Toward Merger

The nominal unification of the armed forces had not stilled interservice bitterness, and no one knew it better than Secretary of Defense James Forrestal. A month ago, he decided that the air transport services of the Air Force and the Navy should be merged. He bluntly ordered the respective Secretaries to find out "how"--not whether--it should be done.

Last week Forrestal was able to announce the "broad outline" of the first major step toward effective integration. Planes and personnel of NATS and ATS would be combined to form the Military Air Transport Service, under the command of the Air Force. The new service would fly all scheduled routes now flown by the separate services, but both would continue to operate transport planes for strictly intra-service purposes.

The man named to command MATS was lean, able Major General Laurence S. Kuter, U.S. representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal, who recently turned down a post as CAB chairman, when the Senate refused to let him keep his rank and higher Army pay on the new job. He would take over the command of MATS on March 1.

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