New & Shiny

Congress got ready last week to vote for a 70-group Air Force.

Impatiently, the Senate Appropriations Committee summoned Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal, who had originally asked for only enough money to fill out the present 55-group force. Under congressional prodding, he had produced a makeshift, economy-sized 66-group program. It would provide ten of the extra groups by taking 300 old B-29s out of storage, and modernizing them.

Forrestal was forced to admit that the Joint Chiefs of Staff considered the 66-group program "inadequate as a military matter." The Senators, suspicious of a force taken out of mothballs, gave it short shrift, decided to take matters in their own hands.

The Gamble. Next day, Secretary of the Air Force W. Stuart Symington appeared, dutifully read a statement endorsing Forrestal's 66-group compromise, then gave it as his opinion that anything less than the modernized, 70-group force would be "gambling with security." The Russians, he declared, have more and better jets than the U.S., a total air force many times 70 groups. Said Symington: "If you don't start building the Air Force now, you won't get it until the Russians have the atomic bomb . . . Time is rapidly running out."

That sounded like good sense to the committee. At week's end, they voted 16-to-1 for the 70-group force, sent a bill to the Senate floor carrying $822 million to buy, as a starter, 825 new jet fighters (P-84s, improved P-80s), 28 heavy bombers (B-36s and B-50s) and jet bombers.

The Package. The House had already voted overwhelmingly for the 70-group program; the Senate seemed certain to follow. What was Congress buying? Basically, a modern air force by 1952. It would be built of planes developed since the war and available, to replace an air force of World War II planes. The present 55-group Air Force is organized as 13 heavy bomber groups, 24 fighter groups, three light-bomber groups, eight troop-carrier groups, seven miscellaneous groups including reconnaissance, mapping and weather,* plus 17 separate squadrons. The new force would add eight heavy bomber groups, one fighter, two light-bomber, two troop-carrier and two miscellaneous.

The committee's bill did not commit Congress to carry out the full four-year, 70-group program. It was simply spending the extra $822 million now to give the Air Force a flying start toward full modernization, to breathe fresh life into the emaciated aircraft industry and keep it healthy in case of need. If the international situation eased, the program could always be cut back. Congress preferred to be on the safe side.

* The size of a group varies with the planes: 30 heavy bombers or 48 light bombers or 75 fighters or 36 to 48 troop carriers.

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