Haying in the Ram

Haying in the Rain Digging into reports of wasteful construction on U.S. air bases overseas, the Senate Preparedness subcommittee last week heard some disturbing testimony. Items:

Cf Workers recruited in the U.S. and taken to Greenland to build the base at Thule (on the island's far northwestern rim, some 650 miles above the Arctic Circle) were paid $3,000,000 in wages before they reached the site.

C| In French Morocco, where the U.S. is building five bases, $2,000,000 worth of material was stolen during storage. CJ At another North African base, a roller broke through a new parking apron, causing $2,000,000 damage. A civilian architect-engineer had warned U.S. officers that faulty materials were being used and specifications ignored, but he was snubbed.

Some of this information came from the House Executive Expenditures subcommittee, headed by Virginia Democrat Porter Hardy Jr., which made an on-the-scene investigation in Morocco; other testimony came from civilian engineers and from Air Force men. All of it seemed to point a finger of blame at the Army Corps of Engineers, which commissioned private firms to build the bases.

Lieut. General Lewis A. Pick, the engineers' white-haired chief, builder of World War II's famed Ledo Road ("Pick's Pike") through Assam and Burma, came before the Senate subcommittee to present the defense. Said he: There was "confusion" in the program, but the Engineers have ordered construction firms to straighten things out; the job will be cornpleted "in an efficient manner." Considering the Air Force's hurry-up order for the bases and remoteness of the sites, a pretty good job has been done. A wage premium was necessary to recruit men for the Arctic Greenland job, where the work was hazardous and hardly anyone had ever been before. A heavy rain before the blacktop surface was laid caused the roller to go through the Morocco base apron. "It's just like the man who cuts his hay in the afternoon and hopes it doesn't rain," explained the general.

The subcommittee decided to hold more hearings later to determine what can be done about such haying in the rain.

The U.S. will take a 1,000-mile step across the Mediterranean from North Africa to bring its air bases nearer Russia. By arrangement with the British, the U.S. Air Force will take over the old R.A.F. airstrip at Tymbou, in the colony of Cyprus, a few miles southeast of Nicosia, the island's capital. A 3,000-man labor force will be recruited to rebuild the base for use by U.S. bombers, which will be only 600 miles from Russia's Black Seaports, less than 1,000 miles from Baku oil, Donbas coal and Dnepropetrovsk power.

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