Man With the Answers

"The Congress and the people would be disappointed," said Defense Secretary Charles Erwin Wilson last week, "if they really knew the facts after all the money that had been appropriated for the Air Force." In answering a set of written questions put to him by Maine's Senator Margaret Chase Smith, he went into no further detail about the sad state (as he sees it) of the Air Force, but he indicated that under his management the whole defense situation would soon be improved. Said he: "We are planning by the end of 1954 to have 20 well-equipped divisions in the Army, supported by 27 National Guard divisions. The Navy is to have about 400 combat ships in operation, three divisions of Marines and over 9,900 operating aircraft. The regular Air Force is to have 114 wings, and seven wings in the Air Reserve will be supplied with modern equipment."*

Both in his written answers to Mrs. Smith and in oral testimony before the Senate Military Appropriations subcommittee, Engine Charlie fought hard to still the reverberations of General Hoyt Vandenberg's warning against the proposed cut in Air Force appropriations (TIME, June 15). Displaying the self-assurance of a man who is sure he has all the answers at his fingertips. Wilson took an aggressive attitude toward his senatorial inquisitors. When Massachusetts' Leverett Saltonstall asked about the $3,169,000,000 "which you allege is what can safely be taken off aircraft procurement," Wilson snapped back: "Senator, I do more than allege ..."

Short Shrift. Alabama's Lister Hill got equally short shrift when he asked whether Wilson's Air Force build-up goal of 120 wings (by 1955) might be changed by the incoming Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Wilson: [The new goal] might be 160 for all I know, or any old thing.

Hill: Any old thing?

Wilson: Do not call it "any old thing."

Hill: I'm just using your language, Mr. Secretary . . . When you use the expression any old thing it might mean . . . less than 120.

Wilson: We have been using too many "old things" in wings now. I can tell you that.

Wilson assumed the defensive when Hill taxed him with failing to consult the Joint Chiefs before drawing up the new defense budget.

Hill: Would it not have been proper for you to have discussed it with General Vandenberg?

Wilson: It would have been proper . . . but he knew where I stood and I knew where he stood. One trouble is that he doesn't understand it.

Hill: You mean you know more about the Air Force than General Vandenberg?

Wilson: You have to look at the pieces. At the Rockefeller hearing [on Defense Department reorganization] he said he was a commander, not a planner . . .

Hill: When you set the interim goal of 120 did you break it down?

Deputy Defense Secretary Roger Kyes (breaking in): I personally talked to General Vandenberg about this in my car in Washington . . .

Wilson: ... I think it's a shame to bring General Vandenberg into a controversy like this. I don't think anyone ought to mark him down . .

Hill: ... If there's anyone marking him down it must be you who's doing it.

"Stretch-Out." Out of such hassles a few new facts about Wilson's program for the Air Force did emerge. Reduced plane purchases will give the nation 200 fewer 6-47 jet bombers than original plans called for. The number of pilots to be trained will be cut from 12,000 a year to "maybe" 8,000 or 9,000. Air-base construction will get a major cutback. But all of this, argued Wilson, just amounts to the same thing as the Truman "stretch-out." Said Engine Charlie: "If I had called it another stretch-out like the previous Administration, I would not be in all this trouble."

Hill: Mr. Secretary, do you tell this committee that reducing personnel, reducing the number of pilots to be trained, eliminating the construction of new bases, and things of that kind, have not slowed the advance, if you were advancing to 143 wings?

Wilson: It is an old military trick when civilians put a little pressure on to get the expenses down to pick out something that you cannot stand with and do ... It is ridiculous to talk about cutting the pilot training that low, instead of taking it out of the band musicians and some of the other extra kind of things you do not have to do ...

Hill: A jet has to be flown by a pilot trained for a jet plane.

Wilson: An old fellow like my friend Arthur Godfrey qualified as a jet pilot.

Hill: He is a rather unusual fellow . . .

Wilson: Yes, he is a great enthusiast for aviation. He called me up before he went into the operation from Boston just to make sure I had not ruined the good old Air Force. I said, 'Go ahead with the operation and don't worry, because it is all right.'

The hearings came to an end, and Charlie Wilson signed off with a voluntary statement. "You know," he said, "I actually think we talk too much. Our intelligence would give hundreds of millions of dollars for the information we put in the press." But enemy intelligence was probably as confused as Lister Hill. Said the Alabamian, as Wilson retreated from the hearing room: "He doesn't answer any question. He just makes you a speech."

* This week the Defense Department added a further detail, announced plans to triple the strength of the Air National Guard over the next three years by adding 168 tactical and technical squadrons to the 84 now in existence.

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