Safety Search

"That's a lie!" yelled Assistant Director Rex Martin of the Bureau of Air Commerce, jumping to his feet one afternoon last week, his face tomato-red, before a sub-committee of the Senate Commerce Committee which is currently trying to determine the present safety conditions of U. S. commercial aviation. Along with Director Eugene Vidal and many another official, he had just heard a onetime subordinate bring to a gaudy climax five days of virtually unanimous condemnation of the Bureau of Air Commerce.

Prompted by the death last year in a TWAirwreck of Senator Bronson Cutting (TIME, May 13 et seq.), the Senate inquiry came out into the open last week for the first time after eight months of special investigation. Empowered only to make recommendations to the Senate, the committee, chairmanned by Senator Copeland, called many an aviation bigwig, scheduled four days to hear their testimony. Excerpts:

Senate Investigator Charles Heave Dolan: The Air Bureau economized to a hazardous extent, "violated regulations 100% in some districts," was lax in reporting forced landings, blamed more than 80% of crashes on weather or plane personnel. U. S. airlines, though deeply in the red as a whole, still spend great sums on new safety equipment, are chiefly responsible for making U. S. air transport five times safer now than in 1927.

Senate Investigator Charles Harry Payne: On a 9,000-mi. inspection trip, he found "lack of training, laxity, indifference and an almost complete lack of understanding of the requirements of a pilot." Near Charlottesville, Va., calling for weather data, he found the observer away, his wife at the post. Said she: "I reckon from where I'm sitting it's cloudy." Trembling with emotion, Witness Payne ended by shouting: "Take the Department of Commerce out of politics. You are gambling with human lives!"

Air Commerce Director Eugene Vidal: Radio beacons, lights, etc., are at present inadequate, but government inspectors are not negligent. "As far as politics go, we have had only 14 men replaced in the last two and a half years."

President Edgar Staley Gorrell of the Air Transport Association: The Government should join the operators in the installation of more weather bureaus, more beacons, continuance of research, extension of personnel. Estimated cost: $14,000,000.

Onetime Ambassador to Cuba Harry F. Guggenheim: Ground equipment is nowhere near adequate. "The airport of the District of Columbia is a disgrace to the United States."

TWA President Jack Frye: The Bureau changed its beacons and equipment without informing the airlines. On the occasion of Senator Cutting's death, the Kansas City radio beam was turned off while the plane was groping in fog overhead. Had it been in operation, the accident might not have occurred.

Such slams at Air Bureau efficiency kept the atmosphere of the inquiry tense but quiet for four days, with only one consolation for the accused Federal agency: The committee exonerated the Government airway keeper at Kirksville, Mo., near the scene of the Cutting crash. On the fifth day, however, as the committee agreed to extend its inquiry, came testimony of a different sort which finally drew blood in the exasperated yowl from Assistant Director Martin.

On the stand at the time was Jay Albert Mount, who was in charge of U. S. airway coordination and maintenance in 1934. Under questioning, he told of inspecting most of the system, finding it in deplorable shape. Lights which at one field meant "danger" at another meant "safety." "Maintenance apparently had been given very little consideration." These conditions Mount reported to his superior, Rex Martin. After he reported them to the Senate committee, he was fired, because, said he, the Bureau did not wish to disclose the situation. When Witness Mount quietly went on to affirm that Martin had told him "an effort would be made to besmirch his character" if he so testified, the Assistant Director caused uproar by bellowing his denial.

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