What's In It For the U.S.?

At the close of the last war I sat at international council tables representing our nation on vital matters affecting aeronautics. Yet my colleagues and I had been given only a few days . . . to prepare. And across the tables sat representatives of the Allies who had been preparing for months and even years. They were equipped with a program. . . .

Colonel Edgar Staley Gorrell, president of Air Transport Association of America, was testifying last week before a House committee. Like many another U.S. air executive he was not only looking back with regret, he was also looking ahead with foreboding. One day peace would come, and with it the vastest problem in world transportation that peacemakers had ever met. The world had to be opened to the airlines. How could it be done?

Dream Fulfilled. The day of world air transport is no longer a pipe dream. It is here. There is not a meridian on the earth's fat face that freighters and passenger aircraft do not cross. There are few latitudes where they do not operate, none where they cannot. Yet the day of air transport is only dawning. New aircraft with vastly increased loads and ranges (up to 10,000 miles) are all but ready to fly. Behind them, far past the planning stage, are larger craft still. And following them are new technologies that will increase ranges and loads again.

One of the rubs in the problem is that most of these improvements are the developments and properties of the U.S. Driven by war's necessities, the U.S. has developed its passion for big aircraft (beginning with bombers) beyond airmen's most purple dreams. Cast by war as operator of its longest supply routes, the U.S. has literally been driven into the world transport business.

So when crop-haired, electric Major General Harold Lee George of the U.S. Army looks at his Air Transport Command, it is the whole world he sees. At some of his bases camels lug in the fuel for U.S. transports; at others, sledge dogs; at others, Chinese coolies or Untouchables. Seeing what he sees, he can and does say that "to place any limitations on air transport at all would be to deny progress."

Fulfillment Deferred? But to implement that progress, the need now is not for soldiers but for statesmen. Though the U.S. has the equipment and the experience no other country has, it is still poor in the pivotal bases on which world air transport depends. Those bases belong to U.S. allies --Britain, Russia and China. Unless U.S. statesmen can wangle the rights to their use, the U.S. will be left at the post. That is why airmen say that now is the time to face the situation.

Aircraft's increasing ranges have changed the old concept of world air trade out of all knowledge. Most of the world's worthwhile trade territory, except for South America, lies in the Northern Hemisphere. The shortest way to points in that hemisphere is by Great Circle routes. All these routes go over the top of the world (see map), where airmen have already demonstrated they can fly.

Thus the shortest U.S. routes to the great trade centers of the world lie across Canada, Russia and China. At many of the terminal points, and at pivotal spots along the routes, the U.S. has already put billions into airdromes, weather reporting stations, radio stations. All these paraphernalia are necessary to world air travel. Yet, six months after the war ends, all will revert to the nation on whose possessions they are built, unless. . . .

Five Freedoms. At this point airmen like Hal George can tell anybody exactly what they want. They are not much concerned with what might be called "freedom of the air"--a phrase not yet fully defined. More than an as-yet-undefined freedom for everybody, they want more freedom for the U.S. To their practical minds, what is wanted is not four freedoms but five: 1) ownership of bases, 2) of customs (so that transient passengers and freight can pass freely), 3) radio communications, 4) operations without unreasonable interference, 5) weather observation. To secure these five points is the statesman's problem. Airmen can only state it.

The most effective guarantee of world air transport and its promise of world peace would be complete freedom of the air--the right of any nation's planes to fly over any other nation. Yet Britain, for one, forced by war to the exclusive building of warplanes and the consequent neglect of commercial aviation, is hardly likely to agree offhand. If she did, it would mean world domination of trade by the U.S. Russia is in a like situation; so is China.

Even U.S. airmen are doubtful of the wisdom of unqualified freedom of the air: along with its easing of trade routes it would also carry a constant menace. Free air traffic by all nations would expose the peaceful to surprise air attack.

Trading in Order. But airmen see great hope in qualified freedom. The broad-minded concede that, since the U.S. has the tools and the know-how, and Britain most of the bases, the obvious thing to do is to strike a bargain. For its share of the bargain, the U.S. is likely to have to trade more than the five freedoms at its own ports of entry. To keep title to some of the bases it has built, and to fly its planes over other countries, it may have to give up airplanes, manufacturing methods, even experienced airmen, to the airlines of other nations.

The U.S. will have to strike a bargain, too, with China and Russia, knowing that in their case it can lay far less claim to the five freedoms than it can in dealing with Britain. It will have to bargain with Liberia, Persia, Sweden, many another noncombatant that is under no obligation for U.S. help in World War II. For airmen the bargaining cannot begin too soon.

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