Peace on the Potomac

ARMY & NAVY

After 14 months of haggling and backbiting, the U.S. had a plan to weld its armed forces together. It was okayed by the Army & Navy and by President Truman. Now it would go to Congress, which must write the enabling law.

As it stood now, the plan called for two major changes. Above the whole military establishment, it set up the single post of Secretary of National Defense. He would have Cabinet rank--but not his assistants, the Secretaries of the Army, Navy --and Air Force. For, peace to the restless shade of farsighted Billy Mitchell, there was at last to be a separate and independent Air Force.

The three civilian secretaries who governed the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, although not members of the Cabinet, would have the right to take up any problems in their own domain directly with the President.

The Secretary of National Defense would be instructed to: "establish common policies and common programs for the integrated operations of the three departments and . . . exercise control over and direct their common efforts to discharge their responsibility for national security."

On paper, that was broad enough to take in all budgetary, purchasing and planning problems in peacetime. By formalizing the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it would resolve all strategic and command arguments in war.

Give & Take. The new plan represented compromise on all sides. The Navy now gave in on the overall secretaryship; the Army had dropped its demand for an overall military commander. The Billy Mitchell school of airmen won the main bout for a separate air force charged with strategic bombing, support of ground troops, lift of airborne soldiers and air defense of the U.S.

The Air Force had to concede to the Navy not only ship-based aircraft but also the vital mission of antisubmarine patrol and protection of shipping, and a modest quota of air transport--mostly with land-based planes. The Marine Corps would have the third air force, both ship-and land-based, for tactical support of its troops.

The details had been worked out in scores of conferences between Major General Lauris Norstad, one of the Army's keenest strategists, and Vice Admiral Forrest Sherman, an airborne sailor who has long been Fleet Admiral Nimitz' brain trust. Sitting in, when higher echelons were called for, were Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal and the Army's W. Stuart Symington, Assistant Secretary for Air.

In the week's speculation in Washington, it was Forrestal and Symington who were mentioned most prominently for the new post of Secretary of National Defense. Forrestal would please the Navy; his fairness made him acceptable to the Army. In that case, handsome Stu Symington, one of the President's Missouri friends, was almost certainly in line for the Secretaryship for Air.

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