Battle Renewed

Battle Renewed The long-smoldering war between the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force is blazing again in the corridors of the Pentagon with the fiercest intensity since the "revolt of the admirals" in 1949. One reason is that the services, after the fat days of Korean war appropriations, are beginning to scramble for funds in anticipation of leaner days under Eisenhower. Another is that, as Inauguration Day grows closer, retiring Defense Secretary Bob Lovett is losing his firm grip. A third and more fundamental reason is that the Navy is certain it has finally found a method (secret) for mastering Russia's submarine threat, now feels free to turn more of its energies to the expansion of naval aviation.

This week the Navy hopes to lay the keel for the second of ten proposed $220 million flush-deck carriers of the Forrestal class. The Navy got the money for the carrier by an end run around the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by pressuring Congress and convincing Defense Secretary Lovett. With quiet confidence, the Navy thinks it can get enough money to complete its program of ten supercarriers. In desperation, the Air Force is starting to squawk covertly through its unofficial mouthpiece, Air Force magazine, and publicly in the steel-edged speeches of Under Secretary Roswell Gilpatric.

Conviction. Underlying the argument is the old Air Force suspicion that the Navy is poaching on its area of strategic bombing. The Air Force is more & more convinced that strategic bombing offers the only way to win victory in the heart of Russia, that the carrier is a wasteful and militarily unsound offensive weapon for World War III. Among points made by the Air Force:

P:Carrier warfare is exorbitantly expensive: a carrier task group consists of four carriers, must be supported by six cruisers or battleships, 30 destroyers, four scouting submarines, a minesweeping force, and a train of tankers and supply ships. By rough estimate (the Navy will not talk cost figures), such a force with flush-deck carriers costs $2.5 billion. One B50 bomber group, plus cost of air base, fighter protection, fuel, men and antiaircraft guns costs less than one of the new carriers completely armed. And the B50 group can deliver about 15 times as much bomb tonnage to the enemy in a given period of time as can a carrier task group. P:Carrier warfare is inefficient: a carrier task group can mount 450 fighting planes, but half of these must be kept overhead or on the decks, ready to defend the ships themselves. Available for on-target attack: 225 planes out of a $2.5 billion investment. Navy answer: a task group can move 300 miles overnight and fight some place else; a captured air base is no good at all.

P:Carrier striking power is short-lived: a task group can maintain full-scale operations for only 2 1/2 days before it must withdraw and refuel.

P:Carriers are vulnerable to weather which does not stop land-based aircraft. In Exercise Mainbrace last September, a task group was assigned the job of protecting part of Scandinavia during a supposed attack "by a hypothetical Eurasian power." The Scandinavians were not impressed by the performance of the defenders. Carrier Midway's hangar deck was damaged by heavy seas, and aerial operations were virtually shut down during two days of storms. The Navy's answer: 'in actual war it would launch more planes, take greater operational risks. P:Carriers are vulnerable to attack by land-based planes. A ship shows up plainly on an attacking plane's radar; a low-flying plane sometimes doesn't show up at all on a ship's radar. The Navy's answer: no land-based bomber--including the Japanese Kamikaze--has ever sunk a U.S. carrier while the carrier was traveling in a task group.

P:Carriers are easy targets for submarines and mines, and Russia has an enormous supply of mines and the world's largest submarine fleet. During Mainbrace, virtually every major U.S. ship was theoretically torpedoed by antiquated British submarines. The Navy's answer: it now has a secret and foolproof anti-submarine device, which it won't discuss.

If war comes, the Air Force would send its bombers (B-36s, B-50s, B-29s and the jet B-47) into Russia from every possible angle of the compass. This, says the Air Force, should be the primary mission of the U.S. armed forces. Under this concept, the principal job of the Army would be to defend Air Force bases and the principal job of the Navy to keep open the sea lanes and provide fuel and supplies for the overseas Air Force and Army. The Navy can do the job, says the Air Force, with the carriers it now has in service and in mothballs--a total of 102.

Thin-Out v. Concentration. The Navy contends that its primary mission of patrolling the seas means that it must be able to atom-bomb the coastal enemy air and submarine bases which threaten the seas. For this it needs bigger and faster jet planes, and for faster planes it needs the ten carriers of the Forrestal class. At this point the Air Force starts around its argumentative circle again: the Air Force, it says, can handle any major shore bombardments more effectively and more cheaply. And it needs to supplement its B-47 attack force with the money about to be spent on new carriers.

So far, the Air Force seems to have the edge in the public and semi-public argument. But, strangely, the Navy is shunning the chance for counterargument. Orders have gone out from Chief of Naval Operations Bill Fechteler to naval officers and the Navy's own unofficial helpmates (e.g., the Navy League) to keep buttoned up. Reason: in, the B-36 hearings, the Navy observed that the Air Force won public sympathy, and concluded it was because the Air Force was the underdog. This time the admirals are prepared to stand by in martyred silence while the Air Force, crying that its jurisdiction is invaded, picks on the carriers. The struggle is to see which one will turn out to be 1953's Underdog in the Manger.

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