Post by miletus12 on Nov 7, 2022 19:33:08 GMT
How the USN was restructured after WWII.
The big change was the atomic bomb.
It had a shattering effect on the way the USG and how its military thought things should and would work. Much was made at the time of the fight of the newly emergent independent air force and the USN. This was a press generated controversy based on a leftover WWII Army air forces propaganda effort designed to get the air force its independence and the natural exuberance of an incompetent yellow journalism that bought into the "air power won WWII" bilge the air force lobby sold in the popular imaginations.
People forget that the American army went through the same exact savaging the American navy did in the press at the hands of the air force.
People also forget that "Whatever happens we have got, the atom bomb and they have not." ridiculous mantra at the time.
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Then there was the WWII war debt, demobilization and a MASSIVE unemployment problem with too many veterans hunting for far too few jobs, and an overburdened tax base and an economy that had to restructure to provide jobs and housing and income for 9 MILLION soldiers.
The USG could afford a large navy or a large air force, not both and work the social safety net. PLUS the USG was underwriting the Marshall Plan and facing off the Russians who at that time had no navy but fielded an army 6x the size of the American one.
The air force came into this situation with the idea that they could neuter the Russians on the cheap with a force of strategic bombers and that aircraft carriers and armored divisions made no sense on a dollars and cents rational. We called it "bang for the buck". That was where the term and saying originated.
The Revolt of the Admirals
There is a lot to unpack, but the sheer corruption in the Truman defense department is why Korea turned into such a stink show and still bled over into VIETNAM. We are still paying for those political mistakes.
CYNICAL Miletus.
The big change was the atomic bomb.
It had a shattering effect on the way the USG and how its military thought things should and would work. Much was made at the time of the fight of the newly emergent independent air force and the USN. This was a press generated controversy based on a leftover WWII Army air forces propaganda effort designed to get the air force its independence and the natural exuberance of an incompetent yellow journalism that bought into the "air power won WWII" bilge the air force lobby sold in the popular imaginations.
People forget that the American army went through the same exact savaging the American navy did in the press at the hands of the air force.
People also forget that "Whatever happens we have got, the atom bomb and they have not." ridiculous mantra at the time.
===============================================================================
Then there was the WWII war debt, demobilization and a MASSIVE unemployment problem with too many veterans hunting for far too few jobs, and an overburdened tax base and an economy that had to restructure to provide jobs and housing and income for 9 MILLION soldiers.
The USG could afford a large navy or a large air force, not both and work the social safety net. PLUS the USG was underwriting the Marshall Plan and facing off the Russians who at that time had no navy but fielded an army 6x the size of the American one.
The air force came into this situation with the idea that they could neuter the Russians on the cheap with a force of strategic bombers and that aircraft carriers and armored divisions made no sense on a dollars and cents rational. We called it "bang for the buck". That was where the term and saying originated.
The Revolt of the Admirals
The Revolt of the Admirals
By John T. Correll
May 29, 2018
A 1948 illustration of a design concept for the proposed Navy aircraft carrier USS United States. The ship was designed to be a flush-deck supercarrier capable of launching large bombers armed with atomic weapons. Illustration: Bruno Figallo/USN
The spark that set off the Revolt of the Admirals in 1949 was the cancellation of the Navy’s supercarrier, the CVA-58 United States, within a few days of the laying of the keel.
The situation was already primed to ignite. The Navy in the postwar period had become apprehensive, then alarmed, about the impending unification of the services under a single Department of Defense. The rise of the Air Force was a challenge to naval aviation.
No foreign nation posed a threat to the United States at sea. With its traditional role thus diminished in importance, the Navy feared that it might be relegated to minor functions.
The nation’s strategic focus was on atomic weapons, which were in the domain of the Air Force. At the Key West conference in 1948, the mission of strategic air warfare had been assigned to the Air Force. The Navy was determined to roll back that decision and gain at least part of the atomic mission.
To do so, it needed a “supercarrier” that could launch large bombers. It also had to discredit the Air Force’s B-36 bomber, which was performing the mission the Navy wanted. Cancellation of the CVA-58 in April 1949 sent the Navy to battle stations.
The Revolt of the Admirals unfolded in stages over the next six months and revolved around a sweeping investigation by the House Armed Services Committee, whose chairman, Rep. Carl Vinson (D-Ga.), was the great patron and protector of the Navy.
The congressional inquiry was instigated by Rep. James Van Zandt (R-Pa.), a member of the HASC and a captain in the Navy Reserve. Van Zandt brandished an anonymous paper that supposedly exposed malfeasance in the B-36 procurement, including allegations of political and financial gain by Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson and Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington Jr.
(Those charges were and are true. Louis Johnson was the worst secretary of defense and most corrupt and criminal until Robert McNamara. Stuart Symmington was well meaning but incompetent and he too was a profiteer. M.)
It was not revealed until August that Van Zandt’s “unimpeachable evidence” consisted of a memo written by Cedric Worth, a civilian assistant to the Undersecretary of the Navy, and based purely on gossip and rumor. Worth had help in writing the memo from the deputy chief of Op-23, a special propaganda cell that had been set up by the Navy to work the strategic airpower issue.
(Op-23 was directed to study the implications of atomic weapons in a fleet environment. One of the results of its work was the atomic bomb tests at Bimini Atoll. It turned out that a US fleet COULD SURVIVE and fight despite an atomic bombing. The USAF did not like that one any bit. M.)
Vinson soon acknowledged that the B-36 program was “clean as a hound’s tooth” but he allowed the investigation to continue. The Navy sent one admiral after another to testify. Their main message was that the Air Force had sold the nation a bill of goods on the B-36, and that the current strategy—which had been agreed upon by all of the service chiefs—was wrong.
(This is a lie. This airpower article written by a USAF advocate, mistates what the USN reported to the committee. They reported that the whole B-36 program was a legacy of an Army Air Forces project to bomb Germany from the United States in WWII. As a result the B-36 was based on an obsolete WWII aero-engine technology and was an upscaled WWII type bomber designed to flatten cities by massed conventional area terror bombing. It was never intended to carry atomic bombs. Both the Navy and the USAF knew what a horror show the B-29 program with its exploding engines and wing snap-offs and planes "disappearing" never to be heard from again due to unknown mechanicals had turned out to be. Just producing 4,000 of those defective monsters had almost bankrupted the USG at 4x the cost of the Manhattan Project. The B-36 in development was proving to be even more of a manure sandwich than the current unreliable and extremely vulnerable to fighters B-29. The B -36 bomber was a technology dead ender in the jet age, a botched engineering fiasco and a waste of taxpayer's money. Johnson, Symmington, Consolidated, the bomber barons, the air force and the professionals in Congress all knew this. The real question was jet bombers from England or jet bombers from aircraft carriers to conduct atomic bomb city killing missions. The Navy argued England might not want USAF jet bombers and thus have a bullseye painted on it. The Navy was well aware that the air force was also lying about its ability to atom bomb Russia with the B-36. M.)
Finally, Gen. Omar Bradley, the highly respected, even-handed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had heard as much as he could tolerate. In what the Washington Post called a “hide-searing statement” to the HASC, Bradley lambasted the dissident admirals as “fancy Dans who won’t hit the line with all they have on every play unless they call the signals.”
(Omar Bradley, the man who screwed up the Battle of the Bulge and who Eisenhower replaced with Montgomery during the battle because to put it Eisenhower's words; "Omar, you have expletive deleted everything we tried to do here up". was even-handed and respected? He was JOCUS because the only other post was US Army Europe and NOBODY would trust him with that position of responsibility. They had to put him somewhere, so they ceremonialed him into the deadend JOCUS charmanship. Eisenhower was that honcho. Omar was especially hated in Navy circles because prewar he had derided them as "unnecessary". M.)
That effectively blew the Revolt of the Admirals out of the water. The chief of naval operations, Adm. Louis E. Denfeld, was relieved and replaced. Op-23 was shut down. Cedric Worth resigned.
(All of this happened because of Johnson, not because of Bradley. Bradley was given the script and he puppeted the lines. M.)
Seventy years later, the Revolt of the Admirals lives on in naval tradition as a courageous lost cause, imperfect in some respects, but waged in a noble and justified purpose. The story from the historical record is at considerable variance with that.
(Lost cause?
Each Hornet can launch TWO atomic warheaded cruise missiles. M.)
THE “ATOMIC CARRIER”
In February 1948, the Navy announced plans to build a “flush-deck” supercarrier. It would be 1,090 feet long, more than a tenth again larger than the Midway class carriers. An elevator would lower the bridge below the flight deck to allow easier operation of airplanes with a wide wingspan.
(A bit premature, but the Neptune atomic bomb carrying ASW aircraft was a bit large. The follow on would have been jet powered and larger. M. )
The manifest purpose was to establish a claim to the strategic bombing mission. The Navy regularly referred to the project as the “atomic carrier.”
In May 1948, the House Armed Services Committee gave unanimous backing for the Navy to “lay down” the supercarrier. Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal and the Navy assured the HASC the project had been approved by all of the service chiefs. The Army and the Air Force said that this exaggerated the extent of their agreement.
Also in May, President Harry S. Truman announced his intention to hold the FY 1950 budget to $15 billion. The requirements calculated by the individual services came to $29 billion, almost twice the size of Truman’s limit.
The estimated cost of CVA-58 was $188 million, but the additional ships required to complete a supercarrier task force would raise it to $1.27 billion, an amount equal to more than eight percent of Truman’s total defense budget.
Bomber aircraft for the supercarrier—not yet developed and not available for another five years—would add $500 million to the cost. These aircraft would have the capability to deliver an atomic bomb but they would not match the range of Air Force bombers.
(Those were the B-47 and B-52 jet bombers, both not expected to be ready for 10 years and expected to cost 2x to meet the same capaility as a USN task force as to atomic bomb delivery. And restricted until mid air refueling became proven in 1957 to guess where? The UK. M.)
A contract for the CVA-58 was let in August 1948. Although not much was said about it, the Navy hoped eventually to have four carriers of that design.
(11 and 1 more on the way. M.)
The Air Force canceled six aircraft programs, 240 total aircraft in all, to help fund the B-36 program. Forrestal forwarded to the Bureau of the Budget a request for additional B-36s that would be equipped with four jet engines to augment the six piston engines and add to its capability.
(The air force scrapped close air support, fighter interceptor and medium bomber programs that were designed to help the army fight and win in central Europe. In addition it refused to join a Navy program to put the heavy USAF gravity dropped atomic bombs on a diet, or to investigate missile delivery systems. Lots of specific indicators in the paper trail suggests that the B-36 was a USAF sacred cow that was to be enabled and protected at all costs despite the mounting technical evidence that it would never survive to meet its mission goals in the presence and evidence of an enormous jet powered Soviet air force based on fighters and medium bombers.
Forrestal left office in March 1949 and wasreplaced backstabbed by Louis A. Johnson, who asked the Joint Chiefs in April for a fresh appraisal of the supercarrier. The Navy was for it, but the Army^1 and the Air Force were opposed. The majority opinion was that the supercarrier was too expensive for a limited strategic capability not part of a primary function assigned to the Navy.
(The Army was desperate to modernize and it saw that money as its only shot for new tanks. The air force played them. As it turned out from the tank crisis and the aircraft carrier crisis, the air force screwed both services over. Neither got what they needed. Wait for it. M.)
The keel for the CVA-58 was formally laid April 18, but on April 23, Johnson issued orders for the program to be stopped “at once and at the least possible cost to the government.” The Secretary of the Navy, John L. Sullivan, who had not been consulted, resigned in protest and was replaced by Francis P. Matthews, whose main qualification was his willingness to cooperate withJohnson Consolidated Aircraft.
(He was paid off, just like Johnson and Symmington. M.)
THE NAVY STRIKES BACK
The Navy struck back on several fronts, making use of material produced by Op-23, a secretive “research and policy” unit created on the CNO’s staff the previous December and led by Capt. Arleigh A. Burke, a distinguished combat veteran of World War II.
Naval aviators clamored for a mock battle in which their F2H-1 Banshee fighter would attempt to intercept and attack a B-36. Van Zandt took the proposal to Vinson. The Joint Chiefs said the ability of the B-36 to evade interception and complete its mission depended on an entire process of factors and that a stand-alone set piece fighter demonstration was not a valid test. Vinson agreed with them and did not press the issue.
(He, Vinson, made a mistake. This FLEET PROBLEM would have revealed the suicidal nature of pitting piston engined bombers against jets which had a 150 knot speed and 3,500 foot altitude advantage over them. As the B-29 an operationally faster bomber than the B-36, was to discover in battle against the MiG-15. M.)
A recurring theme of the campaign was that an “atomic blitz” strategy gambled the future on the Air Force and the B-36. In fact, no such strategy existed and had never been proposed. In July, the Joint Chiefs issued a ringing endorsement of the current war plan. “The Joint Chiefs of Staff separately and jointly are of the firm opinion that the concept of strategic bombing and the extent of its employment as now planned are sound,” they said.
(It is in the Congressional Record. LeMay testified to this strategy, omitting that the USAF B-36 fleet at the time was restricted to ONE runway in the US, that of the 100 bombers existent, only 10 were expected to reach their Russian targets and a NO-RETURN one way suicide mission profile was operationally accepted. Also the US had only 30 atomic bombs, so that would be another BIG problem. M.)
Both the effectiveness and the morality of strategic nuclear bombing role were regularly questioned. The most extreme claim was by Navy Cmdr. Eugene Tatom, head of research and development for aviation ordnance, who said, “you could stand in the open at one end of the north-south runway at the Washington National Airport with no more protection than the clothes you have on, and have an atom bomb explode at the other end of the runway without serious injury to you.”
**(That was an exaggeration but if you were on the USS Saratoga in the atom bomb test they did on her, you wsould survive the blast and still be able to fight. That bomb was burst about 900 feet away from the carrier. Now you would die a month later from radiation poisoning, but you on the average had 2 weeks of revenge in you left. M.)
Putting this into perspective, Bradley said that, “it has been the Navy’s continuous argument that they should be permitted to use the atomic bomb, both strategically and tactically. If it is really so ineffective as some would have you believe, I wonder why the Navy is so anxious to use it.”
(To kill cities. Bricks and mortar are a lot more fragile than warships. Bradley KNEW this. M.)
Rep. James Van Zandt (R-Pa.)
Photo: Library of Congress
VAN ZANDT’S ALLEGATIONS
In the early summer of 1949, though, the main headlines were created by Van Zandt and his showy activities on Capitol Hill. He called for a congressional investigation into “ugly, disturbing reports” of wrongdoing in the B-36 program.
Van Zandt said he had “no personal knowledge” of the truth of these reports. However, he characterized various allegations as “well-founded” and based on “unimpeachable authority.” He also repeated them over and over on the floor of the House, where he could do so with immunity from a lawsuit.
(Op-23. M.)
Among the more spectacular accusations—and the actuality of the alleged events, soon verified by the Committee staff—were these:
Floyd Odlum, the head of Consolidated Vultee, which produced the B-36 was supposedly a “heavy contributor” to President Truman’s election campaign in 1948, for which Secretary Johnson had been finance chairman. Odlum’s contribution was $3,000.
(He became an instant millionaire, Johnson did. It is called stock options in a prospective company about toi be awarded a huge contract. This was still legal at the time. M.)
Van Zandt said Forrestal had refused to approve the request for additional B-36s but that “a very short time” after he was sworn in to replace Forrestal, Johnson issued the order “in great haste.” In fact, Forrestal signed the approval two weeks before he left office. The order was in place when Johnson got there.
(This is true over the current build. What is also true is that Forrestal CAPPED the progam at 100 additional bombers. Johnson increased the purchase by 400 more units. M.)
According to Van Zandt, Symington was “a frequent weekend visitor at the Palm Springs, Calif., home of Mr. Odlum.” Symington had been there twice, once when his airplane diverted to land there because of weather—Odlum not being home at the time—and again for less than a full day in conjunction with a business meeting.
(Most of Symmington's chicanery and treachery was done the usual way, by telephone; especially the PRESS LEAKS about Forrestal. M.)
A wartime defense contract with Emerson Electric Co., formerly headed by Symington, was said to have been renegotiated in Emerson’s favor in 1948 by Col. Frank Wolfe of Wright Field. Wolfe, then retired, supposedly lived in a luxurious Beverly Hills home. In fact, Symington had not been affiliated with Emerson since 1945. Wolfe had retired from the Air Force in 1944. In 1949, he lived in a rental apartment.
(The truth is that Symmington still held voting stock (Illegal even then.) and Wolfe was an expletive deleted lobbyist for Emerson, bought and paid who lived in an EXPENSIVE apartment in Washington to entertain and schmooze politicians because that was where CONGRESS was. M.)
Van Zandt said there was “a plan underway” for Symington to resign as Air Force Secretary as soon as the budget with more funds for the B-36 was approved and head a “huge aircraft combine” established by Odlum. In fact, there were no such plans, no such combine.
(Of course not. Once the scheme was revealed, it died. Symmington had to revert to plan B. Get rrid of Forrestal. M.)
Symington challenged Van Zandt to repeat what he had said somewhere away from Capitol Hill where he would not be shielded by congressional immunity. Van Zandt declined.
(Like Alger Hiss, knowing a man is a traitor is one thing. PROVING it is something else. You may not want to burn means and methods in open court. M.)
Rep. Carl Vinson (D-Ga.), (left), Secretary of the Navy Francis Matthews, Adm. Louis Denfeld, and Pacific Fleet Commander Arthur Radford in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 6, 1949.
Photo: US Naval Institute
(One Congressperson, one poltroon and two admirals. M.)
CONFESSION
When the hearings opened in August, it did not take long to dismiss the accusations. Vinson announced that there was “not one iota, not one scintilla, of evidence” of “collusion, fraud, corruption, influence, or favoritism” in the B-36 procurement.
(Vinson did not actually say this. He said the evidence for criminal prosecutions was not present in sufficient quantity. M.)
Van Zandt’s sole source for his inflammatory statements was the paper, referred to in the press and elsewhere as the “anonymous memo.”
(The Areleigh Burke memo was an analysis, not the source of the charges. M.)
The Air Force knew where the paper came from—the Air Force Office of Special Investigations working with the FBI had tracked down the typewriter on which it was created—and told Vinson, who called Cedric Worth to the stand.
(You wonder what the Air Force was up to? They were in the middle of a coverup. They had to neutralize the source of the investigation into their own wrongdoing. M.)
Worth, a former scriptwriter for the movies (“The Corpse That Knew Everybody” and “The Trail of the Serpent”) was an assistant to Undersecretary of the Navy Dan A. Kimball. Worth promptly admitted to Vinson that he had written the paper. “I made a great error and I regret it deeply,” he said.
(True. We have this on film. What Forth admitted was that he blew op-sec. M.)
A Navy court of inquiry subsequently established that the Op-23 deputy, Cmdr. Thomas M. Davies—noted for setting an aviation distance record in 1946—had helped Worth write the paper, drawing on “rank gossip” he had heard.
(Not true. The court of inquiry was to determine how the air force found out about the Navy's inquiry. M.
Davies said he had no idea Worth intended to circulate the paper, which according to one congressman was “peddled all over Capitol Hill” by an Active Duty naval officer.
(It was supposed to be restricted to HASC. A witless naval staffer shared the memo out of Vinson's office. M.)
“I made no charges or accusations,” Van Zandt said. “I simply repeated to the House the rumors that were all over Washington and were affecting service morale.”
Vinson rejected suggestions to terminate the inquiry, having been persuaded by the Navy that more needed to be heard on the underlying strategic issues.
(Vinson had seen the Arleigh Burke memo, not the Worth summary. M.)
Concurrently in August, Congress passed the National Security Act Amendment of 1949, completing the unification of the armed forces. The National Military Establishment was replaced by a muchstronger weaker Department of Defense. The individual service departments lost their Cabinet status. The position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which had existed informally up to then, was created in law. The Army’s Omar Bradley was appointed the first CJCS.
(As above, Bradley was "promoted" where he could do no harm. The service chiefs were supposedly subordinated to one secreatary now, not two, one for each service, but in effect authority was split among 10 idiot assistant secreataries now grown today to nearly 100. This piece of rotten legislation was the end of any hope for an efficient war machine, not that the USG had one to begin, but the NDA 1949 made it impossible to fight wars with any rhyme or reason and actually IMPEDED civilian oversight as Uniformed Lunatics (Vanderbilt in the air force, Westmoreland in the army and eventually ZUMWALT in the navy at various times and places.) corrupted their services in service to even more corrupt civilian masters like Johnson, Mcnamara and Jimmy Carter (as POTUS). M.)
Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington, (left), speaks with Army Secretary Kenneth Royall Sr., Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, and Secretary of the Navy John Sullivan in 1949.
Photo: Naval History and Heritage Command
(Two crooks amd two idiots. You already know the crooks; Johnson and Symmington. M.)
THE ADMIRALS RALLY
Navy Secretary Matthews implored the service to stick to its own issues in the hearing and not attack the Air Force. Matthews, however, had no credibility with the disgruntled admirals. “They kept the pot boiling with leaks or rebellious public statements, attacking Johnson’s budget cuts, the Air Force, the B-36, and the nuclear retaliatory strategy,” Bradley said.
(Stooges never do deserve respect. I include Omar Bradley. M.)
The principal Navy spokesman was the colorful Adm. Arthur W. Radford, a naval aviator and commander of the US Pacific Fleet. He called the B-36 “a billion-dollar blunder,” a symbol of the “atomic blitz,” and “cheap and easy victory” through mass destruction of populations.
(He was arguing in an America where terror bombing =s a war crime. Jane Voter was not unaware of the Lemay Plan and its underpinnings. She had seen the films from Nagasaki and Hiroshima. M.)
A parade of admirals, Active Duty and retired, took the stand to testify, but the headlines were grabbed by Capt. John G. Crommelin Jr., a naval aviator serving on the Joint Staff, who called a press conference to say the Navy was being systematically and intentionally destroyed.
(As the navy saw it, this was a true statement. Mission requires money and the air force was hogging both, for the wrong and frankly provably corrupt reasons as I explained above in these editorial footnotes. M.(
Crommelin, who became a hero to many in the Navy, praised Cedric Worth for “the highest motives of patriotism and selflessness.” The legendary retired Adm. William F. Halsey Jr. said Crommelin “deserves the help and respect of all naval officers.”
CNO Denfeld, who through the summer had left it to others to carry the propaganda campaign, took the stand Oct. 13 to say, “There is a steady campaign to relegate the Navy to a convoy and antisubmarine service” and that “I do not believe that high-level strategic bombing will attain for us the objectives of a war.”
(True, but the United States Strategic Bombing Survey which was just published was not well known. Otherwise the Navy's case would have been less emotional and more data driven by rersults. The air force did not want the USSBS to be widely dessimated. The bomber barons knew the truth BEFORE the survey collected hard data. Bombing was "ineffective" without surface effectors to follow up results. The enemy recovered SWIFTLY. M.)
That is Nagasaki. M.)
A week later, Bradley unloaded on the Navy and on the “fancy Dans who won’t hit the line” unless they could call the signals. “I believe that the public hearing of the grievances of a few officers who will not accept the decisions of the authorities established by law. . . have done infinite harm to our national defense, our position of leadership in world affairs, the position of our national policy, and the confidence of the people in their government.”
(Did you know Omar Bradley politically backstabbed Billy Mitchell for these same so called reasons when the issue was what was the best defense to build for the scarce money? Strange friends the air force kept in those days. M.)
Coming as it did from Bradley, that was a fatal blow to the Revolt of the Admirals. Truman, acting on the (rotten and corrpted) advice of Secretary Matthews, relieved Denfeld as CNO on Oct. 27 and named Adm. Forrest Sherman, who had not taken part in the revolt, to replace him.
(Oh, Sherman took part. He laid the groundwork for the FORRESTALS as soon as history proved the Navy's case. M.)
Tracing a news leak, a team from the Navy Inspector General’s office was dispatched for a no-notice inspection of the Op-23 files. Tipped off by an informant in the CNO’s office, Op-23 was able to pull the most sensitive papers out of the files and hide them in an office down the hall before the IG got there. On Nov. 3, Sherman disbanded Op-23 and reassigned Burke, Davies, and their colleagues to other duties.
(What happened was Op-23 was reconstituted under Sherman under a new cover. Since op-sec had been compromised, it was going under the Operations and Plans monicker now. Guess who headed that on his way to becoming CNO? Arleigh Burke. Sometimes you can be amazed by how DUMB the army and air force are. M.)
OFF THEY GO …
Van Zandt was re-elected to Congress and served until 1963. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Senate in 1962. He had retired as a rear admiral in the Navy Reserve in 1959.
Worth resigned and went back to writing movie scripts. In 1957, he produced a documentary, “Naked Africa.”
Crommelin continued to criticize Defense officials publicly, received a reprimand, and took early retirement when he was placed on indefinite furlough. He went home to Alabama where he ran for the US Senate and lost.
Radford followed Bradley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was a strong supporter of President Eisenhower’s New Look/Massive Retaliation strategy that increased the emphasis on nuclear weapons.
(After Bradley screwed up Korea, along with MacArthur another Eisenhowe favorite (SARCASM) and the air force screwed up the air war, and Eisenhower became POTUS, you wonder why RADFORD became CJOCUS? M.)
Burke, who had been redlined from the promotion list in December 1949, was reinstated and advanced to rear admiral by President Truman. With Radford as his sponsor, Burke became Chief of Naval Operations in 1955.
(And we get Nautilus and Polaris and minaiturized SOLID PROPELLANT missile thrown nuclear weapons, plus air to air missiles, surface to air missiles and (army) weaponry which works and the ability to project airpower from the super carriers the air force wanted to kill for the B-36 and Consolidated's profits. M.).
Davies retired as a rear admiral in 1973 after 40 years in the Navy.
The B-36 continued in effective service with Strategic Air Command until 1958.
*(The B-36 was terminated early after IOC in 1953 due to wing fatigue, engine fires, cabin pressurization failures and NEVER FLEW A 24/7 FAILSAFE mission as it would seize engines up in the air after 8-12 hours aloft because the oil failed. M.).
The Navy went on to build big-deck carriers. The CVA-59 Forrestal in 1955 is regarded as the first supercarrier, but a “flush-deck” plan to lower the bridge with an elevator was scrapped. Instead, Forrestal had an angled flight deck with the “island” off to the side.
(So what? Her Vigilantes could reach Russian targets when the Air Force could not. M.)
The carrier’s enduring claim to fame turned out to be its value in theater and tactical operations, not in launching long-range bombers. The Navy eventually gained a share of the nuclear mission when submarine-launched ballistic missiles took their place in the strategic triad alongside Air Force bombers and ICBMs.
(The Navy has the primary mission due to air force incompetence DOWN TO THE PRESENT. M.)
_John T. Correll was the editor-in-chief of Air Force Magazine for 18 years and is now a contributor. His most recent article, “Intercepting the Bear,” appeared in the April / May issue.
History
By John T. Correll
May 29, 2018
A 1948 illustration of a design concept for the proposed Navy aircraft carrier USS United States. The ship was designed to be a flush-deck supercarrier capable of launching large bombers armed with atomic weapons. Illustration: Bruno Figallo/USN
The spark that set off the Revolt of the Admirals in 1949 was the cancellation of the Navy’s supercarrier, the CVA-58 United States, within a few days of the laying of the keel.
The situation was already primed to ignite. The Navy in the postwar period had become apprehensive, then alarmed, about the impending unification of the services under a single Department of Defense. The rise of the Air Force was a challenge to naval aviation.
No foreign nation posed a threat to the United States at sea. With its traditional role thus diminished in importance, the Navy feared that it might be relegated to minor functions.
The nation’s strategic focus was on atomic weapons, which were in the domain of the Air Force. At the Key West conference in 1948, the mission of strategic air warfare had been assigned to the Air Force. The Navy was determined to roll back that decision and gain at least part of the atomic mission.
To do so, it needed a “supercarrier” that could launch large bombers. It also had to discredit the Air Force’s B-36 bomber, which was performing the mission the Navy wanted. Cancellation of the CVA-58 in April 1949 sent the Navy to battle stations.
The Revolt of the Admirals unfolded in stages over the next six months and revolved around a sweeping investigation by the House Armed Services Committee, whose chairman, Rep. Carl Vinson (D-Ga.), was the great patron and protector of the Navy.
The congressional inquiry was instigated by Rep. James Van Zandt (R-Pa.), a member of the HASC and a captain in the Navy Reserve. Van Zandt brandished an anonymous paper that supposedly exposed malfeasance in the B-36 procurement, including allegations of political and financial gain by Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson and Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington Jr.
(Those charges were and are true. Louis Johnson was the worst secretary of defense and most corrupt and criminal until Robert McNamara. Stuart Symmington was well meaning but incompetent and he too was a profiteer. M.)
It was not revealed until August that Van Zandt’s “unimpeachable evidence” consisted of a memo written by Cedric Worth, a civilian assistant to the Undersecretary of the Navy, and based purely on gossip and rumor. Worth had help in writing the memo from the deputy chief of Op-23, a special propaganda cell that had been set up by the Navy to work the strategic airpower issue.
(Op-23 was directed to study the implications of atomic weapons in a fleet environment. One of the results of its work was the atomic bomb tests at Bimini Atoll. It turned out that a US fleet COULD SURVIVE and fight despite an atomic bombing. The USAF did not like that one any bit. M.)
Vinson soon acknowledged that the B-36 program was “clean as a hound’s tooth” but he allowed the investigation to continue. The Navy sent one admiral after another to testify. Their main message was that the Air Force had sold the nation a bill of goods on the B-36, and that the current strategy—which had been agreed upon by all of the service chiefs—was wrong.
(This is a lie. This airpower article written by a USAF advocate, mistates what the USN reported to the committee. They reported that the whole B-36 program was a legacy of an Army Air Forces project to bomb Germany from the United States in WWII. As a result the B-36 was based on an obsolete WWII aero-engine technology and was an upscaled WWII type bomber designed to flatten cities by massed conventional area terror bombing. It was never intended to carry atomic bombs. Both the Navy and the USAF knew what a horror show the B-29 program with its exploding engines and wing snap-offs and planes "disappearing" never to be heard from again due to unknown mechanicals had turned out to be. Just producing 4,000 of those defective monsters had almost bankrupted the USG at 4x the cost of the Manhattan Project. The B-36 in development was proving to be even more of a manure sandwich than the current unreliable and extremely vulnerable to fighters B-29. The B -36 bomber was a technology dead ender in the jet age, a botched engineering fiasco and a waste of taxpayer's money. Johnson, Symmington, Consolidated, the bomber barons, the air force and the professionals in Congress all knew this. The real question was jet bombers from England or jet bombers from aircraft carriers to conduct atomic bomb city killing missions. The Navy argued England might not want USAF jet bombers and thus have a bullseye painted on it. The Navy was well aware that the air force was also lying about its ability to atom bomb Russia with the B-36. M.)
Finally, Gen. Omar Bradley, the highly respected, even-handed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had heard as much as he could tolerate. In what the Washington Post called a “hide-searing statement” to the HASC, Bradley lambasted the dissident admirals as “fancy Dans who won’t hit the line with all they have on every play unless they call the signals.”
(Omar Bradley, the man who screwed up the Battle of the Bulge and who Eisenhower replaced with Montgomery during the battle because to put it Eisenhower's words; "Omar, you have expletive deleted everything we tried to do here up". was even-handed and respected? He was JOCUS because the only other post was US Army Europe and NOBODY would trust him with that position of responsibility. They had to put him somewhere, so they ceremonialed him into the deadend JOCUS charmanship. Eisenhower was that honcho. Omar was especially hated in Navy circles because prewar he had derided them as "unnecessary". M.)
That effectively blew the Revolt of the Admirals out of the water. The chief of naval operations, Adm. Louis E. Denfeld, was relieved and replaced. Op-23 was shut down. Cedric Worth resigned.
(All of this happened because of Johnson, not because of Bradley. Bradley was given the script and he puppeted the lines. M.)
Seventy years later, the Revolt of the Admirals lives on in naval tradition as a courageous lost cause, imperfect in some respects, but waged in a noble and justified purpose. The story from the historical record is at considerable variance with that.
(Lost cause?
Each Hornet can launch TWO atomic warheaded cruise missiles. M.)
THE “ATOMIC CARRIER”
In February 1948, the Navy announced plans to build a “flush-deck” supercarrier. It would be 1,090 feet long, more than a tenth again larger than the Midway class carriers. An elevator would lower the bridge below the flight deck to allow easier operation of airplanes with a wide wingspan.
(A bit premature, but the Neptune atomic bomb carrying ASW aircraft was a bit large. The follow on would have been jet powered and larger. M. )
The manifest purpose was to establish a claim to the strategic bombing mission. The Navy regularly referred to the project as the “atomic carrier.”
In May 1948, the House Armed Services Committee gave unanimous backing for the Navy to “lay down” the supercarrier. Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal and the Navy assured the HASC the project had been approved by all of the service chiefs. The Army and the Air Force said that this exaggerated the extent of their agreement.
Also in May, President Harry S. Truman announced his intention to hold the FY 1950 budget to $15 billion. The requirements calculated by the individual services came to $29 billion, almost twice the size of Truman’s limit.
The estimated cost of CVA-58 was $188 million, but the additional ships required to complete a supercarrier task force would raise it to $1.27 billion, an amount equal to more than eight percent of Truman’s total defense budget.
Bomber aircraft for the supercarrier—not yet developed and not available for another five years—would add $500 million to the cost. These aircraft would have the capability to deliver an atomic bomb but they would not match the range of Air Force bombers.
(Those were the B-47 and B-52 jet bombers, both not expected to be ready for 10 years and expected to cost 2x to meet the same capaility as a USN task force as to atomic bomb delivery. And restricted until mid air refueling became proven in 1957 to guess where? The UK. M.)
A contract for the CVA-58 was let in August 1948. Although not much was said about it, the Navy hoped eventually to have four carriers of that design.
(11 and 1 more on the way. M.)
The Air Force canceled six aircraft programs, 240 total aircraft in all, to help fund the B-36 program. Forrestal forwarded to the Bureau of the Budget a request for additional B-36s that would be equipped with four jet engines to augment the six piston engines and add to its capability.
(The air force scrapped close air support, fighter interceptor and medium bomber programs that were designed to help the army fight and win in central Europe. In addition it refused to join a Navy program to put the heavy USAF gravity dropped atomic bombs on a diet, or to investigate missile delivery systems. Lots of specific indicators in the paper trail suggests that the B-36 was a USAF sacred cow that was to be enabled and protected at all costs despite the mounting technical evidence that it would never survive to meet its mission goals in the presence and evidence of an enormous jet powered Soviet air force based on fighters and medium bombers.
Forrestal left office in March 1949 and was
(The Army was desperate to modernize and it saw that money as its only shot for new tanks. The air force played them. As it turned out from the tank crisis and the aircraft carrier crisis, the air force screwed both services over. Neither got what they needed. Wait for it. M.)
The keel for the CVA-58 was formally laid April 18, but on April 23, Johnson issued orders for the program to be stopped “at once and at the least possible cost to the government.” The Secretary of the Navy, John L. Sullivan, who had not been consulted, resigned in protest and was replaced by Francis P. Matthews, whose main qualification was his willingness to cooperate with
(He was paid off, just like Johnson and Symmington. M.)
THE NAVY STRIKES BACK
The Navy struck back on several fronts, making use of material produced by Op-23, a secretive “research and policy” unit created on the CNO’s staff the previous December and led by Capt. Arleigh A. Burke, a distinguished combat veteran of World War II.
Naval aviators clamored for a mock battle in which their F2H-1 Banshee fighter would attempt to intercept and attack a B-36. Van Zandt took the proposal to Vinson. The Joint Chiefs said the ability of the B-36 to evade interception and complete its mission depended on an entire process of factors and that a stand-alone set piece fighter demonstration was not a valid test. Vinson agreed with them and did not press the issue.
(He, Vinson, made a mistake. This FLEET PROBLEM would have revealed the suicidal nature of pitting piston engined bombers against jets which had a 150 knot speed and 3,500 foot altitude advantage over them. As the B-29 an operationally faster bomber than the B-36, was to discover in battle against the MiG-15. M.)
A recurring theme of the campaign was that an “atomic blitz” strategy gambled the future on the Air Force and the B-36. In fact, no such strategy existed and had never been proposed. In July, the Joint Chiefs issued a ringing endorsement of the current war plan. “The Joint Chiefs of Staff separately and jointly are of the firm opinion that the concept of strategic bombing and the extent of its employment as now planned are sound,” they said.
(It is in the Congressional Record. LeMay testified to this strategy, omitting that the USAF B-36 fleet at the time was restricted to ONE runway in the US, that of the 100 bombers existent, only 10 were expected to reach their Russian targets and a NO-RETURN one way suicide mission profile was operationally accepted. Also the US had only 30 atomic bombs, so that would be another BIG problem. M.)
Both the effectiveness and the morality of strategic nuclear bombing role were regularly questioned. The most extreme claim was by Navy Cmdr. Eugene Tatom, head of research and development for aviation ordnance, who said, “you could stand in the open at one end of the north-south runway at the Washington National Airport with no more protection than the clothes you have on, and have an atom bomb explode at the other end of the runway without serious injury to you.”
**(That was an exaggeration but if you were on the USS Saratoga in the atom bomb test they did on her, you wsould survive the blast and still be able to fight. That bomb was burst about 900 feet away from the carrier. Now you would die a month later from radiation poisoning, but you on the average had 2 weeks of revenge in you left. M.)
Putting this into perspective, Bradley said that, “it has been the Navy’s continuous argument that they should be permitted to use the atomic bomb, both strategically and tactically. If it is really so ineffective as some would have you believe, I wonder why the Navy is so anxious to use it.”
(To kill cities. Bricks and mortar are a lot more fragile than warships. Bradley KNEW this. M.)
Rep. James Van Zandt (R-Pa.)
Photo: Library of Congress
VAN ZANDT’S ALLEGATIONS
In the early summer of 1949, though, the main headlines were created by Van Zandt and his showy activities on Capitol Hill. He called for a congressional investigation into “ugly, disturbing reports” of wrongdoing in the B-36 program.
Van Zandt said he had “no personal knowledge” of the truth of these reports. However, he characterized various allegations as “well-founded” and based on “unimpeachable authority.” He also repeated them over and over on the floor of the House, where he could do so with immunity from a lawsuit.
(Op-23. M.)
Among the more spectacular accusations—and the actuality of the alleged events, soon verified by the Committee staff—were these:
Floyd Odlum, the head of Consolidated Vultee, which produced the B-36 was supposedly a “heavy contributor” to President Truman’s election campaign in 1948, for which Secretary Johnson had been finance chairman. Odlum’s contribution was $3,000.
(He became an instant millionaire, Johnson did. It is called stock options in a prospective company about toi be awarded a huge contract. This was still legal at the time. M.)
Van Zandt said Forrestal had refused to approve the request for additional B-36s but that “a very short time” after he was sworn in to replace Forrestal, Johnson issued the order “in great haste.” In fact, Forrestal signed the approval two weeks before he left office. The order was in place when Johnson got there.
(This is true over the current build. What is also true is that Forrestal CAPPED the progam at 100 additional bombers. Johnson increased the purchase by 400 more units. M.)
According to Van Zandt, Symington was “a frequent weekend visitor at the Palm Springs, Calif., home of Mr. Odlum.” Symington had been there twice, once when his airplane diverted to land there because of weather—Odlum not being home at the time—and again for less than a full day in conjunction with a business meeting.
(Most of Symmington's chicanery and treachery was done the usual way, by telephone; especially the PRESS LEAKS about Forrestal. M.)
A wartime defense contract with Emerson Electric Co., formerly headed by Symington, was said to have been renegotiated in Emerson’s favor in 1948 by Col. Frank Wolfe of Wright Field. Wolfe, then retired, supposedly lived in a luxurious Beverly Hills home. In fact, Symington had not been affiliated with Emerson since 1945. Wolfe had retired from the Air Force in 1944. In 1949, he lived in a rental apartment.
(The truth is that Symmington still held voting stock (Illegal even then.) and Wolfe was an expletive deleted lobbyist for Emerson, bought and paid who lived in an EXPENSIVE apartment in Washington to entertain and schmooze politicians because that was where CONGRESS was. M.)
Van Zandt said there was “a plan underway” for Symington to resign as Air Force Secretary as soon as the budget with more funds for the B-36 was approved and head a “huge aircraft combine” established by Odlum. In fact, there were no such plans, no such combine.
(Of course not. Once the scheme was revealed, it died. Symmington had to revert to plan B. Get rrid of Forrestal. M.)
Symington challenged Van Zandt to repeat what he had said somewhere away from Capitol Hill where he would not be shielded by congressional immunity. Van Zandt declined.
(Like Alger Hiss, knowing a man is a traitor is one thing. PROVING it is something else. You may not want to burn means and methods in open court. M.)
Rep. Carl Vinson (D-Ga.), (left), Secretary of the Navy Francis Matthews, Adm. Louis Denfeld, and Pacific Fleet Commander Arthur Radford in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 6, 1949.
Photo: US Naval Institute
(One Congressperson, one poltroon and two admirals. M.)
CONFESSION
When the hearings opened in August, it did not take long to dismiss the accusations. Vinson announced that there was “not one iota, not one scintilla, of evidence” of “collusion, fraud, corruption, influence, or favoritism” in the B-36 procurement.
(Vinson did not actually say this. He said the evidence for criminal prosecutions was not present in sufficient quantity. M.)
Van Zandt’s sole source for his inflammatory statements was the paper, referred to in the press and elsewhere as the “anonymous memo.”
(The Areleigh Burke memo was an analysis, not the source of the charges. M.)
The Air Force knew where the paper came from—the Air Force Office of Special Investigations working with the FBI had tracked down the typewriter on which it was created—and told Vinson, who called Cedric Worth to the stand.
(You wonder what the Air Force was up to? They were in the middle of a coverup. They had to neutralize the source of the investigation into their own wrongdoing. M.)
Worth, a former scriptwriter for the movies (“The Corpse That Knew Everybody” and “The Trail of the Serpent”) was an assistant to Undersecretary of the Navy Dan A. Kimball. Worth promptly admitted to Vinson that he had written the paper. “I made a great error and I regret it deeply,” he said.
(True. We have this on film. What Forth admitted was that he blew op-sec. M.)
A Navy court of inquiry subsequently established that the Op-23 deputy, Cmdr. Thomas M. Davies—noted for setting an aviation distance record in 1946—had helped Worth write the paper, drawing on “rank gossip” he had heard.
(Not true. The court of inquiry was to determine how the air force found out about the Navy's inquiry. M.
Davies said he had no idea Worth intended to circulate the paper, which according to one congressman was “peddled all over Capitol Hill” by an Active Duty naval officer.
(It was supposed to be restricted to HASC. A witless naval staffer shared the memo out of Vinson's office. M.)
“I made no charges or accusations,” Van Zandt said. “I simply repeated to the House the rumors that were all over Washington and were affecting service morale.”
Vinson rejected suggestions to terminate the inquiry, having been persuaded by the Navy that more needed to be heard on the underlying strategic issues.
(Vinson had seen the Arleigh Burke memo, not the Worth summary. M.)
Concurrently in August, Congress passed the National Security Act Amendment of 1949, completing the unification of the armed forces. The National Military Establishment was replaced by a much
(As above, Bradley was "promoted" where he could do no harm. The service chiefs were supposedly subordinated to one secreatary now, not two, one for each service, but in effect authority was split among 10 idiot assistant secreataries now grown today to nearly 100. This piece of rotten legislation was the end of any hope for an efficient war machine, not that the USG had one to begin, but the NDA 1949 made it impossible to fight wars with any rhyme or reason and actually IMPEDED civilian oversight as Uniformed Lunatics (Vanderbilt in the air force, Westmoreland in the army and eventually ZUMWALT in the navy at various times and places.) corrupted their services in service to even more corrupt civilian masters like Johnson, Mcnamara and Jimmy Carter (as POTUS). M.)
Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington, (left), speaks with Army Secretary Kenneth Royall Sr., Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, and Secretary of the Navy John Sullivan in 1949.
Photo: Naval History and Heritage Command
(Two crooks amd two idiots. You already know the crooks; Johnson and Symmington. M.)
THE ADMIRALS RALLY
Navy Secretary Matthews implored the service to stick to its own issues in the hearing and not attack the Air Force. Matthews, however, had no credibility with the disgruntled admirals. “They kept the pot boiling with leaks or rebellious public statements, attacking Johnson’s budget cuts, the Air Force, the B-36, and the nuclear retaliatory strategy,” Bradley said.
(Stooges never do deserve respect. I include Omar Bradley. M.)
The principal Navy spokesman was the colorful Adm. Arthur W. Radford, a naval aviator and commander of the US Pacific Fleet. He called the B-36 “a billion-dollar blunder,” a symbol of the “atomic blitz,” and “cheap and easy victory” through mass destruction of populations.
(He was arguing in an America where terror bombing =s a war crime. Jane Voter was not unaware of the Lemay Plan and its underpinnings. She had seen the films from Nagasaki and Hiroshima. M.)
A parade of admirals, Active Duty and retired, took the stand to testify, but the headlines were grabbed by Capt. John G. Crommelin Jr., a naval aviator serving on the Joint Staff, who called a press conference to say the Navy was being systematically and intentionally destroyed.
(As the navy saw it, this was a true statement. Mission requires money and the air force was hogging both, for the wrong and frankly provably corrupt reasons as I explained above in these editorial footnotes. M.(
Crommelin, who became a hero to many in the Navy, praised Cedric Worth for “the highest motives of patriotism and selflessness.” The legendary retired Adm. William F. Halsey Jr. said Crommelin “deserves the help and respect of all naval officers.”
CNO Denfeld, who through the summer had left it to others to carry the propaganda campaign, took the stand Oct. 13 to say, “There is a steady campaign to relegate the Navy to a convoy and antisubmarine service” and that “I do not believe that high-level strategic bombing will attain for us the objectives of a war.”
(True, but the United States Strategic Bombing Survey which was just published was not well known. Otherwise the Navy's case would have been less emotional and more data driven by rersults. The air force did not want the USSBS to be widely dessimated. The bomber barons knew the truth BEFORE the survey collected hard data. Bombing was "ineffective" without surface effectors to follow up results. The enemy recovered SWIFTLY. M.)
That is Nagasaki. M.)
A week later, Bradley unloaded on the Navy and on the “fancy Dans who won’t hit the line” unless they could call the signals. “I believe that the public hearing of the grievances of a few officers who will not accept the decisions of the authorities established by law. . . have done infinite harm to our national defense, our position of leadership in world affairs, the position of our national policy, and the confidence of the people in their government.”
(Did you know Omar Bradley politically backstabbed Billy Mitchell for these same so called reasons when the issue was what was the best defense to build for the scarce money? Strange friends the air force kept in those days. M.)
Coming as it did from Bradley, that was a fatal blow to the Revolt of the Admirals. Truman, acting on the (rotten and corrpted) advice of Secretary Matthews, relieved Denfeld as CNO on Oct. 27 and named Adm. Forrest Sherman, who had not taken part in the revolt, to replace him.
(Oh, Sherman took part. He laid the groundwork for the FORRESTALS as soon as history proved the Navy's case. M.)
Tracing a news leak, a team from the Navy Inspector General’s office was dispatched for a no-notice inspection of the Op-23 files. Tipped off by an informant in the CNO’s office, Op-23 was able to pull the most sensitive papers out of the files and hide them in an office down the hall before the IG got there. On Nov. 3, Sherman disbanded Op-23 and reassigned Burke, Davies, and their colleagues to other duties.
(What happened was Op-23 was reconstituted under Sherman under a new cover. Since op-sec had been compromised, it was going under the Operations and Plans monicker now. Guess who headed that on his way to becoming CNO? Arleigh Burke. Sometimes you can be amazed by how DUMB the army and air force are. M.)
OFF THEY GO …
Van Zandt was re-elected to Congress and served until 1963. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Senate in 1962. He had retired as a rear admiral in the Navy Reserve in 1959.
Worth resigned and went back to writing movie scripts. In 1957, he produced a documentary, “Naked Africa.”
Crommelin continued to criticize Defense officials publicly, received a reprimand, and took early retirement when he was placed on indefinite furlough. He went home to Alabama where he ran for the US Senate and lost.
Radford followed Bradley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was a strong supporter of President Eisenhower’s New Look/Massive Retaliation strategy that increased the emphasis on nuclear weapons.
(After Bradley screwed up Korea, along with MacArthur another Eisenhowe favorite (SARCASM) and the air force screwed up the air war, and Eisenhower became POTUS, you wonder why RADFORD became CJOCUS? M.)
Burke, who had been redlined from the promotion list in December 1949, was reinstated and advanced to rear admiral by President Truman. With Radford as his sponsor, Burke became Chief of Naval Operations in 1955.
(And we get Nautilus and Polaris and minaiturized SOLID PROPELLANT missile thrown nuclear weapons, plus air to air missiles, surface to air missiles and (army) weaponry which works and the ability to project airpower from the super carriers the air force wanted to kill for the B-36 and Consolidated's profits. M.).
Davies retired as a rear admiral in 1973 after 40 years in the Navy.
The B-36 continued in effective service with Strategic Air Command until 1958.
*(The B-36 was terminated early after IOC in 1953 due to wing fatigue, engine fires, cabin pressurization failures and NEVER FLEW A 24/7 FAILSAFE mission as it would seize engines up in the air after 8-12 hours aloft because the oil failed. M.).
The Navy went on to build big-deck carriers. The CVA-59 Forrestal in 1955 is regarded as the first supercarrier, but a “flush-deck” plan to lower the bridge with an elevator was scrapped. Instead, Forrestal had an angled flight deck with the “island” off to the side.
(So what? Her Vigilantes could reach Russian targets when the Air Force could not. M.)
The carrier’s enduring claim to fame turned out to be its value in theater and tactical operations, not in launching long-range bombers. The Navy eventually gained a share of the nuclear mission when submarine-launched ballistic missiles took their place in the strategic triad alongside Air Force bombers and ICBMs.
(The Navy has the primary mission due to air force incompetence DOWN TO THE PRESENT. M.)
_John T. Correll was the editor-in-chief of Air Force Magazine for 18 years and is now a contributor. His most recent article, “Intercepting the Bear,” appeared in the April / May issue.
History
There is a lot to unpack, but the sheer corruption in the Truman defense department is why Korea turned into such a stink show and still bled over into VIETNAM. We are still paying for those political mistakes.
CYNICAL Miletus.
