ARMY & NAVY: In the Balance

(See Cover)

Just before 8:30 one morning last week, an olive drab Cadillac rolled down the ramp to the underground parking lot of the Pentagon Building. Its passenger, cap set ever so slightly at a rake, stepped out, pulled down his trim, suntan Eisenhower jacket and strode toward the elevator. Pentagon workers did not need to glance at the five-star circlets on his shoulder straps to know who he was. They gave him “good morning.” General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower grinned his acknowledgments, got into the elevator, was soon in his third-floor office and busy at the most difficult job of his life. Ike Eisenhower, who had conquered some massive tasks in his day, was directing the rebuilding of the U.S. Army and its once-great Air Forces, both still at the edge of wrack & ruin as the result of the U.S.’s planless postwar demobilization.

No man knew better than Soldier Eisenhower that the main forces of U.S. policy were dollars for food, clothes and fuel, that the war to win peace was being waged in ideological and economic fields (see Foreign Relations), and that the commander in that campaign was Secretary of State George Marshall. But it was also true that Marshall, and the nation, in the last analysis, were dependent on Eisenhower. The principle was enunciated 154 years ago by George Washington: “There is a rank due to the United States among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. . . . If we desire to secure peace . . . it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.”

The dictum was never more valid than in 1947, when, as seldom in history, the world’s military strength was divided between two great powers. Could Marshall depend on Eisenhower, his Air Forces and his Army to make it clear that the U.S. is “at all times ready for war?” Three years ago, on Dday, facing the coast of Normandy, Ike Eisenhower commanded the mightiest military force of men, guns, ships, and planes in history, and most of it was U.S. strength. Not even the most extreme of U.S. military now contend that the U.S. should still have such a force or anything like it. But the Army and Air Forces over which Ike Eisenhower now presides are little more than skeletons.

The Array. Russia, the only other owner of a first-class military potential, has taken a different course. Russia still has 4½ million men under arms and 15,500 combat airplanes in service, is building a submarine Navy. By best military estimate, Russia has 93 divisions, 7,200 combat airplanes on its European frontier; 82 divisions and 6,000 planes poised toward the Middle East. In Korea and facing Japan she has 13 divisions and 700 aircraft. In Siberia are 20 more divisions and several hundred aircraft in reserve. Within 30 days Russia could build to 10½ million trained men; within six months, to 12 million, including youngsters, who would thus be put under military control but could not be fully armed or equipped. This mighty power, restricted in range and striking force by Russia’s lack of long-range aircraft, is the nightmare that haunts U.S. military strategists. Russia has the power on hand to sweep to the Channel, to the Persian Gulf and the oil areas, to the southern extremity of Korea, or through China. Obviously it is not in Russia’s immediate calculations to make any such vast move, which would certainly bring on World War III. Military men feel that only an accident, e.g., a hasty, intemperate move by a Russian satellite, could precipitate such a catastrophe. But it is within Russia’s potentialities, and that is what military men worry about. Men fighting the battle of foreign relations worry about it, too.

Slow Decay. In the U.S. armed forces, only the Navy and its Marine Corps are anywhere near fighting trim. The Navy has fleets in both oceans, each built around a striking arm of six big carriers. Within 90 days it could bring the first of the zipper fleet out of its cocoons, within a year complete the job. The Marines have their 2nd Division and a reorganized 3rd Brigade; the 1st Division is on its way home from China. Between them, the Navy and Marines have 6,000 aircraft, almost all designed only for the support of the fleets and amphibious operations.

The Army Air Forces, which would be first to fight in a new war, are still in the early stages of reorganization; the Army Ground Forces, the same. The job of reducing the 8,300,000-man Army of V-E day to peacetime size had been done with a sledge hammer instead of a wrench. Along with its veteran citizen-soldiers, the Army has also lost scores of its brightest professionals, who would not endure the skimpy salaries and slow decay of peacetime Army life.

One -Shave -a -Week. The Army’s strength today is a little above a million men, but they are largely tied down by occupation, supply and housekeeping chores. Of the 89 divisions in service when Germany fell, the Army has only twelve left. Less than three are available to join the Marines in immediate action today, and all of them are in the U.S.: the understrength 2nd Armored and 2nd Infantry, the 82nd Airborne.

The 500,000 Army men overseas are mostly green youngsters—the new, volunteer, “one-shave-a-week” Army. They are largely police and riot squads. There are only two divisions in Europe, both tied down by occupation duties, and the equivalent of a third in separate constabulary regiments. In the Pacific, General MacArthur has seven divisions, also committed to the occupation job.

The ready Air Forces, available to defend the U.S. homeland and to make a retaliatory attack, are six heavy bombardment groups and twelve fighter groups. None of them are at V-J day efficiency. The commanders who could once send 820 B-29s rumbling over Japan on a single strike, last month were able to muster only 101 for a practice raid over Manhattan. From a V-J day peak of 85,000 planes, the Air Forces are now down to 9,000 first-line aircraft, and 2,000 to 3,000 of them will pass over to reserve status each year.

Rust & Neglect. On the civilian reserve side, the National Guard program, limping, as usual, from its congenital political ailments, is also hamstrung by lack of funds. The Army Reserve program, with even less money to spend, is only a shadow of the record-line organization planned by the Army. Many of its officers, particularly airmen, are rusting from lack of training.

In the field of supply, the question of factory dispersal is still an unsolved problem. Without the stimulus of war contracts, the military aircraft industry is falling apart. The nation’s plane factories, which once employed 2,101,000, can now keep only 160,000 at work. The decline is continuing. One West Coast manufacturer, now employing 16,200, expects to be down within one year to 360, all that his commercial contracts justify. The 14 major manufacturers, who built 96,000 military planes in 1944, last year built only 1,330. This year they are down to the 100-a-month level.

Stalemate. The U.S. holds three massive military advantages: the atom bomb; undisputed control of the sea; industrial power which can be turned to war with a speed and efficiency that no nation can duplicate. It also has 14 million battle-trained Army & Navy veterans; their availability for battle service will drop rapidly with the passage of time. In five years, less than half will be usable.

No longer in the hands of push-button extremists, no longer a competitive pursuit by Army, Navy and Air Forces of a will-o’-the-wisp, a research program has been coordinated under a civilian-dominated Joint Research & Development Board. By mid-1949 the board expects to have a working model of a supersonic, target-seeking antiaircraft missile (see SCIENCE), the first line of passive defense against rocket assault. Sometime after 1952 it hopes to have the ultimate in destructiveness: a supersonic missile which can be guided under full control to a target 3,000 to 5,000 miles away.

The Navy has 18 ships under construction, including some new-type high-speed submarines and the 45,000-ton battleship Kentucky, now 70% completed as a platform for launching guided missiles. At a demonstration on the West Coast last fortnight the Army & Navy showed off some new aircraft:* the rocket-propelled Bell XS-1 (TIME, Dec. 23), designed to reach a supersonic 1,000 m.p.h.; the Navy’s carrier-based XFJ-1 jet fighter; Consolidated Vultee’s gigantic six-motored B-36, the “Flying Cigar,” which can carry a 10,000-lb. bomb load 5,000 miles and return to base; Consolidated’s needle-slim XB-46, the Northrop XB-35 Flying Wing, now being adapted to jet propulsion.

Because the U.S. holds those advantages and because Russia is so patently lacking in all but manpower reserves, Ike Eisenhower could guarantee a stalemate, at least, if war came now. Even though parts of Europe or Asia might be occupied, there is no strategic bombing force that can reach the U.S. and return—today. Meanwhile the U.S. could smack the enemy’s homeland with atom bombs within 48 hours, order the Navy and Marines into action to seize advance bases from which to mount an aerial attack while the job of rebuilding the nation’s war potential was begun.

Atomic attack would not necessarily be decisive. World War III, as it looks even to airmen today, would be a long, grueling battle, fought with World War II strategy and, at least at first, with World War II weapons. Soldiers argue that money and pains spent in military preparation against war prevent more disastrous expenditures to wage war itself.

Year of Crisis. U.S. military strategists know that the balance of military power is changing. They are sure they can predict almost to the year when it will have shifted to a critical degree, just as the President’s civilian Advisory Commission on Universal Training forecast the situation three weeks ago.

By 1948, strategists guess, Russia will have the power to send one-way missions of 1,000 planes against the U.S. By 1949, they think, Russia will probably have guided missiles, armed with a one-ton warhead, with a range of 3,000 miles. By 1952 disease-tipped bacterial weapons may be practical. Any time after 1952, by their estimates, Russia is very likely to have the Bomb.

Over this period, the immediately ready war potential of U.S. industry and manpower will be falling. Unless the fall is checked, say the planners, 1957 will be the year of crisis, the year when Russia will first have a military edge. The question for the U.S. to ask itself is: how strong must the U.S. be in 1957?

The Braintrusters. The men who sweat for the armed forces over the answer to that question are the top crust of their profession: men like the Air Forces’ Major General Lauris Norstad, the Navy’s Admiral Forrest Sherman, the Army’s braintruster, 39-year-old Brigadier General George A. Lincoln, head of the Army’s strategy and policy team. Their answer is a whopper.

They consider the irreducible minimum to be a ready, full-strength aerial spearhead of 70 groups (some 8,000 planes) able to carry the war to the enemy’s homeland, blast his cities and industry, cut up his slow-moving land armies. Behind the spearhead: eleven fully equipped combat divisions (some 132,000 men) freed from routine chores and immediately available to seize advance bases and begin the clinching land assault. The total: an Army and Air Force of 1,070,000 men, supported in flank actions by the 500,000-man Navy and Marine Corps.

To absorb the first shock of war, and to build the ready forces to full power, the planners say they need an industrial and manpower reserve which could mobilize a total of 131 air groups and 56 divisions in the first twelve months of war, 180 air groups and 74 divisions within two years.

To keep the aircraft industry alone ready for its part, that would mean an annual production of 5,700 planes (or 60 million pounds of air frame) a year.

That is the plan. But it will never be more effective than the willingness of the U.S. to back it up. To sell it to the people and to Congress is the peacetime job of Ike Eisenhower.

Salesman of Security. It is not a mission for which Ike has been specifically prepared. His whole life was a preparation for Dday, 1944: West Point, the best of the service schools, long service as a crack staff officer who rocketed from lieutenant colonel to five-star general in 45 months. But he had never had to fight the Army’s case before Congress.

He works hard at this new job. From the moment he arrives at the Pentagon until he leaves for the old red brick Chief of Staff quarters on Fort Myer’s brass hill, he goes like a piston. He must devote at least part of his time to routine administration. But the bulk of his day is spent in his salesman’s mission.

If there is a major military committee hearing in Congress, Ike packs off to the Hill. If there is a military speech to be made, he makes it. In between he sticks to his office, talking to Congressmen, other military bigwigs, Washington officials. He entertains infrequently, even less frequently ventures into the Capital social merry-go-round.

General Ike. At least once a week he sits with his old mentor, George Marshall, either at his own office, or at Marshall’s quarters in the State Department’s new building on 21st Street. Unlike Marshall, who can make a major decision after reading a memo and reflecting for five concentrated minutes, Ike lingers over his problems, chewing them over with his staff. Where no one ever addressed Marshall by his first name, Eisenhower is “Ike” to all senior generals, “General Ike” to the junior brass.

The greatest lesson Eisenhower has yet to learn is Marshall’s ability to thread his way through the pressures and contradictions of domestic politics. Though Ike was able to stand up to tough-minded Winston Churchill, he is finding that his manner is not forceful enough and has not the sense of urgency to impress Congressmen as Marshall did when he was Chief of Staff—and a wartime Congress was more easily impressed.

Against those shortcomings, he can pit the trust the American people have in him and the prestige of his military victories. He will also have the bitter comfort, if he fails, of the example of his predecessor from the last postwar era. Like Eisenhower, General John J. Pershing stepped into the Chief of Staff’s office from military glories abroad. He fought for the same goal Ike was striving for now: a long-range military policy. Before the belligerent and emotional pacifism of the early ’20s “Black Jack” Pershing had to bow.

Bone & Sinew. So far Ike has not bowed, but he has scored no striking success. The people and their representatives in Congress have not yet got down to considering the bone & sinew of the planners’ program.

In the House Armed Services Committee last week, hearings began on the President’s bill for universal military training, which the services estimate would funnel at least 750,000 men a year into a military manpower pool. Its chances of passage are slim. Not until last week did the bill for unification of the services reach the Senate floor. That bill may squeak by before adjournment.

The House has already cut the Army’s $6 billion budget request by $436 million. Last week Navy Secretary James Forrestal appeared before a Senate appropriations subcommittee to battle another

House slash of $377 million in the Navy budget. His estimate of the damage: 157 ships, 100,000 men, 1,000 aircraft. Said he: “A reduction in naval strength of any such magnitude . . . would surely be interpreted as evidence of our intention to recede from our international obligations and commitments abroad.”

Time for Decision. By the time the planners’ “year of crisis” comes, Ike Eisenhower and the present commanders of other services will be gone. Sometime next fall, the Veterans Administration’s General Omar Bradley will probably take over Ike’s job. Atlantic Fleet Commander William (“Spike”) Blandy, who ran the Bikini bomb tests, will probably replace Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz as Chief of Naval Operations. Lieutenant General Hoyt Vandenberg, former C.I.G. head, now replacing General Ira Eaker as deputy chief of air, is slated to step into Carl (“Tooey”) Spaatz’s shoes sometime next winter; the Marines’ Major General Graves Erskine will probably take over from General A. A. Vandegrift.

The new team will have to meet the threat. But the decision on the forces they will direct must be taken, at least in part—and with proper civilian analysis of the proposals of the military—before the old team steps out. If the U.S. drifts too long, it may not get the chance to change direction again. Said a top War Department strategist last week: “They say we can’t afford it. Maybe we’ve got to afford it. What will a man give to save his life?”

* All of them products of wartime research. During World War II no plane saw combat which was not on the drawing boards before Pearl Harbor.