THE ADMINISTRATION: Map for MAP

While Congress debated the military assistance program, the final outlines of MAP had gradually taken shape in half a dozen-looseleaf notebooks in a second-floor office of the State Department. There, listed item by item, with the quantity and price of each, were precise allocations of military arms to each MAP country. Last week MAP planners combed through the notebooks and cut out $160 million worth of low-priority items to fit the $1 billion program authorized by Congress for the Atlantic Treaty nations.

The schedules of military arms to be furnished by the U.S. had already undergone many a revision. Original requests from Western European countries had simply listed what each country felt it needed. The requests had been carefully screened and trimmed down to size by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Then a committee of State, Defense and EGA officials had worked out the all but final figures.

Rifles to B-29s. In rough outline, France, as the major landpower, was expected to get the bulk of ground equipment —tanks, artillery, trucks, communications materiel, small arms. France would also get some tactical aircraft. But the major share of planes would go to Britain, including every type from trainers to 6-173 and 6-298. Benelux countries would get the same sort of equipment as France, but less of it. Norway, closest to Russia, would get radar equipment and some army supplies. Denmark would be given antiaircraft guns and radar for the defense of her air bases. Italy, her armament limited by treaty, would get little more than rifles. Most MAP countries needed (and would get) minelayers, minesweepers and harbor-defense equipment.

The supplies would be drawn, in approximately equal parts, from three sources. Such items as trucks, anti-tank guns and radar equipment would have to be built (and paid for at current costs). Jeeps, rifles, ammunition, some types of artillery, and destroyer escorts (the largest ships to be sent to Europe under MAP), would come from the armed forces reserves, established after the war. They would be charged against the program at replacement cost. Other items would come from excess stocks.

By Thanksgiving? U.S. excess stocks were plentiful, if badly out of balance. The U.S. had plenty of antiaircraft guns (many of them without fire-control equipment or prime movers). It had thousands of 81-mm. mortars, a good many excess tanks (needing guns and radios before shipment), 155-mm. howitzers, scout cars, machine guns and military radios. In all, some $450 million worth of excess materiel was scheduled for Western Europe’s armies. Only the cost of rehabilitation—estimated at $77 million—would be charged to MAP.

There were still some details to complete before MAP supplies started flowing abroad. Congress had yet to appropriate the money which it had authorized. The North Atlantic defense council had to approve its integrated defense plan and each nation had to sign agreements promising not to sell or transfer MAP arms without U.S. permission. MAP did not even have a director—ex-Ambassador James Bruce had not yet been officially nominated by the President. But MAP planners hoped to ship the first materiel by year’s end or, with luck, by Thanksgiving.