Army & Navy: Good Good Planes (Cont’d)

The Army had its first chance last week to answer the charges of Missouri’s Senator Harry S. Truman, chairman of the Senate’s war investigation committee, that its planes are not all they should be (TIME, Sept. 28). Army’s case was put by technically sound Major General Oliver Echols, Chief of Air Forces Materiel. Points:

> The Army knows it has not the most maneuverable planes in the world, but Army claims its planes are the safest and have the greatest firepower.

> By means of figures so secret they were torn up in small bits before the Senators left the committee room, the Army showed that six Axis planes are shot down to each U.S. plane in combat. (If this success is owing to pilot excellence rather than plane capabilities, that is a good argument for not sending U.S. pilots out in flying coffins like the Jap Zeros. If U.S. planes were stripped of armor, puncture-proof tanks and parachutes to make them lighter—hence more maneuverable, and able to fight at higher altitudes—pilot loss, like the Japs’, would be terrific.)

> Reason U.S. pilots are using Spitfires over England is that the Spitfire is especially adapted to conditions in Western Europe.

> The Army is making every effort to remove bugs from its planes.

Citizens were soothed. Senator Truman himself, up to now unfamiliar with the Air Forces’ side, said the record showed “improvement.” Army fighter pilots on the battlefronts were as eager as ever far new zenith-scaling fighter types to come through.