Now I want to emphasize these words. This is a quotation: It does not in any way alter the Commandant's direct responsibility to the Secretary of the Navy for the administration and efficiency of the Marine Corps. Now, Mr. Chairman, I think that clears this point up. The letter together with the correspondence prepared at the time the legislation was being considered is a complete repudiation of the implied theory that through some legerdemain of Public Law 432 the Chief of Naval Operations had been placed over the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps is not a bureau of the Navy. I cannot emphasize that point too strongly. It is not a bureau of the Navy comparable to the Bureau of Yards and Docks, the Bureau of Accounts, and so on. Legally and in fact it is a separate military service and apparently in the eyes of the Secretary of the Navy of such stature that its naval executive coordinates matters upon occasion between them. Mr. Chairman, if this be true-and certainly there can be no responsible argument to the contrary-it is clear that the Commandant of the Marine Corps under the present structure has no way of making his voice heard on the Joint Chiefs of Staff on matters pertaining to the Marine Corps excepting through a naval officer who heads up the Navy within the Navy Department. This sounds almost as absurd as if a Republican Senator from a State claimed to represent the Democrats of that State simply because he came from the southern portion of that State. I am happy that any misunderstanding concerning the relationships of the Commandant to the Secretary of the Navy has been thoroughly resolved. I still believe that the language in General Order 19 is misleading and should be clarified. General Orders 5 and 9 issued prior to the passage of 432 therefore derive no sanction from 432, and cannot be cited in support of this. General Order 19 is off base in my judgment and should be not only clarified but corrected, which is adequately explained in the Secretary's letter. It makes equally clear that the Chief of Naval Operations does not represent the Marine Corps on the Joint Chiefs of Staff by virtue of his position of being Chief of Naval Operations or the naval executive to the Secretary of the Navy. (11) With the greatest of sincerity and objectivity I hope, I now wish to conclude our case. The sponsors of this legislation are primarily interested in the betterment of our country's national security. Congress is charged with the responsibility for developing the best possible military structure, and there is no way in which it can be shirked. Too often in the past have we in Congress stood idly by and watched the executive department completely thwart the laws passed by the Congress through their interpretations of the laws or by deliberately ignoring the intent of the Congress. We, the sponsors of this legislation-and there are 44 of us in the Senate and I believe 65 have introduced, similar bills in the House. Mr. MANSFIELD. Seventy-six. Senator DOUGLAS. Feel that the national security of our country will be benefitted by the steps which we recommend in the law. I will be very glad to submit myself to cross-examination. May I ask that the attached article from the November 30, 1950, issue of United States News and World Report be placed in the record at this point because I believe it is a most important document, requiring the study of all Members of Congress who will read the hearings of this subcommittee. The article is entitled "Weakness in Air Force" and is a battle report in question-and-answer style from Korea. I particularly desire that pages 18 and 19 of this 3-page report be photostated because of the very graphic manner in which Marine Corps air-ground support operation is portrayed in picture-and-caption style. We have had a great deal of testimony before this subcommittee, however, I believe this article from Korea is the best testimonial to the effectiveness of Marine air-ground operations and hence should be an important part of the record of these hearings. The article referred to is as follows:) [From U. S. News and World Report, November 3, 1950] WEAKNESS IN AIR FORCE (Reported from Seoul and Tokyo) Air Force is coming under fire for shortcomings in Korea. What actually happened in Korea and what it teaches are told in How did the Air Force look in Korea? More and more criticism is being directed at the Air Force's handling of its major role during this war-that is, air support for ground troops. The use of big bombers turned out to be of minor importance in this case and Air Force neglect of its “tactical” mission of supporting troops soon became apparent. What was wrong with the job the Air Force did? The airmen just weren't trained and equipped for a major job in giving troop support. They did an excellent bit of improvising. But in the process they shot up a lot of our own troops. And there were a great many cases in which planes couldn't be provided where they were needed and couldn't be used effectively when they were available. Were there many of those attacks on our own troops? Many more than were reported. The most publicized example occurred a few weeks ago when American planes dropped napalm on British troops. That happened when advance elements of a British regiment had lost radio contact with its rear and were mistaken for enemy troops. Hadn't the Air Force pilots been trained to work with ground troops and give them air support? Generally speaking, they weren't trained for this type of tactical work, They had been trained in air-to-air combat and very few if any had had much training in ground strafing or rocketing. They had to experiment in most cases with jet planes and learn in actual combat. What else was wrong initially? None of the Air Force or Army officers here know how to go about setting up a system for close support of ground troops. There were no trained groundcontrol officers who knew how to direct airplanes that were supposed to provide close support. Those forward controllers are indispensable. The standard fighter planes, all of them jets, were not designed for troop-support jobs. In addition, there was a serious lack of air-ground communications equipment. What was done to meet those problems? The first thing was to modify the jet planes so that they could be used for close support. That was done by fitting them with spare fuel tanks and racks for rockets. Several Air Force pilots then were assigned to the ground forces and given jeeps with radios to do liaison between troops and support planes. To whip the problem of spotting the target for the fighter-bomber pilots, the Air Force mobilized almost every training plane in the Far East Command. These small, unarmed planes-they're called mosquitoes are assigned to division headquarters and fly over the front constantly to detect enemy targets and to lead fighter-bombers to targets right at the front. Eventually and this took some weeks-a fairly efficient system of communications was worked out so that a forward ground unit could flash a request back to the Air Force and get air support in a relatively short time. How did that system of supporting troops work in practice? Like this: Every half hour during the day, a flight of four fighter-bombers is supposed to check in with the mosquito plane assigned to each division. The flight leader asks the pilot if he has any targets. If the controller in the mosquito has a target-an enemy strong point holding back United States troops-he leads the fighter-bombers to it and marks it with a smoke bomb or by rocking his wings. The Air Force officer attached to regimental headquarters as "ground controller" may give the mosquito pilot the target at the request of the regimental commander, or the pilot himself may locate a target. If there are no targets, the four fighter-bombers continue to a point beyond the front, where they attack prebriefed targets such as roads, bridges, airfields, or troop concentration. What happened when ground units needed support in a hurry and there were no planes in the vicinity? That is one of the weak points of the Air Force-Army system. Such a request had to be radioed to division headquarters, then relayed by telephone to a joint operation center. It had to be checked by artillery and naval liaison officers and, if approved, processed through a tactical air control center. Then a special flight was released and sent to the front. Considering that all this has been improvised, it works fairly well normally. How do support planes, under that system, manage to avoid hitting our own troops? Sometimes they don't. That is another shortcoming of the present Air ForceArmy system of air-ground coordination. The fighter-bombers are controlled by a mosquito pilot flying over our lines. Sometimes he is in contact by radio with units on the ground. Sometimes-especially when the front is moving-he is not. And an error in direction or judgment of a few hundred yards can have tragic results. How would this Air Force "close support" system stand up in a big war-a war, that is, where there was strong enemy air opposition? Not very well. The Air Force admits that. For one thing, these mosquito planes that do the target spotting and a considerable part of the communications work probably couldn't be used. They would be too vulnerable to enemy air attack. Use of fighter planes, which could cope with enemy attacks, takes considerable training in target spotting. That's Marine Corps technique. The Air Force and Army have managed to get by with this jerry-rigged system of close support because there is no opposition. But it's quite obvious that they will have to overhaul the system pretty thoroughly for a major war. Were the Marine and Navy air arms better prepared for close support of ground forces in Korea? Yes; but that's not particularly surprising since the Marine and Navy air forces are organized exclusively for tactical work. The Marine airmen specialize in close support, so they obviously were better trained and equipped for that type of work. Moreover, the Marines-air and ground-are a single integrated fighting force that makes for maximum coordination. But why should the Marines stress close air support more than the Army and Air Force? The main reason stems from the character of the Marines. They are an amphibious assault force primarily. They must land on hostile beaches under the most adverse conditions. The success of their operations depends on their ability to bring to bear against a beachhead the very maximum of fire powerespecially in the early phases before their artillery gets ashore. Besides that, the Marines have or at least had until recently-a somewhat different concept of close air support than did the Army and Air Force. How did their concept differ? Well, the Air Force and Army in the past seemed to consider close air support a luxury to be used only under special conditions. That attitude was reflected in the remarks of a high-ranking Air Force official who said that fighter-bombers are uneconomical when used as artillery against targets within range of friendly guns. The Marines, on the other hand, operate on the theory that in battle every possible bit of fire power that conceivably can be brought to bear is vitalwhether by air or artillery. That's why they have developed close support to such a remarkable degree of perfection. From the outset, their planes strafed, rocketed, and bombed enemy positions anywhere from 300 down to 50 yards from Marine lines-a technique that the Air Force and Army did not understand for some weeks after the Korean War began and which they were unable to master for several months. But the Marines demonstrated how it paid off. One of their forward ground controllers pointed out that every hill the Marines took in Korea was captured after intensive softening up by close-support fighter-bombers. What's the secret of the Marines' technique of close air support? There's no secret. It involves the most obvious things. For one thing, Marine air is an organic part of each Marine ground unit and is under the control of ground officers. Equally important is appreciation by the Marines of the value of tactical air power. Joint training is another answer. Marine success in this field also is due to advanced development of communications, coordination techniques, and airplane design. How does their training differ from that of the Air Force and Army? It's concentrated largely on close-support techniques and involves a great deal of training directly with troops. Remember that the Marine air arm is exclusively tactical. The pilots, of course, learn air-to-air combat, but they are specialists in ground strafing, rocketing, and bombing, all on a pin-point basis. By comparison, many of the Air Force pilots who fought in Korea had had little training along those lines and few if any had ever worked with ground units. Why do the Marines have better communications and coordination for close support? The two communications and coordination-are inseparable. The Marines have ground-control groups, known as tactical air control parties, with every battalion and every regiment. At division headquarters they have a tactical air direction center and at corps headquarters they have a tactical air control center. Each of the battalion and regimental tactical air control parties, which consist of an officer and five or six enlisted men, is equipped with a jeep fitted with very high frequency radio and also a 50-pound pack radio which a man easily can carry on his back. The team at division headquarters has enough radio equipment to maintain constant contact with forward control parties, with planes assigned to close-support missions and with the tactical air control center at corps headquarters. The Marines work on the principle that the men on the ground must have "positive" control of the planes providing close support. That's why they have So many teams. In combat, the most direct control is provided by the battalion ground controller, who moves up with the most advanced unit-whether it is a company or a platoon. Do these Marine ground cotnrollers get special training? Yes. All of them must be experienced pilots. And they're all required to go through a 5-week course at the ground-control training school. How does the Marine close-support system work? Let's take a specific case. A Marine company is in the line. It runs into an enemy strong point. The company commander decides that the strong point can best be reduced by an air strike. The battalion ground controller is up there with him. The ground controller transmits the request directly back to the tactical air direction center at division headquarters. A member of the ground-control team at regimental headquarters, listening in on the same frequency, informs the regional commander, who intercedes only if he wishes to veto the request. Meantime, the chief ground controller at division headquarters acts as soon as the request is received from the company that's in trouble. He quickly clears the request with artillery and naval-gunnery liaison officers attached to his oufit. That is to make sure that artilllery or naval gunfire does not interfere with the air strike or, if a barrage is in progress or scheduled, the air strike is timed accordingly. But ordinarily the request is transmitted by radio immediately to fighter-bombers circling overhead "on station." They are ordered to switch to a clear channel and to proceed immediately to the trouble spot, which is designated on a specially gridded map. There they check in with the ground controller on the scene. A fighter accompanies each flight to act as coordinator and target spotter. The ground controller describes to the coordinator the target and its approximate location. The coordinator then swings down low to spot the target. His plan is equipped with smoke rockets. When he thinks he's found the target, he fires a smoke rocket at it. If he's mistaken, the ground controller gives him further instructions. When the coordinator puts a smoke rocket right on the target, he orders the fighter-bombers to make their attack. Thus, there is practically no danger of hitting friendly troops. Meanwhile, back at corps headquarters, the tactical air control center records and coordinates all flights. Here, planes not assigned to close-support work are sent out to do "deep support"—that is, attack enemy transports, convoys, or strong points some distance behind the front. Why don't the Air Force and Army adopt the Marine's system of tactical air support? That, of course, raises the whole question of whether the Army should have its own tactical air force. The Marines have their own. They have on wing for every division and one group assigned to every regiment. The Air Force says that that plan may be suitable for the Marines, with their highly specialized amphibious assault function, but it would be impractical for the Army. For one thing, air officers point out, it would be "uneconomical" to allocate thousands of fighters and fighter-bombers exclusively for ground support. These planes, the argument is, should be available for a variety of missionsinterception, reconnaissance, deep penetration-as well as close support. For the Army, they insist, it would be impractical to have a wing of fighter-bombers attached exclusively to each division. A need is clearly demonstrated, however, for greater coordination between Air Force and Army in planning tactical air work and in organizing an efficient system of close support. Responsible officers in both services concede this. The Marine system, as demonstrated in Korea, now is being examined by them as a major object lesson in how air power can be used to a better advantage. Senator KEFAUVER. I am sorry, Senator Douglas, I stepped out during the last part of your statement, but I will read it very closely. Now we have a letter from Maurice J. Fagan, the national commandant, national headquarters, Marine Corps League, which will be incorporated in the record at this point, in which he states that Brig. Gen. James P. S. Devereux, United States Marine Corps, retired, and now present Congressman from Maryland, who has testified before the committee, speaks for the league. (The letter above referred to follows:) Senator ESTES KEFAUVER, NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS, MARINE CORPS LEAGUE, Chairman of Subcommittee on Military Affairs, Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C. MY DEAR SENATOR KEFAUVER: I have been advised that Senate bill, S. 677, pertaining to the strength of the United States Marine Corps and give the Commandant of the Marine Corps a permanent seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff is coming up for a hearing in the immediate future. Pleased be advised that Brig. Gen. James P. S. Devereux, United States Marine Corps, retired, and now the present Congressman from Maryland, has |