We are starting replacement of some of these amphibians with the HH-3F, a medium-range rescue twin-turbine helicopter. Nine of these replacement helicopters were previously authorized and funded, and we are seeking funds for nine more in fiscal year 1968. This will leave us with only two medium-range aircraft overage in 1968. Looking toward 1970, however, preliminary arrangements must be made by 1969. No aircraft presently available completely meets our requirements. Since development and design costs of a replacement model would be prohibitive, we should modify an existing design to meet our needs. We estimate $1.5 million for reconfiguring, testing, and evaluating the prototype aircraft to meet medium-range search and rescue requirements in 1970 and beyond.

Having all the Nation's polar icebreakers, we also must provide helicopters to work with the vessels. These aircraft carry supplies to otherwise inaccessible polar regions and help to spot weakened areas in the ice fields through which our breakers escort resupply vessels. In the transfer agreement with the Navy, Coast Guard was to provide its own helicopters with trained crews by July 1, 1969. Ten of the necessary single-turbine helicopters were authorized in 1967 and six remain to be funded in fiscal year 1968. Additionally, three single-turbine helicopters are required for a new Great Lakes air station, and three others are needed for backup and support for the operating helicopter fleet. Our 1968 order, along with several more in 1969, will very likely see the end of the manufacturing line for this particular model and we must forelay against attrition by, in part, procuring support or backup aircraft.

Our new Chicago station is to be located at the Naval Air Station. at Glenview, Ill., and will be the seventh of 14 small helicopter stations originally schedules in the aviation plan. These stations are strategically located around our coast to give effective search, rescue, and law-enforcement coverage. As a tradeoff, the extended coverage will permit us to close a rescue station at Racine, Wis.

For years our plan anticipated using spare hangar space at this naval station, but recent increases in Navy operations precluded this. We must now construct our own hangar and shop space, but this was not contemplated in the President's budget. The added costs are about equal to another project "Radio Station, San Francisco, Calif." to improve Coast Guard communications in the western area. Because of siting problems, we propose, with Bureau of the Budget concurrence, that the project be deleted and the $823,000 added to the Chicago Air Station project for a new total of $2,852,000.

Authorization is also requested for one small modern turbojet transport aircraft as a replacement for two propeller-type transport planes becoming overage in 1968.

I have spoken almost entirely about aviation hardware items. However, there is one major construction project at our air station at Barbers Point, Honolulu, Hawaii, for which authorization is requested. The existing wooden aircraft maintenance dock at this station has become outmoded and has suffered extensive termite damage. It is also planned to construct a helicopter hangar to house and service helicopters scheduled for assignment to this station.

The image of the Coast Guard indelibly in the minds of many is that of the small boat from the small shore station pulling a drowning person from a turbulent sea. Indeed, most of our rescues are per

formed by just such units. There are almost 200 small Coast Guard stations with the primary responsibility of saving life and property and in most cases, also performing law-enforcement and aids-tonavigation duties. Provision for the establishment or replacement of this type of station, along with our other shore facilities such as aids to navigation and housing, is contained in the shore units plan. Previous planning was based on an average annual requirement of $38.5 million. The amended plan increases the requirement to $41.2 million annually. Our program for 1968 provides for $34.2 million. In fiscal year 1968 station construction work is planned at six of our most critical locations: Jonesport, Maine; Alexandria Bay, N.Y.; Fire Island, N.Y.; Sassafras River, Kennedyville, Md.; Wrightsville Beach, N.C.; and Panama City, Fla.

Considerably more expensive than the work at the small stations are the projects involving the New York base (Governors Island) and the complementing projects at the Yorktown Training Center and New London base. Consolidation of Coast Guard units at Governors Island is proceeding satisfactorily although difficulties not fully anticipated have forced some delay in the move of the training center now at Groton, Conn., and the industrial base, now on Staten Island, N.Y. Current scheduling has the Groton center, which provides advanced training for our enlisted personnel, now transferring activities by October of this year, and Staten Island base in April 1968. In the initial planning for the utilization of Governors Island, the regular service engineman school at the Groton Training Center was to be included. Through careful scheduling of classes it developed, that, with some augmentation, the existing engineman laboratory and classrooms at the Yorktown Reserve Training Center could be more efficiently utilized on a year-round basis to train both Regular service and Reserve engineman. Two 500-man barracks for the replacement of World War II temporary wooden buildings, part of the long-range unit development plan at Yorktown, are consequently extremely important for the adequate accommodation of a full-year student body. In New London, Conn., a new waterfront base bill replace three separate old or inadequate installations around the metropolitan area, and will provide berthing for three ocean station vessels as well as buoy tenders operating in the area. Also at New London, plans for the Academy include a new auditorium and recreation building, and some rehabilitation of the Chase Hall cadet barracks built in 1932. At most Coast Guard training commands, temporary wooden buildings built during World War I or II, are being gradually replaced. In the request before you, a 500-man barracks will be erected at our West Coast Recruit Training Center, Alameda, Calif., as the first of two planned for construction there. At the East Coast Recruit Training Center, Cape May, N.J., the fresh water distribution system will undergo much-needed improvement.

At Mobile, Ala., we have an opportunity to move our base to a superior waterfront location at Brookley Air Force Base currently scheduled for closing. Our present location at Choctaw Point has long been inadequate for its aids-to-navigation maintenance work and port safety operations. It will be far less expensive over the long run to adapt facilities for Coast Guard purposes at Brookley than to replace portions of the base at Choctaw Point.

Also, additional land has not been available adjacent to the present base. Further, to more efficiently meet our increased aids-to-navigation responsibilities along the eastern Gulf of Mexico, an inland buoy tender and barge now stationed at Mobile will be transferred to a new station planned at Panama City, Fla., and that station will be equipped with a minor industrial capability.

In keeping with the national emphasis on pollution abatement and control, you will note several projects involving sewage systems. Although we still have quite a problem ahead of us in pollution abatement, remedial action at many shore units must await certain municipal arrangements such as sewerline extensions.

Out of about 14,000 married Coast Guard personnel, close to 7,000 are inadequately housed. With the cooperation of this committee we are gradually improving the lot of our people. Authorization is sought in fiscal year 1968 for construction of more family quarters on Governors Island to increase the present 548 to about 600 units. We have a population of around 4,000 persons living or working there now. We are also faced with a housing problem in the San Francisco area, and if it can be worked out, we would like to join with a Navy construction project at Treasure Island to construct about 140 units for Coast Guard use. Besides these large blocs and one small project at Santa Barbara, Calif., we plan to construct 16 more units at our air station at Annette Island, Alaska, to complete a project started several years ago.

No less important than Coast Guard construction of public family quarters is the Coast Guard's leased housing program. That program, authorized by this committee last year, offers an early way out of our housing delemma in some locations. It is sufficiently flexible that any subsequent adjustment of Coast Guard forces need not be constrained by concern for either housing disposition or acquisition and, for moderate periods of time, is more economical than Coast Guard construction of family quarters.

We anticipate having 170 to 200 units of housing under lease by this summer, with more to follow.

I might also mention to the study of the Coast Guard Yard which you recall was contracted last spring. The Bureau of the Budget raised questions about the need for the yard, and Treasury obtained the services of a consulting firm to make a study. The scope of the evaluation included an analysis of the yard's effectiveness and operating costs, a comparative evaluation of the yard with alternative sources of capability (principally commercial shipyards), and development of a recommended plan for certain improvements if the yard was to be retained.

As a result of the study, it was concluded that the Coast Guard Yard should be retained at this time and recommendations for improving yard effectiveness are being evaluated and scheduled for implementation as practicable. One facet of improved operations is the refurbishing of the fabricating shop space contained in this request to effect certain economies.

Finally, funds are included for aids to navigation for rivers and harbors improvement projects completed by the Corps of Engineers, and to meet the changing needs of maritime commerce; for advance planning, construction design, and architectural services; and automation of manned light stations.

As you are aware, we will soon become a charter member of the new Department of Transportation. It is exceedingly difficult to sever a connection reaching back to 1790 without a considerable tinge of regret. Treasury Secretary Fowler and Assistant Secretary Davis, along with their predecessors, Secretary Dillon and Assistant Secretary Reed, have been most helpful in moving the Coast Guard in a direction which has also been of concern to this committee-a sensible program for replacing an aging plant. For these endeavors we are most grateful.

Looking ahead, we can visualize a new impetus in our missions as Secretary Boyd copes with the enormous problems facing this country's transportation system. More than ever we must reemphasize all aspects of safety of life and property at sea. We must continue to remain in the forefront of efforts to obtain international approval of such important matters as fire-hazard reduction on passenger vessels, the need for which has been well known since the disastrous fires on the Lakonia and Yarmouth Castle.

In a similar vein, comprehensive safety regulations are being developed for marine transportation of bulk chemicals, and improvements are being sought in the fields of intership communications, rules of the road, navigation in congested harbor entrance approaches through the use of sea lanes, recreational boating safety, enforcement of conservation laws, rivers and harbor icebreaking, and port safety. We are also studying ways to extend the automation of our manned lights and better utilize buoy-tending vessels. The expanding oceanographic activities of our ships, combined with an increased use of aircraft for infrared temperature surveys over the Continental Shelf for migratory fish studies by the Department of the Interior, ice surveys, and the National Data Buoy Systems Study mentioned earlier, reflect the Coast Guard's interest and capability in providing a major input to the national oceanographic program.

With a view to providing services which will be required in the future, the Coast Guard in coordination with other agencies and the National Council is now carefully studying our responsibilities in ocean engineering, certification of submersibles, precision aids to navigation in the ocean depths, and underwater search and rescue. I anticipate specific recommendations to you in future legislation and authorization requests.

The extent of our input to national programs underway and foreseen should prove to be of considerable significance to the future of our country's water-oriented transport. So much so that we are giving serious thought to assembling an inhouse organizational component appropriately staffed to supervise our research and technological efforts in the scientific environment with which we should be keeping abreast. This will assist us in moving ahead more expeditiously in the field of transportation problem solving while simultaneously producing more cost-effective methods of carrying out our present missions. Now, the staff and I will be most happy to develop further any matters that you may wish to discuss.

Mr. CLARK. Thank you very much, Admiral.

To get right into the meat of this, with respect to the icebreaker design last year, we had a half million dollars in it for you, and I don't know whether you have spent any of that or not. Can you tell me whether or not this is going to be nuclear or have they made up

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their minds whether this is going to be nuclear or conventional powered?

Admiral SMITH. Mr. Chairman, we have not arrived at that decision as yet. We have completed a good deal of preliminary design and exploration, have sought the advice of outside consulting organizations as well as the Navy, and I think you know that on Thursday we will have the presentation to bring the committee completely up to date on the present status of the icebreaker program.

Mr. CLARK. Last year we discussed with the Comptroller General the desirability of utilizing unsold houses in Miami and Honolulu for Coast Guard personnel. What progress has been made in that direction? Last year we asked you to go ahead with that.

Admiral SMITH. Mr. Chairman, we now are occupying in the Miami area 12 units of this FHA housing. We intend to acquire some additional units after the first of July if they are still available. We have found two things that have limited our possible use of this opportunity. One is that the FHA much prefers to sell this property where they can. They would rather not hang onto it and keep it in a lease situation, and the other item that makes it a little difficult for us to get a good many of these units is the fact that they are having better luck selling them now so that the desirable ones are disappearing from the market.

Mr. CLARK. Since that is happening, what housing do you think will be built or has been built in the last appropriation and what do you think you will do with this next one? Has there been any housing built by last year's appropriation?

Admiral SMITH. Yes; there has. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask Admiral Trimmble or Captain Scheiderer to give you a report on where we stand on this presently.

Captain SCHEIDERER. The fiscal year 1967 construction program called for 164 units at Honolulu, and that is proceeding. That is at the Red Hill location. There are also four units at Keflavik, Iceland. We have seven units scheduled for Quillayute River, Wash., and six units at St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. That is the entire family housing project construction for 1967. There are, in addition, of course, 50 other units scattered throughout the individual A.C. & I. shore station projects. Would you like a rundown for 1958?

Mr. CLARK. May I ask you one question. You said "scheduled.” Does that mean that you are now constructing them?

Captain SCHEIDERER. Yes, sir; that is right. For 1968?

Mr. CLARK. Please.

Captain SCHEIDERER. For 1968 there are currently scheduled around 50 units at Governors Island of a high-rise type. This is the 1968 construction program now. There are 140 units at San Francisco, as the Commandant indicated in the statement, if we can go in with the Navy at Treasure Island. There are 8 units scheduled for Santa Barbara, 16 for Annette Island, Alaska, six units at Cape San Juan, and 36 units are included in the other shore station projects not a part of the regular family station project.

Mr. CLARK. Thank you, Captain.

Mr. Lennon?

Mr. LENNON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My recollection is that it was on February 17 last year when Secretary Davis and Admiral Roland and the other members of their