NATIONAL DEFENSE: New & Shiny

Congress got ready last week to vote for a 70-group Air Force.

Impatiently, the Senate Appropriations Committee summoned Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal, who had originally asked for only enough money to fill out the present 55-group force. Under congressional prodding, he had produced a makeshift, economy-sized 66-group program. It would provide ten of the extra groups by taking 300 old B-29s out of storage, and modernizing them.

Forrestal was forced to admit that the Joint Chiefs of Staff considered the 66-group program "inadequate as a military matter." The Senators, suspicious of a force taken out of mothballs, gave it...

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