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¶ Albert Julius Berres, onetime American Federation of Laborite, secretary to the Producers' Committee of the Motion Picture Producers of America.
¶ Franklin Knight Lane Jr., California lawyer, World War flyer, son of Wilson's Secretary of the Interior.
The commission had hardly been named before a howl of protest went up from Philadelphia's flag-waving Air Defense League. Snorted the League's president, Col. Samuel Price Wetherill: "The selfsame lobby which opposed the Administration's policy of cleaning house in connection with the airmail contracts has evidently succeeded in causing two members of the commission to be appointed . . . whose membership . . . promises ill for disinterested findings." The Air Defense League objected particularly to the past records of Members Warner and Hunsaker.
Nobody could positively object to the past record of Chairman Howell on aviation because he had none. All he knows about flying he learned as a passenger on occasional flights over commercial airlines. This lack of expert knowledge, however, did not prevent him from announcing, after his commission's meetings last week in the White House Cabinet Room, that he would junket through Europe next month to size up the power and progress of foreign flying.
Commander Hunsaker, a trained technical observer, is already in Europe. Nevertheless he was to arrive home this week and with Members Warner, Berres & Lane, board a Department of Commerce plane Aug. 3 for a month's tour of the U. S. to visit Army & Navy bases, inspect commercial airports and aircraft factories and look over airmail, passenger & express route.
From coast to coast and border to border, every region will be covered by the commissioners. A flight over the Caribbean airways will probably be included. The committee will reassemble in Washington Sept. 1 to begin public hearings.
Charged with studying all phases of U. S. Aviation and formulating a broad national policy covering air transportation and defense, the Howell Board must report to the next Congress by Feb. 1.
Each member, according to its chairman, will enter upon his work with a "virgin mind." Out of the $75,000 authorized by Congress for the inquiry commissioners will be paid at the rate of $9,500 a year, plus expenses.
The Howell investigation of U. S. Aviation is the 15th since the War. The industry first went under official examination in 1918 when the Hughes Board sought to determine the reason for alleged waste and delay in the construction of U. S. aircraft. Subsequent inquiries of note:
1) The Dickman Board in France (1919) reporting on lessons learned from the War.
2) The Menoher Board in Washington (1919), reporting on a bill to establish a U. S. Department of Aeronautics.
3) The Connor Board (1920) inquiring into the whole subject of military aviation.
4) The Lassiter Board (1923) investigating Army Air Service requirements of personnel and equipment.
5) The House investigation (1924-25) under Wisconsin's Representative Lampert at which General William Mitchell made headlines for weeks by flaying the backwardness of Army & Navy aviation.