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"Army Hatred." The next day, Senator Brewster told newsmen that he regretted having brought up the story about the airline hostess. Then he quit the capital and flew off (in an American Airlines plane) to a vacation in Maine. But Howard Hughes was not through. He turned his guns on the Army. He and Noah Dietrich contended that it was "personal dislike" of Hughes by Major General Oliver Echols (wartime chief of Air Forces procurement) which blocked Hughes's efforts to speed building of the 200-ton "Hercules" and the XF-11 camera plane. And it was "Army hatred" of him, for his failures to kowtow to Army brass at Wright Field, said Hughes, that made him start spending for entertainment, as other airplane makers did.
Hearing the word "entertainment," Senator Ferguson grabbed at it with relief, looked around the packed room and shouted, "Where's Johnny Meyer?" Hughes said he didn't know, and laughed right in the Senator's face. Ferguson said grimly, "It isn't funny." He asked Hughes: "Will you bring Mr. Meyer in?" After a long pause Hughes replied coldly: "No, I don't think I will." The two men glared hard at each other, then Ferguson signed a subpoena for Expense Account Johnny.
From there until the weekend, Inquisitor Ferguson struggled with his bullheaded, shrewd, obstreperous witness. On his part, Planemaker Hughes put on a fancy performance in self-advancement, the sum of which was that, in effect, he had thought up many of the good planes the U.S. used in World War II—and the Japs had copied one for their Zero. Everybody welcomed the arrival of Saturday night. Some other Republican Congressmen still in Washington were beginning to get restive over the rowdy proceedings. Michigan's Senior Senator Arthur Vandenberg dropped in among the spectators on Saturday and did not appear to be entranced.
This week, with the hearing room once more jammed, with Hughes again primed for the witness chair, Senator Ferguson abruptly announced that the hearings had been postponed until November.
As the janitors moved in to sweep up, 41-year-old Howard Robard Hughes fired a parting blast: "When Senator Brewster saw he was fighting a losing battle against public opinion, he folded up and took a run-out powder . . . headed for the backwoods of Maine. There was no reason for the other Senators ... to continue his losing battle ... if he was too cowardly to stay here and face the music."
But Senators Ferguson and Brewster both said the hearings would be resumed. Then Senator Ferguson went off to Bethesda hospital, for treatment of a bad case of poison ivy.