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For three years Hap Arnold sat on the redwood chairs he made himself in his woodworking shop and looked across the California valley. He wasn't exactly quiet: he wrote a book, and burst into print regularly with charges that the Air Force had been cut to "a one-punch outfit" by postwar economizers. When summoned by a congressional committee investigating charges of skulduggery in the procurement of the B-36, Arnold snapped brusquely: "Let's get this straight! You can't buy aircraft as you buy beans. I want it understood that no one man is responsible for the procurement of any kind of aircraft. I was the guy chiefly responsible for the B-36." And the B-36, he declared flatly, was "the world's outstanding bomber and the country should be proud of it."*
But energetic Hap Arnold had a bad heart. Last week he rose early, as usual, and told his wife he "felt pretty good." A few minutes later, his wife said, he "sat down on the bed and collapsed." By the time the local doctor arrived, Hap Arnold, 63, was dead. Said Dr. Russel V. Lee: "He should have quit during the war when he had his first attack [in 1944]. But things were hot then and he decided to take his chances with the rest of the soldiers and went back to duty."
*This week the House Armed Services Committee, which had listened to eight days of angry Navy attacks on the B-36, concluded: the B-36 was bought on merit alone, without the slightest trace of "dishonesty, corruption, fraud or political chicanery."