Planemaker Howard Hughes had taken all that the Senate War Investigating subcommittee had thrown at him, and had given as good as he got. Last week the committee heard from Lieut. General Barney Giles, wartime A.A.F. Chief of Staff, who backed up Hughes.
The Hughes F-11, he said, had been ordered by General Arnold as the best plane available at a time when makeshift photo-reconnaissance planes were taking heavy combat losses. Low priorities were primarily responsible for Hughes's failure to deliver. Elliott Roosevelt was "well qualified" to recommend the plane. Although the plane had been ordered over the opposition of the Army's technical command, there had been no favoritism. If there had been, said General Giles, "I should have been in a position to know."
With that the committee ended its Hughes investigation and turned to a more inviting target. While deaf Howard Hughes listened impassively, with an earphone clapped to his good ear, Michigan's Homer Ferguson grilled the discomfited Benny Meyers, Major General, U.S.A. ret., the man who had approved the original $70 million contract for the F-11.
Profitable Deals. Fellow officers had known Benny Meyers as the sharpest man with figures that the Air Forces had. He received the Legion of Merit for devising the wartime system of production controls and scheduling. One top-ranking officer declared: "Without Benny we would not have had the 6-29s when we wanted them."
But Benny Meyers had few friends. Gimlet-eyed and sharp-tongued, Benny was not interested in the romance of flying. While other officers spun yarns of the wild blue yonder, Benny studied stock reports. He was murderously good at poker, insisted on high stakes that sometimes ran to $3,000 pots. For an Army officer, he seemed unusually wealthy. He liked to flash $100 bills, recently bought a big, colonial house on Long Island.
Last week Benny Meyers would have been better off at 30,000 feet with a Zero on his tail. Hughes had testified that Meyers had asked him for a postwar job, and for a $200,000 loan to buy some $10,000,000 in war bonds on margin. Neil McCarthy, ex-Hughes executive, declared that Meyers told him "he had the same kind of deal with other people."
Other testimony made Meyers' spot hotter. An anonymous letter dated 1945 (which the A.A.F. had managed to "lose" in the files) charged that for ten years Meyers had made a practice of buying stock in companies as soon as he got their bids on contracts, that he held control of a Cleveland company which was buying large amounts of Air Corps supplies.
Pointed Suggestions. Lawrence Bell, president of Bell Aircraft Corp., testified that in 1940 Meyers had recommended the Aviation Electric Corp. of Dayton for $1,053,000 in subcontracts. Benny Meyers had had an interest in Aviation Electric. Major General Oliver P. Echols stated that he had made pointed "suggestions" to Meyers in 1940 that he "disassociate" himself from this company. Meyers, who protested that he had held its stock only as collateral for $34,000 worth of loans, admitted that he had not complied. Instead, he had lent the company another $20,000.