New Man

Henry Lewis Stimson made a bit of history last week. The Secretary of War briskly opened, conducted and closed a press conference in nine minutes flat. Despite the Washington heat, the electric fans in the War Department council room had been turned off, so that the 73-year-old Secretary could clearly hear the reporters' questions. Said he, with staccato conciseness:

"I have one piece of news for you today. Beginning on June 7 next, the U.S. Army will train 8,000 British pilots a year in U.S. flying schools. The first group [of 550 Britons] will arrive early next week."

This news was a little startling in view of the U.S. Army Air Corps' shortage of instructors, training ships, school facilities for its own 30,000-pilots-a-year program. A reporter asked whether the training of Britons would slow up U.S. training. Mr. Stimson's brusque and optimistic answer: "No."

He said that 4,000 of the British students would be trained in the same sort of civilian contract schools which give U.S. Air Corps cadets their primary training; 3,000 more would be sifted into the CAA's training schools for U.S. civilian fliers, and 1,000 of the 8,000 British students would be, not pilots, but navigators (whom Pan American Airways is to train at Miami). The question, "Does this program mean that all British pilots will henceforth be trained in the U.S.?," Mr. Stimson let a subordinate answer.

For the first time, Washington newsmen saw and heard tall, fawn-eared Robert Abercrombie Lovett, Assistant Secretary of War for Air, in action at a Stimson press conference. Mr. Lovett said that Great Britain at present trains about 10,000 pilots a year in the British Isles,* told the reporters to draw their own conclusion--evidently blockaded Britain will have to lean heavily on the U.S. for pilot training.

Secretary for Air? Reporters paid attention to Bob Lovett, who is the first Assistant Secretary of War for Air since F. Trubee Davison last had the job in 1933. He had a great deal to do with opening U.S. training facilities to the British.

In the six months since Under Secretary Robert Porter Patterson summoned him to the War Department, youngish (45) Mr. Lovett has done a standout job.

Bob Lovett got his wings during World War I. He left Yale at 21, flew for the U.S. Navy in North Sea patrol and bombing squadrons. Young and untried though he then was, he had the same quality of quiet, intense persistence which is his administrative hallmark today.

As a cub lieutenant, he had the nerve to criticize British bombing practices in 1917-18, urge the adoption of a technique which is proving itself in World War II: bombing aimed primarily at bases, rather than at such scattered targets as submarines at sea. He also preached a principle of air war which is still fundamental with him: that big bombers win the wars.

The U.S. Army Air Corps had not yet gone all-out for big bombers when Bob Lovett gave up his partnership in a Manhattan banking house (Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.), became Assistant Secretary of War for Air last April. He forthwith went all-out, yammered for more and heavier bombers until he got action. Now the U.S. is striving to get capacity to build 500 such bombers a month.

Modest Mr. Lovett would rather have the credit go to such professional airmen as Major General Henry H. Arnold (Deputy Chief of Staff), Lieut. General Delos Emmons (commander of the General Headquarters Air Force, who has long fought for more bomber-power) and Major General George H. Brett (Chief of Air Corps, who was not so foresighted). They and their new civilian boss mutually respect each other, get along very well.

That they do so is due in no small part to Mr. Lovett, and his knack for the diplomatic intrusion of new ideas. Notwithstanding the popular impression that the Air Corps is a young man's branch, with young ideas, the U.S. Air Corps, like the rest of the Army, has its share of ranking oldsters who are sot in their ways. Part of Secretary Lovett's job is to unsot them.

He has done much to take the snarls out of Air Corps administration. In sleek, double-breasted linen suits (usually blue), monogrammed white shirts, Yale-blue ties, he works seven days a week when at the War Department. Seldom does he get a weekend at home on Long Island with his two children and his wife (the former Adele Quartley Brown, whom he married after he returned from World War I).

He understands the intricacies and difficulties of expanding aircraft production, continually preaches that the U.S. must have the simultaneous capacity to produce current planes and to develop new types in quantity. Everything considered, he thinks the aircraft industry is now doing very well, but must do much better.

Before Banker Lovett became Assistant Secretary of War for Air, he was generally accounted an advocate of an independent, consolidated air service which would combine both Army and Navy air arms. If he still believes in a separate air force, he has kept publicly mum about it in Washington. Good guess: Secretary Lovett sticks to the principle of air independence, but doubts that now is the time to make such a change. Nevertheless, when and if the air services are reorganized, Bob Lovett may well be the first U.S. Secretary for Air.

* In addition to the pilots, navigators, gunners, bombardiers trained in Canada's vast air-school system.

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