Mr. COLE. You have not indicated for the record the cost of one of these ships. I would like to ask what it is.

Secretary THOMAS. The chairman said $190 million, and that is approximately right.

The CHAIRMAN. $199,185,000.

Secretary THOMAS. Our latest costs range from $178 million-it varies, depending on where it is built-from $178 million to $207. million.

Mr. COLE. It is fair to say this ship will cost $200 million?
Secretary THOMAS. $200 million is about the right figure, yes.
Mr. COLE. What did the conventional carrier cost?

Secretary THOMAS. You mean the Essex type in the last war?
Mr. COLE. Well, the most recent, the predecessor to the Forrestal.
Mr. RIVERS. The 45,000 tons.

Admiral LEGGETT. The Essex.

Mr. COLE. Around $50 million, wasn't it?

Admiral LEGGETT. Yes, sir. I think it was about $40 million and some $60 million to modernize them.

Mr. VAN ZANDT. In other words, it was $110 million as they are today?

Admiral LEGGETT. $100 million would be about right.

Mr. VAN ZANDT. $100 million more than they are today.

Mr. COLE. You mean the predecessor to the Forrestal, what we might call the conventional carrier, now, would cost $100 million, against a wartime cost of another million?

Admiral LEGGETT. I am not sure that I understood your question, Mr. Cole.

Mr. COLE. Well, Mr. Van Zandt suggested, and you nodded, that the Essex type of carrier now would cost $100 million. Is that right or not?

Admiral LEGGETT. The modernized version of the Essex class would cast $100 million, about, yes, sir.

Mr. COLE. Is it possible to correlate the striking power of a conventional Essex type carrier with the striking power of a Forrestal type, having in mind the speed of the plane, the power of the weapons, the range of the ship and range of the planes-is it possible to relate that force in contrast to the more limited power of a conventional carrier?

Secretary THOMAS. Well, I would say, Mr. Cole, very definitely, because of the type of planes that it carries and the number of planes and the size of the planes.

Mr. COLE. Well, all right, on the number of planes.
Secretary THOMAS. Pardon me?

Mr. COLE. I say, on the number of planes, how many more planes can the Forrestal carry than the Essex?

Secretary THOMAS. Well, I can give you-and this is restricted— but I can give you exactly the number of the different types of planes that the Forrestal

Mr. COLE. Well, I don't want numbers. Can it carry twice as many or three times as many planes?

Secretary THOMAS. Well, it can carry almost twice as many. Of one type, of course.

Mr. COLE. And the range of the planes it can carry is twice the range of the planes that the Essex type can carry?

Secretary THOMAS. I would say at least that.

Mr. COLE. All right. The range of the Forrestal itself—can that be said to be twice as far as the range of the Essex type?

Secretary THOMAS. Not quite. I wouldn't say quite twice as much. It has a much longer range, now. Of course, your refueling at sea gives us unlimited range now.

Mr. COLE. That also applies to the Essex, so we can't use that.
Secretary THOMAS. That is right.

Mr. COLE. The range of the planes that the Forrestal carries, can they be characterized as twice more powerful than the range of the planes carried by the Essex?

Secretary THOMAS. I don't think you can quite say that. The Essex model, for instance, can't handle the latest types of planes at all. They can carry some of the modern planes, but not our latest type. So your Forrestal is an entirely different weapon, really. I mean, it carries a different type of planes. For instance, that is a 25-foot high hangar deck as against a 17-foot hangar deck on the Essex class. You can't get the planes on your hangar deck.

Mr. COLE. I don't see why you hesitate to declare that the weapons carried aboard the Forrestal will be many, many times more powerful than the weapons carried by planes on the Essex type.

Secretary THOMAS. Well, that is correct. I mean they will be much more powerful. We are trying to be conservative in these statements. As the admiral points out, the launching and recovery rates are double, too, so we can get them off twice as fast and you can recover them twice as fast.

Mr. VAN ZANDT. And the fuel problem is met too?

Secretary THOMAS. Yes, it carries a great deal more fuel. It is a different weapon, really.

Mr. COLE. My reason for asking these questions, Mr. Secretary, is to indicate to persons who may gasp when they learn that one ship is going to cost $200 million, as I have gasped when I realized and was told that is what it is going to cost; that this is a ship that carries a defensive posture many, many times, at least twice greater, than the type of aircraft carrier that was used in World War II.

Secretary THOMAS. Well, I would say that is right. At least Mr. COLE. The cost of this new ship, this new modern version of the aircraft carrier, is about twice what the cost was of its predecessor. Secretary THOMAS. That is right. Its overall striking power, I would say it was considerably over twice what the original

Mr. COLE. Frankly, I wish I could be persuaded and felt as sanguine about its invulnerability to submarine attack as you appear to be. Secretary THOMAS. Well

Mr. COLE. Let me pursue an inquiry which is not too important, but I was rather impressed with the sorties from aircraft carriers in the Korean war, which averaged out only about 211⁄2 hours. That, to me, appeared to be rather sketchy flights. Is my division incorrect or is my conclusion that 211⁄2 wartime flights is sketchy?

Secretary THOMAS. No: I

Mr. COLE. Maybe this is not fair to ask you, Mr. Thomas. Perhaps Admiral Duncan can answer better.

Secretary THOMAS. Of course, we flew a lot more sorties than the ones we mentioned here. The Navy and the Marine Corps flew 350,000

sorties, as a matter of fact. But airbased there were 183,000-I mean from carriers there were 183,000.

Mr. COLE. Well, those flights from aircraft carriers by Navy and Marine Corps during the Korean war averaged about 211⁄2 hours; isn't that right?

Secretary THOMAS. That is about right. Of course, the carriers were close in, as you know, so that length of time

Mr. VAN ZANDT. And were targets assigned them by the overall command in Korea?

Secretary THOMAS. Yes.

Mr. Smith-I would like for Mr. Smith to speak to that, because this is in his field now, as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air.

Secretary SMITH. I think the point you bring up, Mr. Cole, is very worth while discussing because it shows the tremendous advantage of the carrier striking force in that it can move right close into the target. That is the explanation for the short duration of those flights. You apparently were worrying that the short duration had some other

cause.

Mr. COLE. That is right.

Secretary SMITH. Actually, we moved the carriers up as the tactical situation permitted, so we were close to the target. We spent very little time flying from the base to the target and a great deal of time over the target.

Mr. COLE. That is an understandable explanation. But my friend, Mr. Short, has also suggested another possible explanation, and that is that the sorties did not encounter much opposition. There wasn't much air opposition. We maintained the control of the air.

Secretary SMITH. That is right. We had control of the air.
Mr. COLE. And therefore our sorties did not need be very long.
Mr. VAN ZANDT. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. COLE. Yes.

Mr. VAN ZANDT. Is it not true, Mr. Smith, that land-based jet aircraft controlled by "JOC" in Korea could not reach the target south of the Yalu River, in the northwestern corner of Korea, and carriers were sent up to do the job and destroy the targets?

Secretary SMITH. I can't say that from firsthand knowledge. I think Admiral Duncan probably could answer that question. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Rivers.

Mr. RIVERS. Of course, Mr. Secretary, in response to one of those questions, the reason you had control of the air was because they didn't know where you were going to be. That was to your advantage all the time. They couldn't attack you because of the surprise element of it. You were always where they didn't expect you to be. For instance, at Inchon, you had complete control there.

I want to ask you one other question about the A3D and the A4D. Those of us who follow this airplane thing as a hobby-it happens to be a hobby of mine, and I know something about them. These new carriers you call it the angled deck, I guess you mean the canted. deck.

Secretary THOMAS. Well, the angled deck is the term we agreed on. It is the same thing.

Mr. RIVERS. These new carriers can handle an airplane of 70,000 pounds?

Secretary THOMAS. That is right.

Mr. RIVERS. And the terminology of us who watch these planes fly-that is heavier than a C-54, or R5D for the Navy, which is 69,000 pounds.

These new jet planes that come off the assembly line are of stupendous weight. Their respective potentials stultify the imagination, almost, their performance. They have potentials of striking power over stupendous distances. And that is one of the reasons for the Forrestal type of carrier. Now, in answer to some of the criticism and scandal that has been put out on the Forrestal, that had you to change it during construction; any prototype ship has to have some changes when you are going through the construction. And the Forrestal had to have these changes. We who know realize the necescity; we who have been sitting on these committees of the Navy for years, understand.

Secretary THOMAS. Mr. Rivers, I might say that the 3D, for ínstance, weighs more than the B-17.

Mr. RIVERS. The A3D-now the A4D-is a little later one. The A3D weighs more than the B-17?

Secretary THOMAS. That is right. The B-17 weighs a gross weight of 65,000 pounds.

Mr. RIVERS. 65,000.

Secretary THOMAS. When you consider an airplane larger than the B-17 operating at sea in a mobile airbase, you have to have a very advanced type of ship to do that.

Mr. RIVERS. There is no such thing as a jet fighter any more. They are a jet fighter-bomber. They are so heavy. When you have a jet fighter, really, it can carry a bomb, because they are so heavy and have these terrific features built in it, the afterburner and the tremendous weights they require, and the speed, and for a good ship to handle these new bombers, and that is what they are, it is compelled to cost a lot of money.

One man says the Forrestal cost as much as 20 to 50 airbases. Well, if you didn't have the striking power of even the modern Essex type that Admiral Leggett talked about, that weighs over 50,000 tons, Admiral-I think they get up to around 60,000 tons when you load them up to the gunwale. That is what prompted Admiral Stump to say yesterday over in Korea, when he was talking to Admiral Carney, that he could strike anywhere in Asia that he cared to, with his striking power of that 7th Fleet. To me, that is the only reason--if they get the proper information and the proper command from the White House, or wherever it comes from, to defend Formosa, that 7th Fleet can strike anywhere it wants to in Asia, if given the command to do so, because of these terrific striking potentials. I want to ask you

Secretary THOMAS. Mr. Rivers, during World War II we built airbases in the South Pacific, as you know, some very elaborate bases, and then we had to move away and completely-we moved away from them completely and evacuated those airbases.

Mr. RIVERS. Of course you did. You spoke of the concentric circles of electronic warning curtains which provide formidable protection and survive guided missiles, which can search enemy aircraft, and in addition to the screen that is given to it by your destroyers, that carrier, when it is not going 45 to 50 miles an hour in the open sea, it is screened when it is not going that fast; isn't that true?

Secretary THOMAS. That is right.

Mr. RIVERS. You should have put that in there.

Now, I want to ask you: You spent most of your time on that. What about all these ships you are going to build? What percentage of them are going to be built in our naval shipyards and what percentage of them are going to be built in private shipbuildingMr. NORBLAD. In Charleston.

Mr. RIVERS. We will get to that.

The CHAIRMAN. Let's have order, now.

Mr. RIVERS. Wait a minute. I didn't come here to sit on the liquidation of Charleston, for your information. [Laughter.] Mr. RIVERS. That is for your information.

But what percentage are you going to build outside of Charleston? [Laughter.]

Secretary THOMAS. Well, Mr. Chairman, we have been working on that. Of course, we have to get the approval of the program first. Then we can give you some very detailed information on what recom'mendations we would make on that.

Mr. RIVERS. You plan to utilize private shipyards?
Secretary THOMAS. That is right.

Mr. RIVERS. Private shipbuilding to the maximum, and get that in a healthy condition?

Secretary THOMAS. That is right.

Mr. RIVERS. As well as construct these new and converted types of craft in your naval shipyards?

Secretary THOMAS. That is right. And we are trying to do it on an area basis, too, so you divide it in different areas, the west coast versus the east coast, so you get a proper balance.

Mr. RIVERS. It is your plan to keep the industry healthy?
Secretary THOMAS. As far as you can with this program.
Mr. RIVERS. As far as you can.

Secretary THOMAS. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. In that connection, my recollection is that the law is that half of these ships have to be built in industrial yards and half in Navy yards; isn't that correct?

Secretary THOMAS. That is combat ships.

The CHAIRMAN. That is right, combat ships. That is correct, as far as the combat ships are concerned.

Now, if this carrier is authorized, and Congress appropriates the money, under the system of rotation, this naturally goes to a private yard, does it not?

Secretary THOMAS. This would go into a private yard under the Vinson-Trammel Act; yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. That is right.
Mr. Johson, any questions?

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes.

Was this matter discussed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff at all? Secretary THOMAS. Well, Mr. Johnson, the Joint Chiefs of Staff do not select a weapon, as such. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, for instance, have set out in our force levels carriers, so many carriers, for carrier operation. But they don't tell you what kind of a carrier to build, like they don't tell the Air Force to build a B-52 or a B-47. They don't get into the individual weapons. They don't tell the Army what kind of tank to build.