CIVIL DEFENSE

Part I-Atomic Shelter Tests

MONDAY, MAY 5, 1958

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY OPERATIONS

OF THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS,

Washington, D. C.

The subcommittee met in room 1501-B, New House Office Building, pursuant to adjournment, at 10 a. m., Hon. Chet Holifield (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Holifield (presiding) and Lipscomb. Also present: Herbert Roback, staff administrator; Carey Brewer, senior defense specialist; and Robert McElroy, investigator.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. The subcommittee will be in order. This morning we are honored to have before us Dr. Ellis A. Johnson.

Dr. Johnson, I am not going to try to give for the record your background and qualifications, because they are so numerous that I wouldn't know where to stop. But I wish that you would give for the record, before you start your testimony, some of the pertinent points in your background and what you have been doing over the last few years, particularly for the Government; the type of work that you have been doing and service that you have been rendering to the Government in the studies and surveys that you have been making, such that you can reveal for the unclassified record.

Would you like to do that at this time?

Dr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

STATEMENT OF DR. ELLIS A. JOHNSON, DIRECTOR, OPERATIONS RESEARCH OFFICE, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

I speak for myself in this testimony. I was brought up on a farm, I have a doctor of science degree from MIT. I have written approximately 140 scientific technical papers during my scientific career. I was on the staff at MIT for about 4 years. Then I was a staff member of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, under Vannevar Bush, until just a few years ago, when I resigned from a leave of absence.

At the beginning of World War II, I joined the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, and was in charge of the research part of their work, first as a civilian and then as an officer. I served as a naval officer in the Pacific from the beginning of the war until October 1945.

I returned to the Carnegie Institution of Washington after the war to do basic research in geophysics and physics. In January 1948 I was asked by the Air Force to become the first Technical Director of

the Air Force Office of Atomic Energy, AFOAT-1, to establish the system to monitor the Soviet atomic tests and the Soviet atomic stockpile. After that was successfully done, I joined the Operations Research Office of the Johns Hopkins University.

So far as the content of my professional work that affects my testimony is concerned, I have a reasonably good background in electronics. I was at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, so I saw what an air attack will do to an unprotected community and installation. I was at Guadalcanal when the Jap raids there began to encounter such a high attrition from our growing defenses, and as our defense increased still further they abandoned their air raids. I was in the first Philippine sea battle, when almost all of the aircraft in that massive Japanese raid were shot down without doing any military damage to the United States fleet that amounted to anything. Later, as the director of mining in the 21st Bomber Command, I was on General LeMay's staff. I planned two wing missions and wrote the operations orders for a bomb group until the war ended. Thus, I had practical experience in the offensive use of aircraft.

Incidentally, I also planned numerous aircraft operations from the carriers.

I did the analysis for the 21st Bomber Command which indicated that the B-29 attrition rate could be reduced from the intolerably high level of 10 or 12 percent to about 1 percent, by changing the attack plan to independent flights at night at 5,000-foot altitude. The plan was adopted, and as predicted the United States B-29 losses dropped below 1 percent.

In 1948, as the technical director of AFOAT-1, I had access to all of the information bearing on the Soviet capabilities in nuclear weapons and in delivery systems at that time, and I have kept up to date with the information on Soviet attack capabilities.

I have directed and personally participated in and supervised the recent study of ORO on air defense of the United States for the Army. Mr. HOLIFIELD. Would you explain what ORO was and how you conducted this study and the general area of coverage?

Dr. JOHNSON. ORO is the symbol for "Operations Research Office." This is an organization of Johns Hopkins University, which operates under contract with the Department of the Army. Its function is to study the ways that can be managed or devised to improve Army operations of the future. Scientific methods are used to develop better information in order to supplement the intuition and the skill of the officers in the military art. This method of supplementing the military skills is especially effective in problems of extreme complication, which are very hard to figure out on a straightforward intuitive basis. It is a method I used successfully in practice during World War II. So far as air attack and air defense is concerned, we started to study United States defense as a first priority in 1948, and we have continued ever since. It was clear to me at that time that the outcome of the air war, and the ability of the United States to prevent a defeat in the air war, was a necessary condition for our survival. A successful defense is not necessarily a sufficient condition; but you do have to start out with the premise that we will survive an air attack on us, otherwise there are no solutions left for us.

Therefore, we have, until recently, conducted our studies in air defense, responsive to Soviet air attack, on a high-priority basis. This has meant that up to as many as 100 or 120 technical people at a time, and quite a few military people, have worked in ORO in an attempt to understand this very complex problem. Since the amount of civil defense affects the amount of active defense to be provided by the Army, we have tried to understand and incorporate into our overall study the more intensive studies of others on civil defense.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Included in this complex problem, of course, was the evaluation of the capability of the enemy to attack our Nation with nuclear weapons, and the possible casualties we would incur, and also protective methods to prevent those casualties from being so great? Dr. JOHNSON. That is correct.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. This whole field that you covered, then, would be a field that would be of direct scientific value and pertinence to the problem of passive defense of every kind?

Dr. JOHNSON. Very much so.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. As well as the military defense?

Dr. JOHNSON. To my mind, they are inseparable.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. To a certain extent they are, in my mind. But when I spoke of passive I meant things that populations can do other than with military weapons to save themselves. When I spoke of military, I was thinking of our offensive and defensive active military forces. I was using the common lay language.

Our subcommittee, in its report, took the position that the so-called civil defense was an integral part of the national defense, and therefore inseparable, so we are certainly in hearty agreement with you on that point.

Dr. JOHNSON. Mr. Chairman, I am glad to hear you make that statement, since my studies of your work and the exceptionally thorough hearings of your committee have led me to respect your judgment. Mr. HOLIFIELD. We did divide it as to types of endeavor and types of missions.

Dr. JOHNSON. I agree with what I guess you are implying, that the problems of civil defense are problems that cannot be readily handled within the Military Establishment. They involve the essence of protecting the lives of our people and the ways in which that has to be done are dependent very much upon the local civilian actions, as well as upon the centralized planning and the providing of funds from Washington.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. I thank you for that sketch of your background, experience, and your activities in this field.

Now, you may proceed in the way that you care to proceed and introduce such members of your associates as you may wish to at this time, and the record will be clear as to who you have with you.

Dr. JOHNSON. This is Dr. Loewer, who is a consultant for ORO. He has a special skill in the entire problem of construction which has a bearing on civil defense. He did previously work on the staff at ORO, so he has a good familiarity with the overall problem too.

Next, I have Dr. Pettee, who is the assistant director of ORO and who has been just as active as I have in the overall guidance and work on our air defense studies, especially in those things that involve intangibles, and there are many of them in this situation.

Both of them have served the Congress on staffs of committees, so they are familiar with the procedures here.

Next, Mrs. Milton, who is my personal research assistant, and Mr. James Henry, who is the head, the present head, of our air defense studies, and who has been the primary technical man from the beginning of our studies in 1948. He also had a great deal of practical military experience in air defense during the war, with the British Navy in this case.

I

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Thank you. Now, you may proceed.

Dr. JOHNSON. Mr. Chairman, as a preliminary to my remarks, may say that it has been my privilege in the course of my work to study carefully the hearings and proceedings of your committee. Although my testimony will probably depict a situation not at all to my liking, I must say that the work of your committee, and especially of its chairman, has brought a great deal of light into an otherwise dark picture. Because I do hold these opinions, I welcome this opportunity to appear before you in the hope that I may make some contribution to your already extensive efforts. I hope that I am wrong, but on the basis of observations it seems that you are one of a very few Members of Congress who have put these national problems in their proper perspective.

I feel I should say, before I begin the more detailed parts of my testimony, that although I do not know if or when the Soviet Union would attack the United States in unprovoked delivery of thermonuclear weapons, that I do know they will have the capacity to do so. I agree with the conclusions of Malik of Lebanon, in his fine speech to the United Nations in 1949, that if the Soviets have a capability, then if the need arises they will surely use it. The Soviet leaders continue to this day to assure us that this is still so.

So when you have an enemy showing as much hostility toward us and building up his delivery capabilities at an increasing tempo right now, then it is time for us to worry.

Even though we may not know whether such an attack will ever come, we should not provide a temptation, by having a weak defense, which would make such an attack too easy. Our situation with relatively little defense is a very serious one because the Soviet Union is putting about a quarter of its military budget into the air defense, including an increasing amount of passive measures, and all you have to do is to imagine a situation in which they have the attack capabilities they do have a very strong defense-and in which they strike the first blow, cutting down our SAC to size, as much as they can, destroying enough of our population and our industries so that we will not have a will to fight for several years, and then consider whether that does not give them a unilateral capability of taking other actions in the free world which we would be helpless to counter, because we would fear the consequences of their thermonuclear threat. They will probably reach their full capability in the era 1961 to 1963, if they continue the present trends. Of course, we must bear in mind that, they too can change these trends. They do have economic problems.

Now, the time left to us is very short and we must realize that all of our defensive action, and that includes civil defense in a very important way, takes time: Even if you appropriated the moneys

now it would be a year before you would really be ready to roll in construction. Necessary steps would include the centralized planning, the detailed planning, the acquisition of land and materials, and it might be 2 years before you could really have enough construction to be significant enough to really help to deter a Soviet attack.

Thus, because of the timing, right now delay in civil defense endangers more people every year, perhaps as many as 5 or 10 million people who, if we delay additional years, will not have the possibility of being saved, and that is an important responsibility for the Congress.

The other problem, which I think has been made clear in your hearings of 1956, is that we need an understanding and leadership in civil defense, which I say must come from Congress because you can't build shelter everywhere. A universal program is a $100 billion program, which is out of the question.

So that you have to study the value to the Soviet Union of attacks in different areas; you have to, from that, determine where the most shelter, for example, can be provided, and that cannot be decided on a local basis. It must be decided on the basis of central planning in Washington.

However, after that is done, you cannot get the real cost and learn the real difficulties without making local plans.

I feel that this is going to require great funds from Washington, which brings the problem back here, and after funds are provided you have to go back to local execution of the detailed plans.

I would argue that civil defense measures, certain ones, are a very critical part of the United States defense. The civil defense measures have to include a lot of physical things and a lot of human things.

Among these are, of course, a shelter system and its associated warning system. The warning system is primarily military, but it has great significance to the civilian defense operations. So there is an interaction there. Furthermore the training of the civil population, the training to get the shelter refugees out of the shelters in many areas, and the restoring of an adequate food system is going to be quite difficult, if the attack is massive.

There are then, three elements of national defense against a thermonuclear attack, first of all civil defense, which is primarily designed to take care of the population. Its emphasis is to save lives and people, not to save industry or the military system itself. However, what is done in civil defense does depend on the active defense.

Second, we cannot preserve our homes and industry except by active defense. We have got to keep the bombs from actually falling. That means you have to then consider how much money to put into active defense; this includes surface-to-air missiles, interceptors, antisubmarine defense, and anti-ICBM defense.

Third, since no defensive United States system opposed to attack by the Soviet Union can be successful unless it involves the threat of active retaliatory United States military action, our main deterrent is going to continue to be our strategic attack forces, SAC and naval air currently; in the future IRBM's and submarine-launched missiles as well. I assume our national objective is to deter the Soviet Union from an attack because it will not be profitable; that is,