The last page deals with the question of safety.

Also before you is a map of the top of the world, of which the map in this corner [indicating] is an enlargement.

There is an advertisement before you written by Raymond Clapper, that speaks of flying over newly formed routes carrying cargo. It is an advertisement that each of you may care to read.

I have also placed before you a mimeographed copy of a statement taken from a Senate report to which I will refer later. We are also placing before you, when we come to that point, copies of three statements of what happened in military aviation in the last

war.

The question before you, gentlemen, is a vital one. The airplane is probably the most decisive weapon in the world today, in that it is the only weapon that by myself, is changing the map of the world in favor of the country that has superiority in that weapon.

You may be interested at the start to know that we have airplanes already in existence that will cross the ocean nonstop, We have airplanes coming through, of which I will not attempt to give any details, that will do the type of flying you see indicated on the charts behind you.

We are very much in hopes that the airplane of the future will play a role between nations like the automobile does between our States today. It would be impossible for another civil war to break out in the United States, because, for one reason, the automobile has made possible communication, traffic, and trade between the different States, so that the people of one State know the people of another. We think that the airplane will do that between nations in the future. With those preliminary remarks, I would like to divide my further comments into a preamble and a general discussion of the principles of the bill and take up the high spots of the bill one at a time.

NEED FOR LEGISLATIVE RESPITE

This committee is aware, as fully as is the air transport industry, of the period of chaos and confusion which prevailed prior to 1938 so far as civil aeronautics is concerned. We have many times had occasion to point out before the Congress and elsewhere that between 1925 and 1938 there had been so many legislative changes affecting the industry, so many shifts in Federal policy, that investors and management alike were on the point of despair and ruin.

Because of this committee's exhaustive study of that history in the course of its formulation of the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, I know you will understand how we have welcomed the legislative respite since the Congress adopted a new charter for air transportation in 1938.

The fact of the matter is that even a short while ago, had we been asked whether the time was ripe for considering further legislation affecting our industry, we would have replied in the negative. For hardly had we begun to adjust to the new conditions provided in the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 when the war in Europe thrust upon our industry operating and economic problems so novel and severe that for over 2 years we have been completely preoccupied with day-to-day concerns. And since our own Nation took up arms

in the crusade to destroy world-wide aggression, this industry has been more than ever deeply involved in the immediate problems of serving our country from day to day.

AIR LINES WAR PLANS

It may interest you to know that the war plans for the use of the air transport industry in war were formulated originally in 1936. Those plans were revised in 1937, and when the gong rang in this war, there was nothing to do but go to work and we did not have to wait a moment to do so.

It also may interest you to know that the 1st of September 1939 I was in Canada and was so far north that I thought no one could find me. With me were my wife and a guide. One day a Canadian airplane circled around. I thought that the forest rangers were after us. It landed and the pilot said, "Is your name Gorrell?" I said, "Yes," and he replied, "I came to get you. The Germans have entered Poland this morning."

I got into that Canadian plane. They flew me to the Soo and then I flew from the Soo to Chicago. I at once conferred with General Marshall by telephone and our office in Chicago stayed open as long as his did in Washington.

Then on December 7, at Pearl Harbor, we were in touch with General Marshall, the head of the Army Air Corps, and the head of the Navy Air Corps, immediately after the attack. It was our office that was used by various departments of the Government even outside of the War and Navy Departments to ground the Japs in Alaska, in Puerto Rico, and so forth.

The plans of our industry were all laid and ready.

TIME FOR NEW LEGISLATION

With the turn of the year, your chairman announced that the time had arrived when Congress should consider further legislative proposals affecting civil aeronautics, setting forth a number of very important questions which have far-reaching significance to the future development of the aeronautical industry. And at about the same time there appeared an exhaustive report from the Select Committee to Investigate Air Accidents, which is printed as House Report No. 1 of this Congress. This report likewise raises very important questions and set forth a wealth of data which, I am sure, has arrested the attention of the Congress as it has of our industry. It is an excellent report.

We are, therefore, happy to look forward to, and to give you our best advice concerning, the problems of the future which may be upon us almost before we know it.

MR. LEA'S SERVICES TO MILITARY AVIATION

But before turning to the future peacetime problems affecting the industry, I would like to make one reference to an early event in the history of our military aeronautics to which I had the pleasure of referring when I appeared before your committee to testify on the Civil Aeronautics bill in 1937. You may recall that I took that oc

casion to point out that your chairman had in 1919 and 1920 per formed an incalculable service by insisting that the truth be told concerning our military aviation in the First World War. At that time your committee kindly agreed that, when the hearings on the bill then pending were published, there should be reprinted, as an appendix, the essential portion of the report written by your chairman in 1920 on our wartime aviation. Thus that report is available today in the printed hearings of this committee as one of the great historical documents relating to our military air service. Events since 1937 have confirmed again and again the service which your chairman performed to his country so many years ago.

Mr. Chairman, it may interest you to know that that report has been used, since it was reprinted 6 years ago, by both our War College and our General Staff. Your report of 20 years ago was the basis of much that we have done.

FORESIGHT IN CONSIDERATION OF CIVIL AERONAUTICS ACT

Recently while glancing through the hearings before your committee in 1937, I was reminded of another occurrence which, although 5 or 6 years ago it may have seemed visionary, is of much moment at this time. The first question asked me during my testimony in 1937 was by Congressman Reese. He raised the question whether our Government had given consideration to the status of Wrangell Island, and observed that our Nation might possibly have very valuable rights in that island. He then went on to note the strategic location of Wrangell Island from the standpoint of the future of air transportation. No more prophetic remark could have been made. For within the last 12 or 18 months there have been many instances which demonstrate the critical importance to our Nation of the great Arctic region and the vital place that region will play in our future national defense and our future air transportation when at last the Arctic Ocean becomes a chilly Mediterranean. As Congressman Reece indicated, in dealing with aerial navigation, we have to revise completely our thinking concerning the great trade routes of the world. It was a happy portent that almost at the outset of this committee's consideration of the Civil Aeronautics bill in 1937 one of its members brought out so forcefully that aviation is indeed a special problem requiring special treatment, the destiny of which is limited only by the bounds of man's imagination.

NEW TRADE ROUTES

Mr. Reece, if you will note the map behind you, the higher one on the left, you will see that it is a map of routes in existence before Pearl Harbor. One is an indication of the point you raised some 6 years ago in connection with Wrangell Island. You will notice that the shortest route from New York to Manila runs from New York, passes near Wrangell Island, thence over Vladivostok to Manila. Mr. REECE. If I may say off the record.

(After informal discussion off the record :)

Colonel GORRELL. Your line of thinking indicates that you are conscious of the fact and that you realize that some trade routes which we always thought of in the terms of going east and west,

may soon change to north and south, and that ultimately, as the result of time saved in travel, changes will prevail and consequently the shortest routes will come to be the ones to be used. There may be some delay in arriving at that point in the thinking of the world, but we are on the verge now of being technically able to apply such a principle.

If you care to glance at the map lying on your desk, and compare it with the large one on the wall, it might interest you to dwell a moment on that subject.

For example, if we were going from New York to Chungking, thinking in terms of days to date, we would probably cross the continent, get on a boat in San Francisco and go across the Pacific, get off somewhere at the seaboard in China, and go up to Chungking. In the future, to go from New York to Chungking by the great circle course, you will take off from New York, pass directly over the North Pole-maybe some day Santa Claus as proprietor may build a hotel there for us and feature southern exposure, because all rooms at the North Pole will have southern exposure-and, you would then fly straight on down to Chungking. And, if you will look at these maps before you, you will find that the longest non-stop jump that even today we have to contemplate would be about 2,500 miles.

On the other hand, if you were to go from New York to Manila, you would fly across, as Mr. Pogue said, over the Great Lakes, Hudson Bay, Victoria Island-where the white Eskimos were discoveredprobably descendants of Franklin's expedition-and then over the Arctic you might not go over Alaska, but just practically over Wrangell Island, down the cost of China and on down to Manila.

And, assuming that the Japs today had the equipment and wanted to attack Panama by a nonstop flight over the great-circle course, they would not come straight across the Pacific Ocean by the various islands. They would need to fly along the Aleutians, down the coast of Canada, over Denver, and then, the remarkable thing is, over Yucatan and approach the Canal from the Atlantic side-that is the shortest route. It is not straight across the Pacific. So, the whole thinking regarding travel and trade as necessarily being east and west may be on the verge of being remodeled.

The air is the greatest of all oceans. It is the only ocean navigable to all points of the earth's surface at all seasons of the year. With the planes coming through that will arise above the storms, get up where the air is smooth, the future of aviation will be like sailing in deep water-deep air if you wish to call it that.

In the days which are closing, when we fly in contact with the earth, we are like the Phoenicians of old, following the coast line of the Mediterranean, keeping it always in sight. Now, if you take that coast line and revolve it 90° upward, then the Phoenicians' peninsulas revolved upward become mountains. Where the Phoenicians bumped into those peaks and were wrecked because they did not dare let the coast get out of sight, sometimes flyers have bumped into mountains and wrecked, because they did not get high enough into the air. In other words, it is like a ship putting out into deep water. Long-distance flights in the future will be very high, certainly on occasions when the wind does not unduly retard you.

For example, meteorologists tell me that if you are flying from the vicinity of Labrador or Baffin Land toward England, that about 95 percent of the time, if you get up around 30,000 feet, you have a tail wind of about 150 miles an hour. So, if your plane is making 300 miles an hour, and the wind is blowing 150 miles an hour, you would be traveling toward Europe at the rate of 450 miles an hour. Your plane is capable of making 300 miles an hour and you are getting another 150 miles an hour from the wind. On the return trip you probably would return low down to escape a head wind.

There is a new vision about to be realized.

There was a debate in 1938 wherein some people in Congress thought that the companies that fly outside of our 48 States ought to be regulated by the Maritime Commission. In fact, Joseph P. Kennedy asked for that. Your committee very kindly placed all aviation in one bill. I do not think that in the days to come our points of departure for places abroad will necessarily be at our shore lines. Today, when we think of going to Europe, we think of going to New York, or Baltimore, or Boston, or somewhere else and boarding a ship. In the future every town will be its own seaport of the air. Quite likely the towns that are very small today, with air traffic to come will grow in size because of their new world outlets.

Mr. BOREN. May I interrupt there, Mr. Chairman?
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Boren.

Mr. BOREN. You are getting into a thing that interests me so much that I can hardly resist asking some questions that probably would not because of their bearing on military matters be wise to be made a part of the public record. If this committee could arrange for a 15-minute executive session today, or tomorrow, would you be willing to go into our international situation more in detail with us?

Colonel GORRELL. Anything that the committee desires will be my pleasure, sir.

Mr. BOREN. I feel, Mr. Chairman, that this is of sufficient importance, that it would be worth while for us to do that.

The CHAIRMAN. Perhaps we had better consider that later.

Mr. BOREN. Very well, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. You may proceed, Colonel.

Colonel GORRELL. Looking at the map, or looking at the globe here, even 12 to 18 months ago if you were going to fly from Mr. Hinshaw's home town where I used to live (Pasadena), to Europe, you would think in terms of going to New York, even if you had been going in an airplane, and then fly up to Newfoundland. From Newfoundland you would go across to England. Today, or in the near future, that would not be necessarily so. If you will notice the line from San Francisco across to the north of Scotland or into Norway or Moscow or Berlin, or the principal capitals of Europe, runs up near Spokane, across the Hudson Bay, across Greenland, and near Iceland. If you took off from Los Angeles, instead of San Francisco, you would probably cross the Dakotas, and go across the Hudson Bay, and across Baffin Land or Labrador and across the ice caps of Greenland. That is your shortest route.

Mr. Chairman, on each of those maps are indicated the mileage by the great circle routes. With your permission, I would like to insert