Mr. DAVIS. Did they make any specific recommendation with respect to any particular locations?

General WRAY. I do not believe so, sir.

Do you know of any, Mr. McCloud?

Mr. MCCLOUD. No, sir.

General WRAY. Del Rio is quite a problem to us, because housing facilities are very poor, and recreational facilities are almost nonexistent.

Mr. DAVIS. In your consideration of this question within the Air Force, has there been a finding that Ellsworth, for instance, is subjected to extreme climatic conditions, and that this is an isolated area? General WRAY. It is, comparatively. The city of Rapid City, which is nearby, has one pool which is quite small, and it is segregated racially.

We do have quite a number of colored people and Mexicans at Rapid City. The city itself is about 12 or 14 miles away from the station, and we believe this swimming pool to be a necessary require

ment.

Mr. HAND. Do you think that a comparison of costs between a swimming pool which the Air Force needs at some of its bases to the cost of swimming pools located at country clubs is a proper comparison for the use of this committee?

General WRAY. Yes, sir; you can construct a gunite pool up to a certain size, but when you get beyond that certain size, regardless of what the swimming pool is for, it has to be made out of something that will hold water, and that, generally, is some sort of tile.

Mr. HAND. Do you regard tile as being a necessity in construction of a swimming pool?

General WRAY. Not necessarily, sir, but it improves the sanitation; it is a lot easier to keep clean, and you cut down on fungus diseases and so forth, which are quite a problem. You have to keep a pool clean and washed down. If you have a rough concrete wall, you are going to find that you have fungus in your ears and other parts of your body.

Mr. HAND. I am unable to understand the wide variance in cost in swimming pools, indicated in the table which has been submitted as part of the justifications, and also indicated in the letter to me of February 8, 1954, signed by Brigadier General Kelly.

The indication in the general's letter is that Air Force construction costs at present-day prices range from $15 to $23.50 per square foot. That is really a terrific range.

Is there any explanation of that?

General WRAY. Yes, sir; it depends on the location of the pool. You will find that if you are in an area where transportation costs are not difficult, where you have materials available, or where you have hungry contractors, you will get a better price, but if you build a swimming pool in an isolated area, or, we will say, at Limestone, Maine, for instance, where you have to move everything in by rail and where the contractors already have plenty of work, they are not going to bid very well for that.

Mr. HAND. A further section of the general's letter refers to the gunite method to which you have referred.

He states:

This type of construction can reduce costs by $1 to $5 per square foot of surface area by reducing the wall and floor thickness.

My first question is, in regard to the variance between $1 and $5, which is a very considerable variance, and my second question is if you could reach the maximum reduction mentioned you would be getting somewhere on the cost of these pools.

General WRAY. If you try to build for yourself here in Washington a swimming pool, you will find that it varies at the same rate, depending on the size of your pool.

Mr. HAND. General, on what basic data have you compiled the estimate on the pool which you desire at Ellsworth?

Mr. McCLOUD. Neither one of these are proposed for the gunite construction method.

Mr. HAND. What is the estimated square-foot cost?

Mr. McCLOUD. The one at Laughlin is estimated at $20.47, and the one at Ellsworth is based on the estimated cost of $185,000, which would be slightly above $20. It is twenty dollars-plus.

Mr. HAND. I recently had the opportunity to examine a military installation at which a good and adequate pool, apparently, from my observation, had been built. It had been built some time ago out of funds, as I recall, which resulted from profits in some of their recreational operation there.

It had been built, to my definite recollection and knowledge, at a cost of about $50,000, as compared to the estimated cost here of $185,000.

Mr. McCLOUD. I am sure it must have been accounted for by the difference in size of the two pools.

Mr. HAND. Very likely, but it was a nice, big pool, and a fair-sized installation.

Is it necessary to have these pools built of dimensions permitting them to be used in AAU swimming competition?

Mr. McCLOUD. No, sir; we have only one pool of that type that I know of, and that was built quite some time ago. I do not believe this is going to be of that size.

Mr. HAND. In using that language, I am quoting from the letter of General Kelly in which he says:

The dimensions selected permit the pools to be used in AAU swimming competition.

I might be taking that partly out of context, and I do not mean to give you the impression that all pools must be built that way, but that is what is indicated in this letter.

General WRAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. HAND. I am a little concerned at the inference that I draw, and I think, probably, there is a direct expression of it in the justification at Laughlin and Ellsworth, which would seem to indicate that the Air Force has come to the conclusion that they need pools at every base.

Is there any such plan as that?

General WRAY. No, sir; it applies, according to my understanding, either to areas where we have an isolated area, or where we have extremes of temperatures, and where you have to keep these people on the station, or they are going to get in trouble, and you will have a high venereal-disease rate, and a low reenlistment rate.

We feel we need a pool in these areas and that we need some sort of covered exercise area.

Mr. HAND. In addition to the recreational features, which we can all readily understand, paragraph 2 of this justification says:

Implementation of the provisions of Department of Air Force letter AFPTR-F, subject "nonswimming air crew members" dated 25 March 1952, which requires a mandatory aquatic program for students in training to increase their survival capability in the event of ditching, make necessary the providing of swimming pools at Air Force bases.

General WRAY. At all SAC and ADA stations, where you are expected to fly out over the water, you have to practice ditching, and we found out at first during the war that when our planes went down over the water we did not have any survivors. The airmen did not know what to do. It is fine to say that No. 2 man and No. 5 man does so and so, but until you have practiced ditching, it does not work very well.

Mr. HAND. We can assume bases of this type, regardless of the climatic conditions and the isolated areas or the need for recreational facilities, that you would plan in connection with the survival training program, to build pools?

General WRAY. Yes, sir; we have asked for a pool at Limestone, but we have not yet been granted approval.

Mr. HAND. I just wanted to get it clear that we are not faced only with the problem of recreational facilities at isolated bases, but with the problem of the installation of these pools for survival training at many of the bases.

General WRAY. Yes, sir; that is entirely true.

I have practiced ditching, myself, in a swimming pool, at MacDill Air Force Base during the war. We had a section of a B-17 in the pool on which we practiced ditching.

Mr. CEDERBERG. Taking up the matter of the requirements for pools and the recreational proposition, as far as I am concerned personally, I can agree that there might be needs that should be satisfied.

However, I am not fully satisfied as to the financing of the construction of the pools. It seems to me that some of the expense involved in this construction might be handled out of recreational and welfare funds at the bases. I cannot understand why that should not be done.

General WRAY. The Air Force used to provide its pools out of nonappropriated funds, but there has been a policy recently announced, about 2 years ago, whereby we are not allowed to build them out of nonappropriated funds.

Mr. CEDERBERG. That seems like a rather inconsistent policy to me, it would appear to me that swimming is recreation.

I think some agreement could be reached whereby at least portion of the pool cost could be financed out of these recreational funds and a portion of it from regularly appropriated funds and save the Government some money.

Of course, if you are bound by that regulation, there is probably nothing you can do about it personally, but it would seem to me that we ought to go into the possibility of changing the regulation.

Mr. HAND. Will the gentleman yield at this point?

The base to which Mr. Cederberg has reference is the one to which I made reference a moment ago, and it is located at New Orleans. I wish I could recall the exact size of it, but it was of a very adequate

size, and a very good pool. It was built for $50,000 and not years and years ago, but during the high construction cost period during World War II.

Mr. CFDERBERG. It was an excellent pool, and as I recall, it was tiled.

Mr. HAND. I believe it was. I am not griping nearly so much about pools as pools, but what I think is an excessive cost of them. Mr. RABAUT. The cost of a pool, of course, varies as to its location, and its relationship to climatic conditions is that right?

General WRAY. Yes, sir; and transportation capabilities in the area. Mr. RABAUT. Yes; that is right, but I meant the amount of materials that would have to be put in them.

Of course, you have to have a different type of pool where you have deep freezing, or severe weather than you do at a place like Texas. Would you not say that is true?

General WRAY. To a certain extent; yes, sir. They now have these private swimming pools where you can keep them at below freezing temperatures by putting "logs" in them. Yet, you will have ponds freeze so that you can skate on them. That is in contrast to the considerations of 4 or 5 years ago, when you used to always drain the pool, and made sure that it was dry so that you would not have any frost cracking the walls of the pool.

Mr. RABAUT. Has any thought been given to the type of concrete that they are using now, where it is claimed that a smoother finish is made when they inject air into the mix?

Mr. McCLOUD. Are you speaking of Gunite, sir?

Mr. RABAUT. I do not know what you call it.

Mr. McCLOUD. That is a system where you spray it on.

Mr. RABAUT. I do not know about that, but I mean where you would get a smoother surface, and I thought if you got a smoother surface, you might be able to avoid this fungus which you have talked about.

Is tile the only thing that really is safe in regard to the fungus question?

General WRAY. Sir, I could not answer that, but that is the one that the medical people like for us to put in for sanitary purposes.

Mr. RABAUT. Yes; the hospitals are full of them, I notice, but there are some places where they are building with smooth plaster walls.

General WRAY. Yes, sir; but those are generally where you control the people that go into them, and not where you have a large number of people that you cannot control.

Mr. RABAUT. I feel somewhat as Mr. Hand does about this. question, and that is that the expense of some of these things is too high.

How is it that they discontinued the policy which they had before about the building of these pools?

General WRAY. I cannot answer that, sir.

Mr. RILEY. Who issued the directive, General?

General WRAY. It came out of the Welfare Board, which is a joint board of all three services. I imagine it is an OSD board. It also came out of the Bureau of the Budget, where there was some expression about having gymnasiums and swimming pools, and things like

that built out of appropriated funds rather than the nonappropriated funds.

Mr. RABAUT. Did that policy come out of an abuse of the use of the money?

General WRAY. There was an abuse of the nonappropriated funds. (Discussion off the record.)

KELLY AIR FORCE BASE, TEX.

Mr. DAVIS. The next request is at Kelly Air Force Base, where we have an item for the rehabilitation of engine testing.

General WRAY. That, again, is to improve and meet safety require

ments.

Mr. DAVIS. That, I believe, was not the basis on which it was presented to the committee in November.

General WRAY. We have a justification of that of which you have a copy, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. McCLOUD. It was not given in that detail, to say the least. Mr. DAVIS. This justification will be included in the record at this point.

(The matter referred to follows:)

KELLY AIR FORCE BASE

ADDITIONAL JUSTIFICATION FOR REHABILITATION WORK ON FOUR (4) EXISTING OPERABLE TEST CELLS

This project provides for the construction of fuel lines from the storage tanks to four existing operable test cells, plus any necessary valves, rotometers, ventilating fans, electrical circuits, switches, accessories, and other appurtenances. Furthermore, any other practicable changes will be made which will mitigate the possibility of igniting an explosive gas.

Existing fuel lines usually follow the shortest route from the storage tanks to four engine test cells, from which points the feed lines extend within the buildings to the various test blocks. These feed-line systems expose long pipe runs which become safety hazards because of the danger that gasoline may escape from the pipe through leaks and fill the buildings, particularly the basements and any other enclosed low areas, with flammable vapors which may very quickly attain an explosive concentration. The proposed improvements will mitigate this hazard by reducing to a minimum the fuel-pipe system within the engine test buildings and by providing ventilating systems where there are basements or enclosed areas below floor level in which explosive gases may accumulate.

The proposed work is urgently needed because of the hazards to which personnel and existing test-cell facilities are now being subjected. The certainty of these hazards has been emphasized by two recent disastrous explosions in engine test-cell buildings, one at Hill Air Force Base, Ogden, Utah, and the other at Allison plant No. 3, General Motors Corp., Indianapolis, Ind.

The explosion and fire that followed at Hill Air Force Base on June 11, 1951, were caused by a ruptured 4-inch gasoline line with approximately 28 pounds pressure in the control room for cells Nos. 1 and 2, of building No. 113. Gasoline flowed from the broken pipe at the rate of about 75 gallons per minute onto the floor of the control room and through the open-pipe chases to the ground and basement floors. The explosion occurred within about 2 minutes after the break and resulted in one fatality, two seriously injured, and property damage in excess of $100,000.

The explosion in the test cell building of the Allison plant No. 3 occurred on July 12, 1951. This explosion caused 8 fatalities and the destruction of 20 test cells at an estimated loss of $7,500,000. The test cells were constructed with a basement area under the corridors and control rooms. Fuel lines entered the cell block below the roof at each end of the corridor. They were extended to the rotometers in the control rooms, from the rotometers through the control room floors into the basement, thence through the test cell walls to the engines. Fuel leaked from the rotometer for cell No. 89 and flowed into the basement through