those on active duty got the 4 percent plus 14 percent increase in allowances.

Mr. RIVERS. If you think you are going to satisfy all of them-
Mr. WILSON. It was not quite equitable.

Mr. BLANDFORD. The very minimum they are entitled to is 6 percent, if this committee is consistent with what it did in 1952.

Mr. RIVERS. Of course, we gave across-the-board 10 percent, and we had to work it out in conference with the other body. And that conference came up 4 and 14.

Mr. BLANDFORD. Yes, and if you recall the great discussion-this is off the record.

(There was a discussion off the record.)

Mr. GAVIN. Is the Admiral through?

Mr. RIVERS. I think so.

Mr. GAVIN. I just want to say, Mr. Chairman, that I consider it a privilege that we had such a distinguished officer as Admiral Holloway with us to present the case of the Navy.

I note with interest that whenever the Navy has any knotty problems that the Admiral usually appears, knowing our great friendship for him, and he is always able to pave the way for a very satisfactory conclusion.

Mr. BATES. That will take care of his case.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. I appreciate that very much.

Mr. RIVERS. I think the chairman will take official cognizance of that, and say amen, because the Admiral has always been a very fine witness, and all of us have known him over the years, and to show you his intense interest he always comes up with one Capt. Dave Martineau and others similarly situated.

Mr. WILSON. May I associate myself with these eulogies?

Mr. RIVERS. You made a very fine statement, sir. We are going to have to be calling on you to help us solve these things.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. RIVERS. Any other questions of the Admiral?

(There was no response.)

Mr. RIVERS. That is all.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. May I be excused to go down to the reserve hearing?

Mr. RIVERS. Yes.

General Lee, of the Air Force.

We expect as much from you as we got from the Navy.

General LEE. I have with me Lieutenant Colonel Kane and Lieutenant Colonel Wells. Colonel Wells is one of the members of the committee that will be before you throughout the session and into other parts of the discussion of this act. So I brought him along today to assist in this.

Mr. RIVERS. Have you given your name?

General LEE. Yes.

Mr. RIVERS. The statement only has four pages; is that right? General LEE. That is right.

I would like to say that we endeavored to keep General O'Donnell's statement very brief, or he did, in view of the fact that we knew our Secretary, Mr. Talbott, and General White, when they appeared, would get into considerable detail of the trouble that the Air Force is

faced with. Therefore, our statement is brief, and I would like to read it, if I may.

Mr. RIVERS. Go ahead. And you can read it without interruption. General LEE. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I appreciate this opportunity to discuss with you the proposed career incentive bill. My purpose here todays is to point out to you the impact which this legislation will have upon the successful solution of the most important of our personnel problems, the procurement and retention of qualified personnel. My remarks will be brief and general in nature. Members of my staff and the other services are here prepared to elaborate to the extent you may desire.

The Secretary of Defense has requested that I direct my remarks specifically toward the incentive hazardous duty features of the bill since others will discuss basic pay, per diem, and dislocation allowance. For two reasons I will deal primarily with incentive pay for flying. First, airpower today is the primary deterrent to another war and will be a decisive factor in winning a war should one be forced upon us. And, second, for at least the foreseeable future, the decisive element in airpower will be the quality of our combat crews and the quality of our professional air leadership.

It is not my intention to discuss the necessity or the justification for hazard incentive pays. The necessity for additional pay for those who engage in hazardous occupations is recognized in industry and has been recognized by the Congress with respect to the Armed Forces. The Strauss Commission in its report to the Secretary of Defense confirmed this view. It is my intention, however, to justify the increases in hazard incentive pays which are included in the career incentive bill. While my remarks will be almost exclusively concerned with the situation as it exists in the Air Force, my general comments are applicable to the other services insofar as their hazardous duty components such as flying, submarine, parachute, deep sea diving, low pressure chamber duty, and so forth, are concerned."

For several years the flying services have experienced difficulty in procuring an adequate number of qualified applicants for flying training. Numerical requirements for aviation cadets were met in some cases only by decreasing educational standards from 2 years of college to high school level. Voluntary requests of Air Force ROTC students for flying training were considerably below the number required until it was announced that-with the exception of a few commissions in the technical fields-that application for flying training was a requisite for a Reserve commission. Experience has shown that the majority of these men do not intend to remain with the Air Force beyond their obligated tour. The Navy is currently receiving only about half the applicants it requires to maintain full classes in its naval aviation cadet program.

More serious than procurement has been the retention rate of newly trained pilots and observers. Only 35 percent of our ROTC students and 54 percent of the aviation cadets in the flying training system are indicating their desire to remain in the Air Force beyond their obligated tour. The complexity of modern aircraft demands retention beyond this point if an acceptable air crew experience level is to be attained. Not only do excessive losses result in dilution of expe

rience, but for each pilot lost another must be trained. It is significant that it costs more to train a pilot than he receives in incentive pay in 30 years of service. It will be noted that the greatest increases in hazard incentive pay are recommended for first lieutenants, captains, and majors our younger officers who are leaving the service in the greatest numbers.

My comments concerning personnel losses have been confined to flying personnel; however, in the Navy, the submarine service, too, has experienced considerable difficulty in recruiting and retaining qualified personnel. The atomic submarine is like the jet aircraft in that it introduces a new level of danger. Crew members are exposed to those hazards which are peculiar to submarine operation. Resignations among submarine officers are five times as high as they were in 1948 and applications for this type duty among naval personnel have sharply decreased.

Before closing, I would like to say a word about how the proposed rates for incentive pay for flying and submarine duty were derived. They are dollar rates based upon percentages of basic pay of from 45 percent for first and second lieutenants to 16 percent for major generals. Actually they represent an extension to this bill of percentage rates implied in the Career Compensation Act of 1949 with additional selective increases in the lower grades. For all other hazardous duties this bill proposes a flat 10 percent increase.

I believe that the enactment of this bill will make successful our efforts to retain in the several services those people needed to carry out our task of providing security for the Nation.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes General O'Donnell's statement, and he expressed his regret that he was unable to be here. He is out of the country at the moment.

But before going into the questions that you may have, I would like to point out that this bill provides for pay for three new types of hazardous duty. These are: Duty as low-pressure-chamber inside observer, duty as human acceleration or deceleration subject, duty involving helium-oxygen mixture for breathing in deep-sea diving. These items will be taken up later in the section-by-section analysis of the bill. But I should point them out as they are new items. Mr. RIVERS. Are the increased pay for hazardous occupations within the Department of the Air Force consistent with the increases recommended for other branches of the service?

General LEE. They are the same, sir, same all the way through, for the particular type of duty that you may be discussing.

Mr. RIVERS. Thank you, General, that is a fine statement.

Any questions by any members of the committee?

Mr. GAVIN. You say you are not getting the applicants for submarine duty. Isn't that voluntary?

General LEE. For submarine duty?

Mr. GAVIN. Voluntary assignment, that they request that they be assigned?

General LEE. I am certain it is. I would like to have Captain Martineau or Admiral Grenfell answer that.

Admiral GRENFELL. I can answer that, sir.

Since 1928 when Congress instituted submarine pay we have been on a voluntary basis even during World War II, as far as our officers were concerned. At present the popularity for submarine school is

falling off at a great rate, and we are very worried about it. For instance, in 1948 we had 60 vacancies in sub-school for the boys to go to; we had 300 applicants; this is officers. In 1954, the last class of 1954, a 6 months' course, we had 209 applicants for 120 vacancies at the school. This next class coming up beginning July 1, the applicants now number 90; the books are supposed to close on the 1st of March, 10 days away, roughly; we only have 90 applicants for 120 vacancies. And this is the first time we have even been that low.

Normally, at that stage of the game when we are requesting applications, we have about 190.

Mr. GAVIN. What do you attribute that to, this changed thinking? Admiral GRENFELL. Maybe many things, but I feel incentive pay is one of them.

Mr. ARENDS. Does it have anything to do with the change in submarines, atomic submarines?

Admiral GRENFELL. I don't think so.

Mr. RIVERS. How do those boys report their likes and dislikes for the Nautilus?

Admiral GRENFELL. So far they like it fine, to the best of my knowledge. That was very much of a hand-picked crew, as you well know, very highly intelligent crew; many of them, including most of the crew members, had a pretty good knowledge of nuclear physics. The captain of the submarine, himself, has a doctor's degree in nuclear physics. They are very crazy about it; it is a very fine crew, I might add. They like it very much.

Mr. RIVERS. Where is the Nautilus now?

Admiral GRENFELL. Operating out of New London-still on trials. Mr. RIVERS. You can bring it into Washington when you finish up there?

Admiral GRENFELL. Love to.

Mr. RIVERS. You know you can dock it here at the gun factory. Admiral GRENFELL. That would be fine, sir.

Mr. BLANDFORD. May I inquire of General Lee, I notice you say the Navy is only getting half of the applicants it requires to maintain its naval aviation cadet program. What is the situation with regard to the Air Force in that connection?

General LEE. We are obtaining our applicants. We have a small backlog at the moment. As mentioned in the statement educational standards have been lowered to some degree. That is true in the Air Force, and we are taking high school graduates in our aviation cadet program which will be in subsequent years the smaller part of the program. The main part of our program will be coming from our ROTC graduates, and we will be able to fill our quotas.

Mr. BLANDFORD. That is the answer. I want to make sure that we get that in the record. I think you put your finger on it. You are requiring your ROTC to take flight training, except

General LEE. As I stated with the exception of a few technical people who will be nonrated.

Mr. BLANDFORD. The situation may be different in a couple of years if we don't do something with regard to your aviation cadet training, since that captive audience you had of ROTC people who had to make up their minds fast that they are going to take flight training, will not be available to you.

General LEE. That is very important, Mr. Blandford, and we want to maintain a goodly number of the aviation cadet type individuals because it is in that group that we are able to reach the other college man who is not an ROTC man.

Mr. BLANDFORD. The reason I mentioned it is I don't think you want to let the people, or let Congress think that the Navy is only getting half of its applicants, and the Air Force is getting all their applicants, and the situation is the same. You have a captive audience right now, which the Navy does not have.

Mr. RIVERS. They have the Holloway group.

Mr. BLANDFORD. They are not nearly in the numbers that the ROTC is for the Air Force.

I would like to ask the Navy

General LEE. May I interrupt you, Mr. Blandford? I don't want to take issue with you, sir, but I don't like the word "captive."

Mr. BLANDFORD. When you tell them they either apply for flight training or get booted out, I think it is

General LEE. They are volunteering.

Mr. BLANDFORD. Volunteering. You can volunteer for aviation cadet training, and be a flyer or get drafted. That is not captive, any way you want to call it; it is Hobson's choice.

Mr. RIVERS. That draftless

Mr. WILSON. Shotgun.

Mr. BLANDFORD. That is right.

Have you reduced your educational levels for aviation cadet training?

Admiral GRENFELL. I think I am correct in saying not yet, but we are contemplating to go down to high school level.

Br. BLANDFORD. On the floor when people see distinctions between the Air Force and the Navy they will say "Why doesn't the Army do what the Air Force is doing?" You have to maintain your educational levels

Captain MARTINEAU. We are not getting the numbers.

Mr. BLANDFORD. You only have half of your applicants.

Captain MARTINEAU. We are having to set up a new program of aviation ensign, we are having to bring a young officer in, which is comparable to the Air Force ROTC group.

Mr. RIVERS. Where are getting them?

Captain MARTINEAU. They will be college graduates, ensigns.
Mr. RIVERS. Holloway group?

Captain MARTINEAU. They are not Holloway.

Mr. GAVIN. Mr. Chairman, I had a very intersting letter from a young man, which I will send to you, because I couldn't come up with the answer; he doesn't have the educational background to qualify for aviation cadet, and he is unable to go to college, and the answer might be that he might enlist in the Air Force, but he wants to know why when he is interested in flying, and the demand for flyers is so great, that some sort of a program isn't conducted, it might be a civilian program, where he would be able to get that background and be able to be educated to fly, and why we don't set up some sort of a service where an ambitious boy may be able to be given the opportunity for that background of flying?

Mr. BLANDFORD. We have that, Mr. Gavin.
Mr. GAVIN. It is a difficult question.