be adequately designed for the work involved. No other building is available which could be economically converted for this use. This item is part of the post master plan and is approved by the post planning board. It is the minimum facility necessary to satisfy the requirements indicated above.

BUILDING FOR COMPRESSOR FOR SUPERSONIC WIND TUNNEL

This project proposes the construction of a small permanent-type building, approximately 30 by 40 feet, for housing compressor units. It has been necessary to increase the number of compressors for supplying air for operation of the supersonic wind tunnel. The compressors, motors, controls, and related equipment have been installed and are now operating. However, due to lack of construction funds the equipment is housed in an improvised and temporary shelter. In order to provide proper protection for this equipment and avoid replacement earlier than normally required, this proposed permanent building for housing the equipment should be constructed at the earliest date.

Mr. SHEPPARD. In other words, excluding the details-I mean by that the type of construction and so forth that might pertain in this instance the justification in general is the same justification as presented in the original statement that you have given for these other projects.

General BARRIGER. That is correct.

CLIMATIC TESTING FACILITIES

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Have you other climatic testing facilities? General BARRIGER. We have others, but none which satisfies this requirement. All of these have been coordinated with the other services, screened by the Research and Development Board, and approved by that agency. There is no other facility which will do the work which is required here at Aberdeen.

Mr. TABER. Have we none at Aberdeen?

General BARRIGER. No, sir. We have the function there, but we do not have these buildings.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. What facilities do we have?

General BARRIGER. Well, you have the usual proving ground facilities, Mr. Wigglesworth. I cannot give you the details of everything that is located at the proving ground. I could get those for you.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. You are asking here for 21⁄2 million dollars for specific purposes, and presumably supplementary to what you now have. It seems as though someone ought to be able to tell us what you have on hand before you come in to ask for something more.

General BARRIGER. I have Colonel Parker from the Ordnance Department who is familiar with this installation, if the committee would like to hear from him.

Mr. SHEPPARD. Is he available?
General BARRIGER. Yes, sir.
Colonel Parker. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHEPPARD. By all means.

By the way, gentlemen, when these questions are presented to you by the members of the committee the members of the committee

are entitled to go into the requirements, of course.

I realize and appreciate the fact that a considerable amount of this material has been handed on to you gentlemen from other sources. However, if you have a witness present who can respond to the interrogations of the members I think frankly you should present him and let him give us the answers.

I would ask you to please have your witnesses, as they are called from time to time, speak loud enough so that the reporter can hear it. He has a difficult job at the very best, because we fellows get a little careless and interject on each other every once in a while. It makes it tough for the reporter.

Please do that and we will appreciate it.

Colonel PARKER. My name is Lt. Col. George F. Parker, Army Ordnance.

At the Aberdeen Proving Ground there are two small cold rooms presently, built during World War II, for the testing of certain ordnance matériel. Those rooms were designed to test matériel down to about minus 40°.

We have done a certain amount of improvisation there to the extent of even putting in dry ice and other means to bring down the temperature to sufficient low level for the testing of certain matériel within the limitations of the cold chambers.

The Army has a requirement today for material to operate under temperature conditions down as low as minus 65° F., and an upper limit of 125° F. That is not only the Army requirement, but it is generally an Armed Forces requirement.

The climatic testing facilities that have been studied and planned in this proposal for the Aberdeen Proving Ground are to be used jointly by the Army and the Navy. The Navy and the Army both have a certain amount of limited improvised facilities for this purpose.

This facility was defended before the Bureau of the Budget as a joint facility, and was coordinated within the Research and Development Board with the support of the three services for the testing of the type of material for which the Army Ordnance is responsible, for developing for the Armed Forces. It includes provisions for testing under controlled climatic conditions combat vehicles, general-purpose vehicles, antiaircraft weapons with associated fire control and ammunition and other ordnance matériel.

We have to test this matériel in order to determine its operational characteristics under all climatic conditions.

In 1948 and 1949 we spent, over $1,500,000 on a pilgrimage test at Churchill, Canada, where we do cold weather tests under natural environmental conditions. Such tests are expensive in money and in time. Furthermore, suitable cold weather test conditions prevail for only a period of about 3 months during the year.

We have to be able to test this matériel under controlled climatic conditions in order to expedite the development program, which is slow enough under optimum conditions with suitable facilities.

This facility is one which has been a matter of extensive study over a period of time, and has been approved by the Research and Development Board, and is designed to meet the matériel testing requirements under controlled climatic conditions.

For instance in present World War II cold rooms we are not able to elevate certain weapons over about 45° for firing. Temperatures

must be brought down to minus 70° for a 72-hour soaking period before starting a firing program.

Climatic testing facilities are essential to the design, development, and testing of the ordnance matériel and the solution of ordnance problems connected therewith.

I do not know whether I have given sufficient information to answer your questions or not.

Mr. SHEPPARD. I think you have.

Will the gentleman yield for a question at that point, please?
Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Certainly.

Mr. SHEPPARD. Would I be right in assuming that with a laboratory with the qualifications that are to be built in this particular project it to a degree obviates the field expenditure such as the Canadian episode you referred to?

Colonel PARKER. It will reduce that considerably, sir, but we have, in addition to the test at Aberdeen, certain field tests to be conducted under natural environmental conditions, but when we go into this testing we want to know how well our equipment will work not want to find out whether it will perform those conditions.

We are constantly pursuing this task, 12 months out of the year, from a design and development standpoint.

Mr. SHEPPARD. Now, in your statement, if you gentlemen at any time respond to an inquiry which you think should not be placed upon the record because of security purposes, you realize that you a e previleged to eliminate that portion of the record when it comes to you. Of course, you are not supposed to eliminate any congressional request. We take care of that ourselves.

VALUE OF TESTING FACILITIES

Mr. SIKES. I have a question about the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Mr. SHEPPARD. Mr. Sikes.

Mr. SIKES. I have been a very strong advocate of thorough testing facilities, and I still am. However, I sometimes wonder just how much we learn from the lessons at Aberdeen and the other proving grounds.

I would like to have some comment on this, if there is anyone here who is familiar with it: During the recent justification before us we were told that the tests at Aberdeen had proved that our medium tanks are superior to the Russian medium tank which is being used in Korea. Life Magazine at the end of that same week came out with pictures taken at Aberdeen which apparently proved just the opposite, that except for the Patton tank our medium tanks are inferior to the Russian medium tank and that the Patton tank is inferior in some respects and is superior in other respects to the Russian medium tank.

That is why I ask what we are learning at Aberdeen. I would like for somebody to tell me why this committee was told one thing and Life magazine published pictures and gave information which showed directly the opposite?

General BARRIGER. I do not know that I can answer the question. I would like to attempt a viewpoint on it.

Mr. SIKES. Very well.

General BARRIGER. That these facilities will enable us to approach or exceed the qualifications of the Russian tank which we cannot approach or exceed without them. I think that the final test is going to be on the battlefield.

Mr. SIKES. Admittedly you must have testing facilities. Of course, that is what you are asking for here.

General BARRIGER. Yes, sir.

Mr. SIKES. But, if you do not take advantage of the lessons learned in those testing facilities, I do not know that we are gaining anything by having them. If your tests show one thing and some of your people state just the opposite before this committee, I have doubts that anything constructive comes out of the tests.

I would like to have a complete answer.

General BARRIGER. I would suggest, if I may, that the Chief of Ordnance be called before the committee to answer that question. Mr. SIKES. I have asked the question. I would like for somebody to provide an answer for the record.

Colonel MOORE. We will provide an answer, Mr. Chairman.
General BARRIGER. We will provide an answer.

Mr. SIKES. That is all.

(The following information was submitted for the record:)

The discussions of the previous hearing related to the Patton tank. The American tanks shown in the Life issue of July 1950 were Pershing tanks similar to those used in World War II. The performance characteristics of the Patton tank have not been released to the general public, for obvious reasons. Any comparisons made by Life magazine regarding the Patton tank, therefore, have no official significance.

BENICIA ARSENAL, CALIF.

Mr. MAHON. We will resume the hearings, and we will take up "Benicia Arsenal, Calif.," where I see that you are making a request for $243,800.

We will insert in the record at this point the necessary justifications. (The justifications referred to are as follows:)

Benicia Arsenal, Calif.

Improvements to water-supply system__.

DETAILED JUSTIFICATION OF PROJECT

Improvements to the water-supply system, $243,800

$243, 800

This project proposes improvements to the present water-supply system at Benicia Arsenal by increasing the pumping capacity of the Arsenal Army Point pumping plant from 6,000 gallons per minute to 21,000 gallons per minute (to approximately 1,200,000 gallons per hour), with necessary pipelines, and construction of an earth dike to provide an additional reservoir capacity of 135,000,000 gallons.

The total requirements for the arsenal are approximately 100,000,000 gallons per year. The present storage capacity is 70,000,000 gallons less 10,000,000 gallons per year loss due to evaporation. Based on these figures, the grand total requirements are 110,000,00 gallons per year. In view of the present pumping capacity and the short seasons for pumping water, the above capacity cannot be supplied.

The proposed plan will increase the pumping capacity from 6,000 gallons per minute to 21,000 gallons per minute and provide an additional reservoir capacity of 135,000,000 gallons. This increase will provide a water supply for a period of 2 years, which should be the minimum allowable storage time. This is based on existing conditions in this part of the United States.

General BARRIGER. The project at Benicia is for the improvement of the water system, $243,800. Benicia is very important in support of the Far East.

The local water supply is so critical that water for domestic use at the arsenal is not available from the local water company. The water supply for the arsenal, for both domestic and industrial purposes, is presently obtained from Carquines Strait. Water can be pumped from the strait only during those periods when there is sufficient runoff from the Sacramento-San Joaquin drainage system to force back the salt water and reduce the salinity of the water in the strait to 250 p. p. m., the maximum salinity content acceptable for both domestic and industrial use at the arsenal. This condition occurs normally only during the winter and early spring. The present pumping and water-storage capacities are inadequate to take full advantage of the short period of availability of acceptable water, and it has been necessary to augment the supply obtained from the strait by barging water from Suisun Bay to the arsenal.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. How many people do you have there now? It is primarily a storage set-up; is it not?

General BARRIGER. Yes; we have 2,358 people.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Most of them are civilians?

General BARRIGER. Yes.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. What is the basis of this estimate?

Colonel GALLOWAY. The estimate was computed by the district engineer at Sacramento for the dike and pumping installation necessary in connection with the system.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. You are going to put in a brand-new system? Colonel GALLOWAY. Yes. This is to establish a new source of water.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. It says, "Improvement to the water-supply system."

Colonel GALLOWAY. Yes.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Which is it?

Colonel GALLOWAY. We still have the old system available, but this is to provide a new source of water for the post without going into the saline water that is now obtained, and which is objectionable for the greater part of the year.

PROPOSED PROGRAM

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. The present capacity is 70 million gallons, less 10 million for evaporation. Just what are you going to put in here? Let us have some details.

Colonel GALLOWAY. It is to construct a better dike to give an additional reservoir capacity of some 135,000,000 gallons, to increase the pumping capacity of the present plant from 6,000 gallons per minute to 21,000 gallons per minute, and to provide necessary pipelines to tie into the system.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Do you contemplate an increase in the number of people there?

Mr. VANKUREN. There is an increase.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. How much?

Mr. VANKUREN. I do not have the exact figures, sir, at the present time. We have increased our storage and our shipment there, and