INVESTIGATION OF MILITARY HEARINGS 12. Congress. House. BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS . EIGHTY-SECOND CONGRESS SECOND SESSION 96640 SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY PUBLIC WORKS JOHN J. RILEY, South Carolina, Chairman FOSTER FURCOLO, Massachusetts GLENN R. DAVIS, Wisconsin ᏢᎪᎡᎢ 4 MOROCCAN AIR BASE CONSTRUCTION Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations UNITED STATES WASHINGTON: 1952 JOHN H. KERR, North Carolina JOHN E. FOGARTY, Rhode Island ANTONIO M. FERNANDEZ, New Mexico E. H. HEDRICK, West Virginia PRINCE H. PRESTON, JR., Georgia OTTO E. PASSMAN, Louisiana LOUIS C. RABAUT, Michigan DANIEL J. FLOOD, Pennsylvania CHRISTOPHER C. MCGRATH, New York SIDNEY R. YATES, Illinois FOSTER FURCOLO, Massachusetts FRED MARSHALL, Minnesota ALFRED D. SIEMINSKI, New Jersey 1952.2 40772 JOHN TABER, New York H. CARL ANDERSEN, Minnesota GORDON CANFIELD, New Jersey JOHN PHILLIPS, California ERRETT P. SCRIVNER, Kansas FREDERIC R. COUDERT, JR., New York CLIFF CLEVENGER, Ohio EARL WILSON, Indiana NORRIS COTTON, New Hampshire GLENN R. DAVIS, Wisconsin GEORGE Y. HARVEY, Clerk BRIG. GEN. ORVILLE E. WALSH, DIVISION ENGINEER, MEDITERRANEAN DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY MAJ. GEN. COLBY S. MYERS, DIRECTOR OF INSTALLATIONS, DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE Present: John J. Donnelly, Jr., subcommittee counsel; Arvin Upton, Esq., associate general counsel of the Air Force. Mr. RILEY. The committee will come to order. We are pleased this morning to have General Walsh with us, who has recently made an inspection of the Air Force installations in north Africa. He has kindly consented to come and brief us on his findings and observations there. General Walsh, we are very happy to have you here, sir, and we shall be pleased to have you give us your version of what you saw and what you recommend in that area. STATUS OF CONSTRUCTION General WALSH. I shall be very pleased to do that. I spent 15 days in my first inspection trip over to the Moroccan bases and had an opportunity to visit all five sites. Three of them have construction going on. I found there has been a tremendous amount of work accomplished since the actual construction work started around the 22d of April on the first base at Nouasseur. At Nouasseur, the main medium bomber runway has been com pleted and is in operation and use at this time by heavy cargo planesof MATS, and also a parallel taxiway and a large amount of the parking area, both for refueling and the ordinary parking of planes. In addition, the tent camp for the troops at Nouasseur is essentially completed. There is a large amount of warehousing in place and in use, and there is construction under way of the other authorized facilities at that station, including shops, warehouses, utilities, hospitals, roads, POL storage, and similar work. At Sidi Slimane, approximately the same amount of construction has been accomplished; that is, the runway, parallel taxiway, parking aprons, housing facilities, and part of the utilities. At Benguerir, work was just started in December of 1951, and at the time of my two visits consisted of grading of a runway and (1) |