The ancient Army-Navy rivalry had not died down under the impact of war but had flared anew and on many fronts. At heart it was the same old dogfight that had engaged Billy Mitchell and Billy Moffett twenty years earlier. The Army Air Force still battled for control of all military aviation, and the Navy scratched gravel to hang onto its own. Within the industry itself, whatever might be our private views, we took no position on the matter. After all it was a private grudge fight between two customers. We had hoped that the Air Force, now that it had won its battle for autonomy and demonstrated its decisive character, would welcome an opportunity to plead its case before a public tribunal. Instead, it resorted to the same tactics Billy Mitchell had used and thus confused the whole matter of air-power policy. The fact was that the Army Air Force, for all the miracles performed by the military air-transport services—managed as it was by personnel from the commercial air-transport lines—still remained blind to the significance of air transport. In an effort to overcome this resistance we now asked the National Planning Association to study air power, hoping that this distinguished organization might support us with a recommendation for a national air policy board. For the National Planning Association, a private organization comprising men in all walks of life and of all shades of opinion had been organized to study just such problems as ours, namely those of vital import to national policy. Before a matter could be studied at all it must first be passed upon by a tough board of trustees who carefully screened out all subjects not included in its charter. Then after a problem had been accepted for study, it had to be debated by a selected panel in an open forum before which the burden of proof lay upon the proponents. The association finally accepted our request for study and numerous meetings were held under the supervision of competent moderators. Some of the labor representatives on the panel were especially keen, and since the industry’s position safeguarded the working man and the public as well as the industry, we found ourselves on the strongest possible grounds. Our problem lay with some of the many government agencies on the panel, for aviation concerned a whole flock of such agencies, many of whom were naturally more concerned with protecting their vested interests than with advancing the art of aviation as a whole. Debates before the panel helped us to crystallize our own ideas and to adjust them to practical circumstances. When, for instance, the representative of the Director of the Bureau of the Budget questioned the soundness of our view as to the fundamental economics of air power, he started me off on an expedition the results of which startled even our research group.