Concrete action along these lines was forthcoming at the instigation of an able senator, Mr. Hugh B. Mitchell, from my native state of Washington. As chairman of a subcommittee of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, one that contained a number of outstanding men, the senator began conducting hearings on the subject. Our company presidents who appeared before this committee to present our case were much impressed by the fact that committee members attended the hearings and took an active interest in the problem. Before going back home to stand for reelection, Senator Mitchell introduced a bill calling for the appointment of a board to be constituted along the lines of the old Morrow Board. When the senator failed of reelection in the Republican year of 1947, a Democratic colleague, able Senator Brian MacMahon of my own state of Connecticut, reintroduced the Mitchell bill. Not to be outdone in courtesy, Republican Senator Brewster of Maine introduced the Brewster bill, one that differed from the MacMahon bill in that it provided for a purely Congressional committee. From this point forward, matters dragged interminably. Most of us manufacturers, sold on our own doctrine, had now moved into the design and production of new transport aircraft intended to replace the war-weary war surplus. In United Aircraft, for instance, we had undertaken to expand the power output and increase the dependability of our current commercial engines and had at the same time inaugurated a wholly new engine, a twenty-eight-cylinder Wasp Major with a capacity of 4,360 cubic inches and an initial rating of 3,000 horsepower. This was over three times the cylinder displacement of the original Wasp but over seven times the power output, with possibilities of reaching ten times that output. It was expected to cost ten million dollars for development alone, or some ten times the original investment in Pratt and Whitney at the inception of the Wasp production. Around these new models and the competitive engines under development by our rivals, Wright Aeronautical, the airplane manufacturers had gone overboard on new transports designed to carry increased loads at greatly reduced costs, and at much higher speed. All these companies appreciated the risks involved, but faith in the future of air transport justified to them the investment of their war earnings in the expansion of American air power. And this faith might have been justified had we been able to bring about the formulation of a dynamic national air policy, for the designs were sound in conception and well executed.