With the passage of time, the situation in aviation became more critical. Then at the moment when both air transport and aircraft production showed staggering losses, we got an unexpected assist from the Bear That Walks Like A Man. When he began showing his claws, a great public clamor arose in the United States and was quickly heard by sensitive Washington ears. Whatever the politicians may have missed about air power, the American people knew the answer. On July 22, 1947, the United States Congress passed an act to provide for the establishment of a temporary Congressional Aviation Policy Board. Four days earlier, on the eighteenth of July, the President appointed his temporary Air Policy Commission. The Congressional Aviation Policy Board, under the chairmanship of Senator Owen Brewster, of Maine, was made up of senators and representatives. The President’s Air Policy Commission, under the chairmanship of Mr. Thomas K. Finletter, consisted of the chairman and four civilians. Now where we had asked for one investigation, we got two. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Before the Bar of Public Opinion The Finletter Board, convened by the President under date of July 18, 1947, held extensive hearings and on December 30, 1947, submitted its report, “Survival in the Air Age.” Like the Morrow Board before it, the Board comprised able and distinguished men, including besides its chairman, Mr. Finletter, its vice-chairman, George P. Baker, and members, Palmer Hoyt, John A. McCone, and Arthur D. Whiteside. Prior to the Board’s being convened, a step of far-reaching importance had been taken—the reorganization of the armed forces and the establishment of the Department of Defense, under the able leadership of James V. Forrestal. Prior to this step, the Aircraft Industries Association had inaugurated an annual conference of its board of governors held in Williamsburg, Virginia, to provide a forum for the interchange of ideas among the representatives of industry and those of government and military services concerned with aeronautics, with a view to acquainting industry and government with each other’s problems and responsibilities and to aid in finding solutions to these problems. At the first conference in 1946, it developed that the Army and Navy had become concerned over their faulty public relations and wanted advice and assistance. Of course their unfavorable press had resulted from the ancient feud still being carried on in the press by Army and Navy over the problem of “integration” and “unification.” Behind its façade, the battle was still the same jurisdictional dispute that had agitated Admiral Moffett and General Mitchell back in the early ’twenties. From the industry point of view, the dogfight tended to neutralize our efforts to develop a public understanding of air power in its broad aspects, and the board of governors now asked me to confer with Army, Navy, and Air Force with a view to relieving the situation.