Meanwhile, rapid progress in the development of guided missiles had raised the question of the future of the airplane as a major weapon carrier. Some strictly military manufacturers had already begun giving serious consideration to the problem of whether to continue to specialize in aircraft or to shift over to the development of guided missiles. And once experimental aircraft had exceeded the speed of sound, some began to wonder if that velocity might not one day mark the division between combat aircraft and those designed for commercial purposes. In other words the Johnson Committee began its hearings against the background of a changing weather map. Airline testimony before the Committee revealed some wide divisions within the transport industry itself. Captain Eddie Rickenbacker for example blamed the ills of the airlines on “too much coddling and wet nursing,” while Carleton Putnam ascribed them to “slow starvation.” The individual outlook reflected the color of the financial statement. And the airline operators, in making their “policy” recommendations, seldom came to grips with fundamentals but focused their attentions on revisions of administrative procedure. In this respect they reflected their long association with government agencies to whom policy so often means the detailed management of public affairs rather than a course of conduct. If the airline operators’ recommendations seemed slanted toward measures calculated to advance the special interests of their individual companies, the fact was entirely understandable. To us aircraft manufacturers who, five years earlier, had covenanted to cooperate in the public interest where policy was concerned, while continuing to compete with each other in operations to our own—and likewise—the public interest, it appeared that a precarious existence under government economic regulation had blinded the operators to the broad public interest, and hence, to their own enlightened self-interest. Leaning on government for a guarantee of their economic security, they competed with each other for legislative or administrative advantage, and primarily before Congressional committees or government agencies. And if some of them made forays into politics and acted more like rusty railroad executives than like jet-propelled pioneers, it was in keeping with the principles under which they operated. Yet out of the confusion of conflicting testimony it was possible, by keeping in mind certain fundamentals learned from the history of aviation, to arrive at certain conclusions. The airline operators for all their controversies were unanimous on at least two points: they endorsed the principle of “reasonable regulation” upon which the Civil Aeronautics Act had been founded, and they condemned the administration of the Act by the Civil Aeronautics Board.