Viewing page 228 of 270

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

agencies, with a wide range of discretion in the assignment of specific missions, as well as in the adoption of measures for coordination.  In other words, the proviso amounts only to a rule for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces, which the Congress was fully empowered to enact under Clause 14 of Section 8 of Article 1 of the Constitution.  I conclude that the enactment is valid and binding, so far as its terms reasonably import, as a legislative definition and limitation of the respective scopes of the functions of the Army and Navy air components.

8. a. As to the more specific meaning and effect of the proviso, I have been unable to discover any serious difficulty.  For convenience of reference in this part of my discussion, I have assigned numbers to the three principal clauses of the enactment, as follows:

(1)  The Army Air Service shall control all aerial operations from land bases;
(2)  Naval Aviation shall have control of all aerial operations attached to a fleet;
(3)  Including shore stations whose maintenance is necessary for operation connected with the fleet, for construction and experimentation and for the training of personnel.

b.  The first clause, in express and unequivocal terms, gives the Army air component control of all aerial operations from land bases.

c.  The second clause, allocates to naval control all "aerial operations attached to a fleet".  Since an aerial operation is not a thing of substance, capable of physical attachment, the expression "aerial operations attached to a "fleet" can mean only:  aerial operations conducted or carried out by means of aircraft from bases attached to a fleet.  Without further provision, this clause might have been construed to prohibit operations by the Navy at shore stations for the development and maintenance of its fleet-based aviation, such as experimentation, construction and training.  It was to prevent this result that the third clause was added in the Senate and finally enacted as a part of the proviso (Cong. Rec. Vol. 59, Part. 7, pp 7522 et seq.).

d.  The purpose of the third clause was, therefore, to enable the Navy to continue experimentation, construction and training at naval shore stations, for the development and maintenance of fleet aviation.  Its purpose could not have been to authorize the Navy to build up and

- 6 -