mittee are entitled to hold. We concur with this thought in part, but may I respectfully remind you of the purpose of establishing these limits at their present level.

The Officer Personnel Act of 1916 which I mentioned earlier estab-, lished the grade distribution of the unrestricted line officers as 1 percent admirals, 4 percent captains, 8 percent commanders, 15 percent. lieutenant commanders, 30 percent lieutenants, and 42 percent lieutenants (junior grade) and ensigns combined. As a result of operating with these numbers, promotional attrition, that is forced separation from the Navy by reason of failure of selection, amounted to very nearly 50 percent of the officers arriving at the selection point in the grades of lieutenant and lieutenant commander. This great loss and extravagance in the case of trained career personnel caused the Congress to provide a new category of officers called "fitted" officers. These officers were those officers who were not selected by selection boards as best fitted for the next higher grade but who were found fully qualified for advancement. These "fitted" officers could then be retained on active duty in such numbers as the President might desire and in their higher grade and in excess of the grade limitations of 4 percent, 8 percent, 15 percent, and so forth.

This publicly divided the Navy Officer Corps into first- and secondclass officers which afforded no favor in the service and led only to discontent. Therefore, when the time came for determining the grade, distribution for the Officer Personnel Act of 1947, the grade distribution in the grades of captain, commander, and lieutenant commander were raised sufficiently under the 4 percent, 8 percent, and 15 percent, respectively, for those grades to include the numbers that had been previously retained as fitted officers and to reduce the required forced promotional attrition for selection to those grades from about 42 percent which it averaged before the war to approximately 20 percent under the Officer Personnel Act

It was thus felt that the grade limitations as set did four things: First, provided a reasonable number of officers in appropriate grades to meet the billet requirements of the Navy over a wide range of conditions; and second, provide assurance of a career in the Navy with a compromise amount of wastage; that is, forced promotional attrition at the various selection points; third, was productive of economy in precluding unreasonable loss of experience, and fourth, held the retired list within reasonable limit. The 1947 Officer Personnel Act was calculated to represent an optimum synthesis of the foregoing factors.

The Navy has made every effort to live within the spirit and the letter of the Officer Personnel Act. It would appear, however, that at times the results have not agreed with the desires and intent of the Congress, and in that connection we seek your guidance and direction in the premises.

I have received a memorandum from the committee forwarded from the Department of Defense Legislative Office proposing a number of questions. I have officers from the Bureau of Naval Personnel standing by to answer those questions at your pleasure, sir.

Mr. ARENDS. Thank you, Admiral.

I am very interested in having this résumé of what is taking place over the years in this matter of officer procurement.

Do you have any statement that you would like to make at this time, or would you prefer to have your other witnesses

Admiral HOLLOWAY. I believe, Mr. Chairman, that upon the advice of counsel we can go right ahead with the first question and if you will permit Rear Admiral Smoot, the Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel, to take his place as a witness, sir, he will handle the flag billet, name and billet, for the entire Navy across the board.

Mr. BLANDFORD. I think, Mr. Chairman, there ought to be a few preliminary questions.

Mr. ARENDS. Yes.

Mr. KILDAY. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ARENDS. Mr. Kilday.

Mr. KILDAY. I refer to your statement that under the Personnel Act prior to 1947 your attrition reached a high in instances of 50 percent.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. That is correct.

Commander WHEELER. Very close; 48 to 50.

Mr. KILDAY. On page 5 of your statement.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Yes, sir; between 40 and 50, sir.

Mr. KILDAY. I think it ran from 42 to 50.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. KILDAY. Now, that was not of officers who were not qualified entirely?

Admiral HoLLOWAY. Correct.

Mr. KILDAY. Many of those were fine, well fitted, perhaps not best fitted

Admiral HoLLOWAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. KILDAY. But fully fitted officers who because there was no higher billet were required to retire.

sir.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. KILDAY. And they retired ordinarily at 50 percent of their pay.
Admiral HOLLOWAY. 2.5 percent per year of service, as you know,

Mr. KILDAY. Yes; but it generally hit about 20 years.
Admiral HOLLOWAY. That is correct; yes, sir.

Mr. KILDAY. So it came out about 50 percent.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. That is correct.

Mr. KILDAY. Frankly, when I came on this committee from the Military Committee where we had handled two promotion bills, I was amazed to find that the Navy was losing 50 percent of its qualified officers, men that had been trained at the Naval Academy. And were still qualified for duty and we were losing them.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. KILDAY. Industry was getting them.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. KILDAY. Now, there was another provision here, or another statement that you made, that in the act of '47 the grade distribution in the grades of captain, commander, and lieutenant commander were raised, and in lower grades they were reduced.

Now, that, of course, came after World War II. That was in 1947. Admiral HOLLOWAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. KILDAY. Correct?

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Yes, sir; that is correct.

Mr. KILDAY. So that in all of the hearings we have here, I think we should bear in mind that Congress adopted a law which raised the higher grades and lowered the lower grades.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Correct, sir.

Mr. KILDAY. And we did it very deliberately, for the purpose of reducing that 50-percent loss.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. KILDAY. So that when you just take tables of figures as of today and compare them to 1945, you don't get a true picture of the administration of the law by the Navy. You must go back to the law of '47 and find to what extent Congress forced that.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. That is correct, sir.

Mr. KILDAY. Congress directed that to take place. And for that reason, I feel that this is a very fine opportunity to examine into what we did do in 1947, because that is 6 or 7 years ago, and find where the responsibility lies for a larger number of high-ranking officers now than we had in 1945.

Do you agree, Admiral?

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. KILDAY. That is all.

Mr. GAVIN. I might ask my colleague, then, this situation that has developed.

The responsibility for it can be charged directly to the law that was enacted in '47 rather than to the service?

Mr. KILDAY. At least a portion of it, and I think in these hearings we ought to find out what proportion of it is due to the law that we passed in 1947.

Mr. RIVERS, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ARENDS. Mr. Rivers.

Mr. RIVERS. I think the act which Mr. Kilday and Mr. Short wrote in the 80th Congress, the one under discussion, was contemplated I think in an era not of war, but of peace, for peacetime Navy.

Mr. KILDAY. Well, that is the unfortunate situation that we have. Mr. RIVERS. Yes.

Mr. KILDAY. Before we ever got the act of '47 in operation, we had to go into the emergency provisions of the act, and we haven't had a chance to see what '47 would do.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. That is right, sir.

Mr. RIVERS. Really, that act hasn't had the opportunity to operate under normal conditions. Therefore, I agree with Mr. Kilday, that this thing here is extremely timely because we have the emergency end of it now facing us, and it is obvious we have to do something about it.

I was interested to see, Admiral, where you see very little needs to be done, or something to that effect.

Admiral HOLLOWAY. Well, I believe, Mr. Rivers, we have the flexibility under this law to live under it, honestly.

One thing we do not propose is to go up to those full percentages regardless of the size of the Navy in temporary promotions.

Mr. BLANDFORD. May I say, Mr. Rivers, that is probably one of the things that is causing the difficulty, and that is the fact that while the services have kept their own brakes on, there isn't a legislative brake on the Army and the Air Force and the legislative brakes that

are on the Navy are much too generous because you are dealing now with a Navy of seventy-some-odd-thousand officers.

Mr. RIVERS. That is right.

Mr. BLANDFORD. This was computed on the basis of 50,000.
Mr. RIVERS. 30,000.

Commander WHEELER. Well, about 53,000.

Mr. BLANDFORD. 53,000.

Mr. RIVERS. Yes, sir; it was 53,000.

Mr. BLANDFORD. To go back to the old story, that as you increased the size of your service you don't need to have those same high percentages at the top. Thus, for example, today I think the Navy is authorized to have 532 admirals.

Mr. RIVERS. That is right.

Mr. BLANDFORD. They only have 289, but legally they could have 532 if they had the money, and if they didn't have the Senate brake on it, if they didn't have a lot of other things holding it down.

Mr. RIVERS. Of course, the Navy is more conservative over the period of years than the other services. The Navy has been living under selective system longer than the other branches of the service. Admiral HOLLOWAY. That is right, sir.

Mr. RIVERS. I know that, because everybody else knows it. They must do if I know it. I heard Mr. Vinson on the old Naval Affairs Committee refer time and time and time again to the selection of officers when he fathered it and sponsored it, and everything.

I think what we said about the Navy living under this act really applies more to the other branches of the services.

Mr. KILDAY. Mr. Chairman, one other thing before we get into the details.

Mr. ARENDS. Mr. Kilday.

Mr. KILDAY. The idea that when your total strength goes down that your flag officers should also go down can't hold because if you have a cruiser division, let us say, and you have two cruisers and you have to have an admiral in command of the cruiser division

Admiral HOLLOWAY. You should.

Mr. KILDAY. As long as you have that cruiser division, you need an admiral. So your strength goes up, but your flag officers remain static. But when it goes down, the same is true.

Mr. BLANDFORD. Mr. Kilday, may I say in that respect: I think there is little disagreement with that one so far as the permanent promotions are concerned, and insofar as the career structure of the Officer Personnel Act is concerned. It is not unreasonable that a man should spend a certain length of time as an ensign, and then go on to junior grade and I propose to ask the Navy that, and I think they are already prepared to demonstrate what happens to an officer in a normal career pattern.

I think, after the number of years that each person is required to serve in that grade is explained to the committee, that there isn't a person in the committee or a person in the House will think that is unreasonable.

Now, I am talking about the man who starts at the bottom and goes right through a normal career. It is not unreasonable that they have the distribution that they have. That was established by the Officer Personnel Act, and from what I have been able to gather, that

is not being criticized.

Where the criticism seems to come from is the fact that those same percentages when applied to a much larger number of officers gives you a percentage that is greater than necessary. I have some questions, Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the witness.

Mr. ARENDS. Any other questions of the committee at this time? All right, Mr. Blandford.

Mr. BLANDFORD. Admiral, you made a statement here which I think should be explained in great detail at the very beginning of these hearings. You referred to the Naval Personnel Act of 1916, in which you based the number of officers you could have upon your authorized enlisted strength.

Then you said that this act also set up the proportion of officers to be in each grade as percentages of the total strength of officers in the line, or in each staff corps, as appropriate.

Now, that is a very important and significant statement because the Davis amendment and these finite limitations that we have imposed in H. R. 2332 are based upon total number of personnel. Admiral HOLLOWAY. Correct.

Mr. BLANDFORD. Now, when did you start-I mean, why did you go to this distribution of officers based upon total number of officers and not based upon total strength?

Admiral HOLLOWAY. I will let Commander Wheeler answer that, Mr. Blandford.

Commander WHEELER. We have not in the Navy gone to a system based on total number of officers. That was forced upon us in section 634 of the 1953 Appropriations Act, and is continued in H. R. 2332, and we are living under it administratively.

It conflicts with the law in the Officer Personnel Act, and with our administration in every particular.

We use the unrestricted line officer who is the line officer in the chain of command, the seagoing officer, as the base. If you will permit me a little far-fetched description, maybe I can help it.

The unrestricted line in this connection might be compared to the engine and the chassis of an automobile. With the engine and the chassis, this vehicle can proceed along the road. But it isn't so comfortable to ride in. It doesn't give you the safety. So you put a body around it; you put the windshield and all the other accessories.

In our organization, the Staff Corps somewhat corresponds to the body, to the safety features, to the windshield and the windows. But the essential part for operating the Navy is the unrestricted line, the command organization.

For that reason, all of our grade distribution has been tied to the unrestricted line. Our promotion flow rate has been established on the unrestricted line. And procedures such as the running-mate system for the Staff Corps have been introduced to bring them up for career purposes at the same rate of movement, as the unrestricted line. But in the case of the Staff Corps, let us take a surgeon

Mr. BLANDFORD. I think you misunderstood my question, Commander.

Commander WHEELER. I am sorry.

Mr. BLANDFORD. What I was getting at was that in 1916 you established the principle of distributing your officers on the basis of