Pan American World Airways teacher, Vol. XI, No. 3, March 1955

              March, 1955	Published by Pan American World Airways	VOL. XI No. 3
AVIATION AND THE COLD WAR
By Juan T. Trippe
The principal address at the annual Wright Brothers Dinner in Washington in December was delivered by Mr. Trippe, and its implications for educators are so significant that the address is reproduced in full.
The dinner, sponsored by the Aero Club of Washington, was held in the Hotel Statler on December 17.
Tonight we are again gathered here together to honor the Wright brothers, the fathers of aviation. It is most fitting that there are present at this annual tribute to the Wright brothers, as in past years, such a distinguished group of leaders from all branches of aviation.
Aviation, of course, means much to everyone in this audience. But, more important,
I today, it means much to every American and to everyone in the free world. Our commerce, our security—in fact, our very way of life, today, largely depend on aviation for survival.
I venture that never before has any one industry made such great progress every year for 51 years as has the aviation industry. During the last 12 months since our last Wright brothers dinner, however, greater progress has been made than in any previous year. This year, in the domestic field, for the first time passengers could board a commercial aircraft on either coast and fly non-stop to the other. On the international scene, air transport in 1954, replaced surface transport as the principal carrier for overseas travel. More passengers fly the oceans today than sail across them in ships.
But in the area of defense, still greater strides were made in 1954. The Navy launched the mighty super-carrier FOR-RESTAL. The Army and the Marine Corps greatly improved the versatile combat helicopter. Guided missiles became, for the first time, combat-ready weapons. The billion dollars which we have invested over the years in the development of pilotless controlled air weapons has borne first fruit in a development that will eventually largely replace the military airplane, i Far more significantly from the point of view of our security, however, the year was marked by a tremendous expansion in our ability to retaliate immediately against an aggressor. The Strategic Air Command, alert and ready at all times, was provided with aircraft of unparalleled speed and range.
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Juan T. Trippe
Largely as a result of this encouraging growth in atomic striking power, United States civilian and military leaders have been able to tell us recently that the risk of a “shooting” war has been greatly lessened. The balance of military might which tipped away from the United States after World War II has again come back in our favor. Were Molotov and company to strike, they now know they’d get much more than they can give.
But these achievements on the part of our military leaders—our scientists—and our aviation engine and airplane manufacturers —great as they are—can bring about no more than the continuation of an uneasy truce in the shooting war. The risk is not removed only reduced.
We must therefore strive to maintain our leadership in atomic weapons, in military air power, and in guided missiles. Here, problems relating to higher super sonic speeds, the thermal barrier, and more accurate guidance over long distances must be solved. The fate of civilization may depend on who solves them first.
Our diplomats, of course, also made progress in 1954. From the ashes of E. D. C. arose the London and Paris pacts, to breathe new life into the peoples of Western Europe. When these pacts are ratified, as recent developments would seem to guarantee, and a new, democratic Germany is rearmed on the ground and in the air—a Germany solidly on
our side—we can all breathe still easier so far as a shooting war is concerned. And even more breathing space will be gained if President Eisenhower continues to be successful in his efforts to preserve the American position in the Far East, while keeping the communists from splitting us away from our allies, on the matter of Indo-China.
But as the risk of a shooting war fades, the cold war will grow more and more intense. This generation, at least, and, I fear, probably the next as well, still can count on nothing surely in the cold war but those gifts of “blood, sweat, and tears,” which Winston Churchill offered the British people in their hour of desperate trial.
The cold war will largely be fought on economic battlegrounds. It is not only going to be a long fight, but a hard one. Already we can see the new moves by international communism. Soviet Russia, with slave labor, is rapidly stepping up its own capital development as well as financial and technical aid to other countries in Asia. The present generation of Russians is being forced to make incredible sacrifices. By so doing, Russia’s capital investment is being increased at the rate of about six per cent each year—far higher than that of the United States. In addition to this, Red China as well is concentrating on an enormous expansion of its capital plant, also through the use of slave labor.
Our enemies, frightened away by the consequences of direct military attack, are thus proposing to beat us in the field of economic development in other lands. The stakes are great. People in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and parts of Latin America are all watching closely. They number three-quarters of the world’s total population. They represent the uncommitted nations of the world. The choice they make between the two systems now pitted in competitive coexistence will ultimately decide whether the free world or the communist world wins the cold war.
The uncommitted nations, dissatisfied with their ancient poverty, where half the people go to bed hungry every night, are waiting to see whether we or the communists offer the best chance of shifting from their present low-level to a high-level economy. The United States and our Western European allies cannot, in the long run, remain an island of prosperity in a sea of poverty. Nor do we want to do so. We want to show (Continued on Page 15)