Evening star., 1934-03-19
NAVY PLANES HELD.
BOUGHT ILLEGALLY.
House Naval Affairs SUBJ
committee to Get New
Evidence.
BY the Associated Press.

BY the Associated Press.
New evidence which it is said will
prove that the Navy has continued
to buy airplanes through q method
held illegal by its own judge advo-
cate general, is to be presented to
the House Naval Affairs Subcommit-
tee this week.
Decisions of the naval judge advo-
cate general, questioning the Navy's
procurement methods will have
prominent part, it is understood, in a
minority report to the House subcom-
mittee, to be filed within a day or
two by Representative McFarlane,
Democrat; of Texas, member of the
subcommittee, which has just COM
pleted a study of Navy airplane pur-
chaSes. There has been no docu-
mentary proof before the subcommit-
tee that such a condition exists in
the Navy.
Report Already Approved.
The majority of the committee al
ready has approved report finding
no fault with and recommending no
change in the Navy's present procure
ment methods.
Around rs per cent of the Navy's
aircraft purchases, the controller
general has informed investigators,
were made without competition, un-
der provisions of the 1925 air defense
act.
One section of this act-Q-per-
mits the buying of equipment from
one manufacturer without competi-
ton if that equipment can be OBJ
tanned nowhere else.
Another Section-K-iS divided into
two parts. The first permits "nego-
tiated,' non-competitive contracts for
experimental airplanes and engines.
The second calls for purchases, in
quantities, of experimental airplanes
and engines which have been tested
and found satisfactory.
In 1928 CurtisS Dwight Wilbur, then
Secretary of the Navy, asked Con-
greSs to change that second stipula-
ton so quantity contracts for equip
ment tested could be bought without
competitive bidding.
On January II, 1881, D. F. Sellers,
judge advocate general, returned a
lengthy ruling on a proposal of the
Nays AeronauticS Bureau to grant a
negotiated quantity contract under
the authority of the last half of Sec
ton K.
In that ruling he said:
section (K) lacks the express
terms that are requisite to a grant of
power to award the quantity produc-
tion contract until the matter shall
have been subjected to competition
and - such power cannot be de-
rived by inference from the language
actually used in the subsection"
Law Not Yet Changed.
Sellers held the only way in which
such a purchase could be legally af-
fected" would be through congress
sional enactment of the change in law
asked by Secretary Wilbur three years
earlier The law has not yet been
changed
The congressional Investigators have
before them list of contracts award
ed by the Navy since 1925. Until Will
bur's letter in 1928, most purchases
were made under section K After
that, most quantity purchases were
made under section @.
But the controller general reported
several subsequent big contracts
awarded under K. They included:
October 26. 1881, 18 planes, S5O,827;
October 18, 1882, % planes and parts.
$5l5,579; April g. 1881, II planes,
parts, data, etc, S553,32O: June 90,
1929, 112 engines and spares, S1,008,-
639; November 81, 1929, so engines
and spares, s216564; March 10, 1880,
70 engines, $540, ,697.