Memorandum of Conversation with Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Secretary of the Air Force Thomas Finletter, General Hoyt Vandenberg, and H. Freeman Matthews

NLT 827 Only copy DEPARTMENT OF STATE 77 THE SECRETARY TOP SECRET 160 June 27, 1951. MEMORANDUM OF MEETING DECLASSIFIED Participants: Secretary of State STATE DEPT MEMO 8-1-24 Mr. Matthews Secretary of Air Finletter Project NLT 52-4 General Vandenberg By NLT- He NARS, Date 9-5-dy Secretary of the Air Force Finletter and General Vandenberg called yesterday at their request to talk with me. Mr. Matthews attended the meeting. The problem which he wished to inform us about was a con- flict of requirements for pursuit wings between the Far Eastern Command and the NATO organization. Mr. Finletter said that we had undertaken by 1954 to furnish 15-1/2 wings for General Eisenhower's commands. There are at present four wings in Europe, two of which are troop carriers. It had been planned to send 5-1/2 wings in 1951. These were to go in June, July, TRUMAN and October. General Eisenhower and General Norstadt were ARCHIVES **NATIONAL REGORDS AND 1 counting heavily on this reinforcement. There was, however, a problem as to the location of these wings, for the French 8 had not built the airfields which were necessary for them. If they went now, General Norstadt planned to locate th em in the Marseilles area, which from the military point of view was most unsatisfactory, and where there was no a dequate housing. This would involve an expenditure of $50,000,000, which General Vandenberg thought was totally wasted from the military point of view. On the other hand, recent information was that the Chinese Air Force had been increased by 200 planes in the last month, 120 of which were jets. This raised the Chinese Air Force to 1050 planes. We had 1,300 in the Far East of all types. The air battles in North Korea indicated intensive battle training on the Chinese part, and there was a threat that the Chinese might be able to challenge our áir superiority and perhaps attain air superiority by means of further transfers from the Russians and the possibility that Russian units might be used as such in the back areas, where this fact could not be established by planes shot down. Mr. Finletter and General Vandenberg were strongly in favor of sending 3-1/2 of these wings to the Far East, and possibly explaining this on the grounds of lack of adequate air fields in France at present. TOP SECRET