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A briefing of particular significance took place in the late afternoon of 12 December 1960. General Thomas D. White, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, had requested this briefing on the future Army aviation program and, as the Deputy Director of Army Aviation, it was my duty to present the formal portion of the briefing in the presence of General George H. Decker, the Army Chief of Staff, and many senior officers of both Services.

At that time the focus in the Army was on the nuclear battlefield. Organic aviation was viewed by the Army as the best means of maintaining combat operations in an area characterized by great depth and frontage with the dispersion of many small self-contained units. The major threat was viewed as a sophisticated enemy attacking with masses of armor on the plains of Europe. Counter-guerrilla warfare at that time was viewed as a secondary mission. Nevertheless, the early planners in airmobility perceived that one of the automatic fallouts in organizing the Army for greater airmobility would be much greater capabilities in the lower spectrums of warfare.

The Army had already made a decision to replace its light fixed-wing observation airplane and the two light observation helicopters with a single light turbine helicopter. This had been a fundamental decision of the Rogers Board the year before and was another example of the Army's commitment to the turbine engine. The early Bell XH-40 had been standardized as the HU-1 and was envisioned then as the replacement for the L-20 utility airplane and the H-19 utility helicopter. Further growth versions of the Bell machine were planned to replace the bulk of the missions then performed by the Sikorsky H-34 and the Vertol H-21. The Vertol HC-1B Chinook was then on the drawing boards to replace the piston powered Sikorsky H-37.

To provide background for understanding the question and answer period which followed the briefing I must digress to comment on the Mohawk and the Caribou aircraft.

Since its inception as a joint Army and Marine program, the OV-1 Mohawk had been a center of controversy. Actually the Army and Marine requirements were never compatible and compromises were made that suited neither. From the Army's viewpoint, the original design was compromised by shipboard requirements and other specific Marine specifications which had little application for an Army observation aircraft. From the Marine viewpoint, they were looking for a fixed-wing replacement for the old Cessna light observation aircraft and they did not require sophisticated sensor systems which they planned to carry on other aircraft. As it turned