Some time during the next few weeks four sleek, glossy-blue Navy fighter planes are going to try to shoot down a high-flying Air Force B-36. The fighters will use camera guns, because the B-36 is a highly expensive airplane; both services have stuck a security blackout on other details of the operation. The experiment will either aggravate or end one of the bitterest inter-service rivalries of the last generation.

The present fight started with the Key West conferences on unifying the armed forces at the beginning of last fall, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff hashed out the wartime tasks of their respective services. The major argument centered around strategic bombing--including the employment of the atomic bomb--with the Navy disputing the Air Force's claim to sole jurisdiction. After considerable bargaining, instituted by the late Defense Secretary James Forrestal, the rival services compromised: the Air Force picked up a fat budget, the Navy the 65,000 ton aircraft carrier "United States." This decision, coupled with a pair of high-level directives forbidding public inter-service squabbles on the subject, considerably cut down tension.

Then a serious nervous shake-up forced Mr. Forrestal to resign, and Louis A. Johnson, with a reputedly pro-Army background, took over. The Air Force promptly renewed the fight, claiming that the big carrier, scheduled to be laid down in early April, was superfluous and eminently vulnerable. The airmen said the cost of the ship was too high for its usefulness, that it was an infringement on their "rightful control of strategic bombing." The Navy fought back, citing the fine record of its carriers in the World War II Pacific campaigns. Then the Air Force appeared with its trump card.

This was simply a compilation of a series of classified-secret tests run off early this year between the huge now B-36 and various service model jet-fighters. The B-36, a six-engined, 5000-mile range heavy bomber, was the Air Force's big bid for strategic bombing supremacy; as such, it had come in for lots of criticism. It was too slow, too big; it could not maneuver. At one time there was a serious move to halve the B-36 contracts. This was squelched when the Air Force appeared happily bearing the results of its tests. The B-36 had left standard jets gasping for air at its 40,000 foot operating altitude; even the F-86, which had grabbed the world's speed record, could not keep up with it at this height. The tests convinced Secretary Johnson and Congress, in that order; on April 23, the keel of the "United States" was ordered off the ways.

Secretary of the Navy Sullivan promptly quit in protest; Chief of Naval Operations Denfield was kicked into a fleet command when he complained. The new Secretary of the Navy was chosen from a civilian job in which "he never got any closer to the Navy than a row-boat." And there was a wave of mutterings in Congress about the "high-handedness" of Secretary Johnson's move. The forthcoming test is a result of this Congressional pressure.

And the general opinion of military experts is that the test will be inconclusive. For the whole question of Naval vs. Air Force strategic bombing is probably not that of the efficiency of the B-36, but of the relative efficiency of naval bombers.

The "United States" would have been able to fly planes off, but not retrieve them; it would simply have been a mobile airport for bringing planes nearer, but not very significantly nearer, the inland targets of strategic bombing. And it would have been a very expensive airport to lose. The odds are good that the Navy "Banshee" fighters are going to give the B-36 a fine fight, but equally good that the "United States" and the Navy's abortive entry into strategic bombing have been finally washed out.