Louis Johnson Exonerated in B-36 Scandal Despite Convair Board Service and Contract Awards

The House Armed Services Committee exonerates Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington of corruption charges related to the B-36 bomber contract, despite Johnson’s recent service on Convair Corporation’s board of directors. An anonymous document circulated in Washington charges that Johnson, Symington, and Convair chairman Floyd B. Odlum pressured the Air Force to purchase B-36 bombers despite the aircraft’s deficiencies, alleging that Convair contributed $6.5 million to Democratic politicians to secure the contracts. The document condemns the B-36 as “an obsolete and unsuccessful aircraft” and claims corruption entered the selection process. Air Force Special Investigations traces the document to Cedric R. Worth, a former Hollywood scriptwriter working for Navy Under Secretary Dan Kimball, who received data from Glenn L. Martin, an aircraft manufacturer whose bombers lost to the B-36.

The Vinson Committee investigation finds “not one scintilla of evidence [to] support charges that collusion, fraud, corruption, influence, or favoritism played any part whatsoever in the procurement of the B-36 bomber.” Worth recants and repudiates his allegations under oath and is dismissed. The swift exoneration occurs despite the obvious conflict of interest that Johnson, as a wealthy lawyer and former Convair official, canceled the Navy’s USS United States aircraft carrier in April 1949 without warning, then funneled contracts to his former employer. The cancellation triggers the “Revolt of the Admirals,” as Navy officials publicly question the government’s decision to fund the B-36 instead of naval aviation, noting Johnson’s Convair connections.

The scandal reveals that revolving-door conflicts of interest between defense contractors and Pentagon officials are already normalized by 1949. What “today would seem a scandal worthy of a special prosecutor,” as one historian notes, “was common at the time.” The exoneration establishes that former defense contractor board members can assume the defense secretary position and award contracts to their previous employers without triggering accountability mechanisms. This precedent institutionalizes the pattern of corporate executives cycling between boardrooms and the Pentagon, creating permanent structural conflicts of interest in weapons procurement. The B-36 controversy demonstrates that by the late 1940s, the boundary between private defense contractors and public military leadership has already dissolved, with corporate affiliations viewed as credentials rather than disqualifications for managing defense policy.