Voluntary Tanker Pool

"During the war years, as one of America’s key defense contractors, he had built up considerable influence at the Pentagon. Now it was time to turn some of this to advantage. He approached the Navy with a proposal. Let me build you five new supertankers at Norfolk, he told naval procurement officials, larger, at 30,000 tons, than anything afloat, and the Navy can charter them at a rate several percentage points below what it is paying the Voluntary Tanker Pool (which had been set up collectively by private shippers at war’s end to meet the continuing fuel needs of the military). In return, the Navy will supply much of the steel and mechanical equipment to build the ships and contribute to the cost of construction. On paper it looked balanced enough to pass the scrutiny of most budget-conscious administrators. Over the length of the charters the Navy stood to recoup through lower rates what it laid out initially in construction expenditures. But there was a catch — a factor not apparent in the cost-accounting sheets or the contracts Ludwig would sign with the Navy. It did not exist, in fact, except as an understanding between D.K. and a few top-echelon naval officers that when the new supertankers were completed and ready for ser-"