Page "L. Mendel Rivers" Paragraph 17

He strongly supported the constant upgrading of US military preparedness, regardless of the cost.

He supported making all US Navy ships nuclear powered, and he championed development of the C5A Galaxy military airlift jet airplane, despite huge cost overruns.

In his last speech to his colleagues in the US House of Representatives on December 7, 1970, delivered just before he departed for Birmingham, Alabama to have heart surgery, he stated, " While we debate the question of maintaining our military capability, the Soviet Union forges ahead.

We seem hell-bent on national suicide .... We cannot as a nation afford to spend one penny less on national defense than that amount which is required to insure that you and I, and our children, can convince the Soviets they dare not pull the trigger when a Soviet gun is placed against our heads.