R_. C_.,
The Majestic,
Nagasaki,
Japan
Dear Father:
As you've probably heard, the Reds have received a group of Russian fighters, which is really heating up the Koumintang's silly little air war. (I'm not sure it's so silly if you're a poor Egg family getting hour home shot up, but this war is being fought for the common folk of China, whether they like it or not.)
*
The upshot is that I'm not going to be seeing any relief from this whatever-it-is mission any time soon. The fighters will probably come with radars, and that will mean ferret flights. Whether USN personnel get involved is another matter. But if we do, I have the exciting prospect of ending up like those poor guys from VP-26. At least it'll give me something to do.
I'm not getting as much sympathy as I expected about that from Ronnie, surprise surprise. You've heard by now that Uncle George has got Ronnie a summer job with Mr. Wu. He says Ronnie's job will be to get the big man lunch between movies, which I almost believe. Wu's main star makes twenty movies a year! If I had a vote, I would vote against making "kung fu" movies during a Hong Kong summer, but on the other hand that puts Ronnie close as these things go, and we'll be able to see each other on the weekends, providing that the war doesn't get hot enough that the Reds start shooting down airliners.
Your Loving Son,
Reggie
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| April's Victim |
Letters
Readers have all sorts of reactions to an article about Henry Koerner, including Betty Sachs of Baltimore, who is reminded that she is having a very, very hard time getting over the Holocaust. Fred Ells remembers how the Indonesian money reform is exactly like the "legalised larceny" that was "perpetrated in Greece in 1922." He goes on to fondly recall that the minister who carried it out was executed six months later along with all his colleagues.
(Another and much less horrible Trial of the Six)
Roy Chapman Andrews writes to point out that he is 66, not dead, and complain that this is the second time that Time has referred to him as deceased. Jack Kilpatrick objects to bubble gum, miniature gold, the New Look, and the yo-yo because people are sheep, which leads to consumer spending, which is good. I summarise.
G. W. Murdock and George Hopkins are very impressed with Clarence Streit. Elmo Roper thinks he is being overdone, Tracy Samuels thinks he is overdone, and Marie-Anne Greenough of New York City thinks that a world government will naturally lead to a world tyranny. Our publisher is enormously happy about a wonderful speech that Henry Luce recently gave the National Conference of Christians and Jews, which was about tolerance, except when some Jewish bum doesn't want to build the H-bomb to stop Communism, which is the real threat, as Theodore Roosevelt said in 1910, although technically he wasn't talking about H-bombs and Communism or anything like that. Does Henry Luce have to draw you a picture? No, Henry doesn't. In conclusion, fight tyranny, embrace Reason and faith, and be good Christians. Also, you other guys.
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| Chapman expedition looking for fossils in Inner Mongolia: Found, dinosaur eggs; Seeking, Missing Link |
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| A Dassault Ouragon of the kind soon to be delivered to the Israeli Air Force |
National Affairs
"Helping Hand" John Foster Dulles has joined Dean Acheson's staff to ensure a bipartisan foreign policy. Time credits Arthur Vandenberg and helpfully points out that Robert Taft is beside himself over it. Time predicts that Dulles will turn to Asia, where "1,240,000,000 people might soon be lost forever." Also, the President is on vacation and the Census is on, with an assortment of colourful stories, including the census taker who was lifted 65 feet in the air with a block and tackle to interview Odell Smith, and the one sent to enumerate View Ridge, Washington,
which has gone from a wartime population of 4000 to a current population of zilch. Seems like easy money to me, but the enumerator is shocked, so maybe the Census is on top of things enough to stop his cheque.
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| Part of the Hanford complex, not the Seattle neighbourhood. There's no pictures, so here;s the road to Los Alamos, instead. |
"A Fool or a Knave" Owen Lattimore's appearance before the Senate was an almost complete rout for McCarthy, with only Bourke Hickenlooper willing to give him any support at all. But that didn't stop McCarthy from once again claiming that he had a witness who would name Lattimore as a Soviet agent --once the Senator was back in the Senate and safe from a libel suit. Also, Time catches up with Aviation Week by reporting that Thomas Finletter is the new Air Force Secretary. Phil Murray of the CIO has moved out of the Carlton Hotel and into the Hay-Adams because the Carlton won't let his Coloured "lieutenants" visit ("our guests do not want to meet them in the halls"), and the Hays-Adam will, if Murray accompanies them.
"A Pretty Picture" Pat McCarren is still fighting the DP bill on the grounds that i) there are already between two and five million people in the US illegally(me!), that it would increase unemployment, and that there were only 11,000 "real" DPs left, the rest being "criminals, the diseased and those who cannot possibly take care of themselves." McCarren did his best to stop the Kilgore bill, offering one amendment after another over 13 hours, leading to 20 roll-call votes, an all-time one day record, and ending just before midnight. The bill allows 359,000 Displaced Persons to enter the States through the end of next year and extends eligibility in various ways so that White Russians from Mukden and General Anders' army, for example, are now included.
"No Sir, He's Your Baby" Harry Bridges has been convicted of lying about being a Communist back in '45, which means that he has foresaken his citizenship, which means he can be sent back to Australia on the next ship, except the Australians don't want him and won't take him, and so much for that.
"Durable Man" Eddie Rickenbacker gets the cover story. Heavy on pictures of heroes in doughboy hats and aviator jackets, light on the details of how
Rickenbacker came to be president and CEO of Eastern Airlines. He paid over a certified cheque for $3.5 million to Arthur Sloan in a complex deal, is all it says.
"Deepest Breath" The Navy is super impressed with its new snorkel boat, which made a 21 day submerged run from Pearl to Hong Kong. But it reminds everyone that the Russians created their own snorkel fleet on their own, and that a Russian sub could make the same run in reverse. (Because China is communist now.) Also, Time is shocked, shocked I say, at the tactics of the Florida primary race, where the President's man is going to get rid of Claude Peppers by hook or by crook; but it is just jaded by the death of Charlie Binaggio.
International
"Ideas Can Be Dangerous" Owen Lattimore, John Strachey and Frederic Joliot-Curie are all in the news this week. All three were "assaulted by the century's most vicious fallacy, i.e. that Communism was kin to progress." None of them are traitors, or bad people, it's just that they have a Communism contusion or something, which is why Owen doesn't like the Gitmo, Strachey is too pink to be a War Minister, and Joliot-Curie will probably slip the Russians some atom bomb secrets as soon as the French have some. Time thinks that all three should be fired from whatever it is they do because, notwithstanding toleration and all of that, just thinking communist thoughts is dangerous. Meanwhile, the British are over the top at the Americans sticking their noses into cabinet appointments (say some reporters, anyway), and the French are even more upset. The Gitmo's probably fine, though.
"Where Am I Now?" It's spring all over the world. Time celebrates by visiting the streetwalkers of Paris and the brothels of Paris; Because foreigners, know what I mean? (also, a Continent-bound airliner leaves a British airfield carrying a load of tourists every fifteen minutes, 8000 flights already this week. Remember the British travel ban, three years ago? Things sure have changed!)
"Kowtow" The British and Chinese are currently normalising relations, but have hit a snag over exchanging ambassadors. Time interprets this as Britain "kowtowing" to Peking, and gives us a history lesson concerning the last British ambassador to China who didn't kowtow, a ways back in 1816, and how it was all an insult that had to be avenged in the Opium Wars. And Bao Dai went tiger hunting with some officers of the Seventh Fleet. Lieutenant Commander James P. Drake bagged a tiger.
"Plain Talk" Time is pleased to report that ECA officials have been out and about lecturing Korea, Greece, and now Italy on the need for economic reform and lower inflation. I can't help noticing that that the chief of the ECA in Rome is a guy named James Zellerbach, so I looked him up in Who;s Who, and he is one of those Zellerbachs, probably a great-grandson of founder Anthony. Time is quick to notice that the Italians excuse their poor economic performance by pointing to their population problem, but not that the "businessman" who heads the ECA mission was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
"To Sing In Freedom" Most of the Dresden Mozart Choir has come over to West Germany.
Also, the East German Communist youth conference scheduled for Berlin on 28 May will be storming West Berlin's hearts, and not its barricades, after all. Or not. Time is still spoiling for a fight. Also, the Czechs are repressing the Catholic church, an American ex-employee of the Military Government has gone over to the Communists in Prague (George Wheeler again), and something may be up in that vital hub of world affairs, Albania.
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| The future Franconia College's main building in 1909. None of this sounds very edifying, but the building's nice. |
"Cheers" For Cripps in the House when he announced that Britain earned a $40 million dollar surplus over ECA aid in the first three months of 1950. If it's any consolation, it was earned the wrong way (import substitution and through Empire and Australian earnings), and is bad. Also, the British Press Association has taken to issuing health bulletins about absent members, with "Mr. Wiley (Labour)" "very comfortable" and Colonel Stoddart-Scott (Conservative) "comfortable." Also, the Duke of Marlborough has thrown Blenheim Palace open to public tours four days a week to make some spending money.
"Base of Supply" From our neck of the woods, a pair of Koumintang P-51s were jumped by some La-9s while they were innocently shooting up some junks in Hangchow Bay. More Russian-built planes were encountered over Shanghai a week later, Time reports.
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| Beautiful. And doing the Lord's work, too. By The original uploader was Mpj17 at English Wikipedia. - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3376879 |
And in our still-Communist infiltrator-free hemisphere (never you mind Saskatchewan), Dean Acheson tells a news conference that it is completely natural that America is considering a loan for Argentina in return for some modest Argentinian concessions. Looking through my notes, it appears that Argentina is either Fascist or not Fascist, and definitely not Communist, so it qualifies for assistance under the "Franco's not so bad, after all" clause. Speaking of which, the President of Chile is in Washington to dance the samba and scrounge up some loans. And who wouldn't want to loan money to Chile? "They are descendants of Spaniards, mixed with successive waves of Irish, English, french, Dutch, German. They have no Negro blood, some Araucanian." And the American ambassador to Guatemala is in trouble down there for suggesting that Guatemala has way to many communistic politicians and should think about mending its ways. For some reason, the Guatemalan Labour Federation thinks that's a threat! Guatemalans are crazy, Time allows.
Business
State of Business reports that the big news this week is that the boom isn't "tapering off," as predicted, and since the stock market has "penetrated" DOW 212, it follows that it will keep on climbing, and that the boom won't end in 1950, as was supposed. And speaking of which, the industry will turn out its two-millionth car of the year this week, up from 1.67 million at the same time last year, with GM working double overtime on Sundays to keep up, used car prices up to $982, up $44 in three months, and Ford passing its 1924 record, and seeing rapid production through the middle of 1951. Nash is hoping that its Rambler will be a hit in the new small car market.
"Bonded Payoff" Sumner Schlichter points out that WWII's first bonds will pay off "beginning about 1952," which will put $4 billion of purchasing power in the economy in '52, and more than $5 billion each year through '55, which he thinks makes the prospects for the Fifties pretty good, although he worries about 1951, which will be the runt of the litter.
"Birth of City" The housing rush has hit the former Lakewood ranch outside Los Angeles, where the latest planned subdivision will sprawl over 3500 acres, absorb $136 million in capital, and provide 17,000 homes, with room for 17 churches, 20 schools and 37 playgrounds.
"Curse or Blessing" Time explains how just everyone agrees on exempting independent gas producers from FPC regulation, contrary to 1944 Tidelands, It will be better for everyone! Not so, says Senator Paul Douglas (he's so dreamy!), who thinks that lack of regulation will lead to higher prices.
New Products reports that Boeing has put its new 200lb gas turbine in a ten-ton truck. Super powerful, super-low gas mileage.
"Smoke Screen" Cigarette makers have "long ago abandoned the naive idea that smoking was a mere pleasure." so now they plug the "T-zone" and argue that smoking soothes the nerves, relieves fatigue, and aids digestion. This week, the FTC told the cigarette companies that they were full of it, and told Camel to stop advertising that their cigarettes aid digestion and relieve fatigue and to stop using fake testimonials. Old Golds is also in trouble for saying that it has less nicotine than other cigarettes. Camel and Old Gold defend themselves on the grounds that they just stopped using those slogans the other day, so everything is fine. While in other cigarette news, R. J. Reynolds has rearranged its board before stockholders can make them.
"Be Sharp, Feel Sharp" When Gillette bought Toni from Richard Neison Wishbone Harris, it paid $20 million, including $12 million in cash to same, which was a lot, but they earned $8 million on Toni home permanent waves last quarter, so it was money well spent. Then it is off to the farm, where it turns out that it is legal to sell your corn to the government at $1.48 under the price levels, keep it bonded at home so it doesn't hit the market, and then buy it as feed corn at 65 cents the bushel, also under the level, making 50 cents a bushel of government money without it ever leaving the silo.
Science, Education, Medicine
"Growth Drug" Lederle Laboratories, which developed the antibiotic aureomycin, has discovered that low doses of it accelerate hog growth, which is a profitable discovery in its own right, and which may lead to a treatment for some kinds of human malnutrition if the mechanism can be discovered. (The thought being that it acts against intestinal bacteria that consume vitamins or such.)
"Let George Do It" Time has heard a lot about this whole ILS and GCA thing, so it's time for Time to explain the two systems in all the space it takes, which is one paragraph, before moving on to the fly in the ointment, which is that it is too much work and distracts the pilot, before finishing with the solution, which is to set the plane on autopilot. And if you're wondering why the story shows up here and now, it's probably because Gilfillan slipped it to the press.
"Flower Alarm Clock" Scientists have long known that plants figure out when to bloom by following the length of the day, blooming at just the right time, spring or fall, depending. Last week, Drs. H. A. Borthwick, M. W. Parker and S. B. Hendricks of the US Department of Agriculture discovered a new angle, which is that plants are sensitive to colour, specifically blue, which triggers an extra "alarm clock."
"Lots of Doctors in the House" The United States has hit one doctor for every 750 people, with Britain as runner up at 870, although it is only one GP per 1500 people, which is probably a less creditable statistic, since the AMA doesn't compare it with other countries.
"The World's Health" The WHO has declared it World Health Day. It continues to remind everyone to be vigilant against the five "treaty diseases" (plague, cholera, typhus, smallpox and yellow fever), against which quarantine officials must be ever-prepared, especially in this day of air travel. WHO would like to do more, but due to funding is restricted to "task force" type work.
The Amherst professor who invented this Great Books swindle (Ronnie's words!) is a million years old and sick, so he's not going to go out any more. He'll just hang around at home in a giant bed made of Private Life of Helen of Troy royalties. And some professor at Oxford has a book or article or Time article about hilarious student slang through the ages. It's by a pragger-wagger named Morris Marples. Also some more, there's a student strike on at the University of Ghent over somebody trying to impose a Walloon professor of surgery on their Fleming school.
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| The composition is the same as every other NCR ad, but I really like her blouse. |
Radio and Television, Press, Art
"Quite" Time is impressed with BBC's Listen with Mother because it starts out with Jean Sutcliffe being nice, and not with machine gun sound effects. BORING!
"The Perfect Schnook" is a tv comedy show by Alan Young, who is apparently a fellow Vancouverite and almost my age. He is hilarious and he plays the bagpipes, so he should definitely be shopping for a Hollywood mansion already.
"The Saucer-Eyed Dragon" It was three years ago now that Kenneth Arnold told the press that he'd seen nine UFOs flying in formation with him near Mount Rainier, Time opens, this being Time's take on when the "UFO" business started, though my impression was that it went back to the war. Anyway, this week, David Lawrence of US News and World Report said that America built the first flying saucer a way back in '42. So this is the Aviation Week story, but at greater length. Time expands, explaining that it was part of the Navy's guided missile programme, and that it was a combination of a jet and a helicopter. Time tut-tuts Lawrence for saying that he had documented support, and then citing his own interview with the Navy's Commander McLaughlin, in his own article, which is a bit lifted-by-your-own-bootstraps. That didn't stop a rush of press people coming out to say they believed Lawrence, and leaving McLaughlin to disavow the story on his return from from a cruise with USS Bristol.
It seems as though the story is describing the weird and wonderful Chance-Vought XF5U, but that doesn't really get to how we are talking about spaceships.
McLaughlin commanded the Navy's guided missile unit at White Sands from 1946 to February of 1948, and he definitely reported seeing a flying saucer to Admiral Daniel Gallery, his superior, and was moved to Bristol shortly afterwards. McLaughlin wrote the story that ended up in True, to the effect that they were Martians checking in on our missile programme, while from the same evidence Lawrence came up with the "giant XF5U" theory. The Department of Defence is backing up Gallery's position, which is that some people need to quit the sauce, and meanwhile the rest of the press is just going to town, as in the Taos (New Mexico) Star, which says that 3000 people saw a flying saucer the other day, while the Houston Press has them on radar screens, rocketing over the city, and the Los Angeles Herald and Express even has a wrecked flying saucer on a Mexican mountainside, discovered by California explosives salesman Ray Dimmick, who says it had two motors, was 46 feet in diameter, was made of "some strange material resembling aluminum" and was piloted by a 23 inch-tall midget with a big head and a small body."
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| XF5U-1 |
"World's End" The Nation is so tired of all of this end-of-the-world stuff that it does a parody of how the press would handle a comet destroying the world. It was funnier before Uncle George spoiled it for me. Apparently The New York Times handling the end of the world as a stock market story is an old, old joke. And Time has a crush on Ellen Raphael Knauff, who is an anti-Nazi German would-be refugee whose application for immigrant status was rejected by the Department of Justice, just sustained by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the Justice Department didn't have to disclose its case against her, which left her with no case. So she turned out for a Congressional hearing in a boater hat and with a St. Louis Post-Dispatch man at her side, and now she is an American landed immigrant by act of Congress, and so there, Justice Department. (Next step is H-bomb secret! [And tell-all book.])
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| Artist's impression |
Dimmick now says he was misquoted.
"Signs of Spring" The Whitney's annual spring exhibit was mostly pretty blase, but included some nice piece's by old Time favourite Dong Kingman, Laurence Kupferman, David Fredenthal, Robert Howard and Peter Lipman-Wulf.
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| Not exactly unknown, but seems to be your basic "neglected mid-century figure." Couldn't find Man and Horse, so here's Cat. The internet loves cats! |
"Bargain Finder" Walter Heil, of San Francisco's M. H. De Young Memorial Museum keeps finding bargains in thrift stores, this time a lost Gentile Bellini. He points out, however, that a lot of his luck has to do with the buying power of the dollar, and so it won't go on forever. Oh, and Salvador Dali has done another of those weird paintings, and then did an interview about it in the British press where he made fun of "his contemporaries." Say what you like about his paintings (I like 'em, which apparently goes to show that I'm hopelessly middlebrow), he sure knows how to hit the publicity beat!
People
Rober Emmett Sherwood has been scrounging around in the Roosevelt archives, while Westbrook Pegler is still a gigantic asshole. Bette Davis is divorcing William Grant Sherry some more. Claire Chennault, who is in Hong Kong trying to get his 71 formerly Chinese-now-his planes back from the British, who insist that they actually belong to the people of China, who have a government in Peking now. Boo, hiss! 
Robert Ruark is in trouble for saying Americans dress better than Brits, some of whom are famous actors who are applying for American citizenship. Princess Margaret has inspired a new cocktail, the "Royal Blue," and Graham Greene has been seen in Goslar, Germany, where he is apparently working on a follow-on to The Third Man[?]. Franco's daughter is married, some more. Betty Hutton is divorced, Josephine Hartford is married, Nijinsky, Walter Huston and Anthony Fiala are dead.
The New Pictures
City Lights was Charlie Chaplin's first talkie. Time liked it then, and likes it even more nineteen years later on re-release. The Damned Don't Cry is Joan Crawford's latest true-confession style movie. Time is extremely unimpressed since women shouldn't do that sort of thing. Love Happy is the latest Marx Brothers movie. Time thinks it has too much Chico, too little Groucho, but is saved by just the right amount of Harpo. And this is why I don't get the Marx Brothers. Don't tell anyone my age! Nancy Goes to Rio is not about how Jane Powell goes to Rio, but it has singing and dancing, so who cares? Time liked it, in spite of hating the entire cast. The Daughter of Rose O'Grady it just plain hated.
Books
William O. Douglas' Of Men and Mountains is Justice Douglas on the hunting and fishing life. Time liked it so much that I bet Time is arguing a case in front of him. Better hurry, before he falls of another horse! Kathleen Winsor's Star Money isn't about what you do when you're young and full of life and have more money than God. Instead, it's about sex. Sex and a huge advance. Time feels so guilty after that that it reviews a poetry anthology and Andre Maurois' Proust: Portrait of a Genius, which is like two people talking to each other about a book they both read, and which they need to show they've actually read, because no-one else has.
Aviation Week, 17 April 1950
Industry Observer reports that the Air Force is changing the designation of the Lockheed F-94B to the F-97 because it has an 8000lb Pratt and Whitney J-48 with afterburning and very thin wings, so it should be a hot ship. 
Seattle boosters have persuaded the USAF to buy 67 more C-97s, which will keep Boeing Seattle's 10,000 workers employed through 1951. The Air Force has released new fuel designations covering 80 octane, 91/98, 100/130, 115/145 and jet fuel. The jet fuel requirement now defines the distillation range and specifications for aromatic and sulphur content and vapour pressure.
Shell Oil's purchase of two Percival Princes may be just the fist, and rumours that the prototype Taylor Aerocar has been bought by Goodrich have been denied by designer Moulton Taylor. Convair Fort Worth has had to take on 4300 more workers to install the wingtip jet pods on the B-36. The French are following on the Leduc 010 piggy-back ramjet experimental ship with a new model with a pressure cabin, which it will need with its 20,000ft/min climb. They're also very excited by the pulse- and ramjet powered Ariel II (SO 1110) helicopter, which has much smaller blade tip pods than American types. Goodyear's biggest blimp yet is under construction in the old dirigible dock at Akron. Contract price for the big ASW craft is reported at over three million dollars.
News Digest reports that Southwest is merging with West Coast, that Marshall Mars had 8262 flying hours, with a major overhaul at 5000 when a Wright R-3350 engine caught fire during a test hop near Oahu, causing the loss of the aircraft. Vice-Admiral Thomas Craven has died. The "left wing" United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union has been ousted as the collective bargaining agent at Sperry,Lake Success, and from the CIO. It has been replaced by the newly organised Union of Electrica, Radio and Machine Workers of America. American has started 70 seat DC-6 coach flights between New York and Los Angeles. The US elimination of the "transit visa" is a blessing for passengers travelling through American airports.
"Airlines Want Simplicity and Ruggedness: Engineers at ATA Meeting Decide Those Two Factors Hold Key to Cutting Costs" Manufacturers lined up to whine about same. Airscrew manufacturers complain that their stronger blades are being rejected as too heavy. Vacuum tube manufacturers say that as many as 60% of the new "ruggedised" tubes fail inspection. On other fronts, everyone prefers underground ramp servicing equipment, integral fuel tanks work better than they used to, people are warming up to electrically driven gyros, heavier propeller blades may be heavy, but at least they don't fail,
lead fouling and oil sludging of spark plugs are almost solved problems, nonflammable hydraulic fluid would be nice, as would good cabin air circulation and standardised electrical equipment. The propeller sessions ran long because there was so much to talk about. Accidents are often caused by negligence and are more likely to happen on the graveyard shift and when people didn't know what they were doing. Liquid de-icing is the cat's miaow, although people disagree on whether alcohol or glycol is best. Lockheed has helpful hints about how the bare aluminum oil tanks on the Constellation can be heated without setting the plane on fire. (which is bad.) 75ST is giving less trouble in service than expected, partly because it is routinely replaced by 24ST pieces during repairs. A good solution to doors opening in flight is chaining them up. There is some disagreement on just how nonflammable nonflammable hydraulic fluids are, and the best ones tend to be corrosive and require seal replacements through the system. Electrical analysers really help engine tuning. Airlines tell vacuum tube manufacturers to stop whining. They actually need the vacuum tubes their planes carry, so they should be able to rely on them not burning out. Speaking of unreliability, how about those gyro indicator instrument bearings and torquemeters?
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| The Stratocruiser is probably the industry poster child for prop failures |
"IAS meeting Airs Transport Problems" The IAS Meeting heard that the Bureau of the Budget will find $12 million for flight training and certifying a jet transport prototype, but the industry still wants a proper cargo plane, and points out that it would be much easier to meet mobilisation schedules with one. 
"Four-Engine B-47C" To Have More Power" Replacing the six engines of the existing B-47 with four Allison J-35-A23 engines, each developing "approximately" 9200lbs thrust, will give an additional 5600lbs thrust.
An interesting article about how Pratt and Whitney fights noise at its engine testing facility, and another about "Kentanium," a new heat resistant alloy developed by Kennemetal that sounds like one of the nickel-rich alloys. The reason that it is interesting is that Kentanium does a lot of work with titanium. One of the reasons that titanium is being sold as the next big aviation metal is that it has a high melting point.
A little later, a typical short article: "New Titanium Alloy Groomed for Jet Use." It is 5% chromium, 3% aluminum and is approved for engine firewalls. It is not approved for use at temperatures above 1000 degrees, and so is not approved for jet turbine blades, but maybe later.
"Pilot's Idea of A Short-Haul Plane" It should be just like the DC-3, only better and loads cheaper, and perfect for cargo and passengers, using exactly the same servicing and maintenance facilities, and taking up the same amount of hangar space. No chairs are to be installed in line with the propellers, as you have to refund the tickets of all impaled passengers and pay for their dry cleaning. The cockpit should be arranged to reduce crew fatigue, it should be unstallable, have reliable de-icing, reversible propeller, fast acting landing gear with a steerable nose unit, accessible baggage compartments for fire fighting, adequate fuel, more than one energy source for electrics, engine exhaust heating for cabin and cockpit, space in the nose for future gizmos, inspection ports, better windows that will be test in mockups, including flying mockups, I'm not sure how that's possible.
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| The DC-3 replacement should be perfect, only better. Got it! |
"Rain Damage" The results of the Air Force's big investigation into rain damage to plastic is in. In conclusion, it depends on how hard it rains. (Specifically, how hard rain hits various parts, so it is all very aerodynamical.) There are also details about plastic types and pooling. From France, news of the new miracle wing of the HD 10, which combines an innovative airfoil and strut to cut operating costs to "less than 13 cents per ton mile for payloads ranging from three and a half to 40 tons." The inventors also remind everyone to watch out for an escaped magical talking frog, since if a princess finds it and kisses it, their stock scam will fail.
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| Hurel-Dubois HD34, by RuthAS |
"New Device Analyses Upper Air Samples" The Air Force Research Laboratory must be bored, because they're running stratospheric air samples through a spare analytic mass spectrometer, which is a "new device" if you're an aviation engineer who has blotted out out Chemistry 100 with beer. The idea is that they'll find gasses that have been changed into other gasses by "radiant solar energy." Which they will, of course, tritium for one. The article implies that this might help with weather forecasts,but down in the body of the article it turns out that the spectrometer was supplied by GE, and GE is looking for new isotopes.
Which is pretty cool, this is what happens in stars and hydrogen bombs. Light elements are transformed by collisions with high energy photons. That's how we discovered mesons, and there's still a lot we don't know about the subatomic "zoo" and you can basically discover a new isotope any old day.
"Martin Cuts Cost by 'Cutting' Blueprints'" I hope this article was approved before the second 2-0-2 crash in a single year and the Mars fire. It is about an organisational trick that reduces the number of blueprints needed.
"Copper-Core Sheet for Heat Use" American Cladmetals of Carnegie, Pennsylvania, wants everyone to know that its Rosslyn metal sheet, which consists of a copper core bonded to stainless, heat-resisting steel on both sides, would be ideal for maybe some kind of military use where critical strategic materials are being used right now, like combustion chambers and jet tailpipes or maybe for something or other in conventional planes.
I usually ignore Sales and Service, but it opens up with "Cloud Seeding Pays Out West," which is about that California Electric P-38 which has been cloud-seeding up in the Sierra. It has started to snow up there lately, so that's good. "Why the P-38" is the subtitle of the third paragraph, in case you were wondering, "why the P-38." Because it can fly very high, I guess? That makes up for dropping tiny amounts of silver iodide at ridiculous speeds at unknown locations.
New Aviation Products reports on the new Kollsman system for automatic cabine pressure control. It is light, less than 20lbs, in spite of having three Kollsman Synchrotels. Airborne Accessories has its own somewhat frightening automatic accessory, a trim tab control, or "Trim Trol" rotary actuator, which has the usual mechanical virtues, such as zero backlash. (The "usual" being the kind of problem you never hear about in this kind of article until there's an improved machine that fixes them, at which point they were always there all along in this kind of thing.) It is for "dialling" types and lets you do without a position indicator, since it will damp down to the right setting on its own. Hopefully. Greer Hydraulics has an inverter test stand, which is more interesting than part-protecting bags, wash stands, refrigerators and tarmac heaters.
"'Slow' Helicopters Save Time" Eastern's chief engineer turns out to suggest short-haul inter-city helicopter transport, the same idea that everyone keeps bringing up and everyone keeps rejecting, since back in the autogiro days. Helicopters may be slow, he says, but they're faster than being stuck in traffic!
"CAB Straddles on 500kHz Issue" CAB agrees that low-frequency emergency facilities would be useful, but has no opinion about how they might be implemented. The Flight Radio Officers count it as a partial victory, since anything that keeps Morse code on the air keeps them in business.
The report on the Capital Airlines midair collision on 7 August blames the crew of the airliner for not seeing the Cessna 140 they crashed into, killing the pilot. 
Time, 24 April 1950
Letters
Some correspondents really like the "Ten Most Valuable Members of the Senate." Others thought that Henry Cabot Lodge or Robert Byrd should have been there. Charles Cassil Reynard seems to think that Siamese names are silly. All correspondents are disturbed by Frederick Seitz's enthusiasm for destruction and giant bombs. Time must have really got some negative press on this one if it isn't willing to run a single "pro atomic annihilation" letter. Also not faring well with the readers, Don Charles, whose opinion that schoolteachers don't get much recognition in literature is found to be all wet.
New Books branches out from worthy-but-boring to review Bradley Nash and Cornelius Lynde, A Hook in Leviathan (it's a philosophy reference, Ronnie says), which is a "critical evaluation" of the Hoover Commission. Now, my critical evaluation would be that I know the old fart well enough to expect the report to be wrong about everything, but it sounds like the authors are easier on the College Man.
Editorial has "Truman, Finletter and Air Power" Finletter is in the President's inner circle, which shows that the Administration is taking air power seriously, which is good news. Aviation Week hopes this means that the Air Force gets a bucket of dollars and a 48 group air force in the next budget.
Joel T. Boone, of the VA, defends his agency against the Hoover Commission. Richard Sprague sticks up for the presidential yacht, J.M. Delorme for British exporters trying to overcome American trade barriers, tariff and otherwise. That's a lot of contrary opinion for one issue, so Time finishes out with a letter from E. V. Lockhardt completely agreeing with Time's take on the late Harold Laski. Apparently, anyone who would believe in a humane and socialist society is some kind of evil and zealous crackpot. The Publisher's Letter quotes a British reader who has American slang dead to rights, an anonymous Eastern Bloc reader who gets a free Time (and Life) subscription for risking the secret police and Siberia to read the best America has to offer, while four missionaries in the South Pacific share a single copy of Time by shipping it around the islands in a four-way tray that takes it a few thousand miles, because the Pacific is a big place.
National Affairs
The President is back from vacation, and was disgustingly cheerful at a press conference. You'll see, Time warns. Inflation, budget deficits or advancing communism. Something's going to get you!
Something about how much Time misses Arthur Vandenberg and wishes that it could miss Robert Taft.
"Nonstop to Copenhagen" The Navy has lost a Convair Privateer somewhere over the Baltic. Three days after an air-sea search began, Alexei Vishinsky summoned the US ambassador to his office and complained that the plane had violated the "shores of captive Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, [where] the USSR has laid down heavy rocket installations and submarine pens, and has girded them all with high-powered radar detectors and a constant patrol of fighter planes and submarines." So the Russians shot it down. Time sticks gamely by the Navy position that it was shot down while well offshore, and chalks the subdued American response down to "awareness of the incidental perils of cold war."
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| * |
"We Who Serve" Congress is all a-flapdoodle about this and about that as the midterms close in. Though Estes Kefauver might get his Congressional inquiry into the syndicates, and Lister Hill might pay a price for trying to make the Democrats the party of white supremacy in Alabama and racial equality in New York and the north.
"King's Man" If you were wondering about how Sir Basil Brooke's visit to Bill O'Dwyer's New York went, "Not well," is the answer. Harry Truman vetoed the Kerr bill to reduce gas industry regulation, the Boy Scout's penny-collecting campaign to erect 8ft facsimiles of the Statue of Liberty in 800 city parks is a smashing success, Vogue thinks American women are too tense, the State Fair of New York is offering a $50,000 prize to the first person to produce an authentic interplanetary flying disc, and Utah's first Republican governor in 24 years is slashing budgets and imposing fiscal frugality left, right and centre. Well, mainly right.
"The Hollywood Ten" The ten "noisy" Hollywood screenwriters and directors convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to come clean about their communism to HUAC, have exhausted all their appeals. Ironically, if they do go to jail, it will be in the same federal prison currently housing their tormentor, ex-Congressman J. Parnell Thomas. And it looks as though Jack Parisi, arrested recently after ten years on the lamb, is going to walk on murder charges, and Jim Curley gets a Presidential pardon.
International
The first load of American military aid arrived in Italy and France this week. Communist demonstrators were pretty much a no-show, although the Christian Democrats of Europe all showed up for a big conference in a nice mountain resort in Italy where they agreed that Communism is bad.
"The Edge of the Precipice" Italy and Pakistan are one step forward, two steps back over Kashmir. Nehru and Liaquat Ali Kahn worked out an agreement that will allow some confessional refugees to return home, at which two "Moslem-hating members from riot-torn Bengal" resigned from Nehru's cabinet. The Security Council has appointed a mediator in the Kashmir boundary dispute, and war still hasn't started, which is nice.
The editor of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune is back from his world tour to report that Britain is spending "more than it can afford" on welfare, that France's government is "psychologically weak," that Germany is key to the future of Europe, that it is mainly Britain's Labour government that is keeping the United States of Europe, that America can save Southeast Asia from Russia with four hundred millions a year, although it has to bear in mind that Asians don't actually like imperialism, and that, unlike America with its absolutely perfect economy and society, other countries have problems with social inequality and would like that fixed. Given that there might be a world war, America had better keep on keeping on with defence spending and scientific research and development of new weapons.
"A Pale Blue Flash" A British European Airways Viking was struck by sabotage this week, as a bomb hidden in the toilet compartment very nearly brought it down in mid flight between London and Paris.
"Paralysis in Shanghai" Eighty-three Americans and other eligible people finally left Shanghai overland, and not by ship, as the US State Department insisted, arriving in Hong Kong, where they reported that Communism is bad and that Shanghai is a "dying city" because of it. Also, there was a bit of a mutiny or revolution or something in Makassar, promptly put down by the Indonesian government double crossing the leader, as near as I understand it.
"A Pair of Pants" The Russians are trying to get more consumer goods on the Russian market, in a typical example of Communist trickery. Also, there was a devastating fire in a little town in Japan, which is news because 37 inns and six hospitals burned down, and, more importantly, Time got to quote a genuine geisha girl. While in Italy the Fascist entertainer Federico Covella was arrested for giving three cheers for Mussolini. And Father Blandino de la Croce, of Naples, told the Mercedarian order that he had a new mission for them. It seems as though the Mercedarians used to organise ransoms for Christians enslaved by the Moors across the Mediterranean (team up with the pirates and you've got quite the nice racket there!).
But business has been slack what with there being no piracy in a hundred years, so Father Blandino suggests that they shift their efforts to Fascist war crimes convicts in Italian jails. That has got to look good on the Catholic Church in Italy! Although at least the Mercedarians have repudiated him. On the other hand, Cardinal Sapieha of Poland is very upset with the Communists there, Time is pleased to report. How hard is this whole "lie down with Fascists, get up with Fascists" thing to figure out?
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| The legendary St. Pedro Nolasco |
Princess Elizabeth is pregnant again.
"The Nine O'Clock News" A man claiming to be a Viet Minh assassin killed Vietnamese rice merchant Nguyen Van Tran in Paris this week, and the King Of All the Belgiums Except that Flat, Marshy Bit Over There is still sticking with his plan where he returns to Brussels, is restored to his kinging job, and then, sometime later, gets out of town, leaving his brother, Prince Baudouin, as regent. Take a hint, king, you're not wanted. Also in king-related news, the King of Greece has appointed Nicholas Pastiras as premier, Greece's nineteenth since the war. He is a very good king, Time thinks, because he did what he was told to do by the US ambassador in spite of his "personal distaste" for the man who exiled his father. (And had six members of the cabinet of the time executed by machine gun fire.)
Whilst in this hemisphere, Chile's President is still heating up things in Washington with his Latin flair, and Eva Peron is in trouble for wanting to throw a party for all the dockworkers who built the new Argentinian liner, 17 de Octubre, while Vickers would only invite 47 to lunch. Apparently this is Eva's fault because she should have known that a nice lunch for more than 47 workers would be mere political theatre, and who can afford that many cucumber sandwiches, anyway? In Managua, Nicaragua, drivers aren't sure they like these new "traffic lights" that get in the way of their Latin verve. Can you samba a taxicab? Probably.
Business
Motorola and Admiral stocks are through the roof because Wall Street has discovered television.
"$4 Billion Boost" Congress' federal housing bill is a $4 billion boost to the already hot housing market, mainly through mortgages, and so aimed at private home owners. I'm beginning to think we sold our San Francisco-area land much too early. Speaking of boom plays, what about Henry Jones' Cities Services, the natural gas utility combination play? Wall Street thought it would fall apart, but now it's thriving. So there, Wall Street!
"Britain's Entries" At an auto show in New York, the British auto industry wows. Thanks to devaluation, cheap is really cheap. The MG Midget is at $1850, the Austin sedan at $1480, FMC's four passenger Anglia is only $998. The British sold 16,000 cars in America in '48, only 14,000 in '49. Some hope for 50,000 in '50. 
Science, Medicine, Education
"Safe DDT" Mosquito News reports that while DDT accumulates in fatty tissues, there is no evidence that it is dangerous to humans.
"Better than the Germans?" GE invited the press to come see its rocket motor lab in Schenectady this week. It is 3000 acres and has plenty of "Keep Out," and "Boys Only" and "This Means You, Sally!" signs, which is one way that it is far superior to the Germans. Another way is that GE's motors now manage to burn pure alcohol fuel and not the alcohol mixed with 25% water that the Germans used to keep the temperature down. That makes GE's rockets that much better, although company spokesmen declined to boast about how many GE motors have actually been used down at White Sands, which makes the safe answer, "None."
"Twinkling Mysteries" Astronomers like to look at the night sky, but all that air gets in the way. Air! What is it good for? So of late the British have been pointing their radio antennae at the sky and looking for celestial radio waves that burn right through the atmosphere. So far so good, but now they're seeing some kind of pure-radio "point sources" that seem to produce about 100 million times more radio energy than the sun. They also "twinkle" when two nearby receivers compare them, which might be due to the waves running into electron clouds in space. Space sure is weird!
A box feature at the bottom of the page explains the turbo-prop, now that it is time because the Allison turboprop is finally flying on a few test planes.
"The Rosebud Blossoms Out" Henry Rosenfeld has turned knife-pleated nylon into "carriage trade dresses for subway prices," and now has added a line of low-priced womens' suits. And William Fullbright's banking committee has found some more trouble at RFC, this time involving the RFC staking some Texas oilmen who used it to take Massachusetts investors for a ride. "Texmass securities have no value," the company was forced to admit to the SEC, but still they were somehow able to use them as collateral to get RFC money. The Agriculture Department now has almost 100 million pounds of Government butter on hand, and will give 15 million lbs of it away to any welfare agency that wants it.
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| Some turboprops have got a bit further along |
"A Challenge to Tom Parr" The AMA holds an annual George Dock Lecture, in honour of Dr. George Dock, who is 90 and has been practicing since '49 and has written many, many papers, and is in general a great guy and a good doctor and really amazing. Tom Parr is allegedly a guy who lived to be 152 and Dock said that if he lives much longer he'd be a challenge to Tom Parr, and I guess you had to be there because I laughed so hard that milk came out of my nose.
"The Case Against TB" Just to begin with the ending, TB is 152 years old. No, on second reading, that's not it. Tuberculosis is a very deadly disease that many people have, including a half million Americans, and it is not in any way "under control," and people shouldn't think that it is, which is why we need a mass vaccination campaign. This has the feeling of something someone says when someone else says that TB is under control.
Philadelphia's school system offers "in service courses" for teachers. Hmm. Time dips into the catalogue and discovers "Charm School and Personality Development," and "Voice as an Important Asset in Teaching." HMM.
"The Great Ideas" Remember Mortimer Adler of the University of Chicago? Remember how he boiled down the Great Ideas into a wall of Great Books? Well, now he has a Synopticon, which is a 2500p. concordance of the Great Books. I don't know. Can someone get it down to a column? I'm a busy man. (Shifts his weight to write on his other bum in the evening silence. Honestly, an air base shouldn't be this quiet. Maybe if they had more planes? Things would certainly get hotter on the mainland!) Oh, by the way, write in for your cheque and you're still eligible for the "patrons" edition of the Great Books at $500. Also, Kentucky has just amended its 1904 segregation law to allow colleges to put Negroes and whites in the same schools. Berea College has promptly taken the state up on that, because it was founded as an interracial school, which must have made the last fifty years tough.
Also, I think there's probably an implication that no other Kentucky school has done the same, which is interesting considering that the purpose of the law is probably to make sure that Kentucky doesn't have to build Negro-only law and medical schools.
The Cinema section is long and early this issue, because Betty Hutton is the cover story. It feels like betraying my he-man red blooded American (well, Canadian, but don't tell Pat McCarren!) manhood to ignore Betty Hutton, but that's what I'm going to do. This means that we skip The New Pictures this week. I hope you don't miss it.
Radio and Television, Press, Art, People
"Not Too Heavy" Faye Emerson has moved her talk show from radio to TV on NBC. Time thinks that an amiable evening talk show might work out. Also, the Big Ten has banned live TV coverage of all Big Ten football games this fall because of adverse effect on attendance. Cy Howard's Life with Luigi is a success like My Friend Irma.
After a long story that boils down to the 1950 Nieman fellows and Harvard English instructor Theodore Morrison agreeing that newspapers are badly written because most newspapermen can't write, we move on to the axe falling at the Chicago Sun-Times, which has cancelled its evening edition and laid off one in five editorial employees plus another 250 of the other sort. Time is of the opinion that Marshall Fields can't run a newspaper. So there. Oh, and the Daily Telegraph's publisher is retiring after a million years at the helm, in which he has seen circulation increase from LXVI readers to almost a million, which goes to show that he is good at his job, and gets to see his hand-picked successor, succeed him. TV people continue to worry about the effects of TV on children, and the right way to counter it with high-minded television shows, because there's nothing, I repeat nothing, that going middlebrow won't fix.
A psychiatrist from Vienna holds a show in which minor modernist paintings are mixed in with paintings produced by mental patients. Critics can't tell the difference, which just goes to show that six-year-old children are schizophrenic. Did I mix up two different punch lines? Also, Italian sculptor Alberto Sani was born a poor peasant, and is almost blind, and does sculptures that look like Roman frescoes, which probably goes to show that he is a reincarnated Roman or something like that.
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| That's the second obscure mid-century artist in a row. Good on Time! |
Joan Crawford likes to wear a stole, high (wedge heels) and a negligee to photo sessions. Margaret Truman is making good money on the concert circuit. Former heavyweight champion James Jeffries thinks that modern boxing is for sissies.
Raymond Chandler thinks that the Saturday Review of Literature only likes the "nice" sort of whodunnit. Aly Khan was in London for the races, Bernarr Macfaddden is on TV, Ava Gardner flew on the same plane that was carrying King Peter of Yugoslavia to suck up to Francesco Franco, and was one whole lot more interesting, and Seretse Khama was allowed a five day trip to his homeland to check in with his pregnant wife. (The one who is a nice white girl from London. Everyone take time out to be shocked now.) Garry Davis and Audrey Peters have married, to catch you up with this breathtaking story about the boy who was so awful as to repudiate his American citizenship in an attempt to become a "citizen of the world." It is very down-home sweet and not at all cruel and sinister that Governor Talmadge is unbeatable in Georgia. Mickey Rooney has had his third child, which just seems wrong to me. Princess Fatmeh of Iran has married a Los Angeles doctor. Audie Murphy has divorced, and Andrew Ponzi has died along with Marshal Fezvi Cakmak and Bainbridge Colby and maybe someone I'm forgetting.
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| Women's World, it says. Vodka is Joan Crawford's secret to a good party, it says. |
Books
Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not For Burning is pretty good considering that it is a play in verse done up as a book, something Time thought it wouldn't like. Jay and Audrey Walz's The Bizarre Sisters is about a historic scandal from 1793 that really, really sounds bizarre. I would look it up, but there's nothing in Funk and Wagnalls! Robert Gathorne-Hardy's Recollections of Logan Pearsall Smith is about --no, you guess. I'm not telling you. Oh, okay. It's about Logan Pearsall Smith, who is no-one you've ever heard of, but he is really interesting, Robert Gathorne-Hardy says. He wrote books like Trivia and More Trivia, and just when he couldn't get more trivial, hired on Robert Gathorne-Hardy as an assistant. Or one of many assistants, because you need lots of assistants to write books about trivia. Then they quarrelled (lover's quarrel?) and it all ended well. I can't think of a thing to say. Livingston Biddle's Main Line is about rich people in Philadelphia, who will all know exactly what "Main Line" means, unlike me. Time assumes that I do know what it means, and then moves on to the main matter of the review, which is to patronise the author and cut him off at the knees.
I wish I had a real library.
Aviation Week, 24 April 1950
News Sidelights reports that phosphorescent paint is being tried out at Washington National, with two strips painted on runway 33 and pilots asked to comment on how well they show up. Fine is the answer, until they are obliterated by tire marks and oil smudges. Also, it might help if someone came up with a non-skid formula. The aviation industry is the third biggest campaign contributor to the Democratic party. The good old Arcata Landing Aids Experimental Station is officially dead, because Arcata now has a complete high-intensity approach light system and there's no point in further experiments at that site. Work continues at Indianapolis, and Cleveland and Newark may be added. The military is pleased as punch that MATS is being cut by a third, because it can't see why its money is going to run an airline. Senator Brewster is mad as hell at the continuing industry/government "American aviation is private enterprise and flies on its own except when it needs Government money, now fork it over, Pops" position. He thinks some kind of consistent and predictable relationship would be more effective.
News Digest reports that Colonial Airlines just completed its 20th fatal accident free year. Some clown suggests using the B-47 as a long distance cargo hauler to gain experience in jet transport and retain world transport leadership against Britain and Canada. The second Martin XB-51 has been turned over to the air force, and the first Handley Page Hermes 4 has been turned over to BOAC.
Industry Observer corrects itself. The new Allison J-35-A23 has 9200lbs thrust, not 9700. The B-47C will be in production sooner than expected, as the B-56. The Bristol 173 will be the first modern European double-rotor helicopter and will carry 10-12 passengers. Douglas hopes to have one of its C-124s on display for OPERATION SWARMER, and the Marines shot down all the Air Force fighters (practically) in a recent air exercise, F9Fs versus F-94s. The mid-air failure of an Ercoupe was caused by dive speeds over structural limits. The two J-35s on the tip of the Hughes XH-17 jet helicopters have had the first compressor stages removed and replaced by annuluses, because that works just fine.
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| Bristol 173 by RuthAS |
"$100 Million Missile Programme Under Fire"
The USAF's Stuart Report, which basically found the tri-service guided missile development programme to be bogged down with no production in sight, and which recommended cancelling five programmes and consolidating the remaining six into three, is in trouble because some members of the Stuart Committee didn't agree to all the recommendations. The Committee is still waiting on some of the individual teams, but preliminary findings are that "almost without exception" there is exorbitant waste and little or no real progress. Of the supersonic missiles, two will not be readyfor flight testing until 1951, the last two not until 1954. Boeing's GAPA, a ground-to-air missile with a Mach 2.5 speed, weighing 5000lbs with a 200lb warhead, is furthest along, although that is because the Air Force was prioritising demonstrations of it to impress Congress. The Navy's air-to-air missile, the Meteor, is currently undergoing guidance testing and will fly in '53. Hughes' MX-904 will do its first Air Force tests later this year but won't fly until 1955. The Navy's Lacrosse is amphibious and will fly in 1954. The Douglas WAC Corporal, best known from its White Sand tests, is available for "immediate emergency test," whatever that means, and considering that it is an improved V-2, you'd hope so! A range of larger and smaller developments codenamed Hermes I to III will be tested in 1952.Eight missiles for sea use and eleven for strategic air operations are being tested. Three of the Air Force missiles are air-to-surface weapons based on wartime guided bombs. Finally, the only "guided missile" that is actually available for immediate use is our old friend the Banshee, a Boeing B-29 drone.
Congress is NOT impressed.
"Missile Motors Work Gets Results" So this is the same article as ran in Time except Aviation Week tagged along on the second day and saw the inside of the "Malta" staion. There, they witness the Hermes, which is associated with a 16,000lb thrust motor. That gave GE an excuse to fire the monster for the press. GE chemists also explained that they are experimenting with other fuels besides alcohol. They really like Diborane. Needless to say the Malta station has firing pits and an ultra-modern control room where men and women in white lab coats can flip switches and spit acronyms at each other.
Alexander McSurely, "Aircraft Fabrication Revolution" Twelve years after English Electric's aluminum extrusion presses started work on the Lysander,
Reynolds invites the press to see its brand-new extrusion presses and witness the "fabrication revolution." I would guess that the older presses can't turn out ribbed pieces, which allows for integral stiffeners. In the future, wider presses are needed and flatness and straightness tolerances for pieces passed through the extrusion mill and then heat treated. Magnesium pieces are due the same treatment.
Aviation Week maybe a bit short of material, because it publishes another long column of aviation industry salaries (which makes that article from last week about the President of Safeway who earns $350,000/year stand out even more) and also a long list of major aviation contributors to the Democratic Party.
Alexander Kartveli, "Power Study for Long-Range Transports" Republic's top engineer explains that long range aircraft need engines, but he's not really going to talk about this, because this article is just an excuse to go down memory lane and reminisce about the Republic Rainbow, which, if you'll recall, had a Pratt and Whitney R-4360, one of the earliest applications of the turbo-exhaust thrust augmentation that's been such a struggle in practice. Republic designed the hell out of the Rainbow to get 40 passengers, 6200 gallons of fuel and 10,000lb payload on 120,000lbs all up to run New York-London at 400mph and New York-Los Angeles at 450mph. But no-one bought our visionary scheme, so we threw some Allison turboprops on the model (can't actually fly something that doesn't exist yet!) to see what happens. Oh, and we changed the wing, too. Anyway, this imaginary plane flies very imaginarily satisfactorily,
so just imagine how good the Republic with turbojets that I'm imagining right now, does! When I compare the two imaginary planes with the almost-imaginary one, I find that the turboprop is the best.
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| In fairness to Alex, this Buck Rogers ship is worth getting nostalgic over. |
"RAF Control Knobs" Ahem. They're to be standardised from now on, so that aircrew can't turn the wrong knob on by mistake in the dark. Ahem.
"Temperature Data on Laminated Plastics" A useful data series.
"Copying Table" A. V. Roe Canada's Malton works is showing off a three dimensional copying table suitable to doing articles in any size. It's a master table and a work table connected by a pantograph linkage. Accuracy is ensured by scotch-taping the lines.
"Computer 'Flies' Aircraft Designs" The lads at the Institute (Rooty-toot!) have built an analogue computer to test out flight designs. So far it has had 5000 successful runs, each replacing 100-1000 hours of work on a desk calculator.
New Aviation Products reports the "smallest standard audio transformer in the world," by United Transformer of New York, NY, a new micro-switch by Micro Switch, of Freeport, Illinois, which now has momentary-contact double-throw switches, and a tiny dc-ac "Mini-chopper" from Servomechanisms, of Mineola, New York, suitable for modulation, de-modulation, rectification and inversion of "intelligence signals." (I'm not sure why they have to specify that they are intelligence signals, but it may be intended to indicate that signals in analogue control systems have to be cut off pretty square to avoid backlash. )
Out in the wide world, air traffic controllers aren't worried about jets, in spite of warnings that they'll be blazing through the stacks like a rocket. John Christie of the McGraw-Hill World News Service, reports that "Tito Turns from East to West." Pan American is upset that CAB keeps getting tougher about air mail pay standards, United is adopting amber covers instead of red to make lighting conditions in cockpits easier during night flights.
Letters E. A. Bostelman of Southern Airways writes to explain how his airline uses GCA and ILS, combined use being required since they do not have GCA at six of their airports. Kenneth Mehrhoff of Wright Aeronautical is very pleased with the excellent job that Irv Stone did in preparing the Aviation Week article on their new ramjert laboratory. At least one Aviation Week freelancer knows how to do it! K. S. B., of Anaheim, California, points out that while the Air Force is retiring the F-80, the Navy is keeping the Corsair in production, which goes to show that the Navy is awful. H. W. Richardson, editor of Construction Methods and Equipments of New York, is severely not impressed by two airliner doors popping open in flight on the same day. Earl Thiesinger, executive editor of Bus Transportation, likes the way Aviation Week takes on the railways.
Editorial has Robert Woods pointing out that air accidents are hardly a problem at all by commemorating Colonial Airlines' twenty year record in 20 point bold type. If everyone did what Colonial did, the industry would be much safer.
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