Saturday, December 26, 2020

Postblogging Technology, September 1950, 2: Pee Before You Go!




R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver, Canada.


Dear Father:

September rolls to its end, and with it the peasants' attempt to challenge the mighty United States. I almost feel sorry for them, as though in another world and time it might have been an underdog story. But, in the end, a country of 10 million people couldn't resist the power, and especially air power, of the most powerful country in the world. 

Fortunately for those who like to worry about things, we have the ongoing Menace of Red China, which brings you to your loving daughter-in-law, rusticating in Formosa while we wait for America to do whatever it is going to do here. Besides overfly us and deploy a few hush-hush squadron detachments, that is. With British troops in Korea, it is hard to believe that we're not going to come to some kind of agreement over piracy soon, and then I'll have nothing to do except keep house and write these letters.

Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie

PS I honestly hope that I get The Economist back soon. I know that I've missed an entire cycle of overtaken predictions of doom, but I'm sure I'll be back in the swing of things in no time. 




Time, 18 September, 1950


Letters

The article about Congress blaming each other over Korea has attracted some female comment, evenly divided between "Let's not fight in front of the kids" and "the Army." Sergeant Charles Mitchell speculates about the identity of "Seoul City Sue," and Time confirms that she is former American Methodist missionary Ann Wallace Suhr, who left the mission to marry a Korean "leftist" in "the Thirties," and is probably broadcasting under duress. Three co-signing soldiers and Pauline Mellon of Guam, agree that Time is being just war-mongering enough for their tastes. Priscilla Shenk of California agrees with getting rid of medical interns. Two correspondents are worried that cloud seeding will lead to too much rain. Jim Parsons, of Sandpoint, Idaho recalls an abortive scheme to try cloud seeding to get rid of lightning clouds over fire areas. Lee Tod, a member of the Sierra Club climbing team that found the bodies of Topper Reynolds and Stephen Wasserman pleads with young climbers to get proper lessons before they try to climb cliffs. Our Publisher wants us to know that all the smart foreign papers are over the moon about Time, even in Portugal and Argentina, where it is banned. 

National Affairs

"Ambling Through Washington" Everyone agrees that Washington isn't mobilising fast enough. In the wake of the Big Three meeting, Senator Lodge is calling for ten American divisions for Europe this year and another ten next year. He thinks that there needs to be at least 60 Western divisions in Germany to hold the line, and that the Allies have two years to accomplish this before the Russians have enough atom bombs for WWIII. 
I am so looking forward to reading the Inchon coverage over breakfast! (Reggie is doing an overnight to CLASSIFIED.)

"Everybody's Fight" The President's speech last night forecast $30 billion(!) for defence by this June and higher annual spending in the next few years. Thus there will be less to spend at home. He is calling for longer hours and for plants to stop making civilian goods. The $5 billion tax increase just voted will be followed by more. Everyone should spend less, but while consumer credit will be tightened and a Price Stabilisation Board, there will be no wage ceilings for now. 

"Texas Watchdog" Freshman Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson is making a name for himself as the Chair of the new Senate committee on preparedness. A short article gives us a bit of slacking off at the rubber factories and a bit of background on Johnson, the "helicopter" campaigner, you might remember. 

"When I Make a Mistake" President Truman got mad at Representative McDonough and said that the Marines have a "propaganda machine almost equal to Stalin's." So obviously the President is in big trouble, because the Marines have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's. This week, he went to a Marine veterans' shindig in Seattle. Next week, he caves in and puts the Marine Corps commandant on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The week after, he asks why there aren't any Coloured Marines? Just kidding. He won't do that! Speaking of people being in trouble, Louis Johnson is probably on his way out, and Senator Schoeppel is in trouble for suggesting that the Assistant Secretary of the Interior is some kind of secret communist for wanting Alaska to be a state when it is next to Russia, which was too dumb for the GOP caucus but not Kansas voters. (Who mainly want Alaska and Hawaii to not be states because they are full of coloured people who will vote Democratic.)Time is super-duper pleased that Tom Dewey is running for Governor of New York against Harry Truman because he will probably swing the down ballot races towards Republicans. 

"Ups and Downs" J. Parnell Thomas is out of jail, while Homer L. Loomis is going in, having graciously agreed to serve his Georgia sentence for starting a race riot in Atlanta. Tom Murphy, the prosecutor in the Hiss trial, will go back to private practice as soon as the appeal is done, because he is not going to get a judgeship, so why bother? After a careful explanation of how libel laws work,  and perhaps the possible consequences for someone's husband's job, Counterattack's Red-Pink purge committee has agreed that it is not, and never was, a purge committee. Ambassador Jakob Malik is a terrible person because he is putting in carpet that is guaranteed to wear for three years.  

I don't get it, either.


"Ready for Trouble" Nome, Alaska, is 500 miles beyond the Alaska garrison's stop line. When the Russians invade they will be in a half-hour's jet flight time of home base, which makes Mark Field at Nome indefensible. So the Air Force is evacuating it. And so as not to let the Nomeites have all the fun, the rest of the Air Force and Army, and all the dependents in Anchorage, are having their own exercise. All the wives and children in Anchorage have to drive down to Whittier to pretend they are being evacuated in army transports, and all the Air Force ground crew have to dig trenches and build antiaircraft batteries on the airfields. A fine time was had by all, except when thr Army forgot to set up pit stops on the way to Whittier.  

"Black Day in Wyoming Valley" Remember, the state is named after the valley, which is in Pennsylvania! Which is where the he 109th Field Artillery Battalion of the National Guard was raised, and where it was outward bound from when the Pennsie crashed a troop train carrying tinto the Spirit of St. Louis, five miles from Newcomerstown, Ohio, killing 30 gunners and wounding 60. 

Background for War

"War Now? Or When? Or Never?" Time looks at the "pros and cons" of just out and out attacking the Russians right now in a "preventive war." Pro: We'd blow up the Russians before they can blow up us. Con: We can't blow them up enough to stop horrible things happening, like the overrunning of Europe and the blowing up of between 10 and 60 American "sites." Conclusion: It would be a "blunder of tragic proportions." What about war in 1953? Everyone would be atom bombed into the Stone Age, but if we have those 60 divisions in Germany, Western Europe won't be overrun by Communism, so this could be fine. What about war in the nebulous "later"? Preparing for it is just a "disguised policy of drift." So there you go. War in 1953 it is. Which means we need to get cracking on the radar fence, home defence fighter squadrons, civil defence, and "holding the line against Communism in Asia, and pressing it back wherever opportunity offers or can be created." 

Foreign News

"Rainbow Chasing" EXERCISE RAINBOW  is the first NATO exercise in Europe. An American armoured force was the Eastern aggressors, while the 1st Royal Dragoons and some French Algerian troops were on the defence. The scripted exercise called for the defenders to fall back, regroup, and victoriously counterattack, which had Time scolding that this is impossible with the current "8 to 1" Russian advantage, and that the French better get in line on German rearmament soon. 


"Last Call for Europe" This week's cover story is German rearmament, Time checks in with West Berlin's mayor,  Ernst Reuter, who is Time's sort of German. 

Hungary has a church-state agreement. Jan Smuts has returned from his illness to lead the United Party again. The Philippines are in grave danger of being overrun by the Hukbalahup Communist insurgency. 

"Down to Work" The Indonesian Republicans never liked the "United States of Indonesia" that the Dutch imposed on them in the peace settlement, and now it is gone. The new Republic of Indonesia has a new cabinet (with a "thoroughgoing anti-communist" premier). He is also promising to kick the Dutch out of Western New Guinea, even if they don't want to go. 


"The Evil Root" So what is the cause of all of this evil that is afflicting the world? Why don't we start with Ireland, where the "oppressed tenant farmers took eagerly to the "lazybed" method . . . [and] were happy enough to restrict their diet . . . [to this root of all evil] . . . and to spend their free time lying on hillsides thinking dark thoughts on the British and nipping on the poteen." I think that's tongue in cheek?

 Anyway, I have given away the answer, which is "the potato," without revealing the questioner, who is Dr. Redcliffe Nathan Salaman, who compares the potato to the "Jerusalem artichoke," which arrived in France at about the same time and "faded out of the picture without leaving a mark on the structure of society in France or anywhere else." So I take it that the indictment of the potato has to do with the changes it made in the "structure of society" between the class-bound, aristocratic monarchy of the Old Regime and the democratic Fourth Republic. Or not, because the bad example is the Irish Famine, which is now suddenly the cause of Irish Anglophobia. I wonder Dr. Salaman's actual lecture to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (for that is what this article is about) was a bit more serious. 

War in Asia


"Battle of Korea" The fighting around Pusan is continuing. American troops are being worn down, and "it is no longer fashionable" to say that the Communists are running out of men. On the contrary, US Intelligence now warns that two more North Korean tank brigades, armed with 84 brand-new T-34s, are about to be committed. (Reggie points out that 84 tanks is two new tank battalions, the way the capitalist world does things, anyway.) US carrier pilots report damaging 35 tanks at Pyongyang, suggesting that further reinforcements are on the way. The British brigade is in the field, the North Korean chief of staff, General Kang Kun, has "died at the front," and a Russian plane has attacked a Corsair in the Yellow Sea and his body has been recovered. Or, on later review, flown over the US carriers and been attacked by a Corsair.

And in this hemisphere, how about that President Peron? (He sent Congress a law strengthening penalties against spies and saboteurs this week.) Also, Brazil's top admiral was in Washington to kick the tyres on some hardly used American warships that we only steamed to the church on Sunday. In Canada, Time brushed up on its French and read Le Devoir, which, it turns out, has some odd opinions having to do with MacArthur being a crusader of questionable motives, American adventurism being as dangerous as Russian, and American war correspondents in Korea being disgusting drunks. All of this in way of introducing Le Devoir's correspondent in Korea, one Jacques Hebert, who is awful. 

Business

"Headed for the Black?" President Truman predicted a $5.1 billion deficit for this year, but the economy is booming so fast that tax receipts are up 7% and expenditures are down 26%. With higher taxes, total revenues are likely to be about $43.1 billion, and even with the defence spree, expenditures are likely to be only $44 billion. If the GNP keeps on advancing at its current rate, and taxes also rise as scheduled, the budget will likely be in the black next year. 

"Busy Signal" William Henry Harrison, President of ITT and not undead former President and victor of Tippecanoe, is the head of the National Production Authority, which is in charge of voluntary strategic materials allocations, and has been for all of four weeks, so he really doesn't have very much to say for himself. The consumer credit curb is the only thing that has happened so far, but still much lighter than those of WWII. 



"Steel on Wheels" The Burlington Northern just rolled out the first of 35 new stainless steel, double-level commuter cars in hope of "weaning many a new customer from the highways [to] . . . put its money losing commuting service back in the black." This gives Time a chance to profile Budd, where Edward, Jr. took over from Budd., Sr. (as Time puts it) when Senior died in 1946. Also in rail news, the Pennsy is ordering 214 diesel locomotives at $55 million. The National Industrial Conference is warning employers against WWII-style 60 hour work weeks o nthe grounds that they don't work.

"Dogfight" Northwest Airlines, which was singing the praises of its new fleet of Stratocruisers in ads just last week, is suing Boeing this week over  late deliveries of buggy planes it can't fly more than 3--4 hours a day compared with 10--12 for the DC-4. Boeing blames the CAA for burdensome obligations and the unions for delaying production and suggests that Northwest must be mad to say such things.


Fashion visits H. W. Gossard, of Chicago, which is trying to make husbands "girdle conscious." As in, more husbands should wear girdles? Ronnie heartilly approves! No, wait, it turns out that they should be shopping for tighter girdles for their wives. Ronnie doesn't approve. At all!


Science, Medicine, Education


"The Happy Prisoners" Dr. H. Hediger has a book out, Animals in Captivity, which concludes that animals are perfectly happy in zoos and people are just being bleeding hearts for thinking otherwise. Except for the part where "psychopaths" visit zoos and hit them with hammers, poke out their eyes, cut pieces off them, poison them deliberately, feed them razor blades, fishhooks and broken glass, and throw tracts against sin into terrariums. 

"Analyzing Auroras" The University of Chicago's Aden B. Meinel has confirmed that the northern lights are caused by being bombarded by hydrogen from the Sun. And North American is pleased to announce that it has installed retracting doors in the bomb bays of the B-45, which reduces turbulence that is hard on bombs when they are dropped at high speeds. Don't quote me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that's a new idea. 

"Microscopic Invader" Two "Yalemen," Drs. Joseph L. Melnick and John B. LeRoy, announced that they ad used an electronic microscope on the poliomyelitis virus this week, "with surprising results." They don't sound surprising to me. We already knew that polio can kill nerve cells, which don't regenerate, and that it is more dangerous to fatigued or hungry people. The news is that polio penetrates into the nucleus of the nerve cells as well as their surrounding protoplasm. But I thought virri reproduced by "hijacking" cells? I guess my liberal arts education hasn't solved all my journalism problems!

And people are talking about updating the Hippocratic Oath, while other people are talking about not updating it. 

"Rats, Fleas and Men" Dr. Rolla Eugene Dyer, who first went into private practice in 1915 before promptly rolling over into the Public Health Service, is retiring this year at 64. I am sure that Southerners are in high dudgeon about this being some kind of stunt. He has fought bubonic plague, yellow fever and typhus, and the title refers to that time he got typhus from lab rats. More recently he has been in charge of giving out research grants, which might be why his retirement is such a to-do.

"After 125 Years" Gregory Swanson will be the first Coloured to attend the University of Virginia since Thomas Jefferson founded it 125 years ago. Specifically, he is going as a law student, since Virginia has not been able to provide him with an equivalent education at a Coloured school. This is a bit complicated, in that Swanson is already  a lawyer with his own practice. (I read in another paper that he has a degree from Howard.) He will be going to Virginia as a graduate student.  

"Tests and Poisons" No-one has wanted to be the first person to come out and denounce Dianetics, so this week the American Psychological Association, added Ron Hubbard to its naughty list. Since Dr. Frederick Schuman wrote a letter to The New Republic denouncing an unfavourable review of Dianetics, the APA also denounced Schuman. Berkeley, Dianetics, Frederick Shuman, all in the same week. That's quite a list. 


"Stay Away" The American Psychological Association is urging its members not to take jobs with the University of California over its habit of firing allegedly communist professors. Completely not related: Did you know that the Foreign Service has its own college teaching foreign languages? It was started in 1943 because there aren't nearly enough Americans who speak foreign. It might also join up with Johns Hopkins for more institutional stability. Also unrelated to either story, Dwight Young of the Dayton Journal Herald surveyed 54 newspaper editors about their opinion of "the way journalism is taught." I would say, "about journalism degrees," of which editors are no fans, but the survey also covered the ideal education for a new journalist, which turns out to be a liberal arts degree.  Yay! It is a good day to be a foreign-speaking liberal arts graduate!


Art, Press, Radio and Television, People

"Provided" The Vatican is holding a conference on religious art to sort out what the Pope meant when he said that churches should allow modern art, provided it should be etc, etc. And thus was born a showing of 1400 approved pieces of religious art to show what was on, and a conference to determine what the "provided" provides for. Everyone agreed not to agree, because agreeing on what makes art, kills art. That forger who forged all the classic Dutch paintings has died, and his collection of forged paintings has been sold off. Best price was for his "Vermeer," Christ in the Temple, which he painted after he was caught to show that he was a real forger. It went for $800
By Photographer Koos Raucamp - GaHetNa (Nationaal Archief NL), Copyrighted free use, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36983448

 "Last Farewell" Frank Emery, wounded covering the war in Korea two weeks ago, is dead in the mid-air explosion of a C-54 headed back from Tokyo to Korea.

Did you know that there are official British and American papers circulated in Russia? The British one, Soviet Friend, ceased publication last week, and the American one may follow.  The Jewish Forward, the foremost Yiddish newspaper in New York, or, more precisely, the whole world, is having a birthday or something. Anyway, reason enough for Time to blow a page or two on it before giving a bit of space to the labour dispute that's stopping British magazines.

Time likes CBS' Mr. Imagination, starring Paul Tripp, but not Truth or Consequences, which moves over to television this week. 

"How to Attract Women" "Vienna-born" psychologist, Dr. Ernest Dichter, has a blockbuster for the TV industry. Women who claim to not like daytime TV are only fooling. What they really don't like is the guilt they feel about watching TV and not getting their work done. They're also bored stiff by the "domestic and educational programmes" that they can watch without feeling guilty. He advices TV to make entertaining shows that say that they are educational. 

Gypsy Rose Lee, Sir Thomas Beacham, Tennessee Williams, Ingrid Bergman, Roberto Rossellini, Anna Magnani, Ernest Hemingway, John O'Hara and Shakespeare get into the first rush. The Rossellini's marriage might be in trouble, Hemingway's new book is terrible but John O'Hara liked it, and Beecham is terrible. Speaking of, taking a long breath, the next paragraph opens with Claire Chennault, who is quite looking forward to a war with Red China, with Al Jolson, Marlon Brando and Vivian Leigh following on for no particular reason. Well, the last two are doing movie publicity, which I guess is a reason. Third paragraph: Yolane Betbeze (which is a real name), is the new Miss America. Time tastefully provides her measurements (35-24-35 1/2, 119lbs, 5ft 5 1'2"). For all of that she gets a convertible, a pretty generous scholarship of $5000, and a "chance to earn $50,000 through personal appearances." 

Also, this is Grandma Moses week in Albany in honour of her 90th birthday. 


Harold Laski's $54,000 estate goes to his wife. Tallulah Bankhead, H. L. Mencken, Dean Acheson,  Pat McCarren, Bing Crosby, Dwight Eisenhower, Noel Coward,Gustaf V, William B. Kean, Curt Simmons, Eddie Rickenbacker, Arthur Godfrey and Audie Murphy round things out. Just to put it all in perspective, Rickenbacker gets mentioned in bold because his son is joining the air force. Fame belongs to the famous who get more because it is their right.  Except Audie Murphy, who has dark good looks going for him. Judy Canova is married. William Olaf Stapledon, Harvey Dow Gibson, Sigmund Gale, Desiderio Roman, Field Marshal Smuts, and Brigadier General Jefferson Randolph Kean have died.




The New Pictures

Born to Be Bad sounds quite exciting. It's right there in the title! Does it measure up? Well, it has Joan Fontaine as the very bad girl, but she is a bad bad girl and the director is bad, so that the man she fools has to play "a man born to be had."  My Blue Heaven is Hollywood's "first musical set in a TV studio." Movie TV, Time points out, is crisp and Technicolor, so not like TV at all. The plot. "a tasteless hodge-podge," is too much for Grable, or most of the rest of the cast, although Mitzi Gaynor does her best. Madeleine is about a Scotswoman who might or might not have murdered her French lover with arsenic in his cocoa. (I'm bitterly angry I can't make a Proust joke because you don't read Proust!) Ahem. The jury found "not proven," which is that funny thing Scottish juries do, leaving it to the film makers to sort it out. Time liked it, sort of. A Life of Her Own is the kind of movie that must make Lana Turner regret coming back to movies. Time goes on to make some ungallant remarks of the girdle variety. 




Books

Guthrie Wilson's Brave Company is a good, realistic war novel. Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki seems like front page news for the most sensationalist paper (take a bow, Time!) and not a short book review, but here it is. If you haven't heard, and I can't imagine  you  haven't, Heyerdahl is the leader of six intrepid Norwegians who set out from the coast of Peru on a balsa-log raft to prove that ancient South Americans could have been the ancestors of the Polynesians. I guess Time's take is that the expedition doesn't come close to proving its point, but the book is the best man-against-the-sea yarn of the year, so a book review is where it belongs. Kaze Tashikau's Journey to the Missouri is his version of the Japanese journey through WWII that ended on the battleship Missouri. It turns out that the war wasn't so bad due to its mainly being about anti-communism and anti-imperialism, that regrettable American episode aside. Frank Hibben's Hunting American Bears is about . . . hunting bears. So if you like that, you'll like this. Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing is about the "spiritual defeat of a misfit couple in their war with the harsh realities of the veldt." Cheery! 




Aviation Week, 18 September 1950

News Digest reports that the Convair Liner has been recertified for a gross takeoff weight of 41,790lbs, that the first KB-29P flying boom tankers have been delivered to 97th Aerial Refuelling Squadron at Biggs AFB, Texas, that the DC-6 accident near Denver last month has been traced to a faulty Curtiss-Wright propeller, that the director of research at Solar Aircraft has just died at 43. Doesn't say "suddenly," but doesn't give a cause of death, either. Point is, time to dump Solar Aircraft shares! MATS is continuing to cut back civilian contracts on the Pacific Air Bridge while William Wildhack has been promoted from running one laboratory to r unning another laboratory at the National Bureau of Standards. Which I mention because of the name. 

Industry Observer reports that the Air Force and Army are going to have a joint convertaplane competition at Wright Field. The Navy is testing dippable sonars on a borrowed Sikorsky H-19A ahead of delivery of its HO4S-1. A Navy Banshee intercepted a B-36 over New York the other day, but it doesn't count because it was only 17,000ft and the B-36 was one of the old ones without the pods. Speaking of B-36 engines, Aviation Week notes the Ford contract to build Wasp Majors at the Dodge Plant in Chicago (which is the real name for "the old Tucker plant," as Time calls it.) Boeing is stepping up production of the B-47. How do you do that when you're not producing it yet?

"CAA's New Avionics Program Disclosed" The CAA will be spending $53 million in its 1952 programme to establish air navigation facilities. Most of the money will be spent on new equipment under the SC-31 "transitional all weather programme," especially Air Surface Detection Equipment, which is a "new radar-type systems for seeing and regulating runways in bad visibility. ASDE is being developed at the Air Force's Watson Laboratories in New Jersey, the one that is supposed to move to Rome Air Force Base but keeps unaccountably not moving. Five will roll out in 1952, while the rest of the money is spent finishing the DME contract and more omniranges and airport surveillance and precision approach radars.

"Plane Licensing" The Defence Department is going to let manufacturers export the F-86, F-84 C-119 and DC-4M. Since two of these planes are already being made in Canada, it seems like about time! 

Alexander McSurely, "Turboprop Future Seen Bright" The latest from P and W via McSurely is that the T-34 is still the best ever and foreshadows a bright future for turboprops. Certain experts at the Navy Air Test Centre think that the T-34 is only the beginning and that 7000shp plants that run on air are imminent. I'm sorry, at below 0.5lb/hp hr.  The T-34, now test flying in the nose of a B-17, gets 0.821. Pratt and Whitney now no longer expect to develop a bigger piston engine than the R-4360.  

"NWA vs. Boeing" Since Aviation Week's usual approach to industry problems is to sweep them under the nearest rug, this little fight must be the worst thing since Mommy and Daddy got divorced. Forced to choose, our little magazine is going to side with Mommy Boeing. Northwest is well known to be in financial difficulties and all of this talk of Stratocruiser unreliability is just face-saving. 

"Britain Displays Year's Work" After the incredible show last year, 1950 is a bit of a letdown. The main progress has been in engines, with the new planes mainly new models of old. The wooshy ones were the ones with Avon and Sapphire power, so that's the big deal. 


"Vickers Supermarine 535 Fighter Bows In" Equipped with a Nene (still!) the 535 has the greatest sweepback of any British fighter, but still uses a tail wheel in addition to the regular tricycle undercarriage. Performance is classified, but it looks good except when back on its tailwheel. 

George L. Christian, "New Trend at Plug Conference" Champion Spark Plug sponsored an ignition conference in Toledo that ran from Sept 5th to the 7th. The trend, if you were wondering, is towards "digging into fundamentals." They companies are hooking their spark plugs up to instruments and finding out what happens to them when they ignite. Airline maintenance engineers who attended thought that the papers were all too technical, with fancy words a-flying right over their heads. Folks don't do all that math and graphs stuff in Dogwood! Bendix sent someone by to talk up the low-tension plug, some guys from Northwestern showed that you can run your plugs a bit longer because maximum gap estimates tended to be on the conservative side, and everyone fussed about measuring plug temperatures. Did you know that if you take the secondary condensers out of the R-2800 it loses between 40 and 75hp? I didn't!

New Aviation Products is sold on Curtiss-Wright's Kell-Strom prop wrench, because it has a torque meter. Hard Rubber Company of Connecticut is convinced that its new Cohrlastic 3500 rubber is the best diaphragm rubber for aero-engines on the market. The Amplifier Company of America's new magnetic tape recorder for play back of tower and aircraft conversations is the best ever. It is voice activated to save tape, and can record two or four channels simultaneously. Beckman and Whitley's slit-type camera can record movements at up to 2000mph, perfect for photographing mechanical workings, and with an electric switch for "non-optical events."


Avionics reports on a new Pioneer-Eclipse alternator, an engine-driven standby device to provide power to gyro instruments if the regular electric supply is lost. They're simple, so they're reliable, but arranged to provide the right voltage and frequency for gyro operation across a wide range of engine speeds. Avco of Lycoming-Spencer wants us to know that it has lots of Ground Power Unit orders from the Air Force. 

Charles Adams, "Built-in Safety for Transports" The FAA is getting ready to release burdensome new regulations to trouble the airlines just to make airliners "safe" in the sense that they don't crash a lot and kill everyone. It turns out that things like propeller blades flying off and puncturing cabins, and doors and windows popping open at altitude and sucking out flight attendants are to be avoided! Who knew? And it is possible that the American builders are going to be ordered to do what the British are already doing. Not content with that, the CAB is still fiddling with ways of making planes not burst into flame on impact with the ground, and for rapid cabin evacuation if they do. The inquiry into the recent Boeing Field Air Transport Associate's C-46F crash in Seattle finds that the pilot  tried to take off on 91 octane gas because the centre tank that held the 100 octane was "inoperative" and because the end-of-runway marking light had been moved up. 

Letters has the President of Flying Cargo, Inc., writing in to praise Flying Cargo, Inc. Senator Herz writes to thank Aviation Week for its article on Northwest Airline's financing, which will be used by the subcommittee on the RFC. D. H. Jackson, of Jackson Chemical, is peeved that the Aviation Week implies that Turco's new tank stripping method is actually new. Aviation Week replies that it is so new. Clark Smith, of the Advertising department of Eclipse-Pioneer, is also in the congratulating Aviation Week mood. 

What's Ahead in Congress reports on the proposed 100 group air force, a new effort to equip European aircraft  factories with American equipment, and on the other hand a $90 million USAF electronics procurement effort in Europe to support the industry there. James Van Zandt says that the Navy is talking battleships again, this time to be armed with guided missiles. Lyndon Johnson's mobilisation committee says that it would cost up to 20% of the original cost of a mothballed plant to bring it back into production. 


Time, 25 September 1950


Letters


William Hudson of Owings Mills, Md, writes to point out the obvious parallel between Iceland in the last war and Formosa in the war that we're not actually having. Just as the Nazis would have invaded Iceland if we didn't invade it first, the Reds will invade Formosa if we don't invade it first, but not in the war we're not having yet, but right now. Just as the Nazis would have used airpower to devastate our shipping from the midst of the shipping lanes, so Red air in Formosa would devastate our shipping in the Pacific. If it were in the middle of our shipping lanes, which it is not. Also, we wouldn't be invading so much as sending money. But other than that it is a perfect parallel!


All Time readers are pleased as punch that General LeMay has a fleet of atom-bomb armed B-36s ready to bomb the Russians into peace, because that way there will be peace just like now, and maybe the Russians won't even start anything. All the readers except F. P. Mitchell of New York City, who is not a bomber man. E. L. Keithahn. the librarian and curator of the Historical Library and Museum of Juneau, remembers torturing ants, back in the old days. A. L. Peake of Walnut Creek may not know much about Asiatics or Communists, but he is afraid that the Pusan perimeter is a dreadful trap and that as soon as the entire US Army is in there, the Reds will unleash their air power and trap the lot. Our Publisher reminds us that our subscription renewal letter is in the mail.

National Affairs

 "Clear the Track" Everything is suddenly fine. General MacArthur is expected to take Seoul imminently, Louis Johnson has been fired and replaced by General Marshall, and the Pentagon has a plan: 25 divisions, 400 warships, and a 90 to 100 group air force, paid for by $17 billion this year and $40--50 billion next. The only thing left to sort out is German rearmament. However, the Defence Act had to be amended to allow Marshall to serve, since he is out of uniform less than 10 years. So it's telling you something about what to expect in November, (which is nothing good), that 20 Republican Senators and Pat McCarran voted against the amendment, and that William Jenner of Indiana gave a lunatic speech against Marshall. (Because of the 1946 mission to China, you see.) Also, Time predicts the resignation of Johnson cronies Paul Griffith and Brigadier General Louis Renfrow, over lagging mobilisation, and there is talk of a separate peace with Japan, which would get around Russian objections. 




"Five Star" Omar Bradley has been promoted to five-star general to head the Joint Chiefs. Time has a brief explainer about what a five-star general is. The previous Chiefs of the Joint Staff haven't been five-star rank since the war, but I guess Congress thinks that Bradley shouldn't be outranked by the new Secretary of Defence. In fact, aren't five star generals not allowed to retire at all? Also, the Navy has recommissioned Princeton, Monterey and New Jersey. It is also requisitioning the United States as a troop transport. The Army is reactivating the 101st Airborne Division, the "Screaming Eagles" of Bastogne. The Air Force is falling up 5 National Guard groups. This will leave the nation's ranks at 2 million men, including 170,000 drafted by the army, with local draft boards expected to call 50,000 to 70,000 draftees a month. 

"There is a Danger" A super-unflattering picture of Senator Douglas in full frontal, with glasses, illustrates an article about Douglas opposing the McCarren anti-communist bill, at least until it was combined with the rival Kilgore Act to produce an even bigger omnibus bill of anti-communism. The President has promised to veto it, but since it passed the Senate with 70 votes in favour, the veto will be overridden. It is not the only anti-communist action in Congress right now, as the House has also asked the Attorney General to add the National Lawyers Guild to the list of Communist front agencies and ban its members from government work. with all of that, it is a wonder Congress even had time to consider the President's new Civil Defence Agency and making the Excess Profits Tax retroactive.

Manners and Morals reports on "Deadlier than Bullets," which thing is the free beer issue of one can a day of 3.2% beer for the boys in Korea. This upset Prohibitionists, who complained to the Department of Defence, which told MacArthur to can the ration, which upset Representative Dingell and basically the whole sane world. So now the ration isn't just restored, it is mandatory. Something about typhus in the Korean drinking water, plus Blatz Brewing of Milwaukee and Schlitz of St. Louis both breathing fire over it. At this point the Prohibitionists rejoined the fight, alleging that most soldiers in Korea were passing their rations on to "drunkards," and that the whole controversy had been cooked up by the Brewers Foundation, before asking for an investigation into the drinking habits of Eskimos, which invite a Russian invasion. The current crisis is that only frontline soldiers will get the issue, and they will be offered soda pop as an alternative, but beer will still be available in Pxs for rear echelon troops to buy with their own money. Meanwhile Labour reports on the generous wage settlements "raining down" on the unions. 

"No. 2" The week after J. Parnell Thomas walked free, Andrew Jackson May was released after serving nine months of his 8 to 24 sentence for assorted corruption back in the war. He has been a good boy, and he is ailing. Eleanor Roosevelt was in California this week campaigning for her son, Jimmy, and for Helen Gahagan Douglas, for whom she seems more enthusiastic. In early election news, the Republican slate has been returned in Maine, "As goes Maine, so goes the nation." But Democrats claim to be cheered by the fact that their majority was cut to only 70%. The Army continues to get death messages wrong. 

War in Asia

"Thumb on Windpipe" This reads like it was going to be another "Pusan Perimeter" story before the news of Inchon broke. Now the UN is about to take Seoul, through which the road and rail link to the front passes, so that's your thumb on the windpipe. 

"Over the Beaches" The North Koreans knew that an amphibious invasion was coming. They just didn't know where. Inchon was deemed unlikely because it has a very high tidal race. Time spends a paragraph long footnote explaining why, which is quite interesting. The movement of the Earth causes the tide entering the Yellow Sea from the south to "curl" to the east, and Inchon lies at the end of a narrow channel that further pushes the tide up to a 31ft range. 

The upshot is that the Americans can only work their ships for about 3 to 4 hours a day at the peak of the tide. This was one of many reasons that the North probably ruled out a landing at Inchon, but now they look foolish because it is a very short push to Seoul, although resistance there is hardening so maybe it won't fall immediately. Today's military explainer describes the main elements of the Navy's amphibious flotilla, your LSDs, LSTs, LSUs, LCVPs, LVT(A)s, and LSM(R)s. That's a lot of acronyms we thought were retired after WWII!

The frontline news about Inchon goes on for a few more pages. It's all a bit excited, but no wonder and I agree completely! There's just not much for me to put in here for you. There's even less from today's cover story, which is about Marine General O. P. Smith. the Marine divisional commander at Inchon, making up half the American force with 7th Infantry. 

"Pernicious Tendency" Time hates Mao, but has to agree with him that liberalism is a "pernicious tendency." In China, it is holding back true communism. In america, it is "tearing down Mao's  main enemy, Chiang Kai Shek." 

International

"The Hard Way" It's The Economist! I think this is a "news" article about France being maybe against German rearmament a little, but it's hard to tell because it spends nine paragraphs telling us what we already know. Meanwhile at the UN Formosa and Russia are fighting and Time seems to think its job is to be the crooked referee at a wrestling match. Though down at the bottom we touch on the "border halt" issue. Some countries that have supported the US in Korea think that the UN offensive should end at the prewar border, but the US will argue for reunifying the country and "destroying communism" in Korea.

"Kani Politiki" Paul Porter, the ECA chief in Greece, announced a cut to the Greek aid allocation this week, probably to persuade Venizelos to appoint a better cabinet. In Czechoslovakia, Communism is terrible because now Czech soldiers have to shave their heads, like Russian soldiers, and the government has ordered the nation's gypsies to settle down, or it will sell their horses. Communism is also bad in Finland, because it led to a 30% increase in drinking, says Time, no evidence needed. Out of Sweden, talk that Russia's new battleship, the Sovietsky[sic] Soyuz, is doing trial runs in the eastern Baltic. Jane's Fighting Ships says that the two members of the class laid down in Archangel in 1942 have been in commission for a year, that one more is fitting out, and that the fifth is still completing. 

(To be fair, it's not so much the Swedes gaslighting us as Jane's fucking Fighting Ships)

"Belated Conversion" Labour is pink, which is awful, so you don't have to do anything pathetic like giving credit where credit is due for Labour's big new defence plans for an 18,000 man increase in the Air Force, 4000 for the Navy and 55,000 for the Army, good for 6 1/2 divisions, with 3 1/2 in Germany and a home-based strategic reserve of one armoured, one infantry division and one brigade. With an increase in the draft uptake, the army will hopefully hit 10 regular and 12 territorial divisions by the end of 1951. "The programme will not be accomplished without a severe blow to Britain's newly recovered trade. There will be no new automobiles for the British market. The cost of living will probably rise." Churchill supports the government but is upset that it took so long for British troops to get to Korea, and that the government was selling machine tools to Russia and that it hadn't come out clearly for German rearmament. Atlee promptly banned the machine tool exports, but hasn't said anything about Germany. The rush to Korea problem is waiting on the new time machine, which is delayed at Vickers. 


Meanwhile, in France a Communist mayor named a street in his town after Stalin and now everyone is tearing down the signs, refusing to deliver mail, and generally making their feelings known, while in Germany Hjalmar Schacht has been found not guilty by the denazification court for the fourth time on the grounds that he was only pro-Nazi while he was still a Nazi.

Business

The stock market is up, but "peace" shares are leading the way because of Inchon. That doesn't mean that there's now a ceiling on business inventories to prevent hoarding. (GM had a $444 million income tax bill this year!) Also last week, Hubert E. Howard, chief of the Munitions Board, resigned over the failure of the stockpiling programme. 

State of Business reports that business is still waiting to hear what the government wants. Ford has a contract to build Wasp Majors for B-36s in the old Tucker plant, and Aeronca is enjoying a "bazooka boom," and there is action on synthetic rubber, but much of industry is still waiting. We just said that, Time! Searching for a way to finish the thought and get on to the next story, Time lights on the suggestion that there might be shortages of raw materials and also steel. And since the war will require patent pools and allocations, which the Justice Department anti-trusters don't like, Herbert Bergson has resigned as chief of antitrust. Time enough to regulate Capitalism once Communism is licked! And as you might have heard at the head, United States is going to be completed as a troop ship. and not because it is a white elephant or anything, no sir. Someone named Lawrence Ottinger gets a personal/company profile because his American Plywood is heating up. Also getting profile stories are a cow auctioneer from out west, because what else is there in Colorado, and Juan Trippe, because of his hotel business for a change. It loses a lot of money, but come on, it's got hotels all over South America. It's like some kind of American empire!

"Gas Gadget" Did you hear that the Henry J. made 34 miles to the gallon at the latest mileage test, better than the Nash Rambler at 32? Time doesn't care about that, it cares about the gas mileage meter used to measurer the performance, Andrew White's Mile-o-Meter, by Boston's Gale Hall Engineering. It works by a rubber tube from the dashboard to the gas tank to physically measure gas consumption, which seems a little wild to me. Having had a car that eventually got polite enough to share its gas with the passengers, I have to say, no thanks. 




Science, Medicine, Education

"Tritium All Around" When we last checked into the race for the hydrogen bomb, it looked like the H bomb might use too much tritium to be practical. An unstable heavy isotope of hydrogen, new tritium is regularly created when shrapnel from a cosmic ray collision settles into a tritium atom. That means there's a little tritium in water. Not enough to be worth extracting, Time goes on to explain, but some scientists are using it to measure the rate that water circulates between the deep ocean and the surface. 

"Love Song" Male and female moths get together in night time mating flights. How? Not by going to the sock hop, that's for sure. Moths are terrible dancers! John P. Duane and John E. Tyler, researchers at Interchemical, have published an article in Interchemical Review, theorising that the "hot blooded female moth" must shine in the infrared spectrum, so if the boy moth is girl watching in the infrared spectrum, he knows that this little girl means business. So they took a close look at moth antennae, discovered that they are in 4 micron increments, and since this is half a wavelength well within the range of a female moth's infrared spectrum, clearly they are designed to cherchez la femme! And that is science for you. 

"Saucers Flying Upwards" Besides Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision and Dianetics, both of which Time seems to have relegated to the crazy book bin, we now have the latest crackpot bestseller, Frank Scully's Behind the Flying Saucers, which is making money hand over fist for Henry L. Holt. Scully says that the Air Force has captured three saucers, complete with the burned remains of the crew, but the Government is covering it up. Scully, who got his start with Denver oilman Silas M. Newton, who finds oil deposits with microwaves, went on to meet "Dr. Gee," who uses a magnetron to find "magnetic waves," which is what flying saucers run on. The little green men from Venus have perfect teeth and food wafers, and their saucers disappear into thin air. Time goes on to wax philosophical. What with all the wonders of modern science, flying saucers are  hardly more wonderous for most people, so why not buy the book?

"How Much Blood?" University of Chicago doctors estimate that each US city should have 7.5 million pints of blood against a nuclear attack, which might leave half a million people in need. This is almost half as much again as was collected in the US during WWII. 

"Pain and Polio" It isn't a treatment, but two Brooklyn doctors report getting convalescent polio patients out of bed faster with Priscoline, a drug that expands blood vessels and speeds up circulation. This seems to reduce the debilitating pain associated with polio that prevents sleep and movement, and is better than the hot compresses traditionally used. 

"Women's Work" Did you know that there is a Medical Women's International Association, and that they had a meeting in Philadelphia last week? It was to talk about "The Pathology and Hygiene of Housework." That seems like something Time could get behind, especially the "pathology" part. As it turns out, though, housewives are underestimated, not neurotic. Their jobs are boring and repetitive, and come with lots of work conditions such as dermatitis, neuritis, varicose veins, low back pain, fallen womb, peptic ulcers, inflamed muscles, vitamin deficiencies, flat feet, arthritis, and, yes, Ronnie sighs, "neuroses." US women are lucky to have lots of gadgets, but the kitchen is a bad place to work, generally. Dr. Annis Gillie of Britain points out that kitchen tables, counters and sinks are too low for many women, and there really should be chairs so that they can sit down to work. There's also the story  of a fake doctor in New York City. No-one checked his references, and he almost made it through his internship before he was caught by a car lot. 

"Just in Case" The Los Angeles School Board has sent a nice letter home to parents explaining that LA schools are going to hold regular atom bombing drills. Eventually, School Superintendent Alexander J. Stoddard explains, it will be second nature to the kids to "drop immediately to the ground or floor, face down," whenever an atom bomb is dropped on LA. So don't worry about a thing!


"Revolt at Washington" So the University of Washington does a regular physical examination of freshmen coeds every year. Girls are questioned, blood pressure is taken, they are thumped and x-rayed. And then they are taken into a private room, asked to disrobe, and photographed nude, front, back and profile. This, of course, seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, but, later, some of the girls wondered about it. And so did their parents! "By midweek, angry parents had swamped the office of President Raymond B. Allen with protests." President Allen promptly impounded all 852 negatives. Later, cooler heads prevailed, and it was discovered that Barnard, Smith and Harvard had all been taking similar photographs for 20 years as part of the work of the physical education department, which used them to work with the students about posture defects, while University of Washington and some other schools meant to turn the pictures over to Columbia psychologist, William H. Sheldon, who used his 25-year-old collection to study "the relationship, if any, between physique and temperament." He classifies students into round, soft, weak endomorphs, square, hard, rugged mesomorphs, and fragile, spindly stringy ectomorphs, and then writes books about them, with three out and two more to come. Science says that endomorphs are amiable and slow, mesomorphs vigorous and aggressive, ectomorphs inhibited and cautious. Dr. Sheldon also links body shape to disease, diet and reactions to stress and types of work. He is a very highly respected scientist. There was nothing wrong with the pictures!

Except for the whole outrageous invasion of privacy, and the failure to explain that participation was voluntary. So Dr. Allen threw all the negatives in the furnace, and that's that.  

"San Quentin vs. Socrates" San Quentin Prison has a Great Books programme! So a professor of philosophy dropped in to moderate a little old trial of Socrates, with 13 prisoners as the jury. They eventually agreed that old Soks was railroaded by the DA. So if  you were wondering how James L. Hagerty was spending his spare time these days now the Christianity versus Communism bandwagon is too crowded for the old gang, he's doing time at San Quentin. 




Press, Radio and Television, Art, People

Time takes the piss out of the Minneapolis Tribune: Headline of the Week: "Korea's Coal Is Poor"

"Pride of the Regiment" Marguerite Higgins made a real impression on the 27th Infantry by administering blood plasma at a temporary forward Aid Station during last week's Battle of Taegu, the Communist tank assault. This earns Higgins a major profile, perhaps because five days had passed without Higgins filing, and Time was getting an obituary ready. Instead, it turns out that she was with the Inchon landing force, and didn't leave the Marines to file  until she had reached the outskirts of Seoul. 

"Kerchoo!" Hilarious story about the Atlanta Journal's John Keisler, who pretended to be a door-to-door pepper grinder salesman, who told housewives that ground pepper would soon be scarce and that they had better buy a grinder. So they did, and this proves that housewives are hoarders and that they are dumb because they believe Keisler when he lies to them. Some people think Keisler is pretty low-down because he is always doing this sort of thing, but everyone else thinks he's a real card. 


"The Accused" Gypsy Rose Lee is in Red Channels! This led American Legion President Ed Clamage to write to ABC and demand that it cancel What Makes You Tick?, her new show. To which Robert Kintner responded, basically, "Gypsy Rose Lee? Seriously?" Which is good enough for her, but Hazel Scott and Irene Wicker are both in trouble. I am not sure how Congressman Adam Clayton Powell's wife could expect to not be in Red Channels, or be significantly affected by it, but the Wicker story is pretty outrageous. Anyway, the American Federation of Radio Actors has come up with a possible solution, which is not a libel suit, as you might think, but rather a "loyalty board." On the other hand, the Author's League of America, of which Lee is also a member, seems happier with a sue-the-witchfinders-to-Kingdom-Come strategy. 

Time liked the season premiere of The Jack Benny Show, but not so much the Saturday Night Review,  a 2 1/2 hour mix of good and bad. On the other hand, Eddie Cantor's tv premiere on the Colgate Comedy Hour was  pretty good. 

"Down with the East" Frank Lloyd Wright designed a community theatre for West Hartford, Connecticut, two years ago, and ever since the town has been arguing about where to put it. This exasperated Wright, who was beginning to think that West Hartford didn't need his radical new design that will "save the theatre," so he told Easterners that they are little old ladies compared with Westerners, and headed off home to Wisconsin. Frank Lloyd Wright is from Wisconsin? Well, no wonder then! Meanwhile, Rome is aflutter over Giacomo Manzu's commission to replace the "door of death" at St. Peter's. It's the door that's only opened for funerals, and the original design was plain oak, which clearly wouldn't do, so after four hundred years the Vatican has got around to updating them. The problem is that Manzu is modern and controversial and some people think his design is going to be awful or outrageous or something. Communistic, like a Frank Lloyd Wright theatre, probably. 


"Wavering Compass" The latest New York leftwing newspaper is in trouble, and the publisher is running a fundraising drive instead of appealing to Mrs. Emmon Blaine, who is sick. 


George Bernard Shaw is in the hospital.  Dwight Eisenhower is in the paper right next to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, to be fair because of something-or-other South Pacific. Also Anthony de Rothschild, Prince Charles, Cecil Beaton, Princess Elizabeth, Princess Anne, Dolores Costello, John Barrymore, Jr, Archduke Franz Joseph, Princes Illeana of Romania, the Duchess of Windsor,  Ernest Hemingway, Irene Dunne, (General) Mark W. Clark, Guy Lombardo, Margot Fonteyn, Sir Gladwyn Jebb and Rex Harrison. Out of all of it, the only thing worth mentioning is that the littlest Barrymore is a hellraiser and that the Archduke is suing the rest of his family for selling Habsburg family keepsakes without cutting him in.  

Jackie Coogan is divorced. Dr. William Barrow Pugh, Lou Clayton, Sara Allgood, Arthur Stringer, Avaro de Figueroa y Torres, Count of Romanones and Theodore  Penland have died. 

The New Pictures

The Breaking Point is a new adaptation of Hemingway's To Have and Have Not. Time liked it. Eye Witness is one of those American fish-out-of-the-water in Britain stories. This time it's a lawyer who somehow ends up defending a case in a British court and it's "pretty good fun." On the other hand, Union Station and The Sleeping City are pretty routine crime thrillers. 

Books

Ford Madox Ford (which is a real name and a famous person!) has a book. It's Parade's End. Not bad considering how long he's been dead. Time has been pretty good about staying away from the "middlebrow" stuff for a while now, and it's good that Ford's novels have been reprinted, because he is a pretty big name, and they were ambitious books. But they're not really good books, and this is way too much fuss about them. Alistair Cooke's A Generation on Trial: USA v. Alger Hiss is going to be in trouble with Time from the get-go, but let's see if the Guardian's American correspondent gets himself out of it. Hmm. Mostly. Time thinks that Cooke overestimates how many Americans became Communists in the Thirties, and how many just innocently dabbled and might seem like they were Communists if you went through their records. Good save, Time! Wallace Stevens has a poem collection out, so that's good. 

Aviation Week, 25 September 1950

News Digest reports that all the news you've heard before is still news. (Hundred group air force, Turbodyne to GE.)

"This is your Aviation Market" William Kroger of Aviation Week rounds up all the big contracts for aviation industry stuff in the new services budget. It is no less than a billion for avionics compared with $7.5 billion for aircraft!




Rudolf Modley, "Where the Aircraft Money Goes" Out of every $100, $50 goes to the airframe, $30 to engine and propellers, $20 for communications, armaments "and other accessories." That's not very helpful! Much of the rest of the article is spent teasing out the share going to subcontractors and materials providers. When it comes to electrics, there is special attention to the fractional horsepower electric motor market. Small in torque, big in profits!

I don't think articles on renegotiating contracts or "what industrial planning means" matter very much to us. Though it is interesting what a big deal the R-4360 production run at Dodge is. I understand that it is a big engine and that there are high hopes for the near term future of the Stratoliner and Super Constellations as the airliners of This Afternoon (if the Comet is the Airliner of Tomorrow), but aren't we pretty much done the B-36 run? It's the interim plane, to be replaced by the B-52!


Ben Lee, "Where the $4.4 Billion Goes" Aviation Week breaks down new aircraft procurement spending. It's interesting, but in the way of review. There's going to be lots of B-52s, B-47s, F-89s, F-90s, F-94s, F-84s, T-33s (for tactical support, not training), C-119s, C-97s, C-123s, trainers, S-16s for some reason, and helicopters. Everyone is still big on the turboprop, and somehow some R and D comes out of procurement. Lee tries to make it seem reasonable, but it bounces off my brain!


"Where Air Force Does Its Big Business" Aviation Week takes us to Air Material Command, which has to deal with a million suppliers. That's some paper work! There's also a series of articles on selling to the Navy, but it is much sparser on useful information. 

"Bigger Opportunities for Avionic Sales" That billion dollar market didn't just happen. Part of it is due to mobilisation, but a large part of it sude to the natural growth of the market! See that? Avionics is a big industry that is growing bigger. Just like the big boys, resistor and tube manufacturers are operating at full capacity, condenser manufacturers, too, and condensers are in short supply. Small business stands to get about 20% of the money the Air Force is spending on ground installations via subcontracting. Airborne is a tougher  market to crack, and we can't even tell you about research and development spending. It is wide open to small firms with good engineering and scientific staff, but you have to go to the agencies to tell them what you can do. 

Small companies may be reluctant to bid for production contracts, afraid that they can't meet the schedules. Don't worry about capital: a loan can be arranged under the Assignment of Claims Act. If you can get on the Qualified Products List, it is practically a guarantee of business. 

"Guided Missiles: A Growing But Exacting Market" A weird article that is mostly about hypothetical  examples. How would you machine the tube for a surface to air ramjet? How did the Germans machine the carbon guidance fins for the V-2? What does it take to make parts for an air-to-air missile, which have to fit into a 6" body? As with bidding for research and development contracts, it looks like you  have to approach the agencies. But in this case  you also have to have an approximate idea what they are looking for, whether it is precision shaping of a "stovepipe" or watchmaker's precision stuffing a guidance assembly or fuel pump into a ^" cylinder. 

An article on the easier job of getting subcontracts form industry follows. Then we're invited on a tour of the aviation industry in Dallas, for some reason. I mean, local payroll is $40 million with local purchasing of $19 million, so it is a huge share of the city's economy that every other city should envy, but why Dallas? 

Then we take a more-or-less random walk around contractors like Rohr, Ryan, Boeing and Convair to learn interesting facts about the work that subcontractors are doing for them. Unfortunately, interesting facts can include a long and breezy paragraph explaining that Convair has no idea who it is going to divide up work between its three plants yet, much less to subcontractors. Grumman, on the other hand, is actively looking for companies that can make the 21 doors on its new UF-1. North American wants you to know that what it wants from its subcontractors is "know-how." Sperry invites interested subcontractors around for a "pioneering visit" to see if they'll work out. 


Finally, Aviation Week reviews the labour situation with a vague set of advice for hiring new people, a very brief look at regional shortages (metal workers in Bridgeport, for example), a look at Federal wae law, and the difficulties of getting security clearance, from a plant point of view, as well as individuals. 

And that's it for the Korean War!



3 comments:

  1. Lund Alert: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03053-2

    (Dumbed down but important point extracted here, with a side order of extremely sophisticated dancing around the issue: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/opinion/dna-caribbean-genocide.html)

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    1. I note that TalkingPointsMemo founder Josh Marshall's twitter already made the obvious point that someone should do New England, stat!

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  2. It's getting so I can't avoid talking about UFOs, Velikovsky and Dianetics in an appendix. This reinforces the thought that I have to throw one more book in that Time isn't linking to the others: Kon-Tiki.

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