Postblogging Technology, July 1953, II: Purge

 

R_.C_.,
Oriental Club,
London,
England




Dear Father:

We're not completely out of the news around here. We have shortwave. What we've heard makes the Soviet purge sound pretty anticlimactic, and we're beginning to think that there won't be an atom war this summer, after all. So we took the cable ferry over to Renata to see the sights, which involved hiking up a substantial hill, which was certainly good for the appetite. Renata is a bit sad, a town of old people. A Mennonite colony of old times, most of the young folk have long since  moved away. Just like we're going to do in not very long now, although bless those Soviet plotters for a wonderful summer getaway! 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Letters

Palmer Van Gundy of La Canada is happy to hear about the UN's victory over yaws, and reminds everyone that the US hasn't renewed funding for UNICEF yet. Anna Rose, the Dean of Students at Mills College, takes issue with Lynn White being described as an "antifeminist." Charles C. Martin of Toronto points out that, wit all due respect, Eddie Rickenbacker doesn't even begin to compare with the various ace of aces of WWI, such as the late Rene Fonck and Canada's Billy Bishop. Surya Das liked the article about Nehru, while Andrew Brimmer reinforces the article's point that Nehru is India's last bastion against creeping communism. G. H. Herrold, a "City Planner" in St. Paul, Minnesota, meditates on the "robot cop," by which he means the timer-controlled traffic circle in White Plains, while Charles and Phyllis Bar of Jesup, Georgia, seem to be suspicious of the whole thing. Captain C. F. Stillman of the Navy is tired of the Government being blamed for its contractors. For Your Information reminds us that the reason its automobile racing coverage is so good is that it has editors who love car racing, and explains that a picture of a Joseph Stalin tank in Red Square symbolises the fall of Beria. 

The Periscope reports that Malenkov is back in charge, but Khrushchev is "almost certainly one of the key men," and that Sergei Kruglov is more worldly-minded than his predecessor and so less likely to blunder into war. The Periscope knows of a Western ambassador in Moscow who didn't expect the purge, and people in "Western intelligence" who thought it was years away. It also points to evidence that the purge is putting Stalin "back on his pedestal." Communists are also said to be cultivating Tenzing Norgay, while "the White House is completely downcast and badly jarred by Taft's illness," because Senator Knowland is such a clown. Styles Bridges is upset that the President made his Dartmouth address without clearing his presence in New England with him first, and that the President  had Sherman Adams with him, because Adams might challenge Bridges for the Senate nomination next year. The NEA will push to reduce the voting age to 18 next year. Assistant Postmaster John C. Allen is behind that brilliant study of the cost of first class mail on trains, planes, and automobiles, say sources close to Assistant Postmaster John C. Allen. Senator Herman Welker of Idaho has apologised to the White House for criticising its "must pass" immigration bill after Styles Bridges tore him a new one, which just goes to show what a great guy Styles Bridges is, says a source with knowledge of the conversation. The reason no bills have reached the President's desk is that John Taber is conspiring against him.
John Hickerson is going to the National War College, Cavendish Cannon (which is a real name) is going to be the next ambassador to Greece, Otto Herres is going to be the next nominee for the Bureau of Mines, Lyndon Johnson is a photo hog, in London they're saying that the only difference between the French and the British is that when the French don't have a government, at least they admit it. Cuba is getting ever more communist and it is all the fault of Fulgencio Batista, who is some kind of secret Communist. The Navy is cancelling the A2J because of budget cuts and not because its engine doesn't work, and John Floberg actually resigned because of Wilson's cancellation of the Navy's atomic carrier plans. The Army's first Nike installation will be in a secret location in New York, while its new uniform will be modelled on the current officer's uniform, with a dark-green jacket and pink pants. The Belgian "FN" rifle might be selected over the Army's T-44, because it's better. 

Carole Channing will be in a Broadway remake of Shaw's Pygmalion. There will also be a biographical play about Robbie Burns, a musical version of Seventh Heaven with Edith Piaf and her husband, Jacques Peale, a play for Olivia de Havilland by Anna Bonacci, a dramatic reading of Sorry, Wrong Number, by Agnes Moorhead, Gregory Peck and Gloria Grahame in a "high voltage melodrama," Night People, from Fox, Ruth Roman and James Stewart in the Alaska-set adventure epic, High Country, Gene Kelly and Danny Kaye in an adaptation of Huckleberry Finn, and a Pontius Pilate biopic, Holy Grail. On TV, shows for Hedy Lamarr, Victor McLaglen (Mickey Finn), TV's first "minstrel show," featuring banjoist Eddie Peabody, Gregory Ratoff in a series to be titled Mr. Big, and Akim Tamiroff in Secrets of the French Police. And a monthly Metropolitan Opera broadcast, if there's a contract to be signed. 

The Periscope is back on form with a 5/13, not counting the 1954 New Hampshire Senate elections and Fulgencio Batista(!!!!) going full Communist as predictions

Washington Trends reports that the Russian purges are expected to go on for two years or so and be among the bloodiest in history, leading to a hundred thousand Russians being shot or sent to Siberia. Malenkov is making his bid to be an all-powerful dictator in Stalin's image by showing that he hates the secret police as much as everyone else does, but it will require a massive programme of liquidation to get rid of all of Beria's people. Malenkov's main problem is that the overly powerful army might liquidate him. Beria will go to a public show trial, Molotov is safe, the Kremlin will make more concessions to the Russian people and continue its peace offensive, while Eisenhower will not go through with a Big Four conference now, as Russian weakness means that it is time to wring concessions out of them. 

National Affairs

"Events in Russia and Korea Give Ike a Week of Good News" A good week for Ike as Rhee has come on board for a Korean truce, Beria is gone, the Big Three/Big Four talks are probably off, the excess-profits tax got through the House, Protestant clergymen denounced McCarthy, and "those of his associates who had started to become impatient with his patience" were mollified. The foreign secretaries' meeting in Washington is off to a great start, with Georges Bidault teaching Dulles the pronunciation of Khrushchev and making solid progress with Salisbury, although the Marquis remains befuddled that all the unnecessary "hs" in "Khrushchev" haven't been dropped, leading to the conclusion that the man is not our sort of person, and that nothing good can come of Russia for the foreseeable future.  

"The Johnson Affair" The head of the International Information Administration, Dr. Robert L. Johnson, has written up guidelines for American overseas libraries to ensure that they do not inadvertently acquisition "controversial" books, which were personally approved by John Foster Dulles and come with a condemnation of the "wicked symbolic act" of the librarians who burned those 11 books in Singapore. Senator McCarthy says the guidelines are ridiculous and that they should ban all Communist authors without regard for what they write, while Senator Mundt calls them "silly." Dr. Johnson has now quit the organisation and will be returning to Temple University, allowing the President to proceed with a "massive reshuffling" of the whole psychological warfare operation. The Mutual Security Administration is also in trouble, although Harold Stassen and John Foster Dulles are doing their best to sell it to Congress. 

"Double Deferment" The President has issued an executive order disallowing fatherhood as a deferment ground. Now men who are temporarily exempted from selective service as students, agricultural workers, or workers in critical occupations, will no longer get a "double" deferment by making a baby. (Tough work, but someone has to do it!) 

"Joe Stubs Toe" Joe McCarthy's staff is a jolly bunch of drunken monkeys happily doing their best to stab each other in the back, so someone decided that bringing in Dr. J. B. Matthews, the professional anti-communist who just oozes respectability, would shape up the bullpen. Oops! It turns out that Matthews thinks that America's protestant pastors are a bunch of Communist dupes, and said so in print. Now, this line has got the McCarthy gang in trouble before because it brings out the Church Ladies (and Gentlemen), but this time it went straight to the Senate, and got the Senator Claghorn crowd riled up, which is very bad, because McCarthy's committee has the power to fire the members of McCarthy's staff, including Matthews. Then on top of that, Nixon had to stick his hand in the mangle, so the President came down and gave a statement on the importance of firing Matthews, so McCarthy did the right thing and --ramrodded the power to hire and fire his own staff at the sub-committee level through his committee. All the Democrats resigned in protest, and the upshot, we're told, is that McCarthy is less powerful because his committee is partisan now. So McCarthy is now attacking William P. Bundy, Dean Acheson's son-in-law, who is with the CIA, for contributing $400 to the Alger Hiss defence fund, Matthews has resigned, and the President made a fool of himself in the pages of The New York Times. Take that, Church Ladies/Gentlemen! And Newsweek has an interview with Admiral Standley, the disgraced former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, who figures that the Red Army might be up to something.

"GOP Poser: Glut in Drought" Farm prices are down, and now with the Southwest  drought the party is finding that it's not as easy to get rid of price supports as it thought. In not-related-to-drought-relief news, if the House gets its way, the new Niagara power development will go to a private company, Mohawk Power, and not a Federal agency or the New York State Power Authority, as Governor Dewey wants. It is reported that Senator Taft is recovering steadily from his slight case of metastasized cancer at a secret hospital under the care of an unnamed doctor.  

International 

"Grudging Agreement with Rhee Sets Truce in Motion Again" President Rhee has agreed not to keep on fighting Red China single-handedly after the UN withdraws. (As they would, swear to God!)

"Kremlin Purge: Malenkov Emerges Top Red: But Soviet Rule is Weakened" Events in the purge were pretty blatant and dramatic, with Red Army tanks and trucks clanking through the streets on their way to the Kremlin and other points, right through the streets in front of the American embassy. Newsweek outlines what we know and speculates about what might happen next. Leon Volkov chimes in with helpful speculation about Malenkov being "on top," and Beria being taken by surprise. You think? Sergei Kruglov, who is a horrible person, gets his own feature article because he is the head of the MVD now. It also has an interview with two unnamed East Berlin workers who took part in the June riots.

"The New Balkan Alliance: What Does It Mean to West" Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey have agreed to meet annually to talk about things like rail service, which clearly means that a Balkan entente which will launch armies of countless numbers of stout Balkan peasant soldiers at the Reds at the first opportunity. (Yugoslav Reds excepted, because they're different.) Lord Montagu is over in America doing a great impression of an upper class twit, with specific reference to the large number of American servicemen who get married while they're in Britain, which he, a 28-year-old bachelor, finds amazing, as see assorted Bertie and Wooster books, movies, offhand references, and related products.  (Or, you know, the British tabloid press.) Princess Margaret and Group Captain Townsend are dating, but Church and Cabinet have agreed that they can't get married, because Townsend isn't the right sort, oh, wait, we can't say that out loud. Because he got divorced once! I'm honestly so mad I could spit. Oh, and there's a "flare-up" in Suez after the Muslim Brotherhood allegedly kidnapped British serviceman A. V. Rigden. 

In this hemisphere, Peron is taking time off from being suspiciously Communist (like Batista!) to sign a treaty with Chile that doesn't add up to much, while in Mexico, tourist industry types are upset that Americans are going elsewhere. (Or maybe not taking as many vacations!) 

Business

The Periscope Business Trends reports that there are encouraging (but also not encouraging) economic signs as we move into the third quarter. "Adding it all up, the picture is basically favourable. But mounting inventories in some industries is beginning to cause considerable concern to economists[.]" Also, there is tension within the CIO between Walter Reuther and David J. MacDonald, and the sugar industry is alarmed by the rise of sugar-free drinks, and plans an $800,000 fund to promote the "merits of sugar." 

"Americans Hit the Open Road: It's A Record Year for Travel"   It is estimated that 75 million Americans will take an annual vacation this year, 66 million driving, 3 million more than last year's records. The remaining 9 million ticket buyers tgake the bus, train, plane and ships in that order. A half million Americans will fly to Europe this year, a bit less than the total number of ship passages booked to all foreign ports. This is also "the year of the packaged tour," with same up about 15%. 

 Conrad Hilton is expanding, defence contracting in Detroit is shrinking, and not just being delayed, as previously announced. The UAW predicts serious unemployment problems by winter, but unemployment is low to start with and "producers see no cause for alarm." Du Pont's Super Cordura is the latest miracle of modern living through chemistry. Former research chemist Monroe Spaght is a new executive vice president at Shell, which just goes to show. 

Notes: Week in Business reports that net corporate profits are up 11% over last year, that it was a record year for construction, with spending hitting $16 billion in the first half of the year, and life insurance purchases are also at an all-time high. 

Heller's Menswear wants us to know that the style for fall is casual lightweight knitwear, particularly jersey. 

Products: What's New French Industries of San Francisco has a saw consisting of jagged wire between two handles that weighs half-a-pound and can be coiled up to fit in a pocket. Fairchild of Burlington has a 3lb portable electric drill. Ralph C. Coxhead, Corporation has a portable stencil duplicating machine, and Equipment and Furnishing a sprayed cushion for upholstering metal webs

Henry Hazlitt's Business Tides is busy. It's summer. Places to go, things to do. But how to earn that precious cheque from Newsweek? Business Tides knows! Congress is making its annual stink about the Marshall Plan/Mutual Security budget, so let's rerun that ever-green one about American money being sunk into the bottomless swamp of European socialism! Or, well, we can't, because the European economy has recovered, so now we have to explain that they can be socialist and still economically successful because of all our aid. We can use the money on our own deficit. (Which we have in spite of no socialism because of something or other.) Throw in the numbers in the appropriation request and the size of the projected Federal deficit so it'll look like you've done some research, and it's off to the shore! 

Science, Medicine, Education

"City Archaeologist" Sigurd Halseth is the official city archaeologist of Phoenix, Arizona, which has such a thing because the Mesa Grande site is right on the road to Tempe, and remains of its inhabitants are found all over the Gila and Salt valleys, and he can prove that these ancient "Hobokam," who played a ball game that sounds awfully like the ancient Mexican one, were not related to the modern Pueblans.

Science: Notes of the Week has a man on the job reading Discovery, which has a man on the recent British Electric and Allied Industries electricity in farming exhibit, which has a man on the Shinfield farm, who picks up the interesting stuff in all the argle-bargle about drying hay and incubators: They're electrocuting weeds in the fields! Now THAT''s science! Also doing real science? The United States Public Health Service's Communicable Disease Centre in Savannah, Georgia, which has come up with a gadget for tagging flies. (Not with tiny tags, unfortunately, just some coloured thread.)

"Polio: 1953" This year's polio outbreak is racing ahead of last year, with its final total of 58,000 cases. Through 4 July there were 4,680 cases, compared with 4,176 last year, and 627 cases last week, up 84 from the week before. Fortunately, and I think that the magazine is being a bit blase, we have the hope of gamma globulin therapy this year. 

"Deaths Under Anesthesia" I know what you're thinking, and this story is actually about exploding and anesthesia machines, which are apparently a common enough, and dangerous enough, problem that the Bureau of Mines has stepped in to issue some recommendations.  

Newsweek checks in with Dr. Don Williams, who is a professor of education and director of audiovisual services for Syracuse University He has been loaned out to the State Department to do Point Four work, which means shooting films for Greek peasants about how democracy is good and stuff like that that they'd could never learn just by carrying on being Greek. Dr. Williams thinks that films are good for education and there should be more of them. Wil Lou and Howard L. Johnson both run free schools called "Opportunity Schools," but in different parts of the country and not connected except that Lou stole the idea from Johnson's predecessor, Emily Griffith. It's all very charitable and good for you and it is great that there is a nice news story about literally the only two free schools for adults in the entire world. 

Press, Radio and Television, Newsmakers

Robert Ruark is a swell guy who writes great books and great columns and shoots animals, which is great. And that Albert Kinsey! He's a story and he hasn't even released his report yet!

When Down You Go started as a panel show on Chicago TV two years ago, some people thought it was too high brow and boring, "anesthesia." but Newsweek knows the entire panel and they're all great people, which explains why Du Mont syndicates it to 26 cities, there's a radio show,and they do versions of it in all the good countries. (Britain and Cuba.) But the best columnist, who is handsome and erudite and has a personal biography that is absolutely worth a half page. Yes, we 're talking about Dr. Bergen Evans, who .  . . I'm sorry, I fell asleep. 

Ivory Coast Senator Biaka Boda is said to have been eaten by his constituents two years ago, because that is what they do in Africa. President Truman figures that the Democrats lost in '52 because the electorate thought that it was time for a change and fell victim to demagoguery, Ted Williams is back from Korea, Adlai Stevenson is in East Berlin, Mexico City health authorities think that shared 3D glasses are unsanitary, air conditioners might be noisy but aren't a nuisance, legally speaking, Mamie Eisenhower's mom has gone back to Denver because she can't stand the summer heat, Reinhold Pabel and Francis Jareki will get American citizenship by preferred routes for their own reasons, the college man is on the page for no reason, out and about in Oregon.  
 

Jose Ferrer is engaged to Rosemary Clooney, Elpidio Quirino is ill, Titta Ruffo, Temple Bailey, William F. Russell, Frankie Bailey, Sidney Homer and Clarence P. Wagner are dead. 
  

  New Films

MGM's Dangerous When Wet is the summer's Esther Williams movie, in which she has a romance, swims a lot, and has a dream sequence with Tom and Jerry. On the other hand, there's RKO and Irwin Allen's The Sea Around Us, which uses the title of Rachel Carson's book, and nothing else. Fox's The White Witch Doctor is another movie with some gorgeous Technnicolor nature footage with some Susan Hayward and Robert Mitchum thrown in. Scared Stiff, from Paramount, is the latest Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis movie, and is bad enough to be "toying with disaster." Also from RKO is Sea Devils, a Napoleonic-era adventure with Yvonne De Carlo and Rock Hudson being handsome enough to make up for the rest of the movie. 

Books

Eric Ambler's The Schirmer Inheritance is an Eric Ambler novel, and somehow gets the lead review. Maybe so we can take it to the beach? I have the beach behind my house currently, but, it being in Nakusp, I am reading much older Ambler novels. Earl Jowitt's The Strange Case of Alger Hiss was withdrawn from publication in the United States because Jowitt, a highly respected British jurist, had some highly critical things to say about the case, and about Witness, Whittaker Chamber's autobiographical work that centres on the Hiss case. And Chambers, for that matter! Newsweek proceeds to argue with Jowitt for several columns. Eugenie Clark's Lady With a Spear is a memoir of her life of ichthyologist.

And Raymond Moley explains the "New Federal Power Policy" of being much more cautious about building big dams because of various environmental considerations in a pretty fair and reasonable way, especially for Moley. 

Aviation Week, 20 July 1953

News Digest reports that the Transocean DC-6B lost near Wake on 11 July was destroyed by an explosion. TWA's navigators are on strike. New York Airways is only carrying one or two passengers per flight, because mail loads are so heavy. The McDonnell FH-1 and North American FJ-1 have been retired. Harold Bowman, the secretary treasurer of Boeing, has died at 59 of a heart attack. 

Industry Observer reports that the USAF is testing the Boeing Model 500 turboprop on a Cessna, that the NATO Standing Group in Washington is discussing a standard lightweight fighter for NATO, with the Lockheed F-104 having the inside track, the British pushing the Folland Gnat, the French, a Dassault delta design.The recent Olympus-Canberra high altitude trials show that the Olympus is easy to relight in even extreme circumstances, indicating that the British may be able to extend aircraft range by turning off two engines and proceeding on the other two. (That is, with the V-bombers, but presumably also other four engine types, even airliners? Well, transports, anyway.) Speaking of extended range, Bristol is talking up an extended Britannia with a two-spool turboprop as a more fuel efficient, albeit slower, direct London-New York airliner. Vickers is not sending a Vickers 700 on a sales tour of America because it has none to send, because they've all sold, some to overseas affiliates of American airlines, which can get their sales experience that way. It is also working on an extended Viscount, the 800, with 66 seats  up from 48. The RCAF's Comet publicity tour was slightly derailed this week by a tyre blowouot at Mitchell AFB. The first F-84F from the GM Buick-Oldsmobile Pontiac assembly line in Kansas City has made its inaugural flight. Design work on Avro's CF-104 has begun. Wright is now flight testing its J67.   

Katherine Johnsen's Washington Observer is back, reporting that the new Joint Chiefs Committee has hit the ground running with important initiatives like getting rid of "wing" as a measure of Air Force strength. It finds various inconsistencies in Secretary Wilson's positions vis-a-vis cutting the Air Force's precious money over time. There's also a new outbreak of Air Force-Navy feuding going on, while the Army is upset at all the young Air Force officers, a consequence of the planned 143 wing expansion, and it is always good time to make fun of Margaret Truman. She's the daughter of a former President! 

The lead story in News is Senator Welker's obliging attack on Air Force management. Meanwhile, the National Air Transport Coordinating Committee stands firm on its ban on Comets at New York airports, which recently forced the RCAF's demonstration Comet to bypass Idlewild and overreach to Mitchell AFB. NATCC says that the Comet is too loud for the public to accept, its hands are tied. C. R. Smith of American Airlines agrees! But in private letters to Ambassador Douglas Smith in Ottawa, and not in public in any unseemly or traceable way. The UAW's last ditch effort to prevent the cancellation of the Kaiser C-123 contract that was to follow on the C-119, has failed. Air Force Secretary Harold Talbott might have suspicious connections with the Wright Field mob and some WWI misadventures on his permanent record, but he's not wrong about this one! I think. Do people who do business with Uncle Henry ever actually meet him? I mean, he's a lovely guy, but STILL! Also, a little box story indicates that Congress has put $15 million up against the atomic aircraft engine. The Air Force budget cuts include $400 million for bases, and H. M. Horner of United Aircraft is touring Europe looking for German license partners to produce Pratt and Whitney engines. 

"R7V-1 Crash" The 7 July crash of a Navy Lockheed R7V-1, otherwise known as the service precursor to the Turbocompound Lockheed Super Constellation, which is a thing that Americans don't do and that's why there's no American Comet, so please take this paragraph as a contradiction-free zone,  is obviously a concern. 

The Douglas AD-4 atomic bomber is now in carrier service, says Ed Heinemann, who at the same event says that jet  transports will be the rule by 1960, that supersonic transports will follow, and that atomic engines are for the next quarter century after that. The newest Swift gets a publicity shot on the page, and everyone is upset at Boeing for its ridiculous ditching procedure for the Stratocruiser which seems to require some passengers to sit on the floor because there are no crash seats for stewardesses. The Detroit Air Show was a crashing success, and an experimental bomb sight for single-seat fighter jets makes them more accurate bombers, who would have thought. Russian sources are complaining about Japan's resurgence in the air, Lt. Guy P. Bordelon has four Yak 18 kills in a Navy Corsair and may be the first Navy ace of the Korean War if this keeps up. Convair's sale to General Dynamics is the biggest financial transaction in aviation yet, Vought wants us to know that it is working on an ejection seat, and we hear about that 99-hours-around the world guy again. 

Avionics has "That Was No Saucer, That Was An Echo," which is a no-authorial credit article about a CAA study finding that spurious "UFO" radar contacts are due to air refraction. The details of how a refracted radio signal can be turned into a radar target on a scope are gone into at some length, which doesn't help me with the thought that if the authorities were trying to cover up contact with extrate
rrestial intelligences, this is the kind of thing  they would arrange to have printed. 

American Gyro, Summers Gyroscope, and Saunders Associates wants us to know about ate gyros they have on the market. All three are lighter and more sub-miniature than each other, and each one is better than the others, mainly because of damping. The National Bureau of Standards has a device that can shake vacuum tubes until they break, which doesn't sound that hard, but it's for testing so they have to be shaken like they were in an airplane, so that's harder. Aremac offers the first telescopic boresight for radar antennas, which are for checking their alignment, if you were wondering. Filter Centre reports that the Marines are shutting off their GE G-3 autopilots, carried on the F3D, because they don't work, or the F3D doesn't work, or both. Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory is testing continuous wave collision avoidance radar. The SEP 2, recently demonstrated in a Trans-Canada Viscount, replaces all vacuum tubes with magnetic amplifiers in this new version of the Smith's Instrument autopilot. It weighes less than 100lbs and uses three rate gyros instead of the standard directional and vertical gyros. Northwest Airlines is commencing an exhaustive competitive evaluation of the Sperry Zero Reader and Collins Radio Radio Integrated Flight  System. 

The McGraw Hill linewide Editorial explains the National Layaway, I mean, "stand-by capacity" approach to defence production, which is the best thing the machine tool industry has heard all year. That's it, buy a bunch of machine tools and stick them somewhere for later! "The savings will multiply!" I feel like McGraw-Hill is standing at my front door with its foot in the sill and a demonstration model and it won't go away until it has vacuumed my living room for me. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Vacuuming the living room, I mean. 

Aeronautical Engineering has a lavish pictorial devoted to the long-since cancelled Fairchild Lark guided missile. It was ordered nine years ago! That's forever in guided missile time! Also, Mallory-Sharon Titanium, of Niles, Ohio, has opened up the first laboratory exclusively devoted to titanium, which doesn't surprise me as much as it seems to surprise Aviation Week. Production is a bit busy to write an article, but fortunately Vultee wants to tell us about its new rubber pads and jack connectors for making testing easier. Boeing is making its technician trainees work with scrap, because it is a useful experience and not because it is cheaper, and Albin K. Peterson of Longren Aircraft has an aluminum stretch-form press that can't be beat, if Albin K. Peterson doesn't say so himself, which he does.  

Letters

E. Guigonis, the sales manager of Fancaise Thomson-Houston, points out that his company is the only one outside the United States working on GCA. RLD agrees with DG that the main reason that there's an "engineer shortage" is that there's a shortage of engineers who will work cheap. John Frink of Mechaneers is so upset that his company wasn't mentioned in the recent article about something that he wants Aviation Week to print his entire letter about how Mechaneers does something, which goes on and on for columns and which I am going to make a stand for something and else and not read. So if you want to learn about something and Mechaneers, you go ahead on your own time! On the other hand, various companies that were mentioned are very happy with the quality of the articles that mentioned them.

New Aviation Products has Avien-Knickerbocker's electronic fuel gauge, which measures accurately and is simple and light and interchangeable and all that stuff. Sheffield Corporation's jet blade gage allows unskilled operators to check to see if they've ruined the piece yet. Leach Relay's AC/DC relay is the lightest, etc. Haydon Switch's hermetically sealed precision snap  switch has a 10,000 operation expected lifetime. Marion Instrument's elapsed time device is a timer for instrument panels. I continue to be embarrassed for the companies that end up in the Also on the Market section. (Rubber sealant, hydraulic hoists, whatever. If you want to have a chance of being read, pony up.)

What's New has reviews of two books, Fifty Years of Flight by Welmont A. Shrader, which is a real name; and Dr. S. M. Kamminga's The Aircraft Commander in Commercial Air Tansport, which is not only a clumsily translated title, indicates a book with extensive passages left in the original languages. Twenty-three brochures, catalogs, and helpful booklets, including a guide to currency conversions, get in the feature, all with a line or two and there is no way under Heaven I am copying out all of that. Convair does a bit better and sends in some pictures of the R3Y Tradewind being erected, but they're boring and the R3Y is ridiculous, so that's enough of that. 

George L. Christian reports for Air Transport that "Flying the Comet Demands a Light Touch," because this week he got to fly along with an RCAF Comet, which makes up for a lot of boring maintenance base visits. Don't overcontrol, because you can "feel" the surfaces with power control! The radar won't work, probably because its mounting is too light to dampen vibrations, and the brakes are a bit iffy on ice, but other than that, it's pretty swell. The American airlines have moved from fighting over Atlantic routes to squabbling over Pacific ones, Spain's CASA concern is planning a twin-engine 38 seater with Bristol Hercules, the CASA 207 Azor, and US airlines remind us that they are super-duper safe. (One of the companies demanding to be given a Pacific air route is Transocean. Which as of this week has three crashes this year.)  

Captain R. C. Robson's Cockpit Viewpoint looks at how many crew you need in a cockpit. It has gone from one to two to three, and will it go to four? Planes are getting more complicated! And he points to the Flight 470 crash (way back in February, no reason not to have forgotten already), which seems to have been caused by turbulence taking a wing off, as all the evidence you need for airborne weather radar. 

Robert H. Wood's Editorial is happy about the number of tourists flying these days (American Airlines has taken over from the Pennsylvania Central as America's biggest people mover since 1948!) and reminds us that the fact that there was no crash at the Detroit Air Show doesn't show that Air Shows are safe. 
 

Letters

Several correspondents have had it up to here with Newsweek's criticism of HMS Britannia, and point out that it was designed to be converted into a hospital ship in wartime. George Kamm of Pan Books is upset that Newsweek gave the impression that either he, and Ralph Vernon-Hunt founded Pan Books, which was actually founded by Alan Botts. Ira Rowlson of Plattsburg thinks that The Periscope should make more careful attributions. For Your Information notes that the reason that Robert Haeger has so much insight into the convulsions in the Kremlin is that he has travelled to places that are very close to the Soviet Union, like Yugoslavia. The B-52 is "the first of a new class of intercontinental bombers" to take to the air. 

The Periscope reports that the White House thinks that Hoover might be leaking to Senator McCarthy. The White House is doing its best to recruit able staff, it wants us to know. Those ever-reliable sources in Sweden have word that some Soviet diplomats tried to smuggle Beria out of the country before he was purged, and have now been purged themselves. Lo Jui-Ching is probably going to be purged, because he sat next to Beria at a party once. It's hard to get domestics at Western embassies in Moscow because the MVD can't train spies fast enough, and Vassily Stalin is out of the picture at the Kremlin. The French have been told to get out of Germany soonest, because either they approve the EDC, or the Americans and British will start arming the Germans themselves. Poland is likely the next place for an all-out anti-communist revolt. Selden Chapin is probably the next US ambassador to Panama, William J. Donovan is going to Thailand, Raymond Hare, currently ambassador to Saudi Arabia, is going to Lebanon. Remember Adlai Stevenson? Remember him! Some unnamed Treasury officials think that the personnel cuts were no big deal. West Texas ranchers want more drought relief, the first trial of national first-class mail by air will be in September, and the Navy is looking into the possibility that geese home in on radars as a new way of detecting radar. (With watch geese?)

"It isn't generally realised, but the Navy has fallen two years behind on some of its jet fighters. Two engines it had counted on haven't panned out. Result: the Navy's present fighters are underpowered and can't hope to meet the Russians on equal terms." 

People are saying that Churchill will step down soon, leaving Eden as Prime Minister and Salisbury as Foreign Secretary. People who aren't R. A. B. Butler! The widows of Eduard Benes and Klement Gottswald are having their troubles, because Communism is terrible. Ana Pauker, on the  other hand, has been rehabilitated and will soon be back in Rumania to wreak vengeance on her enemies, while Iran will make a big deal with Russia to export their oil through the Soviet Union soon. 

Jessie Royce Landis, Julie Wilson, Richard Conte and Patricia Neal will be on Broadway next year in Celia, Saratoga Trunk, A Dash of Bitters, and New Year's Eve, respectively. Fulton Lewis will be on TV next year while Jack Webb produces a show based on the life of Pete Kelly. On Stage with Monty Woolley and Design for Living with Faye Emerson are going to be on TV next year. 

Clearly, in spite of one bomb after another, people were still picking up for Faye Emerson, because she got another talk show in '54, but not this one. On the  other hand,she had a cameo in 1954's Take Me to Broadway, which also featured Bobby Van, but not this particular routine, which is from Small Town Girl. The point of all this is to say that the ambassadorial appointments are all right, with William Donovan making no secret that he wanted out of Washington because he had no time for John Foster Dulles. The rest of it seems to be would-be producers trying to generate interest by attaching star's names to their projects. Except for Jessie Royce Landis, who was stuck doing dinner theatre this year. You are only as good as your sources. 

Washington Trends reports ton who influences the President: Sherman Adams, Robert Taft, Richard Nixon, Robert Cutler, Treasury Secretary Humphries, Attorney General Brownell, and Gabriel Hauge. Surprisingly enough, he has no time for generals. Probably because he's met them! 

National Affairs

"Washington Mixed Opinion Greets Korea Truce Report" Washington reminds the Reds that we need to get this whole truce thing going. Also, the White has gotten its act together to push the EPT and the McCarran Act amendment through, but has has to settle for a cut Voice of America budget.

"The McCarthy Front" Lots of people don't like Senator McCarthy, who isn't going to be allowed to have William Bundy before the committee. On the other hand, he is back to attacking Western European trade with China, and seems to have Harold Stassen on his side. Aid for Southwest farmers and ranchers is through Congress. Maurice Joseph Tobin is a handsome, promising young Democratic politician. And did I say "is?" Because he died of a heart attack at 54 this week. Sweet Mother of Heaven, Newsweek! Employment is at an all-time high. Those scalliwags in the Democratic Party have a completely off-the-wall and irregular agenda. They're going to try to win the next election! (This story about the Democratic game plan for '54 takes up a page and a half!) Robert Taft's "condition was good, but not good enough to return to the Senate this summer." It says here in a report from New York Hospital, where it turns out he underwent exploratory surgery to find out the cause of his hip pains. He's going to be released within four days. It says here. And the Wabash County Selective Service Board has resigned over political pressure. For the Crime section, Canada gets its own murder!

"Big Stick II" We get an account of the development of America's "newest, fastest, long-range bomber," the B-52, which went from a 1948 proposal to a 1952 prototype to squadron service in 1955, if all holds up. Once in service, the B-52 will require enormous ground complement, because it is enormous, as see picture, but also gigantic statistics. It's 153ft long, has a wingspan of 185ft (sweptback!) and is 48ft high at the tail. That's a big hangar. It has 8 J-57 engines to push all that plane and 650mph "between 7500 and 8500 miles," or more if it is refuelled after takeoff. That's far enough to bomb the Soviet Union, but in case you're worried, we have bases around the world, and Winston Churchill says that the atom bomb brings peace, so especially those East Anglia airbases that can take a B-52 are in play. (Because the undercarriage tyre pressure must be enormous, not that the article discusses it.) 

"Florida Crash" That would be the Fairchild Packet crash at Whitting Field last week, with 43 fatalities of 46 aboard, final count. The Navy is grounding the Packet pending the accident investigation.

Korean War

"Bloody Red Drive Southward Ends With Truce Hopes High" Fighting around the Kumsong bulge is, according to Maxwell Taylor, "the first resumption of open field fighting in two years." A reported 8 Chinese divisions attacked on this ROK-held front. We're told that Sun Yup Paik toured his front line with a "big Smith and Wesson on his hip," relieved one divisional commander personally, and told his troops to stay and fight as four ROK divisions "largely collapsed," leading to a penetration of up to 7 miles, as battalion and even regimental command posts were overrun, forcing hurried reinforcement, largely from Eighth Army artillery and "tank-infantry teams." I guess the Reds are upset at Rhee! Back from Korea, Walter S. Robertson gives Newsweek an interview about his full and wide ranging talks with President Rhee and his communication of an American guarantee of South Korean independence.

"Berlin Food, Offer of Talks, Point Up East German Unrest" In Berlin, US food aid is being distributed to East Germans in West German markets at nominal prices; in the Soviet Union, the purge has expanded to a number of MVD officials and several union politicians (Ukraine, Azerbaijan) promoted under Beria. 

"More Freedom Wanted" From Indo China, word that Vietnamese aren't that hostile to the Reds due to "mass delusion about life . . . under the Communists."  The Vietnamese don't  like the French, either, so the West's main hope right now is for a sudden resurgence of Vietnamese anti-communist nationalism, which might happen, because Paul Reynaud just became the Vice-Premier of France, and he understands Vietnamese nationalism because he once did a report on it. 

"The Big Drop" The French parachute assault on Langson was a glorious victory, as French Union paratroopers dropped into action from C-47s and C-119s to surround the Viet Minh rear echelon centre to destroy supplies and blow up bridges before marching the 60 miles back to the Delta via Loc Binh, with only two paratroopers killed in the operation. 

"A la Bastille" Massive riots by Paris resident North Africans followed the traditional Bastille Day marches by 16,000 French "Reds." Seven dead and 130 injured vastly exceeded the celebrated riots that greeted General Ridgeway, and overshadowed the Bastille Day parade, leading "few" to worry about the "threat" of the estimated 250,000 North Africans who have migrated to the country and are now underemployed because they can't speak French and for no other reason, and are probably about to go Communist en masse. Jomo Kenyatta is out of jail, probably temporarily, after his lawyer was able to force a retrial. Follows a full page on "Margaret's Romance: The Facts." Yes, I'm still mad. Most people I talk to are still mad. 

"'Warm-Weather Waffle'" Jefferson Caffrey has presented President Naguib with an aide-memoire from President Eisenhower laying out the American position on Suez; the situation in the Canal Zone has calmed down after it turned out that teletypist LAC Anthony Rigden was some short of shifty griping left winger who had probably volunteered to be abducted by the Muslim Brotherhood, or something like that. Anyway, it is no big deal say the British now, who are, one might say, waffling. And it's hot, so there's your title! 

"Gay Night Life" Does Newsweek know what the hep cats mean when they say "gay"? Well, yes, probably. Are they saying anything to us? Well, the pictorial has lots of girls in it, and the article is mostly about (female) prostitutes, BUT . . . 

In this hemisphere, Argentinians aren't as deliriously grateful for Milton Eisenhower's presence as you would expect, the very photogenic Diligenti quintuplets are 10, the Organisation of Central American States has abandoned its boring original agenda of promoting economic integration in favour of shunning Guatemala for being a bunch of pinkos, which is sure to be a "dam against Communism." 

Business

The Periscope Business Trends "A few more soft spots are showing up in the economy. The big question is: do they foreshadow serious trouble ahead? Most economist readily explain them away and insist the boom is still on solid ground. But inevitably businessmen wonder --and worry a  little bit." Inventory is up, backlogs down, auto repossessions up, farm equipment sales down. On the other hand, incomes are still high and so is employment, and economists are "staking their reputations" on the prediction that there won't be a downturn. Oh, and the President is going to get his way on a small business agency. Hurray!

"A Look at the U. S. Builder: Another Economic Barometer" Home starts have fallen steadily all spring due to high mortgage rates, but nonresidential buildings are up. 

"Featherweight Trains" The New York Central and the Chesapeake and Ohio have combined to order "Train X" from Pullman. It's a 30ft car compared with the usual 70, only 18" off the rails, with just two wheels on a single axle at the front, as it interlocks with the car behind, which seems like the old "pulled himself up by his own bootstraps" trick, if you ask me. And 104 vibration-free miles per hour. Smallest, lightest, simplest, fastest, most reliable passenger train car ever, as they say over at Aviation Week!

"Heat and Smoke" It's hot out, so Americans are throwing out their cigarettes faster, with 3/4" still smokable, which works out to Americans throwing out 1.2 billion dollars of cigarettes a year, says economist William J. Baxter, who seems to have some time on his hands. Because it's so hot out? I've got nothing! Except that that's a lot of cigarettes. 

Newsweek checks out Vega Baja, outside of San Juan, to see how tax breaks are attracting new businesses to employ Puerto Ricans so they don't have to all move to New York. A  major manganese ore body has been found in French Equatorial Africa, and two fifteen year-olds in Connecticut made a radio-controlled model Jeep and won a prize from Ford.

Notes: Week in Business reports that GE sales are up, that the Federal Court of Appeals in Philadelphia has set aside the Federal Reserve antitrust ruling against Trans-American, that Alcoa is putting up the price of aluminum while Reynolds is building an aluminum mill in the Philippines.

Products: What's New GE has a "flashlight bulb that works like an auto headlight," that is, it has two filaments that give either a flood or a spotlight. L. J. Houze Convex Glass has a glass(?) Christmas card. A. P. Angerio has a wall plug-in baby bottle warmer, which sounds like a very handy gimmick compared with,  say, a warming pan on a wood stove. But first we have to get this place wired! Trane Company has a cold car with a built-in diesel refrigerator.
 

Henry Hazlitt explains why the reason that foreign parts are prosperous and we are entering a Republican Recession is that we're secretly supporting the world with our secret subsidies that sure look like us paying other people to buy our stuff. For one thing, the French aren't taxing the rich enough! (Also, they're socialists! Both together at the same time!)

Science, Medicine

"Aerial Flashlight" The USAF has been testing the biggest, brightest, fastest aerial photoflash ever Windsor Locks, Connecticut, a 300lb, 12ft magnesium "flashlight" that will burn for four minutes while the plane zooms over the AA batteries that won't react in time. Because it's so fast, you see. I really don't think this will work as well as Air Force Research and Development Command thinks it will. 

"Rabies in the Wild" Rabies kills 40 to 100 Americans a year, plus 5000 to 8000 dogs and 1000 cattle. 90% of Americans get rabies from their dogs, but in various foreign countries where they are serious about controlling it, this isn't a problem and instead people get rabies from wild animals. So the United States Public Health Service and Johns Hopkins are off to study "virus reservoirs" in the wild, which has turned into a study of the grey fox population. University of Saskatchewan entomologists studying wireworms with radioactive trace elements have found a problem; they eat each other until there is just one extremely radioactive wireworm. Hey, I have an idea for a movie script. Where's my ticket to Kauai? 

"Food Factories" Science fiction fans are thinking about picnics in outer space,or food pills. Now scientists are worrying about same! Food factories, where tanks of plants might grow in artificial light, need just one thing, an appetising food plant, and they think they have one, Chlorella, a species of  algae, a "universal, protein-rich food for humans and cattle," says Arthur D. Little for the Carnegie Institute, which is excited at a 17.5 ton yield per acre, allowing Rhode Island to feed the world half its daily protein ration. Meanwhile, George C. Williams, an ichthyologist at the University of California, has found that the slightly more delicious spiny-headed sculpin returns to the same tidal pool after every excursion into the wide world. 

"The Researcher's Dream" That would be the United States Public Health Service's 500 bed hospital-laboratory at the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, which has opened its door to its first 24 patients, all chronic cases so that the researcher/doctors will have someone to treat for conditions ranging from juvenile arthritis to heart disease.  

"Radium Safety" The University of Utah is opening a centre, or installation, or project, to study just how much radium or other radioactive material a person can ingest without becoming a hideous mutate, longing for the touch of a Norm woman. Or, in this case, having a veterinarian named Marvin Van Dilla give radium treats to cute beagles. I've got to stress that even though the article names the dean of medicine at the University of Utah, and someone who is in a sentence with him and so is probably the director, one Clarence N. Stover (only 30!), it can't be bothered to tell us what the thing is called. 

"Foreign Students" Charles Malik, the Lebanese minster to America (ambassador!) thinks that foreign students should mix with Americans more when they're over here. Richard B. Fisher and Frank S. Morsman's  Academic Reprints is a worthy new academic press running out of Palo Alto.

Press, Radio and Television, Newsmakers

We check in on the Seattle newspaper strike and the new trend for newspapers to give out prizes to readers that just started now and not in the last century. 

"Papers and Politics" Was Adlai Stevenson right during the campaign when he said that America had a one-party press? The American Newspaper Guild took this so seriously that it did an informal poll of its members! Arthur Schlesinger agreed, and two other guys didn't. So there were three respondents? That's a pretty informal poll, if you ask me! And as the next story points out, what about the Communists?

Also, there are now 207 television stations and some of them are making ends meet by repeating shows, sometimes with different titles, and showing movies with sponsors. Which they did before, but WOR is having separate sponsors for each hour of a two-hour film, and that's news! 

Aubrey Schenck and Howard Koch are the furthest flung Hollywood cowboy flick producers yet, filming on Kuai to reduce costs. Joan Garrison was smuggled aboard a Navy destroyer and spent eighteen hours at sea before being caught, which even for this column is one sad little story. Sam Houston IV has just joined the US Army as a second lieutenant and will probably have to wait at least twelve years before he can be a general. Some very prominent people from the Administration were at the dedication of a monument to George Washington Carver, who, I am told was a credit to his race. (Yes, that phrase is being used ironically in some circles these days.) Vivien Leigh, who is a credit to her sex, was seen in public for the first time since her breakdown four months ago. Katherine Hepburn got a traffic ticket in Old Sayburn, Mrs. Mattie Lou Miller says that Glenn Stewart doesn't look anything like her son, REMEMBER ADLAI STEVENSON, an F-86 exceeded the speed of sound in a dive the other day, just like every other plane, you can't commemorate the anniversary of Commodore Perry's death because no-one knows where he's buried, and William R. Jones gets a light sentence for murdering his wife because it was euthanasia. (Something to remember in ten years when someone says they never talked about that stuff ten years ago, see also the gay night life of Hamburg.)

(Released this last year through United Artists, this seems to be a precursor to Schenck and Koch's mid-50s oeuvre: 45:00 and following for some serious subtext)

Gertrude Moran and J. B. Priestley are engaged, not to each other, but a girl can hope. Marguerite Piazza and Frank Stranahan are married to the usual sort; and Peggy Cripps, 32, daughter of the late Stafford Cripps, to Joseph Appiah, thirtyish, Negro law student from the Ivory Coast." Bela Lugosi is divorced. Hilaire Belloc has died, as has Maude Adams and the Duke of Westminster,

  I don't ordinarily cover Music and don't want to set a precedent, but this week's feature on Les Paul and Mary Polfus' new home-slash-recording studio in New Jersey is pretty interesting. It's amazing how much musicians have done with recording tape in just eight years!
 

 New Films

MGM's Ride, Vaquero, is kind of like Shane in that it has the same plot, but kind of unlike Shane, in that it is awful. And has Mexican villains. Also from MGM is Dream Wife, starring Cary Grant, so that's a good start, right there. Deborah Kerr is fated to be the dream wife, much against her (initial) will, and they both do a good job of being funny, which is great, because the writers forgot how. Gentleman Prefer Blondes has Marilyn Monroe in it, so time to ask whether the Zeitgeist is the Great (Wo)Man or just the Weltgeist on horseback, right? Right? I'm not the only person who happened to look up Zeitgeist in her pocket Encyclopedia of Philosophy this morning, am I? I am? It applies, darn it! 

Books

Lin Yutang's The Vermilion Gate is a novel, but it is set in China and it has a Chinese author, so there's that. Last week, a fish science girl, this week, Haroun Tazieff's Caves of Adventure is about a bunch of speleologists who went down in a cave and one of them died, so you know that this is serious science. At any point in the future where I refer to this, I am going to say "cave science" because I only have so much time for dictionaries. Appearances notwithstanding. Other Books looks at Paul Gallico's The Foolish Immortals, which is a novel with, according to my glancing look at the review (if Newsweek won't take these books seriously, why should I?) and also the Holy Land. So, religion? Philip Deane's I Was a Captive in Korea is by the London Observer correspondent who was captured in the retreat from Taejong and spent 33 months in captivity before British diplomacy got him out, just in time to scoop all the similar books coming our way. 

Raymond Moley explains why all those "critics" bent on "socialising power" are wrong about the Eisenhower Administration's decision to let some rinky dink Idaho outfit build the Hell's Canyon dam on a much smaller scale than the Bureau of Reclamation's planned dam. It would have been too expensive, and some Idaho farmers were worried about their water rights. Plus, socialism! 

Aviation Week, 27 July 1953

News Digest reports that Hiller is going to help build the Doman H-31. I have COMPLETE faith that is going to happen. Link is working on an electronic simulator for the F-102. TWA's navigators have called off their strike. Lt. Bordelon is now an ace. Eastern has ordered seven Curtiss-Wright Dehemel electronic fight duplicators.

Industry Observer reports that the ARDC is building a missile test range at Patrick AFB in Florida, Convair's Sea Dart flying boat delta wing jet fighter has plastic bits. Chance Vought is building a lab in Boston, Aerojet is developing a reusablel Rato liquid-fuel bottle, Temco is working on a successor to the T-35, the RCAF Comet has taken fuselage damage from gravel thrown up from the wheels after a short landing. American will use part of its DC-7 fleet for nonstop coast-to-coast service, cost of the C-124 is falling, and the Air Force's inventory of stockpiled machine tools is now worth $319 million. 

Aviation Week reports that the Defence Department has started a new feud with the Air Force over a freeze in research and development spending, while the AF is trying to balance its cuts. 

"Comet Crashes" The Union Aeromarine Comet crash brings Comet total losses to four, Aviation Week gloats. It was probably a braking problem. An F-86D has set a new speed record of 715.7mph subject to official confirmation. The Convair XP5Y-1 crash on 15 July was due to a failure of the tail trim mechanism. The Navy is buying 96 Super DC-3s. William J. Coughlin reports that General LeMay has been "gagged" because he didn't talk about the Air Force budget in his talk to the International Aeronautical Society. The Navy is going to test steam catapults on USS Forrestal, the J65 license cost Wright a half million dollars, and the Navy has finally unveiled the Sea Dart, which is said to have a limited production contract. Air Defence Command is fling the F-89 again, with a new and improved wing. The head of the CAA is visiting the de Havilland plant to look at the Comet 3 under production and cast around for a good excuse for giving an airworthiness certification when Rickenbacker buys it. And the Air Force now claims a total of 800 MiG-15 kills. Lufthansa will procure Comet 3s, Sea Hawk pilots flying off the USS Antietam find them to be a huge improvement. 

Aeronautical Engineering has Joseph Hay Stevens on Le Baroudeur attack fighter, the one that saves on weight by skipping the undercarriage in favour of a trolley. Boeing is leasing Fairchild AFB to test the B-52, while Beckman and Whitley has misplaced its calendar and thinks it is 1939 from the looks of its "Guillotine" explosive cable cutter. On the other hand, it is supposed to be used on guided missiles instead of barrage balloons, so progress of a kind. 

Production has Gerhard Schroder reporting for McGraw-Hill World News that the "Germans Ready to Roll on X-Day," with a charming subtitle to the effect that the "Reich air industry" has the labour and the experts and is just waiting to get a payoff on all the "research doodles" it lent the Allies after the late unpleasantness. Or the ones they're doing? I honestly am not spending any more time on an article that even the author says is based on "wild guesses." Short and Harland has received a big American press, and "Republic Installs New Tools," again, some presses

Equipment has George L. Christian, who caught a ride to Canada with the RCAF last issue, doing a historic survey of "Canadian Airlines: 'Jalopies to Jets" Which is weird because while Canada did have jalopies, it doesn't have jets, but it does have  Viscounts, but mention of them I see not. Instead, he hops over to Vancouver and looks into all the airlines that fly out of Sea Island. Hint: jalopies, although a a guy named Carl Agar flies Okanagan Helicopters up in the Kemano. (Which, I know, is not the Okanagan.) KLM is not buying jet transports because they are too expensive, and wingtip slip tanks extend B-25 ranges, which why would anyone bother if not?

New Aviation Products has an improved fuel shutoff valve from Manning, Maxwell and Moore, a cheaper method for producing avgas from the Houdry Process Corporation, involving an intermediary stage producing butylene from surplus butane. Patterson Products has a de-icing fluid jets, while Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton's Model P-101M extensometer measures the tensile strength of stainless steel samples. 

Air Transport has a short feature on Russian civil air transport, which "trails behind the West," cue that anecdote about chickens in the overhead luggage rack. "DC-3 Successor Prospects Dim" is a story about the absolutely unsurprising failure of the hair-brained scheme to develop a DC-3 replacement with Congressional encouragement and maybe money. El Al is putting rockets on some of its C-46s.

Letters has Stephen Randolph of Bendix reminding us that GCA exists. George Tenney, the Vice-President of McGraw-Hill, writes to complain about his flights getting cancelled and standing in the terminal at O'Hare thinking that he should have taken the train. Pull up your socks, airlines! M. R. Sheldon of Chance Vought lets everyone know that they have a Reliability Department too, or first, I don't care. Richard K. Fox of Burton-Rogers reminds everyone that they tain helicopter crews. Paul Condon of Collins is upset that Aviation Week didn't mention that the DC-7's radar is from Collins. 

. . . And that's it! No back matter at all; no Robson, no What's New, no Editorial. Not going to complain, because I just got called to dinner. Roast pork with plum sauce! 

And now what everyone's been asking for, the back of the month in The Engineer. Three issues! 

Not-the-Seven-Day-Journal for 17 July, 1953 checks in with the British Internal Combustion Engine Research Association's centenary lunch, an interesting brochure from the Institution of Chemical Engineers on "Careers in Chemical Engineering," a nice model showing at Dr. Lewis Mond's laboratory, and the annual reports of the Forest Products Research Laboratory and Road Research Board, which were handed in to Teacher on the way out the door for summer vacation. We finally have the story of the discovery of nickel carbonyl in miniature model form, learn that wood waste is being used more and more now, and that a tape-punching computing machine does a better job of studying pedestrian/auto interactions at foot crossings than empirical studies. Oh. And there should be more chemical engineers and internal combustion engines. 

In the IXth part (Roman numerals yay!) of O. S. Knock's trip around Britain on every locomotive running FOR PROGRESS he looks at the new "Pacific" engines to see what effect their relatively narrow fireboxes might have. And then, because everyone's on vacation, The Engineer gives two-and-a-half pages to the sales guy at British Thomson Houston to describe their latest alternator.  (The public relations guy at Newberry and Co. is at least too embarrassed to sign his name to the later "article" on its new single-cylinder diesel engine. H. D. Blakelock of GEC is also proud to sign his name to the "article" about GEC's new high temperature vacuum furnace, while the one about a new diesel train car for the Leeds Corporation seems to have landed from outer space.  ) After that, we're off to "The British Instruments Industries Exhibition," with tea and shandys after because it's summer. But first we have to pretend to be interested in the Nash and Thompson ventilation network calculator, designed by Nottingham University and commissioned by the National Coal Board. Wait! This actually is interesting! It's an analog computer for predicting the flow of air quantities through large collieries. I wonder how they did it before electric circuits? Did they even try? The DSIR stand (not going to spell it out) has a suite of instruments from the Electrical Research Association, including the gust anemometer mentioned by Flight, Ferranti has its electronic digital computer developed for the NRDC, and there's an automatic vacuum and pressure controller, remote liquid level indicators, a light-up flow meter, a pneumatic transmitter, a profile projector, an ultrasonic flaw detector, the Minirack remote engine indicator, and the Igema distant boiler-water-level indicator. After lunch and our shandys we are too drunk to really appreciate the Royal (Agricultural Society) Show at Blackpool, but those are some VERY tractor-y tractors! Which, I will admit, is a very hep name! Oh, and a direct milk churn recorder won a Silver Medal, three big cheers and one hurrah! 

Next The Engineer commences an extended visit to the Staythorpe-West Melton Section of the 275kV Grid, which is where the electrical engineer meets the civil engineer in the service of building Colossal Things To Carry Colossal Voltages. But no-one asks an architect to design a transmission line pylon, so it's all ugly and there's a limit to how much I can be expected to care about how they make things rugged enough to carry the Supergrid. No shortage of facts, however, unlike the sixth annual report of the Advisory Council on Science Policy, covered in a single-page article on "Exploitation of Science by Industry," which excuses a year of per diems for scientific worthies like Sir Henry Tizard by finding that Britain doesn't have enough scientists and engineers compared to America, and should get more somewhere. 

 

The Leaders for 17 July look at "The Universities," actually the report on the University Grants Committee, and "Anglo-American Service Co-operation." The former explains that university teacing and research are getting more expensive, but that's the price we pay, the latter is an extended whine about American atomic secrecy when we're sharing our steam catapults, anti submarine mortars and angled flight decks. Letters has an exchange on the extent of employment of engineers at the Ministry of 'Works between the editor and W. J. Webster (more, and less, respectively), while H.G. H. Tracy and David M. Pearson engage with Professor M'Ewen on the training of engineering designers. 

Another article from outer space describes a five-story "statically indeterminate prestressed concrete building," which seems to mean that we don't know why it stands up so we threw in some more beams, here's where they are what we think they do. I'm glad they don't do "Aluminum Test Masts" this way! Then , oh my Heaven there's another advertorial about a "high frequency bar stock hardening machine" from GEC, which seems to be a way of surface hardening steel bars by zapping the ever living heck out of them, which is interesting because I had no idea the did that, and a visit to the Packard works in the United States where they are building some light weight V-12 diesels for the Navy, and then some pages for G. P. Jones to talk about years ago, before the war, and "The Rise and Development of Sheffield Industry" that hits the Battle of Waterloo halfway through. The Boulton Paul P.III.A exists, Industrial and Labour Notes notes steel production and coal consumption are still rising, exports are at a new high but need to go higher, unemployment is about level, Britain is still importing more than it exports, and the Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Act has had its second reading. Four Launches and Trial Trips, three diesel, one (triple expansion) steamship, one cargo liner, one cargo ship, one trawler, one dredge. 

Not-the-Seven Day Journal for 24 July 1953 visits the Institution of Mining Engineers, reads the Lloyd's Shipbuilding Returns, laments the scrapping of the Brabazon and oil pollution at sea, and reads a report on vehicle braking at the Road Research Laboratory. Someone couldn't leave the office for vacation until they handed in! The IME ruined toasted sandwiches and shandys for everyone by hearing actual papers on winding engines, the Brabazon was a giant waste of  money. ships are going to be prohibited from flushing out their tanks too much in British waters, shipbuilding is up 58,000t this quarter at 2.123 million tons, mostly oil tankers, while abroad excepting China, Poland and Russia, there was 3.8 million tons underway. People need to test their brakes more. 

F. A. Blakely has "Some Problems in Flexural Testing," and B. Downs has "The 'Intrinsic Efficiency' of a Flow-Type Air Compressor," both worthy empirical investigations. O. S. Knock isn't just riding around in trains, he also has done some technical journalism, with a look at the performance and efficiency tests done on the "Britannia" Pacific locomotives, which is only going to be of interest to other locomotive engineers since we know perfectly well how it is done. For some reason neither the sales guy nor anyone else bothers to sign another despatch from the BTH works, this one about the machining plant where they make turbine casings, which is a machine shop on a colossal scale with special purpose tools from W. H. Asquith, but otherwise not very novel. "Twin Screw-Ship Valiant is a triple expansion fire boat for the Mersey Authority. Guy Motors is expanding, and it is time to hear about the diesel-electric locomotives that BTH (bringing you this whole issue, apparently) is building for Australia. 

We hear about the annual report of the Radio Research Board, which goes to far off places to look at radio reception and solar eclipses, which sounds exciting, about underground coal gasification, this time in Belgium, which is also exciting, since it is underground coal fires on purpose, and then The Engineer says "the hell with it" and does a full page of short advertorials. Leaders for 24 July 1953 look at "Atomic Energy and Possible Developments" and "The Function of the Large Carrier." The hydrogen bomb is frightening, especially when possibly jacketed with metals that produce long-lived radioactive isotopes under neutron bombardment; atomic artillery is exciting but will use up all the uranium, the British admire the administrative efficiency of the AEC and are thinking about letting private industry have a bigger share of peaceful atomic power. On the subject of large carriers, we can agree that they are quite expensive, and that if you are not persuaded by the logic of carrier borne atom bombers, you probably shouldn't go in for them. William Onyon has died. He was 91, so he  had a good run, but I'm sorry if by some mischance you hear it first here. Letters has T. M. Charlton showing an error in a recent article on "Plane Frames Not Obeying Hooke's Law" in its handling of the Castigliano Theorem, and F. H. Willgoss arguing for a column about the definition of "education" to show that teaching really is important, as might have been doubted. Literature has books on the principles of management and a Symposium on Prestressed Concrete Statically Indeterminate Structures, which is evidently a big subject due to the tendency of prestressed beams to get more stressed. 

"Railway Re-Railing Equipment" is about a train wrecker that British Railways picked up in Germany at a good price and is now trying out. Those clever Germans! We visit the Hydraulic Research Laboratory at the back end of the issue, let GEC have some space to talk about their "Radio-Frequency Edge Gluing Machine," which glues strips of wood to the edge of laminated board by shocking the ever living out of it, and, lacking a full-length article, do American Engineering News with visits to United Steel in Gary to see them use liquid glass as a lubricant in extrusions, and the General American Transportation Corporations "Kanigen" process for chemically nickel plating. African Engineering Notes is about train works, a new power station, and some mines in South Africa, because where else in Africa would  you even do engineering? Industrial and Labour Notes covers the parliamentary debate on science and productivity that determines that it is all the TUC's fault, shows that inflation wasn't high this year, that the iron and steel situation is improving, that exports are up 4% this year so far after declining 10% at the back end of last year, and that imports aren't climbing as quickly mainly because prices of raw materials are falling. 9 Launches and Trial Trips, 7 motor ships, two steamships, one Scotch boiler. Three oil tankers, two coasters, one ore carrier, three cargo liners.

Not the Seven-Day Journal for 31 July 1953 visits the Royal Aeronautical Society (Sidney Camm is this year's President!) and the Chemical Research Laboratory of the DSIR, investigates the very historical turbines of the King Edward as they arrive at the museum, tells us about the Commonwealth Bursaries Scheme, and reads the annual report on "Airline Traffic Statistics." They're up! 

R. Quarendon compares and contrasts various "Paint Coating Thickness Meters" on the market in the first part of a continuing series. They're mostly by electrical resistance, so far. C. G. Watson has an empirical/theoretical investigation of "Forms of Sections for Struts, O. S.. Knock continues to look at testing results for the "Britannia" locomotives, and British Oxygen Company tells us about a welded light alloy yacht produced by the American Aircomatic system licensed by yours truly in this country. You, too, can have a yacht as spiffing as this! De Havilland announces the gigantic Gyron jet engine, you heard it here first. The Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation has released its plans for the expansion of Gatwick Airport. One and a half pages of advertorials are followed by the ever-riveting Metallurgical Topics which has failure as a theme, with precis of work on the deformation of sheet steel, the effect of pressure on tensile properties, and a creep-resistant magnesium alloy, which rather hair-raisingly, finds that the radioactive element thorium is an excellent alloying material in magnesium alloys for high-temperature aviation applications. 

The Leaders for 31 July can't get enough of "Science and Productivity" before talking about "New Weapons." All the summaries in the world can't change the fact that the debate was an exchange of velleities, and the new weapon is the US Army's 280mm atomic cannon, and also atom-carrying atomic missiles, which are the coming thing. The Journal not having got to all the parties, we mention the Cornish Engines Preservation Society and Naval Architects' gala luncheons and an electronics exhibition in Manchester. 

Then it is off to the "Airframe Test House and Wind Tunnel" at Handley Page Radlett! Everyone has these, but Handley Page's high speed wind tunnel is particularly neat-o keen. The Mobile Crane Works at Sunderland is next to my Butlin's, and that's reason enough to pop in and take some pictures of giant cranes being assembled. 

"Skegness." I'm dying here!

While at Manchester and before tea and shandys, "A Heart and Lung Machine" That's actually serious! The Postgraduate Medical School of the University of London has built "what can best be described as an extra-corporeal heart and lungs." It's not small, but the concept is straightforward, if literally breath-taking. Vein in, artery out, and the machine oxygenates the returned blood and pumps it onward into the body so that surgeons can stop your heart and give it a good once-over. An "essential requirement is close control." You think! It uses English Electric Magamp power supply units for reliability, controlled by an elaborate electrical circuit for accuracy.

Twelve European governments have come together to form a European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), under the auspices of UNESCO. Then, to fill out the issue, two advertorials, the first quite a hobbing machine from David Brown, so I guess it's big enough at 110 inches to be newsworthy, although surely not the forklift from Lansing Bagnall that follows.  John Cockcroft takes a break from bringing us the British H-bomb, I guess, to tell us about "The Industrial Applications of Radioactive Materials," about which we've all already heard, so back to setting off a star on Earth, Director Cockcroft. There's not a moment to lose. And Simon Engineering wants us all to know about its portable "Grain Handling Equipment," which failed to draw the excited capacity crows at the late Royal Show. Don't people understand how important it is to be able to handle grain for export at unimproved ports? And then, why not, even MORE advertorials. He has a grinder! The other guy has a portable X-ray! And we're all in the paper! Industrial and Labour Notes has more parliamentary to-dos to cover, this time the report on government expenditure and industry, and the one on the Ministry of Labour and National Service Annual Report. The Government says that Britain has to export even more if it is going to cover wage increases, iron and steel prices are decontrolled, the Chief Alkali Inspector is worried about cement dust emissions. Three Launches and Trial Trips, one steam ship, two motor, all three oil tankers, Baron Kilmarnock, Merchant Baron, and British Flag. I'm surprised that name's not taken.