Bench Grass is a blog about the history of technology by the former student of a student of Lynn White. The main focus is a month-by-month retrospective series, covering the technology news, broadly construed, of seventy years ago, framed by fictional narrators. The author is Erik Lund, an "independent scholar" in Vancouver, British Columbia. Last post will be 24 July 2039.
Postblogging Technology, August 1953, II: One, Two, Many Bombs
R_.C_.,
Oriental Club,
London,
England
Dear Father:
Here we are, coming down to the end of summer and preparing for our trip to London. By which I mean, finally making our bookings. I would love to fly, and have a bit more time in Nakusp, but it seems quite impractical with a baby and a toddler in hand, and so we are embarking in Montreal on the 1st of September and so leaving Nakusp on the 26th, which means that I will be finishing this letter on the train, probably in the boring bits. There's only so much Saskatchewan scenery you can take!
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Letters
Andrew V. Ruckman, of the West Virginia Policy and Industry Commission, earns his salary by writing to point out that maybe the mint julep was invented in West Virginia. Daniel J. Genac thinks something is up with the "ghost town" of El Dorado, California, if it has a garage. Mary Squire of Northboro, Massachusetts, is dealing with the horror of the recent tornado by writing a nonsense letter to Newsweek. For Your Information reports from Europe that the French are prosperous and have every reason to be happy, but aren't because they need a new constitution and have no idea how to get one. Also, everywhere in Europe that Newsweek visits, people ask about McCarthy and whether he or the President is running America.
The Periscope reports that Iran is going to "explode" soon. If the Reds stop East Germans from picking up American food in East Berlin, the Americans will start sending it over by balloon. Russians are now claiming to have a hydrogen bomb, while Americans are planning to "vaporise" a large island in the Marshalls to show that their H-bomb is bigger. Adlai Stevenson really hit it off with Queen Elizabeth, but "some key Democrats," including Sam Rayburn and Truman, are souring on him. The President is spending extra time with press photographers because he read complaints in Newsweek. The new Hoover commission might recommend selling the TVA and other public power to private industry, and will focus on abolishing government agencies rather than reforming them, and "restoring state's rights and jurisdictions." Bill Donovan is talking a large number of former OSS agents with him to Thailand, where he will be ambassador. General Clark won't say whether the US has atom bombs in the Far East because they are aboard aircraft carriers, which are technically US soil. On the one hand, the American Communist Party is split between a "Molotov" and a "Malenkov" faction. On the other, their new plan for the next New York municipal election is to infiltrate the liberal parties. "A leading Southern Senator might have throat cancer." The US is negotiating for bases in Ireland similar to its arrangement with Spain, but it will only go through of Adenauer loses the German elections and "European defence is definitively ditched." Underground agents in Poland report that the Soviets are reinforcing their troops in East Germany. The East German Politburo is in disarray. President Naguib wants to meet with Prime Minister Churchill, while the British are losing between fifteen and twenty vehicles a month in the Canal Zone. "Most are ending up with the Egyptian Army." General Navarre is said to be saying that the reason that his recent parachute raid was so successful is that he didn't brief the French Cabinet on it, so there were no leaks.
Only missed on the Crisp casting. Solid reporting, Periscope!
Andrei Sakharov
Washington Trends reports that the Russian H-bomb is no big deal, it's just to impress the rubes, with another "carrot" offer coming soon. On the other hand, Newsweek points out, Washington Kremlin experts are just guessing, so who knows, really? But the Russians have to do something to get more consumer goods into the hands of the people, so if having an H-bomb means fewer tanks, that's good for everybody. On the other hand there's going to be a renewed peace offensive against Japan and France,and that's bad. The White House list of five renegade Republican senators includes McCarthy, both Idaho senators (Dworshak as well as Welker), Malone in Nevada and Jenner of Indiana. The President says that he has made his last concession to the five, and will be using his presidential power more aggressively in the next session. Defence Secretary Wilson's prestige is rising rapidly due to his common sense approach to problems, his dislike of apple-polishing and doubletalk, and the President's unstinting admiration, say sources close to Defence Secretary Wilson. Reports that Stephen Mitchell will be kicked out as chairman of the DNC are dumb and wrong.
National Affairs
"Red H-Bombs and Atrocities Fail to Unnerve the Nation" Sure, the Russians tested an H-bomb, but that doesn't mean it's not summer vacation! We'll worry about it in September. In the mean time the President can spend even more time golfing. (If you're wondering about "Atrocity," it's the third story, about American reactions to POW stories about their treatment. Everyone is upset, everyone would like to see something done, and everyone wants out of the Korean war right now. So except for some lady in Las Vegas who is ready to throw some A-bombs at the problem, that's the story.)
"What About the Reds Among Freed US Prisoners?" There are some, and they'll be sorted out in the Army hospitals where the sick POWs are going. Like the ones sick with Communism!
People are talking about all the corruption around former Treasury Secretary John Snyder due to some trials and hearings in New York, some people ex-Presidents should get lifetime Senate seats, others don''t, and Republicans figure they will beat the off-year election blues because they are just so darn lovable and there's hardly a recession at all.
I know I accuse Ernest K. Lindley of making sure to knock off his columns before lunch so that he can spend the rest of the day "researching" The Periscope down at the saloon, but this week he's filing from Paris, so he must be hard on the trail of the inside Washington beat! The French figure that Taft was basically Eisenhower's prime minister, and that he'll be lost without him, Lindell reports. Which takes up a whole paragraph, leaving him to fill the rest of the column typing out the Herald Tribune obituary.
"Blast at the G-Men" The big surprise at the Governor's Conference in Seattle last week waws Governors Fine of Pennsylvania and Battle of Virginia attacking the FBI for alleged brutality to inmates (of asylums), and the Administration for not reining the G-men in. Also, the President has "pocket" vetoed Congress' repeal of the 20% theatre excise tax, and as frequently reported Congress on its side failed to pass the increase in the debt limit. And the State Department has blown off Senator McCarthy's request to have William Bundy's passport revoked so that he could question the man about his $400 donation to the Alger Hiss defence fund.
Senator Hickenlooper gets an interview with Newsweek in which he says that on the one hand the Russians probably got the H-bomb secret from the old atom spies, and on the other that Washington has no definite evidence that the Russians have shot off an H-bomb. He doesn't explicitly say that America has an H-bomb that can be used in a war, which is the Russian claim, that their H-bomb can be dropped from a plane, unlike the American one. He also points out that America has enough production capacity to build the H-bombs that we need, and there's not much point in accumulating more after a certain point. Given that it's Hickenlooper, it actually sounds pretty reasonable.
The Korean Truce
"Back From Red Death Camps, POW's Rediscover Freedom" "A Turk sat and wept. A Negro danced an ecstatic jig. A boy from Brooklyn cried out the inevitable query about the Dodgers. A South Korean died almost at the moment of freedom." What Newsweek doesn't know about punctuation, it makes up for in cliches. The Communists, of course, marched home in regimented unanimity, and General Clark is saying that the Reds still might be holding another 2000 unaccounted-for POWs, with Secretary Dulles threatening unspecified reprisals if they don't come clean. Then he went into his meeting with Rhee to yell at the man some more.
"Fallen Hopes Engulf the Land of the Rising Sun" Newsweek reports from Tokyo that the Japanese "Safety Forces" aren't growing rapidly enough because the Japanese have no time for them after their WWII experience. Newsweek hopes that the good old Japanese national character is still alive in the countryside, which makes me feel like that Belgian cartoon character that talks in exclamation marks, because that's all I need! Japan also has tortuous politics, an inflationary economic boom going on (the Ginza is hopping!), and a trade deficit, so it is all bound to end in tears. Then it is off to Russia to be told for the third time that Malenkov announced an H-bomb test and promised the Supreme Soviet more consumer goods. On the one hand, Newsweek reminds us that no-one is scared of the Red H-bomb even if it does exist, and that the Russians probably stole it from us. On the other, it means that Malenkov is stronger than ever, and that's good, too, because, Leon Volkov points out, he hasn't been very strong so far.
France is seeing a wave of strikes against the new economy push, Christian Dior's fall line features lower hemlines, Churchill has resumed some political activities. Up in the Canadas, Newsweek is reminded of how Louis St. Laurent said a mean thing about the Republicans last year in his only recorded comment on the '52 elections, but now Canada is having an election and Newsweek wouldn't dream of interfering in Canadian affairs or having an opinion, vote Tory, damnit! (Down in Dance we learn that Canada has a corps du ballet now!)
Business
The Periscope Business Trends reports that the US is still set on handing atomic power over to private business, Red H-bomb notwithstanding, that aluminum, rails, brewing, 3-D, natural gas, textiles,oil, and farming are all booming. For example, the unexpectedly high heating oil inventory might mean a price cut, falling sales of men's clothes is a :prosperity trap," and farm revenues are only down 6-7% in spite of the drought. Everything's coming up roses!
"High Hopes, HIgh Earnings: US Takes Post-Truce Stock" Etc. Profits are up, but stocks had a "mediocre week," it says in a quarter-page story about a bird that flew into the trading floor, with enough room for a short paragraph about the actual business of selling stocks at the end. The FCC is going to approve the "compatible" colour television system from GE. The first sets will go on sale at the end of 1954 and cost $700-$1000(!!!)
Notes: Week in Business reports that the rubber plant sale bill has passed, that the RCA "genius" computer, developed at the David Sarnoff Research Centre at Princeton, and the extremely fast new computer at the National Physical Laboratories are the latest in electronic computer news. Hertz is being bought from GM by Omnibus of Chicago, Otis Elevator is getting into the electronics game by buying the Transmitter Equipment Manufacturing Company, and Gunnison Homes is changing its name to United States Steel Homes, because that is what it does now.
"How the US Can Halt a Recession: Five Economists View the Nation's Future" A roundtable consisting of Sumner Schlichter, Martin R. Greensbrugh, Clyde William Phelps, Charles A. Glover and A. D. H. Kaplan. Everything will be fine, except Schlicter is worried about consumer credit, Gainsbrugh about strikes, Phelps about the world betraying Formosa, and Kaplan is worried that people will get into a funk.
Products: What's New reports that Easy Golf automatically tees up a ball for practice, Shell Oil's new lift truck with thin arms can take loads without pallets, that Chicago Molded Products Corporation has a rigid plastic plate which can be quickly formed into a prototype, while Artone Color Corporation's versatile stamper can be used on many materials.
On the auto side, GM is getting into heavy trucks, Studebaker aims to reclaim the market share it lost due to materials control, and Chryslers is sending out a catalogue showing all of its styling options. Star Farm Mutual Insurance has digested auto accident records and concludes that housewives are very underrated drivers, and that older men are safer drivers than younger men. (I paraphrase, because Newsweek doesn't draw that generalisation out of a long list of professions and their associated safety rankings, even though it is pretty obvious when managers and professionals rank high and students and enlisted ranks rate lowest.)
Henry Hazlitt figures that not raising the debt limit is good news because debt is bad and stuff like that. And that is how you write a column between 10:30 and 11, boys and girls!
Science, Medicine, Education
C. W. Danforth does a better job of extracting diamond dust from industrial diamond waste than anyone else,and he has a friend on the Newsweek Editorial Board, is all I can figure.
"Things to Come" At Caltech, Hugo Benioff's linear-strain seismograph is designed to take long-term measurements over years and hopefully predict future earthquakes. And Nicholas Christofilos of Greece has won a major patent infringement award from Brookhaven after he demonstrated that their new atom smasher was based on his work. He is now looking for atomic physicist work. (Or inadvertently copied it, they will argue, I am sure.)
"Comfort for the Polio-Afflicted" Gamma globulin is too expensive, a safe and effective vaccine may be years away, and so the iron lung is still our main tool against polio. Sit-up, standing, plastic-domed, and "coughing" iron lungs are all available now. So, interestingly enough, is a servomechanism-controlled one that regulates air pressure according to the patient's breathing. Polio victims are testing out "frog breathing," (as in, how you burped on command when you were ten) and accessories that help the ladies put on their makeup inside an iron lung(!)
"The Sick POW" At the back of the magazine the story of the sick POWs is about the shortage of food and doctors in the Red rear areas generally, which then led to neglect in the camps, instead of "atrocities." In fact, thanks to their extensive immunisations, American POWs were better off than Red soldiers. Also, Chester Hoff Keefer is the first Special Assistant for Health and Medical Affairs at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. It took Secretary Culp four months to appoint him, but most of the time was spent typing out his title.
"The Classical Tour" The Americans doing summer school in Europe are mostly not very serious about it, but Mary Raiola is happy to be back in Pompeii running one.
Art, Press, Radio-Television, Newsmakers
Walter Steumpfig is having a show out on Cape Cod so Newsweek can combine some highbrow art coverage with a beach vacation, hurray!
Charles Roos put the Denver Post on the map by chasing Denver's collector of customs, Harold Zimm, who was never in the office because he had nothing to do, but it sure was a scandal. The El Paso Times has persuaded the police and everyone else that some local fisherman was murdered instead of drowning by accident. The American Society of Newspaper Editors couldn't agree that it was wrong, as such, for Senator McCarthy to interrogate New York Post editor James Wechsler about his membership in the Young Communists twenty years ago, but a minority of four editors on the investigating board dissent from this moderate view and think that it was all some kind of "McCarthyism." Which I report because of Newsweek's gobsmacking use of "moderate" to describe the editors who thought that McCarthy had a point. Former Senator Blair Moody is definitely starting a new paper in Detroit even if he still denies it.
Quiz shows are big on radio, but the big broadcast news is Stu Novins' documentary show, the Quacks, about same, which, Novins assures Newsweek, was lawsuit-proofed by CBS lawyers before it was aired.
Dick Haymes is in trouble with Selective Service on top of his tax troubles and divorce proceedings, while gangster Joe Adonis (which is a real name) is going to be deported to Italy. Bob Merrill, Wesley Moon, Marlon Brando, Roberto Rossellini, Will Rogers, Jr, Charlie Chaplin and Zsa Zsa Gabor are in the column for the usual lack of reasons. President Truman is working on his memoirs, Claire Hoffman is guilty of speeding, and Staff Sergeant Barbara O. Barnswell is the first "attractive, 26-year-old sergeant" to receive the Navy-Marine Corps Medal for Heroism. Just kidding! Plenty of attractive 26-year-olds have received it. She's just the first woman, and the first one to be described as "attractive."
The Queen Mother and Herbert Hoover had birthdays. Lord Montagu is engaged to an American. Mimi Clark and Sandra Burns are married. Major William Clark, son of General Clark, is honeymooning, Jane Powell is divorcing, Percival Farquhar and Abner C. Powell have died.
The New Films
The Cruel Sea (Universal-International) is an "admirable" British attempt to capture the spirit of Nicholas Monsarrat's 500 page novel. Eric Ambler wrote the script and it is a good movie and well acted. I, the Jury, is the first Mickey Spillane film, from UA, and is a "very jazzy bit of roughhousing." Unfortunately it is "drably picturesque" and too fast and glib for its own good. A Spillane movie? Fast and glib? Never! The Master of Ballantrae is the latest Errol Flynn, and bears "only the palest and most perverted resemblance" to the Stevenson novel.
Books
Oscar Lewis' The Story of Legal Gambling in Nevada is quite the story! Franz von Papen's memoirs are out in an English edition that explains how he comes to be still alive and fairly prosperous in spite of managing to be just as bad and dangerous for Germany as he was for the rest of the world during two wars. Ann Petry's The Narrows is a novel with Coloureds in it, set in Connecticut instead of the South, but still one of those novels. (Doomed interracial sex!)
Raymond Moley sees Lindsell's "type two thirds of a column out of a Taft obituary" in the obvious way.
The cover says "Special Avionics issue." And if by "special" you mean seventy pages of ads before the editorial, then this sure is a special issue. Throw this in with a few of my women's mags and our poor postman is going to have a hernia! Fortunately, there's plenty of good content in here, like a message from General Putt, head of ARDC, which explains that the Air Research and Development Command molds defence by . . doing stuff. In WWII we depended on quantity, but in the next war we'll have quality thanks to a whole bunch of sub offices and boards with long titles that focus on doing stuff. About quality! Though the only picture in three pages is of that supersonic propeller fighter that is buzzing around Edwards Air Force Base and I'm not sure how "quality" that is. We get a history of ARDC, which begins with Dr. Karman discovering that the Germans are ahead of America in research and development by virtue of actually spending money on it, and General LeMay steppping in to organise ARDC and overcoming the postwar budget cuts.
"Weapon System Plan Spurs Development" As you've heard, the Air Force is giving manufacturers sole responsibility to deliver a "weapon system, as managed by ARDC. If you didn't know, it will be explained again, right here, right now. Also involved is the Office of Scientific Research, which is so advanced that it has to be explained cybernetically.
There's lots going on. For example, Dr. Perry of MIT is working on a computer to automatically translate Russian into English, while Dr. Gordy of Duke is investigating what holds atoms into molecules, and Frank Clauser is working on a theory of the "boundary layer" that is dimensionless, like the Reynolds number. OSR researchers are working on everything from solid state physics to anthropology.
And then, on p. 91, actual Aviation Week editorial content, as Robert Hotz reports that "Centre Mates Planes to Atomic Weapons" This isn't a lost chapter of the Kinsey report, just a discussion of the Special Weapons Centre's work persuading F-84s and such to carry atom bombs, which turns out to use a lot of glue and double-sided tape. Alexander McSurely is off to Wright Patterson for "WADC: $200-Million Research Key," which has hit p. 139 before I find things worth reporting, the current "tenants" at Edwards Air Force Base, the NACA "stable," the XF-92A delta-wing fighter, D-558-II Skyrocket, Bell X-5 variable-sweep plane, some B-47s for testing, and the X-1, not in a flyable state and to be replaced by the X-2 and X-3 whenever they show up. Edwards also has a school.
David Anderton visits AEDC for "AEDC Will Speed Development," an article about all the things they mean to do there once it is built. Evidently no-one is allowed at the Patrick Air Force Base Missile Development Centre, because the Air Force sends in its own advertorial about shooting missiles from Cape Canaveral and receiving them far beyond civilisation in the Dominican Republic. Holloman AFB also doesn't get a correspondent, and sends in its own advertorial. Besides rockets, they are doing space biology, investigating how flies respond to radiation damage to their genetics and to weightlessness. Also Eglin AFB, which is the weapons range. Irving Stone goes to the Air Force Cambridge Research Centre, which does geophysics, atomic warfare,electronics, and "Other." It takes Stone ten pages to move past the guys reseaching the air! Philip Klass goes to Rome, New York to check in with avionics work. They spend a half billion dollars there on electronics. Half a billion! And since some results seem in order, an article on the "K-system" bombing system for the B-36 follows. It is the next step from the Norden and there's a nice pictorial. Rome also works with ground avionics, with a whole bunch of GCA hardware under development, and there's even a discussion of its work on electronic countermeasures.
"Putting Avionics Research to Work" By this time you might be getting the impression of an out-of-control Air Force spilling taxpayer dollars all over the sciences. So how about something concrete? Well, in Cambridge they figure you'll be able to dictate to an electronic typewriter in ten years, do more with the same frequencies, have harder-to-crack codes, smaller "microtronics," a faster flow of information, whatever that means, but which has something to do with the auto-dictation mentioned. They are also working on a traffic direction computer and automatic flight control. And then they kind of ruin the first impression by returning to the these subjects again and again in a way that shows no-one even tried to edit this issue down to something comprehensible. It is interesting to hear about klystrons maybe replacing magnetrons and high temperature vacuum tubes and smaller transistors once. Or twice. Again and again, looping through the same projects and one "Centre" after another? Sheesh! Oh, and way at the back the Aero Medicine guys get to show off their g-suits again.
News of the Week reports that the Air Force will meet its NATO commitments at least through 1956, the RB-45 recently did a long-distance Pacific tour, and DC-6s are replacing DC-4s in Pan Am's South American fleet. Idlewild is still banning the Comet, the Chase Aircraft reorganisation is ongoing, the Army has ordered its first production Firebees, CAB is blaming the American Air Transport crash in Washington on the controller for telling the pilot he could make it over the mountains given his plane's condition. The US is forcing an ICAO cut, the Ferry Rotodyne is out as a concept drawing, and the F-86F is a much better fighter than the A and E.
Letters
A. C. M. Azoy writes to say that the so-called first flying shot of a football game in the 13 July issue wasn't even vaguely the first. Newsweek explains that the pilot "BELIEVED" it was the first, so good enough! Stella Stern of the American Field Service, Mrs. R. K. Coffee of State Teachers College, Jacksonville, Alabama, and Emil Aftandillian of the University of Maryland are very upset about Ambassador Malik's denigrating comments about the foreign exchange student experience. For Your Information says that Malenkov's speech to the Supreme Soviet confirms everything Newsweek has been saying about the Soviets having consumer goods problems.
The Periscope reports that returning POWs will not be compensated like WWII POWs because there are no foreign holdings to sell off to pay for them. The three big "no-shows" on the first POW return flight are men who have been so heavily brainwashed that they don't even remember their names. Don't count the Shah out now that his coup has failed and he has fled Iran. He might return to the provinces to rally resistance there. The Russians are offering to pull their troops out of Germany if the Allies do the same because they don't really want to be there any more. The President is letting Secretary Wilson award all the posthumous Medals of Honour because the process affects him emotionally. President Nixon is promoting a constitutional amendment giving eighteen-year-olds the vote. The NLRB has noticed that employers are applying for far more strike injunctions since the President reshuffled the board. Reporters at the UN are sick and tired of Henry Cabot Lodge, while newsreaders are sick and tired of hearing about the UN. The Air Force is trying to bury a report from its Arctic, Desert, Tropic Information Centre with less-than-flattering reports about the actions of a general downed in an Arctic accident, and "less-than-heroic behaviour on the part of a famous ex-athlete." We'll be hearing more from that Air Force test range running from Florida to the Bahamas soon, as it is almost ready to run missiles. Churchill looks "as fit as any man his age who has had a stroke." Finland might "slide behind the Iron Curtain" any day now. Washington policy makers are glad to have all those Spanish bases now that "NATO appears to be slumping."
Marlon Brando will play Napoleon in Desiree, based on the best-selling novel, Dolores Grav wil co-star with Fred Astaire in The New Orleans Story, Lee Cobbs, Jeff Chandler, and Rhonda Fleming are doing a film version of Yankee Pasha. ZaSu Pitts will have a comedy series on DuMont starting next month, CBS is giving Bing Cosby a musical variety show while Ed Gardner's Duffy's Tavern TV show will be prerecorded to prevent Gardner's trademark racy ad-libs. A "Where Are They Now" segment visits Richard (Dixie) Davis and Hope Dare, who are living modestly in LA and running a talent agency. Douglas ("Wrong-Way") Corrigan has been spotted running an orange grove in California, and Reverend Charles Coughlin, who is happy doing his pastoral duties in Detroit and has given up the limelight.
Overall a return to form, but I'm fascinated by the frank reference to Churchill's supposedly secret stroke. Where did that myth come from?
The Periscope Business Trends reports that Eisenhower is ready to start the next session by addressing his big four problems, which are, first, Russia, which he will deal with by using "less counterpunching, more punching," as with the food-distribution effort in Berlin, a potential Chinese intervention in Indo-China, where he will rely on US air and sea forces, since Congress won't let him use US ground forces. Second, he is going to try to achieve a real peace in Korea. Third, he is going to do what it takes to stop a recession. Fourth, he is going to assert leadership in Congress and only cut taxes a little, leading to only a slightly ballooning national debt.
National Affairs
"War Leaves Bitter Aftertaste But Brings Joy of Homecoming" What it says! Also, Daniel Reed of New York, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is promising a reform of the Income Tax Act, while "sniffers" have yet to detect fallout from the supposed Soviet H-bomb test. The President is doing some business while vacationing in Denver with lots of golf. Beardsley Ruml claims that the national debt can be eliminated with just $2 billion in spending cuts, and with major tax cuts, just by reforming government accounting practices. The new Department of Agriculture quotas for wheat production will probably go through, even though Eastern farmers hate them. Some poor cub reporter had to cover the American Bar Association national convention and sends in a column covering its major conclusions, which everyone proceeded not to read. (Federal judges deserve higher salaries! More legal aid!) Senator McCarthy is going after the Government Printing Office after finding that a Jewish man named Rothschild works there. As a bookbinder-machinist, yes, but a bookbinder-machinist could do a lot of damage to freedom if he happened to be a Communist! And an anonymous informant says he was, so this is probably a big espionage story. Senator Duff of Pennsylvania gets the weekly interview, where he explains in detail just how great everything is going for his man, Eisenhower.
"Air Reservists: Civilian Bulwark for America" Newsweek admires all the wonderful hat stories that Flight has been able to use to pad out issues for many years, but never had a chance to do the same. But now there's an Air Force Reserve under Continental Air Command, and it's a story! A story about how sometimes former Air Force men have real jobs and families and even houses but sometimes turn out to take training courses and fly troop carriers. There's almost 9000 of them, so it's a big story! With hats. Speaking of giving old Air Force men cushy part time jobs, General Spaatz has a nice Military Tides column about years ago, during the war.
Ernest K. Lindley is back in Washington after his European investigative vacation with word that East Germany is a "volcano." He didn't actually see any erupting, but he's pretty sure that there's lava everywhere.
The Korean Truce
"U.N. Works to Keep the Peace But Fears New Red Violations" Nothing is happening but this here Newsweek stringer is stuck in this country and you're going to be as bored as I am! On the POW beat, some POWs are really upset at the "rats" among their ranks. And peace negotiations at the United Nations are going nowhere.
"Revolt Collapses in Teheran: Will Iran Enter Russian Orbit?" That's been going to happen next week for the last five years, so I figure it's due. People are talking about extending the East Berlin giveaway to clothes, still, the Soviets are pushing German neutralisation, also the same story as last week, and there's a feature insert on how a Russian atomic attack might cripple the U.S. Then, to pad out the word count and justify his expenses, Ernest Lindley tells us about the Schumann Plan in case we haven't heard about this UNited States of Europe that's all the rage these days.
"France: Not Quite Revolution" The big strike in France is more of a holiday than a revolution. Yes, the trains and garbage collectors are out, but the vacationers are already on vacation, and who wanted to come back on time, anyway? Although there's no food in Paris, which sounds tough.
"Morocco Blow-Off" The situation in Morocco is pretty difficult for the French, ad we've heard, and it turns out that the Pasha of Marrakesh had a solution, which was to overthrow the Sultan of Morocco and set himself up in the Sultan's place. Even though the Pasha is the French's man, the French didn't want to see him on the throne, so when the Pasha moved, it was only to marginalise the Sultan, ot replace him. NOw everyone is upset at each other and French colonists are nervous about what might happen next.And in Canada, the Liberals won the election handily, only they didn't really win it, because Canadians are fed up with Liberal rule, even if they don't vote like it.
Business
The Periscope Business Trends reports that the wheat acreage quota plan is good news for everyone. It can now be reported that home building is down, which might be an indication of a recession if there was a recession, which there is not, because homeowners will no doubt go crazy for renovations with all that consumer credit they don't have. There is still a major aircraft delivery backlog, and new industries like glass fibres and polystyrene are up, so take that, recession! US exports are up, but non-military exports are down, brought low by declining farm exports.
"Is a GOP Labour Bloc Forming in General Shift to the Right?" There's some pretty big moves ahead of the AFL conference, and this is the pattern Newsweek sees.
"Hydra-Matic Holocaust" A fire at the GM plant in Livonia, Michigan, the sole producer of the Hydro-Matic automatic transmission, has cost four lives and done $60 million in damage, levelling the factory and cutting off Hydra-Matic deliveries for Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs, Lincolns, Hudsons, Nashes and Kaisers. This means that not only will 50,000 employees be idled indefinitely at Hydra Matic, so will be production lines producing Hydra Matic-equipped cars. This might curtail auto production by up to 10%. GM hopes to have some production going by the end of the month using second hand machines in improvised facilities.
Women are working in factory jobs in the South! It's news!
Notes: Week in Business reports that the Federal Reserve is going to appeal the court order setting aside its anti-trust ruling against Trans-America to the Supreme Court. Several companies are merging, including Massey-Harris of Canada and Harry Ferguson of Britain, and a hefty commercial air backlog of $150 million is mainly late-delivered Lockheed Super-Constellations.
Another story about highway building follows, brought to us by vacationing writers stuck in traffic.
Products: What's New is impressed by a combination scrub brush/sponge mop from Empire Brushes, less so by the usual lot of a hand-operated lawn seed sower by H. G. and D. B. Newman of Edmonton, Alberta, and a plastic glazing insulating material from Arvey Corporation.
Henry Hazlitt's impression of President Eisenhower so far is he got rid of price controls, so that's good, but he's afraid of a little recession, and that's bad, and reflects the fact that the President is far too moderate on economic policy.
Science, Medicine
"Stone Age Revisited" Dr. Edward Meyer of the Natural History Magazine and the Explorer's Club is off to Brazil's Matto Grosso to find out about the fierce and primitive and isolated Chavante tribe. They have stone tools and loin clothes and bite things.
"Soon the Moon" Fritz Zwicky holds up the Swiss side of the interplanetary crowd, where he talks up the advantages of shaped charges and balloons over new-fangled atomic rockets, along which "sometimes the old ways are the best ways news" comes a half-mile, two block-wide warehouse for the General Services Administration built almost entirely of timber by Timber Structures of Portland in Franconia, Virginia.
Treasure Hunt, the Du Mont Thursday show that features Sigmund Rothschild rummaging around in peoples' antiques, is quite the show.
Fred Sparks is quite the reporter. We'd say the same about Aline Mosby, but she's a girl so we sent her to a "sun-bathing convention near San Bernardino" instead of the frontlines in Korea. And speaking of sparks, what about the Wechsler-McCarthy scrap? You'll recall that some of the members of the ASNE review board thought that McCarthy was out of line; well, now McCarthy has gone after one of those dissenters, Russell Wiggins and figures he's probably a Communist, too. Newsweek wonders whether the ASNE will grow a spine now.
Arthur Godfrey, the Vice President, Gene Tunney, Jack Dempsey, Mayor O'Dwyer, Olivia de Havilland, Oksana Kasenkina and Madame Henri Bonnet are in the column for the usual lack of reason, as all of Newsweek's regular "people of interest" writers must be on vacation and the vignettes this week are all boring. If you've forgotten who Kasenkina is, she's the woman who jumped out of the Soviet Embassy, either because she'd been recalled, or because she was suicidal.
Virginia Fortune Ryan has had a baby, Princess Anne is 3, Sir Edmund Hillary is engaged, Tay Garrett is married; Tazio Nuvolari, John Horne Burns, Augustus Van Horne Stuyvesant, ,Gouverneur Morris, and Friedrich Schorr have died.
The New Films
Mask of the Himalayas is a "weird blending of Himalaya mystery drama with remarkable documentary films in the Karakorum area." The documentary part is a lot more interesting than the mystery drama. Columbia's The Stranger Wore a Gun is a 3D Technicolor Western features Randolph Scott as a heroic Confederate veteran. Inferno is a "taut little melodrama\," also 3D and Technicolor, while Latin Lover (MGM) is a weak comic vehicle for Lana Turner and John Lund with Ricardo Montalban as said lover. The Night is My Kingdom is a French import and the reviewer was just glad to see one movie for adults this week.
From 10:41
Books
Alan Paton's Too Late the Phalarope follows up on Cry, the Beloved Country. South Africa is still horrible. Ernest Thompson Seton's Lives of Game Animals is a beautifully illustrated eight volume, 3115p edition of his collected works.
Raymond Moley is happy that Congress is telling the President what for.
Aviation Week, 24 August 1953
News Digest reports that the 707 will be in service by 1955, promise. A USAF pilot poured salad oil into the hydraulic actuator of his C-46 to get it to Tokyo.The cause of the Transocean crash off Wake on 12 July cannot be established. Industry Observer reports that first tests of a Russian flying boat fighter are being reported, while a Red MiG-17 night fighter group has been moved to East Germany. De-icing helicopter blades is hard. Westinghouse might build the Avon in America under license since the Navy doesn't have anything else. The AEC continues to sign development contracts for the atomic airplane of the future. Katherine Johnsen's Washington Roundup reports that big decisions are coming in the defence programmes soon, that the Army and Air Force are getting ready to fight, that Wilson wants some kind of yardstick so he can tell if a plane is outdated, and that the Air Force is having trouble persuading Congress that it needs even more research and development money.
Alexander McSurely reports for Aviation Week that "Big Copters May Replace DC-3s by '59" Which I will believe when I see it, especially with the track record for "DC-3 replacements." The Air Force is de-regionalising the AMC by cutting a bunch of centres. Not moving it all back to Wright Patterson yet, though. And that experimental crop duster from Texas Aggie, the AG-1, that used to give Aviation Week some free copy once a week, has flown, crashed spectacularly, and is now being investigated, so that's even more free copy. Also it is good news, because the pilot lived, proving that the AG-1 is "crash resistant." Russia has a new fighter coming out, the Lavochkin La-17, and the Air Force is ordering Super Connie radar pickets. Scooped by Newsweek. So embarrassing! Kurt Tank is not impressed by the F-86, and the Navy has found a way to put some cargo in the AD-5, which is good for carrier delivery.
"Atmospheric Research Expands as Moby Dick Balloons Explore Upper Air" The Air Force is flying off a new series of atmospheric research balloons which are absolutely not flying saucers.
Thrust and Drag quotes an anonymous source who explains that the 280mm atomic cannon is actually a great idea whose time has come, because artillery can do things that planes can't. And, after all, the Army is already using 240mm howitzers in Korea!
Handley Page and Boeing put in rival advertorials about how they are expanding their research and production facilities. And poor George L. Christian has to do a United Aircraft Products advertorial for them, "New Oil De-Aerator Speeds Arctic Starts" UAL is building a cold weather oil defoamer for Piaseckis and SA-16 amphibians operating in the Arctic. Four pages! And if that weren't enough, New Aviation Products has a new crop sprayer, a tiny tape recorder and swing-out cabin seats for air stewardesses.
From England, McGraw-Hill World News reports that "U.K. Revives Interest in Turboprop Liners" BOAC likes the Britannia because it is cheaper than jets, even if it is 100mh slower. "Sir Miles' decision on a Comet 3 replacement will make or break the British transport manufacturers." A "Super-Britannia" will likely follow, buoyed by the runaway commercial success of the Viscount. "Ceilometers" are the latest thing at LaGuardia and Washington. BOAC has bought Canadian Pacific's remaining Comet and reshuffled its fleet. Captain Robson says at Cockpit Viewpoint that the new avionics support gadgets like GCA and ASR are not perfect. Robert Wood's Editorial celebrates another scalp taken in the open field, as Ernest Hensley leaves the "notorious" Office of Aviation Safety at the CAA. He wants more!
Letters
Morris Grover,of the US Civil Administration of the Ryukyus, was very happy with the article about the Tulane Tropical Medical School, as was former assistant Surgeon General Charles V. Akin. Three railroad enthusiasts write in to point out that the "Train X" is actually a Spanish design. Several correspondents don't care how the word "gringo" actually came about, they just want to tell the story about how it is a distortion of "Green grow the rushes, oh." Newsweek investigates and establishes that people carve their initials in tortoise shells with knives, as you'd expect. For Your Information tells us that Newsweek reporting is credited with saving the life of an eight-year-old boy in Vancouver who was dying of celiac disease after he read Marguerite Clark's coverage of Dr. Sidney Haas' "banana diet" cure.
The Periscope reports that seismographs picked up the Russian H-bomb test but were kept secret because they couldn't tell an atom bomb from an H-bomb. The Administration's clampdown hasn't stopped rumours that the Soviet test was more powerful and more efficient than the Eniwetok blast. There is talk that the President will give a fuller speech on American and Russian atomic capabilities in the fall. The failure of the coup attempt against Mossadegh is being blamed on leaks in Washington and London. Major John Eisenhower is due back from Korea in September and Ezra Taft Benson is expected to leave Agriculture because of the farmers repudiating his "anti-control" position over wheat quotas. Representative Robert Condon of California is appealing an AEC order banning him from atomic demonstrations. While Attorney General Brownell is cracking down on illegal Mexican "wetbacks," Labour Secretary Durkin is closing down the Harlingen, Texas reception centre for legal Mexican farm workers. Secret Service agents guarding the President in Denver are taking neighbourhood kids sneaking up on them with toy guns "in stride." The DNC is paying off its debts and the Navy's next atomic submarine will be a 35kn, 6000t monster designed to carry guided missiles with atomic warheads and supersonic seaplanes[?]. The Batista government is sending out destroyers to patrol the coasts and intercept incoming rebels. The Red Navy is "somewhat bothered" by reports that it is converting some of its cruisers into small aircraft carriers. They are doing some air-sea trials, but it is probably with guided missiles for its cruisers. Swedish fishermen are picking up bullet-riddled Polish pilots' life jackets, showing that they are trying to escape and getting shot down. Moscow is beaming out more Spanish-language propaganda while NATO units are learning first-aid treatments for H-bomb casualties. France is selling 71 obsolete Ouragon fighters to India for $56,000 more than the same number of British Vampires would have cost. A Chinese rail project is bringing "Russia 1000 miles closer to the Indo-Chinese border."
The Periscope Washington Trends reports that Wilson and the defence chiefs are still fighting over "economies," even though the Russian H-bomb means that further defence "cuts" are off the table. The President may intervene. He is also looking at pushing civil rights harder to gain more minority votes, while personally rewarding Southern leaders to keep them on side, as when he made Governor Byrnes a delegate to the UN General Assembly. Gee, thanks, Mr. President! "So far, Eisenhower is surprising everyone, including himself, with his political skill." For example, he hasn't given the Democrats any issues to hang him on, and everyone around the President is confident about '54 because everyone just loves him. In unrelated news, Walter Williams, "national boss" of the Citizens for Eisenhower group, is giving up his position as under-Secretary of Commerce to do other important work.
National Affairs
"U.S. Gets Mostly Good News: But, Over All --the Big Bomb" At this point not only has everyone who can write a sentence gone on vacation, so has the gal who knows where the office Strunk and White is. The President is in Denver, the U.N. delegation is for some reason fighting to keep India out of the Koea peace conference in spite of it being Indian troops guaranteeing the armistice. The Pasha of Marrakech has "forced" the French to depose the King of Morocco, which the State Department thinks is terrible, but on the other hand our bases in Morocco are more secure than ever. Mossadegh is finally out in Iran, although no-one is sure how much of an improvement the new boss, General Zahedi, will be. But no-one knows what the Russian bomb means, and the President flew from Denver to New York to meet with Lewis Strauss, Tom Dewey and Henry Cabot Lodge, and was scolded by Robert Moses for public housing cuts pushed by "a deplorable resurgence of hard-boiled reactionaries. To which the President "ad-libbed a rambling answer" and then got the heck out of town after less than ten hours. The President has been trying to golf and fish in Denver, but his elbow is so sore that he gave up and met with Harold Stassen on Saturday instead. Meanwhile, Harold Stassen is back in town, the AFL and CIO seem to be moving towards unity, and there's talk of a national sales tax.
I'm sure that's not nearly enough coverage of the President' s golf game for you, so perhaps you want to turn to Sports now for a special report on the Burning Tree course in Bethesda, Maryland.
"The Mysterious Code" Senator McCarthy has managed to get that bookbinder fired. Edward Rothschild tried to recruit a co-worker into a Red cell in 1939, his wife was a Communists, says FBI informant Mary Markward, and he pocketed a book once. A classified book! (The merchant-marine code book.) Now Rothschild has been suspended without pay, McCarthy has flown off to LA to find evidence that the Government Printing Office was leaking atom bomb and H-bomb secrets, and he is fighting with The Washington Post over whether it is too pink to get the newspaper postal rate.
"World Without End?" "The United States and Soviet Russia soon will henceforth be capable of annihilating each other." Henceforth, forsooth! The Strunk and White may be in hiding, but we've still got our Webster's! I shouldn't be so facetious about a little thing like global annihilation, but as terrifying as the prospect is, it isn't new. What is new in this story is an explainer about how America detects atom tests. Besides seismographs, our "sniffer" planes are out, and have found thermonuclear "products."
This week's feature interview has Karen Salisbury of the Washington bureau talking to Civil Defence Administrator Val Peterson on the subject of "Survive the H-bomb!" Karen doesn't know where the Strunk and White is, either. Peterson says that a Russian attack on America would involve 400 heavy bombers carrying atomic and other weapons. Project East River projected that it would kill 20 million Americans, with a like number wounded. "Psychological and chemical weapons" would impair our production and reduce our will to resist. "Russia is capable of hitting every major metropolitan area in the U.S.," but Peterson thinks that it will be some time before the Russians have H-bombs available for use. The key to civil defence right now is advance warning, which, given bombers coming over the poles at 40,000ft, is not going to be more than fifteen minutes warning. Everyone must get to proper shelters, and strategic pre-evacuations may be in order. In ten to fifteen years the intercontinental missile may eliminate any possible useful warning time. Peterson talks about shelters, but says that he will not approve a national programme until he sees an adequate one, so as not to give false hope. General Spaatz's column offers a defence against H-bomb attack: better radar. All-weather fighters and the new Lockheed radar plane will give us enough advanced warning to get to shelters.
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Attorney General Brownell says that we need more Border Patrol officers.
Ambassador Douglas is the latest Administration official to remind Congress that it can't keep up high tariffs and expect high exports, too. And Ernest Lindell has more bulletins from our Allies in this week's Washington Tides: McCarthy is as embarrassing as the Klan and Chicago gangsters used to be; we need to be less rigid (and also less timid) in negotiating with the Soviets, and we should build up our defences, with special emphasis on atomic stuff.
International
"The Shah Returns In Triumph" Premier Mossadegh has been overthrown by a popular uprising spearheaded by General Fazollah Zahedi but ultimately sparked by Princess Ashraf, who visited her brother, the Shah, last week to stiffen him up. The Shah issued firmans deposing Mossadegh and the Army chief of staff and appointing Zahedi premier, then fled, first for the Caspian on the 13th, than for Iraq, on the 16th after the firmans were delivered. At that point, on the it seemed as though the royal coup against Mossadegh had fizzled out, but on the 18th Tudeh Communist mobs rampaged through Teheran, and Zahedi unleashed royalist counter-mobs on the 19th, leading to competing factions of the army trying to restore order in the name of their respective bosses, and, ultimately to the shooting deaths of 62 protestors, mostly outside Mossadegh's home, and the Premier's fall. The Shah flew home in a twin-engined Beechcraft, gave addresses to the people and the US ambassador, and called for prompt and generous American aid, which is likely to be granted. The next story histrionically asks if Iran is going to be "Another Korea."
"El Glaoui's Man" Berbers from the south are riding towards Rabat to depose the Sultan while "[i]n the fetid slums of Rabat, Casablanca and Fez, leaders of the outlawed nationalist Itsiqlal Party alerted the Arab mobs to fight for their sovereign." US commanders confined their troops to bases, and everyone waited for the explosion that didn't happen, as the French surrounded the palace, kicked out the king, and recognised Glaoui's puppet as the new king. The French strikes are over, as Premier Laniel has cancelled his economy drive and is talking about pay raises instead. However, in spite of the end of the strikes, the strikers are only trickling back. The Socialists, we are told, are still on vacation, while the Communists have sinister motives. Robert Haeger writes in to point out the contrasts between desperately poor and dowdy Berlin, the front line against Communism, and recently struck and supposedly deprived Paris, which is still bright and gay. But in the end they'll see the error of their ways, because we are fighting Communism with food handouts in Berlin and coddling Communists in Paris, and also the current German constitution works better than the Fourth Republic, which goes to show something or other. Communism is bad, that's for sure. Have I mentioned that? Because it is is! Also, the East German government is still sad and weak, while West Germans only care about the election; Carlos Romulo has abandoned the Presidential election in the Philippines because no-one can beat Ramon Magsaysay, the man who crushed the Huks. And in Indian-occupied Kashmir, a new pro-Indian premier has replaced the old one after some irregularities that the Indians are blaming on America.
"Tempest in the U.N. Teapot: Over Neutrals at the Peace Table" This is the controversy over seating some neutrals at the UN Korean peace talks, which some participants think would provide a mediating voice, and we Americans realise would be the thin end of the wedge towards some sort of appeasement move like letting Red China into the U.N. The next expected fuss is over the arrival of 5000 Indian troops in Pusan to oversee the POW repatriation.
In Latin America, there's some kind of fuss over Peron reaching out to left wing parties, but my eyes kind of glazed over when Newsweek started talking about Russian influence. Remember when Peron was a Fascist? So many years ago. What's not at issue is the Argentina-Moscow trade deal, which Newsweek doesn't approve of one bit. And more oil has been found in Peru, hopefully enough to maintain exports and also encourage development in Peru's Amazon basin.
Business
Periscope Business Trends reports that the first "break of the boom" will definitely not occur this fall. The economy is "bumping close to the manpower ceiling," there are concerns about car production after the GM fire, but, as a separate story says, "What Are Consumers Thinking? No Recession Jitters --Yet." American consumers seem confident in the economy's future and have a rising faith in government. In spite of talk of "shakeouts." The IRS is looking for tax delinquents, Casey and Lasser have their latest guide to tax shelters out, Ford's car of tomorrow has a dictaphone.
"The Smellies" I'm not sure how much scents, that is "Smell-o-rama" adds to the theatre experience, and there are some jokes you could make, for sure. But GE has definitely decided to give it a try.
Notes: Week in Business reports that GM is leasing 1.5 million square feet of Willow Run to produce Hydro-Matics, and in the meantime will put Buick Dynaflows in Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles, and Chevrolet's Power-Glide into Pontiacs. There are 850 price cuts in the fall Sears, Roebuck calendar;, and rubber plants plan a 20% cut on lower demand.
Products: What's New reports a year-round heating and cooling air conditioner from Westinghouse that doesn't need water, just air and electricity, a magnifying lens to go into welder's helmets from Bausch and Lomb, blended buttons to merge with any surface from Edwards Company, a light, reinforced plastic 7,000lb liquid tank to replace heavy steel ones for moving liquids, and easily assembled wooden toy "Zoo Doo" animals from Fannie Hillsmith.
On the one hand, it's not fair that Henry Hazlitt doesn't get a vacation from Business Tides. On the other, he makes his own time off by recycling columns, this week reminding us, yet again, of the "Futility of Foreign Aid." France gets foreign aid, but spends too much on fripperies like social programmes and is politically unstable no matter how much we pay them not to be. And in fairness I will admit that he is using new arguments and incorporating current news stories into his column. On the other, I'd be embarrassed going through my files and seeing just how many times I had predicted the imminent collapse of France.
Science, Medicine, Education
"Astin Vindicated" Allen Astin will stay as head of the Bureau of Standards, although the NBS loses weapons development work to the Department of Defence and will have its commercial work directed by Assistant Secretary Worthy, and the postal fraud case against Jess M. Ritchie has been dropped, and he is free to keep on lying about his magic battery additive by mail. For the first time in a while, Peter Schlumbohm is in the pages, this time for his mobile 1200w electric stove.
Newsweek visits the Fort Douglas VA Hospital outside of Salt Lake City, probably because it is the kind of mental hospital where some Korea POWs are going to end up when they get back to stateside. A WHO report on alcoholism finds that it is mostly a "neurotic-response pattern" in the U.S., which is why it is not much of a problem in Denmark, where most drinking is "reactive." ("You drove me to drink.") In Chile, people drink because they are hungry, and apparently in backwards Catholic countries they drink because the water isn't safe, says the University of California's John Gardner, who has found that red wine has a germicidal effect. This is news?
Medical Notes reports that the headaches experienced by high blood pressure patients is caused by other factors, so drastic interventions to reduce high blood pressure shouldn't target headaches. Chest X-rays are cheap and easy to do, but do a terrible job of diagnosing heart trouble, says R. V. Slattery in a current issue of Journ. AMA.
"A Fourth of a Nation" There will be 23,3690,000 public grade school students this year and 3,417,00 private, up from 22 million and 3, 017,000 last year; public high school students are up 234,000 to 6,427,000, private high schoolers are up 47,000 at 818,000. But college students are up only 100,000 at 2.5 million, which is not very interesting since no more details are provided and instead we get a roundup of academic celebrity moves to take us along to the observation that 2 million more grade schoolers will have schools bursting at the seams. School taxes are up a half billion dollars this year, 50,000 new classrooms were built for this year compared with 47,000 last year, and teacher salaries are up to an average of $3400 from $3160 last year. In California, Proposition 3, which would have extended tax exemptions to private schools, went to referendum last year (the canvassing effort in favour was led by Admiral Nimitz!) and won by a slim majority which has inspired court action. Currently, Proposition 3 is unconstitutional and so is right out. Albemarle Hill is a very fancy private school, but not so fancy that the principal can get a puff piece in Time instead of sad old Newsweek.
Art, Press, Radio-TV, Newsmakers
"Boxing Sculptor" Joseph Brown of Princeton combines teaching in the Physical Education programme with Art and Archaeology because he is an artist who does bronze sculptures of muscled athletes doing strenuous things. I don't trust myself to comment --oh, the heck with it, I've found Uncle George's Christmas present.
"Bombs, H and K" Not only did the Russians drop an H-bomb, Dr. Kinsey dropped a report! The Soviets got into a mess because the bomb wasn't confirmed for a few days, while Dr. Kinsey's dirty, dirty report didn't make a lot of papers. John Knight of the Knight papers gets a profile, the ITU is still publishing its strike papers, and various local newspapers are a bit nuts.
Fred Allen is as hilarious as Charlie Chan and fake Chinese accents. Or more hilarious, even.
Citations for four more Korean Medal of Honour winners include one Japanese-American, whose citation was withheld until his release from captivity to prevent reprisals. Representative William Dawson (R., Utah) is up on state charges of selling liquor to Indians, apparently in the belief that the repeal of the federal law made it legal. Dick Haymes' divorce settlement is going badly while his other troubles with immigration continue. Sonja Henie's show is playing Norway in a homecoming for the 100% never-Nazi. The Dionne girls are going their separate ways as they reach 19, Zane Grey's manuscripts have been acquired by the Library of Congress, Harold Stassen has ordered IQ tests for the 1700 employees of the Foreign Operations Administration, hoping to "lop off several hundred unqualified workers." Michael Patrick O'Brien, the Hong -Kong-Macau ferry rider without a country, still doesn't have a country as Brazil decides not to let him in as a refugee, after all. Bing Crosby golfs, and even Lionel Hampton can't follow that crazy bebop jive lingo. I would also be remiss for not mentioning the special feature on Italian starlets in a week when Silvana Mangano gets the cover.
Oona O'Neill Chaplin has had a son with Charlie Chaplin. Princess Margaret is 23. Dorothy Schiff is married. Gordon Dean is divorced. Mary Purnell, Cameron Morrison, Malcolm W. Bingay, Bert Andrews and Harold Knutson have died.
Books
Ludwig Bemelans' Father, Dear Father is possibly a memoir of the artist edited by his daughter, Barbara? Can't make head or tail of the review. Gwen Darwin Raverat's Period Piece is a memoir of growing up in Charles Darwin's extended family? I think? (She turns out to have been a sculptor of some distinction, not that the review mentions this.) Third try into the section and the review of Madeleine Stern's The Life of Mrs. Frank Leslieexplains that it is a biography of same, written by Stern, and even explains who the subject was. (A fabulously successful magazine publisher of the Nineteenth Century of whom Newsweek disapproves.) Robert Penn Warren's Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voicesis an odd and experimental novel about yet more terrible people (but also Thomas Jefferson's nephews). Newsweek didn't like it, and makes its case better than in the other reviews.
Raymond Moley is upset at the Secretary of Labour for not being anti-labour enough. It's probably because of his conflicts of interest by virtue of being in a union. For such things are otherwise unknown in this Administration!
Aviation Week, 31 August 1953
News Digest reports that avgas will soon be freed of the order requiring increased tetraethyl lead content to save on alkylates, as production of the latter is closer to meeting national defence needs. Transocean flights by massive flights of B-36s and F-84Gs, and one by a C-99 with a 61,000lb load and 23 crew and observers shows that these things can be done. And there's a nice picture of the latest Lockheed P2V Neptune variant with two underwing J34s for takeoff boost. Hey, that's my hubbie's plane! Industry Observer reports that Republic has Air Force contracts for its F-103 inverse taper wing with combination turbojet and rocket power, and its F-105 delta wing, to be built in both a fighter and reconnaissance variant. Wright R3350 engines being used by the Chicago and Southern Airlines are now approved for 1900 hours between overhauls, the highest for any engine ever. USAF information is that the Russian long-range turboprop bomber shown in air displays recently is almost certainly in production. The XB-52 and YB-52 have logged 700 flying hours so far and exceeded expectations. GE's Hermes short-range ground bombardment missile programme has been sharply cut back. Marines are impressed with their Lacross close-support missile, which boosts with solid rocket propellant and then glides up to eight miles to the target. Saunders-Roe is interested in developing a hydro-ski fighter similar to the Convair F2Y-1 now being tested. The story of the "weapon systems development" contract with Convair for the B-58 was so interesting the many times it was told last week that we tell it again! Cessna is working on a helicopter and Rohm and Haas has a new and improved plexiglas.
Robert Hotz reports for Aviation Week that "B-36 Teams Up With F-84 To Carry A-Bomb" The FiCon (for "Fighter Conveyor") project has been around forever, but was eventually repurposed for F-84s flying attached to the wings of B-36s, to the end of an extended probe with room for the pilot to shimmy down into the cockpit. But now instead of being escort fighters, they are to fly the A-bomb the "last mile" to the target, since B-36s are easy prey for MiG-15s. It is one of any number of things that might be done with those buckets of bolts, including use as a tanker or a radar picket.
North American is talking about financial penalties for aircraft builders who deliver late on their contracts, the Air Force is worried about how darn hot supersonic planes get, find it difficult to project the future with the new alloys and atomic power. This is all the same story, somehow. If you put them in separate paragraphs you don't have to explain how you got from one to the other! We end the article by wandering over to General McCormick's talk giving the ARDC view, which is that atomic planes, automatic control and supersonic speed will be important in the future, at which point all the space isn't taken up, so we repeat the same points.
Engine programmes are being cut back as engines are lasting longer than expected, the Air Force is going to be at the Dayton Air Show, the USAF is taking bids on C-123 production, and is up to 98 combat wings. Then it's time to be scooped by Flight with reporting from the Martin B-57 flight demonstrations. The Air Force is now receiving RB-47Es, the reconnaissance variant, with some extra photographic equipment such as intervalometers, optical viewfinders, photocell-operated shutters and bomb bay modified to take a camera pod. De Havilland Australia has curtailed Drover production. The FBI has arrested a front man for a nationwide ring of dealers in unairworthy commercial aircraft parts. The Piasecki YH-21 might be the first helicopter to the North Pole.
David Anderton reports for Aeronautical Engineering that "AF Tests Rocket Engines in Giant Stands" A huge rocket test stand at Edwards Air Force Base allows the Air Force to test giant rockets. Three pages, for pictures. Northrop has anti-ice shields for the F-89 while Rotor-Finish Tumblers installed at Ryan Aircraft are saving oodles of time and money on deburring. Everyone likes Alkaline Battery's nickel-iron batteries.
The SAE Production Forum held recently in New York had a panel discussion on experimental manufacturing, that is, on manufacturing an experimental product, and someone from Aviation Week was there to take notes. Lacking anything else to print, here are those notes under the title, "Experimental Shops Pretest Production," for Production. So if you were interested in coordinating production schedules with subcontractors and possibly subsidising them under appropriate oversight arrangements, this is your article! What's New has received three catalogues, two training manuals, a training film, the ASME's new Letter Symbols for Metrology, and Samuel Herrick's Table for Rocket and Comet Orbits, perfect for planning your next trip to Mars. George L. Christian visits Aviation Electric for Equipment and turns in "Canadian Overhaul Firm Expands." It's thinking about producing some Bendix instruments and accessories under license, since it already manufactures out-of-production parts for its RCAF maintenance contracts. UAL has bought the Bendix glide slop receiver for its 25 DC-7s. New Aviation Products devotes its editorial space to just two items, Celastic treated ("doped") cloth from Calahan and Horsey, and a push-pull disconnecting hydraulic coupling for oil fittings from E. B. Wiggins Oil Tool Company. They're always open when connected, always closed when shut, so you can just pull them free and reconnect at need.
The McGraw Hill Linewide Editorial has free advice for Britain: "Britons Can Have Prosperity --If They Want It" They just need to fix their low productivity. It's simple when you think about it!
Lee Moore reports for Air Transport that "New Avionics Gear Aids Airline Reliability" Radar traffic control and omnirange is important for winter reliability, but so is higher mechanical reliability. A Comet that landed at a 900ft grass strip instead of the Bombay airport by mistake lost nothing more than its tyres, amazingly enough.
Letters has a defence of Jacqueline Cochrane from Lt. Colonel Frank Everest of Edwards Air Force Base, who explains that her record flights did not disrupt normal activities at Edwards, which was able to accommodate her. John Longhurst points out that the "newsletter," or "publication" recently quoted by Aviation Week was, in fact, an official aviation report from Aviation Studies, Ltd. J. C. Schwarzenbach of U. S. Propellers, Ltd., finds Captain Robson's excuses for airline pilots' involvement in mid-air collisions to be "extremely weak." Robert Wood points out that the fact that traffic on the Jersey Turnpike in its first year matched expected volumes for 1971 to be evidence that Americans love progress, and American business can't go wrong betting on progress. He's very impressed with the Sabre, and expects Red treachery in Korea. They are building up their forces, especially air strength in Manchuria, and have executed numerous POWs on trumped-up charges just ahead of their release. Send in the Air Force to bomb them right, this time!
And so what's up as summer winds down at The Engineer (21 August 1953 and 28 August 1953)?
(Not the Seven Day-)Journal for 21 August reports that Sir Brian Robertson is the new head of the British Transport Commission. The Ministry of Supply has stepped in to take charge of aircraft for the Navy, while the Commonwealth Telecommunications Board's annual report focusses on the limited number of available frequencies. If more frequencies can't be allocated, it hopes that technology compresses the width of frequency used.
An interesting historical article, E. S. Chalmers, "A History of Spectroscopy" focusses in its third part, in this issue, on the optics of the prisms used to generate spectra for analysis. J. G. Withers' "Measurements of Air Flow" looks at the size of the surge damping vessel needed in a device that measures air flow by sampling it with an orifice. Our American Correspondent continues to review the work on "Nuclear Reactors for Power Generation" that came out of the AEC recently. This week he looks at the liquid-cooled nuclear reactor, the liquid being implicitly water, so this is just a boiler generator. The nuclear physics, with its damping and shielding requirements, is largely passive, so most of the engineering interest is in the power generating train, your turbines. E. C. Poultney continues to look at the locomotives of 1953. By which he means locomotives that are still around, and not ones built in 1953, because that would just be depressing for those who love their steam. V. S. Swaniathan gives us "Iraq Oil Pipelines," a discussion of the giant pipelines being built to service the Kirkuk oilfields by way of the new terminal at Homs, Syria. Anyone who hasn't completely killed the little boy inside will be thrilled by pictures of the Mighty Antar at work. Unfortunately all the work seems to be being done by American and British workers. We get coverage of the Economic Commission of Europe's potted history of the wide strip mill, the latest thing in steel, and the Coal Board's new run of mine locomotive. Leaders comment on the Commons committee on the nationalised industries and the fighter shortage at the Fleet Air Arm, which is down to a few squadrons of Sea Hawks. We have now decided to worry about Russian jet bombers attacking British trade, since those giant turboprops can be intercepted by propeller fighters, never mind Sea Hawks. The Il-28, on the other hand, is a real threat, only provided that Russia's alliance with Atlantis holds up, and those pesky Atlanteans finds some surface land to build a 9000ft concrete runway on. Or several, because the Il-28 has even shorter legs than the Canberra. Fortunately, the best kind of solution is at hand; reorganisation! (The kind that Lord Pakenham has been arguing for for years.) Letters are very active this week, with one from Donald Scammell explaining why big companies are better for productivity, from J. Hodges of Power Jets on a geometry question pertaining to the article on frames not obeying Hooke's Law (area of irregular planes) and more general comments on same from T. M. Charlton and J. W. Turner of the Engineer's Guild. Details of the London-Christchurch Air Race are given, and we launch "Fifty Years of Undercarriage Development" years ago, before the war, moving from simple "v" undercarriages to the first damped suspension on the big bombers of 1918. F. W. Sheppard tells us about its new cement handling method, the British Steel Castings Research Association about its "Radiographic Exposure Calculator" that determines when you have to go have a nap to avoid turning into a radioactive mutant, a bit from the Reclamation Bureau about irrigation in the Columbia River basin, commercials for a carbide tip finishing machine from R. J. H. Tool, the de Havilland Super Sprite, and a marine radar from Kelvin and Hughes, and the conclusion to D. H. L. Lawson's "Solution of Transient Heat-Flow Problems of Analogous Electrical Networks."
Industrial and Labour Notes attest to the still upward-swinging trends in Britain's economy (more steel, more exports). Four British Standards reports are buried down here, but no Launches and Trial Trips.
(Not the Seven Day-)Journal for 28 August reviews D. F. Anderson's alarmed article in National Provincial Bank Review explaining why it is impossible to replace freighter fleets with current depreciation rules and notices the British Industries Fair for 1954, some awards and reorganisations, and some kind of pull-off between steam and diesel locomotives to determine if the steam locomotives go to the Home For Old Locomotives this year or next. Chalmer's history of spectroscopy explains Huygen's interference theory and its application to a "Spectrograph room" illuminated by a diffraction grating. J. S. Clark and L O. C. Johnson describe the "Resistance Thermometer in the 50 Meter Comparator at the NPL," which is used to "standardise the taping used for geodetic surveying." The latest historical treatment of Cornish mining engines by W. Tregoning Hooper looks at pumping engines, while C. F. Armstrong tries to give us the most detailed look yet at "Overseas Appointments for Civil Engineers" in spite of having only two pages to work with as it is on to commercials for the Temper Mill Drives at the Trostre Tinplate Works and Walker Brothers' new diesel-electric crane. Metallurgical Topics looks at papers on defects in hot-worked mild steels, an attempt to say something definite about just how much better open hearth steels are than Bessemer steels in identical applications, another on the use of rare earth elements in stainless steels, and on "Rapid-Life Tool Testing," which is attempts to speed up wea-failure tests of tools by increasing the cutting speeds and such. The authors think that radioactive tracers are the answer. Leaders point out just how interesting the Tregoning Hooper article is and comments on the guided missile test that we saw photos of in Aviation Week. No-one knows much about them, but the Ministry of Supply suggests that manned bombers cannot possibly outmanoeuvre them, suggesting that the future belongs to the long range missile, unless they can be shot down, too. Given their inherently limited range, they might be an appropriate shipborne weapon. Letters has Gerald Lacey on "regime change," by which the civil engineers mean the silting-up of chanels, particularly irrigation canals, in a general enough way to actually guide them to remedial measures. R. G. B. Gwyer defends the reputation of the "Britannia" class of locomotives, which might as well have provoked J. H. W. Turner (the honorary secretary of the Engineer's Guild seems to have time on his hands) to write on "The Old Engineer." The unsigned article on undercarriage development reaches the early internally-sprung wheels,, retraction, and oleo-pneumatic shock absorbers in a mad rush as far as the Lancaster and Halifax. Duncan Sandy's statement on guided missiles gets a bit more attention, followed by the work of the Fuel Research Station on turning coal into oil, lead into gold, empty space into text. A "Limpet Dam and Tnnel for Lock Gate Renewal" is good news for those who work with canals and dams, while Glasgow's water supply marches and advances, and the latest British Railways devices for ballast cleaning are quite something. In India besides a dam and the latest developments in engineering manufacture, the big news for Indian Engineering News is the nationalisastion of the airlines. Echometers from Marconi, an infrared heating lamp for farms from GE, and a pillar drilling machine from Kerry's get commercials.
Industrial and Labour Notes pivot from everything going up to the TUC clearing its throat about wages and the latest on foreign technical assistance; Launches and Trial Trips checks in with three steamships and one motor vessel. The steam ships are a single old-fashioned collier and two very complicated-sounding turbine plants, including a "triple expansion, double-reduction" machinery for the cargo vessel Patinga. The motor vessel is just an oil tanker. Does the coup in Iran mean we need more,a fter all?
Usually when I find a typo it is me, but The Engineer definitely says "Patinga," and everyone else says "Patonga."
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