Mother and babies resting comfortably.
Actually, Mrs. Cook is flat out, with the twins by her, and the new Turkish nanny looking out for both. Funny how a Turkish girl looks Chinese and talks American with a Chinese accent.
Hi. You probably never heard of me, but this is Vince Murphy here. The babies were on their way when I left for my double shift, and they came an hour after I got back. Not as long a delivery as my Mammy's first, but hard on everyone. Mrs. Judith put a brandy in the landlord and set him to bed before settling down herself. My Mammie has a little one of her own to look after, came last week, the Captain's on a slow cruise on some lame-duck carrier coming back from Hawaii, Larry's driving the doctor home, and that leaves me as the adult of the house. And now I have this here courier at the door to pick up your mail. I scraped up what's on the desk in the Landlord's study, but I remember how my Dad worried out a furrow on the floor, and figure I'd add my own touch, which, well, you see. I figure this is on the first page, not that I read Chinese any to know.
P. Vincent Murphy. (That's me.)
My Dearest Reggie:
I am a little hurt that the Earl has so little faith in my judgement. I understand that he is inclined to be impatient when I make snide little comments in the face of the recommendation of the Economist itself that we invest in "Cousin H.C." I believe that The Economist is wrong about this, and surely their California correspondent's silly comments about water rights should underline his credibility?
In my defence, I offer the events of the past few weeks. I refer to them cryptically, I admit, but you know my business of the last few weeks, and most of my trip's consequences are playing out in the news. If "Cousin H.C." and "E. F.," if you know who I mean, trust my judgement....
As for my little game with "Miss V.C.," whatever you have heard from her mother, that is all it is. She is very disappointed that her investigations at Sacramento turned up no further information about her "McKee" forebears, but, nothing daunted, brings me the Yerba Buena indenture book to point out a name with eyebrows cocked. I dissemble: "Chinese family names come first," I say. "It is a coincidence."
"I know," she answers. Then she pulls out the popular biography and points to the alias that Bing Oh Mah took his Hudson's Bay Company indenture under. It is ironic that a half-caste guttersnape from old Canton could come out on top of his crew here in America; but, after all, he probably took after his EIC sailor father enough to be Black Irish in all but accent.
"Coincidence," I repeat, but she only puts a dinner club napkin from my Chicago visit down on the desk without comment.
I thought that I had left that lying out for nothing! A blank stare back is but a snare draws the young lady ever closer.
One thing, though. Do you know from your sources if the old man left the country at some point? Because his grandson once told me over too many drinks that he first came to the Coast in Gold Rush days....
Time, 13 March 1944
International
The Finns are surrendering more, and, for novelty’s sake, have sent a female ambassador to do it. Some
Americans, rounded up in France when Vichy was occupied, are now returned from internment in Baden-Baden. Deep in the countryside, they have the impression that German public morale is still holding up, buoyed by brute
statistics. Germany and her allies have 200 million people, 18 million
soldiers, vast and increasing war production, massive fortifications against
which the Allies must spend themselves. The Commons is agog over talk that the
V-Cigaret tastes like horse dung. Or Indian tobacco, whichever is worse. There
are automobiles in Bermuda, now. Koreans find Japanese arrogant and oppressive. Malaria is raging in Egypt. Egyptians cite malnutrition for the spike in deaths
and blame the British, while the British (and the paper) blame the landlords.
Whoever is to blame, malaria-carrying mosquitoes are certainly spreading
northwards with the rising Nile. Vichy, in an unexpected turn of events, is
turning anti-Semitic. Wait, did I say “unexpected,” Reggie?
The casinos in
Monaco are closed. The paper notices that things are not as they could be in Italy,
and unloads an emergency supply of condescension in the liberated region. Also
failing to develop to the paper’s satisfaction, Argentina. Brazil, on the other
hand, is colourful, Latin, and cooperative.
The paper asks whether the Second
Front has been postponed, perhaps at the behest of the Air Marshals, whether
there is something the matter in the Burma theatre, whether the Administration
has a policy on Germany, Italy, Poland, de Gaulle, Finland? Answers are
unclear. Hint: Perfidious Albion.
Various clergy think that we should
not be bombing German civilians. Blowing up various places around New Guinea,
on the other hand, is fine, as only natives, and occasionally General MacArthur live there, and you can always tell the General by his (Philippine) Field-Marshal’s
cap. 7th Cavalry is involved in fighting off frenzied Japanese night
attacks on Los Negros Island. Words fail. The Russians are advancing. The
“little Blitz” is driving Londoners back into the tube, although the paper cannot
help quoting an anonymous expert criticising the quality of German bombs. Please do not taunt the German air
force, anonymous expert.
The paper notices that the “full scale” bombing attack
against Germany has only been going on for two weeks now, and celebrates
the heroes of the American infantry who have, over the last seventeen days,
made and held a bridgehead across the Rapido. The Germans are attacking
ships in the Anzio roads with rocket-assisted guided glide bombs. Vice-Admiral
Percy Nelles, RCN, notices that German submariners have high morale due to only
doing three tours per year, high quality leaves, and good food. However, recent
prisoners have been more polite and less arrogant, suggesting a change in the
albeit still highly Nazi corps. Gigantic German five-engined planes have been
seen in France.
Among famous soldiers and sailors: Alfred
and George Vanderbilt, both lieutenants and commanders of PT boats in the south
Pacific. The paper has a picture of them greasy, from maintenance work. I do not, as my copy was dropped in a broken bottle of milk by the postman. I do, however, have this.
* |
Paulette Goddard, who is
not a soldier or sailor, but did fly “over the Hump” to entertain troops in
China; Joseph Wright Alsop, Jr. who likes to flit through the war, is currently
with Chennault’s staff. Jesse Stuart, “Kentucky’s hillbilly novelist-poet” has
just passed his pre-induction physical. Alan
Ladd, discharged as too brittle by the Army last fall, is rumoured to be about
to be re-taken.
Missing in Action this week: P-47
ace Major Walter Carl Beckham, and P-51 pilot Wau-Kau Kong, previously noticed.
Domestic
Five veterans’ organisations
proposed that the prospective 11 million veterans of WWII get a bonus of $4500
each. The paper claims that “[s]ober citizens blinked as if they had been
slugged” at word of Trillions for
Bonuses. Gentlemen, that is how much it is going to cost. There is no point deluding yourself on the subject, or you will just be slugged later. In the mean time, may I humbly suggest a compromise: a home loan
guarantee to the value of, say, $5000? Think of it as an investment whose dividends will pay those trillions. The South Carolina legislature denounces all organisations seeking “the
commingling of the (white and Negro) races upon any basis of equality as
un-American.”The paper points out that the real issue is that Coloured teachers get $70/month in
South Carolina, White teachers $90. I would take this a step further. The ostensible injustice is racial, but since men in war work can easily make
$1/hour, the real injustice is the criminal underpayment of South Carolina teachers of both races. And Christians have the nerve to call Chinese heathens.
Southern Senators, led by Tom
Connally of Texas, might be using their influence on foreign policy to expert
pressure on the President on racial and labour issues. Senators
Wagner of New York and Taft of Ohio, thinking things much too peaceful and
non-anti-American in the Middle East, introduce a resolution calling for a Jewish national homeland in
Palestine. General Marshall came before the Senate to ask that they hold off
inflaming Arab opinion until after the war, when we shan’t need them anymore.
Republican William S. Bennet nearly beat Tammany’s James H. Torrens in New
York’s 21st Congressional District, no doubt foretelling a massive
Coloured swing against the New Deal. Mr. Janeway? Is that you?
The new Governor of Louisiana celebrated with a victory lap in the hay wagon that brought him to town.
Awful, rickety, improvised relief
trains are pulling great loads of stranded Florida tourists home after the
transportation infrastructure threatened to collapse under the load of would be
escapees taking a spring break. Looking back in review as I prepare this packet for the courier, I can only say that there is more urgent news about transportation failures to
Obligatory Canadian news includes a
notice that, unexpectedly, Canadians have not flocked to butcher shops to
exploit the (temporary) end of meat rationing with an orgy of buying, and that
Canadian authorities are attempting to clamp down on over-telephone sales of dubious
stocks by “wheedle-wackers,” or American con-men, and word that Tappan Adney is
a Renaissance genius who knows the ways of the Miami Indians and makes his own pickles. And also has compromising photographs of the Luces.
Local draft boards are having more
and more difficulty in finding good men,
with astonishing rates of rejection for neuropsychiatric illness. The question
that I have, cynic that I am, is. . . Actually, I suppose I needn’t continue
after esuggesting that one could approach such news cynically.
The Civil Aviation Authority is now
recruiting married couples to go up to Alaska to run “isolated communication
stations along the country’s farthest north air routes.” Homes are provided with electrical refrigerators and
all other modern conveniences. Right outside their doors, the paper helpfully
notes for those who have not yet grasped the point, “is the Alaskan
wilderness.” Better than inviting it in, I suppose.
Science,
Technology & Business
The Army is trying out “portable”
oil pipelines of 4 and 6” diameters. The steel pipe segments are spirally
constructed, like soda straws (if that tells you anything), a mile of pipeline
with auxiliary equipment weighs only 13 tons, average capacity is
5000bbls/day, and it all goes up like a Mechano set. Engineer Petroleum Distribution Units are trained by the Army
Service Forces at Camp Claiborne, Louisana. It beats storming beaches, I should think.
Navy fliers who have whispered
behind waving hands of a dream plane that combines the best features of fighter
and bomber, with the fire-power of a small battleship, as big a jump ahead of
the pistol-hot Hellcat as that airplane was ahead of the Wildcat, finally have
the Grumman F7F.
The Truman Committee report on the
Navy’s disastrous tank-lighter programme has been released, after being
embargoed for a year. The shorter version is that the Higgins design was better but that the Navy resisted and persisted with its own. The longer includes a
transcript of a phone conversation (source not revealed by the Committee)
between Captain John Crecca of the Boston Navy Yard and Commander Edward E.
Roth of BuShips. Senator Truman does not fool around.
The paper reports that the New York
Zoological Soceity has been able to keep “fish, guinea pigs and monkeys alive
under completely germless conditions.” That is, a germ-free life is possible,
with all that implies for health in the exciting age to come.
An interesting science story revives
the thinking of old William Gilpin.
It turns out that, besides being an obnoxious old-fashioned confidence man, he was a
scientist! For it was he who proposed that America would play a master role in
the history of civilisation akin to that of Rome by virtue of being a bowl-shaped continent, unlike Europe and Asia, which are inverted
bowls. Also, its population will rise to a billion. This is the first good I hear of
Governor Gilpin, but I rather wonder about the abrupt insight
of Bernard de Voto (Harper Monthly’s “Easy Chair Editor”) that he is some kind
of forgotten prophet.
Unless it may be of the easy money to be made from selling already-owned
sagebrush to eastern investors. Though, to be fair, that is a prophecy on which
De Voto seems to be making book.
An 18-year old welder in Mobile was
taken to the hospital with meningitis two weeks ago. Refused admission, the
head of the sick girl’s rooming house also tried to refuse her until the driver
forced his way in. Mobile. She died the next day. Mobile is one of the towns
worst hit by the doctor shortage, and this makes the current meningitis
outbreak --23 in February, with a death rate of 25%-- especially frightening. The Army and
Navy have a 3% rate.
Charles Sorensen has resigned as
production boss of Ford Motors. Well, someone had to take the blame for Willow Run, and it was Sorensen's time to go. Not that I do not feel guilty. Speaking of sudden retirements of executives, Andrew Moffett, late of the Rockefeller oil empire, is on the war path
against the Middle East oil plan. The American industry thinks that there is no
shortage of American oil, and that American investment in the Middle East is a boondoggle, or against the Atlantic Charter, or
something. Perhaps it is unconstitutional? surely a Southern
Senator can be found.
The Texas vegetable harvest in the
Rio Grande is at risk because of the failure of trucks needed to get it to
market –and labour to harvest it.
Jahco’s Bill Jack came to Washington
to throw a five course meal for 80 Congressmen and 180 guests, at which he gave
a talk about the need for renegotiation to guarantee Jahco a 5% profit on gross
war business, or $5 million, on top of his much publicised $891,000 salary.
Mr. Jack seems astonishingly inept for a man of his estate. I hope that he does
not try to manage his own fortune.
Arthur D. Whiteside, President of
Dunn & Bradstreet, is the latest to warn of postwar economic disaster,
foreseeing a glut of postwar consumer production. His solution: production control on a 1939 basis.
While this will certainly keep prices high and so prevent a glut, retailers
think it rubbish, and propose the release of Federal control soonest, followed
by manufacturers rushing into the market, with the Devil taking the hindmost. Says
American Retail Federation Chairman Fred Lazarus, Jr., “We cannot get a $135
billion economy out of 1939 quotas set on an $80 billion economy.”
The Truman committee seems to agree
with Mr. Lazarus rather than with Mr. Whiteside, but the key thing here seems
to me is that if we do not have a postwar depression on the merits, we
could easily have one by following the wrong course, and it is hard to know whether the right course is to be set by Whiteside or by
Lazarus. You can see why I would prefer to sidestep the whole matter and focus
on products-and-markets-yet-to-be, however much the Earl scoffs at my utopian
attempts to escape into the future.
Education
Small American colleges such as Kenyon
may escape the worst effects of the curtailment of the Army Specialized
Training Program by taking in an expanded new class of 18 year-olds through the
Army Specialized Training Program Reserve. It sounds like a compromise to me,
Reggie. It is suggested that there be United Nations inspectors in postwar Axis
schools, so as to nip militarism in the bud. I certainly do not see any practical
difficulties, Reggie. (It is a good thing that German and Japanese schools
teach in English!) The paper quotes one critic who thinks that American schools
will need such inspectors at least as much as German and Japanese. Due to
backwardness, you see.
Press
and Entertainment
Trini Barnes, Colonel McCormick’s
niece, publishes a leftist monthly, which the paper finds amusing. The standard
price of an American newspaper is up to 5 cents.
Freddie Kuh is the best American
foreign correspondent, and female reporters (“newshens”) demand access to the White
House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.
MGM has spiked plans for a remake of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, on the grounds
that it would cause racial tensions.
I am not sure that it counts as entertainment,
but Robert Sherrod’s Tarawa: The Story ofa Battle is out in time to prepare Americans for “many other bigger and
bloodier Tarawas . . .”
Time,
20 March 1944
International
The paper has its turn dilating
about the coal situation in Britain. The paper sees it as being as much a fight
between miners and their unions as it is between miners and the
government. The paper finds the
Prime Minister’s campaign for Basic English amusing. Latins are excitable.
An amusing anecdote from Denmark, where crowds lingered after a visit by
Field-Marshal Rommel passed by, when asked why, a wit replied that now they
were waiting for Montgomery. The murder mystery of the Pajama Girl is solved in Melbourne. In an amusing incident, General Royce of the USAAF flew a DC-3 out into the
Arabian desert to find King Ibn Saud’s hunting party and presented him with
various princely gifts, courtesy of the American taxpayers, employees of the
Rockefeller oil empire excepted. The larger gift, part of Lend-Lease (the
better to assist the King in any future Axis-fighting endeavours) was a
freighter load of 7 million silver coins valued at $1,250,000. If only a ship
could reach Chungking. . . Argentina, apparently, dreams of uniting Latin
America against the United States. Which sounds quite practical.
The paper covers the syndicated
columnists of America on the subject of foreign policy with even more irony and
sarcasm than I am capable of. I would be surprised if Dorothy Thompson did not
have words with Mr. Luce when next they cross paths. Other sarcastic asides are
noted in the context of a meeting between former Vichy ambassador to America
Henry-Haye and former American ambassador to Vichy, Douglas MacArthur II.
(Nephew to the general and son-in-law to Senator Barkley.) Various people are
concerned that the Nazis are trying to trick us into bombing Rome.
Various apparently pro-Russian
Americans think that Russia should be more pro-Polish.
Summoned for induction this week in
an ironic turn, the War Manpower Commission’s Julius Albert Krug, 6 foot 3, 36
year-old father of two.
The paper cites unnamed sources who
suggest, with no obvious irony, that the current Battle of Berlin is in the “wearing-out
phase” that precedes the decisive cavalry charge. Field-Marshal Haig was unfortunately not available for comment. A story follows which is the first-person account of a
B-17 ball turret gunner on the big raid to Berlin. He knows that 68 Fortresses and
Liberators were lost, and I think it tells under his bravado. Interesting to note that he saw some Polish RAF pilots flying Mustangs over the city. Not an escort flight, exactly, but a greater guarantee of safety than our boys have, notwithstanding what you've told me about your higher unit command's adventures with night fighter escorts, Reggie.
An amusing story about how, after
Private First Class William Rozak wrote home to the effect that they could not
come by eggs in Britain, his mother sent him a dozen, dipped in paraffin and
packed in sawdust, which came out just fine. I think I shall go down and get
myself a tea egg. Do I make you hungry, or jealous, or both?
The paper admires the manliness of
Nikolai Voronov, now raised to the title of Chief Marshal of Red Artillery. The cavalry gets the glory while the artillery does the work. Meanwhile, the Germans continue to retreat,
and the Rumanians continue to surrender.
HMS Penelope is lost. The paper posthumously promotes her to a 6” cruiser.
The paper is impressed with General
Stlwell’s campaign in northern Burma.
Domestic
Having killed the Zionist resolution
in the Senate, the President invited Rabbis Stephen Wise and Abba Hillel Silver
to the White House in order to have it both ways.
Lew Douglas has left the
Administration again. Back in 1934, he resigned on principle, aghast at its
spending. This March, he leaves the Shipping Administration with thanks for a
job well done.
The War Labour Board has ordered an end to the AFL no-recordingstrike against RCA, Columbia, and RCA-Victor. It has ruled that “canned” music
is not a threat to musician employment, and that therefore no payment should be
made out of these companies' profits into a union-run unemployment fund. The paper is skeptical about the fund, to which the other recording companies of course contribute, and hopes that the music-canning industry will not be burdened with this special fee any further. If the strike really is settled, which is unclear, it may have some implications for our friend.
“Dimpled, 27 year old” Dorothy Vredenburgh, the selected convenor of the 1944 Democratic Convention, proposes
that the 1944 election will go Democratic down the line. Silly, silly girl,
says the paper, especially given the Republican win in Colorado this week and falling
approval numbers for the President in Iowa.
Baron Sempill was in
Nova Scotia last week discussing plans to transplant Scots from his estates in
Scotland (of course) to lands that he would procure in Nova Scotia. It was
amusing to relate that he is successor to the lordship patent originally issued
for Nova Scotia by James I, although the patent was extinguished by the
transfer of the province to France by the peace of 1632. I should imagine that
a few years of peace will make the first settlement mentioned about as relevant
as the second.
The Navy’s new depot at Hueneme has
opened for business, as a new port with poor inland access is just what the
coast needed.
Senator Vandenberg has thrown a tantrum about the Army’s War College Library and General MacArthur that is amusing but rather much to get into.
The Army has a new ace, P-47-flying Walker Mahurin,
who shot down three Germans in the big Berlin raid. With Boyington MIA and Hanson dead in a crash, Mahurin is tied with Donald
Aldrich and Kenneth Walsh, both Marine Corsair pilots. Navy Hellcat flyers just
do not tangle with enemy aircraft often enough to be in the running, and P-38
pilots are falling behind, with Bong highest at 21.
In related news, Colonel Karl L.Polifka, commander of the first specialised P-38 aerial photography squadron has
been grounded, as too valuable to lose. Any
gen, Reggie?
Private Dale Maple, who recently
deserted from Camp Hale in Colorado with two German priosners, has been caught,and now other servicemen might be implicated. 2nd Lieutenant Beaufort Swancutt is to be arraigned on five charges
of murder for a shooting spree at Camp Anza, near Riverside. The Army has now
to explain how a man with a long civilian police blotter was allowed to first
enlist, and then be commissioned. As well it should. It is not as though accounts of mania are lacking in this fallen world of ours.
Science,
Technology & Business
News of the astonishing new miracle invention, “Stabinol,” which eliminates mud. That is, an addition of Stabinol
to dry soil binds it in a water-resistant way, making it useful as a road bed. Well, I have heard that only miracles will push the Ledo Road through.
Dr. Charles Greeley Abbot, grey,
72-year-old Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, has discovered a way of
using solar radiation to predict the weather. And by “predict,” I mean that droughts in the (Old) Northwest will seriously lower
the level of the Great Lakes in 1974 and 2020. AD. I, for one, predict that the Smithsonian will be found to have a crank working
as its Secretary. This will happen sometime soon after late March of 1944.
Doctors Herbert McLean Evans and
Choh Hao Li of the [which?] University of California have extracted a pure
human growth hormone from the pituitary
glands of cadavers. I was going to make a joke about football and alumni
boosters, but the story goes on to note that someone suggested making mass use
of the hormone to rid the Japanese of their inferiority complex, and I yield
the field The new Journal of Neurosurgery
publishes claims of a new invention, Fibrin Foam, a, natural wound
sealant.
A new world record for the mile has
been set by a short, bespectacled divinity student named Gilbert Dodds, who
shaved a tenth of a second off the four minutes, 7.4 seconds time with an amazing burst of last-quarter speed.
Dr. Alfred Koerner, a Manhattan
gynecologist, has gloomily predicted that two out of every ten servicemen ill
return from World War II sterile, leading to a postwar ratio of fertile men to
women of 89-100, vice the normal peacetime ratio of 106-100. In past wars, the
commonest causes of sterility in soldiers have been mumps, fevers, gastric poisoning
and gland disorders. In this one, wounds and shock from mines, torpedoes and
bombs may also increase the sterility rate. The good doctor therefore proposes
that discharge papers list whether a serviceman is sterile, to avoid the
lifelong unhappiness caused when sterile people marry fertile ones, and there
is no baby-making. Well, there is baby-making, but you understand me, right,
Reggie? What I am saying here is that there is something in the air
in Manhattan that makes people crazy.
Wall Street is up. Various reasons
are proposed by dyed-in-the-wool pessimists who expect it to start plunging
again soon. These include: Roosevelt bashing bringing spirits up, the Baruch
report suggesting that Washington will throw money at reconversion, thinking
that the end of the war is delayed by the slogging in Italy and the Second
Front, a mysterious quality called the “character of the market/” Or, even, and
this is a stretch, good profit numbers from 1943 from bellwether stocks General
Motors and Du Pont. (I shall plump with “war to go on longer!” Of course, I do
not really believe that, as it would involve conceding that Mr. Janeway is
right about something, but I do hope that you press this point with the Earl,
omitting my scandalous cynicism. In my own defence, I believe in my prognostications,
but do not expect them to be convincing. I suppose that it is too late by 40
years to dissemble my arrant cynicism to the Earl, though. Not that the paper is helping.)
The Truman Committee’s long awaited
report on the magnesium industry is in. Dow did an excellent job, while the
rest of the industry essentially just extracted money from the taxpayer. We are
now well over any likely production needs for magnesium. Most of the nation’s
half-billion-dollar investment will have to be written off as a war loss. Or we
shall all be lounging about on lightweight magnesium lawn furniture soon,
though perhaps with a cautious eye out for sparks drifting from the bonfire.
Six Liberty Ships have now cracked
open in Alaskan waters this winter. The Maritime Commission, in its defence,
reports that serious structural failures have occurred in “only” 62 of the 1,917 Liberty Ships
delivered up to 1 February, and the causes, have hitherto been mysterious. CIO
National Maritime Union President Joseph Curran, invited to present testimony
to the Truman Committee, accused not hazy, and technical factors but poor loading
and handling. Captain Walter A. Brunnick, skipper of the Henry Ward Beecher, answered, “Flapdoodle.” For Curran, the blame
lies on skippers. For Captain Brunnick, I assume it lies
on builders. Common sense would suggest that building 2000 ships in three years
in inexperienced yards with the product
of over-worked steel mills is the cause. But who wants to hear common sense?
Leather supplies are down 18% from
the 1942 high and will continue to decline even as the Army and Navy take ever
more of the supply. Therefore, the ration for shoes is down to 2 pairs/year,
and the shortage will continue after the peace, as relief agencies have taken
up prospective quotas.
Incidentally, shoes are the third
most sought after item in the recent rash of hijackings, after liquor and
rayon.
Arts,
Entertainment, Press
Printer’s
Ink denounces the recent overuse of the word “yummy” in advertising, and
blames the recent influx of female copywriters due to the male side of the
industry being off billboarding Hitler to death.
The paper quite liked With the Marines at Tarawa, a cinematic experience of real war.
Congressman Robert Hale of Maine
reports being pinched in the rear while chatting with Lord Halifax at a British
Embassy tea. Turning gravely, he met the gaze of a woman who babbled
apologetically that she had mistaken him for Justice Frankfurter. Now that’s a story, Reggie.
Flight,
23 March 1944
Leaders
“The Hard Nut of Cassino” Guilty
consciences? Not a bit of it! There are to be “seven Brabazons.” These are to
include a 100 tonner, a landplane of 100,000lbs all up weight (so a puny little
thing) for trans-Atlantic flying, allowing a stop in Newfoundland, a slightly
smaller 70,000lb cruising at 220mph and carrying twelve, when you have to be
there slightly sooner, and are even richer than other trans-Atlantic
passengers, a 40,000lb type, a jet liner, and then some odds and end of a
little 8 seater of 8000lbs, for picnics in the Cotswolds. Or maybe a Halifax
conversion? Something like that. Also, perhaps, a flying boat, at which the
paper’s ears perk up. It all sounds up in the air to me, Reggie.
War
in the Air
Russians win victories! Planes were
involved! Marshal Stalin even admits it! Mussolini’s press secretary was killed
in a recent air raid, no great loss, the paper thinks, though I am sure that Mr. Grey
will send a wreath. This week’s box score shows 116 Allied bombers lost in the West. An airlanding operation in
Burma involved planes! And Indian troops!
Here
and There
Air Vice-Marshal Hugh Henry MacLeod Frazer has been appointed Director-General of Repair and Maintenance at the
Ministry of Aircraft Production. wonder if those who inveigh against the air marshals understand that the air
force is training lieutenant generals to run engine shops. Oh, well, I am sure
that we can find some fustian admiral to claim that commanding a destroyer flotilla
is good preparation for such work. The He219 is announced. A transport B-24 has made the 2100 mile flight from San Francisco to Honolulu
in 9 hr 27 minutes, with a healthy tailwind.
Twenty-eight air training schools in Canada will close this year. Group
Captain MacIntyre of Scottish Aviation predicted that jets will make the flight
from Canada to Britain in only 3-and-a-half hours at some vague point in the future.
Unless “unnecessary conservatism” slows down aeronautical progress, which it probably
will.
Studies
in Recognition
We notice the Halifax, FW 200,
Junkers 290, Heinkel 177 this week.
Oddly for this feature, I had not even heard that some of these were going out
of service!
“Sir R. Fedden Reviews
Anglo-American Efforts” The man who was sacked for failing to bring in the
sleeve-valve engine in a timely way thinks that American aviation is much
better run than British.
Short notes allege that Americans
are anxious to keep up with Britain in civil aviation (Time is, anyway), and point out that British bomb tonnage carted
over and dumped on Germany has grown much more impressively than bomber sorties
through December of 1943.
“Napier Sabre II: Twenty-Four
Cylinder, Sleeve-valve, Liquid-cooled Twin-crankshaft Engine Now in Full
Production.” Were I not on tenterhooks waiting on your daughter-out-of-law, I
would now amuse myself counting just how many times the paper has announced
this sing-song apparatus.
Behind
the Lines
Latins are excitable. The Belgian
Fascist Youth League is recruiting for the Junkers works. “Engineer Rocca” is
working on a high-altitude engine made up of two joined Hispano-Suiza 12Ys with
a three stage supercharger with clutches on two of three impellers, two
coaxial, electrically controllable, independently feathering airscrews, and two
flexibly coupled extension shafts. Someone has some time on his hands. Perhaps
the completed machine can go into the six-engined Latecoere flying boat, “Marshal
Petain.”
German Overseas Radio claims that the Allies, having found difficulties with the “relay” fighter escort method, are relying instead on massed escort by long range fighters, which make up for their inferiority to German interceptors with numbers, introducing the mass principle of combat to the air. So the Western air forces have joined the Red Army in wearing down German superiority with numbers. Well, the Axis actually outnumbers the Russians by population –by quite a bit during the decisive days, and I am no more convinced by the claims about air forces.
German Overseas Radio claims that the Allies, having found difficulties with the “relay” fighter escort method, are relying instead on massed escort by long range fighters, which make up for their inferiority to German interceptors with numbers, introducing the mass principle of combat to the air. So the Western air forces have joined the Red Army in wearing down German superiority with numbers. Well, the Axis actually outnumbers the Russians by population –by quite a bit during the decisive days, and I am no more convinced by the claims about air forces.
“Seven Post-war Types” The House is
in a fuss over the Brabazon Plan. It is all very well to plan a fleet of brand
new airliners, but what about jets? On the Labour benches, concern over who benefits from civil aviation. Air Commodore Helmore answers that people will have to pay for speed, so that fast flying
will be for the rich –at first. He hoped that, by general social improvements,
the cost of flying will come within everyone’s reach, and the aircraft will be
the omnibus of the future. Mr. Hore-Belisha, stewing on the backbenches since
being removed as Secretary of State for War, intervenes to point out the need
for a proper airport near London. Interesting, as the one thing Hore-Belisha
has always been good for is pouring concrete.
“Sir Stafford Cripps Surveys Output”
Fedden is wrong. He notes that manpower per Lancaster has fallen 38% in the
last 12 months, while for the Spitfire it has been a reduction of 27.5% over
three years, impressive given that the Spitfire of 1943 is totally transformed
from that of 1940. The amount of unskilled labour has risen by 500%, although
the proportion is much less on new types. Some 40% of all new production is on
spare parts.
“Correspondence”
This is “Mrs. J.C.s” favourite
section, I have left it for last in my composition, for, as we came up a week
past the due date, nameless fears clenched me every time I thought on her. I
come back to it on this night of ages, as I try to distract myself, my heart
clenching and fingers slipping as I draw those characters, Reggie. These will
be the first twins in our line since 1779. Heaven is telling us something.
Oh, when will this infernal night
end? Patience, I tell myself. We have
the best doctor in the valley, and Judith, who has seen more of these than she
has summers, and now An Way.
A serviceman, “Projet,” leads off, writes
to explain the thermodynamics of jet propulsion. Clearly the limiting temperature
of the blades is crucial, and, as always in engine design, materials science
will lead the way.
Then we have “correspondence” in the
old style, with R. C. Abel writing to propose a “Jet-driven Plastic Flying Wing”
flying boat. I would parse the letter, but my eyes will not focus on the print. A service correspondent
and J. C. Land write on the “best aircraft in the world,” (they are British,
remarkably enough!), and “I. M. Leach,” an odd pseudonym, I must say, writes on
B. J. Hurren’s claim that a single-seat torpedo-bomber-fighter like the old
Blackburn Dart would be useful in the fleet, while Peter Masefield delineates
four main roles. “Leach” thinks that a hypothetical aircraft, called, say, the
Wyvern, of Hurren’s type could fill all four roles.
And so I am to infer that a Vickers,
or possibly Westland, fleet multirole single-seater is in development.
A student writes to say that future aeronautical
engineers should have a generalist, not specialist training. J. Winston
proposes an alternative layout for the proposed “Thames-side” airport. I hope
that the matter of the London international airport is resolved soon. It feels
like it is dragging out.
Time,
27 March 1944
International
The King of the Yugoslavs has
married a Greek princess! When people look back at the great historic turning
points of 1944, they will . . . skip right over this article. Rumania is surrendering
more. President Benes has suggested that Russia might award “the bleak potato
lands of northern Transylvania” to Rumania, causing Hungary to surrender less. ((Another
story notes that Benes is the best cook amongst the exiled ministers of London,
and specialising, “in risotto, stews, soups and powdered garlic.” Oh, Good
Lord, paper. Remember that sandwich place we stopped at on our way up from the
border when I visited in ’34? If the country cousins of Vancouver have seen a
naked garlic clove, is it too much to ask of Manhattan?)
Parisians are “under-fed and ill-clothed, declining into anemia,” says the
paper’s “former Paris fashion correspondent,” recently arrived in Manhattan on “the rescue-ship
Gripsholm.” But they are still going
to the opera and swanky balls, while “women defy restrictions with monumental
hats that take six meters of fabric to erect…” Apparently losing no time in
resuming her duties of filling out the paper, someone contributes a story about gruesome remains of mass murder
found at No. 21 rue La Sueur, and one about Edouard Herriot being dead.
Moscow has recognised the Badoglio government, causing anti-communists to be
concerned that Moscow has not snubbed the Italian anti-communists causing fears
that the anti-communists might not be not? I am having a little difficulty
parsing it. The German ambassador
to Vichy is forwarding the interests of “ultra-collaborationists.” In other
news, the paper reports, Catholics and Protestants are squabbling in New York.
.
Captain “Chow Jockie” of the British merchant marine, and
“U.S. Negro Bishop John Gregg” have both recently run afoul of the South
African colour bar, too. On the other hand, Cape Town is scandalised by gangs
of “skollies,” who roll American and British sailors. Such a crime has never
been imagined before, and is well worth international coverage! Certainly the
paper is above thinking that anyone would be pruriently interested in reading
about young white men being “lured” by “young coloured girls,” only to be
soundly thrashed by “young mulatto hoodlums.” And, yes, the “young” does
repeat.
General Montgomery, whose “worn
brown face beneath . . . black beret” is universally recognised, visited
Trinity College, saw a set of steps, claimed that his father, “militant
Christian” Bishop Montgomery, had jumped them at one bound, causing Sergeant
Charles Russell, USA, who claimed to have been quite a jumper at Waukesha High,
to attempt the feat and fail, followed by “Vince Dunne of the Royal Canadian
Navy,” who could get no more than five of seven steps. Then a “pink, diffident
freshman” named Malcolm Dickson with “no jumping experience” tried, and cleared
it easily. The intent of this story is to make Americans cringe at the thought
of Wisconsinites being allowed to travel abroad?
Quintuplets have born in Argentina!
Probably Nazi quintuplets. Expect Cordell Hull to warn that American
diapers will not be allowed into Buenos Aires until they repent their politics.
Internationally-minded people also continue to
talk about talking about civil aviation.
The Red Army has crossed the
Dniester. There are signs of demoralisation amongst the “retreat-adept
Germans.” Lieutenant Adolph Kannel told his Russian captors that “The clock of
the German army is now at five minutes to midnight.” Has Prisoner Kannel
consented to being quoted by the paper?
The paper covers the bombing of
Monte Cassino, quoting General Eaker as claiming to have “fumigated it."
Allied air attacks against Germany
were heavy this past week, with the aim of breaking German war power and
bleeding the enemy fighter arm. An amusing story of a Polish-crewed RAF bomber
relentlessly harassed on its return flight from Berlin. On landing, the crew
discovered that the navigator, meaning to turn on the heaters, had accidentally
lit the navigation lights, too!
Admiral Nimitz, commander of “the
mightiest fleet and amphibious force in world history,” has left Washington for
Honolulu, with, it is whispered, permission to go ahead with a major operation.
A roundup of news from the Burma
theater notes fighting around the Ledo Road, an air assault by Indian Army
troops, and an “attack across the Chindwin River in force” that was “almost
across the Indian border to Manipur.” I have a feeling that the paper is a
little at sea with the geography of the area. It is noted that American glider
troops and officers involved in the air assault included the model of “Terry”, the first husband of Betty Grable
and Lieutenant
John Lewis, “lanky, hard-hitting third baseman for the Washington Senators.” The
paper, of course, manages to make something of the fact that Indian troops are flying through the air without giving way to
superstitious terror!
Two Army P-38 aces, Colonel Neel
Kearby of Texas and Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas J. Lynch of Pennsylvania, are
reported MIA in New Guinea. The paper covers an event at the University of
Hawaii’s auditorium in “Honolouo” where sixteen “Japanese-Americans” were given
Purple Hearts in virtue of their being “wife, sweetheart or next-of-kin of a
Japanese-American boy killed in Italy.” It is almost as though the Luce papers
are trying to make a point here, Reggie. Also MIA, Lieutenant Donal O’Brien,
subject of a January 1942 profile by his father, a Chicago Daily News columnist, subsequently reprinted widely. Also
MIA this week, the submarine-officer son of Georgia Representative Paul Brown. and Brigadier-General Russell A. Wilson, shot down over Berlin in the first
“big U.S.” assault.
Domestic
The President received a delegation
of Girl Scouts, wore green on Saint Patrick’s Day in his “annual curtsy to the
Irish vote.” Notice that the story about P-38 pilots, featuring a Texan and an
Irish-American from Pennsylvania, is headlined “Texas,” not “Sons of Eire.”
(Although the paper’s retrospective on Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations does
eventually get around to noting General Vandegrift’s observation that there are
220 men with the surname O’Reilly in the Corps.)
**
The President still will
not recognise De Gaulle, was unable to greet to new US Ambassador to Peru
because of a “stiff neck,” and a breakdown of the elevator that normally
carries him downstairs. Instead, the Ambassador ascended to the Presidential
bedroom. The President’s two meetings with the press were not lively, even though
fireworks were expected over a story by a “Hearstling." The President also pushed the “soldier’s vote” issue, met with Nelson and McNutt
over the imminent announcement on drafting 18-to-25-year-old-indispensables,”
and held a farewell party for Edward Stettinus, off to London to talk, perhaps
about talks of a Big Three conference if the President can attend.
The paper to people who can read:
the President’s health is dire; the paper to people who can’t: Don’t worry,
everything’s fine!
Will the AFL allow the CIO to attend the ILO? People who
care, care because of “isolationism.”
Eric W. Johnston must have read Ladd
Haystead’s column putting him forward as a presidential candidate in ’44,
because he was in Boston giving one of twelve public speeches last week. It
was, remarkably enough, on the theme of free enterprise. Apparently, long ago
and in the distant past, American “management” made mistakes. Mistakes were
made, no doubt about it, back in the old days of 1920—33. Ever since, labour
has made mistakes! And, soon, things will even out, as the age of Labour comes
to an end. Eric W. Johnston observes, in the friendliest way possible, that the
mistakes of labour are born, understandably enough, out of fear of
unemployment. So a better unemployment insurance scheme is needed before we get
on with the business of putting Labour “in the dog house,” as eminent free
enterpriser Mr. Johnston puts it. Johnston, the son of obscure parents from
Spokane, showed remarkable fluency in Mandarin and other doings Chinese in his
youth. Do you perhaps have a dossier, Reggie? Mr. Johnston smells like a natural friend to our family, who might be well
served with a less dangerous outlet for his energies.
In Twin Falls, Idaho, a county
auction for a used tractor was won by a bid of $1050, above the OPA-set maximum
of $750. Now the County and the OPA are fighting over jurisdiction. The paper
is amused to call this a fight over State’s Rights, and even more amused to
report that Farmer Hubert has put a “deposit” of $1050 down pending resolution
of the court case, and is using the tractor for spring planting. The OPA is also
the subject of the next story, which is about how Administrator “SalesmanBowles” of the OPA defended it to the Senate and argued for an extension to the act
past June 30th this week. Bowles says that good administration and sound policy have held the rise in the cost of living to only
26%.
This sounds suspiciously
unapocalyptic to me. I was promised wheelbarrows of money to pay for a loaf of bread! Where are my wheelbarrows? Maybe after the war, when too much money is chasing too few goods. After all, what more could we possibly need?
The paper’s version of the New
Hampshire GOP primary is that it is bad news for Wilkie by virtue of his narrow
margin of victory, good news for Dewey, who ran the slate in
North Carolina without even (apparently) campaigning. Stassen’s lieutenants,
meanwhile, are canvassing hard in Wisconsin, jumping obstacles, as it were.
Democrats are canvassing hard to win the byelection in the Second District of
Oklahoma, having found a candidate who is one-half Cherokee, fifty percent
better than the GOP candidate, who is but one-quarter Indian. Amusingly
irrelevant anecdote: the county seat is named for the Democratic candidate’s
family! Even more amusingly irrelevant anecdote: the Democratic candidate is
tipped to win. I am beginning to take the idea that the paper writes at two
levels as more than a joke, Reggie.
More news of the call-up required to
make up a class of 1.16 million by 1 July, taking 1-As to 3-As. Since older
fathers are to be protected after all, it seems that the call-up must go to
deferred under-26s. Industry wants to protect men in steel and vital new war
manufactures such as “radar.” (On this page of the paper, it is allowed to
divulge that “radiolocation” has a name and is made in factories. On the next,
who knows?)
The paper notices that the War
Department has been forced to admit that 20 US transport planes were shot down
by U.S. guns by mistake during the Sicily air drop. Mistakes, to be sure,
happen, but General Patton’s name is dropped.
Commentator Hanson Baldwin of the New York Times has suggested that
inexperienced Army commanders are giving poor leadership. Cat, pigeons, juxtapositions.
Obligatory Canadian coverage
includes Mr. Dionne finally getting custody of his daughters, a colliery in
Nova Scotia being shut down, and the arrest of 22-year-old Indian Alex Prince
at Fort George for the murder of two trappers, to hang, I suspect, on slim evidence because
no-one dissents that it is best for all if he is done away
with, and here are two bodies to be accounted for in the bargain. The wire story says that one of the trappers
died from being shot in the back while the other froze after being immobilised by a a wound to the leg, which sounds like the sort of thing that happens to drunk men with rifles. The paper has it that “both had been shot in the back.”
Friends of the US press note the
drawbacks of press freedom include the “increasing sterility of editorial
expression,” and “the taking over of editorial function by syndicated
columnists.” A non-syndicated columnist (Charles Fisher of the Philadelphia Record) writes this week
that of all them, he likes Wesbrook Pegler least, but he has dyspeptic things
to say about many others, who are egotistical, conservative, know-it-alls. Now that the problem has been diagnosed, can a cure be far behind?
Science,
Technology and Business
The paper has an amusing story about
how brown, foreign people eat bugs. This sort of stuff never gets old, Reggie!
The Army Corps of Engineers has completed an 8 million dollar flood abatement
scheme at Johnstown, Pennsylvania. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_flood.
The paper is at last permitted to
reveal that the Dr. Alwyn Douglas Crow’s eight years of secret rocket experiments have culminated in the British being able to shoot rockets at German bombers. Hitting them is next on the agenda.
A piece, strictly under business
news, profiles youthful Detroit entrepreneur Tom Safady, inventor of an
improved butter slicer. As far as I can find news in the story, it is that he
is working out a way to share profit with his employees at Sav-Way Industries.
I assume some big announcement is imminent.
Thomas Mellon Evans, who prefers to
go by “Thomas Evans,” just got an order for 1800 box cars for his start-up Mt.
Vernon Corporation, having made his way first in the field of “fireless
locomotives” for munitions plant yard switching made by a firm he picked up
from bankruptcy distress at pennies on the dollar. Is he related to those Mellons? Why, yes, he is, the paper notes! Two levels, Reggie, two levels.
Would it be too personal to brag
that “Cousin H.C.” is letting his Buffalo aviation enterprise go? I think so,
and therefore will only smirk and point you to “Again, Brewster,” in this
number. Now if only he would listen to me over Detroit. At least, listen to me as much as Mr. Ford did.
“Red Signals” Covers the overworked,
overstrained and accident-prone American railways, who, as the story above
notices, at least are getting some new rolling stock this year. Whether this
will be sufficient to move Canadian grain and American steel, and the vast
trans-Rockies cargoes of munitions is another question.
The Office of Price
Administration is relaxing controls on crude prices to keep marginal producers
in business, promote wildcatting and put off the day when only a general
increase in the price of crude will make up for declining production.
The South wants higher cotton
prices. Textile manufacturers do not. Meanwhile, the national cotton stockpile
is at 7 million bales.
Education
After the war, Columbia’s Dean
thinks that American universities like Columbia will be as prestigious as
Cambridge and Berlin. The University of Illinois is buying an airfield, planned
as the “No. 1 university-owned airfield in the U.S.”, to study aspects of
aviation. Miss Elena Davila, winner of Columbia University’s twelfth annual
medal for social architecture, studied at Chestnut Hill Academy, is an
equestrian and stamp collector, and “an enthusiastic dancer in the Spanish
manner.” In all, a most accomplished young lady, notwithstanding being Puerto
Rican. No doubt, like most equestrian stamp collectors who study “social
architecture” at Columbia, she climbed up from direst poverty.
Speaking of, it seems as though Avon Old Farms’ School must close in June, notwithstanding the $1450 annual tuition
parents have been willing to pay. There seems to be some difficulty with the
founder, as well as finances.
Nineteen members of the Iowa State
College have quite in a huff over a disputed report on the economies or
otherwise of oleomargarine.
Entertainment
Two true sons of the soil competed
in the “One Man Band World Championship” on the Blue Network’s Breakfast Club. “Redheaded
James Howard Nash” (also known as Panhandle Pete) defeated janitor Archie Sweet with his patent Wabash
Cannonball. I am acutely reminded (especially at the thought of the noise
produced by a ‘Wabash cannonball’) of my own redheaded nemesis. These lads
sound straight out of the Ozarks, while my troubles begin with an admiral from
Texas….
Flight,
30 March 1944
Leaders
“Hammers and Tongs” We are bombing
the Germans hammers and tongs. We hope they run out of fighters soon.
Mosquitoes are now carrying 4000lb bombs. “Power for the Helicopter” Aircooled
Motors of Syracuse, New York, is offering one. The paper thinks that this is
ridiculously premature. “The Most Fearful Form of Warfare” was brought on the
Germans by their own efforts. The paper is defensive.
War
in the Air
Even though planes reduced Cassino
Abbey to “heaps of rubble,” New Zealand troops have not been able to occupy it.
The Japanese offensive in Burma has crossed the border into the princely state
of Manipur. The Commander-in-Chief, India, Claude Auchinleck, thinks that this
is not significant in any way, that it is but raiding parties and a token
invasion. Well, if the Auk says so!
“The Vickers Warwick” is like the
Wellington, only larger and less practical. All
up weight is 45,000lbs, and engines are American, because… People must
feel strong urges when Mr. Fedden talks about the superiority of the American
aeroengine, as demonstrated by the fact that American radials are going into
British planes. At least the latest Pratt & Whitney finally has a two-speed
blower.
Here
and There
Leonard Brown, who erected Britain’s
first barrage balloon for Dunlop, has died at 61, three years after retiring.
Which would put his retirement at 58,
immediately after the end of the Blitz. Am I being too romantic in sensing a
story here. I hope that his last three years were spent with grandchildren playing
at his feet.
US Flying Ambulances have evacuated
173,000 casualties since the outbreak of war. Loudspeakers outside the paper’s
offices remind everyone that it is “Salute the Soldier Week.” Portugal is to
have an airline. A Mosquito has made the 377 mile flight from Toronto to New
York in 55 minutes, an average speed of 411mph, with a 30mph tailwind. A 20ft
airscrew has been built by Hamilton Standard of New York for experimental
purposes. Although if the war dawdles on, we might see it in a less
experimental venue, hard as it is to imagine a plane designed around it!
G. Gordon Smith, a devilishly
handsome managing editor of the paper, was heard to speak on the subject of
turbine-driven airscrews on the radio the other night. Women, and not a few
men, swooned. Messrs. H. Lazell and W. J. Shilcock have taken over the
direction of Cellon, Ltd, after Mr. Wallace Barr was killed in a recent air
raid.
The paper is upset at Canadian Aviation for using writings on
the subject of jet propulsion by the tall and dashing Mr. G. Gordon Smith of
this paper without attribution.
“Manpower for the Mammoths” Indicator
criticises the Hundred-Ton Projects. They are “trying to run before we can
walk.” The paper disagrees with the idea that we will not be able to find
aircrew for such monstrosities any time soon. Or, I suspect without parsing the
column, passengers likely to tolerate their expected imperfections. Whatever
the paper says, “Indicator’s” enormous experience is a valuable counterweight
to “Brabazon” enthusiasm.
Paratroopers prepare for the
invasion.
“Wrens of the Fleet Air Arm” Female
air mechanics are keeping the training aircraft of the FAA in action. I do not
suppose that a girl would have any difficulty with such duties, at least so
long as there is something pressing, like a war, to keep their attentions
fixed.
W. P. Kemp, “The Flying Boat: A
Reply to Mr. Pollitt: Loading Freight Not Difficult with Proper Equipment: The
Question of Lateral Stability.” Years from now, Mr. Kemp, you will look back on
the time you wasted writing this, and contemplate that you could have been
pitching woo, or tasting the new vintage, or tramping over some beautiful
vista, and you will be melancholy.
Short numbers include “Rocket or
Racket?” Time’s story of the London
rocket gun has been mocked by a Swiss expert, and the paper repeats the
speculation that the actual weapon is a counter-invasion device. I hope that
the paper does not feel foolish, when and if German rockets begin to fall in
London.
Studies
in Recognition
Notices the Taylorcraft Auster III
and Miles M-28 Kestrel, aircraft so innocuous that one hardly needs to be able to tell them apart.
“The Cameron Rotor Plane” Mr.
Goldberg’s column is usually carried in another paper. Or, perhaps, the day
when the “helicopter, gyroplane and orthodox aircraft” are combined with
retractable rotor blades and variable incidence wings is nigh.
Lieut. Commander B. S. McEwen, who
was the first British pilot to score in this war, while flying a Blackburn Skua
from Ark Royal, visited the Blackburn
factory to “explore future possibilities for the Pacific.” These presumably do
not include a refurbished Dart.
Behind
the Lines
As from today, work lost due to air
raids in Germany must be made up, and time so spent will not count as overtime.
Says the paper. La Suisse reports a
new German secret weapon: a high altitude bomber that flies at nine miles and
drops a new type of incendiary bomb. Japan will have a complete Air Raids
Precaution apparatus by the end of June. Germans wondering where the masses of
planes claimed manufactured in recent months might be are reassured that they are
in a massive strategic anti-invasion reserve. The Hungarian press notes a new
German night fighter of unspecified type. Trees must die in occupied Europe,
too. German bombers are developing new tactics such as the “Hairspring” to
penetrate into London airspace.
R. H. Bound, “Levered Suspension…:
An Interesting Undercarriage Development Explained and Reviewed.” The author
needs to buy a new dictionary, as his current one is defective, giving
incorrect meanings for some words in the “Is.” In any case, this device seems
better under side loads, and that is important, right, Reggie?
Correspondence
Judith has just gone by, revisions still—
Aero Digest, 15 March 1944
"The Invasion Day Is Set"
Stupendous Statistics! Reveal American Might! I think the paper is less interested in investigating how much of the Very Large Numbers (planes, destroyers, mechanics, whatever) will actually cross the beach on invasion day.
The paper is upset about the Wagner Act, and thinks that the best way to fix it is by randomly insulting the Administration. It may be puerile, but it is easier reading than "Statistical Accounting Procedures in Aircraft Production," an article at the head of the engineering section offered by James R. Crawford of Lockheed. My mind wandering, I notice that, like Northrop, Lockheed uses punch cards to keep track of records. Perhaps these things will turn out to be more than the fashion of the day, after all.
Another article proposes using a paper product of some kind to make aircraft parts. With some relief, it seems to be for the most part not critical parts, but things like flooring, which brings to mind this ad.
Right now she is all workmanlike, but she is a proper lady, and her proper home will have lightweight plastic flooring, developed by Martin! Though probably not anywhere that guests can see.
Aviation News
Notices some training plane cancellations, announcement of the gigantic German "BY-222," and that 8760 planes were produced in the United States in February. I think we can safely write off the idea of America making 120,000 planes in 1944, although 100,000 is well within reach. 87%, we are told, are fighter and bomber types, and structure weight is up 4%. Company news notes that GE cleared 45 million in profits last year. See, Reggie? Electrical engineering! Du Pont admittedly made 69, but 20 of that was from its investment in GM.
Aviation People Notes that Lieutenant Gertrude Dawson, a stewardess for United on military leave to serve with the USAAF, has returned to her home in Philadelphia after escaping from occupied Europe. There are three pages of "Aviation people," but otherwise they are all about salesmen moving around, with the occasional engineer to break up the monotony.
Well, there you go, I have rather slighted this number of Aero Digest here, but that is because I have included a marked up version of an article on turbosuperchargers in this package. It is not that the magazine is unimportant. It is that the tedious technical details need space to bring out their real importance. As you will see, even if very little money is spent on stratospheric flying in the next few years,it seems likely that it will be spent on frozen food, and the two technologies are far more akin that one might realise. With this explanation, I shall now proceed backwards and begin to give you my usual precis of the news, various and technical, with some sense of why I think it is important for the future of our investments.
And just so you are sure that I do not neglect the many insights supplied by Aero Digest, here is a new theory explaining the decline and fall of Rome.
*I do not think that this is the Time picture referenced,but I take what Google Search gives me. Who knows? One of those backsides could be a Vanderbilt's.
**Because "Wearing of the Green" is too much.
I do hope that when you finish this a family tree will be provided for those of us whose subtlety proves insufficient to extracting the information indirectly presented in the postings.
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