Postblogging Technology, July 1945, I: Something Smells Off

Source

Group Captain R_. C_., RCAFVR, OBE, DSO, DFC (Bar),
RAAF Richmond,
NSW,
Australia

Dear Father:

Your letter finds us well, but anxious in the West Coast, where the casualty lists from Okinawa are beginning to sink in. It sometimes seems as though California has given the Marine Corps all the blood it can, and obviously John's death has hit Michael and Judith very hard. Michael actually punched a hand who apparently suggested (in Spanish), that he had grandsons enough that he wouldn't miss one. 

For myself, I had considered moving into the Grant Avenue rooms to be closer to my doctor for the last few weeks; but Judith is firm on the point that there is no need for unfamiliar surroundings at this late date. She also has the fixed idea that Chinatown is dirty. In fact, we have brought Mrs(!) Wong down to stay in the ranch house, close to her inlaws without being too close. Tommy will be in town for two weeks at the end of July, after which all leaves at his station are cancelled through the end of August for very hush-hush reasons. We hope the event will be then. James has written separately, pleading with me to hold off another month, as though I had any say in the matter. So whatever the hush-hush reasons are, they mean early leaves for fleet engineers, no leaves for aircraft instrument men in Alaska.

Miss v. Q., unexpectedly, has been in touch with her cousin. Not the rocket-man, the other one. The explanation, insofar as it can be trusted to me even by Miss v. Q., is that modern code work uses booklets of specially figured numbers in their new-fangled "book codes," instead of astronomy chapbooks, as we do. This is all very well from the point of view of defeating the Black Chamber (as they say in the trade), unless for some reason the lists of numbers are recycled, as the Russians apparently fell into the habit of doing during the war. One way or another, this offers some hope of reading Russian diplomatic ciphers. The Germans were working on it, and her cousin has taken the liberty of supplying their materials to the Americans, for very patriotic reasons involving all the nice things that American dollars can buy. (Miss v. Q. loves her cousin without having a very high opinion of his honesty.) Now the American army and the FBI have put all hands on deck in an attempt to read the codes. From my other source in the matter, our young Lieutenant A_., I have it that there is some hope that the New Deal will finally be proved to have been communising all this time. 

I am not so sure. The Engineer must with the desire to expose the rot, and surely Mr. Luce would like to see the communists out of the State Department, where they are sure to hand China over to Yunnan. Unless Soong does it himself in the Moscow talks. recent election in Britain, but my brain trust at the University points out that the Laski Affair in Britain shows the limits of this. One wants to follow, not try to lead, public opinion in these matters, the Provost says. Look at the Zinoviev Letter, he says. Not a single Labour voter changed his mind, but it swept the Liberals from the field and gave the Tories their majority, anyway. (I forgot to look this up so that I could explain it, but I think it is a  reference to a scandal in a British general election in the 1920s, in which case I would sound like a pompous fool explaining it to you, and Santa Clara's faculty is full up already. 

I'm sorry, that was mean. I love the generality of my old Jesuits. It is just that I do not love sending my drapes out to the dry cleaners. (Cigars, to be discussed below. Would St. Francis approve of cigars? I shall have to ask, next time I host the Fathers.)

Speaking of the Moscow talks, where Macnhria's fate seems settled and the issue has turned to Turkestan, one bit of alarming news you may not have heard. Fat Chow was finally prevailed upon to travel there to meet with his pan-Turanian friends. He is flying out in an Army bomber with some dubious Japanese officers to no purpose I can imagine. 

Your son was in town very briefly on his way to his ship, which he will join in the last week of July. "Miss V.C." and Lieutenant A_. drove down from Idaho to meet them, and made a foursome on the town with our housekeeper, just like old times, young heads bobbing in an open Lincoln in the California evening sun. Blonde, brunette, redhead, another brunette. . . I wish I were seven years younger. . . 

Next morning, she even volunteered to drive him down to the docks. A hug from me, a brisk handshake from "Miss V.C.", and he stepped into the launch. It was all rather ruined when I had to give her a talking-to about reckless driving at home. At least she's growing up: whatever she wanted to say about my scolding, she held her tongue.

Though she did spend the rest of the day listening to sad songs on the radio.

"GRACE"

Flight, 5 July 1945

Leaders

This number arrives without cover or first page, so I do not know the title of the first Leading Article, but I imagine it is something like “Research is Peachy Keen!”

“Civil Flying in India” India is large and has climate, which means that it needs civil flying, which it will have, but should have a “cautious rate of advance,” as fast, shiny aeroplanes scare the water buffalo and sour the milk.

“More About Burma” Aircraft were involved!

War in the Air

We bomb the bridges in Siam, which will teach those heretics what for. 

I cannot tell if the paper is being cheeky. (And never mind where I heard boys making fun of the name of the capital of Siam.) We are bombing Japan more. The Grumman F7F Tigercat and “Zeke 52” exist more. We invade more Borneo.

Here and There

Philip G. Lucas, chief test pilot at Hawker, is appointed to the board of directors. At last, an independent voice to bring fearless objectivity to an examination of the books! A Nuffield man says that there is so much petrol in Britain that the driving ration should be tripled. The paper wants some for planes, too, in that case. The RAF’s official departure from Brussels is a lavish party, or “Making Whoopee,” as the paper says. I will have to remember that. Sir Richard Fairey has returned to Britain from Washington to get in the way at Fairey instead of the British Air Commission. The Halifax VI exists more. A service was held for Sir Trafford and Lady Leigh-Mallory and all the little people aboard their plane. Horace Pentecost, an engineer at Boeing, has invented a personal helicopter, the Hoppi-Copter.

Oh, sure, why not?

RAF Pre-release training has been expanded. So has the programme to train and select Vocational Advice Officers. RAF Release Groups 1—5 have been on their way from India since the beginning of June. Service ballots were flown back from overseas by polling day, today. Mustangs from Iwo Jima completed their longest mission yet: 1,684 miles round-trip. Air Vice-Marshal McEwen will not command the RCAF in the Pacific due to illness, and will be replaced by AVM C. R. Slemon. The German air-reconnaissance photograph archive has been discovered in “300 big, wooden crates.” 

G. R. Volkert is retiring at Handley-Page. 14,000 Bristol aircraft were supplied to the RAF in the recent war, says chairman W. G. Verdon Smith.  Any relation to the Verdon Roes, one wonders?

J. D. Rennie, “The Merchant Flying Ship: New Light on an Old Controversy by One of Our Flying Boat Designers” Since “the economical speed of the merchant ship has been reached . . . it would seem logical, as a next step, to become airborne.” Well, that clinches it. I will certainly fly on planes designed by this logician! Apparently, there is no limit on how gigantically huge flying boats can become, and since the Americans are sure to build a hugely gigantic one, so should we. Now on to matters I actually care about: wing-tip floats, retractile or not.

Let's just get this out of the way right now. Image source; Wikipedia article on Hughes H-4 Hercules.

“Helicopter Rescue and Recovery” A Sikorsky helicopter operating from “surely the smallest flight deck ever,” built up over a Coast Guard cutters’s boat deck, shows that it can rescue men at sea. The Sikorsky S-5 is described.

“Bristol Centaurus: Survey of Britain’s Most Powerful Radial Engine: An Example of Logical Layout to Achieve Compactness with Power” This 18 cylinder engine giving over 2000hp was first revaled to the world by Flight on 17 May 1945. Actually, power output is “well in excess of 2500hp.”   It has cylinders of 5.75” bore, same as the Hercules, but length has been increased to 7.0”, compared with 6.5” in the Hercules, giving a capacity of 53.6 litres (3,270 cubic inches), compared with 38.7L in the Hercules. Bhp/sq inch is also up, from 4.93 to 5.34, and frontal area has only increased from 2,122 sq inches to 2,402 square inches. Enhanced cooling, necessary for this compact arrangement, is achieved by stealing BMW’s cooling fan, but the cowl is also a refined design, with cooling air “obstructed not at all” before it reaches the front cylinder bank. (If you are turning to old dictionaries to find the characters I just used, it is because I’m trying my hand at reproducing the paper’s phrasing.) Pressure drop across by the cooling air across the cylinders is the “rather high” figure of 10 inches of water. This drop is used to induce an air flow through the muffs which cover the rear-swept front cylinder exhaust pipes, cooling them, while separating the flow across them from the main cooling air flow. This arrangement is said to be about as close to perfect as it can be, which suggests that in the future we will see radial, air-cooled engines reach a limit in further improvement in fuel octane ratings, and exclude the use of water/methanol injections and other refinements which might otherwise have a place in the future.

The reduction gear is the tried and proven Farman-Bristol type, and connects to the crankshaft through a gigantic roller bearing. The crankcase is in three, unorthodox sections, and so is the nitrided crankshaft (three sections, but here not so unorthodox), which has balancing weights and Salomon-type ball vibration absorbers. Oil ducts in the crankshaft lubricate the main and big-end bearings and feed jets in the vibration absorbers which spray the pistons, sleeves and little-ends. The big-end bearing continues the Brisol practice of using a white-metal sleeve shrunk onto the crankshaft, and the dimensions of the con- and normal rods is worth remarking, one automotive engineer to another. (I’ve no idea why, though, so don’t ask me to explain.) some rods are angled quite acutely. Cylinders are machined from forged billets, each barrel being retained by 16 locking studs. Heads are deeply indented and made in two sections, the top half cast, the bottom half forged, machined and shrunk on. “Sleeves are the latest stiffened type,” which is vague about how they differ from old cylinder sleeves. Full dimensions are given for the pistons’ gudgeon pin and rod little-end bearing area (3.23 sq in; 1.575 sq in), which no doubt has an old steam-engine seadog such as  yourself nodding, knowledgeably, even if it is all  bibliomancy to me.

The supercharger is a two-speed (6.76:1 low, 9.03: 1, high, giving, at 200rpm, tip speed of 1,325 ft/second) single-stage blower with compound, hydraulic clutches operating with a Hobson-type injection carburettor, with a turbine-type entry to a shrouded impeller. All induction pipers are equal length to ensure equal distribution. Speed selection is automatic through a valve which governs oil flow to the clutches as required, and linked to the injector to meter fuel flow according to blower speed and back pressure differential. Mixture ratio is 10:1 for full power, 16:1 for economical cruising. All auxiliaries, including supercharger drive, are conveniently mounted in a box at the back of the engine.

Which is quite a lot of detail to bulk up this package. In my defence, this is likely to be the largest and most complicated aeroengine actually used in service in this war. Uncle George is always saying that these features will be mined by automobile builders for decades to come. Meanwhile, the Farnborough-designed valve which accomplishes the miraculous task of coordinating fuel flow to blower speed to aerodynamic circumstances will fascinate James enormously due to all the equations it must mechanically solve. I know that you and Uncle George do not care about these things, but they will probably be seen in ship engines and power plants long  before the Centaurus’s mechanical refinements find their way into a new model Lincoln!

“Bristol Review: Something of Past Effort and Future Intentions Together with Announcements of New Engines and Aircraft”

Given that the Rolls-Royce-style two-stage carburettor has yet to appear on a Bristol engine, a graph in this article showing the increase in full-power altitude of Bristol engines from 1926 to 1945 is striking. 1926 saw the first blower, and an increase from sea-level to 11,000ft. In 1945, it was 28,000ft, a jump of 2000ft from 1944, in turn a leap from 22,000ft in 1943 (I assume. It is a very careless graph), and 20,000ft in 1939. Bristol may not seek further refinement, because it is going all in on gas turbines, with a special interest in the turbine-propeller. Bristol does propose to develop the Perseus as a commercial engine, and is understandably excited about the gargantuan Brabazon I.

Bristol is also excited to have delivered 10,000 power gun turrets in the recent war. It is not, however, actually announcing any new engines or aircraft this week, contrary to the title. The Centaurus is admittedly semi-announced, but the closest to a completely novel feature is the  Hercules 100 low-drag “power plant of advanced design.”

The paper saw and enjoyed The Way to the Stars. Sir Arthur Gouge is to be the new president of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors. Vice-Chairman of Saunders-Roe, he has been at that firm since he left Short Brothers in 1943 after 28 years of service, something I would as prefer not to put in my biography, given the ministry takeover of the firm that year.

The Economist, 7 July

Leaders

“The Economist”  From this number, the paper is being printed on tissue wrap. It is everyone's fault but the paper, because it is doing everyone a favour by keeping up circulation. You wouldn't want them to restrict their issue to the important people, would you? You might not make the cut!  

“The Tumult Dies” The election campaign is over at last. (At last? It barely started, by American standards!) But we don’t know how it came out yet. The paper wants to take this opportunity to scold the Prime Minister over the “Laski stunt,” which lowered the dignity of the office of the Prime Minister and raised the old doubts about whether Churchill is fit for office in peacetime, unlike that nice Mr. Eden and his friend, Mr. Anderson. Harping on alleged foreign influences on a Labour Government reminds the paper of some forgotten affair of the 1920s –which is at least an improvement on Flight remembering the 1890s.

“Western Association –V: Machinery for Cooperation” Let’s talk about talking about the United States of Europe! Specifically, the most interesting part –all the Joint Commissions we shall have to have! This, clearly, is just the carrot to dangle before the French, who are still incomprehensibly upset about the Syrian affair, which the British with their neat grip on things Arab and Middle Eastern, can well afford to look down upon.

“Restocking the Shops” The reason that the English must go naked is that there is no spinning, due to labour and materials shortages, which means that there is no cloth, which means that there are no clothes to restock the shops. This is why clothes rations must continue. Beyond that, lack of upholstery means that they are stuck with utility furniture, although plywood imports from Finland may ease the situation. High and perhaps rising demand, the need for exports, etc.

Some people can make anything look good. "Utility Clothes--" Imperial War Museum, via Wikipedia.

“Military Government in Germany” Germans seem fine with it, and this worries the paper, because surely normalcy and lack of unrest cannot continue long! Also, the Miltary Government should give up on the “No fraternisation” order and get on with feeding the people.

Notes of the Week

Poles and Syrians are excitable. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was right to tell the Canadian Chamber of Commerce that we are “frightfully short of dollars,”  because we are, even if $3 billion sounds like a lot of money. This means that the British will not shop outside the sterling area unless they get an American credit. Hint, hint. There is  much talk of the new constitution in France. The paper is envious. Talking about talking is the best! Speaking of, a new deal for Tangier is possible. Just so long as it is nothing so vulgar as Moroccans governing Moroccans. In a particularly nasty election trick, The Daily Express’s suggestion that there would be a speed-up in demobilisation if the Tories won, was nipped in the bud by the Ministry of Labour, but the TUC’s point that demobilisation should be speeded up due to the shortage of labour and the waste of it in the armed forces, is also well taken. The “encirclement” of the Japanese in Southeast Asia involves apparently pointless and aimless Australian attacks on oil fields and such. Also, the Chinese have retaken the airbase from which B-29s first attacked Japan, which is significant for some reason, apart from the Koumintang army’s ability to retake territory it could not defend from the Japanese when they choose not to defend it. The Simla Conference has broken up because the talking about talking had stalemated on the subject of whether there should be talking. A Command paper on “Emigration to the Empire” notes that everyone, Dominion governments and home, are lukewarm to medium warm from the short term to the long about some such thing, which may therefore happen. The paper is disappointed with the Dominions for not realising that continuing high immigration is the best thing ever. (As usual, there is concern that the immigrants will take all the jobs.)

Let’s talk about talking about the United States of the West Indies! Czechs and Poles are excitable. Infant mortality rates in Bitain continue to fall, but less for the poor than for the rich. Though it might be “paternal, and maternal inefficiency,” rather than poverty, which is the cause. Britain must achieve full technical parenting efficiency! There is a shortage of clergy, who are, coincidentally, under-, and inequitably paid. You should imagine me writing “coincidentally” with my most sarcastic face screwed on, the kind my amah told me my face would freeze into, if. . .

This is a very interesting way of colouring the fact that Elisa Howe was able to  use his patent successfully sue the inventor of the sewing machine. But never mind that, because all that matters is achieving full technical efficiency.

“Half-a-Crown Off” The income tax by autumn if the Tories win, say one or two Conservative papers. The current budget foresees a fall in expenditures of £500 million, giving a deficit of £2,300 million. It looks as though the actual decline will be much larger, on the order of £1000 million, and if the war with Japan is over by April of 1946, even more. Not all of this reduction can go to tax cuts, however, as the decficit must be attacked; and so must direct taxes; and the Excess Profits Tax (“a pernicious tax in peacetime”) and some income tax relief mustd be in the form of restored allowances. Still, there might be a cut in income tax in the autumn, unless the Chancellor is by that time a Socialist or Sir John Anderson.

“Employment Doctrine” Everyone now agrees, in the English speaking world, at least (because foreigners don’t speak English, which means their views don’t really count) on what causes trading depressions, and how to manage them. It is a matter of effective demand. When demand fails, so does a part of income, and then there is even less demand, and it all ends with grass growing in the deserted streets. Governments need to intervene to shore up demand, then.

This is where agreement ends. Americans believe in “the restoration of confidence,” while at the other pole, the Australian statement affirms that government should get into the demand business by taking a firm hold of the credit mechanism and by substituting public works for deficient demand from other directions. (That is, the Australian statement sees public works as a substitute for a lack of demand for exports, but this is not the place where demand in America is going to fall down! The paper is skeptical of both extremes. Surely the truth lies somewhere in the boring middle, where the Canadian government statement is to be, of course, found.

The Confidence Fairy --Source

Correspondence

The paper’s solutions to cartels are criticised by Hermann Levy as impractical. Andrew Whyte, Chairman of Pease and Partners, Limited, says that the paper’s ridiculous position that the State has had no part in the disastrous decline in coal production is ridiculous. It was, in fact, the State that did it, by encouraging the horrible behaviour of the miners. It's interesting that the miners all decided to be horrible in every country at once. In conclusion, miners are horrible.

From Cowboy Kisses

American Survey

“Far West Looks to Far East,” By Our Correspondent in Oregon

Not too long ago, the Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams were seen as white elephants. The Northwest already had the lowest hydroelectric rates in the nation, to the point where the Grand Coulee's generating facilities were to be installed at a later date. Instead, it was justified for its irrigation potential,  just at the time when agricultural prices crashed. The war has seen mills and  factories expand in the Northwest, but they need markets. Where shall we find them? To the West, in the East! Because, you seem, there are mountains between us and the East (which is in the West), so we must look West, to the East! Also, freight rates, the Boulder Dam, Hollywood, the Columbia dams. Japan is the most likely market, so we should really batter them into peace, soon.

American Notes

There are no signs of opposition in the Senate to the United Nations Charter, but it is never time to be optimistic, and we should look under the surface, where we will find the subtle resistance of Mr. Taft. Jimmy Byrnes is to be Secretary of State, after just missing the Presidency, in place of Stettinus, who did awful, terrible things like letting Argentina into the United Nations Conference. Mr. Vinson tells Americans that they are in the “pleasant predicament” of having to learn to live fifty percent better than they did before the war. (The point is that this might be hard if they can't find enouogh to spend on. Allow me to volunteer to sell houselots for fifty percent more. No, no, it is my patriotic duty. I wouldn't dream of accepting praise for it. Maybe a little.)

America must also be prepared for a quick end to the Japan war. Judge Vinson also wants more tax to come from income, less from industry; vigorous action against monopolies; a reduction of industrial strife in part by an increase in the minimum wage; the removal of artificial trade restrictions; expanded Social Security and long-term coordination on public works; and, on the other hand, continuing rationing and price controls, not least because of the coal shortage. He also suggests new legislation to make sure that there is adequate relief for liberated nations. Perhaps reading over Judge Vinson’s shoulders, the Office of Price Administration is keeping price controls for now, and the “empty shelves” problem at the grocery store is to be met by a new and even better planning organisation. Visitors to Germany reveal that only 20% of German industry was damaged by bombing, so that Germany will be able to resume munitions production quickly. For example, Germany can still producec a great deal of dye, steel and machine tools. Sinister! Then something about “the survival of the Nazi party and its methods”? The economic demilitarisation of Germany must proceed. Somehow.

The Business World

“Bank Deposits in Wartime” The banks are fine right now, but for various reasons they could be in trouble later, the paper expects. For example, there could be inflation, or rising Government deficits, or too many houses built, or all three, in which case the cheap money policy would be in danger. And by "danger," one presumably means, "When will my annuities go up!" I feel your pain, paper, but you could always give in and buy equities, as you are supposed to do.

“The World’s Bread Grain” Europe’s summer harvest will not end the food crisis. In 1938, the “Eastern group of countries” (Finland, Russia, Poland, Estonia, Hungary, Bulgaria, you know, those countries) produced 83.7 million tons of grain, enough for their own consumption and to export 3 million tons. But the harvest this year is “likely” to be “smaller” for various reasons ranging from war to the breakup of the large estates in Poland. 60 million tons is a good estimate. In western Europe, the harvest was 38.2 million tons, and imports were 4.8 million. During the war, production of wheat and rye was held at 90% of the prewar, and the difference made up by the growing of more potatoes, barley and vegetables. France was largely self-sufficient on a harvest of 8-9 million tons, but the area sown this year was 15% less than in 1938, and French North Africa has had a drought, and will need to import to meet its needs. Norway, Holland and Belgium will need 2 million tons of imported grain, Switzerland, Italy and Greece will need less than their 1938 1.8 million tons of imports, but the situation in Spain is unsatisfactory, and Italy will need help (1938 production, 7.4 million tons). Perhaps 4 million tons will be required? Britain, which imported 5.6 million tons in 1938, will need 4 million this year as a result of the increase in the dolmestic harvest from 1.6 million tons to a record 3.4 in 1943, 3.2 in 1944. Consumption of bread is up to 231lbs per head per year from 195lbs in 1938 just for lack of other foodstuffs, so demand for bread is likely to hold high. Germany, which reached 11 million tons per year during the war compared with 12.6 million in 1938, is said to expect high yields this year, but various things may still go wrong. In total, the western group of countries will need to import at least 9 million tons, and the east cannot be ignored. Fortunately, the big grain exporting countries have been good for almost 15 million tons during the war years, and may reach 18 million in 1946. So the crisis (and, of course, there is one) is in transportation. Not in shipping, though it would teach those submarine-building Germans right, but in rail transport within North America. In the long run, European agriculture must achieve full technical efficiency.

Business Notes

In a statement to the Senate Banking Commission, Harry Dexter White said that Britain held about $3.5 billion in gold and convertible securities in the United States, which seems like a lot, but isn’t. It looks like the gold holdings might be $2,400 million, which the paper supposes on various grounds to be about the same as held in 1939, and therefore given the then-Chancellor’s statement that the country was down to its last £10 million in 1940 seems like a lot. The reason is that American troops spent a lot of dollars in sterling areas, and this source will soon dry up, so, in fact, it isn’t. But Americans might think so.

M. Pleven’ capital levy in France may not be the right way to approach the existing French disparity of wealth. The paper thinks that the actions of the steel industry unions and of the British Iron and Steel Federation approximate a “new feudalism in steel.” (As an expert in the paper’s way of talking, I can translate this as “It’s bad.”) The paper thinks that it is time for outside technical experts to talk about talking about steel.

“Pressure of Money” Repayment of a loan to Australia and of the 2% Conversion Loan, combined with an apparent revival in the fortunes of the Tories leads to buying on the London Stock Exchange. It’s hard to believe that anyone could expect the Tories to win this election, much less people allowed to handle their own money, but there you go.

“The Narrowing Deficit” As usual, revenues higher than expected, deficit smaller. Therefore government expenditure should always be controlled lest deficits balloon out of control, and also there should be tax cuts. I add the last bit because the paper’s astonishing hypocrisy in these matters has only recently dawned on me, and I want to share my shock at its naked obviousness.

The end of the war will ease the potash shortage, as it used to be all mined in Europe, and now we have all the replacement mines, as well. Also, the end of the war has left us with a surplus of nitrogen production, because nitrogen is a good fertiliser and also used in explosives. (Actually, nitrates are used in explosives, and are the main vehicle for supplying nitrogen to plants, but you can’t trust a paper that feels the need to explain what nitrogen is good for to get the technical details right.) Anyway, this is a surplus of nitrogen, and clearly we should act, in a free-enterprise-y, non-cartelish way, by demolishing all the German plant.

Commodity controls will continue, Hawker Sidddely had a healthy profit. The gradual unwinding of the official involvement in sterling balances in New York continues. The Royal Dutch Shell group is being coy about its circumstances in Burma. This is the kind of thing that led Great-Uncle to unleash the dacoits on them in the first place, I am told. Speaking of mischief, silver sales on the Bombay exchange are suspended, as there is now less need to keep a check on Indian inflation, with more imports of consumption goods to soak up the rupees.

Flight, 12 July 1945

Leaders

“Bomber Range and Economy” A feature on the B-29 appears in this number. The paper is envious, but says that at some point it will “cease to be economical by reason of insufficient bomb stowage for size of aircraft.” The idea here is that British bombers have overlooked advantages of, well, bombs per unit size, and will be more efficient at blowing up however little there is of Japan to be blown up by the time that Tiger Force (and 8^th Air Force) arrive. The paper is also critical of the “vertical stowage” of bombs in the Superfortress, which restricts their size. The paper is very, very jealous of the Superfortress. As well it should be. (Aviation will pat it avuncularly on the head below and suggest that the Lincoln is in the same range of aircraft. First, it is not; and, second, it would be the least surprising thing in the world if a bomber version of the Consolidated Model 37 did not emerge from the Fort Worth works soon, at which point we might as well throw in the hand and wait for the 500mph-50,000ft-100,000lbs wonder bombers.)

“Good Work by Sunderlands” And by the paper! The paper needs to meet Uncle George so that they can compare lost causes.

“Atlantic Competition” In an astonishing turn of events, Pan-American has been denied the overseas monopoly that Congress was never, never, never going to give it. (I would add more, but I must save some “nevers” for when my daughter (Or daughters, I pray) is old enough to date. I fear if  matters are left to James, things will get out of hand, as she had him wrapped around her chubby little finger , at least when she will take it out of her mouth. So there are to be three American companies in the mix, and BOAC. The paper fears American competition, and, of course, needs newer and better aircraft at once. Because the country which owns the whole island has no leverage at all in the matter of civil aircraft landing on!

“The Gloster Meteor Jet Fighter” “Somewhat belatedly,” we are informed of the details of this Rolls-Royce engine jet fighter in a Ministry release, covered in this number.  Meanwhile, here are drawings of this “ordinary aircraft with an invisible airscrew.”

By the time we hear about it, it's already old news.

War in the Air

Kipling wrote a poem about a Pathan Ghazi who was eager to die. This reminds the paper of Japanese suicide bombers, now admitted by Washington to have sunk destroyers Twigg and William D. Porter, while heavily damaging Luetze and Newcomb, causing 175 casualties or more. Five “kamikaze” attcks have hit British carriers, albeit with little effect, the paper says. The Japanese, the paper concludes, are like that. Meanwhile, in Burma, we’re winning in part because the Japanese are not really fighting.

Hearing aid company shares, you say?

“Meteor Jet Fighter” The official description is that the Meteor is a Gloster jet fighter powered by two Rolls Royce Welland or Derwent engines in collaboration with Power Jets,  British Thomson Houston and Rover. It is a low-wing monoplane (a biplane jet would be something to see. . . ) with engines in nacelles, two air-brakes, and internally-balanced all-metal ailerons with automatic balance tabs. It has four cannons, a span of 43ft, first flew in 1943, and was first used against the flying bombs in 1944. There is very little noise or vibration in flight, and engine controls are quite simple. In fact, all that wing furniture is probably the most complicated part of the plane. Jets are far less complicated than internal combustion types. I suppose they will eventually be as complicated, but by that time they will be vastly more powerful, and power enormous planes at enormous speeds, as Fortune insists.

I have no idea what wiseass photoshopped this, but here's the source Google Image search keeps turning up

Here and There

The Allied Press Service is excited to report a “device fitted to British and American bombers and long range fighters by means of which a second-by-second pictorial navigation is permitted in blind conditions.” The paper patronisingly points out that this is “of course” the air position indicator, which projects a light in the form of an arrow on a glass chart. After which it can finally, ponderously, approach its point, which is that the press service calls this a “Magic Arrow,” so that the API is “modern magic.”

Having seen The Way to the Stars, this week the paper went to see Merchant Carrier,  How an Aeroplane Flies (Part 1), and Mosquito at Shell-Mex House. It’s very nice that the paper has taken some time for itself to go to the movies. It seems as though it has been getting a bit overwrought lately, and I do hope it invited The Economist out on a double date, perhaps having taken the opportunity to try a French cologne for the occasion. (Wait for it, below). I might have chosen different films. Way to the Stars apart, as it has a romance at the end, after the boys have been lured in too long to give up at the mushy bits. 

Not content to leave the field to Bristol, the Austin Motor Company has given an account of its war record. Airplane bits, Horsa fuselages, 15,000 bomber fuel tanks, 120,000 bomb tails, 300,000 machine gun magazines, various engines for land, sea and air use.

Camera restrictions have been relaxed. While it is still illegal to take a camera aboard a plane or ship without permission, unrestricted camera use is now allowed except in a few designated areas, and in northern Scotland. It is pointed out that the disappearance of Trafford Leigh-Mallory is a painful coincidence, since his brother disappeared in 1924, trying to ascend Mount Everest. Or was, until Sir Trafford’s body was found.   George remains in the Pure Land.

France will send half the men called up in the 1940—3 classes into the air force. Lieutenant General Vandenberg is to be assistant chief of staff of the USAAF. 47 year-old W/O A. L. Cartwright becomes the first RAF POW returned to civilian life under the general release scheme this week. Cartwright enlisted in August, 1939, and was a foreman builder by trade. I wonder how he came to be taken prisoner, as he does not sound like flight crew. An RCAF Spitfire photographed this week’s eclipse over Western Canada from a height of 35,000ft. Aircraft aluminum scrap is now being sold as kitchen appliances and some industrial products in India. 2,300 aircraft flew 35,000 American troops from Europe and the United Kingdom to America in the first month of the USAAF Air Transport Command’s redeployment. Dowty is giving all employees an extra week’s pay this July in appreciation of their winning the war. The new cruisers Swiftsure and Ontario are going to the Pacific with lots of anti-aircraft guns.  Captured German scientists say that the wind tunnel at Peenemunde could produce winds of 3000mph, allowing Dr. v. Braun to solve the problem of air overheating, and that a rocket bomb capable of reaching New York was under development. Miss v. Q. points out that this one of her cousins is as bright as he is conceited (the other cashing in the intelligence for charm, while keeping the conceit), so that this might be boasting, or it might be true.

The picture is held by the San Diego Air and Space Museum, was put up on flickr, was scraped onto Pinterest, and then scraped again by yours truly. Here's the Pinterest account.

“Kellett XR-8 Helicopter” If you’re not tired of the Kellett helicopter, here is the paper to help. This may or may not be a new outlandish alternative to the obvious Sikorsky layout, as I admit that –again—I have not been paying as much attention as I ought. The thing might end up working!

Fl. Lt. S. H.  Swaffer, “Hitting with a Vengeance: Dive Bombing from 11,000ft: Ninety per Cent. Hits: Royal Indian Air Force Lends a Hand” The Flight Lieutenant is quite pleased with the performance of his Vultee

Vengeance dive bomber, which did quite well in Burma. No-one else, anywhere, liked dive bombers very much after the first year or two of the war, but they did fine in Burma, where, apparently, targets were small and easily concealed.

“The New American Wind Tunnels” These are so amazing that only constantly repeating yourself about them will impress the reader with just how amazing they are.

Indicator Discusses Topics of the Day “What Does the Private Owner Want” It seems that no-one really knows. Once we do, we can probably design something that overseas markets will like, too. Indicator also lists some “personal whims,” including flaps. “At no time must I suffer the horrid suspicion that I am either not going to make it, or am hopelessly overshooting after a mis-judgement of wind-strength at a strange airfield.”

That really doesn’t make private flying sound like very much fun! It also sounds very unlike my own experience, which admittedly is five years ago now, and involved sedate biplanes followed by the very highly-flapped-indeed Lysander. I suppose the conclusion is that if you really want to enjoy flying, you want to fly a Lysander? But it is ridiculously over-flapped and over-engined for an economical private plane. Never mind, though, as the poor (or merely less-rich) do not feel fear as you or I do. Or pain at the impact of the tree rushing through your windshield at fifty miles per  hour.

Glenn L. Martin’s “foolproof photographic method” for measuring takeoffs and landings is noted, as is, department of dubious inventions, the RAF’s continuing experiments in glider pickups without landing.

“Boeing B-29” Boeing can be compared with Handley-Page or A.V. Roe, because all three are large firms which build bombers.  This helpful thought is very necessary, because the paper has tree full pages to fill up with discussion of the B-29, and it is not like it is a method of mooring flying boats or a new Bristol engine, or anything interesting like that. The paper is skeptical about claims of the plane’s easy handling, given its 11.5 aspect ratio, important for range, and, of course, sacrificing disposable weight because of all the structure needed to support wing tips so far from the body of the plane.

“Speed-Range Indicator: New and Valuable Instrument to Mitigate Inadvertent Stalling” The Baynes Speed Range Indicator is now for sale here an in America from Messrs. R. B. Pullin. It’s an airspeed dial with a red dot set on it as determined by the aircraft’s design statistics. If the speed needle goes below it, you’re stalling! Or something like that. No doubt I do it an awful injustice (something about showing effective service ceiling in terms of speed range available above stall?), and, at the very least, the paper makes the mail deadline without a page-and-a-half of blank space in the middle; or, worse, a Major F. A. de V. Robertson, V.D. article.

Consolidated’s 204-seat “Super Clipper” will be available in a transport variant. This is the 6-engined, 230ft wing-span plane which Fortune is so excited about, and not the giant flying boat Pan-American was talking about the other week. The British Information Service asserts that 414 pilots and 300 fighters constituted the “Few” available to face the German Air Force at the beginning of the Battle of Britain. Which is to say, that was the strength of one of the four Groups of Fighter Command. Admittedly it was the largest and most  exposed Group, but this is still the old “If you don’t count all our other troops, we were outnumbered this much” line of talk. There is to be a jet-propulsion conference, and Rolls-Royce has a new publicity chief, Mr. M. Proctor-Gregg.

A pictorial of the Aries follows. Wing-Commander McKinley is very dashing (you must not say I said so to James, lest he grow an RAF mustache!), in a Polar-exploring sort of way. 

I wonder if they have sorted out where the Magnetic Pole is, yet?

“Any Aircraft, Anywhere” The ATA delivered 300,000 aircraft during the war. They were quite organised, and the paper is impressed by their very brief briefing notes on planes. They even had a chief test pilot, and an extensive training programme, with six classes of pilots and even flight engineers.

“Ignition Testing Unit: Unique Device for Immediate Detection of Faults: Probable Future as Permanent Equipment in Large Aircraft” Designed for the Department of Tank Design by D. Napier and Son, it was built for the Army by English Electric, leading to orders from the RAF once enough were available. It uses a cathode-ray-oscilloscope to “trace” the engine ignition. Very clever.

That's the nice thing about old analogue stuff. It's just intuitive in the scope.

There is to be a Commonwealth Air Transport Conference, as everyone misses the old days of talking about talking about civil aviation.

Civil Aviation News

Trans-Canada Airlines is to have a transatlantic service from Dorval, Quebec, starting in September. Sweden has also started experimental trans-Atlantic flying, on the B-17s inherited from the USAAF. Swissair is beginning a Zurich-Paris service. To remember the old days, it will fly low and fast by night, and carry older men with German accents bound for Argentina. Australia’s bill to  nationalise air service is discussed. Airline operators are quite upset. A forecast of 50,000 civil aircraft sold per year in the United States was made to Congress by Mr. William A. Bunden, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Air. Who might be a bit over-promoted, I think. Or over-promoting. Ceylon is thinking about thinking about civil aviation, as it is in the middle of everything. The paper notes again that many American airlines will soon fly many airplanes across the Atlantic to all sorts of places. New York Radio says that America will soon have a fleet of a thousand airliners capable of having 36,000 people in the air at any given time.

Correspondence

B. Foster writes to say that it is wrong for Avro to claim that the Lancaster was the first to carry a 4000lb bomb, since Wellington XIIs of 90^th  Squadron were doing so routinely in April, 1941.

C. A. Pickering thinks that the cowardly administrators who stand between Britain and an air-research effort as expensive as the American should be denounced and possibly hung from the lamp-poles. Douglas Deans argues for “cheaper, if slower, air travel.” He is really quite vehement about this. Gadgets and speed are ruining aviation. Stupid “convenience” and “safety.” Reg H. Senior points out that he, too, has not yet been hired to work in the air industry, in spite of being well-qualified, which shows that the Ministry of Aircraft Production’s Appointments Board is all wet. John Grierson writes that the paper does not give enough credit to the valuable work of the test pilots, notably including Michael Daunt’s work with the Meteor.

The Economist, 14 July 1945

Leaders

“Labour’s Responsibility” We still don’t know who won the general election, but, in the meantime, the country cannot afford strikes, and everyone should just go on working until they drop without complaint, under the direction of the planners. Think of England! Also, maybe if full technical efficiency is achieved, some of the productivity gains can go to the workers as wage increases. And it shouldn’t all be squandered by capitalists and rentiers, it goes without saying. Just some of it.

The French are excitable. 

“The Economic Council” Let’s talk about talking about talking about the economy of the United Nations!

“Dirt and Defamation” In the matter of Joan Smith v. National Meter Company, the paper shares with us. “Most of us have at one time or another from our youth on up had laid against us the charge that we are not as clean as we might be; and we have usually after a moment’s irritation dismissed the matter from our minds and forgotten all about it.”

I think I will try to avoid the paper socially. And possibly England, until there is coal, clothes and soap there again.

“Social Security in 1832” by a Correspondent

Our correspondent recently saw a vellum Vestry book from the said year. The Parish of Smarden, in Kent, had a “vestry” consisting of two churchwardens, two sidemen, and ten ordinary members in charge of two paid officials (clerk, £10/year; overseer, £40/year), who administered £50 or so on the poor of the parish in various ways, for example, paying a doctor to see them, distributing firewood; but not going so far as to buy Jas. Smith a spelling book which would have set the Parish back 1s 6d.

Notes of the Week

The Big Three are to meet again and talk more, in Potsdam. The Russians are administering their sector of Germany wrong, although the paper cautions that it is too soon to Draw Conclusions. The paper is pleased by the delayed campaign now being waged in the northern constituencies where polling was delayed, and thinks that the Tory’s second chance campaign is much more creditable then its first, and had it done so from the first, it would not be so worried about the results now. Mr. Lyttleton says less consumption, more export, because, Heaven knows, not enough people have said that yet. Everyone but the Syrians should just get out of Syria before the Syrians’ patience expires. Speaking of, “unexpected numbers of Jews” want to leave Europe for Palestine. Yes. "Unexpected."Arabs seem less enthusiastic, ungrateful buggers that they are. (The paper's formulation is that, after the war, we gave independence to almost all the Arabs --Iraq, Transjordan, etc--, and only kept Palestine, so they really have no grounds for complaint if Britain carries out a little social experiment in it.)

Second-hand house prices have risen well beyond people’s ability to pay, and landlords are being tempted to sell instead of re-let because of the high prices which no-one is paying, because rents are controlled and prices are not. And so houses stand vacant, while “Vigilantes” forcibly move families into them. Since on top of the 3 million women who may leave industry with peace, 1 million men above 65 and women above 60 have only been waiting for peace to leave work, there will be a drastic manpower shortage in the “peace industries” soon. Since we do not know exactly how many workers there are, we don’t know the scale of the problem, but the Labour Ministry’s solution is to keep everyone working just a little while longer. The next six months will be critical, the paper says.

 Indians disagree in talks about talking about talking. It may well be the League’s fault. The paper scolds the Colonial Office for spending more of its development budget on “welfare” than on capital development. There are to be administrative changes in Kenya, and there has been a general strike in Nigeria. German industry might have been knocked out for many years to come; or, on the contrary, be posed to come roaring back. King Leopold is a cad. There is controversy over Oxford allowing some 18-year-old scholars to come up to the arts degrees, when they really should be either in National Service, or the sciences, or perhaps both. “’Ere, then, Jenkins, do you call that an integration? It's sloppy, it is! Do it again! On the double!” The paper points out that, for example, economics has suffered because its students were not deemed essential, while its teachers were. That is a nice paradox! (They study those in philosophy, and make them in Government.) The paper’s position is that some arts scholars are needed, as long as it doesn’t get out of hand. Speaking of, all the schools in London have been found to be substandard.

Correspondence

Hugh Molson writes on the paper’s “Election Manifesto,” which you missed, and I hardly read. He represents the Tory Reform Committee, whose recommendations are quite consonant with the paper’s, and he thus concludes that the paper is secretly or unconsciously pro-Tory. The paper disagrees. E. M. Doff points out that the paper greatly understates the severity of the famine in French North Africa.

American Survey

“A Little West of Centre” By Our Correspondent in Washington

When last seen, OCW was playing canasta with doctors’ wives, but that may have been a different OCW. This one suggests that Mr. Truman is so popular because he is a man of the people, or perhaps because he eschews being “left or right” in favour of being “of the West," which is the direction of virtue. Or death.

American Notes

The Senate continues to talk about Bretton Woods without giving any indication that they will scuttle it and the world economy with it. The paper tries to hide its disappointment. The day will come! Mr. Ickes is in London to talk about talking about oil, since we need a new business-type thing to talk about talking about, now that civil aviation is being done instead of being talked about. The state governors met to talk about not very much, since the only thing they ever talk about is whether or not the President is responsible for what’s gone wrong, and Mr. Truman is still on his honeymoon. The Supreme Court has agreed not to deport Harry Bridges, and then gone home to be old. (At an average age of 59, they’re still younger than the nation’s admirals, though. The paper is not going to point that out, though, because its point is that, depending on who Truman appoints as Chief Justice, that the New Deal majority on the court may not last the generation sometimes predicted.

The World Overseas

Poles are excitable, at great length. Spain is poor, and mismanaged. Brazilians are excitable. Our Dublin Correspondent notices that lack of available imports and of shipping to carry them is having an impact. Wheat bread of 85% extraction is “generally available.” I wonder if ODC eats it? I wonder if he can even chew it? “For a short period, a percentage of barley was introduced into the grist.” Tea is short, at half an ounce per person per week on the ration. Sugar, from sugar beet, is in adequate supply, at least until relief exports begin, and the butter ration, at 6 oz per week, will be increased in the winter as supplies permit. Two ounces of margarine are now allowed per week. Dieticians will be pleased to hear that butter and margarine consumption is up in spite of the ration.

This is what an image search for "sugar beet" turned up. Because that's beetroot and horseradish relish. I'm hungry. (Source.

The Business World

In summarising last week’s feature, I gave short shrift to a long article about bank deposits. The paper, sensing my weakness, returns to the fray with an even longer dive into its own navel. The question is the same as last week: when will cheap money be over? 

The paper points out that however it loves statistics (and, boy, does it love them), there are still bad statistics out there, which should be struck sharply on whatever passes for a head in a statistic, tied in a sack with a rock, and thrown in the millpond in the dark of night. No examples are given, but the paper talks up the U.S. Census.

Business Notes

There is surplus tinplate capacity, not enough effort to achieve full technical efficiency in steel, more talk of the capital levy in France, about bank “cash” holdings (the quotation marks signifying that various kinds of holdings are actually “cash,” and others aren’t.) The paper talks briefly about the selling mood that overtook the buying mood at the end of the week, and about Greek finances, where notwithstanding the devaluation of last November, the number of drachma in circulation have again reached excessive levels, with the result that a devaluation might be necessary again. Although the note doesn’t refer to the possibility, just points out the reality that Greek business and public life runs on gold, instead, making it hard for the Greek government to cover its expenses by taxation rather than by “borrowing from the Bank of Greece” –or, in other words, printing drachmas—instead.

Not drachmas.

The paper likes industrial trade export associations, which aren’t cartels at all. The paper talks gaseously about wool imports, woollen good exports, cotton industry “deconcentration,” and the voluntary halt of trading in Lewis Group shares to show the market’s displeasure about its practices. There is not enough oak to meet demand for bedroom furniture, so now “utility mahogany” is taking its place, in spite of the public’s distaste for it.

Source. Is the thing with boycotting tropical hardwoods still on?

It is hoped that a better class of utility clothing can be tailored. The future of the lace industry in Nottingham depends on its finding enough labour. In the coalfields, Yorkshire is doing better than Lancashire due to the Lancashire fields being on the downgrade. This is why 11,600 new miners’ houses will be needed in Yorkshire, none in Lancashire. There is much more mercury production now than before the war, but it may be soaked up by the new dry cell.  More trawlers (released by the Admiralty) mean more fish, but processing workers are in short supply. Easier grants of shop licenses is foreseen, but the real problem is –you guessed it!—the shortage of shop assistants. Whaling is being resumed with the outbreak of peace. Before the war, the amount of whaling in Antarctica was limited by convention to protect the herds, and Britain, thanks to its factory ships and whaling stations on South Georgia, held 35% of the world’s production of 552,000 tons of whale oil in 1937—8, 476,000 tons in 1938—9. This was 23% of imported edible oil exclusive of butter, lard and margarine, and the reconstituted Norwegian fleet hopes to produce 85,000 tons from their share of 16,000 whales. It is unlikely that this many will be caught, but any little bit helps.  

Sure, it's cold and bleak and lonely, but at least there's the hanging stench of rendering blubber! Photos by Svend Johannes Winsnes. 

Aviation, July 1945

Down the Years in AVIATION’S Log

Twenty-five years ago, 85% of air mail flights were being completed successfully. Packard had a 600hp V-12 delivering more than 1 hp/2 libs. Fifteen years ago, PAA started an air mail service running 1800 miles along the east coast of South America. Ten years ago, The PAA Clipper made its first flight to Midway, and a Kellett autogiro landed mail on the roof of the Philadelphia Post Office building.

Line Editorial

“Steady Jobs and Equipment Buying” James H. McGraw, Junior, believes that steady jobs require moderating the “erratic fluctuations which have characterised the markets for producer’s equipment in the past.” Because writing “boom and bust” would have been too pompous. Like construction, producer equipment has extraordinary ups and downs, with peaks just before business depressions. “At just the wrong  moment, everyone wants to buy.” In the same way, just as depression is giving way to recovery, no-one wants to buy. Solutions include better long-range corporate planning, better financing, and changes in the corporate tax structure “to the end that effective incentives may be offered for private capital investment.” Finally, corporate executives should all read the McGraw-Hill stable so that they can learn not to make the above mistakes. Sorry, I mean that Junior thinks that “education” is key.

Aviation Editorial
James Neville thinks that “Cutbacks Must Be Handled With Care” This seems to be an answer to T. P. Wright, who visualises the aviation industry declining to an employment of 600,000 in a new and peaceful world. On the contrary, we shouldn’t cut back so fast, because what if the Communists make trouble. (Oh, please, let them make trouble so that we can built our beautiful aeroplanes.)

T. P. Wright, “Aviation’s Place in Civilization” I think we’ve seen this in Flight? Anyway, same point: made few aircraft before the war; lots during; probably in between in the future, and it was all very important for civilization, especially blowing up the Nazis, but in the future we should probably blow things up less, and this will mean fewer jobs in making aeroplanes, more in refrigerators and televisions and music recording machines. Private planes may flourish, domestic air fares may compare favourably with rail overall (that is, no more railway station diners) by the middle of the 1950s, and the merely ordinarily rich can already afford to fly to England. Also, possibly helicopters.

James G. Ray, “Let’s Have Feeder Airlines Now, Part IV”  Please send all your money to Southwest Airways, Co. No cheques, please.

Neil B. Berboth, Development Division, Fairchild Engine and Airplane Co., “Utility is the Range-Finder in Civil Plane Forecasts” Automobiles are an example of a thing which is useful. Are aeroplanes like automobiles, or like something which is not useful? Statistics! In conclusion, Fairchild thinks that 300,000 new private aeroplanes might be sold in 1945—7.

John Foster, Jr., Managing Editor, “Mass Plane Market Starts with Surplus” Somewhere in Berboth’s article my eyes swam across the suggestion that there might be 7 million potential owners for cheap, surplus airplanes. That’s even more than the air forces have! Foster explains where the planes are, who is selling them for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and . . . other things. For example, 30,000 schools might want an aeroplane. Is that to teach Air-maths and Air-English for the Air-age, as Flight correspondents suggest? Because that’s harmless, if silly. If it’s to give flying lessons, though, I’m putting my feet down –not my children! It’s dangerous enough when the Navy runs things!

J. H. Famme, Chief Design Engineer, San Diego Division, Consolidated Vultee Corporation, “Design Analysis of Consolidated B-24 Liberator” Instead of reading this very long and comprehensive article, I have razored it out for the most careful of examinations at some future date. I did, however, skim it quickly to get a sense of how the Davis wing imparts its miraculous performance on this 400mph plane which can doodle about for 6 hours, 1200 miles from base, and I am left with a feminine pout on my face at the discovery that it is apparently not a“Davis wing” at all. (Nor does the B-24 actually do 400mph.) Also, its range is mainly due to the fact that it can lift a lot of weight, which may include fuel.

Ralph H. Upson, “Designing Tomorrow’s Personal Plane, Part II” For one thing, it will have enough head room for Mama to wear quite the bonnet, while Father is so relaxed that he goes without. If that sounds trivial, I am not getting into page after page on relative costs and performances of high wing, low wing, cantilever, struts, retracting landing gear and fixed, open cockpits and closed.

C. L. Johnson, Chief Research Engineer, Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, “How We Engineered the Lockheed Shooting Star” The AAF gave Lockheed 180 days to deliver the first P-80. It took them 143. The design was left to the engineering department, which had long wanted to “engineer and build a plane from start to finish” instead of participating in the “conference system.”

This would mean talking to the people who design undercarriages? Engines? The office typing pool? I’m not exactly clear. Hall L. Hibbard gave Johnson E. D. Palmer, W. P. Ralston, A. M. Viereck, and L. F. Holt as assistants. After 35 days, 23 engineers and 57 skilled mechanics were working on the design, and at peak, the project was employing 23 engineers and 105 shop men, or 128 in total. Work was done in a specially-constructed building, for security reasons, and 96% of the fabrication work was done there by machine tools turned over to the P-80 group.

Source; explanation

Viereck did his own tooling direct from the drawings. The plane was designed, of course, directly around the British engine, but on specifications only, as the actual engine had not yet been delivered. An untested airfoil was chosen from a family of high laminar flow sections that “would not work out well with a propeller.” This was the largest gamble in the design, justified in Johnson’s mind by the experience Lockheed had in curing compressibility problems with the P-38.

The interesting part of all of this is the spate of articles on the huge “engineering departments” of various American firms, which articles seem to have impressed Roy Fedden (just kidding; actually, he used vast quantities of confidential documents that just happened to say the same thing) into arguing that British firms could never succeed without hiring hundreds more engineers. I guess my conclusion is telegraphed by my scare quotes –what do all those engineers do, when only 23 are needed to design a jet fighter? Do quality control on subcontracted parts, of course.

Roy Healy, Vice President, American Rocket Society, “Aeronautical Supremacy Demands Jet and Rocket Research” You laughed at us rocket enthusiasts before the war, but now you must give us all your money so that airplanes can have rockets now, and also V-2s and rocket bombs and rocket torpedoes and rocket artillery.

Clark B. Millikan, Acting Director, Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, “New Wind Tunnel Reaches Sonic-Speed Range” I am sure that the Nobel Prize-winner’s son had to work twice as hard as any random scientist to achieve such a distinguished position. It is very big. Here are many statistics! (I am impressed to hear that the main fan will absorb 12,000hp at full power.)

Not only did all three of his sons become tenured professors, one of them married Trafford Leigh Mallory's niece. And then died in a climbing accident in 1947.

K. R. Jackman, Whose Employment Has Appeared Here Before, “Ranging the Budget in the Postwar Laborator: Part VII in a Series” Jackman summarises his last as concluding that the research budget should consume 2% of gross sales. That’s higher than most companies spend, so they should definitely get to it. They should do it the way that Arthur D. Little does. They should pay full Research Engineers $410 to 560/month, and file clerks 160 to 180, and corporate librarians 203—237. (I wonder if I should mention that to “Miss C.?” To clarify my “Fedden puzzle” above, I notice that 60% of employees in an aero research laboratory should be mere “Research Lab Analysts,” paid between $203 and $405/month, and since we’re told that an employee with a B.Sc. should be hired at $1500/year, rising at the end of six months to $1800. It probably follows that “Research Lab Analysts” aren’t college graduates.

…Or that all of this peculiarly specific information is less than completely reliable.

“D.H. Pushes Construction of New Dove Feederliner” Free content from Flight!

“Avro Grooms Lincoln Super-Heavy for Stepped-Up Hammering of Japs” The paper thinks that the Lincoln will have a winspan of 120ft and an all up weight of 100,000 to 120,000 lbs. The paper may be being generous.

“Grumman’s New Tigercat Fighter is Jap’s New Headache” It’s huge, it will fly from the new Midway-class, and it is a multi-role fighter, capable of carrying rockets, torpedoes, bombs, and, I suppose, radar. (One of its roles is as a night fighter.)

“New Jap Warplanes” Exquisitely professional pencil drawings of “Peggy I,” “George II,” Judy 33,” and “Frank I.”

The maintenance section includes an article on servicing the Aeromatic propeller, which yields about a million washers when it is fully disassembled, from the look of things. Also, how to “size” a repair shop, high speed fuel pumps are great, and North American is very pleased with detail design refinements on the P-51.

Aviation News

The CAA is being reformed for peacetime. Fifty-six aviation writers were taken on a cruise in Lake Michigan in the training carrier Sable.  The new high-strength aluminum alloy 75S is used in the B-29. Congressman Clarence Lea wants high school aviation courses. Turboelectric installations may be in use in aeroplanes soon. (As if… Though I’m going to have to tease James about it!) The Navy has a new plane, the Curtiss-Wright SC-1 Seahawk.

America at War: Aviation’s Communique No. 42

We are bombing Japan now. Less than one percent of Japanese suicide bombers get through to our ships, so they are no big deal, except that they are. Navy pilots reports that new Japanese planesare faster than Corsairs are “discounted by Navy spokesmen.” Besides, even if the new Japanese designs are better, they won’t make a difference. President Truman estimates Japanese aircraft production at 1500/month, which, while impressive, is hardly going to be enough when 8^th Air Force and the RAF arrive. It does mean that we have to keep bombing, though. By the way, area firebombing is needed, because those crafty Japanese have dispersed and subcontracted their industries. Why didn’t the Germans think of that?

The Washington Windsock

Stubblefield reads the paper, and has noticed that the firebombing attacks have been successful. Balloon bombs are ineffective, but “interesting.” We used too many resources to beat Germany, and it wasn’t fair. The Air Force is “confident” it can beat Japan using only its best and most modern types.

Aviation Manufacturing

The Air Force is still cutting back: 30% combat types; 10% transport; 5% training types, leading to a total reduction of 17,000 planes. Navy procurement will continue at current levels. B-32, B-17, P-38, P-63, C-47, C-45 and C-46 production are all to be tapered or terminated.  Though A-26 production will be “tapered” as well, and even B-29 production will be “stabilised” in the last part of the year, so “tapered” does not always mean that the type’s day is done. Though mostly so. The end of, for example, the C-47, which will be tapered at its one remaining production plant to half its current rate, and then held at that output through 1946, might seem strange, but the shift is to long-range types for Pacific operations, and the C-47 is a short-range type. Although the whole point of the C-46 was a longer range twin-engined airliner sized transport, so the curtailment of its production probably means that rumours about its reliability and vulnerability to damage are true.

May aircraft output was 6,354, 9 ahead of the schedule. This makes the third straight month in which the quota was exceeded, but, again, it is with steady reductions in the target (April production, although also over quota, was 6,412, you may recall.) The point here is that the numbers still show the difficulties which the industry is facing, mainly due to labour shortages. Of the short research-and-design blurbs, I am struck by the new selenium rectifiers used by GE to give 85%efficiency in converting polyphase current to dc. Call me naïve, but I had no idea that rectifiers had less than 100% efficiency, although on reflection it is obvious enough. The lost current goes out as heat, which means that I have a little baking oven in my car between the generator and the spark plugs.

Convair has made 9,468 Liberators, 6,725 at San Diego, 2,743 at Fort Worth. That doesn’t seem like much of a return for that fortress of modern architecture, and now that the B-32 is cancelled, you have to wonder how it will justify itself. Speaking of, Willow Run is now turning out a B-24 every six minutes, 10,000 Corsairs and 10,000 DC-3s have been built; and Curtiss Wright will close its St. Louis plant to concentrate on Buffalo and Columbus, having built 123,000 Cyclones “for the European phase of the war.” When Boeing-Renton hits peak production this summer, it will turn out 6 planes a day. The Georgia ATSC Depot has cut the time needed to overhaul a Pratt and Whitney R-2800 from 350 man-hours to 250, and the time to overhaul a B-17 by 2,125 man hours.

Transport Aviation

The airlines have received “AA-2” priority for new planes, including component makers. A picture of a Shetland appears.  Aviation’s world columnist, “Vista,” is pleased that Australia is not nationalising its airlines, after all, and displeased that Britain is pressuring the sterling block countries to buy British. Ray Hoadley thinks that air-sector dividends will be down now that they’re producing fewer planes, or something. Eric Johnston is now director on the board of UAL, because you just can’t give that man enough money to do nothing; and at the other extreme, Julia M. Scanlon is to be secretary of Curtiss-Wright, making her one of the most responsible female executives in the industry.

Sideslips is so hilarious this month that I am sending a dacoit to kill the author. No, not really. But how could a humour column make me so mad? It’s not even “blue.” (Exception: “Said Rosie the Riveter, ‘They laughed the first time they saw me in my slacks, but when I sat down, they split.”)

Fortune,  July 1945

The Job Before Us

“The Man From Missouri”

Did you know that the President is from Missouri? It’s true! That means that he’s skeptical, and possibly also a mule. And he’s like Thomas Hart Benton in some ways, because Benton was from Missouri, I gather? Unless there’s a different far-fetched association being made that I would pick up on if I just had more American history in school.

 Because he’s from the west, (from a certain perspective), he has replaced members of Roosevelt’s cabinet from Boston and Pennsylvania, and might replace ones from Virginia and New York. Well, that’s not actually the reason, but it’s a thing that you can say if you make your mouth work like thus and so. The paper is pleased that he “brought in” the Engineer to advise him on food; and is even open to “working with Mr. Dewey.” This is in the editorial/preview section, by the way, because we are promised an entire article on the state of Missouri, about which, I promise, you will hear not another time-wasting word.

The paper is also doing a feature on Corning Glass and yet another on the new airliners, and takes the opportunity to editorialise about patents in the glass industry and aviation respectively, to show that the American patent system doesn’t always properly stimulate innovation and reward inventors. It also wants to talk about whether Russia “wants credit,” and this is the point where the paper fulfills this month’s press mandate to mention Eric Johnston. Eric Johnston, everyone! It's honestly just about this clumsy. I assume that Mr. Luce has plans for our Eric. I just can't for the life of me see what they might be. A Senate run?

Leaving the grooming of promising young men aside, the point here is that "ever less is heard from that species of American economist who thinks that lending abroad is a good substitute for spending at home," and therefore wants credits for foreigners to buy this or that or anything, really. That doesn’t mean, it notes, that Europe isn’t in need. There are going to be articles on the coal famine, and on Bretton Woods, which is connected to the coal famine by virtue of the credit issue. (Since if the Export-Import Bank would issue that $10 billion credit to Russia, not only might it ward of a US postwar depression, it would allow Russia to buy American things, which wouldn’t be coal, but rather wheat, but they’re still connected because the countries which have a shortage of coal, and who aren’t in the running for an Export-Import credit, are still having a “famine.” Of coal. Also, Russia could afford to be nicer, for example, lifting the “blackout on news that has fallen over territories occupied by her armies.”

The paper is also running an article on the Philippines, which leads it to editorialise about the decision by the WSA to set shipping rates at 1940 plus 35%, which is far too high. On the one hand, the badly needed pulp imports from Sweden (ox being gored here) were almost scuttled by too-high shipping rates “suggested” by the WSA to the Swedish lines. On the other, the paper returns to the idea that the new American merchant marine, if so expensive as to need subsidising, is hardly worth having.

Finally, the paper thinks that Americans are getting rude and vulgar, and that this trend should stop.

“The Battle of Bretton Woods” Now that the agreement is about to be passed through Congress, it is time for the paper to rehash the Bretton-Woods agreement.

“Bernard Gimbel: Top Merchant” Gimbel Brothers recently surpassed Macy’s as the top department store network. Apparently, mainly by stockpiling enormous amounts of bric-a-brac in the early years of the war.

“The Houghtons of Corning: They Have Prospered by Making the Kinds of Glass No One Else Can Make and now They are Learning New Ways of Competition –From the Supreme Court”

This is a technology story, because the company invented Pyrex, and because the antitrust action was over a "patent pool" arrangement which prevented other glassmaking companies from producing canning jars on manufacturing equipment developed by either Corning or a competitor --I forget.

 Investors might want to know that this close-held family corporation (Houghton fiduciaries own 76% of shares) produces 37,000 items out of 450 chemically different glasses, last failed to pay a dividend in 1880 and finances all expansion out of profits. Unfortunately, all this is rather irrelevant considering  that the company just about doubled in size with a 1936 merger with “another company.” Also, notwithstanding, Pyrex, or Fiberglas, the 200 inch lens for the Mount Palomar Observatory, or high-silica Vycor glass, metal-bonded glass, glass ribbon for electronics manufacture in place of mica, better optical glass, or less-breakable glass tableware, the company makes most of its money from lightbulb covers. Electrical engineering, I suppose?

Claude A. Buss, “Report from Manila: Independence is a Hot Issue –With a Reverse Twist” Mr. Buss is just back from Manila, where he talked with old friends, former cabinet members, businessmen, “politicos,” missionaries, consular officials, ordinary citizens, and probably the rickshaw driver who took him from the docks to his quarters. He has discovered that Manila is at “the crossroads of its destiny.” It is utterly destroyed by war. The Japanese are still resisting. There is political chaos. Visayans dominate the provisional government, which cannot be good in the long run, I suspect. Brigadier General Manuel Roxas may be a rival candidate for the presidency to Osmena. This rice harvest, and the next, will not meet the needs of the people. Sugar production is down. There is no petroleum. Apparently, the Japanese printed occupation currency for the “entire world” in Manila, Pounds, dollars, pesos and guilders then couldn’t distribute it, and ended up holding it all in a forty car garage before bulldozing it all into the Pasig River in the end.

Which seems like a bizarre story. Wouldn’t these currency be exactly what was needed in the South Seas? The point of the story is vaguely related to the claim that the Japanese put too many Philippine pesos into circulation, and there was inflation, and now no-one has furniture or clothes because you cannot buy them. (Which would seem to be a question of redemption, not the amount in circulation. The observation that you cannot hire labourers for money, but have to turn them away if you offer “lunch and a cigarette” suggests that either Manilans are very hungry, or that you can buy things quite easily –with cigarettes. Manila is filled with Americans, who are distributing seeds for corn, rice and camotes. “Chinese mestizos, able to make money even when the city is in ashes.” Because that’s how we "Chinese mestizos" are. (What do Englishmen do in burning cities? Play cricket?)

The word picture finally coming tumbling to an end as Buss moves to such point as he has, which is that apparently sentiment in Manila is moving against independence, because being an American colony is just that nice. The Americans are determined to grant independence, but Philipinos (secretly) don’t want it!

“The New Transport Planes, II” The paper explains how airfoils works, reminds us of how exciting the Gas Turbine and the Laminar-Flow Wing are, and points out that new construction methods are making planes ever bigger. For example, the 400ft wingspan flying wing that the paper just made up is much bigger than a Piper Cub! (The 1000ft wingspan reverse-double-back-swept plane I just made up is even bigger, but I don’t have a Luce paper to publish it in, and, besides, the picture is too big.)

The inadvertent implication is that actually existing airliners aren't that much bigger than a "Piper Cub."

I suppose I shouldn’t ridicule too much. The Stratoliner and the Consolidated Model 37 are real planes, and big enough. And, speaking of, Uncle Henry’s folly got its picture into this month’s Aviation, and I forgot to mention it! Here’s another picture.

Finally, since the paper is dedicated to the slightly dubious proposal that the American innovation of “laminar flow wings” is comparable to the gas turbine, there is an extensive (a whole page!) discussion of how lowering drag affects power loading, wing loading, speed and range.

Finally rousing itself from reveries of ever-better lifting surfaces besieging the barrier of the Speed of Sound, the paper moves on to materials: aluminum, magnesium, metal-bonded wood, glass(!). Lighter planes (the paper finds it amazing that planes carry passengers with less weigh per person than trains, a comparison that just doesn’t get to me) means, perhaps, longer ranges, or higher speeds. If Americans could be persuaded to go somewhere 4000 miles away, for example, very large passenger planes  might be more able to make money. Where could such a place be? And if it is Russia, perhaps we shouldn’t have a war with the Communists? Yes, the paper presents that train of thought with a straight face. Also, if passenger planes could fly at 720 mph (and why not?), they could go around the world in “zero elapsed time,” or, actually, five hours. Also, if we could find a way to fly above the atmosphere, we could go really fast.

I'm certainly in favour of that. The Hang Ah staff treat me like a princess, for which I should probably thank you, recalling how they greeted you in 1940, but it's not dim sum like Hong Kong dim sum. Lunch in Hong Kong, home in time to read to the children? Science might turn out to be good for something, after all.

“The Building of Nicaro”

A very large nickel mine in Cuba, owned and operated by Americans, was important to winning the war. It was a closely-guarded secret, in case U-boats attacked. So was its budget –I am tempted to use “coincidence” here in that way where I imply that it really isn’t a coincidence at all. It’s not like the presence of nickel in Cuba is much of a mystery, or that a mine and refinery on a seaside site just off Florida qualifies as an exotic location requiring heroic logistics. It’s that Cuban nickel has a high iron content that makes it not very economical compared with Canadian. That’s what the operation has to fix, and as long as the finances of the situation are obscure, we don’t know if they have!

“The U.S. Navy: Its New Power: Unmatched: Its Future: The People’s Choice”

What’s that the unemployed lawyer said? “What this town needs is two lawyers?” The Navy’s big, and its sunk all the other navies. So unless we have a rematch of the Revolution, the US Navy’s got no-one to fight, which is almost sad, when you think about it the right way. Perhaps we could spot the Communists some aircraft carriers?   The paper is at least more grown-up about it than, say, Aviation, noticing that the USN had 10 fleet carriers and 8 “light carriers” off Okinawa, not “a hundred,” since that number includes Uncle Henry’s navy. On the other hand, it gives proper credit to the enormous achievement of supplying them at sea –with an ill-informed back-of-hand at Britain’s “short-legged navy” to match the idiocy in Flight about the B-29's "inefficiency." The paper visited Hawaii, was amazed at all the depots, activity, and congestion on Oahu, and got caught in the horrific congestion on  Dillingham Boulevard which "Miss V. C." and I had the sense to only see from the air, unlike poor James. The paper even talked to him. UNless he is stealing his joke about the  number of things on wheels needed to win a naval war from some other visiting British naval officer, which he probably is, as it sounds like a line that goes round the messes --never mind in the back of a "deuce and a half" in the fumes as it waits to merge in one of the spots where Dillingham goes from eight lanes to two. I would rattle off more of the fairly extensive coverage if there was more to rattle off than word pictures of the incredible congestion on Guam, in the forward bases, and in the supply chain, as for example, smokescreens against suicide bombers drew down oil supplies, or drop tanks built up in depots and warehouses as mission ranges fell. Numbers would help the Japanese, though, or just haven’t been collated, and all I have is word pictures.

The Farm Column

Remember how Ladd took his direction to put Johnston in a column in 1943 and turned him into half of a Presidential ticket with an Oklahoma agronomics professor who wanted to subsidise pasture land to keep erosion down? It's honestly hard to tell when Ladd is pulling our legs.

Ladd notes the “socialisation of fertiliser,” which is due to the fact that everyone has shifted from an age of low prices, when surpluses piled up, and no-one thought of using fertiliser, to high-yield strains of oats, soybeans and, in particular, hybrid corn, which require a great deal of it. Now that prices for fertiliser are rising, farmers are debating what to do next. Farmers look forward to cutting the expense, and effort, of using fertiliser. The TVA thinks that farmers aren’t using enough fertiliser to maintain the soil, never mind improve it. That's the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is the obvious Governmant agency to be behind agriculture policy. Or perhaps the sarcasm is over done, because what it wants to do is keep the government nitrogen plants in production, while building two phosphorus and a potassium plant to complement them. Not only would the TVA operate them, but it would expand, by opening up a phosphorus mine and processing plant in Florida. Meanwhile, the National Planning Association is against all agricultural subsidies, hence "socialised fertiliser."

Showing that it is not slow to notice that the wind is changing, the AFB responds to critics by saying that it is following the recommendations of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, in that more (government) fertiliser plants would increase competition in the industry, and, anyway, the plants would only produce about 6% of the national supply of phosphorus and potassium, and would focus on research and development into new varieties of the fertilisers.

The other concern here is that if fertility is increased too much, surpluses like those of the prewar would recur, prices would fall, farms would be abandoned, Okies to California, etc. So “Eastern agronomists” instead want the government to buy up marginal land and find better and cheaper ways of restoring fertility such as contour ploughing, drainage, cover cropping with clover, liming. Less surplus, more soil restoration!

Moving on, Ladd asks what really happened to the “good five cent cigar.” This is tied to the idea that American city dwellers have that farmers have had a good war. In fact, in tobacco-producing Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a long list of woes has driven good tobacco off the land, so that farmers are poorer than they seem, and there is no longer a good five cent cigar. Or might not be in the future, even more than there isn’t right now, as they actually haven’t stopped growing tobacco, so that this isn’t the reason why there isn’t a good etc. They jusdt might in the future. In the meantime, the reason for etc is that you can’t grow good tobacco at that price. Which is good, because if one more ever-so-smug Jesuit professor lights up a cigar in my sitting room, I will discover the Indian in my blood and reach for a scalping knife. Also in the news is Thermoid Corporation of New Jersey, which is reducing accident rates by giving employees breaks where they drink free milk. This is agricultural news because of the milk.

Books and Ideas

Now that Professor Hayek is everywhere, I have new respect for this column. Let me see who is being launched into the heavens this month.

It is Jerome Frank, formerly of the SEC, on Fate and Freedom. 

*

Our reviewer, John Chamberlain, writes as though he knows Judge Frank personally, but that doesn’t mean that he pulls any punches in his review. The book seems to be about free will and inevitability and natural laws and stuff like that, and names like Hegel, Marx and Freud wander over to meet up with Hitler, before taking a swing back through Moscow on their way to have coffee with Diocletian, who, apparently, was some kind of socialistic type of ancient Roman emperor. Well, then. As with Professor Hayek (I began to write “Hegel,” you will see from the smudge), I may have missed the deep and important point that will have everyone and their dogs talking about Judge Frank next year this time. If they are, you heard it here first!

Other books reviewed are Ludwig Bendix, Planning for the Future, which is much harder than planning for the past; Thomas Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal, which I think argues that rejecting the League of Nations was a mistake, and it was all down to German and Irish-Americans, and Senator Lodge, who wasn’t either, I thought? Also, What Latin Americans Think of Us, which is a symposium by several very important people who agree, not very much. I am sure that some short  essays by very important thinkers published in a book will reform American ways in Latin America right away. Samuel N. Harper writes about The Russia I Believe In, which is a posthumous autobiography published two years after the death of the distinguished professor. He liked Russia. Robert S. Ward writes Asia for the Asiatics? Yes, please. Actually, it is a picture of Hong Kong under Japanese occupation, so not news to us, but a faithful picture of the current straits of the city, although perhaps underestimating how many of its residents have gone to ground, as opposed to suffering sadder fates.

Business at War

Alexander Cooper Nagle, the new President of the First National Bank of New York, is so obscure that there were no pictures of him on file at the New York dailies when his appointment was announced. A banker! Obscure! Imagine that! He commutes from Scarsdale, golfs and sails, has twin grandchildren, born this year. (You should compare notes!) His bank holds $980 million in deposits from 1300 customers, which suggests that this is not the sort of bank that most people deal with. Don’t go there to cash your paycheque, I am saying. You might have quite a wait for a teller.

I bet that Alexander Cooper Nagle IV works in a Starbucks and has three room-mates!

Cigarette shortages might lead to a revival in the fortunes of roll-your-own machine makers. Also, the type shortage will be good for buggy-whip makers! Leopold Pilzer runs Thonet-Kohn-Mundus, “a worldwide coalition of the bentwood chair industry.” They now have an assembly line. Despite which, their American-made chairs cost more than their European-made, although freight makes up the difference plus some. The paper hopes that European wages rise before shipping resumes, in which case I will go and buy all the shares, because humble seats are the future.

The Fortune Survey

This is the tenth anniversary of the survey, in honour of which, Elmo Roper looks back, and does not publish a survey. The inaugural surveys showed that poor Americans despaired of ever having opportunity to better themselves, and that the young thought that there was no place for them in the economic scheme of things. In 1936, the Survey started doing Presidential polling, and began its trend of getting very close to the final results. It also finds that President Roosevelt used to be popular, and that the Fireside Chats were attended to, and that Americans liked capitalism, at least when it was democratic.

Business Abroad

Finally, numbers are put to the coal famine: French production is down from a peak of 55 million tons to 43; Belgian is “half” its prewar level; Dutch is one-third. They need 3.5 million tons of imports a month to keep their economies going, and Italy needs half as much. Scandinavia is starved of coal, and it would be “rash” to expect Sweden’s Polish supplies to be resumed. (Because Communism.) Britain, South Arica and the United States might be able to supply 1.5 million tons a month between them, and the rest must be made up by restoring domestic supplikes, or from Germany. Belgium briefly contemplated using German prisoners of war in the mines, but the miners struck, a “bad sign.” Of something. The unions are against slave labour! Who would have thought. . .. So the German mines have to restore their production somehow, which means labour, which means so much for keeping the German army locked up until it is guaranteed 100% Nazi-free. Okay, I put that last bit in there. The paper is more worried that once the German miners are back to work, they will want to be fed, which will make the food situation even worse. There is good news, though, as the paper is pleased by the Anglo-American tax treaty. It also notes how British films are beginning to compete with French in the French movie market, and that Australia is going to make motorcars now. 

It's interesting to see that while The Economist can't help fretting that Germany will come back Nazi, or not come back at all, Fortune falls back on its own reflexive dream of a bright future of limitless possibility.