Group Captain R_.C_., OBE,
c/o Chateau Laurier,
Ottawa, Canada
Dearest Father:
This package may be held for you at the desk for quite some time, the way things are going, but I am aiming at you via the most likely destination, and this means that our courier will not have to carry it across the Atlantic, instead of other important materials.
I know that I sound like a shrew, nagging you this way, but now that you have confirmed your Christmas visit, may I appeal to your better nature for a visit to Santa Cruz for Thanksgiving as well? The reason is that the university's San Francisco benefactos have proved less than forthcoming, and the Engineer's son believes that a winter trip to Europe will be fodder for the gossip columns. I think he may be overestimating his stardom, but the business demands a healthy ego, and I am anyway not eaget to spend time in his company, reforming his ways. This is not another waspish comment on his personality. He's just a flake, and it is hard to restrain myself and be ladylike when he starts talking about politics in terms of things that belong in pulp magazines.
My point, before I digressed into saying unpleasant things about a distant relative, is that since he is not going, "Miss V.C." must. Hopefully, she will charm the general's toes into a curl, win a renewal of the papers he holds, and earn the Engineer's gratitude, if there is such a thing. She will be flying out early (it has been arranged with her instructors), so that one of the Fathers can chaperone her on the way. Unfortunately, he will be in Rome for his full sabbatical, and "Miss V. C." will fly the Atlantic alone in charge of BOAC, picking up your youngest as a travelling companion in Montreal for the trans-continetal leg. (Whether you and your wife want to meet them in Vancouver and fly down together is up to you, as we haven't bought the tickets from Montreal on, yet.) She very much wants to pick your brain about of Atlantic air, especially after the oh-so colourful stories our courier likes to tell.
Fat Chow returned, not coincidentally, on the same ship he travelled out on. He formally proposed to Miss v. Q. in the brotherhood's garden. It will be a civil service, since Fat Chow does not believe it will serve his bride well for their union to be widely known, even at Berkeley. I was there to see Queenie's relief when she heard, and young Miss K, ostensibly immersed in childhood things, perked up noticeably when Queenie talked of lynchings and beatings.
Wong Lee tells us, in strictest confidence, that the beneficiaries of the mortgages are not named, which means that the papers are not sensitive. Though it is possible that the materials in the Harrimans' hands are more sensitive.
Uncle George writes from Vancouver, where he is meeting with Easton. As you will have heard, with the war over and reconciliation achieved, the young man will be taking over active management of the shipping side of affairs from Hongkong. This is rather tricky business, as the first special load is expected, in San Diego, next week. He is still waiting on you before flying to Los Angeles, where he hopes to close out his friend's business with the network, which is about to go very sour, as his friend has decided not to return to his show when it resumes in a week's time. This will trigger the breach-of-contract clause, and since the network cannot use its "morals" weapon, it will presumably turn on the pre-recording issue. Our friend can now show that there is a better alternative than disc recording, and, hopefully, separate from the network. Whether the young men down at Santa Cruz can actually deliver an equipment that will operate in studio conditions is, unfortunately, another question. The best guess now is, not until next summer.
Speaking of business indefinitely delayed, Tommy Wong writes that the business of his squadron has picket up in recent weeks. It might be, he says, two, or five, or even twelve years before they need to do this work for real, and they need to get some practice in before returning to weather flying.
In the meantime, you will have heard from your youngest, at least if I can twist his ear by long-distance. He tells me that he is settling in at school, although he is not used to being held to account on his maths!
I should finally mention that your newest grand-daughter is a charmer, and you should not delay a second before you meet her!
"GRACE."
Letters
Carter Holmes, of Dallas, Bert S. Heintzelman, of Rye, N.Y.
and Radio Mate (2nd Class) R. E. Cody, with the fleet all disapprove
of Walter G. Taylor’s disapproval of the atom bomb. An anonymous army sergeant
in Austria thinks that the Russians are fine, or, at least, no worse than the
other armies of occupation, as does another, postmarked New York City. Sgt. Jay
Bundenthal writes from Germany to deny authorship of his previous letter. The
letter from the publisher is farmed out to John Scott, currently rebuilding the
Berlin bureau, who reports that he has a furnished two room flat on Limastrasse
with a bed but no sheets, desks, chairs and even a piano. Telephone service is
back this week, he has a car, and hot water, if gas is restored, as is hoped,
sometime this winter. Food is hard to come by, and he would like a care package
from home, although when he goes out to the homes of German families, he is
well fed, from what source he does not know, and “reciprocates” with
cigarettes.
John Scott:
One afternoon about a fortnight ago, I was taking leave of a German acquaintance on Limastrasse in front of my Zehlendorf house while a spry, blond boy about three and a half feet high stood gaping at me, as his kind in Berlin will. When I had said goodbye and turned to walk toward the mess, he came up, grinned, took my hand and said, "Du sprichst doch Deutsch. Hast du kein Kaugummi für mich?"
I gave him some of the American chewing gum he asked for and asked him why he wasn't in school. "School? Oh, I'm on the morning shift now, and besides, the Americans took our school and I have to go to another one very far away, and anyhow I am busy." At that point we came to the mess and as I had to go in if I were going to get anything to eat, I left him with an invitation to come and see me.
He came next morning; I gave him a chocolate bar and we had a long talk. His name was Dietrich. He was eight. He wore clean but patched clothes, was lean as a wolf and just about as quick. He spent a lot of time around the press camp, particularly in front of the enlisted men's mess, picking up butts. "My mother smokes the long ones and we exchange the others for potatoes," he explained seriously.
Dietrich lived in a small, neat, almost undamaged house. He, his six-year-old sister Heidi and his mother had two rooms; the four others were occupied by a grey, staring-eyed woman of 40-odd with six children, one of whom, a boy of 16, had just returned from a British P.O.W. camp.
Dietrich didn't like school. "Teacher doesn't know as much as we do. She used to tell us the British and Americans were very bad and the Russians were barbarians. Now she tells us Hitler was barbarian, and the British and Americans are saving us and she doesn't say anything about the Russians at all. We know, don't we [here he appealed to Heidi for support], that's all Quatsch. War is barbarian. People are all the same. What we did to other people they do to us and now everything is all smashed up. How many chocolate bars do you get every day?"
After some persuasion Dietrich agreed to take me to see his school, and we set out one afternoon. It was a good 40-minute walk. Boys went mornings one week and afternoons the next week, alternating with girls. Even with shifts and poor attendance the building was very crowded. Dietrich told me about how a bomb once fell near him when he was going to school. Since then, he said seriously, he never liked to go to school even if the bombings were over.
"What I liked to do was walk in the woods at Krumme Lanke," he said, laughing. "We used to have a fine time there. Weisst du, in the woods were still lying many corpses—some Wehrmacht and a few Volkssturm and many Russians.
"We used to play there every day. I looked at all the Wehrmacht corpses. One never knows, I might find my father. I wouldn't know him, I guess, but I have his dog-tag number here, you see."
He grinned and told of how they got into burnt-out tanks and pretended to be fighting. Then he got serious again. "But then we had an accident. One little girl from the Kleiststrasse was playing with a hand grenade and she blew herself up and since then we don't go into that part of the woods."
We became fast friends, Dietrich and I. He would wait for me outside the mess at dinner time, take my hand, and tell me how one enlisted man gave him a whole chocolate bar at one time. He started out to take it home to Heidi, who was in bed with dysentery. "Nun aber, weisst du—by the time I got there it was half gone and I didn't want to give her half a bar so I ate the rest of it."
When Dietrich didn't come around for several days, I wondered what had happened to him. But I was busy, and it was ten days before I walked down one afternoon to his house. Little Heidi was playing in the front yard with a battered little toy tank which had the swastikas scratched out but still seemed battleworthy. She jumped up and ran to me with a laugh.
"Wie geht's dir? You know my mother won't let me go to gather butts any more since Dietrich left, so I play here."
I asked where Dietrich was. Her face fell for a moment. "He got sick and cried very much. First they thought it was typhus and made us stay in the yard all the time but then they found it was something else, but anyhow they took him away to the hospital and he died." Then she brightened up and took me off to see their new litter of kittens under the porch.
Domestic
It is “the season of the moon which Western Indians call
The-Moon-When-Deer-Rub-Their-Horns.” A land of peace, when the soldiers who
were cheered on their return to New York are peering around the next corner in the road in hope of seeing their real end of their long journey home. The wartime years
have left their mark with weeds in New England service station lots, purple
bergamot in Vermont pastures, Louisiana bayous ripe with water hyacinth,
fireweed on the newly logged land in the Western foothills. But it is rodeo
season, and almost time for hunting once again, and the war jammed cities are
relaxing to the “tinkling of the lawn sprinklers, turning drowsily in the
darkness.”
 |
| Source: Pugnotes |
“Out-Dealing the New Deal” The President’s message to
Congress asks, again, for the Murray Full Employment Bill and a permanent Fair
Employment Practices Committee, asks also for money for State unemployment
funds to boost payments to a $25 for 26 weeks maximum. He bluntly called the 40
cents-an-hour minimum wage “obscene,” and suggests that the Government hopes
for a 40 to 50% increase in the average wage without “by some miracle”
increasing prices. He is hoping for the rapid cancellation of wartime contracts
to free up the factories, and faster disposal of war surplus. Congressional
Republicans are appalled, on the grounds that he is asking for too much.
In other news from Washington, the nation will not be
sharing atom bomb secrets with anyone. Which
upsets the Russians more than the British, perhaps because the British think
that they can get the decision changed by lobbying harder. Anyway the secret
will hardly last longer than the time needed to build the production plants
over the next ten to fifteen years. (What? The United States programme didn’t
even start until 1940!) Henry
Stimson’s successor will be Louis Johnson; Congress will be having a committee to investigate Pearl Harbour, and the State Department anticipated
the first news reports of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a report on Japanese
atrocities.
“Bull Market” News that reconversion is going well is
inspiring the markets, with an expectation of a decline for six months,
followed by a strong 1947 and 1948, although “some analysts” think that a deep
depression is on for 1949, while others think that housing and foreign trade
would keep business booming.
“Relief in Sight” Senator Walter George, chairman of the
Senate’s tax and finance committee, hopes that Americans will get a 15% to 18%
tax cut on their 1946 levies. Arthur Vandenberg agrees, but the President is
more cautious. “A total war effort cannot be liquidated overnight.”
“Paralyzing Prayers” Apparently, some “hill sects” in the
South worship poisonous snakes, which have recently killed the wife of Reverend Harve Kirk, of the Faith Holiness cult, and Lewis Francis Ford, a truck driver
and lay preacher of the Dolly Pond Church of God, of Grasshopper, Tennessee.
“Let George Do It” America is BUNGLING demobilisation.
Especially the Navy.
“The Endurance of Lou Zamperini” Lou, a 1936 Olympics
miler, was declared dead by the Army in the loss of their B-24. It turns out
that they were prisoners of war.
“Brains, Brains, Brains” The paper thinks that it is okay to print pictures of Miss America if it makes fun of the talent competition,first..
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| Note that for some reason, this is not actually Miss America 1945, Bess Myerson, the first Jewish girl to hold the title. |
Foreign
Jimmy Byrnes, this week’s cover story, is off to London to
talk to foreigners about things, mainly whether a vast coalition of socialists
and communists is about to start World War III in Europe. (As far as I can
tell, the paper thinks that the answer is that that the question is completely nuts, but
that it needs to talk about it anyway, because of very good reasons that it
will think up later. Trieste? The latest word there is that the Yugoslavians
might be cutting all the trees down, which will lead to the springs drying up.
I would think that if that were going to happen, it would have happened by now,
but I am not an arborist.) The Japanese surrender has gone without incident. At
Singapore, we are told, the British made Japanese prisoners sweep the streets,
as the Japanese had forced the British to do in 1942, the point, apparently,
being to “restore ‘face’ with the natives.” There was no celebration at the
surrender at Nanking, but there was at Shanghai, where the crowds even cheered
the arrival of the 94th Route Army. Whose soldiers, understandably,
stared back blankly at the well-dressed Shanghaians. The paper ingeniously
explains that this is because they had never hard cheering before. Tokyo,
meanwhile, has only 3 million of its prewar 7 million population, the rest
having flet to the country, which is just as well, as it has only 60 busses and 10%
of its streetcars left. The few cinemas still open are queued around the clock,
and the TB rate is estimated at 22% of the population. The hospitals are still
closed, and there are no bandages or disinfectants. “Last week, this wretched,
sleazy city was stark and rude, its colours mud-brown, grime-grey and the red
of rusted iron roofing on shacks where bombed-out thousands lived.”
“$3Billion Gum, Chum” The joke is a reference to a Tribune joke. “Any gum, chum, on a
strictly long-term, interest-free, dollar-loan basis?” Britain is negotiating a
dollar loan, etc.
. . . .
“Over to Peace” England is BUNGLING demobilisation. Various
business are booming, including radio and the shipyards, which are converting
ships over from war service. Pubs are converting over to peace beer, vegetable
gardens are in bloom everywhere, and Woolwich Arsenals is opening sidelines in
go-carts, playpens, perambulators and kitchen utensils.
“Crackdown” The Russians have seized the 100 hectare-plus
estates of the big landowners in their occupation zone, while the British and
Americans aim to de-Nazify their German industries as quickly as possible.
The Balkans, French, Poles and Czechoslovakians are excitable.
Also, Liechtensteinians. It is proposed that “Russians” be called “Soviet peoples,” since
Russia has many non-Russians. General Chiang Kai-Shek gave a victory speech
which pleased the paper. Also Mexican, Brazilians, Guatemalans and Argentinians.
Business
Various aircraft factories are shutting down and paying off.
How will this affect aircraft manufacturers’ business? Boeing has almost all
the B-29s actually needed by the army on hand, only with some assembly still
required, which is why it is shutting down so quickly. The Navy is slower to
trim than the Army, and Lockheed, which reduced from 80,000 to 38,000 before
the end of the war, has laid off 1000 since. Douglas has an order for one or
two Globemasters a month, and has shrunk a 165,000 payroll to 26,000,, closing
Government-owned plants in Tulsa, Chicago and Oklahoma City in the last month.
“Sinco Places a Bet” Sinclair Oil, Co., has bought the Ethiopian oil concession, which might extend to potentially oil-rich Eritrea,
if Ethiopia gets it.
“Sand in the Wheels” The biggest wave of strikes since peace
has closed down many a reconverting plant. In other news,, Lewis Ruskin’s
druggist business is doing well, and in spite of Standard and Poor’s warnings
to the contrary, there is no rash of suspicious fires, or fire sales, for that
matter, in the retail trades. In fact, shelves will be very bare at Christmas,
it looks like.
“No Takers” The Reconstruction Finance Corporation is
repossessing seven aluminum plants from Alcoa, and will either sell them to new
takers of they can, or, more likely, shut them down.
Science, Medicine,
Education
“Atomic Footprint” Journalists were taken last week to see
the sight of the American test firing of an atomic bomb in New Mexico. The
showing was intended to scotch rumours of persistent radiation poisoning men
and vegetation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, perhaps for years to come. Although
the journalists did have to carry radiometers and wear overshoes while touring
the crater where the bomb was detonated, but this is because the test blast was
at 60ft, so that the radioactivity was less dispersed.
“The War on Rats” To DDT, 2,4D and
the atomic bomb, we can now add the rat poison “1080,” or sodium fluoroacetate,
which fools even the cagiest rat, but which is also lethal to dogs, other small
mammals, and men.
Curare is being investigated as a muscle relaxant in polio
patients. Amebic dysentery is being blamed for “many cases of apparent lack of
ambition, short-term disarrhea, aching legs, poor memory, and jumpy or erratic
pulse.” “Atomic wounds” are being reported by a Dutch doctor from a prisoner camp
near Nagasaki. He doubts that any radioactivity lingers on the ground in the
city, but does describe the radiation injury of people exposed as very
serious.
“The Science of Guidance” Arthur E. Traxler’s Science of Guidance explains what the
school guidance officer, who might be new to the readers’ school this year,
does. It apparently involves hundreds of tests and observations.
“Quonset College” Servicemen on Saipan are taking courses
through the United States Armed Forces Institute still. But they are in Quonset
huts, now, because that is what servicemen have on Saipan. Some instructors are
quite well educated There is even a Coloured fellow with an M.A.
People
Cab Calloway, the “Man with the Hi-de-ho,” is being held for
assault after a bar tussle in New York City, and Peter Aitken, second son of
Lord Beaverbrook for drunk driving.
The Sultan of Johore now recalls being
quite anti-Japanese during the occupation. Walda Winchell has asked for a
divorce. Emily Hahn, best-selling author (Seduction
ad Absurdum, The Soong Sisters), is pleased that the man she has described
as the father of her daughter, Major Charles R. Boxer, has been released from a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Hong Kong,
and predicts that he will now come home and marry her. Shirley Temple is getting married; Gloria Swanson is having trouble
managing her fifth husband; Something about the Admiral and the Emperor’s
horse. Not his actual horse, but one that Hitler was supposedly going to send
to Hirohito, instead sent by General Patton to the Admiral? No, to the City of Denver, which is just about the same thing.
Simon Willard Roosevelt, great-grandson of the first
President Roosevelt, was born in New York City this week, while Admiral McCain
and Orlando Franklin Weber have died.
Press, Literature,
Music, Radio
The chickabiddies who are the 70 members of Mrs. Roosevelt’s
Press Conference Association are quite upset at Mrs. Truman for not giving
regular press talks, and recently delegated Ruth Montgomery to go tell her so.
The paper notices this in light of a recent column in which “Ruth” implied that
Mrs. Truman had recently snubbed Madame Chiang. This is a “service to
journalism,” the paper suggests, perhaps tongue in cheek, and it then goes on
to imply that Mrs. Truman is actually snubbing Ruth.
A better sort of journalist is “Hearstling” Clark “Chang”Lee, who has been all over the place, capturing Gestapo men and accepting
Japanese surrenders. Also a fine figure of a journalist is Timesman William
Laurence, who flew aboard the B-29 which bombed Nagasaki. The Cezchoslovakian
composer of the Beer Barrel Polka gets his due at last.
Police Commissioner Valentino of New York is stepping down
to be the lead commentator on radio’s Gang
Busters. Less reputable is Iva Toguri, a 29-year-old University of
California graduate better known as Tokyo Rose. She does not think that she did
anything wrong. The paper thinks that she is ugly. She did have a better radio
presence, the paper suggests, than Mr. Atlee.
The New Pictures
The True Glory is a very nice war documentary. Isle of the Dead is badly paced at the beginning, but
very frightening.
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| Very spooky! "Isleofdead" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Isleofdead.jpg#/media/File:Isleofdead.jpg |
Books
Andrew Roth, controversial indictee, has a book, Dilemmain Japan, which suggests that Ambassador Grew was very naïve, and that Japanese
fascism will revive shortly, because, far from being a country of superstitious
fanatics who literally believe in the Emperor’s divinity, Japan is actually a
country of warlike generals fully
subordinated to profiteering businessmen, who will actually include the
Emperor, who owns 140,000 of 300,000 public shares of the Bank of Japan. What
Japan really needs, he concludes, is more socialism. Carl Jonas’ Beachhead on the Wind suggests that the
actual Americans who actually maintained the war effort on places like Adak
Island in the Aleutians were reluctant “sad sacks” of mixed origins who grew
into their roles and will not be able to ever explain or describe what happened
to them in the winds of places like Adak.
Flight, 20 September 1945
Leaders
“Unique Promotion” Air Chief Marshal Tedder’s promotion to
Marshal of the Royal Air Force is “in many ways unprecedented,” because it has
never before been conferred on someone who is not Chief of the Air Staff. But
the war has led to various Field Marshals and Fleet Admirals, so why not? Only
the paper has a column and a half to fill up, so upwards and ever onwards!
“Faster, Bigger and Better” The paper is pleased that the
British press is boasting about the Hornet and Vampire, but thinks it should
have been done six months ago, when someone was still paying attention. Also,
the Lincoln and Griffon.
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| Flight has a much nicer rear angle, but someone scrawled a copyright notice all over the copy used for the online edition, and UBC's postwar collection doesn't start 'till next week. Which is still better than its subscription to Electronics (London), which wasn't resumed until 1950! |
“The Few” Remember the Battle of Britain? The paper does,
and there was a mass RAF flyover of London on Saturday, which was pretty neat,if you live in London. Falls a little flat in Santa Cruz, though. Which is the
problem with the whole boasting thing.
“In the Air: Handling Impressions of RAF Aircraft: The First
of a Series of Brief Word Sketches by ‘Indicator’” “Indicator” flew many planes
during the war. He flew the Beaufighter, which wallows on the ground, and is
“hard” in the air. Early versions were unstable fore and aft, but the version
“Indicator” flew had solved that problem, and, providing one were willing to
“apply a reasonable degree of physical strength,” would do aerobatics and
“out-turn most things.” Landings can be a bit tricky, and the escape/exit hatch
is an elaborate contraption. The engines block the view to the side, and the
engines are loud.
“Here and There” The paper reports that two Blackburn
apprentices, Raymond and Ernest Wilkes, have won scholarships and medals from
Hull Technical College for their part-time studies while at Blackburn. A picture of the Vampire from behind appears,
the first, I think, in the paper. A final total of 82,000 wounded were
evacuated from the Continent by air to Britain during the Victory Campaign. The
United States Navy is adapting atomic bombs for use from aircraft carriers, and
might have a peacetime strength of 1079 ships, with provision for 116 aircraft
carriers. Norway has a new air force chief, Major-General Riiser-Larsen.
“Vampire and Hornet: Two de Havilland World Beaters: Jet
Interceptor and Long-range Fighter: Level 500 mph-plus for the Vampire; 2500
mile range for the Hornet” The Hornet is in some ways the more impressive, as
its speed is due to “design refinement.” Low drag gives it 470mph in level
flight. The Vampire, on the other hand, is the result of break-neck development.
Work on its Goblin engine began in April of 1941, while the Vampire started development in
1943. An all-metal structure except for the pressurised control cabin, no other
details of its construction can be given.
“Rolls-Royce Griffon 65: Review of the Latest Rolls-Royce
Piston Engine: Classic Orthodoxy of Design: Highest Specific Power Yet
Achieved” Ony a very small part larger than the Merlin and with virtually the
same frontal area, it still has a 35.9% greater swept area, achieved by
increasing cylinder bore to 6.0 inches, “verging on the optimum limit.” The
paper then “speculates” that the Griffon’s successor must have even more
cylinders, since larger ones will not do. Whatever will this bigger, and yetstill “orthodox” engine look like?
 |
| Like this. |
Although the same size and layout as the old
racing “R” engine, the Griffon is not an update of that old design. It is
mostly a development of the Merlin, which followed hard on the cancellation of
the Vulture, and which was mostly inspired by the FW190’s low altitude
superiority. Putting Griffon III’s into Spitfire VIII’s gave XIIs, built in
limited numbers, but defeating the Focke-Wulfs. This was because, at the time,
the Griffon had a single-stage, two-speed blower, as developed fro the Fleet
Air Arm’s Fireflies. Once established in RAF service, the two-stage blower
followed to give the Griffon the same kind of high altitude performance as the
Merlin. The most important change was to to move the magneto and cam drives to
the front, reducing variations in angular velocity and variations in rpm due to
airscrew inertia. The crankshaft is machined from a forged billet and is fully
counterbalanced, although the firing order geography has been selected to
reduce beats in crankshaft vibrations. Lubricating oil is carried through the
hollow interior of the shaft, in a major innovation which must have greatly
complicated its machining. The crankshaft also now floats on two variable
drives, gears in front and a torsional spring-drive in the rear, rather than
being rigidly connected to either fore or aft driven members, the reduction
gearing in the front, and the impeller drive in the rear. This greatly reduces
torsional stresses on the crankshaft, since no-one enjoys flying a
single-engined fighter whose crankshaft has just broken. Combustion chambers
are machined all over and orthodox in shape, valve seats are shrunk-in inserts
and the porting passages are scurfed very
smooth, and the valves are Brightray. The magnetos are a new, highly efficient
duplex type from BTH. In the cockpit, a single “power” lever controls boost,
rpm and ignition, with an override for unusual conditions, such as combat. A
boost regulator holds boost, available to 42 lb/sq in at lower altitudes, to 21
lb/sq in under usual conditions, but can also be overridden. Continuous power
is 1000hp up to 30,000ft, and it is hoped that derated Griffons may replace
Merlins in civil service, giving the same performance at greater economy and
reliability. Water/methanol injection will follow soon.
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| I can't believe how complicated late-war aero-engines were, part the millionth. |
“Germany’s War Aircaft”
A review of lesser known German war aircraft include the BV141n with asymmetric layout, BV155 high-altitude fighter, BV 238 very large
flying boat, Dornier 335 tandem fighter, Focke-Wulf TA 152 FW190 follow-on, Ta154 wooden, single-seat, twin-engine fighter, Ta 183 jet fighter, Ta 400
six-engined long range aircraft, Heinkel “Siamese twin” He 111Z, He 162, He 280 jet fighter, Hs 132 single-engine jet diver bomber, Junkers “Mistel”guided-bomb carrier, EF 128 fighter, Bf109G-10, jet-propelled Me 328 ground
attack aircafft, Focke-Angelis Fa223 and Fa 284 helicopters, and a proposed
helicopter with jet-turbine tipped rotors. A Thanksgiving exhibition will show
some of these in London at Hyde Park on September 16th.
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| Prone pilot, because why not? |
Civil Aviation News
BOAC service to Teheran will be terminated on 29 September.
All-Canadian Norsemen aircraft are available for forest fire fighting. Soviet
factories are shifting over to airliner production. Brigadier-General Thomas B.Wilson, Chairman of TWA, is in talks in
Dublin over landing rights. The CAB is
still having talks about Pacific routes. North-West tells it that it expects 29,200
passengers a year, and Pan American, 34,000. “White Project,” the flying of 5,615 USAAF
aircraft carrying 86.077 crew and passengers out of Europe to America, is now
complete with seven major accidents costing 72 lives. This is civil aviation news, for some reason.
Correspondence
Another correction for B. J. Hurren, this concerning HMS Hermes, and from Michael Dawson. C.
H. Latimer Needham chief engineer of Flight Refuelling, Ltd. writes on the
subject of why air refuelling is the future of civil aviation. Air Commodore H.V. Rowley writes a full column on the government and civil aviation, to the
effect that we have to mass-produce airliners, and that the government should
do something about that. W. Maitland Harold asks whether cited costs per mile
for the proposed civil Stirlling give us a way to calculate what air tickets “should”
cost. The paper answers that they are jiggered-up numbers to make the case that
the civil Stirling is worth buying, without directly saying it.
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| So, yes, the architect did intend for it to look like this. I think the fear was that the conn wouldn't be able to see where it was going. |
Newsweek, 24
September 1945
Letters
Captain William H. Hackman and Lt. Carl J. Carlson write
from Camp Lee, Virginia, to correct misapprehensions about mustering-out pay,
and Staff Sergeant Thomas E. O’Hara about terminal leaves. A Serviceman’s
Father and several flight trainees write to explain how the services are
BUNGLING demobilisation. Several persons write about vandalism during the war,
and who was more responsible for it, British or American servicemen. “For Your
Information” reports that the paper is now in Tokyo! It is a very good imitation of American States-side printing
practices, because you know those Japanese!
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| * |
The Periscope
The Army will shortly reduce the number of points required
for discharge, to 70 on 1 October, 60 on 1 November. Several older American
warships are being transferred to allies such as Russia and China, the latter
to fight smugglers. (Imagine exasperated sigh here.) Several scientists think
that controlling atomic bomb secrets is silly, when the Russians can probably
do it on their own in two to five years, and probably in fact improve on
current American practice. J. Edgar Hoover is talking about retiring to take up
several business opportunities which have been presented to him. American
engineers are in Ethiopia to work on a new national railway. The Chinese
government will crack down on the Japanese-run opium industry very soon. The
Chinese are alsoo having trouble feeding Japanese troops who have surrendered
in China. Wang Ching-Wei’s wife has been arrested in Canton and might be
prosecuted as a war criminal. The draft is to be finalised at a half-million man postwar standing army.
Meanwhile, the “foreign outlook is gloomy” due to excessive demands on American
food stocks and industrial resources for rehabilitation. Russian-American
relations are deteriorating, the paper tells us. It also thinks that the
permanent seat of the United Nations will be in San Francisco! Very exciting!
Meat may be off ration next month, but edible fats and oils won’t be. The OPA
will be liquidated by next 30 June. Rubber from the Far East is expected soon,
but the problem is reconciling this with the wartime synethetic rubber
industry. To which Americans says, the heck with them, we want tyres! Congress
is to raise its pay, because that is what Congress does. New freight cars will
have double-acting, direct action hydraulic shock absorbers. Hydaulic controls
will also be introduced in farm tractors.
Truck exports may begin this year.
6000 new theaters will be built in America as soon as materials are available.
So of course Uncle Henry has popped up with a scheme for prefab theaters.
General Chiang is to have an article in next month’s Colliers on China’s boundless future, and extracts of CaptainButcher’s Three Years with Eisenhower are
expected soon.
Domestic
“More Billions in Aid for Britain? Truman in Favour;
Congress Wary” That pretty much says it all. General Wainwright’s ticker tape
parade in New York was quite an affair, and the paper’s Bert Andrews thinks
that the President is doing a pretty good job. Various returning veterans
enroll in the eighth grade in their hometown and become missionaries, hopefully
to Japan. Mrs. Evelyn Lynch, a buyer for A.
Harris and Co., a Dallas-area department store, managed to scoop the country
with a purchase of 1200 pairs of nylons, which she flew home, leading to a sale
before which police had to rope off a lineup two blocks long, containing 3500
men and women. The worst hurricane since 1932 hit Florida.
In his “Washington Tides” column, Ernest K. Lindley thinks
that “Control of the Atomic Bomb” might be chaotic right now, but it is also at
its height, and will diminish as other nations catch up with us. This is why it
would be best to establish an international agency now. It should inspect, and
probably reimpose censorship to some extent.
The paper profiles Ralph K. Davies, who is in charge of oil
diplomacy.
Foreign
“’Race of Giants’ Takes Over Japan”Within six months, the
American army of occupation will rise to 200,000, but quarters must be found,
as some Japanese cities are still too unsanitary for American billeting due to rampant typhoid fever, typhus,
diphtheria and tuberculosis, and no winter clothes have been received for the
men to go to Hokkaido to find out what is going on there. Meanwhile, American
troops are on a “kimono hunt,” and are finding out “what a geisha doesn’t.” The
Admiral rode an actual, whitish horse (but not the Emperor’s, and nor the one
General Patton was going to send him), but, since he has never ridden before,
it did not go well, the paper reports.
It is reported that the Japanese
battleship Nagato will shortly be used
in an atomic test. Three divisions, the 31st, 37th, and
38th, are being sent back from the Pacific to the United States. An
American B-29 which passed beyond the demarcation line in Korea was attacked by
Russian fighters, due to miscommunication. The millionth GI to return from
Europe, Almon N. Conger, of Tacoma, Washington, was amongst the whole of 35th
Division, which recently debarked from Queen
Mary. The Army and Navy are NOT BUNGLING demobilisation. American GIs are
applying to marry German women.
Admiral William V. Pratt, USN, ret., has “Some Hopeful Facts
About the Japanese” to the effect that the Japanese are much nicer than some
people think.
“Cloak, Dagger and Valor” The OSS decorated 27 of its
wartime operatives this week.
“MacArthur Cracks Down Hard on Defeated, Fawning Enemy” General
MacArthur swages amongst the diminutive etc. That out of the way, it be noted
that Japan will continue to dominate the Far Eastern trade, and the key
problems right now are a shortage of 3 million tons of rice, and a steel
production down to 50,000 tons idling the shipyards. With the Japanese on
half-rations, it will be very hard not to ship American supplies to Japan,
something the General wants to avoid, and which he can only do with Japanese
help. With Japanese unemplohyment estimated at 8 to 15 million, there is a lot
of help going idle! Suicides continue amongst the Japanese leadership.
Field-Marshal Sugiyama’s wife followed him in death. Tojo’s attempt to stage
his own death was “ridiculous.”
 |
| The arrest of Hideki Tojo. This is just before his suicide attempt. |
“Korea Hodgepodge” The appointment of Lieutenant General John Hodge as Military Governor of Korea was not greeted well in Seoul,
especially when he decided to retain Japanese officials. He explained that the
Koreans are a bunch of pickaninnies, and had better stop demonstrating and get
back to work, or he would crack their heads.
“Do We Run Korea Badly: Well, Look How the Reds Do” Harold Isaacs points out that the Russians are doing worse. They are looting and
stealing, and the so-called Communists are all former collaborationists.
“Singapore: In Kind” Japanese troops in Singapore were
publicly humiliated last week, but at least called off plans to parade enemy
generals down the streets carrying white flags. Well, it may be cruel, but
surely it is an appropriate reward for fighting their way back into Singapore,
no?
“Pace, Not Peace” The Big Five are meeting to talk about a
peace with Italy and the disposal of its colonies.
“Dreary Paris in the Fall: How We Dread Winter” Toni Howard,
of the paper’s Paris bureau, spent a day with a typical Parisian family.
Rations are utterly inadequate. “Oh dear,” says the householder. “That means we
have to go black marketing, again.” A
bar of rough, brown soap, is all the family has for washing, and an
unbleached muslin towel to dry the hands. Dinner is sliced beets, tomatoes,
bread and butter (the latter only with company) and vin ordinaire. The eight
year-old eats with the family, but the 15 year old is on a farm in Normandy to
work, and hopefully, or, after, he recovers from his pleurisy. Black market
purchases are a cheese less than a pound in weight, and two pounds of steak for
three-hundred-fifty francs.
 |
| The other side of Paris in the fall of 1945 |
“Death of the Desert Fox” It is now reported that Rommel
poisoned himself, because he was told that his chief of staff, General Speidel,
had reported him for colluding with the 20th July plotters.
Business
“Labour’s New High-Pay Offensive Strains Against Truman’s
Ceilings” The paper is not sympathetic.
Meanwhile, Mary Anderson continues her
campaign for equal pay for women’s work.
“Laying Off Big Inch” The RFC is selling off the Big Inch.
“Bumper Crop” There won’t be a fodder crop failure this year, after all.
The corn estimate is now up to 3 billion bushels, up 225 million.
“Rail or Air” The rail-air truce is over, as railroads and
airlines go head to head on price and speed. However, rail may not fight that
hard, as the railways do not make much money on passengers.
New Products
Taylor Engines has a copper-welded plate steel eingine that
gives 26hp on 32lbs, and is licensing it to Crosley Motors. Goodyear is
“canning” surplus tanks in steel and aluminum boxes to keep them safe from
moisture. Bendix reveals that it made the direct injection carburettors used in
B-29s, and H. L. Ratchford of Muncie, Indiana, announces a new, electrical
mousetrap.
Ralph Robey’s column covers “How We Can All Be Better Off”
He points out that wages increased 50% between 1920 and 1929, and look what
happened then! So the Administration’s current plan to raise wages will just
lead to mass unemployment of depression proportions, or maybe inflation. Or
both! Only increases in productive efficiency can lead to higher wages, and
that is why the attempt to raise wages by legislative action is futile.
In Transition
Major Boxer has announced that he will be marrying Miss
Hahn, so Time must be awfully
relieved. Major General Leslie Groves is being given a medal for getting that
whole atomic bomb thing off the ground. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor have
boarded a liner in New York for . . England, perhaps? Joe DiMaggio has been
discharged from the army for stomach ulcers.
Press
John H. Johnson, the man behind The Negro Digest, is ready to launch an all-Negro glossy, Ebony. Lt. Colonel James P. S.Devereaux, found in a Japanese prisoner of war camp last week, denied ever
saying, “Send us more Japs,” pointing out that the Wake garrison had all the
Japanese they wanted, and more. NBC Radio’s engineers walked off the job in
mid-broadcast on Sept 12. The paper blames James Petrillo.
Movies
The paper reviews The House on 92nd Street, which is a plausible, documentary-style
story of G-Men chasing Bundists.
Medicine
“They Walk Again” The Army is using braces to treat more
than 1000 “cord cases,” men paralysed from the waist down by crushed spinal
cords. Because sulfa ointment and penicillin can treat bed sores, they are
living longer than they used to do, and braces, crutches and wheelchairs offer
hope for the future.
Science
The paper reports that injuries from atomic radiation are
afflicting reconstruction workers at Hiroshima. Domei reports both ultraviolet
sunburns and more horrifying x-ray wounds, and American scientists have to
flatly deny that the ground there is still radioactive. It is noted that antsare surviving perfectly well around the New Mexico bomb site. The paper also reviews
the sober, twenty page British history of their “Tube Alloys Directorate.” The
British use “heavy water, an alloy of helium, beryllium, and carbon” to
moderate the neutrons. The rest of the paper’s account is even more incoherent,
if that is possible.
Books
Arthur M. Schlesinger (“son of Harvard’s noted professor of history”), delivers a fine account of TheAge of Jackson. That is, the American President who served two terms in the
1820s or 1830s. Or both? I suppose I could figure it out if I counted backwards
by four years from the first American election I remember. Tee-hee. Alf Landon.
But I’m not going to, as I fail to see the relevance. But George Bancroft was
involved! Henry Wallace has a book out (it’s about prosperity through full
employment), while, to balance things, Frederik L. Collins suggests, in Uncle Sam’s Billion-Dollar Baby that the
TVA is a “menace.” Because it threatens private enterprise, you see.
Flight, 27
September 1945
Leaders
“In Germany To-Day” Mr. Geoffrey Smith gives his impression
of Germany, home of the V-weapons, and all of its secret weapons.
“A Single Fighting Service” President Truman wishes to unite
the American armed services under a single Department of Defence. The paper
approves, since aircraft will be involved.
“The Future American navy” Secretary of the Navy Forrestal
wants a postwar navy of 11 battleships,
15 aircraft carriers, 21 escort carriers, as well as cruisers, submarines, etc,
and 8000 aircraft.
“Atlantic Achievement: Return Ferry’s Fourth Anniversary:
The Senior Trans-Ocean service Operated by the British Overseas Airways
Corporation” BOAC can’t congratulate itself enough. It is worth remembering
just how half-measured the effort of 1941 to establish the return ferry was –21
men flew to Hattie’s Camp under D. C. T. Bennett, and although 50 aircraft were
brought across the Atlantic, the return leg was flown by six converted
Liberator bombers, which required massive internal modifications to be suitable
to the North Altantic weather, including carburettor heating, oil cooler
shutters, cabin heating, and double windscreens, In June 1941, athen- peak of
21 return flights was made. Now, it is all routine. What a world we live in.
“’Lily:’ The Floating Airstrip” The idea is that water
tension will support a floating carpet of buoyancy cells with enough rigidity
to be a road, airstrip, floating island. The inventor is one Mr. R. M. Hamilton,
while mathematical calculations are due to Mr. J. S. Herbert, housemaster at
Eton college. It is based on the “Swiss Roll,” a floating pier twenty times as
light as a Bailey bridge of the same length, but able to carry a 9-ton lorry.
That’s a big truck. I wonder if the idea is a truck carrying nine tons? Though the other idea is that apparently
crackpots can get into the paper now.
Here and There
Sir Arthur Harris thinks that atomic bombs make operations
like D-Day, and battleships, impractical. Three B-29s which tried to fly
directly from Japan to Washington last week had to land at Chicago, 600 miles
short of their objective due to lack of fuel. Mr. Shackleton is going on a
world business tour, leaving the London offices in charge of his partner, Sqn
Ldr J. H. C. Beard, recently relieased from the RAF. The Brazilian Air
Minister, who has been in Britain, has now left. He had a nice farewell dinner.
Fighter Command Communications has an excellent safety record. Research may
become very important in Australia in the future, thinks N. J. O. Makin, the
Commonwealth’s Minister for the Navy and Aircraft Production. For example, is
it really true that water goes down the drain the other way around? Also
probably something about planes. Various flight crews still in training for the
RAF because they have not been cleared to sit their aptitude tests, are now no
longer wanted by the service, but are free to transfer to the Navy, Marines or
Army.
“In Germany Today: Part I: Factories and Communications
Disrupted: Research Establishments Almost Intact: Some Projected Types”
There is almost too much to assimilate. In a country with a
shortage of handcarts and perambulators, huge wind tunnels stand idle. Aluminum
and dural are available, tyres are not. The country is short 25,000 trucks, and
even bicycles are precious, and Germans make seven tons of edible yeast from
the twenty tons of effluent from making a ton of sulphite wood pulp. The cities
stink, and live ammunition is lying everywhere. Russian soldiers, some boys
with rifles slung on their backs, prowl and strugg everywhere, examining the
general wreckage in the company of soldiers of all the occupying nations. Few
cattle are to be seen, and the winter will be grim. An underground factory,
built to make V2s, is eerie and empty, as is the mile-long Nordhausen
underground factory for V1s. A BMW 28 cylinder multi-bank liquid-cooled radial, the 803, is
on show, as is the high altitude ribbon parachute, and the radio guided anti-aircraft
rocket already described by Time.
 |
| Instead of a Corsair or Seafire burking, how about a Grumman? Not that no-one is implying that a Blackburn product was any safer. Just more solid. |
The Editor, “’D.H.:’ Twenty-Five years a Constructor,
Thirty-Six Years a Designer: The Achievements of the de Havilland Aircraft
Company, Ltd.” Time for some ancient history! I wonder what didn’t get released
from the Secret List this week? Never mind. If this article was substituted for
something spiked by the Air Ministry, it was a very long article, and I have no
idea if there even is anything that secret going on in Britain right now –atomic
bombs apart, I’m sure.
Civil Aviation News
Swiss service might start soon. Brazilians are being very
congenial. Car deliveries by air are a thing that Avro is thinking about.
Captain Harold E. Gray, manager of Pan American’s World Airways Division,
commanded the DC-4 (C-54E) which recently arrived in London on a proving flight
from Gander Newfoundland via Shannon. Trans-Canada has set up an experimental
radar shop at its Winnipeg base. Portugal is expected to give the Americans a
99 year lease on the Santa Maria Airport they built there, in return for
considerations. 6000 passengers and 500,000 tons of freight were flown between
Stockholm and Great Britain during the war, in spite of vigorous German efforts
to intercept them. They mostly carried ball bearings, and were flown by
Norwegian personnel. General Sir Frederick Pile reveals another war secret,
that the fuzes used in antiaircraft shells fired at V1s over Britain and
kamikazes in the Pacific was nothing less than a miniature radar set! This is
the “Crossley Fuze” that the Gestapo was so eager to hear more about, per our
Miss v. Q.
It is a five-valve radio transmitter that could somehow survive the shock of a shell being fired. Also revealed is the zero-length rockert projector, which gets rid of the need for long rails or tubes for rockets. The paper regrets to report the death of Major J. C. Savage, MBE, late RAF. Born in 1891, he apprenticed with Graham-White in 1909, and wrote articles for Flight under the –something French for an alias, I think? I am not translating it, anyway. He invented skywriting and owned a large fleet doing it in Britain and continental Europe after the war, and later worked on searchlights, including “artificial moonlight” types, and founded Savage and Parsons, Ltd, producing various inventions, notably including the Leigh Light.
It is a five-valve radio transmitter that could somehow survive the shock of a shell being fired. Also revealed is the zero-length rockert projector, which gets rid of the need for long rails or tubes for rockets. The paper regrets to report the death of Major J. C. Savage, MBE, late RAF. Born in 1891, he apprenticed with Graham-White in 1909, and wrote articles for Flight under the –something French for an alias, I think? I am not translating it, anyway. He invented skywriting and owned a large fleet doing it in Britain and continental Europe after the war, and later worked on searchlights, including “artificial moonlight” types, and founded Savage and Parsons, Ltd, producing various inventions, notably including the Leigh Light.
Correspondence
H. M. Absolon points out that the Gloster Meteor leaves smoke trails. S. L. Quine objects to the “Vampire” nickname for the new
fighter. L. Taylor, editor of the ATC
Gazette, writes at length about the Government and the ATC. I am guessing
that the Government is doing it Wrong, but I’d have to read it to know for
sure. Speaking of such attitudes, “Potag” thinks that the Fleet Air Arm has
been neglected in campaign awards. D. R. Newman writes that the “Duplex-Reaction” propulsion proposal published by Mr. Umpleby is nonsense, as does D. H.Mallinson, of Power Jets.
Maurice R. Rappaport, Research Engineer, Sanborn Corporation,
“Development of Cardiac Diagnostic Instruments” Electrocardiographs detect
electrical action potentials in the heart, while phonocardiograms detect sounds
in the heart valves and vascular system and render them graphically. X-rays can
directly monitor the heart, and sphygmomanometers measure blood pressure. Sanborn makes all of these useful devices! An
electrocardiograph, in particular, which can monitor a patient, untended, for
as many as 27 hours, is something a doctor can never do himself. It is also
quite a piece of engineering. The Stetho-Cardiette amplifier requires 7 tubes
to get proper accuracy. Rappaport is rather merciless in describing the circuit
theory behind it, too. “The distortion, C, is a function of the rate at which
the voltage E1 is varying, and the relative size of C and R. . . “ It is not
just antiaircraft directors that need the new error theory!
J. C. Hoadley, (?) “Audio Oscillators and their Applications”
Audio oscillators are “one of the most versatile pieces of equipment which is
within the reach of the majority of raido repairmen . . .”
Essentially, you set up an audio
oscillator in front of the radio, set it to produce certain waves, and see how
the radio picks it up? Perhaps because I am not to picky about my musical tastes, it had not occurred to me that anyone would take so much trouble to sort out the pitch, treble and base tones in their radios, but apparently some people do.
McMurdo Silver, McMurdo Silver Company, “An Improved Wheatstone Bridge” Wheatstone Bridges are familiar to me as a means of measuring
electrical resistance. Mr. Silver explains why the one he is marketing is
better than the ones conventionally used, because it has an external battery.
Swanee Taylor, “V.H.F. For Federal Airways” VHF was, of
course, used in the war to control fighters and, later, offensive bomber raids,
but this is a description of the development of VHF radio beacons for
navigational purposes, which required the radio mapping of a large part of the United
States, and some elaborate equipment to do it with.
H. Fancher, Engineering, G.E. Transmitter Division,
“Microwave Television Relay Networks” Relay networks have been in the news from
the Olympian viewpoint of mere users. I bet you want to hear about equipment,
instead! It seems that we need a clear 8.5 mc AM range for basic television
relay, about two or three times that for colour television. With a guard band,
about 40 mHz will be needed for a 2000 mHz relay signal, which limits the
number of television “channels,” as with phone “lines.” FM is likely to have
worse distortion. Specifically, the article looks at a relay link between
Shenectady and New York, to be built by GE in collaboration with IBM. This
relay will have 3 channels in either direction, and will be capable carring
either a television signal, or a multiplexed combination of business machine
circuits, facsimile, and FM circuits. For economy, separate signals going and
returning will be used, requiring 6 channels to relay 3. Three relay towers
will be required on the 135 mile path, entirely due to topography. The signal
to noise ratio will be 53 db, if I am understanding the engineer talk
correctly. The towers will be built by the Austin Company of Cleveland, and
will have many, many tubes.
R. A. Whiteman, Electronics Engineer, Bell and Howell,
“Cavity Resonators: A Mathematical Presentation of Cavity Resonator Theory and
Design” Cavity resonators are
electronics engineers’ favourites, because the musical instrument analogy is
exact. But you can put way more math in it if you want!
J. P. Jordan, Electronic Engineer, GE Heating Division
“Radio Interference and Electronic Heaters” Electronic heaters create
electrical “noise,” which radio engineers want to see abated somehow. Proper
shielding design, the way that GE does it, solves the problem. Write for our
free brochure.
P.S. Dickey and A. J. Hornfeck, Chief Engineers, Bailey
Instrument Company, “Electronic Instruments for Industrial Processes” Bailey has
some excellent designs. Write for your etc.
Bowden C. Dees, Instructor, Elec. Comm., MIT, “Graphical
Methods for Solving Transmission Problems” Engineers of indifferent maths are
often fine drafters. Here is a way of constructing illustrations that solve
transmission problems.
 |
| By inspection of this simple-to-use graphical aid, it is easy to determine that |
Personals
The one thing that jumps out at me is that M. R. McKenney,
patent attorney at Bell Telephone Labs since 1917, has been appointed head of
their Patent Division, succeeding Edgar W. Adams, who has been appointed
general patent attorney for Western Electric. Mr. McKenney is a 1917 Maine
graduate in electrical engineering.
Industrial Review and
New Products
The Andrew Company(?) of Chicago has a coaxial cable grooving
tool; Bakelite has a new Bakelite holder for crystals; B. F. Goodrich is
reporting good results with their factory Intercomm system. Westinghouse has a
free brochure on induction and dielectric electronic heating. Swedlow
Aeroplastics has a polyester laminate with good insulating properties; GE is
proud to vaguely describe the testing process for the new GE computer that
directs B-29 gunsights; Electric Eye Company of Danforth, Illinois, has a new
system for automatically inspecting the M48 fuze component; Spencer Wire Company’s wire drawing machinery made America independent of European supplies of
drawn wire in the late war.
Electric Products, INc., have a new line of electron tubes
for aircraft, automotive and industrial uses; Langevin Company has continuous
duty autotransformers; Eitel-McCullough has a new multi-element triode;
Tobe-Deutschmann announces a power-line filter for use in screen rooms.
Fairchild Camera and Insgtrument has a non-linear, variable wire-wound
potentiometer; Robert Hetherington and Sons has a new snap switch; and GE a
line of portable current transformers.
 |
| Bleeding edge. "Eimac Tube" by Jeff Keyzer - Flickr: Eimac Tube. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eimac_Tube.jpg#/media/File:Eimac_Tube.jpg |
News Briefs
RCA has annoiunced a scholarship programme to encourage
young, scientific students. Chicago will soon have a new FM station, operated
by the Sentinel Corporation; CBS is advertising a “Program Analyzer” which can
measure the program preferences of as many as 100 listeners at once; of 45,000
alien patents seized by the American government, 9,366 are in use by American
citizens; lifetime use of patents of citizens of alien countries may be had for
a $15 fee. 29,000 German, 7,800 French, 1800 Italian, 1300 Dutch and 1200
Japanese were available at whatever point (last year?) this article actually
applied. Sprague Engineering Company’s Pulse Service Capacitor is very nice! GE
has set up a scholarship fund. An Industrial Electronics talking cinema instruction course has been announced by GE.
Television
President Truman likes television. Dorman D. Israel,
President of Emerson Radio and Phonograph Corportation, thinks that televisions
will need larger pictures before they can be really popular. George P. Adair,
chief engineer of the FCC, wants a five-man committee to begin to work out the
allocation of television frequencies in the United States. GE has a free
brochure on the recent television show sponsored by Chef Boy-Ar-Dee. It was
very successful in promoting its canned sphagetti dinner, so advertisers should
take note. It has been suggested that television advertising will be an
important medium within as few as five years. No wonder GE has a free booklet
available on “Television as a Career.”
 |
| Coincidentally, I built a merchandising display that included Chef Boy-Ar-Dee products last night. It's one of those "Why are you even trying?" things. The source is Horror Foods, on Pinterest. |
R. Paul Wehrmann, Instructor, AFFTC, “Transformer Theory”
Hey, look, it’s a monthly, continuing textbook.
Harry D. Hooton, W8KPX, “’Junk Box’ Short Wave Receiver” Mr.
Hooton gave his equipment up to the army at the outbreak of war, then built his
own with scraps from the garden shed. More or less.
Gerald R. Davis, “0-300 Volt Regulated Power Supply” Write
for your etc.
Jordan McQuay, “Practical Radar, Part 4: A Complete Analysis of the Design and
Construction of Antenna Systems”
Let’s
Talk Shop, with Joe Marty
Radio servicemen will face increased
competition in the postwar market. Taking Radio
News will help. Here is some advice to make that come true: talk to
merchandisers, keep good accounts; be judicious; get up early; drink plain
water; say your prayers . . .
F. Earle Clark, “Quartz Crystals Today and Tomorrow”
Rufus P. Turner, Consulting Engineer, Radio News, “An Amplifier-Type Vibrating-Reed Frequency Meter”
Alfred A. Ghirardi, “Practical Radio Course, Part 37”
Ghirardi covers the series-padder method of tracking the oscillator to the
various preselector tuning circuits in present day superheterodyne receivers.
William Maron, “Generating RF at 600 m.C.” Several good VHF
generators, etc.
Gerald F. J. Tyne, “The Saga of the Vacuum Tube, Part 19:
Covering Developments in England from 1911 through WWI” Well, this’ll take a
while to reach 1945.
Books
The paper reviews Television Programming and Production by Richard Hubbell, dutifully; and Waldemar
Kaempffert, Science Today and Tomorrow,
which it actually enjoyed.
Dorothy Holloway, “China Looks Ahead in Radio” General
Chiang has personally intervened to see that China’s radio future is very
America-like. America is invited to help.
C. H. Harrison, “Modernising International Telegraphic
Communication” He wants to modernise the international tariff system, which
presumably will mean something to international telegraphists.
John Latimer, “All-Feminine Service Shop” Adirondack Radio
Service of Harrisville, New York, has an all-feminine shift. Imagine that, says the paper.
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