Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada
Dear Father:
Thank you for stepping in with the Junior College. I return my completed application for a year's medical leave enclosed, and make pious offering to the gods that someday my mail will follow me here to my bungalow by the sea. I also enclose Polaroids of our spacious new home for the impatient, who know who they are. It turns out that the squadron will remain on Okinawa, with only the advanced detachment here. but that still gives us some domestic security for the next year or so, fingers crossed, salt tossed, wood knocked. You will see that we have plenty of space for events foreseen and not. Everyone around knows that one tempts the gods by talking about such things, but talk there is, to the point where people show me cribs and the like just, you know, matter of interest. Grr!
In the mean time, and while I still can, I have given the Goose a bit of a work out. Flying into this or that flyspeck island fifty feet above the drink will never get old, but there are lots of people to talk to and we cannot leave it all to Big Deng or we will lose face. The piracy/embargo/blockade situation is a precious chance to make friends and offer favours with Hong Kong shipowners, and they need to know who they owe. Which I tell them. And will continue to tell them while I can still fly!
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Time, 7 August 1950
Letters
Two people liked the article comparing the Kremlin leadership to a cruel, treacherous cat waiting to pounce. The third pointed out Time doesn't know anything about cats, which maybe undermines its argument that it knows something about the Kremlin. Time points out that the Kremlin is a special kind of cat that isn't like other cats. Bernard Yablin points out that if all the money we've given to the Koumintang was wasted, maybe we shouldn't send them more, like Time wants. A correspondent points out that GE can't have invented the electric alarm clock, being that Telechron has been making them for thirty years. Time apologises. Two people write to say that Fon Boardman
's list of boring "classics" is wrong because classics can't be boring. They can just seem boring when you're reading them. Everyone is confused about the plot of The Sheriff's Daughter, Time publishes Roland Usher's omitted list of the "irreducible minimum of important dates of modern European history," and Princeton alumni are very, very snooty for Princeton. (Just kidding, Princeton men!) Our Publisher writes to let us know that Time's senior correspondent for Asia isn't just a Koumintang bagman. He's also quite anti-communist.
National Affairs
Korea has been either promoted or demoted to a National Affair. War casualties so far are 1086 killed, wounded and missing.
"A Sense of Urgency" Time seems to want a "general mobilisation" and not the Administration's preferred "creeping mobilisation," arguing that the country is "preparing to make whatever sacrifice is necessary." On the other hand, Senator Taft doesn't want to authorise emergency powers for the President, because Senator Taft hates the President. Bernard Baruch, on the other hand, wants them before it is too late. Steel has offered "voluntary" rationing, in spite of signs of gray markets already. With $10.5 billion in war already and the President asking for only $5 billion in new taxes on an economy already in full swing, inflation is going to be a problem quickly unless there are price controls. In Time's telling, Baruch's push for strong rationing only failed to get out of a House committee by one vote, 9 to 10. Truman thinks that with the economy hurling along at a yearly production of goods and services of $267 billion, $107 billion more in 1949 dollars than in 1939, the country can take $5 billion in higher income taxes and still beat inflation with limited controls and some anti-hoarding and anti-extravagance lectures. 
But the whole notion of a "1949" or "constant dollar" tells you all you need to know about the unending growth in the cost of living in the last ten years!
But the whole notion of a "1949" or "constant dollar" tells you all you need to know about the unending growth in the cost of living in the last ten years!
"Command the Tide" Time catches up with the nation's spree of inflation-spurring extravagance and hoarding last week. Cigarettes, televisions, tires and gasoline are all up.
"Piece by Piece" The President's new defence bill adds 600,000 men to the armed forces (240,00 for the Army, 268,000 for the Navy, 137,000 for the Air Force. Don't ask me why the Navy gets the most when the Communists have no boats! Maybe it is because of the Marine Corps?) There will be $3.5 billion for planes, $2.6 billion for tanks, guns and ordnance, and also $4 billion to the European allies to buy more American guns. The Air Force meanwhile is promising $4.4 billion to some hundred manufacturers, telling them to get cracking now and not to wait for contracts. The Arm is going to call up 4 of 27 2/3 National Guard divisions and now wants 100,000 Selective Service draftees, up from 20,000. It is also extending enlistments wholesale. The Navy is going to spend a huge chunk of money on two atomic submarines, and raise the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions to full strength. The Defence Department is going to hire 237,000 new employees, partly to replace the 171,00 that Secretary Johnson fired last year in his economy drive. Some $600 million will be spent on strategic materials, including refurbishing artificial rubber plants. The Coast Guard will get money for port control, especially for "Trojan ships" carrying atomic bombs or "bacteriological weapons." That's pretty serious news for us, since I don't think the Coast Guard would ignore a hold full of passengers just because they weren't holding big pieces of plutonium and getting ready to bang them together! Speaking of sort of which, the Army wants to go back to using live ammunition for training.
"Hold Up a Minute" Senator Paul Douglas is so dreamy. Also, everyone is arguing about the strategic stockpile reserve, because it is too small, too expense, and has too much American stuff in it. Everyone agrees that everyone else is to blame. Also, the FBI arrested two more atom spies, but it is a tiny little story at the bottom of the page (with a para over, but still down at the bottom.) Abraham Brothman has been arrested before, but his secretary is new to the FBI, and very well dressed for her arrest!
Manners and Morals reports on coffin manufacturer Lemuel R. Crockett's lecture to the University of Chicago's Small Businessmen's Seminar on the subject of Government controls. Or maybe it wasn't, because Time talked to him on a smoke break, where he explained about how war controls cut into the range of coffins he can make, which is "tough on all of us." Not under Manners and Morals but something or other is Time tut-tutting because there are 430 Russian citizens registered with the Soviet embassies and TASS in America, but only 113 Americans in Russia. Too many over here? Not enough over there? I don't know, but the title ("Red Noses") makes it seem like it's all embarrassing. I just don't know why! And the official hangman of the occupation has died. Master Sergeant John C. Woods hanged some 300 people, including Julius Streicher, but lately took to carrying two loaded .45s around with him just in case, and accusing the cafeteria staff of trying to poison him. So the army transferred him to Einwetok, where he died last week of "accidental electrocution." Also not under Manners and Morals but should be, extracts from house ads in Washington advertising real estate that's outside of atom bomb range.
Oh, and the Moscow press is reporting that Selective Service call-ups are fleeing in droves, even though one draft official in Chicago says that "Not one in a hundred of these guys is ducking," which shows that Communism is awful. (Early reports said it was 23%, but that's because the call-ups had already volunteered. The Arkansas gubernatorial election gets a story, because it is news and pushes Russell Long's re-election in Louisiana down the page. I don't think Time likes Long.
War in Asia
. . . But Korea also gets its own section. "We Must Hold" is a half-page story on the fight for the "Pusan perimeter," the defensive line around the southwestern Korean ferry port of Pusan. This is the fallback position after the Americans and the South Koreans failed to hold a line to the west coast. General Walker received 2nd Infantry Division and part of the 1st Marines this week, and will have five or six US divisions by next week to hold the 100 mile perimeter into which 1st Cavalry and 24th Infantry . Meanwhile, Kochang on the central front, the rail stop of Kumchon on the Taejon-Taegu railroad, and Chinju on the south coast all fell. First Cavalry's General Hobart Gay quoted Ferdinand Foch about attacking, attacked, and then was driven back ten miles. The Air Force is using its B-29s for "tactical interdiction," which has them upset, but it's really the North Koreans' fault for not building more war industry. Correspondents were invited along for an attack on one of the ones they do have, a heavy chemicals plant at Hungnan that makes explosives precursors.
Bombing on radar through heavy overcast, the Far East Air Force blew up 30% of the plant area. No more glycerine, nitric and sulphuric acid for you! General MacArthur visited the peninsula to see the fighting and buck up the Korean cabinet (did you know that Korea has a prime minister named Sung Mo? Me either!). Then he flew back to Tokyo and gave a speech to the press about victory being inevitable. Somewhat closer to the front, an unnamed US infantry captain recorded a message for his wife that was replayed on CBS, which is sweet.
Bombing on radar through heavy overcast, the Far East Air Force blew up 30% of the plant area. No more glycerine, nitric and sulphuric acid for you! General MacArthur visited the peninsula to see the fighting and buck up the Korean cabinet (did you know that Korea has a prime minister named Sung Mo? Me either!). Then he flew back to Tokyo and gave a speech to the press about victory being inevitable. Somewhat closer to the front, an unnamed US infantry captain recorded a message for his wife that was replayed on CBS, which is sweet.
"Firm Promises" The Security Council has promised 27,000 men to support the US in Korea, with the Commonwealth making up 19,000 of that and Turkey and Siam another 8500. This sort of thing is a bit of a problem for the Russians, who have decided to drop their boycott of the Security Council so they can get back to vetoing things.
"Man on the Dike" What's the most important thing about the Korean War? Giving the Koumintang money! John Osborne flew into Taipei this week to find out how much money we should send and which denominations --I mean, for what. Douglas MacArthur and Vice Admiral Struble tagged along with Time, because they know about guns and boats, which is very useful. Did you know that Formosa has a governor, named K. C. Wu? Me either? (Although Reggie knows all about him and gave me the full rundown, which makes it seem less silly.) Ahem. Aside from that, it's the usual Time special pleading about how Formosa needs buckets of money or the Communists will win. Why, just last week they tried to take the island of Taitan, just off Amoy in Fujian province, and almost succeeded. That brought the Nationalist Air Force out in strength after a month's grounding to strafe the "Red invasion" fleet and sink "150 vessels." The fact that there is no Red invasion fleet and that these were just a bunch of junks in the coasting trade doesn't seem to register. Meanwhile, US advisors who are not Reggie are convinced that a Red air fleet is about to start bombing Formosa's ports and industries. And so it is time to tell us the life story of Wu Kuo-cheng, childhood friend of Premier Chou Enlai, Anglican, and son-in-law of one of the old Republic's richest men.
"The Other Side of the Curtain" The Vatican says that twelve thousand Catholic priests have been killed, deported or jailed behind the Iron Curtain since 1945. In other news, the Japanese are talking about rearming, while one reason the Germans are being allowed to keep more of their stell industry is that, says the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "We have learned at Seoul and Taejung that there are two few tanks and guns, and the steel for them is now to be supplied by Germans . . . People beyond our borders are more and more coming to understand how little the Western World can accord the division into victors and vanquished." Time reports that the Russians have 275,000 ground troops in Germany. They are in "tiptop shape" and "rigidly disciplined," and have lots of tanks, about 4400 in Germany alone. There are about 20 divisions, half of them armour, organised into five armies. "Most" of the tanks are T-34/85s. The Russians are also backed up by the East German "People's Police," which, Time implies, is an army in all but name. They also outnumber the West in the air, with 750 jet and piston fighters, plus attack and dive bombers in "impressive force." Against this, the Western Allies have three French divisions, two British and one under-strength American division. The US is outnumbered by Soviet aircraft 15-1, which seems like a strange way of totalling up the odds given the whole RAF, but I'm not the kind of master strategist who works at Time, thank Heavens! Also, in Belgium there is rioting against the king in the streets of Brussels, and he has confirmed that he will abdicate in September of next year when his son turns 21.
"Short of Requirements" Speaking of the RAF, the British are also getting into the "preparedness" business. The defence budget is up £100 million, bringing it to £880 million, about one quarter of the entire budget. The new spending will cover a reserve of jet fighters, reconditioning the army's 6000 tanks, equipping the Royal Navy with ant-submarine weapons, more antitank and antiaircraft guns, and radar predictors. The British armed forces have 827,000 personnel, but they are very widely scattered, and the government hopes to raise the home army to 400,000. (Besides the reserve of 4 million WWII veterans.) Churchill has been having enormous fun replaying all of his old hits. Apparently forty thousand Soviet tanks will sweep across northern Germany and down the Channel coast, clearing the way for rocket forces and masses of Red planes to level Britain, not to mention atomic bombs.
Meanwhile again, the Admiralty is putting the Far East fleet of one light fleet carrier, three cruisers and sixteen destroyers and frigates on a war footing by calling up 1100 reservists including 50 Navy pilots, and bringing a 13,000t carrier out of mothballs. I don't know where this leaves any previous plans to settle Nationalist pirates' hash.
In Guatemala, the twenty-eighth attempted coup against President Arevalo has failed, while summer in Canada involves eight colourful fish stories and one outlandish Quebec Catholic one. In Mexico, since American and Mexican authorities turned from shooting cattle to vaccinating them, the uncontrolled hoof-and-mouth epidemic in central Mexico has come under control, though not before 23 members of cattle-shooting squads had been killed in ambushes. And Cuba is trying to export baseball players to America.
Business
The lead story is all about steel and controls. I can't summarise it because it doesn't go anywhere. Everyone is worried about running out of steel, but no-one can agree about what to do about it. The industry is especially keen about not increasing production capacity, which would leave the industry overbuilt in normal times (they argue). The aviation industry is also on a tear.
Time still hates Charles Brannan and his price supports.
"A Norseman Named Leif" That would be Major General Lief Sverdrup, who built airfields in the South Pacific during the war, and is now building the Arnold Engineering Development Centre for the Air Force in Tullahoma, Tennessee. For some reason, this qualifies him for a short profile. More timely than Walt Whitman, I guess. (See below.) Also in for a profile, American Export Lines.
"Just in Case" The Manhattan banks have joined in to microfilm all their records and find a place to store them in a non-atomic-bombable location. They won't be moving their securities, notes and valuables, because they are stored in vaults five stories deep in Manhattan bedrock, bombproof.
The latest in post-devaluation import news are Germany's Volkswagen, poised to be a hit in America in spite of being Hitler's favourite car, and Japanese rayon and cotton, cutlery and cheap bicycles, toys and knick knacks, which are flooding markets from India to America.
Everyone is making big profits, possibly including Ford, which doesn't report its profits.
Science, Medicine, Education
"For Range" The WAC Corporal tests off Florida are now tipping over and going for range deliberately. Firing off from the launching rocket at 51,000ft and 1700mph, the latest successful test involved reaching [Classified] speed and [Classified] range. Perhaps guessing that that didn't make for much of a story, an "informed observer" told the press that the WAC Corporal hit 5000mph.
"The House on 91st Street" Belongs to Reeves Instruments, which is responsible for rocket "test flights" conducted entirely on an analogue computer. Project Cyclone has been running these and related but still secret computer "tests" since 1946. The Office of Naval Research has decided that it is time to brief the press on some of the details, so Time went and had a look at the large room where the tests are run. Time tells us it is large and filled with tall, many-knobbed cabinets full of electronic apparatus. Reeves has also been working on the hydrodynamics of new submarines and flutter in aircraft wings.
"Death Sand" Remember back in 1945 when the Smyth Report warned that the fission products from a 100,000 kw chain-reacting atomic pile might render "a large area uninhabitable?" Since then, no-one has mentioned these possible radiological weapons, says Louis Ridenour. Back in 1948, Hans Thirring, an Austrian physicist, seems to have worked out that they would be quite dangerous, and Ridenour uses Thirring's math to show that Hanford has produced enough to contaminate 44 square miles of territory with enough radioactive material to administer a fatal dose in ten days. He didn't work out how it would be distributed, but Ridenour thinks that the fact that no-one has published on the subject in America means that we are working away at it. 
"Medics in Arms" The Army needs thousands of doctors and nurses in Korea due to the unfortunate trend of science treating dysentery, malaria and simple bleeding, so that casualties live to see a doctor. Meanwhile, another of those cranky medical school doctors who complain about medical school complained that university isn't teaching enough of that cultural stuff to doctors and they should just get rid of "premed" and stuff the doctors-to-be with culture instead. Works for me!
More pharmacists are dealing barbiturates under the counter these days. And at one pharmacy in Nebraska, sulfas and abortion drugs, too! Since it turns out according to one study that the cost of doctoring isn't going up as fast as the cost of living, all these black market patients could just go see a doctor instead. (How's that for working in a story without wasting time writing out the headline?)
"Paths of Glory" Schoolteacher Estell M. Darrah's annual poll of personal heroes, asked of children aged 12--14 finds that today's teenagers like stars and comic characters. Shocking! (They used to like famous historical persons. Now only 33% of them do, and most of the boys like FDR! Shudder! Something about New England prep schools. Non-sarcastic shudder!
Radio and Television, Press, Art, People
Bars and restaurants are buying lots of teevees, just like we've been hearing everywhere since 1945. A lowdown murdering crook named Eddie Sadowski was found out after he was featured on NBC's Wanted, and blasted out of his flop house hiding place by the homicide squad.
"Rising Toll" Five weeks into the Korean War, the press casualty roll continues to grow, with Gerrassimos Gigantes, a Hearst/London Observer/Radio Athens correspondent ambushed, wounded and capture, while four war correspondents (James O. Supple, Albert Hinton, Stephen Simons and Maximilien Philonenko) went down with a C-47 that crashed in the Sea of Japan. At least SCAP still isn't imposing press censorship.
An outlandish chariot race in Rome pits teams sponsored by different newspapers against each other. Al Capp and Ham (Joe Palooka) are feuding, which is why L'il Abner disappeared from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the paper tells anxious fans. Which is something they could have said before Time got into the act! A veteran evacuated from Japan with a shattered ankle has been caught out making up a story about it being a combat wound. The real scandal is that only one of four newspapers checked the story before running it. It's time for Walt Whitman to have a profile in Time!
People are very upset that the Tate Gallery bought Stanley Spencer's Resurrection as this year's Chantrey Trust acquisition. Winston Churchill is especially upset. In Italy, brickmaking magnate Giuseppe Verzocchi commissioned a whole show of 72 works by contemporary Italian artists incorporating "the virtues of work" and also a brick. And Los Angeles artist Howard Warshaw has captured the true spirit of Los Angeles with a series of (abstract) paintings about traffic accidents. Broken Figure and Traffic Signal. Brr!
Errol Flynn wants his alimony to Lili Damita reduced because he can't afford it any more. Ruth Marx wants $15,000 lump sum to settle alimony with Groucho. J. Leslie Younghusband is getting divorced from his fifth wife, who would be Mary the dancer if you remember 1937 (I do! I don't remember much news from 1937, but I remember that!) Admiral Nimitz is the UN peace envoy to Kashmir, Louis Denfield
is running for the Republican nomination as governor of Massachusetts, Jean Simmons plays cricket for Pinewood Studios, Randolph Churchill will report on the Korean war for The Daily Telegraph. Charles Coburn visited Coney Island to be nostalgic about the summer of '97, when he worked there as a bike courier. Hewlett Johnson makes the page somehow, and several politicians are off to National Guard manoeuvres. William Saroyan and Milton Berle are writing things. David Niven is being written about and George Bernard Shaw and Erskine Caldwell wrote things in the old days. Eric Johnston says that Stalin won't start a war because old men don't start wars. Sitting Bull's great grandniece is glad that Indians are starting to get a fair shake in the movies. Gloria De Haven, Ray Middleton and Mary Martin are in the page somehow.
Bette Davis and Louis Sobol have married. Paul Raymond Mallon has died, three years after retiring. So are Mary Astor Paul Allez, William George Hellis, Arthur Ungar, Louis Edgar Fairchild and Austin Lathrop.
The New Pictures
Mystery Street is a "low budget melodrama" told with such "taste and craftmanship" that it is "just about perfect." I think Time liked it! Our Very Own is "the most piercing din of twanging heartstrings" since another movie Time didn't like. And 711 Ocean Drive is exploitative trash, although Time did like the radios and amplifiers that illegal betting operations use to transmit information from the race tracks. Peggy is a waste of Technicolor, except for some footage of the Tournament of Roses at the end.
Books
Frank Mlakar tells the tale of Slovenian immigrant Osip Princevich, who travels to America and has a very psychological time with repression here and beatings there. Bernard O'Donnell's the Old Bailey and Its Trials is about the old days, when times were rotten. (Not my joke.) E. C. Bentley's Elephant's Work is the mystery writer's attempt to branch out into thrillers. It isn't very thrilling. Two collections of American short stories, one edited for Houghton Mifflin by Martha Foley and one from The Saturday Evening Post are all about America. Time invents "muddy-brow" for Foley. That's when highbrow mixes with middlebrow.
Aviation Week, 7 August 1950
Industry Observer reports that the Pratt and Whitney T2 and GE Turbodyne are potential competition for the Allison T-40. Fairchild Stratos and Hamilton Standard are trying to get into the air-conditioning-for-jet-fighters racket. The J48 is going into the F-94C. (That's code for Pratt and Whitney's made a sale.) Martin is pushing ahead with its 4-0-4. Sikorsky has sold some helicopters under the Navy's shipboard helicopter programme. The RCMP is buying some helicopters, while Hamilton Standard is working on the largest propeller ever, beyond 20ft in diameter. Air Materiel Command has an automatic release parachute to save aircrew who black out for lack of oxygen after bailing out at high altitudes. The Australians now want to build the new Hawker P. 1081 swept-wing fighter instead of the P. 1052 they originally set their sights on. The Senate has finally come round to approving the consolidation of the Air Force's electronics laboratories at Rome AFB.
"Procurement Goal Pushed to $7 Billion" Time has it first, but apart from details of money to be spent, we learn that the Air Force is now targeting a 69 Group air force (not counting the National Guard), which is bigger and better than a 70 Group air force because the planes are better, while the Navy is now aiming at 10 big carriers. This will amount to 4300 aircraft.
"Britain Ups Aircraft Production" The RAF is to get "the lion's share" of new spending, which will be spent on more Vampires and more Meteors. The Government assures everyone that the shadow factory scheme is still in place if needed, guided missile research is "in a good way," that reconditioning stored tanks is only behind held back by shortages in the sheet metal industry, and that Navy deficiencies are being made good in jig time.
"Aircraft Re-Hiring Starts Slowly" There's only so many people they can hire. This story, though, onlyl begins after an introductory section quoting various scientific luninaries like Vannevar Bush on the theme of America's attempted 'scientific suicide," when it cut the size of the research establishments before the war. Presumably this will now be addressed by vast forced drafts of science students.
"How Jet Planes Survive Battle Damage" Now that a few jet planes have suffered battle damage, it is time to look at pictures and ascertain how jet fighters, by which we mean some F-80s, got shot and didn't fall down. The North Koreans are apparently setting "cable traps" by stringing cables between mountain tops and luring F-80s into them, or something, and they slice off the wingtip fuel tanks. This led to the loss of two fighters, while a third took a cannon shell that entered a burner, without knocking the plane down. More to follow when the censor lets us!
"Low Tension System Gains Favour" American has spent a million bucks on Bendix Scintilla low tension spark plugs. Scintilla writes in with an entire advertorial that explains in detail just how awesome it is. Also in company press releases disguised as news, Redifon of England will make Dehmel simulators.
New Aviation Products reports on the Aero Cell telescopic refueller developed by Wattpar of New York, Wells All-Steel Product's "Big Plane Aid," which is just a crane for moving larger fuselages around in places where they have to do it, Nutt-Shel Corporation's lightweight nutplate, and Inter-Lakes Engineering's Dupligraph, which replaces templates for checking concavity readings in forming dies.
Aviation World News checks in with Air India, which has simplified maintenance with a work dock. New scaffolding is big news!
"Newer Look: British Rework of Old Designs Gives New Types at Minimum Cost" The British excuse for building more Meteors and Vampires is that they are better and newer, which leads into the VC 3, which is a Vickers attempt to squeeze more sales out of the Viking. Surely at some point someone is going to replace their DC-3s! Also, Bulgaria has an airline now with Soviet aid
An article on the turboprop installation on the XP5Y-1, which is powered by the Allison XT-40, still the Great White Hope of the American industry. There's obviously a lot to be done with a turbine engine on a flying boat in terms of hanging accessories out over the water, so that's interesting enough. Or would be if flying boats have a future. (Husband says no.)
"Swivel Gear Interest Quickens" Husband says I don't have to read this. Love that man of mine! Buried at the bottom is news of more Zero Reader sales, which is important, and page over is the Avro Orenda's flight check in a testbed Lancaster, the "submerged" antennas on the Comet, and a new fire-resistant hydraulic fluid, which would be bigger news if there weren't fire-resistant hydraulic fluids all the time, all with the caveat that they aren't really good hydraulic fluid if they're fireproof, and vice versa. (This one kills seals.) If you're wondering, "submerged" antenna means that they are buried in a "dielectric material" making up the nosewheel doors. Clever. Other antenna are in underside fillets. "Dielectric" in this case means plastic materials which have been the coming thing in aeronautics for a while on account of being light and easily shaped into aerodynamic surfaces, but tending to be a bit fragile. The Comet is very light all around, but if anyone knows how to do that, it is the maker of the Mosquito. (Says husband, always the voice of caution: Warplanes and airliners are different.)
David A. Anderton, "Copter Analysis" Frank Piasecki drops into the ASME session on helicopters to explain what people are doing wrong on helicopters. It's long, but I think can be summarised as not enough attention to detail.
Avionics goes down the advertorial road by featuring an "article" about a Bendix power supply monitor. It is small and light and does good things like warn of ac power supply failure and dc low voltage, but this is a New Aviation Product, not journalism. Unlike three pages of new Air Force contracts in fine print, following.
The Air Transport section has some unusually interesting stuff, including an airlines push for bargain rates to beat back the railroads and a shortage of navigators limiting the Pacific airlift. And people are working on a "rooftop heliport" in Los Angeles. Again. Ignore all the times that they've failed before, and you can still make money off the rubes.
Editorial is replaced by What's New in Congress as Robert H. Wood takes a long-overdue vacation somewhere far away from the sound of the train whistle blowing.
Time, 14 August 1950
Letters
Ted Sipe of Columbus is upset at General Wainwright's suggestion that Americans commit counter-atrocities in Korea. Geraldine Fitch of Leonia, N.J. is also upset, but by "our effrontery now in bottling up Chiang. . . " Geraldine points out that Chiang has very good reason to be upset at America, but he will forgive us if we just line up behind him. Two people in Iowa --Iowa!!!-- who think Time is bad for making fun of Dianetics lead off six letters pro and con-Dianetics and one from founder L. Ron Hubbard. Dianetics is quite the thing, all of a sudden. Sigmund Spaeth defends Dimitri Tiomkin to Time.
National Affairs
"August Mood" As of 1 August, US casualties in Korea are 661 dead, 2971 wounded, 3000 missing. No wonder there was "no parade" when the 20th Battalion of the Marine Corps reserve left Oklahoma City last week. Because of course the depot of the 20th Marines is in Oklahoma. But . . . The American mood is that no-one is excited about the Korean War, but they are upset at the lack of preparation and are "peevish" about "remembered brags." Opinion about the atom bomb is divided. On the one hand, Heaven bless the bomb, because otherwise it would be all out war by now. On the other, if it is going to be one brushfire after another until the Russians are ready for the "real war," maybe we should just drop the bomb on Moscow and get it over with. People are impressed at the Communists for fighting so hard and upset that foreigners all want to be Communists. Time also thinks that they're "peevish" at the Administration, bad news for November.
"Call Out the Marines" Korea is the perfect war for the Marines, it turns out. Why? Maybe because it's next to the water? No, that won't do. Because the Marines have called out their entire 80,000 strong voluntary reserve, raising the Corp's strength to 200,000, compared to the Army's pre-July 834,000, which is only going to increase to a million by year's end by virtue of "dipping into" its own voluntary reserve, which is tiny. These are pretty incredible numbers that make me wish that some good accountant would take a look at military budgets. (For example, we learned last week that the British have a defence budget a fifth the American with the emergency supplementary budget, but an enrolled strength of close to half. The additional money will pay for refurbishing 6000 tanks, while America must dig into a supplementary defence bill equal to the entire British defence budget to order new tanks. Meanwhile, the Marine Corps, set to practically disappear under Louis Johnson's reforms is suddenly a fifth the strength of the entire army. RONNIE DOESN'T GET IT.)
"Waiting for September" Did you know that Tom Dewey hasn't gone away? In fact, he's back in the press complaining that General Lucius Clay, who is in charge of New York state's civil defence, is calling Albany to let them know that they shouldn't cross up federal plans for New York civil defence that won't exist before September. This upsets Dewey, who wants to make atomic defence plans right now. California is making atomic defence plans. Townspeople in Maine are making plans. Time goes on to explain how the Chambers of Commerce in every big American town is convinced that Joe Stalin has an atom bomb just for them. He's going to blow up the brains of Harvard, the aircraft plants of Los Angeles. Chicago wants to tattoo its citizens with their blood type "underneath their armpits because arms might be blown off." Call me morbid, but I don't think that someone who has had their arms blown off is going to get a blood transfusion after the Great Radiological Attack of '53. Meanwhile, St. Louis is refurbishing some "beer storage caves" as a municipal bomb shelter, while Boston has got some RFC money to dig a garage underneath Boston Common because, in the event of an atomic attack, it would be a great bomb shelter. New York hears this, and sees it $40 million for "civilian shelters." None of this counts as actually getting ready for an attack as such, but Stuart Symington promises a plan by September.
"The Last Word" So MacArthur went to Formosa last week to talk to Chiang. The question on everyone's mind is, what did he say? The White House wants to know! An "informed observer" at SCAP scurried down to tell some reporters that MacArthur said that America ought to back anti-communists all over Asia, including Formosa and "the British in Hong Kong." So MacArthur isn't offering to back Nationalist pirates. That's good!
"A Fee for Franco" "Most Americans" don't like Franco, Time points out. Well, fine, but we need him in case of Communism for some reason ("bases," they say), so naturally we have to give him a cool hundred million for this and that, with Pat McCarren looking on. McCarren still wants to cut Franco into the ECA money spring. There's not votes for that in the Senate, so here's walking around money instead. The State Department is livid. Even Britain didn't get its money on such easy terms!
"Old Rinds and Used Grounds" A long, long story trailing off into complete incoherence, which is fair enough, because, as Congressman Earl Michener shouted, "There is confusion on the floor!" The confusion that confused Congressman Earl was over the GOP and the Administration handing each other price and possibly wage controls like the tar baby. Only I guess my analogy is wrong because the tar baby sticks, and price and wage controls don't stick to no one no how. On the money side, Congress ended up wrapping all Government spending for the entire year into a single $34 billion(!) appropriation bill, beating back "a hundred amendments," including Paul Douglas' "brave battle against . . pork barrel items." Leaving aside fixed charges like interest on the $247 billion national debt(!), the President has $11.6 b illion for guns and still no word on price (and possibly wage) controls.
"Gentleman from Georgia" That's either William Lorenzo Patterson, "well-known and voluble mouthpiece of the Communist Party" or Congressman Henderson Lanham, who was chairing a House Committee hearing from Patterson until Lanham abandoned the chair and charged Patterson at the witness seat. What would have happened next given that Lanham is 62 and that Patterson was a longshoreman before he became a lawyer. Unfortunately (I think), we'll never know because two Capitol policemen were able to wrestle Lanham down and return him to his chair, where he adjourned the meeting.
"When the Time is Ripe" Time has been waiting for years to get rid of that pesky Second Amendment protection for Communists saying Communist things, and now Judge Learned Hand has said the day is nigh by upholding the Smith Act and Judge Medina's decision to fine the leadership of the US Communist Party and send them to jail. Time is confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the decision and officially find that the Constitution doesn't protect Communists talking Communistically. Speaking of which, Harry Bridges some more, while Paul Robeson has had his passport revoked because he might say bad things about America if he got abroad. Now he has to stay in the country he's called "fascist, imperialist and war-mongering." Serves him right! I don't know, Time. Do you even read what you write? 
Also, various stories about Truman backing the new Democratic candidate for the Missouri Senate seat and having a pres conference. Americana reports that after a con-man calling hiimself F. Bam Morrison bilked Wetumka, Oklahoma of a good chunk of change by pretending to be the advance man of "Bohn's United Circus Shows," Wetumka decided to have a party anyway in place of imaginary circusses. They called it "Sucker Day." Also, a New York judge decides that a rich man has to pay for his daughter's college education out of alimony because that's what everyone in his circle does, someone held a bubble gum blowing contest (never mind what that means) and a rich man in Florida is paying for everyone's Sunday bus to church even though some people will take advantage to do their shopping.
"Target for the Night" Time reports on the B-29 crash at Fairfield-Suisan that cost the life of Brigadier General Robert Travis. According to Time, it was a "2400 mile training flight" with live bombs aboard and Travis was along to keep an eye on things. Strangely, the B-29 was carrying 20 "crew" for this training mission. Seven firefighters were killed when the "bombs" exploded, and 60 people in the adjacent trailer camp wounded. Some people say that it was actually an atom bomb, minus "physics package," on its way to the Far East.
Manners and Morals reports that Cora Carlyle, (an agony aunt in the Washington Post) has strong and very, very detailed opinions about how to get a man. It is nice that Time gives us an Americana and a Manners and Morals in the same issue, but except for "Suckers Day," I really don't feel like I got my money's worth.
War in Asia
"Battle for a Beachhead" A series of stories digs into the fighting around Pusan in Korea. There are now five US divisions (or parts of them) in Korea, including 24th, 25th, 2nd, 1st Cavalry, 1st Marine,with 60,000 men including supporting units. There are about 50,000 South Koreans in support, and 100,000 North Koreans attacking, with a draft class of 50,000 to call on and another 60,000 to 90,000 "attached to the Chinese Communist army in Manchuria." (This part is ambiguous because there are many ethnic Koreans in Manchuria and the Soviet Far East, so it's hard to say whether they are actually "Korean" troops, I am told.) The North Koreans are deemed "fully equipped," the Americans still have deficiencies, but more materiel is arriving daily. The South Koreans are "ill-equipped." General Gay of 1st Cavalry says that the Northerners are using "hordes of civilians armed only with sharpened sticks" to spearhead their advance. Some people say that Gay has told his men to shoot Korean refugees if they get in the way.
"Out of the Haystacks" Not only are the Marines suddenly a fifth or more the size of the Army, they have an air wing in Korea, flying Corsair fighter bombers, which are probably a good choice since they are a carrier plane and can fly off pretty short runways. The FEAF is still flying B-29 sorties against North Korean factories, all several of them, while F-51s and P-80s support the Marines. The North Koreans seem to have received more La-7s and Yak fighters from Russia.
"The First Team" This week's cover story is the Marine Corps and the commanding officer of 1st Marine Division, General Eddie Craig.
"On the Hill this Afternoon" Frank Gibney is eyewitness to fighting on the 4th Division front. First, the Reds attack and are beaten off with BAR and 75mm recoilless fire. Then an armoured column of two M8 armoured cars, five tanks and "truckloads of GIs" from 19th Infantry Regiment counterattack, only to bog down under heavy Red fire and fall back to a pass. North Koreans launch "Mansei" attacks, which are the Communist equivalent of Banzai charges, which break in front of "13 guns" manned by "GIs," which I mention because my darling husband points out, reading between the lines, 
(Hey! That's that's my job description!!!) that Gibney is saying that the Reds have reached the American gun line. That is Not Good, in army talk. On the bright side, everyone is happy that 90mm shaped charge rounds have arrived for the Pershings, giving them more antitank capability then they used to have, which isn't exactly a vote of confidence for the Pershing's gun, which really should overmatch the T-34s, given that even Romance majors know 90 is bigger than 85. Ahem. I may revise that in the next draft. Ahem. Also, the Red Chinese are supporting the Red Koreans, which is inexcusable, and Nehru says he doesn't like Western imperialism in Asia and is suggesting that there could be some kind of "peace" in "Korea" if America would only "negotiate" with "China." Putting everything in sneering quotation marks is fun!!!! People dying in a war that could be ended by negotiations if we listened to Nehru is not nearly as much fun. The painful dilemma is whether we should listen to Nehru. He really is too slick by half.
(Hey! That's that's my job description!!!) that Gibney is saying that the Reds have reached the American gun line. That is Not Good, in army talk. On the bright side, everyone is happy that 90mm shaped charge rounds have arrived for the Pershings, giving them more antitank capability then they used to have, which isn't exactly a vote of confidence for the Pershing's gun, which really should overmatch the T-34s, given that even Romance majors know 90 is bigger than 85. Ahem. I may revise that in the next draft. Ahem. Also, the Red Chinese are supporting the Red Koreans, which is inexcusable, and Nehru says he doesn't like Western imperialism in Asia and is suggesting that there could be some kind of "peace" in "Korea" if America would only "negotiate" with "China." Putting everything in sneering quotation marks is fun!!!! People dying in a war that could be ended by negotiations if we listened to Nehru is not nearly as much fun. The painful dilemma is whether we should listen to Nehru. He really is too slick by half.
At the UN, the return of the Soviets means blistering rhetorical battles between Jacob Malik (who was in a very suspiciously Communistic fender bender in Long Island the other day) and Sir Gladwyn Jebb, and a promise of 5000 men from the Philippines. (The Huks are just going to have to cool it with the whole revolution thing for a few years.)
Foreign News
"Frightening Truth"
The frightening truth is that the Russians "can roll through Western Europe like a colour guard crossing a parade ground." Time counts 175 divisions, 25,000 tanks and 19,000 warplanes rip-roaring to go, versus a "a pathetic collection" of 12 to 15 Western divisions on guard duty from Germany down to Italy.
Britain has a total of five divisions, but one is in Malaya and two are in garrison duties around the Empire. The army is also underpaid, but Labour can't grant a pay increase without "making trade unionists jealous." The government promises that rearmament won't compromise the economic programme. The Economist is skeptical that it will be enough. (I almost miss being able to watch The Economist jump and sprint and dodge through the Maze of Sharp Pointy Spiky Trap-py The Economist Bromides and Velleities to get to where it needs to be to suddenly talk about how the Government always had to have been spending more on guns.)
France has a 700,000 man army, but the best of it is in Indo-China. A three year, $5.7 billion rearmament programme will give it a 15 division army, although it will be full of Communists and demoralised, because you know those Latins. The Dutch plan for an army of 3 divisions of Indonesian veterans. Belgium has one division, and will raise two or three as soon as the whole "politics" thing is settled there, which will be any day now. Italy and Denmark are also spending some money on this and that.
Moving on to things that have to be baldly stated as otherwise you would have to make an argument, and you would just look ridiculous, "Rearming Germany . . . is obviously indispensable . . ." This is a great way of introducing the idea that Franco has to be brought in because of BASES! America also has to send more divisions to Europe. And if you ask why, considering the size of European armies in the distant past of five years ago and its current population of 275 million wealthy people, it is because of economic reconstruction, which would be threatened if the Europeans had to make guns, instead of buying them from America with American money. And it's at this point that I have to point out that, whatever the politics of all of this, this is GREAT news for the family with all our stock in the "electrical industry," as Uncle George put it, which is so tied up after years of wartime investment in companies that, after all, make guns. Even tanks, those great hunks of moving steel, are acquiring "electronics," is the word from the industry. So the more Europeans buy more American guns, or Americans buy American guns to give out to other people, the more money we make. 
At this point, sort of as a footnote on my long and snarky summary, much as Time footnotes it, we have to register the fact that the Red Army's "175 divisions" is a tremendously misleading number, since Red Army divisions are smaller than anyone else's.
Meanwhile, Red Star has an editorial denouncing "blitzkrieg" as "bourgeois," and Princess Margaret is GASP seeing men. Whilst on a less scandalous scale of things, some Oxford undergraduates are in trouble, not so much for scaling the 73ft Martyr's Memorial, which is a nightly occurrence, as knocking off a cornice on the way down and attracting a policeman, which is not done, whereas the NHS really does provide false teeth and wigs, but not bath salts and vanishing cream, and that is funny. Either funny or not are Communists marching through Bonn singing anti-American lyrics to the Wacht am Rhein.
In this hemisphere, Canada is sending a brigade of infantry to join its destroyers and transport squadron in Korea, Colombia has "elected" a President under the state of siege law, Venezuela has had an earthquake, and a UN "commission for technical assistance" to Bolivia has decided that drinking is a worse social scourge than coca-chewing. Time is shocked by displays of public drunkenness. I could make a joke about just how energetic Bolivian festivals are, but I'd rather not answer questions about what does on at Stanford sorority parties. It wasn't me, officer. Honest!
Business
The stock market is coming back and the "wave of scare buying" is ebbing. Steel blah blah. Rubber blah blah. Charles Brannan says that rising commodity prices are due to speculators, so Time has to disagree or admit that it doesn't hate Charles Brannan. Which it does. (I think if you combined Brannan and Paul Douglas, you would have a place that Time literally could not see.) Also, people are talking about an excess profits tax to balance cuts in "nonessential" government spending. France has agreed on a payment deal so it can buy American cigarette paper, and fashionable French women are as happy as R. J. Reynolds.
"Road Block?" Remember how the railroads were being strangled by the lack of rail cars and locomotives, and then how they were financially doomed by their over-capacity? Now that steel is short (in spite of being 11 million tons over wartime highs), we're back to being short of railcar capacity to support our growing economy.
On the financial side, Mutual Insurance gets a profile, and Larry Giannini is beating retreat from his Transamerica ad. Seems as though if you're told by regulators that you can't do it, and you go ahead and do it, that's wrong now.
Science, Medicine
"Discovery in the Tundra" Dr. V. Ben Meen (which is a real name) of the Royal Ontario Museum of Geology, has found a large meteor crater in northern Quebec and named it Chubb Crater after the "sharp-eyed prospector" who actually found it. I'm confused.
"Discovery in a Cellar" Physics hopes for a "unified theory" that explains how electromagnetism and gravity work together. Last week, Discovery reported that, going through Oliver Heaviside's old papers, they had found that old Ollie had a "unified theory" of his own. Being that I was reading this across the hall from the hubby, who was grounded because he'd flown too much that week (this is an Air Force thing), I asked him, and got the capsule biography of the super-eccentric old British physicist and electrician and mathematician from the horse's mouth. Look him up in your Funk and Wagnall, because he was just the bomb! Anyway, late in life after getting tired of inventing new math and believing in fairies, he went down to his basement and promised not to come up until he'd written a three volume treatise on electricity and magnetism. The wife was good with that, so when it looked like he was going to be done before he died --which is just not done when you're an eccentric genius and also the wife doesn't like you underfoot for see reason above-- he decided to make volume 3 something else. Then he died before he got done, and the whole was swept up and first put in his papers at the museum, and then evacuated to a cave in Wales where they got all wet, which led someone to reconstruct them before it was too late, and it turns out that Heaviside decided that a complete treatise needed a complete theory of the universe and it involves some crackpot stuff about "pushing gravity." Too bad, but then this is the Oliver who believed in fairies, not the one who invented operators. (I don't know what those are, but writing it like that makes me look like I do.)
"Prepare for the Worst" Boston orthopedist Dr. Charles Bradford proposes a unified armed forces medical service directly under the Department of Defence to economise on doctors and make more doctors available to give blood transfusions to armless Chicagoans and the like. Doctors being a crucial strategic resource, you see.
"The Geography of Cancer" We don't know what causes cancer, but we do know that distribution of kinds of cancer differs widely around the world. Last week, 20 cancer experts from eleven nations, which doesn't sound like a lot to me, met in Oxford to discuss what they made of it. Dr. Harold Dorn of the National Institute of Health in America, points out that Coloured people get less skin cancer, more intimate cancers. Southerners get 50% more cancer than Northerners, almost entirely due to mouth cancer. Danes and the Swiss get more esophageal cancer than other countries. In Denmark it is concentrated in the hotelling trades, and Switzerland also has hotels. Coincidence? Rural Britons get more stomach cancer, Parsee women get three times as much breast cancer as intimate cancer, but the reverse is true of Hindu women. Javanese labourers in the rice fields of Sumatra get more liver cancer, their Chinese co-workers more stomach cancer. What do we make of all of this? That we have barely started to collect these kinds of statistics, and that only when we have them can we draw conclusions. So the conclusion is, more studies, more meetings.
"The Way Out" A report on New York City's new programme for rehabilitating the long-term disabled, some of whom have been in hospital for as many as ten years.
Art, Press, Radio and Television, People
Sculptor Daniel Chester French, responsible for the Lincoln Memorial among others, gets a show of his plaster miniatures in the Berkshire Museum. The Vatican is having a big show with a "religious art by Catholics around the world" theme. Archaeologists found another piece of the Winged Victory of Samothrace this summer. Unfortunately, it is a hand, and since the arm is still missing, it's probably just going into a display case.
"Be Back Possibly" Was AP deskman William R. Moore's message when he was sent to Korea three years ago to report on the US occupation. Last week, he went missing on his way to the front, so 40-year-old William R. Moore may, indeed, never come back from Korea. We wish Styles Bridges would go to Korea and never come back. If anyone can agree on anything, it is that it is the Army's fault for not introducing an official censors' office. Also, there are way too many Reds in Japan thanks to "American sponsored labour laws" that protect them from being fired for being Reds. Fortunately, everything is better now that the Tokyo papers have fired 476 journalists for being Communists or fellow travellers. "Some Japanese liberals" think that a dangerous precedent has been set, but they're all wet.
"Ears for the Voice" Just because Voice of America is broadcasting, doesn't mean anyone is listening. David Sarnoff of RCA has a helpful suggestion. We should build fifty million radio receivers pre-tuned to Voice and distribute them behind the Iron Curtain somehow. Good advice, radio manufacturing man!
Queen Elizabeth's fiftieth birthday was quite the party. Betty Hutton, Mrs. Henry Ford, Mrs. Winthrop Rockefeller, Gloria Swanson, Judy Garland and Errol Flynn are in the page for some reason. Jimmy Doolittle and Glenn Davis have volunteered for Korea if needed, while Charles F. Wilson of GM has volunteered to be a dollar-a-year man in Washington if he is needed. Glenn Taylor sounds like a bit of jerk, Stanley Marcus of Neiman-Marcus promises less "bust"next year. Good luck on that! And Queen Victoria's favourite painting, Derby Day, continues to be hidden in a stairwell at the British Museum because people still think it is tacky. Ferenc Navy, former prime minister of Hungary, has had his fourth and fifth child (twins) on his dairy farm near Washington. Saly Mayer, the Swiss manufacturer who saved 200,000 Jews, has died. So has Cardinal Lavitrano, Nina Boucicault and the Reverend Francis Dunlap Gamewell, "Hero of the Boxer Rebellion."
The New Pictures
Sunset Boulevard is a story of "Hollywood at its worst," told by "Hollywood at its best." Pardon me for going on. I was at a very strange showing at the home of a Koumintang luminary who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons. And that's how I came to see the movie of the year as soon as Time, in spite of being here on faraway Formosa.
Gloria Swanson is back after a nine year absence, playing a fading silent movie era star in a role that puts her up for an Oscar for the first time in a 37 year career. Time calls it a shocking and unconventional movie. Swanson's Norma Desmond is a neurotic and suicidal woman in her fifties, keeping the "hero" (a hack screenwriter played by William Holden) as her lover in a decaying mansion after he stumbles on like he's exploring darkest Africa instead of running from his creditors. Desmond is obsessed with making a comeback movie, but hasn't a hope, and it all spirals out of control. Kudos to Gloria Swanson with playing something that cuts so close, and kudos to Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder for trying to say something.
Ahem. I loved this movie. Moving on, Panic in the Streets is a movie about the New Orleans police searching for a pneumonic plague carrier who is also a murder accomplice. Time liked it, but not nearly as much as Sunset Boulevard.
Books
Aubrey Menen's The Backward Bride is a funny book about how a Sicilian bandit chief's son acquires some progressive ideas and has to be cured of them by the Sicilian simplicity of his wife and also their Sicilian wiles until he embraces his infant son, burns his books, and settles into peasant life. Time agrees with the sentiment but is unconvinced of the art. Me? There's a picture of the author, who is very handsome, but in a way that makes you want to punch him in the face. I think if you can make a face that handsome into a punching bag, you are as bad a man as the face suggests, and forget about looks being deceiving. Or maybe I hated the review that much. Elliott Paul's Springtime in Paris is, well, the book you could write if you spent a spring in Paris. Just take some pictures to get a feel, then sit down and let the cliches roll out. Francois Boyer's The Secret Game is more of a sketch of a book about children in Nazi Europe than a book. Nelson Bond's Lancelot Biggs: Spaceman is collection of Bond's funny stories that I think Time might have taken seriously? Louise Stintorf's White Witch Doctor is supposed to be a novel but is, at best, a memoir of a person that only exists in the author's head. Probably because even in the Time review you can see she was probably in a Boston marriage with her native nurse, and you can't spell that stuff out if you're writing for the Church lady set, just hint, hint, hint.
Aviation Week, 14 August 1950
News Digest reports that the industry is rolling in the clover. Industry Observer reports that the Germans are reporting that the Russians are testing a supersonic rocket fighter by Yakovlev, the Yak-21. The assault freighter competition will finally go ahead this week. The Chase YC-122 has been dropped from the competition between the Northrop, Fairchild and Chase XC-123. NACA doesn't like rocket-jet tip propeller helicopters because they are even more insane than other --no, it says here because they can't autorotate to a landing at a safe descent speed. Canada's CF-100 is to be called a "Canuck" because Canadians don't go to New Hampshire. (Husband's joke. He went to the Institute,so he knows where New Hampshire is.) The USAF is building airfields for B-36s in Britain. They're inland because that's important. Otherwise those Red rockets from the other side of the Channel can hit them. Egypt wants to build Vampires in their own factory, and Piasecki delivered its first HRP-2 flying bananas to the Marines, which makes sense because they are monkeys.
"How Industry Gears for Increased Output" Apparently they put ads in the newspapers and then hire qualified applicants. News! The Air National Guard is being strengthened and he industry hopes that there will be a "full-scale" government programme to support new prototype airliners.
From Korea comes news that the air force hasn't forgotten how to build airstrips out of pierced steel plate. I forgive you for never once wondering if it had.
"Jetliner to Carry Cargo This Fall" Unphased by the fact that no-one wants their jetliner, Avro proceeds to make plans to use it as a cargo carrier because it is fast and flies very high, although nowhere near far enough to fly across the Atlantic so the British can look at it at SBAC, which is totally the reason it is not going to SBAC, and not because the British will laugh at it. Poor Canada.
Lots of ads this week.
Aeronautical Engineering has Irving Stone, "Lab Pushes Work on Better Lubes, Fuels" Very, very worthy article on very, very worthy work researching better lubricants at the Texas Corporation. I wonder if this is what Irv thought he was getting into when he went to journalism school.
"RMI Rocket Test Stand Simulates Flight Attitudes" Oh for Heaven's sake, Aviation Week. Reaction Motors built a tilt-a-wheel for rocket motors. It doesn't need a half page article.
"Magnesium Alloy Corrosion Studied" Again, not much, because it is a Standards trial. It's not "Stop the Presses, magnesium alloy banned in aviation" kind of article, just guidance for industry on corrosion standards.
"Ram Air, Steam Drive Turbines" Marquardt's series of turbine-powered accessory engines for rockets is discussed.
"Turbine Transport Airworthiness" The industry dropped by CAB to discuss all the ways they can keep the Comet out of the American market by nitpicking every little thing. "Are the flaps big enough? It goes fast, vroom vroom. They are? Are they too big? It burns a lot of fuel, glug glug." Goes on for six columns.
"Control Complexity on Brabazon" So it turns out that eight-engine giant plane has quite a few controls at the flight engineer station.
"Willgoos Lab: Proving Ground for Engines" Pratt and Whitney has a new lab for proving its turbo engines. Lots of compressor engines, fuel supplies, cooling.
"BOAC Comet to Get Search Radar" The Comet will fly with an EKCO radar that will give advance warning of storm clouds and obstacles, with "map painting" for over-ground navigation. Everyone talks about cockpit radar, no-one does anything about it. Since the husband is an expert on how it doesn't work, I check in with him, but he's fine with it because it doesn't involve trying to land with radar, which is what drove him crazy. The radar set manages to weigh only 155lbs thanks to lots of very reliable and compact components.
Short bits from the usual suspects let us know that the Air Force is buying some stuff from Bendix Scintilla, although not low-tension equipment. Fortunately they make conventional electrical equipment, too, or they would have missed an issue. The Texas Corporation also gets a bit more column space for their "nozzle tester," which is a way of testing the efficiency of nozzles.
New Aviation Products has Aero-Sonic's exhaust muffler for the DC-3, now CAA approved. Shell Oil has a way of "loading fuel tanks from the bottom." Douglas and Goodrich are excited about rubber drive wheels (for elevator hoists on the C-124 Globemaster. Just the thing for every cargo plane that needs its own elevator.
Martin sends in an article about the 4-0-4's cabin arrangements.
What's New tells us about the first edition of Principles of Stretch-Wrap Forming by Hufford Machine Works, which will tell you if stretch-wrap forming is right for you. SBAC has a movie about last year's Farnborough show just in time for t his one, and the Women's International Association of Aeronautics, Inc. has a cash prize literary contest for aviation literature in all languages.
Robert H. Woods is still on vacation in a quiet house in the country where the rooms are padded and the staff doesn't mind strangled screams of "The trains, the trains!" Instead we have "What's Ahead in Military Equipment Buying." The superficial impression might be that they're going to buy it all, as in the solution to the "assault freighter" contest. But even $7.7 billion doesn't pay for everything. And to save money (I think), the government is talking about moving away from Government Furnished Equipment and just writing a cheque so that the prime contractor can buy from the secondary suppliers. That's for your connectors and fuel tanks and such. Or, says the industry, possibly just avionics, because they are emerging as the main expense.
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