R_. C_.
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada
Dear Father:
Well here is the latest missive from the "unstable Pacific Rim." I'm a bit ahead of the news again, so you're getting this after the route on Colonial Route 4. Looks like we're going to have a Communist Indo-China soon unless de Lattre de Tassigny can stabilise the front, and I imagine that'll be the end of the Fourth Republic. Exciting times! And if that's not enough, there's talk of the Seventh Fleet enforcing the blockade. I can't even begin to express the absurdity of it, but apparently Arleigh "Thirty Knot" Burke says that the British will fold if we push it, and he's definitely the leader of the Navy's Young Turks.
I hope --I hope!-- this will all blow over, but as a matter of simple self preservation I wonder if we need to reach out to the Reds?
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Time, 2 October 1950
Letters
Eric Araguari of Rio de Janeiro is sarcastic against Communists, while John Severson of California and Loretta Scott of Virginia are sarcastic for Communists. Time has all the views! Helene Lillian Boothe thinks that it's awfully pink of Time to not be even more anti-communist, and Mrs. Frank Morgan of Virginia points out that the Polish hams that Margaret McBride is in trouble for supporting, are avaialble everywhere in the DC area, so probably Americans should be working on better hams while purging Communists. Doctors don't think they deserve to be drafted just because they did a year or two of training (out of nine to fifteen) on Uncle Sam. M. W. Webb of Texas thinks that the Federal government should fire a million people because they probably don't do anything and that when the Russians have enough atom bombs and attack us, Washington will be the safest place in the country because the Russians know that it is a bad place for the usual stupid reasons. (Red tape, regulation, blah blah.) Our Publisher writes to congratulate Time on winning the Korean Police Action (with help from the Marines.)
National Affairs
"The Distant Hope" "To a generation born in depression, weaned on world war, and greeted at 18, with a conscription number, President Henry M. Wriston of Brown University offered some stern guidance." Okay, first, when you put it that, way, the last thing the younger generation (Gah! I'm old!) needs is a stern warning from . .. And this is second. Brown? Brown University? I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's the low-pressure Ivy League University. Stern warnings there run to "Don't put your elbow in the finger bowl," and the last stern thing a Brown University president had to deal with was when he was a baby and had to take the silver spoon out for the wet nurse. So what did President Henry M. Wriston have to say? That they should give up on the idea of security and get ready to live dangerously, because the "problem of peace has been mishandled by a generation." And which generation you should ask? Not President Wriston's!
"Dawn Over Capitol Hill" With US casualties in Korea reaching 1858 dead, 8,535 wounded and 3,515 missing, Senators opposed to the McCarran anti-communist bill (Humphrey, Kefauver, Lehman, Frank Graham and Republican Bill Langer) filibustered for a day, but couldn't stop the overriding of the Presidential veto. Thus ends the 81st Congress, which declined to repeal Taft-Hartley, give federal aid to education, or pass anti-lynching and employment equity laws or the Brannan Plan; but which did extend rent control, raise the minimum wage and expand social security. Also, James Wadsworth is retiring, and total state taxes reached a record $9 billion this year. Time really liked Jonathan Daniels' The Man of Independence because it is full of stories that shed a bad light on Harry Truman. Who is campaigning against Bob Taft, who would have thought!?
"Faith and Charity" Paul Hoffman has left the ERA, and is expected to be the next head of the Ford Foundation, which is where the Fords started putting all their money so as not to lose the auto company when the old man died. Which is why it has over $200 million to give away, of which it has only disbursed $27 million, which isn't keeping up with its earnings. So Paul's job is to spend the money, which is what charities are supposed to do, and apparently the Ford Foundation is going to be doing th at by promoting world peace or something like that. Also, Tom Dewey went to a foreign relations shindig for Andrei Vishinsky in New York and gave an after-dinner speech attacking communism not because he is really, really rude, but because he is running for Governor and then President again.
"The City Under the Bomb" Are you tired of not having Tom Dewey pictures in your magazine! Well fret no longer, because Tom is running after all and because he is running he cares about the future atom bombing of the city of the future. That is why he has been reading a new civil defence pamphlet about surviving the Bomb. The trick is to fall flat when the bomb drops but before it explodes. It will also help to live in a perfectly circular house with no angles or protrusions to catch the blast wave, double-thick windows and stainless steel doors, and to be "beyond the radiation zone." General Lucius Clay, who is now in charge of this, says that Junior should also avoid panic and apathy, rid himself of "constant fear," induce a state of calm, and evidently try not to catch fire, or need a road, bridge or hospital bed. If Junior can do all that, Junior will be glad to hear that the state of New York (doesn't everyone live in New York?) is working on stockpiling vast quantties of construction material and equipment such as compressors and hydraulic jacks and is aspiring to have 600,000 pints of blood on hand in spite of having no way to collect, store or distribute it. Beyond that, Junior should look into civil defence training, so that Junior will know what to do when a man with "half his face blown off" goes running by.
In all seriousness, you can imagine a situation where the Russians only hit New York, and the whole country has to come to its aid. (Or four or five cities, and whole regions come to their aid. It's a big country.) In that case, the idea of scrounging up 600,000 pints of plasma is a bit more believable, and it is interesting to think about the problem of getting it to New York through the rubble and wreckage. How quickly can we clear the roads, rails and bridges? How much construction material and equipment could we call on? And once the 17 refrigerated tanker cars are in the rail yard in New York (if that is possible, too), it is interesting to think about how the plasma gets to the victims. Can we count on ice cream trucks? It's not necessarily a silly question!
War in Asia
"Mop-Up Ahead?" Seoul took a bit longer than we expected to fall, but fall it has, perhaps because the Communists put the priority on defending it while falling back in the south. Time goes into a bit more detail about the battle of Seoul, and also the Kimpo airlift. Since Kimpo Airbase was liberated, we've seen daily air deliveries into it rise to over 1300 tons of supplies, and one day recently it received "2400 paratroopers with trucks, trailers and equipment." Paratroopers come pretty lightly equipped, but even so. Also, a missionary that Time knows has had some adventures, and a Chinese fellow Time also knows, has reached Hong Kong, where is saying nasty things about the Reds.
"Why Was the U.S Armed?" I don't know, Time. But my theory is that it was because the defence budget was cut to the bone in the name of balancing the budget while also cutting taxes. Since this was all done under the 80th Congress, Time might be a bit embarrassed if it didn't have an answer, which is that over the five years since WWII, America spent a "staggering" $90 billion, plus another $3.4 billion on atomic bombs, military aid abroad, and strategic stockpiling. This represented $100 for every US citizen versus $8 in 1938, and just wasn't enough to . . . Well, technically, it was enough to win the Korean War. But we ought to have won it more! And we didn't! And it's not just because we're too dumb (or dishonest) to figure out the effects of inflation since 1938. Time is pretty sure that $90 billion ought to have been enough to roll right over the North Koreans --I mean, even more than we have, and Time is the expert, so we need to find out where all the waste came in! Mostly, it turns out, it was because of demobilisation. Moving right along, it turns out that 40 cents of every military spending dollar is on "housekeeping," and when an army shirt's price has gone up from $3.68 to $5.47, we have to conclude . . . Actually, we have to conclude that the Army is a much better shopper than I am! So anyway at this point we finally admit that inflation has played a part before rolling right back to waste, like that time the Hoover Commission found that the Army was issuing six pairs of pants to every recruit, while the Marines were making do with three. That sort of thing adds up!
Also, and stop me if you've heard this one, aircraft are more expensive these days, what with the avionics and the jet engines and all. Army divisions are also more expensive, because they have more firepower and men. In conclusion, we can all agree that it was Johnson's fault, and move on to firmly face the future in which America needs to make 15,000 tanks, 25,000 pieces of artillery and 40,000 bazookas and recoilless rifles, for the Army, Navy and all of our foreign allies, and we should have listened to Secretary Forrestal when we had a chance, since he was a pretty smart guy for a cuckoo bird.
International
Americans are really enjoying laying into the Russians at the UN. Dean Acheson has a plan to make the UN World Police an official thing in case anyone else tries to reunify their homeland by force. The Russians, meanwhile, are saying that everything will turn out all right.
Meanwhile, Guatemala asked for a moment of silence in honour of the brave UN troops killed in Korea, India is in trouble with Time again for trying to get the Red Chinese seated in the UN. Even Time admits that it is pretty hard to make a case for the Koumintang retaining China's Security Council seat with a straight face. The best that Acheson can do is point out that they're getting better. Progress!
Ralph Bunche has won the Nobel Peace Prize, although he didn't believe that he was "the first Negro to win the Peace Prize" until he got the telegram straight from Stockholm.
"Getting Warmer" Time covers the latest creeping steps towards a Western peace treaty for Germany, a security guarantee for the West, and a new West German army.
"Clash of Steel" Churchill has decided that the time is right to have a fight over iron and steel nationalisation in Parliament. Churchill's argument is that, since the government ran on nationalisation and failed to win a popular majority, it had no mandate to nationalise. Meanwhile the industry has been performing magnificently, tripling production in 20 years, with no major strike in 50 years, and that nationalisation would disrupt the industry during the current emergency. After some to and froe, the vote was called, Labour won 306 to 300, and steel nationalisation is on until the Conservatives win again, when Churchill has promised to reverse it all. And in India, Nehru stood off a Hindu nationalist challenge from within Congress, led by a saintly saint named Purshottamdas Tandon who wants to crush the Muslims and the scheduled classes --but in a saintly way.
The Hemisphere
Time catches us up with the Brazilian national elections, where Getulio Vargas may or may not be making a come back. A funny Colombian has written a very funny article about how Colombians don't mourn for long enough nowadays. Well, it's funny if you're Colombian!
Business
"Busy Signal" ATT traditionally pays a $9 dividend every year, but Wall Street was shaken by the company's plans to issue ten million more shares, since how could it possibly pay another $90 million in shares, but fortunately the company isn't off its rocker, and needs the extra shares to expand its business and is swimming in money, so first the stock went down, and then it went up. News! Well, ATT seeking $435 million in new financing is news. Wall Street ups and downs, are not.
"Unfair, Unsound and Unpopular" Business has finally noticed that good things like all out military mobilisation to beat a bunch of East Asian peasants and balanced budgets lead to bad things, like taxes. It took a while, but now here is Time to explain why the excess profits tax is a terrible idea that will lead to disaster. It's not that we need to spend more on guns, have a balanced budget, and cut taxes, because higher corporate and personal income tax rates are still allowed.
Montgomery Ward made a profit this year, and Pan Am finally takes over American Overseas this week and gets a step closer to a single American airline flying the Atlantic, because that's just obviously such a good idea. US Steel's Harry Moses enjoys fighting unions so much that he is leaving US Steel to become head of the Bituminous Coal Owners' Association so he can fight with John L. Lewis full time.
"Full Steam Ahead" Remember how American yards built a million Liberty ships even though Uncle George said they were the wrong ships for peacetime and Americans couldn't afford to crew them? And it turned out to be true? And then they decided the cure was steam turbine cargo ships that were faster, and Uncle George said that they would be too expensive and burn too much fuel and Americans not only couldn't build them, but wouldn't be able to afford to crew them in peacetime? And it turned out to be true? So in the end there were 1528 Liberties in the mothball fleet and only 205 Victories? Well, we've brought back 130 Victories for the Korea run, and that's not enough, so into Congress rolls the same old suspect (actually, the sorceror's apprentice, Edward Lull Cochrane, not Land), to argue for a new giant shipbuilding programme for 50 18 knot cargo ships. "The speediest ever built."
"Enter the Henry J" And speaking of the certain American manufacturers (Ronnie makes the "screw loose" motion), Uncle Henry introduces the Henry J. to Kaiser-Frazer showrooms this week. K.F will be building 1200 a week of the $1300 (factory) at Willow Run, which is a bit short of Model T numbers. On the other hand, not to worry about Uncle Henry's erratic h and, because it is Edgar, who is running the show. Edgar told me once that the whole thing requires volume production. He is pretty sure that the market is there, and Time quotes him as predicting 1600 a day as soon as the second shift starts rolling, and that's the rub, because you have to have the orders, first and there's a lot of competition just domestically, never mind the British and the Europeans. So just to be safe, though, Uncle Henry is trying to get a share of the 18 knot freighters.
"Tipped Scales" Canada and Britain's trade position has improved so much since devaluation that there is talk of upwards revaluation of the Canadian dollar from 90 cents to par, and of the pound from $2.80 to $3. The British have denied it, but the Canadians haven't. The US positive balance of trade has slipped to a mere $63 million, so it might just be time.
New Jersey's Zausner Foods is packing cheese into plastic containers shaped like stagecoaches to get their share of the cowboy market. Cole of California is showing its new swimsuit line already. Republic and Armco are going Dutch on a taconite processing plant near Beaver Bay, Lake Superior and a 47 mile rail line to lake's edge to process 2.5 million tons of taconite ore a year with the new magnetic method.
Science, Medicine, Education
"Lamb Control" Working under an Armour grant, Professor Frank X. Grassner of Colorado Agricultural and Mechanical (I had no idea Colorado had Aggies, too), has found a way to induce a fall pregnancy in a ewe that gave birth in the spring using an injection of gonadotrophin. As the injections only cost 25 cents each, this may be some practical research.
"Transonic Model" Time checks in with the wind tunnel people at NACA and informs us that it is hard to make transonic wind tunnels, which is why NACA has taken up lawn darts, dropping "gravity propelled models" from aircraft. If they hit the ground nose first, they're aerodynamical! More importantly, the new models have dive brakes and parachutes that pop open at the bottom so that they don't break up when they hit, which means that the instruments they carry can be self-recording, which is a heck of a lot more practical than radio-instruments, and they can also be reused.
"Hot Bugs" The AEC has "health physics" experts who worry about radioactive waste and fallout and such. They're particularly worried about plutonium. It isn't particularly radioactive, but it accumulates in the body, like arsenic, so eventually someone who is using plutonium face powder will get poisoned and die. And it has a hugely long half live, so that our post-Atomic Stone Age descendants will still get plutonium poisoning, and it doesn't wash away, because it is so heavy. Fortunately, it turns out that "zoogleal" bacteria eat it, so you can put them in the sewer ponds and they will eat the plutonium as it settles out (thereby refusing to run away to the sea where it can never harm anyone again(?) like a good little poison). Then the bacteria settle on the bottom and can be vacuumed out.
(What happens when you're born too close to the hot zone? You're born telepathic and looking like Olivia Thirlby. Could be worse.)
"Such Kindness" A little old lady went to Manhattan's Memorial Centre for Cancer and Allied Diseases as a pauper patient for a year, receiving treatment for advanced breast cancer at a total cost to her of $34.50, at which point she died and it turns out she left her estate, valued at $150,000, to the Centre. Which seems only fair considering that she took them for a ride in the first place!
"Oh My Aching Back" The new Principles of Internal Medicine is a good medical textbook because it has a chapter about listening to patients. Time's reviewer has carefully read all 1500 pages and thinks that it is the best textbook ever. And that is why you never led Mom review your textbook for Time. (Well, in my case it might not be a bad idea. But in general.)
The Texas College of arts and Industries "(enrollment: 1855)" is in trouble for misprinting the loyalty card that all the students had to sign so that it said that they promised their loyalty to "foreign powers," instead of "did not." Yale Library has purchased the sixth lot of lost Boswell papers and now presumably we have all of his grocery lists, love letters and anonymous denunciations of Jacobite agents.
"Out of Bedlam" Dr. James M. Mott Jr describes how he cured "Mrs. X" at the Menninger Clinic in Kansas just by talking to her for a half hour a week. Also, by promising her parole if she stopped her crazy talk. That helped, too! He concludes that, apart from being an amazing psychiatrist, if he doesn't say so himself, that the case of Mrs. X shows that we shouldn't be so quick to rush into lobotomies and shock treatment out of fear that "the patient will deteriorate," as after all they might get better, too.
"Edge of the Wedge" Professors live forever, so why should they have to retire just because they've gone dotty? That's what Alvin S. Johnson, at 75 the president emeritus of Manhattan's New School for Social Research wants to know. It's because "75" and "New" don't go together, Professor Johnson. Anyway, he is doing something about it by forming an entire faculty of retired professors from around the country who will specialise in adult education. That's a lot of dottiness. A critical mass of dottiness?
Press, Art, Radio and Television, People
Milwaukee has a newspaper. No, stop that. It's true! (Two, actually, but one's a Hearst rag.) Time's latest Korea correspondent to win a Purple Heart is James Bell. Not a real Purple Heart, because he's not a soldier, but a real broken leg. A jeep accident again. Other correspondents have been hit by shellfire, shot in the back by a sniper, and shot in the thigh while covering the assault across the Naktong, bringing Fifth Estate casualties to 11 dead, 14 wounded, 2 missing and 3 captured.
"Back to the Mines" Time is pleased to see Fred Allen on TV. Also on TV this week, Joe DiMaggio and Boris Karloff. Well, why not?
Fleur Cowles and Edith Sitwell are women who publish or write things. Silly ladies! John Dickson Carr doesn't like Raymond Chandler. Gregor Ratoff is trying to buy Eliot's The Cocktail Party. Eliot doesn't want to sell because he doesn't like the play anymore. Bernard Shaw is in ill-health and in the column. AGAIN! Go away! Leave some column space for someone under the age of DEAD! Speaking of which, Robert Service is also somehow still alive. Andrew Jackson May and Winthrop Rockefeller get where-are-they-now moments. (To catch you up, they're both awful.) Ruth Hussey, Edward Moyneux and A. P. Herbert are in the column because why shouldn't they be. Madeleine Carroll has added some class to Life by marrying the publisher, who is some guy. Richard Edward Lauterbach, formerly of Time, has died of polio at 36, as have Edward Arthur Milne, Tatyana Tolstoy, the Marchioness of Milford Haven, Mabel Young Sanborn and John Bayne Maclean.
The New Pictures
Mister 880 is the true story of the Secret Service's most wanted, a "lovable old conterfeiter," played by Edward Gwenn for extra lovableness, who passed one-dollar bills for ten long years. Known as "Old 88" after his file number, one of his neighbours, Dorothy McGuire, an improbably lovelorn UN translator, develops a crush on one of the Secret Service agents on the track of Old 880 and prolongs the investigation and the romance. I have no idea why Madame would want to bring out a rush of this one, but it's officially the only new release I am going to see this month and I loved it. The Glass Menagerie is an Imporant Movie of an Important Play, which you can tell because it is by an Important Playwright in American Letters Today, only with a happy ending, because it is Hollywood.) As everyone knows, real Important Plays have sad endings, although in the Arts we say "tragic." The tragic thing here, Time thinks, is that everyone tried too hard. Except Jane Wyman.
Books
Mika Waltari's The Adventure is the sequel of The Egyptian, in the sense that it's about this guy who has adventures and gets girls. Only this time he's a medieval Finn instead of an ancient Egyptian. Time is not impressed. Robert L. Eichelberger's Our Jungle Road to Tokyo is a much better memoir of WWII by a much nicer man than Halsey or Kennan. The Short Stories of Conrad Aiken is a "faintly bitter" book because they are mostly about men who disappoint in love, although there is also "Silent Snow, Secret Snow." Mary McCarthy's Cast a Cold disappointed Time. The Truman Merry-Go-Round is the latest "Merry Go-Round" book, and the formula is getting tired. Though Time seems mainly peeved by Allen and Shannon's description of the GOP as "Piltdown Men" and "mental Charley horses" with "verbal diarrhea and varicose egotism."
Aviation Week, 2 October 1950
News Digest reports that Bell has a large contract for H-13D helicopters, the military version of the Model 47. Speakers at the New York meeting of the Institute of Navigation, Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics and the Radio Technical Commission for Marine Services, highlighted the need for a more unified approach to air traffic problems, before giving a medal to Thomas B. Thurlow for his work on the Pfund sky compass. The CAA certified the J-47, the Air Force received the first of its three Boeing VC-97D command transports, which are fitted out as mobile advance base headquarters. North American has taken over management of the Curtiss Wright plant in Columbus, and hopes to utilise all of its several thousand qualified employees. An attempt to fly three F-84# Thunderjets using British-style probe-and-drogue refuelling had to be aborted due to weather.
Industry Observer reports that Fiat is going to make the F-84 under license, that the air force is going to order some more transports "off the shelf" and convert some of its KC-97s and C-124s into aerial refuelling tankers, that GE's main gain in the Turbodyne purchase was the technical staff involved with it, that the Boeing 502 turboprop is seen as a great helicopter engine, that Nimonic 90 is ten perecent stronger than Nimonic 80A, that stabiliser area is going up on various aircraft again, the Navy is ordering some blimps, that the Army wants the Air Force to order some McDonnell XF-88s because they are probably the best jet fighters for ground support.
Ben S. Lee, "Army Demands Plane-buying Power" The Army is asking Congress to give it the power to force the Air Force to buy the best ground support plane. The army likes the XF-88, the XB-51, the C-82 , XC-123 and Piasecki XH-16. It is particularly concerned that it lost 10% of the paratroopers dropped in OPERATION PORTVEX to injuries in landings and thinks that a better transport plane is the answer. (I throw this in because 10% losses before fighting even begins is something!)
"Show Tips Off British Production Plans"
Although there were no "hidden wonders" shown off at Farnborough this year, unlike last year's incredible show, "straws in the wind" include the disappearance of the Camberra Mk 2 and Blackburn YA 5, presumably for flight testing in advance of production, and the appearance of new types including antisubmarine types like the Blackburn YB 1, Fairey Type 17, Short SB 3 and Avro Shackleton, as well as the new night fighter prototypes, which show what the British are serious about. (Communist submarines and night bombers.) The Tay-Viscount testbed shows that the British are serious about getting high altitude data for their new jet engines, as well as being a very impressive plane when flying overhead at high speed. The Ambassador is very pretty and the SB3 is not. Short's Sealand is just there, but the "Survey-Prince" put on a good show of its short stopping distance, thanks to its reversible props and a heavy hand on the wheel brakes. The Sea Hawk is spritely, the Wyvern took off (and rolled) with a huge load of ordnance, the Canberra and the P. 1081 showed what the Avon can do, and the Vickers-Supermarine 535 is clearly competitive with the Hawker P. 1081 in the future fighter sweeps. On the other hand, the Brabazon seems overweight and underwhelming. (Meanwhile, the regular Viscount has finished its commercial flight trials.)
Alpheus W. Jessup, "Korea's Air Power Lessons" Alpheus has been over to Korea on Aviation Week's dollar to learn that the Air Force and Army are engaged in the latest phase of their forever war over whether close air support should be close or beyond the bomb line, and whether or not prop planes really are obsolete or at least obsolescent. The Air Force has a renewed interest in the night fighter, and on the transport side is thinking about what it would take to move an entire division from the United States to Korea by air. It would take the entire civilian air fleet right now, and arrangements would have to be made for heavy equipment, but perhaps it is a target for the development of the transport side, however it is currently organised. (It is hard to believe MATS will last much longer with the Navy and the Air Force ordering their own transports in numbers.) Finally, the Navy thinks that it has aced the case for a "super carrier." It won't look like the United States, but it will be very, very big to carry proper catapults and enough deck area for an all-jet air wing.
Letters has a long letter from Georgia Macris on her recent flight from New York to Oakland on nonsked World Wide Airways. It was an adventure, and not in a good way. Or, to put it another way, beyond frightening that anyone could treat air travel that way. Follows a letter from F. L. Stephenson of the Associated Aviation Underwriters, who are understandably happy about Aviation Week's crusade against high speed, low-altitude air races, etc.
Aeronautical Engineering has "Air Force Asks Convertaplane Action" That's the convertaplanes that turn from planes into helicopters, not the ones that turn from cars into planes. It turns out that enthusiasts are demanding action from the Air Force, which is demanding action from Congress. (Aviation Week takes a more generous tack and assumes that the Air Force is beating around the bush because it thinks that the bush might hold a convertaplane proposal that actually works.)
Follows short articles on the Prestwick Pioneer, which has gone to that world beyond the world where minor small plane designs go, and a reprise of the article in Time about NACA's transonic lawn darts
Speaking of small plane heaven, Fokker is now trying to flog its twin as a crew trainer and Avro wants us to know all about the new igniter-fuel injector for the Orenda.
Engineering Forum has a long communication (it looks like a letter, but this isn't where letters go!) from J. J. Davies, Chief Maintenance Engineer of Trans-Australia Airlines, who is not happy with the way that air transports are getting worse, mainly due to more powerful (piston) power trains that can't really deliver reliability and long life, and which have knock-on effects on things like hydraulic reliability and cabin pressurisation.
"Cable Matches Expansion of Aluminum " describes American Steel and Wire's Hyco-Span cable, which has a coefficient of expansion about 80% of 24ST aluminum, which means that a control cable won't stretch much relative to the part it is anchored on in high speed and high temperature flight, and so control characteristics won't change, either.
"Spark Plug Competition Keen" Sure. More endless Bendix Group promotion. Why not?
New Aviation Products is happy to report that United States Rubber Corporation's new "Naughahyde" is the best tough plastic cover for walls and other surfaces ever. Stalwart Rubber's Silicone 161 is the best for jets because of how it withstands extremes of temperature. Westinghouse has the best "electronic temperature control panel" (that's a thermostat, right?) ever. It is mainly for defogging windows, so lucky it is very light and vibration resistant, because the last a designer would want is to waste weight on something so special purpose and find it doesn't work. It takes 115v DC and the power unit is a triode amplifier. Dave Rumph Company reworks military compasses for airlines. Tempilaq paste is for applying to parts for temperature trials. It melts when the specified temperature is reached and sticks to them in the meantime. Tempil Corporation, New York. Airborne Instruments has a mixer-crystal test set, and Audilog has a new recorder for tower-plane conversations.
Congressional Roundup reports armed peace between the Air Force and Navy over the B-36, almost erupted into open fighting, mainly because the Army roped the Air Force into a united front against the Marines. The rest is mostly money news. Plane prices going up, the National Science Foundation getting a quarter million to get its grant programme flowing, that sort of thing.
Editorial
Aviation Week believes that "Our Turboprops Lead." Despite the deceptive British cleverly having all of the turboprops actually flying, American turboprops are better, because they are more powerful. Aviation Week points out again that air shows shouldn't be "risking death for thrills."
Time, 9 October 1950
The war must be over, because Robert Frost gets the cover.
Letters
K. Kaufman-Grinstead, PhD, tells us that this one Italian friend of his thinks that America should plan on protecting Europe from Russia, not liberating it; because Europeans are too apathetic to bother with being liberated. On the other hand, Gordon Strong, also of New York, liked it. L. Lee Layton, of Delaware, thinks that "Possibility of War" should suggest the "Possibility of Peace," which gets him a dressing down from the Editor, who reminds him that Communism is bad. C. L. Janik, yet also of New York, and Mrs. John M. Strong of Kansas City agree that America should be fighting the Cold war harder. Rear Admiral Commanding Carrier Division Fifteen writes to explain how Time is disributed throughout the Western Pacific by the well-oiled machinery of the Seventh Fleet, about which I cannot complain since that's how I get my Time. (And my Life, which, thank you very much, I am not adding to my reviewing here.) Maurice Angly of Houston writes to explain that the reason he commissioned Bob Prescott's "Flying Totem Pole" of the Flying Tiger Line was not exhibitionism, as Time implies, but for very important business reasons. Our Publisher wants us to know that Robert Frost and Time are bosom budies.
National Affairs
"The Four-Mile Race" Even though America is wining in Korea, the Administration warns of inflation, heavy taxes and shortages to come as the West firms up its defences and America in particular calls up another 3 million men by next June. It's not a sprint, it is a four-mile race. (American casualties through this week are 2,441 killed, 10,820 wounded, 3,959 missing. Army casualties are 16,000 to the Marines' 951. Now that is how you do public relations!) The GOP is now panicking about the possibility that the President will go into November as the War President, calling for more mobilisation. Whether or not he makes that speech in particular, there is plenty of talk of economic controls over critical metals coming soon. 
"First Bite" This week the income tax withholding rate goes up from 15% to 18%, in effect giving every wage earner and corporation a pay cut, and General Vaughan, he of the favours-for-freezers matter, is still in D.C., still paling around with President Truman, and still being seen in public. Rob Lovett is back in DC, but as Assistant Secretary of Defence, Time tells us at some favourable length. Lew Douglas is out as Ambassador to Britain, Walter Gifford is in. Henry Wallace sent a nice letter to Mao asking him to not be such a sucker for Moscow and Time is upset that a bunch of Communist leaders are out on bail, just because they are "citizens" and have "rights." Very, very exciting news about the state-level races in Colorado, Illinois, and NEW YORK is in the news! Okay, I will grant you that Dewey's I-never-left comeback and the possibility that the Democratic House Leader will lose in Illinois are both actually big news in US federal politics. On the other hand, politics. 
"The Great Ford Swindle" For the last ten years or so some swindlers have been bilking Fulton County, Illinois, farmers out of a steady stream of money with a swindle, or series of swindles, turning on the Fords supposedly buying a large tract of land for a soybean factory. Not even sending the original swindlers to jail for mail fraud has slowed it down, because a local named Mrs. Marie Fuller has taken it over, along with a $200,000 take. And Bill Drury has been killed (along with his lawyer), which is news if you follow Chicagoland crime syndicates. Which I do! The old Capone gang has generally been taking the smart road out of crime and into real estate, but couldn't resist gambling, and with the recent heat over Western Union and wire services as fronts for bookie operation, the chance that Drury would squeal over the killing of James Ragen was just too much. The moral: If you need an illegal source of cash, stick to, I don't know, smuggling. Also, they're cleaning up the NYPD again, this time by putting all the plainclothesmen back into uniform.
Manners and Morals reports that Hadacol is advertising for a parrot, which will make publicity appearances for the health tonic, and that Utter-McKinley Mortuaries of Los Angeles has a catalogue of caskets with a bursting A-bomb on the cover, just to be topical, and a little wallet card, "To Whom It May Concern, in the event of my death please notify Utter-McKinley Mortuaries." I hope the atom bomb doesn't knock out the phones!
War in Asia
"This Was the War"
Time explains MacArthur's masterful strategy that won the Korean War. From the first, the North Korean army of "spring-legged little men" was surprisingly good and had "surprisingly good equipment." They were "smart, tireless infantrymen and were closer to wonderful with mortars and artillery." On the other hand, the South Koreans had "feeble armament," and were prone to weakness and panic. It was a painful surprise when the commitment of American troops failed to turn the tide of battle, as light bazookas, 105mm howitzers and Sherman tanks could not stop North Korean armour. The great mistake of the North Koreans was to pause and deploy after encountering US troops, rather than to push straight on to Pusan. 76mm-armed Shermans are deemed to have been inferior to T-34(85s), with only super-bazookas saving the day. Evemtually there were elements of five divisions of US troops holding a perimeter around Pusan, and after winning a tough defensive battle at Taegu, held on until the Inchon landing. The North Koreans, in spite of running out of tanks and ammunition, still put in one final push in the first two weeks of September that was the last gasp of the North Korean Army, leaving it hapless when the Inchon landings arrived.
"Rout" and "Liberation"
The retreat has turned into a rout as from Wednesday, when the advances from Pusan and Inchon linked up. Lots of battlefield reporting follows before General MacArthur arrives in his personal Constellation to embrace President Rhee, lead the audience in the Lord's Prayer and then call on the Communist (and Buddhist, don't forget Buddhist!) North to surrender. Also, the Communists shot at least 1100 prisoners when they pulled out, which would be bigger news if the Southerners hadn't done the exact same thing when they pulled out.
General Dean might get the Medal of Honour for being captured, the Marines have the best public relations.
"Everyone Bowed"
Everyone thinks that everyone who thinks that the UN should halt on the 38th Parallel is wrong and stupid and cowardly. Premier Chou En-Lai's warning that China "would not stand aside" if the UN crossed the parallel is just propaganda. It's not, but it is hard to see the Reds maintaining an army in Korea in the face of UN air power, so it might as well be. The "bowing to everyone else" title reflects Time's perception that no-one in Washington wants to be seen as making the decision to cross the parallel. MacArthur wants instructions from the Joint Chiefs; the Joint Chiefs want it from the President, and the President seems to be just letting it happen, with MacArthur getting permission to go just so far and no further, which in practice means avoiding the mountains and so stopping well short of the Russian border. Right now, the only troops crossing are South Koreans, which might satisfy the Russians, who think that this is all just a Korean affair.
"No Nonsense" Red infiltrators (financed by the coffee black market) have been starting riots in West Germany, and the West German police have been beating them with sticks and ejecting them back into the Eastern zone. Meanwhile the Reds have started a strike in Vienna's factories just because the government raised the prices of food, coal and electricity by 30%, and wages by only 13%. The fact that striking against this is completely reasonable, and even the police weren't inclined to break heads, doesn't stop it from being a sinister Communist plot to take over Vienna at last.
"Unanimously Decided" Creswell is one of the nicest mining towns in Britain and its pit is very productive, which made it extra tragic that a fire cut off 89 men, and this week it was "unaimously decided" that they were dead and that the affected part of the mine would be cut off.
"Militant Mouse" Time likes Italy's new Minister of the Interior, Mario Scelba, because Communism is . . not as bad as expected? But the point is that even though north Italian Communists didn't try to gang-assassinate him while he was touring the area, because they are actually quite nice, communism is still bad. Which means that Scelba is good! Especially his plan for an anti-Communist militia, which will be nothing like the Blackshirts. The government compromised with his plan (which is good) by turning the millitia into a civil defence organisation, which means that it is no longer in charge of defending Italy from Communism. Now, you might think that that implies that the rest of the Italian government thought that Scelba's original plan was, in fact, creeping Fascism, just like everyone has been saying. But you'd be wrong!
In this hemisphere, Canada has decided to let their dollar float instead of repegging it at par. Right now, the "free" Canadian dollar is trading at 94 1/2 cents in New York and 96 1/2 cents in London. While in the Canal Zone, US government employees have just been stripped of their income tax exemption, which was part of the "welfare-state Elysium" they enjoy for living in the tropics. In Haiti, it looks like Paul Magloire will be the next President of Haiti because he is an "open-handed Strong Man," which is what the silly Haitians like, being lesser folk without the law and all of that. Speaking of which, there was almost a coup in Honduras, only there wasn't.
Business
Dow Jones up, GM up.
"How High the Sky?" A panic over inflation is sweeping the land, but Time is skeptical and in particular doesn't think that wage and price controls are the answer.
"Big Fifth" Delta and Northeast are talking about merging, which will threaten Eastern's profitability.
"The Way to Do It" The five big construction trade associations have got together and agreed that the best way that the housing industry can support US rearmament is by getting together to cut construction from 1.4 million units a year to 1 million via credit restriction to be applied gradually so as not to cut the props out from under the economy.
"Sea Lawyer" Hans Isbrandson's line is in trouble for allegedly running the China blockade with its ships Flying Cloud and Flying Arrow. An informant's letter from Flying Cloud alleges that it is shipping oil, gasoline, armour plate, tools and parts to the "damn Reds" and urges the Seventh Fleet to blow his ship up. Isbrandson denies the allegations, but it is coming up in the Senate. Isbrandson does say that since the US doesn't recognise the Nationalist blockade, that he should have warship escort for his legitimate business with China, which does not involve, he says, contraband.
"Double Order" The Administration wants the steel industry to increase its capacity by 9.4 million tons by the end of 1952, making US steel production capacity, 109 million tons a year. US Steel and Uncle Henry have both announced expansion plans, but more is needed. Uncle Henry is promising to repay the RFC loans he spent on Fontana, but with a new 2.4 million share offer for Kaiser Steel. I am so glad that Uncle George kept us out of that mess.
Science, Medicine, Education
"In Arctic Twilight" In the excitement of promoting Books to the fold, Science just barely squeezed in with this story about US airman flying in the far north "in search of weather data." ("Whether or not we should continue on our current course and nuke Moscow" data, specifically.) They find that in the spring and fall, when the sun is below the horizon but the light still floods out the stars, they can take neither sun shots nor star shots. To be able to use celestial navigation, a B-29 headed for the North Pole has to take off within a fifteen minute period in these seasons. So 375 Squadron, which is making these flights, is very excited by the Pfund sky compass and now the "flux gate compass." On the one hand, to everyone without dual degrees in physics and celestial navigation, it is a blessing to have Time explain how these work (in combination with magnetic charts), but on the other it is frustrating to be told about exciting new technology five years after the first article in Flight. Is this Flight being premature or Time being late?
"Diggers" Archaeologists are busy around the world. Dr. William Ritchie, the New York State Archaeologist, has dated a campfire from Schuyler County to 5400 years ago, using the new carbon-14 technology. A much more recent ceremonial burial of a bear, near the Trinity River in Texas, has also been excavated. The legend that Indians feared the meteor crater near Canyon Diablo in Arizona because they remembered the meteor as a manifestation of the Great Spirit turns out to be hogwash. A pit house was found on the crater, and the crater has been dated to 50,000 years ago, long before there were Indians in the area. The whole superstition was probably made up by white men. From near Pompeii, at Stabiae, Italy, Italian archaeologists have found "advanced paintings" that are either evidence of a lone roman genius, or of an hitherto forgotten ancient tradition and artistic style "unknown elsewhere in the classical world." In Palestine, American diggers have found Herod the Great's winter palace in the Jordan valley. And a dirty old man has been digging up the Isthmian temple at Corinth, which according to Time was a giant prostitute's stroll. ,
"The Life of Stress" Dr. Hans Selye is back from a stressful tour of the world to give lectures on how stress killed the rats in his experiments back in the day, and concludes that he will spend the rest of his life making rats die of "stress." I'm being a little unkind, because I cannot shake the thought that his original work was inspired by experiments in which he basically tortured rats to death. But the whole point of his work is that he understood that that was what he was doing, and since he has come up with a general theory about how the body adapts to stress, often in ways that unbalance it and can cause illness and even death. Stress eventually wears through resistance, and in rats leads to symptoms like "overactive adrenals, wasted thymus and bleeding ulcers." Other so-called "diseases of adaptation" are high blood pressure, kidney diseases, rheumatoid and gouty arthritis. He believes that his theories explain the recent discovery that ACTH and cortisone can reverse rheumatoid arthritis. It is via their effect on endocrine glands, "though many dispute some aspects of his theories and question his methods." Fascinating! And a good excuse to get out of stressful situations. "I'd like to be tortured to death in the name of science, but it would unbalance my endocrines!"
"The Dry Drunkard" Dwight Anderson, former "50-year-old derelict," has written The Other Side of the Bottle, which explains how his alcoholism was cured by treating it as an illness, rather than a crime. He explains that a "dry drunkard" is one who will never be able to touch a drink. There is no "cure" for alcoholism. Drunks remain drunks, even if they don't touch a drop. The alcoholic needs a distraction, and a family that wants to save an alcoholic should encourage him in it, "even if it bores them to death." Hmm. Does writing these letters count?
"What About the Oath?" Are loyalty oaths a violation of academic freedom? Of course not, says famous liberal philosopher Sidney Hook, who is very temperate and even handed because he admits that the regents of the University of California made asses of themselves in imposing their loyalty oath before lighting into everyone who objects to them as "hysteria mongers."
Press, Art, People
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is going to ration advertising because it can't get enough newsprint. Marshal Field is promoting his son at the Chicago Sun-Times. Children, the Magazine for Parents, is doing good business. (It has been called Parents since 1929, but Time wants us to know that it knew it back when.) It is also launching a companion, Children's Digest. There are other companions, Time explains in this brief profile of publisher George Hecht.
"The Noes Have It" The American Newspaper Guild is not going to launch its own newspaper in single newspaper towns, after all. 
"John Smith, Negro" The Chicago Tribune is one of the last northern papers to still label people as "Negroes" whenever they show up in a news story, and Chicago's City Club wants to know why. After all, it doesn't label "Jews, Mexicans, Poles or other groups," and when the label shows up in crime stories, of which there are a lot in the Tribune, it perpetuates stereotypes. The Tribune will so far not budge. A French Communist newspaper got American Communist William Z. Foster confused with William F. Foster, new chairman of the ECA, to hilarious effect. (Actually, how can you not find it funny?)
Waldo Pierce and Ossip Zadkine are big in Art this week. Waldo is an old painter and a friend to Time, while Zadkine won the competition for a memorial to the bombing of Rotterdam.
Somerset Maugham (which is a real, and famous name), William O. Douglas, Greer Garson and Gary Davis are in the paper. Well, I see the point with Davis, because he is easy to make fun of, and Time likes making fun of him. The other three, well, at least they have more reason than Sherwood Anderson being in it, even though he's dead. People news about Sherwood Anderson: Still pushing up daisies! Darryl Zanuck is just back from Germany, where he thinks Hollywood is in for some steep competition in the next few years. Oscar Tschirsky is old, Herman Talmadge wants to refight the Civil War, Olivia De Havilland hopes her son will grow up to be a Supreme Court Justice, Ethel Waters can curse up a storm, George Bernard Shaw and Lady Astor just won't go away, Princess Margaret surrounds herself with handsome men, Duke Ellington, Hans Fritzsche, Sun Fo and Crown Prince Akihito get into the middle of the column. There is so much people news that it is page over to hear that Frank Sinatra is not getting a divorce from Nancy, who gets maintenance of a third of his million-dollar-a-year income, while Princess Elizabeth, John W. Snyder, Al Jolson, David Sarnoff, Cordell Hull and Winston Churchill make the bottom of the column.
The Maharaja of Bikaner, Ralph Emerson Weeks of International Correspondence Schools, William E. Woodward, Lawrence York Spear, Mrs. Henry ford, Mrs. Charles Knox, Stephen Olney Metcalf have died.
The New Pictures
Two new movies from Britain, State Secret and The Happiest Days of Your Life. The first is a vaguely Hitchcockian melodrama only with more humour, which I am pretty sure has been reviewed before in some slip up. Anyway, it sounds really familiar with Douglas Fairbanks as a surgeon who is brought in to demonstrate his technique only to discover that he is operating on the dictator, and then is scheduled to be shot to conceal the secret. The other is a "nimble farce" in which the Ministry of Education somehow co-locates a girls' and a boys' public school, which they then have to conceal from the Ministry for very good reasons that involve a guided tour in which the two schools have to constantly switch classes. Not at all from Britain is Saddle Tramp, yet another attempt to make a different kind of Western, although not that different because it has Joel McCrea. Devil's Doorway likewise, in that it takes the Indians' side, as in the recent Broken Arrow. Robert Taylor "could pass only for a Cleveland Indian," but that doesn't stop him from fighting a good old range war against villainous Whites before dying with honour at the hands of the US Cavalry.
Books
Books moves to the centre of the back pages from its usual place at the end of the magazine so that it can do its cover story on Robert Frost, but since you are expecting me to write about it heere, well, here it is. Though that doesn't meant that I am going to waste my time talking about one of the most-talked about men in modern American Letters. Look it up for yourself if you suddenly get a new personality and start being interested in modern poetry.
Aviation Week, 9 October 1950
News Digest reports that the backlog in deliveries of airrcraft, engines and propellers is up to almost $3 billion, while at least the Martin 2-0-2 and Stratos supercharger deliveries are on schedule. The Pacific airlift is being cut back again.
Industry Observer reports that the Air Force will be buying more seaplanes in 1950 than the Navy thanks to its Grumman SA-16 rescue plane order. The new Convair flying boat has hit 400mph, which is very impressive, but the best is yet to come. Boeing is working on a jet transport with room for five. BOAC will replace its Yorks with Constellations on the Santiago, Chile run this week, ending the converted Lancaster era and cutting flight time by 7 hours.
Alexander McSurely, "Helicopter Industry Gets First Big Orders" That would be the Bell order already noted ("less than 100 planes"), and orders for the Sikorsky 8-10 place machine as the Air Force H-19 and Navy HO4S (200 planes) and the Piasecki HUP, with about 100 machines on order for the Navy. There are also some smaller orders. Current service interest is focussed on "assault helicopters" for delivering troops to the front line, and anti-submarine warfare.
"Trainer Tests Off, Buying On" The endless tests of trainers I wasn't covering are now off in favour of just buying a whole mess of planes because no-one cares about the details anyway. Except the shareholders. They care.
"A. W. Jessup, "'Mobile Bases' Carry Navy Punch" The Navy is super glad that Korea came along because now it can stop arguing for aircraft carriers as atom bomb carriers and argue for them as Korea-airbases-that-move. Which I don't know why it is a good thing because Korea doesn't move, but on the other hand it is a big place so I guess moving bases is a good thing! Jessup also covers the "evolving" argument for a super carrier, which isn't that admirals would sure like to hang their hat in one, but rather that a jet aircraft carrier needs bigger catapults and elevators and a good instruments shop, too, considering how the Navy is asking for more automatic equipment to make flying jets easier.
"CAA War Plan" Like it says in the title, the CAA is working out a war plan for taking over private pilots and civil airports. Meanwhile, CAB has told the airlines to raise air coach rates to the point where they can make money while still providing passengers things like "schedules" that tell them when they're flying out, where they're flying to, and maybe even where they will be stopping along the way. (Especially helpful when it isn't clear that the flight has terminated yet, as in Miss Macris' adventure, where for a while it looked like she'd arrived at Burbank, close enough to Oakland compared with the distance across the continent. The Senate is going to maybe look at the airmail rate after Northwestern paid out a giant don't-look-at-all-the-crashes $325,000 dividend.
"Northrop Builds Engine Noise Muffler" Northrop has heard the complaints about the noise from the F-89 Scorpion and is building --a muffled testing space so that people won't hear it when they're testing it on the ground. At some point someone should look into making them quieter in the air, too.
"Ingenuity Aids Field Maintenance" Just like in the old days, Aviation Week, or actually McGraw-Hill World News, drops into a forward based in Japan to see that the groound crews have simplified the job of removing a panel from the F-80. It used to take 18 man hours, but a sort of screwdriver-in-ajig reduces the time to an hour and a half. Added under, mention of a new radio telephone from Schittig, perfect for private airfields.
"Britain Unveils Rocket Motor" Fairey's new Beta hydrogen peroxide rocket engine uses an unstated fuel. The hydrogen peroxide is just the oxidiser, so this is emphatically not one of the old British "cold" rocket engines like the de Havilland Sprite.
Valves are solenoid controlled, just like in the earlier German designs.
"Biggest US Navy Blimp Nearing Completion" It is!
Avionics reports that "Navigation Experts Trade Ideas" This is that big show in New York. I've already written out the title somewhere, so I won't again. The summary is blessedly free of head-scratching technical details, but also short of actual content. The experts want more coordination. That's great! Coordinate what? Well, "electronic aids." I thought so! At one point, Douglas Ewing, of the Air Navigation Development Board, descends into specifics for a moment to notice that we need to handle 40 to 80 landings an hour, and that aircraft need speed as well as location information, and current air speed reporting, which can be in error by as much as 45%, is simply not reasonable, as towers can't possibly control landings at 30 second delays with separation time errors that great.
"'Brain's' Double Job" Now Vultee has an electronic brain, at Fort Worth. It is capable of 6000 "sizeable" operations an hour, big deal, and the double job is that it handles payroll as well as electronic calculations for the aerodynamics section.
The new approach light system endorsed by the Air Line Pilots Association will be tested at Newark this fall.
Letters has the continuing light plane debate (snore), a letter denouncing Clarence Sherman, now of Warner, formerly of Vickers A Division of Sperry Corporation for padding his resume; another from Leonard S. Kimball, Director of Public Relations at Flying Tigers (who is doing a bang-up job if you see that picture of a lion being led into a DC-3 last week), explaining how much money they make on air freight. Frank Williford of Link Aviation writes to point out that Air Materiel Command failed to give the company credit for some equipment mentioned in a 31 July article.
Equipment reports on Bendix's new Omni-Mag "Three in One Flying Aid" in an article by George L. Christian. It's fairly long but I think the illustration gets the gist of it. Brobrick Manufacturing says, forget those fancy expansion-matched cables, and get good old rubber cable tension regulators, instead.
New Aviation Products reports on pressure switches from Aerotree, air pumps from Aro Equipment, Heli-coil Insert Kits from Heli-Coil of New York, and an oil cooler clearner from Organics Inc. Also on the Market returns, but I am not going to give them any more attention than they warrant for not buying a full advertorial. Avionics wise, though, I notice a low-inertia electric motor and a radio noise suppression system.
Air Transport reports that Capital Airlines is pleased with the Super DC-3, which I hope they would be because I am sure Douglas must have given them a good deal, being the only buyers and all.
Editorial is upset that the CAB thinks that it is still "business as usual." Mainly because it isn't being nice enough to the nonskeds that we will need to fly divisions here and there when the world war starts. Unless the world war consists of blowing up New York and leaving us to clean up the mess, in which case no divisions for anyone! Let's just say I'm a bit of a skeptic about the nonskeds.
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