Postblogging Technology, March 1951, II: No Affray

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver, Canada

Dear Father:

I had yours of the 13th on the afternoon, and sent my condolences by telegram to Uncle Henry, and to Edgar and  Henry, and thank you for those numbers. I am very sorry that Aunt Bessie did not live to see her great-niece, and, even though we have been expecting it, can hardly bear to believe it even after two weeks.  My regrets also to your wife at the loss of her cousin.My mother has written to say that she will meet me in San Francisco when I arrive next month, so we will mourn together, and she will be my advance party when I arrive in Palo Alto, so that though I walk through the valley of the shadow, I shall fear no evil, because my mother is the mightiest battleaxe in all of California! 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Time, 19 March 1951

Letters

All the readers loved "The U.S. Gets a Policy," although some readers are crackpots who believe in world government or Leo Tolstoy's philosophy of history. (It's all the inevitable outcome of impersonal forces, if you weren't keeping up). I think Richard C. Wolf of Xenia, Ohio thinks that some television is too bad for anyone to watch, although I wouldn't put my house on it. (If I had one.) Bill Williams of east Tennessee State College thinks that if the TVA was a good idea, so is the St. Lawrence Seaway. Austin McClain and George A. Eckert have corrections and criticisms. Captain Alvaro Valencia is just glad that Colombia's battalion in Korea got a mention. Various writers have various opinions about Margaret Truman, of which I suspect the worst weren't printed. Herbert Carver and J. H. Florea have corrections, Mr. Florea's being a bit nuts. (Time did not mean to imply that the pellets of sex hormone implanted in broiler chickens to make them grow faster caused a sex killer to be a sex killer.) Charles Thompson liked the article about the artillery in the Korean War, because it shows that artillery isn't obsolete, like the Air boys say. Our Publisher welcomes Bill McHale back to Business after three months with The Economist, an arrangement that is so unbelievably unusual that it takes a full column to explain. 

National Affairs

"No Time for Illusions" General MacArthur gave a speech at the front calling for bombing China as the only alternative to an attritional stalemate until the Chinese give up, while US casualties hit 52,448. 

"A Hedge and a Hash" Congress started the week extending the draft law and raising service period from 21 to 24 months, starting at 18, with 75,000 student deferrals, approving a six-month universal military training for males aged 18, beginning at some point soon, with National Guard or Organised Reserve as an alternative. The Senate then decided to start protecting its constitutional authority by writing some legislation, and proposed that army strength be capped at 4 million, for various reasons, but which, amongst other things, sets the ceiling of how many actually get drafted. Then Wayne Morse proposed reducing the cap to 3.5 million. Congress rejected that, but maintained the principle of a cap, at 4 million. Meanwhile, in the House there was a move to require Congressional approval to send more than the initial six divisions to Europe, which Time deems an isolationist move, while Carl Vinson put forward a bill that would reduce the draft age to 18 1/2, not 18, and push UMT off into an even hazier future than the Senate bill. It is thought that as long as the situation in Korea remains good, this bill has a good chance of passing. Meanwhile, over on the labour side, organised labour has walked out of talks with mobilisation authorities, and the usual names (Eric Johnston, Frank Graham) have swung into action to salvage the situation. 

"Point for Point Four" Now that Point Four is rolling along, and Washington has agreed that all the disadvantaged countries of the world will get rid of their anti-foreign business laws, it is agreed that it will be financed by American capital and left to American business. "What could possibly go wrong?" asks Reggie. 

"What Have I Got to Lose?" Office of Price Stabilisation chief, Michael Vincent Di Salle, gets the cover this week. Also, Time reports that just 28% of voters approved of Harry Truman this week, and that Paul Douglas is the Democratic favourite if Truman doesn't run in '52. Because love is blind, that's why. Some guy won a Democratic nomination in St. Louis running against the party machine, leaving Time weak at the knees. Walter Dunham of the RFC put up a weak performance in front of the Senate investigatory committee. The committee still hasn't found any evidence of a crime, but it's bound to, soon! Alger Hiss's latest appeal has been rejected, James Matles of the UEW tied HUAC up in knots during his testimony and avoided a contempt charge, and Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobell had their first court appearances this week. Also, crime and quite the story about a hunter setting the Barnabas Fireworks Company in Hackensack, New Jersey ablaze with a single errant .22 round, causing an explosion that would have killed the entire workforce if it hadn't all left twenty minutes earlier. 

I'm not naturally a suspicious person, but .. . . . 

International

Ike is over there in Europe getting the United States of Europe started. In Paris, everyone is talking about the Big Four foreign ministers talking. Marshal Tito wants $30 million to buy planes in the West to defend himself from the other Communists. Time gloats that now that Britain has recognised Red China it probably can't keep a Chinese fact-finding visit out of Malaya.

War in Asia

"It Hurts" "In spite of what General MacArthur called a 'stalemate in Korea,' the Communists are beginning to hurt more than the allies." Time carries word from down here in Formosa, where we apparently have "excellent" intelligence, Mao is sending 150,000 men from the Second Field Army and another 60,000 irregulars to reinforce Korea. Just east of Seoul, 8th Army is on the offensive again, launching a limited attack across the Han and securing a beach-head based on Hongchon, which the Chinese abandoned with "a British tank spearhead only five miles away." Time's correspondent, meanwhile, was with the Turks, who were in charge of a river crossing demonstration two miles upstream of 25th Infantry's crossing. Because the Turks are prettier, that's why! 

After watching burly, bearded Turks splashing around in the shallows of the Han, it was off to the central front to catch the 7th Division band performing Star Dust at the front, then down to Yokohama for the ceremonious departure of 50 US war dead for final burial in the United States, as for the first time in history, the United States aims to bury all of its war dead on home soil. 

Foreign News

Germany is officially independent again, Gasperi's government has survived a non-confidence vote, the first since WWII. Ernest Bevin has resigned, and Herbert Morrison is the new British foreign secretary, in spite of being short, having a bad haircut, and wearing his suits off the rack. James Chuster Ede adds majority leader to his portfolio as Home Secretary. Time is just happy that neither Dalton nor Bevan got the Foreign Office. The Watlington Flyer is flying again after British Rail found a replacement for the previous engineer, who had been called up by the Army. Barcelona is in general strike over an increase in trolley car fares, the first  major challenge to Franco. Belgium's wartime military governor, General Alexander v. Falkenhausen, is on trial in Belgium for being a very bad person. Henri Queuille will probably lead the next French government and put through some kind of electoral reform, but it is not for sure, yet. India has held an Asian Games, which will be an Olympics, for Asians. Time sees the secret agenda. Pro-Asian racism! China sent a nice delegation of observers who gave everyone a prize and threw a huge party on the closing day of the games, but pictures of Mao were involved, so it was sinister. Japan also sent presents, for the children of India. To prove how far above anti-Asianism Time is, it notices that "big, bearded Sikhs and leathery Afghans," "short-legged Japanese and lean Iranians." The "Mr. Asia" contest was won by Indian, Parimal Roy, and not Mahmoud Namdjou of Iran, who had been a Mr. Universe finalist at the 1948 London Olympics, which struck Namdjou as grossly unfair. The Japanese won the games overall, with 130 points compared with India's 95. From Pakistan, news of a conspiracy against the government being nipped in the bud. 

"For Oil and Islam"

Ali Razmara, the premier of Iran, was killed by an assassin this week, a member of a fanatical sect called the "Fadayan Islam," and probably instigated by the Ayatulla Kashani, the head of the sect and member of the "National Front" in the Iranian Parliament. Razmara has been opposing the push to  nationalise the Iranian holdings of Anglo-Iranian, and was a loyal American ally, carrying out a land reform when he wasn't recuperating from a heart ailment in Arizona. 

Time is giddy to report that the Communists in China are purging anti-Communists, shice this proves that they were bad all along. Dr. Seagrave is out of jail in Rangoon. One of the activists raiding Manilla's waterfront union has been shot and killed. Filipino Defence Secretary Ramon Magasaysay is having success in resettling Huk guerillas in virgin land down south in Mindanao. Since my understanding was that the land was "virgin" mainly because the Americans cleared the locals off the land, and that was mainly what the Moros were fighting about, this boils down to making the Huks happy by making the Moros madder. Then it is off to check in with other docks around the Pacific, from Canada to Hawaii to San Francisco to Australia. Communists are found to be rife, with leaders from one place being lustily deported to other places (from Australia to Britain, from America to Australia). Prime Minister Menzies of Australia proposes a law to put the burden of proof on the alleged Communist, which will surely lead to accused Communists zipping across the Pacific in all direction in the end of labour peace and mass rearmament. 

In this hemisphere, we check in with Argentina. Has Peron got less terrible since last week? The man America send down to check says that he isn't. Perhaps there is some other news? Hmm. An-American backed millionaire is the finance minister of Cuba again, and Canada is opening up a second uranium mine next year so that there will finally be atom bombs for all. 

Business

"Toward a Sounder Currency" The Federal Reserve has unpegged government bonds to allow interest rates to rise. Also, there are still no consumer good shortages to speak of, Korea notwithstanding, and the House Ways and Means Committee is looking at a Federal sales tax again to replace piecemeal wartime excise taxes. Senator Lyndon Johnson points out one reason for one set of high prices, which is that the world's tin producers are holding tin off the market to keep the price up. Since that includes lots of foreign Europeans, it just goes to show. Mainly that the government should stop stockpiling tin until the price goes down. 

Speaking of inflation, the Bureau of Labour Statistics has made some adjustments in the items it uses to calculate the price of necessities. American necessities now include televisions, frozen foods, canned baby food, cola, men's rayon tropical suits, home permanents, velocipedes, electric toasters. Putting less weight on food has slightly reduced the apparent rise in cost of living, which is, you heard it here first, up.  

"Road Test" This year's road test mileage winner is a Lincoln sedan when adjusted by car weight, with the Nash Rambler, Henry J and Studebaker Champion winning on raw mileage. Cotton futures have straightened up and Time likes GE's new productivity incentives. 

"Lock and Key" The Federal Trade Commission has announced that it is going to be looking at the interlocking networks of boards of directors at America's thousand largest corporations to look for evidence of hidden monopolies. Chairman Mead of the FTC wants new powers to act, although Time doesn't say what powers those might be. 

Science, Medicine, Education

"Freak Effect" Dr. David Bradley is some dumb old doctor who writes atomic scare books like No Place to Hide, and now he's gone one better by saying that one of the Frenchmen Flat explosions was an H-bomb because it broke windows in Las Vegas, but that is dumb and wrong and shows how little he knows because even regular atom bombs can break windows a hundred miles away under "freakish" conditions, which goes to show that no-one needs to worry about these devastating atom bombs being devastating and anyway the even more devastating hydrogen bomb will be along any day. Hopefully, so will be the longed for artillery shell atom bomb. 

"Basic Director" American scientists are happy to see Alan T. Waterman appointed director of the National Science Foundation, because he supports basic science and theoretical research. 

"Rough on Aphids" George Curtis Quick is a "ladybug merchant" in Phoenix, Arizona, who sells ladybugs by the gallons to farmers afflicted with aphids. 

"Problem in Security" Klaus Fuchs was a crucial Manhattan Project scientist. He was also a Russian spy. He was caught in Britain, and says that he was a spy. He has told the British and the AEC exactly what  he told the Russians. So now it isn't secret, and can be published, right? Oh, you silly goose, of course not! Maybe he didn't do a good job of explaining, and the Russians didn't understand what he was trying to say! Besides, maybe there are things he didn't tell them that will get out to them that way! In short, everything atomic should stay secret forever, just in case. 

"Frostbite, Amputation" Remember Dorothy Mae Stevens, who was found in an alley chilled down to 64 degrees, and lived? Well, not so fast, as her legs just came off at the knees because of frostbite, and several fingertips may follow. 

"Cortisone Shortage" Someone who was stealing from the till to pay for his wife's cortisone was convicted this month. He has a new job at a car wash, but his wife is bedbound by crippling arthritis again. The price of cortisone is up, and even at $8 a dose it cannot be found, with dark rumours that "the government" is shipping it to Russia, or that gamblers are buying it to dope race horses and such. Actually, there's just not enough of it. In a terrible irony, a young Brazilian cancer surgeon has come down with lymphosarcoma, and says that "I give the patient another few weeks."

In Britain, the Red Cross has lowered the minimum hemoglobin count for British blood donors because the country is going anemic, while Stephen Potter, the author of Gamesmanship: The Art of Winning at Games Without Actually Cheating has an article out in The Lancet about "doctor versus patient."

"Death in the Dark" Some Northwestern State students pulled a prank on Allen Kaplan (an out of state student from Massachusetts, and a Jew, obviously). He ran off a bluff and died. That's higher education for you.

"Spinner at Rollins" Rollins College in Florida, a small school with an enrollment of 630, has just fired 17 members of its 53 faculty (and senior ones at that), after a Bell and Howell sales rep came by and showed them how modern home-movie technology makes live teachers obsolete. The president says it is because he anticipates enrollment falling by 30%, but the faculty says that it is because the bright new audio-visual future has no room for fussy old professors. And dear old Santa Clara is a hundred years old and a fine school, honestly almost good enough for the likes of me, Ronnie said, her nose in the air. (Nothing said about the University School, because the less said about it in the press, the better.) 

"Fellow Wanted" Cambridge is once again advertising for a research fellow to meet the requirements of the Frank Duerdin Perrott bequest of money for psychic research. Cambridge has only ever felt that it could award the fellowship twice since it was founded in 1937, but is advertising for a "ghost hunter" again in hopes of getting a better candidate this time around. 

"Fossilised Europeans?" You know what the problem with Europeans is, according to Perry Miller, "Professor of American literature at Harvard"? They're Europeans, and too stuck-up and fossilised to learn. 

"Costs in California" The final toll of the Berkeley loyalty oath is 110 scholars, including 26 fired, 37 resigned, and 47 from other schools declining job offers, including Rudolf Carnap, Robert Penn and Howard Mumford Jones.  

Art, Press, Radio, People

Did you know that Rico Lebrun is "among the nation's most respected artists"? I didn't! Now he has made a giant painting of the Crucifixion that he is showing at the MoMA. Critics loved it! Time must have misplaced its notes, because it likes it almost as much as Guernica, which leaves it saying nice things about Picasso. Andre Malraux, who is not an artist, is a critic, and now has the third volume of his critical essays, Twilight of the Absolute out, in English. Time loves it as much as I did when I first read it. You know, in French! Time started it by calling Lebrun "pretentious," so I just had to top them, because I have not, in fact, read Malraux's third volume of art criticism essays, in French or otherwise! (I have read some of the collected essays, though. I'm not a complete fraud!) Henry Koerner might be having an exhibition, is my theory for the next article. It would be nice of Time to say so. 

"Censorship? Yes or No?" Members of the Truman Administration discussed the positives and negatives of press censorship this week. By which I mean Charles Sawyer suggested in a news conference that "some kind of voluntary censorship was needed" "to prevent the leaking of defence data." So there you go. The Truman Administration is about to send jackbooted thugs around to throw all the newspapers in jail. Just in time, too, as US newspaper circulation hits a record high of 54,877,000 this year. 

Time checks in with Walter Lippman, who is in a meditative mood on account of being 74 and all. The New Republic accused The New Statesman of "following the party line." As

Time points out, if two liberal magazines are fighting, this proves beyond doubt that the modern left isn't allowed to criticise  America or capitalism because Communism is worse. Time just noticed Alistair Cooke, gives him a solid page. 

"Bardolatry" Time likes Jose Ferrer Presents Shakespeare which airs at 10pm Sundays on Manhattan's WNEW. WHO LISTENS TO RADIO AT 10 AT NIGHT ON SUNDAYS!?!? It also likes Edgar Guest's A Guest in Your House, which airs weekdays at 3:15 on NBC TV. Who watches TV at 3:15 weekdays? But both guys like to talk, and I guess it's better than static. 

Asbestos heir Tommy Manville, now separated from his eighth wife, is promising to marry a starlet next time round because he needs a mature woman in his life. Lord Craigavon's camapaign for a giant anti-Communist pilgrimage to Canterbury to embarrass Dean Hewlett continues. Tallulah Bankhead, Nina and Earl Warren, Kirsten Flagstad, Rudolf Bing, Gayelord Hauser, Alben W. Barkley, Albert Einstein, Little Red Riding Hood, Clement Attlee, Elliott Roosevelt and General MacArrhur are all in the column. Little Red Riding Hood is made up, and I wish some of the others were, too. 

Time is still not burying the hatchet with Garry Davis, even though he is now a father and a "stage and TV actor" and not a would-be "Citizen of the world." Ian Douglas, 11th Earl of Argyll, previously heard from trying to dig up a lost treasure ship, is getting divorced. Virgil Munday Chapman, Ivor Novello, the Marquis Gonzalo Queipo de Llano y Sierra and Harold Bauer have died.  The Marquis, according to Time, is famous solely for taking Seville. The "White Terror" goes unmentioned. 

The New Pictures

Rawhide is a bad movie and practically everyone involved is to blame. Bird of Paradise is a Technicolor splurge on Hawaiian scenery, including sarongs, but unfortunately not an original story. Three Guys Named Mike all want to marry "airline stewardess Jane Wyman" shortly before they all go down in flames . . . Oh, wait, it's a Hollywood movie so it's not meant to be realistic. Time thinks Jane Wyman carries a slight movie. Under the Gun is a "routine thriller" with a "good documentary sequence" about how bad it is in Georgia prison camps before it jettisons realism for a chase through the cypress swamps. 

Books

Blair Bolles has a biography about old-timey days in American politics. Joe Cannon was the Speaker of the House and the Tyrant from Illinois. Maurice Collis' The Grand Peregrination is a sort-of biography, sort-of novel about a Sixteenth Century Portuguese navigator, Fernao Mendes Pinto. Eric Ambler's Judgment on Deltchev is another Ambler Balkan thriller novel that is pretty good and shows how Communism is awful, so it is really a two-for-one! John F. Wharton's The Explorations of George Burton is about life and death and stuff like that. Honestly I kind of tuned it out after one of those the Economist introductions where the reviewer goes on for half the column space about something completely unrelated. Manes Sperber's The Burned Bramble doesn't sound promising at any level, and the appearance of "anti-Communist" in the first sentence of the review isn't helping. Even Time ends up sounding a bit tired of it all. 

Aviation Week, 19 March 1951

News Digest reports that the CAA will approve the DC-6A and B soon, and that the last tenants at Roosevelt Field have their eviction notices, bringing a close to the world-famous private airfield, and not much else relevant.

Sidelights reports that Eclipse Pioneer's five-gyro copter autopilot is showing good results in Navy trials, and since Aviation Week hasn't mentioned that experimental crop dusting plane that Fred Weick was building at that Texas agricultural school

(the one with the football team!), it mentions it again. The Pentagon is "increasingly concerned" about all the generals and admirals quitting to work for the defence industry. Air Force liaison officers are working in Burma and Indonesia. The new head of the TASS bureau in Washington is an aeronautical engineer, and the Army is experimenting with 75mm recoilless rifles mounted on the wing tips of L-5 liaison planes. 

Industry Observer reports that the CF-100 outperforms the F-86 at high altitudes, that the Curtiss-Wright engine for the Bell X-2 rocket plane will finally be delivered this summer, that CAA certification of the Allision T-38 turboprop is a long way off, that the Curtiss Electric supersonic propeller has been up to Mach 1.6 in wind tunnel tests, that the Douglas C-124's undercarriage conversion to a four wheel gear is ongoing, that Lockbourne Air Force Base in Columbus, Ohio will get a 9000ft runway to accommodate B-47s and B-52s as a Strategic Air Command base, that Stanley Aviation's downward-ejecting ejection seat will be redy to equip B-47s and B-52s soon. Boeing is disclosing more aerial refueling arrangements for B-50s.

Washington Roundup reports that Aviation Week is willing to puff up Charles Wilson and Stuart Symington this week, and that the RFC inquiry is sure going to be news soon, but no more plane contacts are coming out any time soon and the Navy is now fighting over whether its new super-carriers will have "islands" or not. 

William Kroger emerges from wherever he's been hiding to report that "Aircraft Industry Steps Up Subcontracting"; "Pentagon Reshuffle to Cut Red Tape" follows. Don't they all? 

Alexander McSurely, "Allison J-45: New No. 1 Engine" GE's newly unveiled J-35-A-23 is the most powerful American turbojet and will be ready for production really soon. The substantially revised design has sixteen compression stages, a three-stage turbine, and is 172" long, while the new combustion chamber is "cannular," which is a compromise between a can system and a true annular burner chamber. The engine is scheduled to be installed on the B-47, almost doubling its power, giving longer range and better de-icing performance.

"Northwest to Ground 20 Martin 2-0-2s" You do not say so! You see, the CAA has "recommended modifications." Specifically, whatever modifications might be needed to fix whatever caused all those accidents. So far, no-one has any idea what those might be, and there is no urgent reason to ground the planes, but pilots have point-blank refused to fly it any more, and there are all kinds of things that can be done to make it safer when it does crash. Which, if it keeps crashing all the time for no reason, would probably be good  modifications to make. 

Or, alternatively, they could just ground the death traps. 

"Bill Sets up new Renegotiations Board;" "Jetliner Purchase by AF Seen Possible;" "Harvard School to Study Air Policy," and "Avionics Purchases Near Billion Mark;"  "Tool Stockpile. "SEC Report Lists Stock Transactions;" "aircraft Labour Reservoir Dropping;" "Big Four Mail Rates;" and "First Ford R-4360 Expected by 1952" round out a very long News section. The Harvard Business School study was commissioned by the CAA, and no-one is on the record about Jetliner buys. SEC is looking at dubious stock buys at nonskeds, which figures.

"The Defence Production Problem" McGraw-Hill corporate editorial weighs in with a look at the "all out struggle for freedom into which the Russian Communists have plunged us." And says exactly nothing new: We need to make lots of stuff; it should be pay as you go; we  have the industry to do it; the problem is that demand comes on top of a consumer demand boom; therefor controls are needed in the short run; and in the long run an even higher national production through more and better factories. 

Production has "How to Stretch-Form Magnesium," which might be sent in by a press maker. It is the same as stretch pressing aluminum, but with magnesium!

Aeronautical Engineering has Irving Stone, "Prop Extrusion is Production Milestone," which is about Curtiss-Wright discovering how to make seamless chrom-nickel-molybdenum propeller blades. It's nice to hear, but basically this is like light planes; the industry's focus has shifted from building better propellers to making them more efficiently. Experimental supersonic blades aside. 

"Aero Slide Rule Developed at Douglas" Look! A slide rule with custom scale! News!

"Reactions Studied in Radar Reading" the School of Aviation Medicine is looking into people looking into radar scopes to figure out how much they get out of it, and how quickly, and how it can be approved. As Reggie says, mainly you need to stop distracting them with everything else, but also somehow make sure that the person in charge of everything else knows what you're seeing, which is hard, but good luck to the plane doctors. 

Robert Temple, "Laminates: Fiberglas-Plastic Parts have Many Ballistic and Dielectric Uses: Precis of a Paper Delivered at the Annual Technical Section at Chicago of the Society of the Plastics Industry" "Ballistics" means that laminates can be bullet proof, which is good for stopping bullets. 

"Black Light used by Lockheed" You know how the forensics specialists shine ultraviolet light on the floor, and voila, a blood stain? Like that, only completely different because there are hopefully no blood stains at aircraft factories. And because instead of looking at things, they are curing plastics. But other than that, completely the same. 

George L. Christian has escaped Miami for Atlantis, where he is checking in with Delta's operating base to see how they do stuff to things. 

"Overhaul Period Set for Stratos Blower;" and "Long Engine Life for P and W R-4360" are short Aeronautical Engineering stories. 

New Aviation Products has the Struthers-Dunn line of expendable miniature dc-relays, perfect for missiles but also planes, which aren't really expendable, except for 2-0-2s. Zallica Brothers of Wilmington, Delaware have created the largest expansion joint ever made. They say. The words mean different things in different branches of engineering, Reggie says. Edward Robinson has a wax-feeding pump that is ideal for "filling electrolytic capacitor cases." Newage International's new hardness tester is portable. You just set the gauge, press the handgrip, and get a reading in any of the three million and five different hardness scales in industry. (Four, it says here. That's ridiculous!) Fansteel Metallurgical has "sub-miniature tantalum capacitors." Sounds exotic! Gamewell has a new line of precision potentiometers. 

Letters has a three column complaint from Hugh W. States, Vice-Chairman of the International Flight Radio Officers Air Safety Organisation of the Transport Workers Union of America. He thinks that PAA discontinuing its radio-telegraph service is a bad idea. Captain Waldo Lynch, Communications Superintendent, PAA, responds that actually it is okay and everything will be fine. Aviation Week has a nasty little fight with Henry Comstock, of 344 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, New York over the 16 January Seattle crash that has the New York press worked up. He points out that all passengers should have parachutes. Aviation Week replies that that is ridiculous (which it is), and asks if Comstock is still the press agent for a parachute company. Comstock replies that he isn't. More or less. Well, he is. But it doesn't matter, because he was worried about parachutes even before he took on the Irving account. 

This is the most ridiculous sidelight on the Seattle crash yet, and I feel like the rash of recent crashes is getting lost in the weeds, and maybe that is Aviation Week's intention. 

What's New has seven catalogs and operating manuals to discuss, including one for powdered plastics, one on producing gears, and another for a new Kodak, and I am not giving any further detail!

Editorial has Robert Woods presenting Aviation Week's defence against the accusation that they blew the "1211-J" swept-wing Douglas jet bomber secret or not. The defence: It wasn't a secret and no-one cares, and Newsweek has the story; and I would too if my correspondence wasn't still being intercepted because I can't tell the Palo Alto public health office to stop!

Time, 26 March 1951

Letters

Everyone likes the articles about La Prensa. P. Panajotopoulos writes from Athens to point out that Greeks are always fighting Communists. George Albert Drovin isn't fooled by this talk about how the postage has to go up because the Postal Service is in the red. What the USPS needs is efficiency, and it won't get it from this Administration! Leonard Miller of Montrose, California, is very concerned with something that is going on in India. Two veterans write to tell us that they think General Ridgeway is a "soldiers' soldier." Everyone in the Philippines loves the ambassador's wife. Time apologises for saying that she isn't. John Marshall of Philadelphia reminds us of the ironic fact that USS Tang was sunk by its own torpedo. P. H. Mosgrove of Pisgah, Alabama, thinks that if the President were elected to a single eight-year term it would get rid of all those bad old politics. Our Publisher wants us to know that Francesco Marinosci of Brooklyn is very happy with all the donations sent in by Time readers since his philanthropic work in Italy was covered in a story three weeks ago.

National Affairs

 The President's Key West vacation has been ruined by rainy weather and all sorts of scandals in his Administration. Korean casualties hit 54,649. The House Appropriations Committee has sent the Truman budget to the floor after finding cuts of $36 million from the $71.6 billion request. The Senate is overhauling the bill approving the dispatch of 6 divisions to Europe, while the House Armed Services Committee has removed the cap on Army size but rolled the draft age back to 18 1/2 and given draftees "the right to ask to be put in segregated units." 

"Goldbrick Blues" "Front-line soldiers" say that the Army has no shortage of men, just a surplus of rear-area goldbricks. The army is accordingly combing out cooks, bakers, aides, orderlies, buglers, hobby-shop keepers, personnel clerks, athletic directors and division historians. No-one will miss those guys! Hopefully, the comb-out will find 20,000 men (to be replaced by civilian employees) for combat duties, or two full divisions. 

"Airborne's Air Force" The Eighteenth Air Force will be the Army airborne's private air force. For now, it will be equipped with C-82s and the C-46s and C-47s recently mobilised. Later, it will add the two C-119 wings currently flying in Korea, when they return Stateside. The army's new T-20 parachute is the cat's meow. 

"Full Cooperation" Earl Browder has been having some fun with the Tyding's sub-committee investigating Communism at the State Department, Time admits, mainly because his latest stunt was to call up none other than Joe McCarthy as a witness. Because, it turns out, when it is Communism versus getting something over Tyding, McCarthy will take Communism any time. McCarthy testified that Browder was not in contempt of Congress because he was "cooperating" with Tyding all along, on account of Tyding being objectively pro-Communist by virtue of being anti-Republican. Said Earl Browder: "When demagogues fall out, honest men have a better opportunity to protect their liberties. Senator McCarthy, having driven the committee out on a limb, then proceeded to cut it off." The Kefauver Committee, meanwhile, was hearing from people with names like "Joe Adonis" in New York. Time is intrigued by the possibility that it will all lead to Bill O'Dwyer eventually, and not even more Virginia Hill. The Rosenberg trial gets even more coverage, almost two full pages and a very embarrassing picture of co-conspirator and fink, Harry Gold. 

Political Notes starts after a story about how wonderful Arizona's new Republican governor is; but does cover James Curley announcing that he is going to be a candidate for Mayor of Boston in November before moving on to fawn over Paul Douglas some more. 

In International news they're still talking about the Big Four talking in Paris; The French President is getting ready for his trip to Washington while the Assembly is closing in on electoral reform and the Schuman Plan. Time takes a moment to pat America's back for it, on the grounds that the Plan is all due to US pressure. (Another way of seeing it is that the US stopped pressuring the Ruhr steel  makers to give up their coal supply cartels in favour of a 75% compromise.) 

War in Asia

"Way Out" Has General MacArthur found a way to stop saying that the Korean war is a stalemate due to the President's bad strategy? Not yet, but the Chinese are on the way out on their own, retreating "faster than Ridgeway cared to follow." Time concludes that UN forces won't cross the 38th Parallel, not because people are saying they can't, because they're not the boss of us, but because they don't want to. Okay, Time, you are ready for your nap! Time goes on to conclude that the reason that the Chinese haven't continued their advance in Tibet, Indo-China, the Philippines, Burma, Siam, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Formosa and Japan is that they are bogged down in Korea. On the other hand, the US can't keep 150,000 US troops in Korea forever, and so the State Department is looking for a solution. Which, Time points out, is just obviously an attack on the Chinese mainland "to punish the Communist aggressors at relatively little cost to the free world." And how, do you suppose, will this be done? By starting another Chinese Revolution! It's easy! The mainland is seething with revolt, the Party is cracking down in a brutal purge, and Chiang's reformed army of 100% democratic Formosa is ready to fight, needing only a few bagatelles such as gasoline, ammunition, small arms, artillery, spare parts and lots of US technicians. That doesn't mean that they're ready to invade the mainland, as such, but they are ready to send over guerillas, ranging from "Free Chinese" to "stab the coast with Commando-type raids" to a giant underground army of anti-communists, ranging from ex-Nationalist troops ready to spring into action with their cached weapons to free-riding Mongol generals with their own private cavalry armies. 

"Crunching Advance" To put some details behind the previous article, the Reds pulled out of Seoul as soon as the UN bridgehead over the Han was deep enough to threaten Seoul with outflanking. That puts the UN back in Seoul, the city's fourth change of hands during this war. Only 200,000 of the city's pre-war 1.5 million people were there to greet the glorious conquerors. In general, the Korean economy is at a standstill, there are millions of refugees, no coal, no tungsten being mined, galloping inflation, and no rail cars. 

"How to Protect France" It turns out that you defend France by fighting to control Indo-China. I would not have guessed, but that's what General de Lattre de Tassigny told politicians in Paris while arguing for another "15,000--20,000" men, which will surely do the trick by allowing him to launch a counterattack in June that will drive the Viet Minh back across the Chinese border. The Defence Minister pointed out that this would get in the way of the 10 divisions that he had promised to Europe. Since French law forbids sending conscripts to Indo-China, the 12,00 will come from North Africa, while conscripts will go to "North Africa (not a combat area) for training." Maybe I am just a pessimist, but this doesn't seem like something that will end well!

Foreign News

"Whose Ox is Nationalised" The Iranian Majlis voted unanimously to nationalise Iran's oil last week. Time concludes that the Majlis was intimidated by the assassination of Premier Razmara last week, but this is "only part of the story" of the "one of the worst calamities to the anti-Communist world" since the fall of China. Time bravely lays the blame where it belongs; Decades of greed by British business; British socialist New Jerusalemism (my coinage! Mine!); "failure of the US to develop an effective policy;" "complete lack of US-British cooperation." You would think it would mention Arabian-American's decision to give half its profits to Saudi Arabia, but there's only so much room in the article, so that has to squeeze into a parenthetical way down at the bottom of the article. Now the Iranians are talking about nationalising the American works in Bahrain, which debatably belong to Iran, while the Egyptians are talking about nationalising the Suez Canal. At this point, Labour must be almost wishing that the Tories would defeat them in the House with their current obstruction tactics, just to stick the Conservatives with the mess in the Middle East. Attlee himself is the latest Cabinet minister to check into the hospital, with a recurrence of his stomach ulcers.

"The Lid Clamped Tight" Barcelona is under martial law, with armed police in the streets to suppress the general strike. Also, the West German government has refused an East German initiative for an all-German election and the Czechs are being mean to the Church again. while Australia is going to the polls on 28 April. 

In this hemisphere, all the foreign ministers of Latin America have been summoned to Washington to be concerned about Korea and the advance of worldwide Communism, and shake their fingers at Argentina, which is, as  near as I can tell, still Fascist (but not capitalist) this week. Argentina is so Peronistically tyrannical that it has an "Anti-Argentine Activities Committee" in its Congress! (But it is worse than the American one because its head is "a former butcher.") At least, Time hopes, the new President of Guatemala, as a "property-holder as well as a militarist," will "turn from Arevalo's leftist path." 

"Harder on the Fiscal Brake" Time isn't that sure of President Arbenz, notwithstanding his promise to fellow coffee-planters that he won't share his rents with anyone, but it is sure that Canada's choice to "fight inflation with fiscal measures" is brave and smart. What that means is that the Canadian standard of living is up, and Finance Minister Doug Abbot is responding by increasing down payments and cutting back on credit payment periods from 18 to twelve months, instead of wage and price controls. The Federal budget will also continue to run a surplus ahead of expenses to take money out of circulation. If that isn't enough, the next step will be a revived WWII-style compulsory loan. I mean (this is something that they used to have in France in the Eighteenth Century; never mind, I'm showing off), a "compulsory saving scheme." 

Business

State of Business notes that Korean war spending has hit a $5 billion a month clip, and that the rising tide of inflation has broken for the first time in months. 

"Scavenger Hunt" Time checks in with Sixth Army Headquarters in the San Francisco Presidio, where Colonel Paul Steele is in charge of tracking down huge knockdown lot sales of WWII surplus made in recent years and buying the boots, blankets, combat jackets, binoculars and so on back. The Army explains that while the Army is buying the no-longer surplus back for far more than it sold it for, it is still paying less than the Army would for new goods. Time disapproves, but also approves. 

The Guinness brewing interest gets a nice long profile. A furniture company in Chicago gets a really short one. There's a bit of a gold rush along Cripple Creek in Colorado, and concentrated milk is the latest thing, much nicer than old-fashioned condensed or evaporated milk. Is this the solution to the dairy industry's long effort to reduce transport costs by taking some water (and weight) out without reducing quality? Dairymen think so! A carton of concentrated milk takes up only a third of the space in a refrigerator, can be used directly as cream, and the consumer saves several cents a quart.

K. T. Keller is going to make $300,000/year and get a $75,000/year for the rest of his life on top of his $25,000/year pension, all to run the Government guided-missile program for Chrysler.  

Business finishes up with some stories about the end of easy money, including the reaction of the market (not much), and a profile of William McChesney Martin, Jr., who worked out the compromise. 

Science, Medicine, Education

"The Greenglass Mechanism" It has been decided that the Greenglasses, Rosenbergs and Harry Gold can't be convicted unless the Court is satisfied that they gave the Russians some actual secrets, so the State explains that Greenglass was a machinist responsible for assembling the implosion device that jammed wedge-shaped chunks of plutonium together to "assemble" a critical mass and trigger the bomb's explosion. It consisted of 36 "lenses" of "some such high explosive as TNT" that, due to their shapes, exploded preferentially in one direction. Greenglass also vaguely described a "neutron source" consisting of beryllium to irradiate the mass with neutrons at a crucial moment, almost like a fuze. Time speculates that he actually meant a mixture of beryllium and radium, which is the usual laboratory source of neutrons, although it is also possible that the "fuze" was pure beryllium, and the actual firing sequence started with alpha particles from the "imploding" plutonium irradiating the beryllium sphere and expelling neutrons.

"For Regulating Rainmaking" Congress is thinking about regulating silver iodine cloud-seeding and rainmaking on the grounds that everyone is doing it and it usually doesn't work, probably, the industry says, because too much silver iodide prevents rain; and if it did work, at this point it would be throwing the country's whole weather into chaos. On the other hand, Vannevar Bush wants a national rain making programme. And a national weather control service?

"In Case of BW" So to review what I have learned about biological warfare in Time, it is either a worse threat than the atomic bomb or pretty much impossible because germs aren't that  hardy. Last week, Time got a copy of What You Should Know About Biological Warfare from the Civil Defence Administration, which splits the difference. Germs are a useful weapon that may be used in war, but "no man-made pestilence is likely to sweep the whole US." The Black Plague was the product of "verminous times," with no science and no public  health. Normal health regulations are enough to keep a "seeded disease from developing into a self-propagating pestilence." Keep clean, report any cases of disease, don't rush out to watch an aerial bombing in progress, and don't start rumours, and you should be fine. 

"Volcano and Ice" "New military techniques are where you find them." Ooh. This is not opening well. We continue: Last week, Drs. M. Ewing and Frank Press, who are geophysicists at Columbia, reported on their method for measuring the thickness of Arctic ice. The eruption of Krakatoa back in 1883 was followed up scientifically, by ground stations reporting hearing the explosion as the "bang" swept around the world, and the surge of the sea wave, which was measured by tidal gauges as far away as Britain. Since the two occurred at the same time, and waves propagate at different speeds in air and water, Drs. Ewing and Press concluded that the "sea wave" was actually induced locally by the air pressure wave. If that was the case, it needed to be proven experimentally, so they went out on the ice of Lake Superior last winter and began letting off blasting caps and listening for waves in the ice, which they found. Which leads, roundabout, to measuring Arctic ice thickness by dropping bombs on it (which burst in the air) and listening for the induced waves. Which seems pretty strained and indirect. 

It turns out that figure skaters didn't need to be told about "flexural waves.")

"Lights for Stephen" Stephen was a little boy with cancer who lived through Christmas and then he died. That's sad!

"Careful!" In the last half-century, the number of children who died in America before reaching the first grade has gone from one-fifth to . . . much less. Because Time shifts to a different metric (deaths in the first year of life) and doesn't cite those numbers, either. Because now it is more interested in what they die of, which is diarrhea. I mean, babies die of plenty of things, but diarrhea is the big thing. Also, accidents, Metropolitan Life says. Which is the point of the article. I think. Maybe. Time then follows up on that head injury con artist in Colorado, who went to prison this week, and then Carolyn Joan Purcell, who is almost over her 100% non-cancerous eye infection that local doctors wanted to amputate her eyes over. Time also checks in with osteopathy, which is definitely not up-scale chiropractics, and the retirement of San Quentin's long-serving prison doctor, who will be missed by the prisoners. 

"Cost: $1.4 Billion" That is the Office of Education's estimate on how  much it will cost to bring the national school-building programme up to the mark and accommodate an additional 8.138 million new pupils in the next ten years. 

"Ultimatum for the Court" Governor James Byrne of South Carolina is warning the Supreme Court that it had better not find school segregation unconstitutional, on account of people being just fine with the law of the land "for more than a century," and South Carolinians won't allow White and Coloured children to attend school in the same classrooms, although he hopes that the General Assembly will give Coloured schools more  money. 

"Argument for the Court" Speaking of live wires, the Supreme Court is also hearing an objection to school Bible readings from two New Jersey members of the "United Secularists of America." Oh, and Yale students have lost a privilege because they're too spoiled to not abuse it, and some Fourth Point lads are over in a backwater district in New Delhi, checking to see if money will help people have better lives if it is spent right. Okay, I'm just a girl, but isn't the real question whether you can go to some little village and spend money on it without helping people? I mean, just handing it out on the street corner would be great! No, okay, I'm just silly. It has to be for education and hygiene and stuff.  

Art, Press, Radio and Television, People

The Samuel Kress Foundation, "funded by dime store profits," has bought a huge collection of paintings, sculptures and bronzes, which it is going to be showing various places, just a little head's up for you and me and everyone who might want to go down to the National Gallery and see Fra Angelico's Adoration of the Magi. 

"Painted in Berlin" A travelling show of current Berlin artists is one of the "sleepers" of this year's art season. Is there such a thing as an "art season?" I'm an Arts graduate and I don't know! (It turns out that there is, indeed, an "art season," and the next article is about this year's "pre-Easter height," mentioning roughly a million canvasses at about a hundred New York galleries.) It has lots of expressionists, surrealists and abstractionists(?), but this is the part of Art where those are good things and not the kind of paintings your four-year-old could do.

 "Unpretty Picture" I bet you think that that story about McCarthy and Earl Browder combining to throw former Senator Tydings to the wolves was ugly. It gets uglier! Congress invited Ruth McCormick ("Bazy") Miller of the Washington Times-Herald to explain about how her paper threw all in with the anti-Tyding campaign in Maryland last fall. In particular, the Times-Herald published a four page tabloid in support of Republican candidate John Marshall Butler, running a picture of Tydings and Browder together. Bazy Miller explained that, why, good old Joe wanted her help to get that picture (and the tabloid) out to the voters, so just naturally she threw her presses because it was the neighbourly thing to do. Now, it is true that the picture was a composite, or, to put it another way, a complete fake, but it saved space, and there's not a lot of space in the newspaper business, and it is true in a sense. Senator Butler's office was willing to admit that it was all pretty stupid and tasteless, but, really, that was then, and this is now, and who wants to litigate this kind of old business now?

"Double Trouble" So it turns out that news stories coming out of General Ridgway's censorship are being sent through Tokyo, where they are censored again by MacArthur's headquarters. Tokyo says it is to make double sure that secrets stay secrets, but since Air Force and Navy stories don't get double censored, how can this be?

"The Letter" The only thing that Time hates worse than Communism is Hearst and the Hearst press, so when the Hearst press printed a letter "cut from last month's Le Figaro" showing "FDR's Secret Offer to Share World Power with the Kremlin," Time double checked, and, to make a long story short, it is all moonshine (featuring Franco finking out a Jewish Roosevelt agent sent to present the offer and "a Scroll of the Torah" to FDR in the way of return post). As the whole thing is a farrago of rubbish containing numerous easily-checked errors of fact, the State Department reasonably pointed out in a press conference that the whole thing was a fake that Le Figaro and the Hearst press had published without even checking. 

"Diets for Men" The latest story is that reducing diets for men are replacing news stories on Page One. I don't know why, because Page One is for vital stories about how Communism is awful, the Korean War is a stalemate, wage and price controls are about to bite deep, and the United States of Europe is on its way. I can't believe that kind of stuff has gone stale (Sarcastic voice!), but if it has, there's not much you can print besides diets for men, on account of women not reading the front pages. I mean, what do you want them to print? Aviation accident stories?

"Biggest Show on Earth" The biggest television story is the millions of people glued to the televised New York Kefauver Committee hearings, taking time off work to watch "superbly tailored racketeers, gimlet-eyed gamblers, dumb cops, venal politicians and slick lawyers" trooping through. 

Herbert Hoover, Mary Astor, Ingrid Bergman, Robert Rossellini, John D. Spreckels III, Grofe Ferde and wife Ruth, Barbara Hutton, Igor Cassini, Paulette Goddard, Lady Mountbatten, James Doolittle, Walter Bedell Smith, Carl Spaatz, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Branch Rickey, yet more royals, George Bernard Shaw (he haunts the page still!), Gandhi, Lenin, Stalin, Ibsen, the Pope, Prokofiev, Connecticut Governor John Lodge, and Kilroy get mentions in a very crowded column that doesn't have a lot of room for actual stories. John Spreckels is a "sugar millionaire," and his fourth wife has filed for divorce "in fear for her life." I've never heard of the man, but given Spreckels One "helped build San Diego" with Hawaiian sugar, you probably have. Anyway, his great grandson is apparently a wife-beater, so that's the latest installment in money not being everything. Goddard would have been the fourth in a set of pictures illustrating the fashions of the moment if they hadn't run out of room. I like Princess Elizabeth's dress! 

Elliott Roosevelt, Homer Bigart, and Elliott Paul are married. Robert Gerald Riddell, Vladimir Lewton, Sam Lewisohn, Katherine Hepburn (senior), and Emilie Baker Loring have died. Auntie Bess's passing gets a Milestones notice, discretely saying that she died of heart disease after "becoming sick eighteen months ago." 

The New Pictures

The Mating Season is a funny movie, in part because Thelma Ritter is a funny actress. Time loved it, and gives it a review longer than many installments of The New Pictures. That doesn't leave a lot of room for anything else, but Target Unknown still gets more review than it deserves, at least according to Time. 

Books

We catch up with the Kon-Tiki craze that's sweeping the world. Or the American and British best-seller lists, at least. People like adventure right now! Alberto Moravia's Conjugal Love is a novel about "the corruption of love by vanity." Time loved it and singles out the translator (Angus Davidson) for more praise. Sinclair Lewis' World So Wide is his valedictory, "an awkward, rambling book." Ivy Compton-Burnett's Darkness and Day is "Oedipus revisited." And it's not so bad. Says Compton-Burnett. I think I'm done with that. J. B. Priestley's Festival is about how a small town in Britain celebrates the Festival of Britain? I guess? I paid more attention to the review than I sometimes do (because of politics, sigh), and I have no idea. Harold Lamb's Suleiman the Magnificent is the historical novel of magnificently lush style taking on a subject worthy of him. Turns out he was "a quite speakable fellow." 

Aviation Week, 26 March 1951

News Digest reports that the Convair Liner has made a test flight, that the defence procurement rate has doubled, that the Royal Navy will receive Supermarine Attackers, Hawker Sea Hawks and Westland Wyverns into squadron service this year. Canada is going to buy a "substantial number" of CF-100s. A Thai airliner of pacific Overseas Airways has crashed at Kai Tak, killing all 24 aboard.

Sidelights reports that the AF will call up all its ROTC graduates this  year, that columnist Marquis Childs says that f Congress is serious about looking into inside dealing at Washington it should check out the CAB and the Pan Am-AOA merger, that AMC is extending its tractor-tread undercarriage trials to the B-50, just to have more data. The AF's radar-guided gunsight is making progress. 

Industry Observer reports that the McDonnell three-blade jet rotor is doing the best of the jet rotor trial installations; that the Armstrong Siddeley Viper is one powerful little engine and is going on an Australian radio-controlled pilotless aircraft; that an Air Force C-54 auction is attracting high bids in spite of their beat-up condition (oh, goody!); that the Army has discontinued those trials with the wing-tip mounted recoilless rifles on the L-5 after determining that it was a terrible idea; that the Canberra is going to be built in America as the Martin B-57, which get out of town! The Bristol Hercules on the BOAC fleet of Hermes IVs are getting the "vee rod modification," which will boost cruising speed to 260mph from 222; that the British are absolutely for sure buying F-86s, which is so news even though we've heard it before.  

Washington Round Up reports that Paul Douglas is poking his nose in over at CAB now, that PAA is thinking about giving up its fight to be the American Atlantic flag carrier because absolutely no-one else in the whole world thinks it is a good idea, that someone has reached the retired Air Force generals who were going to appear before Senator Kenneth Wherry and testify that Fortress America should call its troops home and stand on its global strategic atom bombing fleet. The Air Force has been sitting on one, Orville Anderson, since he publicly suggested an American pre-emptive atomic bomb strike on Russia, but the muzzling of General Hugh Knerr is new. 

Katherine Johnson reports for Aviation Week that "Dispute Over Funds Delays Build-Up" Congress has assigned $70 billion, but the Air Force, Navy, and mobilisation are arguing over funds, because Congress had to squeeze out $30 billion of the original ask. Which Senator Wherry wants to put back in at the expense of the Army, arguing that America's army is already too big with all its other manpower requirements. (Reggie says that when you put it that way, "He's not completely crazy.") 

More about CAB's application to the Senate for more powers comes up next. Delta has ordered 10 Convair 340s, UAC is building a factory or something, the Marines have bought experimental Sikorsky and McDonnell helicopters, while McCullouch's MC-4 is the latest helicopter prototype. Clarence Belinn, who is the Los Angeles-based "passenger helicopter services are just around the corner" promoter, not to be confused with whoever is doing it in New York, says that the industry needs more money for more helicopter prototypes so that we can fix the fact that helicopters are no good for regular passenger services by repealing some annoying laws of nature. 

Production has Erwin J. Bulban, "WAC Sets Subcontracting Pattern" That's Wright Aeroengine Corporation. They're building the Turbo-Cyclone and the Sapphire, and it has a really good subcontracting management programme that the USAF is recommending to the industry. And if that's not enough boring, there's another story about the national machine tool stockpile. Remember how the head of the British industry warned that the entire stockpile is all going to go in twenty years or so, and where will we be then if we don't build new tools now? No-one's listening over here, either. 

Aeronautical Engineering has "Steel Ball Holds Nitrogen at 5500 Psi" I know that, like me, you're wondering why. It's for "servicing" experimental AF rocket-powered aircraft, but the article doesn't go into detail, because it is more interested in how you build a steel sphere that will hold gas at that temperature and pressure. It's hard! And takes a lot of inspecting with gamma rays and stuff. 

"Camera Sees Like Moving Eyes" In case you haven't heard enough about high speed cameras, including the Perkin-Elmer Panoramic, here's an article about the Perkin-Elmer Panoramic! A long article. 

"Study Delta Wing, Supersonic Flow" Aviation Week checks in with Langley, where NACA has got some papers on delta wings. They're tricky, and it is not exactly how clear that their flaps will work in practice. Also, "Centrifuge Developed for 40-G Force"

Avionics has "Unit Simulates Traffic Problems," courtesy of the McGraw-Hill News Service from Australia, where the Diggers have taken a break from waltzing matildas to build a simulator that will seat nine pilots and two controllers. The pilots are put in cubicles and given a course and altitude, which they "fly" by steering a projector, which produces a composite image which is visible to the controllers. There is an "automatic speed adjustment" and there will be a wind drift adjustment mechanism soon. Pilots and controllers communicate by headsets on a limited set of channels

"New Monitor: Gilfillan's Automatic Control Device Should Speed Up Traffic" The monitor takes a feed from the new Precision Approach Radar PAR-1 and turns it into position and approach speed data for up to three aircraft and gives a light and bell warning if planes are too close together. Output signal is shown in meters next to the GCA controllers. 

"Pressure Pumps Proved in Use" Pesco wants us to know that everyone likes the new Pesco pressure pump, which after long and intensive development has optimal pressure and volumetric performance. And it is so quiet that you can't hear  it over the engine. Which is not actually quiet by any normal human definition of quiet, while also suggesting that earlier hydraulic pumps were really loud. 

PAA is putting safety belts on its new DC-6Bs, and Kidde's new fire trucks are even better than old Kidde fire trucks and you should buy them! Sprague's cabin leak  detector detects cabin leaks. Yale and Towne's new baggage scales for airports is good, while Buchanan Electrical Products has a crimp-type splice cap that is pretty good, details follow at great length. Technical Tape Corporation's vinyl-backed adhesive tapes are tough. Romec's shock-mounted pressurising kit "provides oil-and moisture-free compressed air" for the pressurised sections of radars. 

Aviation Week presents a special feature, "Cockpit Viewpoint: Ice Still a Problem," in which R. C. Robson reviews the last winter's struggle with icing. 

Editorial checks in with "A Navy Answer on 'Saucers'" Rear Admiral T. A. Solberg, the Chief of Naval Research, writes to argue that the Navy never tried to keep the Skyhook programme a secret, and shared all information in a timely way, so if anyone got the impression that they were unknown flying saucers, it is because they weren't paying attention. Aviation Week proceeds to demolish the flimsy defence.