Postblogging Technology, April 1951, I: Lost At Sea

R_. C_.,

Shaughnessy,

Vancouver,

Canada.

Dear Father:

I know that you probably expected to hear that I have landed safely in Macao by this time, but my mother has, completely unexpectedly, decided that she is going to come to Macao to see me through my confinement, as opposed to sitting in Chicago and complaining that I won't come to America for the blessed event. I have no idea what is going on, which leaves me free to speculate that my mother is another victim of taking Mr. Rohmer seriously and believes that your grandfather's organisation commands all the mad scientists of Asia, in aid of which I presumably will either have a safe delivery or give birth to a cruel and brilliant superman (-woman) born fifty thousand centuries before his time!!!

Either way, I am pretty sure my mother would be happy. Well, okay, maybe not if the first born is female. Other than that, I mean. Cruel and brilliant superman, I mainly mean. 

Oh! My point! She's not coming until the end of the month, so I am putting off my trip to Macao.

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Time, 2 April 1951

Letters

Samuel Rosenbaum of Philadelphia thinks that we should call the Soviet Union "the Russian Empire" because it has more zing. Robert Meyer, down in New Jersey, has the new, with-it idea that there shouldn't be strikes when American boys are dying overseas. Mrs. Byrd and Mr. Austin like the cut of Este Kefauver's jig while Henry Dehm thinks that it goes to prove they're all crooks, just like Lincoln Steffens once said. Lots of other people also agree, but I'm not writing out their names. Complain to Time for putting you low in the column! Judge Cullinan writes in to explain how much he liked Father Arthur O'Connell back when he was a teacher. News! F. L. Black writes in from Nash Kelvinator to remind Time that it built helicopters too, back in the war. Sergeant Murphy, over in Korea, thinks tht the Marines get too much press, while Eugene C. Reed of East Orange is very disappointed with the RFC. Our publisher points out that Time's Frank McNaughton gets recognised in restaurants because he's on TV, costarring with Estes Kefauver, and that's why everyone should watch Time's TV show. That doesn't make any sense! 

National Affairs

This week, while General MacArthur proposed ceasefire talks with the Reds without bothering to clear it with Washington and the President came back from vacation early because the weather in Key West is terrible and because the RFC, the cost of living, the labour situation, and his office are all on fire at the same time. US casualties in Korea hit 55,814, Tokyo is disagreeing with US policy in the Far East, wage and price stabilisation is falling apart under Eric Johnston, surprise, surprise, and at this rate, Senator Kefauver is a shoe-in for the nomination in '52, tearing Mayor O'Dwyer and his cronies to shreds in New York, then bringing on a colourful ex-Capone  man in the way of desert, sending him up for contempt of Congress, the same charges that Fred Vanderbilt just slipped, because, well, he's a Vanderbilt. Congress has also escaped, Washington, specifically, going into recess. The US ambassador to Rome thinks that Russia might have fifty bombs, which is too many, and Time reminds us that one in 24 Americans works for the Federal government, which is also too many. (It doesn't explain what the right number might be.) Communists are arguing again, which shows that they are bad, and Alger Hiss has lost his perjury appeal.

"Twice as Big" General Marshall's report to Congress says that the size of the US armed forces has doubled in the last year. The Army will hit 3 million men by the end of  June; the Navy has expanded from 381,000 to 700,000; the Air Force has gone from 411,000 to 700,000; the Marines have gone from 74,000 to 200,000. Voluntary enlistments are rising and casualties in Korea are lower than expected, allowing the draft call for April to be cut from 80,000 to 40,000 men. Time is super-duper impressed with General Marshall. Also, the US is going to recruit 2500 anti-communist refugees from the DP camps in Germany into the armed forces, because we aren't a big enough target for Communist propaganda already. It's Senator Lodge's idea!

"Homing Torpedo" The new US homing torpedo is twice as fast as the old ones, has its own Sonar, and no wake of bubbles from its "chemically fueled motor." It can be launched from submarines, surface ships and aircraft and is definitely the cat's meow. 

"The Shame and the Glory" Navy Chaplain Otto Sporrer, who is with the Marines, has written an article excoriating all the other services for Fortnight, which the Marines all think is great, and everyone else thinks is in terrible taste, but the army has decided not to make a fuss because what is even the point of trying to fight the Marine hype machine? Over in Dubuque, Iowa, the whole town is in an uproar over paperback novels with sexy covers, including a Somerset Maugham potboiler that is sure to corrupt the morals of the youth. The Ford Foundation has managed to spend $42 million of its $500 million endowment so far. 

"France Since the Revolution" This week's feature gives us 150  years of French history in way of introducing this week's cover article on President Auriol, who is going to be in Washington this week on a state visit.  

Foreign News

"Brave Old Wheelhorse" As see above!

"Recess" Labour has managed to stagger through to a recess, which will give Britain a chance to get ready to fight over the budget, due on 10 April. In Russia, three new members of the Politburo, while in Italy, a train disaster in which 530(!) passengers died, is finally going to have its day in court seven years after it happened. 

"My Soul to the Devil" Dr. Hu Shu is "China's foremost scholar," and doesn't like the Reds, which goes to show that all the Chinese scholars now practising self-criticism over their previous American liaisons is bad. 

"Anti-Communist Defence in the Balkans" The United States is training the new Greek army, which is now perfect, and even though Yugoslavia is Communist, it is not too bad, because the Yugoslavs are our Communists. Russia probably won't invade Yugoslavia because it turns out to be full of mountains, and invading countries with mountains is hard, as you might remember from 1941, when it took the Germans whole days to overrun the country. On the other hand, Yugoslavia is almost out of wool and cotton, so it going to collapse any day now. 

War in Asia

Oh, I remember this! So, anyway, UN troops have stopped the Communists, defeated the human wave attacks with superior firepower, and now it is time to talk about strategy. Specifically, it is time for General MacArthur to talk strategy. The General is willing to negotiate a ceasefire any time the Communists want to talk, but also to invade across the 38th Parallel any time he wants. London and Washington are throwing a mutual fit, but as Time makes clear in a boxed article entitled "Facts About the 38th Parallel, this whole "38th Parallel thing" is just a myth, and the UN can cross it any time it likes, and probably should, because otherwise the war in Korea is just going to turn into a "bloody stalemate." Unlike a naval blockade and air war against mainland China!

"Again at the Parallel" After covering off MacArthur, Washington, London and the distant future, it is time to check in with how the actual war is going. Eighth Army is gradually closing up with the Parallel, and recently fought a grinding four-day battle for a fortified position called "Tombstone Hill" that ended when the Chinese defenders slipped away in the night. Meanwhile, on the east coast where it is flat, UN troops are trying to catch the Reds as they retreat by armoured thrusts and parachute envelopments. It isn't working. 

"With Task Force Growdon" Lieutenant Colonel John Growdon led the task force of Patton tanks that relieved the parachute assault on Munsan. As there was no resistance to either the paratroopers or the tanks, it wasn't much of a fight, but the Reds kept on mortaring both, so it wasn't much fun, either. 

"Education at Sea" Time traces the voyages of the Empire Marshall, a British freighter that carried French supplies to Indo-China, was then chartered by the Military Sea Transportation Service, and has recently and finally left  Yokohama last week to call at Dairen to load a cargo of soybeans for England. The crew promptly mutinied because that was a Communist port and a Communist cargo, and Communism is bad. Everyone agrees that whereas the French dockers who refused to load Empire Marshall outbound were bad, the crew is very heroic. 

In this hemisphere, Peron declared last week that Argentina had carried out the "controlled liberation of atomic energy." But not nuclear fission, which is boring and old hat, but rather a thermonuclear reaction. Dr. Ronald Richter, the Austrian physicist who is in charge of the project, adds that Argentina knows the secret of the hydrogen bomb, but has chosen not to build one, because Peron is a man of peace. Time thinks that it was a publicity stunt to distract the delegates at the Washington conference from his ongoing war with La Prensa, which gets a separate story, devoted to the very important news that the editor of La Prensa escaped police surveillance and entered Uruguay. Mexico City is now the fourth-largest city in the Western Hemisphere, behind New York, Chicago and Buenos Aires.

Business

 

"Balanced Budget (Fluke)" and "Balanced Budget (Real)" Somehow the US is taking in more money than it is paying out, and will return a budget surplus of $5 billion in spite of rearmament; but as rearmament bills come due, next year's deficit is likely to be in the range of $13 billion. To bring the budget back into balance, Congress is looking at $10 billion in new taxes at savings of $7 billion on a proposed 1951 budget of $74 billion. The Committee for Economic Development wants to cut fripperies like public works and foreign aid, while a partial sales tax is the most dramatic proposal for tax increases that also increase income tax rises and an increase on targeted excise taxes such as the one on new cars. 

"Not Enough" Farmers are talking about planting 366 million acres this year, which is up 8 over last year, but still 4 less than in 1949. The Department of Agriculture warns that this is not enough to keep food prices from rising. Over in Los Angeles, the OPS is unleashing the full might of its price-stabilisation power on its first enemy of the state, a used-car salesman. Time steps on Aviation Week's business by checking in with Pioneer Airlines, one of the country's biggest nonskeds. Another business profile visits the Erie Railroad, the "scarlet woman of Wall Street," which is very prim and proper these days. And also the Dollar Lines, where the Dollar family is having trouble persuading
the Maritime Commission to follow through on their court victory and return the line to them. And Bethlehem Steel just received the first shipload of Venezuelan iron ore from its open pit mine in the state of Bolivar.  

"Israel's Independence Issue" Israel is floating its first bond issue, the largest foreign issue in the history of the United States at $500 million, the first of a planned $1.5 billion loan to build on WWII investment and strengthen Israel's position as the most heavily industrialised nation in the Middle East. 

"Dow's Debut" Dow Chemicals is building a new plant near Denver in connection with the atomic effort, although not to make atom bombs "as such," according to the AEC press release. 

Science, Medicine

The AEC is still playing it close to the vest, disclosing that the next US atom bomb tests (which may be in progress already) are being  held on Eniwetok under the command of General Quesada. No-one other than personnel of "Task Force 3" are going to be allowed within 200 miles of the atoll, one of the objectives of which is testing the effects of atomic blasts on various "structures and materials." Two hundred miles is a lot of miles! On the other hand, Time is looking forward to the bright new future of "atom-resistant buildings." 

 

"Weather Once a Week" Time hasn't promoted Irving Langmuir in a month or so, so it checks in with him and finds him very excited by a collection of weekly weather reports from Missouri and Ohio that show that his experiments are spreading weekly rain right across the United States. 

"Interceptor Mission" Time checks in with the Air Force's 52 Fighter (All-Weather) Wing, which is carrying out night interception missions with F-94Cs, which lift their radars at interceptor-level speeds and climbs using afterburners, which Time found very impressive. Time goes on to explain how GCI works to bring an F-94 close enough to the target that the fighter's own radar can "lock on." The Wing is practicing on inbound airliners, because they are good sport, and, after all, a Russian bomber might shoot one down over the mid-Atlantic, insert itself into the commercial air traffic pattern, and sneak-bomb the US, which is why 52 Wing fighters intercept all airliners that deviate from their planned course. 

"Bargain Radiation" Hanford has some barrels of "fusion byproducts" from plutonium production. They're kept in a concrete vault deep underground, because they are very radioactive, but the AEC hopes that eventually they will be used in industry. This week, the Stanford Research Institute issued a report. First, the chemical separation process is carried out by remote control from behind thick shields, and the result is a "crude" mixture of radioactive and non-radioactive materials, radiating at 1000 curies/lb, twice the level of radium. Further refining increases that to 5000--10,000 curies/lb, and based on the current price of radium, it might be worth 10 cents/curie for various purposes, at which Time gets all wishful and speculative. Maybe it would be used to sterilise medical dressings or food; to kill mold spores on cheese, or weevils in grain elevators. Maybe it could be used in chemical reactions, reduce static electricity, or go into fluorescent lights to speed their warm up.

"Wrong Blood" Instead of being executed for stabbing an acquaintance to death over a girl, 17-year-old James Vencill is only going up for five for assault, after the Johns Hopkins Hospital admitted that the victim died after they gave him two transfusions of the wrong blood type by mistake. Birthroom Supervisor Mabel C. Carmon is retiring at Chicago's Lying-In Hospital at 68, after a 44 year career in which she seems to have single-handedly saved all the babies in the world, or at least the 105,000 she has delivered. Everyone respects and admires her, which is why the title of the article is "The Flexible Autocrat."

"Prescription for the Dying" Walter Alvarez says that the dying should get all the drugs they need, kindness, and no patronisation. They should be told what is wrong with them, and be left alone if an intervention like enemas or dietary restrictions isn't likely to work. 

"Piedmont Uprising" You might recall that Georgia's little Piedmont College has been in an uproar ever since word came that it has been accepting $500 a month from "anti-Semitic, anti-Negro" Judge George Armstrong's educational association, which is fronted by the even nastier General George Van Horn Moseley. This week, the President of Piedmont has fired an instructor and the treasurer for objecting, while 106 (of 210) students have signed letters complaining about it all and demanding that the president resign, instead. 

"Michigan Mystery" This week The Detroit Free Press revealed that the nearby school district of Lichfield has been padding its enrollment figures with 89 "ghost" pupils to earn an additional $13,000 in funding. The superintendent confessed and said that he destroyed the records to cover his tracks, but the real question is whether other Michigan school districts are doing the same thing. Mitford Matthew's Dictionary of Americanisms is the latest weird little dictionary to get the Education treatment. Cambridge University should be considered "America's nursery" because 140 or so Cambridge graduates emigrated to America in the 1600s and added tone. Then Time does the same thing I do, and attaches a vaguely related little story that doesn't really warrant its own paragraph break and mentions that Cambridge (England) might be declared a city soon, as Oxford has been for 400 years. 

 

Art, Press, Radio and Television, People

Maurits Escher "is one of Europe's most original graphic artists." I think we've all seen his strange images, but he is having a show in Holland that really brings it out. Esther Gorbato is a young Argentinian who moved to Paris looking for art, but couldn't find it, so she did some painting, and now she's won a prize, so, really, the art was inside her all along! Old Joe Turner, who is long dead, also gets in the paper, I'm not sure why because I would have to read a column-and-a-half of biographical blither to find the announcement of whatever show or prize occasioned the story. 

Everyone agrees that the La Prensa affair is the worst thing to ever  happen to press freedom. Also, Clement Greenberg is leading a campaign against J. Alvarez Del Vayo, a columnist at The Nation because he is just too communist. But since The Nation refused to print Clement Greenberg's letter denouncing de Vayo, it is The Nation that is practicing censorship. Also, it is suing Greenberg and The New Leader, which printed his letter, for libel. 

Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon have the same plot this week, but they are fighting communism so it is not a plagiarism scandal. The Daily Herald shows how being a left wing paper is terrible because editor Brian Chapman just quit, probably because the publisher wants it to push up circulation by covering sports instead of covering "the spread of Communism in Asia. No wonder British workers find it  hard to ket steamed up over Korea or Iran or the urgency for the West to rearm," said one anonymous Fleet streeter. So, to get this straight, because The Daily Herald is covering sports instead of foreign affairs to push up circulation, the reason that British workers don't care about foreign affairs is that The Daily Herald doesn't cover foreign affairs more. 

The music critic at The New York Times uses big words. 

"Spring Thaw" The FCC will soon release 70 channels, allowing 2000 new UHF stations, of which "200 must be dedicated exclusively to educational TV." The FCC still has to work out details like colour on UHF and the spacing of the stations. 

The Kefauver Hearings are still the biggest thing on tv, and the networks are trying to figure out how to make money off televised congressional hearings, if they're going to turn out to be a big thing on the regular. 

George Bernard Shaw isn't letting a little thing like being dead keep him from the page (his literary estate is valued at a bit over a million). Sinclair Lewis and H. L. Mencken are also not dead enough to escape the page. Milton Berle, Hemingway, Ambassador Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Helen Traubel, General Bradley, Anna Rosenberg, Emanuel Celler, Joe Adonis, Ralph Capone (brother of guess who?), Anthony Carfano, Louis Compagna, PaulRicca, Charles Gioe, Frank Diamond, Rocco Fischetti, Vito Genovese, irving Wexler, Frank Costello, Andrei Gromyko, Alexei Pavlov, Princess Djavidan (widow of Khedive Abbas Hilmi II), Tennessee Williams, Irving Berlin, Ethel Merman, Russell Nype, Uta Hagen and Claude Rains are all in the paper. 

Ezzard Charles has married his "longtime friend," Gladys ("Gee Gee") Garrell, with whom he has also had a daughter. General Jose Enrique Varela, Edward Trowbridge Collins, the Reverend James R. Cox, Edmund Ezra Day and Willem Mengelberg have died.

The New Pictures

Lemon Drop Kid is "second rate Runyon, first rate Hope."   Lightning Strikes Twice is an "involved" melodrama that manages to get "more preposterous as it goes along." The Scarf "tackles another pressing problem," which is the story of a multimillionaire's son who escapes from an asylum for the criminally insane to clear himself of false charges of murder. Or are they actually false? Dramatic music! Mercedes McCambridge, who was in the last movie as the woman who married a man who got off on wife murder charges because she was on the jury, etc, etc. Ridiculous things keep happening around McCambridge, but she keeps right on trooping through the preposterous and the bad dialogue! The Magnet is a  slow British comedy that is "kept alive" by dry humour and "consistently acute observation."

Books

Odell and Willard Shepard team up to tell the story of Jenkin's Ear, which isn't about the war, but about Bonnie Prince Charlie, who is sneaking around London trying to set a plot in motion to do too much historical stuff that you probably don't care about unless it has to do with the Founder and his father, which it probably actuallly does considering that the authors throw over the whole premise and turn it into the prince hearing stories about King George's War. Astolphe de Custine's La Rusie in 1839 is out in English after the publisher rang up the translator and told her that if she didn't get on with it and turn in a manuscript within the century, she would be fired. It's about how Russians were terrible then, so it stands to reason they still are. Paul Fatout has a biography of Ambrose Bierce out. Dan Mannix's Step Right is about an Annapolis drop out who applied for work as a fire-eater at the circus one day back in 1932 and ended up with quite the story to tell, or actually quite a lot of them if you happen to have a fascination with poisonous snakes like some people I could name. (Because they are me!) Then it is off for some extracts from Omar Bradley's new autobiography. 

Aviation Week, 2 April 1951

News Digest reports that shipments of domestic aircraft are down this year, that Fairchild has more C-119 orders, that a USAF Douglas C-124A is missing off the coast of Ireland with 48 passengers and crew including four SAC officers and Brigadier General Paul T. Cullen. The AEC has acknowledged that it is working on an atomic aircraft with GE. North American will make AJ-1 attack planes for the Navy at its Columbus plant in the new year. Two DC-3 crashes in South America this week. 

Sidelights reports that the President told the press that the most dangerous places in the country are the bathroom and the kitchen. And airliners have both! The Pentagon will see some "amazing" aircraft designs soon, the Air Force probably won't hit 95 groups before October of '52, the RFC is promising to keep on making all loan requests secret in spite of the Fullbright Committee.

Industry Observer reports that  the first Sikorsky H-19 is going to Korea for combat evaluation, that the Bell Army H-13D lost in Korea flew into a cable at low altitude, and that Major-General Bryant E. Moore died of a heart attack, not physical injuries. Pratt and Whitney's J-57 is taking the "most powerful American jet engine" crown from the Allison J-33. The USDA's new Lactoprene artificial rubber is even better than older ones. The USAF and Navy are taking up British experiments with reversible pitch for  shorter fighter landings, and also testing the rubber mat landing pad, which might be used on airfields as well as carriers. Since no-one has tried to push the Burnelli lifting body aircraft in a long time, you might think that the promoters had given up. But they haven't, and they're back in Washington!  

Washington Roundup reports that the UN advances in Korea have "taken the steam out of defence mobilisation in Korea." Wilson now projects full defence readiness in 1954, whereas the generals want it in 1952, when "intelligence" indicates that the communists are going to pounce. Secretary Marshall will probably cave and back Wilson, and that will be that. General Bonner Fellers is making hay over at the GOP, which is contemplating a "scrap the army, build up the air force" approach to cutting defence spending. Other GOP representatives are gunning for General Vandenberg, who is getting in the way of their efforts by promoting air support in Europe, perhaps even more than the one tactical air group per division currently planned. The Senate is going to investigate international mail subsidy rates, but probably won't go along with Senator Fulbright's plan to extend RFC investigations and add the CAB to the docket, since any investigation would likely expose Republican bigwigs, too. 

"Funds Cut Threatens All-Weather Programme" Just to be clear here, the people asking for the cuts are the military and the CAA. An all-weather navigation, landing and air traffic control system just isn't ready yet, and also there just aren't the people and labs for the planned research effort. The ANHDB's position is that, if they get the money, they will build it, but the CAA and the military thinks that there are more pressing needs for the money.  For example, a separate story carries a warning from the (Guggenheim) Aviation Safety Centre at Cornell about  more serious gaps in the air safety research effort. (In spite of more than 600 ongoing projects.) 

Alexander McSurely, "Centre Aims to Make Air Traffic Safest" Another story from the Guggenheim. 

"Electronic Production Board Established" It has been!

Ben S. Lee, "Hughes Boat Being Prepared for New Flight" This is that giant wood flying boat moored down in San Diego, amidst speculation that it will be the atom-powered plane that the AEC is talking about. 

"Boeing Backlog Reaches $Billion" That is, 1 billion. That's a lot of money! General Clay would need 10,000 years to earn that much! 

"Stratojet Becomes Long-range Threat" The B-47 has now been refuelled in the air. Tremble in your boots, faraway foreigners! How far away is unclear, although the prototype did make a transcontinental dash, which leads Aviation Week to say, very optimistically, that it must have a "range" of more than 2300 miles. "Range" being usually calculated in terms of making it home after spreading atomic freedom, I am a bit at a loss. 

Production has "Hot Dimpling Widens Metal Use" Aircraft Tools of Los Angeles wants us to know that its Thermotronic Control Unit makes hot dimpling much more practical. Hot or cold dimpling can be done on 24ST and 75ST aluminum and magnesium, and will no doubt be practical on titanium sheet when it becomes available. It is best done by conduction heating on certain kinds of dies, as worked out by Douglas.

Aeronautical Engineering has Irving Stone, "J-35 Points Up new Thrust Achievements" Allison's J-35 is the most powerful turbojet under contract for construction, is economical, will go into the B-47C, and is likely to be more powerful than the GE J-47, although the Air Force won't let Allison say just how powerful, because it will just lie about it, Aviation Week strongly implies. 

The McGraw-Hill World News checks in with France, where the Aspin I variable-airflow jet turbine engine with dual airflow is undergoing tests; and with Britain, where DH is using an induction heater to make large steel propeller components, as he new props use a grade of steel that has "not previously been used." The Philips F280 Induction Heater operates at a maximum of 200kW output at 380--440V, 50 cycles. It has many automatic operating ranges and can be controlled manually, too. Later, it goes to Australia to find out about its purchase of a Bendix Eclipse electronic autopilot and a Sperry Zero Reader, for evaluation. 

Equipment has George L. Christian, "Engine Analyzers Gain Wider Acceptance," which is a headline that could have been used any time in the last, what, twenty years? The point is that both Sperry and Bendix have won contacts to put analysers in new Air Force planes, while PAA likes the Sperry equipment for Constellations and Stratocruisers. Christian covers Bendix and Sperry's competing claims about each others 'equipment. 

New Aviation Products, having had its territory invaded by World News and Equipment, is stuck with a "quick release end fitting" from Gordon Brown and Associates that allows aircraft cargo to be secured to a cargo net, and yet still quickly jettisoned in emergencies, and "Syn-Cote," which is a tough plastic coating for protecting metal and fabric surfaces on aircraft, from Roscoe Turner Aeronautical. 

Letters starts out with a humdinger from C. E. Rosendahl to the effect that NACA is neglecting and ignoring the airship somehow. Lester Follette has severe doubts about the methods that the nonskeds use to get haulage rates. (CAB, meanwhile, wants over-ocean coach rates by the summer of '52.) We know, Lester. We know. W. P. of Doylestown is intensely skeptical about statistical games that show that flying is safer than safe. Don Ryan Mockler of the Helicopter Council is tickled pink at the coverage that helicopters are getting.  G. C. Whalen of American Mercury Insurance writes to put us at ease about the club rates insurance package. 

"CAA, NWA, Martin Get Accident Blame" This was a takeoff accident at Billings, Montana, on 4 September 1950. Unlike some other 2-0-2 accidents of note, this one left a plane to be inspected. The CAB found that the Martin hydraulic brake system was not up to current regulations, and that the CAA, NWA and Martin share the blame. Air France has ordered six Viscounts, and production Super Constellations will be tested soon. 

Editorial is vexed that the Air Force is classifying its contracts again, probably because of Administration pressure to conceal the increasing number going to big companies again. The Postmaster is defending taking mail from trains and putting it on trucks on the grounds that no-one has a "vested right" to the mail. Aviation Week apologises for repeatedly and mistakenly saying that the C-124 is being built at Douglas Santa Monica and not Douglas Long Beach. In its defence, it isn't very bright. 

Time, 9 April 1951

Letters

Mrs Ray Reed thinks that the Kefauver hearings are bound to end badly somehow, while Stephen Freeman thinks that Time's jokes about girls are funny. Robert K. Kelly of Corning, New York, thinks that the income tax leads to socialism. Bernard Frank thinks that the whole Argentina thing could be solved by inviting Eva Peron to the White House, everyone likes the new OPA administrator. Gracie Fields writes Time (from your own Vancouver!) to say that she's not really fed up with California. Linton Stevens and Jacqueline Murphy write to defend European college education against Perry Miller. The President of the International Council of Christian Churches writes about some blither blather while David MaClellan of Nova Scotia explains that monarchy is good and Louis S. Clapper of Nashville is worried that America is eroding too much soil, cutting too many trees, polluting too many rivers, and, in general, fouling the nest. Our Publisher explains some more about La Prensa and pats Time on the back over the Kefauver hearings. 

National Affairs

"More Serious Than in November" That is what "Secretary Marshall" says! (Remember when he was General Marshall? Those were the days! Remember when he was "Pious Old Fraud Marshall"? Those will be the days!) It is more serious, you see, because America is letting down. Why, people have decided that Korea and China and Indochina and Iran and --somewhere else, I forget right now-- aren't super-duper emergencies that demand that we stand to some caffeine-fired pose of rapt attention, our fingers and hearts and other distal extremities trembling with the need to do . . . something. (Also, the rules are in for the college draft. Professional students can't be drafted until they graduate, while undergraduates can be drafted if their grades fall too low, although there will be a special national exam they can take to get a full undergraduate deferment, grades notwithstanding, I guess on the grounds that some schools mark harder than others.)

Yes, I know I shouldn't drink coffee, or, really, anything else fun in this state. Now do please be quiet. 

Casualties in Korea have stopped building up (57,120), and while we obviously have no plan for getting out of Korea, it is because politicians won't make one, and the next Presidential election is only a year away. Two National Guard divisions are going overseas, but it is to Japan, and that's just fun. Yes, the Russians are massing around Valdivostok, and Time thinks that they're getting ready to invade Japan, but no-one else thinks that, so there. Also, Charlie Wilson thinks that America's mobilisation has come along so far that even though we still need 3 to 4 million more defence workers, pretty soon no other country will even dare attack us or our allies.
 

I should drop a note to Mr. Wilson explaining as how we have the atom bomb now. 

"Clay Calls It a Day"  General Lucius Clay has been in Washington a whole 100 days now working as a dollar-a-year man as Charles Wilson's assistant, and has had enough. He is going back to be chairman of Continental Can at, if I am reading this right, $96000/year instead. It's all because labour was mean to him. 

"After Kefauver" Crime crime crime! They're busting gamblers in Oregon! They're looking into the death of Abe ("Kid Twist") Reles, because now they think O'Dwyer might have been in on it. Abraham Goldman retired from the NYPD after being exposed as Frank Costello's crony. Etc. Not a crime at all is a manoeuvre in which Joseph Casey bought some tankers from the Maritime Commission, transferred them to a Panamanian company, and made a handsome profit at modest capital gains tax when they were sold two years later, along with various "gilt-edged backers" including Stettinus and Admiral Halsey. Lots of ways of making money with boats! Legally and illegally. Also, Time digs up some murders in Missouri linked to old Frank Pendergast, which means that the President practically committed them with his own bare hands.

"Funny Business" The State Department got a tip about same at the Hong Kong consulate, and an investigator swung by to discover the shocking truth. Four consulate employees were homosexuals, and one was taking bribes to arrange visas. All four have been fired, but the one who took ten grand to expedite visas was extra fired. 

Presidents Auriol and Truman have been having a grand old time, although Auriol has let it be known to the press that he is very tired of Americans calling the French effeminate. Then our President had to go before something called "The Associated Church Press" and defend Mayor O'Dwyer and the RFC, which wasn't anywhere near as much fun. (Senator Fullbright is riding the RFC hobbyhorse in all directions. It even turns out to be Communism's fault! "The vast  majority of great civilisations have been destroyed . . . by domestic corruption . . . . Democracy is more likely to be destroyed by perversion . . . than by armed attack . . . . The evil and insidious materialism of Communism is a far greater danger to us than their guns." Also, America needs to get right with God. ) 

Immigration is still trying to deport Ellen Knauf, and still won't explain why. The Reverend Jerry E. Hauff of Full Gospel Assemblies of Van Nuys, California, is being sued for keeping two dozen of his parishioners in a desert concentration camp he called Eden City for two years. His defence would seem to be that, if they weren't so gullible, they wouldn't have believed him. And speaking of getting in trouble over your strange beliefs, Sobell and the Rosenbergs have been found guilty of espionage. Sentencing is next week. Considering that the state witness got thirty years, things are not looking good for the three. 

"The Wetbacks" That is what we are calling Mexican migrant workers now. Time rounds up the long list of people who don't like the situation, including union organisers and small town boosters who think that the low wages paid to Mexican illegal migrants are ruining the small towns of the Imperial Valley, before  mentioning the people who do like them, which are the farmers, who couldn't even be lured away from hiring the illegal migrants when the government made legal migrants available back in the war. Low-paid illegal immigrant workers are "a cheap, natural resource as naturally [the farmers] as rain or good soil."

"Step Right Up, Folks" Atom bomb shelters and other atom bomb precautions, including the U-236 Atomic Shock Cure, aluminum pyjamas and lead-lined brassieres, are the latest down LA way. 

International

General Eisenhower blah. The Foreign Minister's Deputies Meeting in Paris (which is where they are talking about talking about a Big Four Meeting to . . . talk) is lots more fun than a repetitive story about General Eisenhower taking command, because the delegates keep getting into traffic accidents, which makes for a hilarious analogy to talk about the talking about talking. 

"Enlightened Peace for Japan" John Foster Dulles is pleased to report that the same old bunch of reactionaries are in charge in Tokyo, so it is full speed ahead at getting done with that old WWII business. The Japanese have promised not to covet Korea, Formosa, the Pescadores or "the Antarctic area," while America gets to keep the Ryukyus and Bonin islands for as long as it wants. Russia will be allowed to keep Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands just as long as it signs on with the treaty. There will be no more reparations, and Japan will be guaranteed its "inherent right to self defence" and will be cordially invited to participate in defending "the Pacific area." Also, General Falkenhausen has been released from prison in Belgium, stopping on the way out of the country to sign the guestbook and give a one-star review. 

Some guys who used to be Communists, defected, which just goes to show. 

This week's box story is "Britain in 1951." It turns out that it is hard to say anything nice about Britain because in Britain everyone is saying bad things about Britain. (And America. But while it is okay to say bad things about Britain in Britain, calling America "hysterical" is completely unacceptable.) Even Socialists want Labour gone. Says Time. Apparently Labour has no appetite for running a rearmament programme because "nothing in their experience" prepared them for it. Just  think how it might have turned out if Labour had been in the government in WWII! Also, there are meat and coal shortages. The Tories don't want an election because they don't have answers to the shortages. "Britain's foreign policy is being created in a landscape of bombed cities, pitted and jagged like bad teeth." He also notes that the British are a bit tired of being called "appeasers" considering that they spent more on guns (proportionately) before Korea than America did. 

Not in the box story is a short one about a crate of Norwegian ski-jumping equipment sent to Britain for an exhibition on Hampstead Heath, which was charged duties because of all that bureaucracy that Labour Britain has. Pretty soon even weather coming over from Europe will be taxed, ha ha!

"Hope Against the Huks" Time is very excited about Ramon Magsaysay, who is the communist fighter that the Philippines needs right now. Also, while India is a very strange place full of strange people, the important thing to remember is that Nehru's neutrality policy is objectively pro-Communist and bad. In Iran, everything is going to pots and the Iranians will probably nationalise the oil industry, and Moscow is "delighted." 

In Italy, a Communist named Laura Diaz has been convicted of insulting the Pope and blasphemy ans sentenced to a suspended eight month prison sentence. There has been some trouble in Berlin, which is all the Communists' fault. A box-type story, but not in a box because there has already been one, takes us inside Red China, but I'll leave you to write it in your head, because it is just not that hard. 

War in Asia

Everyone around the world, from Radio Peking to London to Ottawa, doesn't like General MacArthur because all those cowardly Europeans are afraid that "forthright action against China" might lead to a Russian invasion of Europe. Fortunately, The Daily Mail and The Daily Express back MacArthur, so the British are still staunch, and will surely support yet another crossing of the 38th Parallel. Which all goes to show that all the "MacArthur-haters" are pinkos, Communists and Communist dupes. 

"Enemy Buildup"  The Chinese are getting ready for a May offensive in Korea. UN troops are launching armoured raids across the parallel and bombarding Wonsan continuously in way of preparing for it. An Indian from Wisconsin gets a posthumous Medal of Honour, and the UN secretariat reports 228,941 casualties in Korea, with the South Koreans leading at 168,652 and Turkey coming in third at 1169, followed by the UK at 892, the French at 396, the Australians at 2656, Siam at 108, Greece at 89, Canada at 68, the Philippines at 55, New Zealand at 9, South Africa at 6, and Belgium and Luxembourg at a combined "0."

In this hemisphere, Canada and the US have signed another defence agreement, but those naughty Latin Americans keep being more interested in economic development than international crusades against communism, and, specifically, more capital goods for their US dollar credits and fewer guns. In happier news, the mambo is sweeping the world. In less happy news, the recent statement by the Mexican Red Cross that 70% of Mexican children die before reaching the age of 5 turns out to be a gross exaggeration of the real figure, but 20% is still terrible, although Time is tired of the subject with that and turns to Dr. Frederico Gomez, who is a much happier note to end the story on because he is doing something about it. (Although obviously not nearly enough.)

 

Business

 The US will spend $23.9 billion on capital equipment this year in spite of making 7 million televisions, 14 million radios, 5 million autos and 3 million automatic washers this year. The numbers are all down on 1950, but then we made all those guns. To make sure that we make even more guns this year, Charlie Wilson promises to clamp down on control of materials, resulting in a steeper decline in consumer goods production next year, although by 1953 industry will be able to meet civil and military demand. Meanwhile, controls now mean that new autos are being delivered without spare tires, to cut down on rubber consumption. Below there is also a story from the OPS that suggests that its latest moves are going to generate a lot of paperwork headache for retailers like groceries. 

The SEC has decided to launch its own market index in competition with the Dow-Jones.

"Speculator's Delight" If I am reading this right, a stock market guy named Francis Randolph who ran two investment trusts, recently merged them and made a lot of money off the clueless investors who held stocks in the two companies through various dubious manoeuvres. 

Mike and Ike, the Katz brothers, who run a Midwestern department store chain, get a profile, with Parker Pen gets in the news for throwing out its time clock. 

Goods and Services reports on New Ideas, including a cow pest killer to be applied to a scratching post, because "cows know where they itch;" a TV built-in to the rear seat of a Cadillac sedan by William B. MacDonald of Chicago's Mid-State Corporation; Exzyme, a dry cleaning powder, actually a digestive enzyme, from Pabst Brewing Company that "literally eats stains from clothing; and a front-window television set up for department stores showing a fashion show. Diner's Club cards aren't really a new thing, but they're fairly new. 

"Death Edict" The CAB has finally stepped in with some rules for the nonskeds, which won't be able to fly the same route more than eight times a month, pretty much killing their coach-rate flights. The industry has called it a "death edict." So, just like flying non-sked! However, it has complained to the Senate, which has put the regulation on hold while it holds hearings and takes bribes. 

Science, Medicine, Education

"Engineer's Problem" Bell is still working on the X-2, the rocket plane that will beat the X-1 speed record and hit 2500mph at 200,000ft just as soon as it is built. There are still little things to fix like the wing shape and the fact that aluminum will reach its yield point at these frictional temperatures and the problem of the pilot needing to breathe, but they'll figure it out! 

"Atom-Poisoned Metals" The structural metals in atom bombs are exposed to a lot of free neutrons. It turns out that radiation particles like neutrons "poison" metals by smashing into atoms and kicking them out of their lattices, and sometimes transmuting them by being captured and joining the nucleus. Hot protons and electrons and photons don't penetrate as deeply, but do melt the surface levels. No-one is sure how much damage is done by poisoning, and no-one is eager to experiment with highly radioactive materials to find out, but the new national laboratory at Arco, Idaho, is being set up to do it safely, and will hopefully discover new ceramic and metal materials which will stand up to atomic poisoning and take atomic engineering beyond the "steam in cast iron boilers" stage that made the early years of the Nineteenth Century so exciting. 

"Two-Way Fish" Cambridge zoology professor H. W. Lissmann thinks that he might have discovered a fish with a kind of radar threat warning receiver in its tail, but his unique specimen of Gymnarchus niloticus died of experimental excitement and he is hoping that a reader in Africa can send him another one. 

"The Missing Link" The Observer thinks that Britain has never lost its "leadership" in science, especially atomic physics, but hasn't done enough to develop its discoveries. It supposes that the solution is a technical school like MIT.  I asked Reggie, who gave the idea the ringing endorsement of, "Sure, why not?" 

"Audible Tinnitis" The draft board has turned up a young man with tinnitus the ear doctor can actually hear. Jack Husband, a 20-year-old sophomore from Oklahoma has a periodic spasm of his soft palate that produces a regular ticking, which is enough to get   him out of the army, and onto Columbia, which broadcast the sound to the nation last week. 

"Flourine Works" You know how the dentists say that flourine strengthens the teeth enamel? Turns out that it's true. The New York Department of Health has been adding sodium flouride to the water in Newburgh, New York for six years, and it has cut cavities by 33%. Other New York towns are now doing the same thing, but the District of Columbia has turned flouride down on the grounds that it can't afford it. 

"Earthquake in Chicago" Up until now, there has never been a general cure for cancer, although lots of quacks have claimed one because there is so much money to be made and attention gained. Well, now, in Chicago, they've got another one, "Krebiozen," and, once again, the phone is ringing off the  hook. Is it for real? Andrew Ivy, head of clinical science at the University of Illinois, says so. The inventor is a "hawk-faced, 45-year-old Yugoslav" named Dr. Stefan Durovic, so that checks out. All the good mad scientists are from Yugoslavia! (Except for the hydrogen bomb guy down in Argentina. Although it turns out that Dr. Durovic was down there for a while working in a secret laboratory after escaping Communism, which he hates.) Dr. Durovic claims to have "stimulated" the reticuloendothelial system of horses into producing a cancer-fighting substance that he  has extracted from their blood and turned into a white powder, which he has been using on a group of terminal cancer patients with good results. Time then checks in with the critics, who do exist. They generally think it is more quackery, and are very upset with Dr. Ivey for promoting it, but he claims that he had to do a press conference about Kreboiozen because he had been sending ampules of it around to other hospitals and rumours were getting out!

Ford is starting scholarships for the children of its workers, some private school gets a long article in Time,  and we check in with Jimmy Byrnes' plan to abandon the public school system in South Carolina rather than give up on segregation. Specifically, it turns out that Ralph Bunche is willing to say that it is a bad idea. Ralph Bunche! Also, North Carolina is in a tizzy over a law to keep five-year-olds out of school, which is all very well except that there is one five-year-old who has grown so tall that he ought to be in school, say some North Carolinians! 

Is there something in the water down there?

Art, Press, Radio and Television, People

Turin has held a city-wide art exhibit that was probably good for tourism. Mark Tobey[!] is "one of the Northwest's strangest and most famed painters," and is having a big retrospective show in San Francisco. 

"Racial Strength" Atlanta has an "annual exhibition of painting and sculpture by Negroes" which has become "one of the features of the art year." Time really liked it. 

"Too-Early Bird" In a scandalous development in St. Louis, the one-man art department at the Globe-Democrat was caught filing a music review ahead of the performance and has been demoted to "just books." 

Charlie Sprague of the Oregon Statesman sounds like a pretty good guy, but I don't follow American politics much outside these letters, and Time has fooled me before.

"Soul Searching" It sounds like Commentary is giving The New Republic a run for its "liberal magazine that doesn't like communists" money. and it particularly doesn't like The Nation.  

 "Advance on Hollywood" In the latest skirmish between television and Hollywood, the FCC has decided that Hollywood's refusal to release top movies to television looked like restraint on trade, and that Hollywood figures wouldn't get television licenses until they cleaned up their act. Harry Brandt, the president of the Independent Theatre Owners Association, replied that the FCC was trying to "blackjack" the industry into "committing hara-kiri." Meanwhile, CBS says that if Hollywood won't share its stars, it is going to start its own stable, so it signed Mary Sinclair. That'll show them! And if not that, the Pope has made the Archangel Gabriel the patron saint of radio and television. 

Alben Barkley, Senator Charles Tobey, ex-Belgian premier Henri Spaark, current Belgian premier Jospeh Pholien, William O. Douglas, Sir Osbert and Edith Sitwell, Patrick Hurley, Gregory Boyington, R. Marlin Perkins, Jarmila Novotna, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Aly Khan, Paul and Grace Hartman, Eugene O'Neill, Doris Duke and Porfirio Rubirosa are all in the paper. The O'Neill story is sad, and so is the Hartman divorce and Boyington being locked up in the drunk tank, but it's all still just People.

William Saroyan has remarried. Ralph Forbes, Countess Ida Coudenhove-Kalergi, Jerome Dunstan Travers, Sir Harold Beresford Butler, Porter Sergeant, Rabbi Zvi Rabinsohn and Eugene Bolton have died.

The New Pictures

Teresa, we're told, is a "strange picture." Pier Angeli plays a war bride "with no makeup or fancy hair-do," who takes her home to his tenement flat in Brooklyn and his mean old mom. Which is fine if over-drawn, but the  happyish ending doesn't convince Time. Up Front is supposed to be the Willy and Joe movie, but Universal is not Bill Maudlin, although Tom Ewell is up to being Willy. Or maybe Joe. Flight Plan for Freedom takes documentary moviegoers on a flight on a B-36. Time liked it, but thinks that the implications are a bit frightening. Lullaby of Broadway is just plain not very good. 

Books

Time really liked Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny, a taut, psychological thriller set on a US Navy destroyer escort in the wartime Pacific, commanded by a scrub Annapolis lieutenant and  bunch of ill-sorted draftees. It is "realism without obscenity" and vastly better than the "crushed-sensitive-youth" school of war novel from the likes of Norman Mailer and James Jones. Blanche Patch must have had a warning of a George Bernard Shaw-less issue of Time far enough ahead to write Thirty Years with GBS in time to be reviewed this week. Yay! Hugh MacLennan's Each Man's Son is another of those worthy Canadian novels that he has mastered. The Tolstoy Home: Diaries of Tatiana Sukhotin-Tolstoy is for everyone who can't get enough Tolstoy. Or other people writing about Tolstoy. It's no War and Peace, but it is only 350 pages. Probably with big blocks of white space at the head of every entry, because that is how the format goes; but, anyway, less to read! 

Aviation Week, 9 April 1951

News Digest reports that American has ordered 3 DC-6As, that the next Grumman to fly will be the MF9F-6, a swept-wing Panther, that the first 100 Convair 340s will be equipped with AiResearch air conditioners and pressurisation systems, that the Convair XP5Y-1 has just made an 8 hour trial flight, that BOAC is cutting back its order for 25 Bristol 175 turboprop transports, that the RAAF is receiving Meteors for service in Korea, that Trevor (Wimpy) Wade has been killed in a Hawker  P. 1081 test flight. 

Sidelights reports that the CAA will make pilot ID cards mandatory as of 1 September. Exercise SOUTHERN PINE has been delayed to allow more civilian components to join. Sky Pilots Flying Service of Columbus, Ohio, is promoting aerial road salting. We still have no idea whether Congress will investigate the CAB. The Army Signals Corps has invited reserve lieutenants to volunteer to train as liaison and helicopter pilots. 

Industry Observer reports that Boeing's tiny turbine is getting a workout in Australia as a potential boat engine, that there is still somehow news to report about that crop duster that the aviation class at that Texas university is working on, that McCulloch Motor's tandem helicopter could be serious threat to the big companies' tandem helicopters, that this year, Lockheed spent one man hour in 10 on engineering, one in four on production. Bell is moving its helicopter operations to Fort Worth but that doesn't mean that it is pulling out of Buffalo. The Army Corps of Engineers is experimenting with a grass landing mat, Convair is buying components for the 340 in bulk after getting 88 orders with options for more, and the Allison T-40 is now available in an advanced version with a  third more power than the announced 5500shp. 

Washington Roundup reports that military strategy is likely to be a big issue in the '52 election. This is the same story as last week, and is being pushed by the same man, Bonner Fellers. The Republicans figure that they can save money on defence by cutting the army and focussing on the Air Force. This will mean waving an atomic stick at the Russians. Feller thinks that Vandenberg and MacArthur are about to break with the Administration and back the GOP plan. No "hopeless land war" with Russia, just nuclear bombs from horizon to horizon the moment they cross the line. The Johnson Committee is expected to show that the Administration's $70 billion defence package isn't enough for the 95 air group air force, and will need to be increased to $100 billion, due to  inflation.

Alexander McSurely, "Avionics Gets Own AIA Technical Group" It does!

"CF-100 Readied for Trans-Atlantic Test" The Canadair CF-100 will show off its long distance cruising capacity with its new wing-tip tanks on its way to evaluations at Boscombe Down that might lead to it being chosen as a standard night fighter for the Atlantic Pact. 

"Turbo-Hydromatic 19-foot Prop to AF" The AF is taking delivery of this massive new propeller that might be used with the GE TG-100 on the Convair F-81, Ryan XF2R-1 Dark Shark, or the Pratt and Whitney T-34. It's a bit of a change from previous UAC-Hamilton airscrews, which were all electrically controlled. I've already noticed a bit of news about nonskeds and the CAB from Time, so I won't repeat it here. 

Ben S. Lee, "Ground Forces Hope New Order Pried Out of USAF is only Starter" The Air Force wants to keep the bigger helicopters to itself, while the Army is besieging the Air Force's 4000lb cap on Army aircraft with trial orders of tandem heavy helicopters from Piasecki and Sikorsky. It is also pushing for its own army air cadet programme. 

Aeronautical Engineering has David A. Anderton, "A Look at Tomorrow's Passenger Copters" David Anderton checks in with Britain, where they've been working on tomorrow's passenger helicopter, today. the news doesn't look super-good to me. Bristol and Westland are both working on conventional tandems, which are too small and slow to be worth the effort. Cierva and Fairey have more innovative designs, but with the crash of the Air Horse and of the Rotodyne, they're both back on the drawing board. Cierva is developing the W.11T on an enlarged Air Horse design, which doesn't really seem to answer the safety issue involved in having three engines driving three shafts through completely separate transmissions, while the Rotodyne is a completely novel concept, although it will be fast and able to carry a worthwhile 23 passengers. The Air Ministry is also looking at both control and landing arrangements. 

NACA Reports has a particularly exciting one out th is week, "Further Study of metal Transfer Between Sliding Surfaces." Also, "Effect of End Plate on Swept Wings at Low Speed," which seems more pressing. (They do help.)

"Prestressing May Up Aluminum Life" Some trials are reported. 

Avionics has "Electron Hammer: Research Tool" The other side of "metal poisoning." North American's Atomic Energy Development Laboratory has been using a statiron ("electron hammer") to fire high-speed electrons at metal pieces and "thus changing the metal's properties." By measuring the power needed, North American learns about the metal's properties. Most of the rest of the article is spent explaining the statiron, which is just a fancy name for a Van de Graaf generator, which my husband assures me is "old stuff." It's a big Van de Graaf generator that is cooled down with dry nitrogen, but it is a Van de Graaf.

Equipment has "New Hangar Comes Apart in the Middle," which I think I will skip, as I get tired of ingenious folding luggage and furniture very quickly at the best of times.  The very last thing I want to do is pinch my finger and break my airplane at the same time. That's expensive! There are also articles about a new turntable to simplify compass swinging, a USAF order for 4000 high intensity runway lights, and about the new "Coolair Minor" cooling units that cool British ambulance planes on the ground at stations between Singapore and Britain. 

New Aviation Products has a rival quick-connect fastener for cargo nets. This one is a "turnbuckle," and is from Pacific Scientific Tool. Scott Aviation's "Econo-Masks" are pliofilm oxygen masks for passenger cabins that are much cheaper than rubber masks. Doesn't seeem like the kind of thing you should be scrimping on, but what do I know? American Shower Door Comapny's "Thumweld" fastener locks into place in a 3/16" hole with thumb pressure and can be released by a screwdriver.

Transport news includes 56 nonskeds being refused renewal by CAB and NWA losing 35% of seat mile schedule capacity with the 2-0-2 grounding. NWA has no idea whether it will keep the 2-0-2 or sell it; it depends on the CAB modification list, which is not  yet complete. CAB hopes to mail it by 18 April, but that is only the target date. It is not clear that NWA pilots will fly the 2-0-2 again, even after it is modified. BOAC has received a Comet, the second built, for operational tests. 

Production has "How to Up Your Tool Productivity While Downing Your Grammarity"  I made up the last part. It's a series of  precis of papers given at the last annual meeting of the American Society of Tool Engineers. Carbide tools, a machinability measuring lathe, multiple thread bobs to speed gear production and boost life, a more rational approach to tolerances, more efficient usage of presses, the use of optical checking, hints on more efficient grinding and also automatic operation and organising production. 

The Semi-Annual Report of the Secretary of the Air Force is printed inside the back cover.