Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada
William Chase
Dear Father:
This is my delayed last, since in spite of the Siam Air Lines crash I am still flying to Macao next week for my confinement. My mother will be there the week after, and has telegrammed ahead with some words about Alyce that just about curled off the page.
I don't honestly know what to feel. We all know that Uncle Henry is a cad. He was obviously carrying on with Alyce before Aunt Bess left us in the body, but who knows whether it started before her mind left us? One thing is for sure, Uncle Henry has badly needed a woman to keep him in check. I don't think he appreciates just how many enemies he has made in the aviation business. Sherman Fairchild has amply proven his talents as a boardroom intriguer, and he is going to swoop in the moment Uncle Henry slips up, which we both know he will.
As I leave for the plane comes the news of the Battle of the Imjin and the fate of the Glosters. For me, it all blurs together in the sorrows and horror of war, but could you please check with your cousin? Uncle George will, I think, be taking it badly, especially as it seems to have pushed HMS Affray out of the Hong Kong press.
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Time, 16 April 1951
Letters
National Affairs
"Letter From Tokyo" "Each week the Korean war was costing the US 1300 casualties," so obviously the solution is to bomb China and unleash the Koumintang on the mainland, says General MacArthur in a letter to the Republican Minority Leader in the House. Senator Martin was so impressed by the sensible talk by the clearly still completely competent grandstander-in-chief that he read the letter on the floor of the House, just like it says you should do in the Big Book Of How The Army Does Things. "Insubordination?" What's that? After all, the General says that the President is trying to get out of the Korean War through peace negotiations, and we can't have that! Unless, you know, it's the general conducting armistice negotiations. That's fine. The Times of London calls the whole thing "the most dangerous" of "an apparently unending series of indiscretions," which seems about right. Taft has lined up with MacArthur, but even Time seems to want to have it both ways.
International
A box insert describes the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
War in Asia
"The Bigger Question" The Communists are building up for a big offensive in Korea. Reconnaissance shows engineers working on air bases behind th front, and there is talk that there are 3000 aircraft in the area, ready to deploy in Korea to give the offensive air superiority, although people speaking for the UN command think that the number is highly exaggerated. Time is quite excited, though, because the Administration has given permission to bomb Manchurian air bases if they support Red operations in Korea. In other words, the Red offensive is no worry because we will surely show it off. The real question is whether we finally get to bomb Red China into oblivion afterwards.
Foreign News
Germans are quite excited about the removal of the armistice restrictions on this and that, but upset about something the East Germans did. A long story claims to explain how Herman Goering got the poison he used to commit suicide with after his Nuremberg sentencing, based on a recent confession in a German trial. There might be progress in Yugoslavia's persecution of Archbishop Stepinac, Time sends a reporter to cover the Italian Communist Party's annual convention, then dumps the reporter's notes on us so that we can find the evidence that communism is awful. Belgium's premier is visiting America, the French Assembly continues to work on electoral reform, General Franco is trying to fix inflation in Spain, Iraq is using the leverage of the Iran situation to extract a 50-50 share of oil royalties from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and the Chinese anti-counter-revolutionary reign of terror continues with over 300 public executions in the south and more in the north. The Middle East is having a very bad locust year, and Manilal Gandhi, a son of the Mahatma, is conducting a hunger strike against apartheid in South Africa.
In this hemisphere, the Pan American Union has promised to defend US bases if the US needs to pull troops out, and to vaguely improve defence production. I guess they put off commitments to control; prices on strategic exports, and that is good for South America but not America?
Business
"Buyer's Strike" US buyers in Australia are "pulling out of the market to force the price down," on the grounds that US consumers don't seem to want to pay that much for wool. (Also, Du Pont's Dacron is better than wool! Maybe.) Wall Street is beginning to worry that the US is headed for an inventory recession, although the Dow Jones recovered from its swoon at the end of the week.
"The Wizards of Wilmington" Du Pont Chemicals gets the cover story this week thanks to taking the Savannah River project to build the H-bomb.
Science, Medicine, Education
"RCA Astrology" John H. Nelson of RCA believes that he can predict magnetic storms (which affect radio reception) by the alignment of the planets. I guess the idea is that the pull on the Sun, affecting sunspots, which create the magnetic storms.
"Energy of the Pampas" Time's article about the Argentinian "nuclear fusion" claims posits that Richter is producing fusion events by colliding accelerated electrons with lithium, which will produce fusion and energy, but only if the target is pure lithium. If it does work, James R. Arnold of the Chicago Institute for Nuclear Studies says, the Argentinians will soon be producing isotopes like Iodine-131, which would be a very lucrative export.
"Weather Spy" The Air Force has a tiny new automatic weather station, the "Grasshopper," which can be dropped by parachute into enemy territory. The Grasshopper frees itself from its parachute, erects itself on a tripod, and sets an antenna with a series of small explosions, and can run for 15 days before its battery runs out of power. Time speculates that a single bomber could lay massive numbers of "Grasshoppers," which would lie inert until activated by a radio signal, at which point the three little explosive charges would pootle, pootle, pootle, and Grasshopper would begin broadcasting weather information just in time for WWIII.
"Cut Out the Liver" The FDA says that Carter's Little Liver Pills can go on, but they have to cut out the "liver" part, because there is no evidence that their patent mayapple and aloe juice are good for the liver, as opposed to being a very "drastic" laxative.
"Rx for MDs: Be Nice" Time got a copy of Dr. Stanley R. Truman's The Doctor over the transom, and is here to tell us that in this salt-of-the-earth doctor's mind, doctors can go pretty far in their practice by just remembering to be nice to their patients.
"Three-Letter Wonder" Time is so excited about ACTH that it is hoping that "STH" (somatotrophic hormone) turns out to be just as magical. Hans Selye of Montreal told a conference in Lancaster, Pennsylvania last week that, in his experiments, STH seemed to act as a "safety catch," preventing the adverse side effects of ACTH. If it does prove effective, chemistry will have to discover how to synthesise it, since right now it is extracted from the pituitaries of slaughtered cows in small quantities.
"Effemination" John Stepnowski, a former laboratory assistant at Specific Pharmaceuticals of Bayonne, New Jersey, is suing his employer for not providing him with enough effective protection when he was crushing stilbestrol, the artificial replacement for female sex hormone used in poultry raising. As a result he turned into a girl and his wife is suing too, so we know what she likes! (Is this the right place for a Vassar girl joke?)
"Decision on the Oath" A California court has found the University of California loyalty oath unconstitutional and has ordered the reinstatement of the 26 professors fired for refusing to sign it.
"Concession at Chapel Hill" The University of North Carolina has agreed to open up all graduate programmes to Coloureds where there is no state programme at a Coloured school. That means all programmes except law, although this is still an issue at law.
"New Crisis in the Colleges" Between Korea, the draft, and the beginning of the Slim, Depression-era birth classes, the private colleges of the United States are experiencing sharp declines in enrollment. For example, Stanford is down from 9,200 in 1950 to 7700 this year. The colleges sure hope that something can be done about the draft and the end of the GI Bill, as many colleges are showing a deficit (Stanford is going to be $250,000 in the red, for the first time since the thirties), and up to 200 private colleges might have to close. Some schools are even thinking about letting co-eds in! A number of schools, including Dartmouth, Denver and Baylor, are letting faculty go, although only Rollins is dismissing tenured faculty. Educators point out that it is a bad idea to be closing colleges ahead of the bumper crop of WWII babies that will show up in ten years or so.
Art, Radio and Television, Press, People
Time checks in with the first retrospective of Max Beckmann's art, since he has been a Great Artist since January. His last painting wasn't as good as the early ones, but it was still pretty good, thinks this side of Art, which likes expressionism. On the other hand, Gerald Brockhurst just does portraits, so I guess his show balances Beckmann's. With classical and modern art in the balance, Time turns to David Smith, who is also modern, but a sculptor, which is different. I'm sorry. Wouldn't a "sculptor" who works in steel actually be a welder?
Benjamin Harrison Reese of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (recently seen faking its entertainment reviews) gets the long profile treatment.
"The Colonel Carries On" Colonel McCormick has fired his niece, Ruth McCormick Miller, as editor of the Washington Time-Herald, which presumably means that she is no longer the heir-apparent of the McCormick empire due to bad management. And that thing with the composite photograph suggesting that Millard Tydings and Earl Browder associated. And that thing with "Bazy" divorcing her husband. And that thing with her dating one of her reporters. Actually, she does sound like the Colonel's natural heir! (Except apparently he's actually a pretty good boss? It's so strange I actually believe it!) The President is fighting with Jonathan Daniels in spite of the Raleigh newspaperman being one of his most loyal supporters in the press.
Phumiphon Adundet (Rama IX), has had a daughter, who is not the heir to the throne of Siam because she is a girl. Barbara Bel Geddes is divorced. Klondike Mike (Michael Ambrose Mahoney), Alberto Caprile, George Albert Smith, Robert Broom and William Gwinn Mather have died. Mather, at 93, wasn't just a Cleveland iron magnate. He was also the direct descendant of all those fancy-named Boston Mathers, your Increases and Cottons.
Lots of news in the Cinema section that tests my resolve to skip it. HUAC is smearing yet more actors, which isn't news, and Jewel Productions is packaging burlesque movies and making a killing.
The New Pictures
The New Pictures
Books
Stephen Spender is a poet, but World Within World is a memoir. So it's really the best of both worlds. You can read a book by a poet without all that darn poetry! Theodore Plievier's The World's Last Corner is one of the books that Plievier wrote before Stalingrad. Since Stalingrad is tearing up the charts, here is one of his early, bad novels! F. Van Wyck Mason's Proud New Flags is first in what is set to be a tetralogy of novels on the Civil War, just like his previous tetralogy about the Revolutionary War. It has history, ships and sex! There are two Sherwood Anderson biographies out this week, which is nice. Time doesn't like Sherwood Anderson very much, and is pleased as punch that the biographers don't, either. A King's Story is, finally, a look at bee life beyond the queen. Wait, no, it's about a different kind of drone, the Duke of Windsor. That's thrilling!
Aviation Week, 16 April 1951
News Digest reports that Jacqueline Cochran has set a new speed record for propeller driven planes, 469mph on a 16 mile straightaway in a P-51. TWA has sold its 5 Stratoliners to a French nonsked in Africa. A Southwest Airlines DC-3 has crashed into a mountain, killing all 22 aboard. Canadian Pacific made a profit last year, British European made a loss in January, and the latest version of the Canberra is the PR Mk. 3.
Sidelights reports that Northwest now advertises itself as the only company to fly four-engine on every domestic service. Now that's making the best of the situation!
Industry Observer reports that the Air Force is getting ready to install "scientific weighing equipment" aboard jets to measure thrust, just as soon as industry figures out how to do it. The Canadians are going to manufacture a two-place training jet to an American design. Industry tells CAB that it still isn't ready for a standardised cockpit layout. North American has successfully test-fired the Mighty Mouse rocket projectile cell from its F-86D all-weather interceptor, but the Air Force can't buy the Mighty Mouse because it is Navy. The Navy will be left to use it on its all-weather interceptor, the FJ-2, which is basically a navalised F-86D. Sikorski's first foreign sale of the S-55 is to Westland, which will be making it under license in Britain. The choicec of the Alvis Leoinides for the new Percival P. 56 Mk. 2 trainer establishes it as "the most important piston engine in future British production plans." Convair is going to put a plenum chamber into the T-40s used on the Convair XP5Y-1 to eliminate flame quenching caused by water intake while using reverse props for landings. That's almost as good as not having the props dig up water in the first place! The new high alititude ejection seats the Air Force is testing, allow for immediate separation of seat and pilot after ejection, instead of the pilot riding the seat down.
Katherine Johnson at Washington Roundup reports that the push for emergency mobilisation continues to wane. Aviation Week calls out Senator Taft for lying about his previous opposition to the 70 group air force. Senator Brewster's call for an investigation of airline industry influence over the CAB and the White House is just a manoeuvre to tar the Democrats. The fact is that, as with the RFC, no-one in the Senate wants an impartial investigation, because everyone would be hit.
Alexander McSurely, "AF Pushes Buildup of B-47 Jet Bomber" I first read that as "AP." Because the AP sure is pushing the B-47. More importantly, so is the Air Force, because it is the only bomber the Air Force has that can actually reach Moscow in these days of the MiG-15. It's too bad we can't just move Russia a bit closer to our airfields!
With the "Y-ducted" Westinghouse J-40, Aviation Week officially gives up and tells us that Westinghouse says that it is the most powerful jet engine around today, just like all the other jet engines from the other companies.
Guess what? Nonskeds and regular airlines are squabbling in front of Congress.
"Navy Expanding Rocket Test Base" The Navy is spending $10 million on testing equipment at the Lake Denmark, NJ for a test facility that will use the currently inactive Navy base. It will be the East Coast centre for liquid-fuelled rocket research for BuAer. I'm not quite sure why Aviation Week specified the bureau. Are the submarines doing their own liquid-rocket research? I think we'd all pay a bunch of money to see a submarine launch a fluorine/hydrogen rocket! (See below for exciting experiments in fluorine chemistry.) Speaking of exotic materials, the NPA has modified the DO for "columbium-tantalum containing steels" for aviation use. The industry now has to get permission from the Aircraft Production Resource Agency at DoD as well as from the NPA.
Alpheus W. Jessup, "Props vs. Jets: Some More Navy Views" Aviation Week recently hosted an exchange of letters between Jessup and a Navy commander in Korea on the subject of close support aircraft. The commander was not best pleased with jet tactical support. This week, Jessup shops around for some more Navy points of view. He finds that while admirals and captains are always talking up the Skyraider, lower ranks are all for jets, as long as they are used right. (Jet pilots aren't over the target long, so they need better ground control, better radios, and better navigational arrangements so that they know where they are.)
Production Engineering as Irving Stone reporting on "Wright Speeds Sapphire to Production" You see, Wright isn't correcting the general impression that they are crawling forward with jet development because they are "depending on intense action now," and expect that "words will write themselves, later." In particular, they have moved development from their Wood-Ridge plant to an agency plant in Detroit after noticing that Wood-Ridge lacked the facilities, labour, or nearby labour pool, to do the job. Well, that was smart of them. Or, no, they did pick Wood-Ridge to start with! Once the design is modified to easier American tolerances, Wright is confident that it will be able to produce the engine in half the time that Armstrong-Siddeley needs. However, the Wood-Ridge plant has 11,000 employees and will need 17,000, and while there is a shortage of engineers right now, college enrollments are plunging, so the shortage will be drastic in five years.
"Single Curve Simplifies Control: New System, Adaptable to all Aircraft, Uses Mechanical Based on Theoretical Calculations" So, according to Frederick Ross, an aeronautical engineer at the University of Detroit, a single instrument that measures the angle of rudder deflection for a given aileron setting, allows fully stable lateral control of his Aeronca 7AC, and the sooner it is installed in a B-36 for testing, the better. Just throw on an atomic bomb or two and take to te air, ignoring air speed, trim tabs and engine power setting. As long as you've got a regular reading of the ratio of deflection to aileron setting, you can thrust and pull at the levers and not worry about a thing! If you're wondering, the "mechanical computer" is just the control linkage, and the article spends longer explaining how it works than it does explaining the aerodynamics.
I think I might be ready to teach aeronautical engineering at the University of Detroit.
"Scientific Faith: The Creative Man Has Intelligence to Use His Work, Says Smith" Henry DeWolf Smith explains how to use creative science to fill up space between the advertising you've already sold, when you don't have enough articles to do the job.
NACA Reports has more thrillers, including one on using an "uncalibrated cone" to measure air flows at transonic speeds, and transonic drag measurements on some wing shapes. The last series were classified when they were done five years ago, and showed the superiority of sweptbacl to rectangular wings. And I thought they just asked the Germans!
"Diversification" Ryan wants everyone to know that it is doing just fine with military contracts these days because it cleverly diversified its production back in the day and maintained its production capacity. Isn't Ryan a clever boy? Give Ryan an airframe-company-treat!
Equipment has "Mechanised Control Saves Money," which is an article from UAL about how UAL uses some gizmos (IBM card readers and sorters, although the ad opposite is for Remington Rand card sorters) to keep its Boeing Stratoliner spare part inventory under control. I think we should balance a treat on UAL's nose until we tell it that it can eat it.
"New Heavy-Duty Ground Connector" This one has the McGraw-Hill World News Service byline, telling you that it something clever the Brits (or French) have done. Specifically, Plessy has a . . .one of these. (Doing double duty, the article is paired with a photo of a GE "aircraft electrical system duplicator" so that our eyes don't get tired of all the words, and also so that our American advertisers don't get upset.)
New Aviation Products has a time delay relay from the Wilcolator Company of New Jersey, a teethed rubber and fabric drive belt from US Rubber, which is apparently the biggest advance in direct power transmission in 50 years because it does everything a metal drive belt can do, and is made of flexible, bouncy rubber. Fine Organics has found a way to control the odors in aircraft (specifically, the toilets). One tablet will deodorise three gallons of waste "immediately." It is a tablet of solid ammonium, which doesn't really sound like a technological breakthrough, but it must have needed proving, because it had trials on hospital aircraft on the Pacific run from Korea. Yale and Town has come up with a "triple stack" extension on the forks of its forklift truck so that you can stack inventory even higher.
"Air Taxi Gets Boost in NY Area" The Port Authority is allowing two operators to do shuttle and charter flights in single engine aircraft.
"Group Studies Specs for Planes of the Future" The Air Advisory Board's technical sub-committee thinks that America needs a DC-3 replacement and has some ideas about the jet transport of the future, which should be really big and also have radar.
Shortlines has the usual short bits from airlines that I usually ignore. The exception is for your hometown airline, Canadian Pacific, which has flown its Rolls-Royce DC-4s 750,000 miles on the Korean airlift, with one hour turn-around time in Tokyo.
Editorial defends the nonskeds and highlights the work of the Air Force's Director of Safety, Major General Bertrandias, who pleads with airlines to come clean about design and equipment difficulties to the air force.
Time, 23 April 1951
Letters
National Affairs
. . . And let's spare a moment of admiration for the only real hero of the last week, Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, who basically held the floor of the Senate to defend the Administration's position while the other Democratic Senators kept their heads down in hopes that the whole thing will go away before '52.
A box story catches us up with some other historical generals who have got into trouble with the President, including Andrew Jackson, Winfield Scott, George McClellan, Leonard Wood, and Billy Mitchell. Interestingly enough, Jackson became a president, and all the others except Mitchell ran, or at least sought a nomination. MacArthur has already tried for the Presidency, and I am pretty sure that he won't run for the nomination in '52, but that isn't the only kind of trouble he could make.
On the other hand, sometimes it is good to have a scandal to give you cover, like for example Carl Vinson getting the draft bill through. And also nameless Senators getting a reorganisation of the RFC through. We also have room for colourful local news, like Air Force Reserve Lieutenant John Hodgkins landing his Piper Cub on the summit of Mount Rainier and not being able to get off.
International
Everybody else in the world is happy that MacArthur is gone, which just goes to show that once again America is right and everyone else is wrong, says Time. Because, you know, Communism. It's all the British's fault!
They're still talking about a Big Four meeting.
War in Asia
Pyongyang's peace demands are still excessive, Red forces in Korea are still building up, General Ridgway was not expecting his promotion to SCAP, spring brings new kinds of horrible weather to Korea as the Reds open reservoirs in hopes of flooding the UN out of positions in the centre of the peninsula to add to the rain.
Foreign News
"Another Flare-Up" There is a "clearly Red-inspired" "outbreak of violence" in Iran. At least ten strikers have been shot by troops, which doesn't seem very Red-inspired, but on the other hand Time reports that three Anglo-Iranian employees were killed by the rioters. On the other hand again, Time is upset by demonstrations in Teheran and demands for the release of political prisoners, evidently because Communists deserve to be in jail. Time goes on to imagine WWIII breaking out if the British land troops to secure the refineries, and the Russians promptly invading from the north under the terms of the 1921 Treaty.
In Italy, meanwhile, Communism. In this hemisphere, the distressingly pink Canadian Minister of External Affairs, "Lester B. Pearson," has proclaimed that Canada is no American "camp follower," After eventually admitting that the minister goes by the masculine "Mike," and not the lisping "Lester," Time explains the problem: Canada hasn't sent enough troops to Korea, and instead of apologising for it, says that Canada shouldn't be criticised for this any more than Argentina, Egypt and Sweden. And since Argentina and Egypt are bad places (Sweden gets a pass), this is awful. Although given that he is complaining about interminable American stalling on the St. Lawrence Seaway on the one hand, and the astonishing America leaps on the Japanese peace treaty and German rearmament, Time is willing to concede that he has a point. Except when he criticises the United States, because he needs to "keep your nose out of our affairs," said one Texan in a letter. Exactly!
Time continues to be very upset about the closing of La Prensa. and gives it to Peron.
Business
Wall Street is UP this week.
"Trouble for Northwest" "In the past four years, Northwest Airlines has been plagued by accidents with its 36-passenger Martin 202s." You don't say! With three 202 (and one DC-4) crash, Northwest had more passenger fatalities in 1950 than all other scheduled US airlines combined. After the fifth crash earlier this year, Time reports, there was a "palace revolt" against the 202, and Northwest grounded all 20 of the surviving planes. It is now putting half its fleet up for sale, while planning to upgrade the remaining 10 to the CAA's recommended modifications order, and will put them back into service. Oddly enough, there are no buyers in sight even though Northwest assures everyone that it has in no way lost faith in the plane and just wants to operate more four-engine types. The CAA is investigating to see if maintenance might be at fault. In the meantime, Northwest can just be grateful that it doesn't face any competition.
"Shotgun Wedding" This week, PGE and the California Public Utilities Commission entered into an agreement to distribute California public power on the PGE power grid, which is "a victory for private power," but only after Congress told them to settle down and make nice. In other California news, the Commerce Department still has its heels dug in against the California court order requiring the government to return the Dollar Line to the Dollars.
CBS is cutting its advertising rates, and layoffs are spreading across the television industry due to slumping sales and growing inventories.
Medicine, Education
"Back to Life" Time describes how some doctors "brought a man back to life" by massaging his stopped heart for twenty minutes until it started beating. It's apparently nothing new for doctors to cut open a chest cage and massage stopped hearts, but twenty-two minutes is a long time, so it is a miracle. It's a miracle that seems like it was only necessary because the anesthetist administered too much sodium pentathol, and what do you expect from the Colorado State Hospital, Pueblo, but the patient can't sue for having his chest cracked open because it is a miracle!
"Signals in the Blood" Dr. Reuben Leon Kahn, of the University of Michigan's serology lab, invented the Kahn test for syphilis thirty years ago, but we still call it the Wasserman test, because it was basically an improvement on the 1906 Wasserman test, but now he thinks he has come up with a universal blood test for disease and has written a book about his exclusive research, An Introduction to Universal Serological Reaction in Health and Disease, in just exactly the way that a real scientist does, and not like a crackpot at all.
"For UMTS" Of 791 US college deans and presidents, 52% backed universal military training as an emergency measure only, 30% wanted it permanently, and only 18% were flatly against it. Which means that they're for it. Time obviously went to a liberal arts college. Its sums aren't very good! The real question is whether it went to school with "George Paik," South Korea's Minister of Education, who gets a good page for reopening the schools in South Korea even though some of them don't have roofs. My hero! The University of Chicago has replaced Robert Hutchins with Lawrence Kimpton, a Stanford man who took his PhD in philosophy at Cornell, but who has mostly worked as an educational administrator, including running the University of Chicago's Metallurgy Project for the Manhattan District.
Art, Press, People
Amedeo Modigliani is a great artist because he is dead, and male, and killed himself with alcohol before tuberculosis could get him. Perfect for a show at the MoMA. In search of something even more stultifying, it is off to the Tate, to view a collection of schoolboy portraits from Eton, on loan from Eton, which has made it a tradition for the young scholars voted "Most Likely to Succeed" to donate a portrait of themselves instead of the otherwise traditional ten pound gratuity.
I have no words.
MacArthur is in the news, so Press does that story that is all about how the Press handled MacArthur being in the press.
"A Small Mistake" Last year, Stars and Stripes misreported the court martial conviction of Lieutenant Colonel Richard F. Whitcomb for "looting a requisitioned house in Germany." (The conviction was later overturned.) It listed him as "Richard S.," which went into the AP wire, which led the Boston papers to the Worcester hometown of Richard S. Whitcomb, where they discovered that he had been a prominent businessman and a candidate for the Republican nomination as governor in 1938. They then misprinted his address, so that the crimes of "Richard F." eventually settled on "Richard S." of Longmeadow, near Springfield. Still guilty of looting, but not of being a member of the GOP. This particular Richard S. having only ever been a Boston businessman, and either he or Richard F. sued for libel. Or both? Anyway, some of the libels have been settled, and either Richard F. or Richard S. has collected a cool fifty grand from the Boston press and the UP wire. Nice going on the copyediting, Time. "Last week, a jury awarded Whitcomb (now a brigadier general on active duty . . . " Which Whitcomb!?
Fulton Sheen said that there's too much sensationalistic coverage of "cime, lust, and violence" in the US press the other day, so the papers checked their copy and concluded that he is full of you-know-what.
"Victory for TvA" The Television Authority is a union for TV actors that recently won a nice settlement. Which goes to show something. I think. Time doesn't say, which is understandable given that it only has a column-and-a-half to say it in. The Mary Margaret McBride Show is like her radio show, but on television.
Uncle Henry's marriage to Alyce hits the paper. Mrs. James Joyce has died. So have Samuel Rufus Rossoff, Ernest Bevin, Henry DeVere Stackpoole, and Vilhelm Bjerknes. Because Time manages to not kick Ernie Bevin while he is down on the Milestones page, I have decided not to mention that it failed to deliver a Science column this week. After all, why dwell on failure?
The New Pictures
Father's Little Dividend is even better than the original, Father of the Bride. Time expects us to not remember that it didn't like Father of the Bride, so on that count it wouldn't be much of an achievement to be better, but I don't think that's what they mean. The Brave Bulls is the long-awaited American pro-bullfighting movie. It is to be followed by Republic's Bullfighter and the Lady, produced by John Wayne. (Yes, the actor.) It is a cheaper movie but with a better cast and better bullfighting sequences. Goody! I so like my animal-torturing scenes with "stylised grace and violent excitement." The Tales of Hoffmann is a British version of an opera based on a German tall tale of the kind that gets eaten by the dread Romantic Criticism beast, only to live on in the form of an excreted volume of overwrought prose and lyrics. Which is to say that the movie seems to be manure.
Books
Shirley Jackson, she of dreadful lotteries and haunted houses, has a terrifying-sounding novel out. Or maybe I just expect Hangsaman to be terrifying because I've read The Lottery. Marcel Ayme's The Miraculous Barber is about the man I hope to find in Macao to tame my terrifying mane. No, on second read, it is about Paris in the "uneasy year of 1936," when silly things happened that you can satirise, if you are Ayme. James Michener's Return to Paradise is what happened when the author of Tales of the South Pacific is sent back to the South Pacific to write some articles for a travel magazine. James Agee's The Morning Watch is about a novel of a boy growing up somewhere down south with religion. Can't have too many of those, you know. Pearl Buck's God's Men is about what happens if you write a book after reading back issues of Time all day. (If you hadn't guessed, Henry Luce is the villain.)
Aviation Week, 23 April 1951
News Digest reports that the Air Force has the funds to operate its XR6O-1 Constitutions for another year. Consolidated Vultee is building a guided missile factory at Ponoma, California. A Siamese Airlines DC-3 has crashed into the sea near Hong Kong, with no reports of survivors at press time. William G. A. Perring, Director of RAE Farnsborough since 1946, has died at 52. Canada is ordering $267 million worth of CF-100s and F-86Es.
Sidelights reports that the 1952 budget proposal is going to be late, that the Aero Club of Italy is buying 50 two-seater Beechcraft under the European Recovery Programme, that all three of the existing service commanders are on record as not wanting a Marine on the JCS, that Air Materiel Command is not going to have another industrial exposition at Wright Field because they are a headache. MATS says it needs a bunch more engineers, and will pay starting salaries of $5400 to $6400. Might have accidentally misplaced this page on my husband's face. It's okay. He was napping! The USAF has built a complete underground command post at the Pentagon, because everything is better underground, including the bunker you will defend against radioactive mutant bureacrats after Washington is levelled by a Commie H-bomb. (H-bombs can't go underground. It's just science.) Convair wants to call its new California plant "the Avionics Division," but the Navy is "not OK" with this because "avionics" isn't a word. Now they tell us!
Industry Observer reports that the AMC may belatedly add magnesium to the list of controlled metals, that Curtiss-Wright hopes to finally deliver the rocket engines for the Bell X-2 soon, that the USAF will announce the winner of last year's automatic interceptor contest soon, that Goodyear has a magnesium wheel that is longer-lasting and lighter than existing ones, that Reynolds' programme to develop a machinable, extruded aluminum cylinder has run into a snag, that it is going to take another six months to clear out the building in Omaha that has been chosen as SAC's new headquarters, that the USAF contest to develop more reliable vacuum tubes is down to two suppliers working in ceramic tubes, and that the Air Force has just about given up on pulse jets in favour of ramjets.
Katherine Johnson's Washington Roundup has MacArthur this week! Also, Johnson can confirm that the current round of plane production contracts are going to be delayed, that the original national mobilisation plan to put war factories on triple shifts has been "modified, that the Senate CAB investigation into the airlines is going ahead because the nonskeds have put on too much pressure for the Senate to resist.
Alexander McSurely, "Relief Speeded for Materiel-Short Plants" It has been!
"6 Pacific Planes Sent Back by MATS" The Korean airlift continues to wind down (peak month was September, with 13,000 passengers and 1784 tons of cargo), or maybe just get more efficient, as 6 more planes are released, reducing the Lift to just 60.
"National Air Races Planned for 1951" A few massacres can't stop the Races! I hope there's another 400mph, zero-altitude midget race! (No, on further reading, the only pylon race will be the Continental 190hp class.) It says here that it is because the Air Force and Navy have agreed to take part as long as there's only a little emergency going on this summer.
"Boeing Delivers TB-50D Trainer" Finally there is a B-29 sized trainer. (Rumours that USAF top brass are too tired to keep on stuffing money down the drains have been denied by Under-Secretary for Navy Swell Guys Dan Kimball.)
"Two New Copters Offered Military" Under-Secretary for Navy Final Pass Copy Editing Dan Kimball says that two tiny-weeny West Coast helicopter manufacturers have announced that they're really going to try very hard to get Navy or Air Force contracts.
"Convair's Turboprop Flight Experience" So how is Convair doing with the unnecessary turboprop conversion of the airliner nobody wants? The one with a four-blade Aeroproducts prop geared 12.5-1 through two reduction gears to two separate four-stage turbines running at over 14000rpm? The article promises the "fresh breeze" of actual flight testing, of which there have now been two. (Flights, that is.) So far the lesson is that the engines need screens in front because foreign matter keeps wrecking the compressors, that starting is "easy" now that the initial problems were worked out, that the plugs in the electrical control unit keep falling out, resulting in "wandering propeller blades," (Remember how the Apollo kept creeping around the runway because "idle" couldn't be made to mean "no thrust"?) It turns out that if you replace the plugs with hard connections, realign the electronics before every flight, and continuously tweak them in flight, it's a pretty easy plane to fly! As long as the actuator in the propeller pitch control mechanism is working properly, which it often doesn't, because who understands magnetism, anyway? All those equations! The governor doesn't actually govern until it is on overgoverning, so at takeoff you have to manually set the speed, but that's okay. There's no "definitive solution," but if you set your mouth and bite your tongue and jiggle this and jiggle that, it works out so far. "Fortunately, a complete hydraulic failure in the propeller has not been experience," but that's why the company pays for the test pilot's life insurance. Once in the air, the XP5Y-1 keeps trying to crash to the side, but that's probably because of the dual props, so no worries on the Turboliner. Turbine burnout seems likely to happen often at takeoff, so someone needs to figure out a feathering arrangement for the props, especially for the XP5Y-1, although in the mean time, life insurance, etc. And that's it. Everything's keen!
Avionics has "High-Purity Polarisation for VOR" FTC's new antenna for VHF Omnirange is really good, really high fidelity stuff. Lockheed's new Avionics Test Lab is swell.
Several pages of new maintenance guidelines for the Stratoliner and 2-0-2.
New Aviation Products has a landing gear position indicator from Riverside Metal, an "automatic Pyrometer Control" for "Hot dimple control," from Assembly Products of Ohio. Meletron Corporation's new pressure switch uses a diaphragm to achieve the kind of ruggedness you want in an airplane. Welch Electric's Universal Cable Harness Tester is very fast. Franklin C. Wolffe's electric cable terminal fasteners are pretty good, and so are Neilson Wheel company's packing case hooks, which go right into the case as a permanent feature. Lablon Pressure Sensitive Tape from Lablon Tape is ideal for identifying electrical components like wiring and fuze boxes. Barber-Colman's AYLC torque limit actuators do what it says.
Production has Lockheed telling us about how efficient its new press-forging equipment is. Lockheed used to think that press forging was a big waste of time when it was just its competitors doing it (especially in Britain, Uncle George would remind us), but now that it has press forging equipment from Wyman-Gordon, it is the best thing ever.
The CAA has cleared the DC-6B, and the Senate is going to investigate foreigners with their airline subsidies.
Editorial is upset at the CAB for announcing that it is going to be investigating Colonial Airlines for something or other. Making it public in advance amounts to a smear, not a warning, Robert Woods says. Woods is also seeing red at the Southwest Airlines DC-3 crash, which could only have happened if the plane was cruising at half the minimum altitude, and he wants more reporting and more enforcement. He also notes a dispatch from The New York Herald-Tribune's England correspondent about how the British have a jet transport and we don't, and harrumph scones, strawberries and cream, stiff upper lip Wimbledon to you! This is very embarrassing for America, and America should be embarrassed. The newest member of CAB is named John Chandler Gurney, in spite of which he was born in Yankton, South Dakota and used to run a gas station there. He has profited since, having won one of the state's Senate seats in 1948 and won re-election in 1944. Defeated in 1950, there wasn't much for the "Protestant, Mason, member of the Odd Fellows and Elks," with three children, to do except pick up a CAB seat.
Time, 30 April 1951
Letters
Letters about the MacArthur firing are surprisingly evenly divided. At least we can agree that Truman should be defeated in '52. (If he runs.) W. G. Groeninx van Zoelen, who lives in Mexico City, thinks that Time has a penetrating grasp of the French mind, while Abilene defenders defend Abilene, someone thinks that William Fulbright would be a good President (besides Fulbright). MP Richard Fort and retired admiral B. B. Schofield also liked the "Britain in 1951" ad, and reader Charles Whittaker writes with an urgent correction to the ongoing shortage of George Bernard Shaw-related content. Time's Burmese stringer got a Burmese press award. Our Publisher tells a meandering story about how a Wasington-area doctor diagnosed an outbreak of "Herpangina" because he reads Time. Then Our Publisher tells us that we'll be able to buy Time neckties soon. Nothing for the ladies, oddly enough. (Sarcastic even in my condition. Why aren't I the hero in an Austen novel?)
National Affairs
"The Old Soldier" Oh. I hadn't even thought. I'm sorry. You probably haven't heard, but General MacArthur has been fired. His address to the Joint Session was quite something. So was his appearance before an "enormous, rumbling thong" of 250,000 people who greeted him in front of the Washington Monument when he left the Joint Session.
Time then ties itself up in knots and gives itself a thorough thrashing for not liking isolationists or the President 
or MacArthur, before giving itself a little present in the form of a fawning obituary for Senator Vandenberg, who had the absolutely terrible timing to die this week. (And be replaced by a placeholder.)
International
"Against the World" General MacArthur says that the rest of the world didn't like his Korean War strategy. The rest of the world replies that, no, it didn't, and for good reason. Time explains as how all the foreigners are wrong, and Time knows it because only Time understands the Asiatic mind. Also, Time is worried that the current working arrangement for security in the Pacific is slipping through the cracks, and reminds us about it because it allows for the official military advisory group to Formosa, and Time doesn't want to lose it. The US ambassador to Belgium is in trouble for scolding Belgium for only spending 5% of its GNP on defence and also tradiing with "Soviet-bloc nations."
War in Asia
The way Reggie hears it, Time is being a bit Pollyannish, and the UN has taken a serious black eye due to Van Fleet extending an offensive until it ran right into the Chinese attacking south. Some of that is understandable since weekly reporting is behind the news and Time hasn't heard about the Glosters, which is going to be a huge black eye on the Americans, not only in London but also Brussels, as the Belgian battalion is attached to the British. (The Turks also got quite beat up, and the New Zealand artillery regiment had a close call, but the New Zealanders got away, and the Turks don't have any press clout they can't win by dying heroically in the first place.)
"One-Eyed Dragon" Time reports that Liu Po-cheng might have taken over command in the current offensive. Time's man in Seoul reports that people are begging for food.
"Insecticide" That's the French troops' nickname for General de Lattre de Tassigny. The general was worried that it wasn't very sympathetic, but the assembled press told him that it was, so he decided to launch a grand offensive in the delta that killed a whole 300 Viet Minh and took 600 prisoners. That'll show them! "Making an Army" covers the general's attempts to create a native Viet Nam army to replace the French. His main problem is finding officers. St. Cyr graduates 16--20 Vietnamese officers a year, but that isn't nearly enough, and most competent Vietnamese refuse to serve in the army or government because "they do not know whether the Communists or the French" will win. The consensus is that they are a bunch of fence-sitters, as opposed to patriots.
Foreign News
"The Beginning of the End" Aneurin Bevan has resigned over the budget, following arguments on the Labour left that the scale of rearmament was excessive and threatened social democracy, and that American rearmament would "gobble up raw materials at such a rate that 'the civilian economy of the Western world outside America will be undermined.'" Time thinks that the government might be defeated on a confidence motion soon. Meanwhile the British have agreed to Argentine prices for meat, ending the ten month meat shortage on Argentine terms, apart from some small concessions. A horrible little story in which "a smashing brunette named Mrs. Helen Caple" wanders the butcher shops of the north of England, tries to seduce the butchers out of an extra slice or two, and then, if they give way to her feminine wiles, hits them with a summons. Because apparently this kind of behaviour is rife, with "professional actresses getting as much meat for themselves as I get for my whole family," says Housewife Mary Browne. Also, the government probe into gambling in Britain establishes that gambling is okay in moderation. Everyone is shocked and appalled.
"Executioner" Since there doesn't seem to be a story about Italian communists behaving badly, Time turns to the death of "famed bandit [Salvatore] Giuliano," who was apparently assassinated by a fellow bandit, and not killed by the police. Says a former member of Giuliano's band, who confesses that it was, indeed, he who pulled the trigger. In East Germany, the German premier and the Polish met to agree that the new Polish-German border is permanent. Time senses that the two communist governments are about to have a falling out.
Business
Inventories are up, price-cutting is breaking out, and Beardsley Ruml says that the solution to an excess profits tax is to not show an excess profit on your books. He really, really doesn't like excess profits taxes. For 50 years, Rhode Island has required that workers who have their pay garnished need to be left a minimum of $10/week to live on. This week it put it up to $30.
In spite of everything, corporate profits are good, and the master plan of price and profit controls is out. It is 25,000 words to cover 75,000 manufacturers and supersedes the 26 January general order when it becomes effective at the end of May. In particularly exciting news, pencil manufacturers are going to get enough copper to keep on making those little coils at the top of the pencil, which means that America won't run out of pencils!
"Switcheroo" Another company we haven't checked in with for a long time, Tracerlab, might be tiny (only $1.7 million gross last year), but somehow it has taken over the much larger Kelly-Koevig Mfg Company of Lexington, Ky, which made most of America's x-ray machines. Tracerlab could scrape together $750,000 to pay for it, and could afford the company's $1.5 million debt, so off walks Philip Meyers, also owner of Cincinnati's Fashion Frocks, Inc, with that white elephant off his mind.
On the bright side with Communisn, the Hungarians are letting Robert Vogeler go, in return for the satisfaction of "just Hungarian claims," which may involve the Crown of St. Stephens, which is in American custody somehow and which Cardinal Spellman apparently has the authority to deny to those awful Communists; or possibly just a big lot of machine tools that the Nazis confiscated in 1944 and which are sitting in a warehouse in west Germany. On the not-so-bright side the Chinese purges continue. Time is pretty sure that all the shootings are because a mass anti-Communist uprising is imminent. Also, a shipping company in Hong Kong has been compelled to apologise for misrepresenting its new service to Shanghai, which means that Clement Atlee is personally appeasing Red China.
In this hemisphere, we remember various Latin American revolutioanry martyrs against this and that, while in Canada a television making company in Port Credit, Ontario is making money as Canadian Admiral, which is surprising because who ever heard of Canadians making things, even though they are also making jet engines. In fact, totalling all the American investment in Canadian manufacturing, it must come to billions! Or $363 million. But taking it all into account, it's billions.
Science, Education
"Heat Beyond Measure" Temple University's Research Institute has built two of the hottest cutting torch yet. One burns aluminum in oxygen, the other "fluorine in hydrogen." ("Ooh, spicy," says my husband, before describing what hydrofluoric acid is like.) Temple says it isn't actually working on a commercial cutting torch, it is just setting things on fire because it is fun, and also because it might learn important stuff that will apply to, oh, they don't know, atomic research. Or jet engines. Something! Now let's go cut something!
"The Great Event" So what was it like in the beginning? Maybe the universe was just a great big mass of protons and neutrons containing all the mass of the universe, the primordial "ylem." Then there was a big explosion, big enough to hurl matter "a billion light years away," after which all the neutrons and protons settled down together to be the matter we know and love today. That's what George Gamow says. (Unless that Hoyle guy in Britain and his Indian colleague whose name I couldn't possibly spell from memory, who say that all the elements besides hydrogen were mad
e in stars.) The point here is that Ralph Alpher and Robert C. Herman now are arguing for the "ylem" theory.
"How to Free Fossils" Fossils come embedded in rock, often limestone, and Donald G. MacVicar, Jr, of Amherst must be getting ready to transfer to Temple, because he thinks he has found a way to free the fossils by burning them! Or the rock. It turns out that setting rocks containing fossils on fire in an electric arc furnace is too much fun not to try, and sometimes it works.
"Allergies by the Millions" In Allergies: Facts and Fancies, Dr. Samuel Feinberg of Northwestern University explains that allergies can be very serious and that lots of people have them. Millions! Also, they are not caused by emotional upsets. He is very clear on that. You cannot get an allergy by arguing with someone. (I don't have any allergies, so that checks out!) It turns out that ACTH doesn't cure allergies, and Dr. Feinberg wishes that there was more money and research for allergies, considering how important they are.
"The Law and the Life" Did you know that the Jehovah Witnesses have a religious rule against blood transfusions? There is a case in Chicago where a judge has ruled that Cheryl Lynn Labrenz, the infant child of two Jehovah Witnesses, who evidently didn't get a blood test before they got married, should receive a transfusion to treat her response to Rh incompatibility. The court said she should get a transfusion, and she is recovering, but the parents aren't appropriately grateful, so Time scolds them.
"Down with Beriberi" I'm also against beriberi! It is a disease of Vitamin B deficiency that afflicts people who have too much polished rice in their diet. (Rice bran has Vitamin B1). Asians do feed their chickens the bran, and brown rice spoils faster than white, so there are reasons for it, but American scientists are now experimenting with enriched rice on Bataan, which used to have a real problem with beriberi, and generally everything is swell. You'd think it would be even better if the poor peasants could eat their own eggs instead of selling them, but I'm just a girl, what do I know?
James Conant thinks that the British system of higher education is too neat and tidy for a big, brawling country like America. ("If it can afford [the current system].") Time catches us up on all the worthy ways that the Ford Foundation is spending on education-related activities and then checks in with the new Legal Centre of Southern Methodist University, which produced two Justices of the Supreme Court and Harry Medina, which I won't hold against them even if they are Texans. It reminds Time of the Inns of Court. Except for being way the hell and gone out in Texas. Time to tell us about Ivor Brown, who writes about words for The London Observer, and oh, boy, has he found a good one: "Amygdaline." Let that one roll around on your tongue! It's Greek for "column filler."
Art, Press, Radio and Television, People
Willem de Kooning is having two Manhattan shows, and Time is required to say something about him. He "packs a wallop." The Russians aren't going to return the paintings they seized from Dresden museums because they are "legitimate war booty." "Pretty Honore Sharrer" is an artist even though she is a Massachusetts housewife, and, even more importantly, because her show in a W. 57th gallery is a triptych entitled, Tribute to the American Working People. Time thinks that "despite its faults," it is in the "front rank" of American art that tries to "put content first."
"Columns v. Editors" "Are syndicated newspaper columnists worth printing?" That's the question that has been roiling American newspapers since J. Donald Ferguson of The Milwaukee Journal kicked all the canned columns out of his paper. By which I mean that Drew Pearson is writing columns about how he breaks stories that the Journal is afraid to touch, and that's why he is syndicated around the country, and Ferguson saying that "No, you're ugly."
"Key Question" "The New Dealing anti-Communist New York Post and Manhattan's Communist Daily Worker" have both seized on Gallup polling that seems to show that their anti-MacArthur position is popular. It turns out that while 62% of Americans disapprove of his firing, three out of five support peace talks with the Reds. However, as Time points out, 46% of Americans are in favour of blockading China and bombing it, whereas only 40% are against it, which goes to show that America agrees with Time. (Except for the part, Time admits, where 75% of Americans are against full-scale war with China.)
"No. 2 For Hodding Carter" Apart from being just a little bit (lot bit) white supremacist, Hodding Carter of the Delta Democrat is all for "tolerance in the race- and religion-conscious South." Carter notes that even though Coloureds outnumber Whites two-to-one in his area, segregation is just fine. What is needed is more "respect between races and between religions," which can be achieved if the Protestants and Catholics of the area get together to build a synagogue for the Jews. Also, he just bought the competing paper.
"The Supermagazines" Better Living is just like a magazine, only they sell it at supermarkets. Sure, sure, these big, supermarket checkout magazines have been around for years, but that doesn't mean that it isn't time for a story about this one!
Hey, it's that story about how the news covers MacArthur, only it is in Radio and Television! Time also catches us up with who won the radio and television Oscars, which is lots of people, and the new shows, which consist of Crime Photographer moving over from radio and The Harry Morgan Show giving up on its original idea of making fun of TV amateur hours and switching over to sketches.
The Gandhi situation is terribly sad. He had lost 20lbs already, and was so weak that he broke his fast with honey water. Starving yourself to death has to be the most horrible kind of suicide there is, and that was what was going to happen. There was not going to be popular pressure on the Malan government to relent. If anything, The kind of South African White voters who put the National government in power would be more likely to vote for Malan if Gandhi died!
Audie Murphy has married. Sam Maceo, Senator Vandenberg, Oliver Fremstad, Marshal Antonio Cremona and former Senator James Thomas Heflin have died. (He's the man who stumped for Hoover because the Democrats nominated a Catholic.)
Cinema reports that after a fire last month at the World Jungle Compound of Thousand Oaks, California has wiped out Hollywood's entire supply of chimpanzee actors, the Jungle Jim series either had to stop filming or launch an emergency talent search. A female chimp named Tamba is your new Jungle Jim.
The New Pictures
Books
You know what we need right now? A novel about growing up in the South. With religion! And forbidden sex! And we have it, from Thomas Hal Philips, The Golden Lie. Time says that it isn't like the others. Sure, sure, good luck with it! W. H. Auden's Nones is book-length poetry, but it is Auden, so I forgive it. Walter Macken's Rain on the Wind is a very serious novel set in Ireland instead of the South. Time kind of sort of liked it. E. W. Scripps' Damned Old Crank: A Self-Portrait sounds like a book by the kind of man I'd like to know. The book, not so much. For a guy who started a newswire service, it sure sounds badly written!
Aviation Week, 30 April 1951
News Digest reports that the National Guard is calling up 300 pilots, that Bennett Meyers has pled guilty to income tax evasion, that Alcoa's new XA788 alloy is made of the same material as 75S but has 10% more strength and about the same stress and fatigue properties --which is a bit of a worry since fatigue has been the issue with 75S.
Sidelights reports that Glenn L. Martin needs translators to talk with the visiting English Electric people who are helping them build the Canberra, that Bob Kenney, ex-Fairchild public relations, is now handling same for Eric Johnston's office. I'm mentioning this because I'm secretly hoping that Kenney turns out to be one of the guys who got kicked out in the Fairchild reverse board takeover. It would be about Johnston's speed! Britain is expected to announce its first transonic fighter imminently.
Katherine Johnson's Washington Roundup reports that MacArthur is still talking, that MacArthur and Eisenhower are the Army's only "air" generals, with the rest of them hating those modern aeroplanes, that General Vandenberg is notorious for not returning letters from Congressmen asking about the 250(!!!) group air force. And General MacArthur reminds everyone of General Mitchelll, so all the books about Mitchell are checked out of the Washington public library.
"AF Freezes Plane Types to Speed Outfit" Type freezes are pretty hard to pull off, so it is probably better for me to list the designs that have actually got the "freeze" --the rest might sneak through into fancy-free, change-it-as-you-like paradise later. That means the B-47C, and probably the F-94C, Chase YC-123, Douglas C-124A and Lockheed T-33.
Convair has launched a special engineer training programme with the help of Southern Methodist University.
The USAF has mobilised the 18th Air Force to specialise in troop transport, there's going to be airline maintenance engineer convention in Chicago, and Martin is somehow making money again, thanks to the Korean War.
"XC-123A: First US Jet Transport" Chase has hung four GE J-47s off its C-123 and is calling it a jetliner. It is not. It is a lift-off-and-run-out-of-gas liner.
F. Lee Moore, "Navy Group Folds As Key Men Resign" Key members of the Defence Department's Research and Development Board have resigned due to the Defence Department stripping away their power over navigation electronics research. Also, they got better jobs, because that's what every engineer with a pulse is getting these days. That being said, whoever our reporter's source is (probably Ralph Damon), has some serious complaining to do, and the article goes on for a bit.
Alpheus Jessup, "What a Guy Sees From a Jet" Since the controversy has blown up, the Air Force has put Jessup in a T-33 so he can go out and get an eyeful of jet close support, and, as it turns out Red AA, which put a ,50 through the wing during the pull-out from a strafing run.
Thomas B. Self, "GE's Maintenance Monitor Plan" Aviation Week's Self pokes his nose into the GE Modification and Service Facility at South Gate, California, to see how they do it.
"McCulloch's MC-4: Cheap But Chic" McCulloch understands that you're reading this and rolling your eyes at the idea of yet another company trying to horn in on the helicopter business at this late date, but McCulloch wants you to take it seriously, because its prototype has a bright paint job with chromed highlights. No, really, that's what it says here.
This week's NACA Reports are very "basic research" stuff, with critical stress tests of ring-stiffened cylinders and low speed stability of tapered wings and blockage corrections for three dimensional flow.
"Tanks Stripped Faster and Cleaner" My copy of this article is available to those interested on request. (Seriously, did you know that it takes more than 20 hours to strip out an aircraft fuel tank?)
"How to Save Time on the Ground" Jerome L. Murray, "inventor and head of Murwood Laboratories" of New York has a new approach to the problem of getting passengers to their planes: a speedy, tractor-trailer that carries passengers and cargo, acts as a loading ramp and as a waiting room, with a television and a bar.
"Douglas Developing Collapsible Lifeboat" No, it is collapsed until it is needed. It also has a motor, so all modern conveniences.
From McGraw-Hill 'World News Service comes the latest from Plessey, a high-speed tachometer. I guess that just because you don't run British ads doesn't mean that you can't run British advertorials. It's more accurate or something like that. (20,000rpm plus or minus 10. That is accurate!)
New Aviation Products has the Heller Company's Heller Power Stapler, which could replace welding and riveting equipment at the front line. Van Dusen Aircraft Supplies offers the latest ground omni range checker. It's for checking the accuracy of a plane's omnirange navigational beacon receiver. Burndy Engineering has electric disconnect panels for pressurised compartments.
Capital Airlines has bought five of KLM's Connies as the Dutch get ready to receive the Super-Constellation. BEA is "in transition," because it is taking forever for Airspeed to deliver its Ambassadors. Meanwhile it is throwing some junk in the air (Vikings, a Mamba-powered C-47 for freight use only) while waiting for the Viscount.
R. C. Robson's Cockpit Viewpoint complains about recent problems with GCA at Washington and Providence, Rhode Island. At Washington it was in and out of rain squalls, and easy enough when out of them to see that GCA had the plane too low, so the landing was safe and easy. The samer problem at Providence ran into the problem that there is only a single frequency to talk to the tower, so if that went out, it would be plain unsafe for a plane to land under its own control and altitude. Has aviation really worked for ten years to reduce minimum visibility height by 200ft at the expense of safety? Something isn't right here, Robson thinks.
What's New likes Leonard Finley Hilts, Airmail: From Jennies to Jets, and Richard Malkin, Box Cars in the Sky, then remembers that it is supposed to be boring and provides a short review of Revised Index of Military Purchasing Offices.
Letters Editorial is not impressed with Admiral Solberg's letter about how the saucer mystery isn't the Navy's fault. Melvin Snyder, acting head of the University of Wichita's Aeronautical Engineering Department directs Aviation Week's attention to a recent article in the Wichita Eagle, "48 Irate Air Travellers Head East After 13 Hour Stop," which was essentially the Eagle's cub reporter swinging by the airport late in said passengers' purgatory to find out how they liked being stranded in Wichita by some nonsked. Because he's an old Aviation Week reader, and thinks that it should stop embarrasing itself with reflexive defences of the nonskeds. Other than someone from Philippine Air Lines writing in to point out that its 30-hour schedule to India is actually faster than BOAC's proposed Comet service, the rest is all letters from eager fans. (Hazen Lipsett really likes the paper that Aviation Week is printed on, which comes from Kimberley Clark.)
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