Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada
Dear Father:
What I'm saying is, in my opinion, and as usual, Uncle Henry is a fine fellow and I would lend him the shirt off my back, but not a penny of investment money. How you take that is up to you.
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Letters
Roy Freuhaufer of Freuhaufer Trailers writes to remind us that you can't have highway improvements without highway engineers, that there is a shortage of highway engineers, and that this is because highway engineers aren't paid enough. Yes, we should definitely pay engineers more. I am one hundred percent convinced! C. A. Worth of London writes that America should keep it down over there while we are electing our new President because we are being very loud and uncouth. Branch Dyker of Colonial Airlines reckons that the Gloria DeHaven fashion show aboard that Colonial DC-4 has saved commercial aviation because how can you be scared of your plane crashing when models go up in them? MODELS!!! Jarvis Baillargeon of New York is upset at the Department of Agriculture because this one school in New York got a shipment of pecans and peanuts from North Carolina, and that's just nuts. Three correspondents really appreciated the photos of the Panama Canal. Seven correspondents are upset at the MacArthur interview, mainly because the General seems to have misspoke himself about his support for Taft. (I'd rather not go into the blow by blow. At this point, MacArthur running his mouth off is a dog-bites-man story.) Our Publisher can't leave it alone, and explains why the magazine isn't apologising. 
The Periscope reports that the appointment of Le May as Air Force Vice Chief of Staff might being the Tactical versus Strategic Air Command feud to a head. The Navy is also getting ready to fight it out in the alley over spending cuts in case carriers get the axe over the B-36. Eisenhower is getting excited about the election, some GOP Senators want to hold expulsion hearings against a Democratic Senator to retaliate against the expulsion hearings against McCarthy, and will go after one who gets drunk on the floor all the time. There's talk of Averill Harriman for the Vice Presidency in a new Truman Administration, while US "brass" are upset and embarrassed about a Congressional move to ban the import of "Soviet books," because then how would we know anything about what is going on over there? The Navy is looking on a fully automatic landing system for carriers, which will bring us one step closer to a carrier armed only with robot planes. The AFL Seafarer's Union points out that, talking about security, anyone can waltz onto a Navy ship at dock, and they've got the photos to prove it. 
The Army is going to raise some "light" infantry divisions modelled on mountain and arctic warfare units that are 14,500 men instead of 18,000, to save manpower, and they are also on a major push to get GIs to re-enlist. The Navy says that there are not, in fact, any Russian submarines off the Dominican Republic. The Turks say that the Russians are "intimidating them" by holding exercises near the Bosphorus, British left wingers don't like John Foster Dulles, Iran is still in turmoil, West Germany is going to pay reparations to Israel, but Syria and Lebanon want a cut to pay for refugees from Palestine. There's a meat shortage in Soviet Germany, the head of the Polish secret police is said to be on the "purge list," the Don-Volga Canal will "allow Red ships to move between the Baltic and the Black Sea." Must be one giant canal! The wives of men who flee Red Bulgaria are forced to denounce their husbands and then "marry inferior men selected by the regime," and Aneurin Bevan has a book coming out. Monte Proser is trying to get Ezio Pinzo and marlene Dietrich for a stage version of Casablanca, Ring Lardner's 'You Know Me, Al" letters are going to be turned into a weekly television show, and "rank-and-filers" in the Italian film industry are upset that Anna Magnani and Maria Felix are making so much money.
Washington Trends reports The State Department has decided that Southeast Asia is a nightmare. The French have their hands full with the Vietminh. If the Chinese intervene, Indo-China will fall. "Rich but weak Thailand" will follow, then most of Malaya, then Indonesia. To prevent this, Foggy Bottom now thinks, "the West" should "act positively" in Southeast Asia. TV won't be coming to Congress any time soon, The Defence Production Act will be renewed for another year, but with major changes, and states and cities are going to get into the loyalty oath game in their own right soon.
National Affairs
I'll spare you the election coverage and move on to the Johnson Committee, which is going to be raking the Air Force over the coals this week for falling behind Russian jet production and taking forever to get to the 143 Wing air force.
"Moscow Diary" It turns out that General Grow was keeping a diary of good locations to bomb while he was the military attache in Moscow, which you're not supposed to do; and you're certainly not supposed to leave it lying around your hotel room when you check out. And you especially shouldn't be constantly talking about how much you want a preventive war with Russia. The whole thing was published in a book by British deserter Richard Squires, and now Congress wants to hold hearings or court martial the man, which has the Army upset, because it figures that it is the Army's fault for sending a moron to Moscow.
Doesn't anyone even argue with these brainstorms any more? I guess I know the answer to that one. Last week, I chanced to say that the motto of my age is, "Because I said so." Your Honour, I wish to amend the motion to read, "Because I said so and don't talk back." Sonja Henie is in trouble after it turned out that the bleachers set up for her show at Baltimore's Fifth Regiment Armory were overloaded, underbuilt, and refused a permit by the city, leading the ice show to go ahead anyway because the city didn't have the power to enforce the permit. Poor Sonja. She hasn't even been a Nazi for just years and years! Also in Norwegian scandals, it turns out that that nice Mrs. Olga
Carl Spaatz's column features the General almost waking up to write it, getting just so close to conscious thought. We can't shut down the airports, we can't even shut down Newark, so we should get on with automatic landing controls and more "gadgets" on airplanes, such as ones to monitor the engine performance so that pilots will know before they have a boo-boo. Also, maybe those meteorologist fellows will find out that there are conditions in which planes shouldn't fly that we don't even know about these days. Which seems to be the return of "clear air turbulence?" Did we ever sort out whether that existed or not?
International
"De Gaulle at the Cross-Roads" It's depressing for me to report that Auriole has put together the first right-wing cabinet in France since the war, under Antoine Pinay. First Britain, then France, next probably America. However the big point that Newsweek wants to make is that he formed it with the participation of the Rassemblement du Peuple Francais, de Gaulle's party in the Assembly, against de Gaulle's wishes, so it is both a victory for the Gaullists and a defeat for the general, which is very confusing! So that the article will be as long as it deserves, what with the Fourth Republic teetering at the brink, as usual, the story is rounded out with a visit to the General's country home, where he rises early and gets right to work! Speaking of generals who are or might be presidents in the future, Ike is touring the Mediterranean soothing ruffled feathers.
"Widened Labour Breach" Attlee wasn't able to whip Bevan into voting for his position on the Tories' modified rearmament programme, which was to agree with it with reservations. Bevan wanted Labour to come out in straight opposition, and in defiance of the party leader, led 57 "miscellaneous fellow travellers, anti-Americans and professional pacifists" into opposition. Attlee is angry, the party is divided, and no doubt Labour is going to go pink on German rearmament next. Newsweek gleefully reminds us that Socialists traditionally oppose armaments, and that Bevan's long-held point about Britain not being able to afford the (Labour!) rearmament programme of 1950 seems corroborated by Churchill's 35% cut and one year extension of the programme. Newsweek predicts that the workers will be ought fighting the Tory programme to put the country back in the black with "economics, deflation, and increased production." Also, and unrelated(?) Professor Lancelot Hogben, he of Mathematics for the Million, has beaten a drunken-driving arrest by successfully arguing that he was one of those sorts who often seems drunk when he's not, and also had a colleague testify that he was a very sober person, so the police who arrested him were just mistaken. 
The National Committee for a Free Europe has published what was supposed to be a manual on Enlightened Terror, found on the corpse of a Polish secret policeman in 1948 and smuggled to the West. Which would be a great propaganda coup if it didn't sound suspiciously like another Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I'm particularly struck by an extracted chapter that claimed that the Germans were treating Soviet prisoners of war so kindly at the beginning of the war that the Red Army was deserting left and right, so that the Soviets launched a programme of mistreating German prisoners, which led the Germans to mistreat Soviet prisoners, which squashed that threat to Communism right in the bud. Apart from being a bit under-baked (how is everyone finding out how all the prisoners are treated?), I have my doubts about this being a true anecdote, and even more doubts about it going into an official Soviet publication, propaganda manual or not.
"U.N. Hopes Firm-Stand Policy Will Force Reds to Back Down" Blah blah armistice real soon for sure now. Did you know that the US 2nd Infantry Division musters a pipe band? They're going to wear kilts, too, but they're in trouble with the British for choosing the one that the King's Own Scottish Borderers wear, which they're apparently not allowed to wear. I thought Borderers weren't Highlanders? Or is that a misconception from one too many romance novels featuring craggy Scottish lairds?
"War and Disease" Newsweek covers the recent Communist germ-warfare propaganda with appropriate skepticism. I thought we'd established that being shot out of cannons or dropped from planes wasn't good for bugs, and that was why we didn't do germ warfare?
On this continent, Fulgencio Batista is back in charge of Cuba after a squalid coup by the army three months ahead of the election he was going to contest, the same week that we hear that the United States has scraped up forty million bucks for a hemispheric defence aid programme to arm Latin America against Communism. Enlightened terror, you say?
The Periscope's Business Trends reports that business is trying every trick in the book to increase executive compensation without increasing income, leading to higher tax rates. These include stock options, pension plans, expense accounts and "insurance gimmicks." An oil pipeline is going to be built from Texas to California, because the California fields can't keep up with demand in spite of California being the largest producing state. Heavy winter snowfall means plenty of hydroelectric power for West Coast aluminum production this year, unlike last year. Southern textile plants will get what they think is a fair share of government contracts this year, instead of the contracts going to New England mills. The arms stretchout means that there is more steel available for all, and that aircraft companies will be able to relax their efforts. However, even once the armaments boom ends, don't expect government to get entirely out of business, as it will need to keep an eye on aircraft in particular, fund research, and maintain a large machine tool reserve, meaning that the machine tool industry is afraid that it is being "handed over to government for good."
"Economic Outlook is Spotty: But It is Not a Real Recession" Good to know! (Employment is higher than last year, but the number of surplus employment areas is increasing. There are layoffs here and there, consumer spending is still depressed, and textiles are in a slump. But construction is booming, and unspent but allocated defence spending is a tremendous cushion.)
Business also checks in on the fiftieth anniversary of the AAA, the rail strike, the music record price war, and the ever-increasing number of loosened controls on materials.
Newsweek checks in with Alfred Lawsome, old time American flim-flam man, who has been running his "University of Lawsomology" for years now. It promises to produce a "superior species" through a thirty-year (!) training regimen, but the Federal Security Agency suspects that it was mainly a way of buying war-surplus machinery at a fraction of the cost and then resell it.
Notes: Week in Business, reports on a bank in Indiana that was trying to get around all those pesky royalty fees by playing a record player in the bank, and which has been told to shut it down. Westinghouse is going to build the atomic reactor for the first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus (like in Jules Vene!), Goodyear is trialling the addition of rubber particles to highway pavement, and Uncle Henry is dropping $65 million on the Fontana plant to boost ingot, open-hearth and hot-rolling production. That could have been our money!
Products: What's New reports on new hinges from the No-Mortise Hinge Company of New Jersey, (it is an English-made product), Naco Fertiliser's concentrated plant food, "Nurish," Adhesive Products of New York's plastic-and-rubber paint for all sorts of fabrics, and Roger Toffolon's steel-and-canvas "binder" for rail shipments.
Hazlitt's Business Tides has an unusually vapid column, even for him, vaguely pointing at his arguments against price controls, and citing some papers in his files supporting his arguments.
"How Much of Your Income Goes to Taxes?" Newsweek can tell you! Well, actually it can't, because the drift of the article is that there are all sorts of insidious "hidden" taxes that come along with income taxes. For example, 31% of the cost of a new car is taxes. The Tax Foundation has sent along a brochure describing how much various hypothetical individuals and families might pay in "hidden" taxes, concluding that these days it is impossible to be prosperous on just wages, and that the way things are going up, people are much poorer than they were in 1939. Which is so absurd that I can hardly bear to read on. Apparently everyone agrees that the most the government can take out of the average man's salary is 25%. After that, the prospect of paying all that earning as taxes causes people to become lazy, and earn less. Thus, increasing taxes reduces tax revenues and the only way to save the national finances is by cutting spending, as various senators want to do, by getting rid of foreign aid and wasteful spending and such.
Science, Medicine, Education
"New Field: Mathematical Biology" After a weird introduction exploring the philosophical problem of the donkey that starves to death because it is equidistant to two piles of hay and can't choose to move towards one or the other, Newsweek introduces us to a research group at the University of Chicago which is interested in this and similar questions of "stimulus" and response. Which is really boring, so we wind up the page-long story with a digression into member Nicholas Rashevsky's elitist ideas about how scientific progress happens and Herbert Landahl's mathematical "model" of human gambling behaviour.
"Too Many Brakes" Kenneth Pitzer, who left the AEC for California's College of Chemistry last year, believes that atomic progress would be much faster if top advisers weren't so cautious and lacking in enthusiasm, especially James Bryant Conant, who "sees little prospect for atomic power." Also, this year's expedition to observe the total solar eclipse in North Africa sounds like it was a smashing success.
"The Aging Flier" A roundtable at the Air Force School of Medicine, Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, discussed whether old pilots with their bad reflexes, bad eyes, bad digestion, and endless pointless stories about the Gay Nineties which they tell while complaining about the youth these days, are better than young pilots, who lack experience and are apt to deviate from their flight plans to go chase girls at the beach. It is generally agreed that the 59 fatal crashes the roundtable studied, showed no evidence that age was a factor. Of 1400 licensed pilots in America right now, only 175 are over 50, and older pilots are routinely grounded for medical reasons, so maybe the point of the story is that those groundings are more strict than they have to be?
"Post-Surgical Peep Hole" Otis Wolfe, a cataract specialist, has come up with a "peephole" bandage for cataract surgery patients, which immobilises the eye, which is important for healing, while addressing the "cataract mania" that leads people to tear off their dressings in a panic over the thought that they have lost their vision for good.
toothbrush that reduces receding gumline due to brushing. Cortisone seems to be a treatment for a form of baldness, alopecia areata.
Johns Hopkins' Science in Review show is very educational, and so are the New York City School Board's efforts.
Art, Radio and Television, Press, Newsmakers ("People")
The FCC reports that the television industry made money for the first time this year, with radio and television networks reporting higher revenues from the television than radio sides, with radio revenues down $8.35 million this year over last year. Red Skelton's show is very funny, and Newsweek reports on Time's recent purchase of two radio stations in very pleasant tones, but with a neat little sting in the tail. Time, it says, has been looking into radio for a while, with a particular interest in two stations in New York and New Mexico(!) which "soft pedal commercialism," because if there's anything Henry Luce likes, it is soft pedalling capitalism. Back in the war, we're told, Time was informally told that the FCC would be fine with a small expansion in that direction, and now those plans have come to fruition. Oh, and just by the way, recently retired FCC chairman, Wayne Coy," will be the co-owner.
Newsweek, or, more likely, someone who blabbed to Newsweek, really doesn't like David Platt of The Daily Worker. Atlanta Georgia History Professor Joseph L. Matthews gets in the paper by citing an American (of course!) as the first war correspondent, specifically, John Bell of the London Observer, who reported on the Napoleonic wars. I know it is going to be hard to communicate my specialist outrage, but doesn't anyone read any more? Uncle Toby? Also, a weekly American newspaper in Germany might have to pay German taxes and it is obviously outrageous.[more]
Estes Kefauver, Jimmy Durante, Margaret Truman, Governor Battle of Maryland, St. Hugh Silverthorne, Duke Ellington, Jim Downey, Marlene Dietrich, Keith Funston and Inspector William White are in the column for the usual reason, except for the Sergeant and the Inspector. The Sergeant's dog had puppies while he was trying to fly her back from Britain to join his transferred family, and Inspector White found contraband Italian salami in the false bottom of a traveller's suitcase. And that's about it!
Movies
Paramount's Encore is an anthology of three Somerset Maugham stories, one vaguely funny, one actually funny, one thrilling. It's okay. The Wild North features bored Navy men in an icy Alaskan wilderness occasionally flying provocative missions right up to Russian air space in hopes of starting WWIII while we can still win it easily. No, wait, that's real life. This one has Stewart Granger and Wendell Corey as Mountie and prisoner making their way through the wilderness back to civilisation. MGM has Elizabeth Taylor in Love is Better Than Ever, which has Taylor being pretty in dancing tights, and not much else. Something to Live For is a "sentimental romantic drama" featuring a recovering drunk.
Books
Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer's latest "Confidential" book, U.S. A. Confidential concludes that America is hopeless corrupt, country and city alike, in the grip of the Mafia, and that the younger generation is "hopped up, sexed up, and perverted." Communists are flooding the country with drugs. Various famous people are very corrupt. For example, Attorney General McGrath has a secret real estate empire, former White House "chief protector of radicals," David Nile, fled to Israel one step ahead of the law, but continues to direct things via diplomatic pouch. Various alleged chief mafia men are identified, others are not. The Bureau of Narcotics and the FBI are the lone bulwarks against the sea of corruption. It's all too much for Newsweek. Marion Crawford has another book about Queen Elizabeth out, Orville Prescott's In My Opinion is popular literary criticism of recent novels, and Corinne Griffith's Papa's Delicate Condition is a funny, autobiographical look back at her childhood.
Aviation Week, 17 March 1952
News Digest reports that the 2000th F-84 has just been delivered to the USAAF, that the Army Corps of Engineers have turned over their facilities at the Wichita Municipal Airport to the Air Force for a B-47 training school. (It's an airport. The Corps of Engineers has its own airport at Wichita. No, I don't know why. Not in this column is a story about the Air Force also acquiring the Palmdale, California airport.) Jack and Heintz has declared a 50 cents dividend, because nothing can stop a St. Louis defence contractor from making money, not even the Truman Committee.
Industry Observer reports that Douglas is tooling up to produce its A3D as the B-66 for the Air Force. Glenn L. Martin is having trouble modifying British production methods to produce the Canberra, and the first flight of the prototype has been set back to mid-1953. (Reggie says that Martin is having trouble finding its own behind, although he doesn't put it quite like that.) The Canadian version of the F-86 weighs 16,500lbs and has a ceiling of 53,000ft with a cruising radius of 1250 miles, tactical radius 535 miles, ferrying range of 2,350 miles with the current GE J47. Convair has a $200,000 contract to develop a titanium alloy for jet pods. MATS is giving its planes a new paint job, and a Lockheed advertisement saying that their planes use six different kinds of power is for sure a hint that they are building a ramjet. Or maybe an atomic plane!
Katherine Johnsen's Washington Roundup reports that General Vandenberg is for sure going to be reappointed as Chief of Staff, but it might be a fight, as Senator Cain, amongst others, wants Curtis LeMay and Taft wants anyone but Vandenberg. Twining, White and Norstad have all bowed out. This whole column reads like a "background interview" of LeMay. Who is not going to be Chief of Staff because he is insane and wants to bomb Russia tomorrow, Reggie says.
Katherine Johnsen reports that "Storm Over Stretch-Out Brews in Congress" The Senate is going to throw a tantrum over the stretch-out.
"How Good is France's Mystere?" The Mutual Security Agency says that the Mystere MD-452 is better than the F-86, which is turning out to be a headache for everyone, because a foreigner saying that a foreign plane is better than an American plane is downright unpatriotic to the only real country, and also an insult when we're giving the Europeans so much money to buy or guns and wheat with. The pilots who did the evaluation, General Boyd and Major Yeager, are in a bit of hot water, too.
McGraw Hill World News reports "More Comets"! Short Brothers will produce the plane in Belfast to relieve pressure on de Havilland at Hatfield, as orders hit 45 and rising. The first Comet II (Avon powered) will roll off the Belfast lines in 1954, although subcontracted parts will be delivered first. This will improve certainty over delivery dates and secure more orders. It helps that there is a "better labour market" in Belfast.
"Atom-Power Airframe Contract to Boeing" This is the second contract for an engineering study, not an actual atomic powered plane. Also, General Vandenberg and the President have talked about Korea, Air Materiel Command, which is in charge of this for some reason, is again posting information about air mail bids, and it says here that "Army Pilots Sold on Rotor Rescue Craft," which seems obvious, but is the best headline to put on a story about a speech or something by actual Army helicopter pilot, Joseph Bowler, just back from Korea. 
"'Blackshoes' Control Navy Air" John Tower has been talking Congressmen's ears off again about how we'll be back to line-of-battleships in no time because the gun club doesn't understand how those new-fangled planes can stay up in the air when they're so heavy and all. The substance of the story is that several "air" admirals are being shelved. Bill Radford is going off to be superintendent of the Naval Academy for criticising the B-36, Tom Sprague is retiring rather than be demoted for some reason, Harold Martin is being replaced by a non-aviator at Seventh Fleet, and Frederick Sherman is being criticised for nothing more than urging Congress to pass a law that the CNO can only be an airman, which is very unreasonable of everyone but Sherman.
The CAA wants more money, and American wants CAB to raise fares.
Aeronautical Engineering has David Anderton reporting that "NACA Probes Into Tandem-Rotor Control" A metal spoiler strip on the fuselage of a tandem-rotor copter like the Piasecki HRP might improve stability to the same level as single rotor copters. Testing that requires using NACA's experimental HRP, which is stuffed full of controls, let me tell you about them and the wind tunnel where we tested the contraption. Meanwhile, the Naval Ordnance Lab's new supersonic wind tunnel is testing spinning models to determine the force on spinning missiles, the Air Force has just adopted a newer, lighter parachute, and the British are working on an all-plastic molded panel for the wing of the Fairey F.D. 1.
"Fiat G. 80 Follows Conventional Lines" Says so here! Also in headlines that say it all, "Eighth Viking Rocket Has Triangular Fins" They're only 75% of the size of the old ones, which probably means that there is more attitude control from the gimballed motor.
"British to Build Co-op Wind Tunnel" Eleven British aircraft and engine companies are throwing in to build the biggest transonic wind tunnel in Britain.
"Republic Speeds Rocket Servicing" Republic has figured out a way to refill the rocket engines of its XF-91. Specifically, a big truck and trailer with a giant pumping engine to force the liquid oxygen and alcohol into the tanks.
"50,000hp Jet Engines Forecast" E. B. Newill of Allison says they're right around the corner! I think he means giant turboprops, which is why the target number is in horsepower and not lbs thrust.
Thrust and Drag reports that Flight's British Aircraft to Scale is a great booklet, so write to Ilife and Sons for your copy. It then ribs Roy Rice of North American for claiming that the MiG-15 has a very primitive control system without noting that the Russians, not knowing any better, are using their primitive controls to crawl all over North American's B-45. It is also very impressed with the quality of illustrations in Avia-Vliegwereld, with which readers of technical German can cope. So subscribe, already!
McGraw Hill World News reports on a "Straight-Line Map Navigator" from Australia, while Collins Radio is very excited by a fleet order for its new VHF "visual steering equipment," which is competitive with the Sperry Zero Reader and Bendix Omnimag, using a steering computer, course indicator and approach horizon. Midwestern Geophysical Laboratory's new oscilloscope is very light.
William Kroger reports for Production that "Production Rising, Profits Lagging" Although Convair has made money off a tax rebate and Douglas had a good year.
Texas Engineering wants us to know about its carbon paper method for tracing router patterns, while Alcoa is impressed with its new aluminum stretcher for straightening extrusions.
George L. Christian is off to Lockheed's New York overhaul base to report for Equipment on the company's attempt to cut the backlog on everything from Piper Cubs to B-36s, including modifying P2Vs with skis instead of nosewheels and the coach conversion of 5 BOAC Constellations ahead of the summer season, the rebuild of a BOAC Connie that broke its back landing a few years ago, and installing analysers in B-29s, C-54s and MATS Constellations.
Aviation Engineering has established a field service school, Naer Corporation's slip ring assemblies are the tiniest, cutest ever, and Zep Aero Breathing Equipment has subcontracted oxygen flight testing equipment maintenance from all the leading LA firms.
The CAB wants more control over airlines, air mail contractors made a $342 million loss in 1951, and the airlines are upset at having to use heavily-leaded, low grade gas, which is bad for engines, while the new House subcommittee on airport safety is getting an earful about noise, and the first ten Airspeed Ambassadors will be delivered to BEA this April, a year late.
Letters bravely reveals that readers love Aviation, and that Richard Mock of Lear has found an old poster to the effect that railroads were dangerous a hundred years ago, which was probably sensationalistic now, just like the public is being sensationalised about air crashes now. T. H. Davis of Piedmont Aviation agrees, while George Tenney of McGraw-Hill writes to praise a nice pilot he had a recent flight.
Robert H. Wood needs two full pages for Editorial this week, because the whole first page is needed to reprint a story in the New York Journal-American about how an Office of Aviation Safety official is taking bribes in rum and whiskey flown in from the Caribbean off the manifest to clear planes to fly. It is an incredible story, but indirectly corroborated by an Aviation Week experience the week the story appeared, in which CAA's Chief Information Officer laughed it off.
In spite of which, air travel is safer than ever says one study, which is why a television "news" story purporting to describe a mass public campaign against airports is just sensationalism. Everyone loves loud planes! (Wait till they hear a jet!)
Letters
The men of the 40th and 45th Infantry Divisions object to being described as "green."S. A. Faulk has a high opinion of the very young city manager of Titusville, Florida, while Bette Browne is wrong to think that Elizabeth Taylor repeated an outfit in two publicity photos. Three correspondents have opinions about the article on textile mills, Miss Duane Marshall of Temple City, California, is appalled at the San Francisco neighbourhood that voted against letting the Shengs move in in a referendum, while a doctor and a layman congratulate Newsweek for its article on the craze for isotonic acid hydrazide as a tuberculosis cure. John Meek, over in Korea, liked the article about the Army's new winter underwear; a doctor and a laywoman liked the article about migraine headaches. Our Publisher wants us to donate to the Red Cross while need is greatest.
Big business in Italy won't coddle Communism any more and will fire some Reds, which is good, because as between Communists and Big Business, we're apparently on Big Business' side. We'll know if Stalin is very sick, instead of just sick, if he misses the May Day parade, Britain's atom bomb will be a "tactical" one that can be carried by a Canberra and used for "sustained attack" against enemy troop concentrations and supply lines. It turns out that Konrad Adenauer is quite a statesman, Prince Charles will be made Prince of Wales soon, the anti-communist "monopole" guerillas are gaining ground in Bulgaria, Czech, Polish and Hungarian communists are awful. (It's lucky the Russians took over so many countries or we wouldn't know half as much about Communists being awful!) British firms are going to electrify Mecca, beginning with the "mosque." (I don't think it is actually a mosque? More like a shrine?) National Distillers find that chickens thrive on a diet of feed which has been soaked with "laundry detergent." Is this like adding alkali ash to corn? Foot-and-mouth disease is spreading in France, Drew Pearson is getting a television show. Other series feature "secrets of the French Sûreté with Akim Tamiroff, and a life of Tom Mix[?]. Lana Turner's agent isn't talking to The Periscope, so the best it can do on entertainment news is word of B. C. Forbes' new book, America's Twelve Master Salesman, and Soviet Medicine During the 1941--45 War, which is a bad book that shows that Communism is bad because, at thirty-five volumes, it is too long to be about that subject.
National Affairs
By skipping election news, which you can get anywhere, I've arrived deep in the section at the first original news, which is that Senator Tom Connally is reacting to pressure from back home by blowing up all over everybody in Congress over everything. I'm especially struck by a story about how he is upset at his colleagues for stranding him in a solo photo with Dean Acheson, and by the fact that Republican Senators have taken to quoting him verbatim on the floor so that he can't edit the comments out of the Congressional Record, which is apparently something that senators can do. After some blather about tax reform that will probably seem very interesting to me in a few years, it's on to another Congressional tantrum, featuring Newbold Morris, who was supposed to be the guy getting to the bottom of the tanker reregistration story, but has instead turned into another victim of Senator McCarthy, as he blows up at the man on the floor over a typical McCarthy accusation.
General Spaatz's Military Tides column is another one about something he knows something about, and it shows. He thinks that jet transport is indispensable for the future of the US military, with its worldwide obligations, and that means that civilian jetliners are necessary. It is unfortunate that the British a
re so far ahead, but it is hard to organise domestic American routes to support jet flight, because of the way that jets have to dive through all the traffic to get to ground quickly, as you've heard before. He thinks that Americans need to start operating jets on domestic routes as quickly as possible to try out and develop techniques and equipment, either with jet bombers or with Comets, if necessary. The Air Force should be budgeted some money to support a jet transport construction effort to bring down the cost to the point where airlines can afford them, as otherwise America will depend on foreign transports, and will be buying foreign-made 600mph jets while foreign airlines are transitioning to 1200mph "rocket types."
re so far ahead, but it is hard to organise domestic American routes to support jet flight, because of the way that jets have to dive through all the traffic to get to ground quickly, as you've heard before. He thinks that Americans need to start operating jets on domestic routes as quickly as possible to try out and develop techniques and equipment, either with jet bombers or with Comets, if necessary. The Air Force should be budgeted some money to support a jet transport construction effort to bring down the cost to the point where airlines can afford them, as otherwise America will depend on foreign transports, and will be buying foreign-made 600mph jets while foreign airlines are transitioning to 1200mph "rocket types."
Korean War
"Truce Talks Show Much Heat and Some Unusual Progress" A separate box bit, not this story, has it that the talk out of the Indian Embassy is that the Chinese story about germ warfare is cover for a shift in Chinese attitudes towards favouring an armistice. Washington insiders agree that it is a cover story, but think that what it might "cover" is preparations for a Red offensive. I mention this because putting that stuff in this story would clear it up a lot. This one shifts the angle to focus on the POW camp angle, and here it is hard to see the "unusual progress." Both sides are "desperate" for an armistice, which is the progress, but can't see a way to solving the POW angle. So the Americans are stuck with hoping that the Chinese come through with something.
"How do They Rate?" British troops in Korea must be feeling their oats, because Lt. Colonel William Guy Lowther, who commanded the Royal Irish Hussars in Korea last year, is out and about branding American tanks as "all too pansy." This on the strength of the M-46 Patton's inferior armour. Americans stoutly defend the Patton in comparison with the Centurion because the armour is better sloped and its 90mm gun is probably the equal of the Centurion's "20 pounder," which, Uncle George says, is 83mm calibre, and then he went on and on about lengths and ammunitions and then he couldn't resist an off-colour joke, which I found funnier than I should and snorted a martini through my nose, which goes to show that I should only meet Uncle George for coffee.
International
"Pinay's Plan" Antoine Pinay's plan to stabilise France is not given much of a chance for success, on account of, as usual, the French are hiding, hoarding, and exporting their money to escape rising prices and ongoing devaluations.
Egypt is probably going to have a revolution sooner rather than later, and Bevan has gotten away with defying the Labour party leadership. Some union leadership has been rounded up to denounce him, but he responded with a speech to supporters saying that rearmament could not be afforded, that the Soviet Union has no intention of launching into imperialist aggrandisement, and that "it would be a great mistake to let world leadership fall into the hands of the U.S."
"Incentive Budget" Speaking of letting world leadership slip away, how is Rab Butler doing at the Exchequer? His first budget features "help for those who helped themselves by working harder." Specifically, an increased income tax exemption, increased family allowances, a reduction in food subsidie, calculated t raise the cost of living by 21 cents a person per week. The often-promised excess profits tax is finally here, but is balanced by a cut in normal profits tax to "increase efficiency." The bank rate is to go up from 2.55 to 4%. Orthodox economists are worried that he won't be able to cut inflation while maintaining consumption, because he won't be able to cut capital spending enough. The high interest rate will raise the value of the pound, but that might not be enough to address the balance of exchange deficit, with further losses in gold and dollar reserves revealed.
The latest Soviet peace pact initiative is just Communist propaganda, and Lord Ismay is going to be the first secretary of NATO. A story about 18 "pygmy bushmen" visiting Johannesburg leads to the intrepid Stone Agers saying that they are not impressed by modern civilisation and can't wait to get back to the bush. Where they can't go back to is a village in the French Alps called Tigne, because it is about to be drowned under a new hydroelectric dam reservoir.
In this hemisphere, we get a full-page spread on the return of Batista, who has the "tacit support" of the State Department, but not so much of the Cuban people. As for the rest of Latin America, the various revolutionaries that President Prio was harbouring have already made their way to Mexico and Costa Rica.
"Banana Bonanza" A labour dispute in Guatemala between the United Fruit Company and its banana pickers has been resolved in favour of the union by a ruling of the labour court in a compromise which is seen as a defeat for the Communists, possibly leading to the president making further moves against the Communists.
Business
Periscope Business Notes reports that Washington is under pressure to lift restrictions on installment buying, with "responsible observers" fearing that it will wait too long to ease credit, waiting until arms spending picks up and causing an inflationary bubble at the end of the year. This week in "material controls," they won't be "junked," but only eased. Residential construction continues to be surprisingly high, retail construction is recovering, and defence construction is past its peak. More and more states are floating bond issues to pay for public works, schemes for largescale "wholesale" buying clubs for frozen goods are the next big thing, and everyone in transportation wants a raise, with interstate truckers getting a 1`5% boost for sure.
The endless "steel shutdown," rail strike, Macy's, and the Lorillard Kent Filtered cigarette get stories. Just to explain the last, with various worrywarts claiming that nicotine and tar are bad for you and not just disgusting things to blow into your furnishings and clothes, the cigarette industry is getting into filters to protect the consumer, even though the AMA says that cigarettes are a great way to calm nervous tension. The filters use a "secret mineral" [it's exactly what you think it is] discovered by the Germans before the last war and used in gas masks by the Germans and then the United States after we captured samples of the wonder mineral and got our own supply.
"Amerada's Boom" Amerada Petroleum uses science to find oil. Buy your Amerada shares today!
Notes: Week in Business reports that Pan-Am is showing off its first DC-6B on the New York-Bermuda run, that department store sales are still slumping, that General Motors' profits are down 39% on 1950, and that prize Oregon cow, Opal Crystal Lady, continues to shatter records for butterfat production.
Products: What's New reports that Dasco Company's new floor-patching material is 250% stronger than ordinary materials. Emenee Industries of New York has a lawn water sprayer the shape of a potted flower. The para goes into a bit more detail, but that seems like enough for me! Reiss Brothers is commemorating the coronation of Queen Elizabeth with some imported tin soldiers. For commemoration, and not for fighting each other! John Williams Company of Belmont, Massachusetts, is very pleased with its lobster fork, which deserves attention from the national press, because who ever heard of a fork for getting the meat out of lobster shells before?
Henry Hazlitt's Business Tides has "Are These Handouts Necessary?" Is that a trick question? Readers of Business Tides (have my commiserations) know what the answer is going to be. The answer is always going to be "no." The only question before flipping the page is, "what handouts are these?" Because even Hazlitt is right, now and then. It turns out that the answer is "the foreign giveaway programme," and the whole column is a tirade against the President for daring to suggest that the isolationists who want to leave NATO and get American troops out of Europe are isolationists who want, etc, etc. Hazlitt has a point when he accuses the President of being a bit intemperate in his language, but so is he!
Science, Medicine, Education
"Water Wizards" "As all too many GIs know, Oriental fields are slimy and smelly," but that's because of the algae, which are actually a very industrious and hardworking, albeit single-celled folk. Now some Japanese scientists are studying how it does this and that, with the hope that perhaps some day the millions will be nourished on protein-rich algae goop, or simply use it to fertilise paddies.
"Dozier Dossier" Edward Dozier is a Hopi Indian who has done a PhD in anthropology and studies --get this!-- Hopi Indians! He is the first Indian ever admitted to the faculty of the University of Oregon (I'll just bet. . . ) and has many worthy and interesting things to say about Hopi Indians.
Science Notes of the Week include new evidence that students can learn in their sleep, from "Drs. Bernard Fox and Joseph S. Robbin of Washington, DC." I am not sure what kind of doctors they are, or where they work, but I am pretty sure my leg is being pulled. Students who listened to Chinese vocabulary while they slept picked it up twice as fast, but students who listened to Strauss waltzes were 37% slower. I'm glad they had a control group, anyway. Michigan State students have gotten into the feeding-animals-laundry-detergent craze by feeding a herd of Yorkshire hogs "an ethmoid product of treated animal fat," leading to them putting on an extra 6lbs a month.
"Elastic Life Savers" Doctors at Boston University use elastic hose to prevent post-surgery complications, especially in the leg, where circulation can fail. Also, Dr. Gustav Lopp of the Loyola University School of Dentistry and Garwood C. Richardson of Northwestern's' Medical School believe they have discovered a chemical which can predict the sex of unborn children "in nearly every case" in a saliva test. Like all scientific discoveries, the actual nature of the chemical is the inventors' secrets, but I'm sure that if you want to get in on the ground floor, Lopp and Richardson have a deal for you.
Medical Notes reports that the months-long New York controversy over the Hatch-Metcalf animal experimentation bill is over after Governor Dewey signed it into law. Over? That's not how things work! Dr. Samuel Figlia reports the latest miracle cure by ACTH in the New York Journal of Medicine. He gave it to a 71-year-old morphine addict, and now he's fine. Blood tests for paternity will "detect 55% of false accusations of paternity," reports Sidney Schatkin, Assistant Attorney for the City of New York, although in the courts that success rate falls to 18% for some reason. A new mechanical heart, an improved version of the one developed by Dr. Michael DeBakey in 1932, kept a patient alive for more than two hours at the Pennsylvania Hospital, it is reported. This counts as a success, because the patient died for reasons other than having a mechanical heart in him. Dr. Harry E. Ferris and colleagues at George Washington University are having success in controlling fevers and other allergic reactions to blood transfusions with antihistamine injections.
"Exclusive Webb" The admission requirements for the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture are very tough because it is a very exclusive school for very smart students who study very hard and then get good jobs in naval architecturing, and the school is so very famous and important that it couldn't possibly need an advertorial in Newsweek, no sir! Also, Phyllis Adams is back on television with another educational show, And It's a Problem, a discussion of problems without easy solutions that "steers clear of controversy" and "the lunatic fringe." That's no fun!
Press, Newsmakers ("People").jpg)
.jpg)
"Horse-Wire Finale" The Continental Press, the fourth name in the national wire service threesome, has succumbed to the inevitable thanks to the crackdown on horse-betting by wire. There's a nice summary, naming names, of how the Continental Press did business, if you're interested and didn't catch the Kefauver hearings.
The UN's draft freedom of the press code can't catch a break, as the Russians want it to ban warmongering and the Americans and British think that that's the kind of thing that will lead to it being used against freedom of the press.
Tom Piper, John Brownlee, Daphne Du Maurier, Stuart Symington, Rita Hayworth, Frank Bittinan, Marilyn Monroe, Nicholas Eden, and a Republican women's auxiliary are in the news for the usual reasons. Except Piper, who is a precocious ten year-old bing precocious, and the Republican women, who demand to be shown the gold in Fort Knox in case the President has absconded with it. Two paragraphs get more than a dismissive comment; the first is exactly the same story about Jimmy Durante, Margaret Truman and some other guys that ran in last week's column. For shame, Newsweek! The second is the sad story of the annulment of the marriage of Costas Kafaloghianis and Tassoula Petraka-George, children of two feuding Cretan families who eloped into the mountains together a few months ago, but then thought better of it. Costas sounds bitter about the fickle ways of women, but Costas might look himself in the mirror, first! I don't know. Maybe Tassoula is a heartbreaker, but I am going to give her the benefit of the doubt, because if the fair sex doesn't show solidarity, the world isn't going to step in to help us!
(A lot of The Gods Must Be Crazy is questionable now, but the part of the movie where the Land Rover is the star is a classic)
Audie Murphy has had a baby, West Point has had an anniversary, Vera Ralston is married, Alexandra Kollontai, the "Red Rose of Revolution," Ella Alexander Boole, Hugh Herbert, Johann Nygaardsvold, the Bishop of Bologna and Air Marshal Lloyd Samuel Readner have died.
Movies
The Marrying Kind is Judy Holliday's first movie since Born Yesterday in a great performance that should help her escape typecasting as a "dumb blonde" and earns male co-star Aldo Ray a short biographical sketch. The Mutiny is a United Artists costume thriller set on a warship in the War of 1812, based on a Hollister Noble story. It's okay. Man on the Run is from Stratford, and is a sympathetic British melodrama about the plight of deserters. RKO's Rancho Notorious is the strangest movie that Hollywood has stranded Marlene Dietrich in, yet. A "Wyoming epic," say no more!
Books
Bruce Catton's Glory Road is a fine book about the Civil War. George Heinold has a book about hunting in Connecticut, which is all about Nature, and shooting it. Kenneth Robinson's Wilkie Collins is the first biography of the somewhat mysterious author of what might be the first modern detective novel in the English language. The rest of the review is about Collins, and not the book, which is too bad, because it has quite a nice "hook." Robinson was a gentleman-ranker in the Royal Navy, which probably has its own name for that sort of person, but I can't ask Uncle George because I am in a hurry to get finished, and he did his research while convalescing from some horrible Naval disease. Or began it, anyway.
Raymond Moley urges unity on the right to defeat the "socialistic Fair Deal." Which, in practice, means that Eisenhower needs to repudiate the Fair Deal and Fair Deal-like policies now, in case he wins. I guess we're not betting on Kerr, any more!
Aviation Week, 24 March 1952
News Digest reports that the Grumman XF10F-1 Jaguar is about to begin flight tests, that Seaboard is reporting a new cargo weight record on the Atlantic run (in a DC-4), exceeding their claimed record of 16,616lbs last year. CAB reports that the Continental crash in December was probably caused by the pilot's attempt to fly a low-level visual service through a mountain range in a snowstorm at night. This is another field where I am not qualified to comment, and Reggie may disagree, but it seems like you wouldn't have to be told this?
Industry Observer reports that Allison's Convair Turboliner has logged 53 hours test flying, which means that its engines are now undergoing a 50 hour check. Canadair will be the British contractors for repair, overhaul and maintenance of the RAF's F-86s. The fourth prototype of Rene LeDuc's 021 experimental ramjet is ready for testing. There are modifications of the latest model of the Dassault MD-541, and in the McDonnell DF-88A, reflecting its redesignation as the YF-101. The Marine Corps is using its Sikorsky HRS helicopters to hunt snipers by landing teams of rifleman in good locations and then spot for them. The Air Force is looking to buy the Hughes-leased Convair 240 which has been rusting at LA Airport for two years because Howard Hughes is too eccentric to fly it and the contract omits a termination clause. Pan American is going to be the first US airline to buy the Sperry Zero Reader, which has now been ordered for KLM, the Comet and the Viscount. Saab is finishing its transonic wind tunnel.
Katherine Johnsen's Wasington Roundup reports that Congress might further extend the stretchout, that the services are working together to compare costs across different assembly lines, that Carl Vinson is wining back some popularity with the Navy by sponsoring a second 60,000t aircraft carier, that Secretary of the Air Force Thomas Finletter is taking more control over Air Force public information, that the new system for prioritising machine tool allocations is getting rolling.
"Hot Rod Jets" R. M. Harman, Beech's chief design engineer, thinks that the future US business executive plane will be a hot-rod jet capable of zooming around the country at 400mph, although Beech's new Model 46, with two R-2800s, will be a step along the way.
"ATA Pushes Study of Airborne Radar" The airlines are looking to radar mainly as a way to chart a path through turbulence. American has wanted them since 1948, but so far they are impracticably expensive.
"New Intercept: NAA Building System for Own USAF, Navy Planes" The new North American system integrates radar, radio and autopilot inputs, as usual, and replaces vacuum tubes with magnetic amplifiers. Financial has a long story by Selig Altschul showing how Martin managed to spend its way to bankruptcy in the middle of rearmament. It is mainly because the 2-0-2 and 4-0-4 were such disasters.
David Anderton reports for Aeronautical Engineering that the Bristol Britannia is nearing final assembly. He has a lengthy report on varius aspects of the design, mostly in regards to fuel supply.
Thrust and Drag reports on the "Missiletoe," a visual aid for lectures about missiles, and that GE is about to lose one of its B-45 testbed planes to Pratt and Whitney so that they can use it for J57 aerial runs.
Philip Klass reports for Avionics about sessions on applying the new "wonder transistors" to electronics equipment at the annual meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers in New York City. Transistors are already replacing vacuum tubes in some allocations, and new military aircraft are being seen with modular-type racks mounting avionic equipment. Collins' new flight system makes heavy use of the transistor --I think? I may have missed a transition--, and a demonstrator was a popular exhibit at the conference. The main issues right now are maintenance problems due to reliability and environmental issues. The Signals Corps also showed a transistorised equipment for steering radar antenna, developed with RCA, and Aviation Week really liked the Convair Charactron, an oscilloscope that "spells out" messages and numerical data on the screen at up to 10,000 characters a second using a "matrix," similar to a typeset. FTC showed off a microwave radar waveguide that is much lighter than earlier ones. Aviation Week also saw a nice booklet about transducers from DuMont and a complete rig replacing vacuum tubes with transistors on some kind of gadget (I faded out there for a moment), just to show that it can be done.
Production has "Convair 340 on the Line" Convair thinks it is a nice plane. I hope they are managing to sell it for less than it costs to make!
New Aviation Products is excited by a new crop sprayer for the Super Cub and Aeronca Champion from Dakota Aviation; a pressure transducer from Rahm for measuring pressures, and a jet speed switch from Manning, Maxwell, and Moore that adjusts jet engine functions such as activating the afterburners. C. G. Manufacturing is willing to pay for premium space to describe its combination wire stripper-cutter-plier, which is probably actually a story about how cheap it is to advertorialise in Aviation Week.
Letters has a lengthy explanation from Thomas McClure about how "noise is efficiency," and who needs hearing or high property values, anyway when airfares could be cheaper. Aviation Week editorialises that he is "deplorable." Commercial pilot Jake M. Marcum explains about the latest labour talks.
The McGraw-Hill Line Editorial explains that there is lots of investment going on and this talk of a depression is baseless, but it would be nice if the government cut taxes.
The CAB report on the recent Peninsular C-46 crash landing at Chicago attributes the cause to talking off at too low of an engine speed to maintain single engine flight, with the left engine failing due to blowback in the intake pipe followed by the burning and overheating of a spark plug which had been installed in a partially burned-out bushing with the approval of the carrier, captain and service manager, who are being charged. The plane was overloaded by 1846lbs.
Fares are going up here, landing fees are being charged there. Aviation must be the future, the way people are trying to make money off of it.
Robert Wood's Editorial reprints letters from businessmen about their experiences with the CAA's Air Safety Office. I get a bit of clarity here. The concern is that the office is being reorganised and placed under some other people at the CAA who are seen as lacking the relevant experience, and it is all a corrupt power grab by Ernest Hensley and William Davis. Naming names makes this seem like serious business.
Letters
The articles about Honduras and "Communism in the Caribbean" provoke some very interesting letters in response. V. E. Estrada of Ecuador thinks that America needs to listen to American businessmen in Latin America more, while park ranger David Jones, of the San Juan office of the Department of the Interior is eager to discuss the connection between communist infiltration and historic San Juan. William Cantrell of Greensville, Texas, writes in defence of white supremacy. Three correspondents liked the article about Southern Baptists. Our Publisher celebrates fifteen years of The Periscope and tries to explain its "legendary accuracy," but not very well, because it doesn't explain how Lana Turner's agent fits in.
The National Security Resources Council has a new fear. America lacks "double domes," meaning European-style creative geniuses. (In unrelated news, Johns Hopkins is under pressure to fire Robert Oppenheimer and everyone is surprised that the McCarran Committee isn't pressing perjury charges against Owen Lattimore.) The army still wants General Grow to just go away, because he is so embarrassing. The Eisenhower win in Minnesota is being read as the voters endorsing NATO and foreign aid, and critics are going to back down a bit. The Taft camp, however, is not backing down, and is attacking Eisenhower straight on. The Army's suitcase-sized collapsible jet helicopter is back in the news. The Army is also working on contact lenses for tankers, because spectacles tend to get knocked around while going cross-country. Soviet propaganda is linking the supposed American germ warfare in Korea to Japanese General Shiro Ishi. who supposedly developed germ , bombs back in the war, and also to "colonials" who gave out smallpox-infected blankets to the Indians in the Eighteenth Century. "Insiders" say that American Communists now consider Eisenhower to be their number one enemy. Insiders of what? The Eisenhower campaign? The Progressive Party is going to raid the personal war chest of their Presidential candidate, Vincent Halliman, to support two Congressional candidates who actually have a chance. The Treasury reminds local banks to comb their records for dormant accounts. That money may belong to Uncle Sam! Communism is awful, blah blah . . Oh, wait, here's one about Communist propaganda that claims that Red scientists have developed food plants that will grow inside the Arctic Circle, including new varieties of potatoes, cabbages, sugar beets and carrots. British scientists, on the other hand, are working on recipes to use "synthetic foodstuffs" available in the British Isles, to use if worse comes to worst. MGM is going to give up on its television appearance ban, Martha Raye will have a "video" show next season, attractive young Italian author Flora Volpini got $11,000 for the film rights to her novel, A Woman of Florence, and will appear in the title role in the movie. The book will be published in the US next year.
Washington Insider reports on the state of the armistice negotiations. Washington is desperate for an armistice and the Chinese are eager to give them one, but POWs get in the way. The Chinese want all their POWs returned, and that's what the Geneva Convention says should happen, but the US feels that it can't send the anti-communist prisoners back, especially after it has encouraged them. Washington Insider wants us to know that Defence Secretary Robert Lovett is a gentleman and a scholar, if he doesn't say so himself. Congress is behind on passing bills, and won't catch up because Congress wants to go home and campaign. Eisenhower backers think that only he has a chance of delivering the Senate to the GOP, because it would take a real landslide, and he is the only GOP candidate who can deliver a landslide.
National Affairs
"Ike Icky Boom Boom Taft Dah Dum Dum" I'm sorry. This is the part of this self-imposed duty that I just cannot take seriously. I'm sure there's more presidential election coverage in the Vancouver papers than Newsweek can fit between its covers. It's a weekly! And it is all saying the same thing over and over again. Eisenhower probably but maybe Taft. The Democratic side is the real story, but that story is waiting to see if Truman decides to run, which should be under Korean War, because it is all about Panmunjom. And when you put it that way, what incentive do the Reds have to come to the table before November? So it is all going to be up in the air until the convention, when the President will probably be told to go sit in a corner while the brass figures out who, if anyone, can stop Kefauver. And the press isn't even working these stories, because it has its nose buried in Mr. President to see what the President said about them. I'm pretty sure that it's the first book that Ernest Lindell has ever read.
t has been a killer tornado season in America so far this year, with 250 dead across the Midwest. No-one is actually dead in LA, but reports are that the LAPD is out of control and inflicting beatings on suspects as they come through the stations, and the LA papers are having a field day with it.
International
"King Farouk Risks Revolution to Restore Peace on the Nile" Says here! "If Farouk loses his power play against the only organised Egyptian political machine, Egypt would be irrevocably lost to the West." It says so here! To be fair, this is a genuinely important story, Egypt really does seem to be teetering, and Newsweek gives it just as much coverage as it deserves. It is just that the sentiment sounds a lot like, "Did you ever stop and think about your horrible tragedy would affect me?" Newsweek thinks that Farouk has a better chance of pulling it off than people think, because the British have made a list of concessions to him. The problem I have is that the concessions, as described by Newsweek, hardly sound like concessions at all, and as the paper admits, Britain's "strategic reserve" in the Canal Zone is useless as long as it is in the middle of all those hostile Egyptians. And that give the Egyptians all the leverage. Further on floating strategic reserves, USS Midway sailors were held up and relieved of a $3000 pot at a crap game, on the ship itself. That's embarrassing!
"Depression, 1952 Style" Newsweek heads for the obligatory grim Lancashire mill town to interview the obligatory unemployed weaving operatives. Sixty thousand of 250,000 are unemployed, and a third of the remainder are on short time, working three days a week and tending five looms instead of six. It is a dire situation, and with sixty percent of the operatives married women, average age 38, the work force is difficult to shift into other work. The industry blames Japanese competition and hoarding since the beginning of the Korean War, but the usual lot of "observers" note that only one in five looms is automatic, and that the industry's best hope is to shrink, into something much smaller and more efficient, producing high quality woven goods in smaller quantities.
Communists are sometimes ridiculous as well as awful. Hundreds of US servicemen have married Japanese girls, when they are not dancing at anti-ballet tax-demonstrations, which is something they now have in Japan. Germans are rejecting the latest Soviet peace initiative, and there are demonstrations in Capetown against white supremacy, in case it turns into Afrikaner supremacy later.
The Korean War
"Steps Washington is Planning to Achieve a Truce in Korea" Everyone is trying to negotiate a face-saving compromise on POW return. Also, the Reds have refused all offers to sent observers behind the lines to check out the germ warfare story. 
Canadian Affairs
Canadian? I'm sorry, I misunderstood for a moment. It's a page of Canadian news. Says here, "Isn't any." You're welcome. (Canadians are excited that their dollar is higher than the US,but not entirely sold on NATO. And they don't like taxes, which might be coming down.)
Business
Periscope Business Trends reports that Trade with Japanese is increasingly interesting to American business, except for Japanese tuna and sewing machines, which are subsidised imports killing American jobs. Prices are expected to go up in the next few months. I feel like this story needs one of those sign cards so that you can interchange "up" and "down," but a point in this rumour's favour is that price ceilings are excepted to be abolished on a number of crops. The Department of Agriculture wants to raise yields of six major crops by 6% this year/ (Which is a box story, not in the Periscope.)
Home building will go on at their current, blistering pace, with costs going down. After that, the outlook is cloudy, with the number of new, young couples expected to decline. Quizzes of new families have established that they like 8ft ceilings, which may help mills cut lumber to standardised lengths, and all-electric houses (including heating) are making headway. Technological progress may see hardened glass as a steel substitute, growing use of magnesium in truck parts, a new fight over synthetic fuels as the cost of gasoline from coal falls, and new uses for aluminum. 
"Steel Strike Still Probable" It says here! The Johnson Committee says that defence mobilisation is "lagging dangerously," and television manufacturers have thrown in their hand and lowered prices to clear inventory.
Notes: Week in Business reports that the cost of living fell this month for the first time since June, that GE has dedicated its new jet factory in Ohio to build the J47, and the New Haven is aiming to speed lineups by installing two automatic ticket vendors, developed by General Registers Corporation and Burroughs, in collaboration with the railway.
Products: What's New reports that Alex Taylor and Company of New York's new fly tackle box comes with a built-in magnifying glass, while Amos Molded Plastic, a supplier to Admiral, has come up with a one-piece, moulded plastic liner for refrigerator doors with shelves, a butter compartment, and an egg rack. Nite-Tel-Lite has another molded plastic product, this time a base that the phone sits on, with a light that turns on when the receiver is lifted, or which can be a night light with a flick of a switch. Zola Products' "No-Stick Powder" keeps adhesive labels, such as the ones on envelopes, from gumming together. R and L Products' Antifog Applicator is a small vial of antifogging liquid for treating items like eyeglasses, microscope lenses, "X-ray glasses, and the like." I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but I had no idea that fogging was aproblem with X-ray glasses, or that it was common enough to warrant a mention in an ad. That's a lot of people shooting X-rays at things! (Maybe in industry?)
Henry Hazlitt's Business Tides has "Inflation and High 'Costs'" is a full-page defence of Hazlitt's pet "money quantity" theory of inflation, according to which increasing the money supply "dilutes" monetary value. At which, at the risk of exposing myself to ridicule for my lack of expertise, I'm going to point out that this isn't a harmless crackpot theory. If money is a "claim on value," as The Economist likes to say, you need more money as the number of goods and services increase, or the value of money will rise, which is the "deflation" that causes Communism, per the cover of last week's issue. On the other hand, it makes the idle rich, richer, which is good for the idle rich! (For example, the heirs of Nineteenth Century literary criticism fortunes. Which seems weirdly specific and even unique, but I can think of one specific case.)
Science, Medicine
Science covers the transformation of Scientific American since Gerard Piel (Uncle Henry's little buddy) led a syndicate to raise money and buy it and turn it into a magazine for Americans about science, instead of a convenient place to publish advertorials rejected by Aviation.
Science Notes of the Week checks in with Harold Urey, who is teaching a course on cosmology and has come up with the radical new theory that the Moon formed out of cosmic dust and isn't just a blob of the old molten Earth that got separated somehow. Harvey Mylander of Pasadena has told the American Society of Mechanical Engineers meeting in Seattle that it is better to blow the crud out of wells with several smaller explosives instead of one big one. I had no idea that crud formed in wells, or that blowing them up was the solution of record.
"The Rocket Riders" Air Force medicos are putting monkeys and mice in Redstone rockets (V-2s, that is), to see if they die, and, if so, how much. On the results, it looks like, when we put humans on rockets and fire them out of the atmosphere, they won't die at all! Also, doctors say that science proves we should have moderate breakfasts and not heavy breakfasts or no breakfasts.
"The Dangerous Days" Even today, 78,000 American babies die in their first year of life, of whom a third die on the day of birth, and three-fifths by the end of the first week. First month deaths are actually rising, says a Metropolitan Life Insurance study, primarily among non-white babies. This is because the rate of hospital birth is much lower amongst non-white mothers. However, premature births are also an important factor, and this story is largely about a programme, based on a fourteen year study by Dr. Hermann Bundesen of the University of Chicago (currently on suspension for involvement in the horse meat scandal), for reducing death rates in premature births. The major part of the programme is better nutrition and more vitamins for expectant mothers, but there is also some new equipment for delivery rooms based on AMA recommendations. Congratulations to Newsweek for showing that it can produce a fact-packed story based on multiple sources!
Some architecture majors at Carnegie Tech have built a house, which is very educational. Newsweek visits Siletz, Oregon, a terrible town with a terrible school where the local board refused to renew the superintendent's contract because she was "too progressive," leading the faculty to resign in protest, to the board refusing the resignations, meaning that the teachers couldn't get new jobs in education, leading to the teachers getting jobs at the sawmill, leading to a completely new faculty and superintendent, and good luck to them. These people vote!
Radio and Television, Press, Newsmakers ("People")
Radio and Television, Press, Newsmakers ("People")
"Elusive Mary Agnes" The Chicago papers have been looking for Mary Agnes Moroney for 22 years. Recently, Edan Wright of The Chicago News thought he'd found her by circulating pictures of family members and asking whether anyone had seen someone who looked like her. The Chicago Tribune says he hasn't, the prospective Mary Agnes' foster mother is upset and has refused to comment, and it's all quite the to-do in Chicago! Also, The Freeman, Henry Hazlitt's vanity "small press" literary magazine, gets a profile on the occasion of it acquiring a new publisher and a renovation.
Newsweek checks in with the new network Hollywood studios, which are very nice.
Humphrey Bogart, Vivian Leigh, Gary Cooper, Colonel McCormick, Earl Warren, Count Jean de Lesseux, James Roosevelt, Katherine Hepburn, Rudolph Bing, Sir Gladwyn Jebbs, Andra McLaughlin, Robert Hallenbeck, Senator Taft and President Truman are in the column for the same old reasons. They are already famous, so everything they do is news. Andra McLaughlin seems to be only famous in Vancouver, but that still counts. 
James Van Fleet is 31, Betty Hutton and August Busch are married, Hedy Lamarr is divorced, Thornton Wilder has an award, Alexander Dunlop Lindsay and Don Stephen Senanayake have died.
Movies
Columbia's My Six Convicts is Stanley Kramer's production of the movie of Donald Powell Wilson's bestseller of last year about the convicts he met at Leavenworth. The Bureau of Prisons hated the book, but the movie is pretty good. MGM's Just This Once is a nothing movie, but with Paul Lawford and Janet Leigh. Deadline --USA is a Bogart movie, only set in a newspaper, which is good material, well handled. Universal's Steel Town is a "sentimental drama" starring steel plant in action, co-starring John Lund and capitalism.
Books
Mary O'Hara made a lot of money from the "Flicka" books, including from me, although I was a bit too old to be a true "Flicka" fan. So much, in fact, that British and American economists argue about how to measure it. But that was then, and this is now, so she has written an adult novel just to show she can. It's sort of autobiographical, and it isn't very good. She's going to have to roll around in a giant pile of hundred dollar bills to get over this review! Sidney Lens' Counterfeit Revolution is an account of eastern Europe travels by an AFL official. while Massimo Salvadori's The Rise of Modern Communism is a history of same by an anti-Fascist Italian who fought with the British OSS and now teaches at Smith and Bennington. They both say that the early fervour of the revolution is fading away into bureaucracy and apathy. C. S. Forester's Lieutenant Hornblower looks back at his hero's youth and the mutiny that derailed his career. Paul Hyde Bonner's SPQR is a romantic novel set in postwar Italy with some bonus material featuring communism being awful.
(No word on her opinion on transsexuals, but Thunderhead, Son of Flicka was definitely bi.)
News Digest reports that Republic has formed a guided missile division, that the Sikorsky S-55 has been cleared for civilian use, that France has received the first F-84s to be delivered for NATO use.
Industry Observer reports on an "interesting Anglo-American rivalry" developing between Curtiss-Wright, which is producing the Sapphire as the J65, and Pratt and Whitney, which is developing the Rolls-Royce Tay as the J48. The rivalry is that 7200lbs is being claimed for the J48, and as soon as the news broke, the same was claimed for the latest model of the Sapphire. The F-84 has an unofficial record for jet flight duration. Contracts continue to be shifted to the Detroit area (and Uncle Henry) to mollify the labour vote. Lockheed says it has spend a half million in company funds in the last two years on its jet transport design, but still has no airline orders. The F-86F, which replaces the F-86E in production, has a more powerful engine, and will be built alongside the F-86D, radar-equipped interceptor. Piasecki's first H-21 rescue helicopter will take to the air soon, while the airlines have just received a draft of the new air transport mobilisation plans.
Katherine Johnsen's Washington Roundup reports that Defence Secretary Lovett is feuding with Air Secretary Finletter over Curtis LeMay and "strategic air." Arleigh Burke has been promoted to Rear Admiral, confirming that he won't be punished for leading "Op. 23" against the B-36, while Steve Leo, who led the Air Force response, is now under congressional investigation for influence peddling. The House is also looking into General Wolfe's arrangement with Oerlikon America, which somehow got $30 million in contracts when Wolfe joined the board, without renegotiation. Pat McCarran has "declared war" on the CAA. 
"New Merger Facts Disclosed" More on the proposed Kaiser-Frazer-Convair merger, its impact on industry competitiveness, and the ongoing competition between the B-52 and B-60 to be America's gigantically expensive atom bomber of tomorrow. Follows coverage of President Truman's letter denying that he exerted any influence over the CAB.
McGraw Hill World News reports on "RAF Outlook" The RAF will make fighters, not bombers, its priority. That is, it will be the Hawker Hunter and the Supermarine Swift, followed by a night fighter, over atom bombers. Of course, as we keep hearing, the Canberra will be able to carry the British atom bomb. Transport Command will not get the GAL-60 it wants, while Coastal Command is stuck with the Shackleton and the P2V, which it does not like on account of poor engine-out performance. The Canadair Sabres will go to Germany, and while the House of Commons might like to know about British guided missile work, that is all top secret.
Newark has been re-opened for limited service, and Avco has turned over the first refurbished Wright R-1820 over to the Air Force, prompting a round of comments to the effect of, "What are we supposed to do with this?"
"CAA Views Heard at N. J. Probe" The CAA had to defend its organisation, practices, and airport zoning at the hearings.
"New Jets to Get Rocket Armament" The F-86D radar-equipped interceptor will carry a rocket armament as well as 20mm cannons, to improve the chances of a successful intercept. These include a US developed 2.75" rocket and an Oerlikon 8cm rocket, and will likely go on subsequent interceptors. They may get guidance in the future. In related showings of new machinery, GE is showing off its J47-GE-27, which is going into the F-86F and which gives about 10% power as well as high-altitude starting and anti-icing arrangements.
David Anderton reports for Aeronautical Engineering that "Poor Coordination Slows Missiles Work" The story is a plea for an "expanded Office of Guided Missiles" I won't go into it or the following story about a "re-engineered" twin-engined version of the Navion that is supposed to win the sales that the original couldn't find, presumably as an executive plane. It's a long article! Epic, I might almost say.
NACA Reports, or even sings, of arms and the man, and of wind tunnel investigations and analysis of the effects of end plates on the aerodynamics of a straight wing, and of the muse that inspires David R. Riley.
Truly, Heaven hides nothing from the view of John P. Campbell and Marion McKinney, when they raise the banner of revolt and of summary of methods of calculating dynamic lateral stability and response. For it is better to reign in Hell with a valid method for estimating lateral stability derivatives.
I joke, but I have to do something to render these reports readable when soft and yielding minds glide away from a flight investigation of the effect of transient wing response on wing strains in rough air, lest we fail to adorn Harry C. Mickleboro and C. C. Shufflebarger with golden crowns and heavy flowers.
Follows an "article" about how 1952 Pipers are better than ever, a note about how North American has flown the firsrt AJ-2P photo reconnaissance bomber, and one about Republic's new spotwelder, which is very fast and accurate, saving skilled labour. Colvin Laboratories new transducers are the smallest and cutest ever, and perfect for guided missiles, while Boeing wants us to know that the KC-97 can be converted from transport to tanker in no time at all.
Philip Klass reports for Avionics that "Jet Instrumentation Turns to Avionics" Turbojet makers are turning to electronics experts to solve their measurement problems. Which turns out to be a precis of a paper given to the Detroit meeting of the SAE by R. E. Gorton and B. E. Miller on "Instrumentation for Aircraft Gas Turbine Development," describing their work at Pratt and Whitney. This involved putting a bunch of probes, thermometers, and other instruments in the engine to measure this and that, and then "plot" them remotely on a specialised automatic equipment euphoniously called the "Plottomac." They caution that unless you understand physics and thermodynamics, these kinds of measurements will probably not do you any good, because you won't know what you're measuring. The Naval Research Laboratory, on the other hand, knows exactly what it is measuring with its "heat pulse." I don't.
McGraw Hill World News has "Why Production Lags in Britain," for Production. It is because of labour, tools and materials. So there. On the other hand, a third of the 4000 planes flying for NATO are British, which is a lot. Also, Solar Aircraft has a big subcontract from Westinghouse to produce afterburners, combustion chambers and other hot parts for the J40, while GE is expanding its "Accessory Turbine" branch. And Convair is sending its supervisors to a management training course at Texas Christian University, while De Havilland is setting up a Ghost overhaul base outside Sydney to support the anticipated Canadian Pacific Comet service. And speaking of Comets, Shell is busy distributing tankers to top up the speedy and thirsty airliners to places like Bermuda. US airlines are also starting to adopt underwing refuelling, which is the point of this article, it turns out as I read on, with specific reference to the way that the Shell "Dorset" tanker feeds fuel into the Comet. 
Grumman is very pleased with its sponge rubber weather sealing and gasket material with patented internal steel wire reinforcement. It is strong, and made of gas-resistant Neoprene. Also exciting new equipment are a "panel light" for the B-36, and the Dowty hydraulic power pack being introduced with the Airspeed Ambassador, a 5hp variable speed electric motor for a radial pump giving 0.43 gallons per thousand rpm, which is very impressive, I'm sure.
George L. Christian checks in with Colonial Airline's "'Personal Path' To Safety" for Equipment. Individual crews are responsible for individual planes. That was easy. Now how do we fill up our space? Let's tell the customers about the tie downs that Colonial uses to keep airliners from flying away when it gets gusty on the tarmac. They're made of rope! Fascinating!
New Aviation Products is impressed with a fuel switch from Northrop, a heating tape from Electrofilm that can warm cylinders and tubes up to 300 degrees, a high speed drill from Westinghouse, and a synthetic rubber and tar blend for protecting airport runways from jet fuel spillage, from US Rubber, preventing the "disintegration" of airport runways due to kerosene spills. Lear has a new 18 channel VHF transmitter operating on 12 or 24v, weighing only 10lbs, with a 7.5w power amplifier on the output to improve your chances of hearing something over cockpit noise, with a frequency range of over 100 mHz (118 to 238 mHz.)
Under Financial, the airlines want higher fares, and no wonder when NAL is going to pay $2 million per DC7.
Robert Wood's Editorial has a belated response from the CAA's Charles Horne, denying that they are involved in smuggling, and Aviation Week's reply, inviting him to address the results of journalistic investigations, and the cloud of gas he emits, instead in reply. Although, in fairness, a fuller letter from Hensley and Davis is to follow in the next issue.
"
No comments:
Post a Comment