The Mayflower,
Washington
Dear Father:
It was so good to see you last night! Uhm, okay, if you ever read this, it will be months from now, because this package is going to your house, and not to your hotel room. I am writing it, with the customary epistolary opening, in the name of completeness, so that my historical posterity (which there will surely be!) will have an entry for the summer of 1952. Who knows what historical insights there will be to be had in retrospect? And, of course, your own Ronnie will have picked out the gems, I am sure. Although when the biggest science and medicine story of the week are successful public vaccination drives and some crackpot worrying about flooding due to the Greenland ice caps melting, it is hard to see what kind of history is being made.
So how did I drive myself up this road, this wrong way cul-de-sac like the planners of your little neighbourhood so love? Because of the movie, of course. I couldn't stop thinking about it. Reggie couldn't stop thinking about it. I have my concerns about casting a 51 year-old as the love interest of a 23-year-old, but at the same time my woman's eye is pleased to rest upon Gary Cooper at the least excuse, so I suppose that means that I am part of the problem. BUT THE MOVIE! And I am so glad that I could see it with you and with Uncle George, and to be there with you talking about it afterwards at the Lotus. What a meditation on cowardice and service and the death of Admiral Ting, and to hear Uncle George talking about the kamikazes at last!
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Letters
The committee to save the Quasset school has received many donations since they got in Newsweek. Someone from Woodward Iron Company of Alabama wants us to know that it has had nothing to do with that awful Harvey Woodward since the Eighties. Lots of people at the studios liked the special article about the movie industry that said it's not in as much trouble as all that. Canada writes to say that it is really enjoying these great articles about Canada that it has no idea how they came to be published, and certainly didn't pay for. The Presbyterian church of Pennsylvania writes to point out that it isn't evangelising Catholics in Colombia because it hates Catholics. That's just a bonus! Correspondent Shirley Murphy likes actor Arlene Francis. People don't like Elsa Maxwell's US flag-pattern purse, because it is in bad taste. Our Publisher wants us to know that the whole team will be in Chicago for the conventions, which will be very exciting.
The Periscope reports that the Coast Guard will need $800,000 to refurbish the cutter Westwind, recently returned by the Soviets, Meanwhile, the message in a bottle claiming to be from a Soviet submarine trapped 60 fathoms down off Florida must be a hoax, because the currents wouldn't wash it onshore. The Air Force's new multiple-feed machine gun has a rate of fire of more than 4800 rounds per minute, which is a lot. The US and Denmark are fighting over a tanker that the Danes are building for the Soviets. The US says that Denmark might be out of mutual aid if it goes ahead and delivers the tanker, and the Danes say that the Americans can go do something rude. John Alsop, Joe Alsop's brother, will be campaigning for the GOP in Connecticut. Taft is starting to come across as testy, because no-one wants to vote for him besides party leadership. The McCarran Committee still wants Owen Lattimore's passport taken away, and is also still upset at John P. Davies. The Navy's Weapon Alfa is an antisubmarine rocket, while there is talk that cargo ships may be equipped with antisubmarine torpedoes and helicopters. Announced Allied-Soviet talks about German reunification is a diplomatic victory for France. The Arab-African bloc at the United Nations is bound and determined to have a debate about Tunisia.
(I like Periscope's show business section. Tells you a lot about how much "inside Washington" punditry is worth.)
Washington Trends reports that there's going to be a Presidential election in America this year, and it will probably feature Eisenhower or Taft against Adlai Stevenson. Unless Stevenson declines the draft, in which case, who knows?
National Affairs
To get the full effect of the first four pages, reread the above twenty times.
"Starfire: Mechanical Marvel to Repel Red Threat" The Alsops say that the age of "active reconnaissance of this continent by the Soviet strategic forces has begun." The USAF is said to have put the civilian observer corps on 24 hour alert, and there are signs that "laggard" air defence is catching up. The F-86D exists, several wings of Northrop F-89 Scorpions are in service, and who cares about all that, because let's talk about the Lockheed F-94C, with its ceiling of more than 45,000ft, speed of greater than 600mph, 6500lb Pratt and Whitney J48P-5 with afterburner, and its "brainlike electronic instruments." Compared with the 180lbs of radio and other electronic instruments carried into the air by the old P-38, the F-94C carries 1200lbs, including 350 vacuum tubes, which blurb seems familiar, so I've probably quoted it before. Yes, the fire control is a "mechanised brain," which I guess explains why it is "brainlike"!!! The interception, as described, consists of the ground radar controlling the fighter as it approaches the intruder until the plane's radar operator picks up a "pip" on the screen. The "pip" is thrown up on the pilot's screen in a reticule, and the pilot steers the plane to keep the pip in the centre of the reticule on the radar screen. When the pip grows "large enough," the pilot flips the trigger switch, and the fire control "brain" whirrs into action, firing a volley of 3.5" rockets at exactly the right moment. The brain itself is top secret, being installed in a black box the size of a home radio at the Lockheed factory, and jealously guarded afterwards.
The F-94C is basically a development of the old F-80, but Lockheed justifies this by pointing out that it is the right plane for the job as long as the Russians are basically flying the B-50. When the Russians get a plane like the B-47, the USAF will need a new interceptor. At least until the scientists lick the problem of replacing the pilot and create a "drone" interceptor, which is probably not a distant prospect.
Speaking of fascists, the McCarran immigration bill has passed over the President's veto. Congress has also extended economic controls just through to the next session, patched up spending with a special appropriation, and in the one permanent solution offered up in the last-minute flurry, extended WWII-style GI benefits to Korean War veterans. It's hot out (and how!), so Newsweek can this year's picture of kids in NYC playing in a fire hydrant, and somehow Anna Rosenberg is the villain as the Senate steps in to the case of a 33-year-old WAC major who was forced to resign after she had a child, passing a regulation that mothers of dependent children are too allowed to be WACs and all those other wacky acronyms. For one thing, the Senate is full of "paternal solicitude." For another, there aren't enough WACs.
"Apology to Lattimore" It turns out that that tip that Owen Lattimore was about to flee to Moscow was a fake, cooked up by Seattle travel agent Harry A. Jarvinen, who spun it to a square-jawed, upright CIA agent who can't believe that anyone would lie about something like that. Fortunately, the case was turned over to the FBI (and the State Department, which ran out to cancel Lattimore's passport in a blaze of publicity.) The FBI , which might not like Lattimore, likes the CIA and State Department less. Now the State Department has apologised and Lattimore has blasted the State Department, pointing out how close we are to "government by informers."
The Korean War
"Why the British Were Not Told Of Plans to Bomb Power Plants" Because the British would have said "No," is why. Also, they would have told the French, and the French would have stuck their noses in the air and said, "Zut alors!" and then they would eat some snails in garlic butter, and then they would explain why it was a terrible idea, and we'd have had to put our fingers in our ears and said, "La la la la, we're not listening," and we would get some earwax on our fingers, and it would be disgusting. Also, we forgot to look at our calendars so we didn't realise that Lord Alexander would be in town the day the bombs started dropping. Oops! Well, if the Marine Corps can forget to look up a tide chart before launching an invasion, I guess I'm saying that these things happen. The British have pointed out that this is what you get for putting Mark Clark in charge of something, and that if you want Labour to come back in under Bevin, this is how you do it.
International
Moscow is also hot, and Singapore must be even hotter considering the way that tempers are fraying over Commissioner McDonald not showing up for an event in white tie, and also, less remarkably (because it is less remarked), defying the colour line, which from the sounds of things is getting stricter. And in Japan, where the Communists ("mostly Koreans") are throwing big riots even though it is cheating because the Japanese National Police don't have a flying squad yet. And in the Netherlands, where the Socialists have won the election and taken office. Also, in France, where Marshal Juin and The Picture Post have been quoted saying anti-American things. Juin is upset about America not giving France enough money to fight its Indo China war, while the Post is upset about all those American soldiers over here ruining Britain's bon ton.
Justice William Douglas has been invited to write a guest column about "How to Win Peace With Point Four." He points out that the Marshall Plan mainly served to make rich Europeans richer, and promoted Communism in France and Italy. Point Four, instead of being a Marshall Plan for Asia, should consist of "a vast accumulation of capital, the training of skilled labour, and the "adoption of protective labour standards so that Asia will not inflict sweatshop labour on the world." He gets a bit mushy-mouthed when he talks about how modern "industrial units" will revolutionise village life, but a bit earlier he is clearer when he talks about land reform in Iran. Finally, he offers the usual pious wish that all that money America is spending on guns should instead be sent overseas to fund Point Four development. I get the impression that he doesn't really understand how exchange balances work, but he's not alone in that in the ranks of the middle-browed and well-intended.
"Alberta: Young Province Adds Oil and Industry to an Economy Long Dependent on Agriculture" "Long" here means fifty years, I think? I'm not going to spend too much time on this article. I didn't find the one on British Columbia particularly enlightening, and I've actually been there!
Business
Periscope Business Trends reports that there won't be major tax cuts next year, railways are alarmed at the losses they are piling up in passenger rail, and don't think that the trend can be reversed. Passengers require one and a half tons of dead weight equipment per head on the rails, compared with a half ton on the roads. That's why the railroads spend so much money on lightweight cars for passenger service, but that's asking for a lot of "adding lightness." Eastern railroads will experiment with low family fares this summer to see if rising fares is the problem, but the next bit is about how the states are building more and more superhighways even though New Yorkers are very annoyed at all the tolls they have to pay. The coal miners are not in a good position going into contract negotiations because coal stockpiles are high.
The final draft of the 1952 wage and price stabilisation package that passed the House has various liberalisations of price, rent, and wage control, and has scrapped consumer credit restrictions. The end of the steel strike might be in sight.
"Allison Accomplishments" Newsweek takes time out to pat GM's Allison motor division on the back for delivering its ten-thousandth Torquematic tank transmission, and is working on an even bigger one. Allison has been around since the old days, before the war, but only got into tank transmissions seven years ago. The production version of the new transmission has 4007 parts packed into a 30 by 40 by 33 inch box. The 1952 wheat crop is over 1.3 billion bushels worth more than $2.6 billion dollars. Billion! Wheat farms have grown to an average size of more than 500 acres, are worth thirty-seven thousand dollars, and have $4700 in equipment. Newsweek has one of those breakdowns that shows that farmers lose a dollar for every bushel of wheat they sell, and meanwhile are buying ever more equipment (the story prominently features the annual "migration" of independent automatic harvester operators from Texas to the Canadian border), and are ever better educated and prosperous.
"Electronic Reservations" American Airlines introduced the "Magnetronic Reservisor," developed for American by the Teleregister Corporation over eight years, to sell tickets electronically. 
Notes: Week in Business reports that the American Woolen Corporation is selling its idle New England mill to the highest bidder, while Parke, Davis and Company is building a drug factory in Caracas, Venezuela, as part of its Latin American outreach. Emerson is expanding its educational television effort by donating equipment to new television education channels, which have 240 channels available to them around the country.
Products: What's New reports that Crossley is building an improved automatic dishwasher in which the top rack rotates, so that one loaded rack doesn't obstruct the other. U.S Rubber's new rubber cement pourer spout lasts longer than existing, canvas ones. Home Curtain Corporation is offering an inflatable, "embossed, tufted" "valance" as a "simple cornice" for windows. I know what a valance is, but I don't understand how it can be a cornice. Labelon Tape Company has a roll of 45 common drafting symbols on both opaque and transparent tape rolls to ease drafting layouts.
Henry Hazlitt's Business Tides has "The Fallacy of Point Four" The fallacy is that giving money and technical knowhow to all those Asiatics makes no sense until Asiatics embrace capitalism.
Science, Medicine, Education
"Old Bremsstrahlung University" Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been offering a four-week summer course in radioactive isotopes since 1949l, possibly? (The article doesn't say.) It is mainly devoted to Dr. Robert Christian, an associate professor of chemistry from Wichita University who took this year's course, along with some classmates and really appreciated it. News! Also, the American Veterinary Association heard at their annual convention this week that Dr. James Baker of Cornell, along with Drs. George Poppensiek and James H. Gillespie, had come up with the first effective vaccine against canine hepatitis, which will be combined with the distemper vaccine and save millions of puppy lives, which is kind of news.
Medical Notes reports that Francis Delafield Hospital in New York has what sounds like a rubber balloon for immobilising limbs and other parts for X-rays. A 43% rise in polio cases around the country last week has doctors worried that this will be the eighth consecutive year of summer polio epidemics. The rise is particularly notable in Texas, which is down south, so the first place a summer disease might strike. This makes another experimental gamma globulin immunisation campaign particularly noteworthy. It is going ahead in Texas after the success of last year's campaign in Provo, Utah. Dr. Carl Limber and associates at the State University of Ohio are testing a procedure for cleaning the bronchial tubes of people suffering from respiratory illness, including tuberculosis, with an aerosol incuding trypsin, the enzyme that digests proteins, hence hopefully the mucus that blocks the tubes.
"Dangerous Membrane" Drs. Jonathan Williams and Harold Stevens of the Children's Hospital of Washington, D.C., have discovered that a membrane that may form across the top of an infant's brain in the first months of life, can lead to fluid retention and brain damage. Further, if the membrane is only drained, it may send capillary roots deep into the brain and be associated with idiopathic epilepsy. Therefore the recommend the surgical removal of the membrane when it is diagnosed in infants.
"How to Clear Arteries" Drs. Christian Anfinsen and associates of the National Heart Institute have established that heparin, a substance that is involved in clearing the arteriosclerosis that hardens arteries, is associated with some other unidentified substances that make it effective. They believe they are on track to find and extract these substances, and hope to begin clinical trials of artery cleaning trials of their heparin-plus-other-mystery-substances miracle cure next year.
That big French trade union federation (you know the one) is having a summer school for trade union officials outside Paris. Must be nice!
Art, Press, Radio-Television, Newsmakers
Newsweek's Art correspondents check in with the 84th annual convention of of the American Association of Architects, where thousands of architects gathered in New York to tackle the big problems of architecture, like roofs that don't leak, and having enough women's washrooms. Marshall Fredericks, George Nakashima and Auguste Perret get paragraphs. 
John Daly may be a famous newsman on TV, but he doesn't let it get to his head.
Management and union are fighting over how profitable the New York World Telegram and Sun actually is, now that they are negotiating a new contract. The National Association of Manufacturers is publishing a glossy magazine that isn't at all right wing, for a measly quarter an issue. The new, employee-ownership model at the Cincinnati Enquirer isn't really sorted out yet. A Senate committee has recruited six Washington reporters to look at the Administration's use of security classifications and has decided that it is all flim-flam to cover up its incompetence.
"Colour Again" Twentieth Century Fox is still working on replacing the old double feature with colour television broadcasts to its theatres, using their giant (or small; any size, really) Eidophor television, which they have spent a million bucks on, and are now sending to GE to work out the production bugs. Unfortunately, it still needs broadcast frequencies, and microwave relays. The FCC is wary of the first, and ATT is against the second. At least the NPA says that Eidophor (and other colour television) production can go ahead, although Twentieth Century is the only company with actual plans to go ahead right now.
FDR's son is still a Congressman from New York and would still like to be famous, so he said something. The President and John Steinbeck are famous, so they didn't have to. Caesar Patrillo didn't like it when Arthur Rodzinskii conducted an orchestra in Italy, there was an attempted robbery at the Paris Museum of Modern Art, Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini went on a walk with their twins, which is obviously quite newsworthy. (They're very cute twins, but what do you expect?) Congressman Harold Velde of Kentucky likes Kentucky bourbon, the ex-Mrs. Adlai Stevenson does not like the Mr., Jeanne D'Arc Michaud is a passionate French chanteuse who sank into depravity (well, burglary), when her man did her wrong, Sergeant Dean Chase has been court-martialed and busted to private for publicly balling out General Mark Clark, and then reassigned to the General's stenographer pool, which I think is the Army's way of sending a message to someone, and it isn't Private Chase. (Well, it's to Private Chase, too.) Thomas D. Garry, Chicago Superintendent of Sewers, promises not to make a scene at this year's Democratic Convention, not like in 1940.
Richard Rodgers (Rodgers and Hammerstein) has had a birthday. Anne Charleton Hadley, daughter of the Vice President, is married. Lana Turner, Roberta Peters and Bertrand Russell are divorcing. Irving Wexler and giant panda, Pao Pei have died.
Movies
Warner's Where's Charley is "perfectly silly" and "perfectly entertaining." The same studio's biopic about some baseball player who had quite the life, The Winning Team, stars the College Man's youngest, because the athlete had a wild and eccentric life after suffering childhood brain damage, and the casting director was going for verisimilitude. Walt Disney's The Story of Robin Hood is a full-length Technicolor epic, so a bit of a departure for the studio. Newsweek liked it, especially Joan Rice, who "glows." Yet again from Warner is Carson City, a Western starring Randolph Scott. Newsweek grouses that it gives the sordid business of railroad building a "romantic, fictional glance." British import, Island Rescue, doesn't do much with the jokes that can be written about its premise, which is something about British soldiers escaping German-occupied islands with cows, but the cast, notably David Niven, makes up for it with their delivery.
Books
Newsweek leads with an industry story about a Congressman from Alabama who is appalled by all the lewd books they have nowadays, and who is modestly putting forward a tiny spot of fascism to fix the problem. Then it is off to sooth the middlebrows with a review of a biographical study of Thomas Gray by Joseph Wood Krutch (which is a real name). Gray turns out to have been quite an entertaining young man before he was frozen in aspic and became a "confirmed bachelor." Arthur C. Clarke's Exploration of Space explains how a "space station" would work in smooth prose and argues that space stations and Mars colonies would present no more difficulties than building a city at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Which I think is Newsweek being funny. Dawn Powell's collection of eighteen short stories about unsuccessful people on the "fringes of life" makes me want to make a comment about literary fiction writers who issue short story collections.
Raymond Moley's Perspectives explains that now that it is all up to the delegates, it is all up to the delegates. Hey, Newsweek! I can do Moley, Lindell, and Hazlitt's job for the money you pay the three of them!
Leaders
"A Supercharged Turbojet" Flight introduces us to the Bristol Olympus, a turbojet with separate low- and high-pressure compressor and turbine stages, with the low-pressure unit "supercharging" the high pressure one. While this is not the first such design, as the abandoned Rolls Royce Clyde and current Dart have or had a similar layout, and so does the Pratt and Whitney J-57, but it is the most powerful and economical turbojet in current development. Now that it has been dropped from the Secret list, there are rumours that it will be used in a four-engine bomber with "6000 miles range at 600 mph," in a future generation of transports, and future long-range heavy fighters, for example a Gloster GA. 5 development. 
"Helicopter Groundwork" Flight reminds us that it is very excited about helicopters and a bit disgruntled that there are only 25 civil helicopters in the country, of which only 11 are operational, and that service helicopters are equally rare. People should really get on with developing twin-engine helicopters and using them for passenger and freight services, and it is about time someone thought about helicopter terminals in cities.
"Olympus: Unrivalled Economy from a Fundamentally New Turbojet" For many months now, plumes of exhaust have indicated that Bristol has been running a very big, high power jet turbine on the testbed in Filton. Now we can share the details! It is a big engine, designed for heavy, long range aircraft. The high fuel efficiency comes from the use of a very high compression ratio. A single compressor with a 9:1 compression ratio will narrow sevenfold from the inlet to the outlet to maintain constant flow-velocity, and this will mean that the initial compressor stages will experience much lower axial velocities and flows compared with the later, and will be stall-prone. The solution to this is separate high and low-pressure compressors, which in the Olympus also have their own turbines, and are mechanically independent of each other. This two-spool design is already showing fuel consumption in excess of 0.766 lb/lb thrust hr, far higher than any other turbojet off the secret list, and with a very low rate of blade failure so far. Running stress is low, and engine responsiveness is amazing compared with single-spool turbojets. "No longer will the turbojet pilot be committed to a landing throughout so much of his approach." There are a total of 14 to 15 compressor stages compared with 11 in the Avon and 13 in the Sapphire, the combustion system consists of "cans" fed from a diffusor, and there really are only two turbines although "there appear to be more." It is also long and has a small diameter, ideal for "buried" installations.
From All Quarters reports that Gloster's chief test pilot, Bill Waterton, has survived the prototype GA 5 in a crash landing, and although the wreck burned up, he saved the flight records. Hunting Aerosurveys has opened its new laboratory at Boreham Wood, which is a real place. SNCASO is marketing the Turbomeca Palas as an auxiliary "power unit" which can be slapped onto existing aircraft to give them a bit more boost in emergencies and tight landings. They are doing trials on a DC-3 with one under the fuselage, but apparently the idea is far enough along that they can market it in the Commonwealth. Air Service Training will be producing components for the Hawker Hunter. NATO is going to have an air display, and Flight summarises an article by Michael Cooper-Silver, the Avro Canada test pilot, about flying the Orenda-Sabre.
Here and There reports that the British team is in Madrid for the World Gliding Championships and that no-one has died yet. General Vandenberg says that the Air Force is launching another effort to get to the bottom of the whole "flying saucers" thing. Canada and the United States will have a joint air exercise in the summer, SIGNPOST, while Avro Canada is refitting Lancasters as long-distance navigational trainers and the like. Japan is starting up an air force, although we can't call it that. Goodyear's new tyre rubber for jets is good for more than the current five or six landings. Women are more likely to fly coach than men, who still predominate in first class. The US Observer Corps needs to recruit some 150,000 observers across 37 states. Rolls Royce has licensed the Solar Aircraft process for forming complex sheet metal shapes, which greatly simplifies "the design of intermediate-forming dies," aiding turbojet production.
Flight sends James Bay Stevens to fly a French light plane for a page and a half that scrunches up an advertorial from GEC Heavy Alloy about a new 90% tungsten alloy for making weights. It is 60% heavier than lead, which is good, but needs to be held in a hydrogen atmosphere at 1000 degrees, then sintered for fifteen minutes, which you don't have to do with lead. But it is a much more efficient aileron balance, so it is worth it when you are already spending that much money on a jet bomber. Then we check in with Harold Dvororetsky, who flew to the Middle East with the officers of the Central Flying School's Examining Wing to examine candidates for Instrument Flying ratings on seven different types of aircraft. He visited 206 Group, which is very upset at the lack of Egyptian labour in the Canal Zone, meaning that it has to do all of its own menial labour; Aden, which is still very hot, and the RAF mission in Asmara, Eritrea, which is very pleased with itself for repressing the bandit campaign of Tesfai Merit, who had one of those incomprehensible, native objections to the British presence.
Also, the Treasury says that British aircraft exports hit £45 million last year, compared with £293 million for cars and £53 million for ships and boats. Which is awfully low for ships and boats considering how much steel and coal goes into them!
"Gannet" A very nice pictorial of the new Fairey Gannet.
"About British Helicopters, By the Editor" It seems very important to make it clear that this article about plans for the Bristol Type 173, and impressions of the Type 171, are by the Editor and not some greasy correspondent, or, worse, Bristol Aircraft. The 173 is the proposed BEA 36 seat passenger helicopter, with Flight just as invincibly obtuse about the limited potential of helicopter passenger services as Aviation, so on and on about how it will probably be able to land safely in the event of an engine failure and how navigation is easy with the included Decca, and that there reallly are no obstacles to "inter-city heli-busses by the end of the Fifties." Except noise and the fact that they are hardly faster than the train! But flying the 171 was nice. 
The National Air Races are coming, there is a model airplane meet to cover, and The Aeronautical Bookshelf reads The Army Air Forces in Europe, volume III, Europe: Argument to VE-Day for us. Flight quite liked it, and rounds out the review by pointing out that the Germans had the V-1, V-2, and "still mysterious V-3" seven years ago, and what do we have now? Good question! The A.B.C.s of Military Aircraft is for enthusiasts, and W. F. Hilton's High-Speed Aerodynamics is a "valuable work of reference." Service Aviation reports that 40(!!) of the WWII War Emergency destroyers are going to be converted into "a new class of fast aircraft-director ships," [?] relieving aircraft carriers and heavy ships. They will lose their surface armament to make room for the aerial systems and control towers. EXERCISE CASTANETs featured the fast minelayer, Apollo as a raider and several Dutch submarines attacking outbound ships, including HMS Hedingham Castle, escorting a convoy. Firebrands failed to intercept Apollo due to bad weather, although they were more successful against some simulated convoys off the east coast, but Shackletons and Lincolns were up to the task, and Apollo was struck by carrier aircraft and finished off by destroyers. Carriers also attacked the amphibious invasion convoys off Den Helder, thwarting a landing on the Dutch coast, and there was a nice surface gunnery action in the far North Sea. A fine time was had by all, except the Firebrand pilots.
Civil Aviation reports that the inquest into the Consul that ditched in the Channel on 14 June, leading to the death of the pilot and five passengers, suggests that the problem was engine trouble. BEA is replacing its Dragon Rapides with Pionairs, and is re-scheduling to take advantage of their superior navigational facilities. Air India isn't making much money, there is a new charter airline out to Aden (and yet another to Nairobi), there is talk of stretching the Bristol Freighter, and India and Pakistan are fighting over civil aviation, too.
Correspondence
D. K. Fox reminds us that Air Britain is doing good work bringing the story of British aviation to life, but the Editor is worried that its data will allow the enemy too much insight into the doings of the services. S. M. Todd Webb writes to describe all the planes he has seen at Gibraltar in the last year, speaking of which. And H. Ball Wilson writes to point out some confusion in Sir Harry Garner's Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture, which implied that troop transports might be supersonic soon, just like bombers. That is clearly not true, and the editor is forced to clarify that they won't be supersonic, and that means that it won't be possible to convert future bombers into future transports, for that reason.
Letters
The Periscope reports that the Republican convention has been pretty contentious so far, Truman is attracting large crowds on his current whistlestop tour, the CIA is cracking down in its "collecting unsourced rumours and bothering the adults with them" programme, the State Department is recovering its public esteem, Joseph Malik is being replaced at the UN, General Nam Il is being replaced at the peace talks, Senator Blair Moody is single-handedly responsible for getting Korean GIs combat pay, UN forces were expecting a major Red offensive on 25 June due to increased artillery shelling amongst other things, and the Army is still upset at the Air Force for "sloppy" parachute drops, and is now even more upset about the extension of runways at air bases next to army bases. More jets for Korea mean more bombs dropped in Korea because jets make faster round trips. The Army's new landmine weighes only 4 1/2 oz and costs $4, compared with 12oz and $25 in the last war. The bomber boys are upset that B-29s weren't used in the Yalu powerplant raids. King Farouk is upset at all the British newspaper cartoons making fun of him, and wants them stopped. Tito is visiting Austria, Chiang Kai-shek has decided that he is stuck on Formosa and needs to make the best of it. Communism is bad for four paragraphs. Western occupation troops are on the hook for 93.000 illegitimate children in West Germany, 50,000 of them American.
Clark Gable will star with Lana Turner in a remake of Red Dust. Susan Hayward will star in Irving Stone's biopic about Rachel Jackson. Rosemary Clooney will make her movie debut in White Christmas with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Samuel Goldwyn's $5 million Hans Christian Anderson will open around Christmas in New York and Los Angeles. Summer theatre has notes, which I am ignoring because no-one cares about summer stock. The new line of Bendix television receivers will have headsets for those who want or need to watch tv quietly, and Mr. and Mrs. North will get the TV treatment next season.
So that's the Periscope, which for some reason is still talking to Lana Turner's agent.
The Periscope's Washington Trends reports that the GOP is going to have to recover from the convention if it is going to beat the majority-party Democrats in November, while Democrats are overconfident, which is why they're cool on Kefauver. They don't need him, and prefer Stevenson. Civil rights will be the big fight at the Democratic convention.
National Affairs
"The Senate and the IPR" The McCarran Committee's report on the Institute of Pacific Relations (and whether Owen Lattimore single-handedly lost China) is out. Conclusion: Yes, also Commies are everywhere! Also, McCarthy fought with Senator Benton until it was time for him to leave for Chicago, where he will be addressing the GOP convention.
Ernest K. Lindell reports in Washington Tides that the GOP convention is pretty darn contentious and that the President is currently giving them hell. At least the dateline is Chicago, so they made Ernest leave his desk. 
"Red Stallers at Panmunjom Get a Taste of US Air Power" Major General William K. Harrison, Jr, who is a real person, and not in any way an indication that the United States has a republican aristocracy, is currently in charge of talking to communists at Panmunjom, and is confused that the Communists are confused about why we are bombing them. It's for peace! And so we can keep all those POWs and give them to Chiang. The air offensive is being carried out by the F-84Gs of 31 Fighter Escort Wing of SAC, which were convoyed by B-29 tankers in the first mass jet crossing of the Pacific, and which are now conducting bombing raids along with the planes of an additional Navy carrier, bringing the attacking force up to between 200 and 250 planes. The use of all-jet raids makes it harder for the Reds to scramble interceptors, of which they might have a lot, since the Reds are supposed to have 2000 aircraft, mostly jets, between Korea and the rest of China. A raid of 75 F-84Gs already in Korea against a compound near the Supung dam recently raised 115 MiG-15s to intercept, resulting in US F-86s shooting down 12 with no losses. Meanwhile, the latest weekly casualty returns shows 965 US casualties, mostly due to the 45th Division fighting around Chorwon. This is four times the low rate of last spring.
Meanwhile, in London, Churchill completely accepts Dean Acheson's explanation that the Americans didn't tell the British about the power station raids in advance because of a little mix-up, and says that Labour should just let it lie, because everyone has a snafu now and then. In Pusan, Syngman Rhee has had the police round up the members of the National Assembly and take them to the legislature, where they held a public vote endorsing him as President through to elections scheduled in two weeks, and giving him the power to create a bicameral legislature and throw out the Cabinet without parliamentary approval. Everyone thinks this is the best possible compromise, since Rhee hasn't specifically said that he is running for re-election, so there's a remote chance he won't.
International
Except for the French, who are distracted by the Tour de France, a heat wave, and just being French, in general, and the Japanese, who have no idea what is going on.
The Russians are vetoing UN resolutions for an impartial investigation of germ warfare allegations in Korea, the charges of inciting riot against Jacques Duclos have been dismissed because of his immunity as a member of the assembly, the flap over that Danish tanker for Russia continues, the latest Egyptian cabinet seems to be falling, Communism is terrible in Berlin, and a Swiss attempt to climb Mt. Everest (which has grown two feet since it was last measured, due to geological forces) has failed.
Aneurin Bevan's guest column "Blasts U.S. Korean Policy." Actually, he is blasting America's Chinese policy, because he thinks that America's refusal to accept the Peking regime is getting in the way of peace with Korea. Also, why is America giving money to (allegedly not-)Fascist Spain and stonewalling Red China?
Mexico is getting more democratic, which you can tell from the way that the outgoing President has called out the army to make sure that the election elects Adolfo Ruiz Cortines. Dean Acheson is in Brazil to let Brazilians know that America is full of goodwill towards Brazilians. Except Communists.
Business
The Periscope Business Trends reports that we shouldn't be disappointed by the steel strike ending without the world ending too, because it really, honestly did some damage. The textiles industry is upset about following exports and points out that everyone on Earth is building textile plants, so there you go. The Canadian boom is fading, just like the American. The President's Materials Policy Commission figures that underwater mines are just around the corner as the world turns increasingly to the sea for its raw materials. The industry is upset that the new shipping bill doesn't give them even more subsidies so that it can compete with foreigners. The end of Federal rent controls will lead to significant increases in the cost of living. You know, because rents will go up. 
"Military Production Speeds Up: Steel Strike May Slow It Down" I feel like I've read this article many, many times before. The good news is that M-47 deliveries are up to 300 a month, and that the newly-revealed M-48 will be rolling off the assembly lines at the end of the year, and that military aircraft deliveries are up to 800/month. Electronics production is up seven times from from June 1950, and ammunition production will meet the highest Korean consumption rate by October and go up from there. Also, stories about steel and shipping don't add much to the Periscope blurb except to say that the United States has taken the blue riband at an average crossing speed of 31.69 knots.
Notes: The Week in Business reports that the CAB has signed off on a final decision of the TWA/Pan Am dispute about who flies where and how often. TWA gets to keep its "temporary" Rome route. Higgins has a sixty million dollar contract to build 322 of a new version of the LCM for the Navy. Some crazy Oklahoman who thinks that flying a plane is like riding a bicycle, sent a mechanic up in a Piper Cub after 45 minutes of flight training because he knew how to ride a bicycle, and the mechanic lived, so that's definitely worth a story. The Arabian American Oil Company can't be all bad because it sprays locusts and lets Saudi Arabians use its hospitals.
Products: What's New reports that Monsanto is making a plastic fabric that smells like flowers, ideal for shower and window curtains, that Sal-San of Des Moines is making lunch boxes with smell and leakproof plastic containers, perfect for those mayonnaise-and-Limburger sandwiches. General Design of San Francisco has a little wet press for separating clumped stamps, while Imperial Pen of Chicago has a fountain pen with a spare nib under a screw-on handle and Pearl-Wick of New York has a laundry hamper with a built-in cupboard for brushes.
A five-page feature story turns some highly-publicised bootlegger busts into a major trend in which excise taxes are bringing back the bootlegger and ruining the liquor industry. Sure they are. Sure they are!
Henry Hazlitt's Business Tides explains that "Our Laws Create Strikes," which, sure, I grant. I mean, there were strikes even when strikes were illegal, but making them legal probably leads to more strikes, although there's still the question of whether that is a bad thing. Anyway, the real question for Henry is whether he manages to get past this obvious point and get a bit deeper and find some level at which the laws promote strikes in work places where there is no reason for a strike. And not only does he not do that, but he changes the subject into a discussion of why sector-wide bargaining units are bad because they make strikes worse, which is worse.
Science, Education, Medicine
"Atomic Leapfrog" Indian Springs, Nevada, which is only 24 miles from Frenchmans Flats and between it and Las Vegas, sometimes gets hit by the shockwave from the blast, and other times is spared even when the blast hits Las Vegas. How does the blast "leapfrog" from place to place? Reggie takes fifteen seconds and a bit of scrap paper to show that it is like musical pitch and depends on how steeply the blast bounces off the air, but Newsweek doesn't pay him to write for the magazine because it has to save money for Raymond Moley, so it blathers on about rubber balls bouncing before describing how the AEC is now paying a meteorologist to send up weather balloons to predict how the test is going to go. He has no idea, but he can retrospectively explain them, and has helpful advice about how people in Nevada should just tape up their windows if they don't want them wrecked by atom bomb tests. Why didn't we think of that!?
Newsweek gives us a quick once-over of what's in the new Korean GI Bill, with special attention ot provisions against postwar-style fly-by-night colleges. Bad news for the Arthur Murray Dance Studio! The annual convention of the National Educational Association said good-bye to long time executive secretary, Willard E. Givens. (There was also some nonsense about how censorship and loyalty oaths and firing professors for giving thee HUAC gang the stinkeye was bad for academic freedom and the country, but who cares about that?)
Press, Radio-Television, Newsmakers
Lots of foreign journalists are in Chicago watching the convention and wondering whether it's something in the water. The papers in Erie, Pennsylvania are in a knock-down, drag-out fight with the mayor over town business that shouldn't be secret, but is, or, says the Mayor, no they should be. The long strike at the Tacoma News-Tribune may be over soon.
"'This Won't Hurt Much'" The "blackest week" in Texas polio history ended with 206 new diagnosed cases, compared with a total of 1123 for the whole of 1952. Houston's Harris County had no less than 166 of those cases, including 6 deaths, or 30 cases per 100,000, qualifying it as the site of an epidemic, which is why Harris County is launching its half-million dollar gamma globulin immunisation campaign for 35,000 children. 
"The Perilous Antibiotic" Chloromycetin, introduced in 1948, is considered one of the most powerful antibiotics, but reports that it affects the blood and bone marrow have been trickling in, and now doctors have been warned not to prescribe it "promiscuous[ly]." It is now clear that there is a risk of potentially fatal splastic anemia from chloromycetin, which should be reserved for deadly infections.
"Air Cooled Hearts" Dr. George E. Burch, of the Tulane Medical School, New Orleans, has found that tropical heat is worse for people with congestive heart disease than for regular people.
Taft organisers kicked the TV newsmen out of the Convention because no-one had TV back in Calhoun's day, so now TV likes Ike. That doesn't mean that TV isn't covering the Convention, which is, according to some, "the Television Convention," just that the networks have to smuggle in microphones like CBS, or have "pivot personality," John Daly, interview experts and share his views from the studio. The Guiding Light is about the same old same old on television.
Margaret Truman is touring in Europe. Those Argentinian quintuplets are being sent to separate schools so that they will stop eerily speaking in uncanny unison and plotting the overthrow of "man's reign." Ana Pauker is purged some more. Margaret Chase Smith and Sarah T. Hughes are being politicians while female. The Patton family was out in force to give the old Sieg Heil to the new M-48. A Wellesley undergraduate sent a telegram to the GOP convention signed "Herbert Hoover" about how censorship is bad, and now she is in just so much trouble. Florence Chadwick is still trying to be famous. Frank Costello is also in so much trouble, but not a four-year-old who swallowed a watch or a Louisiana prison warden who is buying new bloodhounds. Albuquerque has grown from 35,000 to 145,000 since 1940, but is doing it wrong. Lana Turner gets her picture in the column. Give it a rest, Newsweek!
Marjorie Tallchief has had a baby. Pat Rooney has had a birthday, Senator Tobey is getting married (at 72), Edith Piaf is getting married, Olivia De Havilland is getting divorced, Mauno Pekkala, Felix W. Morley, Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach and Allison Skipworth have died.
(Maria, not her sister. Sorry. It's what I've got.)
The New Pictures
Rank import Secret Flight is "a gala celebration of British radar developments in the Second World War," with Sir Ralph Richardson being very, very funny, as radar is. "Congress is the hero and the Press is pretty much the villain" in MGM's Washington Story, which sounds like just the message we need right now. Speaking of, RKO's The Half-Breed is about a half-Apache trying to live peacefully around San Remo, Arizona back in the Old West days amidst corruption and Technicolor's desperate struggle to render yellow stripes on blue pants. Universal's Sally and Sainte Anne is going to be about religion but that's boring so it turns into a domestic comedy instead. High Noon is a Best Actor award in a box for Gary Cooper to go with Best Picture, and Grace Kelly is nice, too.
Books
Governor Dewey's Journey to the Far Pacific is a former politician's travel diary that Newsweek tries to tie to scandal in a very unsavoury way. (Also, Communism is bad.) Irving How's Faulkner: A Critical Study, is for the middlebrow in the best way, because it takes on "highbrow criticism of the works of Faulkner." Oh, those highbrows! (Of which the reviewer seems to be one.) "Lael Tucker is in private life Mrs. Charles Wertenbaker, the wife of the novelist and war correspondent." Now she has a novel, Lament for Four Virgins, which is one of those lush novels set over a generation of decay in a made-up Southern town. Can't have too many of those! 
Raymond Moley's Perspectives is about the absolute agony of having to rattle off a whole column-full of drivel in your hotel room before going out to paint the town red. Since Long Tall Sally hits the stage right as happy hour ends, he can't wait around to hear how the convention comes out, but that's not going to stop the guy who wrote a three-column prospective of the Dewey Administration leading up to the 1948 election. In conclusion, whoever wins, the campaign is going to be rough for the GOP. Unless it's Eisenhower. I think this is more about all the Republican congressmen and senators fighting for election or re-election on a platform of more money and less rules for rich people and more wars against foreign Reds. (The thought that people are going to say that the GOP is for fighting wars against foreign Reds enrages Moley in advance.)
Flight, 11 July 1952
Leaders
"Towards Automatic Interception" Flight has the same discussion of the interception system of the F-94C as the rest of the press, but improves on it by pointing out that the same system is rumoured to be being installed in the F-86D, which, significantly enough, is a single-seater, and that the Hughes system in the "1954" interceptor will be more complex, and may be used to control an armament consisting of a single, large missile in the fighter's belly.
"Technology is Defence" The College of Aeronautics at Cranfield needs a more generous supply of brains to create new technology for better defence, says Sir Victor Goddard, who is completely right.
Flight takes us to the World Gliding Championship, which is trying to live down any infamy from the hecatombs of deaths at previous events by holding this year's meet in the entirely noncontroversial climes of not-at-all-Fascist Spain. Flying from a baked-earth airfield across the valley from Madrid, spotted with the semi-operational hulks of assorted Spanish ex-German Air Force planes, pilots showed a considerable enthusiasm to get airborne, so as to be anywhere else as quickly as possible. (And also because of their death wish problems.) No-one has died yet. To be continued.
From All Quarters reports that John Cobb is going to attempt to set a new world water speed record in a Ghost-powered boat, the Crusader, which reminds Flight that Rover's experimental turbocar is out in its latest model doing high-speed turns on the "Ostend-Jabbeke motor road," and is the subject of a length article at Flight's stablemate, The Autocar. A sketch of the Shackleton M.R. 2 may now be published.
Here and There reports that the RAAF has built an airfield at Hermite Island, largest in the Monte Bello group, which has been chosen for the British atom bomb test. Hawker has invoked super-priority to get some machine tools for Hunter production at Blackpool. The Australians are going to step up Avon production to three per week to meet the need for rapid re-equipment of the RAAF with Avon-Sabres. MiGs, absent from earlier American raids against the Yalu power plants, rose to meet the Independence Day raid against what Flight calls an "unidentified target" near the Suiho dam (Newsweek says that it is a training facility), with claims of 12 MiGs shot down, no information about Allied casualties. (Newsweek says none.) Flight is skeptical of claims that MiGs won't be able to operate effectively from Manchuria now that the power grid has been knocked out. Americans hope to have their own Farnborough soon, and the latest Fairchild Packet, the C-119H, is very nice. Lt. Commander J. S. Bailey, R.N., flew an F-86 in the Suiho raid, and is now on his way back to London to participate in a "MiG symposium" at the Central Flying School. Meanwhile, MIT is going have its own symposium, on combustion systems in jet turbine engines, apply soonest if interested.
"Elizabethan Flight" Flight admits that the Ambassador is practically old news after years of stories as it inched towards entering service just now, so that its flying qualities are described as "sedate," and the biggest news is the high quality catering, but that's what we have. 
For the Bookshelf reports that Asher Lee's The Soviet Air Force has been brought up to date for this second printing by a rewriting of the last chapter, but still has plenty of questionable details. William Armstrong's Pioneer Pilot is about the old days, before the war. William Lazarus' Wing in the Sun: The Annals of Florida Aviation is just two covers with a picture of an orange and a sun umbrella folded in.
"Vehicle Ferry" Have you heard that you can put an autocar in a Bristol Freighter? HAVE YOU HEARD??? Well, you're going to hear again! And again! Yes, you can be excused to go to the little boy's room, but first you have to buy a Bristol Freighter. Just one Freighter. Is that too much to ask?
F/L J. Crane and S/L B. A. Colvin, "Rapier --Not Bludgeon" Two junior RAF officers disagree over whether future bombers should be small and fast or big and slow. Only those are really just analogies, just like 'rapier' and 'bludgeon' are analogies. I think they might be arguing about what kind of planes the RAF should buy in the future, but since we don't know about the secret types that Crane and Colvin (and some Flight readers know about, it's all Greek to us.
Correspondence
"Technician" in Hampshire, points out that British engineers who emigrate to North America are not dirty, rotten traitors, but rather just voting with their feet against the low British standard of living. Geoffrey Dorman explains about how Northolt came to be, in the old days, before the war, and then catches us up through 1946, just to deflate the stereotype of the "historical" letter to Flight. E. B. Sennett has a "hats of the RAF-" like letter about upcoming changes in British aircraft serial numbers, and Barrie Aldbury welcomes the exciting days when the helicopter dominates passenger transport services in the 250 mile radius, beginning with a helicopter terminus on the south bank.
The Industry reports that Wireck Electronics has just the cutest little tape recorder; the Aviation Division of Dunlop has a compact air compressor delivering 3000lb/sq inch working fluid (air!) for pneumatic systems, Boulton Paul has a six-channel instrument recorder with provisions for automatically inserting calibration and time-markers and a very wide range of deflection. E. K. Cole is building anew Ekco factory at Kenway Road, Prittlewell, Southend-on-Sea, Essex. 
Civil Aviation reports that the British Independent Transport Association had a nice convention, that a BOAC Comet has landed in Tokyo as part of a proving flight, that 58 Douglas DC-7s are now on order, following United placing a contract for 25, and the Doolittle Report on the epidemic of crashes at Elizabethtown is in. It calls for clearing structures from the approaches to runways, extending existing runways in the short term and then again in the slightly longer term to accommodate jets, more provision for cross-wind landing equipment, the improvement of existing runways to prevent "dead areas," the abandoning of cross-wind runways as these come in, national certification for airport traffic control facilities, and the minimum amount of engine run-ups on the ground to reduce noise. Skyways is taking on a trooping contract to the Caribbean, Juan Trippe is in town, but probably not to buy Comets. BEA is hiring stewardesses, with maximum ages, weights and heights, preference for girls with nursing or show business(!) backgrounds.
Fortune, July 1952
And since the rest of the article is about salesmanship, that's it for Fortune this busy week.
huh, another maniac trying the general pattern of lashing a jet engine to a speed boat and seeing if anything good happens?
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