Postblogging Technology, April 1951, I: Shoppers Showing Signs of Stress Fatigue

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

I feel a little silly handing this off to the courier so I can catch my flight to Vancouver, but we've decided we're going to do these, and you're not the only person who sees it, and I meant to have it done days ago, I swear. Please tell Ronnie to take her time, because TCA will, and I will see you when I arrive! Which will be long before you get this. In fact, I'm in the taxi from the airport right now, for all you know!

Your Loving Son,

Reggie

The Economist, 4 April 1953

Leaders

"Symptoms of Sanity" The Reds are open to compromise on the POW issue, a Swedish Secretary-General of the United Nations, and have expressed "guarded regret" for the RAF Lincoln shootdown. The Economist dithers over whether this shows that Communism is bad or whether maybe there might be a Korean armistice before deciding that the answer is both. 

"What Went Right?" New budget, new year, new economic plan. That means that it is time for The Economist to admit that it was wrong to call for more disinflation last year. In it's defence, practically everyone but the government and those nasty leftists said they agreed! But in fact it was a great year, even better than 1950, of which Labour is so proud. Yes, it came at a sacrifice of industrial investment, but business saved more money so probably it will all come back to industry in the end. What a wonderful year! A 4% bank rate stopped inflation without budgetary austerity, which is a lesson for the future, and also we built more houses. Now just as long as politicians aren't tempted to inflate again. "There is no sense in driving Britain back into underemployment and declining output." That's what is says, anyway. 

The next Leader is about how the legal aid scheme is working out.  

Notes

"Mau Mau at War" So how is our fight for the Five Freedoms working out in Kenya? The House of Commons was forced to debate the issue on Tuesday, even though they don't really care, but just wanted to delay the Transport Bill. The massacre of 150 "Kikuyu loyalists" means that this is more of a war than an "emergency." Malaya is an "Emergency." There is virtually a Kikuyu civil war going on, there is a threat of settler reprisals that would play into the Mau Mau's hands, and there is a mass exodus of labourers from the Central Highlands that threatens the Kenyan economy and is causing the government "considerable anxiety." 

Labour is having policy discussions. It wants to buy companies instead of nationalising whole sectors, and is looking at aircraft, machine tools, and cement, but not sugar. The Eisenhower Administration has guaranteed the French "indirect military support" in Indo-China, plus more aid and off-shore buying. The new Soviet regime has let a whole bunch of people out of jail. No one expect the new Secretary General to be Dag Hammerskjöld, who seems like a good guy. The British Productivity Council isn't fighting with the TUC, even though it just looks like it is. The General Secretary of the Boilermakers says that the Productivity Council is a bunch of shills for the employers, but everyone agrees that he is a very naughty fellow saying very naughty things that aren't to be said out loud because everybody agrees that productivity is good, and if they're a bunch of main chancers who've jumped on a band wagon and basically make up numbers, like Uncle George says, well, that sort of thing happens when bandwagons start to roll. Something something a Note on "Caution on Local Government." Yes! Caution and sober thoughts and reform and reorganisation of local government in England and Wales. I can read about that all day and so can you! But maybe not today. 

"Character Versus Brains" Ooh! Ooh! I've heard this one! "Character" means "my nephew," and "Brains" means "Went to the right school." (As opposed to just being smart, which is annoying.) Is that what The Economist says? Well, yes, actually. The Italian Christian Democrats said, "Look, over there, it's Mikhail Bakunin!" and when all the Communist members of parliament were distracted looking for  him, passed a bill that prevents the Communists from holding as many seats as they should get under proportional representation. The Economist admits on the one hand that this was a pretty low down move, but on the other hand Communism is bad, so what are you going to do? Dr. Adenauer supports British action against the Naumann group, and that is what matters. They're neo-Nazis, and that is not only as bad as being a Communist, is suspiciously close to Communists. The French  have arrested Andre Stil and some other French Communists. The Economist thinks that that it's all a bit much. I'm not sure why. Is it because it was the French doing it? Or because Stil is a journalist? Or because Maurice Thorez might be about to return from Moscow? Kent County Council has closed its nurseries because they are too expensive and working mothers in Kent are up in arms. The Evonomist has some ideas about how to make the nurseries more economical that made Ronnie laugh and laugh, which at long distance charges means she spent as much money in a minute as Kent County Council spends on a nursery worker in an hour. (Average wage, says The Economist: £4 10s/week, afternoon tariff for a call from Vancouver to Newport News is a bit more than $2. So when ou get your phone bill and hit the roof, remember that the baby is cheaper. Or something like that.) The United Nations wants to know about the cost of living in various cities compared with New York, and has calculated that if it costs 100 in New York, it is 75 in Copenhagen, 91 in Geneva, 72 in the Hague, 75 in London, 90 in Mexico City, 100 in Paris and 89 in Rome. Interesting! I could have sworn Paris was cheaper than that, and the number for Mexico City is down right strange. Civil Defence in Britain is now 250,000 strong, but no-one seems to care, so they've been assigned to show educational films  about what will happen if England gets bombed, which will hopefully scare everyone into caring. The incredibly interesting story of the changing government of Czechoslovakia is breathlessly updated because there have been important changes. Turkey has a trade deficit with Britain due to heavy machinery imports and is a bit cross that Britain won't take more grain, cotton, and dried fruit at prices Turkey is prepared to accept. The Economist thinks Britain should take some poultry feed off their hands in way of a favour. Mao has quite a nice deal from Moscow to support his Five Year Plan. 

From The Economist of 1853 we have "Who Shall Educate Them?" Public education. Public education should educate the children of the lower classes, since no-one else will do it, and the Government should either be ready to tell "the sects" to shut up, or admit that government cant' do anything except hang the occasional criminal. 

Letters

Franz Borkenau's European Communism is worth a half-page review. It's about how Communism is bad. H. J. Massingham and Edward Hyams have Prophecy of Famine. Remember how Uncle George used to talk about how various sages who live on named farms would come out and talk about this year's famine every spring through 1943, and how he was disappointed that they didn't show up again in 1944, and told us all that we should watch to see if it was a trend? Well, this review is titled "Cold Comfort Farm," which is a play on an English parody of that kind of thing, but Massingham and Hyams are dead serious. Famine is imminent, and by the 1960s the majority of British children will be going hungry. There is a world shortage of food, and no-one wants British junk in trade for such food as is going. All they want from Britain is coal, and that is not forthcoming, so the British better start farming just as hard as they can. The Economist agrees that the terms of trade will favour food more in the future, but otherwise it's all barmy. The American Diaries of Richard Cobden are out, so we will finally know what Cobden thought about his whirlwind 1835 tour and 1859 visit to salvage the wreck of the Illinois Central. I specifically asked for Ronnie's permission to say that J. Richard Petrie's The Taxation of Corporate Income in Canada  is a very worthy book, and now feel free to abuse the privilege if anything else as horribly boring comes up. Graf Heinrich von Einsiedel's The Shadow of Stalingrad doesn't sound boring. It sounds like a trainwreck. Accept it! The Russian Communists beat you fair and square. Don't build cloud castles out of the metaphysics of it, shut up and take your licking! My rant doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the book, as the Graf was a young and vaguely pink officer who was captured at Stalingrad, joined the German National Committee, and eventually decided that he didn't like Communism after all. But it's still true!

American Survey

"The State of State" John Foster Dulles is using official blackmail to get the Democrats out of State so that he can get remake it in his own awful image (but not necessarily start WWIII after Eden and Bidault came over and braced him), and the only people stopping him are the grandstanding Red-baiters in Congress for whom no-one, and especially not Chip Bohlen,  is anti-communist enough. On the one hand, people's lives are being ruined left, right, and centre. On the other, it's pretty funny. 

"Consumers Become Heroes" We're going to hear at length in Fortune about how consumers are going to buy so much that they stop the Eisenhower depression in its tracks, and here's a preview. $10 billion on motor cars! $3.6 billion on furniture; $1.6 billion on jewelry and watches; a total of $123 billion on durable goods. I don't know. "123" honestly looks like a made-up number to me, and even the Leader goes on to say that it isn't a prediction, it's an "estimate." We sure are lucky that the American middle class is so big and has so much money, no thanks to us! (And let's be clear; actual people buying stuff they like is a decadent way of driving the economy compared with foreign trade and war.) It certainly won't be agriculture, where Federal production caps get their own Note. 

American Notes

"McCarthy's Second Front" Let's be clear here. Bohlen's confirmation is a defeat for McCarthy and a win for Taft. It saved Dulles and the President from a serious embarrassment, and leaves McCarthy looking for a new angle, which he has found in the form of the Chinese blockade. Which is a pretty good angle, if you ask me, because of the very real possibility that he'll be able to start WWIII by having Koumintang pirates capture British ships, although the first step was to have his staff negotiate an embargo with Greek shipowners in New York. In related "search for savvy," Wesley Roberts has stepped down as head of the RNC already. The RFC will probably be wound up this year, because under current accounting rules, its assets will be folded into the Treasury's and reduce next year's deficit. Manufacturers are allowed to build colour televisions again, but won't because the RCA-developed system (where colour broadcasts can be received as black and white) does not actually exist yet, and CBS realises that it has a loser and won't restart broadcasts, never mind produce sets. Walter Reuther is making a move to add the leadership of the AFL to that of the UAW and CIO, which he already holds, unifying the labour movement, as long as all the AFL's various problems and objections are dealt with. 

The World Overseas

"The West After the Boom" The Boom is over. It says so here! Industrial production was almost stationary in twelve major countries studied in a recent UN report, compared with the 10% increase from 1950 to 1951. Only in Canada, Australia, France and West Germany did industrial production increase. Similar trends were seen in agriculture, and while wages increased, this was counterbalanced by increases in the cost of living, the reduction of food subsidies in Britain and taxation in Germany. Only Canada, France, Italy and Sweden was there a real wage gain. 

"Water for Kuwait" Our Special Correspondent in the Persian Gulf was released from the yoke of Persia and allowed, finally, to report on something else, specifically a seawater distillation plant in Kuwait City, ending age-old dependence on water barges from Basra. The Economist thinks that it is all silly and inadequate and that Kuwait should get on with building a canal to the Shat al'Arab. Yes, it will leave Kuwait dependent on Iraq, but this is a modern and civilised age. What could go wrong? 

"Uno's Staff and Its Hosts" Uno has a lot of work to do. For example, this week it wrapped  up its investigation of all the bizarre evidence and accusations in China's case that America is waging biological warfare against it in Korea. Meanwhile, Uno  has been caught up in American demands for more guarantees of the loyalty of American employees. On the one hand, Trygve Lie is trouble with the Americans for "sheltering" employees who take the Fifth. On the other, the whole organisation could be bankrupted by wrongful dismissal suits if it started firing everyone that the spy hunters have fingered. Lie, it will be remembered, was under so much pressure that he tried to resign in November, and his chief advisor committed suicide not long after. The Uno agreed with the new loyalty progamme brought in by Senator Lodge, in which all 1800 employees filled out the civil service questionnaire, were finger printed, and are now being subjected to a security investigation by the FBI. But it is naive to to think tht this will stop the hunt, and the question is whether it will fatally undermine the UN itself. Meanwhile in Mexico the new President will end the reign of corruption, probably, and eastern Europe is undergoing an industrial revolution under Communist rule. 

The Business World

 Three Leaders develop the extraordinary findings of the "Economic Survey for 1953," which necessarily begins with what happened in 1952, which no-one understands. What was supposed to be a disastrous year featuring a disastrous current accounts deficit turned into a £170 million surplus, or in other words a  £572 million swing from 1951's deficit. It was not invisible earnings, which are not of nearly the necessary amount, and anyway fell from £100 million to £95 million. It was, in some measure, the saving of internal spending, which, although the amount available was overestimated, found room for a £345 million cut. It was not the fall in world commodity prices, as important as that was. It was not the shift from industrial production to other sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, which must have happened, but for which no statistics are found. It was not drawing down inventories of imported raw materials. We are left with the "shipping lag," which, we are told, is too impossibly complicated to be explained in enough detail for the reader to understand how it could possibly have this much of an effect.

From here we move on to the prospects for 1953, which must see "demand" in the driving seat, with a recovery in textiles in view. One aspect of 1952 that needs to be noticed is that while unemployment only rose to 2.2%, some 5.5% of engineering employees were on short time, and this explains a lot of the productivity decline. There is slack in the economy for the first time, and activity isn't being limited by a shortage of labour, steel or coal for the first time since the war. We can expect the recovery in textiles to continue, and more metal goods for British consumers, as small a part as they are allowed to play.  And now the question is whether, if there is a budget surplus, as is now expected, there will be some room to stimulate demand? If so, The Economist demands that it be done smartly. 

"Management among Builders" The Economist looks back at eight years of postwar home building and concludes that it has all been a terrible muddle. Good thing the magazine has rolled up its sleeves, mastered the art of homebuilding, and can tell us how to manage it properly, which it will do in subsequent installments in this series. Looking forward to it! (I am actually not.)

Business Notes

"A £400 Million Shortfall" The disappointing deficit on last year's budget is due to disinflation hitting revenues. Meanwhile South Africa is still pushing for an increase in the price of gold, bank deposits are up, the recovery in output is being sustained, Austin Motors is out on strike, tourists will be allowed to spend "capital francs" in France freely this summer, this being a species of French franc which are foreign earnings on French investments, which must be held in France or reinvested there. American film revenues are a particularly large source of capital francs, so the French are eager to see lots of American tourists flock to France and invest in wine and French cuisine in little cafes in Provence and the Left Bank. And they had better spend it all, because they will be shaken down for spare change at the airport. 

There is a prospect for a tin truce, and we dastardly colonials are still holding up the Comet's CAA airworthiness certificate. Nice going, Canadian Pacific! Karachi, we're told, seems to have been another "over rotation" incident in which the pilot made the mistake of assuming too great an angle of attack. The inside scoop is that this is a big problem with Sabres in Korea, and I've even talked to pilots who think that you have to expect it with swept wings. The Comptroller and Auditor General filed a report last week showing that the Bristol Proteus engine has cost more than £13 million to develop since 1946, which is a lot, and on top of that it was delayed, contributing to the decisions to scrap the Brabazon and the Princess. (And by "contributed," we mean, "Had no effect on the decision to send these white elephants to the elephant glue factory.") In fact, taking into account the complete failure of the Proteus I and II, and the fact that the III has a new compressor and is effectively a new engine, the final cost by the time the Britannia is flying might be £30 million, and the conclusion might be that Bristol ought to have been kicked off the job long ago. 

Aluminum is in plentiful supply, Egypt is not going to reopen the Alexandria cotton futures market, the price of second hand ships is falling, exports to Argentina are disappointing, and ICI is opening a $20 million Canadian terylene plant.

Leaders

"Opportunities for Technicians" Technically (for technicians!) the first Leader is an obituary for Queen Mary, but it's only a paragraph, and centrally justified for some reason. After that it is on to the crucial question of whether "technicians in the British aircraft industry" are paid and promoted enough. Let's face it, most of us are average people, so it's no good talking about the prospects for the exceptional. Management and employees can certainly do more by seeking post-graduate education and broader experience, but how much those benefit the average worker isn't clear, and what is clear is that the average "technician, draughtsman, and others" isn't being paid enough. 

"Canberra Eleven Miles Up" A Canberra has set an unofficial height record during "routine high altitude development" of the Olympus, which has an official power rating of 9,750lbs. No special preparations were made, and it is likely that an official attack on the record will be made in the summer. In the mean time let's recognise some extraordinary flying. As Flight explains, the flight envelope between maximum speed and stall is very small at those altitudes and you spend an awfully long time there because the climb at the end is almost flat. The Canberra is also an unusual plane for attacking the record, since it has a low aspect ratio, and a modified Canberra with an extended wing might reach 65,000ft. 

"Costs Reviewed" Flight's take on the Auditor General's report on the Proteus, Theseus and Phoebus is just about taking dictation, with no opinions or even sharing of the Auditor General's opinion about the poor design of the early Proteus. It does quote the discussion of some questionable contracts, particularly a case in which valves were bought at prices more than 75% greater than another supplier had offered, and also notes that Power Jet's million pound profits come entirely from American patents. 

"The R. Ae. C. Design Competition" Flight has a preliminary report on the RAeC design competition for light aircraft. 

From All Quarters

Avro Vulcan Flight Deck By Isaac Bee - Own work,
CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91757962

EXERCISE JUNGLE KING was intended to prepare Bomber Command for the new medium bombers by running a Canberra force very intensively. More than 100 Canberras took part in "continuously recurring operations" for over a week, with "virtually" no engine failures and only a single serious accident, a missed blind approach. Maintenance of radio, radar, armaments and instrumentation were quite another matter, and a shortage of key ground  personnel is a much more serious matter with the Canberra than with Lincolns and B-29s. There is also the question of "guided bombs," Flight says out of nowhere before going on to maybe imply that some Canberras that might have been involved in JUNGLE KING might have been equipped with prototype bomb guidance equipment.  These will be necessary with the medium bombers, as it is hard to imagine them bombing accurately at 600mph. Weather is also a more serious matter, since Canberras can't stack. Better forecasting, better instrument flying, and better blind approach aids are all called for. GCA is useful, but the V-bombers (as we're calling them) would benefit from Zero Readers and ILS for entirely automatic approaches. 

The Royal Aero Club's annual general meeting is coming up, while Flight went to a nice factory fittings show at the new Royal Horticultural Society hall in Westminster. Flight liked a loudspeaker that worked off a regular GPO phone and a portable electric vacuum cleaner for sucking up annoying debris. 

Here and There

The FAI is meeting in the Netherlands this year. Fifty-six USAF planes were involved in the recent Yucca Flats bomb tests. The USAF is worried that its bombers are falling behind its bombs. Lord D'Isle and Dudley, which is a real peerage (am I stealing Ronnie's joke, or aren't I? I can't decide!) is the Secretary of State for Air, and had an excuse for there being no British swept-wing fighters: Labour didn't do it. (Didn't order them until 1948, that is.) The last Swordfish on navy inventory, which has been doing experimental torpedo-dropping work at Lee-on-Solent, has been retired. 

Group Captain W. N. Cumming gives us a taste of the mind of an air officer in the making with "Design for Civil Air Transport: The Flying-boat as a Key to Current and Future Problems"See, he knows that it takes too long to read Flight and putting in a section in the middle that reads "abcdef . . . " for a few pages is a blessing. Although as I skim it I get the disturbing sense that he means for them to make sense somehow.    Also, after a bit of research that I should have done before I committed brush to paper, I find that the man was separated from the RAF after WWI and recalled to services hostilities only in 1939.

"Thoughts on the Gnat" Is Henry Folland's Gnat "light fighter" the real future of the jet fighter? Probably not, in spite of mention of the US being very interested in the concept. The Air Staff talks about "quality over quantity" for a reason. Sure, if the United Kingdom is attacked in the air by a superior force of enemy fighters and bombers, having more fighters on defence might be a good idea. But is that something that can be seriously expected to happen soon, as compared to being attacked by a small number of fast atom bombers flying at very high (or even very low) altitudes? And it gets more ridiculous from there, with a "master fighter" supporting swarms of Gnats with in-air radar and even radios, as the Gnat may lack the instrumentation to find its own way home. Finally, the author wants everyone to know just how heroic the task of keeping the Gnat light is going to be. 

Maurice F. Allward, "Helicopter Landing Gear: Some Problems the Designer Must Face" There are a number of problems unique to the helicopter, notably ground resonance, which requires as much damping from the tires as possible when the rotors are running on the ground. Some American helicopter designs have had to adopt solid tires to deal with the problem. Non-castoring wheels can be seriously damaged by lateral movements on landing and by towing. Persistent vibrations are a problem, but on the other hand landings are less of a shock. The undercarriage of the Air Horse was quite a job! I like helicopter pontoons. I (Reggie) really hope that this article is notes from a longer talk. But the bit about ground resonance is interesting! 

The National Gas Turbine Establishment had a passing out ceremony for its apprentices the other day. 

Aircraft Intelligence

I'd tell you more about the new crop of American fighter jets (F-86D, F-89D, F-94C), but you're probably as tired of hearing about Mighty Mouse as everyone else. Talk is that the Douglas Jet Transport might use the J57 or J65. The Republic F-84H with two Allison T-54s, definitely exists. Testing of the Dassault Mystère is continuing in spite of the recent death of Charles Monier while testing the prototype. The crash was caused by a wing pylon tank breaking away, so they're working on that. The next step for Avro Canada would seem to be a 1300mph delta wing fighter, if the Canadian government will pony up. We're reporting from Aviation Week, which says that $105 million might be needed. The "flying saucer" reported earlier is a circular Avro Canada prototype vertical takeoff fighter. Russia is apparently developing its B-29skis into B-50skis. 

"Canberra Night Flight" Flight went out to Bremen and back on a night flying Canberra as part of JUNGLE KING. Since the right rear seat's only view of the outside when the navigational bubble is curtained is through two small windows on either side, Flight didn't see very much, and spent the trip thinking about how much an ejection seat hurts before falling asleep until the GCA controller woke Flight up. With an entire strike of Canberras stacked over Binbrook with cloud-base at 300-400 ft and 2000ft visibility, I'd be awake, too! Pilots with lower instrument flying ratings were given the Canberras with wingtip tanks and diverted to airfields with better visibility conditions. Everyone got down safely, but recovering the strike was definitely the high light of the whole thing. That's the price you pay for doing a Hamburg strike in half the time of a Lincoln! 

"Automatic Ejection Seats" Up until now the Martin-Baker ejection seat has been manually operated. The occupant has to jettison the hood, put on the face mask, fire the seat, and then, once the drogue parachute has stabilised the seat, release the harness and fall away from the seat before opening their personal canopy. This can be done as low as 250ft, but it is not a lot of time! Martin-Baker has now successfully tested modifications that make the process completely automatic, and is refitting RAF and FAA seats. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Bennett

"Is the Aircraft Carrier Obsolete? An MP Revives and Old Controversy" During the Naval Estimates debate, Dr. Reginald Bennett (Cons., Gosport) pointed out that Navy aircraft are inevitably out of date and limited compared with land planes, and are no longer that useful for surface search or strike, and carriers are too expensive, and the merchant ship carrier was more than enough for convoy air defence. Carrier-based fighters ought to be stodgy missile carriers (or even guide ship-fired anti-aircraft missiles), because any enemy search aircraft encountered over mid-ocean would also be stodgy. To finish this amazing audition for a permanent seat on the back benches, Dr. Bennett went on to say that the Navy needed flying boats entire squadrons of helicopters because they were so flexible and could do so many things, like rescue stranded Dutch farmers. Just the thing if the Red Army invades Holland in the middle of a record North Sea gale!

"More About the Air Estimates" The honourable members can agree that the new bombers are fast and look very exciting, but the electronics inside aren't keeping up with the airframes and the engines. Arthur Henderson thinks that there is something to concern Parliament here, but the Under-Secretary says that the industry is doing its best to keep up, and is "second to none." He also explained that the Princess was cancelled because it was a white elephant and not because it was built by a company built on playing the Liberal benches, and you can't get anywhere with that when the Tories don't need you, that it was all very sad but wasn't there a book that needed publishing? (Duncan Sandys said later that it was a "tragic" white elephant, which I'm sure is a consolation, since Duncan Sandys knows a tragedy when he sees one.) Also, some blither blather about the planes that reservists get to fly versus the ones they would like to fly. 

"Antenna Research" The Aircraft Radio Systems Laboratory of the Stanford Research Institute sends in a nice picture of researchers playing with antennae, although the point of the advertorial is that they have enough money to run two C-54 test aircraft. 

Flight went to the inaugural fancy party for the new Institute of Material Handling at the Trocadero. 

"The 'Spacesuit' Arrives" Also from California, word that Dr. J. P. Henry's "spacesuit" has arrived after ten years of development. Besides Henry, the University of Southern California and the US Aero Medical Laboratory deserve some credit, and if we have any space left over we'll explain that the suit inflates automatically when cabin pressure falls and the artificial lungs also start operating automatically, and it is absolutely just line one of those space suits in science fiction. It even has zippers! This is what USC gets for hiring English professors who will pass a football player. 

Correspondence

D. L. Brown writes to point out that the Handley Page H.P.R. 3 seems to be descended from Miles Aircraft's four-Leonides engined DC3 replacement that the company would absolutely have had flying by 1950 if its dumb old suppliers hadn't been so sticky about getting paid for stuff. Gordon Conway and Sidney Clifford write to point out inaccuracies in a recent episode of Victory at Sea. "Pro Bono Publico" explains from Montreal that the reason that British scientists and engineers are emigrating is that they're better paid over here. You don't say! Stewart Blundell writes from Australia to reminisce about something that seems to have happened in 1920.

The Industry reports on central-control welding, an innovation recently developed by Frama-Autogen of Frankfurt, the new high-temperature valve-coating alloy, C.26, developed by Deloro Stellite of Birmingham and used by Rolls Royce; English Electric's annual general meeting; and Innoxa Laboratories new protective barrier skin cream for preventing dermatitis. 

Piasecki writes in to say that it has been reorganised as Piasecki International, with Don Berlin on the board, and the "International" part means that it has French orders, which is just the most exciting development in the most exciting year for the most exciting company ever. Did you know that Frank Piasecki is only 33? And that Don Berlin has fought with every boss he's ever had? This seems like it won't turn out well. 

Civil Aviation reports that BOAC is back in the red due to the oil strike and the recent Stratocruiser grounding. Qantas is planning to buy a fleet of Britannias. Olley Air Services and Eagle Airlines are doing more and more exciting routes than ever. A Constellation landed at Nutt's Corner the other day. Comets will be flying even faster services starting this summer. Brevities has it that Switzerland has just opened its first concrete runway, the Dutch have recalled their North Atlantic weather ship to guard against more gales, and that Rumbold has a brochure out explaining how to actually fasten their seatbelts. 

The Economist, 11 April 1953

Leaders

"What Mildness Means" The Economist welcomes you to the RAB Butler Fan Club. Would you like a poster and a Hugh Dalton voodoo doll? Yes, his last budget was completely mistaken, but there's a current account surplus and there was disinflation, and the deficit is just a tiny little thing, not including capital expenditure. But the Labour surplusses were bad, because they were deflationary, but in a bad way. Now we live in a bright new tomorrow where "demand is no longer excessive," and as any businessman can tell you, the best prospects for business is when there aren't too many orders to fill. And as long as the Chancellor avoids stimulating domestic consumers into buying stuff they need, allowing all stuf as is made to be exported to grateful foreigners and sort-of-foreigners, all will be well, disinflation will proceed, no wage-price spirals will eventuate, and some small measure of tax relief will be possible, especially cuts in the income tax, which, of course, will encourage investment and not private spending, as long as indirect taxes are kept high. And, of course, the Excess Profits Tax should be done away with as soon as possible, as every reasonable person can agree. 

"April Mood in the Kremlin" It has taken all of four weeks for  the Malenkov Kremlin to begin dismantling Stalin's legacy. Everything seems so nice in Russia right now! Malenkov seems to want a detente with the United States. Even Stalin asked for an end to the Cold War in his Christmas address, appealing to  is old comrade in arms in the hopes of a new Republican isolationism and noticnt that Dulles turned out to be a wet firecracker. But let's not forget that communism is bad!

"A Constitution for the Caribbean" The British West Indies Federation is sure to be the best thing ever, although it may take a while. 

"Burma Accuses" Burma's complaint about Chinese Nationalists operating on its territory is very awkward, because Communism is bad, so the Koumintang must be good, but it is very hard to argue that a Chinese warlord state in northern Burma is a good thing, or that sending him enough American aid arms via pirate airlines will make it a better thing. It's clear that Siamese officials think that it is a great thing, but we have no idea why. (Just kidding; it's opium, which goes completely unmentioned.) So you can see why the Burmese have brought their complaint to the Uno. But since it undermines the American presence in Southeast Asia just when they were supposed to start spreading some dollars around on various local wars, so we're going to settle for objecting to the Burmese tone. If they were just a bit politer and more moderate, everything would be fine! 

Notes of the Week

"Tunnelling with Mr. Vyshinsky" Andrei Vyshinksy made his first appearance at the Uno podium since his return from Moscow and all was sweetness and light. It turns out that he can smile and joke, and was only being so angry and dour for diplomatic reasons! He's still some kind of sneaky Communist, though, with his disarmament talk. His "tunnel of friendship" is an offer to disarm the East Bloc such that it still has numerical superiority, while doing away with the atomic weapons that are our sole guarantee of security besides overwhelming air and maritime superiority. There is progress towards an exchange of sick and wounded prisoners in Korea, and if it doesn't happen, it will be the Reds' fault. Nato celebrates its second anniversary by reminding everyone that it is outnumbered a zillion to one. After returning from recess, Parliament will settle the denationalisation of steel and transportation and then turn to ending the Cold War, with all that implies. (I am fine with it unless they disband a single squadron or cancel a single plane.) 

"Climax in Kenya" By the time you are reading this, the Central African Federation will have either been killed by the Southern Rhodesian referendum, or approved by White Southern Rhodesian voters and imposed on the unwilling African majority. In Kenya, it will be overshadowed by the conviction of Jomo Kenyatta and five others for running the Mau Mau insurgency and successes in the struggle against these terrorists that surely prefigure the successful suppression of the insurrection. The Economist does wonder why British policy seems to turn educated Africans against British rule. Why do the moderates not come out in support? "In countries of white settlement in Central Africa no less than in Kenya, some of the answers to these questions are plain." The solution would seem to involve "settlers and government alike" to "see things in a new light."

Parliament is talking about a pay raise for MPs again, France is cutting imports from the European Payments Union countries from $130 million a month to $116 million. It is not clear how much this will affect British exports to France, but The Economist is pre-emptively offended since Britain just reduced restrictions on French imports. France should just cut its budget, disinflate, and liberalise trade, and everything would be fine. An entire Note explains that no-one cares about the Italian national elections in June because now the Communists can't win, and who cares about Communism anyway. The United States of Europe is taking forever, but the European Coal and Steel Community is galloping along. Parliament is upset over funding for the National  Health Service for the third year in a row. When will it ever end? Never probably, considering that health care is just going to keep on getting more expensive. Labour and other socialists are still fighting over nationalisation.

"Teachers Make Themselves Scarce" There is still a shortage of teachers. That's true everywhere, but I thought I would summarise the British discussion of the causes, because it is so interesting. For one thing, there is no shortage of male teachers. The National Union of Teachers explains that this is because while two thirds of the girls who stay in grammar school after they turn sixteen, become teachers, seven out of ten girls leave grammar school before they turn seventeen. This is a much higher proportion than male students, and if it cannot be fixed, then entrance requirements for teachers' colleges will have to be changed so that they can recruit girls who have left grammar school early. However, the National Union of Teachers is bitterly opposed to the longer terms in teachers' college (currently two years) that this implies, and argues for higher wages for teachers, instead. Which is probably the way things will go. 

The Arab countries' attempt to form a common front against Israel is being undermined by Egypt's insistence that they support it on the Suez Canal in exchange. We get a brief look at Japanese politics as Yoshida's potential rivals line up. The Economist is worried about a revival of Japanese nationalism, against which Yoshida is the safe bulwark. Nehru and Nazimuddin, the premier of Pakistan, are sparring over their respective shares of irrigation water in the Punjab ahead of the Commonwealth conference. The Economist thinks that Nehru is probably in the right since Nazimuddin is under pressure from religious radicals at home. The annual report on university graduate employment is summed up in three paragraphs of platitudes. Art graduates get jobs based on their role in university life and not the courses they took! (Or, I am guessing, their grades.) Twelve hundred breaches aong a thousand miles of sea defences have now only been temporarily stopped, and a new Bill gives the Ministry of Agriculture some emergency powers to prioritise work and pay for land restoration of the 158,000 acres of inundated land. 

From The Economist of 1853 comes "Two and a Half Percent"     I feel like this extract  has been edited? Gladstone is issuing  "for the first time a permanent and irredeemable stock at two-and-a-half percent." I'm no export on British financial history, but I am pretty sure that Gladstone wasn't the first to issue "consoles," so I guess the issue is the interest rate. It seems like the result would be for people with "stocks" paying less than that to cash them in and buy these 2 1/2 percent stocks, and so the effect would be to increase interest rates at the expense of increasing the national debt, which The Economist is opposed to. And the thought is that high interest stocks are a good protection against inflation, although the word isn't used. And that's good? Bad? This part loses me. "Two and a half percent," though. That part I get. 

Books 

L. Dudley Stamp's Our Underdeveloped World is an attempt to dampen the ardour of the Malthusians. Yes, at mid-century the population of the world is 2.3 billion and rising fast, but it is increasing fastest not in the teeming East but in America, where the crude birth rate in 1947 was as high as India's. There is still more than enough cultivable land to feed everyone, even though that actually cultivated is already inadequate. Dr. Stamp proposes that there are vast expanses of undeveloped land ready to be put to the plough, but mostly in countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia, where the land that is farmed is farmed wastefully. Cultivate them like Denmark, and we would be swimming in food. But where does that leave the countries actually subject to "population pressure?" The Malthusians are right! (Unless the under-cultivation thesis applies to those countries, too, in which case the Malthusians aren't so much wrong as off in their own little world, and, yes, I know that actual Malthusians are always talking about that far off date when we reach the limit of development per acre, not for all the acres.) 

R. Page Arnott's The Miners. Volume II. The Years of Struggle is the latest volume in his official history of the National Union of Mineworkers is more about negotiations than the actual mineworkers. Willi Frischauer's Himmler is the biography of a "repulsive figure," but is too sensational and uncritical of its sources. Alexander Brady's Democracy in the Dominions and two books on "statistical methods" are very worthy. Bob Darke's The Communist Technique in Britain is yet another book by an ex-Communist about how Communism is bad. 

Letters 

W. O. Fairfax of Sydney and J. F. Cairns of the University of Melbourne take offence at The Economist's inexplicable jeremiad against Australia's development policy, although Fairfax agrees with it on points, being especially upset about pay raises for unskilled labour. 

American Survey

"Offshore Oil: A Precedent?" It looks like the first major legislation from the Republican Congress will undo decades of precedent and assign undersea mineral rights to the adjacent states, at least "within historic boundaries," as the House but not Senate bill limits it. Not only is this a bad omen for the new Republican regime, but it suggests that the ongoing assault on federal lands will intensify. And these are far from the only ways that the Republicans are assisting state raids on the Federal kitty! 

American Notes

"Feeling Prosperity's Pulse" Stocks and commodities are down over fears that peace in Korea will lead to a recession. Arms deliveries are probably going to be stretched out and the Selective Service call-up will be reduced, as these things are in train anyway as the Defence Secretary aims to reduce spending ahead of the budget. Moreover, if deflationary trends develop, consumers may hold off spending. Senator Taft is worried that Congress will cut defence appropriations too harshly if there is peace, which will provoke calls for tax cuts to increase demand. So. Will there be an Eisenhower Depression? Maybe? Cuts in all departments are intended to "nibble" at the deficit, but it is hard to see a demand side benefit to cutting the Agriculture Department's spending by $131 million. Also, the Administration isn't exactly leaping into the fight against tariffs. Higher tariffs (notably on lead and zinc, oops!) are what the American people want, says Richard Simpson of Pennsylvania, and will guarantee a Republican Congress in 1954. 

"McCarthy's Verbal Victory" Senator McCarthy's "negotiated" agreement with some New York Greek shipowners to stop trading with Communist China (which they say they don't do, anyway), is the talk of Washington. Everyone agrees that the President has to do something about McCarthy now, and now that someone else has been elected to bell the cat, we don't have to do it! Except that when McCarthy was invited to lunch with Secretary Dulles on 1 April(!), he proceeded to extract an agreement that McCarthy had had a glorious victory that in no way involved a Senator negotiating with foreign powers, because that would be unconstitutional. Harold Stassen was duly thrown to the dogs, and the Administration's reward for letting McCarthy walk all over it will be later considerations. Because it there's anything McCarthy is known for, it's the way he remembers old favours! At least the Association of American Universities has issued a statement to the effect that there really actually is such a thing as academic freedom and it should definitely protect academics some things, although definitely not being Communists. 

Reauthorisation of the AEC has been held up, a House committee is horrified that members of the Truman Administration had their accumulated leave paid out in lump sums, and the new Congress is cracking down on paid European junkets for members of Congress. 

The World Overseas

"New Phase of German Recovery" Some people think that the German "dash for freedom" has ended, that with the growth of German export markets slowing down to a very gradual climb, "economic stagnation" is here. If that is the case, the new German chancellor thinks, the solution is full convertibility between dollar and Deutschmark, with higher pay leading to  more German purchasing power. This, The Economist warns, will end in tears as it prices German exports out of world markets, but the Germans reply that the real remedy to this is higher productivity, not low wages that leave Germans unable to afford American exports like food. The first step in this German plan will be a 500 million DM loan to fund German purchases of machine tools abroad, the so-called Preusker Plan. 

"New Outlook for Middle East Defence" A Greek-Turkish-Jugoslav alliance to defend the Middle East would give Britain a strategic rationale for getting out of the Canal Zone, which would be good for 100% strategic reasons, no face-saving here, no sir! 

"Vicious Circle for French Finances" It's getting a bit tiring writing this here issue of The Economist, so here's that article about how the French are running their country wrong that we've run every April since 1850. Austrian politics are as funny as Austrian music! 

The Business World

"Patches in Britain's Purse" Preliminary estimates of the national income have been released this week as a Command Paper and since they involve lots of complicated tables, The Economist will summarise so we don't have to trouble our pretty little heads. First, the "redistribution of real incomes to the poorer sectors of the community seems to have resumed," so Labour can stick that in their pipe and smoke it! (Not a direct quote, but definitely the sense.) Second, even though trading did decline last year, there "was an even bigger decline in the burden of stock finance," so companies had more money to spend, which allowed them to compensate for falling Government spending. There was more saving, and a current accounts surplus. There are numbers to these assertions, but

I will not bother with them as they seem like the lies accountants tell each other, much like last year's "shipping delays." Britain's GNP rose 9% last year to £1,111 million, but with the fall of invisible exports, the domestic production was actually £1,221 million. But since the real value of Britain's gross domestic product fell by £100 million according to the Economic Survey, the conclusion is that the cost of domestic costs and prices rose 10.5%.However the fall in import prices kept the increase in consumer prices to 6.5%. Employer incomes rose 7%, farmer's incomes rose £30 million, or 8%, social security payments rose by £114 million, or 12.5%. The upshot is that aggregate income probably rose 5%, but that in spite of income tax reductions and reduced national insurance contributions, personal consumption only rose £528 million, which is how we get the estimated increase in private savings. Private capital did increase significantly in 1952, mainly due to some of those "complicated" factors that transferred money from wages to profits, and because that's good, and helped compe

nsate for nasty Government profligacy, we are going to exit this very long Leader without bothering to justify our claim at the head about the poor getting richer and talk about the current account surplus again. How did it happen? A bit of a mystery, but the "accounting trick" aspect wasn't the most important part. The most important part was favourable terms of trade and declining imports, and, no, we can't explain those, either. Oh, and gold and silver exports have recovered from that disastrous 1951 that no-one can explain either. (Except for the very obvious point about bullion smuggling undermining Labour going into an election, which will not be spelled out because it is so obvious.) 

In conclusion, it is even more obvious than ever that the current account surplus/deficit is being used as an excuse to justify high interest rates.

"Future for Building" are Leaders still going on? Anyway, after demonstrating The Economist's central competencies of flacking for the London Stock Exchange, it is time to expand its expertise and tell us all how to build houses. Probably prefabrication, mechanisation and more American methods? Well, that was some heavy thinking! Now we leave it the contributors to clean up minor details like building a billion houses over the next century or so. 

Business Notes

"Flutters from the Dovecote" If the Kremlin is making nice, will Russian commodity prices fall? That would be great! See also the next Note. The one after looks at retail sales last year again and finds that rising prices and falling incomes led to lower sales. I feel faint! There will probably be a wheat agreement, Japan wants to export more to the sterling zone to cover its account deficit with it, Scotland is redoing the way it does statistics, British factories sure have changed in fifty years, says the Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories for 1951, which looks back on the report from 1950 and has many interesting details that The Economist can't be bothered to report except that the workers today are so much healthier. Comet service to Tokyo starts this week. Coal production is not up as much as hoped due to the workers edging towards a scandalously lazy 40  hour week. And finance, finance, finance, to close out. 

Leaders

"Fuel for Thought" The British have really been pushing to go beyond gas. First it was kerosene on the jetliners, now Flight says that the Royal Navy has started burning "heavier oils" in their Double Mambas, and the Napier Nomad is another try at an aeronautical diesel. Going beyond that, Flight says that we have to forget about "premium" gasolines, too, because they are more expensive, which is true, and more flammable, which is a very embarrassing mistake, the kind I expect from Newsweek, not Flight. It does have a point that they are more flammable than heavy oils and should be kicked out of airports double time.  

"License" The acting administrator of the CAA, Fred Lee, has told Congress that there are "innumerable" problems to be solved before jets can be put in civil service in the United States, which is true; and then went on to list problems that actually aren't problems. (Lightning, transonic aerodynamics, "greater difficulty detecting power loss and failure in jet power plants.")  See, if he had talked about congestion and landing problems, he would have had a point! 

From All Quarters reports the founding of a separate Royal Netherlands Air Force, plans for the Paris Aero Show (not an Aero Salon any more, not yet an "Air Show"), and more, equally risible details of Lee's testimony to Congress. (There's no propeller slipstream over the wings to create additional lift!) He goes on to point out that initial lift is low and the takeoff is flat and extended, and that this poses problems for "medium" airports, and that is absolutely a problem. I mean, it is not a problem in that it is not true as an issue of engine design, only in respect to jet takeoffs from short runways. Again, I wish  he'd stuck with the actual airport problems. Some of it is pretty obviously special pleading. For example, the problems with "lightning" are actually with kerosene jet fuel, which is alleged to form explosive vapours in the tanks at high altitudes, leading to explosions during lightning strikes. That's just the American refinery industry lobbying. He is also worried about explosive decompression at altitude, which produces this interesting response from de Havilland: "The windows of the Comet 3 have been tested to more than 20 times the maximum pressure to which they are subjected in flight." That's all very well, but stress travels. What about the airframe? What about the window seating? And it doesn't get any easier over time. How many cycles were the windows tested over? And what about the Comet 1? What kind of beating did their windows take? 

Also in the news are concerns about Air Ministry expenditure, including £6 million in unauthorised contract overruns and £388,00 for holding ten Yorks and their crews on standby to fly troops to Abadan if necessary in the summer of 1951. Sir William Farren is the new president of the RAe.S. 

"Jet Pilot Ground Trainer" The new AT50 Ground Trainer was produced by Air Trainers of Aylesbury, the British licensees of Link. It is based on a heavily modified Link D4, and the first two are ready for delivery only nine months after the contract was placed. I'd clip a picture but they just look like Meteor cockpits, with some analog circuits behind the dash to tell you if you've pronged the ship. (I hope that for the complete experience there's also an automatic smoke candle!) 

Here and There reports that we're talking to the Russians about making the air corridors safer, and that TCA will buy either the Convair 340 or the Viscount. A USAF (MATS) Skymaster down by ice and diverted from Iceland to Prestwick by bad weather only made the flight by jettisoning "several thousand pounds of freight and baggage." Marcel Birkigt, the founder of Hispano-Suiza, has died in Switzerland. The Pathfinders are holding their sixth annual dinner at the Dorchester. I hope they can find it! Maner Lualdi, the Italian legend amongst his peers (of whom there is only one) wants us to know that even though he is in the earliest stages (he has reached France) of his heroic Arctic flight commemorating the anniversary of Roald Amundsen doing something cold and snowy, it is very heroic.  I think Flight is in on the joke? The new branch of the RAeS in Singapore has been hearing interesting talks. The Aeronautical Group of ASLIB is having a conference at Oxford, and if you don't know what that means, you haven't been invited anyway.

"Use of Heavy Fuels"   This is the article that the Leader was summarising.  Kerosene has been the favoured fuel of jet transports so far, but probably won't be available in quantities during a war. Fuel chemists have been working on a "wide cut" jet fuel, which would be a heavier oil, and Shell's Aero-Engine Research Laboratory has found one, but like most if not all candidates, it suffers viscosity problems at low temperatures. The best solution so far found for this is onboard preheating via heat exchangers in the engine exhaust, used in the Viscount's Darts. The Ambassador uses combustion heating, and, either way, if they prove practical, will allow heavier fuels and longer ranges.
 

"The Winning Two Seater: An Australian Entry that Succeeded in the R.Ae.C. Competition" A clever design for a light plane gets three pages of coverage.

"Maintenance Docks" BEA tells us all about the dock where it maintains its Airspeed Ambassadors. ("Elizabethans.")

"Talking About Fatigue: A Strenuous Discussion Under R.Ae.S. Auspices" "The formidable-sounding title of the Royal Aeronautical Society's function on March 27th, 'A Full-day Discussion on Fatigue." This time I'm almost positive Flight is in on the joke. Designers and college engineers overfilled the University College's main chemistry theatre from opening at 10, although a mysterious block of empty seats led to rumours that "Bristol has booked two entire rows." Major P. L. Teed of Vickers chaired, H. L. Cox of NPL led off. 

By Charles Sims - picture scanned by me Ian Dunster 20:36, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
from a colour plate in the Camera In Cloudscape article
 in the December 1974 issue of Aeroplane Monthly
and credited Photographed by the author.,
Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3898795

So I'm giving this a lot of coverage because I think this is important. The 2-0-2 and the Viking are probably the stars of the show in terms of fatigue-related disasters, but it is a problem throughout the industry. Fatigue is a bit of a mystery in terms of what it might actually be, especially since it is so hard to distinguish between structural fatigue life and material fatigue life. You should be able to get at that last by simply cycling a homogenous bar of the test substance enough times, but for various reasons that doesn't tell the whole story, especially if fatigue propagates from material to material through a structure, which people talk about in terms of "concentrated" stress, for example at hatch and window corners. The afternoon session was led off by E. S. Moult and Frank Owner of de Havilland Engines, who have been working on fatigue for years.  Finally, Beverley Shenstone of BEA and B E. Stephenson(!) of Vickers Armstrong talked about "Fatigue in Aircraft Design." See, this is the part that's important. My ship cracking open halfway between Cape Race and Lajes de Flores. Everyone else can go hang, because that's too far to swim! Is the popular press right? Do British planes suffer from fatigue, like the Vickers Viking?  The Viking failures were traced to centre spar fatigue originating at the holes for tapered bolts. The bolts had never been given a proper fatigue life but were an approved design. Better detailed design work would have prevented the accident, but "there is a lot of detail in an airplane." In conclusion, more studies are needed. And since failures are more concentrated in time with shorter fatigue lives, we at least won't be in any doubt if another Viking comes along, since they will fall out of the sky one after another. 

Aircraft Intelligence reports that the third Gloster Javelin is flying, that the first Leduc O.21 ramjet is ready to fly, that Piaggio's prototype helicopter is undergoing flight trials, that there are questions about whether the XB-52 will receive bomber orders, with only 36 RB-52As ordered for 1954, because the B-47 nearly matches its range with mid-air refuelling. "It is also possible that the USAF may look beyond America for its next generation of medium bombers." Pull the other one, it's got bells on! The Convair Sea Dart is in trouble due to the failure of any J46s to show up, although its USAF cousin, the XF-102, which uses a single J57, is on track. The Martin P5M is the latest Martin design with a T-tail, although they probably won't fiddle with the original English Electric tail on the B-57A. I personally wouldn't put anything past Glenn L. Martin with their own designs, but they won't survive the Air Force tantrum if they screw up the B-57. The Air Force took enough flack pushing a British design through procurement to save the widowmaker of Baltimore! 

"The Double-Deck Proven" The double deck is not proven. You pretty much have to put a double deck on a big airliner, but that doesn't mean that the top floor is good for anything except maybe storing Granny's spinning wheel. But Société d'Aviation Louis Breguet is building a big airliner, which means a double deck, and they have to tell the shareholders something, which is that you really can manhandle cargo and herd passengers up and down an internal deck on airline time at 1953 wages.

"Glider Trainer" and "Outback Airline" establish that gliders are still trying to kill themselves and that Australia is a funny place.  More mistakes have been spotted in Victory at Sea, and discussed in the Commons, as is only right. Good thing that Episode 19 was so gripping! Airplanes are top-dressing hill pastures in New Zealand. Team Spirit, the Arthur Laing and Sons newsletter, has a gripping series on the contractor's work on a new airfield "somewhere in the Midlands." They are turning an abandoned WWII field into a modern one suitable for jets and it involves lots of concrete. 

Correspondence

J. Godley of the Southdown Gliding Club has opinions about gliding training. (That it isn't a complete waste of time.) A. F. Hobias explains how the Brisfit got its name, notices that the grandchildren still haven't nodded off, and recites some poetry. Don't wait up for the opium tincture, kids! "Stress Bod" thinks that exempting young technicians from National Service would be good for emigration. J. Joseph can't tell the difference between a staged photo and real life. N. A. Ogilvie corrects a vitally important mistake from when Flight was craning its neck to look at the stars out of the Canberra's side windows, so bored as to branch into astronomy. It wasn't Saturn that Flight saw. It was Jupiter. 

Civil Aviation reports that  Lufthansa is going to buy Convairs and DC-7s even though it's dumb. Swissair is impressed that America kept producing spare parts for its DC-6s through the Korean War. The CPA Karachi accident is being laid off to pilot error. Sabena is doing well, and De Havilland is very impressed with the Heron 2's performance. Some French charters are merging, UAL's "paper exercise" proves that a jetliner would be just the thing on the Los Angeles-New York route, the accident report on the Morton Air Services Consul G-AHFT that went into the Channel off Brighton killing six of eight on board, was caused by engine failure compounded by pilot error. The pilot sounds like a bit of a loser from the biography included. An entire Dakota on regular scheduled service is the latest Czech escapee from whatever is going on in Czechoslovakia, which frankly sounds like a slow motion re-enactment of that Agatha Christie novel with those ten people on the island where the murderer turns out to be -Grr. I hated that book! Whodunnits aren't supposed to cheat! Anyway, that's Czechoslovakia for you, except instead of 10 people it is 10 million so it'll take a while to find out who dunnit, but it'll have been Benes, who faked his own death. 

"Instrumentation --Ancient and Ultra-Modern" Elliott Brothers is giving some very special people tours of the digs to see the very special stuff they're working on these days and also some stuff they brought down from the attic to show around. They're doing autopilots for the RAF, the first all-British autostabiliser, and are getting ready to do a line of licensed Bendix designs, including the Telesyn and Autsosyn. Flight was particularly impressed by all the printed circuits. 

Business Roundup reports that home building is up again, but the boom might be cresting. One way of looking at the way that business spending have run ahead of projections in the first quarter is that they're getting ready to take a dive in the next. Just like we've heard again and again, consumer spending is the bright light, and now the talk is that tax cuts might boost them. Any excuse will do! And, to be fair, between tax cuts and WWIII, I will take tax cuts. The review of United States gold reserves has confirmed that the Democrats didn't steal it all and hide it in a vault in Texas, but in spite of that US reserves are falling due to foreign disinflation cutting into US exports. Steel is still selling well, farm prices are steadying. 

We don't comment on "Products and Processes;" it's easier just to direct your attention to the pictures in your copy. But I'm going to make an exception for the news that 3M is getting into the magnetic tape racket with a tape that holds 133% more than ours. I know we've made a lot of money on magnetic tape in the last five years, but I, me, this one pilot-type person who is writing this letter, doesn't think that we can compete with 3M. Maybe we should start thinking about selling our stake? It's like going up against Ford in the Model T business! 

Leaders

"Should a Businessman be Educated?" Liberally educated, that is. Probably? They say so! But they don't hire like it! I have a very cynical explanation for that. ("The top men we  hire should be liberally educated, because that's what the top men we're looking for do. That doesn't mean we're looking for the liberally educated!") Fortune's review of pinkos in the press ("the permanent revolution") goes after David Lilienthal this month. Is Los Angeles or Philadelphia the country's fourth biggest manufacturer? Opinions differ! Congressman Shafer of Michigan is a gigantic pain in the derriere, which is why Fortune likes him. And why people think Fortune is a pain. People are still trading Imperial Russian bonds on the New York markets, and it is still obviously a fraud. Everyone agrees with Fortune that free traded is inevitable.  Arthur Burns is just the best, and it seems like a lot of the new housing being built is by families moving into bigger houses, leaving smaller old ones that are hard to re-sell. Hopefully it will end with poor families moving into them, which will be a real social improvement, considering where they live now. It also explains why there are more new houses but fewer new households. 

Want to hear even more about "The Slow Death of the RFC" then you've heard from The Economist? Here it is, right here! 

"Jet Airlines: Year of Decision" The Comet comes along just as the Super-Constellation and DC-7 are being delivered. No-one doubts that these will be the last, and best, piston airliners. The question is whether they are too late. .Has the American industry lost the race to the Comet? American builders say no. Fifty-six Comets have been sold at prices ranging from $700,000 for the Comet I to $2.1 million for the Comet 3. Fifty more are in negotiation, fifty at the "talk stage." These are by far the biggest component of the world jetliner market, and the market is spreading fast. Comets will cover the Eastern Hemisphere within a year of their entry of service and will reach Australia and South America in 1954. The Comet III will go on the North Atlantic run as soon as it appears in 1956. BOAC will be all turbine by 1960. Other international airlines are in close pursuit. US airlines are sure they haven't been caught napping. The Boeing 707 and Douglas Jetliner will be much better than the Comet. Everything is fine, unless a domestic line suddenly starts flying Comets and starts a stampede. (Which won't happen because of airports. They might eat the coast-to-coast services, although even that is dicey until LaGuardia gets its new localisers, but they can't touch anything that flies regionally.)  In some ways the turboprops are even more dangerous. Nothing can touch the Viscount, and the Britannia will be the most cost-efficient big airliner ever built.

The best the American builders can offer right now is turboprop conversions of the Constellation and the Convairliner, and I can't believe someone is writing this down with a straight face. Turbojets won't be definitely superior until they break the sound barrier some time around 1970 by which time I hope to be a happily retired colonel with the money to take the train. Sonic booms and turbojet compressors under the windows! Okay, as a passenger I won't be hearing the booms or even the compressors much, but Heaven help you if you have to wait for a connecting flight at an airport for a few hours! Of course the VC7 and Comet IV will have the Conway, which has the advantage of an insulating sheath of cold air around the working engine, which will help with noise as well as fuel economy. 

Fortune follows up with a handy summary of the Comet's history, pointing out that it really starts with a desire to get some use out of the Ghost by way of the futuristic and deadly DH108, which showed what you couldn't do with aerodynamics as of 1947. The Comet's economics are pretty tricky. De Havilland needs to sell 50 to break even, and it's not clear how much money BOAC is making. On the London-Johannesburg route it requires a 72% load factor to break even versus the Constellation's 60% (and the Constellation isn't exactly a workhorse) due to its heavy reserve fuel load, and needs to pick up more of the business on the strength of speed and comfort to compete. Where American airlines (and airlines flying American) are fooling themselves is by thinking that the Comet's advantages won't be enough to pick up that business. Come on! Long distance flying is not very much fun. Any improvement is worth the price! The problem is that BOAC is still running pistons over the route, so how much of that business is coming out of their own pocket? BOAC will also use the Comet to pioneer the upper atmosphere over the North Atlantic, about which little is known, and will have sixty to seventy Comets and Britannias in its fleet by the time it is (almost) all turbine in 1960. In spite of which the American builders didn't move until Rickenbacker said that he would buy Comets if there wasn't an American competitor last year, and then Pan Am's actual purchase of 3 for the Rio run. C. R. Smith of American admits that the Comet I will be competitive on the LA-New York run with the DC-7, but that an American jetliner will cost $4 million, almost twice as much as the Comet III. The British may have a cost advantage since they seem to accrue lower tooling costs in the initial run, but he wouldn't buy a Comet III at $2.1 million because he doesn't think it will be economical with its thirsty 9000lb Avon engines, at least not once Comet services are competing against each other and load factors become an issue. Other American executives agree, and think that the Britannia is the bigger threat.  

Republic Steel is very pleased with developments in Liberia. 

"So They Named It General Dynamics" (Formerly Electric Boats) The company that is making the Navy's cold war submarines and the RCAF's Sabres is also looking at Atomic Age commercial markets. I'm surprised to learn that Canadair is responsible for 705 of the General Dynamics' conglomerate's earnings. There's a hope that once General Atomics is "activated," that is, finds a product to  manufacture, it will take over that role, because atoms are the future. In the mean time, here's a potted history of the American submarine all the way to the Nautilus and Sea Wolf, plus a profile of Hyman Rickover and a discussion of General Dynamic's minor but vital role in actually designing these first atomic reactors, and even a brief spotlight on Admiral Andrew McKee, who, as a naval architect must be used to being invisible, before we move on to wildcatting oil, which is a great way to make money if you already have money and know where there's some oil. Fortunately, you can write off 60% of your losses on taxes, which is almost better than paying "80-90%" on revenue on a strike that actually strikes. 

"Television City" CBS's new studio in Hollywood is quite something. From Japan, Jerome B. Cohen reports on the efficient and businesslike ways of the enigmatic Japanese with their odd ways, and the many American business which have established Japanese subsidiaries. Japan has high interest rates that limit investment, and wish that there was more American investment coming their way, because they must "export or die," and so on and so forth. The Japanese particularly need investment in their power utilities, and on the other hand are already investing in mines in the Philippines and Goa. 

"New Ways to Metals" is a review of new methods of assaying and processing metals. They include magnetic assay, neutron activation assay, new flotation methods, and flash smelting, or "pyrometallurgy." Union Carbide's new "jet piercer" breaks through the strata over iron-rich deposits of taconite gravel. Froth flotation is the latest thing, only electrostatic separation is showing promise in titanium processing in Florida and there is talk of ultrasonic dressing, more atomics, hydrogen precipitation, and even pulp (wood pulp?) flotation at Blackbird in Idaho. A BC connection is Professor Frank Forward of UBC's hot ammonia leaching, to be used on Gordon Mines' Manitoba nickel-cobalt-copper ore, to which he is now adding hydrogen precipitation. Chemico, of Fredericktown, Missouri, wants everyone to know that it has a top-secret German patent. Other Chemico rivals use pressure, furnaces and electrolysis to extract nickel from ores. Frank Spedding of Iowa State is using ion exchange to extract rare earths, while the Teddington Laboratory is using the same method to get gold out of recalcitrant Canadian ores, and Kennicott is working on new methods of leaching gold with a laboratory at Brigham Young. That's quite a tour, and if you're wondering about details, that is all the details. I'm summarising by not covering every sentence-long squib! 

"Working Wife: $96.30 a Week" An American working wife is worth ten times a British wife. Says so right here. Margaret Dalby Brown is a riveter at Republic Farmington, has been working since she was eighteen, and has been at Grumman and then Republic since 1943. she works in spite of having an able-bodied husband and two girls because the money is good and she wants to have it all. A Levittown house, a Nash Airflyte and a sewing machine. She works the 7-to-5 (for breaks for a nine hour day), car pools, and is currently making wings for the F-84G. There's a lot more about two working wives of Levittown and their husband, but as interesting as it is to Ronnie, I feel like I've given it enough space. 

Newfoundlanders are a funny people,  and Arnold Peterson of Peterson Manufacturing and the Folda-Rolla collapsible baby carriage is a funny man. In a dead-serious Christian evangelist kind of way. Zoysia grass is the next wonder crop, because it produces what Americans really want, a beautiful lawn of Bermuda green.  

A brief blurb about a would-be Canadian rival to GE, Continental Electric, isn't the last bit of text in this issue because all the articles are split to the back (often with the most interesting reporting in them), but it is the last new story. So that's it at Fortune for another month!