R_.C_.,
Oriental Club,
London,
England
Dear Father:
Here we are, coming down to the end of summer and preparing for our trip to London. By which I mean, finally making our bookings. I would love to fly, and have a bit more time in Nakusp, but it seems quite impractical with a baby and a toddler in hand, and so we are embarking in Montreal on the 1st of September and so leaving Nakusp on the 26th, which means that I will be finishing this letter on the train, probably in the boring bits. There's only so much Saskatchewan scenery you can take!
Your Loving Daughter,
Ronnie
Letters
Andrew V. Ruckman, of the West Virginia Policy and Industry Commission, earns his salary by writing to point out that maybe the mint julep was invented in West Virginia. Daniel J. Genac thinks something is up with the "ghost town" of El Dorado, California, if it has a garage. Mary Squire of Northboro, Massachusetts, is dealing with the horror of the recent tornado by writing a nonsense letter to Newsweek. For Your Information reports from Europe that the French are prosperous and have every reason to be happy, but aren't because they need a new constitution and have no idea how to get one. Also, everywhere in Europe that Newsweek visits, people ask about McCarthy and whether he or the President is running America.
In entertainment news, Donald Crisp, James Mason and Janet Leigh are going to costar in Prince Valiant. Lowell Thomas will narrate a second Cinemarama feature, Seven Wonders of the World. Arturo Toscanini will conduct the NBC Symphony and do an opera for the network. Van Johnson is doing a play based on the Book-of-the-Month Club choice, 7 1/2 Cents, while Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney are doing a Ferrer-produced show. There will be a musical version of the Greta Garbo vehicle, Ninotchka, starring Mary Martin and written by Cole Porter.
Andrei Sakharov |
The Cruel Sea (Universal-International) is an "admirable" British attempt to capture the spirit of Nicholas Monsarrat's 500 page novel. Eric Ambler wrote the script and it is a good movie and well acted. I, the Jury, is the first Mickey Spillane film, from UA, and is a "very jazzy bit of roughhousing." Unfortunately it is "drably picturesque" and too fast and glib for its own good. A Spillane movie? Fast and glib? Never! The Master of Ballantrae is the latest Errol Flynn, and bears "only the palest and most perverted resemblance" to the Stevenson novel.
The Periscope Business Trends reports that Eisenhower is ready to start the next session by addressing his big four problems, which are, first, Russia, which he will deal with by using "less counterpunching, more punching," as with the food-distribution effort in Berlin, a potential Chinese intervention in Indo-China, where he will rely on US air and sea forces, since Congress won't let him use US ground forces. Second, he is going to try to achieve a real peace in Korea. Third, he is going to do what it takes to stop a recession. Fourth, he is going to assert leadership in Congress and only cut taxes a little, leading to only a slightly ballooning national debt.
National Affairs
Ernest K. Lindley is back in Washington after his European investigative vacation with word that East Germany is a "volcano." He didn't actually see any erupting, but he's pretty sure that there's lava everywhere.
The Korean Truce
"U.N. Works to Keep the Peace But Fears New Red Violations" Nothing is happening but this here Newsweek stringer is stuck in this country and you're going to be as bored as I am! On the POW beat, some POWs are really upset at the "rats" among their ranks. And peace negotiations at the United Nations are going nowhere.
"France: Not Quite Revolution" The big strike in France is more of a holiday than a revolution. Yes, the trains and garbage collectors are out, but the vacationers are already on vacation, and who wanted to come back on time, anyway? Although there's no food in Paris, which sounds tough.
"Morocco Blow-Off" The situation in Morocco is pretty difficult for the French, ad we've heard, and it turns out that the Pasha of Marrakesh had a solution, which was to overthrow the Sultan of Morocco and set himself up in the Sultan's place. Even though the Pasha is the French's man, the French didn't want to see him on the throne, so when the Pasha moved, it was only to marginalise the Sultan, ot replace him. NOw everyone is upset at each other and French colonists are nervous about what might happen next.And in Canada, the Liberals won the election handily, only they didn't really win it, because Canadians are fed up with Liberal rule, even if they don't vote like it.
Business
The Periscope Business Trends reports that the wheat acreage quota plan is good news for everyone. It can now be reported that home building is down, which might be an indication of a recession if there was a recession, which there is not, because homeowners will no doubt go crazy for renovations with all that consumer credit they don't have. There is still a major aircraft delivery backlog, and new industries like glass fibres and polystyrene are up, so take that, recession! US exports are up, but non-military exports are down, brought low by declining farm exports.
"Hydra-Matic Holocaust" A fire at the GM plant in Livonia, Michigan, the sole producer of the Hydro-Matic automatic transmission, has cost four lives and done $60 million in damage, levelling the factory and cutting off Hydra-Matic deliveries for Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs, Lincolns, Hudsons, Nashes and Kaisers. This means that not only will 50,000 employees be idled indefinitely at Hydra Matic, so will be production lines producing Hydra Matic-equipped cars. This might curtail auto production by up to 10%. GM hopes to have some production going by the end of the month using second hand machines in improvised facilities.
Women are working in factory jobs in the South! It's news!
Notes: Week in Business reports that the Federal Reserve is going to appeal the court order setting aside its anti-trust ruling against Trans-America to the Supreme Court. Several companies are merging, including Massey-Harris of Canada and Harry Ferguson of Britain, and a hefty commercial air backlog of $150 million is mainly late-delivered Lockheed Super-Constellations.
Another story about highway building follows, brought to us by vacationing writers stuck in traffic.
Products: What's New is impressed by a combination scrub brush/sponge mop from Empire Brushes, less so by the usual lot of a hand-operated lawn seed sower by H. G. and D. B. Newman of Edmonton, Alberta, and a plastic glazing insulating material from Arvey Corporation.
Henry Hazlitt's impression of President Eisenhower so far is he got rid of price controls, so that's good, but he's afraid of a little recession, and that's bad, and reflects the fact that the President is far too moderate on economic policy.
Science, Medicine
"Stone Age Revisited" Dr. Edward Meyer of the Natural History Magazine and the Explorer's Club is off to Brazil's Matto Grosso to find out about the fierce and primitive and isolated Chavante tribe. They have stone tools and loin clothes and bite things.
"Soon the Moon" Fritz Zwicky holds up the Swiss side of the interplanetary crowd, where he talks up the advantages of shaped charges and balloons over new-fangled atomic rockets, along which "sometimes the old ways are the best ways news" comes a half-mile, two block-wide warehouse for the General Services Administration built almost entirely of timber by Timber Structures of Portland in Franconia, Virginia.
Science Notes of the Week: Stanford has come up with the most powerful microscope ever built by attaching a magnetic "eyepiece" to their new linear accelerator, while MIT professors point out that in nuclear reactions, particles don't actually have to collide to interact. It's like, they say, the Moon whizzing by the Earth at a distance of 30,000 miles was as good as a collision.
The Kinsey report on American women is out, which I leave to others to report.
Radio-Television, Press, Newsmakers
Treasure Hunt, the Du Mont Thursday show that features Sigmund Rothschild rummaging around in peoples' antiques, is quite the show.
Arthur Godfrey, the Vice President, Gene Tunney, Jack Dempsey, Mayor O'Dwyer, Olivia de Havilland, Oksana Kasenkina and Madame Henri Bonnet are in the column for the usual lack of reason, as all of Newsweek's regular "people of interest" writers must be on vacation and the vignettes this week are all boring. If you've forgotten who Kasenkina is, she's the woman who jumped out of the Soviet Embassy, either because she'd been recalled, or because she was suicidal.
Virginia Fortune Ryan has had a baby, Princess Anne is 3, Sir Edmund Hillary is engaged, Tay Garrett is married; Tazio Nuvolari, John Horne Burns, Augustus Van Horne Stuyvesant, ,Gouverneur Morris, and Friedrich Schorr have died.
The New Films
Mask of the Himalayas is a "weird blending of Himalaya mystery drama with remarkable documentary films in the Karakorum area." The documentary part is a lot more interesting than the mystery drama. Columbia's The Stranger Wore a Gun is a 3D Technicolor Western features Randolph Scott as a heroic Confederate veteran. Inferno is a "taut little melodrama\," also 3D and Technicolor, while Latin Lover (MGM) is a weak comic vehicle for Lana Turner and John Lund with Ricardo Montalban as said lover. The Night is My Kingdom is a French import and the reviewer was just glad to see one movie for adults this week.
Books
Alan Paton's Too Late the Phalarope follows up on Cry, the Beloved Country. South Africa is still horrible. Ernest Thompson Seton's Lives of Game Animals is a beautifully illustrated eight volume, 3115p edition of his collected works.
Raymond Moley is happy that Congress is telling the President what for.
Aviation Week, 24 August 1953
News Digest reports that the 707 will be in service by 1955, promise. A USAF pilot poured salad oil into the hydraulic actuator of his C-46 to get it to Tokyo.The cause of the Transocean crash off Wake on 12 July cannot be established. Industry Observer reports that first tests of a Russian flying boat fighter are being reported, while a Red MiG-17 night fighter group has been moved to East Germany. De-icing helicopter blades is hard. Westinghouse might build the Avon in America under license since the Navy doesn't have anything else. The AEC continues to sign development contracts for the atomic airplane of the future. Katherine Johnsen's Washington Roundup reports that big decisions are coming in the defence programmes soon, that the Army and Air Force are getting ready to fight, that Wilson wants some kind of yardstick so he can tell if a plane is outdated, and that the Air Force is having trouble persuading Congress that it needs even more research and development money.Alexander McSurely reports for Aviation Week that "Big Copters May Replace DC-3s by '59" Which I will believe when I see it, especially with the track record for "DC-3 replacements." The Air Force is de-regionalising the AMC by cutting a bunch of centres. Not moving it all back to Wright Patterson yet, though. And that experimental crop duster from Texas Aggie, the AG-1, that used to give Aviation Week some free copy once a week, has flown, crashed spectacularly, and is now being investigated, so that's even more free copy. Also it is good news, because the pilot lived, proving that the AG-1 is "crash resistant." Russia has a new fighter coming out, the Lavochkin La-17, and the Air Force is ordering Super Connie radar pickets. Scooped by Newsweek. So embarrassing! Kurt Tank is not impressed by the F-86, and the Navy has found a way to put some cargo in the AD-5, which is good for carrier delivery.
"Atmospheric Research Expands as Moby Dick Balloons Explore Upper Air" The Air Force is flying off a new series of atmospheric research balloons which are absolutely not flying saucers.Thrust and Drag quotes an anonymous source who explains that the 280mm atomic cannon is actually a great idea whose time has come, because artillery can do things that planes can't. And, after all, the Army is already using 240mm howitzers in Korea!
Handley Page and Boeing put in rival advertorials about how they are expanding their research and production facilities. And poor George L. Christian has to do a United Aircraft Products advertorial for them, "New Oil De-Aerator Speeds Arctic Starts" UAL is building a cold weather oil defoamer for Piaseckis and SA-16 amphibians operating in the Arctic. Four pages! And if that weren't enough, New Aviation Products has a new crop sprayer, a tiny tape recorder and swing-out cabin seats for air stewardesses.
From England, McGraw-Hill World News reports that "U.K. Revives Interest in Turboprop Liners" BOAC likes the Britannia because it is cheaper than jets, even if it is 100mh slower. "Sir Miles' decision on a Comet 3 replacement will make or break the British transport manufacturers." A "Super-Britannia" will likely follow, buoyed by the runaway commercial success of the Viscount. "Ceilometers" are the latest thing at LaGuardia and Washington. BOAC has bought Canadian Pacific's remaining Comet and reshuffled its fleet. Captain Robson says at Cockpit Viewpoint that the new avionics support gadgets like GCA and ASR are not perfect. Robert Wood's Editorial celebrates another scalp taken in the open field, as Ernest Hensley leaves the "notorious" Office of Aviation Safety at the CAA. He wants more!
Letters
Morris Grover,of the US Civil Administration of the Ryukyus, was very happy with the article about the Tulane Tropical Medical School, as was former assistant Surgeon General Charles V. Akin. Three railroad enthusiasts write in to point out that the "Train X" is actually a Spanish design. Several correspondents don't care how the word "gringo" actually came about, they just want to tell the story about how it is a distortion of "Green grow the rushes, oh." Newsweek investigates and establishes that people carve their initials in tortoise shells with knives, as you'd expect. For Your Information tells us that Newsweek reporting is credited with saving the life of an eight-year-old boy in Vancouver who was dying of celiac disease after he read Marguerite Clark's coverage of Dr. Sidney Haas' "banana diet" cure.
A new television show will feature Ida Lupino, Shelley Winters, and Margaret Sullivan in rotation. Johnny Weissmuller is going to do a Western, produced by Gene Autry. Du Mont is talking with Ronald Coleman about a show based on Somerset Maugham stories while comic strip characters Archie and Tillie the Toiler are coming to TV. Jennifer Jones is going to be in a David Selznick produced version of Bell, Book, and Candle, Spenser Tracy in Bad Day in Honda, Yvonne De Carlo in O'Leary's Night with David Niven and Barry Fitzgerald. "Where are they now" features Jeanette Rankins, managing a Montana ranch, and Jesse Owens managing a dry cleaning chain and owning a Chicago public-relations firm.
The Periscope Washington Trends reports that Wilson and the defence chiefs are still fighting over "economies," even though the Russian H-bomb means that further defence "cuts" are off the table. The President may intervene. He is also looking at pushing civil rights harder to gain more minority votes, while personally rewarding Southern leaders to keep them on side, as when he made Governor Byrnes a delegate to the UN General Assembly. Gee, thanks, Mr. President! "So far, Eisenhower is surprising everyone, including himself, with his political skill." For example, he hasn't given the Democrats any issues to hang him on, and everyone around the President is confident about '54 because everyone just loves him. In unrelated news, Walter Williams, "national boss" of the Citizens for Eisenhower group, is giving up his position as under-Secretary of Commerce to do other important work.
National Affairs
"The Mysterious Code" Senator McCarthy has managed to get that bookbinder fired. Edward Rothschild tried to recruit a co-worker into a Red cell in 1939, his wife was a Communists, says FBI informant Mary Markward, and he pocketed a book once. A classified book! (The merchant-marine code book.) Now Rothschild has been suspended without pay, McCarthy has flown off to LA to find evidence that the Government Printing Office was leaking atom bomb and H-bomb secrets, and he is fighting with The Washington Post over whether it is too pink to get the newspaper postal rate.
"World Without End?" "The United States and Soviet Russia soon will henceforth be capable of annihilating each other." Henceforth, forsooth! The Strunk and White may be in hiding, but we've still got our Webster's! I shouldn't be so facetious about a little thing like global annihilation, but as terrifying as the prospect is, it isn't new. What is new in this story is an explainer about how America detects atom tests. Besides seismographs, our "sniffer" planes are out, and have found thermonuclear "products."
Attorney General Brownell says that we need more Border Patrol officers.
Ambassador Douglas is the latest Administration official to remind Congress that it can't keep up high tariffs and expect high exports, too. And Ernest Lindell has more bulletins from our Allies in this week's Washington Tides: McCarthy is as embarrassing as the Klan and Chicago gangsters used to be; we need to be less rigid (and also less timid) in negotiating with the Soviets, and we should build up our defences, with special emphasis on atomic stuff.
International
"The Shah Returns In Triumph" Premier Mossadegh has been overthrown by a popular uprising spearheaded by General Fazollah Zahedi but ultimately sparked by Princess Ashraf, who visited her brother, the Shah, last week to stiffen him up. The Shah issued firmans deposing Mossadegh and the Army chief of staff and appointing Zahedi premier, then fled, first for the Caspian on the 13th, than for Iraq, on the 16th after the firmans were delivered. At that point, on the it seemed as though the royal coup against Mossadegh had fizzled out, but on the 18th Tudeh Communist mobs rampaged through Teheran, and Zahedi unleashed royalist counter-mobs on the 19th, leading to competing factions of the army trying to restore order in the name of their respective bosses, and, ultimately to the shooting deaths of 62 protestors, mostly outside Mossadegh's home, and the Premier's fall. The Shah flew home in a twin-engined Beechcraft, gave addresses to the people and the US ambassador, and called for prompt and generous American aid, which is likely to be granted. The next story histrionically asks if Iran is going to be "Another Korea."
"Tempest in the U.N. Teapot: Over Neutrals at the Peace Table" This is the controversy over seating some neutrals at the UN Korean peace talks, which some participants think would provide a mediating voice, and we Americans realise would be the thin end of the wedge towards some sort of appeasement move like letting Red China into the U.N. The next expected fuss is over the arrival of 5000 Indian troops in Pusan to oversee the POW repatriation.
In Latin America, there's some kind of fuss over Peron reaching out to left wing parties, but my eyes kind of glazed over when Newsweek started talking about Russian influence. Remember when Peron was a Fascist? So many years ago. What's not at issue is the Argentina-Moscow trade deal, which Newsweek doesn't approve of one bit. And more oil has been found in Peru, hopefully enough to maintain exports and also encourage development in Peru's Amazon basin.
Business
Periscope Business Trends reports that the first "break of the boom" will definitely not occur this fall. The economy is "bumping close to the manpower ceiling," there are concerns about car production after the GM fire, but, as a separate story says, "What Are Consumers Thinking? No Recession Jitters --Yet." American consumers seem confident in the economy's future and have a rising faith in government. In spite of talk of "shakeouts." The IRS is looking for tax delinquents, Casey and Lasser have their latest guide to tax shelters out, Ford's car of tomorrow has a dictaphone.
"The Smellies" I'm not sure how much scents, that is "Smell-o-rama" adds to the theatre experience, and there are some jokes you could make, for sure. But GE has definitely decided to give it a try.
Notes: Week in Business reports that GM is leasing 1.5 million square feet of Willow Run to produce Hydro-Matics, and in the meantime will put Buick Dynaflows in Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles, and Chevrolet's Power-Glide into Pontiacs. There are 850 price cuts in the fall Sears, Roebuck calendar;, and rubber plants plan a 20% cut on lower demand.
Products: What's New reports a year-round heating and cooling air conditioner from Westinghouse that doesn't need water, just air and electricity, a magnifying lens to go into welder's helmets from Bausch and Lomb, blended buttons to merge with any surface from Edwards Company, a light, reinforced plastic 7,000lb liquid tank to replace heavy steel ones for moving liquids, and easily assembled wooden toy "Zoo Doo" animals from Fannie Hillsmith.On the one hand, it's not fair that Henry Hazlitt doesn't get a vacation from Business Tides. On the other, he makes his own time off by recycling columns, this week reminding us, yet again, of the "Futility of Foreign Aid." France gets foreign aid, but spends too much on fripperies like social programmes and is politically unstable no matter how much we pay them not to be. And in fairness I will admit that he is using new arguments and incorporating current news stories into his column. On the other, I'd be embarrassed going through my files and seeing just how many times I had predicted the imminent collapse of France.
Science, Medicine, Education
"Astin Vindicated" Allen Astin will stay as head of the Bureau of Standards, although the NBS loses weapons development work to the Department of Defence and will have its commercial work directed by Assistant Secretary Worthy, and the postal fraud case against Jess M. Ritchie has been dropped, and he is free to keep on lying about his magic battery additive by mail. For the first time in a while, Peter Schlumbohm is in the pages, this time for his mobile 1200w electric stove.
Newsweek visits the Fort Douglas VA Hospital outside of Salt Lake City, probably because it is the kind of mental hospital where some Korea POWs are going to end up when they get back to stateside. A WHO report on alcoholism finds that it is mostly a "neurotic-response pattern" in the U.S., which is why it is not much of a problem in Denmark, where most drinking is "reactive." ("You drove me to drink.") In Chile, people drink because they are hungry, and apparently in backwards Catholic countries they drink because the water isn't safe, says the University of California's John Gardner, who has found that red wine has a germicidal effect. This is news?
Medical Notes reports that the headaches experienced by high blood pressure patients is caused by other factors, so drastic interventions to reduce high blood pressure shouldn't target headaches. Chest X-rays are cheap and easy to do, but do a terrible job of diagnosing heart trouble, says R. V. Slattery in a current issue of Journ. AMA.
Art, Press, Radio-TV, Newsmakers
"Boxing Sculptor" Joseph Brown of Princeton combines teaching in the Physical Education programme with Art and Archaeology because he is an artist who does bronze sculptures of muscled athletes doing strenuous things. I don't trust myself to comment --oh, the heck with it, I've found Uncle George's Christmas present."Bombs, H and K" Not only did the Russians drop an H-bomb, Dr. Kinsey dropped a report! The Soviets got into a mess because the bomb wasn't confirmed for a few days, while Dr. Kinsey's dirty, dirty report didn't make a lot of papers. John Knight of the Knight papers gets a profile, the ITU is still publishing its strike papers, and various local newspapers are a bit nuts.
Fred Allen is as hilarious as Charlie Chan and fake Chinese accents. Or more hilarious, even.
Citations for four more Korean Medal of Honour winners include one Japanese-American, whose citation was withheld until his release from captivity to prevent reprisals. Representative William Dawson (R., Utah) is up on state charges of selling liquor to Indians, apparently in the belief that the repeal of the federal law made it legal. Dick Haymes' divorce settlement is going badly while his other troubles with immigration continue. Sonja Henie's show is playing Norway in a homecoming for the 100% never-Nazi. The Dionne girls are going their separate ways as they reach 19, Zane Grey's manuscripts have been acquired by the Library of Congress, Harold Stassen has ordered IQ tests for the 1700 employees of the Foreign Operations Administration, hoping to "lop off several hundred unqualified workers." Michael Patrick O'Brien, the Hong -Kong-Macau ferry rider without a country, still doesn't have a country as Brazil decides not to let him in as a refugee, after all. Bing Crosby golfs, and even Lionel Hampton can't follow that crazy bebop jive lingo. I would also be remiss for not mentioning the special feature on Italian starlets in a week when Silvana Mangano gets the cover.
Oona O'Neill Chaplin has had a son with Charlie Chaplin. Princess Margaret is 23. Dorothy Schiff is married. Gordon Dean is divorced. Mary Purnell, Cameron Morrison, Malcolm W. Bingay, Bert Andrews and Harold Knutson have died.
BooksLudwig Bemelans' Father, Dear Father is possibly a memoir of the artist edited by his daughter, Barbara? Can't make head or tail of the review. Gwen Darwin Raverat's Period Piece is a memoir of growing up in Charles Darwin's extended family? I think? (She turns out to have been a sculptor of some distinction, not that the review mentions this.) Third try into the section and the review of Madeleine Stern's The Life of Mrs. Frank Leslie explains that it is a biography of same, written by Stern, and even explains who the subject was. (A fabulously successful magazine publisher of the Nineteenth Century of whom Newsweek disapproves.) Robert Penn Warren's Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices is an odd and experimental novel about yet more terrible people (but also Thomas Jefferson's nephews). Newsweek didn't like it, and makes its case better than in the other reviews.
Raymond Moley is upset at the Secretary of Labour for not being anti-labour enough. It's probably because of his conflicts of interest by virtue of being in a union. For such things are otherwise unknown in this Administration!
Aviation Week, 31 August 1953
News Digest reports that avgas will soon be freed of the order requiring increased tetraethyl lead content to save on alkylates, as production of the latter is closer to meeting national defence needs. Transocean flights by massive flights of B-36s and F-84Gs, and one by a C-99 with a 61,000lb load and 23 crew and observers shows that these things can be done. And there's a nice picture of the latest Lockheed P2V Neptune variant with two underwing J34s for takeoff boost. Hey, that's my hubbie's plane! Industry Observer reports that Republic has Air Force contracts for its F-103 inverse taper wing with combination turbojet and rocket power, and its F-105 delta wing, to be built in both a fighter and reconnaissance variant. Wright R3350 engines being used by the Chicago and Southern Airlines are now approved for 1900 hours between overhauls, the highest for any engine ever. USAF information is that the Russian long-range turboprop bomber shown in air displays recently is almost certainly in production. The XB-52 and YB-52 have logged 700 flying hours so far and exceeded expectations. GE's Hermes short-range ground bombardment missile programme has been sharply cut back. Marines are impressed with their Lacross close-support missile, which boosts with solid rocket propellant and then glides up to eight miles to the target. Saunders-Roe is interested in developing a hydro-ski fighter similar to the Convair F2Y-1 now being tested. The story of the "weapon systems development" contract with Convair for the B-58 was so interesting the many times it was told last week that we tell it again! Cessna is working on a helicopter and Rohm and Haas has a new and improved plexiglas.Robert Hotz reports for Aviation Week that "B-36 Teams Up With F-84 To Carry A-Bomb" The FiCon (for "Fighter Conveyor") project has been around forever, but was eventually repurposed for F-84s flying attached to the wings of B-36s, to the end of an extended probe with room for the pilot to shimmy down into the cockpit. But now instead of being escort fighters, they are to fly the A-bomb the "last mile" to the target, since B-36s are easy prey for MiG-15s. It is one of any number of things that might be done with those buckets of bolts, including use as a tanker or a radar picket.
North American is talking about financial penalties for aircraft builders who deliver late on their contracts, the Air Force is worried about how darn hot supersonic planes get, find it difficult to project the future with the new alloys and atomic power. This is all the same story, somehow. If you put them in separate paragraphs you don't have to explain how you got from one to the other! We end the article by wandering over to General McCormick's talk giving the ARDC view, which is that atomic planes, automatic control and supersonic speed will be important in the future, at which point all the space isn't taken up, so we repeat the same points.
Engine programmes are being cut back as engines are lasting longer than expected, the Air Force is going to be at the Dayton Air Show, the USAF is taking bids on C-123 production, and is up to 98 combat wings. Then it's time to be scooped by Flight with reporting from the Martin B-57 flight demonstrations. The Air Force is now receiving RB-47Es, the reconnaissance variant, with some extra photographic equipment such as intervalometers, optical viewfinders, photocell-operated shutters and bomb bay modified to take a camera pod. De Havilland Australia has curtailed Drover production. The FBI has arrested a front man for a nationwide ring of dealers in unairworthy commercial aircraft parts. The Piasecki YH-21 might be the first helicopter to the North Pole.David Anderton reports for Aeronautical Engineering that "AF Tests Rocket Engines in Giant Stands" A huge rocket test stand at Edwards Air Force Base allows the Air Force to test giant rockets. Three pages, for pictures. Northrop has anti-ice shields for the F-89 while Rotor-Finish Tumblers installed at Ryan Aircraft are saving oodles of time and money on deburring. Everyone likes Alkaline Battery's nickel-iron batteries.
The SAE Production Forum held recently in New York had a panel discussion on experimental manufacturing, that is, on manufacturing an experimental product, and someone from Aviation Week was there to take notes. Lacking anything else to print, here are those notes under the title, "Experimental Shops Pretest Production," for Production. So if you were interested in coordinating production schedules with subcontractors and possibly subsidising them under appropriate oversight arrangements, this is your article! What's New has received three catalogues, two training manuals, a training film, the ASME's new Letter Symbols for Metrology, and Samuel Herrick's Table for Rocket and Comet Orbits, perfect for planning your next trip to Mars. George L. Christian visits Aviation Electric for Equipment and turns in "Canadian Overhaul Firm Expands." It's thinking about producing some Bendix instruments and accessories under license, since it already manufactures out-of-production parts for its RCAF maintenance contracts. UAL has bought the Bendix glide slop receiver for its 25 DC-7s. New Aviation Products devotes its editorial space to just two items, Celastic treated ("doped") cloth from Calahan and Horsey, and a push-pull disconnecting hydraulic coupling for oil fittings from E. B. Wiggins Oil Tool Company. They're always open when connected, always closed when shut, so you can just pull them free and reconnect at need.
The McGraw Hill Linewide Editorial has free advice for Britain: "Britons Can Have Prosperity --If They Want It" They just need to fix their low productivity. It's simple when you think about it!
Lee Moore reports for Air Transport that "New Avionics Gear Aids Airline Reliability" Radar traffic control and omnirange is important for winter reliability, but so is higher mechanical reliability. A Comet that landed at a 900ft grass strip instead of the Bombay airport by mistake lost nothing more than its tyres, amazingly enough.
Letters has a defence of Jacqueline Cochrane from Lt. Colonel Frank Everest of Edwards Air Force Base, who explains that her record flights did not disrupt normal activities at Edwards, which was able to accommodate her. John Longhurst points out that the "newsletter," or "publication" recently quoted by Aviation Week was, in fact, an official aviation report from Aviation Studies, Ltd. J. C. Schwarzenbach of U. S. Propellers, Ltd., finds Captain Robson's excuses for airline pilots' involvement in mid-air collisions to be "extremely weak." Robert Wood points out that the fact that traffic on the Jersey Turnpike in its first year matched expected volumes for 1971 to be evidence that Americans love progress, and American business can't go wrong betting on progress. He's very impressed with the Sabre, and expects Red treachery in Korea. They are building up their forces, especially air strength in Manchuria, and have executed numerous POWs on trumped-up charges just ahead of their release. Send in the Air Force to bomb them right, this time!
And so what's up as summer winds down at The Engineer (21 August 1953 and 28 August 1953)?
(Not the Seven Day-)Journal for 21 August reports that Sir Brian Robertson is the new head of the British Transport Commission. The Ministry of Supply has stepped in to take charge of aircraft for the Navy, while the Commonwealth Telecommunications Board's annual report focusses on the limited number of available frequencies. If more frequencies can't be allocated, it hopes that technology compresses the width of frequency used.
An interesting historical article, E. S. Chalmers, "A History of Spectroscopy" focusses in its third part, in this issue, on the optics of the prisms used to generate spectra for analysis. J. G. Withers' "Measurements of Air Flow" looks at the size of the surge damping vessel needed in a device that measures air flow by sampling it with an orifice. Our American Correspondent continues to review the work on "Nuclear Reactors for Power Generation" that came out of the AEC recently. This week he looks at the liquid-cooled nuclear reactor, the liquid being implicitly water, so this is just a boiler generator. The nuclear physics, with its damping and shielding requirements, is largely passive, so most of the engineering interest is in the power generating train, your turbines. E. C. Poultney continues to look at the locomotives of 1953. By which he means locomotives that are still around, and not ones built in 1953, because that would just be depressing for those who love their steam. V. S. Swaniathan gives us "Iraq Oil Pipelines," a discussion of the giant pipelines being built to service the Kirkuk oilfields by way of the new terminal at Homs, Syria. Anyone who hasn't completely killed the little boy inside will be thrilled by pictures of the Mighty Antar at work. Unfortunately all the work seems to be being done by American and British workers. We get coverage of the Economic Commission of Europe's potted history of the wide strip mill, the latest thing in steel, and the Coal Board's new run of mine locomotive. Leaders comment on the Commons committee on the nationalised industries and the fighter shortage at the Fleet Air Arm, which is down to a few squadrons of Sea Hawks. We have now decided to worry about Russian jet bombers attacking British trade, since those giant turboprops can be intercepted by propeller fighters, never mind Sea Hawks. The Il-28, on the other hand, is a real threat, only provided that Russia's alliance with Atlantis holds up, and those pesky Atlanteans finds some surface land to build a 9000ft concrete runway on. Or several, because the Il-28 has even shorter legs than the Canberra. Fortunately, the best kind of solution is at hand; reorganisation! (The kind that Lord Pakenham has been arguing for for years.) Letters are very active this week, with one from Donald Scammell explaining why big companies are better for productivity, from J. Hodges of Power Jets on a geometry question pertaining to the article on frames not obeying Hooke's Law (area of irregular planes) and more general comments on same from T. M. Charlton and J. W. Turner of the Engineer's Guild. Details of the London-Christchurch Air Race are given, and we launch "Fifty Years of Undercarriage Development" years ago, before the war, moving from simple "v" undercarriages to the first damped suspension on the big bombers of 1918. F. W. Sheppard tells us about its new cement handling method, the British Steel Castings Research Association about its "Radiographic Exposure Calculator" that determines when you have to go have a nap to avoid turning into a radioactive mutant, a bit from the Reclamation Bureau about irrigation in the Columbia River basin, commercials for a carbide tip finishing machine from R. J. H. Tool, the de Havilland Super Sprite, and a marine radar from Kelvin and Hughes, and the conclusion to D. H. L. Lawson's "Solution of Transient Heat-Flow Problems of Analogous Electrical Networks."Industrial and Labour Notes attest to the still upward-swinging trends in Britain's economy (more steel, more exports). Four British Standards reports are buried down here, but no Launches and Trial Trips.
(Not the Seven Day-)Journal for 28 August reviews D. F. Anderson's alarmed article in National Provincial Bank Review explaining why it is impossible to replace freighter fleets with current depreciation rules and notices the British Industries Fair for 1954, some awards and reorganisations, and some kind of pull-off between steam and diesel locomotives to determine if the steam locomotives go to the Home For Old Locomotives this year or next. Chalmer's history of spectroscopy explains Huygen's interference theory and its application to a "Spectrograph room" illuminated by a diffraction grating. J. S. Clark and L O. C. Johnson describe the "Resistance Thermometer in the 50 Meter Comparator at the NPL," which is used to "standardise the taping used for geodetic surveying." The latest historical treatment of Cornish mining engines by W. Tregoning Hooper looks at pumping engines, while C. F. Armstrong tries to give us the most detailed look yet at "Overseas Appointments for Civil Engineers" in spite of having only two pages to work with as it is on to commercials for the Temper Mill Drives at the Trostre Tinplate Works and Walker Brothers' new diesel-electric crane. Metallurgical Topics looks at papers on defects in hot-worked mild steels, an attempt to say something definite about just how much better open hearth steels are than Bessemer steels in identical applications, another on the use of rare earth elements in stainless steels, and on "Rapid-Life Tool Testing," which is attempts to speed up wea-failure tests of tools by increasing the cutting speeds and such. The authors think that radioactive tracers are the answer. Leaders point out just how interesting the Tregoning Hooper article is and comments on the guided missile test that we saw photos of in Aviation Week. No-one knows much about them, but the Ministry of Supply suggests that manned bombers cannot possibly outmanoeuvre them, suggesting that the future belongs to the long range missile, unless they can be shot down, too. Given their inherently limited range, they might be an appropriate shipborne weapon. Letters has Gerald Lacey on "regime change," by which the civil engineers mean the silting-up of chanels, particularly irrigation canals, in a general enough way to actually guide them to remedial measures. R. G. B. Gwyer defends the reputation of the "Britannia" class of locomotives, which might as well have provoked J. H. W. Turner (the honorary secretary of the Engineer's Guild seems to have time on his hands) to write on "The Old Engineer." The unsigned article on undercarriage development reaches the early internally-sprung wheels,, retraction, and oleo-pneumatic shock absorbers in a mad rush as far as the Lancaster and Halifax. Duncan Sandy's statement on guided missiles gets a bit more attention, followed by the work of the Fuel Research Station on turning coal into oil, lead into gold, empty space into text. A "Limpet Dam and Tnnel for Lock Gate Renewal" is good news for those who work with canals and dams, while Glasgow's water supply marches and advances, and the latest British Railways devices for ballast cleaning are quite something. In India besides a dam and the latest developments in engineering manufacture, the big news for Indian Engineering News is the nationalisastion of the airlines. Echometers from Marconi, an infrared heating lamp for farms from GE, and a pillar drilling machine from Kerry's get commercials.Industrial and Labour Notes pivot from everything going up to the TUC clearing its throat about wages and the latest on foreign technical assistance; Launches and Trial Trips checks in with three steamships and one motor vessel. The steam ships are a single old-fashioned collier and two very complicated-sounding turbine plants, including a "triple expansion, double-reduction" machinery for the cargo vessel Patinga. The motor vessel is just an oil tanker. Does the coup in Iran mean we need more,a fter all?
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