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So I Found Myself Writing A Pulp


Lawnmower Boy

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I should start a "rejected superweapon ideas" thread, one of these days.  I mean, if things like Maus tanks and nuclear-powered cruise missiles got approved for R&D, imagine the craziness that never got past the fanciful suggestion/napkin sketch stage...

You write that like a robot-controlled atomic-powered flying bomber made of a radioactive alloy flying a low altitude circuit around the Soviet Union dispensing nuclear bombs on lower-priority targets before ending its career in a kamikaze dive on the last objective is somehow  crazy. 

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Postblogging Technology, November, 1943: Caesar's New Clothes

 
Historic+Santa+Clara.jpg Santaclararesearch.net

 

 

 

My Dearest Wing Commander:

 

I have received your last, and will try to reply to your questions in --well, I was about to write something grandiloquent about "in the order of their importance," but that is beyond my garrulous nature. I leave the most important to last, let us say.
 
First, it looks like we will be a houseful for some time. As might have been expected, the Admiralty's decision to build some of the later freighter-aircraft ships as "assault carriers"has evolved in the typical way from the stage at which we cared when naval architects talked about ship stability to the point at which the specialisms have had each their say. Now there are vast amounts of new equipment to be procured and installed, and the vessels are expected to float vaguely upright, and so your eldest has been cut new orders that will keep him on the "West Coast Shuffle" at least through the New Year. At least I can look forward to sharing a berth on the Seattle and Los Angeles trains!
 
Second, the Santa Clara estate is surprisingly little touched by the ravages of war and old age. There is even a  boy's crashing tread shivering the old timbers. Although your youngest is, of course, rather older than when we left for Greenwich! The western verandah has come out to make way for an outdoor carport, a long overdue "improvement" brought on by your son's attempts on an invalid Lincoln that he inherited from a friend of mine, a minor movie star gone to war. (I draw a curtain over the trip up from Los Angeles, whose details would hasten your graying.)
 
Once again I salute my wisdom of four years ago in taking the master suite instead of my old bedroom. Not only does it seem so much smaller now, but little could I imagine in 1939 that we would end up hiring out the cabin to no less than three dockyard workers' families! You can imagine the bedlam in the back yard. The long and the short of it is that the outdoor kitchen is running by shifts and the ranch hands take their meals on the back verandah. Michael and Joan have elected for the back bedroom, keeping the hands alittle quieter knowing that their boss is overhead and that he speaks Spanish. Joan by the way, is seeing to her mother and the house in Pasadena, where they are to retire to be closer to their grandchildren. 
 
Of Shiwa Ta-Wan you will have heard from your wife and daughter, and I say no more of the ruinous old pile overlooking us. Your son, and daughter-out-of-law will be staying there. This rather avoided a bit of a scrape for we three bachelors, who received many a stern look on "Mrs. J. C.'s" (if I remember my coy little code from 1939, she was "Miss G. C." then). She seems to have been shocked as much by the amount of food lying around as by the mess. She also took a dim view of the effort put in by the local girl who is acting as our after-school housekeeper. What can I say? Good domestic help is impossible to find, and she is well-mannered and attractive, in that  blonde Californian way. "Mrs. J. C."  has taken it upon herself to organise Grandfather's papers. Thank God. I was not looking forward to trying to find a lawyer in San Francisco who could be trained to read the oldHakka pirate writing! (Not to mention that he would then be equipped to read this correspondence.) 
 
This brings me to two final and more sensitive matters. First, Grandfather was apparently roused to a rare moment of coherence upon hearing your letter read. (Congratulations on receiving the RAF "contract" by the way!) Bill and David were summoned up to the big house to give a seminar. Grandfather had lapsed by the time they arrived, of course. Fortunately, they are well-used to their patron's eccentricities, and took in stride receiving instructions from his "translator." It does not hurt that she was looking very fetching indeed in a beige linen dress! They recommended --but enough of that for now.
 
Second, or, as I think in this rambling pile of digressions I have quite lost the thread, most importantly, there are the Earl's rather pointed questions about my dissent from our cousin-in-law's business plans. I understand his anxiety. As much as you have disabused him about "H. C.'s" legendary (alleged) business genius, he still speaks very much the received West Coast wisdom. Given our inherited real estate profile, the future of a very large share of the family's fortune is  linked to the prosperity of the Pacific Slope. So why do I dissent? 
 
Ordinarily, I would give my answer in the financial newsletter appended. However, I did not feel comfortable rendering Bill and David's recommendations even in Hakka characters, so have hauled out the family one-time pad, and given that I was transcribing anyway, this month's newsletter brings England up-to-date on the sordid side of our real estate business. That being said, just because I was "feeling like" transcribing does not mean that I was feeling like waxing eloquent, so I have appended my argument with "H.C" to the end of my news roundup. Knowing my tendency to wax on, I take the liberty of bolding those bits of news and comment of special relevance.

 

 

Flight, 4 November 1943
 
Leader: Wingate’s force in Burma was very romantic, but the point was the striking example of modern science and progress, since transport aircraft can supply troops now.

 

Contrasts+of+1943.jpg
 
“War in the Air”
 
German bombers attacking Russian rail-, and bridgeheads in strengths of 50 or more, trying to hold up Russian advance. Our correspondent is not fooled by Middle East Command’s attempt to paper over the fiasco in the Dodecanese, of which I shall say no more. Unlike the press.
 
“The Rotol AGP,” which is a petrol generator set for auxiliary power generation aboard aircraft. My eyes pop at hearing 3,750rpm, 37 kW output. This is most impressive detailed mechanical engineering, and it uses a sleeve valve, perhaps the first time I have heard of this technology being put to meaningful work. One wonders why an aeroplane would need 37kW.
 
“Drop Tanks;” Carefully faired metal, paper and wood tanks extend fighter ranges. A picture of a Lockheed Lightning with two 150 gallon drop tanks is captioned with the information that an additional 300 gallons “approximately doubles” its range. Err. Assuming three hours in the air (at a cruising speed of over 300 mph, that is a lot of range!), the engines absorb 50 gallons/hour. The author adds that with drop tanks, the Spitfires of the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit have flown over Koenigsberg, while another made a ferry trip to Tunis to photograph Italian targets, while Mosquitoes have flown from Scotland to Russia and then back between lunch and “early evening.” Apparently, the Russians, letting Allied solidarity take precedence over class solidarity, do not serve PRU pilots dinner.
 
The Economist,  6 November 1943
 
Leaders
 
 “The Moscow Conference” happened.
 
“Restitution:” We cannot do without some war reparations, but they will be in the form of German goods and services to Russia, not money.
 
“The North East Coast:” Remember the tragedy of unemployment in Sunderland, Jarrow, Bishop Auckland and Durham? It’s hard to think back that far, but what if it happens again? Things should be done. Agricultural  and mining machinery? Also, and perhaps you will point this out for me to the Earl, “Electrical engineering, which is flourishing on Tyneside, could be expanded.” More housing is the greatest need.
 
Notes of the Week

 

Pay-as-you-earn income tax is here. The paper is pleased. “The Secretary and the Viceroy.” The White Paper on the famine previewed in Parliament by Amery, the SoS India to the effect that the famine is due to the incompetence of the government of Bengal. The paper is not pleased. Food must be found for India. Latins are excitable. Some in Labour think that coal must be nationalised to secure the supply for the winter. As for the miners, they want a 6 pound/week minimum wage (notice that Mr. Lewis has won an increase of $1.50/day), the release of miners from the Forces, and the abolition of dual control. Meanwhile, the threat of a winter coal shortage is being met by “expedients.” Output will be 5% lower than last year, 190 million tons vice 200. At best it will be an uncomfortable winter. At worst, if the Coal Board in Washington was correct in warning that the coal needs of the Mediterranean cannot be met from American supply, it will be more serious than that.
 
 
“Strikes and Arbitration:” The London dockers’ strike, which lasted a week, was over the pay of danger money for handling some classes of goods. How circumspect in this month of official commitment to the Second Front. Are munitions meant? The London docks will be loading a very great deal of it, I imagine. In the West of Scotland engineering industry, it was over “rate for the job” for women (allegedly) hired to do men’s work.
 
“Sugar and Jam:” From the next ration period, the two coupons will be interchangeable with the thought that sugar will be favoured in the summer to promote preservation, and fruit in the winter, to make allow people to eat more jam. Remember turnip jam?

 

 
“The Billion:” This week for the first time, notes in circulation exceed 1000 million, an American billion. It’s a milestone. The paper will use the American version of "billion" from now on.
 
American Survey

 

The GOP is ahead in all local elections. Mr. Dewey is now well positioned for "other things." “Coal Must be Mined;” a temporary solution to the strikes has been found, with a compromise wage increase of $1.50/day and temporary Government control of the mines; but some abatement in the cost of living is needed if there is to be wage stabilisation. 
 
“The Civilian Slice:” Is to be increased. “Early in October, the President of the Society of Tool Engineers revealed that many shell factories have been ordered to return to civilian production.” Production of trucks, tank trucks and repair parts has been stepped up, and the Atlantic coast petrol ration increased. Quotas on butter and cocoa have been increased, and coffee has come off the ration. Just in time to save the war effort! The first signs of let-up in the meat shortage have been met by requests from the packers to increase the ration, good news for readers of Aviation, some of whom, by which I mean, "me," are getting a little tired of relentless salivation over vanished beefsteak. Do Americans know how to cook anything else? Some parts of the war production effort, notably munitions, are said to have overrun the their target. Yes, I remember them digging up 1913 quotes to that effect in 1915.
 
 
“The Food Position:" The current $800 million price support programme could be usefully increased next year by Congress, the President suggests, and Readers’ Digest recently published an article by Louis Bromfield with the ‘haunting’ title, “We Aren’t Going to Have Enough to Eat.” This is not true, the paper says. Food production has risen steadily, from a basis of 100 in 1936 to 126 in 1942 and 132 in 1943, with hopefully a still larger increase next year as 380 million acres are ploughed vice 364 this year. It is, however, true that food consumption has fallen 5% below the fat year of 1941, and with Service men eating more, and food aid exports, there is a sense of shortage. The farm lobby’s campaign against subsidies, controls and food aid export is pernicious and ought not be indulged.
 
 Senator Wheeler’s bill for the drafting of fathers has been delayed 90 days to allow all the single men to be taken. The paper decries the Senator’s unsavoury accusation that Government work is a refuge for draft dodgers is indignantly decried. The President presents a bill to provide for the educational needs of returning veterans. Small saver participation inthe Third War Loan drive has proven disappointing, with only $2 billion of $17billion of bonds in the E and F series designed to appeal to them taken up.
 
 
Germany at War

 

 “Air-War Economy” more than half of Germany’s big towns have been bombed in 1942 and 1943. A very speculative estimate of a million killed and missing and 6 million evacuated comes from a neutral source. The paper is cautiously optimistic about the impact on German war production.
 
Business Notes
 
 
Equities down for the first time since early 1942; ‘rally in rails’; Australia repays its sterling debt; there has been excess profits and waste in the munitions industry. Is there to be cooperation or competition in international rubber? Will the excess profits tax finance reconstruction? Durham coal production has failed to meet its targets in every week this year and output per man-shift has declined from 22.82 cwts to 19.21. The men are older and more  tired, and the strain of the war is beginning to tell. There is a shortage of young men, and now they are being “directed” into the mines at the rate of 150/week. Housing in miners’ villages is inadequate for this influx, and many “necessitous” and marginal mines are being worked. Voluntary absenteeism is lowest in the country at below 2.5%, but involuntary has ballooned to over 7%. 
 
Flight, 11 November 1943
 
Leader: “Administrative Innovation.” The Air Ministry pretends that it is of no great account that two observer officers have been advanced to the command of bomber squadrons. But how unthinkable this would have been in the last war! Or recall how “some RAF circles” reacted to the Admiralty’s 1937 announcement that observers were eligible for the command of flights or squadrons, and that in multi-seat aircraft the senior officer was in command of the aircraft.
 
“War in the Air” Pays tribute to the Pathfinders, who blazed the trail for the recent successful raid on Dusseldorf. Which is to say, we now admit that there are Pathfinders. See below.
 
Here and There 
 
A two-speed, two-stage Merlin has been in quantity production at Packard Motors and is being installed in new production P-51s being built in Burbank and Texas.
Articles
 
 Frank Murphy, “Victory Through Air Power: Mastery of the Air by 'Air Battleships:' Jet Propulsion Favoured: Some Thoughts Evoked by the Film.” This appears to be the title of the piece, which is a reflection on Mr. Disney's recent film version of Seversky’s Victory Through Air Power. Mr. Murphy's thoughts are as unimpressive as title and author's fame suggests, but "jet propulsion" pricked up my ears. Again, see below.
 
“Hercules Progress:” I might be skeptical about the practical value of the sleeve valve, but there is no doubt that Bristol has put a great deal of work into its potential for making the action of an internal combustion engine even more head-scratchingly complex.   

IMG_0132+(2).JPG
 
“Aircraft Types: Invader (A-26). The paper really is shameless in borrowing material fromAviation.
 
“The Bf109G:” This is news, at least somewhat. Apparently the first examples were recovered in Tunis. The salient point is that Daimler-Benz has a new engine, the DB605, which gives 1350hp for takeoff vice the old DB601’s 1200. This strikes me as a rather small increment after the boggling increase from the c. 550hp of a decade ago!
 
“Behind the Lines” reports that the Germans are exploring a ‘sonic altimeter” based on the depth locator principle. Which sounds preposterous. Ha! "Sounds." 
 
“Blazing the Trail:” Air CommodoreD. C. T. Bennett, CBE, DSO, is now noticed as having been wearing the Pathfinder Force Badge in a June 17th visit to a Bomber Command station in Yorkshire. Air Commodore Bennett was born the youngest son of a grazier in Toowoomba, Australia and is 33. I am feeling old, and inadequate. Again, it is official. There is Pathfinder Force.
 
Ad: “Planning for Power.” I shan’t include the uninspiring artwork, I only draw your attention to the fact that some flea-bitten firm called “Herbert Terry and Sons” is representing its research office as an empyrean realm of men in white laboratory coats and benches in the pages of Flight. Bristol may talk of tax breaks for research, or Hiduminium. That I can take in stride. When a spring maker is on about its research efforts,"research and development" is officially a "fad."
 
Flight’s publishing office advertises the availability of a second edition of G. Geoffrey SmithGas Turbines and Jet Propulsion for Aircraft. This has been advertised in Flight for some weeks now. Giving authorial creditor to the line editor rather strongly suggests that the actual prose originates in a Government shop. Given that we are to hear nothing of "jets" officially, I imagine that I have stumbled across some vast state secret, and I hope that the Gestapo's foreign press section is particularly dense.
 
The Economist, 13 November 1943
 
Leaders
 
“Unscrambling Politics;” Mr. Churchill has given a masterful speech that is the preview of the next King’s Speech, probably the last before Germany is beaten and quite possibly the last before a general election. This seems hopeful.
 
“The American Temper:" The Moscow Agreement has American internationalists in full flood; but don’t count the isolationists out, either! On the one hand this, on the other that, Mr. Wilkie this, American anti-English sentiment that.
 
 
Notes of the Week
 
“Three Voices;” Stalin, Hitler and Churchill have all given big speeches this week. They mirror the war in their way, says the paper. “Russia, triumphant, warlike, national but Socialist still; Germany in retreat, gloomy, and mystically frenzied; Britain resolved, confident, and half aware of the morning after victory, now assured.”
 
“The Air Front;” Stalin said nice things about the bombers. Churchill laid stress on its effects. And Air Marshal Harris gave a talk.
 
“Climax in the East,” the fall of Kiev.

“Reciprocal Aid;” the President recently said that Lend-Lease makes up 12% of the American war effort, and British reciprocal aid 10% of its. Well, a few numbers shall certainly lance all inter-Allied acrimony!
 
“Domestic Service in Hospitals” the campaign to recruit nurses is ongoing, and the shortage is made worse by the need to do non-nursing duties. More ‘domestic staff’ is needed. Also, who is to fetch my coffee? (For I am Californian, now.)

 
 
“Rewards for Service” given the predicted shortage of teachers, might not service personnel be invited to train for it? And shouldn't we try paying them? A new compensation scheme is needed.
 
American Survey
 
“Thunder of a Distant Boom” is another boom in agriculture in its incipient stages, asks Our Correspondent in Iowa? It could be! Booms are bad, as they threaten ownership by the men who work the farms. Farmland price appreciates. Speculators and rich people somehow intrude themselves between  farmers who sell to relatives.  “Thousands of Iowa farmers sold out at boom prices last time . . . and retired to live in southern California on their incomes from mortgages, even though it made hard the lot of the next generation of farmers, thus burdened with the debt for grossly overcapitalised farms.” But wait. The "men who work the farms" pay a mortgage that by itself supports their parents in retirement? That is quite a farm! And does the "boom" not meant that they will now be able to sell their farms at 'inflated' prices and retire to the palm trees in their turn? Our Iowa Correspondent seems a bit wet to me.

 

IMG_0077.JPG
 
“The Omens for 1944:” The GOP sweep was even more complete than first thought. The Republicans are convinced that this is predictive. Wilkie says that the country is tired of the Administration. The GOP now controls the majority of state governorships, with all the rewards that will bring them. The surrender to Mr. Lewis will reward Republican challengers in farm states. The Economist certainly gives Wilkie a great deal of press.
 
“The High Price of Coal” To get the miners back to work, the reward was $1.50/day. The concession that lunches will be cut to 15 minutes, with the miners paid at time-and-a-half for the quarter hour, is but a fig leaf. The Administration’s failure to sustain the War Labour Board is folly, and the way is open for a CIO-led assault on the wage structure, starting with the steel industry.
 
“Lend Lease Debt” The Truman Committee turns its attention to lend lease. More inter-Allied trouble, in particular over rubber? Or is the committee to be moderate and sane?
 
“Eire’s Wheat Supplies” are threatened in spite of an increase in ploughed acreage. A guaranteed and increased price for wheat will promote its growing. Yes, we have seenthis play before. Government's view of what counts as an adequate price of wheat (or, in Bengal, rice) so rarely coincides with the farmer's.
 
Business Notes
 
.. . Of which I note only “Fruit Production.” The Ministry is stepping in, because too much orchard land has been lost. Although the details suggest that in practice more will be lost. But ministry direction means  science! Unproductive orchard land is to be grubbed, and all will be for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Turnip jam. The mouth fails to water.
 
 
Flight, 18 November 1943
 
Ad: Republic: “Our Backyard is the Stratosphere.” The P-47 operates above 40,000 feet. Reggie, my 17-year-old day scholar litters the house with "pulps" dedicated to daring far future adventures in the blackness of space. But we are already halfway there!

 

Amazing_Stories,_April_1926._Volume_1,_N
 
Leader: “Crippling Japan:” while the Japanese cope with MacArthur’s attacks on Rabaul, rushing aircraft and cruisers there, and cripples back, the Americans have commenced work on two35,000 ton aircraft carriers, with another to follow next year. “And the Americans build fast.” Well. Remember the last intended 35,000 ton capital ship laid down the midst of a war and how  that turned out?
 
“War in the Air” Allied fighters and light bombers conducted 500 daylight sorties on a recent day over Northwest Europe on a recent day without seeing a German fighter. The Germans are conserving their forces against heavy bomber raids and the coming invasion. As to whether the sweeps are worth interception, I can only notice (yet another) picture of a “cannon attack on a railway engine in Belgium.” 
 
The recent attack on Wake involved the largest concentration of aircraft carriers ever assembled, the United States Secretary of the Navy reported, and give the lie to the idea that carriers must operate out of range of land bases. This inter alia of a notice that the U-boat war will be taken over by land-based Navy squadrons, which I read as mainly salient for confirming that United States naval aviators will have access to squadron command berths. Worth knowing for the youngest's sake, if his ambitions remain firm.
 
 As to the mighty concentration, I note that United States Navy appropriations are not really secret. Three fleet carriers survived the first year of the war, Ranger because she is not deemed suitable for Pacific operations. The Naval Expansion Act of 17 May 1938 authorised two new aircraft carriers, with a third appended later, and the July 1940  Two-Ocean Navy Act ultimately authorised ten more to the same design and 8 to be converted from 10,000 ton cruiser hulls under construction. While I suppose that an East Coast miracle (I can tell you that no miracle workers stalk the shipyards of this coas) might have rushed the Two-Ocean Navy order into service, I think it more likely that it is the three Naval Expansion carriers and some or other of the light carriers, with perhaps some glorified freighters. In which case, while I congratulate their courage in steaming into harm’s way, I suggest doing so with a weather eye to just how many land airfields they might choose to tangle with. 
 
 
“Here and There” notes the American announcement that deliveries exceeded 8000 aircraft last month, and that, with Allied totals added, makes the United Nations 3-1 winners on the production front. 
 
Lord Brabazon promises that the British aviation industry has nothing to fear from American production after the war. This seems optimistic to me. There is a reason that the American industry has flocked to Los Angeles, and it is much the same reason that the film industry flocks to Hollywood, with hardly any time to even come up to San Francisco and “make time with our girls,” as your son puts it. “And him a married man!”
 
Also ‘Here and There’ is news that Sir George Thomson, FRS, has been appointed chief scientific advisor to the Air Ministry. It is noted that “he will work in consultation with Sir Robert Watson-Watt, the RDF maven. Excuse me? How did an atomic scientist pip W-W out of the post?  One assumes that it is a matter of being his (grand)father’s son.
 
“Luftwaffe’s ‘Most Surprising Discovery,’” speaking of carriers of great names, Carl Zeppelin writes that German  investigators have discovered that only the lead American bombers carry their famed bombsight, and that the bomb load of Fortress-type bombers is slight, “as nearly a third of their weight-carrying capacity is used in armour,” which I assume is some winsome rendering out of the German of “arms and armour.” 

 

IMG_0105.JPG
 
Behind the Lines
 
Notices that the Rumanians have announced a parachute corps. Candidates must be physically fit, of Rumanian “ethnical origin,” and, if possible, proficient in at least one foreign language. As someone of pure and unblemished English origin myself, I parse this as “Handsome, swell, and a good liar.” Look for the next generation of Rumanian leaders to be former paratroopers, in short. The first German pictures of the “havoc caused by theattack of Lancasters on the Mohne and Eder dams on May 17th” is included. Finland is starting a new lubricants industry to make industrial grease out of animal fats due to the curtailment of German deliveries. Due to acute shortage of housing, the Reichs Commissioner for Housing declares 17, including Berlin and Vienna, “closed,” preventing relocation there.
 
 
The Economist, 20 November 1943.
 
Leaders
“Lord Woolton’s Task;” Lord Woolton’s appointment to the Cabinet as Minister for Reconstruction is a positive move. His record as Ministry of Food follows him, and a more difficult task lies ahead!

 
Notes of the Week
 
“Labour and the Nation” Labour is trying to set up its position for the eventual general election. French and Italians continue to be excitable Latins.“Retreat and Counter-Stroke” the battle around Kiev is ongoing, with a German counter-attack perhaps even aiming at retaking Kiev. God, I hope not.
 
American Survey
 
“The South and the World” The South is isolationist. Before 1941, it led the states in percentage of volunteers. Now it does not, despite the South's natural martial valour. Perhaps we might question our premise? But no. The South has views on tariffs. And Mr. Wallace. The South is moving right. The country is moving to the right. The President is moving to the right….
 
American Notes
 
“Coal and the Little Steel Formula” The Administration’s position is that the wage reward was within the terms of the “little steel formula,” because all of the increase in pay is compensated by increased production. The paper is not convinced; and now the railway operators’ union has “revolted” and asked Congress to overrule the Stabilisation Director’s ruling that they can’t have more money.
 
“A Drop in the Bucket” is an increase of $2 billion on the revenue side of the new budget. There are increases in excess profits tax, effective income tax rates, and in excise and some other special taxes, but the paper scowls over Congress's unwillingness to tax in proportion to the nation's need.
 
“Hey Diddle Dilling,” Mrs. Elizabeth Dilling has crashed, Anti-Saloon League style, a Chicago talk on Lend-Lease given by assorted usual suspects of the British Commission and the paper. (One does not have to agree with Mrs. Dilling to take her point, here.) The Sun blames the Tribune for fostering a “Black Network” of crypto-fascists. It sounds like Chicago has a vigorous press rivalry to which the paper pays far too much attention.
 
Gogo and Gopo” Mr. Baruch has been put in as head of a new unit of the Office of War Mobilisation which is in charge of “war and  postwar problems of adjustment.” That is, of disposing of Government-owned war plant., whether Government Owned and Government Operated or Government Owned and Privately Operated. After WWI, much was sold at fire sale prices and scrapped with enormous waste. The Chamber of Commerce recommends that this experience not be  repeated.
 
The World Overseas
 
“Roumanian Anxieties:” are understandable given that Kiev is only 150 miles from the Bessasrabian frontier,  “From Kherson to Odessa it is 100 miles, and to the mouth of the Danube 250 miles," but a good harvest has relieved some pressure on the government. 
 
Letter to the Editor: “Marine Insurance;” Basically an answer to what all we shipowners have been hearing about windfall profits from casualty insurance.
 
 
The Business World

 

“the Durham Coalfield” with 100,000 workers, the field has produced 1/7th of Britain’s needs. The decline has already been noted elsewhere. I keep coming back to this, because apparently there is a real possibility that the poor will freeze this winter. It seems distant here, save when caught in a Bay fog, but it is rather alarming nonetheless.
 
Business Notes
 
Mr.Montagu Norman is to be recommended for election as Governor of the Bank of England this year, as he has been since 1919. “Coal Output” has increased by 88,600 tons for the last four week period, but is still 216,000 tons under the weekly average of this time last year.
 
“Larger Clothing Sales” follow the release of more clothing ration coupons, remarkably enough.
“Wages in the Cotton Industry” in more amazing news, there is upward pressure on wages.
“Home Flax” this encouragement scheme has not gone well/
 
Flight, 25 November 1943
 
Leader: “Thorny Questions:” Are we to have commercial flying boats or not? (There is an article later. “Gigantic flying boats are structurally efficient,” I say. “Efficient!” The last man to make a house with a stone axe must have felt much the same way as he vainly made his arguments. ) “The Fall of Leros:" I break my embargo because the paper asks where might be the carriers which took part in the Salerno landing? “They may be reserved for another landing behind Kesselring’s lines.” Secrecy! Is another glorious victory on order? And by that I mean, will Eighth Army somehow be able to break free of its trenches and advance to the relief of the beachhead again? 
 
War in the Air
 
Bombing of the mountain routes into Italy, with many striking pictures of martial supplies, including whole aeroplanes, shattered and scattered about ruined trains.
 
“Gatwick Airport” is being built.
 
Here and There reports that Mr. W. H. Eisenman, national secretary of the American Society of Metals, is reported to have told a luncheon in Winnipeg that “After the war, people will buy helicopters for $1500, learn to fly them in five to ten minutes, and be home for dinner at the rate of 130 mph.” “What a swell lunch that must have been."
 
 
Behind the Lines reports that the Japanese have begun parachute instruction at the kindergarten level.  The Japanese are an odd people. On a more serious note, the Romanian Ministry of Air declares the confiscation of all stocks of butyric acid and butyl acetate. Householders must be queuing up now to render theirs to the Ministry.
“Fluid Drive:” modern aircraft hydraulic systems are very complex, and in many remarkable ways quite similar to electrical systems. I imagine that a great deal of math is involved.
 
Ad: mistreating an SKF roller bearing is much like smoking in a powder store. For some reason. Ad: The Timken Tapered Bearing is one of many roller bearings that come in many highly machined and varied forms. Cf. "Schweinfurt."
 
The Economist, 27 November 1943
 
Leaders
 
“Great Illusions” Cordell Hull says that the UN will be kind of like the League of Nations. The paper thinks that collective security under such a scheme is an illusion. 
 
Notes of the Week
 
“State Assets” HMG has accumulated lots of stuff, and net, it is easier to say that the war has led to a distortion of the nation’s domestic capital than a decline. Overseas is another matter. See my precis of Fortune, below.
 
“The Future of Exports” America needs to import more stuff.
 
“World Needs” More productivity per unit labour, above all so that people can pay for, and consume more. See Mr. McGraw, below.
 
“Slow Motion in the East” the German counterattack continues.
 

“The Gilbert Islands:" Admiral Nimitz announces the fall of the islands after a short and remarkably successful American combined operation. The paper points to a threat to the Caroline and Marshall Islands and to Nauru as well as to Truk, and notes Radio Tokyo discussing nervously the upcoming “battle of fleets.” The paper sees a pre-emptive spiking of the guns of the Pacific Firsters complaining about the diversion of American efforts to Europe. Can we also look forward to a "decisive fleet battle" involving aircraft carriers to test the controversy between Mahan and Richmond?
 
 
American Survey
 
“War Plans in the Far West:" With the index of production at 200% of the 1935—39 average, the development of American war production is a  matter of pride. But what happens during readjustment? Will communities have to give up their war plants? Provo, Utah does not want to give up its steel plant, which cost $200 million in public money. Dreams of post-war industrial development in the West face obstacles, the paper admits, but the thought is that it is only political folderol holds them back. 
 
The paper adds that there is the dream of an unleashed torrent of consumer demand.Individual holdings in saving banks have now reached $31 billion, with another $19.5 billion in war bonds. The pent-up demand for consumer goods might support plants in areas where they are right now marginal.
 
American Notes
 
“Favourite Sons” A tortuous tour through the likely course of the GOP primaries end with the observation that it will be Dewey, of course.
 
“Freedom to be Fascist:" it would do the paper good to  just not read the Chicago press. Good God. General MacArthur really is the best that the conservative wing of the GOP can field.
 
“Inflation Front:” The anti-subsidy bloc in Congress cavalierly votes to end this main bulwark against inflation by 278-118. This comes up against Presidential veto, at which point the question is whether the bloc can find a two-thirds majority. “As Raymond Cooper points out, the fight against subsidies is really a fight against price control as a whole." Translation: Congress will make a great show of voting against subsidies for the sake of the rubes, and slink away when there is a serious question of putting more pressure on the feeble anti-inflationary barriers is felt. 
 
The Paper tries to scare us (all numbers in American billions):
 
 
Second Quarter
 
 
1942
1943
Total Income
27.4
34.5
Total Personal Taxes
1.5
3.5
Investment
19.8
22.3
Total Disposal
25.7
31.9
Quarterly Addition to Inflationary Pressure
1.7
2.6
 
"Quarterly Addition to Inflationary Pressure" is the paper's coy way of saying that there is money burning holes in American pockets. Which, I have to admit, is true. This American Christmas is going to be something!

  .

But with two pregnancies well-advanced in the back yard, I have to wonder just how much more the old town will be painted, at least from these quarters, next year.

 

 
The Business World
 
“The Dollar Problem –I” the high value of the dollar reflects the steady influx of foreign-owned investment into the United States, as shown by the Department of Commerce’s enormous new study. Gold kept flowing into the States because it didn’t want to stay in Europe, and this is more a cause of the trade imbalance in the 30s than American tariffs, perhaps. Perhaps.
 
Business Notes
 
“Coal Consumption” these late November days are foggy and damp, and it is not surprising that people are using more fuel. Compared with the corresponding period in 1942, 13% more gas, 12% more electricity. The Minister of Fuel pleads for conservation. Will fuel be rationed this winter?
 
“EMI Reserves” Close reading of the new format that Electrical and Musical Industries has chosen for its financials suggests that there is a healthy profit margin for their products, one that will continue through the postwar period of eager replacement. 

“Light Metals” In his monthly munitions production report for July, Donald Nelson of the US War Production Board state that the production problem for magnesium and aluminum has been overcome. Mg production is at 35 million lb/mo compared with 500,000 before the war, while annual production of Al is at 1.7m tons, with production of both set to further increase. 
 
And now I turn to the monthlies.
 
Aviation, November 1943
 
Front cover: A Pratt & up to ten tons each." I am reminded of your complaints about American bragging, Reggie. Although, of course, the B-24 does carry 10 tons, all disposable lift taken together. Just not 10 tons of bombs, unlike the Halifaxes and, now, Lancasters to which your unit attends. Will the "Mossies" be offended if I do not mention them? Wood they? I am sorry. I shall stop now. 

IMG_0118.JPG
Whitney ad celebrates the B-24. “From July 1 to October 1, 1940, the enemy dropped 18,900 tons of bombs on England. In July 1943 alone, allied bombers dropped 26,000 tons on Germany. Consolidated B-24 Liberators, carrying
 
Line editorial: James H. McGraw II asks: “Free Enterprise: How Does it Work?” Which is not a rhetorical question addressed to a particularly starry-eyed Fabian, but rather an opportunity for Mr. McGraw to explain that while America was founded by daring entrrepeneurs on the basis of  freedom, private property and progress. ("The Second," mind you.) But here he takes an unexpected turn. Waste and unemployment are sobering proof that our economic mechanism is still far from perfect. 
 
Now, on to substance: Our production per man hour has been increasing at the rate of 2.5% per year. Improved machines and greater efficiency have more than tripled output per hour of work since 1900. Looking to the future, this annual rise indicates that our production per hour of work will double in the course of he next 25 to 30 years. This means that we can have twice our present volume of goods and services per capita or an equivalent of more production and more leisure. But only with free enterprise. 
 
In a compelling demonstration of efficiency of free market capitalists, the full editorial is repeated on the next page.
 
Over to “America at War: Aviation’s War Communique No.23.”
 
 
We head off this month’s communique with a complaint about modification centres. “Difference between the totals of delivered planes since the first American models, and the total now in use on all fronts, is amazingly high.” And I quote. …"Army and Navy are begging for more planes, faster. It is doubtful they will have enough even on Hitler’s judgment day.. . . “ More must be done to get production up to the 10,000/month target. “The Army called a conference in Washington of war industry bosses, labor and the press. The Navy has just set in motion a new incentive program by which it will try to jack up the fighting spirit of management and workers on the home front. Behind closed doors, during the Army’s conference, war goods producers were told some very disturbing facts about our losses of materials and the punishment our soldiers are taking. The story of our airmen’s battles is notwhat it sounds like in the newspapers. The whole truth cannot be told becausethe facts would be useful to the enemy. . . . Other military observers from overseas say the Germans have a fighting chance of stopping the Allied bombing attack. . . . At home, the industry is at a production plateau of 7600/month. Manpower and design changes are the same old bottlenecks. Labor needs to be found in other sectors." America's war effort requires very choppy prose, too.
 
Lou Leavitt, “Let’s Be Calm about Helicopters.”
 
John Foster, Jr. (associate editor), “Design for Survival;” and Raymond L. Hoadley, “Cancellation Demands Action –And Quick.” Twin articles on the theme of how mismanaged contract cancellations spell D-o-o-o-m to the industry unless Congress Acts Quickly.
 
William J. Morrison (Chief Field Engineer, Simmonds Aerocessories), “Engine Control Achieves Simpler Piloting.” It does, you know.
 
E. C. Hartmann, “Prescriptions for Head Cracks on 24ST Rivets,” Rivets of this type are used for highly stressed parts because they are the strongest of commercial aluminum alloys, but they present special difficulties. Rivets of this type age-harden rapidly at room temperature and consequently become more difficult to drive as the interval of room temperature between heat treatment and use increases. Therefore, they should be either driven immediately after heat treatment or refrigerated. In spite of these best practices being normally employed, head cracks will often show up in rivets driven when too far age-hardened. Cracked rivets are often drilled out and replaced on detection during inspections. This is of dubious value. What is needed is a better standard for condemning rivets on head crack grounds. Our tests were limited to a single batch of commercial rivets and not all that comprehensive, but we conclude that head cracks are nothing to get too upset about. I

 

 
So, in sum, more head-cracked rivets should pass inspection. I was going to add a clipping here telling inspectors to stop rejecting Alclad sheets  for nicks, but I seem to have misplaced it, and so confidence in the squadrons soars!

 

More usefully, there are recommendations on reheat treatment. Factories must better organise workflows, and provide ample refrigeration space. We have an electric icebox now. It is quite nice, and our housekeeper frequently announcers her parents' intention of buying one after the war.

 
E. V. Gustavson, “Engineers Made to Order.” Vega has established special courses to adapt the inexperienced and unskilled to specific production jobs. In cooperation with California Institute of Technology, Warren G. Furry, Vega staff engineer, is giving a 52 week course on aircraft engineering fundamentals to forty engineering employees. All subject matter is “college level,” and includes mathematics, including calculus, (your eldest rolls his eyes at this), aerodynamics, and structures, plus shop work. All students attend classes at CIT for 9 weeks full time on payroll, alternating with 9 weeks in the shop. All candidates selected from applications were women, and were chosen for “personality, adaptability and leadership” as well as other qualifications. Of 130 initially successful applicants, 75 had college math through trig, “some two dozen” through calculus. Of the 20 initially selected, six had college degrees, 2 had 3 years of college, 3 2 years, four 1 year, while 4 had finished high school and 1 had 7(!) years at an art college. Age range was 18 to 49, 14 were single, 5 were married. The longest any had worked at Vega was 18 mos. It is broadly implied that laboratory and office employees were favoured over line workers.
 
Incidentally, this program follows on an earlier one that increased Vega’s engineering staff from 60 to 300 in a few short months by employing persons from other industries who had been trained as civil, mechanical and electrical engineers. One wonders what civil, mechanical, and electrical firms are doing for engineers.
 
“Side Slips” has a story about a pilot who self-administered first aid from his “Doc’s kit” while bailing out and on his survival dinghy, about a “hand written note” in a Washington elevator that said that the odor was from the elevator just being oiled, a relief on a day when temperature and humidity were both pushing 100. Which apparently means that Washington is a fetid swamp. A “route application to end all route applications” has been filed with the CAB that will allow the lucky recipient to fly from anywhere to anywhere in the country. That would be Cousin "H. C.," I imagine. Side Slip makes an extended joke about Globe Aircraft leasing the grounds of the Fort Worth Exhibition, and its relation to the steak that Side Slip no longer eats because of the meat shortage.
 
“Make Your Reservations Early,” United Air Lines has an incredibly complex and efficient system for dealing with reservation requests. They have “two-way telemeter” equipment, so that all the branch offices can communicate with each other simultaneously. There’s  a picture of a women putting a sheet of paper into a gigantic contraption that leaves me none the wiser of the details, which manage to make booking a seat on a plane seem complicated..
 
“Piloting Big Bombers is Big Business”. Nine weeks in cockpits, classes and mechanic’s overalls aren’t enough to make you a four-engine pilot. You need executive ability. A four-engine pilot is a business-man of the air! Someone protests too much.
 
Aviation News
 
From the front we have news that the Germans are losing more aircraft than they produce, and they are also getting more fighters up than ever. Salerno would not have been taken without planes.
 
“War Department Gives out Uncomfortable Facts,” is another summary of the big Army press conference. The manufacturers are sure that it is labor’s fault! “Manpower, Design Changes Slow Production, But Efficiency Pushes Plane Rate Near 8000.” So. Is the industry hoarding labour? Donald. W. Douglas points out that with a mere 4.4% increase in manpower, we are putting out 44% more aircraft over the first 7 months of the year. We’re not hoarding, says the industry. It only looks that way due to design modifications.
 
Blaine Stubblefield, Washington Windsock, reports that people are asking where the Navy liquid-cooled engine, promised months ago, might be. Never mind that one! There’s another one coming that is even better! The Maritime Commission is making auxiliary aircraft carriers because it has the berths. Boeing Vancouver is giving a retroactive pay increase of 6-7 cents/hour. In unrelated news, the company has found only 60 women to fill the 600 berth dorm it built in hopes of employing that many women. I have seen that dorm, which is at the Vancouver Airport, and and the sooner it is levelled to make way for something that people will live in, the better.
 
Aviation Manufacturing News: Interchangeability of parts still has a long way to go says SAE, on American aircraft, world’s best. I thought I’d throw that in, as it has gone unmentioned for pages on end. Douglas is hiring Chinese students who can’t speak English to work on the assembly lines, by using labor brokers in San Francisco. In Long Beach, it is putting high school students on the assembly lines. (They will attend class at the factory half days.) the Navy scheme for incentivising labor, alluded to above, involves tracking the serial numbers of aircraft involved in famous victories so that the people who made them can celebrate their work. I am not sure that this will actually prove much of an incentive.
 
Aviation Abroad: It is officially noted that British warplanes are cheaper than American. British aircraft production is going so high that they’re running out of test pilots!
 
Fortune, November 1943
 
 
“About Agriculture,” are farm prices reaching their peak, notwithstanding consumer fears of runaway inflation ahead? The author thinks that what is really happening is that people are buying tax writeoffs, both in terms of livestock and in land. That is bidding up prices, and, ironically, attempts to inflation hedge are driving inflation. Also, refrigeration will allow us to eat all sorts of exotic stuff, such as rijstaffel

 

Rijsttafel_Den_Haag_Javastraat.jpg Yeah, I don't think so. I suspect the next bit, about frozen, ready-to-eat dinners is a more prescient forecast of postwar American dining. What about the beef shortage? Currently, we have 38 million head. This is up from the 1930s, but in 1890 we had 45 million head to a population of 62 million. 38 million for a population of 133 million is a huge drop. Also down, lamb crop, mainly for lack of good shepherds.

 
Ad: “Gluing Wood with Radio Waves.” Radio waves excite vibrations in water molecules, producing heating that sets glue down in the middle of thick sheets of plywood.
 
Eliot Janeway, “Trials and Error: The West Looks West, and finds foreign policy no abstract subject.” Or proper capitalisation. There are two possible foreign policies in view from San Francisco, as the author writes "this 1 October, 1943." One is of an alliance with Britain, the other with "the progressive forces of Asia." T. V. Soong and Marshal Chiang count as progressives, Reggie! Dewey’s declaration for a British alliance hurt him out here in the West. Wilkie, on the other hand, is popular because WWII is thought of in the west as a Pacific war, thus a war of color, “Wilkie’s Negro policy hasn’t hurt him in spite of alarming growth of conditions that are making this area a new racial danger zone.” (That's code for eastern trash are flocking to the "the shipyards.")

 

 

 

People in the West, Janeway hastens to add, think of the Negroes as our own India, an obstacle in the way of prestige in Asia. In order for the Pacific century to be achieved, however, we need more than civil rights, in places far away from northern California. In fact, we need heavy industry out west.  Now that's quite a jump, and this is what I had in mind when I talked about the conventional wisdom out here. Janeway thinks California needs steel, aluminum, magnesium, alloys and double tracked transcontinental railways must be double-tracked. Finally, he concedes that there must be new housing.

 
The paper has sent a correspondent to Britain, who makes his first report: “Britain’s Balance Sheet: 1.” To create  siege economy, Britain has produced more, consumed less, sacrificed her domestic capital and devoured her assets abroad. Here is a fascinating counterblast to The Economist's stout denial that the war has cost Britain domestic investment.
 
The Cost of War to Britain (millions of pounds 1938 purchasing power)
Year
1938
1939
1941
1942
Government Expenditure
845
2660
3355
3545
Consumption
4035
3551
3408
3408
Maintenance and increase of domestic capital
762
395
220
232
Overseas disinvestment
55
658
638
485
GNP
5587
5948
6345
6700
 
In brief, in 1938, the gross national income was about $22 billion, of which the government spent $3.4. In the last year, of a gross national income of $27, the government spent 14. We note that all of this production has been done under the difficult conditions of blackout, bombing and manpower shortage. People talk about the production of American yards, but British yards are actually more efficient. La! 
 
The sacrifice has been made in areas like imports, in the cessation of housing development, “the backbone of the recovery in the 30s,” and pushing beyond allowable cut on timber lands to save on timber, while old iron mines are reactivated. Labour has increased its productivity, but also its working hours. Treasury control has been good, more of the war has been paid for with tax receipts than in the United States, although the nation will be left with a debt of, so far, $1450/head, compared with 1030 for the United States to this point. The question, motivated by the table above, is how Britian will cope with the huge capital investment deficit in everything besides manufacturing plant, and the loss of foreign revenues?
 
Sherry Mangan, “State of the Nation: Minority Report." I am informed that Mr. Mangan is another literary heavy hitter, a translator of no mean repute, a recent reverse emigre from Paris,  and a Trotskyite, whereas Janeway only flirted with regular communism back in the thirties. Fortune certainly commissions interesting people to write for it! Mangan thinks that since prices and taxes are  rising, the middle class is getting it in the neck. Labor has been spared by the boon of overtime. But with the no strike pledge holding back pay increases, there must come a time when purchasing power begins to decline. Meanwhile, constant efforts to introduce piece rates, disguised as “incentive pay,” disgust labor that is coming to believe that “inflation is doing fine for itself without any wage increases.” Labor militancy is on the rise, as the UAW convention shows, independent labor parties will soon revive and separate from the Democrats as people realise that the old American social contract (that although depressions follow booms, production rises ever higher and each boom is higher than the last) wfails. A total lack of faith in the future will lead the workers to the barricades!
 
 
“A Yaleman and a Communist:” Emerson Electrics has the best labor record in St. Louis even though its union leader is a  communist! It’s because Yale man Stuart Symington is a great manager, and the shop steward, notwithstanding being a communist, is a great labour organiser. Emerson, by the way, builds ball turrets for B-17s. 

 

 

So, now, as promised, my dissent from "H.C." The substance, of course, is that we have refused to invest in his Fontana steel plant, which Mr. Janeway thinks has bright prospects, and that we are only committing a fraction of our orchard land to his "$5000 homes for veterans" schemes.

 

Here are my concerns: the whole objection to investing in heavy steel vice electrical engineering is an old one. Surely the Earl does not want me to go over this again? But, of course, it is more complicated than that. "H.C." thinks that demand for domestic steel will continue high into the postwar era because American will take a share of the postwar shipping boom. There is absolutely no chance of that.

 

Now, I may be dyspeptic, as I am still tired from last week's whirlaround. Men my age should not be asked to make flying trips to the Aleutians, and even my disingenuous soul rebels at being tasked with laying off the loss of ten men to bad welding when the role of poor steel is obvious at a glance.

 

 

 

Yet even if the Richmond and Portland yards prove to have a postwar future, my objection to the Fontana plant remains the same. The steel industry is globally overcapacity already, and the West Coast lacks inland water transportation, without which it is handicapped on cost control.

 

The second concern is housing. Of course there will be a housing boom in the United States after the war. The extent of it will depend on whether the professional pessimists are right in deeming Amerca to be a "mature," low-growth nation, or not. I am personally inclined to the pessimistic side right now, although hearing that the Russians have defended Kiev, or that Berlin has been levelled, or even that the Second Front has gone off may well cure that. You see how I have shifted there? It is not the prospects of the American economy that are the cause of this pessimism. It is a contagion from the war news --or, more likely, this miasma of fatigue that settles over people too-old for the work that they are doing.

 

So let us set the crystal ball aside for the moment as clouded by too many fears and not enough hopes and ask ourselves what the boom will look like. Well, the minimum that we can say, with Our Iowa Correspondent, is that Americans look at houses as capital investments to fund their retirement. (I have even had a pretentious real estate hustler quote de Tocqueville to me on this theme!) The scale of the investment is in proportion to the income to be saved; and when coal miners are getting $1.50/day wage increases, a $5000 house is setting sights too low to be worthwhile.

 

Oh, sure, there will be those in the family way who urgently need a house in 1946, and there are those who say that all of those wage increases will be eaten up by inflation. To that I point to Mr. McGraw's figures about labour productivity gains. The money has to go somewhere, and as long as labour is short, we squires will have to earn our share. By, I suggest, holding land off the market, taking its pulse, and releasing it in small quantities to match demand.

 

Again, though, as in all my conversations, I circle back. Houses mean roads and sewers.  Roads and sewers mean low-grade steel --especially if America decides to build "autobahns" with "cloverleafs." Now, I grant that there will be American autobahns in some places, notably Los Angeles, and the Fontana plant is well situated to serve them. Yet remember that much of our real estate portfolio was built up in service of the old droving trails. The needs of sheep headed from "the Oregon country" to Chicago, or of tallow-and-hide on the hoof headed for old Monterey and the Bay are not the needs of the modern automobile commuter. Is America seriously to be expected to build "autobahns" all the way along the great old transcontinental trails?

 

Well, fine, then. We have made most of our real estate money with "H.C" from roadwork to this point. We can continue to do it on an increasing scale if this mad vision of a national autobahn network is ever more than a pipedream. The last thing we need to do is to rush it by flooding the Spokane market, say, with house lots now. Will Fontana provide the steel to make cloverleafs in Spokane? I doubt it.

 

Whereas the one thing that I am sure that Americans will buy in the postwar is musical entertainment. If you see my point.

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There are TWO classes of "Royal Sovereign" battleships in the Royal navy around the time of World War 1. One is the 15'' gunned dreadnaughts, the other is the survivors of a class of pre dreadnaught battleships; one of which was kept in commission, heeled to increase her gun range, and used as a compliment to the monitors that were bombarding the Germans on the coast of Belgium; I believe she was renamed "Redoubtable" when her original name was taken by one of the new class of battleship.

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The article on Wikipedia about the pre-dreadnaught Royal Sovereign class states that the ship that bombarded the Belgian coast was the Revenge.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Sovereign-class_battleship

 

The article mentions that the Revenge Class is sometimes referred to as Royal Sovereign class incorrectly.  Probably because of the reuse of names between the two classes.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge-class_battleship

 

Just my two cents worth.

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Postblogging Technology, December 19443: I'll Be Home For Christmas

 

 

 
IMG_0151+(2).JPG  

 

 

Happy Christmas from Santa Clara!

 

Rancho_Camulos.jpg I apologise for including snapshots of the neighbours, but the pictures that I include are a great deal easier to parse than the family writing!

 

My Dearest Reggie:

 

I know that it is my invariable practice to wrap up the family news with an overlong restatement of my investment strategy, buttressed with the last month's news in scientific progress ("research and development" as we are saying now) and such economic, military and political news as seems relevant. You will find, as far as precendent goes, that this is a somewhat truncated entry due to my having left my copies of Fortune, Aviation and the month's run of The Economist in a certain library just to our north in a state of high dudgeon a week ago, but there is more than enough material for the boring parts, as you will see.

 

As for habits, they are made to be broken. After a long and difficult month, I am finally in the Christmas spirit this holiday eve, and with a variegated feathered flock a-roast in the back under the supervision of your wife (Bill and David are most grateful for their Christmas gift), I shall endeavour to share the celebrations with you.

 

All of this was inspired in part by Mrs. J. C.'s blessed news, in part by potentially more dispiriting war news, which I think I will reserve a few weeks in the hopes that it will blow over. The long and the short of it is that we will have the Captain and Mrs. here with us on the West Coast for an indefinite extension, as the Engineer Vice-Admiral has conceived a lively concern about his newest pets that will only be assuaged by investigations on the ground. I am torn between rejoicing and trepidations, but I repeat myself, and I really should finish this letter. The indomitable mother-to-be has led the youngsters on a hike up the mountain. I have begged off with the excuse of fearing a recurrence of gout.

 

IMG_0150+(2).JPG

 

But it is only an excuse, as you will have realised by my mention of that certain library, it being you who forwarded the Earl's instructions to seek the Engineer's guidance concerning Cousin H. C.'s persistent requests for investment in his steel plant. See how I nickname him so respectfully? You, who knows me so well, will seek out the irony and realise supsect that I imply that this honour is as empty as every other "achievement" of the life of his (real) father's son.

 

The Earl, of course, thinks that the son of the man whose oh-so-successful American life we helped launch will owe us dispassionate advice. I dissent on two grounds. First, gratitude is an odd thing, and in the Engineer's father's heart, I suspect that events in Batavia came long ago to be seen not as Great-Great-Grandfather sweeping a hanging crime under the rug, but rather as an excuse for Great-Grandfather's imposture: that the Engineer has aligned himself with our cousins across the divide of 1823.

 

So much for the incestuous concerns of our house, because, much more importantly, the Engineer is certainly bitter about this Administration, and dear Cousin H. C. owes virtually everything to it. This, at least, is my excuse for maintaining my side in our difficult interview, in which he did his best to encourage me to invest in the steel enterprise before dismissing me on the grounds that he was "busy/" With his memoirs, or with coupon clipping, or some other vital enterprise having to do with his legacy, I do not know. In any case, Wong Lee, whom I took as my driver on some mad impulse, had to lead me to the car by the shoulder, or I think that I should have burst back into the Engineer's study with some "wisdom of the staircase" that might have descended into fisticuffs.

 

In many ways, Wong Lee is a wiser man than I, hard as it is to tell when one's eyes go first to that kris scar. A more unlikely male nurse it is harder to imagine: but that is why Grandfather kept him around, I suspect, back when Grandfather was still making decisions. And his boy, who accompanied him, is smart as a whip, always with a "Number One Son" quip on his lips, as big as his father and as fair of face as his mother. (You remember Chang Wei, do you not? I believe that we had to make her a Peruvian to get her into the country. . . .)   I suspect that I am meant to conceive a desire to do a favour for the young man, which will be vouchsafed to me at the right moment. I shall not require much persuading.

 

Enough of this, then, especially as I owe you a month's worth of the "big" magazines yet. I shall even be able to cover the end of the month, in the unlikely event that major war news troubles the week between Christmas and New Years.

 

 

 

Flight, 2 December 1943
 
IMG_0138+(2).JPG
 
 
This splendidly modern building is the new “Shakespeare Memorial Theatre” in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Amongst aviation firms, not only Boulton & Paul, but apparently Parnall and Sons have reason to be proud. 
 
Leader: Roy Chadwick, Avro, postwar airliners will all be pressurised, but most will cruise at less than 200mph. “Flying wings” and jets are still ten years out, Chadwick says, but Frederick Handley-Page disagreed. Jet propulsion is closer, he pointed out. There was argument about Edward Warner’s recent Wright Memorial Lecture which suggested that the advantages of high flying are overrated. This will not be true with jets. If fuel-efficient compressors can be developed. Which Chardwick thinks they will be . . .  in 10 years.
 
War in the Air
The Battle of Berlin continues. Twelve thousand tons have been dropped so far this year. Berlin’s Gauleiter estimates that 8 to 10,000 have been killed. The paper splits the difference on the "morality question" between those who have suffered at German hands not having much sympathy; and those of a more sympathetic bent accepting the grim necessity. Pathfinders find their way to the target in spite of overcast by “some method.” A secret weapon, in other words. I suppose that I shall have to turn to the funny pages to discover radar and radio beacons. Or secret weapons are in the air, notably the ones that the Germans threaten to unleash on Britain. (A strategic bombardment rocket, it is supposed, and page over there is a surprisingly detailed drawing of a hypothetical rocket weapon presumably based, the text below suggests, on the basis of Fritz Opel’s “rocket-assisted cars," which, we are told, led to a rocket-powered aircraft experiment. Meanwhile, “U.S. Fighter-bombers” strike at air bases in Holland and northern France. As do Whirlwinds escorted by Spitfires, while “Mediterranean Command” attacked Toulon and Sofia, while RAF Wellingtons attacked Turin. In the Pacific, the attack on the Gilberts went unbelievably well.
 
Yes, Reggie, that is just what we are hearing down on the Bay. 
 
IMG_0152+(2).JPG
 
That's the brand new Lexington aircraft carrier, 27,000 tons on fire and steaming out-of-control within machine gun range of a fortunately not-machine-gun-equipped  atoll. That's my candid shot from a page of the After Action report, which is classified, but not not severely, since the Navy was shopping it around the West Coast yards. The Captain of the Lexington has blood in his eyes, on the grounds that the ship was only saved from the consequences of a single aerial torpedo hit by an improvised manual steering gear introduced into the system by his crew. I suspect that there is more to the story than that, but, in any case, if you are wondering what is taking your son up to Seattle over the next few weeks....
 
Well, actually, I do. It is hard to imagine Nimitz or King seeking out a British engineer's opinion, even one with experience of the analogous problems suffered by IllustriousI have warned your son that this is probably politics, and that he is being sent off to show someone up by being all plummy and British  --the path is still open to lay the blame off on poor Captain Stumpf!-- but he just smiled and told me that he had, after all, been educated by the Poor Clares. So was I, I said, and they never smoothed my rough edges. He answered that, after all, they had had him for an additional four years, to which I had no answer.
 
Here and There
 
Blue Star Lines is the latest shipping company with liner interests to change its corporate charter to authorise itself to run an airliner. It is quite the trend!
 
Articles: “Rocket Research.” British amateurs did experiments with rockets in the 1930s, and we can tell you about them. Unlike any work that might or might not have been done in any other countries for any other reasons! They can be automatically controlled with clockwork mechanisms!
 
The “Aircraft Types” series covers two Lockheed transports, the C-56 and C-57 covered by the Lockheed Lodestar nickname. Also, an Avro Lancaster transport variant, the York.
 
“Microgram Service: How Airgraph Letters are Handled” Using the new microprinter, great masses of documents are turned into miniatiurised pictures and sent by air mail. This is an ad for the Williamson Cameras’ micro-printer by the way. It’s even perfect for blueprints! Which is exactly what American machinists say when they see these things. Better than nothing, I suppose. 
 
IMG_0140.JPG
 
“Keeping Them Warm: Anti-Icing System Uses Engine Exhaust Heat.” The system installed on several Consolidated types is shown. The actual circulating fluid is atmospheric air and the amount of heating is automatically controlled, as are so many things these days.
 
“Native Weapon:” Australia’s new, indigenous fighter, the Boomerang, is too secret to be revealed in any detail, but here are pictures that make its secrets perfectly obvious!
 
“Russian Aircraft Materials:” a translation of a highly complimentary German report. The quality of Russian compressed-wood and phenol-formaldehyde glued plywoods is impressive and improving rapidly. I am sure that this is something that you are paying close attention to, Reggie, given your plywood interests in Port Alberni.
 
Letters
 
“Technical Training: Purely A Matter of Finance” “Thirty Year Old” writes to comment on the recent comments of Mr. Biles of Blackburn Aircraft, Ltd, to the effect that the industry will need many more theoretically-trained aeronautical engineers after the war. The writer points out that after the last war, the market was flooded with B.Scs who could not find work appropriate to their direct and indirect investment in their education. What father is going to finance this? If it is in the public or industry interest, the public or industry bloody well better finance it.
 
Time, 6 December 1943
 
 “Manpower: The Last Shortage.” The “manpower shortage” has actually been critical for some time, but trends are towards relief. The paper says, anyway. The all-time employment peak was actually hit last winter, and the trend has been downwards ever since. There are 2 million fewer non-farm workers now than when the “crisis” was discovered. The government and services have acted. Small weapons factories have been closed in the Mid-West, saving 30,000 jobs, while the navy pulled a major contract out of West Coast yards. Now Boeing has a surplus of labour. B-17 production is up 10%, all war production up 4%. With victory on all fronts in the news, employers are beginning to think not of meeting contracts, but of the cost of severance pay on D-Day. Fat cheques and good-bye to Oakland, the workers are saying, very loudly, below my office windows.
 
 
“Inflation: Report From the Front:” The railway workers get an 8 cents an hour increase over stabilisation commissioner Vinson’s veto. The OPA’s power to regulate oil prices has been taken away by Congress, which has also ignored most of Morgenthau’s tax increases. But a compromise has been wangled over farm subsidies explicitly tying them to wage increases.
 
“Report on Tarawa: The Marines’ Show.” The fighting spirit of the Guadalcanal veterans of the 1st Division fought its way through the hell of Betio, which was made worse by the fact that the water was too shallow for the LCAs to beach. Many a man expressed a wish for more than his service standard $25 life insurance policy. Some people say the fighting at Betio (on Tarawa) was "hell." Others that it was a cakewalk. The operative question being just how many Marines have to be killed before a cakewalk turns into Hell. Rather a lot, it seems.
 
“The Admirals.” The average age of United States admirals is 57, and he is an Annaopolis graduate, whereas the average age of generals is 51, and only 45% are West Point graduates. The Navy has 202 flag officers. There are 6 full admirals (King, Nimitz, Halsey, Stark, Ingersoll, and Reeve. There are 21 Vice-Admirals, average age 58, including one Engineering Duty Only, five aviators, 1 aviation observer. There are 153 Rear Admirals, not counting staff corps (supply, medical, dental, engineering). Twenty five are EDOs, 33 are aviators, 2 are aviation observers. There are 23 comodores, including 1 EDO, 6 aviators. The USN has superannuated admirals that include many aviators, albeit all qualifying through postwar flying training, unlike our own Admirals Portal and Bell-Davies, and they have a rather dismissive title for Engineering Branch admirals. 
 
“World Battlefronts: Balance Sheet:” The Gilberts have fallen at what the paper calls a light price of American lives, giving an airfield suitable for heavy bombers. We go on to clarify: “Of 2000 to 3000 men who stormed the Tarawa Beach, only a few hundred came through the hail of Jap lead without dead or injury. No ship losses were announced (Rear Admiral Henry Maston Mullinix was reported [MIA].) Unless Mullinix took a wrong turn on his morning constitutional we can assume that a flagship was lost. Or instead of assuming, you can ask a dockyard man and be told that the Navy is looking at underwater protection for the "jeep" carriers. The appropriate underwater protection, I told them, was to keep torpedoes and mines away from those tinder boxes..
 
 
 
 “General Electric’s famed Physicist-Chemist recently predicted that man would some day speed up to 5000 miles an hour in a vacuum tube. Meanwile, Westinghouse did a thing for the press the other week where it showed fluorescent lamps lit by “a high-frequency radio beam generated by a physicians’ ordinary diathermy set. Westinghouse admitted that this was  a stunt and that wireless electric power “might” not be commercially viable for years. But the FCC is reserving a part of the postwar radio spectrum for wireless heating and cooking." A heat lamp was shown. Also sterilising lamps, a shatterproof lightbulb, a compact new sun lamp for easy tanning, and a 10,000 watt mercury vapor lamp. More business for electrical engineers! I am not sure how electric cookers are an improvement over electric ranges, and I cannot see the use of "wireless lamps" but a device for home tanning has pretty profound implications for the American colour bar. Not that I expectTime to notice that.

 
The Press: “In the Windy City,” where the  Tribune has been abusing workers at Chicago’s Studebaker aircraft-engine plant as loafers, malingerers, gamblers and Communist-led,the Sun went out and found that it was actually Colonel McCormick who is a very bad person! Whatever sells papers, I suppose.
 
“Postwar: Frozen Future.” Time advertises the Fortune story (which I will get to in a few weeks) about how manufacturers “expect to put electric refrigeration into practically every one of the nation’s 40,000,000 housing units. Or two, with one a “home freezer.” More on ready-cooked frozen foods of the future.
 
“Fiscal: Mr. White’s White Paper.” There is to be a World Bank to finance the world’s postwar reconstruction. I will believe it when I see it.
 
“Retail Trade: Record November.” This will surely not come as news, although the extent of of the record –201% above the 1935—39 average, up 21% over last year, is still astonishing. “But we are still below the last-gasp before-Christmas rush a year ago.” A few weeks on, I can report that while it has been a busy month for the men folk, and the expectant mother, we have been able to lean heavily on  Wong Lee, surely one of the oddest of persons seen loaded down with parcels in the queue at Magnin’s. . . .
 
"Production: “Navy Bean Soup” is the Navy’s obscure nickname for carbon dioxide fire extinguisher cartridges, which have buoyed National Foam from a gross of $500,000 in 1942 to $6 million this year.
Music: “Record Shortage.” Last year, U.S. record manufacturers hit an all-time production record with 136,000,000 discs. This year, production is down “at least 50%.” Causes include lack of manpower, rationing of shellac (which comes from India); wear and tear on nonreplaceable machinery, and lack of transportation and packing facilities.  Meanwhile, orders are up to three times their 1942 rate. I am skeptical that this reflects more than retailers ordering everything in the catalogue so that something will be delivered, but I am heartened by the thought of re-equipping the industry. Electrical engineering products go into record manufacturing, too, you know!
 
Radio: “Cousin Emmy;” at CBS station KMOX in St. Louis is famous! (Mountain music is big in Oakland, and not just in the places reached by this 50,000 watt station with 2.5 million steady listeners. The appeal of acts such as Cousin Emmy and Her Kin Folks may elude you and me (she apparently gives people a taste of “the natural twang of real mountaineer goings on” every morning at 5:25. She plays the banjo, “gui-tar,” French harp, and sings, all at the same time. Also, she yodels and dances and sings gospel songs, and sells cough drops and hair dye. Which is how she takes in $850/week. Sneer at her, but not her money!
 
 
Flight, 9 December 1943
 
Leaders
 “Harrissing” Berlin: It’s a deliciously subtle play on words, dear cousin. We are indirectly told that there have been doubts expressed about the merits of the current Berlin offensive by way of quotes of Archibald Sinclair’s defence of it in the House. “3-in Guns in Aircraft.” B-25s carry 3" guns. Cousin Emmy would make a joke about critter-hunting now. "Those are big critters," she'd say. That fly. Or something
 
. “Aeronautical Science School:” Sir Roy Fedden has “seen too much of the lavish way in which training and research are treated in the United States of America.” He wants something big and impressive. But is there money for it? Will it be a school for practical engineering or an “academic hot-house?” Opinions differ!
 
War in the Air
 
Sinclair’s statement in the house: from 1 January 1943 to 6am on 30/11, 2,189 British bombers operating from this country have been lost over Europe, while US 8th Air Force has lost 829. This news is simultaneous with that of news of von Papen’s visit to the Pope to invite an intervention in favour of a bombing armistice. Many raids have been made, and Bomber Command’s diversionary tactics were quite successful in protecting a raid on Leipzig the other day. A major German U-boat offensive was just broken, in the course of which a B-24 captained by a son of Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Longmore was lost. The Japanese made a daylight raid on Calcutta. “There were some casualties among the civilians in the crowded city.”
 
Article: “Lancaster I and II: Interchangeability of Power Eggs Applied to One of Our Four-Engined Bomber Types.”  Not terribly relevant, but I took a plan-view picture showing “the way that the bomb load is supported by a  beam built into the structure.”
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This is old news to you, Reggie, but let me pause for a moment and meditate on the existence of a girder, in an airplane which flies, that can take a 12,000lb load in suspension.
 
Here and There
 
The paper has a vacancy for a junior artist with drawing office or art school experience.
 
The Canadian Director-General of Aircraft Production is back in Ottawa, where he forecast a “20 percent bigger Lancaster in 1945.” Fairey has a new chairman, in the absence abroad of Sir Richard Fairey. “Another U.S. Record;” American ‘warplane’ production set a new record in November by topping the 9000 mark, it has been reported. (More on that. . . .) Another day, another prediction of postwar trans-Atlantic commercial flying.
 
Behind the Lines
 
A Swiss paper reports the details of new German secret weapons, rocket shells with a range of 200km weighting from 2 to 20 tons, the average weight being 12. The smaller types have been satisfactorily trialled, but the larger ones are giving difficulties. Jean-Herold Paquis, a military commentator on  Paris radio, reports that the Germans have doubled their fighter force since January and put three new types of aircraft into service, of which two are fighter-bombers, whose speed reaches 434mph. The third is a giant machine capable of transporting lorries. AGotha 244 is pictured. A neutral source says that several towns in southern Fance and in the Balkans have been evacuated. Japan is pushing to increase aircraft production. The Germans now have a centralised Air Defence Command (Fluko), staffed by the best of the best of the Luftwaffe’s signalling units, and from the women’s auxiliary services. “They must have iron nerves,” German radio reports. No flighty dames here!
 
Aircraft Types
 
Curtiss AT-9 “Jeep;” Beechcraft AT-10 “Wichita”. Unimpressive small trainers.
 
Articles
 
“Pitch Panic” the story of how De Havilland Co. raced to change both Spitfires and Hurricanes from two-pitch to constant-speed airscrews in time for the  Battle of Britain. Tw-speed props could be delivered faster, so were specified for Blenheims, Spits, Defiants, Hurricanes, while other aircraft, such as the Welllington, Beaufort, Stirling and Whirlwind got constant-speed units. D.H. was asked to do its  first experimental on-site conversion on 9 June, and was ready four days later. By 20 June the plane had been put through its paces and on 22 June DH got verbal direction to convert in the field all modern SE fighters on first priority. The conversion was easy, because the airscrews had been designed with constant speed in mind, but pipes and engine reservoirs and cockpit controls all had to be installed, and the screws did have to be dismantled to move the index pins. DH made the qull shafts for driving the cs units per Rolls-Royce drawings at the Gipsy engine factory.  Outside contractors such as M.R.C. Ltd, which did pilot controls, did a fine job. The actual work was done by picked teams of fitters at each station, initially under DH instruction.  DH engineers worked 105 to 110 hours a week to get this done.
 
And then, mysteriously, a few years later, all the engineers in Britain died of heart attacks. I am an old and cynical man, Reggie.
 
“Blind Landing in Mid-Atlantic” S/Lt (A) R. A. Singleton and observer Lt. Cdr J. Palmer (A) managed to land on board in 50 yard visibility with lighted paddles. Something strange is going on here, as Palmer is by now long past active flying, and in fact seems to be commanding HMS Eglington.One wonders just why this story gets press, and what we are to infer of Lt. Cdr. Palmer.
 
“Atlantic Record” of 11h 35 minutes set by B-24 piloted by Captain Richard Allen. Do I smell a “Blue Riband” coming on?
 
Time 13 December 1943
 
“Foreign News: The Known and Unknown” Have you heard that there was a big powers conference at Teheran? That “unconditional surrender” was agreed upon, and that there are various uncertainties about the postwar world? You have? Well, then, you shall have very light reading in the fields of politics and foreign affairs for the rest of this month!
 
For my part, I notice that Fat Chow is in Herat, suddenly trying to negotiate passage to Erzerum through great masses of NKVD and Indian Police.
 
“India: While the Paddy Ripens:” the Bengal famine will not end until the rice harvest, and there is not the manpower to harvest the paddy, and the Bengal Provincial Government reportedly refuses to ask the army to help.
 
“Foreign News: Raw and Unrestrained:” British womenfolk are complaining because of a critical shortage of wearable underwear. The title of the piece has a clever double meaning, if you will pardon me for reusing a joke until it is well past wearing out and can no longer support its own weight.
 
Other Foreign News: Frenchmen, Yugoslavs, Argentines and Icelanders(!) are excitable. 
 
“Foreign Trade:” American heavy industry, haunted by the nightmare of being overbuilt and underdemanded in peacetime, are ecstatic about a proposed 3-year Russian $10 billion order to rebuild their heavy industry, perhaps paying for it with Russian petroleum. America is so far reluctant to buy Spain’s record olive oil harvest in spite of the edible fats shortage.
 
“Fiscal: Compensatory and Mr. Chase:” Will the national debt of $300 billion bankrupt the United States? Where will the money to finance postwar full employment come from?Stuart Chase has a brilliantly written answer (the paper says) to these questions in the form of his new book, Where’s the Money Coming From? “Stripped to its bones, the Chase compensatory economy is nothing but old-fashioned pump-priming on a vast scale, through self-liquidating public works and expanded social security,” with high taxes in boom times to cover spending in the lean. The concern is that it will be hard to keep taxes high in good times. I cannot help but notice that someone is optimistic about the postwar economic scene. Guardedly.
 
“Aluminum: The Boy Grew Older:” a war-boosted industry is getting bigger. H.C.’s play in Columbia Metals, however, is unlikely to play a big part in this unless the war goes into 1946.
 
“Government: Permission Or Else:” Parkland Sportswear Co. of Dallas has been fined for raising the pay of its 47 employees in disregard of the regional War Labor Board. And this is national news because the WLB is actually enforcing the regulation, I suppose.
 
“Timely Figure:” A condensed English version of the Four Classics occasions the paper to discover that Confucius was a great man. Not great enough to warrant studying the actual texts, but a great man. . .  
 
Flight, 16 December 1943
 
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Thackery is to diesel engines as oranges are to movie stars!
 
Leaders
 
“Close Air Support:” The Allies have air superiority in Italy, but are not blitzkrieging. Does that mean that Allied CAS is much less efficient than German in the old days? Why, no, the paper says. “Allied Air Supremacy:” fighter pilot wastage has been less than expected, says C. G. Power, Canadian Minister of National Defence. So resources are being redirected to training bomber pilots.
 
War in the Air
 
Wintry weather in Italy has cut down on air operations in support of the troops there, while the Germans have pulled out in the air. In the Pacific, more on the American carrier attack on the Gilberts, although it is also noted here that first production priority has been shifted from aircraft to landing craft.  A joint statement by Roosevelt and Churchill notices that the quantity of shipping sunk by the enemy has fallen to the lowest level this last month since May of 1940.
 
Here and There
 
There is now a US-India air freight service; six new airfields have been added in East Anglia; the US industry will deliver its 150,000th aircraft in time for the anniversary of Pearl Harbour. “Microgram” is not the same as “Airgraph,” which exclusively denotes the service which Kodak provides for the GPO. The paper regrets the error.
 
IMG_0139.JPG Microgram or Aerograph, it is very Research and Development!
Articles
C. A. H. Pollitt, “Will There Be a Place for the Flying Boat: A Critical Revierw of the Saro Report.” No, there won’t. They’re boats. Get over it, paper. Time for pastures new.
“Fortress Evolution:” the new B-17G, with a chin turret, represents the latest stage in the evolution of this venerable ship. It is noted that the “10 ton load” can be achieved by hanging 4000lb bombs off each wing rack, but this is well beyond a safe takeoff limit. Take that, American cousins!
 
“More Rotating Wings:” Greyhound has applied to run 78 helicopter routes covering 49,000 air miles. And they even brought Igor Sikorsky in to testify that it was actually possible! In two-an-a-half years or so. The paper finds this to be optimistic.
 
Behind the Lines
 
The German press wants you to know that the Luftwaffe is still active in Italy, attacking partisans. Up around Bergamo. It is apparently presumed that maps of Italy are hard to come by. A Swedish newspaper reports that the courier plane carrying diplomatic mail forthe Hungarian legation in Stockholm is now mysteriously five days overdue. (Last week’s number also noticed this.) Hungary has a “satellite industry” now in service of German war production. 
 
Aircraft Types: The MiG-3.; and Mitsubishi KB-98 ‘Karigane.’
 
 
“High Command Changes:” ACM Sir Philip Joubert de la Ferte has retired as Inspector General of the Air Force, and AVM Sir Christopher Brand. Joubert has agreed to be employed by the air force at the lower rank of Air Marshal, perhaps in India.
 
Articles
 
“Russian Land” The Russians have an air force, too!
 
“Engine Cowlings:” a précis of the MAP report on German practice.
 
Time, 20 December 1943
 
International News: There as an international conference! In Teheran! And another in Cairo, for which the President of Turkey was present, adroitly doing the stay-out-of-World-War-II-mazurka! Fat Chow writes that he is pretending to be a Kirghiz princeling to play on the sympathies of Turkish nationalist . . The Furhrer is a second rate fellow. Brazil is having inflation.
 
“Foreign News: Coal: A Dilemma” The paper notices that the mines are still a problem, emphasising low morale in the mines and mentions, by-the-by, what The Economistwon’t, that conscription for mine labour will fall heavily on mining families and that families that aspire to get their sons out of coal mining are upset that coal-owners get something out of it, too.
 
“The Hate Debate:” Civil war amongst the Democrats, it is proposed, is occurring! It is suggested that southern Democrats would like to see a Republican Presidential/Senate/House victory in 1944, giving the party four years to purge the New Dealers, who have excessively "coddled"  Coloureds, labor and the poor. Now, I am a squire, and you are -well, apparently the phrase for inherited wealth her in the New World is "self-made man," but whatever. But we --I think-- still remember that in a democracy, you have to get most people to vote for you to win an election, and that most people are not rich. Oh, true, one of the things that these New Dealers do is to“attack” the poll tax, and one might place one's hopes on lifting the poll tax high enough so that only the rich can vote. Now we shall look at the Democratic record in the last 80 years of national elections and find that, yes, this is a strategy. A terrible, terrible strategy, but a strategy. The paper goes on to add that this rush to political suicide is inspired by the “group tactlessness” of the White House inner circle. Theat is to say, the President’s aides werecutting, and this is a perfectly sound reason to plan to lose every election from now on forever.
 
One suspects that, when push comes to shove, a more practical spirit will flourish in Democratic circles.
 
Flight, 23 December 1943
 
Leaders
 
“The Shape of Things to Come” aviation folk working 16 hour days have to take a breather sometime, and when they do, they talk about postwar aviation. Some even say that the flying boat has had its day, but they are mad. Sigh. There is also much of interest in theMiles “X” type, which only seemed mad five years ago, but now looks like an acceptable compromise between the conventional types envisioned for the next ten years by Chadwick (which Handley-Page said no-one would buy), and the unconventional types thereafter, perhaps including the all-wing type.
 
War in the Air
 
In the Battle of Cherkassy, the Russians made “effective use of airborne forces.” Unless some spectacular news breaks in the next few days, I suggest that this is a generous use of the word "effective." Also, there was bombing and close support on the Eastern Front, unlike in Italy, where the weather sucked. In the Mediterranean there were air attacks on the Brenner Pass and Innsbruck to further isolate the Itality theatre.  MacArthur has invaded New Britain, and the Americans acknowledge heavy casualties in the German air raid on two ammunition ships unloading at Bari. “More jet propulsion” is the caption of a picture of German Nebelwurfers firing in Russia.
 
Articles
“Teaching Air Photography” the paper visits “the R.A.F.’s oldest photographic training establishment.” (Historic pictures.) Number 1 School of Photography got its start in 1915, with Moore-Brabazon as its motivating spirit. Stereograms are a big deal, and so are multi-printers.
 
 
IMG_0147+(2).JPG
 
“Jet Propulsion:” A Swiss expert speaks.
 
“The Miles ‘X’”. It doesn’t exist. But if it did exist, it would be amazing, a sentiment from which I cannot dissent. You know what else would be amazing if it only existed? Father Christmas's sleigh. Imagine the ratio of loaded to unloaded weight it must have. At least Miles is not proposing to build it. That sounds more like a Sikorsky job.
 
Behind the Lines
 
Japanese ramping up production and trying to do a better job of building combat effective aircraft to offset the American numerical superiority. Germans have the Me 323
.
Aircraft Types Boeing 314 and Sea Ranger.
 
Service Aviation has a picture of F.O. S. E., Sukthanker receiving his DFC. A member of the Pathfinder Force.
 
Time, 27 December 1943 (Yes, I received proofs of this a little early. The publisher has yet to drop me from the advance circulation list after I was added over the "Kaiser expose" matter in the fall.)
 
China: Nine Tings of Yü
 
“A well-informed traveler from Chungking” tells the press of a story suppressed in China, of Marshal Chiang being presented with a set of nine bronze tings, the familiar symbolic precursor to . . . well, I hardly need to explain it to you. The Marshal rejected them angrily, the paper reports, imagining that this is to the credit of the Marshal. Why, one wonders, do Westerners never imagine that wu jen are capable of ironic comment?
 
“India: Death in Bloom:” Bengal now has ample food, but the privation-related disease of cholera, dysentery and dropsy are on the march.
 
“Foreign News; One More Close Call:” The paper notices, and is concerned about, the Prime Minister’s recent bout of pneumonia. That will happen when old men are tasked with such arduous travels. Which is not to say that dread does not grip me, too.
 
“Tristan da Cunha: The Lily Maiden:” the main title will allow the future archivist to group this with all the other Tristan da Cunha-datelined stories. But I should not joke, because the lily maiden in question is the figurehead of the Admiral Kampfanger of the Holland-America Line, reported overdue In New Zealand five years ago, with a crew of 16 and 44 boy cadets aboard, all lost to the world for five years, and now forever, a price demanded by the sea that pales only because of the war that has come since. How many have been swallowed by the sea? And how many of them, spit forth from a sea-change, made wondrous strange? Family history always makes me pensive.
 
“FEPC vs the Railroads:” First on the returned President’s agenda is the Federal attempt to desegregate the Southern railroads. The Southern railroads made the expected response, but the head of the FEPC pointed out a national shortage of 850 locomotive firemen, even though Coloured firemen were unemployed. Also on the rails, the strike question. In spite of the pay increase, 145 million railway employees are ready to walk off the job at Christmas time, and the country is not happy, especially with Bing Crosby crooning his latest crime against sentiment from every radio.
 
“Ban Facts:” London and Washington’s unwillingness to be straight about the devastating German air raid on Bari harbour is not reassuring. Surely the people can “take it?” So how did the explosion of two ammunition ships kill more than a thousand service men without sinking any more ships? A puzzler. To those who have already forgotten the last war, and more than suggesting why this is being so carefully concealed. Shall we see gas used on the Italian front soon?
 
“Catastrophe: Why?” A railway accident at Buies, N.C. kills 72 Christmas travellers in a gruesome scene. It was a failure of signals to alert the Tamiami East Coast Champion of a derailment ahead. The paper is not impressed. The Engineer would be even less so. The signals just have to work.
 

 

“Wartime Living: Minimum Comfort:” There is not enough coal to go around, due to John L. Lewis’s strikes and shipments to Europe. Say some. Plus a shortage of labour and machinery. Others suggest that it is because of distribution problems. Coal is shipped by rail, and the rails are slow in winter, when coal is wanted. Which is why coal is often short in the winter. Solid Fuels Administrator Ickes, however, is gloomy, because this shortage is unusually severe. He says that while Britain has become used to ‘no coal for comfort,” America enters 1944 on a ‘minimum comfort’ standard. Fair enough in California. But in Michigan?
  
 “U.S. At War: The Bobbie Pin Front:” people miss these. And many other “indispensable doodads.”
 
“U.S. At War: You Can Get Something:” At this point, Christmas shoppers are basically buying anything they can get, since everything they want is out of stock. “Decent lingerie –in both senses—is especially in demand.” I am a little perplexed about what this sentence seems to imply about indecent lingerie. Wong Lee did not set out to buy lingerie, but given the way the stores were picked clean, I may be receiving some, if only because I put my foot down on giving any from the glum  pickings-over of his expeditions. Ah, well, at least by measure of money spent, this will be a generous Christmas, and I did manage to find tyres for your namesake son's car, bringing it that much closer to "roadability."
 
“Food: Meat Moratorium:” appears to mean the opposite of the strict reading, as the fall slaughter was “near-record,” and the OPA may be forced to temporarily lift the rationing of pork.
 
Battlefronts” Amphibious assault takes location on New Britain, carrier task force raids Rabaul and Truk, USAAF Liberators raid the Marshal Islands in preparation for operations there.
 
“Battle of Russia: The Push?” The question marks says it all.
 
“Army And Navy: In This Total War:” Recruiting for the WACs and WAVES has been very disappointing. Possible things to blame include male chauvinism;  female careerism The New York Daily News. The British had to go for conscription. Should we? This is an interesting question. Where are the lady volunteers?
 
“Army and Navy: Shining Planes” Henceforth, US planes will not be painted except where tactical considerations require. Tis, it is suggested, is partly for weight saving. A bomber might save 70 to 80lbs. Excuse a shipyard man, but isn’t there another reason why one might skip painting? To save labor?
 
“Transport: Failure in ‘43”: Truman Committee warns that only a generous quantity of new equipment and replacement parts can prevent a critical transportation breakdown in 1944.” There is mention of rails, tyres and airliners, but not what the Rennert accident reveals as essential, more and better signals equipment. Well, the less attention it gets, the more room there is for first moving investors? In fact, I broached this to Bill and David. And while they rolled their eyes and explained that they cannot be into everything, they did offer me the name of an acquaintance made down on the water with a bug in his brain aboutimproving rail traffic control that he works on when he is not fitting radar to ships. Or we could just drop some money into Westinghouse, although I am skeptical, as we certainly could not mobilise the capital to have a place on the board of so colossal an enterprise.
 
“The High Cost of Ceilings:” Ceilings on textile prices have squeezed out low-cost producers of cheap socks, work clothes, aprons, dresses. Secret inflation! As the paper sees it.
 

“No Time on Their Hands:” the national radio networks have basically sold their entire time table, and profits are up 20%. Notice that the paper has already complained about paper shortages. No relief for advertisers there. 

..And I hear adolescent feet stamping below. The sojourners have returned, and I suspect that Christmas Dinner is imminent, with hopefully enough food to keep even young bodies abed to a reasonable hour.

 

Wishing, in this happy moment, for one of Mr. Wells' time machines so that you can read this as I write it, looking forward to the unwrapping of gifts on Christmas morning. Unless with the time shift that is actually happening in England? Or is it the other way around.. You know that I could look this up.

 

Or I could descend to greet my family. Ah, well, it may be too late to say Happy Christmas, but best of the New Year, Reggie!

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Postblogging December 1943, II: Towards A Cold War

 
Wing Commander R__. C__., RCAFVR, O.C.

L__. House,

Isle of Axholme,

Lincolnshire, U. K.

 

My Dear Sir:

 

Father of my Beloved: I take up the brush in my feminine hand on no occasion of sad news, but rather because fortunate winds are blowing. That friend of whom you have been previously advised, had an acrimonious dispute with his employer over a New Year's engagement. It was the breaking point in their relationship, and he is now definitive that he wants out of his contract. He  appealed to us, as we were warned  he might, on the basis of blood and obligation incurred so many years ago. Because our friend is so much in the public eye, he can scarcely be seen visiting lawyers, or even have lawyers visit his hotel room. Your beloved cousin, my Uncle, has gone East to arrange meetings with H. C.'s lawyers and plot our next step, but it will take some time. 

 

IMG_3333Discovery.jpg

 

 Uncle remains intent on resuming his correspondence in February, naturally enough. Indeed, he is attempting to draw our friend into his beloved electrical engineering investment scheme, and may have more news on this in his next.

 

Let me also assure you that James and I are also well. Your wife may have informed you that she summoned Judith back from Pasadena instant upon her arrival in Santa Clara, and she certainly did not leave California until I was under a watchful matron's eye. It seems like rather a fuss to me, but she and Judith are so stern, and so motherly, that I cannot bear to defy them. Nevertheless, Judith and I did accompany James on his trip to Tacoma, which, by the way, went very well indeed. I shall append an amusing story about it once I have finished doing secretary's service to Uncle.

 

We do, however, have news that may yet cast a shadow over your heart if the war winds on too long. While James is here on the West Coast for the duration of his assignment only, we have resolved that I will not be crossing the Atlantic again this war, and we have begun to prepare a residence en famille. The old house, unfortunately, is far beyond the available resources of material and labour. Moreover, even if we could repair it, it would only distress Great-Uncle's last days. Fortunately, the old coach-house will do quite well enough for three (for now), at least once the stables have been converted into something more domestic.

 

The only drawback is that the work is quite visible from the road. The locals are understandably curious about what the owners of 'Arcadia' intend, and less understandably opinionated about how matters should proceed. One of my contractors has amused himself by setting up a hand-lettered "Suggestion Box" at the gate. Oh, the rural round....

 

One final familial note. Let me see: I need a coining from Uncle's rather threadbare pseudonym system. Will it suffice to say that Miss "V.C." is the daughter of Mr. "N.C." of Chicago for you to know a young lady whom you last saw in pigtails? Well, pigtails no longer, and her father is wide awake to the implications of the high rejection rate of his product by the Army.

 

38-fort-steele.jpg From Miss Ewe's Holiday

Chicago may continue to be windy and broad-shouldered, but this is one branch of butchering-to-the-world that is well past time to be retired into a shadowy investment trust. So now he reconsiders his social-climbing choice not to send his daughter to the Poor Clares, and I have the rather large charge of teaching her proper literary accomplishments. This is rather much to pack into a senior year, but the thought is that we might enroll her in Stanford, as I shall be Santa Clara for at least another year, war or no war. The agreement is that Miss V. C. will be allowed to believe that she is being prepared for missionary work unless and until she deduces the family secrets for herself. 

 

Now, as I have mentioned, filial duty requires that I continue to prosecute Uncle's campaign to persuade the Earl, through you, that it would be a mistake to sink money into poor Cousin H. C.'s steel plant and "prefabricated house" schemes.

 

 

 

 

 

Aviation, December 1943

 
Briefing for October [That's what it says]
 
The Summary is not needed here, but the “Down the Years in AVIATION’s log reports that back in 1938, the Department of Commerce was looking at a $700 plane. The idea of a cheap plane is news to me, and alarming. Should aeroplanes really be marketed like automobiles?

An Alcoa ad asks, “How Good is that Spot Weld?” Destructive Metallographic testing is destructive, but Radiographic testing is not. Employ both methods, therefore, to establish quality …. And then occasional radiographic testing afterwards.
 
RCA ad: “Electronics is the so-called “dream science of tomorrow.’”The point seems to be that RCA is already doing the 'dream science of tomorrow.' Has any living mouth ever uttered a phrase such as 'dream science of tomorrow' without irony?

 

IMG_0175.JPG
 
Line Editorial: “Free Enterprise: The Opportunity and Obligation to Compete” James H. Mr. McGraw, Jr.  thinks that in the real, as opposed to ideal world, competition cannot be perfect. Various factors put severe limits on the price sensitivity that perfect competition would require. Only the most extreme price sensitivity could prevent booms and depressions, and therefore we cannot count on competition alone to cure depressions, but, still, we must stand for as much competition as we can have, including the annoyances of anti-trust legislation. At which point the son of the man who founded the company finally finds his point, which is that unions are getting too powerful.
 
 
Aviation Editorial: “’44 Musts for ’54 Markets”

 

What will the industry look like in 1954? It certainly won’t compete with steel or food, but it will be big, depending on how the private airplane works out. Uncle thinks that investing in aeroplanes in 1946 would be akin to investing in shipbuilding in 1919. Twenty years of peace will not be good for the aviation sector!
 
America At War
 
15th AF now attacking Germany from the south. In a recent month, 20,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Germany by the Allies, and 1,387 German fighters were shot down. Fighter escort is increasing in strength, and the Army Air Force no longer has any intention (if it ever did) of fighting the B-17s and B-24s through without escort.  . . . What will happen in this respect when the new Boeing B-29 goes into action—in whatever theatre it moves first—remains to be seen.” So subtle is the scholarly pen that uses a parenthetical to change the past!
Here at home, the main thing is the industry’s 10% increase in production. “Nearly” everyone is betting on production hitting 9000 per month “before this year ends” and some will even go so far as the planned rate of 10,000. Donald Nelson says that the rapid rise from the old plateau of 7000 has been a great relief, and is due to increasing efficiency and standardisation of models.
 
On the Pacific front, the carrier force is “nearly as large as the battleship force,” which you can infer, the paper says, from memory or from old newspapers. The number of fleet carriers “can” be doubled in 1944, and the number of auxiliaries tripled, while the  new 45,000 ton carriers will appear in 194.
 
E. E. Lothrop and John Foster, Jr. “Let’s be Practiical about Postwar Plane Markets.”  The demand will be at best  a third of current levels. As Uncle says.
 
Agnew E. Larsen and Joseph S. Pecker, “What is the Helicopter’s True Commercial Future?” It will be a long time before people are commuting by helicopter, and, when they are, they will be built by automotive manufacturers, not aircraft.
 
Myles V. Cave, “Sighted Wreck, Repaired Same,” a member of a “fourth echelon” repair team, Cave’s team wanders rural England repairing American planes where they crash land.
 
IMG_0188+(2).JPG
 
Then they make time with the Doughnut Dollies. There are going to be a few angry scissors wielded on this photo Stateside!.
 
“They’re Trained to Fix it Under Fire." 
 
IMG_0191+(2).JPG
 
And in the Forest of Arden . . . 
 
James Montagnes, “Crew Competition Speeds Maintenance.” It’s what the RCAF does. Included is a photo of a “circular log-book desk.” Girls sit at the centre and ‘data’ is handed in from outside.
 
Edward G. Thorp, “Autopilot Gives Instant Control,” I have prepared a longer summary of this article for James, but here is a Kodak of the artwork. I know that when I first heard  "Minneapolis-Honeywell autopilot," I envisaged something not too far different from the cheery robot of the advertisements, but it turns out to be quite an elaborate  device spread all through the aircraft.
 
IMG_0193.JPG
 
 
“Latest Machine Tools”
IMG_0194.JPG

Gigantic machine tools! Because boys will be boys. 

 
"Side Slips," Aviation's humour column, has a story about those charming ladies who are taking so many of the airline jobs nowadays. Normally, they’re pretty reliable, but one day one of these lovelies misses an important meeting. Why? Her supervisor asks the next day. “Had a date,” was the calm reply. “And with men as scarce as they are, a gal who wants to get married finds any date a lot more important than a dull old meeting.” I am not sure that she does our sex any credit, but the young lady in this story is not alone in her sentiments. All the boys overseas are to be snapped up by Doughnut Dollies, of course.
 
Or, worse, Englishwomen!
 
Aviation News
 
Allied strategic bombing gets ever heavier versus Germany, with 2000 planes sometimes seen in a day. The Me 410 is the German answer to the Mosquito. The AAF is getting ever more independent. “Air superiority is the first  requirement” of overseas operations. Navy Carrier Force Bigger, More Coming. The paper can’t help quoting “some” whothink that the carrier will turn out to be a “one war weapon.”
 
“West Coast Manpower Utilization Improves, But Materials Still Exceed Personnel” This is pursuant to ongoing discussion of the 9000 a/c interim target. One study shows that output is up 4,360 percent in West Coast plants, but labour is up only 933.%. On the other hand, North American Aviation has been refused permission to hire another 10,000 hands. The 37,000 available would be enough if they were just used more efficiently, says C. E. Wilson, chairman of the Aircraft Production Board of the WPB. Apparently, NAA was denounced by citizens of Dallas.
 
I was so appalled at this that I threw the paper out the window and it was caught by a shipfitter in the middle of his shift down at the Oakland yards. Then he went back to refinishing the coach-house stable. 
 
“Branch Stores, Incentive Pay Applied to West Coast Manpower Problem.” A recent house-to-housecanvassing campaign culminated with an Army-sponsored rally brought 40,000 Washingtonians to a job fair at the University of Washington Stadium. It sounds as though a grand time was had by all, but Boeing was able to recruit only 2700 of 9000 required in the last six week period. The “branches” are of Pacific National Bank and a Seattle department store, set up inside of Boeing plants to ease the living burden on employees. This actually makes sense. Not all of the absenteeim at the yards is men slipping out to work on the black market. Some of it reflects the near impossibility of getting domestic things done. Canvassing is also being tried in LA, and “two thirds” of the 50,000 boys who did summer work are to be retained on special programmes scheduling school work around part-time shifts.
 
“Boeing of Canada Retools," it will make Ansons as Mosquito trainers. To meet the volume of work, wing assemblies are being outsourced to Portland, Oregon and Nelson, B.C. facilities. I note the latter because I well remember that little town from our honeymoon.
 
“New Montreal-Britain record:” is reported by TCA 11hr, 56min, by a Lancaster transport of that airline.
Aviation Manufacturing
“Record 8,362 Planes Made in October, New High in Heavy Bombers”
 
“Transport Conversions Deemed Too Expensive.” B-17s and B-24s are not going to be converted into commercial transports, relieving would-be manufacturers of postwar airliners.
 
Raymond Hoadley, “Aviation Finance,” My, Goodness. A lot of money is flowing into aviation firm’s coffers. Boeing has paid out $1 dividends twice this year! Bell did a ten percent (1 share for every ten held), and even hardly-worth mentioning Beech did a $1 dividend.
 
“McGraw-Hill presents the 23 editors of Aviation, Air Transport, and Aviation News.” I find it amazing that Aviation has a single editor, but, in fact, the number is 23.
 
Fortune, December 1943
 
The cover illustration features Gothic angels to the fifteenth century design of German social revolutionary Tilman Riemenschneider, while the globe is the latest icosahedron globe projection by economics Professor Emeritus Irving Fisher of Yale. Inventor of the “Index Visible,” which made him a fortune, and founder of the American Eugenics Society, he also does geography! He is a modern Renaissance man, with interests in taxation, physical culture, and prohibition.
 
The Fortune Survey
 
“By the end of 1943, Americans will have saved the tidy sum of $84 billion.” It will be in the form of bonds and bank savings, but also in the form of paid-off debts, family and other private debts included.
 
So what kind of desires has this money built for future living? The paper decides to ask:
 
But first, consumer confidence :
Do you feel..
Oct 35
April 35
July 38
May 39
Feb 41
Feb 42
Jan 43
Dec 43
Better off
36.6
28.2
22.4
32
37.5
30.9
51,8
12.6
Same
30.3
34.7
32
37
45
46.9
35.1
36.8
Worse off
30.2
34.2
43.4
28.7
14.9
21.3
12.3
49.6
 
People are very negative this Christmas. 
 
So what are they going to buy? The paper asks, what are you going to buy first. Cars rank highest, at 21% overall, but fully 13% of Americans are going to buy themselves homes. “A step that, if carried out in a short period, would revolutionise our living.” 
 
The paper explains. 
 
If 13.3% of families did build, this would lead to the construction of 4.7 million units, but the highest annual housing construction number in the US was 937,000, in 1925. The home-construction industry currently hopes, as opposed to expects, to build 500,000 housing units (so including suites in apartment buildings and hotels) a year after the war. This would meet the rate of increase in families, which is half a million per year. I do not have to pull out my slide rule to calculate a staggering deficit of completed homes, unless the construction rate increases markedly. This is the vision that leads dear "Cousin H. C." to pursue his vision of the prefabricated home. Uncle just observes that unemployment has idled many men who could be building homes. 
 
Clearly this is a serious matter if people's opinions at all reflect concrete intentions. So the poll’s compiler points the high place of other home furnishings on the list as indicating a "domestic inclination." Even 6% of Coloureds expect to buy refrigerators, and 1.4% of the high income group propose to buy air conditioning. I suppose that air conditioning will rapidly become the new way to be the envy of the neighbourhood. 
 
It is also pointed out that extending the poll results to the whole country on the basis of “first choice” sales and using 1941 prices, total spending is “only” 28 billion out of the $83 billion "out there."
House
21 billion
 
 
Car
6 billion
 
 
Refrigerator
468 million
 
 
Airplane
232 million
 
 
Boat
158 million
 
 
Washing Machine
141 million
 
 
Air Conditioning
53 million
 
 
Fur coat
53 million
 
 
Clothes
30 million
 
 
Radio, Phonograph,
And stereo
20 million
 
 
Stove
117 millioin
 
 
 
The concern is suggested by the prominence of fur coats on the list. This is a “first off the top of my head” list, and people might rethink so large an investment as a house in the cold light of morning.  Fortune is also gloomy about people being  gloomy. The poll indicates a large growth in the sense of hardship over the year. If people are anxious about victory, or their jobs, or the future more generally, surely they will save rather than spend?

 

IMG_0206.JPG "Half-smile wistfully for Daddy, everyone! Cheese!"

 
“The Farm Column”
 
As late as 1939, Glenn E. Rogers, Third Vice President of Metropolitan Life, was called America’s largest farmer, with nearly 2 million acres of America’s best farmland worth $120 million under his care. But in the first nine months of 1942,  Metropolitan’s farm sales have jumped to 6.6 million, to $15.6 million in the first nine months of 1943, leaving only $25 million foreclosed farms on the firm’s books. Less than a quarter of the 10,399 foreclosures of the Depression remain on the books. East of the Mississippi and on the West Coast, none do. It is the Missouri Valley that remains the laggard. Will this avalanche into a speculative boom? Possibly. It depends.
 
“Business At War”
 
The Building Trades are coordinating in Washington.  Discouraged by the current “private depression,” they are excited about postwar prospects, figuring that $8 billion will be spent on residential construction in the first postwar year, $12 billion in the second, and $18 Billion in the third. Two-thirds of new housing will be in the $3000-$6000 class, The Association will cut costs on labour to encourage this buying group and through standardisation. The Association seems pessimistic about the amount of money available to fund house building, though of course much depends on the way that this finance is mobilised.
 
“Trials and Errors”
 
Is the President isolated by Harry Hopkins, who has pushed the Adminsitration to the right, or by Wallace, who pushes it to the left? Or by both? What is his guiding principle? The New Deal? Hopkins torpedoes that. As bad as times are, worse is to come, due to the “Balkanization that threatens the U.S” For there is a terrible "Negro crisis" brewing in this country. (Other kinds of Coloured folk will apparently continue to know their place.) The Negroes are angry with Roosevelt, and so are the labour unions, and since they are against each other, the President is haqpless! Meanwhile, out on the Pacific Coast, everyone is pro-Russian, whilst in the Mid-West, the President is losing the all-important Polish vote. He is losing the coal miners, and those who oppose the coal miners even faster! All in all, the President is weak and rudderless, and the country is doomed.
 
Signed, Eliot Janeway. 
 
I have to admit that I giggled when"the West" was pronounced to be monolithicallly pro-Russian.
 
“Britain’s Balance Sheet”
 
Unlike the United States, which has made good its war production from unemployed labour and machinery, Britain has had to redirect existing capacity. Last year, the national income was 5.7 billion. Consimers spent 2.79, the government 3.47. The difference was made up by depreciation and by borrowing, with a deficit of 560 million. Now, it is unlikely that Britain will  ever  be able to produce as much as it did last year. Hours will have to fall from the current 52 hours/week currently, and at least some of those fighting or employed will not seek employment after the war. Technological advances will have increased output per head by 10 to 12%, and taking this into account, the postwar target should be a national income of 5.2 billion. How is this to be earned? Industry must transition to peacetime production. On the basis of prewar trends, that production will have to go to exports, which will have to be up to 33% greater than prewar due to liquidation of foreign holdings. This is too high: there must be artificial curtailment of domestic demand, so that imports do not rise too high. The Economist distributes the 5.2 billion as follows: 920 million to the Government, in very large share for national security but also social assistance; 3.464 to consumers, just equal to 1938, 816 million to liquidate wartime debt. This looks good for the British consumer, but the figure is overall, and the needs of reconstruction are massive.
And imports. The self-sufficiency school wants to cut back, but a highly conservative long-pull estimate  is 750 million in imports, far below 1938 –and far below the 950 million required for full employment. To cover so much in the way of imports, exports must rise 50 percent over 1936. The paper makes it sound as though this is an unlikely achievement. I hope for the sake of our future that it is too pessimistic.
 
“That Refrigeration Boom” 

 

The prewar market was large, and the thought is that there is a backlog in demand. But the postwar market may be igger for other reasons. For while industry insiders are talking about getting back to the 4 million units sold in 1941 for $600 million retail, only 28 million of 40 million housing units in the country are wired  for electricity and can so take refrigerators, while only 18 to 19 million are currently equipped with refrigerators. So other insiders think that saturation may reach 100%, that is, that all housing units will be electrified in a surprisingly short time, and a refrigerator will be as universal a fixture as an indoor convenience is rapidly becoming. And then there is the prospect of refrigerators in every household!  
 
In short, if turnover continues to be every five years or so, the future market may be four times the size of the prewar. Manfacturers are concerned that they may miss out on sales, due to a resumption of the "refrigerator wars" between the through distributorships and the department stores, which have a powerful tool in the form of their mail-order catalogues.  
 
 Meanwhile, Willard Morrison, the inventor behind the “DeepFreeze” line is getting into delivered frozen pre-prepared foods, which he thinks could be the Next Big Thing. There is considerable evidence that others agree with him, with Sears, Roebuck and others trying to get into the business., while restaurant chains might get into the act as well, distributing some of their signature specialties from central kitchens. All of this will require great care to maintain the cold-chain, and here is more good news for manufacturers, as currently much of this is done by ice. The future clearly belongs to "reefer" trucks and trailers with powered refrigerators
 
And then there is air conditioning. It was a bust prewar, but some households bought, and it might well make a comeback postwar. Uncle notices rather vague talk of combined heating and cooling units, and the market opportunity for them in large hotels. He adds, "department stores" and "office buildings." James,  meanwhile, points out that an entire number of his touchstone "Principles of Automatic Control" series from The Engineer was devoted to temperature control. In short, when a modern version of Macy's is thrown up, it will likely have a furnace and massive rooftop air condiitioners, and these will be connected by the sort of devices that Honeywell is putting into aeroplanes. It is a fairly precious form of electrical engineering, but goes to Uncle's stated preference for investing in the kind of gadget that goes into everything,.
 
 
“A Fleeting Opportunity”
 
Air Chief Marshal Harris of Bomber Command, and General Anderson of 8th Air Force agree that there is a fleeting opportunity to make the invasion a walkover by strategic bombardment. Harris talks in terms of enough bombers to put up a thousand plane force 10 nights per month, and 8th wants to achieve the same strength. There are only 40 industrial centres in Germany worthy of strategic bombing. Once they are all obliterated, the production war is effectively over. Hamburg has been done, and the Battle of  the Ruhr has shut Essen down. The next, logical step is Berlin. It is calculated that 15,000 tons of bombs are needed to eliminate Hamburg. So far, 8000 tons have been dropped there; and 4000 against a like total for Berlin. We have a long way to go. Will our forces be enough? Will the higher command allow the air forces the freedom to wage this great strategic bombardment on their own terms?
 
IMG_0179+(2).JPG
 
And now for a British-eye view of events this tumultous month.
 
The Economist 4 December 1943
 
Leaders
“Out of Touch?” The Government might be out of touch.
“UNRRA Decides,” Something about postwar reconstruction and Germany’s part in it. Will Germany re-industrialise, or will its neighbours be encouraged to take over its place?
 
“Special Areas?”  The problems of the Special Areas may reassert themselves after the war. This would be a pity, as they have skilled labour and coal. But perhaps they have to get away from heavy industry and move towards “lighter” and “consumer” manufacture? Or coal-chemical? Or agriculture, focussing on “protective” foods?
 
“The Great Migration” has been set loose in Europe by the war. It will be an effort for the UNRRA to put the people  somewhere that they will want to stay.
 
Notes for the Week
 
“Three Power Meeting” focussed on the Pacific; “The Mosley Debate,” the paper supports the decision to release Oswald Mosley, now being debated; “Advance in Italy,” is slow because the creeks have risen and the mountains are unexpectedly mountainous. “Slow Motion,” the paper is concerned that there is not enough action on the Russian front. “Target Berlin:” 10,000 tons have now been dropped on the target.  But it is equal in size to Greater London, with only two-thirds of the population. It will take a great deal more than 10,000 tons of bombs to level it, compared with Hamburg. “The Mnister of Production,” and “Hush, Hush;” the question of how full employment was not achieved in the prewar period (“in 1939”), and might be achieved in the future under the Beveridge report is contentious in various ways, the paper reports. The Latins, as Uncle would say, are excitable; “Freedom to Starve;” Austrian émigré socialists are in a tizzy. Apparently there has been a defeatist/treasonous revival of interest in either or both of ‘Greater Germany’ and a ‘Danubian Empire.’Socialists advance dismiss the idea of a lack of Austrian vitality. But is this fair? Actually living in the Vienna in 1938, one got every impression of “lack of vitality:” unemployment, under-nourishment, an even  more-rapidly falling birth rate than everywhere else. Will Austrian freedom mean freedom to starve? The future Austria must live under a larger economic framework, whatever the socialists say. “New Measures for Mining,” there will be conscription by ballot, but this is just an admission of failure. What would solve the problem? Owners: a subsidy by effort, not production, so that the less economical pits will not be penalised for staying open under present conditions. Miners think that higher wages will remedy things, but this is regrettably impossible, as all workers would then want higher wages, and there would be inflation.  “Higher Milk Prices,” Dairy farmer are to be rewarded for their hard work with higher prices, part of which will pay the labour that works for them. “Portuguese Islands,” and “Exports” both concern our social triumph. Now that we are winning, General Salazar has condescended to be seen in public with us. It seems perverse that we had to be winning the war before we got the bases that would have helped us win them.
 
“American Survey”
 
“Subsidies and Taxes” The paper is very jealous of our American holidays, muttering of a “pre-Christmas spending spree of breath-taking proportions." This in respect to the lead item, covering Morgenthau’s attempts to get his budget through the House. The House refuses to take it seriously, and talks about the agricultural subsidies as a giant slush fund. Much of the agitation reflects, the paper thinks, jealousy on the part of farmers directed at the higher incomes of labour. The Mineworkers’ successes are singled out; but the paper goes on to add that the main victims of price increases will certainly not be farmers or labour, but rather upon fixed incomes. In short, because some pensioners and also the coupon-clipping rich will suffer, the miners cannot be allowed a pay raise.
 
“Hard Knocks for the Army” I must say that I feel rather badly for General Patton, who has had to keep up the side, with all the braggadocio which the army seems to expect of its generals. The paper agrees; everyone agrees. The issue now is the “Army authorities” who tried to deny the incident in the first place. There is also talk of the wasteful drilling of oil wells in the far Yukon.
 
“Petrol Civilisation” A nice segue to the the paper being alarmed by waning American oil reserves and looking to the Truman Committee looking to the Middle East. The dwindling away of American petroleum also now concerns Mr. Ickes.
 
“Canada’s Empty Spaces” Are nowhere near so vast as is supposed. The country will graciously take skilled workers, though.
 
“Hungarian Policy” Is to loot the Jews to pay off the gentry.
 
“Irish Retrospective,” An economist who lectures at Dublin is quoted to the effect that all of Ireland’s troubles are down to the potato,  which first made its labour “disgracefully” cheap, and then failed, leading to all those deaths, evictions and emigrations. The little potato is an unmitigated evil, although I have proclaimed a truce for the duration with its delicious, French-fried golden specks of starch.
 
“Germany at War” the old apprenticeship system is breaking down, as young people can get on in the factories directly. The Party seeks to reinstitute proper discipline. Even in Germany, the younger generation lacks all decorum! I shall have to twit Uncle about this.
 
The Business World

 

“The Dollar Problem –II” Is that the dollar is too strong and the pound is too weak.
 
The Economist, 11 December 1943
 
Leaders
“Power and Peace” Something about the postwar settlement? My eyes quite glazed over when the illustrious name of General Smuts was raised. “First Come, First Served?” Perhaps some part of capital reconstruction will be put off to meet consumer demand for “clothing, shelter and maintenance?” The paper disagrees, seeing little need of such fripperies. Well, we of the weaker sex find this cold comfort, as, naked and homeless, we march to shining factories to make a better future. Like a dog to a bone, the paper returns to the same subject with “Consumption and Investment,” invoking the name of Lord Keyens on the proper balance of consumption and investment. This seems to me like the ‘supply and demand’ upon which The Engineer likes to dilate, Having met both, I would take Mr. Keynes over The Engineer in a heartbeat.
 
Notes of the Week
 
“The Turks in Conference” Uncle made a joke to the effect that the Turks have stopped our breath with their “Stay out of World War II” mazurka. The Economist, as economists will, keeps looking at its watch and wondering when it will be over. That’s  not the point! I nudge the paper, hard. Settle down and enjoy the performance. We then segue to Persia, as it is right next door, and Russia and Britain are having a spat. I hope there shan’t be tears, and thank the heavens that Fat Chow has reached Istanbul.
 
Unfortunately, for us, Fat Chow now knows that he will be allowed to marry my sister when he returns to Hongkong, and he is full of fire. his new friends have opportuned him with the prospect of great things out of a visit to Berlin, and even if they labour under misapprehensions about Fat Chow, they are not wrong about this. Fat Chow has passed his package on to courier and agreed to go through with the invitation. My heart is in my throat.
 
 “Policy for Agriculture.” Labour has intimated a policy that might lead to higher wages for farm labour. The paper is appalled, as this would lead to higher food prices, and so what the poor, naïve labourers think would be good for them would actually be bad! My slide rule is not up to the task of determining whether low food prices make for disgracefully low labour prices in degenerate Ireland, or competition and progress in old Manchester. Perhaps both. It has taken some distance to help me appreciate how obsessed Britons are becoming with potatoes.
 
“Italian sideshow:” if we are not take Rome by the time that the spring fashions are released, attention will turn to Paris, by way of beachwear. I know, Father, I am in danger of only amusing myself!  Speaking of the excitable set, Norwegians and Yugoslavs are &tc.
 
American Survey
“Industrial Incentives –Two Models” by Our Correspondent in Ohio. Two Cleveland firms offer very different models. The Heintzs offer high bonuses to executives and high wages to labour. Lincoln Electric, by contrast, offers bonuses to labour as high, or even higher, than their wages. Mr. Lincoln is now publicly defying the Navy Board’s demand that he return $3.25 million of his 1942 corporate profits of nearly $5 million on the grounds that they have gone out as bonuses, whereas Heintzs' is in the pink, as their money has gone out as wages, much of it for overtime (84 hours a week being the standard!), but also as a dizzying array of “benefits” ranging from health insurance to piped-in music in the plant to pensions to steam bathes.
 
I asked aloud how one could work so many hours and the fellow painting the ceiling pointed out that right at that moment he was well into his fourth hour of overtime for the week at the Richmond Yards. Only someone as cynical as Uncle would suspect that the Heintzes are padding their cost-plus contracts by neglecting to check the time cards.

 

I wish that I had remembered to clip the ad in Fortune that announced the discrete services of a firm in Philadelphia experienced in the matter of arranging the immediate private sale of war-work firms ahead of the looming peace.

 
“Down on the Farm” Farm incomes have risen very quickly in the last two years, from $761 in 1941 to 1320 last year, perhaps to reach $1500 this year. Distribution has become less unequal, although the upper 10% receives 37% of all income. “Much” of the increase has been eaten up by the increase in the cost of living. I quote, because the estimated increase in living costs over the same period is from $823 to $981, and this seems an odd definition of "most." Poorer farmers are living better than ever, because they could never afford the standard of living permitted by current rationing before. Richer farmers are feeling the effects of rationing and shortages, and instead saving. Farm debt declined in 1941 by 1.6%, in 1943 by 5.4%, and in 1943 by 10%(!) “Nevertheless, black spots remain.” Farm homes are in poor shape and are not being maintained, the provision of medical care and rural education have declined due to call-ups, tyre and gas rationing have hit home, farmers are still not enrolled in the social security retirement scheme.
 
It is supposed that with all of these grievances, farmers will go back to the GOP.
 
“The Soldier’s Vote” The Senate has set aside a bill that would permit a single Federal ballot for absentee servicemen, merchant sailors and the like. That is, it will be the responsibility of the states, which are not expected to be able to organise a worldwide ballot. The paper manages to notice that if states administer their own ballots, Jim Crow will be extended to Coloured soldiers. It does  not appear to notice that the opposite is true! “Appears,” I think, will be the focus.
 
“Inflation in Eire?” The cost of living has risen 64%, the amount of money in circulated from 18 to 32 million, and bank deposits from 119 to 162. This does not mean, says Our Correspondent in Dublin, that there has been inflation. The national income has risen from 160 to 200 million since 1939, wages have increased 20%, but “there has been no vast expansion of working class incomes such as has taken place in Great Britain.” In fact, by attempting to control prices, profits and wages, much of the money seems to have been kept where it is meant to be, in the bank and Post Office accounts of tenants and landlords. No doubt with this sensible policy, the runt of our old archipelago home will soon catch up with the pick of the litter(?) (My dictionary says that I just missed a chance to drop “pelagic” into the conversation!)
 
“Latin American Coffee” Due to something about trade  balances, America will have to continue to import very large quantities of coffee from the Latins. Now there I go, writing “have to,” and dissolving into helpless laughter at the paper’s so missing the point.  Judith and the painter are looking at me strangely. The paper requires some straightening out about Americans and coffee!
 
“American Banking in Wartime” Apparently, more people have gotten out of debt, and more people have gone into debt than at any other time in the history of the Republic. I have no head for figures, but is that not how it must work? Anyway, money in circulation has now passed $19 billion, and bank deposits have increased largely, and, it is now supposed, will remain at this higher level in the future as more people accustom themselves to bank savings. Money is not being invested as much as it should be. (There is some discussion of how the Federal Reserve works that makes this no clearer to me.) 
 
Meanwhile, the public debt stands at $168 billion, up from $96 billion  a year ago, but spending is still only 10% higher than it was in 1916, and the projected deficit is down, for tax revenues have  been gigantic. “The reverse side of the national debt picture concerns the individual who is paying his share of the war costs, buying his share of the Government’s obligations, putting money in the bank, opening bank accounts at an unprecedented rate, and paying his debts. 
 
Do not laugh, sir! We have three such individuals living in the cabin! Tho’ I do not know if they would be so diligent had they not their wives to nag them. Just last week I drove with Mrs. Kelly into San Jose to help her open up a “joint savings account.” (And to inspect theDorsa plant, where Henry might have a lead on a post-demobilisation job.) If the experiment goes well, she says, she might even take up cheque-writing, like “the Missus.” I very much doubt that I shall be Mrs. Kelly’s “Missus” for very much longer, though I have been asked to stand godmother, and that I will most gladly do, letting lightly pass the deception as to my being a Roman communicant. . . .
 
There is more. A Congressman supposed in public last spring that people are borrowing to pay their income tax. Not only is this not true, but the most unlikely investment trusts are springing up to find a place for money once spent, on for, example, car loans. Americans might have a reputation for being terrible spendthrifts, but “total consumer installment loans” have fallen from 1,428 billion to 928, commercial loans to 281 from 521, small loans from 481 to 363, industrial from 253 to 170, credit union loans from 173 to 114. Even pawnbrokers are complaining that no-one needs their services!
 
Business Notes
 
Professor Varga of Soviet Russia pooh-poohs Mister Keynes and Mister White’sstabilisation fund scheme for restoring world trade, and expresses a preference for the gold standard. This is either as demanded by the theory of true communism, or just possibly might have to do with Russia’s status as the world’s greatest gold producer. Apparently, Mr. White’s scheme would be even worse than Mr. Keynes, in case you are interested in knowing who to back as thefirmest bulwark against World Bolshevism. The paper jokes about this more cruelly than I!
 
“Cavilling for the Pits” The paper notices the scheme of a random lot to condemn the victims to the coal mines and applauds, but suggests that perhaps something should be done about accommodation in the mining villages. If we are condemning boys to be coal-miners (for I think their parents are wiser about their prospects of liberating them from the mines than is the paper), at least we should arrange for them to have pleasant miners' cottages.
 
“Post War Foreign Investment” and “Shipping Freight Markets” appear as issues in this number. Expect fuller comment from Uncle by the usual channels.
 
“Pre-fabrication of Houses” In Britain, as in America, the future belongs to prefabricated houses, all alike in appearance and size. Honestly! Do no women write for this paper at all? Seek your economies elsewhere.

 

 

 
“US Patent Reform” The paper is quite disappointed that the report of a recent American Commission refrains from scolding Cousin Jonathan, instead endorsing the American patent system in every respect and calling for its emulation by the world. I  do hope that a Commission of the same philosophy is struck to study American real estate law!
 
The Economist,  18 December 1943

 

Leaders

 

“Shall We Be Poorer?” Lord Woolton has suggested that Britain will emerge from the war a poorer country. You might have noticed the controversy, and the paper shares its opinion, which is that he has the right of it, as Britons shall have to scrimp and save to rebuild the nation’s productive power for 3 years or so. That being said, the paper thinks that he makes too much of the national debt, which, after all, is only an accounting identity(?) But the bombing and the sunk ships and the liquidated investments (I feel a  little guilty here.)
 
Moving on to concrete numbers, the paper quotes “Professor Bowley and Lord Stamp” as estimating that from 1911 to 1924, Britain’s total social income rose 1 to 2%, while income per head fell 5%.” Another way of putting it is that output per person working was 7% higher in 1924—27 than in 1911—13, while the income per head was about the same. Without unemployment and the rise of part-time labour, the national income might have been 10 to 15% higher.  After the next war, we can expect to see the resumption of the prewar trends overall. So, if unemployment is avoided, and foreign trade resumes, average income per person might be 10% higher in 1948 than in 1938, not all of which may accrue to the standard of living of the people. But without the war, the increase might have been closer to 25%! “The economic cost of the war . . . will lie in the fact that we shall be poorer than we might have been.” But wasn’t the paper concerned in 1938 that our low unemployment and booming economy was due to rearmament? These things go right over my head.
 
“Power and Fear” General Smuts thinks that Russia is the “colossus bestriding the continent” of Europe, or some such. Or to the contrary. Or he thinks so, and is wrong. Is it too womanly of me, sir, to find worries about the “Russian bear” old hat? And I am too young to own an old hat! I hope. Please don’t contradict me, or I shall be so very cross!
 
“India’s Economic Needs” Attempts to get more food out of Indian agriculture have simply driven up prices. While industry has done well, it is supposed that India needs a Ten Year Plan of investment in railways and rural electrification and such to accomplish an “agricultural revolution.” But the paper wonders if India, with all of its sectarian divisions, is capable of such a thing. Perhaps it would be better for it to continue to bear the white man burden for a bit longer? Or am I misquoting the poet? I am only my father’s daughter in this.
 
Notes of the Week
 
Latins are excitable.
“Sunday Entertainments Again:” The Lord’s Day Observance Society is campaigning against Sunday performances for the troops, invoking the Sunday Entertainments Act. The paper thinks that if the welfare of the troops is not to be left in the hands of “a few cranks and reactionaries,” the House should bloody well do something about it. Uncle wonders if the House ever listens to anyone other than vocal minorities of cranks.
 
The people of the Balkans are excitable. As are Finns, and Latins, specifically French in Algeria.
 
“The Influenza Epidemic” Early evidence is that there is not to be one. This year. But next year. . . Oh, please let this war be over by next winter.
 
“Wheat Supplies,” Another anxiety relieved, as the UNRRA reports that there is enough to meet the needs of the currently occupied countries. The supply will continue to be sufficient if the war ends next year; but production will probably continue to fall, the size of the next harvest cannot be predicted, and much depends on how much is diverted to feed livestock and to industrial users.
 
“Mounting the Winter Offensive” The German counter offensive in the Kiev salient goes on. “The danger to Kiev has considerably increased.” Looking back even after only two weeks helps put this in its proper perspective, but the fear was real enough!
 
American Survey
 
“California Boom”  Recent surveys show that most of the migrants brought in to work in Southern California’s aircraft factories intend to remain there after the war, even in the full knowledge that most of the plants will close, and that Federal and state authorities have warned that the area “may be one of the most seriously distressed industrial districts” for a few years. Of Los Angeles's 7500 factories, 2000 are new since 1939 and have never made anything save war goods. 1000 of them are in aircraft accessories, and 5000 others specialise in tools, dies and machines. Before the war, Los Angeles County was far less industrially developed than many eastern centres. To meet the sudden demand of the wartime aircraft industry, a whole southwestern feeder zone built up. I assume the chain of thought is that this is also threatened.
 
BUT, on the other hand, agriculture and “apparel” have built up to meet the needs of the region, power supplies have been secured, iron and steel production is up, molybdenum, tungsten, zinc, lead deposits have all been discovered, and the synthetic rubber industry is supposed to be capable of rapid expansion.
I think the real reason that Uncle left his bundle of old Economist numbers in Palo Alto is that at this point he couldn’t go on reading. Iron! Steel! Synthetic Rubber! Los Angeles to be the new Tyneside! It may have escaped the paper's attention, but California has already had a mining boom, while the synthetic rubber industry can only expand to the limit of public subsidy and at the cost of pound sterling are earnings.  At this point, the writer makes one small concession to modernity.The plastics industry might take off. Is this not a rather more logical "value added" use for the region's oil than is synthetic rubber?
 
 
“Third Party Threats” This week, Mr. Wilkie has refused to confirm or deny rumours that he has considered leaving the Republican Party for a third, while southern Senators were enraged and ready to revolt over accusations that they had “entered into an unholy alliance” with the Republicans to kill the Soldiers’ Vote Bill for fear that it would lead to Coloureds voting. 
 
 
Unfortunately for them, Senator Byrd declined to place himself at the head of the revolt, and it all blew over, subject to the President doing nothing further to press the issue of letting soldiers vote. The next para down, “Another Blitz,” points out that the Wilkie speculation has much to do with Mr.Landon and Mr. Hoover’s unwillingness to rule out having a terrible tantrum over the idea of approving of the Administration’s foreign policy. I will not be unladylike and express my opinion of The Engineer.
 
“NAM And the Future:” the annual meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers” was marked by Mr. Sloan of General Motors graciously committing to spend $500 million on expanding plant if there was tax relief on investments and the like. In the opinion of the Post-War Committee, industry will only be able to find new outlets of production if the most energetic measures are taken to open new methods of distribution and “consumer wants” are increased somehow. I confess to being a little perplexed by this, as it is quite clear  that consumers want new cars, new houses, and new everything else.
But, apparently, they will keep their money in mason jars unless taxes on enterprise are reduced. The altruistic instincts of the American common man are sound.
 
 
“Manpower Politics” The President has signed the bill that delays the drafting of fathers. This reaction to public opinion naturally leads those who are not fathers to suggest that there is a terrible shortage of manpower that makes the delay nugatory. In spite of cuts to war production, war industries are expected to need a million new workers by next July.
 
“Inflation and National Unity” Congress has allowed the 8 cent an hour increase for non-operating railway employees and a 35 cent a barrel increase in the price of oil, and Mr. Charles Wilson of the War Production Board and Secretary Byrnes are appalled at the lack of national unity. Mr. Wilson supposes that there will be a “right-wing reaction among some sections of capital,” but the paper holds the danger of reaction to be more general.
 
“Germany at War” Uncle found this dissertation on Germany’s difficulties in procuring strategic metals, and the lengths to which its metallurgists have gone in finding substitutes fascinating. His little margin note suggests that there might be profit in the substitutes, and new possibilities for his beloved electrical machinery if they prove economical, necessity being the mother of invention, and all of that.
 
“Motorways in Britain”
A thousand miles of new motorways are needed. The paper thinks that the road-building programme might take ten years or more.
 
“Premium Bonds in India” the Government of India’s anti-inflationary policies of forbidding the hoarding of essential produce and of selling gold on the open market have had some effect, and now it I is introducing a state lottery bond to soak up “redundant purchasing power.”
 
-There is trouble with China’s exchange apparatus (as you will have heard), in the coal mines in Britain, and with the “industrial ten,” the extra clothes coupons issued to employees in certain sectors of British heavy industry. Cotton workers will get a pay-raise.
 
The Economist, 25 December 1943

 

Leaders

 

There is trouble over Brazilian loans; the Turks dance on. Jugoslavs, Bolivians, Swedes and Australians(?) are excitable. The idea of a National Minimum Income combined with the universal income tax is to be deferred in Britain.
 
 
“The Future of Coal Mining” is bleak, as no-one wants their son to be a coal-miner.
 
“The Baltic Front and Ukraine” it is hoped that the Russian offensive in the north will take pressure off of Kiev.
 
“A Liberal Revival?” The recent byelections have led to talk that it could happen, and the paper should like it, if it could, but it probably can’t. Isn’t the Secretary of State for Air the Liberal leader? I was only a little girl when Mr. MacDonald was accused of using the Air Force to assist him in campaigns, but I remember it because the pictures of him in flying gear were so dashing. Or am I thinking of another flying politician?
 
 “Property and Income” Mr. Beveridge is in trouble for saying that “80 percent of the private property in this country is owned by 7 percent of the population.” The paper explores the statistics and shows that it is true –and that it is  necessary to go as low as £1000 in holdings to encompass 7 per cent of the population. Matters stand a little differently with respect to income, but the same 7% draw 28 per cent of the national income.
 
American Survey
 
“Labour-Management Councils,” such as exist in Britain, are being tried in Massachusetts. The paper finds this worthy of almost a page and a half of prose, ending with the curious observation that the strongest proponent is the business partner of Lou Maxon, the man who flounced out of the Office of Price Adminsitration with a Parthian shot to the effect that it was a threat to the whole American way of life. So controlling wages is vital for national unity, while controlling prices is a threat to the American way. So much is clear.
 
American Notes
 
“The Home Front” Congress, railway workers and farmers are attacking the Administration’s apparatus of anti-inflationary measures, and the President is surely doomed. Does Mr. Janeway write for the paper in some guise?
“The Future of Contracts” If the war ended today, there would be $75 billion in outstanding contracts to be wound up. The speed of settlement is thus so very important that I can almost read this –no, my eyes just nodded.
Senator Butler of Nebraska and Colonel McCormick are ridiculous, at least to the paper. The Office of War Moblilisation has relaxed some price ceilings that are hindering the production of essential civilian goods. The paper is too decorous to talk of details, as did Time, but of course this concerns textiles and necessities.
 
“Family Allowances in Eire” The proposition is that raising children is too expensive, and that there is no intention to affect the marriage rate or birth rate, as this would sound all-too Romish, I imagine. It being supposed that the tax burden to pay for it will be met through excise taxes, Our Eire Correspondent feels that the effect will be nugatory, the extra money being spent on a stout at the pub coming back into the house in a cheque. If the paper is to continue to bemoan the poor American attitude towards Britain, it would do well to remember that Americans can read, and that many Americans have Irish connections.
 
“Palestine’s Inflation Problem” is much the same as India’s; too much money, too little goods, too little gold and silver to be sold at public auction to “soak up excess purchasing power.”
 
Russia at War

 

“The Third Winter” Russia is short of labour, and of tractor spare parts against the spring planting.
 
Business Notes
 
The demand for notes at the year’s end Christmas season is up to 1.018 billion, but supply is adequate to demand. Farmers are upset that increases to prices do not quite make up for increases in wages, but the minister points out that hitherto, their receipts have risen faster than their expenses, and to a much greater extent than the Ministry expected at the time due to increased efficiency and productivity, so the farmers are just going to have to live with it. Farmers, my dear Minister, are never going to just live with it. We shall complain and complain, and the price of oranges, dear sir! Uncle says that we cannot continue in citrus after the war. Neighbours look to almonds and even vines, but he is reluctant to go into a tree crop when there are so many houses to be built.
 
Now, as you will know, dear Father, I write this after Epiphany, and this means that I have two numbers of The Economist to hand that Uncle will weave into his summary/special pleading of next month. But now I am going to cheat, and discuss just one article from the 1 January number, first because it caught my eye with a phrase that always bothers me, and because I have recently been reading Great-Great-Grandfather's journals, and specifically his account of Mauritius during the Napoleonic Wars. Well, here is that 716 square mile Indian Ocean outpost, in the news again.
 
One Major Orde Browne reports to the Foreign Office that since its 415,462 people, including 268,885 Indians, and the remainder are Africans, Chinese, Europeans and mixed blood, and are “poorly paid, undernourished, sickly…” Thus, there is no point in increasing their wages, since this offers “little prospect of improved performance." Browne goes on to note that a high property qualification restricts the electorate to 10,000 of the population, and that it is scarcely suprising that the sugar interest for some reason dominates the legislature, as it does the economy. Unemployment is high, especially outside of the sugar harvest, as secondary industries scarcely exist. and wages, it is to be reiterated, are low while congenital illness is rampant. Since employers stopped extending a ration as part of daily pay in 1938,malnutrition has been added to the burdens born by the poor. There has been industrial strife, occasioned by the odd combination of labour shortages with a falling standard of living for labour. It seems that the working poor naively believe that their hunger and poverty might be remedied by increased wages.

 

Major Orde Browne, however, sees the flaw. Being foolish, the poor will simply eat their preferred white rice, a food low in "protective qualities," and remain hungry and sick. As he has already observed in his odd introduction, this will mean that higher wages will not fetch higher productivity. A more sensible policy would be to  allot some of the land currently being reclaimed in the northern corner of the island to subsistence potato farming lots. This will allow the native population to occupy themselves and feed themselves in such seasons as they are not required to work on the sugar plantations and perhaps in some vague way lead to diversification into tea and the like. 

 
Major Browne is too modest to completely spell out the advantages of his scheme, which will include maintaining the price of sugar land against the sale of the reclaimed sector, and further raising land values by shifting some of the existing acreage out of sugar.
 
Perhaps I have been round Uncle too long and have acquired his cynicism, but after talk about low wages and potatoes in Ireland and low wages and low food prices in England; and simultaneously of generous payments to farmers in England and America, I can only hope that Major Browne's sleep is haunted by images of starving "mixed blood" children. But I doubt that it is, and expect that he sleeps the sleep of the just, exhausted by the noble work of keeping the profits of landlords high and the wages of labourers low.

 

Now, as I have told you, your wife would not part with me until Judith was on hand, but, in spite of her concerns, did not forbid me to go to Seattle with James, who was called to an inquiry at the yards into the jury-rig of the steering system that either saved USS Lexington or nearly wrecked it. James was able to work out a nice little algorithm modelling the system, and the slide rule he used was so prepared that he was able to calculate the point where the rudder would 'stick' for every increment of power. The court was impressed by this demonstration of the correctness of Captain Stump's interpretation of events that it recommended that the Lexington jury-rig be extended to all ships of the class. Captain Stump was grateful, and James had occasion to speak with him about Wong Lee's son, with favourable results, provided he passes his course.

 

So much, then, for my husband's little professional triumph, and the chances of our man Wong's son. The amusing part is that there was an Army Signals Corps officer there, who, thanks to his minor movie star status, had landed an assignment making training films, in this case being loaned to the Navy to film an instructional movie on installing the manual emergency steering system.

 

You may guess to whom I refer, a distant relation not unknown at Santa Clara! It is a small world. In person, he looks only a little like his father, and is handsome and far more charming. Though in contrast to his father's vaunted intellect, he struck me as entirely at sea and, worse, uninterested in getting a grip on the process. Imagine my surprise when, after the session, he pointed out that James put the slide-rule away in a very 'feminine' case, and asked if it were mine! Which, indeed, it was.

 

This is a man to watch: incurious does not mean unintelligent. Even the affability may be a cover for ambition --of various kinds. Judith was able to procure a used telegraph pad from a Mexican hotel maid. I gather that certain persons sought an eye on the process. Were you aware that our soldier-film-maker corresponds with the Federal Bureau of Investigation? 

 

That, however, is only one thing to be distressed about. He is also much too gallant, both with Miss V.C., and with ranch house housekeeper, a girl of the same age. In the former case, I suspect his father's purposes. In the latter, it is a matter of a notch on the belt, as they say. While our gallant does not need to marry into money, the appearance of having done so will provide a more convenient explanation for the passage of some share of his father and grandfather's fortunes than some feather-bedded employment. And it will continue a family tradition, Uncle suggests, considering his father's decision to marry anactual engineer.

 

GRACE.

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Postblogging Technology, January 1943, I: Will There Be Marmalade in 194Q?

 

Capture.PNG

 

My Dearest Reggie:

 

Material is piling up, and I have to write you anyway, to brace you for some business in special cargoes that I must ask you to arrange. Special delicacy, I hardly need observe, is required in the matter of border "rebirths" in war years, especially with an enthusiastic amateur FBI informant under foot every time he can get up from Burbank. So, then, here is the first of my January newsletters! 

marmalade.jpg *

Nor can I say that I have not had an eventful few weeks! In taking up  my brush last week, "Mrs. J. C." dropped a little reference to the city of broad shoulders. Well, I have been to the one that never sleeps, in fast company. It was very nearly too much for me, who am set so permanently in my ways. Fortunately, and I have had a few days to retire early and sleep late and let my hair down. (That is this month's obligatory "permanent wave" joke out of the way. Never let it be said that I do not keep up with the trends.) This Sunday,  I slept until the smell of marmalade boiling began to percolate upwards. Judith has been teaching the art to our young housekeeper, and I, I am carried away with memories of things long past.
 
In the matter of our friend, mentioned by "Mrs. J. C.," you know much and will have guessed more from my mention of special cargoes. Needless to say, the very volume of the rumours demonstrate the need for discretion! You will know that he has an acquaintance, quite as erratic in person as he may seem from a distance, who boasts of breaking his own contract with the assistance of those to whom he oleaginously refers as "men of respect." You may rightly suppose that our friend's vanity would only be assuaged when he could make a like show, and that this is how I came to owe a favour to one ofGrandfather's little brothers. The actual business will be done by "Cousin H. C.'s" lawyers, of course. 
 
And engineers. I cannot expect "Mrs. J. C.'s" solid but essentially feminine mind to grasp something so technical, but I remain firm on this. We can solve our friend's most pressing problem in the courts, but we can only deliver the kind of life that he would like to lead through "research and development." He is a very, very rich man, so someone will do it. Why not us? I await a favourable report in the matter of your Christmas present via Bill and David soon, although the actual work has been delegated to a White Russian of the Mukden emigration, who is more intimately obligated to us.

 

 The Economist,  1 January 1944

 
 
Leaders
 
“Now or Never” The paper celebrates the announcement of the Second Front Commanders. “The curtain is about to go up. . . All the carefully husbanded trumps in the Allied hand are about to be played, in the hope of winning trick, game and rubber.” “Pray God,” the paper says, the Second Front will be won. 
 
Two Leaders on India to the effect that the Viceroy’s ten year plan is impractical in the light of Indian sectarian differences. Britain’s commitment to Indian independence is unequivocal with only two equivocations. (Defence and protection of minority communities.)
 
Notes of the Week
 
“New Fields” The paper is very impressed with Air Chief Marshal Tedder. Who was very active with the Young Liberals at Cambridge. Much more so than in his studies, I have been told; but now he is a world-historical genius, so we shall let that pass.
 
“Marshal Vatutin’s Victory” relieves the threat on Kiev with a smart check on Manstein.
 
“Poland in Suspense” the paper notices Governor-General Frank’s call for a Polish-German anti-Bolkshevik alliance, presumably on the grounds that the Bolsheviks will starve, shoot, and dispossess Poles while conscripting them for war work.
220px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1989-011-13, Wiki
 
Latins and Jugoslavs are excitable.
 
“The Nursing Profession” Nurses need to be better treated as well as better paid if there are to be  more of them.
 
“Miners’ Wages” It being supposed that, if paid more, coal miners will all just lay about doing nothing (the technical term for this is, apparently, “heterodox behaviour"), it is proposed that their wages not be increased, and that any extra money paid to them be in the form of vaguely-defined performance bonuses. The paper’s enthusiasm for not paying coal miners is striking, especially considering the lack of coal. Ah, well, who is to argue with economists?
 
American Survey
 
 “Congress and the President” Congress is much criticised on the occasion of its adjournment.
 
“Ending the Strikes” The President has ended the railway strikes, and Washington’s pundit class is lined up in the receiving room at the White House to apologise for characterising the President as being weak and isolated. I jest, Reggie. In fact, the paper is worried that the settlement was too lenient. 
 
“End of the New Deal” It is supposed that the President is moving in a new direction. The article goes on to weave a path through the thickets of the future that lead to a future in which the President is politically unassailable, thanks to a postwar depression that ruins his political prospects for a fourth (fifth?) term. Has Our New York Correspondent taken up politics?
 
“Republican Futures” Dr. Wilford Brimley examines the psephological entrails and suggests that the party that is already celebrating its coming victory of 1944 may well then celebrate its last. Poor people have come to vote Democratic, and the Republican Party is showing no signs of regaining its old hold on the poor. The birthrate also runs against the Republicans. “Older stocks inhabiting the poorer soils of the back country are scarcely less prolific than the teeming masses of recent immigrants, who together form the basis of the Democratic ascendancy.” I foresee a quick reversal of fortunes once actual Republican candidates start using this kind of language to woo voters.
 
“Global Suckers” Senator Brewster of Maine asserts that Britain is playing America for suckers.
 
The World Overseas
 
“Protection of Minorities” After the war, everyone will pogrom everybody. Unless Europeans learn to act like the British, with their exemplary record of toleration of minorities.
 
“Island Outpost:” “Mrs. J. C.” has taken up this article in some dudgeon, as you will recall. The author, Major Orde Browne, proves to be the Colonial Office’s labour advisor. Pray he never knows how he has offended our brooding kinswoman!
 
Business Notes
 
 “Disposal of Tramps” Prewar, the estimated tonnage of tramp freighters was 10 million. Postwar, it is to be 21 million, of which 12 million will be in the American, and 2 million in the Canadian Liberty fleets. 1.5 million will be under the Red Ensign, and 0.5 million under other European flags. The fate of the American Liberty fleet is thus supposed to be of great concern to Britons, though less than to the poor devils who have to sail them! Oh, to be sure, it is possible to exaggerate the shoddiness of Liberty construction,  as I have just done, but the fact remains that many --perhaps one in twenty-- Liberty ships will have to be laid up. It is no great stretch that more will be. There are prospects for the right ships, built at Hongkong or Whampoa, if we play our cards correctly.
 
Flight, 6 January 1944
 
Leaders
 
The paper supposes that Air Chief Marshal Tedder will be a credit to the Air Force as Deputy Supreme Commander. A capsule biography appears later in this number. Apparently, he won a prize for a history essay at Cambridge. Well, that quite makes up for his grades! It is also pleased that Field-Marshal Montgomery proposes to win air superiority in advance of the landing. Sir Geoffrey De Havilland is honoured. (So is Oliver Simmonds, of Simmonds Aerocessories, but he is not mentioned, as he is not famous.)
 
War in the Air
 
The recent air-sea action in the Bayof Biscay is to the credit of Coastal Command. The latest raid against Berlin was a glorious victory. They are all glorious victories. Pay no attention to the 187 Allied bombers lost over Europe in the past two weeks.
 
Here and There
 
A gentleman with Handley Page assures America that Britain will be an “arsenal” for them once Germany surrenders and the Americans turn to finishing off Japan. Americans are guaranteed to appreciate such patronising sentiments far more than a corps ofBritish troops!
 
Looking Back
 
Various planes and engines appeared in 1943. Do you remember them? If you do not, here are several pages of reminders. If you do, well, here they are, anyway.. I am a little surprised that anyone would want us to remember the Blenheim Bisley. The paper does contrive to remind us that everyone was quite excited about “reaction propulsion” in 1943. Well, we were certainly told to be excited about it. Perhaps, the censors being willing, it will even eventually be explained why. The Avro York looks like it is pregnant, and theLockheed Constellation 
784px-C-69.jpg
 
 
like a not-quite-filled-in teenager.
 
Behind the Lines
 
Germans are cowardly, ill-fed, living in pre-fabricated huts, and reliant on Ju-42 transports to support encircled forces in the north. The Hitler Youth is being called upon to volunteer for service, and the neutral press reports that our bombing is having a considerable effect.
 
Lacking anything really novel to report, the paper has articles on “Supercharging, So That Even I Can Understand It,” novel methods of keeping aero-engines warm in cold weather; and “the case for flying boats.” The paper simply will not relent.
 
Of more interest, Bendix and Eclipse jointly announce “Gyro Flux-Gate Compasses” which are quick-acting, undisturbed azimuth indicators by virtue of the use of a gyroscope to eliminate magnetic compass adjustment. It sounds like a watch-stander’s dream, if it works.
 
The Economist, 9 January 1944
 
Leaders
 
 “Post-War Democracy:” Latins and Americans are excitable.
 
“The Western Fringe” A few months ago, it was supposed by General Smuts that there might emerge an alliance of powers along the Atlantic fringe of Europe, opposed to a Russian-led continental bloc. The paper supposes that even if such a scheme were necessary or workable, America would have to be associated with it.
 
“The Balance of Payments, II” Not to anticipate, or repeat, but the paper is going to use up a medium-sized forest this month explaining that Britain will have to export vast quantities of goods in the postwar years and conserve imports.
 
“The Approaching Budget” The main interest of the December 31st Exchequer Return is that it shows a flattening of the curve of expenditure, which actually fell by 40 millions in the fourth quarter of 1943 compared with 1942. Expenditure in 1943 was 15.9 million per day, and will peak at 16.5 million, absent inflation. As a rough estimate, Government spending will peak at 6000 million per annum against an estimated national income of 8500 to 9000 “Buoyancy of revenue” is higher than estimated this year, as every year since the war began. The Exchequer is not embarrassed. There is nothing wrong with its “model.” (I have quite picked up this word from Fortune.)  It is the fault of the public, for incontinently consuming too much and thus paying too much in taxes.
 
Notes of the Week
 
“From the Dnieper to the Dniester” The Germans now have no choice but to evacuate the Dnieper bend.
 
“The Coal Cut,” of which you cannot but have heard, is excused as a means to build up reserves for the invasion of the Continent. It will be of 10% for industrial users. Domestic users will be restricted during January to 4 cwts in the south and 5 cwts in the North. The Ministry encourages industry to use coke, coal breeze and anthracite dust, until the young recruits in the training centres graduate.
 
“The Biggest Depressed Area” England and Wales lag behind New Zealand and Holland in infant mortality, albeit doing better than Scotland. It is because of poverty and poor housing.
 
American Survey
 
“Misgiving on Thanksgiving” A whimsical wander back to November and forward to now concludes that, due to cost of living (the Department of Agriculture’s index of farm prices is at 116% of parity, while the Department of Labour’s cost-of-living index has gone up 23.4% over the year) and shortage of non-black market turkeys, there is a sensible risk of the domestic front dissolving into inflation, sinking the Administration’s foreign policy and war production alike.

IMG_0224.JPG
American Notes
 
“Crime Against America” is what General Marshall called the threat of a railway strike and a steel stoppage. Mr. William Green, President of the AFL, thought this inflammatory.
 
“Discrimination in War Industry” is becoming an issue. The President’s order to cease discrimination against Negroes has been flat disobeyed by certain southeastern railways. Southwestern Bell Telephone Company has appealed a ruling, arguing that the President’s order was merely a directive, not mandatory. The resulting storm in the “liberal and Negro press” led the President to say that it was indeed mandatory, and applied to sub-contractors as well. The railways are now claiming that the order will imperil the war effort, and have suggested that an order to employ Negro firemen might lead to their pressing “pretensions” to be engineers and conductors, as well. 
 
A Gallup Poll shows that public support for an amendment limiting presidents to two terms is over 50% popularity for the first time. A move to draft General MacArthur as GOP primary candidate is underway in Illinois.
 
The World Overseas
 
Latins are excitable.
 
“Sweden’s War Finances.” Neutrality protection looks exactly like making war. High spending, high taxes, high revenues, high debt, inflation around the corner.
 
“Eire and Denmark” Why are the fates of these superficially similar, agrarian states so different. Why are the Danes so much richer? Is it because Ireland’s climate is too good? That Denmark is politically stable? That Denmark has large and successful export industries? On the other hand, while Denmark is in national debt, Eire is not. Three cheers for financial probity! Eire could afford a programme of “agricultural and industrial intensification” without resort to any foreign borrowing.
 
Business Notes
 
“The coming of the New Year has brought no revival in business, so far…”
 
Flight,  13 January 1944
 
Leader
“The most jealously guarded secret in modern aviation history, and at the same time the best known, was suddenly revealed on January 6th.” It turns out, dear Reggie, that Group Captain Frank Whittle, and W. G. Carter, chief designer at Gloster, have been working on a jet-enginedaircraft! I, for one, am shocked.
 
War in the Air
 
 The Germans have ceased opposing air raids over Northern France. It is supposed that they have withdrawn their fighters to the Reich. The Russians are not pulling their weight, vis-à-vis bombing the Romanian oil fields. 

 

The third imprint of the second edition of Mr. Smith of this paper’s book on jet propulsion is out of print. Nice work, if you can get it!
 
Here and There
 
The industrial research committee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation reports that while in 1930, 422 American firms spent £1.736 million on research and development, by 1938 this had risen to £5.4 million spent by 566 firms. Considering the difference in business climates, this does not strike me as the most useful of comparisons. Why, exactly, is the FBI spending its efforts on this? A précis of a Swedish report on Turkish radio implies that the RAF now has invisible planes, thanks to infra-red, which is the new name for “magic.” The twenty Glenn Martin Mars flying boats are to be extensively modified internally before entering service with the USN. At a cost of £500,000, the mind quails. Fourteenth Air Force, in China, receives all of its supplies via trans-Himalayan flights. The paper is impressed. The third annual conference on “X-Ray Analysis in Industry” is to be held later in the month.
 
“2,200 h.p. Napier: Some Features of a British Engineering Triumph,”

 

You know, if it were a niece of mine whose debute in society were scheduled for the same day as a royal princess, I would have sharp words for those responsible. Napier has a right to be upset. The engine is not new, of course, but the article is a very detailed look-in that no-one will notice or remember, because all eyes are on the new jet turbines. That, unlike the Napier Sabre, has yet to fly in battle in this war.
 
“A Great British Achievement: Jet-Propelled Aircraft HaveBeen Flying Since 1941: British Pioneers Given Due Credit at Last.” It all seems somewhat anti-climactic to me.  Though very patriotic!
 
 Behind the Lines
 
German fuel exports to Denmark have been cut. A German war commentator depreciates novel secret weapons and tells the world that Germany will have the victory through “total war.” Even a German commentator admits that our bombing offensive is working! German pilots are to be protected from the upsetting smell of lily-of-the-valley and chrysanthemums, and exposed to the soothing effects of garden mint, instead. This, indeed, is the news.
 
“Altitude Sounding” Altitude-sounding rockets might be used to investigate “cosmic rays.” A diagram of such a rocket is included. Though not of the ray-detectors that we will catapult into space at rocket velocities.
 
The Economist15 January 1944
 
Leaders
 
“Church and School” A compromise means that state schools will have some religious instruction. Catholics are opposed. 
 
“Trade and Employment” There is nothing incompatible between high imports and full  employment, as long as high imports are balanced by high exports. Still, better for all the world to be in balance. For this to be possible, international trade needs to be regulated internationally.
 
Notes of the Week
 
Poles and Russians are excitable. “Farmers in Arms” Farmers are dissatisfied, and hope that prices will be fixed such that even the least efficient farmer has a surplus over (rising) wages. The Paper is not impressed. Does the Skipton byelection foretell the future? The Industrial Association defends itself against Beveridge’s criticisms. There is an incipient water shortage in Britain that occasions ruminations about the state of public works. A German-Swedish trade agreement is under discussion. Ciano’s execution is “nightmarish,” Amery says that the worst part of the famine in India is passed. The West Indies are less worried about being cut off from the mainland by U-boats. (I honestly had not stopped to think about how the submarine campaign must have alarmed islanders about their food supply.) Labour supports milk for children and expectant mothers. The American Communist Party has renounced revolution.
 
American Survey
 
“A Win-the-War Deal” The President’s message to Congress is a bold return to leadership –if carried through with.
 
“Tu Quoque” Mr. Wilkie, who recently criticised British intervention in American affairs, has now been taken to task by Pravda. Wilkie seems wounded. It all comes down to the Polish vote, 5.5 million strong and concentrated in key states, which went 10 to 1 for Roosevelt in 1940.
 
 
“The Favorite Son Crop:” Warren, Bricker, General MacArthur, Harold Stassen. Apparently this is the fruit of Mr. John D. M. Hamilton’s Anyone-But-Wilkie effort. You will recall that Hamilton was campaign manager to Alf Landon? Governor Dewey? Hello?
 
Shorter Notes: President Roosevelt has appealed for every one except qualified war workers to stay away from the Pacific coast. “The physical capacity of all community facilities is exhausted.”
 
The World Overseas
 
“Saving Canada’s Bacon” Under this year’s agreement, Canada will supply Britain with 450 million pounds of bacon vice 675 million last year. It is suggested that this will cut the British ration from 4 to 3 oz per week, and there is “sharp comment,” for bacon will be taken off the ration card in Canada. The truth is that the coarse grain crop is not likely to repeat the 1943 bumper and hogs must go.
 
“Swiss Agriculture” As elsewhere, the war has brought rationing, stringency, high prices, and odd propaganda and still odder initiatives. The drive to reduce the amount of arable land in permanent pasture from 83% to 54% made progress at first under the impetus of demand for cereals, potatoes, sugar-beet, vegetables, oil-seed and tobacco, but has now stalled. The 1942—3 revised plan calls for intensified production from already-ploughed land instead. The 1943—44 plan has had to admit that Swiss agriculture has reached its limit, held back by shortages of labour. Meat and edible fats production has fallen, and it may be doubted that actual nutritional value production has increased, although bulk certainly has.
 
Germany at War
 
“The Housing Disaster” is real. This seems to be a refutation of Dr. Ley’s recent statement that everything was fine.
 
The Business World
 
“British Cinema Prospects” Cinema stocks have done well, but are rated “speculative."
 
Business Notes

 

“The Gold Cure” Combating inflation with gold sales is working in the Middle East and India.
 
“Miner’s Bonusses” appear to have been under-issued under the current scheme, which somehow contrived to exclude virtually all miners. Hurrah! Coal miners have not been overpaid!
 
“Housing for Pit Recrutis” arguments about whether to put the young pit recruits in hostels or in houses is rather beside the point, which is that housing Housing is short. Whichever method works best in a particular region must be used. Production must not be held up by such matters!
 
“The Clothing Ration” has not been reduced from its current 24 coupons/6 mos in two years. It is a grand achievement. Oh, by the way, it will be continued into peace. This does not seem to me the approved way of writing news stories. Is the news not supposed to go in the first sentence?
 
So much, for the weeklies, save Time, but I fear an overdose of backward sentences, as I am covering Fortune this time around. Enough Luce has been cast over this scene!
 
Fortune, January 1944
 
“Trials and Errors”
 
This is to be Eliot Janeway's regular column, but no-one told him, and he is off discovering America. Instead, we have the thoughts of Ladd Haystead, normally the paper’s farm columnist. His subject today: political sentiments of Mid-Western farmers! Did you know that Westerners hate Easterners like Easterners hate Englishmen? It is very geopolitical. Other things that they hate include postwar planning, foreign aid, taxes, Social Security, inequitable freight rates and the Administration (which has already written off the farm vote). Since New York bought one third of all war bonds, it follows that all the war wealth has gone East. There’ll be no jobs after the war. All the returning servicemen will hang out in the village square, not able to spend their bonus, because there’ll be no bonus, because the money is all gone. Everyone will be forced out of business by taxes, and a depression is absolutely in the cards. Business will be busted, agriculture will be on a subsistence basis (it can’t go broke, because it’s out of debt). While all of this is going on, Russia, Germany and England will take over the industrial leadership of the world, as our traders will be out-traded at the negotiating table, because they are a bunch of dreamers who have never had to carry a payroll. “We’ll be lucky to keep Stalin from getting the state of Texas.” The synthetic rubber industry has been stabbed in the back.
 
What is the answer? A new generation of politicians who can tell it like it is. Men like Eric Johnston, President of the US Chamber of Commerce, who is said to have the backing of labour. Or Wheeler McMillen. Say, here’s an idea: A Johnston-McMillen ticket! As the European war will be over by the time of the next election, FDR is doomed. After all, he has neglected the Japanese war and been very cutting to MacArthur. As an easterner, FDR doesn’t understand the Japanese, like Far Western men such as Eric Johnston. Meanwhile, the one thing the British understand is a hardboiled negotiating stance. Johnston will be tough with them, not like FDR or especially Wilkie.

“That’s what you hear at this time west of the Appalachians.” Says Ladd Haystead. President Eric Johnston. You heard it here, first, Reggie.

 
Business at War
 
“Research is a Business” Specifically, National Research is a business, headed by Richard S. Morse. Morse founded a company dedicated to industrial research just at the time when a group of New England investors led by William Coolidge were looking for new outlets for venture capital. The brand new National Research Corporation gas done various things since, and might do more things later. I am a little perplexed at how this company rates a  mention in Fortune, save for the very large amount of money provided it by "venture capitalists" and the novelty of a firm that consists mainly of a laboratory. That said, it is possible that someone knows something. I almost tempted to take this as a stock tip. Almost.
 
“The Lame, the Halt, the Blind” The Lewyt Corporation of Brooklyn, NY, makes sheet metal and electronic devices on contract, using a labour force of disabled people. He also uses various means to promote worker health and reduce absenteeism.
 
The Fortune Survey
 
This month, an attempt to assess the voting preferences of independent voters. Conclusion: independent voters feel complex and divided ways about complex and intractable problems. The future is uncertain. Ask again, later.
 
Ads: Pitney-Bowes says that striking is killing our boys; Jenkins Valves says that not replacing your valves on time is killing our boys.
IMG_0227.JPG
 
 
“The Job Before Us” The idea here is to estimate expected demand for various goods in “194Q,” the year after the end of demobilisation and reconversion. Apparently, 194Q is a "model" based on data from 1939 to 1943. The exercise is justified with the example of the Sears catalogue. Using this kind of date,  American production at a national income of 192 billion was projected at only 64 billion in consumer goods and 56 billion in war expenditure. On this basis, Sears added books to its catalogues, reasoning that it would be desperate for merchandise to sell, and so it proved. 

 

The "194Q" model proposes a national income of 165 billion. From this basis, it can carve up expected expenditure. Notice first that 8 billion is allocated for new home building.

 

 

IMG_0228.JPG
To explain: GNP of 194Q is, of course, limited by manpower. We can’t have a higher national income than we can achieve by producing at peak employment. This will be lower lower than it is in 1943, but, obviously, higher than in the slack employment year of 1939! Given that productivity will continue to go up at 2.5%/year, it is projected, we actually get to the 8 billion for housing by backing into it. This is the number required to soak up all of the savings sloshing about due to the high national income. It is higher than the previous total of 4.6 billion in 1925, and constitutes the Producer’s Council’s estimate for peak building. So one of the problems of the 194Q model is that there may not be all of this housing activity to soak up savings. Still, I am gratified that the logic of Fortune's"modeller" converges with mine. There is not much point in cheap housing a la "Cousin H. C." when the issue will be to find investments for savings.

The rest of necessary investments will be found in the form of 16 billion in private investment in railways, factories and the like. Now, projecting from 1939, there will be consumer spending of 37 billion on food and other agricultural goods. This suggests that farmers will be working hard and making good money. Thirteen billion on durable consumer goods assumes, as Professor Sumner Slichter puts it, that wartime savings are “cold,” and will not rush into new goods as soon as these come onto the market, so that production will be at historic levels. If not, if savings turn out to be “hot,” and consumers splurge on can-openers and cars, then production will have to be at unprecedented levels or there will be inflation. 

 

 

Now, where will the money go? That is, what will be the share of the national income?

 

IMG_0229.JPG
Making some assumptions (for example, that the already high profits of 1943 will not be even higher), we get an average annual income up $780 from 1939’s $1410. However, cost of living is up, too. By some alchemy, the author folds the change in cost of living into the calculation to show that the average man will have $350 more to spend or save (that is, "$350" as this would have stretched in 1939, not in 194Q). Farm, professionals and business incomes will be up much more than this.

 

Still, for all the money about, prices must be high enough, and wages low enough, for price signals to work. We shall not all be able to have everything at once.

 

The one worry in all of this is that we do not know how far unemployment can be reduced without causing inflation (again.)  There might well be 4 million unemployed in the demobilisation year, less than 2 million in 194Q. So how do we get from 1943 to 194Q? Don’t say that we can’t. That’s just “exogenous pessimism.” Which is not to say that there might be problems. Americans might save too much, because the experience of the Depression made us a “badly scared generation,” or not invest enough, because demand is not there, as see above. But if we demobilise in an orderly fashion, if we tell ourselves that we are a $165 billion nation, we can get there. 

 

Fortune is much more optimistic than The Economist.

 

 
“Shortage of Oil?” Peak oil! America is running out of oil, although this may change as exploration ramps up again with peace. There is also the rest of the world to consider.

 

“Jack and Heintz: More about the “Jahco” way. These are the 12 hour day, 84 hour week guys. So the  new business miracle plan is to go in with your employees to soak the army and navy on cost-plus contracts? It could work, I suppose.
 
Aviation, January, 1944

 

Leslie Nielsen’s editorial for Aviation says, plan for contract termination now. James H. McGraw II's line editorial is missing in action.

 

America at War

 

Germany’s plan to convert from bomber to fighter conversion has failed. One city after another is getting the Hamburg treatment.
 
“Beam of Sunshine Pierces Termination Clouds” Bernard Baruch has been put in charge. 

 

Aircraft Design Portfolio No. 4, “The A-20 Havoc.” 22 pages of a very old plane.

 

Willy Ley, “Jet Propulsion: From Fancy to Fact” It’s a fact! Such are the perils of running a monthly. 

 

Chester S. Ricker, “Continuous Pouring of Magnesium Castings” is hard. But we do it at Chevrolet.

 

Ellis F. Gardner, “Spotwelding Expedites Lockheed Constellations”  Lockheed is now using the method on structural members, is the point.  Many many details about where spot welding is used, and where torch welding; about the alloys used, and the increasing thickness allowed in extruded tubes, which provides enough of a flange for a spot welder to get a grip, and more also.  One gets rather a sense that much of this is "good enough for government work."

 

Edward M. Greer, “Pressure Control in Aircraft Hydraulic Systems, Part 1”The American hydraulics industry went from low, American pressures to high, British pressures over night, and the number of accessories designed in the last two years to exploit this and ameliorate the problems that it brought in train are staggering. 

 

“NACA: The Force Behind Our Aerial Supremacy” 

 

Ralph H. Rudd, “These Horizontal Jigs Boost Aircraft Panel Fabrication,” 

 

Loren F. Dorman, “Aircraft Production Analysis Key to Assembly Line Efficiency, Part II.”

 

“Refrigerated Welding tips Save Time and Money,” When I saw this title, I thought, at first, "Ah hah, more use for industrial refrigeration. Maybe we need to put more family money in there." Then it turned out that  this is actually a refrigerated (cooled) unit. Coolant circulates through the tip. Now, this is remarkable. I was in my worldly-wise thirties when the grizzled elders of this industry first made aircraft with saws and emery boards, and now they are wielding devices that would shame a science-pulp writer and his "blasters." (What can I say? Your younger son's reading materials surround me!)

 

That said, I feel as though my enthusiasms are in danger of taking me for a ride, rather like our local business council, dropping money at Fortune's elevated rates to trumpet to the nation the triumph  of landing a factory for record-keeping cards in San Jose!

 

IMG_0226.JPG

 

H. L. Federman, “How Tax Policies Affect Our Industry’s Future.” “Profitless prosperity”seems to be the point, and the generous dividends of last month some fever vision of a land beyond the sea of dreams. 

 

Carl E. Swanson, “Supercharged Ignition Cures ‘Rough Engine’” Northwestern Airlines has fixed the problem of rough DC-3 engines by adding a supercharging harness to prevent moisture buildup and stuff. It is curious that one never hears about problems such as these until they are solved. Unless one has had a few occasions to fly on a DC-3.

 

IMG_0231.JPG

 

Aviation wants you to know that the dark-skinned men working on P-40s here are "heavily-tanned." Why else would they look like that? In this light, I mention that "Mrs. J. C." worked all the cunning of the female of the species to secure Wong Lee's son ambition last month. I do not imagine that he will ever be more than a sublieutenant of the naval reserve ("Lieutenant, j. g." in Americanese), but I expect that in the long run, wartime command of a United States naval craft will count for far more than his substantive rank. 

 

R. Dixon Speas, et al. “Cruise Control for Flying Efficiency” is part vi of “Current problems” –I think. Anyway, here is yet another discussion of some form of automatic control in the cockpit. The American public seems quite taken with "Elmer the autopilot."

 

 

 

“Sideslips” is upset that Ford and Kaiser have been allowed to boast about their production when other firms aren’t allowed to seek publicity about their in fact much better production records. 

 

Aviation News

 

Bomb tonnage on Germany up 30%; Russia may join the air attack on Germany. The Martin Mars has finished its m ission to Brazil, which was to do one useful thing to justify their cost before the end of the war. Blaine Stubblefield just wants us to know that while bombing enemy railroads is useless,Brigadier General Johnson, who led the attack on Ploesti is a hero. A B-24 just made the Atlantic run in 11h 35min. The new Wright Cyclone is in service. November’s aircraft production was a record 8,789, including 1000 bombers.  Some P-47s now have water injection in their engines. 

 

Oh. Did I somehow, unavoidably, downplay the fact that American air production fell 211 aircraft short of the 9000 plane revised target? Perhaps that is because the story was buried in Aviation, too. As an American propagandist, I would certainly not be ashamed at having built 1000 heavy bombers in a month. I am sure that the British figure is nowhere near that high. I would be worried about the loss rate. And I am.

 

Sometimes, cynicism can be a defence, Reggie. While I do not despair, as I have at some points in this long war, I frankly do not see a way out of this war that does not end in some kind of compromise with Berlin and Tokyo. What of poor China, then? Instead of being coerced into moving more poor refugees into America, perhaps we should get back into the business in our own right?

 

Ah, well, a toast to the Navy, Army, and Air Force. that they achieve a miracle on the coast of Europe this summer, and bring "194Q" to this whole, suffering nworld. 

*Scraped from Food.com

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Postblogging Technology, January, 1944, II: Best Wishes and Good Fortune in 1944!

 
year+of+the+monkey.jpg *
 
 
My Dearest Reggie:
 
The dates have aligned, and I hope we shall have a most auspicious year. "Mrs. J. C."  returned from her specialist's appointment in San Francisco at the beginning of the week in a gay mood, and now there are to be two cribs in the new nursery at the carriage house. Even the endless sound of hammering and nailing in the back as boxes of oranges are sealed and as quickly sent off to Chinese groceries in time for the Lunar New Year celebrations did not affect her feelings.
 
The arrival of your wife in advance of our Robbie Burns Supper was not, as I feared, a greater test. She and Judith bore the Inspector-Generaltrix's visit with the most magnificent aplomb. All is in order, and "Mrs. J. C." was the most gracious host. We were honoured by "Cousin H. C." and by Cousin Bess, lured out of the sanctuary of her home by the prospect of family, and a chance to spoil her beloved (half-)nephew and niece. We were also honoured, I am pleased to report, by our film star-Signals Corp relative's wife, who attended at the sharp insistence of "Mrs. J.C." Less happily, he brought along a friend, a member of Admiral Halsey's official family, quite handsome, notwithstanding his unfortunate red hair, in naval whites. 
 
I say "unfortunate" because "Mrs. J.C" believes him to be a stalking horse for his friend's adventuring ways. This strikes me as taking her personal dislike for the young man rather into the realm of the paranoid, but one must make allowances for woman in her condition. And, that said, I have to admit that for all his avuncularity, our patriotic actor relation rather rubs me the wrong way, as you Colonials say.
 
For example, we had as our guest once again the Provost of Santa Clara University, a clever man, as you have often noted, even amongst the Jesuits, andof long years in these parts and deep understanding of the value of the Poor Clares to our family. He watched without comment as I gave the traditional gifts to the young folk. 
 
But when "Miss "V.C" opened up her copy of the red-leather bound volume  of the Immortal Poet of Ayrshire's verse, and found within a crisp, new, $100 bill, she was somewhat taken aback. The Provost, as is his wont in other circumstances (have you ever seen him do this at a lunch for the parents of prospective students?) pulled out his old, ivory dog whistle, and told the story of how his grandfather used to be a "redeemer," pursuing fugitive slaves on the shores of the Ohio, and how there was often a crush of redeemers after some well-remunerated refugee, and how, on those occasions, when his dogs found the scent, he would pull out that old whistle, retrieved from a Mound-Builder tomb. "For it is a curious property of this whistle that it can only be heard by mongrel dogs, and none other. Grandfather was careful to keep a mongrel kennel, whereas the other redeemers used the finest bloodhounds for this remunerative work. Thus, Grandfather could call in his dogs without alerting the other redeemers, and many a bounty he took that otherwise would have gone to another."
 
Then, of course, the Provost held that long pause of his, before adding, as he always does, "Grandfather was an evil, evil man. But he did establish the family fortune that way. A curious thing, though: he never took a fugitive but was dark as deepest Africa, though we all know that slaves come in many colours betwixt coal and milk coffee. Perhaps the mongrels of other species can hear Grandfather's dog whistle, too."  
 
 
 
 
When I saw our young relation's eyes rise, I saw that, once again, someone had heard the dog whistle. My problem is that there was a hint of malice in the smile he gave then. I do not always approve of the message that the Provost gives when he goes on to talk to parents about how congenial their children will find Santa Clara while fiddling with his whistle. There are many children, however thinly their final coat of white overlies a primer  of coal, or sage, or even vermilion, who would do well at Harvard or Yale, and whose parents do not need to be frightened into sending them to Santa Clara, instead. 
 
But that hint of malice suggests that quite another message entirely was being heard, and noted.       
 
 

 

 
Time, 17 January 1944
 
International
 
“The Test,” “the Case,” “Anatomy of a Feud.” Etc.
 
The reason that the Russians were so cutting to Mr. Wilkie about the status of the Baltic statelets is that they intend to build up a “cordon sanitaire” in eastern Europe to maintain their security while they demobilise and rebuild their economy. Perhaps the Poles will be upset about this, because, naturally, of Vladimir the Great, or perhaps Jagiello, Or, at a stretch, President Wilson and Lord Curzon. Meanwhile, Rumania and Finland stand idle in the field, conspicuously massaging their calves and intimating their readiness to be pulled from the line-up.
 
“Russia: No. 6.” On Christmas Day, the Iron City of Magnitogorsk, which sits where the Ural river cuts through the iron mountain of Magnitnaya, celebrated the first pour from its sixth blast furnace, the second built since the beginning of the war. The Russians claim that they “followed the methods of Henry Kaiser” in building it, so expect it to start cracking open the moment it hits a stiff sea…. Hard to imagine how much more profitable the Fontana plant would be if it sat between a navigable river and a mountain of 62% iron ore. No. 7 furnace, which will come into operation this year, may be the world’s largest. The question is, how much steel will Russia need after the war? Hopefully the Communist Utopia will not be tempted to keep excess capacity in operation just to avoid writing down the investment, but you never know.
 
“Great Britain: The Stately Coals of England” The Earl of [sic] Fitzwilliam is upset that the 450 acres of his estate at Wentworth Woodhouse, Yorkshire, has been spoliated by steam shovels taking 25,000 tons/week of outcrop coal. Time seems to think that His Grace is getting what he deserves for having such a nice house. The cause of making fun of the grievances of the grande noblesse  would have been better served, I think, by noting that the family also owns the 15,000 acres surrounding that 450. As for the story itself, the effort and waste implied by all of that stony outcrop coal is disheartening. It will certainly do the boilers no good.
 
“Italy: Gentleman of Verona” Also not sympathetic about Count Ciano, the paper is. Or perhaps the "not" goes at the end? Writing for Time is harder than it looks.
 
War
“Votes for Soldiers” The Christmas break was not kind to the legislators who voted against the “super-powerful Federal War Ballot.” Now assorted state legislatures are moving. Arkansas is even renewing a 1923 law abolishing the poll tax for soldiers.
 
“Facts” In a big Army-Navy “facts-of-life” rally held last week in Los Angeles, some 650 “West Coast big-wigs” were told that in two years of fighting, U.S. troops have captured 280,000 European prisoners but only 377 Japanese.  Thus, the Japanese fleet will eventually come out to fight a decisive battle, as this proves that they have fanatical courage. “Island hopping” will continue. The number of American aircraft carriers, now over 40, will be approximately doubled. Also doubled, cruisers, although building priority shifts to landing craft and submarines. I pointed out that "doubled" is not very specific, but your eldest points out that  cruiser plants work hard, and that the Navy can scarcely relenton cruiser building until it has enough ships that do not risk burning through their own steam plant. Admiral Halsey contributes that the only good Japanese is a dead Japanese. As much as I understand where the admiral is coming from, this does not, I believe, constitute a “fact” as that word is normally understood. It also rather undermines the simple logic of the first “fact” supplied.
 
“Lend-Lease: Swords into Ploughshares” I find it interesting that while Lend-Lease accounted for 38 out of every 100 tanks the U.S. produced, it only took up $9 of $100 of machine tools, 4 out of a 100 barrels of petroleum products, and 10% of food products, with much of the drain on “less critical” foods such as pork, eggs and dried fruit. The currant growers have done rather well out of Lend-Lease, while the world rejoices in America’s surplus of dried eggs and bacon.
 
 
 
 
“Rocket or Racket” More talk of German vengeance weapons. A Swiss expert (so presumably this is an unattributed rewrite of the Flight article) thinks that rocket-guns are bunkum, although in fact the Germans are building launching installations along the “so-called Invasion Coast of France,” and we are bombing them. The paper suggests that the Germans intend to use these giant “bazookas” against the invasion fleet, rather than in any “futuristic terror bombing of London.”
 
Assorted “Battlefronts” articles:Leese is in as new GOC, 8th Army; Ernie Pyle writes affectingly about the death of an army captain from Texas, Tito’s partisans are partisans, the latest landings in New Britain were unopposed, Chinese troops will fight well underGeneral Stilwell’s leadership. General Stilwell is lucky that Grandfather is no longer able to follow the news, or a dacoit would soon be showing him just how well Chinese fight under their own leadership.
 
“Flying Teakettle” The paper is less impressed by jet planes than Flight, for some reason, though it does note, as Flight does not, rumours that the Italians and Germans are working on their own. Mr. Smith, of Flight, now has an American publisher for the latest edition of his book, so someone is making bank on this “jet turbine” thing.
 
“Fashion Note” The Army is tryingout its new field jacket in Alaska. In cold temperatures, perfect comfort will be achieved by wearing as much clothing underneath it as will fit. 
 
“Hobby’s Army”
 
The Women’s Army Corps in England has just been inspected by their Colonel-Commandant, “trim” Colonel Oveta Gulp Hobby. Of a woman of a certain age, “trim” says it all, does it not? And this is all about appearance. “She saw erect, well-dressed girls drawn up for parade." Well, appearance to a point.
 
IMG_0125.JPG
 
 
 After "Mrs. J. C.'s reaction to the "Doughnut Dollies," my eyebrows rise. "In the clammy English dawn, she saw WACs in maroon bathrobes (with boy friends’ unit insignia sewn on their sleeves)… 
 
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 Twenty million women working in American factories are being told about 63,000 “G.I. Janes” over in England, with their boyfriends' patches sewn on their bathrobes' sleeves.
 
 
**
 
Politics
 
“Voice from Main Street” The paper tells us that Main Street wants Mr. Wilkie to be the GOP 1944 nomination. No intimation of who the people standing on it want, but early indications are Governor Dewey.
 
“$134,000,000 Memo” The paper’s take on the Truman Committee’s outrage of the week, the failed attempt to supply Alaska with oil from the Canadian deposit at Norman Wells in the sub-Arctic north. Apparently a pipeline laid over open ground across the tundra, beside a wilderness road of hundreds of miles that winds its way through the worn-down mountain ranges of the eternal snows is not an economical proposition! Since this is not enough absurdity for a single article, the paper quotes a strategic review asserting that a refinery 150 miles from the coast of the Gulf of Alaska would be a “too-easy” target for enemy aircraft.
 
“Death of a Lady” The paper notices the death of Mrs. “Lou Henry Hoover” in her apartment in New York. She is survived by one son, and her husband, the former President. President Hoover, you will certainly not forget, Reggie, lives on the campus of his alma mater, founded a few miles to the north of us (as Americans reckon distance) and a considerable distance from New York. The paper notices “Lou’s” cosmopolitan tastes, the scientific interests that so complemented her husband’s, her athletic inclinations, and her involvement with the Girl Scouts. 
 
Louhenryhoover.jpg
 
The paper only fails to notice her hair style in painting a compelling picture of her private life without actually saying anything.
 
 
Business --“The Toll” Strained by the record-breaking load of 7 billion passenger-miles monthly, the American rail-road system is falling apart. Accidents are up 32% since last year, breakdowns due to equipment failure 39%, due to improper maintenance 47%. 2,349 were killed in rail accidents in 1943.
 
Education  --“Mrs. Evans solves a Problem.” A four-room high school outside of Chicago with only 13 high school students also has only one teacher, a 1929 Bachelor of Music, Mrs. Evans, who also finds time to be principal, school superintendent, and district elementary school visitor. This is deemed to be an acceptable way of running a school because the parents of the children are strict Calvinists. One hopes for the childrens' sake that the postwar depression is not severe or long lasting, or they may suffer from the lack of education. Which, of course, is only a little more extreme than the general deficit of these times.
 
Radio; “Good Aftermoreevening” A radio show broadcast from London by shortwave is picked up by the NBC in New York and rebroadcast around the United States. Is it the future of broadcasting, the paper asks. No it is not, I suggest. It is short wave, as even the paper notes. Australians complain that American armed forces radio is better than British, causing Australians to lose precious British-ness in favour of American-ness. Frank Morgan is leaving the Maxwell House Hour.
 
Flight, 20 January 1944
 
Leaders
The paper thinks that news is thin enough to lead off with some Flight Lieutenant’s talk about the future of air warfare on the BBC. Germany might be running out of fighters, and Spitfires are remarkable.
 
War in the Air
 
 The paper obliquely notes that the Allies possess a way to “see through clouds.” Sofia in Bulgaria has been bombed. Japanese planes have gotten better, but their pilots are deteriorating in skill. There will be no offensive in Burma before the monsoon. The attack on Brunswick was combined with a diversionary attack on Berlin, which accounts for the light casualties.
 
Here and There
 
Transport Lancasters have set a new Atlantic record of 11 hours 15 minutes, taking it away from the Consolidated B-24. Our Geoffrey Smith is a radio star now! The Rolls-Royce Aero-Instruction School’s annual enrollment just reached 5000. 10,000 trainees have passed through the school.
“The Hawker Typhoon” is surprisingly aerodynamic considering how ugly it its. I include a clipping showing the transition from a spaced-frame structure to a monocoque just to the rear of the main spar. Whatever else can be said about it, this is bravura engineering.
 
Tornado+Structure.PNG
 
“Airfield Saturation” The country is reaching its limits as far as new airfields go. This is made worse by the fact that the average size of an airfield has increased from 200 to 600 acres, and by the reduction in the glide path from a 1 in 15 descent to a 1 in 50 due to increasing wing loadings.
 
“Avro York Transport” The Paper has not announced this plane lately, so here you are.
 
Time, 24 January 1944
 
International
 
Something about Poland, Russia, London, America?
 
“Asp from Spain:” You will have noticed the absence of The Economist in this roundup, Reggie. Fortunately, the paper covers the British beat well enough that I do not have to turn to the English press for coverage of this latest Fascist atrocity. Oranges being shipped from Spain to provide a  precious 2 pounds a week for British children through March have been infiltrated by orange bombs! Tiny bits of peel, carefully hollowed out by Spanish Nazi sympathisers and filled with ingenious time-bombs are now being ferreted out of the holds of ships by trained RAF bomb-disposal experts.  
 
War
 
“The Fuerher’s Guests” A German gentleman was interviewed In Stockholm on the subject of his large house in Berlin, which he abandoned, presumably in favour of Stockholm, to bombed-out families (the titular guests) because they were disrupting his routine. I do not imagine that the German Volk will miss him very much.
 
“Not Dead Yet” It is said by the Daily Telegraph that 8000 acres of Berlin have been devastated by bombing. This is an exaggeration. Only 8000 of Berlin’s 20,000 acres are built up at all, and, of these, 1360 acres have been significantly attacked by 9000 tons of bombs dropped in six raids. Although since this assessment, another 5000 tons have been delivered. Updated photo-reconnaissance results are awaited. The total tonnage needed to be delivered is estimated at 40,000, so we are  “about” half way to converting Belin into “Acres of Death.” This story goes nicely with an earlier one about an old Russian peasant woman braining a captured Nazi saboteur as he lay, pinioned and helpless.
 
 “Fathers, Go to War” To meet the Selective Service quota of 699,000 men by July, the service will have to take a “considerable proportion” of fathers, only 90,000 of whom have been drafted so far. Perhaps this will finally effect a reduction in the ever-increasing number of perambulators cluttering up the sidewalks!
 
“Retrenchment” The USAAF is closing 69 airfields and cutting back training.
 
New Star in the Sky” The Paper is bemused by the North American A-36 P-51 Apache Invader Mustang. I gather that its friends call it “Sinjan.” The paper notes its “laminar flow wing,” and its Packard-made two-speed, two-stage supercharger, but then spoils the effect of its brief excursion into actual technical facts by adding that this gives it “speed both upstairs and down.”
 
“Global War, Global Network.” I may or may not have been fair in mocking the paper’s coverage of aviation technology a moment ago, but I was inspired by the next story, which describes the creation of the Army Airways Communication System, apparently a global network of dedicated radio stations supporting Army Air Force Operations. The key here is a globe-wide network for reporting weather. One could very definitely stand for a description of how this is accomplished, but, apparently “radio did it” must suffice.
 
“Receptive Lion” “top-ranking U.S. political commentator” Ray Clapper went to Australia to interview General MacArthur, reports that he is “receptive” to a Presidential run in 1944. I hope his generalship is more closely moored to reality.
 
“Shock of Arms” The paper notes that 8th AF lost 60 bombers and 5 fighters in its raids on northwestern Germany this week, while Bomber Command lost 38 attacking Brunswick. This isexclusive of damaged ships, and it is small consolation that “despatches toneutral Sweden” claim that the city has “ceased to exist,” with citizens fleeing the burning city for the Harz Mountains. In other news, the paper likes General Bradley, as he is a “quiet operator.” Take that, General Patton!
 
“Death in Training” Before the war, the fatal accident rate for Army student pilots was 13 per thousand. It has now risen to 20. The paper thinks that this is just fine. Why does it mention it, then?
 
Science
 
“Secret Weapons” We have jets, while the Germans have their “rocket-gun coast.” Now there is talk of Nazi rocket planes uncovered in Germany, and, of course, there is all that talk about “atom-busting . . .[which]. .. ha been subject . . . of intense research by both United Nations and Axis scientists.” I distinguish “atom-busting” from the other entries in the above list because, unlike the paper, I haven’t heard talk about it in a very long time. The rest of the article has a remarkable listing of boy’s stuff ranging from Greek fire toMerrimac and Monitor to longbows and so on. Secret weapons are real!
“Blue Cross” The Blue Cross is making a tidy little profit these days, after very nearly going under during the 1930s. This news is attached to an odd human interest story about a released Japanese internee who was reimbursed by Blue Cross for his Shanghai medical bills.
 
Politics
 
“The Soldier’s President” It is suggested by some that the delayed implementation of National Service in the United States is tied to the President’s hope of winning a fourth term, as the labour shortage is over. Apparently. Some have brains with the suppleness of a belly dancer.
 
“$100,000,000,000 Guess” The new budget is a hundred-billion dollar guess, as no-one knows whether the war will last out the financial year. The President is asking for twice the national income of 1933, and the public debt will soar to $258 billion, ten times the highest level of the 1920s following the First World War. Once again, the President asked for more taxes, but income, rather than a national sales tax. Obviously I should prefer an income tax over a sales tax, and I notice that our tenants are of the opposite opinion. I wonder why the Luce papers are so congenial to my opinions, and not those Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Wengler and Mr. McCrimmon? I joke, Reggie, I joke!
 
“Button, Button” The paper notes that Wendell Wilkie is a laughing stock at the Front. I imagine that this will matter in his run to the nomination almost as much as the fact that Dewey is going to win.
 
“Work Preferred” In 1943, 900,000 U.S. workers who had become eligible to retire under Social Security opted to keep on working, as the money was just too good.
 
“The Lobby Gets to Work” The American Legion is in Washington getting things ready for returning World War II veterans. I specifically notice talk of an increase in the mustering out bonus from $300 to $500, with even more possible, and of “loans for home building” amongst other things. This is for the Earl, of course. How plausible are $5000 homes when the returning serviceman will be able to muster the 10% down payment from his basic bonus alone?
 
“The Army’s Doctrine” The Army’s censorship authorities released new guidelines. The paper is dyspeptic, and especially notes the silly way that it kept jets “secret,” when  “its basic principles were expounded and diagrammed Sept 11. 1941 in the British aviation magazine Flight.”
 
Civilian Supply, Aviation, Renegotiation
 
“For Babies Only” The massive article that leads off the section and which by itself justifies three separate headings is about –brace yourself, Reggie—a release of steel to make perambulators, the WPB taking account of a “bumper crop “ of 2.7 million babies this year. I wonder if someone has studied the impact of this bumper crop on long term steel consumption? Will they not need tricycles, and then bicycles, and, finally, a flivver before settling into domestic life in a house filled with steel refrigerators, automatic washing machines, and even air conditioners?
 
 
 
“Aluminum: From Feast to Famine” On a more serious note (again), there is now an excess of aluminum production in America, as just about everyone except “Cousin H.C.” could have predicted. American plants that use coal-fired electricity are already being closed.
 
Railroads, Banking, Retail Trade
 
“Recovery” In the Depression, US railroads were the sickest of sick industries. Now, they are not, thanks to having retired $6 billion, ahlf their total debt, while lsalting away $1.6 billion for capital investment in equipment and roadbeds. Notably, they have done two-and-a-half times more business in 1943 than in 1928 with 250,000 fewer employees thanks to improved equipment and better technique.
 
Canada at War: “Jimmy Rides Again” Canadian Agriculture Minister James Gardner has apparently resolved the Anglo-Canadian bacon crisis by paying farmers more for hogs. No mention of the “coarse grain” shortage, though.
 
Arts
 
Louella Parsons has brought out her memoirs,  Jimmy Durante is funny, Jules Romain is prolificthe opera house in Naples is open again, Jackpot gets a bad review.
Flight, 27 January 1944
 
Leaders
 
The Marquess of Londonderry finally extracted some details about the Government’s postwar civil aviation plans in the Lords this week. There was further talk about the Bristol Brabazon, and the revelation of a somewhat smaller and near-at-hand “Tudor,” a name with a striking similarity to “Lancaster” and “York.” The paper, of course, thinks that there should be a flying boat, too.  “Technical Training:” Talk of a British College of Aeronautics is all the rage, while others call for an expansion of basic engineering and other technical education on a “walk before you can fly” basis.
 
War in the Air
 
Aerial photographs show that more than a third of the great woolcombing factory at Leipzig was destroyed in the 3 December raid. “The deaths and sick casualties from cold in a campaign in Russia during the winter must in any case be high.” The paper is pleased by the landings at Anzio, long awaited by armchair strategists.
 
Armstrong Whitworth Albemarle” Is a plane of which you have probably heard on account of your being an RCAF officer in the thick of it. No-one else has, for the good reason that it is a sad and lonely failure that will be put to some undemanding use in the Invasion.
 
ARMSTRONG_WHITWORTH_AW.41_ALBEMARLE_CH_0
 
“Long Range Mustang: Credit for the Latest U.S. Fighter Goes to British Air Ministry,’ You will note, Reggie, that Time took a different tack. I think this will be quite a successful aircraft, if there is such a fight over its paternity! Certainly no-one is rushing forward to claim credit for the Albemarle.  Save for the subcontracting furniture makers who pioneered the use of “improved,” or “compregnated” wood products.
 
Air Transport
Discussion of the Government’s commercial aviation policy continues in the Lords. The “Brabazon” will be a very large plane, and will be flown by BOAC, in its capacity as a “national flag-bearer.”
 
Here and There
 
Fan mail and proposals continue to pour into the Flight offices, directed to our own Geoffrey Smith, who now candidly described by some as “British aeronautical engineering’s answer to Bing Crosby.” Also, this Group Captain Whittle fellow of whom you may have heard will be giving a talk to the Royal Aeronautical Society, or some such.
 
“Colour and Design in Civil Aviation” Something called the British Colour Council stands prepared to offer advice on tasteful colour schemes for airliners. If passengers can be persuaded not to fly in a déclassé aeroplane finished in last season’s hues, aeroplane output may not have to shrink at all!
 
Time, 31 January, 1944
 
International
 
“Spain: Wages of Appeasement” Hard on the heels of the “legerdemain” of the Blue Division and the orange-bomb fiasco (which turned out to be bombs in the crates, not actual orange-bombs), Franco signs a credit agreement with the Germans, probably to sell them tungsten. The paper is not amused.
 
“Death at Konstanz” The paper reviews a recent Swiss newspaper article reporting that the German city across the lake has reported 3,785 obituary notices for officers and men killed on the Russian Front since 22 June 1941. Forty-three percent were married, and 76 suicides are reported as well, “mostly wives and mothers of the dead soldiers.” Which seems like a morbid and unnecessary statistic for newspaper consumption. Not to mention uncalled-for, even in wartime.
 
“The Bear’s Way” The paper speculates that Pravda’s accusation this week that the British were in negotiations for a separate peace with Germany might have been intended to pre-emptively justify Russian talks with the Germans, or at least warn that two could play that game.
 
“Not Yet” The paper allows that the invasion of France might have to wait for the summer.
 
“Third Landing” The invasion at Anzio was a glorious success! And that is why Rome has already fallen! Wait a minute, Reggie….
 
“By Sea and Air” A great submarine-air battle has been fought by a convoy “250 miles off Portugal.” No Allied ships were sunk, and the British released details about the “Leigh-LightPlanes.”
 
“More of the Same” The Germans announce that “liquid-air rocket bombs,” a “rocket-booster mechanism” for interceptor fighters, and a “new kind of underwater arm” are all imminent.
 
“The Way to Tokyo” Another amphibious invasion of a Central Pacific island is imminent.
 
“Cradle Retaken” Leningrad’s siege is lifted, Novgorod, "cradle of Russia," falls, Russians launch new offensive into northern Finland.
 
“Superfortress” The paper notices that Flight has noticed the B-29 “Superfortress.” Of note are that it is a colossally large plane, and that its "side turrets" operated by remote control. Your son looks over my shoulder and shakes his head sadly. He is quite confident that General Electric has not solved the lag problem any more than anyone else has.
 
“Double Champ” The commander of a PT boat that has sunk several Japanese barges explains that he had no choice but to shoot twelve Japanese in the water.
 
“Reverses and Reserves” The paper hopes that the German efforts to build up a counter-invasion reserve, noted by Hitler in his New Year’s address, are failing, pointing to the absence of German troops on the Anzio beaches.
 
“Enter the Royal Navy” The existence of an Eastern Fleet is intimated. American submarines continue to sink Japanese merchant ships at a great clip.
 
“Respectable Floozie” The Martin B-26 Marauder, much criticised by the Truman Committee as a “Widow-Maker,” or woman of ill-repute, has had its reputation restored by the traditional expedient. "It separates the men from the boys," says Glenn L. Martin spokesman. The mothers of America must be so relieved.
 
Politics
 
“Labor”  The paper reviews the railway strike, accuses the Administration of honouring the letter of the Little Steel guidelenes for wage increases while “doing violence to its spirit.” There are still three thousand coal mines under Federal administration, but at least the strikes in the Akron rubber plants have been broken. On the other hand, an injunction against “maintenance of membership” in their plants sought by the chairman of U. S. Gypsum, Sewell Avery, also head of Montgomery Ward, is being evaded by the WLB.
 
“The Hopkins Letter” The scandal of the forged letter from Wendell Wilkie to Harry Hopkins continues
“Man of the West” Wilkie/Warren 1944!.. I mention this because Governor Warren is on this week’s cover. Of course, Jimmy Durante was on last week’s, so there you go.
 
Science
 
“Much Ado About Nothing” Vacuum is being used in new ways in science nowadays! Mainly by Richard B. Morse of Massachusetts. Mr. Morse must be a major shareholder, is all that I can say.
 
422px-Orange_juice_1_edit1.jpg
 
 
Business
Jahco continues its lonely battle against the excess-profits tax; Anaconda Wire& Cable’s long trial for deliberately shipping failed product to Russia comes to an end. American private exports are at the highest level since 1929. There is much talk of scandal over the Petroleum Reserve Corporation. Again.
 
Education
 
“The Race Question” A 46 page booklet by Columbia anthropologists Ruth Benedict and Gene Weltfish, entitled The Races of Mankind, has been prepared for distribution to servicemen by the USO. But it contains “troublous facts and troubling doctrines” to the effect that there is no essential difference between races, which are all mixed up, anyway. The USO has therefore discontinued its distribution and has been criticised for it by the AFL, CIO, and “many Negro newspapers.” The remaining "Negro newspapers" think that racial inequality is fine with them!
 
“Yale Versus Harvard” The two old schools are agreed that government financial aid (in view for veterans, I gather) must not threaten their freedom to do just as they please. To wit, Yale will accommodate returned veterans at a special Institute of Collegiate Study, disdains vocation training, and will retain summer vacations, while Harvard will run all year around and will introduce vocational training, while its president dismisses the idea of teaching the humanities to “any considerable portion” of the 10,000,000 returning veterans, as they will “be in a hurry” to get on with their lives.
 
Fanny Hurst has a new book out, and Robert Duffus has published a memoir of his year at Stanford with Thorstein Veblen. Veblen does not sound like a Stanford man to me, Reggie. But I only know one Stanford man well, and not for the better.
 
And now for the monthlies. Or, in this case, bi-weeklies, as Aero-Digest now has enough material –and this notwithstanding losing Armed Forces accreditation—to publish every two weeks! (I was also not billed for the increase on my subscription, and shall gratefully pay special attention to the advertising content.)
 
Aero-Digest, 1 January 1944
 
“Pacific Strategy and the Bombing of Tokyp” The paper notes that since a serious bombing campaign against Tokyo will require on the order of 50 airfields, American “super-bombers” cannot be based in China. Range rules out their use from Hawaii or the Philippines, and weather from Alaska. That leaves Formosa, as it always does.
 
“Recreation for War Workers” Instructs factory managers in how to organise dances and parties. Hopefully no-one needs armoured bras!
 
H. O. Boyvey (Vultee), “Fatigue –The Forgotten Member of the Design Family.” Boyvey tells us that traditional engineering builds in a fatigue margin of strength. This is impossible in aircraft, where weight management rules. We are left to calculate safe usages from experimental data, and we do not have enough data about new materials. Fly in new planes (built to old designs?) only for the first decade or so after the war. Hopefully tastefully-decorated ones, though. More seriously, you will recall the alarming increase in fatal accident rates in Air Corps training. Mr. Boyvey points out that student pilots land hard, and testing of the strength of undercarriage forgings is not very good, especially when it is considered how “nicks, scratches and other blemishes” can affect their integrity. Vultee is building various equipment to test them.
 
J. A. Chamberlin (Noorduiyn-Montreal), “Parts Straightening Without Heat Treatment,” a judicious use of force can salvage banged up parts after a crash. What about safety, you ask? Here’s some very convincing math (with charts) to show that it is!
 
As a consolation, if German aircraft production totals are going up as quickly as they claim, fatigue testing sounds like something that they might be neglecting, and the German air force may well crash to Earth far more quickly than we expect.
 
Max Munk (Catholic University of America), “Computation of the Takeoff Run,” which I  notice because of the presence of an integral sign. This is not our generation of engineers. But, of course, he is an academic, and so must make a pretense that this “calculus” thing has uses.
 
Design Sketch: The P-51 “Mustang.” Other papers talk. Aero Digest delivers.
 
IMG_0122+(2).JPG
 
 
Although I gather that the fuselage-mounted guns indicate an earlier model than the one currently flying bomber-escort missions.
 
Edward Lodwig (Mobile Refrigeration, Ltd.) “Altitude Simulation,” If there really is a “cold war” in the postwar, with companies racing to bring new and improved refrigerators to American homes, the credit to wartime innovation will be even wider than I realised a moment ago. Mr. Lodewig describes the rigs his company built to test aeroplane components for high-altitude performance. Apparently, many of the same problems being faced by jet-turbine and aero-engine manufacturers were faced by builders of refrigerator compressors.
 
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Bringing several themes together, here is a young lady testing "aircraft fabrics" in -40 degree conditions.
 
Washington In-Formation
 
This biweekly entry is mainly dedicated to the Baruch appointment, and its implications for the postwar liquidation of government-owned plant. I go into this further in my financial note below. However, I will note here that Senator Truman seems to be taking a soft line on the vexed question of valuations, and intimates that he should like to see war plant purchased at the “true value,” and not at prices reflecting inflated wartime construction costs. What I am not at clear about is the implications for us. “Cousin H.C’s”  steel plant may be sold to him for much less than we currently expect. Are we no longer expected to save his investment, in anticipation of postwar profits in a steel-hungry world, or are we expected to clamber on board the wagon with him, in anticipation of said profits? Again, my message to the Earl is that these profits are being heedlessly exaggerated, but the paper has little to say about the steel industry’s future. I shall talk about the ironmaker’s trade papers in the next section, but please do be at pains to remind the Earl that my joke about the lifetime steel needs of 1944's bumper crop of squalling infants was just that!
 
Digest of the News
 
The West Coast produced 2581 planes in November, vice 2496 in October. Labour turnover, with 20,000 workers leaving their jobs each month on the West Coast, is the main factor holding back production. Various numbers are shown to prove that this has cost the equivalent of 2035 B-17s in the last 11 months, a probably spuriously precise number building on an estimated cost of $200 to recruit, hire and train a new employee. “Cut turnover by 50% and most of the aircraft industry’s manpower problem will be solved,” says the representative of the employers. It is all the workers' fault.
 
In other news, “Tex” Rankin, founder and principal of the Rankin Aeronautical Academy, is shown pinning on his son’s wings. I suggest that you not send your son to the academy of a  man not bright enough to realise that one sends one's son to one's friend's academy.
 
“Stout Sees World Concept if Plane Development Left to Engineers” I would summarise this brief summary of ‘William B. (“Bill”) Stout’s’ talk to the Aviation Writers’ Association except that I still have no idea of how aircraft engineers will “give mankind a world concept in place of a national or local mentality.” What I am sure of is that jobs are going begging in the United States to the point where people who cannot read and write are doing the reading and writing.
 
“’Mars’ Breaks All Records” The Consolidated Mars is a very big aeroplane. The paper’s attitude reminds me of something a very vulgar Egg woman said to me once in her cups about her taste in men.
 
Aero Digest, 15 January 1944
 
“Civil Aviation In War” American airlines have planes! And they fly them to places where there is a war!
 
“The ‘Helldiver’ Meets South Pacific Battle Tests” The Curtiss Helldiver (Aero Digest’sstyle for aeroplane nicknames is all over the map) SB2C-1 has had 889 design changes since it was lambasted by the Truman Committee, and now is somewhat satisfactory.
 
Hon. Jennings B. Randolph, “Aviation Fuels for the Future” If you spend enough money on Virginia coal, you can turn it into high-test gasoline, just in time to produce an over-priced product for a market that is moving on to broad-cut jet fuels! Fortunately, the author is in the House of Representatives, where he can do no harm. As the paper notices, along with current jet’s high fuel consumption, a few pages later.
 
Washington In-Formation
 
More in contract wind-up, and talk of funding airports. Also, an even bigger “super-bomber” than the B-29 is on theway, intended for Pacific ranges.
 
Guest Editorial
 
J. C. Miller, “Electrical Industry’s Role in Refinement of Aircraft” General Electric’s Aviation Division Manager wants to remind us that it was his firm which was selected to develop the first American jet engine. Why? Because GE has been getting more and more involved in aircraft, ever since its amplidyne technology was chosen for the electrical power turrets on various American bombers. Chosen as lead contractor for various secret “super-bombers” of which details will be intimated here, GE went on to produce an electro-hydraulic automatic pilot, complete with electric pick-offs on the gyros. (Your eldest explains to me that this concerns the problem that measuring a gyro’s rate and direction of spin interferes with it and thus causes it to precess., Then he tells me about a mind-boggling thought experiment concerning a physicist’s cat, which I will relate to you in person, since it really takes a gin-and-tonic to go down properly.) GE also built the turbosupercharger of the P-47, although it has purely mechanical controls. They also built the high-altitude ignition system for that ‘plane. More to come at another date.
 
IMG_0128+(2).JPG
 
 
Following on are articles about light weight electrical systems for aircraft and a new, high-capacity heater for high-altitude flying.
 
Robert Taylor, Industrial Radiologist, “Alteration of X-ray Beams to Meet Inspection Requirements” Apparently, inspecting X-rays are not just x-ray machines. They also have filters to ensure that the beam is of consistent wavelength. Mr. (Doctor?) Taylor explains progress in this field.
 
Charles A. Mobley, “Essentials of Airplane Duct Design” It turns out that the air flowingthrough aircraft must be treated aerodynamically, as well as that flowing around them.  Proper engineering makes radiators work better.  I am increasingly amazed that the aircraft of a decade ago flew at all!
 
Digest of the News

The Army Air Force now has a strength of 2,385,000 officers and men.  85,946 planes were made in 1943, 8802 in December of 1943. Los Angeles has received $6 billion in aviation orders, first in the nation, ahead of Newark and Detroit. 
 
*Copyright Caroline Young 2014? Anyway, prints available here.
**Does anyone have any idea where "Wilson Johnnie" comes from?
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  • 3 weeks later...

My Dearest Reggie:

 

The house, or rather houses, are a-whirl with the energy of youth this month. Our distant relative, the actor-turned-Signals-Corps-Captain (you know who I mean) has turned in a handsome apology for his behaviour over the last few months, admitting that he paid far too close attention to "Miss V.C.," and blaming marital troubles, now resolved, for the fact that he "was not himself." He will not, he told me, be making further domestic visits.

 

I was pleased to accept this resolution. For all of "Mrs. J. C.'s" suspicions --some confirmed, I will ashamedly own-- he is a winning young man with a bright future in politics, if he chooses to pursue it. This affair, if successfully prosecuted, would quite ruin those hopes, and make his father's old age even bleaker than otherwise. (It is odd, or, rather, telling that a divorce should be seen as fatal to one's electoral prospects, while the press will decline to press closely the investigation into any candidate's even most obviously questionable ancestry, but the precedent was set long before our time.) As little as I like the Engineer, I will not deny him the pleasure of seeing his son succeed in a field in which he so resoundingly failed.

 

But this did not resolve the matter of suitors pressing round "Miss V.C.," because apart from your younger son's obvious interest (speaks the wisdom of age) there is the matter of "Lieutenant A.," who now seems determined to press his own suit. As he is young, single, handsome, born to wealth and well-connected, I see no reason to object if he wishes to insert himself in our social whirl for as long as his Admiral's business keeps him in San Francisco. I have, however, intimated to him that Wong Lee's vigilance is not to be underestimated.

 

 I also rather hope that he manages to obtain a slightly more modern auto for use social calling soon, however. 

 

As for "Miss V. C.," and Wong Lee, for that matter, I am pleased, even if I must pretend otherwise, to report that he caught her in the main hall of Chi Wei Tao Wan the other night, trying to enter the west wing. As this would have involved removing the tarpaulin covering the Whale Man, it is rather a serious matter. Your wife still has not found anyone she deems competent to restore it. It may have stood too many seasons of Pacific storms since the Founder's son and daughter were carried through it to be introduced to their grandfather. In any case, I had to explain to "Miss V.C." that Grandfather is being kept isolated out of concerns for his health, and that she might be allowed to visit him by prearranged appointment if properly gowned, and that due to the condition of the main wing of the mansion and the state of preservation of the art in it, the covers must on no account be removed.

 

None of this was convincing, of course. Indeed, I was as unconvincing as I dared to be, hoping that she would realise that the "appointment" would be a ruse, giving us time to make Grandfather up, while pointing her curiosity towards the furnishings of the main hall.  I have, however, given an undertaking to her parents not to lead her curiosity. When she asked me about the Chinese practice of giving out monetary presents at the Lunar New Year, I had to suppress my temptation to dwell on the significance of red envelopes and the like, and instead claim entire ignorance. 

 

I could add to this picture of domesticity by painting your youngest and Wong Lee's son posing in their cadet uniforms and of your daughter-in-law in all of her radiance, but since I include photographs, words will not be needed, and I do not, after considering the last number of Fortune, trust myself not to descend into autumnal despair. I could also make some technical comments, but will refrain for a few paragraphs yet, though I will get them out of the way in the first section, as the second section is devoted to investment prospects in insurance, and will, I expect, bore all and sundry.

 

 

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Flight, 3 February 1944

 

 

Leaders

 

“Technical Training” The paper makes no apologies for reverting to this subject again. Your eldest takes this as proof positive that the editor, like your correspondent, Reggie, has never been married.

“Where are the Chiefs?” Where is the next generation of chief aircraft designers? Are American and German educational institutions superior to British? The paper does not think so, but  others do.

 

War in the Air

 

Long range aircraft clash in the Bay of Biscay in a “strange development in a strange war.” Heavy bombing continues in that part of France of which the paper is not informed as to whether or not it will be the site of the invasion, attacking unidentified targets. Lest we who watch the great events from outside are left entirely mystified, the paper allows that German resistance has been entirely of AA, the fighter arm having been withdrawn to conserve its strength. Everyone is pleased that Leningrad has been liberated again for the first time. The USAAF now numbers 2.3 millions. It would seem to me difficult for the army to contain such an overgrown organ, but I am reliably informed by a very highly placed admiral (you may guess just whom) that it can and must, since the idea of an independent air force is a foolishfancy. American paper Iron Age reports that Allied jet interceptors will go into service soon, and that twin-enginedultra-long range fighters equipped with Allison engines are in production at General Motors.

 

 

They are to escort B-29s. It is reported that “long range Mustangs” are escorting American bombers all the way to Brunswick and Hannover and back.

 

Here and There

 

US night fighter squadrons have flown Beaufighters. £600 million have been spent on airfields in Great Britain since the war began. More than half a million aircrew personnel have been trained in Canada under the Commonwealth Air Training Scheme. Accidents in American aircraft factories in 1943 have cost the lives of 18,000 workers. Coningham is to be AOC No. 2 Tactical Air Force, continuing his famed partnership with General Montgomery. Mr. H. A. Jones, official historian of the last war in the air, is to be the new Director of Public Relations at the Air Ministry. Mars gets more press.

B. J. Hurren, “Backbone of the Fleet.” Hurren proposes that aircraft carriers are now the backbone of the fleet. Pictures of Indomitable and Biter illustrate. The Americans, we are told, have announced that they launched 65 aircraft carriers in 1943, including 6 27,000 ton Essex-class, 9 light carriers of 10,000 tons, and 50 escort carriers. Work continues on 3 45,000 ton carriers to operate twin-engine bombers. So, apparently, the actual totals are only secret from the American press. Turnabout is fair play, I suppose. Major Seversky supposes that aircraft carriers are too vulnerable and are doomed when faced with land-based air power. Mr. Hurren disagrees and supposes that even though x superbombers might be purchased for the price of y medium bombers flying from super-carriers, the fact that they are on  ships might make them more useful. Pressed to say something actually interesting and original, Mr. Hurren proposes that torpedoes are quite useful aerial weapons, and more suited to the sort of planes that fly from aircraft carriers, and further supposes that a single-seat “torpedo fighter” such as the Blackburn Dart of days gone by might be quite feasible with plants such as the new Napier Sabre as its power plant (1,234,etc.) 

Sabre+Installation.PNG

 

This strikes me as a weak justification for a class of warship that must serve twenty years or more to justify the expense. Far be it from me to dissent from the noble cause of building ever-larger warships, though!

 

“Studies in Recognition” More pictures and silhouettes in aid of telling one plane from another. Or, as they say in the business, ”filler.”

 

Behind the Lines

 

In a morale-boosting parade, the Japanese exhibit models of their latest DonryubomberShintei reconnaissanceaircraft and Shoki fighter. Gnome-et-Rhone is developing various new engines, and the Arsenal an aircraft made of “improved wood.” My attention is alive, once again, to the mention of new wood products, with all that it implies for house construction here in America. If the houses are not to be cheaper, will they instead be larger? Good news, it seems to me, to the makers of home furnishings. Or, at least, as it can be with the postwar depression staring us down. The postwar era will be a strange one.

 

Burnelli+Fruit+Express.PNG

 

 

Though I do not think anything so preposterous as air-delivered fruit is on the way!

 

“Air Observation Post” Britain, too, has a cheap aeroplane that can support the army, the Taylorcraft Auster. More interesting than the brief ad for the industry is the revelation that they are attached to individual medium artillery regiments and flown by Army captains, who spot for the guns and correct them via radio, i. e., spoken voice communications. This will be the oldest of old news for you, Reggie, but I want to highlight the electrical engineering advance implied by this for the Earl. Lighter, more powerful radios, acoustic arrangements, higher frequencies in regular use… The implications for radio entertainment and even industrial use are considerable.

 

Major F. A. de V. Robertson, “Heavy Bombers and Pathfinders: Britain’s Conquest of the Weather.” So desperate is the paper for copy that the oldest of old warhorses are decanted from whatever liquor cabinet they have been hiding in had put to work. The correspondent of much punctuation supplies a two page summary of the air war to date with exactly the kind of insight and detail you may expect.  I suppose I should apologise in advance if you correct me and tell me that the Major is an indefatigable journalist who regularly does the air force station round up in the North Country, and that you have yourself shared the most confidential “gen” with him on strict discretion. But I rather doubt I need have bothered.

 

“Charley Chan” A Chinese officer –born in Singapore, actually—is flying for the RAF. The tone of the paragraph may be guessed. "Charlie Chan" is substituted for his actual name, both by his brother officers and, less forgiveably, the paper.

 

B. J. Stedman, “the Student’s Point of View,” Aeronautical engineers are being overtrained. Or possibly undertrained. I would have to read the article to be sure, and that I will not do. Even had I not become quite sufficiently conversent with the opinions of young engineers when I was one, thank you very much, I now live with two at either end of the spectrum, by its more expansive definition.

 

 

The Economist, 5 February 1944

 

Leaders

“Dominions and Republics” The paper is upset that Mackenzie King has rejected the current worthy initiative for the Commonwealth, and then it was a beautiful morning, with mist filling the valley below, and our mothers were with us, Reggie, so young, and we younger still, and a cowboy, the most –I’m sorry, I think that I drifted off there.

 

“Words and Meanings” Oh, you talk about “free enterprise” and on the other hand “government control,” but what do you mean?

 

“Representative Government” Let’s talk about electoral reform!

 

“The Regional System” Regional trading blocs would be a good thing.

 

Notes of the Week

 

Russia is revising its constitution to make the Union more enticing to the Baltic states. Pay-as-you-earn advances in the income tax system. The premier has screwed up the Brighton by-election. Latins and the Balkans are excitable. The new report on Kenya is damning. White settlement has been a horrible blunder. India’s future is total political independence under British supervision. Half a step, ever half a step forward in the matter of allowing non-Britons to govern themselves without British assistance. Publicly-funded research and development is good, because it has as its end an increase in labour productivity in private industry. The TUC comes out in support of industrial training.

 

American Survey

 

“How Ready is the Right?” A section of American labour swung too far to the left in the 1930s, and a section of American business is in danger of swinging to far to the right now,

 

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says Charles E Wilson, Executive Vice-President of the War Production Board, and before that President of General Electric, to the National Association of Manufacturers annual convention. It certainly looks like the GOP is poised to make big gains in 1944, and then the sky will fall, unless it does not.

 

American Notes

 

“Plight of the White Collar Worker.” The point here is that “Little Steel is dead,” and therefore the cost of living is set to skyrocket (It has already increased 25%. Or 50%, if  you prefer impressions to statistics.) It is noted that only 40,433 applications for wage increases for white collar workers out of 1,219,000 in one particular region, and concluded that white collar workers (and receivers of fixed income, our correspondent adds, innocently) are getting it in the neck. “Any substantiation of these difficulties” should be brought to the attention of the paper by its alert readers, as they would bolster arguments for more effective control of the cost of living against the loud cries of the inflation bloc, which apparently spreads its malevolent influence through the American body politic.

 

“The Bottom of the Barrel” Every available pre-Pearl Harbour father between 18 and 34 may have to be inducted in the first six months of 1944, says General Hershey, director of Selective Service, in a speech to the National Automobile Dealers’ Association. If this is not enough, there may have to be reclassification. “Bottom of the barrel” is a relative concept, after all.

 

 

“Stand Up and Be Counted,” the President tells Congress in the matter of the soldiers’ vote. The House has already moved for an unrecorded vote, so that, some will unkindly suggest, no-one will have to go on the record as opposing votes for soldiers. Republican resistance, inspired as it was by fears that the military vote would re-elect the President, does not look good on them.

 

“Pacific Atrocities” Revelation of Japanese atrocities may impact MacArthur’s election campaign, and, of course, justify the wisdom of  barring released Japanese detainees from returning to the Pacific coast, where presumably people are much more retaliation-prone on account of the sea air.

 

The World Overseas

 

“The Soviet War Economy” Russia has paid for the war out of what would be in a capitalist economy war profits, at the expense of what used to be its main source of revenue, a  “turnover tax,", the decline of receipts of which indicates the extent of consumption decline.

 

“Germany at War” The paper makes fun of Hitler.

 

“How Many Houses” Is the ten year plan realistic? The paper does not know. Is planning for short term emergency construction adequate? The paper suspects not, and calls  for more planning. Good thing the Germans are not getting ready to lob rockets at England in vast numbers, or more building would be called for instead of more planning!

 

Business Notes

 

The paper is watching the Washington talks on currency for insight into future exchange rates and mechanisms. Good. Electricity distribution is under discussion. There ought to be a large-scale oil-refining industry in Britain, as importing petroleum makes more sense than trying to synthesise it from coal or whatnot. Hear! Hear! Although, again, the Earl needs to be cautioned about the poor chances of our getting our Burma interests back. Even if Mountbatten gets off his ass and makes a campaign out of it, turmoil in India makes holding onto Burma unlikely, in my view. We shall see how our position develops, but oil is not of much use without investment capital. I wonder if there is more oil to be found along the Mackenzie River?

 

 Persia announces that it is shifting the backing of its paper currency from the crown jewels (officially assessed at 2.65 millions) to gold. This is pursuant to importing enough gold. Some of that will come from South Africa and America, but it is likely that a great deal is already in the country as a result of Allied gold imports into the country to sop up purchasing power left over from the Allied expenditure in the country. While much of that gold has served its purpose by going into hoards, some will have leaked through to the National Bank.  

 

 

 

 

 

The price of coal has gone up effective Feb 1st. Further price increases are being negotiated. Engineering wages may be going up, or be rationalised, or both. Labour is also an issue in the building industry, where efficiency is declining due to a shortage of young workers, and indiscipline is for some reason on the increase since the introduction of the Essential Work Order. The manganese shortage has been alleviated.

 

Flight, 10 February 1944

 

Leaders

 

“The Attack on the Marshall Islands “ Was delivered by carrier forces as well as Fleet Air Wing 2 and 7th Army Air Force, with all shore-based aircraft under the command of one Vice-Admiral J. H. Hoover. . Curious about the name, I discover that he was born in 1887 in Ohio, graduated 73rd out of 86 from the Naval Academy, specialised as a submariner, made commander in 1926, switched over to the air branch and made captain in 1935. Talk around the Bay is that he is able, fit and aggressive, but aloof and not well liked, except by the Spruance circle.

 

Other leaders note that the Free French are flying war planes, surprising all, and, still more surprising, a popular aviation American paper has said  cutting things about British aeroplanes.

 

War in the Air

 

In addition to the above, it is noted that planes have been involved in the fighting in Burma, have attacked the Rumanian oil fields, and have attacked the transportation facilities behind German lines. Dr. Goebbels falsely claims that 750 German aircraft dropped 1000 tons of bombs on London on the night of 21 January, whereas in fact only 90 raiders crossed the coast. On the other hand, Bomber Command’s six heavy attacks on Berlin delivered 9300 tons of bombs –and cost 200(!) aircraft. The USAAF made its first thousand plane raid last week. The Germans are supplying the Shpola pocket on the Eastern Front by air again, while the Russians have made a strategic air attack on Helsinki. Reports from Sweden are that it was a heavy attack. The paper supposes this was to encourage the Finn peace party.

 

Here and There

 

Royal Marine squadrons will fly with the Fleet Air Arm. A B-24 Liberator named Heaven Can Wait, defied irony by not crashing last week. General Smuts has been given a “giant four-engined Avro” in appreciation of his services. The “Standard Exhibition,” in the words of Minister of Aircraft Production Sir Stafford Cripps, celebrates “the man who makes the thing that oils the ring that works the thingummy-jig.” Several Russian parachutists, who had disguised themselves as pastors and in that capacity preached sermons in several factories in Estonia, were turned in to German authorities for preaching without permission. Ration coupons are offered to those turning in worn rubber boots for reconditioning. Americans talk in hilarious ways. Mr. Harry R. Sheppard, Representative from California, supposes that the Administration favours Pan-American Airways at the expense of good old American free enterprise. 

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Lord Rothermere supposes that American might require a production of 5500 aircraft per year, post war. Others find this exaggerated.

 

“A Russian Dive Bomber: The Twin-engined PE-2 Does 335 mph at 16,000ft: All-electric operation of Auxiliary Services” A translation of an article in the Swedish paper Flyg details this  very serviceable, albeit virtually unarmed, three seater. It has no fewer than 18 electric motors, including one for the pump that operates the hydraulic undercarriage retraction. Pilots report that it handles well, but does not suffer fools gladly. Or shorts, I would imagine.

 

 

 

“Germany’s ‘Secret Weapon’” is to be a crewless, radio-controlled winged bomb with rocket propulsion, but requires an elaborate launching mechanism which Allied bombers are attacking, although it can also be launched from the air.

 

A. Gouge, “Flying Boats” In the paper’s next number, Mr. A Gouge considers whether a two-horse or four-horse carriage is right for you. That may not be fair, but I am in a mood, as I have just learned that I am expected to make a transcontinental excursion to discover whether Cousin H. C.’s new plant in Buffalo might produce the new Boeing flying boat profitably. I am not sure why he tapped me, as he cannot be in any doubt as to how I will advise him on the merits of the plan itself. I suppose he trusts me to report on the industrial side objectively, which I should take as a compliment.

 

 

 

 

Correspondence

 

Several previous correspondents are confused about how airscrews work, and how rockets can fly according to Newton’s Second Law. Something about action and? In any case, pedantic confusion is met with pedantic elaboration. Other letters discuss burning water and broadcast electric power. For all its fussiness, Flight is a young man’s paper, if more technically literate than the ones who write into your youngest's beloved "pulps."

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Behind the Lines

 

The Adler automobile factory was destroyed by sabotage involving explosive and incendiary bombs, although the notice goes on to mention that it was carried out by five men armed with revolvers, which seems a curious way for bombers to carry out their work. German aircraft workers are now on 11 hour days. A new German aluminium alloy of “sufficient” resistance to corrosion (versus soap water as well as seawater, the usual standard) is on the market. “Sufficient.” Encouraging! It is reported that 500,000 German evacuees from Berlin have been sent to western Poland. It looks as though they shall be returning soon! Two German night  fighter aces are reported killed in action. The Germans are using more single-seat fighters as night fighters.

 

The Economist, 12 February 1944

 

Leaders

 

“the Public Service” Should be more scientific, like the new REME, only for people trained in economics.

 

“Baltic Vacuum” Germany has pretty much destroyed the social order of the Baltic states. I particularly notice, and am  particularly moved, by the paper’s offhand observation that the “Aryanisation” of the middle classes of Latvia and Lithuannia, which were primarily Jewish, has meant the destruction –[and here  the “off-hand” comes in] and probably also the physical extermination—of the greater part of the middle classes.” Though I notice this because of the grim implications of “extermination.” The rural classes are more numerous, their problems in many ways more pressing, and proper solution of them key to reincorporation of the Baltic states into the Union.

 

Principles of Trade, III: “Prices and Markets”  A page and half of labour delivers forth a product in the form of journalistic insight which the market must now value at its worth. Which, since it broadly implies that British wages must be kept down, would seem to be high for this paper.

 

Notes of the Week

 

“Hazard and Caution” The war in the East is reaching “a new climax,” as it does very nearly every week. The paper is finally convinced that the Germans will not counterattack successfully. The only question now is whether the Germans will be able to restore a  front, or whether Russian troops will enter the “powderkeg” of the Balkans soon. The paper is disappointed with the lack of progress in Italy, but still hopes for great things. The paper has decided that the Government win in Brighton was by an insufficient margin. There should be more planning for housing. Turkey is still neutral. Latins are still excitable. So are school officials and everyone else concerned with them. There should be more planning for demobilisation. The paper is given furiously to think by manganese.

 

American Survey

 

“Four Midwestern Papers” Our Iowa Correspondent reads the Des Moines Register, Cleveland Press, Saint Louis Post-Despatch and Chicago Tribune, and is apparently paid for it. The liberal papers are disappointed that the Administration supports too many right-leaning and imperialist people. The Tribune thinks that foreigners are inherently Communistic. The eternal Senators Lodge and Borah still haunt the Hermit Kingdom of the West.

 

American Notes

 

‘American Oil Diplomacy” America is afraid of running out of oil, and wants more access to Middle Eastern supplies. 

 

“The Sorest Point”  A Church of England newsletter recently suggested that President Roosevelt ought be re-elected, leading the entire Republican press to make this unconscionable interference in American affairs front page news. The paper thinks this was over-reaction, and suggests it in its usual patronising tones. The paper is not helping as much as it thinks it is. 

 

“Sweat and Taxes” the proposed federal budget does not raise taxes by as much as is expected. Mr. Wilkie thinks they should be raised more. The informed opinion continues to think that the whole thing will never pass through the legislative process, anyway. 

 

“The Soldiers’ Vote” The House defeated the President’s proposal. The Senate defeated the House proposal. The Senate proposes a compromise that will give the President the substance of what he wanted, if not the whole.

 

The World Overseas

 

“The Falange Economy” Is a mess.

 

“Middle Eastern Oil” is to be had.

 

“Student Unemployment in Eire” It seems odd that more university and professional education has not led to employment for many Irish graduates for the last five years or so, but it has. Notwithstanding the increasing subsidies granted to students, which has led to more graduates than ever, more positions have failed to materialise. Perhaps this is the fault of the young, who harbour dreams beyond their station of escaping country for the city. Or perhaps it is the fault of Irish society, for Our Correspondent in Dublin notices the levelling policy of the Irish government, which has prevented a new class of rich to appear to replace the old class of landed aristocracy. Without high fees, solicitors and doctors cannot make money. This is obviously why there is unemployment amongst graduated engineers, journalists, architects and clerks. Fortunately, the Irish, acting on the advice of the Reverend Swift, have contrived a solution, in the form of higher student fees. These will soon do away with the obnoxious surplus of educated Irish.

 

 

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The Business World

 

“Short Term Housing Policy” the paper has some ideas about what it should be. I continue to wonder if the paper is paying attention to the technical press.

 

“Youth in the Mines” The young “optants” being forced into coal mining really should be going down into the pits singing the praises of the wise elders who sent them there. After all, they are to have, in effect, a wage increase, and there is to be training, and medical examinations (compulsory physical training?). It will be admitted that safety is not the best. One in four boys under 18 used to be killed or injured during their employment before the war, and during it,  the number has tended to increase. Perhaps an unreasonable and morbid fear of death is the reason that youth employment in the pits fell from 108,000 in 1930 to 66,000 in 1940? No, more likely it was the lack of security and low wages, which the paper is prepared to address by any means not requiring wage raises or guarantees of future employment. Perhaps there should be youth clubs in the pithead villages, while a comprehensive national solution to the problem of decaying industries is sought.

 

Business Notes

 

Latins are excitable.

 

“Higher Wages –Less Coal” The most recent award of an increased minimum wage in the pits has not met the demands of better-paid miners for a commensurate increase, and they are upset. It is all very well for them to demand a higher wage, though. Who is to pay for it, apart from coal-users?

 

“Building Society Interest Rates” If it is to be seriously expected that we are going to build as much housing as is required, perhaps something should be done about pushing mortgage rates down from their current 5%, as the Halifax Society has just done, in going to 4.5%.

 

 

“American Building Methods” Lord Portal, Minister of Public Works, has commissioned a study which shows that American housing costs are a comparative 75 compared with 100 in Britain, in spite of American wages being between 3.5 times as high as British (craftsmen) and twice (labourers), and construction materials similarly more expensive. The explanation is much higher American productivity the study says. Looking at the comparison of cost of building materials (100 to 110—160), I would suggest that the more likely explanation is that the study was cooked.

 

And now I turn to the monthlies:

 

Aviation, February 1944

 

This month’s line editorial has a new format. I had to page over three times to find James H. McGraw, Jr.’s signature on “Free Enterprise: Incentives and Taxation.” Junior wants us to know that there are three ways of making a living: getting on someone’s payroll; “lending one’s savings to business interests;” and “starting, or helping to start, a business enterprise.” “Three of four of us fall into the first group. We are job-holders.” Is this an editorial“we?” Or is Junior included? As he also enrolls himself in the next two groups, it may well be the editorial we. On the other hand, he does work for, own, and manage McGraw-Hill, so he does belong in all three categories.

 

The point is that, after the war, the Federal Government will have to raise each year about 20 billion in taxes, three times the amount required before the war, and six times that required in the Twenties. In the Twenties, Federal tax receipts were about twice as large as total corporate profits in a good year. After the war, they will be tree times, and it will be that much more difficult for the Federal government to raise revenues without discouraging investment. Or, as Junior puts it, “diminishing the number of jobs.”

 

“We must understand the forces that determine the level of employment and consider the tax progam in relation to other measures designed to create jobs.” Junior prefers income taxes to “hidden” consumption taxes, and calls for a “somewhat” progressive tax system. Among other suggestions (lower corporate income taxes, lower rates on dividends, reducing the high income marginal rate to 60 of 50%, income averaging, extending depreciation times), Junior calls for the elimination of excise taxes, even at the expense of high income taxes, in order to promote consumption and provide a market for “our vast industrial capacity.”

 

Aviation Editorial Leslie E. Neville, “Jet Propulsion spurs More than Imagination” While it will be a while before there are jet bombers or helicopters all over the place, much progress has been made. But Germany is in the hunt, too,  so more details than that are not to be revealed. That said, speculation is fine, and every effort should be made to push forward towards their “fullest utilization in the achievement of human progress."

 

America at War

 

The paper does not go in for prediction, but General Eisenhower does. “With our attacks backed by full home-front support, the General says, the Nazis will fold in 1944 with no further ifs or howevers.” This will be accomplished, the paper grudgingly admits, with a large “walking army.” Airpower advocates have lost their chance to win the war with bombing alone. Nevertheless, air power is the main margin of victory, through strategic bombing and tactical. In the strategic field, recent times have seen the introduction of feint attacks and bombing through overcast, which is less accurate than visual bombing, but, “to put it grimly, gets within city limits.” The paper notes that this innovation (whatever it is) will be important to postwar civil aviation.

 

Bombing will get ever heavier. The UN built 150,000 a/c in 1943, and could “better 200,000” in 1944. The air war in Italy suggests that tactical air power is less effective than it was in 1940, because soldiers, “especially German soldiers,” have lost their fear of airplanes. The big move against Japan is under preparation right now. It only looks like an island-hopping campaign because of relative lack of resources, but we still note that while bombing Japan is in the cards, it will not be done via either Chinese or Russian bases.  Which leaves…? Aircraft production in 1944 will not “much” top 10,000, but weight per worker will increase from 28lbs/month in 1941 to 60 in 1944, with employees in the industry at 1.6 million plus in 1943 compared with 48,000 in 1938. 14.9 billion in value was procured in 1943, 7.2 in airframes, 4.2 in enginers and propellers, and 3.5 in spare parts. This was up double from 1942, and characterising the industry as a “20 billion dollar business,” people are being accurate if everything is toted up. However, there will be a 2 billion cut in the aircraft production budget in 1944, notwithstanding the 110,000 a/c production foreseen by T. P. Wright of the Aircraft Resources Control Office. This, note, is down from some projections of a 12,000 a/c/month projection still held in some quarters. But the B-29 is huge, man, huge. On the West Coast, 26,636 warplanes were delivered last year, up more than 50%, with airframe weight up 72%. This is especially remarkable given the manpower shortages on the West Coast.

 

Some financial highlights: Beech did 97 million in book last year, up from 29 million the previous year; Boeing wage rates are up 27% since Pearl Harbor; Consolidated Vultee made lots of planes; So did Curtiss-Wright; Douglas deliveries are valued at 1 billion dollars and employs 200,000. Packard delivered $350,000,000 worth of Rolls-Royce engines, 150% of highest sales figures for automobile engines in a peace year.

 

Herb Powell, “’43 Output Doubled the Miracle” tells us that, well, we doubled the miracle of production, or more. Although the numbers also suggest a levelling off at under 9000…The increase in money cost tracks weight better than numbers, though.

 

Edward M. Greer and Harry J. Marx, “Pressure Control in Aircraft Hydraulic Systems, Part II,” is a full discussion of unloading valves.

 

The rest of editorial in this number is taken up by Aviation’s “Aircraft Directory of 1944.” On the basis of what I have seen this month, I would greatly appreciate full coverage of Japanese developments, as they, unlike the Germans, appear to be pursuing extensive prototyping. It will be very interesting to see if they can defeat a super-bomber offensive with their new planes. Unfortunately, the Japanese air forces have not extended their cooperation to the paper, and I move on to Fortune. Once again, the Luce papers have put together a very interesting feature story, although unfortunately not nearly so optimistic a one as the story of the "cold war."

 

 

 

 

Fortune, February 1944

 

An aviation-themed cover, but as my Fortunes are in a great stack on the old reading desk in the morning window of the den, I see the  Chesterfield Cigarettes ad on the back cover of the January number as I contemplate the title, and it is far more interesting in the sad and wintry mood cast by the February rains. Bottle blondes smoke Chesterfields. I just bet they do, boys.)

 

 

 

“Fortune’s Wheel” looks back on the first issue of the paper in February of 1930 and notes an article on a “A Budget for a $25,000 Income in Chicago." Even the paper is slightly embarrassed at the kind of periodical it was trying to be at its launch, as it wryly notes that the article might have been much ado about nothing with a federal income tax of only $830!

 

Letters to Fortune include “a representative sample” of letters from Jack and Heintz’s 7600 "associates." The manuscript of the Fortune article was sent to the company for comment, and read over the loudspeakers on the factory floor. The staff is upset about all the vile calumny &tc. “We have kept unauthorised absenteeism down to zero,” writes one Edmund J. Pohnay. Yes, Mr. Pohnay, you have, and we salute the firm for its innovative use of the word "unauthorised." This might be a case for  "honesty engineering."

 

IMG_0269.JPG

He is so  honest that the girls can't stop looking at him!

 

 

Farm Column

 

Ladd Haystead is back on his regular beat. His point is that we need a land-use policy? In 1935, Oklahoma had 213,325 farm operators, but nowadays the best guess is that there are 160,000, and contrary to what someone, somewhere might say, this is not because of tenants being tractored out, but because of all the erosion, as land was cultivated that should have been left in grass. And now it is happening again! “50 million acres of our lands are completely eroded, 50 million very seriously damaged, 100 million half or more of the topsoil is gone, and on another 100 million erosion is actively underway.” Therefore, Horace J. Harper, Professor of Soil Science at Oklahoma A&M thinks that we need a legislative land use policy. He suggests tax rebates for ranchers to encourage putting the land in grass.

 

 

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I am torn between launching a hearty "rafter cheer" and fear of giving the game away. Although there does not appear to be much scruple on that front over here right now, so perhaps I should just leap onto my chair right now. Not only that, but the lawyers tell me that the rebates will go through the leasehold agreements to us, instead of sticking to our tenants, as have the war's other windfall profits.  

 

Ad: The Bituminous Coal Institute assures us that coal miners are now well-paid, safe, living in fine homes, and not at all “in hock to the company store.” As some might believe. They are no more than 10% (well, 12%) in hock to the company store!

 

Trials and Errors

 

“The beginning of a war is no time to liquidate a war economy.” Eliot Janeway has bestirred himself to write a column, and on the night before Christmas, yet! Nation and readership can only be happy that he got his shopping done early. Or perhaps he has bethought himself of the bills come February. 

 

In the spirit of inversions logical in which specialises Janeway, he tells us that the upshot of the Teheran Conference is not that the war in Europe is about to end, but rather that it is about to begin! Russia has made a vague commitment to come into the Pacific War, and the British have made a vague commitment to a cross-Channel invasion some time in 1944. Japan will have to be defeated in time and at great cost, after Germany is beaten.

 

Now we come to his point, which is that it is foolish for  Washington to start liquidating the war economy at this point. It is an understandable foolishness, “[f]or Washington, having lost leadership and initiative in the country, is reflecting the war-weariness, the self-delusion, and the greed into which the home front has degenerated," and it will be admitted that it is not actually happening. The war effort is not actually being liquidated. The emergent surpluses of some goods, the end of seven day weeks in the shipyards, even unemployment in some marginal groups –these are simply to lead labour to prepare for the deflation it anticipates, as Washington has no plan for a program that “will absorb the impressive capacities being released for other use.” 

IMG_0262.JPG

 

For example, back when the steel surplus came into sight, Don Nelson suggested that refrigerators might be made again. But now they are not to be made, because other raw materials are still short. Engineers could have designed refrigerators that did not use these materials, but no engineers were released for this work.

 

The upshot is that “panic is reaching acute proportions on production lines, where people are slowing down because they are afraid to work themselves out of jobs.” This is hurting attempts to reduce turnover, the workers being so afraid of losing their jobs that they change jobs. Also, small business will be hurt worse than big business by cancellations, and big business will keep government-owned plants on good terms  and drive small firms out of business. Janeway is, oddly, particularly upset that the US Steel  plant in Utah might close and leave the West Coast dependent on Pittsburgh again. Except for Cousin H. C.'s plant, which has the advantage of being near where the people actually are.

 

Finally, Janeway ambles to a conclusion. Of course Washington is not liquidating the war economy; but because it looks as though that is what is going on, the people are self-liquidating it! To conclude in true Janeway fashion, up is down! White is black! War is peace!

 

Honestly. could write a better national affairs column than this. The one sure thing is that if Eliot Janeway says that the war is long before us, while General Eisenhower tells us that it will end by Christmas, then Christmas it is! 

 

Kearney and Trecker ad tells us that the nation’s output per man hour increased 34% in the last 12 years, or 2.5%/year. Manufacturers who want to keep step and produce more peace products more cheaply must invest in machine tools such as the ones we make. Word to the wise.

 

Insurance Company of North America tells us to “…Protect what you have” under this free enterprise system of ours. As I have already extracted a Curtiss Machine Tool and a "Youth Advertising" spread on this somewhat-hysterical theme, I content myself with summarising the conclusion that buying casualty insurance is related to efforts to prevent this country from being “bossed from outside,” or “undermined from within.” There is, I think, reason for the American casualty insurance industry to be concerned with the way things are going, but it is a somewhat perverse and paradoxical concern that will be quite entirely satisfied if the average American can be persuaded to start borrowing again, and, as tedious as I am on the subject, I believe that housing may be a way of persuading him to do this. 

 

As to the ostensible concern of the ad, The Fortune Survey for the month is all about labor unions. They are not popular. Except among Coloureds. Although they are more popular amongst people who vote Democratic than rich people who vote Republican.

 

The Job Before Us

 

This month’s topic is colonies. They’re bad, but the Luce papers feel the need to hedge their bets. The voice of dependent peoples will depend on the contribution they make. Then they reverse hedge. "Post-colonial powers" such as America, Russia and China (exclamation marks all around) expect dependent peoples to see progress under the benevolent tutelage of imperial powers. The Caribbean is a great experimental laboratory for sorting all of this out, and there America (or the Luce papers) have learned that racism is bad for interracial relations.

 

Editorial “Public Regulation No Dilemma” It isn’t, you know.

 

“What Should Germany Pay” War reparations require careful handling, especially as the landscape has been pretty thoroughly razed.

 

 

 

“How’s Your Renegotiation?” The renegotiations/excess profit law is controversial!

 

“Mr. Lincoln’s Formula” More about Lincoln Electric, the only company whose workers have received as much money as those at Jack and Heintz.

 

Other articles

 

“Two Billion People: A Portfolio Showing the Population of the World, Now, and in 1970” 

 

This is the gloomy article to which I referred. You will pardon me if I think the survival of the race a little more important than some of the other features in this number of the paper, such as a fine article on the wonderful character of the (very) late President Lincoln. This is a subject that is easily summarised in pictures, which you will see pasted to the back of the first page, unless this package was too much jostled in its Atlantic transit. Two billion people is a great many people, but not that much more than there are in the world today, and probably as many as there will ever be, if the chart is correct.

 

A summary view is that in primitive societies, death and birth rates were both high, holding population at a virtual stasis. An improving economy brings lower death rates, and, consequentlally, rising population. In Europe, where the Industrial Revolution wrought a demographic revolution, population increased 189% during the Nineteenth Century in spite of high emigration rates. The skyrocket of US population is due to immigration as well as  high birth rates. Yet during this period, the population of Asia increased by only 98%.

 

In the second stage of the cycle, high levels of living begin to compete with reproduction. Social pressure and the independence of women, later marriages and birth control cut down birth rates until they again approach death rates and the natural increase diminishes. Industrial Europe, the British dominions, and the United States have reached this stage and their populations are growing more steadily and probably will become stationary or begin to decline in another generation. War will almost certainly accelerate the process of natural decline in Europe. The recent rise in birth rates in England and the U.S. presumably is the usual early-war phenomena (war brides, war  babies). It will not greatly change the long-term trend. 

 

Of note is that Japan is also in the second stage of the cycle. It had a gradually declining birth rate in the thirties, and the growth of its population will terminate at about 75 millions in about 1970. Thus there is no racial exception. Asian countries can, and will, enter the "second stage," precisely as they achieve peace and progress. The Soviet Union, which alone has both an industrial economy and a rapidly increasing population, may defeat this general picture, and will continue to grow on momentum alone to over 200 million in 1970, with the graphical projection (pictured) showing 251 million. It does not take into account war losses.

 

More than half the world’s population lives in Asia, but low levels of living, high birth and death rates, and overcrowding  in the fertile river valleys complicates things. It is estimated that China has 450 millions. India is known to have 350. It is unlikely that these countries will enter the second stage any time soon, so the indiscriminate blessings of science mean that their populations will likely increase quite dramatically. India is projected by Hans Weigert, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, to reach 500 million in 1970, and China, grant a quick victory by either Chiang's sorry lot or the Communists, will grow even higher, albeit in continuing immiseration until a virtuous dynasty finally emerge. 

 

Picking numbers of the chart, I see that we expect peak populations of 39 millions in France and “England and Wales,” 45 million in Italy, 55 million in Germany, 77 million in Japan, 145 million in the United States, the noted 200 or 251 million in the USSR.

 

Nor is this all. The idea of “momentum” in connection with the forecast rise of the population of Russia holds everywhere. As birth rates and death rates fall, the population of second stage countries will get older. Conventionally, population distributions are “age pyramids,” but in France and in England and Wales, they will by 1970 be closer to lozenges (France) or ellipses (England and Wales.) 

 

 

I confess to feeling a cold grip on my heart as I read. The American real estate market has been based since time immemorial on the premise of continuing population growth. There is room for more people, hence need for more homes. Where ranches and forests stand now, farms tomorrow. Farms today, suburbs tomorrow. Suburbs today, row housing and high-rises tomorrow, and so on. But what when the population levels off, or even begins to decline? It will not affect our situation in 1945, as buyers have not taken these frightful possibilities into account, but it does hint at troubles in 1970. 

 

The one ray of hope here is that Fortune, in a typically American outburst of blind optimism, drafts great arrows of population movements on a world map, showing Russians to Siberia, and the Chinese to Turkestan. The thought here at the paper is that it disapproves of the overcrowding in the parts of these countries where people want to live, and supposes that the allure of the frontier will draw the population to places where no-one would ever want to live. (At least, that is how remember the Trans-Siberian, though perhaps your memories are conditioned by that lovely Buryat  girl...) The thought here, as evening gives way to night here in Santa Clara at the end of a long day of compositing is that the arrows should point the other way. It may be inconceivable to the paper that the Chinese or, God forbid, the Indians, move in any numbers across the oceans to an aging Europe, never mind  America, but it is not as though our family will hesitate to sell them ranches overlooking Santa Clara!

 

.

London Cable “The American Invasion of Britain Raises Some Social Problems” Americans are over-paid, and the girls like that. It is the end of the world. Or, wait, no, that was silk stockings. Now we have nylons, and we really are in the end times.

 

Now I must bring this around to sensitive matters. There has been considerable progress with your Christmas present. Bill and David have been drawn into a project to equip one of the new motor landing craft with a version of it for certain uses during the island-hopping campaign. They express, however, serious concerns about the fragility of the medium. They appreciate why the Admiralty chose it in the first place, but believe that an alternative must be found. You will be aware, none more so, given the work of your unit, that it is not being used where less demanding applications allow a simpler material.

 

At this juncture, we have a dead drop from Fat Chow, who confirms access to German work on a viable alternative. It is likely, avoiding specifics, that he will be able to get hold of a sample on false pretexts, at least as long as his luck holds out and he does not run into an actual Kalmyk prince in Berlin. I shudder to think at what might happen then, and it does not help that "Mrs. J. C.'s" sister has forwarded back an excised version of the tender letter Fat Chow sends her. Our hearts, as it were, are in our throats.

 

So: it now occurs that the reason that Wong Lee's son is to be permitted to progress to his commission is the same old seedy side of the American colour bar. The high ranks of the United States Navy are well aware that they cannot put scrubs and career lieutenants in charge of civilians who combine the talents needed to run vessels such as the special-purpose LCMs with the social handicaps that have kept them from reaching higher ranks themselves. (You may, from your own acquaintance, insert the expected anti-Semitic slurs here.)  Nor, of course, is the experience of Tarawa any recommendation for putting a lower grade of man at the helm of such a vessel. Thus one looks for a tall and handsome, nobly-maned, athletic young man with, say, a summa cum laude in electrical engineering from Berkeley who have somehow not taken a United States commission as yet. Naturally, one finds them under the englobing trap of skin of the wrong colour.

 

Well, then, if one has such material to hand, might one not use it to command a particular L(anding) C(raft) M(echanized)? I am not so foolish as to think that our friends within the navy can have Wong Lee's son placed in command of so sensitive a project in San Francisco Bay, of course. But if the basic type were to be replicated overseas, if another of the same class were found to be required off Formosa, then would he not be the obvious candidate? (I rather like the symmetry in advancing the clan's fortunes by a little harmless double-dealing off Formosa again.) Given carte blanche to assemble its equippage on the far side of the world, and I think it reasonably certain that we will be able to produce a prototype of the equipment of which we have crooned promises to our noteworthy friend in New York, all out of Government Issue equipment! (Allowing for a moment that the Reich is a government, and that we get our sample from Fat Chow.) 

 

The upshot is that you will find in these papers a contract for the refitting of Sparrow as an LCM tender at Vancouver. The rest, including the refitting of my cabin, I leave to your agents. Especially as I am now tapped to traipse the country in Cousin H.C's service again. 

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ostblogging Technology, February 1943, II: To The Gates of the Pure Land

 
 
Gate+of+Shamballah.jpg *
 
 
Wing Commander R_. C_. Q.C., D.F.C.
L_ House, Isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire.
 
My Dear Father:
 
I hope you will forgive my impertinence in taking over your correspondence with your cousin again, dear Father-(Out-of)-Law. Uncle is travelling in the East with the redoubtable Wong Lee, and someone here must congratulate you, as I am told that your decoration must otherwise go unpublicised  for now. Uncle is also frantic to continue his campaign on the Earl's patience in respect to electrical engineering versus "little steel." And he has, perhaps, noticed that confinement is wearing on me and that I would welcome this opportunity to make myself useful.
 
More on Uncle's itnerary. He will be touring facilities in Buffalo on the Boeing matter, but I do not think anyone takes that seriously. The real meat of the trip, it turns out, is a visit to some Heaven-forsaken suburb of Detroit. There is talk of Uncle Henry taking over a white elephant that one of his business partners ran up for an Army contract and cannot now "make go." Fortunately, his son will have the last say in that matter, and Uncle and Edgar have an understanding. Uncle will be returning via Chicago and Vancouver, so you can expect to hear more of our mutual friend, as well as from the yards, on the subject of a mad owner,  dictating minute changes to the refit of Sparrow. 
 
Needless to say, Uncle is quite beside himself at the prospect of going to war. He will not admit it, but he is jealous of your DFC! I should probably slip and say something about boys being boys if I went on about it. You and he are now definitively pencilled in as guests of honour in Santa Clara for the holiday season of 1946, amongst our family heroes from the wars returning. I hope that you shall be available, as, Heaven willing, your grandchildren will be there.
 
 
 
Time,  14 February 1944

 
International
 
"Devious Dipomacy" &etc. The paper is upset at Izvestia being upset at the Pope. Poland is at the root of it, the paper says, but it approves of various measures to promote regional autonomy --if they go through.
 
"Brighton Speaks" And says that the Tories are in trouble.
 
Germany: "Situations Wanted" Several "Situations Wanted" ads in German newspapers are parsed as evidence that Germany is collapsing. Would that it were so.
 
"Squandered Lives" The paper notes the famines in Honan and Kwangtung. It is suggested that "skyrocketing prices" have played a role, as well as blockades, crop failures and hoarding, while international relief agencies "must pay prohibitive prices" for food. It is suggested that Chungking can do something by prompt and leaderly action. Father writes (see below) that it would accomplish rather more by issuing silver until the rich are willing to part with their rice. But if there is one thing that Chiang and his cronies will not do. . .  The paper also notes Madam Sun's recent statement.
 
War News
 
"The Great Test is Ahead" The paper is pleased by the cheap capture of Kwajalein, but quotes General Marshall to the effect that people still do not appreciate the full magnitude of the 'great test ahead.' Rumour has it that the people of Kwajalein fought for the Japanese because they believed that the Army would perpetrate a pogrom, and the paper is willing to put it on record that the General has received protests in regard to the use of flamethrowers at Tarawa.

 

The paper also credits 2000lb bombs dropped by land-based bombers. The Navy, "with its new carrier strength and antiaircraft fire, was no longer nervous about land-based aircraft." We are referred to another article, on Secretary Forrestal's annual report, which notes that the "45,000 ton" Iowas now carry "148 antiaircraft barrels, ranging from 20mm up to five-inch dual mountings." Monte Cassino, and not the defences opposite the Nettuno bridgehead, is the "stone wall" of the Italian campaign. German blockade runners are on the loose. Those brave, brave captains and their crews. If only they were not taking war materiel to Japan!(**) The paper quotes General Montgomery on being "fed up" with the war. Germans are not sending fighters up against American bombers. Berlin is "dying" under air attack.

 

  Stilwell and Mountbatten are fighting about the Ledo Road. Father has now met Stilwell. His opinion, he says, is of Marshall and the President, not Stilwell, since knowing that Marshall put Stilwell in charge in Burma tells Father everything he needs to know about their true opinion of Chiang and his army. the Marine Corps Women's Reserve held its first birthday this week. They are college girls and very spit-and-polish (but meek in the face of "real" Marines), but still girls, with feminine accoutrements everywhere and men trying to "crash" their social functions. After Valentine's Day, imprints of lipstick will no longer be tolerated on Vmail. It "ruins" the automatic feeders, which must be stopped and cleaned after very pass. I somehow suspect exaggeration --and a girlish fad.

 
Girls and machinery, you know?
 
IMG_0266.JPG
 
Domestic
 
The President is probably going to run again. 
 
A House bill for a $2 billion tax increase reached the President's desk, in place of his own $10 billion and Wilkie's $16 billion. Wilkie argues that since the national debt will be $300 billion, and annual interest alone will be $6 billion, almost as high as the entire 1934 budget, so that we must have high taxes in order to "save our standard of living in the future." I smell a rat. What happened to the good old Californian Republicans of old? (Not counting the Engineer or his father, of course!)
 
The President signed the new veteran's bonus bill. Only $300. You will know that Uncle will not be satisfied until the bonus is higher than a ten percent down payment on one of Uncle Henry's five-thousand-dollar houses, but some progress. 
 
Representative John Rankin, Democrat of Mississippi, thinks that only communists, the "tax escaping fortune of Marshal Field III," and "Walter Winchell --alias no telling what" want soldiers to vote if it means violating the sacred constitution with the Federal ballot. Invited to elaborate on Winchell's "alias," Rankin called Winchell a "little kike" on the floor of the House. Mr. Rankin hates Coloureds, rich people, especially liberal rich people, Jews and many other groups to be named later. And aliasses. The House seems to have more tolerance for boors than I do in my house!
 
"Mahout" The GOP will win in 1944, unless they don't. Credit (blame) will partly go Harrison Spangler.  which is why he gets the four-page cover story in this number. Senator Vandenberg endorses General MacArthur, because there is no reason whatsoever that a 65 year-old divorced bachelor who sends tanks after veterans cannot be President, and not because Senator Vandenberg is a horrible old woman who has persuaded himself that spoiling Governor Dewey's chances will somehow open his way to the Presidency. I almost feel sad for Colonel McCormick and General MacArthur, who are so confident in their intelligence and influence, and so readily duped.
 
"Hunger Postponed" Last summer, writing from his 1500 acre farm near Mansfield, Ohio, novelist Louis Bromfield predicted famine in February. It was delayed by a prior engagement, and has rescheduled for April.

 

Senator Lodge is going to war. Or, possibly, is just not comfortable in his own skin.

 
Cabotlodgefam.jpg
 
Henry Wallace is an idiot, Mackenzie King is a snake. Canadians cannot get spirits, thanks to rationing and shortages, and, more importantly, the artificial rubber programme. Politicians and the press join to worry that cutting back to a 48 hour week is essentially a return to the Great Depression.
 
Science
 
"Engineer-Architect" Hermann Herrey, "no starry-eyed planner," proposes to solve Manhattan's soon-to-be-fatal congestion problems by completely reorganising its street grid and land use. The key would be an eighty-foot high, six-level "belt highway," at an estimated cost of $250 million. "All this, thinks Herrey, would involve no volcanic disruption of city life." 
 
The Press: "The Times Gets Ready" The New York Times is preparing for the future by purchasing a radio station, and placing it under  a  man who is in charge of managing the paper's adoption of facsimile distribution of newscopy via radio to "a receiver in the reader's living room." Uncle will be beside himself at the prospect of dealers selling such an elaborate electrical gadget into homes so soon after the deep-freezer.
 
Business
 
America has an official oil policy, which is to expand its stake in Arab oil. The Western Hemisphere current supplies 88% of the United Nations' petroleum needs, and reserves are being depleted faster than they can be discovered. Manhattan-based businessmen have "[F]ormed the China-America Council of Commerce and Industry, chairmanned by Thomas J. Watson, International Business Machines Corp. president and global good-willer." It is supposed that the U.S. will supply two-thirds of China's presumably enormous postwar imports. Because of course the first thing that the Chinese people will do when peace comes is spend foreign exchange on American typewriters! 
 
(J.) Magnin's and Bullock's are to merge, A sad day. As you will have heard, the NYSE finally went into the black last year. 
 
magnin+oakland.jpg Credit
 
 
The artificial rubber programme is in trouble. The easiest path to production is via industrial alcohol. The plants making rubber out of alcohol made out of grain are well ahead of production targets, but will be halted in their tracks by the growing grain shortage. The petroleum-derived process relies on butylene made at the 100-octane cracking plants, meaning that it is in direct competition with 100-octane gas aviation gas manufacture, while the promised butyl manufacture[?], the only viable substitute for rubber in inner tubes apart from Du Pont's small neoprene production, has not emerged at all.  Butyl is produced at a reaction that cannot take place above 150 degrees below zero, and must then be heated to 150 above. Production is negligible. Allotments of civilian tyres have fallen below what "Rubber Boss Dewey" once called the "starvation diet" of 30 million," and prewar stockpiles of both tyres and natural rubber are used up. Truckers actually talk of a transportation collapse." Related, the paper notices the formation of the National Federation of American Shipping, upon which subject Uncle has bombarded the Earl with enough optimism for a sequel to Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. 
 
Education Various schemes to persuade high school students to finish their degrees before entering war work are discussed. Cleveland is the national leader, somehow managing to have more students enrolled last September than the year before, while at the other extreme, San Francisco has all but given up, handing out a full semester's equivalent of credits for "war work." Texas, which after WWI banned all public school second language education as divisive, is now moving towards bilingual education in Spanish. 
 
Art Some "primitive" watercolour paintings done between 1815 and 1825 by a "Miss E. Willson" has come into the hands of a New York dealer from an unspecified collection and been sold for surprising sums with surprising speed.  I am not sure why this story is in the paper, but my eyebrows cannot rise any further at the personal details. Ah, well, it is Uncle's subscription, and I read out of the strictest sense of duty. 
 
Decision, by Edward Chodorov, is earnestly left wing but terrible, and its racist, war-profiteering Senator villain leads into the next story, about former isolationist, John T. Flynn, who publishes, with Doubleday, As We Go MarchingThis short but powerful work discovers the fact that an unwieldy public debt is the true cause of Fascism (or vice versa).  The paper asks whether the example of Sweden and Baldwin's Britain does not suggest that the debt can be managed "dynamically," and hypothetically supposes that Mr. Flynn would give an answer that would seem to imply (no, really, that is the drift of the article!) that Americans just have not the brains of Swedes. I do not know about this, but I am having some difficulty understanding whether it is Fascism, Communism, or even an excess of Democracy which leads to high public debt, or vice versa. All that I can be sure of is that public debt threatens my future prosperity, and no amount of mathematical mumbo-jumbo by advanced British theorists will change this future-fact. 
 
What, after all, has mathematical mumbo-jumbo ever given us?
 
Flight, 17 February 1944
 
Leaders
 
The paper thinks that the Bishop of Chichester is an amiable old fuddy-duddy for being worked up about the bombing of Berlin. At the same time, it is a dangerous argument to say that the bombing is justified on the grounds of shortening the war alone. Where else might such an argument lead? Manganese. Nikopol. Manganese manganese manganese. This has been your quota of "manganese" for this number. 
 
War in the Air
 
All aircraft are on tactical work in Italy this week as the Germans counterattack. The paper approves of using strategic bombers for tactical work when the alternative is losing the war. Men! Always so logical. (To let you in on a little secret, Sir, that is woman-talk for "silly.") Buried in the article is a discussion of whether or not airpower can be counted upon to cut off a battlefield from reinforcement. James (who is leaving again next week) says that someone is having a conversation through the press that he is also having in private. I assume that this is about the Invasion air plan?
 
"Halifax Development" It is good to hear of the Hercules replacing the Merlin to good effect, instead of vice-versa, as I was feeling a little sorry for it. 
 
"Jet versus Airscrew" The dreamy Mr. G. Geoffrey Smith contributes again. At least, I assume that he is dreamy. The paper certainly has a crush on him! Or am I guilty of "recycling" Uncle's joke?
 
"Shock Waves at Sonic Speed" Apparently, the wings of aircraft designed to fly at around the speed of sound have to be specially designed, and this might be hard. That seems to conflict with Captain Mcintyre's "next few years."
 
Here and There
 
General Smut's "personal" Avro York is actually to be property of the Department of Defence. Captain Macintyre of Scottish Aviation believes that civil aviation will within a few years achieve 700mph. 
 
"Flak" A precis of an article on the German antiaircraft arm from the German press. They sound very professional and well-equipped, which is depressing considering that this is only what the censor allows them to reveal. 
 
The paper's correspondence page continues to be very long and full of very well-worked up papers on subjects that make me wish my boy were born and grown up enough that I could be watching over his shoulder right now as he discovers these things for himself.
 
I'm sorry, I know that sounded broody, but I do not retract a word of it, and I'm crying a little right now, because when I think of these boys --and I think they are boys, to write so earnestly and so intelligently about jets and the law of reaction, and the (lack of) potential of broadcast electrical power, I cannot help also thinking about the great and terrible pending event that has them penned up together in their boredom as winter turns to the spring of 1944. 
 
 
The Economist, 19 February 1944
 
Leaders
 
“Chickens to Roost” “the sky is black with chickens coming home to roost at the Ministry of Fuel and Power.” The miners are upset that the minimum wage award did not lead to a general increase in miner wages. Speaking of impertinence, they make much of the fact that they are paid significantly less than workers in engineering for more difficult and dangerous work. The paper grants that they have something of a point, but not much of one, considering that output per man is low and falling, and that if the miners want more money they should work harder. But now they have been all cozened and indulged, and will not see the iron logic. There must be nationalisation, and rationalisation, the closing of pits and the introduction of mechanisation, etc. The paper certainly knows a very great deal about coal mining, for men who "toil not, neither do they spin." Well, cloth, anyway. A marvellous tale of how the world should be is quite another matter!
 
“Outlaw Europe” German occupation and oppression has caused a breakdown in the European social order, moreso in the East than the West, admittedly, but it is in France that people are demanding an end to economic dominance by the “two hundred families.” They’re going to go communist, is what the paper is saying.
 
“The Principles of Trade –III: The New Liberalism” Rereading Uncle's diaries, I gather that he loathes this series as a grand waste of time and paper. I see why.
 
Notes of the Week
 
“Russia and Finland” The paper thinks that Russia should offer Finland a moderate peace, as much to undercut German propaganda as for any other reason. Russia-Poland, electoral reform, educational reform, India, pay-as-you-earn, Latins.
 
“Employment Policy” The paper senses an incipient Great Surrender on full employment, which the Government looks to abandon as a fever dream releasing us from its clutch with the morning light. “The Size of the Market” looks at the notion that Britain cannot have the kind of consumer goods-led prosperity that exists in America because its market is too small, and rejects it.
 
American Survey
 
“Only Fear Itself” Our Washington Correspondent attended a meeting of a  private professional and business women’s club somewhere in the bedroom suburbs/market garden belt part of Washington. The ladies who lunched talked about the postwar. They are worried about the future. A doctor’s wife was convinced that her husband would have no practice to return to, as the non-mobilised doctors would have aggrandised all the patients, and because of socialised medicine. 
 
Apropos of not very much, Mrs. Murphy says that she may begin to "try again" this summer. I do not suppose you want to hear these details, sir, but I want to stress just how important Uncle Henry's "health care" organisation is to families such as the Murphys. Mrs. Murphy may joke that she is going to keep on keeping on until she finally has her daughter, but the truth is that she was married in 1931, and was beginning to think that she would never be able to afford a second. Now she is quietly determined to accumulate babies as long as "she has a doctor," and all that implies. As she joins me in what passes for a constitutional in our condition, I got to field pointed questions about plans for the land between the creek and the park road, where the trees failed again this winter. She points out its suitability for houselots. I can hardly discuss Uncle's plans, but, word to the wise, I should  like the Murphys to get an inside track.  
 
 
 
 
Back to the lunch meeting with OWC. Teachers and social workers are worried about juvenile delinquents, and there was a “difficult discussion:” about “racial facilities” in local schools. Perhaps, OWC concludes, these fears are over-done?
 
The World Overseas
 
Ulster’s old unemployment problems are likely to reassert themselves after the war; Spain’s autarky is working to the extent that the country’s economy has not collapsed. Germany’s coal and steel situation suggests problems in the mines not dissimilar to those of Britain. (Or America.)
 
The Business World
 
“Long Term Housing Policy” Planning will save us. Uncle claims that building more houses will save us. Perhaps there could be both?
 
Business Notes
 
Tramp rates are up; Canadian Pacific finally pays a dividend; Woolworths’ is doing better than expected; there are glimmers of hope in the Northern Rhodesian copper mining labour situation.
 
Time, 21 February 1944
 
War
 
The Germans counterattack under the cover of winter weather in Italy with the support of their siege artillery. All German men not yet mobilised of the classes of 1884--1893 are now called up. Swiss sources report that the Germans are trying to squeeze out another 900,000 men for military service. The paper has brotherly love for General Holland Smith of the Marines. (Yes, I am being facetious.) The paper ridicules German radio for announcing the sinking of Ranger. 
 
 
The paper feels that it is time to salute the Russian General Staff, which it choooses to write"Shtab." Beats describing them as "lanky," "gangly," "salty," or "dark," I guess. TheTribune elects to run the story of an air raid that led to the loss of B-24s  "Fyrtle Myrtle" and "Golden Gator." The former was so-called because it carried a new father and an expectant one, and was lost without survivors.  "Golden Gator" flew on to crash later, and four men escaped. In order to help the paper's audience better imagine the fate of the fathers of "Fyrtle Myrtle," the Tribune's correspondent dwells at great length on the gruesome fate of the other seven crewmen of "Golden Gator." 
 
The Tribune is published in Chicago, "C-h-i-c-a-g-o," not "T-o-k-y-o."[***]
 
 
IMG_0136.JPG
 
 
Britain continues to arrange a "counterbloc" in Western Europe against a presumptive Russian rival block in the East. Britons are told to prepare for the tension of the "nip and tuck" of the invasion by taking a rest day, lying about in a lighted room with an open window with some diverting reading. It sounds heavenly, but perhaps not the best tone to take just now? You certainly do not sound as though you have any time for "rest in the incumbent position!" Turkey is still neutral. The paper notices conflict between the Soongsand Dr. Kung.  Disease follows famine in India. the paper is surprised that the excitable Latins of Costa Rica are not going to have a civil war, after all. . 
 
 
 
Domestic 
 
Our Correspondent in British Columbia reports that the property of Japanese coastal residents deported to the interior of the province has somehow fallen into the hands of the provincial government and will be disposed to the benefit of returning (White) veterans after reasonable expenses &tc, not least to cordially encourage said persons of Japanese descent to go elsewhere. No doubt this will work as well as countless would-be anti-Chinese boycotts over the years, and those whose wallets have unaccountably fattened will have to work all the harder to not look their returning former neighbours in the eye in years to come! Perhaps to wash out the taste of the story, we are told under the same dateline of a temporary relaxation of Canadian meat rationing. This may be greeted by general salivation, but is merely intended to dispose of a surplus caused by a backing-up of shipments intended for Britain.  Oil and Russia dominate Washington discussions of foreign relations. The President has signed the repeal of the Exclusion Act. An end of an era here in Santa Clara... New Jersey politics are finally being cleaned up! Tax accountants do not know what they are doing! Theodore Bilbo is to be head of the Senate District (of Columbia) Committee. The City's Coloured population is apprehensive that he is ill-suited for office, especially as his first act was an order for "gangsters" to get out of town,  when, in fact, Washington's crimes are all political, not personal. The paper is puzzled. 
 
Governor Bricker visited Washington this week to explain that he would be the most anti-New-Deal-President of all! Uncle says that he is "auditioning for Vice-President." The paper is warming to Wendell Wilkie, cooling to Henry Wallace. Your Member of Parliament is back in Ottawa from the fighting to give a speech calling for more generous veteran's benefits after the war. Bad news for Halsey; Spruance is to be a full admiral. The paper is amazed by the amount of materiel $4 billion dollars will buy and move to "England" for the invasion, and tells a little story about US troops pumping out a manor house's flooded basement. Is this normal? Are many of the stately homes of England sitting on top of standing floods? I can imagine it, given how hard it is to get anything donehere on the carriage house, never mind Arcadia, but it cannot be good for the structure!
 
The paper reports that while two years ago almost 50% of draftees had various technical skills, the current Selective Service call-up shows only 180 out of every 1000 having "usable skills." Secondary schools are now running preinduction courses to teach "fundamentals."
 
Science, Press, Education, Arts
 
A Swedish scientist believes that bacteria originating in the chemically-rich atmospheres of Jupiter, Mars or Venus might travel to Earth on meteorites. The paper proposes "Flu from Venus," and notes University of California's Charles P. Lipman's old claim to have found living bacteria in ancient meteorites. Long distance calling is getting easier in America. Already robot voices tell callers the time and weather, while switchboards automatically route local calls. Now, Bell Telelphone Laboratories shows a mechanical brain which enables long distance calls to be put through without human assistance. Already in use in Philadelphia, it will spread across the nation after the war, when the equipment is available. "Eventually, [engineers] believe, it will be possible for a customer to dial an out-of-town call on his home or office phone." 
 
This will not eliminate the need for operators, says the paper. In fact, the number of operators has increased as telephone use has increased; but it does "seem to foreshadow a day when men will seldom hear an operator's voice." 
 
Orestes H. Caldwell, editor of Electronic Industries, thinks that railroad train crews need two-way radios. I am mildly amazed that they do not have them already, but Caldwell's point is that there is enormous room for railways to buy things from the industries that subscribe to Mr. Caldwell's trade magazine. Perhaps even music and news will be broadcast in "dismal railroad waiting rooms." Dr. Hattie Alexander of Manhattan loses only 25% of her patients to influenzal meningitis thanks to the new sulfa drugs. The Air Surgeon's Office encourages the use of benzedrine to maintain crew alertness on long missions, and of course, it is well known as a cramming aid and as the "pep in the German Army's pep," but the Surgeon now cautions that people should use no more than 30mg of benzedrine per week. To end a benzedrine alert, one should take a mild sedative. 
 
The New Yorker will no longer let its copy appear in Reader's Digest. Marshall Field III has dismissed the editor he brought in to found the Chicago Sun. The first Coloured newsman has been accredited to the President's regular press conference, "light-skinned HarryMcAlpin of the Atlantic Daily World."
 
The US Army is running correspondence courses for frontline soldiers ranging from grammar to electrical courses. Colonel Spaulding, who runs it, is one of the "fastest sandwich and coffee racers" in the halls of the Pentagon, and uses particularly colourful slang substitutes for profanities.
 
Business
 
Retail sales in 1943 were an all time record $63.3 billion, up 10% above 1942,up 64%, or 23.2% adjusted, above the 1935--39 average. The most amazing thing, the paper says, is that the numbers are not higher. With total income payments to U.S. people zooming to $142 billion, more than twice 1939, it was expected that Americans would run out and spend all of this, causing unprecedented price inflation. "People can still sometimes outsmart the economists."

 

Justice Thurman Arnold has found new ways to pursue his old practice of breaking preventive patents, though the decision seems likely to be reversed. Advertisers are advised to avoid ads that annoy servicemen. Frank A. Pearson and Don Paarlberg think that the "the U.S. is committed to the impossible task of feeding more people and animals on a better diet than the land can provide." All sorts of things can lead to disaster in 1944, and probably will, unless Americans promptly adopt an abstemious diet of cereals, beans and potatoes. This can be achieved by letting food prices rise. 

 
On the one hand, so long as the price of oranges be allowed to rise with beans, I encourage this line of thinking. On the other hand, if Professor Pearson and his former graduate student thinks that the high rangeland and low marshes of the Snake and Columbia should go into beans and potatoes, I have hoes, shovels and bucket yokes ready for them. Watch out for rattlesnakes! Speaking of, Congress wants to run industrial deomobilisation. The WPB has cut the supply of glass jars to the salmon roe canning industry. I was not aware that this was even an industry, but apparently it is used as bait in the inland trout fishery. Perhaps this is news for you or your wife?
 
Flight, 24 February 1944
 
Leaders
 
The paper is uncomfortable about the bombing of Monte Cassino, but judges that it was probably for the best, in this best of all possible worlds. Truk happened. I know this well, as only a day after James returned from Los Angeles, he was called away again to fly off to meet Intrepid at Pearl Harbor. Another carrier attacked, another steering gear failure.
 
 
The Economist, 26 February 1944
 
Leaders
 
“Showing the Flag” The Prime Minister’s review of the progress of the war in the Commons was a great set piece. Also, apparently, there will be an invasion. I am also taking away a certain pessimism about extravagant promises of a rapid end to the war? But Uncle points out that this is what Mr. Janeway says, so it must be wrong. The paper thinks that flying boats are so practical, and will hold its breath until it turns blue if you disagree! (Again, I am treading on Uncle's toes because I see his point.) 
 
War in the Air
 
In the paper's version of the Truk attack, which may be a bit of trans-Atlantic churlishness, the operation was a bit of a letdown, as the Japanese Combined Fleet had withdrawn from the harbour, depriving Admiral Spruance of his chance of finishing the job that some say he left half-done at Midway. (And by some, I mean at the very least a certain Admiral's pet sub-lieutenant. Uncle, in his usual contrarian way, is a bigger Spruance booster by the hour that he spends with young Lieutenant (j.g.) A., although an unfortunate episode involving a porcelain vase of sentimental value may have intruded itself. I am inclined to forgive the boy a bit. It cannot be easy to grow so quickly into such size, with all joints and limbs poking out untended in all directions. Which perhaps gives you a misleading impression of the young man, Sir, as he is quite handsome for a boy of his age --says Grace, looking down her nose at the vast gulf of four years!) The paper notices, of course, the American daylight raids.
 
Here and There
 
Mars.PNG
 
Captainn J. H. White of BOAC is to be commended for making three journeys totalling 2400 miles in the air in 9 hours of flying time in complete darkness recently. So where was he going? N.B. Never mind, the last number of Time for the month describes its new Stockholm bureau, formed by a man flown to Sweden from Britain by a Mosquito. That's one. 
 
C. A. H. Pollitt, "The Flying Boat: Will it Survive?" No.
 
"The Turbosupercharger" A very brief paper. As James says, this could be a very important technology for the future of marine motorships. I am not sure that aviation-suitable installations have much to teach marine engineers, tho'. Certainly this paper does not any new light! (Except to carefully notice the importance of making sure that the air-fuel mixture in each cylinder is the same. I imagine that would be quite a difficulty with these new engines.)
 
"The World's Best Aircraft" I am reminded of the one about lifting yourself up by your own bootstrap here. First Flying does a paper about the world's best aircraft, and Flightexcerpts it. Now Flight replies. Will Flying reply to Flight? Anything to fill pages while we wait on the first buds and continental invasions of spring! Oh, my summary. It turns out that actually British planes are best!
 
British+insularity.PNG
 
Behind the Lines
 
The Japanese have put a new fighter in service. It flew at Rabaul. Nothing else is known about the new fighter. Oh, come on, paper! German boys may now be air force cadets! (In other late breaking news, Columbus discovers America!) A Vichy paper reports that the Germans have developed an infrared spotlight to support their AA. I hope for the boys' sake that it is true, but common sense makes me doubt it. Karl Zeppelin claims that the recent attacks on the German air industry have had no effect, and the apparent shortage of German fighters is due to stockpiling against the invasion. Or it might be due to changeover to new kinds of aircraft. As meanwhile the Germans are stepping up the use of FW190s and Bf109s as night fighters, I think that it is safe to say that the graveyard has met another whistler. The Japanese minister responsible blames "bottlenecks" for holding back Japanese aircraft production. Having heard all of this before often enough, I am supposing that we should expect vast fleets of Japanese aircraft in, say, 1947. Too bad you started the war in 1941, then!
 
C. G. Volkes, "Air Filtration" A worthy subject belaboured worthily, wearily, wanly. It probably says it all that one of the illustrations is of the air filter off of a Boulton Paul Defiant.
 
Notes of the Week
 
“Unconditional Surrender” the paper wants more clarity with regards to what this means, to encourage the Germans to surrender already. There is to be a by-election, quite exciting! Correspondents at Anzio were censured by the army, quite outrageous. Finns and the Balkans, also Poles and the Argentines are excitable. (Uncle says this when he cannot be bothered to parse the substance of the dispute, and so do I.) The British Medical Association is cautiously welcoming of “socialised medicine.” The Federation of British Industries supports a better world. There is to be another call-up of men from industry for national service in Britain. All the men have already been earmarked, but still… Also, in America some are being released for, or even compelled to enter, industrial employment.
 
 
“The Use of Resources” Has the commitment of so many resources to aircraft production at the expense of warlike stores been wise? Time will tell.
 
American Survey
 
Our Correspondent in Ohio reports on “Less War Work.” In the Cleveland area, raw material and spare part surpluses are appearing in war industries, and there have been layoffs and hours-worked cuts in some plants and in shipyards. There are even surpluses of certain classes of materials, such as tanks. The country, it is said, needs to get ready for peace. The Coloured population is even revisiting the idea that it is “last to be hired, first to be fired.” Race relations in Cleveland are, however, on the whole quite good, not least because there are not that many grounds to complain of not being hired on the basis of colour or ethnic background. When everyone can get a job, there is not much racial discrimination in hiring! I am only a woman, and can see the case. I do suppose that it is going without saying that this could change.
 
The World Overseas
 
“The Northern Flank” Scandinavia is doing relatively well out of occupation, all things considered.
“Malnutrition in Dublin” After our Dublin correspondent’s explanation of the brilliant plan to use higher school fees to discourage the obnoxious excess of highly educated graduates over suitable jobs, it does not come as a surprise to read this headline. One Professor Fearon has now done a statistical study to put the phenomena on a firm scientifc basis, concluding that malnutrition is a serious matter in larger families(!). Our Dublin Correspondent has still not heard that Modest Proposal was a parody. I wish he would ask himself just why there are large families in Dublin when the labouring occupation will barely support them. Who does he think provides for orphans, if not their kin?
 
The Business World
 
“The Outlook for Tobacco” Is wonderful. This is the true “inverse elastic” product. The higher the prices go, the higher goes consumption! Remarkably, people smoke more when they are worried about their finances. Or  not remarkably, at all.
 
Business Notes
 
“Looted Gold” The United Nations warns neutral countries not to accept German payments in gold which does not belong to them. Profits are fine. Sir Leighton Seager, reporting to the Chamber of Shipping, hopes that buoyant international trade will carry the British merchant marine forward in the world to come.
 
“Railway Returns” are high as people take profit, concerned about the postwar outlook.
“Research in Industry” is good. There needs to be more than lip service, though.
 

“Chinese Exchange” Attention is drawn to the parlous state of the Chinese monetary situation. Specifically, inflation is eating away at the incomes of those in Chungking who depend on foreign remittances in paper money, and now adjustments have accordingly been announced. I hate to confess to being wounded by your stringencies on the risk that Fat Chow is taking, but here is our defence. The reply will relieve some distress there, at least so long as the United States dollar still passes in the heart of Sechuan Province. 
 
Time, 28 February 1944
 
War
 
Sun was seen in Moscow this week. "If spring is here, can the second front be far behind?" Muscovite: "Yes." Another byelection defeat for the Conservative candidate, a Cavendish running in the old family seat. The paper does not suggest how this could never happen in America, so I do not have to throw it down in disgust. The Germans are making rubber out of dandelions. "U.S. Rubber Development Corporation" discovers that the best way to get rubber out of the Brazilian jungles is to pay Brazilian gatherers enough money. As opposed to their other idea, which was apparently some version of 'scientific management.' The bombing of the monastery of Monte Cassino has left a bad taste in people's mouths. The paper is amused by the way that the Brazilians put a prominent American critic of the Republican persuasion in jail and were amazed to receive a diplomatic protest. Marshal Sugiyama and Admiral Nagumo are out as Japanese chiefs of staff after the attack on Truk, covered at slightly greater length elsewhere in the  paper. Stilwell, MacArthur, Chennault and Nimitz are arguing Pacific strategy via the press. (And even the Pentagon, we hear.) James points out to me that in this latest round, Admiral Nimitz suggests the need for a landing in the Philippines. Presumably MacArthur agrees, so on to Manila? Eniwetok and Engebi fall to amphibious assault. German bombers might have penetrated to London by using air-dropped tin foil (actually, would aluminium not be better, or am I confused?) to defeat radiolocation systems. 
 
James points out good news for Uncle. It should be possible to "filter" out these returns electronically, giving the electrical engineers their own version of the good old "shells versus armour" game! The massive American daylight air attacks are reported. The paper has so much purely Platonic, brotherly love for General Wilson that it makes him this week's cover story. Also a fav with the paper, General Rotmistrov, and "rough and rugged" Lewis Brereton. His job is "to umbrella" the invasion, in preparation for a projected peacetime assignment verbing words for the paper. The paper is not impressed by the outcome of the Battle of Arakan, a minor sideshow where only small Japanese forces are likely to be engaged, and where truly heavy fighting will have to wait until after the end of the war in Europe.
 
The paper considers it news that Lieutenant Kong Wau Kau is flying a P-51B in 8th AAF Fighter Command and has just scored his first kill. Because it is news, unfortunately. 
 
Domestic
 
Administration and Congress still fighting over who gets to run demobilisation. And subsidy bills, and the tax bill. Polish WACs, sent to America by the Polish Government-in-Exile, impress everyone with their feminine wiles, which will presumably convert the US Polish community to supporting the Government-in-Exile against the Russians. Because that will be hard.

 

US farmers took in $19 billion, up $3.5 billion on 1942. Estimated carry-over profits are $12.5 billion. Economists warned of a runaway land boom. (The proposition being that we will spend our profits on more land so that we can grow more oranges to feed the --wait, there is a flaw in this plan, for which see this month's Fortune.) Instead, they are saving the money for reinvestment in homes and tractors so that we can live better and grow more oranges with less work later. Damn you, farmers, with your rationality! I want my price inflation! Several prominent Democrats have made anti-Administration statements of one or another sort. Straws in the wind, blowing down the roads where the Wilkie caravan winds its way from event to event. Senator Burton has joined the race to be Vice-President. (Although the paper pretends that it is a Presidential campaign.) Southerners spread rumours of "Push 'Em Clubs," in which Coloureds compete to jostle and push white folk in the street. The Army Specialized Training Program just got combed out of 110,000 young men,"stunn[ing] college presidents." Only about 30,000 taking advanced courses in medicine, dentistry and engineering were left untouched, and 5000 enrolled in the programme in spite of still being 17. Colleges without contracts for woman students were particularly hard hit, and serve the chauvinists right! The Navy is so hard up for officers that it will commission 22 Coloured officers. They will probably serve in segregated ships.

 
Science, Etc.
 
A lie detector caught out Mrs. Edna Hancock of Brooklyn in perjury last week when she accused Mr. Murray Goldman of rape. It turns out that Mrs. Hancock is a slut, the paper cheerfully concludes. I usually leave it to Great Uncle to send out dacoits to avenge the injustices of the world, but I am meditating a change in my usual abstention. A machine which first cracks the shell of a walnut, then injects a mixture of oxygen and acetylene prior to passing the nut on an assembly line under a flame, causing an explosion which separates shell and meat is predictably unimpressive to the walnut industry, but the inventor gamely carries it over to the sugar beet industry, which needs a device to split up beet seed clusters. Here, apparently, his ingenuity will be rewarded, and soon sugar beets will be able to economically compete with sugar cane. The fact that we are already growing sugar beets in competition with sugar cane is ... Well, I have long since given up on understanding the business of farming in America except insofar as it rebounds on our returns. Hmm. Exploded oranges? Perhaps a cheap juicing method?
 
 
 
 
The presidents of Hunter College and the University of Chicago are in the news today. Both are cracking down on their faculty, but in quite different ways. President Shuster of Hunter wants them to stop saying outrageous things ("communism is good," "Negroes are an inferior race") to the impressionable girls under his care, while President Hutchins wants to rein in outside activity by faculty in various ways. 
 
Business
 
Bernard Baruch's latest report on demobilization is out. Presenting it, Baruch's "junior partner," "shrewd oldster" John Milton Hancock said, "There is no need for a postwar depression." "Fine point students" find nothing new in the report, but that may be the point. What needs to be done is obvious. The question is, can we do it? Or something like that. I reread myself with satisfaction. I could write for the paper. Just sketch out an article, add adjectives until I crack, and it's done! No, wait, here I learn that Mr. Hancock is an "optimistic Ancient," and it would never have occurred to me to capitalise "Ancient." I have much to learn.
 
In a transition first, the Gopher Ordnance Works are being torn down. 500 buildings, $69 million on 21,000 acres, built to make powder for the Allies, and never even operated. "You wouldn't believe it, but this cornfield was once a war plant." 
 
Eh. It is funnier in America.
 
Uncle Henry is in the  news. His partnership with Hughes to build a giant flying boat airliner, has just been bashed by the War Production Board. The paper likes the Brewster business, but I doubt it will hold its fire in the unlikely event he tries to build the Boeing ship there. Another Liberty has broken up, this one at the dock, fortunately. The paper is all over his talks with Venezuela. Frankly, this is the same business as the Hughes thing. He fobs the enthusiasts off by upping the ante, which is natural enough for him, anyway. Speaking of, Republican "Henry J. Kaiser for President" clubs are sprouting up. Seriously. Well, he is registered GOP, but I think the county has made its opinion of California Republicans clear enough. The state party will have to go another direction before it can expect a favourite son candidate to get very far on the national stage. 
 
 
 
 
Most embarrassingly, the paper describes his "245lb frame." 
 
the national stockpile of foreign wool is being liquidated, hopefully clearing the way for us to make a profit. Oh, dear. It can be hard sometimes for me to remember whether I am for or against free trade.
 
Miscellany, Milestones, Radio, Etc.
 
Charles Eugene Bedaux, "wily industrial engineer," has died of a self-administered overdose of sleeping powders. I know that you lack time for trivia, but have you heard the one about the trans-Saharan pipeline for edible oils? Because that was Bedaux. 
 
Frances Langford is touring the fronts with Bob Hope's USO Group. Which I mention only because I miss James so much, and have Embraceable You playing as I write.
 
 
 
 
 
Aero Digest, 15 February 1944
 
"Look Here, Mr. Striker" It turns out that strikes in wartime are bad!
 
"Aviation's Post-War Dillemma" Business could turn down for various reasons.
 
 
Editorial: New bill proposed in Washington, something something bad news. 
 
Guest Editorial: William Thomas Piper (President, Piper Aircraft), "'Main Street in the Coming Air Age," If only someone builds airfields everywhere, people will fly everywhere!
 
I cannot say that anyone reads Aero Digest for that stuff. Even the Roosevelt-hating can be got better elsewhere. They read it for the technical papers, and those are of limited interest. That said, Uncle is at least at the edges of that interest, and my obligation continues. So I  notice a paper on "new uses of the electron microscope" in industry (checking the quality of raw material samples), followed by "Electronic Process of Plastic Bonded Molded Plywood."  With a pageover Minneapolis Honeywell ad for electronic control systems for bombers, you might be forgiven for imagining a plywood plant run by an electronic brain, which would certainly interest  you, Sir, given your plywood investments. However, it is just about the use of electronic heaters-at-a-distance to ensure even glue setting within the board. I am sure that you are aware of this. I cannot help wondering if this could be used in cooking?
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Perhaps it is sensing the waning of attention of even the most earnest, the paper launches a new "What's Ahead?" series. Aluminum to replace house shingles? Radio wave heating to assist in tin-can making? Diesel engines in trucks and cars? Lighter aluminum-made freight cars? A carrot-beet hybrid called the "wobbie?" Facsimile reproduction of newspapers in one's own living room is mentioned here, too. So is colour television, three dimensional television, and even "storing up" television for later use. That last -hmm.
 
The paper's version of the aviation news frankly admits that the decision to stop painting B-17s is intended to bring up the production rate, admitting the rather obvious point that the decline in aircraft production in January to 8789 from 8802 is a disappointment, greater structure weight notwithstanding. This is sort of confirmed by the statement of C. E. Wilson of the Aircraft Production Board that the results were most gratifying, because the greatest increase in production came in combat units. If you have to look that hard for a silver lining.... In Aero Digest's world, jet propulsion is years away. Rear Admiral Portal (yes, as a matter of fact, and actually your boss's brother) is in Washington for talks about . . .things. James is supposed to fly to see him if he can get away from Intrepid."Things," of course means British carriers to the Pacific. 
 
In family matters, your youngest has applied for permission to take a road trip to Sacramento now that his car is roadworthy. But this requires me to back up.
 
As you will recall, Uncle could not resist a good carrying-on at our "Robbie Burns Supper" last month. I know that he expressed some mild doubts --as he should. How in Heaven's name do you keep a secret from one teenaged girl at the table when there is another teenager present who is "in?" I know that Uncle does not care to keep this a secret, but a promise is a promise.
 
Last week, "Miss V. C." asked to talk to me about 'matters of some delicacy. And so it came to pass that we sat down over tea like proper ladies (as I suppose I now am, alas), while she, with all the discretion that is possible to seventeen years, delicately pointed out how uncannily similar certain family traditions of the McKees are to Chinese New Year practices. 
 
Oh, how hard it was, Uncle, to keep a straight face as this girl with her raven hair and high colour asked another of equally dark and straight hair and equal colour and an even more -ahem- eyelid if she had ever considered that perhaps there was some "Oriental influence" in our family background?
 
No, no, I said. (Truthfully, at least, for her.
 
At this point I got a real surprise, as she produced with a flourish the version of the family tree provided by her mother, Mrs. H.C." (Uncle's alias scheme does not restrain me to confusing reuse here, because I do not scruple to identify Uncle Henry by his actual family name. Not when Aunt Betsy covers her tracks so well!) It seems that, uncomfortable with the way that it pointed in various directions,  her mother has interpolated some additional McKees into the lineage, and, not surprisingly, the details of these imaginary persons fail the test of historical soundness in some cases. I am left spluttering, trying to explain how someone can be at the Spokane factory the year before it is founded, and "Miss V.C." pounces, announcing that Lieutenant A. has discovered that some of the old Chief Factor's  business papers are at the state archives, and would this not be the natural place to look for McKee Asiatic connections?
 
Oh, dear. From many a false premise, an indisputably correct conclusion. Fortunately, it is a wild goose chase, and Great Uncle reached such of the Doctor McLoughlin's papers as were extant long ago.

 

But this is not the issue. It is the road trip, and I worry about my place in locum parentis. Young A was put onto this by the Engineer, who can have no motive other than to do a favour by proxy to a certain Admiral. He, of course, is looking forward to a weekend in Sacramento without parental supervision, while I am most intrigued by the connection, and wish to see it develop. The Engineer is torn between the temptations of Pacific First and his religious pacifism, and the conflict is developing in an interesting direction indeed if he is cultivating the Admiral, of all people.

 
So here is my solution. I have given tentative permission for the trip, subject to Uncle's veto when he returns. However, Wong Lee will go as chaperon, and the children, will stay at our young housekeeper's aunt's home, and this will mean that that young lady accompanies the party. Two girls and a boy seem like a safe chemical combination to me, at least on the road, and Wong Lee and the aunt can combine to check young A when he appears to claim his prize. 
 
Speaking of comrades in old exploits, I will end by addressing your concerns over Fat Chow. Yes, he is in grave danger in Berlin. Yes, his Pan-Turanian acquaintances are madmen. But they, unlike the regular run of Central Asian ruffians, are willing to operate his network and carry materials to and from Chungking. I cannot guess how long this will last, but Fat Chow tells my sister not to worry too much about the Gestapo. His German acquaintances are (part of) the Gestapo, and yet have their minds on revolutions sweeping out of Shamballah and throwing the Reds out of Asia. 
 
Don't ask me to explain. Fat Chow thinks that it is a combination of desperation, lack of sleep, organic madness and benzedrine washed down by cognac. At least they are right to think they could use a little of what Shamballah has to offer!
 
 
 

 

*Just so there is no confusion, I will go on the record that Uzbekistan is better than Kazakhstan in every possible way but one: the Gate of Shamballah is on the Sino-Russo-Kazakh border.

 
**It's hilarious because Lascars are cowardly and Japanese girls are submissive!
 
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Postblogging Technology, March 1944, I: Pulling In the Horns

 

 

 

 

 

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My Dearest Reggie:

 
It has been so good for all of us to hear from you. Your gifts were much appreciated. I cannot imagine where you obtained the nursery suite  but it is perfect! (No, strike that, I am sure you were informed through Wong Lee.) I cannot believe your choice of a theme in the decoration, however. Wait until "Miss V. C." sees it!
 
I do not speak lightly, either. I was in Chicago, last week, and had occasion to visit with the "N.C.s" and was subjected to a most unpleasant dressing down, made all the more difficult by the fact that I was of necessity seeing some unsavory types. You will have heard by now that I am proposing to go to war in the guise of the civilian master of an Australian naval auxiliary, with Sparrow in the guise of a landing craft tender. (Perhaps I repeat myself? I should really check, but am too lazy.) 
 
What has this to do with Chicago? Well, Grandfather would never adventure so without providing for contingencies, and, following his old precedent, I took the precaution of placing my men within the American Fleet. Under the (racial) circumstances, I chose not to be a slave to tradition, although there was an irresistable opportunity to place a wily old dacoit in the kitchen staff of the New Jersey battleship. Instead, I bought retainers from those "men of respect" with whom I have had to dally in the course of certain relations with our friend. An acquaintance of a friend --but, again, you surely know the story. 
 
I have always rather liked some aspects of this. It makes me feel quite the benevolent squire when I  relieve the fears of men who have fallen into gangsters' hands. A cynic would add that it wins an extra measure of loyalty. (Unless they have seen those recent Hollywood productions where the suave, rich man is more to be feared than the gangsters who bring you to him.) Unfortunately, the human material is imperfect. At least they are not truculent tinderboxes, like the run-of-the-mill hoodlum, but they are naive, and I should like to groom them more before placing much reliance on them. Hopefully, I shall not have to, and will ultimately activate the connection for less dangerous matters, as it is hardly clear which way they will jump when they are asked to do things that appear . .  . unpatriotic. I cannot frankly tell them that, as Grandfather said, he gave up masterminding the  fall of Western Civilization  in the moment he saw the casualty returns for the first day of the Somme, on the grounds that, in the face of the fine job that Western Civilisation was doing of bringing itself down, the family's proper role lay in cushioning the fall for its members.
 
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As to your charge, I sat Mr. Murphy down and we have gone over the finances of the proposed sub-division. I honestly had not considered building on the roadside land. It is rather farther from town than the land I planned on giving over, and Michael has high hopes of restoring its former fertility if we can only control manure runoff in the creek. Still, your wishes are my command, and I was rather impressed with Mr. Murphy's bank statement. 
 
In retrospect, I should not have been, considering how much overtime he (and his wife, before her confinement) have worked in the last two years. Knowing what he can afford gives me -or us-- something of a guideline for the size of the lots, as well. Now I wonder whether I was too hasty in planning to dispose of the lower land as residential properties. Americans do not like to rent out their houses, and for reasons I will explain below, I am becoming increasingly more anxious about maintaining our rental revenues. Perhaps there is a future in commercial real estate development just outside the city, or in more-easily managed situations, as in a case that I am contemplating now in  Vancouver
 
As for the Murphys, I am confident that they will be very nice  houses. You can tell that to the person who inspired the request. (Oh, yes, I know the influence at work!) 
 
This brings me to the final matter about which you were most anxious, Reggie. Your son's trip to Sacramento went well, and there was no scandal. Rather to the contrary, the Lincoln by all accounts ran smoothly and the trip was almost boring. In fact, your son is frustrated, since Lieutenant A.'s ancient roadster broke down, leading to what was by all accounts quite an adventure. Yet, for some reason, the girls appear more taken with Lieutenant A., who comes across the scrappy and resourceful young man, while your son is written off as a spoiled,rich boy, and any protest to the contrary that he rebuilt the car with his own hands is deemed "conceited." I try to nod wisely and offer gruff, manly advice about the wisdom of saying less and doing more, but the boy misses his father.

 

On a more serious matter, a most unexpected turn of events. A bundle of Doctor McLoughlin's papers were indeed in the archives at Sacramento, in papers from the dissolved Indian Affairs agency of Yerba Buena. The largest piece is a bundle of copybooks for letters having to do with the Doctor's official dealings, but Lieutenant A intervened to arrange for a photographic copy of the whole, and I have seen some brief extracts that indicate that there are also copies from the Doctor's patent book and the Company's Yerba Buena indentures. The former have some potential for leveraging difficult land transactions, as you and I and "Cousin H. C." know from using our copies.

 

The latter are more tricky. Some of the issued indentures are still about, and Wong Lee recalls using them to secure birth certificates for some followers in 1919. As I recall, all the indentures "invented" acceptable identities for  men of our old crews who wanted to engage to work in the country. The relevance to the old bureau was that some of those identities were Mexican Californian Indian, but there were others, and the indenture books are certainly not organised by the race or religion of our lascars, much less the pretended race! What I am saying is that I will not be easy in mind knowing that this document has been sitting in the state archives for seventy years until I have seen the full, developed roll.

 
Never mind. It matters very little to me that "Miss V.C." has discovered a real lead. I very much doubt that she has the sophistication to use it, and it is absurd to think that sheneeds it. "Lieutenant A," and the Engineer, are another matter.  did he suspect the fasicle's presence? How else put the Lieutenant on its trail? This is a mystery, and so is his purpose.
 
Ah, well. We shall deal with it. Somehow. And I shall endeavour to calm myself by continuing my newsletters.
 

 

 
Flight,  2 March 1944
 
Leaders
 
The Prime Minister made a statement about air power. He deems the Battle of the Atlantic to be over, and that the success of the invasion depends on the success of the air offensive. The paper finds this to be mysterious. Which seems a little coy, given that the paper must have some insight into the empyrean realms of the planners. Perhaps it is coyness with a purpose? I will admit that I am drawing inference from very little here, Reggie. Just anticipating the inevitable fixing-of-the-blame if the invasion fails, or the claiming-of-the-success if it does. The paper also supposes that the German air force is being shifted westwards. The paper is also pleased that the “Double-way attack,” that is, by night and day bombers, has had the effect of reducing German fighter production, as this will relieve the attacking bombers.
 
War in the Air
 
The Russians have won a battle, but, regrettably, no-one has praised the Red Air Force. The recent Allied offensive by Bomber Command, 8th and 15th Air Forces gets its due.  More details of the attacks are given. The recent German bomber offensive against London is noted, and the way that the Germans are “imitating” us by using chaff to fool radiolocation is noted. Interestingly, a picture of a “Ju53 magnetic minesweeper” illustrates the page. You no doubt know all about this, but except for some notice in the press a while back, the idea of a plane flying over magnetic mines with a massive hoop to detonate them by flux is –is novel the right word? “Bizarre” might be more accurate. Does it work? 
 
 
 
The recent raid on the Ladronnes is noticed. Guam, Saipan and Tinian are within some crucial range of Tokyo. Is this where the “Island hopping” is going next? It would explain a great deal of veiled reference and hints regarding the B-29 without requiring an outlandish China-based campaign supported via the Himalaya air route! Now where is the Japanese battlefleet? The German, by the way, in the form of Gneisnau, now written off in its watery grave at Gdynia, is in sad shape.
 
“The Prime Minister’s Review” The Prime Minister is retreating from 1944 as a firm date for the end of the war. It remains hard to believe that Mr. Janeway will prove right, however.  Apart from that, I prefer the paper’s summary, as it is …summary.
 
Short items: Mr. Woodford pleads for the greater use of electric auxiliaries on aircraft in a paper given to the IEE. At the beginning of the war, we had planes with two 500w generators, while the Germans used two of the same size giving 1500. Now we have 3000w generators coming into service. How much power do the planes You work with require for their special business? Bill and David are very much concerned with power supply, although mainly from the point of view of cooling overheated elements in very complicated assemblages. It does not help that we now propose to do the final assembly in the Pacific! Somewhere. Australia? Borneo? Manila? Guam? Fujian?
 
IMG_0308.JPG Children say the most commercially lucrative things
 
 
A brief précis of the Mosquito, with extracts of its wonderful performance. Sir Stafford Cripps praises the Air Inspectorate Division. I will second that. We inspectors of factories truly are unsung heroes and all of that, sorting out problems, seeing through smokescreens, walking weary, weary miles through Willow Run. Which really is quite big, you know.
 
Here and There
 
Two new Essex-class are launched, including the cheekily (or, depending on one’s readiness to be offended) sacrilegiously named Shangri-La are launchedThe paper informs us that those in the know will be interested to hear that Mr. Bloss is reinstated as head of airframe production at the Fighter Aircraft Production office. The rest of us can just relax in the knowledge that more privileged others, have our best interests at heart. Air Chief Marshal Harris is decorated by Moscow for blowing up Germans. A Commonwealth  “Radio in Aircraft” conference is opening in London soon. The new air service to Stockholm is suspended for various reasons. It is said that experience has greatly improved productivity in the American industry. Charles Wright of the War Production Board (shh, Reggie, we are not supposed to notice when an American of great moment in the aviation industry has the name “Wright”) notes that whereas an American fighter might once have taken 157,000 man hours to produce, by the time that the 1000th plane is off the assembly line, it is down to 7800. Which has the stink of burning statistics to me, as torches are applied to feet (if numbers have feet) until they yield what Mr. Wright wishes them to yield. Still impressive.
 
“Synthetic Blackout” Night flying training is made easier by new darkened goggles. But they are darkened in a new way. Do you know what the new Exactor remote control needs? More publicity, Reggie! Here it is.
 
H. R. L. Smith, “Safety in the Air” After the war, planes should be safer. Here are worthy initiatives towards that end, of the coordinating-planning-organising-cooperating variety.
 
Wallace Barr, Cellon salesman, has died.
 
Behind the Lines
 
News of Japan’s Donryu bomber and the German He177. A new device that makes it possible for pilots to bail out safely at 50,000 feet has passed development in Germany. I suspect that it is this that frees the aircraft already noted for its upcoming flight. The markings of the Hungarian air force are noted, in case our planes run into any of the several dozen of their planes still flying.
 
Aircraft Recognition notes the Bristol Beaufort and Grumman Avenger, observing that the easiest way to tell them is that they are being followed by a plane carrying a museum acquisitions agent.  Well, less the Avenger, but only because we have done such a fine job of building carriers from which practically no other American plane can fly! (Not that I expect complaints from Japanese infantry or submarines on the grounds that they are offended by being bombed by old planes, as opposed to one taking the name of the Pure Land in vain…) The Boy’s Own discussion of jets that so impressed “Mrs. J. C.” continues in the Correspondence pages.
 
The Economist, 4 March 1944
 
Leaders
 
By-election omen-reading again! The paper thinks that the success of the independent candidate, which seems to foreshadow gains on the Left and the return of party politics,might actually be an illusion. Even if it is not, we shouldn’t return to party government until after the war is over, which will be after the election. In short, the electorate, although as treasonous as any  lot of stirkers and coal miners, is stuck with the Prime Minister through 1948 or so. The paper also thinks something about postwar Germany, which seems to boil down to it not going away. 
 
 
 
The paper thinks that the future for South Wales is coal. Or buggy whips? Buggy whips might be better. Just in case you haven’t had the time to immerse yourself in these things, I will explain that the paper is thinking in terms of post war coal exports and oil-from-coal. Which astonishes me yet again. Surely a business paper can understand that  coal’s problems start with its inability to compete with oil pumped from the ground, for the moment only as fuel for transportation, but, in the long run, perhaps anywhere. This has had the effect of driving down wages, which has had the effect of cutting off the supply of new coal miners and investment capital, which has led to falling productivity, which has led to… I can understand why the paper would pretend not to understand this. The only solution is an increase in the price of coal, which would be against the interest of everyone save the coal-owners, and possibly even they, considering that they would not see the increased revenues. But to deny this not only cynically, but to make predictions on the pretense of it not being true?
 
What is worse, or perhaps better, even if we break out of this cycle of diminishing returns, how sure are we that there is no oil in England? Of course there actually is, and that it has been found at all intimates that geologists are right to suspect that there is more to be found by better drilling. What for coal, then? I am not saying that we should drop money into oil exploration on the three-cornered isle. In case the Earl asks, I think northern Canada to be a better bet, but I am asking about the future prospects of coal owning.
 
The paper has thoughts about Army Education. Skipping lightly over matters tedious such as vocational training, admittedly important to such as might eventually have vocations, as opposed to money, it moves on to “Citizenship training,” which does not sound sinister to me at all. Citizenship training (unlike “worthy” vocational training?) is a way of relieving boredom. Funny that the paper should say that.
 
I know, I know, Reggie. An unapologetic rentier like me has no business putting on the airs of a man of the people. It is just that I have had occasion to think like a pirate of late, and I cannot help but look to the coal situation in the light of old Coxinga. When theK’ang-Hsi Emperor quelled the pirates, he did not do so by conquering them in battle, but by making sure to build something that made us willing to be quelled. We may look back to that golden age as the descendants of captains of pirates rather than as descendants of pirates, but there was something for our followers, too.
 
Notes of the Week
 
Finns are abandoning ship some more. Poles and Anglo-Catholics are excitable. The Secretary of State for Air wants us to know that he’s very airminded. That is “Archibald Sinclair.” Accept no substitute (ballot, that is.) We bombed Monte Cassino, which is near Rome. We must therefore also bomb Rome before we can take it. Unless we don’t. The paper has proposals on how we can not bomb Rome that sound extraordinarily unworkable. Perhaps we could leave it to the Italians, who have hitherto done a fine job of arranging for their cities to not be levelled in conquest? Latins are excitable. There are to be further limits on civilian coal (“and coalite,” which is just like coal except that it doesn’t actually burn) consumption. For March, the restriction is to 4 cwts in London, 5 in the north. Which is actually not a change, the paper adds, going on to observe that the actual substance of the new restrictions is on coke, to 10cwts of fuel apart from coallite. This is not a ration. It is a maximum. Even the paper pauses to note that the implications for the poor are daunting. “There are working class flats in London which have had no more than 1 cwt of coal since Christmas, and rural dwellers have been very badly off.” If we had just  rationed fuel back in 1942, we might be warm today. Right now. The paper’s lapse from bloodlessness suggests that the paper is cold. Now that’s a crisis.
 
The paper has opinions about things that the TUC has said about control of labour and nationalisation. It seems that the paper and the TUC are joined in thinking that people and capital need more control in their lives. This is how captains go from commanding ships to longboats, gentlemen. On the other hand, the paper notices the need for state intervention in the old age home business. And again a step backwards as the Government contemplates various means of constraining cost-of-living increases in pensions. Do old people vote Conservative? Why, I believe they do! Never mind, as I am sure that office is beginning to pall on the "Baldwinites."
 
The paper notices that Professors Pigou and Macgregor are retiring simultaneously, leaving both of the Oxbridge Chairs of Political Economy open in the same year. Cambridge will be filled from London,  leaving it vacant, while the Glasgow chair is also open. There are others, too, and the prospect of more. Perhaps there has developed an excess of demand over supply of Olympian, white-headed Thinkers Upon Matters Economical? Such are the concerns that trouble the paper’s sleep, at least to the extent that it sleeps, in its cold, cold rooms. If only we were Ireland, with its troubling excess of unemployed college graduates. 
 
American Survey
 
Our Correspondent in California talks about “Water in a Dry Land.” The western half of America or so  uses irrigation! Irrigation requires irrigation works! (Insert Scripture quote, there being a commandment to irrigate in one of those books that begins with an “R.” Or am I confusing the sermon with injunctions about eating shellfish? I am showing my pagan upbringing, dear Reggie.) 
 
In any case, the irrigation works are now extending to mighty dams of the kind built by “Cousin H.C.,” and thus, after a page or more, the point. Harold Ickes thinks that once the Grand Coulee is complete, some of the 1.2 million acres to be irrigated will provide a home for returning veterans. There will be no more such great dams, but incremental work, for example, on the 528,000 undeveloped acres in the Mississippi-Missouri basin might yield yet more well-watered land, allowing the basin to accommodate another half-million people, per the Bureau of Reclamation.
 
I lied earlier about coming to the point with Mr. Ickes’s statement, Reggie. Another page and a half gone and we arrive at a discussion of water rights in the West, which often belong to the oldest landowner. OCC seems to reflect the views of the newer beneficial owner, and gestures to conflict between the Bureau of Reclamation versus Army Corps of Engineers. Perhaps he thinks that the Army will swoop in and save the new breed of agricultural entrepreneur? I think we can agree that that is optimistic, Reggie. It is our water, and our water it will remain. Water shortages are a fact of life in California, and if you want to avoid being hurt by them, you should arrange to have wealthier and more timely grandparents. Or find another business. Or cultivate politicians.

 

And the Earl wonders why I do not simply break with the Engineer if I dislike him so much.

 
“Uncertainties About Labour” Are strikes adversely affecting American war production? The paper has asked before, and the answer is still “no,” and the reason we hear the contrary is because trade associations want lower wages, and unions want higher wages, and can’t we all negotiate it and get along?  And the answer is no, because of politics.
 
American Notes
 
“Congress versus President” Congress offered $2 billion the President asked for $10 billion, “economic realists” wanted even  more. Congress passed, the President vetoed, which was an outrageous breach with precedent, all were shocked and appalled, etc. Congress re-passed with a veto-proof majority, requiring numerous Democrats to vote against the President, and Senator Barkley resigned as Majority Leader in the Senate. Surely this seismic event will echo down the pages of American history. Although since Senator Barkley has since been re-elected to his position and paid a social visit to the President, it will be a subtle and subdued echoing. One is almost inclined to be cynical, given that the main damage done is to Mr. Wilkie, the “economic realist.”
 
Eleven states have now provided for soldiers’ ballots. Selective Service will be taking another 240,000, including many farm workers. Farm organisations protest.
 
The World Overseas
 
A page-and-a-half on the Italian Fascist Government’s new economic legislation. The Pitcairn Island Local Government Committee on Cats and Dogs issues an  interim report: there are no cats or dogs on the island. Inquiries continue.
 
“Empire Wool Problems” A huge surplus of wool has built up during the period of production control. Something Must Be Done! Specifically, something that in no way affects our rents. Unless it leads to increased profits at the point when we renegotiate them. Because that would be fine.
 
Letters to the Editor is back.
Correspondents argue about just how many old houses there in Britain right now, an issue pertaining to how many new ones must needs be built after the war. Later this afternoon, the Emperor gives a violin recital in the Forum.
 
A representative of the mining association of Great Britain thinks that coal miners are being compensated quite competitively, and (by implication) the critical shortage of coal miners must be one of those odd things that happens once in a while, of no import and signifying nothing. The representative has now to speed across the Atlantic to address the Bituminous Mining Association of America.
 
The Business World
 
“Relics of Dear Money” The paper notes that the impression that cheap money has won out is somewhat deceptive. It points out that hire-purchase schemes often have effective interest rates ranging up from 7 to 30%, and cites the example of a life insurance policy offered by a well known firm in which an annual premium of £80 is broken down into two semi-annual payments of £41, which seems at first glance reasonable but (flourish of slide-rule!) isn’t, actually. Apart from these near-confidence games, it is more concretely noted that the notional idea that the “traffic will bear 5%” is not well corroborated by the actual market for securities, where colossal firms have been able to demand 2.5%. Drilling down, the accepted mortgage rate of 5% is perhaps not surprisingly in this light settling down to %4.5. Consider the implications for housing  of a further reduction, to, say, 3.5%!
 
I really ought to use a bigger brush for that last para. The paper seems to consider returns well under the increase in the cost of living to be normal, as opposed to something to be up in arms about. I imagine that this is because the paper thinks that the trend can be stuffed back into the bottle by being sufficiently harsh to farmers and coal miners. Will I sound like a broken record if I stress again that it will not, and that our main hopes are rents and dividends on growth stocks? (And capital gains on real estate, if it somehow manages to avoid the drag that population stagnation might be intuitively expected to impose.)
 
Samson+Cars+Recording+Ad.PNG Recorded music used to be awful, but now it is quite good. Samson cars are like that. When they're available again, they'll be quite good, whereas before --Wait a minute. How much did we pay for this advertisement, again?
 
Business Notes
 
A worthy Canadian initiative in regards industrial banking; equities have been “blitzed” on the market by the resumption in bombing. Industries might in the future be compelled, as opposed to bribed, to relocate to distressed areas. Expenditure on advertising has fallen in the war years in some industries and increased in others. There are tea leaves here to be read, the paper says, although given that toiletries, for example, have decreased while boots and shoes have increased, it will be subtle mind indeed that discovers them. The Indian Budget may not do enough to contain inflation, the main reliance being on gold sales to mop up surplus spending power. (Rich) Indians, then, are to be trusted to save the money that the government is spending, whereas (working) Americans are just waiting for the slightest pay-increase to go on the tear to end all tears. Speaking of, retail sails in Britain have disappointed. Home heating could have improved efficiency. Nice canteens and improved houses for miners will save the day. People would eat more herring if it were more appetising. Accordingly, the Herring Industry Association thinks that there should be subsidised loans for fishermen. Canada is a place where you can invest. East African is to have money, now, although  actual East Africans continue to prefer Maria Theresa thalers. East Africans are not  fools.
 
Flight, 9 March 1944
 
Leaders
 
The old “Air Defence of Great Britain” command title has been recreated, because “Fighter Command” is out of style. The paper approves, because it always does. The Americans have attacked Berlin in daylight, and even sent fighter sweeps over it. I notice that the paper avoids explicitly saying that bombers are escorted to Berlin. As during the Battle of Britain, having fighters actually escort the bombers is more difficult, as fighters achieve a higher cruising speed than bombers.
 
War in the Air
 
The Arakan Offensive is over. ‘Twas a glorious victory, and air supply of the troops was important. The counterattacks at Anzio continue. Aeroplanes were involved! As well as the German siege artillery, which rather leaves me thinking that we were foolish to give those big tubes targets. I hope things develop well, but I feel a certain sense of foreboding, for I remember the terrible work they did in the last war. The Australians are to make Lancasters, as Canada is going to do. Quite a stride for Australian engineering, I should think. The Governor of Bengal has made a tour of the famine areas. Aeroplanes were involved! Two members of the Parnall board have resigned. Is this a secret scandal? Do you know, Reggie? Many aeroplanes have been sent to Russia. India wants air services. Also South Africa. Showing their endearing loyalty, the natives of Southern Rhodesia have chipped in for a plane in the Spitfire fund. The US Army has discovered the source of the Orinoco river. Aeroplanes were involved.
 
“Convoy Cover” An RAAF Spitfire squadron somewhere in Libya has flown protecting flights over merchant convoys at some point in the war. Vokes oil filters were involved. And aeroplanes. And Australians. Won’t someone please send us some real news, the paper cries.
 
Behind the Lines
 
Japan is now producing 1200 aircraft/month. German radio, quoted by Reuters, blames diversionary tactics for Allied bombers getting through. The Deutsches Allgemeine Zeitungcriticises the high command. I hope that certain air marshals’ affairs are in order for retirement, and papers readied for the courts-martial! Speaking on Paris Radio, Jean Herold Paquis tells the French that Axis victory will be won  on the ground, not the air.
 
“New Rolls-Royce Engine”
 
The paper is now permitted to tell of the Rolls-RoyceGriffon, which is like the Merlin, only larger. It is based on the old record-breaking “R” engine, has 36.7 litres displacement, and runs at 3200rpm. It does not, however, have two-stage superchargers yet. The day of the high-altitude day-bombing “Liverpool,” or whatever Avro calls it, is still a ways off.
 
“Indicator” talks about dealing with the inevitable unreliability of the modern aircraft, of the relative roles of science and ingenuity in sorting out the snags, and of test rigs and regular maintenance. Cabbages and kings are left for his dotage, which cannot be far away, given that he seems to share our vintage.
 
“Radio in the RAF” The RAF uses radios. They’re little boxes with wires sticking out. You talk to them, and they talk back. At least until the gentlemen come to take you to the rest home. Tongue in cheek justified by the paucity of actual in formation in the article.
 
“Studies in Aircraft Recognition” Covers the Douglas Boston, Martin Maryland, Pe-2 and Ju-88. 

 

“Boundary Layer Control” Do you like very complicated mathematical papers in theJournal of the Royal Aeronautical Society? If so, you have already read this. Now read it again, but without tedious math. Do you not? Well, lick a finger and  move on, as there are more pictures of planes, over.  
 
Correspondence
 
Not all of the letters in this number are from eager boys. There is at least one from a cranky old man, and, oddly enough, one from an electronic engineer, the chief designer of R. K. Dundas, who has either time on his hands, which would be unfortunate, or a bee in his bonnet, which I can at least understand. It’s about broadcast power, if you are interested.
 
“The Air Estimates”
 
The paper found Sinclair’s speech so wonderful that it will vote for him twice! Berlin has been almost destroyed some more.
 
The Economist, 11 March 1944
 
Leaders
 
“The King’s Shilling” The Welsh miners’ strike raises the question of whether Service wages can be increased to the industrial average or, even more exorbitantly, to the American pay scale. The Government says, “no,” because of the delicate balance of prices and wages. The paper thinks that, on balance, the Government is right, but that when Sir John Grigg speaks of “inflation on the wildest scale,” he overplays the Government’s rhetorical hand and damages his own argument. In any case, the paper lays out its own, more modest proposal for a pay increase.
 
“Presidential Progress Report” The paper is inclined to complain that American Presidential elections go on too long. Do not look to me for a scholarly citation, here, Reggie. They all say that, every time. Has it, perhaps, occurred to them that this sort of thing just encourages it? The paper, in any case, is offended that Americans are offended that the paper is offended. Or something. The paper hopes that we can all move on and elect Mr. Wilkie and be done with it. The paper is a very silly paper.
“America in the Middle East” America is not in the Middle East, silly paper! It is in the Western Hemisphere. Oh, never mind, Reggie. Oil.
“What is a Great Power?” Large, rich, populous countries. Now with illustrations, using cleverly distorted maps to show that with these conditions applying, China is not really a great power, but that we pretend that it is one, and Britain is only a great power if the Commonwealth wills it, which it should, and that Japan might not be a great power in the future.
 
 
Notes of the Week
 
Finland is still abandoning ship. Russia and Poland. Turkey is still neutral and will therefore be given fewer guns with which not to fight in the future. Something about parliament and ministerial powers? Coal miners are awful for striking when there is a coal shortage, just because they are not being paid enough. They should wait until there is enough coal to strike. It’s only fair. Argentinians are excitable. It is noted that there is an urgent housing crisis. As it took five years to build 300,000 houses after the last war, we all hope for better performance this time around. The “fifteen year plan for the reconstruction of India” presented by Indian industrialists is hopeless naïve. The paper explains, slowly and carefully, using short words and soothing gestures to calm the agitated babus.
 
Yugoslavs are excited. There is to be a Royal Commission on Population. The paper is hopeful, but “population trends move slowly, and Royal Commissions sometimes move more slowly yet.” Mr. Lyttleton is very impressed by the extent of war production in 1944. But we are winding down, and in such a way as to fit work to sometimes immobile labour, and thus all the more reason to explain these things to a populace whose reserve of good will, the paper intimates, might be drawing down at the end of five long years of war.  Flemings, Walloons, Hollanders and Luxembourgeois (is that right?) are excitable.
 
American Survey
“Watch Texas” Our Correspondent in California, who last week passed gas on the subject of irrigation, now notices where there is plenty of gas. Everyone should invest in Texas. Or the Northwest, because of the Grand Coulee dam. Or, at a last resort, in California, which has only Henry Kaiser. By Jove, Reggie, I think we pay this man! Remind me to pay him less.(If he turns out to be Mr. Janeway in disguise, I shall not be firing only Mr. Janeway!)

 

Although given the way that "Cousin H.C." perks up when we discuss November, he might overrule me. The eyes roll.

 
American Notes
 
“War Production Report” America has produced vast quantities of war materials, Congress says. To do it has let many war contracts. It has rather lost count, which makes it hard to say just what will happen when they are all wound up. Congress promises to look into this and get back to us. One industry that has overbuilt is the machine tool business. “Its only real hope lies in the rapid development of new materials and processes in post-war industry, which would quickly put all tools made during the war out of the market.” As we shall see, American Notes is reading Fortune.
 
“Planning War Economy” Perhaps Americans have woken to the virtues of free trade. The paper hopes so.
 
The World Overseas
 
(Vichy) Latins are excitable. Holland has been cruelly exploited by Germany, and the spectre of famine looms due to the shift of available acreage to industrial crops and a shortage of farm machinery and fuel. Our Dublin Correspondent notes that a shipyard has opened up in Dublin to support a proposed Irish merchant marine that can exist if only the Government will subsidise it. OCD has very clear ideas on what impecunious causes are suited to government money, and which are not. If OCD thinks that Dublin will defeat the Pearl on the postwar seas, OCD is due for a great disappointment.
 
The Business World
 
“Is There Enough Oil?” The United States, the paper says, “s suffering from one of its periodic scares of impending oil shortage.” Dr. Egloff, of the United Oil Products Company, points out that Mr. Harold Icke’s recent forecast that the world might run out of oil in as few as thirteen years is based on proven oil reserves only, and we might well find more. The paper rather agrees with Dr. Egloff over Mr. Ickes. It does occur, the mind having turned to the old Doctor, to contemplate his comments when Beaver arrived on the coast, that it is all very well to have a cheaper means of conveyance. One must needs find the fuel, first! The costs of oil exploration must be carried by the price of oil for consumers.
 
Business Notes
 
 
Railways and electrical generation and distribution need Plans! The Bank of International Settlements has published a pamphlet on exchange restrictions that the paper quite likes. The interest rate on bank loans to industry is likely to fall in the future. Equities and real estate, not bonds, part the second. 
 
It is supposed that if we try to sell goods in the United States harder, it will happen that we will sell more goods in the United States in proportion to how hard, and how effectively, we try. Sir Stafford Cripps thinks that there should be more cooperation between management and labour. The actual increase in wages from October 1938 to July 1943 is 76%, as opposed to the 65% calculated from wage rate increases, the excess being carried by overtime, which will disappear after the war, so that the estimate of increased purchasing power weighing on “inflation” may be overstated with respect to the postwar period. This will certainly quell demands for wage restraint, as there are certainly no signs of pent-up frustration at the poor state of various goods and services that will lead to demand for more money so as to spend on more things.

 

 
 
Flight, 16 March 1944
 
Leaders
 
“The Air and the Sea” The First Lord introduced the Naval Estimates in the House this week. Aeroplanes were involved! On a more serious note, unlike the Prime Minister or the Air Secretary’s speech, this one actually had some interestingly concrete things to say, noting that in 1941, submarines sank only 1 of 181 ships sailing, 1 of 233 in 1942, and “in the second half of 1943” only 1 in a thousand. That leaves out six months there, which I seem to recall were quite bad for submarine sinkings. But what do I know? I am  only a shipowner. Presumably, all will turn out, at least in the Admiralty’s telling, to have all been the Air Force’s fault.
 
“Another Point of View” Admiral Nimitz promises to pound Japan with landplanes based on the China coast. So much for my premature speculations about the Ladrones! The paper thinks that such bases are unlikely before the naval war is won. So if there is to be “strategic” bombing of Japan, it will be from aircraft carriers.
 
The Statement of the Ministry of Aircraft Supply claims the production of 99,000 aircraft through the end of 1943. We Americans are beating the world! (Pirates side with the victor.)
 
War in the Air
 
Continuing night and day attacks on Germany must be pushing the Germans to their limit. Tactical aircraft are wandering over the Atlantic shore, looking for someone to fight. Oddly, the Germans decline to come up to be shot down.
 
Here and There
 
Canada now has 12,000 trainers in service. American Aviation “takes it on itself” to reveal the existence of the Hawker Tempest and Vickers Windsor, which were seen by Wellwood E. Beall of Boing on his visit to England. Captain Roy Brown has died. Canadian Pacific Airlines is growing rapidly. Scale models of a Hampden and a Halifax II were presented to Frederick Handley-Page in a fete in his honour. They were delivered a little late and were far heavier than they looked. Even Maori can now be fighter pilots, at least in the RNZAF. Charles Wilson’s statement about the 8760 aircraft built in February is noticed. Canada has taken over the Alaska air route. 

 

Vickers_Windsor.jpg
 
Ads: “Look out for Hydulignum!” Why? Is it falling from the sky? Have all of Britain’s advertising writers found war employment?
 
“Coastal Comamnd Station” Exists. Some nice pictures of depth charges blowing up fish, and perhaps occasionally German submarines. There is a nice discussion of the Command’s Consolidated B-24s, which fly quite long missions (sometimes more than 16 hours!), which would be quite impossible without the Minneapolis-Honeywell autopilot. I notice that while the Liberator itself is said to be a miserable flying experience in bad weather under autopilot (your eldest pulls out his maths and gives his well-worn talk about the inadequacies of the Sperry design), no ill is spoken of the Honeywell device itself. A pilot tells us that he once flew for 14 hours on seven different courses without disengaging the autopilot! Operational losses happen, and the maintenance burden of these long flights is, of course, colossal, but the autopilot –but I repeat myself.
 
“Indicator” talks about “Mathematical myopia.” Basically, he does a great deal of war ferry flying, and is sick and tired of ground people telling him that he’s the problem. And so I expect to say, on the day that they take my car license away. Though he does have more useful things to say than some doddering old man.
 
“Aircraft Recognition” has caught up with the A-36, P-40, and Westland Whirlwind. In case you were wondering what those planes you saw six months ago were.
 
Behind the Lines
 
Germany is  using new planes, and 500kg bombs in its attacks on London. Says the Hungarian press. Coercing and starving coal miners turns out to be bad industrial relations. Inform The Economist! A Swedish correspondent writes that Germany has become a land of the submerged. Those who have good reason to wish to disappear, including not only deserters and criminals, but also particular, politically compromised men, need only have their relatives go the police and tell them that they were lost in an air-raid, and then reappear in another city with a claim that their papers have been destroyed in another air raid. Presumably the ones with money in Sweden can talk to Swedish correspondents…
In any case, I send this along to Fat Chow.
 
Germany has a labour shortage on the one hand, and improved ground control of fighters, on the other. The Germans suspect that the Allies have secret airfields in France with which to move agents in and out.
 
“Growth of US Air Power,”  Has been covered. Interestingly, in the light of those who talk about American manufacturing’s genius for standardisation, it turns out that 67 different aircraft were being made in the united states in 1943.
 
An ad praises aids to cleanliness offered by one firm that promises to address “industrial dermatitis.” Gloves are apt to work better, but I can appreciate the difficulty of providing them in adequate quantities.
 
A long article about the “MacLaren Undercarriage,” which seems rather gimmicky to me.
 
Correspondence Continues last week’s theme of a battle of old versus young, this time with a pilot explaining why fast fighters beat slow but manoeuvrable trainers, and a scolding coming out of the receding “airplane rating” episode. It looks like some people have more time on their hands as February turns into March. Has there been a relenting in some aspect of the war effort of which we are not yet informed, Reggie?
 

Short bits: the paper wonders about how the plywood of the Mosquito will stand up to the tropics, now that they are in use against Japan. And it turns out that a disposable fuel tank can be turned into a nice coracle. 
 
The Economist, 18 March 1944
 
Leaders

 

“Irish Neutrality” The Irish have been very naughty. In the interest of good relations, the paper prints, with only the slightest hint of irony, the old “Home Rule means Rome Rule” slogan. That should help make Dublin more amenable to Allied (London) demands!
 
“According to Plan” Mr. Willoughby presents the Governmentn plan to build 300,000 houses within two years after the war. The paper has pages of useful criticism. “Verdict on Munich” It is time for history to judge the Munich agreement. It was bad, it turns out, Reggie. If Britain was not ready to fight in 1938, surely it was not ready to fight in 1939. It is difficult to understand why we have all chosen to forget just how much money was spent on armaments in 1938 and 1939. Unless some people want to forget. Like the paper.
 
Notes of the Week
 
“The Russian Offensive” is succeeding. Roumania is still abandoning ship. Anglo-Catholics and others are excited (over schooling.) For example, now that we have no teachers, it is contemplated not firing woman teachers on grounds of their getting married. The paper is upset that Mr. Hudson is retreating from free trade in agriculture. (Italian) Latins are excitable. National Health and Full Employment are on the agenda of ministers and Fabians. There is fighting in the Far East, with attacks on Truk, the Japanese attacking in the Chin Hills, and the Allies advancing in the Chindwin. A more detailed map than the one provided would go far to suggest the balance of importance between the two offensives! Guam is sufficiently close to Tokyo that something censored something. Infant mortality is exacerbated by poverty due to mothers working longer than they should, but perhaps not to the extent rather emotionally claimed by the female(!) Dr. Summerskill. 
 
IMG_0305.JPG Ladies are illogical. For example, these two find a giant, rotating filing cabinet to be amusing for some reason. it's a good thing that they're so well dressed, or someone would get upset.
 
 
It is announced that the total killed and wounded in Britain in air raids to date is 113,219.
 
American Survey
 
“Contract Renegotiation” Our correspondent in Massachusetts notices that renegotiation might prove to be scandal fodder due to the highly varied ways in which the excess profits tax might  be applied in individual cases. I am certain that when the boys (and girls) come marching home, Americans will want nothing more than a long-drawn out autopsy of individual cases. What could possibly distract them?

 

 
 
American Notes
 
“Kingpin of Victory” is Lend-Lease. “Army Casualties,” killed and wounded, are 95,795 to this point. Mr. Wilkie has carried the New Hampshire Republican primary, but the latest Gallup poll suggests that this is highly unrepresentative of Republican primary voters as a whole.
 
The World Overseas
 
Even more pages about the Pucheu trial. Canada has…Wake up, Reggie! Portugal is having Social Reform! Expect Finland and Rumania to have finished surrendering, first.
 
Now follows the massive annual “World Commercial Review” insert, which, the Earl may rest assure, I have considered in much greater detail than my flippancy here would suggest. I just find little use for it in my summary report. Which is to say, and is this not the way of mankind, that I find nothing in it to shift my thoughts on where to invest those moneys at my discretion.
 
The Railways need a Plan! Mining wages should increase, but only in proportion to increasing productivity, the paper thinks. I suppose I do not need to bang my drum again, Reggie. If you cannot attract labour under current conditions, you must abandon those conditions, not double down on them, unless you are prepared to do without coal.
 
Business Notes 
               
 
Civil Aviation is …advancing. America is richer, and spent a smaller proportion of its national income on the war effort than Commonwealth countries, and especially the U.K. Credit has contracted in the UK, as usual, seasonally adjusted. English resistance to technological progress threatens its place as shipbuilder to the world.
 
Aviation, March 194
3
Down the Years in  AVIATION’S Log
 
Some things never change. The entry for 1919 has “engineers prophecy that 200mph flight will soon be realized commercially,” while the 1934 entry tells us that airline speeds average 150mph. Remember the outrage when skeptics said that the DC-2 entered into the MacRobertson Race wouldn’t average 200mph? Neither did the De Havilland number, of course, but it came closer, because it was a racing plane! Other things change much faster. The 1929 remembrance is of "Lady Mary Heath" receiving the first aviation mechanic’s license held by a woman. Really quite unnecessarily tawdry of the paper. In 1934 the Air Ministry diligently set aside 13 “practice areas” for “cloud flying,” presumably to save civilian pilots from certain death in mid-air collisions with service planes coming hurtling out of the nearest strato-cumulus.
 
Line Editorial Junior is on about the disposal of Government inventory, an estimated $60 billion of goods, including $2 billion “marketable or usable for civilian purposes.” Either the ‘or’ here has some other than the obvious meaning, or Junior privately shares the general opinion of the marketing business. . . From there, though, the editorial descends into that most dreaded and boring of copy –specifics, mounting rapidly into such dizzying array of specificities that one must conclude upon the need for organisation, planning, and specialised government agencies.
 
Editorial
 
Leslie E. Neville thinks that “Industry Must Lead in Re-Locating Workers.” In the future, American employees have a right to expect not to be put out of work by their own efforts. If industry does not take the lead in relocating workers to places where their labour is in demand, the government will, and who wants that? LaMotte T. Cohu, board chairman and general manager of Northrop Aircraft, has developed a system, which we can all study, and which is further discussed in a worthy article, beginning page over.
 
 
“Northrop’s Plan for Postwar Employee Re-Location”
Not to hold you in suspense any longer, Reggie, but the manufacturers of the P-61 have a system, and that system is of a piece with their work. It turns out to be that every employee has a punch-card on which every piece of information of any value about his employment, such as his skills, address, age, seniority and family status are recorded, allowing, when Northrop or some other firm has a requirement, for a massive card-sorting machine to spit out the exact card (and thus name) of a man required for, say, a 45-year-old refrigeration and air-conditioning repair/hydraulics installer/WWI veteran in suitable circumstances for a married man with two dependents and a seniority date of 7-9-42. (There is a sad story of the Depression hidden behind these numbers, but I do not need to tell you. I remember those heart-rending letters about thin and anxious men, desperate for the work you couldn't give them.)
 
IMG_0285.JPG
 
 
And, so, it turns out that advanced machinery is the solution to this postwar problem. I endorse this conclusion! It is also good news for the county, if those plans for an IBM punch-card plant goes through, the firm might even take some small share of the "giant sorting machine" business. 
 
Earle M. Scott, “Scott’s Plan for Reconverting Small War Plants"
 
The “President of progressive Scott Aviation Company” says we can hardly just lay off staff on notice of contract cancellation with two week’s pay and a wave in the direction of unemployment insurance and ‘Uncle Sam.’ No, the kind of employee we want to retain does not want charity. "He has saved, bought war bonds, paid off old debts, and, perhaps, invested in  a home. He is in the best financial condition he has been in years; but, as much as they look forward to, and pray for, victory, they look to the future with misgivings. They are not afraid of the postwar years –they have heard far too many optimistic reports about the coming golden age. But they are worried about the conversion period.”( I believe the failure of agreement is original to the article, but perhaps I copied it wrong, and owe Progressive Mr. Scott an apology.)
 
So how to ease these employees through the conversion period and keep them around? Termination pay. It need not be high, in fact, shouldn’t be, so as to keep “inflationary pressures” down. Nor should it be a lump sum on release; but rather semi-monthly payments, beginning with the two weeks’ pay on release. Money for this should be held in a reserve, “untaxed, unrenegotiated, and allowed as a cost.”
 
Scott has the good sense to let a paragraph intrude before he follows this up with the observation that “no government subsidy” is involved. So, to summarise, Scott Aviation has provided for $10/week for 9 weeks, on the understanding that this will be a supplement to the New York State Unemployment Insurance Benefit of $18/week, starting two weeks after unemployment begins and extending for 16 weeks, or perhaps more in the case of some firms. In Scott’s case, 60% of employees will be released, while 40% are kept on at reduced hours.
So, in some, the plan requires that UI payments do not garnishee payments made out of a special corporate income tax-free reserve deductible from the excess profits tax. But no government handouts are required.
 
John Foster, Jr, (associate editor), “How a Myriad Ideas put More Planes Aloft Quicker,” East coast aircraft production manpower efficiency is up 80% over two years, each man turning out 77lbs/month of airframe today compared with 42.6lbs then. Many of the savings have been in engineering departments. As recently as 1940, these were staffed with relatively limited numbers of men of considerable experience and versatility who could handle perhaps two models in limited production. Today, although employment is past its peak, the departments are vastly expanded, at the expense of originally hiring new employees with no previous aircraft experience, which meant that “old line” engineers had not only to do their own work, but to train newcomers, many of whom had no engineering experience at  all, a fact especially true of women workers. One company’s engineering department employs 33% women now, compared with 7% just 16 months ago. Whereas there were then no women at all in the drawing department, today there are 26. Fashion designers and cartoonists have been successfully trained to do technical illustrating. Thereafter, it was a matter of organising and in many cases reorganising the flood of newcomers and salting them with experience while streamlining processes and accommodating such special needs as needed to be accommodated.
 
 
IMG_0287.JPG See how manpower can be better utilised by simple expedients such as factory day cares. We shall talk less about the poor shipyard executives who might have offices above stairs.
 
R. W. Feeny, “Analytic Geometry for Speedier Wing Lofting,” discusses the use of mathematics more complicated than simple algebra and trigonometry to improve, well, wing lofting. From the look of it, it involves an engineer’s worst nightmare –the substitution of arithmetic for drawing. 

 

Lynn S. Metcalfe, “Slide-Films Promote Employee-Relations Training” through the wonders of modern technology, various training sessions can be made more productive by turning tedious presentations into fantastic slide-shows!

 

Lt. Comdr Harry J. Marx, USNR, “Prime Axiom in Hydraulics is Banish Dirt.” The worthy papers of Mr. Volkes in Flight on the subject of filtration now have their trans-Atlantic counterpart. I distrust Commander Marx. He is the first author in this number photographed holding his pipe, instead of clenching it in his teeth in a manly fashion. 

 

James J. Heatley, “Fuel-Weight Measures for Better Flight Performance” The old rule of thumb of 6 lbs/US gallon is not terribly accurate across the range of temperatures found in flying. We need weight in pounds to estimate endurance, but we get volume in gallons from filling the tanks. We need to know how much fuel we have (rather important for calculating lift off weight, you would think?). Here is how to compute it, with graphs. 

 

P. H. Moyer, “X-Rays Now Gage Propeller Blade Thicknesses” The precision required in machining hollow steel propellers is so precise that it was thought worthwhile to measure it with industrial x-ray machinery. This is quite the bit of photography, as is here explained. 

 

Side Slips

 

“Once more a great shipbuilder has shown aircrafters “how to produce.” But, once more, unfortunately, the ‘production ‘ is in newspaper headlines only.” Side Slips, I remind everyone, is the funny and irreverent take on the aviation news. 

 

  Hilarious! And putti are never inappropriate. I believe we know which cousin-in-law the paper means! It rather rudely points out that promises of production of first the Mars and now the Hughes plane have gone unfilled. With Navy fighter planes still sorely needed, it is time to “let the shipubuilder stick to his ways.” If that is some snide reference to the Buffalo plant, it is only producing what the Navy thought it needed. Cousin “H.C.’s” enthusiasms for giant flying boats will get no defence from me, though, Martin seems scarcely less to blame than our organisation! As for Hughes, quite frankly, an odder man you will never meet, Reggie. Unless your little club in Vancouver matches the London scene, mind you, in which case he’s a sadly familiar type. There is a reason that this new breed of “psychiatrists” think that they can diagnose diseases of the mind by their symptoms.

 

Aviation News
“January Plane Production was 8,789, Poundage 90.3 million; Trends Forecast” We are, apparently, pushing the production targets! The target is 113,000, and we are on track to build 100,000! January production was 8,789, the same amount as November’s figure, and only 13 short of December’s. Meanwhile, the projected monthly rate is levelling off, and will  never reach the projected 10,000/month. It may, indeed, even decline in the future. The WPB is concerned that this will demoralise the public, which is why it is sternly admonishing the public not to be demoralised, for various reasons including that military types production is up, poundage is up, and we are now building BC-29s and “other types.”
Speaking of other types, Russia has agreed to haul off some of the junk fouling our factories –I mean, Douglas is sending 2000 A-20s to Russia! 

 

America at War –Aviation’s Communique No. 27 Tojo has told the Japanese people that airpower is key, and Japan has the edge. But he is wrong! American (and there are some other Allies, the paper thinks?) production facilities are superior, and the “Jap has to copy.” I thought this kind of arrogance led to Pearl Harbour? Or am I remembering more than I am supposed to, again? We are going to invade Europe. Air power will not eliminate the need for ground forces, but it will make their job “easy to the point of negligibility,” as in the landings below Rome, where the Germans didn’t even resist! Perhaps this communique was prepared somewhat in advance of publication? “Curtiss-Wright’s Back Up Our Battleskies initiative" has been a rousing success. More workers are coming to work! That is, the rate of absenteeism has fallen from 3.34% to 1.1%. Suggestion boxes were stuffed! Scrap was reduced 37%!

 

Spot Checking

 

The Martin Mars transport aircraft, recently converted from a patrol bomber, just completed its first 4700 mile trip to Honolulu in 27 hours, 26 minutes. This would be considered damning with faint praise, I think. The Senate, meanwhile, asks why, if the Navy does not want the “Kaiser-Hughes wooden flying boat,” it has agreed to buy 20 of the Martin machines. 

 

The Washington Windsock

 

Blaine Stubblefield reports that some airfields will be declared war surplus. Will “aircrafters” hit the postwar market with a “modernique” automobile while Detroit is still in the process of resuming 1942 models? No decision, Mr. Stubblefield says, combining equal measures of industrial insight and prose style. The Zero still outmaneouvres Allied fighters, but we lick ‘em, anyway, showing how much that’s good for. The Truman committee sure was silly, criticising great aircraft like the SB2CB-26 and JRM-1! “New warplanes are all the rage, but if you look the lists over, you will see that all service planes were either in service or completely engineered before Pearl Harbor. The flying boat versus landplane debate may be moot, as people may turn out to prefer 50-seaters to giant, multistory airliners, giving frequency of service the nod. Stubblefield reports that people who have seen the Kaiser-Hughes flying boat are impressed with the carpentry, and that officialdom is burning with curiosity over how it turns out. Postwar airline success will be constrained by price-per-mile.
 
More Aviation News

 

 Minneapolis-Honeywell has a new film out explaining how its autopilot works. The AAF have 2.3 million personnel, including 100,000 pilots, 20,000 bombardiers, 19,000 aviators, 107,000 air gunners, 556,000 ground crew, 29,000 training planes. In Canada, more than a million lbs of airmail has flown out of Vancouver, and Boeing-Chilliwack has added a night shift. Wasn’t Chilliwack essentially a trading post and a tavern the last time I saw it, on that fishing trip with you, Reggie? And wasn’t that only ten years ago?

 

Aviation Manufacturing

 

A joint government-industry committee has been struck to manage contract renegotiation and conversion in southern California. Northrop thinks that its newest plane, the P-61, has not got enough publicity, even though it has “fairly long range and effective speed and climb characteristics.” Even Northrop seems to be suggesting that its various “control” devices and instrumentation are more worthy of comment. Too much stuff driven by too much engines to get too much firepower equals a flying barn door, I imagine. 

 

“Manufacturer’s Report” is the usual miscellany of random statistics, in which Douglas stands out as actually attaching financially useful information. It has delivered on a billion dollars’ worth of contracts.
“Coast ‘Quits’ Down; ‘Pools’ Save Man-Hours” Less labour poaching cuts turnover on the West Coast. Don't look at us, Reggie.

 

Aviation Abroad

 

The Nazis have new glider-bombs, rocket planes. China is being supplied by C-47 transports flying over the Himalayas, the paper tells us. News! Total air tonnage, we are told, exceeds that once carried on the Burma road. But how much of it is consumed turning the planes around? 

 

Fortune, March 1944

 

Business at War

 

“Spam and the Future” Today’s article is about a meat-canning company with the army on its feet and the world in its sights. It turns out that Spiced Ham and Pork is something that people will eat, albeit under protest, unlike canned mutton. That is, when prepared the way that Hormel does it. The Army Quartermaster’s specification renders it inedible, and Servicemen complain. A Dr. White is quoted as saying that Servicemen are giving Hormel priceless publicity by griping. You can’t buy better advertising? Dr. White says?  Is Dr. White related to Mr. Janeway? Another firm is Triumph, of Elkton, Maryland, which is a massive, brand-new munitions plant complex that became notorious when its operators were arrested for various fraud and corruption charges back in 1942 While on bail pending appeal and barred from participating in the management of the company, Mssrs. Kann and Decker have done quite nicely out of their shares, and the court-appoointed war manager Benjamin Franklin  Pepper is now in charge of conversion to peacetime production of whatever they might be able to produce, barring a race riot levelling the place ‘”when white and Negro relations ignite.”

 

The Farm Column 

 

Ladd Haystead thinks that rural electrification has been a blessing, as has crop diversification, pointing to Upshur County, Texas. But, as always, there are storm clouds on the horizon. Perhaps the local co-op has borrowed too much money? Could be! More is possible Bell Laboratory is experimenting with telephone-without-telephone wires, with the signal carried by powerlines and house wiring, as well as with electrical “diathermal” cooking and various other gadgets that might allow farmers to consumer even more electricity with advantage. He also supposes that city farming might make a comeback, pointing to people doing farming-type things inBrooklyn.  There might be 100,000 “city farmers,” Haystead supposes. Trees are a good crop. The president has them on 400 of his 1400 acres at Hyde Park. Without reforestation of lots such as these, America would run out of timber eventually! 

 

Trials and Errors

 

Mr. Janeway is in New York City, or was, back in January, when he wrote this. Mr Janeway supposes that the American consumer is becoming jaded, because he has all the things he needs. Therefore, manufacturers resort to “billboard  engineering,” persuading people to buy things through ever more effective advertising and pointless improvements, for example, in the “streamlined, chrome-plated, high-speed family automobile,” which American families demand in spite of congestion and designs that make engines and tires inaccessible, so that special tools are required for elementary repairs. Advertising is awful, and so are American consumers and American manufacturers! It will all come to a bad end!

 

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This brings us to the point that Mr. Janeway is making, that in the future we will be dependent on exports, and of course foreign consumers, such as those in China and Brazil, to pick woo examples of foreign lands where people are poor and benighted, will not want chrome plating and special tools, and so America’s competitors will get all of the business, as we have “gadgeted ourselves” out of the market. 

 

Mr. Janeway helpfully explains the relevance of this discussion of chrome automobiles to the subject at hand, which is the machine tool industry. Our machine tools are too complicated and break down too often, with their multiple settings and speeds and the like that no-one ever uses. Give Mr. Janeway a good old fashioned lathe, any day!  

 

Other things the hapless Chinese need: small steel plants integrated with crane factories. (Just for example, the point being that the poor Chinese will not need large steel mills, but might want geegaw factories alongside.) They might also want synthetic oil made of Chinese coal, or instructions on how to farm, irrigate, and protect against flooding, at which they are notoriously bad. And how about this idea? China could procure Chilean copper, if Brazil vacated the market by taking up the manufacture of aluminum out of native bauxite? 

 

According to my inquiries, Mr. Janeway is 30, and not 17, as you might suppose. 

 

The Fortune Survey Is on the future organisation of the United Nations. When I opened this number to a letters page where a Wisconsin forester was writing to cancel his subscription because the paper was using too much paper, I was inclined to think that the world had found one forester of the kind of whinging precision that I more usually associate with indoor labour. I wish now to retract my interior criticisms.

 

Oh, and I retract again, as, page over, it turns out that they asked other questions. Who should be President? Roosevelt, it turns out, though per Republicans, it ought to be Dewey, and a hardy Corporal’s Guard of 8% of Republicans think that it should be MacArthur, leaving me appalled anew that the General allows his name to be floated in this way. If has no capacity for embarrassment, should he really be directing the war effort in a major theatre? Although the presence of young Mountbatten in another… 

 

The major postwar political issue, by the way, is to be unemployment, as we gaze into the crystal ball to predict future opinions about things to be done even further into the future. 

 

 

Today’s big “The Job Before Us” feature is about the invasion. The greatest battle is still before us, and the bloody fiasco at Dieppe shows just how thoroughly it can go wrong. A feature on “Invasion Tactics” shows the obstacles to be  overcome.

 

 

 

IMG_0310.JPG

I am struck by the detail of air attacks on enemy radiolocation stations. It gives me a better sense of what the planes that you service are doing, and of what Bill and David and their subcontractors are accomplishing down on the water, and what we might be able to do --will be able to do-- for our friend after the war. and, of course, there are all those details about the sanguinary exercise that is to be the invasion.

 

“Retreat from the Pentagon” I sure hope my photocopies are legible.

 

Despite the title, this is about reconversion, and the costs to industry. It is also forecasting a deflationary gap when American consumers can no longer finance purchases out of the current income that they lose when they leave war work. I suppose that all of the talk of a "postwar depression" necessarily implies a movement from price inflation to price deflation, as after the last war. I know that I talked confidently a moment ago about price inflation in the context of the postwar bust, and now I find myself disagreeing with Fortune, but I think I will point, again, to the coal miners and stick to my guns. Short of reintroducing slavery, you cannot raise production and restore employment in an industry that labour is abandoning without increasing wages, or pushing unemployment to such heights that people will welcome the chance to work in the mines. And considering how high unemployment got in the Distressed Areas in the 1930s...

 

Well, that thought is enough to put me off my lunch.

“One War Boom is Over”

 

The machine tools boom is over. The paper proposes that we should be concerned, since manufacturing busts follow machine tool busts.

 

 

This is, however, a company profile-type story, and we do not want to be upsetting the shareholders. Monarch Industries, specifically, hopes that another boom has just begun. Clearly it will not be in machine tools, for prospects for demand are poor. 700,000 of the US’s 1.75 million machine tools were made in the last 3 years. It is going to be very difficult for current models of machine tools to sell. Fortunately, Monarch is in good shape financially thanks to putting money away during the war years. It has learned a great deal about making various kinds of non-machine tools as a result of war contracts. The boom it hopes for is (mostly) in non machine tool areas. 

 

Other possibilities include the miraculous entry of entirely new machine tools onto the market, and a return to the Depression-era cliché about dumping current production into the ocean in order to create new markets, which is hardly serious, although it at least ties in with Mr. Janeway’s column in a way that makes Mr. Luce look less of an idiot for paying him.

Guided by nothing more than my unshakeable dislike of Mr. Janeway’s oracular act, I plump for the miraculous new machine tools, which will be even more complicated “universal” tools with even more speeds and settings. That said, instinctive dislike will not guide my investment decisions, obviously, and I will stick with electrical engineering, preferably close to home.

 

The Bituminous Coal Institute answers a common question: can the children of coal miners be educated? The Institute is happy to answer that, yes, they can. State and federal standards require that they permit coal miners’ children be educated, and the Institute hardly begrudges them that more than a little! Indeed,  coal miners’ children are even free to go on to university and community college, if they can pay for it! 

 

These really are appalling ads, and not appalling in the sense of the ill-judged British ones I sniped at earlier. The Institute seems unaware of just how callous the industry that it supports comes off here. Miners will always be captive to their employers so long as they value their jobs more than the dubious prospects of the freedom of the water margin, but it is unbecoming of the industry to gloat over it. 

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Postblogging Technology, March 1944, II: A Pinch In Time Saves Nine

 
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Mother and babies resting comfortably.

 

Actually, Mrs. Cook is flat out, with the twins by her, and the new Turkish nanny looking out for both. Funny how a Turkish girl looks Chinese and talks American with a Chinese accent.

 

Hi. You probably never heard of me, but this is Vince Murphy here. The babies were on their way when I left for my double shift, and they came an hour after I got back.  Not as long a delivery as my Mammy's first, but hard on everyone. Mrs. Judith put a brandy in the landlord and set  him to bed before settling down herself. My Mammie has a little one of her own to look after, came last week, the Captain's on a slow cruise on some lame-duck carrier coming back from Hawaii, Larry's driving the doctor home, and that leaves me as the adult of the house. And now I have this here courier at the door to pick up your mail. I scraped up what's on the desk in the Landlord's study, but I remember how my Dad worried out a furrow on the floor, and figure I'd add my own touch, which, well, you see. I figure this is on the first page, not that I read Chinese any to know.

 

P. Vincent Murphy. (That's me.)

 

My Dearest Reggie:

 

I am a little  hurt that the Earl has so little faith in my judgement. I understand that he is  inclined to be impatient when I make snide little comments in the face of the recommendation of the Economist itself that we invest in "Cousin H.C." I believe that The Economist is wrong about this, and surely their California correspondent's silly comments about water rights should underline his credibility?

 

In my defence, I offer the events of the past few weeks. I refer to them cryptically, I admit, but you know my business of the last few weeks, and most of my trip's consequences are playing out in the news. If "Cousin H.C." and "E. F.," if you know who I mean, trust my judgement....

 

As for my little game with "Miss V.C.," whatever you have heard from her mother, that is all it is. She is very disappointed that her investigations at Sacramento turned up no further information about her "McKee" forebears, but, nothing daunted, brings me the Yerba Buena indenture book to point out a name with eyebrows cocked. I dissemble: "Chinese family names come first," I say. "It is a coincidence."

 

"I know," she answers. Then she pulls out the popular biography and points to the alias that Bing Oh Mah took his Hudson's Bay Company indenture under. It is ironic that a half-caste guttersnape from old Canton could come out on top of his crew here in America; but, after all, he probably took after his EIC sailor father enough to be Black Irish in all but accent.

 

 

"Coincidence," I repeat, but she only puts a dinner club napkin from my Chicago visit down on the desk without comment.

 

I thought that I had left that lying out for nothing! A blank stare back is but a snare draws the young lady ever closer.

 

One thing, though. Do you know from your sources if the old man left the country at some point? Because his grandson once told me over too many drinks that he first came to the Coast in Gold Rush days....

 

 

Time, 13 March 1944

 
International
 
The Finns are surrendering more, and, for novelty’s sake, have sent a female ambassador to do it. Some Americans, rounded up in France when Vichy was occupied, are now returned from internment in Baden-Baden. Deep in the countryside, they have the impression that German public morale is still holding up, buoyed by brute statistics. Germany and her allies have 200 million people, 18 million soldiers, vast and increasing war production, massive fortifications against which the Allies must spend themselves. The Commons is agog over talk that the V-Cigaret tastes like horse dung. Or Indian tobacco, whichever is worse. There are automobiles in Bermuda, now. Koreans find Japanese arrogant and oppressive. Malaria is raging in Egypt. Egyptians cite malnutrition for the spike in deaths and blame the British, while the British (and the paper) blame the landlords. Whoever is to blame, malaria-carrying mosquitoes are certainly spreading northwards with the rising Nile. Vichy, in an unexpected turn of events, is turning  anti-Semitic. Wait, did I say “unexpected,” Reggie? 
 
The casinos in Monaco are closed. The paper notices that things are not as they could be in Italy, and unloads an emergency supply of condescension in the liberated region. Also failing to develop to the paper’s satisfaction, Argentina. Brazil, on the other hand, is colourful, Latin, and cooperative.
 
The paper asks whether the Second Front has been postponed, perhaps at the behest of the Air Marshals, whether there is something the matter in the Burma theatre, whether the Administration has a policy on Germany, Italy, Poland, de Gaulle, Finland? Answers are unclear. Hint: Perfidious Albion.
 
Various clergy think that we should not be bombing German civilians. Blowing up various places around New Guinea, on the other hand, is fine, as only natives, and occasionally General MacArthur live there, and you can always tell the General by his (Philippine) Field-Marshal’s cap. 7th Cavalry is involved in fighting off frenzied Japanese night attacks on Los Negros Island. Words fail. The Russians are advancing. The “little Blitz” is driving Londoners back into the tube, although the paper cannot help quoting an anonymous expert criticising the quality of German bombs. Please do not taunt the German air force, anonymous expert. 
 
The paper notices that the “full scale” bombing attack against Germany has only been going on for two weeks now, and celebrates the heroes of the American infantry who have, over the last seventeen days, made and held a bridgehead across the Rapido. The Germans are attacking ships in the Anzio roads with rocket-assisted guided glide bombs. Vice-Admiral Percy Nelles, RCN, notices that German submariners have high morale due to only doing three tours per year, high quality leaves, and good food. However, recent prisoners have been more polite and less arrogant, suggesting a change in the albeit still highly Nazi corps. Gigantic German five-engined planes have been seen in France.
 
Among famous soldiers and sailors: Alfred and George Vanderbilt, both lieutenants and commanders of PT boats in the south Pacific. The paper has a picture of them greasy, from maintenance work. I do not, as my copy was dropped in a broken bottle of milk by the postman. I do, however, have this.
PT-p223.jpg *
 
Paulette Goddard, who is not a soldier or sailor, but did fly “over the Hump” to entertain troops in China; Joseph Wright Alsop, Jr. who likes to flit through the war, is currently with Chennault’s staff. Jesse Stuart, “Kentucky’s hillbilly novelist-poet” has just passed his pre-induction physical. Alan Ladd, discharged as too brittle by the Army last fall, is rumoured to be about to be re-taken. 
 
 
 
 
Missing in Action this week: P-47 ace Major Walter Carl Beckham, and P-51 pilot Wau-Kau Kong, previously noticed.
 
Domestic
 
Five veterans’ organisations proposed that the prospective 11 million veterans of WWII get a bonus of $4500 each. The paper claims that “ober citizens blinked as if they had been slugged” at word of Trillions for Bonuses. Gentlemen, that is how much it is going to cost. There is no point deluding yourself on the subject, or you will just be slugged later. In the mean time, may I humbly suggest a compromise: a home loan guarantee to the value of, say, $5000? Think of it as an investment whose dividends will pay those trillions. The South Carolina legislature denounces all organisations seeking “the commingling of the (white and Negro) races upon any basis of equality as un-American.”The paper points out that  the real issue is that Coloured teachers get $70/month in South Carolina, White teachers $90. I would take this a step further. The ostensible injustice is racial, but since men in war work can easily make $1/hour, the real injustice is the criminal underpayment of South Carolina teachers of both races. And Christians have the nerve to call Chinese heathens
 
Southern Senators, led by Tom Connally of Texas, might be using their influence on foreign policy to expert pressure on the President on racial and labour issues. Senators Wagner of New York and Taft of Ohio, thinking things much too peaceful and non-anti-American in the Middle East, introduce a resolution calling for a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. General Marshall came before the Senate to ask that they hold off inflaming Arab opinion until after the war, when we shan’t need them anymore. Republican William S. Bennet nearly beat Tammany’s James H. Torrens in New York’s 21st Congressional District, no doubt foretelling a massive Coloured swing against the New Deal. Mr. Janeway? Is that you? 
 
The new Governor of Louisiana celebrated with a victory lap in the hay wagon that brought him to town.
 
Awful, rickety, improvised relief trains are pulling great loads of stranded Florida tourists home after the transportation infrastructure threatened to collapse under the load of would be escapees taking a spring break. Looking back in review as I prepare this packet for the courier, I can only say that there is more urgent news about transportation failures to
 
Obligatory Canadian news includes a notice that, unexpectedly, Canadians have not flocked to butcher shops to exploit the (temporary) end of meat rationing with an orgy of buying, and that Canadian authorities are attempting to clamp down on over-telephone sales of dubious stocks by “wheedle-wackers,” or American con-men, and word thatTappan Adney is a Renaissance genius who knows the ways of the Miami Indians and makes his own pickles. And also has compromising photographs of the Luces. 
 
Local draft boards are having more and  more difficulty in finding good men, with astonishing rates of rejection for neuropsychiatric illness. The question that I have, cynic that I am, is. . . Actually, I suppose I needn’t continue after esuggesting that one could approach such news cynically.
 
The Civil Aviation Authority is now recruiting married couples to go up to Alaska to run “isolated communication stations along the country’s farthest north air routes.” Homes are provided with electrical refrigerators and all other modern conveniences. Right outside their doors, the paper helpfully notes for those who have not yet grasped the point, “is the Alaskan wilderness.” Better than inviting it in, I suppose.
 
Science, Technology & Business
 
The Army is trying out “portable” oil pipelines of 4 and 6” diameters. The steel pipe segments are spirally constructed, like soda straws (if that tells you anything), a mile of pipeline with auxiliary equipment weighs only 13 tons, average capacity is 5000bbls/day, and it all goes up like a Mechano set. Engineer Petroleum Distribution Units are trained by the Army Service Forces at Camp Claiborne, Louisana. It beats storming beaches, I should think.
 
Navy fliers who have whispered behind waving hands of a dream plane that combines the best features of fighter and bomber, with the fire-power of a small battleship, as big a jump ahead of the pistol-hot Hellcat as that airplane was ahead of the Wildcat, finally have the Grumman F7F.
 
 
The Truman Committee report on the Navy’s disastrous tank-lighter programme has been released, after being embargoed for a year. The shorter version is that the Higgins design was better but that the Navy resisted and persisted with its own. The longer includes a transcript of a phone conversation (source not revealed by the Committee) between Captain John Crecca of the Boston Navy Yard and Commander Edward E. Roth of BuShips. Senator Truman does not fool around.
 
The paper reports that the New York Zoological Soceity has been able to keep “fish, guinea pigs and monkeys alive under completely germless conditions.” That is, a germ-free life is possible, with all that implies for health in the exciting age to come.

An interesting science story revives the thinking of old William Gilpin. It turns out that, besides being an obnoxious old-fashioned confidence man, he was a scientist! For it was he who proposed that America would play a master role in the history of civilisation akin to that of Rome by virtue of being  a bowl-shaped continent, unlike Europe and Asia, which are inverted bowls. Also, its population will rise to a billion. This is the first good I hear of Governor Gilpin, but I rather wonder about the abrupt insight of Bernard de Voto (Harper Monthly’s “Easy Chair Editor”) that he is some kind of forgotten prophet. Unless it may be of the easy money to be made from selling already-owned sagebrush to eastern investors. Though, to be fair, that is a prophecy on which De Voto seems to be making book.
 
An 18-year old welder in Mobile was taken to the hospital with meningitis two weeks ago. Refused admission, the head of the sick girl’s rooming house also tried to refuse her until the driver forced his way in. Mobile. She died the next day. Mobile is one of the towns worst hit by the doctor shortage, and this makes the current meningitis outbreak --23 in February, with a death rate of 25%-- especially frightening. The Army and Navy have a 3% rate.
 
Charles Sorensen has resigned as production boss of Ford Motors. Well, someone had to take the blame for Willow Run, and it was Sorensen's time to go. Not that I do not feel guilty. Speaking of sudden retirements of executives, Andrew Moffett, late of the Rockefeller oil empire, is on the war path against the Middle East oil plan. The American industry thinks that there is no shortage of American oil, and that American investment in the Middle East is a boondoggle, or against the Atlantic Charter, or something. Perhaps it is unconstitutional? surely a Southern Senator can be found.
 
The Texas vegetable harvest in the Rio Grande is at risk because of the failure of trucks needed to get it to market –and labour to harvest it.
 
Jahco’s Bill Jack came to Washington to throw a five course meal for 80 Congressmen and 180 guests, at which he gave a talk about the need for renegotiation to guarantee Jahco a 5% profit on gross war business, or $5 million, on top of his much publicised $891,000 salary. Mr. Jack seems astonishingly inept for a man of his estate. I hope that he does not try to manage his own fortune.
 
Arthur D. Whiteside, President of Dunn & Bradstreet, is the latest to warn of postwar economic disaster, foreseeing a glut of postwar consumer production. His solution: production control on a 1939 basis. While this will certainly keep prices high and so prevent a glut, retailers think it rubbish, and propose the release of Federal control soonest, followed by manufacturers rushing into the market, with the Devil taking the hindmost. Says American Retail Federation Chairman Fred Lazarus, Jr., “We cannot get a $135 billion economy out of 1939 quotas set on an $80 billion economy.”
 
The Truman committee seems to agree with Mr. Lazarus rather than with Mr. Whiteside, but the key thing here seems to me is that if we do not have a postwar depression on the merits, we could easily have one by following the wrong course, and it is hard to know whether the right course is to be set by Whiteside or by Lazarus. You can see why I would prefer to sidestep the whole matter and focus on products-and-markets-yet-to-be, however much the Earl scoffs at my utopian attempts to escape into the future.
 
Education
 
Small American colleges such as Kenyon may escape the worst effects of the curtailment of the Army Specialized Training Program by taking in an expanded new class of 18 year-olds through the Army Specialized Training Program Reserve. It sounds like a compromise to me, Reggie. It is suggested that there be United Nations inspectors in postwar Axis schools, so as to nip militarism in the bud. I certainly do not see any practical difficulties, Reggie. (It is a good thing that German and Japanese schools teach in English!) The paper quotes one critic who thinks that American schools will need such inspectors at least as much as German and Japanese. Due to backwardness, you see.
 
Press and Entertainment
 
Trini Barnes, Colonel McCormick’s niece, publishes a leftist monthly, which the paper finds amusing. The standard price of an American newspaper is up to 5 cents.
Freddie Kuh is the best American foreign correspondent, and female reporters (“newshens”) demand access to the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.
MGM has spiked plans for a remake of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, on the grounds that it would cause racial tensions.
I am not sure that it counts as entertainment, but Robert Sherrod’s Tarawa: The Story ofa Battle is out in time to prepare Americans for “many other bigger and bloodier Tarawas . . .”
 
Time, 20 March 1944
 
International
 
The paper has its turn dilating about the coal situation in Britain. The paper sees it as being as much a fight between miners and their unions as it is between miners and the government.  The paper finds the Prime Minister’s campaign for Basic English amusing. Latins are excitable. An amusing anecdote from Denmark, where crowds lingered after a visit by Field-Marshal Rommel passed by, when asked why, a wit replied that now they were waiting for Montgomery. The murder mystery of the Pajama Girl is solved in Melbourne. In an amusing incident, General Royce of the USAAF flew a DC-3 out into the Arabian desert to find King Ibn Saud’s hunting party and presented him with various princely gifts, courtesy of the American taxpayers, employees of the Rockefeller oil empire excepted. The larger gift, part of Lend-Lease (the better to assist the King in any future Axis-fighting endeavours) was a freighter load of 7 million silver coins valued at $1,250,000. If only a ship could reach Chungking. . . Argentina, apparently, dreams of uniting Latin America against the United States. Which sounds quite practical.
 
The paper covers the syndicated columnists of America on the subject of foreign policy with even more irony and sarcasm than I am capable of. I would be surprised if Dorothy Thompson did not have words with Mr. Luce when next they cross paths. Other sarcastic asides are noted in the context of a meeting between former Vichy ambassador to America Henry-Haye and former American ambassador to Vichy, Douglas MacArthur II. (Nephew to the general and son-in-law to Senator Barkley.) Various people are concerned that the Nazis are trying to trick us into bombing Rome.
 
Various apparently pro-Russian Americans think that Russia should be more pro-Polish.
 
Summoned for induction this week in an ironic turn, the War Manpower Commission’sJulius Albert Krug, 6 foot 3, 36 year-old father of two. 
 
The paper cites unnamed sources who suggest, with no obvious irony, that the current Battle of Berlin is in the “wearing-out phase” that precedes the decisive cavalry charge.Field-Marshal Haig was unfortunately not available for comment. A story follows which is the first-person account of a B-17 ball turret gunner on the big raid to Berlin. He knows that 68 Fortresses and Liberators were lost, and I think it tells under his bravado. Interesting to note that he saw some Polish RAF pilots flying Mustangs over the city. Not an escort flight, exactly, but a greater guarantee of safety than our boys have, notwithstanding what you've told me about your higher unit command's adventures with night fighter escorts, Reggie.
 
An amusing story about how, after Private First Class William Rozak wrote home to the effect that they could not come by eggs in Britain, his mother sent him a dozen, dipped in paraffin and packed in sawdust, which came out just fine. I think I shall go down and get myself a tea egg. Do I make you hungry, or jealous, or both?
 
The paper admires the manliness of Nikolai Voronov, now raised to the title of Chief Marshal of Red Artillery. The cavalry gets the glory while the artillery does the work.  Meanwhile, the Germans continue to retreat, and the Rumanians continue to surrender.
 
HMS Penelope is lost. The paper posthumously promotes her to a 6” cruiser. 
 
The paper is impressed with General Stlwell’s campaign in northern Burma. 
 
 
Domestic
 
Having killed the Zionist resolution in the Senate, the President invited Rabbis Stephen Wise and Abba Hillel Silver to the White House in order to have it both ways. 
 
Lew Douglas has left the Administration again. Back in 1934, he resigned on principle, aghast at its spending. This March, he leaves the Shipping Administration with thanks for a job well done.
 
The War Labour Board has ordered an end to the AFL no-recordingstrike against RCA, Columbia, and RCA-Victor. It has ruled that “canned” music is not a threat to musician employment, and that therefore no payment should be made out of these companies' profits into a union-run unemployment fund. The paper is skeptical about the fund, to which the other recording companies of course contribute, and hopes that the music-canning industry will not be burdened with this special fee  any further. If the strike really is settled, which is unclear, it may have some implications for our friend.
 
“Dimpled, 27 year old” Dorothy Vredenburgh, the selected convenor of the 1944 Democratic Convention, proposes that the 1944 election will go Democratic down the line.Silly, silly girl, says the paper, especially given the Republican win in Colorado this week and falling approval numbers for the President in Iowa. 
 
Baron Sempill was in Nova Scotia last week discussing plans to transplant Scots from his estates in Scotland (of course) to lands that he would procure in Nova Scotia. It was amusing to relate that he is successor to the lordship patent originally issued for Nova Scotia by James I, although the patent was extinguished by the transfer of the province to France by the peace of 1632. I should imagine that a few years of peace will make the first settlement mentioned about as relevant as the second.
 
 
 
 
The Navy’s new depot at Hueneme has opened for business, as a new port with poor inland access is just what the coast needed.
 
Senator Vandenberg has thrown a tantrum about the Army’s War College Library and General MacArthur that is amusing but rather much to get into.
 
The Army  has a new ace, P-47-flying Walker Mahurin, who shot down three Germans in the big Berlin raid. With Boyington MIA and Hanson dead in a crash, Mahurin is tied with Donald Aldrich and Kenneth Walsh, both Marine Corsair pilots. Navy Hellcat flyers just do not tangle with enemy aircraft often enough to be in the running, and P-38 pilots are falling behind, with Bong highest at 21.
 
In related news, Colonel Karl L.Polifka, commander of the first specialised P-38 aerial photography squadron has been grounded, as too valuable to lose. Any gen, Reggie?
 
Private Dale Maple, who recently deserted from Camp Hale in Colorado with two German priosners, has been caught,and now other servicemen might be implicated.  2ndLieutenant Beaufort Swancutt is to be arraigned on five charges of murder for a shooting spree at Camp Anza, near Riverside. The Army has now to explain how a man with a long civilian police blotter was allowed to first enlist, and then be commissioned. As well it should. It is not as though accounts of mania are lacking in this fallen world of ours.
 
Science, Technology & Business
 
News of the astonishing new miracle invention, “Stabinol,” which eliminates mud. That is, an addition of Stabinol to dry soil binds it in a water-resistant way, making it useful as a road bed. Well, I have heard that only miracles will push the Ledo Road through.
 
Dr. Charles Greeley Abbot, grey, 72-year-old Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, has discovered a way of using solar radiation to predict the weather. And by “predict,” I mean that droughts in the (Old) Northwest will seriously lower the level of the Great Lakes in 1974 and 2020. AD. I, for one, predict that the Smithsonian will be found to have a crank working as its Secretary. This will happen sometime soon after late March of 1944.
 
Doctors Herbert McLean Evans and Choh Hao Li of the [which?] University of California have extracted a pure human growth  hormone from the pituitary glands of cadavers. I was going to make a joke about football and alumni boosters, but the story goes on to note that someone suggested making mass use of the hormone to rid the Japanese of their inferiority complex, and I yield the field The new Journal of Neurosurgery publishes claims of a new invention, Fibrin Foam, a, natural wound sealant.
 
A new world record for the mile has been set by a short, bespectacled divinity student named Gilbert Dodds, who shaved a tenth of a second off the four minutes, 7.4 seconds time with an amazing burst of last-quarter speed.
 
Dr. Alfred Koerner, a Manhattan gynecologist, has gloomily predicted that two out of every ten servicemen ill return from World War II sterile, leading to a postwar ratio of fertile men to women of 89-100, vice the normal peacetime ratio of 106-100. In past wars, the commonest causes of sterility in soldiers have been mumps, fevers, gastric poisoning and gland disorders. In this one, wounds and shock from mines, torpedoes and bombs may also increase the sterility rate. The good doctor therefore proposes that discharge papers list whether a serviceman is sterile, to avoid the lifelong unhappiness caused when sterile people marry fertile ones, and there is no baby-making. Well, there is baby-making, but you understand me, right, Reggie? What I am saying here is that there is something in the air in Manhattan that makes people crazy. 

 

 
 
Wall Street is up. Various reasons are proposed by dyed-in-the-wool pessimists who expect it to start plunging again soon. These include: Roosevelt bashing bringing spirits up, the Baruch report suggesting that Washington will throw money at reconversion, thinking that the end of the war is delayed by the slogging in Italy and the Second Front, a mysterious quality called the “character of the market/” Or, even, and this is a stretch, good profit numbers from 1943 from bellwether stocks General Motors and Du Pont. (I shall plump with “war to go on longer!” Of course, I do not really believe that, as it would involve conceding that Mr. Janeway is right about something, but I do hope that you press this point with the Earl, omitting my scandalous cynicism. In my own defence, I believe in my prognostications, but do not expect them to be convincing. I suppose that it is too late by 40 years to dissemble my arrant cynicism to the Earl, though. Not that the paper is helping.)
 
The Truman Committee’s long awaited report on the magnesium industry is in. Dow did an excellent job, while the rest of the industry essentially just extracted money from the taxpayer. We are now well over any likely production needs for magnesium. Most of the nation’s half-billion-dollar investment will have to be written off as a war loss. Or we shall all be lounging about on lightweight magnesium lawn furniture soon, though perhaps with a cautious eye out for sparks drifting from the bonfire.
 
Six Liberty Ships have now cracked open in Alaskan waters this winter. The Maritime Commission, in its defence, reports that serious structural failures have occurred in  “only” 62 of the 1,917 Liberty Ships delivered up to 1 February, and the causes, have hitherto been mysterious. CIO National Maritime Union President Joseph Curran, invited to present testimony to the Truman Committee, accused not hazy, and technical factors but poor loading and handling. Captain Walter A. Brunnick, skipper of the Henry Ward Beecher,answered, “Flapdoodle.” For Curran, the blame lies on skippers. For Captain Brunnick, I assume it lies on builders. Common sense would suggest that building 2000 ships in three years in inexperienced yards with  the product of over-worked steel mills is the cause. But who wants to hear common sense?
 
Leather supplies are down 18% from the 1942 high and will continue to decline even as the Army and Navy take ever more of the supply. Therefore, the ration for shoes is down to 2 pairs/year, and the shortage will continue after the peace, as relief agencies have taken up prospective quotas.
Incidentally, shoes are the third most sought after item in the recent rash of hijackings, after liquor and rayon.
 
Arts, Entertainment, Press
 
Printer’s Ink denounces the recent overuse of the word “yummy” in advertising, and blames the recent influx of female copywriters due to the male side of the industry being off billboarding Hitler to death. 

 

 
 The paper quite liked With the Marines at Tarawa, a cinematic experience of real war.
Congressman Robert Hale of Maine reports being pinched in the rear while chatting with Lord Halifax at a British Embassy tea. Turning gravely, he met the gaze of a woman who babbled apologetically that she had mistaken him for Justice Frankfurter. Now that’s astory, Reggie.
 
Flight, 23 March 1944
 
Leaders
 
“The Hard Nut of Cassino” Guilty consciences? Not a bit of it! There are to be “seven Brabazons.” These are to include a 100 tonner, a landplane of 100,000lbs all up weight (so a puny little thing) for trans-Atlantic flying, allowing a stop in Newfoundland, a slightly smaller 70,000lb cruising at 220mph and carrying twelve, when you have to be there slightly sooner, and are even richer than other trans-Atlantic passengers, a 40,000lb type, a jet liner, and then some odds and end of a little 8 seater of 8000lbs, for picnics in the Cotswolds. Or maybe a Halifax conversion? Something like that. Also, perhaps, a flying boat, at which the paper’s ears perk up. It all sounds up in the air to me, Reggie.
 
War in the Air
 
Russians win victories! Planes were involved! Marshal Stalin even admits it! Mussolini’s press secretary was killed in a recent air raid, no great loss, the paper thinks, though I am sure that Mr. Grey will send a wreath. This week’s box score shows 116 Allied bombers lost in the West. An airlanding operation in Burma involved planes! And Indian troops!

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Here and There
 
Air Vice-Marshal Hugh Henry MacLeod Frazer has been appointed Director-General of Repair and Maintenance at the Ministry of Aircraft Production. wonder if those who inveigh against the air marshals understand that the air force is training lieutenant generals to run engine shops. Oh, well, I am sure that we can find some fustian admiral to claim that commanding a destroyer flotilla is good preparation for such work. The He219 is announced.  A transport B-24 has made the 2100 mile flight from San Francisco to Honolulu in 9 hr 27 minutes, with a healthy tailwind.  Twenty-eight air training schools in Canada will close this year. Group Captain MacIntyre of Scottish Aviation predicted that jets will make the flight from Canada to Britain in only 3-and-a-half hours at some vague point in the future. Unless “unnecessary conservatism” slows down aeronautical progress, which it probably will.
 
Studies in Recognition
 
We notice the Halifax, FW 200, Junkers 290, Heinkel 177 this week. Oddly for this feature, I had not even heard that some of these were going out of service!

 

“Sir R. Fedden Reviews Anglo-American Efforts” The man who was sacked for failing to bring in the sleeve-valve engine in a timely way thinks that American aviation is much better run than British. 

 

Short notes allege that Americans are anxious to keep up with Britain in civil aviation (Time is, anyway), and point out that British bomb tonnage carted over and dumped on Germany has grown much more impressively than bomber sorties through December of 1943.

 

“Napier Sabre II: Twenty-Four Cylinder, Sleeve-valve, Liquid-cooled Twin-crankshaft Engine Now in Full Production.” Were I not on tenterhooks waiting on your daughter-out-of-law, I would now amuse myself counting just how many times the paper has announced this sing-song apparatus.

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Behind the Lines

 

Latins are excitable. The Belgian Fascist Youth League is recruiting for the Junkers works. “Engineer Rocca” is working on a high-altitude engine made up of two joined Hispano-Suiza 12Ys with a three stage supercharger with clutches on two of three impellers, two coaxial, electrically controllable, independently feathering airscrews, and two flexibly coupled extension shafts. Someone has some time on his hands. Perhaps the completed machine can go into the six-engined Latecoere flying boat, “Marshal Petain.”

 

German Overseas Radio claims that the Allies, having found difficulties with the “relay” fighter escort method, are relying instead on massed escort by long range fighters, which make up for their inferiority to German interceptors with numbers, introducing the mass principle of combat to the air. So the Western air forces have joined the Red Army in wearing down German superiority with numbers. Well, the Axis actually outnumbers the Russians by population –by quite a bit during the decisive days, and I am no more convinced by the claims about air forces.

 

“Seven Post-war Types” The House is in a fuss over the Brabazon Plan. It is all very well to plan a fleet of brand new airliners, but what about jets? On the Labour benches, concern over who benefits from civil aviation. Air Commodore Helmore answers that people will have to pay for speed, so that fast flying will be for the rich –at first. He hoped that, by general social improvements, the cost of flying will come within everyone’s reach, and the aircraft will be the omnibus of the future. Mr. Hore-Belisha, stewing on the backbenches since being removed as Secretary of State for War, intervenes to point out the need for a proper airport near London. Interesting, as the one thing Hore-Belisha has always been good for is pouring concrete.

 

Sir Stafford Cripps Surveys Output” Fedden is wrong. He notes that manpower per Lancaster has fallen 38% in the last 12 months, while for the Spitfire it has been a reduction of 27.5% over three years, impressive given that the Spitfire of 1943 is totally transformed from that of 1940. The amount of unskilled labour has risen by 500%, although the proportion is much less on new types. Some 40% of all new production is on spare parts.

 

“Correspondence” 

 

This is “Mrs. J.C.s” favourite section, I have left it for last in my composition, for, as we came up a week past the due date, nameless fears clenched me every time I thought on her. I come back to it on this night of ages, as I try to distract myself, my heart clenching and fingers slipping as I draw those characters, Reggie. These will be the first twins in our line since 1779. Heaven is telling us something.
Oh, when will this infernal night end?  Patience, I tell myself. We have the best doctor in the valley, and Judith, who has seen more of these than she has summers, and now An Way.
A serviceman, “Projet,” leads off, writes to explain the thermodynamics of jet propulsion. Clearly the limiting temperature of the blades is crucial, and, as always in engine design, materials science will lead the way.
Then we have “correspondence” in the old style, with R. C. Abel writing to propose a “Jet-driven Plastic Flying Wing” flying boat. I would parse the letter, but my eyes will not  focus on the print. A service correspondent and J. C. Land write on the “best aircraft in the world,” (they are British, remarkably enough!), and “I. M. Leach,” an odd pseudonym, I must say, writes on B. J. Hurren’s claim that a single-seat torpedo-bomber-fighter like the old Blackburn Dart would be useful in the fleet, while Peter Masefield delineates four main roles. “Leach” thinks that a hypothetical aircraft, called, say, the Wyvern, of Hurren’s type could fill all four roles.

 

And so I am to infer that a Vickers, or possibly Westland, fleet multirole single-seater is in development.

 

 
 
A student writes to say that future aeronautical engineers should have a generalist, not specialist training. J. Winston proposes an alternative layout for the proposed “Thames-side” airport. I hope that the matter of the London international airport is resolved soon. It feels like it is dragging out.
 
 
Time, 27 March 1944
 
International
 
The King of the Yugoslavs has married a Greek princess! When people look back at the great historic turning points of 1944, they will . . . skip right over this article. Rumania is surrendering more. President Benes has suggested that Russia might award “the bleak potato lands of northern Transylvania” to Rumania, causing Hungary to surrender less. ((Another story notes that Benes is the best cook amongst the exiled ministers of London, and specialising, “in risotto, stews, soups and powdered garlic.” Oh, Good Lord, paper. Remember that sandwich place we stopped at on our way up from the border when I visited in ’34? If the country cousins of Vancouver have seen a naked garlic clove, is it too much to ask of Manhattan?)
 
 
Parisians are “under-fed and ill-clothed, declining into anemia,” says the paper’s “former Paris fashion correspondent,”   recently arrived in Manhattan on “the rescue-shipGripsholm.” But they are still going to the opera and swanky balls, while “women defy restrictions with monumental hats that take six meters of fabric to erect…” Apparently losing no time in resuming her duties of filling out the paper, someone contributes a story about gruesome remains of mass murder found at No. 21 rue La Sueur, and one about Edouard Herriot being dead. Moscow has recognised the Badoglio government, causing anti-communists to be concerned that Moscow has not snubbed the Italian anti-communists causing fears that the anti-communists might not be not? I am having a little difficulty parsing it. The German ambassador to Vichy is forwarding the interests of “ultra-collaborationists.” In other news, the paper reports, Catholics and Protestants are squabbling in New York. . 
 
 
Captain “Chow Jockie” of the British merchant marine, and “U.S. Negro Bishop John Gregg” have both recently run afoul of the South African colour bar, too. On the other hand, Cape Town is scandalised by gangs of “skollies,” who roll American and British sailors. Such a crime has never been imagined before, and is well worth international coverage! Certainly the paper is above thinking that anyone would be pruriently interested in reading about young white men being “lured” by “young coloured girls,” only to be soundly thrashed by “young mulatto hoodlums.” And, yes, the “young” does repeat.
 
 
General Montgomery, whose “worn brown face beneath . . . black beret” is universally recognised, visited Trinity College, saw a set of steps, claimed that his father, “militant Christian” Bishop Montgomery, had jumped them at one bound, causing Sergeant Charles Russell, USA, who claimed to have been quite a jumper at Waukesha High, to attempt the feat and fail, followed by “Vince Dunne of the Royal Canadian Navy,” who could get no more than five of seven steps. Then a “pink, diffident freshman” named Malcolm Dickson with “no jumping experience” tried, and cleared it easily. The intent of this story is to make Americans cringe at the thought of Wisconsinites being allowed to travel abroad?
 
 Quintuplets have born in Argentina! Probably Nazi quintuplets. Expect Cordell Hull to warn that American diapers will not be allowed into Buenos Aires until they repent their politics.
 
 Internationally-minded people also continue to talk about talking about civil aviation.
 
The Red Army has crossed the Dniester. There are signs of demoralisation amongst the “retreat-adept Germans.” Lieutenant Adolph Kannel told his Russian captors that “The clock of the German army is now at five minutes to midnight.” Has Prisoner Kannel consented to being quoted by the paper?
 
The paper covers the bombing of Monte Cassino, quoting General Eaker as claiming to have “fumigated it." 
 
Allied air attacks against Germany were heavy this past week, with the aim of breaking German war power and bleeding the enemy fighter arm. An amusing story of a Polish-crewed RAF bomber relentlessly harassed on its return flight from Berlin. On landing, the crew discovered that the navigator, meaning to turn on the heaters, had accidentally lit the navigation lights, too! 
 
Admiral Nimitz, commander of “the mightiest fleet and amphibious force in world history,” has left Washington for Honolulu, with, it is whispered, permission to go ahead with a major operation.
 
A roundup of news from the Burma theater notes fighting around the Ledo Road, an air assault by Indian Army troops, and an “attack across the Chindwin River in force” that was “almost across the Indian border to Manipur.” I have a feeling that the paper is a little at sea with the geography of the area. It is noted that American glider troops and officers involved in the air assault included the model of “Terry”, the first husband of Betty Grable
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and Lieutenant John Lewis, “lanky, hard-hitting third baseman for the Washington Senators.” The paper, of course, manages to make something of the fact that Indian troops are flying through the air without giving way to superstitious terror!
 
Two Army P-38 aces, Colonel Neel Kearby of Texas and Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas J. Lynch of Pennsylvania, are reported MIA in New Guinea. The paper covers an event at the University of Hawaii’s auditorium in “Honolouo” where sixteen “Japanese-Americans” were given Purple Hearts in virtue of their being “wife, sweetheart or next-of-kin of a Japanese-American boy killed in Italy.” It is almost as though the Luce papers are trying to make a point here, Reggie. Also MIA, Lieutenant Donal O’Brien, subject of a January 1942 profile by his father, a Chicago Daily News columnist, subsequently reprinted widely. Also MIA this week, the submarine-officer son of Georgia Representative Paul Brown.  andBrigadier-General Russell A. Wilson, shot down over Berlin in the first “big U.S.” assault.
 
Domestic
 
The President received a delegation of Girl Scouts, wore green on Saint Patrick’s Day in his “annual curtsy to the Irish vote.” Notice that the story about P-38 pilots, featuring a Texan and an Irish-American from Pennsylvania, is headlined “Texas,” not “Sons of Eire.” (Although the paper’s retrospective on Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations does eventually get around to noting General Vandegrift’s observation that there are 220 men with the surname O’Reilly in the Corps.) 
 
**
The President still will not recognise De Gaulle, was unable to greet to new US Ambassador to Peru because of a “stiff neck,” and a breakdown of the elevator that normally carries him downstairs. Instead, the Ambassador ascended to the Presidential bedroom. The President’s two meetings with the press were not lively, even though fireworks were expected over a story by a “Hearstling." The President also pushed the “soldier’s vote” issue, met with Nelson and McNutt over the imminent announcement on drafting 18-to-25-year-old-indispensables,” and held a farewell party for Edward Stettinus, off to London to talk, perhaps about talks of a Big Three conference if the President can attend.
 
The paper to people who can read: the President’s health is dire; the paper to people who can’t: Don’t worry, everything’s fine! 
 
Will the AFL allow the CIO to attend the ILO? People who care, care because of “isolationism.”
 
Eric W. Johnston must have read Ladd Haystead’s column putting him forward as a presidential candidate in ’44, because he was in Boston giving one of twelve public speeches last week. It was, remarkably enough, on the theme of free enterprise. Apparently, long ago and in the distant past, American “management” made mistakes. Mistakes were made, no doubt about it, back in the old days of 1920—33. Ever since, labour has made mistakes! And, soon, things will even out, as the age of Labour comes to an end. Eric W. Johnston observes, in the friendliest way possible, that the mistakes of labour are born, understandably enough, out of fear of unemployment. So a better unemployment insurance scheme is needed before we get on with the business of putting Labour “in the dog house,” as eminent free enterpriser Mr. Johnston puts it. Johnston, the son of obscure parents from Spokane, showed remarkable fluency in Mandarin and other doings Chinese in his youth. Do you perhaps have a dossier, Reggie? Mr. Johnston smells like a natural friend to our family, who might be well served with a less dangerous outlet for his energies.
 
In Twin Falls, Idaho, a county auction for a used tractor was won by a bid of $1050, above the OPA-set maximum of $750. Now the County and the OPA are fighting over jurisdiction. The paper is amused to call this a fight over State’s Rights, and even more amused to report that Farmer Hubert has put a “deposit” of $1050 down pending resolution of the court case, and is using the tractor for spring planting. The OPA is also the subject of the next story, which is about how Administrator “SalesmanBowles”  of the OPA defended it to the Senate and argued for an extension to the act past June 30th this week. Bowles says that good administration and sound policy have held the rise in the cost of living to only 26%. 
 
This sounds suspiciously  unapocalyptic to me. I was promised wheelbarrows of money to pay for a loaf of bread! Where are my wheelbarrows? Maybe after the war, when too much money is chasing too few goods. After all, what more could we possibly need?

 

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The paper’s version of the New Hampshire GOP primary is that it is bad news for Wilkie by virtue of his narrow margin of victory, good news for Dewey, who ran the slate in North Carolina without even (apparently) campaigning. Stassen’s lieutenants, meanwhile, are canvassing hard in Wisconsin, jumping obstacles, as it were. 
 
Democrats are canvassing hard to win the byelection in the Second District of Oklahoma, having found a candidate who is one-half Cherokee, fifty percent better than the GOP candidate, who is but one-quarter Indian. Amusingly irrelevant anecdote: the county seat is named for the Democratic candidate’s family! Even more amusingly irrelevant anecdote: the Democratic candidate is tipped to win. I am beginning to take the idea that the paper writes at two levels as more than a joke, Reggie.
 
More news of the call-up required to make up a class of 1.16 million by 1 July, taking 1-As to 3-As. Since older fathers are to be protected after all, it seems that the call-up must go to deferred under-26s. Industry wants to protect men in steel and vital new war manufactures such as “radar.” (On this page of the paper, it is allowed to divulge that “radiolocation” has a name and is made in factories. On the next, who knows?)
 
The paper notices that the War Department has been forced to admit that 20 US transport planes were shot down by U.S. guns by mistake during the Sicily air drop. Mistakes, to be sure, happen, but General Patton’s name is dropped.
 
Commentator Hanson Baldwin of the New York Times has suggested that inexperienced Army commanders are giving poor leadership. Cat, pigeons, juxtapositions.
 
Obligatory Canadian coverage includes Mr. Dionne finally getting custody of his daughters, a colliery in Nova Scotia being shut down, and the arrest of 22-year-old Indian Alex Prince at Fort George  for the murder of two trappers, to hang, I suspect, on slim evidence because no-one dissents that it is best for all if he is done away with, and here are two bodies to be accounted for in the bargain. The wire story says that one of the trappers died from being shot in the back while the other froze after being immobilised by a a wound to the leg, which sounds like the sort of thing that happens to drunk men with rifles. The paper has it that “both had been shot in the back.” 
 
Friends of the US press note the drawbacks of press freedom include the “increasing sterility of editorial expression,” and “the taking over of editorial function by syndicated columnists.” A non-syndicated columnist (Charles Fisher of the Philadelphia Record) writes this week that of all them, he likes Wesbrook Pegler least, but he has dyspeptic things to say about many others, who are egotistical, conservative, know-it-alls. Now that the problem has been diagnosed, can  a cure be far behind?
 

Science, Technology and Business
 
The paper has an amusing story about how brown, foreign people eat bugs. This sort of stuff never gets old, Reggie! The Army Corps of Engineers has completed an 8 million dollar flood abatement scheme at Johnstown, Pennsylvania. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_flood.
 
The paper is at last permitted to reveal that the Dr. Alwyn Douglas Crow’s  eight years of secret rocket experiments have culminated in the British being able to shoot rockets at German bombers. Hitting them is next on the agenda.
 
 
A piece, strictly under business news, profiles youthful Detroit entrepreneur Tom Safady, inventor of an improved butter slicer. As far as I can find news in the story, it is that he is working out a way to share profit with his employees at Sav-Way Industries. I assume some big announcement is imminent.
 
Thomas Mellon Evans, who prefers to go by “Thomas Evans,” just got an order for 1800 box cars for his start-up Mt. Vernon Corporation, having made his way first in the field of “fireless locomotives” for munitions plant yard switching made by a firm he picked up from bankruptcy distress at pennies on the dollar. Is he related to those Mellons? Why, yes, he is, the paper notes!  Two levels, Reggie, two levels.
 
Would it be too personal to brag that “Cousin H.C.” is letting his Buffalo aviation enterprise go? I think so, and therefore will only smirk and point you to “Again, Brewster,” in this number.  Now if only he would listen to me over Detroit. At least, listen to me as much as Mr. Ford did.
 
“Red Signals” Covers the overworked, overstrained and accident-prone American railways, who, as the story above notices, at least are getting some new rolling stock this year. Whether this will be sufficient to move Canadian grain and American steel, and the vast trans-Rockies cargoes of munitions is another question.
 
The Office of Price Administration is relaxing controls on crude prices to keep marginal producers in business, promote wildcatting and put off the day when only a general increase in the price of crude will make up for declining production.
 
The South wants higher cotton prices. Textile manufacturers do not. Meanwhile, the national cotton stockpile is at 7 million bales.
 
Education
 
After the war, Columbia’s Dean thinks that American universities like Columbia will be as prestigious as Cambridge and Berlin. The University of Illinois is buying an airfield, planned as the “No. 1 university-owned airfield in the U.S.”, to study aspects of aviation. Miss Elena Davila, winner of Columbia University’s twelfth annual medal for social architecture, studied at Chestnut Hill Academy, is an equestrian and stamp collector, and “an enthusiastic dancer in the Spanish manner.” In all, a most accomplished young lady, notwithstanding being Puerto Rican. No doubt, like most equestrian stamp collectors who study “social architecture” at Columbia, she climbed up from direst poverty.
 
Speaking of, it seems as though Avon Old Farms’ School must close in June, notwithstanding the $1450 annual tuition parents have been willing to pay. There seems to be some difficulty with the founder, as well as finances. 
Nineteen members of the Iowa State College have quite in a huff over a disputed report on the economies or otherwise of oleomargarine.
 
Entertainment
 

Two true sons of the soil competed in the “One Man Band World Championship” on the Blue Network’s Breakfast Club. “Redheaded James Howard Nash” (also known as Panhandle Pete) defeated janitor Archie Sweet with his patent Wabash Cannonball. I am acutely reminded (especially at the thought of the noise produced by a ‘Wabash cannonball’) of my own redheaded nemesis. These lads sound straight out of the Ozarks, while my troubles begin with an admiral from Texas….

 

Flight, 30 March 1944
 
Leaders
 
“Hammers and Tongs” We are bombing the Germans hammers and tongs. We hope they run out of fighters soon. Mosquitoes are now carrying 4000lb bombs. “Power for the Helicopter” Aircooled Motors of Syracuse, New York, is offering one. The paper thinks that this is ridiculously premature. “The Most Fearful Form of Warfare” was brought on the Germans by their own efforts. The paper is defensive.
 
War in the Air
 
Even though planes reduced Cassino Abbey to “heaps of rubble,” New Zealand troops have not been able to occupy it. The Japanese offensive in Burma has crossed the border into the princely state of Manipur. The Commander-in-Chief, India, Claude Auchinleck, thinks that this is not significant in any way, that it is but raiding parties and a token invasion. Well, if the Auk says so!
 
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“The Vickers Warwick” is like the Wellington, only larger and less practical. All  up weight is 45,000lbs, and engines are American, because… People must feel strong urges when Mr. Fedden talks about the superiority of the American aeroengine, as demonstrated by the fact that American radials are going into British planes. At least the latest Pratt & Whitney finally has a two-speed blower.
 
Here and There
 
Leonard Brown, who erected Britain’s first barrage balloon for Dunlop, has died at 61, three years after retiring. Which would  put his retirement at 58, immediately after the end of the Blitz. Am I being too romantic in sensing a story here. I hope that his last three years were spent with grandchildren playing at his feet.
 
US Flying Ambulances have evacuated 173,000 casualties since the outbreak of war. Loudspeakers outside the paper’s offices remind everyone that it is “Salute the Soldier Week.” Portugal is to have an airline. A Mosquito has made the 377 mile flight from Toronto to New York in 55 minutes, an average speed of 411mph, with a 30mph tailwind. A 20ft airscrew has been built by Hamilton Standard of New York for experimental purposes. Although if the war dawdles on, we might see it in a less experimental venue, hard as it is to imagine a plane designed around it!
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G. Gordon Smith, a devilishly handsome managing editor of the paper, was heard to speak on the subject of turbine-driven airscrews on the radio the other night. Women, and not a few men, swooned. Messrs. H. Lazell and W. J. Shilcock have taken over the direction of Cellon, Ltd, after Mr. Wallace Barr was killed in a recent air raid.
 
The paper is upset at Canadian Aviation for using writings on the subject of jet propulsion by the tall and dashing Mr. G. Gordon Smith of this paper without attribution.
 
“Manpower for the Mammoths” Indicator criticises the Hundred-Ton Projects. They are “trying to run before we can walk.” The paper disagrees with the idea that we will not be able to find aircrew for such monstrosities any time soon. Or, I suspect without parsing the column, passengers likely to tolerate their expected imperfections. Whatever the paper says, “Indicator’s” enormous experience is a valuable counterweight to “Brabazon” enthusiasm.
 
Paratroopers prepare for the invasion.
 
“Wrens of the Fleet Air Arm” Female air mechanics are keeping the training aircraft of the FAA in action. I do not suppose that a girl would have any difficulty with such duties, at least so long as there is something pressing, like a war, to keep their attentions fixed.
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W. P. Kemp, “The Flying Boat: A Reply to Mr. Pollitt: Loading Freight Not Difficult with Proper Equipment: The Question of Lateral Stability.” Years from now, Mr. Kemp, you will look back on the time you wasted writing this, and contemplate that you could have been pitching woo, or tasting the new vintage, or tramping over some beautiful vista, and you will be melancholy.
 
Short numbers include “Rocket or Racket?” Time’s story of the London rocket gun has been mocked by a Swiss expert, and the paper repeats the speculation that the actual weapon is a counter-invasion device. I hope that the paper does not feel foolish, when and if German rockets begin to fall in London.
 
Studies in Recognition
 
Notices the Taylorcraft Auster III and Miles M-28 Kestrel, aircraft so innocuous that one hardly needs to be able to tell them apart.
 
“The Cameron Rotor Plane” Mr. Goldberg’s column is usually carried in another paper. Or, perhaps, the day when the “helicopter, gyroplane and orthodox aircraft” are combined with retractable rotor blades and variable incidence wings is nigh.
 
Lieut. Commander B. S. McEwen, who was the first British pilot to score in this war, while flying a Blackburn Skua from Ark Royal, visited the Blackburn factory to “explore future possibilities for the Pacific.” These presumably do not include a refurbished Dart.
 
 
Behind the Lines
 
As from today, work lost due to air raids in Germany must be made up, and time so spent will not count as overtime. Says the paper. La Suisse reports a new German secret weapon: a high altitude bomber that flies at nine miles and drops a new type of incendiary bomb. Japan will have a complete Air Raids Precaution apparatus by the end of June. Germans wondering where the masses of planes claimed manufactured in recent months might be are reassured that they are in a massive strategic anti-invasion reserve. The Hungarian press notes a new German night fighter of unspecified type. Trees must die in occupied Europe, too. German bombers are developing new tactics such as the “Hairspring” to penetrate into London airspace.
 
R. H. Bound, “Levered Suspension…: An Interesting Undercarriage Development Explained and Reviewed.” The author needs to buy a new dictionary, as his current one is defective, giving incorrect meanings for some words in the “Is.” In any case, this device seems better under side loads, and that is important, right, Reggie?
 
Correspondence
 

Judith has just gone by, revisions still—
 
Aero Digest, 15 March 1944
 
"The Invasion Day Is Set"
 
Stupendous Statistics! Reveal American Might! I think the paper is less interested in investigating how much of the Very Large Numbers (planes, destroyers, mechanics, whatever) will actually cross the beach on invasion day.
 
The paper is upset about the Wagner Act, and thinks that the best way to fix it is by randomly insulting the Administration. It may be puerile, but it is easier reading than "Statistical Accounting Procedures in Aircraft Production," an article at the head of the engineering section offered by James R. Crawford of Lockheed. My mind wandering, I notice that, like Northrop, Lockheed uses punch cards to keep track of records. Perhaps these things will turn out to be more than the fashion of the day, after all.
 
Another article proposes using a paper product of some kind to make aircraft parts. With some relief, it seems to be for the most part not critical parts, but things like flooring, which brings to mind this ad. 
 
IMG_0330.JPG
 
Right now she is all workmanlike, but she is a proper lady, and her proper  home will have lightweight plastic flooring, developed by Martin! Though probably not anywhere that guests can see. 
 
Aviation News
 
Notices some training plane cancellations, announcement of the gigantic German "BY-222," and that 8760 planes were produced in the United States in February. I think we can safely write off the idea of America making 120,000 planes in 1944, although 100,000 is well within reach. 87%, we are told, are fighter and bomber types, and structure weight is up 4%. Company news notes that GE cleared 45 million in profits last year. See, Reggie? Electrical engineering! Du Pont admittedly made 69, but 20 of that was from its investment in GM. 
 
Aviation People Notes that Lieutenant Gertrude Dawson, a stewardess for United on military leave to serve with the USAAF, has returned to her home in Philadelphia after escaping from occupied Europe. There are three pages of "Aviation people," but otherwise they are all about salesmen moving around, with the occasional engineer to break up the monotony. 
 
Well, there you go, I have rather slighted this number of Aero Digest here, but that is because I have included a marked up version of an article on turbosuperchargers in this package. It is not that the magazine is unimportant. It is that the tedious technical details need space to bring out their real importance. As you will see, even if very little money is spent on stratospheric flying in the next few years,it seems likely that it will be spent on frozen food, and the two technologies are far more akin that one might realise. With this explanation, I shall now proceed backwards and begin to give you my usual precis of the news, various and technical, with some sense of why I think it is important for the future of our investments. 
 
 
 
 
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Postblogging Technology, April 1944, I: Ancestral Voices

 
 
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My Dearest Reggie:
 
Grandfather has pneumonia again. The breath of life is slipping away, and as sad, even morbid as it is to say, I doubt that there is anything within that withered body that needs to see the banks of the Pearl again. As a burial in British Columbia might attract unwelcome attention, I am having grounds prepared at under Ch'i Wei Tao Wan.   
 
As one life prepares to journey on, two more come in. I have taken the liberty of enclosing some photographs of your grandchildren. I am not sure what an old rake such as yourself does with such unbearable sweetness, but, after a moment entertaining dark thoughts of your passing them to some comely barmaid as an icebreaker, I retreat to the obvious position. You will have them framed and proudly displayed on your desk. You will have to have them enlarged, but that, of all things, should present you with no difficulties! I regret the cropping, but, as you will see from my review of the last two weeks, this is not a time when we can risk attention. Better any stray load found on an aircraft in, say, Basra, not be traceable to us this month!
 
Your daughter-out-of-law is in good spirits. We have had her confinement in the ranch house, as the coach house is not ready, and we have seen much of each other in the last few weeks. Some friction --she is so much changed from the sweet girl of 1939, who even then had a not-always-very-feminine hard core to her. Your son arrived two days after the birth. "Lieutenant A." was kind enough to drive him straight down from Hunter's Point as soon as his ship was docked, delivering an exhausted, rumpled engineer to an exhausted, rumpled new mother. At least it made a change from the young man's service duties, which seem to consist of couriering notes around the Bay to the effect that the only American admiral to have ever won an air-sea battle ought to be replaced by the super-annuated rival who is the only American admiral ever to have lost two, on the grounds that he did not win his victory enough, whilst his rival was somehow not responsible for his subordinates' actions, except when they turned out well.
 
I grouse, but that is because I report the complaints of the newly-minted Admiral Stump, who attended the christening and had long, fruitful talks with your son and Bill and David, with "Mrs. G.C." sitting in as hostess, on subjects of which I know not what. Antennas need to be a certain distance from each other? Mutual interference? 
 
These electrical matters will be the death of me, especially with the lawyers bogging me down with doleful talk about our friend's contract renewal. Rather a matter of attention given that we intend to break it! The baleful instrument has been revised, although not in any serious way --just an expansion of the "morals clause," no doubt inspired by his young associate's public behaviour. 
 
 
 
 
 
I grouse, but that is because I report the complaints of the newly-minted Admiral Stump, who attended the christening and had long, fruitful talks with your son and Bill and David, with "Mrs. G.C." sitting in as hostess, on subjects of which I know not what. Antennas need to be a certain distance from each other? Mutual interference? 
 

These electrical matters will be the death of me, especially with the lawyers bogging me down with doleful talk about our friend's contract renewal. Rather a matter of attention given that we intend to break it! The baleful instrument has been revised, although not in any serious way --just an expansion of the "morals clause," which you can understand under the circumstances.
 
 
 
I am grateful to the Earl for his allowance of time. Unfortunately, he is mistaken. Taxes are filed at the middle of April, here, not the end, and so we are in another tax year. I know that he will be angry, thinking me to be temporising, but let me put it another way. We are less than a month away from the invasion. The fifteenth of May is the low tide, and the Allies need to allow themselves a solid month and time to spare to win the war by Christmas, even if the campaign in France goes as quickly as the  "Hundred Days." Afterthat, we shall be outfitting the invasion fleet against Japan, and only after that will it be time for the boys on the Bay to think about incorporation and the issuing of stocks. 
 
This will happen. And it will happen this tax year, unless the war drags on. We will probably not be able to put the greater part of our investments into a proper, legal form --Bill and David talk as though their incorporation is a decade away!-- But it will happen. 1955 will be the tail end of it. The world will be back in the doldrums of the 1930s, so I am told, but, in the meantime, we will have reaped the profits of the growth of a new American electrical engineering industry. Profits that are likely to be greater than real estate, much less clapped-out "traditional" businesses such as steel.
 
IMG_0366.JPG
 
As a final note vaguely related to news of the Bay, Wong Lee's son graduated. I took photographs of him in his pressed now-official uniform for his father's sake. One cannot be too cautious where Hoover's lads are concerned, after all. We threw a party for the boy at the ranch house, and many were the tired old jokes about Chinese laundry when a sprit of Hoisin Sauce was detected on the nape of his bright new Naval whites. There is the usual note of sadness at the realisation that he is off to war, with  a stop somewhere in the deep Midwest to pick up his vessel, and a private warning that he ought to pack blues as well as whites. Parsing the time, I imagine there is to be a follow-up to the main cross-Channel assault.  
 
 
The Economist, 1 April 1944
 
Leaders
 
“Permanent Defence Policy” Lord Chatfield wants the Lords to talk about postwar defence organisation. Oh, putanother inch of armour plate on it, and it’ll be fine, Milord. The paper offers its insights: the maximum likely professional force is that of summer 1939; 600,000 men. To that can be added the annual conscript class of around 300,000 after exemptions. With recruiting shortfalls, say 750,000 to 800,000 to be shared between three services. Since the armed forces are to be maintained for effect, and not for “social education or processional elegance,” they must be used as effectively as possible: planes, ships, and mechanised troops, providing that “they are not so mobile that they cannot move.” Weapons should be made and stored for war mobilisation, ships built and strategic supplies stored in national reserves, which would also serve to stabilise boom-and-bust commodity cycles. The paper namechecks Lord Keynes.
 
“Deadlock in Palestine?” I am absolutely confident that there will be peace between Jews and Arabs in Palestine  this spring. The Foreign Office is on the case!
 
“Civil Aviation” How will international civil aviation be organised? And how will this lead tous getting all the sales? Burning questions indeed.
 
“Notes for the Week”
 
“Eastern Sedan?” Events in the East this week might go down as an eastern Sedan, the paper posits. Or they might not. Let’s go with “not,” for the moment.
 
Rumania is not surrendering this week.
 
“Equal Pay” The Government was defeated in the Commons on an amendment to the Government bill on education calling for equal pay for male and female teachers, with strong support from the Liberals, Independent Labour, and the Tory Reform Committee. It seems unnatural to me pay fathers and spinsters on the same rate, but I had the misfortune of putting my opinion to your daughter-out-of-law, and my ears were soundly boxed, so I hold my peace. In any event, the paper sees a chance of this policy being carried through the civil service! It is hard to see how this could be afforded, were stenographers, never mind nurses, included.
 
“Another Coal Crisis”It appears that three coal districts out of five will reject the Government’s latest pay scheme, which the paper thinks is absolutely wonderful. Some coal miners will “break their bond” and strike illegally, although not as many as could.
 
 
“Ex-Service Industries” Demobilisation and conversion will be very hard.
 
“Plainly Speaking” Americans are horrid about Lend-Lease. Britain is being made a scapegoat in the American election campaign! Oh, Tom Dewey, can’t you understand how the paper loves you? (That is, Leader loves you. American Survey still longs for the touch of Wendell Wilkie's lips, for his sweet promise of happy ever after. )
IMG_0374.JPG
 
“Salute the Soldier” The paper objects to savings bonds drives because they make the banks’ lives more difficult, when tightening rationing would have the same effect of reducing consumption without making bankers’ lives harder at  all!
 
“Germany’s Balkan Losses” As Roumania is going, going… It is time to take stock. Roumania produces 5.5 million tons of petroleum a year, about a third of that available to Germany from all continental sources; and not nearly as much food as it could, as its war harvests have been poor. Therefore, the loss of Roumania may mean less than is sometimes supposed. When it happens at some imminent date.
 
“Second Thoughts on Trade” Political and Economic Planning has, after much cogitation, finally produced the statistical appendices of the report it filed in 1937. The paper’s main takeaway point is that in 1937, the PEP supposed that the main barriers to international trade were regulations, including tariffs. Now it supposes that it is national employment. Tariffs are symptoms, not the disease.
 
“Rights of Asylum” 243 Bulgarian Jewish refugees have arrived in Istanbul on Milka, and have requested to be resettled in Palestine. The paper says, that this will not be difficult if they have permits, but since they do not, it is impossible as it stands, a horrible outcome for Jews escaping the death camps of Eastern Europe. Therefore, the paper proposes a compromise. Milka will proceed, and others, likely to be numerous with a new pogrom developing in Hungary, will follow. Just so long as the 30,000 vacant places in Palestine under the current plan have not been filled. Are there more than 30,000 Jews in Hungary? Oh, dear.
 
American Survey
 
“American Zionism” Not all American Jews are Zionists, although some are. non-Zionist American Jews hold that Zionists present Jews as an unassimilable foreign race from other Americans, causing anti-Semitismto rise in America. Sensible American Jews ask themselves whether America could offer asylum to more Jews without provoking more anti-Semitism. Of course not, say those sensible Jews. Only Palestine is left as a refuge from Nazi persecution, and so it follows that non-Zionist American Jews are also Zionist. However, as most American Jews are not Zionists, but only Zionists, a  sensible British compromise solution in Palestine will go over smoothly and without fuss in America.
 
“Front in the Orient”
 
Our Correspondent in Oregon says that they make and ship things in the Pacific Northwest, including things that will be used in the “Big Push” against Japan. They also make paper, like the paper wasted here.
 
“Destitute Greece” Rationing has not been effective, there is price inflation, with massive increases in the number of bills in circulation, and there are difficulties trading with Germany.
 
“Feeding Switzerland” Is hard, but the value of Swiss agricultural production has risen steadily, and the addition of potato flour to bread has stretched the strategic grain reserve.
 
Germany at War
 
Germany is a totalitarian dictatorship not just so far as basic liberties are concerned, but financially as well! Oh, the humanity!
 
The Business World
 
“Steel Shares”
 
If you have invested in steel shares, you have to be concerned about rises in wages and coal costs, as the dominant postwar question will be how to reduce the selling price of steel to help in the export drive.
 
Business Notes
 
The Prime Minister’s statement last week touched on housing. Will the initial stage of expansion be possible without a state policy and planning, as he said? It seems unlikely. Will there be factory made houses? Mr. R. Coppock, secretary of the National Federation of Building Trade Operatives, says that the PM has solved a problem with a word, “fabrication,” with no  bearing on reality. The half-million home target can be met by normal methods. The paper is not convinced.
 
“Gold Price Raised’ In India. That is, the Bank of India’s selling price was raised from R. 71 to R. 72. As this was still well below the market rate, for some curious reason, the Bank’s favoured buyers were able to reap a  tidy profit until the end of the week, when the price was further raised to the New York/London clearing rate, which makes more sense, anyway, given that the point of the gold sales  is to hold down price inflation and the growth in sterling debt to India.
 
“Persian Silver Sale” The price rise in silver in India is even more marked than that for gold, as it is the preferred peasant hoarding medium, but also because the Bank of India has not been selling silver. But now comes news that the Bank of Persia has sold the Bank of India 500 tons, and that it is on its way to Bombay, where it will be sold. Curiously, the paper finds no problem at all with the silver price in Bombay being 3 times greater than the London parity, because of inflation fighting. Certainly no-one would descend to something so ungentlemanly as currency smuggling, and no aircraft whatsoever will be flying from London or San Francisco to Bombay with a few hundredweight of bullion tucked under a burlap wrap.
 
“Vickers Limited” Appears to have had a good year, although it is difficult to parse its returns due to the number of subsidiaries reporting independently. Overall, the company’s future seems brighter than it did 25 years ago.
 
“Shipbuilders Wages” Are going up, as the workers want to make hay while the sun shines.
 
 
“Whaling Agreement” An international agreement to hold the harvest at “16,000 blue whale units” has been signed. But given the shortage of ships, the total is not likely to be reached.
 
“U.S. National Income” The paper notices that the total income available for spending in the United States has risen from $67.7 billion in 1939 to 124.1 in 1943.
 
 
 It is a wonder, the paper says, that there has not been much more inflation in the United States than has yet become apparent. But soon! As for labour, this has increased by 2 million from the normal growth of population, and by 5 million from persons not normally employed. In spite of this, there are still about 3.5 million housewives under 45 without children who could be employed, and who would be, in Britain. 44.5% of the population is working in America, compared with 47% in Britain.
 
 
 
 
Flight, 6 April 1944
 
Leaders
 
The paper is pleased by “Bomber Command’s surprise attack on Essen” on the night of the 26th. It is a compliment, in its way, to German resilience. German industry recovers rapidly when bombing relents. Will the invasion not require a massive diversion of bombing sorties?
 
“Imperial Defence” The dusky races of the Empire may have their freedom, as long as they listen to the Chiefs of the Imperial General Staff at all times about everything. Also, the peacetime air force should be incredibly  huge, so that it can be all things to all men.  Speaking of enormous efforts, the hundred-thousandth Rolls-Royce Merlin has just been made. Most are, I suppose, too clapped out already to ever be used for anything, but at least  every cottage beside a country lane now has its own personal bucket of spare washers. 
 
War in the Air
 
The medium bombers of 9th Air Force and TAAF have been joined by the 8th Air Force’s daylight bombers in attacks on targets in the Pas de Calais. Air fields and training stations seem to be particular targets in spite of long standing doubts about the efficacy of airfield attacks. Although German attacks on London have fallen off. The paper is now cold on the idea of an air attack on Casino Abbey. A little late, I think? On the other hand, the mountain-fighting New Zealanders and Gurkhas are now being resupplied from the air as they seize the commanding heights. Airplanes are involved! Likewise on the Japanese front, where matters are confused, mainly by the fact that no-one has any clear idea where exactly the fighting is going on.
 
IMG_0380.JPG
 
"Imphal?" How did the Japanese get to Africa, precisely? The Russians are advancing! Aircraft, etc. The paper notices that it is official policy not to state the results of the Calais bombing, but the Germans have not yet fulfilled their promise to rain rocket shells of vengeance upon Britain. The two must be related. At least, this week. Next week, who knows? Rocket shells, like radio direction finding, might not exist again. I am sure that they would do this to jets, too, if the manly jaw of G. Geoffrey Smith were not set against it.
 
Here and There
 
“Jet Development” C. D. Howe, Canada’s Munitions Minister (pardon me for a moment, dear cousin, as I must go and turn over some salt pork rendering by the fire) is quoted as saying that jet development has been transferred from Britain to Canada. Or misquoted, the paper suggests. Which seems like a sound interpretation, so why does this bit lead the column?
 
“Help from de Havilland” de Havilland chairman Mr. A. S. Butler, has offered the Herts Education Committee a 90 acre site for the building of a proposed technical college. Rather nice of him, I think. We could offer the same to the Kent Education Committee. If by “offer” is understood a nice profit on so much bog land. The Earl must be cursing himself for holding most of his real estate in the remotest Midlands, where no-one would ever want to study aeronautical engineering. Perhaps he should build a college for training cotton engineers instead?
 
Mr. Wright was at Buckingham Palace to show off an American-made constitutional monarch. It is just  like a British one,but cheaply made, too expensive, unreliable, and far too thick.
 
“Blue Riband” (not the actual title, which is “Fine Performance”) An Avro York has made the flight from New Delhi to London in 42 hours and 30 minutes, actual flying time being 31 hours 54 minutes. With a fortnight’s leave in London, even the Guards might be tempted to do some trooping out East of Suez!
 
“Ford’s Glider Contract” Ford has a $17 million contract to make CG-13 Waco gliders. The work consists of welding steel tubes and assembling canvas, plywood and timber parts, rather closer to the firm’s trade than the Willow Run madness, and good practice for “conversion.”
 
“Compulsorily Amphibian” F/O G. O. Singleton, an RAAF pilot, has managed to land his Sunderland on an airfield after sustaining a 7ft hole in the hull in an ill-advised takeoff in rough waters. “Nice work, Aussie,” the paper condescends.
 
IMG_0340.JPG
 
In fairness to the Diggers, it seems to be going around.
 
“Ironical Fate” Celebrated Aussie pilot, F/O L. G. Fuller, has met his death in Melbourne in a cycling accident. I suppose that the fact that he was still F/O rank tells the sad tale, but I note the story because of the callous header.
 
“His Journey Was Necessary” Mr. D. McVey, director of Australian civil aviation, has just arrived in London for a conference. Last year, he led Australian delegations to South Africa and Washington. The paper seems to be very upset at Australians this week. It seems surprising that Canada has got off so lightly, after trying to steal tall and smouldering G. Geoffrey Smith’s jet and jet-related thunder.
 
“U.S. Calls for Women Pilots.” More women pilots would release more male pilots for the war.
 
G. Geoffrey Smith, “Turbine-Compressor Unites: Problems of Small-Sized Units: Fuel Consumption Factors: Heat Exchangers” Those baby-blue eyes! That manly chest! The most eligible bachelor in all of engineeringdom explains Swedish and Swiss experiences with said problems, etc. It is nice of the neutrals to publish their work.
 
L. G. Fairhurst, “Jets versus Airscrews.” Someone who is not G. Geoffrey Smith (I have it on good authority that he is knock-kneed, hairless, and 5’3”) says that putting propellers on turbine engines could be a fine idea! Someone who is chief engineer at Rotol, to be precise.
 
Behind the Lines
 
The collaborationist government of Yugoslavia is training several new pilots. (160, to be precise.) The Germans are building three new airfields in Denmark, which are reported by the clandestine paper Frit Danmark to have dispersal areas for aircraft.  I suppose the news here is that Denmark’s premier freedom-fighting paper is named after a fried treat? It certainly cannot be worth the paper otherwise. A Helsinki paper accuses the Germans of building airfields sited to support German bombing raids on Sweden? Are these stories related? Even the paper finds the idea a little ridiculous. A new anti-knock fuel is distributed with warnings that its lead content makes it poisonous, and that it should not be allowed to contact skin. The paper finds this amusing; I say, if you are distributing wood alcohol, however dressed, as fuel, good luck in persuading alcoholics not to drink it by allowing that it is poisonous and irritating. News of a larger version of the He177, suitable for Atlantic missions, and of the new Arado Ar 240.
 
 
Studies in Aircraft Recognition 
 
The Fairchild Argus and Cornet, Bucker Bestmann, Percival Proctor IV. Sub-200hp trainers all look very similar, and someone, somewhere, might actually have cause to need to tell them apart, until the day that he learns about girls.
 
“Continental Air Transport” Happened before the war, will happen again after it.
 
“Siebel Si 204” A new Axis aircraft is a cheap, light transport/advanced trainer.
 
“Mr. Burden is Optimistic” The US Assistant Secretary of Commerce believes that the first postwar civil air transport generation, which will come into service in about 1954, will be up to 30% cheaper than Pullman railway service. That is optimistic, as it will basically capture all business and tourist traffic, I should think, leaving rail to the kind of daft old lady who insists on the store keeping a credit book for her, as she is unwilling to learn how to use a chequing account. (And, yes, I had to stand in line behind one of those earlier today. In the new America, we do our own errands. Frankly, I am a little pleased to recede into the background of Wong Lee’s life this month. He has every right to be proud of, and frightened for, his son.)
 
P. W. Nicholas, “Plywood and Plastics” The paper notices the use of high-frequency electrical heating on phenol-formaldehyde resin plywood panels. The much-delayed point of the article is that the “Gallay” process is much more economical of electrical power in achieving the desired effect, for various technical reasons. It seems like there is something to be said for it, and you should probably look at this number yourself. The real question, of course, is feasibility of production on a home-construction scale, and for that I am no guide.
 
Correspondence
 
Only one highly technical article under a serving officer’s pseudonym this week, and relatively little of the joyous boyishness of which “Mrs. J.C.” so approves. Perhaps the pace of work has picked up in the service? Why do I even speculate to you, Reggie, when you have the gen? Although the whole matter of British versus American planes carries on. More hair-raising, a letter over a proudly-signed name (“V. H. Izard,”) calling for Bomber Command to shift to day bombing. Although couched in terms of improving accuracy, this strikes me as a bit of a stalking horse. In clear weather, both kinds of bombers find their targets, do they not? So what is the real issue? This is where I fret. The alternative is that casualties are beginning to raise concerns.
 
Service Aviation
 
 
Men are promoted, decorated, die. Award citations take up more pages than the list of the dead. I notice also a striking picture of a Vought Corsair with folded wings on a Royal Navy carrier. It is nice that the plane finally reaches the place that it was designed to be. Is it too much to be hoped that the Marines will now get some Hellcats, so that the Grumman plan can catch up to the Vought in the aces derby?
 
 
 
 
The Economist, 8 April 1944
 
Leaders
 
“The Prime Minister” The Commons was whipped, and the Prime Minister got his vote of confidence on the issue of equal pay for woman teachers. The paper is perplexed that Mr. Churchill felt the need to make the withdrawal of Mrs. Cazalet Keir’s amendment to the Education Bill a matter of confidence. The paper is beginning to have doubts that the Prime Minister will be able to win the next General Election.
 
“Russia in the Far East”
 
Will Russia enter the Far Eastern War after victory in Europe? Probably. It has already won a considerable victory by compelling the Japanese to withdraw from their oil and concessions on Northern Sakhalin in return for ludicrously small compensation and the promise of 50,000 tons of oil annually after the end of the Pacific War. As Japan was relying on Sakhalin for almost a quarter of its domestic oil supply, this is a sharp blow, administered diplomatically.
 
But what after that? TASS’s recent statement that the Chinese are driving the Kazakhs out of Sinkiang Province and aggressing into Outer Mongolia in the process is seen as evidence of friction. Chungking, communists, possible return of Russia to its Northeastern Concessions after it enters the land war and takes the necessarily predominant role in defeating the Japanese Army that this implies.
 
The Budget, accurately reported this year, is surprisingly good. Expenditures have been lower than expected, revenues higher, the increase in National Debt therefore, although high, within the range expected. The paper is pleasantly surprised.
 
Notes of the Week
 
“Warning to Strikers” Mr. Bevin says: strikers, no striking!
 
“Into Roumania” Russians invade, Roumania surrendering more. Latins are excitable.
 
“Best Foot Forward” The late Director-General of the BBC, Robert Foot, has gone to be President of the Mineowner’s Association, which is occasion for the paper to remember that it hates the coalowners as well as the coal miners.
 
“Thunder on the Right” The Tory Reform Committee has a plan for reorganising the coal industry, too!
 
“Feeding India” Now that the famine is over, it is over. And it might not happen next year, at least if the effects of the “small” Japanese advance into India are not excessive.
 
“Battle of Communications” The paper is disquieted by news of the evacuation of Tiddim and the use of RAF fitters and clerks as airfield defence detachments. With the death of Wingate possibly putting a check on the development of airborne operations, the Allies can no longer put pressure on the Japanese offensive, which seems to be developing in a worrying way. Just how worrying is unclear to readers of the paper thanks to one of the more impenetrable maps of the region that I have seen.
 
“On Air” Civil aviators are excitable, as are Argentines. And Caribbeanites. Not that anyone cares, although it is a little disgraceful that British subjects be at risk of starvation on their little islands. And the Welsh.
 
American Survey
 
“Bulwark of the Farm Bloc” The Farm Bureau (if somehow you have not heard of it, Reggie, it is a farmer’s lobby in the United States) is increasingly at odds with the Farm Security Administration over the Administration’s subsidy policy. American Survey dedicates almost two full pages to refuting the ludicrous idea that the Bureau lobbies for the interests of rich farmers over poor farmers, with the effect of endangering the New Deal –that is of depriving the Democrats of farm votes. Of course, that’s what the Bureau intends, it’s just that this is precisely what all the poor farmers want! The paper says so.
 
American Notes
 
“The Right to Vote” Is at issue with the continuing controversy over the soldier’s vote, and the Supreme Courts’ finding that the Sixteenth Amendment protects Americans’ right to participate in party primaries without respect to race. In other election news, the paper has a good feeling about Mr. Wilkie’s prospects in Wisconsin.
 
“Conscripting the Barrel” It is suggested that the 3.5 million 4-F men be conscripted anyway, and put into labour units. It seems very unlikely that this will happen. Meanwhile, the Army is calling up more men over 26, there is evidence of people drifting away from war work to positions in industries with more promise of peacetime permanence, leading to labour shortages in war work.
 
Latin (Americans) are excitable, and possibly Communist.
 
“Mineral Poverty in Eire” Our Dublin Correspondent takes aim at the ill-advised myth that there is plenty of mineral wealth to be extracted in Eire if only it could be put to work. Good to have that cleared up, I say.
 
Russia At War
 
“Plan for Farming” Last year’s harvest was poor; lack of tractors, drought, other reasons are indicated. This year’s harvest, thanks to the vigorous planning and directives of the Council of People’s Commissars will be better. Hopefully. Actually, the paper is not that hopeful.  The losses of war are not to be made up that easily, and schemes like last year’s plan to interplant rice with cotton in the fields of Turkestan do not encourage confidence in the competence of the Council. Perhaps more Mouziks will rise on the Kolkhozs.
 
Business Notes
 
The France rate needs to be set with an eye to the errors made in setting the lire rate; new building methods are to be embraced, not disparaged, and Sir Malcom Stewart, of the London Brick Company, has a much more progressive attitude than Mr. Coppock in regards to prefabrication. However, even his views may fall short of the innovativeness needed. What of alternatives to brick such as cement, plaster board, timber, and, possibly, metal and asbestos board? The future is bright with possibilities. Sorry, for a moment there I thought that I was reading Fortune rather than The Economist. What I meant to say is that the future is full of uncertainties.
 
IMG_0345.JPG
 
 
“Coal Dust Abatement” The paper greets new schemes, then offers tempered skepticism about the value of putting even more sprinkled water into the collieries before moving on to the problem of “black lung” and the difficulty of finding employment for miners so afflicted.
 
“South Africa and Free Gold” and “Bombay Bullion Prices” both concern the recent rise in prices on the Bombay Exchange. South Africa is eager to have its share, even as the price of gold and silver began to fall there. Although they have risen at the end of the week. General Auchinleck’s soothing statements about Imphal do seem to have caused some abatement in the price rise, however. On the strategic metals front, China has announced that it has found additional reserves of tungsten and antimony to introduce into the world  market once they can be exported again. The paper applauds the prospect of a fall in the price of these useful metals, which would encourage greater use of them.
 
Flight, 13 April
 
How boring can high-speed, heavily-armed “hot ships” be? Very, when your front cover advertisement is for Cellon’s new Cerrux dope paint.
 
Leaders
 
“Putting the Jet on the M.A.P.” The paper was disappointed when MAP took over Short Brothers, believing that less drastic measures might have sufficed. The paper hopes that the case is different with the now-announced MAP takeover of Power Jets, Ltd. The paper’s hopeful formulation is that the vast national effort required to bring the Jet Age on is now to be backed by the whole nation, rather than the limited resources of a private company, which could hardly bear the burden of such an enterprise, unless its name were Boulton & Watt, Parsons, Brown Boveri, Vickers-Armstrong, Rolls-Royce, Nuffield…. Actually, this sounds like exactly the same case as Short Brothers.
 
“The Satellite Capitals” Rumania is surrendering some more, and aircraft were involved! Specifically, 15th Air Force attacked the Bucharest railyards on 4 April as the Russians crossed the Pruth.
 
“The Barracuda’s Bow” The Fairey Barracuda now officially exists, thanks to publicity over the carrier-borne attack on Tirpitz. The paper intimates that special bombs were used, perhaps glider bombs. A striking picture shows the Barracuda with its enormous flaps extended for landing.
 
 
 
 
War in the Air
 
The loss of 94 bombers in the BomberCommand night attack on Nuremberg in clear air under a full moon shows that casualties in air raids can be heavy, the paper concludes. Actually, I suggest that you can conclude more than that. The Germans have pretty clearly won this round of the long night bombing war over Europe. In other unfortunate news,General Wingate has died in an air crash. The paper describes General Wingate as a soldier of an original cast of mind., and notes that he was “probably” unable to avail himself of current meterological reports that would have led him to postpone his trip. The “probably,” I think, says much. The paper has its sources.
 
“Mrs. J. C.’s” father was able to pull his familiar little game of feigning a lack of English. The general, I gather, was moon-touched. At this point, may I digress and suggest that if the social costs of opium were so great as to occasion its banning, that the same might be contemplated for Benzedrine. But not until after the war, of course. You lads need not fear being deprived just yet? (Or, conversely, that we just be frank about the dangers of both, and give over puritanical prohibition of both?)
 
In other Burma news, it is mentioned that the men of the RAF Regiment have been posted around the airfields at Imphal as a possible last-ditch defensive line. Which is, I think, the first that I have heard of the Regiment in this paper.
 
In the Pacific, carrier attacks on the Palau group at the western end of the Caroline Islands. Unless the Japanese fleet comes out, the hundred thousand men in their garrisons in the Pacific will be isolated and left to starve, the paper points out. What a senseless and predictable outcome, it says. Well, yes, but Britain’s loss in France in 1940 was not far short of a hundred thousand men “cut off” uselessly. Do we now say that this was a senseless undertaking and an easily predicted defeat? The railyard attacks at Bucharest are noted again. This must have cheered up the Russian troops, the paper speculates, then notes that they are already flushed by their own victories. Which seem rather more consequential, even if attacks on the railways make their jobs easier. The Tirpitz attack is summarised again. The paper notes here that the Barracuda has been in service for “about” a year, and that the number of squadrons equipped with it has “steadily increased.” Given how much the taxpayer has spent on planes in the last year, I should hope so! The week’s box score shows 145 bombers lost over Europe this week. The Nuremberg casualties are thus about two third of Combined Bombing Offensive losses and not that far short of half of all (232) Allied air losses in service flying this week.
 
Here and There
 
The total American aircraft supply to Russia now stands at 8800. General Oliver P. Echolsof USAAF Materiel Command says that new long-range fighters are being developed to escort B-29s. Have we not heard this already? Major General J. F. Miller, AVM T. W. Williams, and AM Sir William Welch all have new jobs.  A Transport Lancaster has set a 12 hour 59 minute record for Scotland-Montreal, beating the old record by 17 minutes. It carried 3,611lb mail, 425lb freight, and four passengers. B-25 Mitchells are now being used as advanced trainers. Another warplane surplus to requirements? A new Mid-Air Safety Device is announced by the “Square D Co., of Detroit,” which sounds exactly like C. G. Grey’s old “Radioaura.” The important part is when someone pays everyone who has  patented this contraption so that they can actually use it. Very important people are going to Washington to talk about petroleum. A Navy school has been opened to train 300 Ceylonese as engine fitters, so that they can relieve 70% of Fleet Air Arm personnel on the island for carrier duties. Catalinas searching 200,000 square miles of the Indian Ocean from Ceylon take four days to find 42 survivors of a sunken ship and directing a tanker to them. 
 
 
 
Americans want free competition by private airlines on international routes, while other countries prefer “international control.”
 
“Flying the Typhoon” It’s remarkably nimble for such a large plane, and the engine, with its high rpm, gives a gentle hum. (While it is subtly shaking you to pieces.) The very thick wing gives good handling at the stall, and “lineal descendants” of the Typhoon and Sabre will be very impressive. Pictures of the Hawker Tornado, the failed Vulture-powered rival to the Typhoon, appear next page. The Vulture, it will be recalled, was not taken up, as it was so much more complicated than the Sabre.
 
Studies in Aircraft Recognition
 
Today we learn to tell gliders apart. There is the Hotspur, a dashing northerner, the Horsa, always trying to invade Britain, the Hadrian building a wall to keep the Horsa out, and the DFS 230, which ..also tries to invade England.
 
“Indicator” must be grounded, as his column this week is a “Literary Interlude.” He has read some novels about aviation, and is not impressed. Books that tell us what war flying was actually like will be written, and read, but not until some time after the war is over. Who wants to remember the frightening and uncomfortable parts now?
 
“Mobile School Unit” The US Air Transport Command has a group visiting schools with the M.T.U. 96, which is kind of a mockup/model/display of the C-54 Skymaster. It does not appear that it is a Link Trainer-type setup to give the students the feel of flying the plane, but then it is mainly for instructing ground crew.
 
“Interchange of Technical Information” The eligible heiresses of Old England will be devastated to hear that the dashing G. Geoffrey Smith of this paper (and Aircraft Production, as well) is off to America in connection with the sharing of technical press information.
 
“A Novel U.S. Suggestion” The Civil Aeronautics Administration has proposed installing a recorder in the pilot’s compartment to preserve every word spoken, so as to learn the cause of crashes in which both pilot and co-pilot are killed. (The actual device would be secreted in the tail and wrapped in an asbestos blanket.) I just wonder how much the pilots’ conversation would add to the chatter with ground control. Speak, oh ancestral voices...
 
Behind the Lines
 
“An Axis newspaper” reports that rumours circulated that Bratislava would be raided by British, or Russian, or, failing them, German bombers. The intent would be to force the inhabitants of the city to evacuate, at which point the Germans would move their entire governmental apparatus into the abandoned buildings. It is rumoured that certain war profiteers actually fled the city on that date, showing that they had conduits of information to Moscow or London, says the paper. They should be exposed, says the paper, and punished. It has been said that, thanks to Bismarck and the threat of Social Democracy, Germany has quite good provisions for the handicapped. Paranoid maniacs, for example, are employed in the provincial press.
 
All German able-bodied men of the classes of 1884—1893 have been asked to register for conscription.
“The Wild Sow” technique of directing single-engined fighters onto night raids is described, presumably indicating that it is now obsolete.
 
Correspondence
 
J. R. Gould (Major, late RAF), writes to say that he thinks the Sabre much too complicated and vulnerable, and that it is a pity that the company did not instead further develop its licensefor the two-crankshaft Jumo diesel aircraft engine. He goes on to explain the advantages of diesel powertrains for the tens of Flight readers who might be unaware of them. As usual with diesel enthusiasts, he is less forthcoming on the subject of compression stresses, vibrations, and exhaust work loss. Not that he’s necessarily wrong. In many applications, the future does belong to diesel cycle engines. The problem isthat the various complications inserted to deal with these difficulties ratherundermine the appeal to simplicity!
 
N. V. Brittain, on the other hand, is convinced that the Sabre’s sleeve valves score by saving work on regular maintenance, and imagines the chagrin of German engineers analysing the Sabre. As well they should. If the British have so much design talent to waste on that contraption, imagine what their service jet engines will be like!
 
G. W. Stanley takes issue with the “Projet’s” opinion that some jet engines are impractical. In fact, other jet or perhaps turbosupercharged engines are impractical. If I am reading him correctly, and I will allow that it is quite likely that I am, arrangements much more advanced than in any jet engine are used in oil injection turbines and for a combustion/steam turbine without a boiler. Whichsounds as though he is describing a ground installation?
 
Michael Annand says that the proposed “Wyvern” would be too heavy, too lightly armed, and would ask too much of the lone pilot.  He proposes that the carrier arm might be pared down to a single fighter (/dive-bomber) and torpedo (heavy dive-) bomber, for example the Seafire and Avenger.
 
R. E. Gregory, thinking on similar lines, narrows the role of the fighter down to only fighting, and suggests a carrier torpedo-bomber large enough to carry the torpedo internally! Surely that would imply a twin-engined aircraft. Have such proposals not been vetoed before on the score of weight and size? I am beginning to doubt my rash speculation that the “Wyvern” has taken such concrete life on these correspondence pages because it is an actual aircraft under development. My logic is that there would also be a twin-engine torpedo bomber under development, and that would imply aircraft carriers to match. 
 
Short_Sturgeon_TT3_prototype.jpg
 
W. H. Hambrook, Assistant Chief Designer for Short & Harland, objects to another correspondent objecting to flying boats.
 
“Optimist” thinks that the only problem with the “drift” (that is, castering) undercarriages discussed in an article in an earlier  number of the paper is that they are not complicated enough. Throw in a gyro-controlled powered servo to keep the castered wheels turned in the right direction, and you would have a miracle machine. I shall propose the idea to your eldest when I see him next. It is always amusing to see him wince in pain and put his hand to his forehead.
 
D. A. Brice thinks that “Indicator” is wrong to say that the proposed 100 ton mammoth airliners might be a bit much for existing manpower. He also thinks that “Indicator” was insulting him personally as an airline pilot. And not only him but all air marshals, aviation pioneers, and, in general, everyone. Not to harp too much, but someone needs to cut back on the Benzedrine.
 
“Russian Ground Crews” Are much like ours, but wear those unflattering, shapeless, Russian-style forage caps. I hope that the engines aren’t offended.
 
R. D. Leakey, “Where Battles Are Won.” In the future, in anticipation of future wars, aircraft factories will have to be secret underground complexes where unidentified top scientists and engineers work on top secret new aircraft with all the advances made possible by top secret research and development. Also, the designers will have codenames, like “the Shadow,” “Dr. Syn” and “The Scarlet Pimpernel.”
 
I’ll bet you can’t tell what part of that I made up, Reggie.
 
The Economist, 15 April 1944
 
Leader
 
“The Governor” The paper is sad that Mr. Montagu Norman has withdrawn his name from the election for Governor of the Bank  of England after a quarter century in office. Oddly, the paper’s main complaint is about the Bank’s industrial policy of encouraging cartels under the guise of “industry self-government.”
 
“Freedom for France” Within a few weeks, we will be invading. Should we not sort out franc convertability, and the administration of the occupied zone? Maybe we shall get rid of that annoying De Gaulle fellow, too. The French will thank us for it when they come to their senses. And it will help the French try out this democracy arrangement. 
 
Sometimes I think it would do Britain good to lose a war once. It might help the paper gain some empathy for defeated.
 
“Article Seven” The paper hopes that Lend-Lease is not ended too quickly on account of difficulties over tariffs and such. This would undermine trade and employment. It is hard, the paper says, to feel happy about the prospects for full employment in the United States after the war, and only a rash man would prophesy with complete assurance that it will  be attained in Great Britain. With American production vastly above prewar levels, and no plan in prospect for organising and administering transition, there is a very real risk of a postwar American depression.
(Emphasis mine.)
 
Notes of the Week
 
“Odessa and the Carpathians” Roumania still being invaded, still surrendering.
 
Latins are excitable. Eden-Stettinus talks will continue, given that Mr. Eden is not resigning the Foreign Office after all. Miner’s delegation visits London and puts their case against the Portal Reward with some success. It turns out that “rippers, roadmen, machine minders and some classes of enginemen” do require higher wages! The paper lugubriously points out that the rate of strikes was even higher in 1919 than during the war years, so we may face even more work stoppages soon.
 
Finland is still surrendering; the Polish Resistance may cooperate with their Russian liberators, after all; after the contretemps over equal pay, it is now possible to again notice that education reforms are being held back by a shortage of teachers. I certainly hope that this, like the shortages of nurses and coal miners, does not turn out to have anything to do with wages, because then trying to hold teachers' wages down might prove to be a mistake!  
 
“Responsibility for Industrial Progress” The paper is pleased that it is now generally recognised that the improvement of British industrial prospects depends on improving productivity, and not mysterious magic and tricks. Yet many in industry suppose that Government support for research and development will be enough. It will not. Everyone must put on white lab coats and splash goggles and take long, insightful glances at test tubes held aloft. 
 
 
 
There must also be more technical education. In that area, Britain is apparently a backward country. Its old edge in industry led it to lazy ways of rules of thumb and practicality. Now there must be technical education. And, of course, there must be opportunity and status to the young people who “have been through this mill.” Unless they work in the Lancashire textile trades, in which case we shall wipe our feet of them and move on to wondering why no young people enroll for aeronautical engineering training.
 
“Defending Assam” The paper notices that if the Japanese take Kohima, they can advance on Dimapur, which is still the only rail nexus between Bengal and Assam, just as it was when we toured the area with Grandfather in ’27.
 
“Front Line Province” The Governor of Bengal promises that there will be  no recrudescence of famine this year. The wheat and millet crops were poor, but the rice was good enough to make up the lack. Providing that loss of confidence in the food supply does not lead to hoarding, mind. Meanwhile, the Statesman of Calcutta is now running a series that was suppressed during the famine on the utter ineptitude of the Government of Bengal’s response to the famine. The paper finds it disheartening, and suggests that continuing concealment of vital statistics can only raise doubts about whether these have been remedied.
 
“Absent Workers” It is not just miners who have absence problems. A look at industry in general shows a 5% absent rate in peacetime for men, 6-8% in wartime, 10-15% for women. These are for various reasons, but the reporting Industrial Health Board singles out fatigue as something that can be remedied by steps such as holding the work week to 60 hours for men and 55 for women.
 
IMG_0354.JPG
 
 
“The City President” Herr Goebbels, who is, of course, already the President of BerlinGau, is now made President of the city. The paper hopefully supposes that this is because of the extent of damage and chaos caused by the night area bombing offensive.
 
American Survey
 
“Wilkie’s Wake” Mr. Wilkie’s defeat in the Wisconsin Primaries, predicted only by everyone, has led him to withdraw from the race for the GOP nomination. The paper thinks that that was premature, and dreams of him going on to greater and grander things. Governor Dewey, who did not even contest the primaries, won over half the vote, suggesting that, as only predicted by everyone, he is the front-runner! But what of MacArthur, Stassen, Bricker, Warren, Taft, or the paper’s pet parakeet? Surely someone other than Dewey could win. It’s not over yet, surely? Governor Bricker? Commander Stassen? Anyone?
 
American Notes
 
“Holding the Line”
 
Incredibly, there has been no increase in the cost of living, or in wages, over the last year. Price controls have been very successful, which is why they might be doomed. They’re digging their own grave, you see. Successful prince controls will lead to runaway inflation. How many papers does Mr. Janeway write for, anyway?
 
Shorter Notes
 
Some Texans are appalled that Coloureds are now by Supreme Court decision allowed to vote in the Democratic Primaries. Or the Republican primaries, should such a thing happen, and the organisers choose to exclude Coloureds in the first place. Or new measures will be found to exclude them, just as, when the “grandfather clause” was found unconstitutional, literacy and poll tax tests were substituted.
The Census reports that the American population was 134.9 million on 1 July 1942, compared with 133.9 in 1941 and 132.8 in 1940. There are now more American women than men, ending the old American demographic exception.
 
The World Overseas
 
Latin Americans are excitable about communism, part 2. The British have stepped up their sisal buying in East Africa. It is thought that production of hard fibre will have risen during the war, and hoped that new uses have been found to absorb this production.
 
“The Discount Market” I am not going to adventure comment; the Earl is the expert.
 
Business Notes
 
Canadian Pacific has had a good year; there is talk about oil, or talk about talks about petroleum; South African bonds are doing well; the Government is criticised for whitholding statistics, and answers that it is not going to change its policy on the eve of the Second Front; it looks like revisions in GRT measuring methods might finally come this year.
 
And now.. the monthlies!
 
Aviation, April 1944
 
Down the Years in Aviation’s Log
 
25 years ago, New Zealand announced plans for air mail, a variable-pitch propeller was tested and declared “eminently practical,” and the Post Office bought twelve DH-4s for the proposed New York-Chicago route. Fifteen years ago, the Air Corps adopts ethylene glycol coolant, Keystone Patrician flies 10,200ft carrying 36, Guatemala buys six all-metal Crawford planes, Chicago grocery firm equips a Ford trimotor as a “flying store.” Ten years ago, Congress ended the Air Mail experiment, the first S-42 flies, Sodium lights are used at Schipphol, Army request for 4000 planes put off by Congress, United makes a $2 million buy, including 6 12-seat sleepers.
 
Line Editorial
 
Junior is on about the disposal of Government war plants and equipment. In the last four years, the Federal Government has spent 15 billion dollars on plant, two-and-a-half-times private spending. One third has gone to aircraft and shipyards. A third to ordnance, a third to chemical plants and miscellaneous. About a third are suitable for peacetime commercial use and will be disposed without difficulty, and, with ingenuity, this might rise to half or even more. But the rest present difficulties. Fortunately, there are encouraging signs (George Committee Report, Truman Committee Report, appointment of Baruch) that this will be handled in a way that promotes freedom of action towards a competitive society. But more argle bargle.. Planning, inventory, sober second thought! Wherever possible, plant should be auctioned off at the best price. That would be fair! Where not, it should be leased at attractive rates to put it into effective use. Plant needed abroad can be exported. Plant needed by legitimate government enterprises such as the services and the TVA should be kept. Anything that does not fall into these categories should be liquidated, lest it lead to government or private monopolies.
 
"Cousin H.C.", who dreams of a Lower Californian monopoly on steel, does not seem frightened by Junion, however.
 
Editorial
 
Neville thinks we need a powerful postwar air force. Just like Flight! It is a grand coincidence.
 
Captain C. H. Schildhauer, USNR, “Global Air Transport and the Flying Boat’s Role.” Perhaps this is the fellow who is interchanging technical press secrets with that heartbreaker, G. Geoffrey Smith of Flight.
 
 
 
Flying boats will be large and comfortable, with smoking lounges and dance floors and indoor swimming pools, just like the trans-Atlantic dirigibles that now ply our skies.
 
E. H. Cargen, Sales Research Engineer, and L. J. Stosik, Market Analyst, Write Aeronautical Corp,” “A Three-Way ‘Fix’ On Aircraft Markets.” I) The Military market: scientific technical analysis shows that military spending fell after the War of 1812, Civil War, and WWI. Therefore, science says that the postwar military market will be small, about 5000-5500 aircraft/year. Four alternative levelling curves are shown, with the best forecast showing renewed international tensions requiring continued high armament spending, and the worst flowing from renewed isolationism, in which case it will be closer to 3500. Commercial demand is established as 298 a/c in Victory +5. (1949, based on defeating Germany by Christmas and Japan a year later.) This is scientific! Though even the authors have no way of estimating the private postwar market, though
 
Raymond Hoadley, “Hope for the Aircraft Investor,” is apparently not the prompt launching of the world onto the road leading to World War III at the stroke of 1957 (ie, not waiting until 1967), but rather the orderly readjustment of the industry, which will take aviation stocks out of the “orphan” status that has kept them at low valuations.
 
“Ernest G. Stout, “Experimental Determination of Hull Displacement.” Say you do not know precisely how much water the flying boat that you are designing will draw in practice. Good question! It’s hard to calculate, and it might be helpful to know before you sit down behind the controls for that first takeoff run! Well, here is an easy experimental method involving pressing your hull model underwater with gradually increasing weights. Words fail. But, on the other hand, one gets a sense of how the Mars and Lerwick got the way that they did.
 
David B. Thurston, “Key Considerations in Pressurized Cabin Design”
 
Uncredited, “Metal PLUS Plastic Makes New Aircraft Flooring.” This miracle flooring sells itself! And if it doesn’t, we can always buy space in Aviation.
 
Commander Harry J. Marx, “Production-Line Remedies For Hydraulic Headaches.” In summary, you can do everything with aircraft hydraulics except make them work. A very dirty mechanic demonstrates how to pack clean parts.
 
 
 
Articles on forming sheet aluminum and “near infrared” baking of engine parts at Jacobs follows, at which point we get to...
 
J. S. Nielson and C. B. Mitchell, “Stretch Bend Unit Simplifies Metal Work,” which is a feature length advertisement for the new Goodyear Roto-Stretcher, developed by the Experimental Tool and Machine Design Division of Goodyear Aircraft. The one built in house for Goodyear is doing excellent work, and these two Goodyear-associated engineers want you to know that a Roto-Stretcher is right for you!
 
“The A to Z of Servicing Cuno Filters” is helpful in case a Cuno filter has arrived in your shop and you have no idea how to get at the filter and service it. It turns out that “auto-clean” Cuno filters are very complicated.
 
 
 
It frankly astonishes me that all of this has been designed and put into service in the last five years or so.
 
“Field Maintenance of Bosch Magnetos” is helpful in case a Bosch magnetor has arrived…
 
“Two Metalwork Units Do Work of Twenty. The proud inventors, both tradesmen at Northrop’s metal-forming shop, are shown smiling. My snap impression is that I would enjoy working with RalphFroelich in particular. He is, however, only a tradesman who has made something workaday to improve metalworking, not some transcendent mystery machine like a real inventor, such as Nikolai Tesla!
 
IMG_0338.JPG
 
 
“Bull’s-Eye Aim Makes Bombardiers” Bombardiers need training! Honest, Reggie, it is true. (Given your position, you might have noticed at one point.) The Norden Bombsight is the best thing ever, which would fall under the heading of things that your eldest tells me is not true, and the USAAF has established a vast apparatus  to train new bombardiers, which is true. More interesting is the fact that while even the USAAF can only give them 85 hours in the air, trainee bombardiers do 450 hours on the ground, learning theory and reading maps, but also practicing in a special Link trainer! The point here, I suppose, is that the Trainer sounds fairly simplistic compared to schemes that I have seen elsewhere, with a simple “ bug” projected on the floor, similar to a battleship seen from 10,000 feet. Where is the scrolling countryside lit by faked Flak? Perhaps someone could sell something like that to the air force? Involving “television?”
 
The paper reports on the “new” Albemarle, Sabre, and “Tony.”
 
 
 
 
Side Slips
 
We begin with an amusing anecdote about a silly girl riveter, young pilots who joke about how many hours it takes a freighter to cross the Atlantic, about pilots who lose their hearing after a few hundred hours in the air and turn it to their advantage by pretending that people are offering them a beer, and amusing doggerel about Goebbels and Goering. I mock heavily and without humour, because imitation….
 
 
 
 
Made-up people love Bonney Tools!
 
Aviation News
 
“Improved Planes at Lower Prices Seen Postwar,” says somebody. Why do fighters now go further? They have drop tanks, the latest brand new technology that has been around forever. Wright Field has two new wind tunnels ready to go. “Private flying is coming out of the superman class andn down to the common man via a drastic revision of air traffic rules…” The AAF is exploring the possibility of having a garden sale. Flyers posted on hitching posts is my suggestion. Telephone poles good too, if you’ve got them. Blaine Stubblefield thinks that everyone in Washington should be fired for being lazy and not doing anything. Other bits of news in his column include the fact that some in Washington want a postwar Air Force, and that others want there to be airports around the country and that despite rationing, you can still get a decent blended American whiskey in  this town. And that’s Stubblefield, signing off until next month!
 
America At War
 
…Reports nothing that I couldn’t get from …I was going to say Time, but that’s too kind. Honestly, the news in the Montgomery-Ward catalogue is fresher. 
 
Aviation Manufacturing
 
“February Production: Record 350 planes in one day for 8,760; Weight up 4%.” Four pages into the news insert comes the news that aircraft production is down 29 units over the January numbers. But the month was short, or we would have hit the 9000 a/c/month new minimum target required to hit the 100,000 vice 120,000 unit target for the year! Also, weight is up and we built a record number of aircraft on one particular day! No guilty consciences here, sir. 
 
Plant investment is projected at only $500 million this year as the effort winds down. The P-47 now has a four-blade Hydromatic propeller. Glenn L. Martin promises that the new model of “Mars” will be even better! B-24s made at San Diego are also now better, because they are a pleasing metallic silver rather than drab camouflage, adding an estimated 6 to 8mph top speed. At least Aero Digest is honest enough to admit that the lack of paint is labour saving.
 
Aviation Abroad
 
The Swedish air service is back in operation. The Tudor and Brabazon I are under construction. The “Boomerang” is in action. The paper picks up the Flight story about how German pilots are being kept away from flowers with distressing scents and adds its own unique touch: “A bouquet to the Japanazis!”
 
Aviation Finance
 
In brief, lots of aviation companies made lots of money during the war, but the stocks are not highly valued because the end of the war is likely to crimp demands for new warplanes.
 
 
 
 
Wellwood Beall, looking in photo like the son of one of our clients (by the way, thank you for Mr. Johnston's file. I was being facetious in suggesting that we would lean on him for his father's unpaid passage, but am amused to note that my instinct was correct), has received some kind of award over something related to being another aviation figure who landed in the honey pot thanks to our pal Hitler.
 
“Footprints Halt!’ An ad for some kind of adhesive doormat that cleans the soles of shoes of people entering a very clean room at a ballbearing plant is illustrated with a picture of a child’s bare feet. That is, the technology of 1944 is projected to 1955 again! Page over finds Kinnear missing the opportunity to suggest that its technology could have a domestic use in ten years.
 
 
 
 
“Building Railroad Tracks for Electrons” is an ad celebrating Astatic’s “coaxial conductors.” Gives me a better sense of where the conversation is turning whenever the lads from the day turn up to visit your eldest and his wife.
 
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“For More War Work With Fewer Workers” What will our future be, when devices like this have done away with manual labour in 1955? Though I could write 1855 for all the inherent plausibility of it.
 
Fortune, April 1945
 
This should be a quick read, as the entire number is devoted to Japan, and I cannot even begin to guess when we might be called upon to invest in the lands of the barbarians of Wa. I pick it up mainly in anticipation of that special outrage to which only Mr. Janeway can move me. For lack of any actual reportage, the number has been turned over toHerrymon Maurer, who has spent whole weeks in Japan in pursuit of his in-depth study of Eastern cultures. Known as the author of an “imaginative” account of Lao T’se, he is… He is One of Those. Enough said. Although Claude Buss and Shelly Mydans both recently repatriated from Japanese internment, are also represented. Neither, astonishingly, have a high opinion of the Japanese. Apparently, they, unlike other armies, select military police from the lower sort of recruits.
 
“Issei, Nissei, Kibbei” The paper is upset about the internment of American Japanese, even though it’s not as bad as all that, and it is really all the Hearst Paper’s fault. Not that that nasty gossip Hedda Hopper has helped, with her allegations that released evacuees have been committing sabotage.
 
“How Many Japanese?” It is supposed that the population of Japanese might rise by 1970 to 95 million, which is obviously too high for their land. This is the result of demographic transition. In the previous hundred years, Japan’s population moved from only 28 to 33 million. Industrialisation has had the effect of reducing birth rates. The point of the graphical comparison is that Japan’s curve lags that of England and Wales by 60 years.
 
 
 
Before the war, Japan’s increase of a million a year exceeded that of America and also all new inhabitants of western Europe! To feed them with imports, Japan has customarily depended on imports paid for with consumer goods. Emigration has been difficult, and there was the hold Manchuria thing. What is left? The Japanese are big on commercial fishing, and greater agricultural productivity would help.
 
Though not relevant, it is disconcerting to see the curve of population for England and Wales turn downwards in 1950. We did well to sell as much land as we did, when we did. I know that there is no direct relationship between population and real estate prices, but the one does tend to drive the other. It also illustrates just how tricky it is going to be to balance demand for housing against the future of the industry. No point in overinvesting in a sector that is going to be ebbing in the same way as the Lancashire cotton mills.
 
Or steel. Do I repeat myself? I do!
 
Unfortunately, it turns out that Mr. Janeway has no opinions worth printing on the subject of Japan and the Japanese, and I am deprived of my eagerly anticipated moment of righteous outrage.
 
Until next time, Reggie, I remain your beloved Cousin. 
 
PS: I  hope that you find time for this missive and do not spend it all looking at those wonderful baby faces. I see Grandfather in the boy. Do you?
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Techblogging April 1944, II: He Is Risen

 

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My Dearest Reggie:

 

We have official word. Your son will do naval preflight training at Berkeley as an engineering freshman, beginning this summer.  One way or another, he will have his own hands on a hot machine soon. He has been told to write you in his own hand, but this will reach you rather faster than V-mail.

 

And so we are between waiting and tenderness here in Santa Clara as April turns to May. We wait on news of finance (the matter of selling of Government-owned plant, and specifically the Fontana mill  is still unsettled), and of the war, both personal and public.

 

You may wonder what personal news we have this month, now that your youngest's fate is settled, as well as that of Wong Lee's boy. Well, first of all, your son has been abruptly ordered to Boston, whre there is some kind of tangle over a new kind of engineering-related top hamper that the Navy will shortly be inflicting on ships not already sufficiently inclined to turn over. Second, we have had a down-at-the-mouth report from Fat Chow, and so know as well as you that the attack on Berlin is ebbing, and that the spring air is letting some of the fug of powdered masonry and unwashed bodies out of the waiting rooms where he attends on Nazi madmen.

 

Not all mad, of course. He reports an encounter with a fellow who is forging Bank of England for the foreign service. Apparently a grand scheme to bring the British war economy down with massive inflation is devolving into profit-seeking. How surprising!

 

Fat Chow is attached to a much less impressive scheme. I have  referred to it rather ambiguously earlier, perhaps because refined allusion is better than the baldly-spelled out scheme to establish a  clandestine radio station in Lhasa to broadcast religious propaganda in Kazakh Turk. If the idea is "to set the East ablaze," this is much straining over wet tinder, it would seem.

 

That being said, it seems that the prime mover of the project is a member of the Japanese legation. Fat Chow therefore proposes that the point of the project is less to broadcast foment revolution in Central Asia than to get the distinguished Colonel home before the Twilight of the Gods. If this is the case, we wait, as everyone waits, on the invasion, whose success or lack of it will determine whether there is to be a Gotterdamerung after all.

 

Or, rather, who the Gotterdamerung is to be for.

 

On the tender side, we had a photo session with Grandfather, who, amazingly enough, seems on the mend from his pneumonia. With all the household in Sunday best and the twins cooing agreeably, we took a formal portrait or two across five generations. "Miss V.C.'s" suspicions that old "Doctor McKee" is not at all what he seems were further aroused when I accidentally got a little of his makeup on my thumb, and clumsily let it be seen.

 

I know that I shall catch Hell for this in Chicago, but the amusement is more than worth it, to see the gears spin under that pretty face. And I am not the only devising away, I suspect, as she balances her two would-be beaus against each other. She is playing a long game, is our girl, with bonds that are not to mature before their time.

 

 
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I include a cutting, to show the not-so-subtle way that advertising these days seems to play to women's marriage madness. Even savings bonds are somehow about making the right match! "To have and to hold," indeed. Can we not have some fun, first?

 

 

 

 

 

I was a bit disappointed by the flagship Luce paper this month, Reggie. I want my business coverage with a good dose of absurdity, and this month’s Fortune spent its farce budget on “Eastern culture,” leaving me in need of some milk of magnesia. Hopefully I shall find more to amuse me in that small portion of a very large stack of Time magazines that I actually have time to digest. 

 
  Time, 17 April 1944
 
 International
 
“Time to Back Up?” The paper notices that The Sunday Observer thinks that it is time to ditch “Unconditional Surrender,” because it is a folly. Inspired by the Civil War, when it was a fine idea, it is inappropriate to our modern, complex world, and is just encouraging the Germans in a “Dunkirk spirit.” I am not sure how we would even notice the new German “Dunkirk spirit” when the German troops actually in Dunkirk are enjoying sea-bathing and a dilatory introduction to the light construction trades whilst our bombers make post-demobilisation work for them at home. Perhaps once we have actually engaged them in the field, we will find out how “Unconditional Surrender” is affecting their moral?
 
 “While Big Ben Boomed” The paper notices that The Economist notices that Churchill and Eden are fighting. Honest to God, Reggie, this is like having your youngest moping around the house because his attempt to expose Lieutenant A for booking dates with both “Miss V.C.” and our housekeeper failed. I am not sure how the young man manages not to look like a cad, but he does. Is it his ridiculous car? His looks? The fact that he is an Academy graduate and can look down on a mere cadet from the eminence of his Lieutenant (j.g.) rank? It is not as though either matter, with the accelerated wartime course and a grandfather of flag rank.. But I show my partisanship, not unaffected by an excessive exposure to the lieutenant’s gangly, over-loud, clumsy presence. I can only hope that his admiral is sent to war before I am called upon to host his 21st birthday party. (The scene of a Palo Alto Homecoming being apparently too refined for such a celebration.) Oh, and there is something about Eden’s hope for the premiership and Beaverbrook being annoying. Even excitable. He is a foreigner after all –and the worst kind. Canadian!
 
Slovaks, Greeks, Latins, Manipuri, Mexicans, El Salvadoreans are excitable. I would add Poles and Mexicans, but a glance at this week’s story notes 140 underground papers, “underground courts,” and “ultrabrutal Gestapomen.” It would seem that the German police state in Poland is ineffectual except in applying indiscriminate violence. Meanwhile, 200 Jewish members of the Polish Army in exile went AWOL last week to protest the Army’s virulent anti-Semitism.
 
There are talks about civil aviation, oil, the Middle East. All will be resolved imminently.
 
The Commonwealth premiers, including Mackenzie King and John Curtin, are soon to gather in London to...I think I have placed too much reliance on my joke about Canadian affairs putting me to sleep, but, Good Lord, paper. Can we get to the point where this actually has an effect on preferential tariffs?
 
The paper has a humour column for international funnies! A British soldier and a U.S. soldier were standing in Piccadilly Circus when a dilapidated car drove up. Said the Yank: "What a wreck! Do you know what we would do if a car like that drove up in Times Square?" "Well," mused the Briton, "if you treated it as you treat everything else, you'd either drink it or kiss it."

 

 

 Four days running, Stalin looked out of the Kremlin windows and saw a comrade praying in Red Square. Finally Stalin called in the comrade, asked why he prayed.
 
The comrade replied: "I am praying for the second front." Stalin: "How much do they pay you?" The comrade: "Eleven rubles a week."
 
 Stalin said that he was underpaid. Said the prayerful Russian: "But you see, comrade, it's a permanent job."

 

I left out the less amusing ones.

 
War 
 
"The Balance Sheet" It was announced today that, since the invasion of Poland, more Britons have been killed and injured in highway accidents than the United Kingdom's total of killed, wounded, missing and prisoners in the fighting services. Given that the Empire's total is 667,159, and of them 387,996 were Britons, this is something of a commentary on the slaughter on the roads: 588,742! America's casualty list, the paper notes, is even smaller: 173,238 in 27 months --in battle, not the roads, which are the safer for lack of blackout. Tyres are a concern, but you know that I have taken care of that. Except for the young Lieutenant, who has his own source. I suspect the Engineer on that score, Reggie. According to Manhattan's Tax Institute, by next year the war will have cost the Allied and Axis powers a trillion dollars (a thousand thousand million). The Allies are spending $150 billion/year, the Axis $40, although they get more for their money due to forced labour, currency manipulation and looting. But what of the invasion? "Holocaust" or "moderate casualties?" I fear that the advice that Wong Lee's son should provide himself with naval blues is an intimation that he and his craft will be on the scene.
 
"Casualty Forecasts" Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley said today that he would not be surprised by casualties comparable to the Tunisian campaign, where we lost on average only 3 to 4 of a 1000 men. But the paper quotes "Assorted High Allied Military Authorities" predicting "several hundred thousand casualties." Eddie Rickenbacker says that "Sorrow will come to a million American homes."
 
"Whopper" The Office of War Information has announced that the Navy has reached a strength of 3.2 million men (not numbers borne, obviously), and will need another 400,000. The paper notices that this will be the largest navy in history by far. 750,000 will belong to the navy's air arm, and 35,850 will be aviators, including your youngest, it looks like, providing he contrives not to kill himself on the roads on two wheels or four. The services will need 200,000 new draftees monthly for the foreseeable future, but Selective Service is tacking and shifting about in its hunt for the manpower required.
 
"Glory for a Tin Can" Destroyer O'Bannon has received a Presidential Unit Citation after fighting in the Battles of Kolumbangara and Vella Lavella.

 

 

 Domestic 
 
The President’s dog, Fala, celebrated a birthday this week! (See page 390, “Paper Shortage.”)
 
“Line Held” In a statement to the press, the President praised the War Labor Board and the Price Control Act for containing inflation, “long out of the news.” In other Presidential news, the President congratulated Iowa Senator Mark Gillette (D) for his decision to run for re-election. This is deemed to be an indirect announcement of the President’s intention to run for a fourth term, as he and Gillette detest one another, and Gillette seems unlikely to win re-election against Iowa Governor Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper. It took me half-an-hour to find characters to render “Hickenlooper,” Reggie. So please be assured that I did not make the name up.
 
"The Clearing" Incredibly to anyone except everyone who has actually seen a poll, Willkieis out of the Presidential race. It is further asserted, straining all credulity, that Deweymight be in.
 
"Ban on Fruit" Bernard DeVoto has engineered a test case of the Massachusetts blue laws by buying a copy of Lillian Smith's banned-in-Boston Strange Fruit.
 
"Time Bomb" Various southern Democrats propose to run against the Supreme Court and for "white supremacy" in the fall.
 
"Eastern Fronts" Oh, sure, the Russians are advancing, but our bombers are helping by raiding behind the lines, delaying trains and "confusing the political situation" and causing the Balkan satellites to surrender more. (The only thing missing at this point is a suggestion that Turkey is sure to enter the war on our side soon if we just bomb a few more Bulgarian rail yards.) Our bombers could help even further if the Russians would just let them land and refuel. It is hard to imagine why the Russians would resist. After all, the Russians could just send some of their spare troops out to gather early fruit from the gasoline trees for the purpose. . .
 
"Almost None" Per the FBI, there has been almost no Axis espionage and sabotage this year. Director Hoover had no direct comment about the Red under your bed, except to say that the Red wouldn't be under there if you weren't up to something on top of it, and the FBI won't rest until it knows what that is, too. Apparently said Reds do not include Victor Kravchenko, who used to be interested in buying metals on behalf of Russia, and nowwishes to be an American citizen.  In other news, Senator Clyde Reed of Kansas asks how "aging" Vivien Kellem's "violet-scented" private correspondence with "Count Frederick von Zedlitz, a Nazi engineer in Argentina" came to be extracted in Drew Pearson's column.
 
"Command Wanted" "Fierce-browed Admiral William Frederick Halsey, one of the Navy's fightingest admirals" has almost worked himself out of a job in the southwest Pacific. Clearly the "once famed Annapolis fullback (1903) needs another frontline assignment, along with his staff, which includes, the paper notes, one Lieutenant-Commander Harold Stassen. Because what the United States Navy needs right now is a man my age flying his flag afloat. Be it noted that Halsey is a year older than that over-promoted gasbag at the Admiralty.  Well, I am sure that someone of less accomplishment will make way for him.
 
Science 

 
"Bedroom and Bath" The John B. Pierce Foundation of Manhattan has carried out a study of 131 typical families (income: $2000 to $3000) to find out if they would like nicer houses after the war. Remarkably enough, they would. Notice, not to beat a dead horse (oh, I kid, Reggie. Take that, Dobbin! And that!), that a $5000 house would be between two and three year's income for these "typical" families. At that rate, it would be ridiculous for them not to borrow to buy a house as a rental, never mind a home!  

 
"Halfway to Bedlam" The population of U.S. mental hospitals is increasing rapidly due to increased use for patients previously cared for at home or in county institutions. Mental hospitals are unhealthy, understaffed, overcrowded, and some "do not use insulin or electric shock therapy because of staff "inertia."
 
"Pregnancy Test" Doctors Abner Irving Weisman and Christopher William Choates have discovered a new and superior means of detecting pregnancy involving frogs rather than the famed rabbit.
 
"Eye Giver" A blind man has received a successful cornea transplant from a live woman.
 
"Zenith Zooms" Zenith Radio Corporation's improved, inexpensive ($40 vice $75) hearing aid is selling well.
 
"Four Way Infusions" Frontline Marine surgeons are doing all sorts of remarkable things to improve the  life-saving effect of blood and plasma transfusions.
 
Press, etc.

 
Pravda is fighting with the Times over Hanson Baldwin, who is accused of impugning the honour of the Red Army, while the paper's editorial board has had its own fight with Vice-President Wallace, whose invited column, "Intolerance," was deemed itself intolerant. Fourteen newspaper correspondents have passed combat training and are now to be attached to US Army units at the battlefront, with more to follow, hopefully in time to see some actual combat.

 
"Peculiar Revolutionary" The paper's six pages of Easter coverage around the world takes the Archbishop of York's sermon as summing it all up.  His peculiar revolution, as I am sure you will have heard, living in the diocese as you do, is that there should be a European "cooperative commonwealth" after the war. I, for one, am happy to look forward to yet more press stories about "commonwealth premiers" meeting to talk about talking.
 
"Up Catto" The paper quotes Harold Laski as to how England has been conquered twice, in 1066 by William the Norman, and in 1931 by "Montagu the Norman." It does so in greeting the appointment of Thomas Catto as Governor of the Bank of England in place of Montagu Norman. It notes the close association of Catto and J. M. Keynes, now Baron Keynes. The paper hopes for a grand multilateral system of trade and investemnt that binds Sterling and Dollar together. There is one, I thought? Bullion smuggling? Oh. Never mind, a legal one. Well, good luck with that, oh acquaintance of an acquaintance.
 
"Bright Pattern" The War Department has spent $14 billion on war materials delivered, and cancelled $13 billion in contracts. The real news is not the whopping figure, but that it has paid off 13,000 of 19,000 contracts, average time for filing only 3-and-a-half months, paying out on average of 80% of dollar claims. I have to say that my instinctive personal reaction is disbelief, but I know how much statistics can contradict personal experience, and I am probably dwelling too much on particular defeats, notably the cost of extricating ourselves from Buffalo.
 
"Battles and Startled Geese" The paper covers n exhibition of 46 "War Pictures by Chinese Children." The thesis of the piece is that China is suffering, and I would feel better if I did not know through whom ran the conduit for the relief that this pathetic portrait in words will generate.
 
"NBC v. Boston" The City of Boston is offended that NBC is rebroadcasting "Assignment: U.S.A," on the grounds that it intolerantly portrays Boston as being intolerant of various groups and political positions on account of the inherent bigotry of Irish-Americans.
 
"College of Love" Latins, especially Mexicans who go on this new radio show, are excitable.
 
Flight, 20 April 1944
 
Leaders

 
"Mine Laying" More than 13,000 minelaying sorties have been carried out by Bomber Command since April 13, 1940. It is noteworthy that this work has never been handed over to Coastal Command, since it has been more economical to use Bomber Command's resources for the work, leaving Coastal to more important naval cooperation work. "Preliminary Discussions" There have been talks about civil aviation!

 
War in the Air

 
The Russians are advancing. Aircraft are involved, the paper hypothesises. Air supply is in use in Burma. That is,we have not stopped doing it in the last week. (Slightly less stale is news of an "Air Commando" that might be involved.) The paper observes that the Fleet Air Arm is training Tamil inhabitants of Ceylon as ground crew. The paper points out that Tamils are "really" inhabitants of Madras, and Madras is where the old Madras Pioneer regiments and Corps of Sappers and Miners were raised, making Tamils racially well suited for military technical work. The fighter arm of the German air force continues to increase, first by 1000 aircraft, now by 250. This increased production has been achieved in spite of our air attacks, a considerable achievement, although the paper notes that any increase in front line strength "must" have been been accompanied by an equivalent increase in spares and reserves, or it is some kind of fraud. Ah, well, surely it is possible to see through such things.

 
"The Bomber Offensive" Continues, with long range fighters flying escorts in relays to provide continuous cover to day bombers for flights as far as Bavaria.
 
"H.Q. in Ceylon" A new Southeast Asia Command headquarters is announced at Candy in Ceylon. The paper reads the tea leaves and divines an amphibious invasion of lower Burma. Aircraft will be involved. And aircraft carriers!
 
"Spitfire Twelve: First Details of the R.A.F.'s Low-altitude fighter: Outstanding Performance with R.R. Griffon Engine and Cleaned-Up Airframe" Although flown in prototype form in 1941 and in service now "for some time," the paper is finally permitted to give details of this new type.  The airframe, as noted, is cleaned up, and the Griffon is a 2000hp engine on 36.7 litres compared with the Merlin's 27. It has a two-speed mechanical supercharger similar to that in the Merlin XX, but with a "remote" gear box that can also drive the auxiliaries. (Giving fixed speed operation, I would imagine.)

 

 
This is apparently as much as we are to know about the Spitfire XII this week, as page over we get
 
"The Fairey Barracuda: Chequered History of Unjustly Criticised Aircraft: Reasons for Delays Some Difficult Design Features Solved"

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I am not sure what there is to criticise here, for if there were a single plane that would choose to provide cover from an inconvenient rain squall, it would be the Barracuda. It has awnings in all directions! But, apparently, criticisms have been made. "Some undoubtedly originating from the enemy." The critics, awful, awful people the lot of them, have now been refuted in every imaginable way, and must humbly seek forgiveness by doing pilgrimage on hands and knees to the Fairey plant in Stockport.
 
A final paragraph notes that B. J. Hurren was the author of the foregoing article, and adds an appreciation of the Youngman flap, high wing, three-person-crew, and specialised low-altitude Merlin 32 engine, all of which Hurren somehow neglected to discuss. Altogether the oddest substitute for a byline that I have ever seen, and strange even for this paper.

 
Studies in Recognition

This week we learn to tell the Avro York, Douglas Skymaster, Lockheed Constellation, and a bizarre monster called the Me 323 apart.

 

Here and There

Air Vice-Marshal Kenny of the RCAF has died * while Colonel Isaac W. Ott of the USAAF has been promoted.

 
The CinC, Bomber Command has congratulated his crews for their work in March. I suppose that if the number of planes lost cannot be suppressed, there is not much point in trying to deny the disastrous outcome of the night air fighting...
 
The paper is impressed at a final total of 9,118 a/c built in the United States in March, enough to hit the 110,000 aircraft target.
 
British bombers for the first time dropped a lower weight of bombs than American in March.
 
"Mosquito Genetics" A potted history of the famed aeroplane. Not much that is technically new here, but there is a bit of a tension between the project of covering innovation and being interesting. Who cares about a "universal gear box" when you can see another picture of the Mosquito Fighter's four 20mm cannon armament?

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"Auster IV: Artillery Spotting, Communications and Ambulance Work among Functions of Latest Taylorcraft: Lycoming Engine Now Fitted"
 
Correspondence

 
At risk of reading tea leaves, it seems that the spate of interesting correspondence truly is ebbing. There are two letters on the ATC dress code (and one by an ATC man on "round the clock bombing"), one on the flight of birds, to take the old-timers back to the day when the Aeronautical Journal could always count on making up its numbers and its sales with matters ornithological, a contribution by "Naviator" on the subject of the "backbone of the fleet," who rejects the idea of a multirole fleet type, and finally a letter by R. Shoham, B.Sc., showing that the ducted radiator really does produce net negative drag. It is probably as neat a comment on the pro-air cooled engine crowd that he compares the ducted radiator directly to the low-drag Townend ring, ancestor of the modern "negative drag" cowling.

 
Time, April 24 1944
 
Australians anxious for evidence that someone outside the continent (it is a continent, isn't it?) will be pleased to hear that their premier, John Curtin, is on the cover if this number of the paper. I hope he is not as boring as King!
 
International

 
"Man of Good Will" Edward Stettinius continues to See People in London! He brought Churchill a nice ham, lunched with Lord Catto, had "earnest talks" with Eden, saw Imperial Chemical's Lord McGowan, Production Minister Oliver Lyttelton, audienced with the King. In the wake of these talks, Sweden, Spain and Turkey were sternly warned against supplying Germany with ball-bearings, chromium and tungsten.

Belgium's government in exile has come up with a postwar plan: it will resign. From what I recall of those distant days of the prewar, it seems like a very Belgian solution to whatever problem it is meant to solve.
 
"Australia: Journey Into the World" Did you know that Australia has as many sheep as there are Americans, fewer people than has New York City, even though it is a very large place? Many other amusing and true facts abut Australia are shared on the way to discussing Mr. Curtin, who is socialistically atheistical, but has his eye on America.
 
"Africa for the Africans" Paul Robeson and Adolphe Felix Sylvestre Eboue intimate that the continent might conceivably be run by and for its inhabitants, as opposed to the beneficiaries God so clearly intended: washed-out would be Oxford men. The French similarly decline to be run by benevolent foreigners.
 
Finland is surrendering more.
 
Greeks and Latins (Italians, Chileans, Argentinians, this week) are excitable.
 
The paper is so upset by the Chinese controversy of the moment that it quotes Confucius on Tsai Yu. Then it quotes Dr. Sun Fo in its next story. I hope that the Generalissimo takes proper cognizance of the fact that the paper disapproves.
 
"Henry on Tour" Henry Wallace is going to take his self-embarrassing act on world tour this spring, and plans to be back in time to be dumped from the ticket in person on July 18.
 
War

"Next: Skyrocketing" The United States Navy in the Pacific is now very large, and the war will be over there sooner than expected due to the skyrocketing rate of its advance. The carrier fleet is a juggernaut that will steamroll all Japanese resistance, I paraphrase one Marine Corps general. Texans aboard one navy carrier have replaced the American ensign in some technical context with the Stars and Bars, which is amusing because the Civil War was but a frolic amongst cousins. The navy is so big that it needs two stories saying the same thing.

 
"A Sea Regained" The story would be more timely if the paper went to press afterSevastopol fell, but it pretty obviously was about to, and why waste a headline?
 
"When the Sea Shall Give Up Her Dead" A doctor at the front in the Pacific is upset about the senseless loss of life on the battlefield, and objects to strikes at home, Senators fostering racial prejudice, and the small mustering out pay of $300 currently authorised. (Who was it, Reggie, who dropped that comment about how, when someone says that it is not about the money, it always is?).
 
"Radio National" A would-be subversive German station that pretends to broadcast within Britain, talked aobut a new Nazi secret weapon consisting of a projectile loaded with a chemical that freezes everything within 500 yards to 332 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Your daughter-out-of-law casually announces that the fireball this would create 401 yards from impact would be far more damaging.
 
"Bong" Richard Bong is now America's Ace of Aces. Colonel Rickenbacker is following through with his promise of a case of whiskey to mark the occasion, and the paper notices that this has upset the Iowa Anti-Saloon League (predictably) and General MacArthur (less so.)
 
"Achtung Pokryshkin" Colonel Pokryshkin of the Red Air Force, meanwhile, has just won his 59th victory.
 
Alexander_Pokryshkin_1941.jpg

"Slugging Fifteenth" The paper is impressed by manly "Air Corpsman" General Nathan Twining. In other news, the RAF dropped 4000 tons of bombs on rail targets in France and Belgium one night last week.
 
"Congress Asks Questions" The latest Naval Appropriation Bill, of 32.6 billion, has passed the House, but it did not go entirely unquestioned. Congress learned that a radar set on a "destroyer escort" is $28,750. This confirms that radar is not secret this week. Matters are different with the new "loran," which, the paper assures us, is off the record. Torpedo gyros are now plentiful, but ball bearings are a bottleneck. Battle damage cost the Navy only 12 million in the first half of fiscal 1944, but other "heavy cases" have come in since January, raising the twelve month total to $100 million. A single 16" AP shell costs $1,252. The "hardest single thing facing Navy doctors" is filariasis. The Marshalls operation required 1.5 million barrels of fuel oil, and a single, damaging Japanese air raid cost us $2.5 million. Someone at the Navy Department approved a new football stadium at Annapolis out of the budget. who? Congress wants to know!
 
The paper notices that for the purposes of noticing how large the US fleet now is, the war will be over soon. For the purposes of not noticing how large the US Navy budget now is, the war will go on forever.
 
"Two Soldiers and a Marine" Major Gregory Boyington, Second Lieutenant Ernest Childers, of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and Captain Maurice L. ("Footsy") Britt, of Lonoke, Arkansas, and, more recently, the Detroit Lions, have won Medals of Honor, while Dwight Eisenhower has been given (honorary) KGB and Orders of Suvorov.
 
Domestic
 
"Methodists and Businessmen" John Martin Vorys (D, Ohio) has opinions! 

"No Confidence" The press has lost confidence in the Administration's foreign policy, per the Twohey Analysis of Newspaper Opinion. 

"The MacArthur Candidacy" General MacArthur's continuing candidacy in the Illinois Primary has occasioned notice that the General is terminally indiscreet, which has apparently dampened the ardor of the 8% or so of GOP voters who prefer him to Dewey. I personally would prefer that a man appointed Army chief of staff by President Hoover not be President, and, given that 96% of Americans agree with me, it seems as though I will get my wish. It is even to be hoped, probably in vain, that at some point the press will accept this fact and cease to run "MacArthur for President" stories. "Eight percent of GOP Primary voters are lunatics" might be a story worth following up on, though. Will they shift their support to Bricker? I, for one, am excited about the prospect that we will talk and talk about anyone but Dewey until it is time for the Governor to sweep the New Deal away in the Fall. Nebraska Democrats, expected to nominate one no-hoper to challenge for the governorship, nominate another instead!
 
"Give Plants to Warriors" Harold Ickes had rather too much to drink at the Commonwealth Club this week. So did I, and then we went out to see some Gilbert and Sullivan. (The paper treats the alleged subject of the story with high seriousness. Perhaps it should  have taken in some comic opera, too.)
 
"The U.S.Shrinks" Howard Hughes set a new transcontinental record of six hours and 58 minutes on his personal Constellation last week.

784px-C-69.jpg

 

"Thin Men" A demonstration at Great Meadows, N.J. forces "Farmer Ed Kowalick" to send away five Japanese "he had imported from an Arizona relocation center" to help out with his 600 acre farm. The paper takes this as a victory for prejudice. I am not going to dissent, only ask how much it was proposed to pay these men.
 
Business

 
"Mr. Avery v. Mr. Roosevelt" Sewell Lee Avery, the 69-year-old chairman of Mongomery-Ward & Co., is trying to break his union again.

 
"Santa Claus Has Gone" War Mobilization Director James F. Byrnes spells out the harsh realities in a speech to the Academy of Political Science in Manhattan. In the next 20 months, war production will be cut back $16.75 billion. Another 1.4 billion will be struck from the spare parts programs. Plants no longer needed for the war effort will be closed. There will come the cry: "Woodman, spare that plant. But we must realise that Santa Claus has gone." Byrne rejects schemes for dismissal pay, but proposes a boost to state unemployment benefits, funded by the Government under a to-be-passed "federal demobilization bill." Such a scheme, Jimmy Byrnes hopes, "will give private enterprise an assurance that its efforts to expand after the war will not be frsutrated . . . by unemployment and falling purchasing power." On the subject of taxes, which many US businessmen consider the number one problem, Byrne expresses no opinion.
 
"The Trend" Bank profits are up more than "even the most optimistic bankers had dared predict." It is warned, however, that with huge deposits, the proportion of bank capital to deposit liabilities is falling to dangerous levels, with as little as 5 cents of bank money to every $1 deposited. This will make banks less willing to make high risk loans after the war.
 
Science and Medicine

 
"Methylolurea" Du Pont has invented impregnated wood! Well, not invented such a product so much as invented a new impregnating material. Well, not so much invented a new impregnating material as ...claimed credit for Forestry Service work with it? I think?

 
"Witchery in North Dakota" Teacher Pauline Rebel and her eight pupils at the Wild Plum School near Richardton, North Dakota demonstrate that America will not lack for future generations of farmers so long as it continues educating the children of current farmers like this. 
 
"Rape of the Laboratories" Not-at-all inflammatory story about Selective Service taking young scientists. The paper does not quote Vannevar Bush, who did not say anything. Which is a strange enough thing to do that I expect that ity was the good doctor who pushed the story, speaking off the record. It is rather eye-opening to note that "of 200 men in a key war-instrument laboratory, all but two are under 26." I am  not sure what that says about the circumstances of American science before the war, but probably nothing good. One wonders what happened to the scientists who were not hired in 1941 and before.
 
"Ten Years for Teeth" It is proposed to add fluorine to the water supply of several towns in upper New York state and Canada for ten years in order to see what happens to dental health in these cities.
 
"Popeyes Unpopped" The surgical treatment for relieving pressure on the eyes due to certain thyroid conditions and other ailments is further improved, reducing the chances of ...the eyes actually popping? That does not sound pleasant!
 
"When Bed is Bad" Doctor William Dock proposes that "absolute bed rest kills moer patients than anesthesia and all the drugs in the pharmacopoeia added together." The custom of making all victims of heart attacks stay in bed for six weeks is "almost as illogical as the bleedings and purgings of previous generations."
 
Press, Religion, Education, Arts

 
Wesbrook Pegler is out of the Chicago Sun.

 

 
"Televisionaries" The American Newspaper Publisher Association's annual convention will have sessions on FM (frequency modulation) radio and television, including a "newspaper television demonstration" by General Electric.

 
Paper finds Daily Express's "Beachcomber" hilarious, tries to explain why, fails.
 
The paper finds evidence of religious revival, commendable moral leadership from churchmen, notably Rector Ray of Manhattan's Little Church Around the Corner, who advises against hasty wartime marriages, noting that relationships should mature into marriage after reflection, as in the case of his daughter, socialite Kathryna Hoffman Ray, and her new husband, 27 year-old Air Force Lieutenant Courtlandt Nicoll. 
 
A gas coupon forging ring at a Denver high school has been broken up, and now students cannot afford to drive their "jalopies" to school any more, the number of students' cars in the lot falling from 120 to 40.
 
Bernard de Voto need no longer be upset that he is not in this week's paper. He had to throw together a collection of essays into a book to do it, but his streak continues. The book is on the theme of how awful Van Wyck Brooks is. I, for one, am glad to have that cleared up.
 
 
In closing:
 
Sirs:
CONCERNING REFERENCE TO DOG FOOD IN
TIME (APRIL 3), OUR EXPERIENCE IS CONTRARY
TO STATEMENT THAT "DOGS DO NOT LIKE THE DEHYDRATED PRODUCTS." DOGS IN OUR RESEARCH KENNELS EAT OUR DEHYDRATED PRODUCT WITH SAME GUSTO AS PREVIOUS CANNED FOOD. . . . ALSO THERE IS ERROR IN STATEMENT THAT DOG FOOD SALES IN U.S. OFF 50% AS COMPARED TO FORMER CANNED DOG FOOD. ONE REASON FOR ERROR IS THAT TOTAL NUMBER OF POUNDS CURRENTLY SOLD IS OF COURSE LESS BECAUSE PRESENT PRODUCT IS DEHYDRATED. . . .
C. M. OLSON
Dog Food Department Swift & Co. Chicago

TIME interviewed no dogs, suggests that Dog Food Department Head Olson get in touch with the Independent Grocers Alliance of America, which disputes his statement.—ED.
Flight, 27 April 1944
 
Leaders

 
"Transport Command and the Future" Transport Command has learned much about transporting things by air. The future will be bright. "Bombing, Strategic and Tactical" Bomber Command mounts ever heavier attacks. This past week came the 4000 tons dropped on rail targets in France and Belgium. German air resistance, against this and the American daylight attacks, was surprisingly weak. Hopefully this reflects the Combined Bomber Offensive's effort to reduce German fighter production by bombing and air combat.

 

War in the Air

 
The Crimea has almost fallen! Aircraft were involved! Admiral Somerville's aircraft carriers of the East Indies Fleet have attacked Sabang in Aceh. Two years and more of war in the Indian Ocean and we are barely on the verandah of Mecca. The paper notices that this week's bombing work in France is very similar to that which preceded the invasion of Sicily. A wink and a nudge, as it were. Although a reader of this paper would have to be insensate not to have reached this conclusion on his own.

 
Here and There

 
The RAF Atlantic Transport Group has celebrated its first anniversary, and its first annual lrecord of air mail sent, this week. Fifteen million letters, or 65 tons per month. And if the occasional aircraft has gone slightly more heavily laden than its manifest would suggest, well....

 
Some B-25 Mitchells are being built with 75mm cannons! (This must count as news, because it is in the paper.)
 
Sweden will no longer intern Allied prisoners escaping from Denmark, as Denmark is not technically a belligerent country. Also, Sweden is not technically giving Germany the high hand, but....
 
Hollywood film actor Jimmie Stewart is in Britain for a tour of duty with 8th Air Force and has already flown 11 missions. The draft dodger has thus avoided active duty service for two full years of the war while more patriotic actors have been risking life and limb by making instructional films in Burbank.
 
We have given the Americans various things under Reverse Lend-Lease, including 750 Spitfires.
 
"Even I Can Understand --19: Why does an engine convert less than a third of the fuel energy into useful work?" The paper offers a two page discussion of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
 
George H. Miles, "The Tandem Monoplane: Its Merits and Drawbacks Compared with Those of Tailless, Tail-first and All-wing Designs: 'Libellula' suggested as Name for Class" George H. Miles thinks that we should built a preposterous-looking aeroplane, as other preposterous planes have been built, and it would not be as bad as all that in practice, and, really, the taxpayer is made out of money, anyway.
Miles_Libellula_M_35_UO235.jpg

"Future of Civil Aviation" Roy Fedden has a plan!
 
Major F. A. de V. Robertson, "Transport Command," The man of much punctuation bestirs himself to deliver a laborious single page treatment. Transport Command has administration! And it transports things! And the Major needs a drink!
 
Speaking of life's disappointments drowned with drink...
 
"Studies in Aircraft Recognition" coves the differences between the Boeing Sea Ranger,Consolidated-Vultee CoronadoBV 139 and Grumman Goose. It might do well to  notice their similarities, too. To wit, they are all fairly safe planes as long as they do not get too close to the water. Actually, that is probably unfair to Grumman, which, by sticking to its last, produced a fairly useful little plane.
 
Behind the Lines

 
The Spanish Blue Division is busily disengaging from the Eastern Front, no doubt to the bitter tears of its soldiers. If, by this time, there were any. Vichy France has a plan for postwar civil aviation! The much celebrated Major Rudel flies a Ju-87 armed with two 37mm antitank cannons. The paper notes that they are not effective in the ground antitank role, which strikes me as a rather unfair comparison, given that tanks are not, as I understand it, armoured so well against attack from above as they are from the same level. Rudel gives an extended discussion on the use of aircraft to counterattack and blunt Russian spearheads. No wonder the Germans have been so successful in stopping the Russian advance! "Fear of Allied Air Raids will mean less Amusement for the People of Tokyo" The police of Tokyo are to control crowds in the Ginza in the event of air raids. Hence "less amusement." Perhaps they should just borrow from Boston's practices and introduce blue laws?

 
C. B. Bailey-Watson, "Airpower Support: A Review of U.S. Air Service Command Operating in this Country: Comparison of Size and Detail" Various staggering numbers: 1200 USAAF engines, aggregating 1.5 million hp, are overhauled in Britain each month. This requires only as much labour as to produce 70 new engines each month! (I assume this neglects manufacture of parts.) "Literally thousands" of modifications have been made in British area depots. Various other components are serviced and rebuilt. "Acres of warehouse space" are required. More is being built. 'Literally, masses of aircraft pass through." A Statistical Control office of 400 statistical special officers accumulate statistics on, presumably, literally masses of special subjects.
 
This article is literally absent useful information.

 
Indicator, "Co-operation and Confidence" Pilots need to be taken more seriously by technical men on the ground, says the old pilot. Cue enraged letters from technical men denouncing Indicator as mistaken in thinking that they are not.

 
"Ceylonese Fleet Air Arm" The paper continues to find it worthy of comment that swarthy folk in palmy climes can learn how to hold wrenches, keep their whites clean, and march in formation.
 
Correspondence

 
"Literary Interlude" Frank M. Buss recommends various books in which aircraft are involved. "Heir O'Naught" and "Projet" write very slight epistles. "Renard" explains that any discussion of turbine compressors should really start with Benjamin Franklin. I humbly disagree. Surely we can get Elijah in!

 
Colin R. Barty writes in to say that of course British aircraft are better than American.
 
"M. I. Mar, E. Ex-Chief Engineer," replies to Major J. R. Gould's recently expressed regret that Napier did not follow up on the Jumo diesel with an extended discussion of what an development would look like: "A six-cylinder, liquid-cooled, in-line, opposed-piston, two-cycle engine with upper piston stroke half of that of the lwoer and a crankshaft with one throw and two eccentrics per cylinder. Mixture would be by the customary centrifugal superchargers, two-speed and/or two-stage as necessary. Since there is nothing new in this idea, and such engines have not not come to pass, there are obviously some serious 'snags.'" Will we ever see such a monstrosity?

 
Another writer supports George Mile's Thamesside airport.

 

And now I turn to Aero Digest. 

 

Aero Digest, 1 April, 1944

 

General Arnold is "Confident of the Outcome."

-Charles M. Stanton believes that "Aviation is Everyone's Business." At the head of the article he offers a (to put it charitably) ridiculous forecast of 600,000 aircraft in operation in the United States in the near future, perhaps including helicopters, rocket ships and "roadable" aircraft. This does not seem the stuff of a head of the CAA. At least until he moves on to an estimate of the number of airfields that the CAA will need to administer in order to accommodate so many ships. His empire, it turns out, must grow great indeed. I should check with Cousin Bess to see if her husband's tairport-building scheme is still alive.

-Scott Aviation asks whether your plan to build up an aircraft accessory dealership network has a sales program.

 

-The most interesting technical articles cover the affects of altitude on electrical insulation and methods for calculating pressure drop in hydraulic tubing. As aircraft are called on to do more and more in the air, the question of transmitting these services become more important, and so do the practicalities of the alternatives.

 

Aero Digest, 15 April 1944

 

The cover advertises the "much heralded" B-17G. My information is that this is one of the more belated heraldings of an aircraft already in action over Germany.

 

IMG_0360.JPG

 

 

-Franklin M. Knox, the paper's Detroit Editor, believes that "Shipping of Perishables by Air" will begin to be feasible when ton per mile costs fall to 15 cents. Rio Grande growers will ship early strawberries at this price, while at 5 cents, even green beans will pay. This strikes me as optimistic. A truck, "going like sixty," can be across the continent in less than three days, and it is hard to see this as less utopian than air shipping costs of 5 cents/ton mile.

 

-Clare Boothe Luce suggests that "When Peace Comes to Aviation," something about air stewardess uniforms, I think, or perhaps the Pledge or missions to China. I should have to read it to be sure, and that is more attention than I am inclined to give the bluestocking set.

 

You think I mock, just because Mrs. Luce is a woman, but you should see the other "news" articles in this number. No: I shall clip an ad, instead.

 

IMG_0154.JPG

 

The Editorial expresses very strong opinions about the Lea-McCarran Act. The masthead quotes the "Mayflower Compact." The point here being that the proposed new civil aviation regulations are so un-American that they were un-American before there was an America.  And if you think that is over-egging the pudding, the last number quoted Herbert Hoover in the same place. In whatever heavenly fastness the paper dwells, there is a certain longing for the days of The Engineer, it seems.

 

Our Washington Correspondent manages to get one interesting nugget into three pages: the War Production Board is once again urging aircraft factories to aggressively dispose of surplus materials before cancellation. Which is to say, right now. With our building and renovation projects hanging fire, I am minded to approach the factories to see what might be on offer.

 

C. B. F. MacAuley reports that the "Bell Helicopter Achieves Stability." Perhaps talk of helicopter commuting is premature, after all.

 

S. H. Rolle, of the Powerplant Section of the CAA's Aircraft Engineering Division, reports that 1895 of 3305 documented air carrier power plant accidents he studied were due to ignition problems, mostly due to spark plugs, while in non-carrier operations, the leading cause of failure after structural (1132 of 2658) was carburertion, at 919. Air carriers had 792 structural failures out of 3305, the balance of the known causes of failure being lubrication and human error (118/3305; 136/2658).  Spark plugs! We have a great deal of progress to make in electrical engineering, Reggie. (Here I go after Dobbin from a differrent, but familiar angle.)

 

Messrs. Boice and Levoy return to "Electrical Systems for Large Aircraft" in this number, making the interesting point that aircraft systems are pioneering high-speed, low-weight components. Details of magnetic eddies in iron cores become more pressing as those cores become smaller, hence with larger surface areas to smaller volumes. A better understanding of this kind of electrical engineering could lead to smaller devices in terrestrial applications, too.

 

I. R. Goldsmith, "Weather Networks of the Future" discusses the need for more weather stations, more widely distributed. The current continental network includes 100 stations spread from Panama to Alaska, but this is hardly enough. The Army has hardly begun to train enough meteorologists, much less tackled the problem of sending them to the remote areas in which weather tends to brew. Therefore, Goldsmith proposes that, in the end, we must make do with "automatic weather stations." Can those be built by electrical engineering firms? Why, yes, I think they can!

 

-An article on "Fuel Systems" perhaps provides insight for those asking why it took so long (if it took so long, I suppose) for fighting aircraft to be equipped with "drop" tanks and "ferry" tanks. Aircraft fuel plumbing is, as usual, more difficult to engineer than it looks to be. Note that it is not just fuel draining out of the aircraft! Even intertank drainage can adversely affect trim.

 

Digest of the News

 

After seeing the figure of merit sink ever deeper in the press's news summary, we understandably head the late April number with the electrifying news of 9,118 a/c built in March. (Structure weight is also up, and more "tactical types" --not warplanes this month-- are being built, etc.) However, the story reminds us that one swallow does not make, etc. Production in April will be lower, and after that it will be hard to hit the schedule as the draft takes skilled workers.

 

Ford announces that 3000 B-24s have been made at Willow Run, albeit 1000 in knock-down form to be assembled elsewhere. It notes that this exceeds the Army quota, but not that the Army quota has been cut. (As I am sure you know by now, Reggie, the B-24 has been pulled from daylight operations over Germany.) Vultee's man in Detroit dryly admits that projections of 1000 a/c a day are never going to be met, because aircraft are not automobiles. In not unrelated news, the paper shines a positive light on the recent conversion of B-24s into photographic reconnaissance planes. It seems rather impractical to me, but any use for the things is better than no use. Another positive light is the type of installed camera, coyly referred to as the "super eye," which is likely to have peacetime applications.

 

*Inevitably.

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Postblogging Technology, May 1944, I: Pent Up

 
Fort+Astoria.jpg

 

My Dearest Reggie:

 

I find after finishing my personal note that it has evolved into a long complaint about the local sept of our kin across the divide of 1822. It should not be that way, and I would wish instead to raise a smile on your face by recording that your youngest was actually permitted to escort "Miss V.C." to a dance at the college. He was over the moon before he conceived the idea that she was only trying to make Lieutenant A. jealous, at which point he crashed back to Earth with the moody speed of his age. Your eldest will be flying back from Boston next week, and writes with Kodaks of the jumpers he has bought for the babies enclosed. Your daughter-out-of-law has resumed walks with Mrs. Murphy, who recovered from her own delivery more quickly. Judith is a marvel with the babies. It is as though experience counted in this matter of being a grandmother --or in this case a substitute grandmother.

 

(Included in this package are pictures for you, and another package that you will direct to Chungking via the usual channels for your  counterparts.)

 

 

And now to return to the more depressing matter of challenges and questionable investments. I am glad to  hear that the Earl has taken note of the febrile condition of the London Exchange, and stopped pressing, however temporarily, for an agreement with "Cousin H.C." I do not know how I shall wiggle out of the trap, in the end though.

 

That depressing thought was occasioned by an uncomfortable interview with the Engineer and his son,  a  miserable day

 

Miserable+Day+on+Airstrip+One.PNG

 

brightened by his daughter, brought to meet her grandfather. Though it is still a depressing thought that the girl will not see her grandfather between what is deemed in that cursed line the age of reason and such maturity as signifies discretion. (Not that we do things that differently.) In any case, "M" was there to ensure that would bit my tongue when the Engineer urged me to get on with making our investment in Fontana. He knows that I think the idea potentially disastrous. I am sure that he agrees with me; and, therefore, I am sure he is doing it out of pure malice.

 

Since I can hardly say what I think in front of a three-year-old, I need bite my tongue, only gesturing in the direction of the Invasion --and, floating a trial balloon, the Election. That is where the Engineer went queer, scorning the prospects of the European war, and sure that the election will go against the Democrats, in 1948 if not 1944. which he seems to think will end as it did in 1918. "Look to the Pacific," he told me. "It will be MacArthur in Tokyo in 1945, and MacArthur in the White House in 1948. It is about time that this country did away with one party, one section rule." I levelly asked him if he really believed that, and he shrugged. The idea of MacArthur winning in 1948 is a long shot, but, on the military side, he seems much more firm, persuaded that Nimitz will eventually take one risk too many, and that the Army will rescue the Navy. The air admirals, he told me, are all either idiots or square pegs, and will make sure of it. He should know, he observes cynically. He appointed many of them.

 

I can hardly argue with that. I did point out the Fortune poll, mentioned below, which found MacArthur more popular amongst Southern business managers than Roosevelt. Is it not the case that the problem with the "Solid South" is that voters there are too deferential to local leadership? The Engineer waved me away, but his son's eyes showed a certain alertness. Incurious, but not unintelligent, I will say again. "M" may yet see her father in high office. 

 

Speaking of gradual initiations, a most interesting conversation with "Miss V.C." she now knows that there can have been no McKee commanding Spokane House in 1811, as it was not founded until 1812. How then to account for her mother's certainty that "McKee" was in the country that year --the year before Astoria? It must be California, she concludes. The McKees were involved in Upper California before the Companies came to the Northwest.

 

But what was their business, she asks, sharply: fur to Canton, even then? If so, by the Maritime Trade? She pulls out her copy of Irving's Astoria. Her finger hovers over the name of Alexander McKay, an inspired, if entirely mistaken guess, and swoops off to the romantic heather to draw in Thomas Muir, spinning a tale of international intrigue rather more plausible than the truth.

 

 

 

 

 

Flight, 4 May 1944

 
Leaders
 
“Identification Difficulties” Looking back at tragic episodes in the invasion of Sicily in which transports full of paratroopers, suggests that something should be done to make sure that this does not happen again. I hope that all of the fleet AA gunners are fans of the paper’s “Studies in Recognition!”
 
“Internationalisation: A Supra-national Air Force?” Labour thinks that civil aviation should be international and that the United Nations should possess the ability to bomb aggressor nation’s factories to prevent aggression. I imagine that this will seem like a bloodless alternative to war until we actually start killing factory workers. And the infants in the nursery school that is inevitably right next to the factory. I know that if the bombs blew up my paper work, they would inevitably blow up some screeching toddlers.
I have mixed feelings, is what I am saying, Reggie.
 
 
Waiting+for+Go.PNG
 
The caption says it all. 
 
If it does not, news of a second airborne landing behind Japanese lines in Burma tells the tale. The “Air Commando,” headed by Colonel Philip Cochran  apparently consists of ground crew and engineers to operate an airhead to support the airborne force’s operations. I do not imagine that this will work in France by itself, but an inland airhead combined with coastal landings might stretch the German garrison further. There has also been a landing on the western tip of New Guinea, and continuing attacks on Rabaul to give the Admiral something to do. Surely he needs his entire staff for this work? In Europe, Bomber Command is assailing communications to impede German reinforcements, and the German Air Force continues to hoard its reserves.  Mines in the Baltic are now closing neutral ports as well, with shipping blocked up in a Swedish port for three days waiting for the minesweeping flotilla to be available. This might seem impolitic, but we certainly do not want the Germans getting their hands on high grade Swedish iron ore, which is often more than 55% ferric material by weight. Berlin was attacked in daylight by 750 Eighth Air Force bombers. Fat Chow reports a day out with the Japanese Colonel intriguing for his radio station on the Unter den Linden. The man is beside himself.
 
“Tactical Air Support” The paper attends a demonstration by an American unit of Ninth Air Force Fighter Command, under Brigadier General E. R. Quesada, an unusual name, although I somehow suspect that he is not the son of a New Mexican vaquero. General Quesada’s force includes Mustangs, Lightnings, and Thunderbolts, and, in an interesting demonstration, a CG-4A glider, which was shown landing a jeep with a radio to provide an instant forward air support party. I hope that the radio in the jeep is more rugged than the one in the parlour, which was knocked over by Lieutenant A the other week and spent 10 days in the shop before I gave up waiting for parts from the distributor and sought out the necessary valves on the water.
 
Here and There
 
The Irish have suspended airmail deliveries to a variety of overseas locations. England is being locked down so tightly that it must be squeaking! “Canute in Kingsway” Variious pacifists want area bombing shut down. If the paper’s view is not clear enough from the section header, it quotes a member of the audience as scolding Mr. Rhys Davies,M.P., for asserting that the war had been brought on by the “monied interest.” It is reported that theDouglas P-70 is now one of the most heavily armed fighters in the world. This will be frightening news for any German bomber slow enough to be caught by it, so Gotha pilots everywhere beware! Douglas, on the other hand, deserves hearty congratulations for extending the newspaper lifespan of this ancient plane. 
 
“—If Any” Someone has filed for the postwar California-Tokyo air route. The paper amuses itself by suggesting that there might not be a Tokyo after the war. Remind me to share this hilarious jape with any Japanese women and children I see. Even more hilarity on the subject of exterminating the Japanese race follows in Stubblefield's column.
 
“RAAF Expansion” The RAAF is now twenty times larger than it was before the war, and “25.3 percent” larger than it was in 1943. It has so far spent £265 million on maintenance.  “Long, Long Trail” A story of how Red Army men did a five day trek into the Arctic wilderness to recover two German fighters and their pilots, and packed the dismantled planes out on 100 reindeer.
 
 “Loaned to the BBC” Mr. E. Coulston Shepherd, of the Air League of Great Britain, has been lent to the BBC as an Air Correspondent for the Invasion. It should be a nice change of pace for Mr. Coulston Shepherd, from professionally frightening Colonel Blimps to paid employment. The paper points out an Aviation article on castering undercarriage wheels and laments that it did it first, but that the MacLaren undercarriage is being ignored in its home country, even as the industrious Americans take it up. It is all, I dimly remember being told in my youth, down to disestablishmentarianism
 
“Apprentices” The Society of British Aircraft Constructors has recommendations on the subject! They will be forthcoming at a later date. “Indian Wind Tunnel.” India is to have a wind tunnel. A hilarious joke at the expense of the HindustanTimes, Gandhi, Jinnah, or, really, any number of subjects may be inserted. 
 
“Death of John A. Crosby-Warren” The deceased, who wrote for Flight as “Sparrow,” died while testing a prototype aircraft. A Cambridge MA, he served with the Cambridge University Squadron of the RAFVR, did a brief apprenticeship with Bristol, and went on to be one of the senior test pilots in the Hawker-Siddeley pool, testing experimental jet aircraft. I suppose that it is not news that Gloster is involved in the jet programme, given that the one publicly known British jet was a Gloster machine, but I do not imagine that Crosby-Warren was flying the publicised plane. On the other hand, what do I know?
Gloster_Meteor_F.4_VT340_Fairey_Ringway_
Behind the Lines
 
“Flying Dentists” The Germans are now flying dentists into bombed areas with their eupment. “Caproni” is absorbing various independent firms in Fascist northern Italy. “Secret Research” Into rocket (or jet?) propelled pilotless aircraft, controlled from the ground by wireless, are said to be conducted by the Germans on the Baltic island of Bornholm. One aircraft crashed into the ground, causing a violent explosion. German laboratories are said to have developed a non-crack, splinter-proof, pressure-resistant high altitude glass. The Blohm und Voss6-engined flying boat is reported, equipped with either 985hp BMW 325s or Jumodiesels. Excellent news; passengers of the future borne by the  engines of 1939!
 
“Round the Spitfire XII” We can now show you that the Spitfire XII is a very pretty plane. Hopefully, so is the plane that has replaced it!
 
“Flying Fortress (B-17G)” I was a bit hard on the paper above. It can only report what it can report, and sometimes air forces play it close to the chest. Other times, as with this may-paged technical report on a front-line bomber, they do not. The B-17G is no longer state-of-the-art, of course. That would be the B-29, with whatever even larger plane is following along behind, much intimated by news of ever larger generators and airscrews. The B-17G is a still further improvement. It does not have a tail turret, quite yet, although it does have two guns in a gunner-operated sponson, a considerable improvement over the old “tunnel” gun. It does have a chin turret.
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Still, the B-17G is still much improved over the original. The paper notes that the B-17D (i.e. “Forterss I”) weighed 40,000lbs, while the Fortess II (B-17E) weighed 50,000. The article goes on to describe the internal arrangements and structure of the B-17 in significant detail.
 
I am not sure how significant the static structure of an aircraft is, however, especially when it is passé. The same cannot be said for the two ads on the interleaved full page spread, which suggests that the paper restrictions on Flight are being relaxed. The first is for Cellon, or, as it now calls itself, Cellon Laboratories. You and I are familiar with it as the manufacturer of record of cellulose acetate, the wood-based plastic for which a bright future is so often predicted. In the aviation case, it is an important “dope” for treating surfaces. However, the Cellon ad does not mention any of this, but rather describes sulphite drugs, antiseptics, anti-insect sprays, and even a hand cream! So that is what the company has been branching out into.
 
Unfortunate given our timber interests, as we might have hoped for more uses of cellulose acetate on a par with rayon. 

 

1920s-stockings-pinteret.jpg
 
Studies in Aircraft Recognition
 
Today we are treated to the Martin Mariner, Short Sunderland, and PBY Catalina, which can be told apart while still in the air, albeit not as easily when sitting on the shoal, six fathoms down.
 
“Future of Civil Aviation” Sir Roy Fedden believes it has one. In order to be less boring, he then makes up stories about future “all wing” airplanes. They really are on the horizon this time! Fedden, or perhaps the paper, protests about “unjustified criticism” of flying boats. He also talks about futureengines, which might include a 42 cylinder(!) air-cooled engine giving 5000hp, presumably powering flying boats with an all-up-weight of 300,000lbs, at which point we will give one to the King of Siam, I suppose.
 
Correspondence
 
Seems to be by men with time on their hands, all in a mood to argue with other letter writers of previous numbers. John Lawrence, “B.Sc.” thinks that V-hull flying boats are inherently stable, so you need not worry about the wing floats; Leonard Taylor of the A.T.C. Gazette thinks that the design of the official A.T.C. officer headgear simply must be a peaked cap versus the field service cap, else the entire corps will soon be laid low by sunstroke or colds. R. J. M. Baron thinks that jet engines would be splendid for all-wing aircraft. Indicator defends his opinion that the problem of finding crews for “mammoth” airliners has not really been properly confronted. Various persons are upset about the allegation that members of the Royal Observer Corps is leaking information about top secret aircraft. 

 

The Economist, 6 May 1944
 
Leaders
 
“Election Illusions” The paper notices that Governor Dewey will be the Republican candidate, and that the President will be the Democratic candidate, but concludes that this does not mean that it can stop paying the most tortuous attention to the election campaign until it actually starts. On the contrary, for the most important reasons, it must go on torturing the reader until Labour Day, at which point it can get on with torturing us. Extra points for noticing that at one point General MacArthur was “leading in the polls.”
 
“Appointments Vacant” It is noted that there will be a shortage of teachers after the war. The paper therefore feels that it can put its editorial weight behind a Committee that wants to make it harder to be a teacher, while discouraging pay increases and the expansion of teacher training, at least at universities, and possibly training colleges, so as to prevent the training of bad teachers. In a momentary obeisance to common sense, it does at least suggest that additional teachers be recruited from “other walks of life.” It then goes on reeling down the empyrean halls of cloud cuckoo land to some destination not obvious to this mere mortal.
 
“The Tractor and the Plough” At the beginning of this war, Europe faced a general agricultural crisis. Peasants on small plots were squeezed by large estates. Yields per low, and farming unprofitable. A higher income makes possible a shift to higher protein, higher fat foods and more fruit and vegetables. In Germany, this process went wrong in the 1930s, with wheat production expanded on unsuitable land to provide the preferred grain, pushing down productivity. A way must be found to push it forward again.
 
Quintals per Hectare/ percentage employed in agriculture
Holland
29.8 (20)
Italy
14.7 (47.6)
Denmark
29.7 (35.0)
Hungary
13.1 (73.1)
Belgium
26.6 (17.1)
Poland
11.3 (76.2)
Germany
21.2 (29.5)
Bulgaria
11.3 (80.9)
Czechoslovakia
17.0 (38.3)
Jugoslavia
10.3 (80.0
France
16.0 (35.7)
Roumania
10.2 (76.2)
 

Highly industrialised countries, with well developed cooperatives, have the highest yields. Except Germany, which it is supposed, is a result of policy maintaining wheat production on unsuitable soils. War mobilisation has also cut production. Industrialisation will increase productivity, with tractors. Germany should stop trying to be autarkic.

 
Notes of the Week
 
The Commonwealth premiers are talking, this week. (Last time, you will recall, they were talking about talking. Next, they will be talking about what they talked about,  I imagine. Or the Invasion, which cannot come soon enough. Perhaps it will even knock the American election out of the papers for a week or two.
 
The paper is provisionally pleased with the homebuilding scheme, which, I note, aims to deliver houses at £550 exclusive of land, which the paper takes to be quite reasonable. Ha ha ha ha! “Exclusive of land.”
 
Speaking of… The paper notices that many rural cottages have been built for farm labourers, lately, and, as they are far too large and elaborate, will be difficult for labourers to rent in the long run, as farm wages are low. It is especially regrettable how, before the war, farm labourers were squeezed out by urban workers, who could afford the rents. Should this happen again, the situation will arise in which there are no farm labourers, because they cannot afford to live anywhere, and there is not anything anyone can do about this. Nothing.
 
Spain is being neutral more.
 
Greeks are excitable. Labour is excitable. Local politics are in the news. A farm policy is feared that, by allowing farm profits to rise, fails to take into account the importance of good, cheap food for consumers. For then consumers will  not be able to afford food, and they will all starve, and nothing will be able to be done. Nothing.
 
Poles are excitable, and Stalin’s May Day Order confirms that the Red Army will continue to advance across the Russian border, if that had been in doubt for anyone. The paper summarises the latest report on national vital statistics of the Registrar General. The crude birth rate per thousand has risen again last year to 16.7, the highest rate since 1928. It is expected, on the basis of a slump in marriage rates, that this rise will be of short duration. Indeed, the proportion of the population at marriageable ages is the lowest ever. Fortunately, the death rate continues to fall, and so there was a very slight gain of 181,000 in population on a basis of 41 million. Another way of calculating this suggests that every woman alive in Britain today is going to have, on average, 0.903 female children to carry on the race, up, at least, from a historic low of 0.747 in 1933.
 
“Tax Troubles” Some people need tax relief. And by this, the paper does not mean factory girls or families with young children, who can always adjust their spending, but  more the “genteel poor,” who are poor by reason of fixed income, “commitments” and “established standard of living.” If I maintain a country estate, a minimal stable and hunting pack, and just the smallest little townhouse in London, and have no money at the end of it, am I a member of the “genteel poor?” More importantly, do I take the paper?
 
American Survey
 
The paper has read those nice articles in Fortune about “194Q,” and drawn as its main conclusion that the $2 billion out of $165 billion national income likely to be invested abroad is, uhm, something about it vaguely menacing Britain’s return to peace and prosperity, somehow? Though, to be fair, yet more boilerplate talk from Eric Johnston on the subject of free enterprise and anti-monopolies is cited, and one might conclude that Washingtonians need to be more careful about how much sun they get.
 
“Government Aid” William L. Batt, vice-chairman of the War Production Board, thinks that America should have a peacetime policy of importing vast quantities of strategic materials and of stockpiling them in national reserves in case of emergencies.
 
American Notes
 
The paper notices that Governor Dewey will be the Republican candidate, and, what is more, in a recent speech he did not even rave and speak in tongues, as one might have expected, on the grounds that he is an American Republican, and Colonel McCormick is an American Republican, and so Governor Dewey might be secretly as mad as Colonel McCormick.
 
“Civilian Supply” Covers the recent order freezing work forces in the civilian sectors at current levels pending the defeat of Germany, and its subsequent revision to allow some plants to expand production, if they are in areas with no critical war production going on and do not employ scarce skilled labour. The paper is not sure that it approves, given the shortage of Service manpower.
 
“A Post-War Military Establishment” Governor Dewey has no plans to cut the strength of the armed forces below what is reasonable. Peacetime conscription is likely, due not least to the “benefits it provides to trainees.”
 
“Magna Carta in Chicago” Mr. Sewell Avery’s anti-union action at Montgomery Ward has escalated remarkably since last I wrote, Reggie. The paper notices it here. The Army was actually sent in to run the department store briefly. (The officer in charge shared some amusing anecdotes on a western swing the other day, renewing acquaintances made in Buffalo.) The paper expects that this will be a campaign issue, as McCormick’s Tribunemight as a result say nasty things about the President. This, it strikes me, is a possibility. Whether the average reader of the Tribune notices that the paper has a new reason for Roosevelt-hating is another question. The paper thinks that Tribune readers take it for the comics for the most part, anyway. (And "imbibe its subtle poisons through them.")
 
The World Overseas
 
“Poles, Ukrainians and Jews” are excitable. I should not make light. The paper estimates that two-and-a-half million Polish Jews may have died in German “slaughterhouses.” Though that makes this whole “desertion” thing seem even more absurd; although so is the fact of a Polish Army, over-officered and under-trooped, bringing in both Jews andVolksdeutsch to serve under the generally rich and upper class Poles who escaped in 1939.
 
Germany at War
 
“Food Tactics” Germany is not suffering from a food shortage, and probably won’t.
 
1280px-Choucroute-p1030189.jpg
 
 
Letters to the Editor
 
The occasional feature is back, and it amuses me to attempt to discover just why. There is a letter on Irish neutrality, which in spite of a title that implies that it is connected with events of this century, turns out to be about Irish “oppression” of the Church of Ireland, implicitly calling for British intervention. Yes, Mr. Savory, that could certainly happen. Perhaps General Quesada could lead the invading air forces! More sensibly, one H. W. Singer suggests that tinkering with depreciation allowances is unlikely to affect the current state of obsolescent manufacturing equipment, considering how generous current allowances already are. It is more likely, he suggests, due to  lack of credit facilities. On the evidence, it is the depreciation issue, but, who knows? Perhaps the paper has decided to back the Ascendancy.
 
The Business World
 
After surveying national finance, the paper moves on to the recent proposal for ..more generous depreciation allowances to deal with the obsolete technology of British factories.
 
Business Notes
 
Stocks are up on weak volume, as, in spite of Budget goosing in the form of tax exemptions, everyone waits for the Invasion to make up their minds to buy. The amount and method of levying motor taxes is debated, lest British policy encourage designs with no export potential. The “oil-based chemical” industry is to be encouraged. Movement on gold markets as South Africa moves to reintroduce redemption (but not the gold standard) while Mexico moves to ban private gold imports and exports, ostensibly to keep bloody Axis gold out, but in fact more to press for a move to a world silver standard, for the obvious reasons. It is proposed that the overseas profits of British firms be Excess Profit Tax free. I heartily approve! And not just because all our profits will prove to be “overseas” profits! Moving money on paper sounds a great deal less nerve wracking than moving it in unmarked bundles of gold bars!
 
“Coal Supplies and Output” Output continues to be down in spite of the resumption of full production, and only two districts have earned their production bonuses. It is not much of an incentive if no-one can hit the target! In any event, we are gently encouraged to stockpile against next winter. (Especially since it is hard to reconcile claims that there was no lost war production against the fact of declining coal output other than “waste,” or, more plausibly, the accumulation of stockpiles last year at this time.)
 

Mr. Hawtry on “Futures” R. G. Hawtry, in a speech to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, celebrates the existence of futures markets in various commodities as giving financial certainty and the ability to hedge against future price rises. Reading between the lines, I suppose that he thinks that the business might itself be profitable for Britain, given its existing large financial industry.
 
Flight, 11 May 1944
 
Leaders
 
“Hamstringing German Reserves” The Air Ministry statement that transportation bombing has had enough results to prevent the Germans from making full use of their reserves is welcomed by the paper. The paper also argues with un-named German authorities who are surprised that there has been no bombing of coastal defences. Surprisingly, the paper concludes that the Ministry is probably right, and the Germans probably wrong.  “The Immediate Targets”  The paper supposes that the only reason why we are currently bombing German industry less is that we are bombing French railways more. 
 
“One Every Four Minutes” The First Lord, of all people, summarises a full statement on Allied aircraft production with the observation that the Allies are building a plane every four minutes. “The Final Blow” Admiral Cunningham and now Mr. Oliver Lyttleton have stated that the war can only be won by the Army, but the paper wants to add that aircraft will be involved!
 
War in the Air
 
The paper is impressed by the low-level pin-point bombing attack recently made on “an important house in the Hague.” Apparently it was full of very important documents that it was absolutely vital must not be destroyed, thought some Germans, and the RAF quitethe opposite. One imagines that there are those in Germany –and elsewhere-- who should like to make their own arrangements with the RAF.  It is never a sadder story than when some necessary document proves to have been destroyed in an earthquake long ago, and must be replaced with a brand-new one, backdated and filled out as directed! “Help for Tito” We are dropping guns on the Jugoslav partisans, and bombs on the Germans fighting them. Another of Essex-class has been launched, Bon Homme Richard. The bombing of Bucharest, gently intended to encourage Roumania to surrender more, is described again in a long paragraph that also fits in the bomber offensive, the 1940 “Blitz,” and something something Mosquitos. 
 
“Preparation” Perhaps you have heard that we are contemplating an invasion of France? Because we are! And then the Russians might attack too.
 
 
Here and There
 
Canada has trained 100,000 aircrew for the United Nations. The Derby chapter of the Royal Aeronautical Society recently had its first meeting. The meeting resolved that Rolls-Royce engines are the cat’s meow. Haile Selassie gave the RAF 300 ounces of gold as a token of appreciation for services rendered. In a perfect world, this would be gold paid to the emperor by Hawker Siddeley, but so far the Abyssinians are in our “rain guns from the skies upon them” list, not our “sell them guns” one. The time will come, though, and the Lion of Judah is clearly prepared. 
 
Flight is hiring. New York City is thinking about having a helicopter port. “Looking Well Ahead” Doctor Smith-Rose, in a recorded address to the Silver Jubilee session of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, forecast a future day of trans-Atlantic air flight service by pilotless aircraft controlled from land bases.
 
THE EDITOR, “British Helicopters,” is a five page account of helicopter experiments from the golden days before the war.  Arthur Tedder took a well-publicised flight in one of them, so clearly there’s something there, even if the pictures suggest a senior shop project.
 
Studies in Recognition
 
This week, telling the Curtiss AT-9Jeep from the Beech AT-10 Wichita from the Cessna T-50 Bobcat from the Airspeed Oxford. Something about too many types for production efficiency?
 
Behind the Lines
 
The Quisling regime in Norway has started an official aviation periodical. A Swedish correspondent in Berlin thinks that the German Air Ministry has admitted by omission that their night fighter force is suffering. Finland urges fifteen year-old boys to join AA units. The Germans might have a new torpedo bomber. The Japanese are mobilising to build aircraft more. Bulgaria’s air force has been taken over by the Germans. I save on glue by not including a picture of a torn kite. The Germans are building airfields in Norway for very important reasons.
 
W. S. Farren, “Research. “ Mr. Farren, who went to Cambridge and fought in the Great War and worked at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough before they got tired of his garrulous ways, was recruited to give this year’s Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture to the RAeS, on the grounds that everyone who could make the basic point that aircraft have got better over the last twenty  years because of research in less than five pages or so is busy doing something else this spring.
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“Flight Testing: Doyen of British Test Pilots Explains His Work: Importance of Mutual Trust Between Designer and Pilot” Every time I think that authorial attribution in this paper cannot get any odder, it gets odder. The doyen is Lankester Parker, by the way.
 
R.A.F.’s “Tough Technicians” The men of the Service Commando in Burma are called that by someone. Their mothers?
 
Correspondence
 
The major topic of conversation this week is whether it was the Air Training Corps or the Roya Observers Corps that leaked the existence of some or other plane to the press. (The Tempest?) “Draughtsman writes with a silly little explanation of the Townend Ring, A. H. R. Fedden (the very same) to explicate the need for 100 ton planes with six 5000 hp engines. There is also more correspondence on the subject of ATC officers’ caps, on the B-17 being better than the Lancaster, so too! There are also some vaguely sensible letters, notably about future educational certificates for draughtsmen.

The Economist, 13 May 1944
Leaders
“The Labour Coalition” The fight between Bevin and Bevan (no, seriously) has the paper cautiously hopeful that the Labour Party will fall apart soon and be replaced by the Liberal Party. If that does not happen, it supposes that it would be nice if Labour holds it together well enough to keep the Conservatives under some kind of electoral discipline.
 
Poles are excitable.
 
“New Trends in India” Indian industrialists want a massive national plan on the model of Russian Five Year Plans to push development. Indian ecumenicals want to revive the Cripps plan and prevent a partition between Hindu and Moslem halves of the Empire, and think that the “Bombay Plan” will interfere with this. The Radical Democrats think that it is all about the rich getting richer.
 
“Road to Serfdom?” A Professor Hayek of the London School of Ecnomics has just published a book under this title which supposes that too much government control of the kind we have now will lead to a species of state serfdom. The paper reviews same, and, in a spirit of even-handedness, decides that it has both good and bad points.
 
Notes of the Week
 
“The Monetary Debate” International money matters were debated in the House. “A Parliamentary Success” The amendment to the Education Bill  calling for equal pay for female teachers is reintroduced into the new version of the bill tabled in the House. Latins are excitable. Commonwealth premiers are excitable. Russia is making trouble about the postwar composition of the International Labour Office. The paper is upset with a proposed new “Farmer’s Charter,” as it might lead to a rise in prices. (Though it does have some refreshingly acerbic things to say about platitudes about maintaining the fertility of the soil and the importance of “mixed farming,” both of which can easily become excuses for effective subsidy policies, in the paper’s view.) People are talking about civil aviation, the collection of “economic intelligence” in foreign parts, the situation in China, and the shortage of domestic help.
 
American Survey
 
“Labour and the Election” (By an American Labour Correspondent) Some American labour leaders (by which we mean Mr. Lewis. We always mean Mr. Lewis) are making noise about "flocking" to Dewey in the election, because, as the President has not done enough for labour, why not support the candidate who will do even less? However, actual labour voters will vote for the President. The upshot of three columns is that this might affect turnout and, thus, the composition of the next Congress.
 
American Notes
 
“The Road Back” covers the latest talks on reconversion plans. Still no agreement on proper support for laid-off workers, though.  Topping up unemployment insurance funds, or tax reliefs on severance pay set-asides?
 
“Hornet’s Nest” The paper’s opinion is that the Montgomery War matter was mishandled by the Administration, and may pay heavily for it in November. The thought is that it does not qualify as a war industry under the Anti-Strike Act, and so the Government is not legally allowed to take it over.
 
“Solid South” Anti-Roosevelt Democrats failed in primary challenges in Alabama and Florida. This is because the Democrats are still seen as the party of White Supremacy, in spite of the Administration’s support for Coloured emancipation, while fears about the President’s health have melted away, in spite of Dewey’s hammering away on the subject.
 
“The Hyphenates” The Russian-Polish situation exercises Polish Americans, and some are thinking about turning to the Republicans.
 
The World Overseas
 
“French Faith in the State” Is an alternative to faith in the “Hundred Families,” supposed to be a bunch of anti-republic collaborationists, as well as having too much of France as their personal property for the country’s own good.
 
The Business World
 
“The Motor Industry’s Choice” The industry must do things to seize the possibilities opened up by the postwar world. Mainly in the lines of producing “big, cheap cars” for export. It involves tax and duties policy.
 
Business Notes
 
The stock market is in a fey mood over the Invasion. Uncertainties attend conversion rates for the “invasion Franc.” This will also be a problem elsewhere in Europe, and the paper also notes American experience with the “Hawaii Dollar,” a currency originally issued for circulation in Hawaii only, supposedly so that dollars captured by the Japanese could be readily distinguished, but, obviously, actually intended to prevent capital flight and corruption, are now being used throughout the Pacific at an exchange rate of 20 Japanese Military Yen to the Hawaii dollar. The paper notes that since the Hawaii Dollar circulates at parity with the US dollar, the Yen-sterling exchange rate is 3d versus the prewar 1s 2d.
 
“Report on Transport” Freight tonnage miles are up substantially across the country over prewar days, and passenger miles are down less than might be expected. Train loads are up 120%, which would end to suggest massive wear and tear, although this goes unmentioned. The paper is appalled that the six directors of the Lanport and Holt Line will receive £150,000 in compensation in the acquisition of their firm by a rival.
 
 
 
“Rebuilding Merchant Fleets” Is happening, but the paper is concerned about financial aspects. Specifically, stock prices suggest that substantial reserves have been set aside for the purpose, but cannot discover what, and where. The paper is, I assume, feigning naivete. Or perhaps our competitors have failed to grasp the possibilities of this world of ours. Though I rather doubt it.
 
“Women in Engineering” Equal pay for equal work proceeds. Mr. Jack Tanner, of the Amalgamated Engineering Unions, proposes that increased technical skill should be the basis of increasing wages and increasing profits in the industry. “The industry should pursue a high wage policy and be profitable.” This does rather imply that female labour should become more skilled, rather than that female labour should proceed from dilution of skilled labour. What a curious thought this is: use increased pay to motivate labour to achieve greater training standards. One wonders if this idea of using higher pay to motivate labour might have applications in other areas in the economy, such as coal mining, teaching, or farm labour! I should write the paper to suggest this.
 
“Debate on Electricity Supply” State or local monopolies or private enterprise? Well, I am sure that this will be sorted out directly.
 

“Postwar Inflation in the United States” Mr. Mariner S. Eccles, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, sees sharp postwar inflation in the United States as a result of the accumulation of savings and a shortage of things to buy. As a remedy, he calls for high taxes now to reduce the savings overhang. Postwar, he wants to see the state continue to rely on income taxes, as these depress consumption less, and a maintenance of consumer demand through social insurance. 
 
And now for the monthlies...
 
Aviation, May 1944
 
Down the Years in Aviation’s Log
 
25 Years ago  today, Lt.Cdr A. C. Read’s Curtiss NC-4 seaplane was on its way from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland to Plymouth, England, in stages. Hawker and Grieve, attempting Ireland-Newfoundland, have to put down at sea and are picked up by a Danish steamer. US Army airship A-4 lands passengers on the roof of a Cleveland hotel. Lt. Roget and Capt. Coli of the French army fly nonstop from France to Morocco, 1116 miles in 11hr f50 minutes. 

 

 

 

15 Years Ago, Elinor Smith of Freeport, N.Y. breaks the female air duration record at 26 h 21 min. “Curtiss-Robertson” factory turns out 16 a/c weekly. Army LB-7 bomber flies nonstop New York-Dayton and back, refuelling in the air twice. Army sends air expedition to Alaska, Rickenbacker announces million for an Allison engine plant, Navy opens 1 year ground course at U California. 

 

10 Years Ago TWA incorporates and American announces transcontinental sleeper service between Dallas and Los Angeles. 

 

Line Editorial
“Invasion and the Final Challenge” Junior points out that even though America has become great without aggression or tyranny, its greatness now requires invading Europe, crushing autocracy and “removing causes of aggression.” Americans may have seemed “soft” to the architects of Pearl Harbor, but we are actually inherently virile because we are free! The battle of production has been won! Every American has contributed! And then, when peace comes, we must contribute further, by eschewing “foreign ideologies” in favour of bracing, virile, freedom. Also sound economic policy, maybe?

 

Aviation Editorial Leslie Neville thinks that “The Critics Stand Refuted: And Sound Engineering Will Keep Them That Way” Back in October of 1942, some people, to name no names (Alexander Seversky!) thought American planes were terrible! But they aren’t! So there, you nameless critics! (Alexander Seversky!) A certain pilot we know, who went out to war, fresh from “football field or varsity crew” as a “legal killer” has come back a year later “from a theater where quarter is neither asked nor given,” with lots of ribbons on his chest. His Group has practically won the war single-handed, which would obviously not be possible with “no-account” or “obsolete” planes. Nope, no way at all. But this is not the time to rest on our laurels! “Papa Heinkel, "Wily Messerschmitt” and “Herr H. Focke” still have one last out to throw. Back in the mid-war, the fact that the Germans had frozen research and development gave us a chance to achieve qualitative superiority. Now the shoe is  on the other foot. We are freezing quality, while the Germans have gone back to basic research. We must never relent, never rest!”

 

I know, gentlemen. I find myself marking time with the postponement of the invasion, too. It really is a temptation just to throw a carbon in the typewriter and type out the contents of my dictionary. Unfortuantely, have LSTs to expedite. 

 

John Foster, “Here Are Your Markets” In the postwar, rich states with lots of people will buy more planes than poor, unoccupied states. This installment establishes that there are states of both kinds on the Atlantic coast. Stay tuned next month, when we will learn if there are similar contrasts in the Mississippi valley! 

 

J. L. deCubas, “Now, ‘Packaged Airports” Westinghouse has prefabricated kit to get your local airfield off the ground today! By which is meant, buy our power plant and we’ll throw in some knockdown buildings free. 

 

Captain C. H. Schildhauer, USNR, “A Ballot for the Flying Boat” Captain Schildhauer puts some carefully selected data on charts to show that, postwar, flying boats will rule the skies and compete with submarines to see which can dive furthest! Although submarines will come back up again. 

 

George D. Ray, “I Saw Russia’s Air Power” Planes were involved. Russian planes are cheap, disposable, wooden coffins. On the other hand, the prevalence of low level combat and forward area airfields makes things safer than they would otherwise be. Also, Russians like our trucks and P-39s. Which says it all, really.

 

E. E. Lothrop, “Keying Market Research to the Aircraft Industry” Word. Another word. Word word word word. Am I done yet? No? Okay, here’s some numbers cribbed from the business pages: National income in 1943 was $147 billion, up from 97.5 in 1934. A lot of the increase was probably in wages and salaries, given that the 1943 figure shows that 75% of national income was in that form, and the figures from 1934 were probably such as to justify my random speculation. Obviously, the fact that people had more money in 1943 will have an impact on aircraft sales in 1947! For sure, if coincidence counts! Guys? Hold a seat for  me at the local? I still have 26 column inches to knock off before I can get out of here!

 

Chester S. Ricker, “Design Analysis No. 6: The De Havilland Mosquito” It is hard to imagine that a wooden airplane points the way forward for aviation (although the detailed aerodynamics are often remarkable), but it is pretty clear to me that plywood of the strength-to-weight characteristics of the Mosquitos points the way forward for plywood! This is why I have clipped the article and sent it on to  you. The main fuselage is a balsa-plywood sandwich with 0/437” balsa compressed between two 0.062” spruce or birch three-ply skins. Since balsa differs between 6 and 30lb/cub. ft, the wood must be carefully selected. Structural material for the Mosquito averages 9lbs/cub. Foot. Straight 3 ply birch is used in noncritical fuselage areas, some with transverse grains in the plys. Fabric-reinforced Bakelite is used in joints to prevent compression of the softer wood at the join. Bulkheads are composite pieces, with an inner skin of 3-ply 0.12” spruce, laminated spruce glued on to it, sometimes as “blocks.” The fuselage is then covered with Mandapolam, a special aeronautical fabric, and then doped and painted. Wing pick-up members are 0.4” laminated spruce. The main wing uses solid Douglas Fir stringers, plywoods of the already noted types, more Bakelite packing metal fixtures (there are some) in the inner structure. The all important wing skinning is where past plywood planes –and Russian types—have fallen down, being excessively heavy and thick, and still given to flutter. Careful use and design of stringers is the most important thing to note in overcoming this potential problem, but wing ribs use two 0.187” 3-ply birch sides with hardwood (walnut, ash, but also spruce and birch) stiffeners. Other web ribs have 4 ply 0.0625” web. I have heard rumours of composite plywoods containing both traditional carpentry hardwoods and softwoods, but I see no confirmation here. 

 

More briefly, the secret of the Mosquito’s performance is, above all, careful design. That given, very thin veneers are also important, and so is the composite construction usingBakelite and fabric (and metal fixtures) as well as the more celebrated plywood.

 

Monroe A. Maller, “Methods for Determining Airfoil Pressure Distribution” Put two-dimensional test sections of the proposed foil in a wind tunnel. Measure. Be careful about where in the wind tunnel you put the model. Do lots of tests. Here is some calculus by which I reduce the problem (approximately) to plugging your numbers  into a simple algebraic equation. 

 

“From Billet to Blade” Chevrolet and Frigidaire, now not making cars or fridges, are instead making Hamilton Standard propellers! The Chevrolet plant has gone in for a 3000ton Wood accumulator-served hydraulic presses. Forge working of ingots held at 720F for 3.5 hours in an adjacent furnace increases their tensile strength from 39,000psi to 55,000psi. Blades not requiring forging are instead made in a Duomatic lathe, then heated to 850, then swaged, then forged by a 35,000lb Erie steam hammer., prepared with saws and presses for fittings, then heated up again, then quenched, or as they say in the industry now, “precipitation heat treatment.”
Frigidaire takes over final production machining, as they have “assembly line” fittings to speed the work. For example, a single pass on Frigidaire’s Hall planetary contour miller creates a hold point to clamp for all subsequent operations. Machining is crucial to achieve blade balance, which is done in a “draft preventer cage.” 

 

It is fascinating to know that Frigidaire and Chevrolet are cooperating so closely on such a highly machined product. One wonders what it means for the postwar "Cold war." Obviously very little for domestic refrigerators, a product which has little in common with airscrews save in being made of aluminum. Although I suppose that the coolant must be recirculated by propellers....

 

C. J. Breitweiser, “Approach to the Problem of Radio Precipitation Static” Mr. Breitweiser, of Consolidated Vultee, discusses antenna arrangements to reduce disruptive static in rain. “Such devices as radium-tipped discharge rod, ultra-violet generator, high polarizing potentials on the discharge, and creation of secondary particles have been considered” to replace the traditional trailing wire as a means of discharging static buildup. Breitweiserr thinks that FM might be a way to go in the future. Traditional loop antenna work, but noise-limiters in circuit have a ways to go before they are there. 

 

Richard G. Smith, “Graphic Simulations in Computing True Airspeed” What engineer does not love the idea of drawing a picture to avoid mathematics and solve a problem that turns out to be more complicated than it looks? It really is the best thing ever.

 

“Precision Angle Plages ‘Bypass’ Trigonometry” Second best thing after using neat toys to avoid mathematics!

 

R. W. Feeny, “Analytic Geometry for Speedier Wing Lofting” But once your hopes of using drawing instead of numbers are raised, here comes Feeny of Northrop to make you put them back in. 

 

“Equivalent Charts for Aircraft Plumbing Fittings: They Speed Standardisation at American Airlines” And fill out the page requirements quite nicely. There’s twenty pages of charts showing American’s equivalent fittings! 

 

Robert W. Kinzel, “Looking Ahead to Air Cargo Markets” Planes will fly valuable cargoes after the war. Especially when speed over distance is a factor. There is a tinge of evangelisation to the article, though. At one point Kinzel notes that easier paper work is an advantage of air transport! Do not worry, Mr. Kinzel. The paperwork burden will catch up.

 

John S. Miller, “’Peashooters Should be Troubleshooters, Too” Lieutenant Miller (I suspect the "legal killer" in Neville's column) thinks that pilots should be a factor in the maintenance effort. They should tell the mechanic if a bit comes off, or the plane starts making funny noises, or if it crashes into the ground at high speed. 

 

“Airport + Resort=New Business” It is hard to argue with the idea that some resorts will take an advantage from having an airfield. Presenting a ski hill at Blairstown, New Jersey as an example of this seems dubious to me. Surely the whole point of flying from, say, New York to a ski resort is to get somewhere more suited to skiing than the Poconos? It is not as though Lake Placid were some gruelling intercontinental flight away!

 

Aviation News

 

“Launch Initial Postwar-Air-Policy Parleys; Peacetime Private-Plane Market Gaged” I note the lead article in this months’ news digest here. Many people at many levels are talking about talking about civil aviation at many venues. But certainly not about aircraft production totals. At least, not on the front page.

 

Colonel Lucius B. Manning, former Vice-President of American and director of Consolidated, died in an air crash last month, while Inglis M. Uppercu, tireless aviation promoter best known for his association with Vincent Burnelli, died at home last month. 

 

Reynolds has produced a new R-301 aluminum alloy that is as strong as structural steel. Civilian school aid to the Air Force is being rapidly run down. All 64 Army primary schools will be closed by the end of the war. 

 

The Army says that the P-51 is now the world’s fastest plane, while the Navy just activated eight squadrons of Liberators. 50 AAF bombers have returned to base with shot-away control cables thanks to their Minneapolis-Honeywell autopilots, says Minneapolis-Honeywell. 

 

Blaine Stubblefield’s Washington Windsock reports that we’ve been bombing the enemy, and will find out how effective it was after the war. Also, the Truman Committee is totally wrong about the B-26 being a piece of crap with a rapidly declining production rate. Even though it has already been discontinued at one of the two plants that makes it. There is an explanation that still makes the Truman Committee wrong, somehow! Mr. Stubblefield is entirely unimpressed by British “6 ton, or is it 10-ton bombs by now.” Public reaction to high casualty rates in pilot training is all wet. They can’t learn to fly unless they’re dying all the time! A lady of Mr. Stubblefield’s acquaintance proposed that we should send over a formation of bombers “the size and shape of flower Nippon,” which would, all at a signal, drop their bombs at once. “Everything would be destroyed, the land would be plouwed up –and fertilised with dead Jappos, ready to start farming. Wonder if the War Department is listening.”
Yes, Mr. Stubblefield, they are. And they want you to know that if you really want to stop drinking, there is help available. 

 

Construction continues on Lockheed’s new 3.5 million modification centre for the Navy. Britain’s most handsome man, Geoffrey Smith, is coming to America to melt on dreamily about jets or some such. 

 

America at War: Aviation’s Communique No. 29

 

The Army Air Force is large! The German air force is fighting! “Presumably,” German engineers are doing a better job of fortifying the coast of France than they did beaches south of Rome. An attack on the Philippines “soon” would surprise no-one. 

 

Aviation Manufacturing

 

Here we are: 9,118 a/c, new record, were built in March. Labor turnover is up, from 2.82 workers in January 1942 to 4.31 in January 1944, but will not stay this high. Innumerable labour-saving devices ease the blow. “Report Company Achievements” notes that Boeing set a new production record for 4 engined bombers recently. Immediately following, the paper notices that United modified a record 3,500 B-17s since early 1942, while Continental has done 1600. Allison has recently completed its 50,000th engine. 

 

Transport Aviation

 

Talking about talking; McCarren bill proceeds in Congress; airlines upset that they cannot get planes, nor answers from the Administration about when that might change; various interests interested in “feeder” air routes.

 

British reveal details of Sabre, Griffon, Tornado, “Tempest.” Not actually true, on that last, so this counts as revealing an aircraft on the secret  list, as we’ve heard elsewhere. Brabazon Committee report summarised. 

 

Fortune, May 1944

 

In this number, the paper’s pollsters turn their attention to management.
First, they are optimistic. More businessmen think that prospects for their business are better after the war than the same, and far more than think it worse. But it is restrained optimism:

 

Size of National Income
Two Years after the War
Five Years after the War
Between $80 and $110 billion
6.5%
15.4%
Between 110 and 140
42.3
36.5
Between 140 and 170 billion
7.5
11.9
Over 170 billion
2.2
3.9
 
 
 
 
Notice a suspicion that the national income will be lower in five years than in two. That is fairly qualified optimism! 49.6%, all together, thought that national income would be either below 110 from two years out and onwards to five, or would have declined to that rate by year 5. Most in the executive offices think that government agencies will need to take the lead in the postwar wind-down, although 38% think we should just set a date for the end of Government controls and go for it. Fully 66% of managers think that government is not responsible for maintaining full employment. Almost everyone thinks that business and government should do something to reduce the impact of postwar layoffs. Most think that foreign trade will have direct or indirect benefits for their company.

 

In politics, 56.9% prefer Dewey, 29.0% Willkie, 8.2% Roosevelt, 5.9% MacArthur. (In the South, it is Roosevelt 9.4%, MacArthur 10.5%.) The sun may be going to their brains, but this tends to support my belief that the paper, and its ilk, include MacArthur’s name on lists like this mainly so that we can enjoy a good laugh at the expense of the congenitally insane. 

 

Finally, where would you recommend that a young man look to make his start in business?

 

Industry
Total
Manufacturing
Finance
Commerce
Utilities
Other
Chemical
50.6%
53.7
53.4
39.8
58.1
45.4
Merchandising
18.3
17.0
14.4
26.8
11.0
19.4
Foreign Trade
11.9
10.7
11.1
13.9
14.1
13.7
Construction
10.0
9.7
9.9
13.1
6.3
9.5
Household appliances
9.5
9.8
8.1
9.1
7.3
11.0
Transportation
8.8
8.1
8.6
9.2
12.0
11.0
Radio Manufacture
5.2
4.9
6.3
5.5
4.7
5.5
Finance
2.4
1.7
5.1
2.3
3.7
2.3
Publishing
0.8
0.8
0.3
0.9
1.0
0.6
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It appears that finance is not very interesting to anyone except financiers, and electrical engineering does not even rate compared with "Chemical."

Letters

 

Mr. J. F. Gilfillan of Westmount, Quebec, writes to query the idea that in “194Q,” national income will be $138 billion, national product $165 billion. Where will the business come from? The issue here is not business, he thinks, but consumption, and increasing consumption is the province of government,  not of business. 

 

Farm Column By Ladd Haystead

 

Farm country has woken up from a long winter spent dreaming by the fire of the happy day when famine returns to the land and the farmer is taken seriously again. Consequentially, Haystead has something substantive to write about, making him far less interesting. There are no new Presidential tickets to report, instead an attempt to discern whether farms are long on livestock, or whether they should begin to “reconvert” now. If not, in the absence of price signals, how will they know when to do so? As I have said before, the silver lining in the clouds over the mutton industry is that at least we know that we need to reconvert. Unless and until famine does indeed begin to stalk the land, that side of the family business continues to wind down, and the question remains the economical use of the lands freed. Going over to beef cattle does not make much sense of cattle herds are thinning out, too, and dairy cattle tend to require more water. If only I could believe in “Cousin H.C.’s” vision of subdivisions of single-family houses for as far as the eye can see. Though I do imagine that he is right for the Santa Clara Valley at least . 

 

Business at War

 

The paper dwells on the paper shortage for a page and a half. Paper conservation campaigns interfere with paper reclamation campaigns!

 

There are still 9.3 million horses and 3.6 million mules on farms in the United States, which makes horseshoes a surprisingly large business. The industry looks forward to a gentle postwar dotage. There is a watch shortage, notwithstanding the continued import of Swiss watches via Swiss flag ships operating from Lisbon. Prices have gone up, and Switzerland has accumulated a significant US dollar surplus

.

Trials and Errors

 

It is the merry month of May, and time for Mr. Janeway to talk about –the Presidential election! (Actually, the dateline is “New York, March 30, 1944,”  but what is a month for a story like this? This week’s column title is “A Solid Midwest Outweighs the Solid South –And California May Yet Decide.” California decided the 1916 election for Wilson, and it may happen again. After all, the 1940 election was surprisingly close. The President only won by 4.9 million votes, so a swing of no more than 2.5 million votes would have given it to Willkie! The higher math, ladies and gentleman. “A switch of just 1%” might have lost the President New York, New Jersey and Illinois, hence the election. So if the election is close, and the President loses 25 electoral college votes because Connecticut, Massachusetts and –some other states—switch to the GOP, then he will need California’s 25 to win! More mathematics! What is even more interesting about this is that California is a very typical state now, in that it has war workers and Coloureds --or to concede the more vulgar Americanism in the interest of racial precision, Negroes, as California has always had "coloureds." 

 

The Job Before Us

 

War industry is already winding down even as our armies have most of their war before them. Now is the time to look forward to postwar and 194Q. Today, foreign trade in 194Q. It can make a significant contribution to America’s prosperity. If Americans are willing to import. Also something about global communications. The cable companies face tough postwar competition from air mail, so maybe the American cable companies should merge into a big national monopoly. This strikes me as a case of people worrying about something that no-one else is worrying about, leading me to wonder what they know that the rest of us do not? Or, to put it another way, are gentlemen reading gentlemen’s mail?
Joseph M. Jones, “Let’s Begin with Puerto Rico” Puerto Rico’s status within the American whatever-it-is is anomalous. Let us resolve it before lecturing foreigners on what they should do with their colonies.

 

Editorial

 

‘”We Alone among the big Nations are going back to Free Enterprise. To Hold it here we must Crusade Abroad –And Stop Kidding Ourselves”

 

I prefer the hysterical full page ads,  myself. 

 

Feature articles:

 

“The Comer’s Mill” An Alabama cotton mill is making money! That shows it can be done.

 

“Baron Keynes of Tilton” Is in the news. The paper explains why. He is quite bright. And also tall. And something about economics? Which has to do with the Versailles Peace Conference? Actually, my issue with the article is that it is a bit trivial to be dealing with such counterintuitive issues, and I include a clipping of a more serious engagement with the man’s ideas in this month’s package, Reggie. 

 

“America and the Future” Is actually the main heading of a section with articles on Henry David Thoreau and the Andover school, neither of any great relevance, and on “Britain and the Continent” and “Buildings on the Farm.” Taken together, it is a rather odd conjunction. 

 

 

 

 
So taking the salient articles at face value, a British scientist named Michael Polanyi explains that Britain stands for peace and “Puritanic tolerance, and the Continent for “violent rebellion.” So we are going to beat the Hell of the Continentals to stop them being so violent. Makes sense.

…I am not sure what to say about “Buildings on the Farm” the sub-heading notes that as many as $2 billion worth will be needed annually after the war, and this occasions investigation into new designs and building materials. An Illustration suggests aluminum dairy barns. Hard to see a problem with that! Smaller buildings might be send in pieces, by mail order. 
 
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Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Postblogging Technology, May, II: Overdue
 
 
 
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Dear Mother and Father:
 
Please forgive this poor letter. I know how hard it must be for Sister to read, but we are confined to our camps and all outgoing mail is being impounded. So I write it on this stuff and out it goes in the laundry, just like a Republic serial! Mother's aunt's grand-daughter is going to take it up to the Wing Commander, and, from him, America. Queenie is one swell girl! She and her mother even took me around the town last week to see the sights! Keyham is a very small place, all English and sad. Not at all what I pictured. 
 
If Sister has to give up on this, I hope it sets your heart at ease that since it was made from a ditto, there is a fair copy in the Wing Commander's papers. If anything happens, you will have it after the war. 
 
Since my letter before this was all about my afternoon out with the Chungs, I shan't repeat myself, as the English say, although you may not have received that letter yet, so I am not really repeating myself! Instead, Father will surely want to know that I shall have my own ship for the Invasion! Well, not really a ship, an LCT, and it will not carry my name on D-Day, though, I hope, soon after. 
 
It happened this way. Commander Stump of the 510th Port Battalion, who I mentioned, has been staffing his unit by the old-fashioned method. White officers are no good for Coloured troops, but the Navy gets upset about commissioned Coloureds, so the Commander arranges Mess Chiefs to be transferred to the Battalion, then has a friend in Washington lose their jackets. No fuss, no muss, another "White" Officer who is good with Coloureds --at least until he gets it in his head that he can be promoted. 
 
Well, now that we're shut down, it is hard to play this game, so he has been looking further afield, since Admiral Hall is desperate to get some decent management on the ground. I mentioned Harry Sullivan, the Ojibway highliner from Grand Island? I set up an  LCI whose ramp won't drop with some radios and one of the new LORAN sets, and he'll be a breach guide, talking boats through the obstacles and mines and marshalling the rear echelon landings. I'll take over his LCT. From the look the flag gave me in the minute he spent approving it, I have a feeling that Hall's minded to wink at something a little irregular. (I knew I would make it into a frat some day, Sis!)
 
The scuttlebut around the fleet is that the swimming tanks are useless. The Admiralty Instructions say that there's a cross-current off the beach, and the tank drivers have no idea how to keep from being swamped by it, but the Army major who is in charge won't hear of any changes. Well, Dad, I hope that the next you hear of me won't be court-martial charges! 
 
Mom, once again, I can't thank you enough for introducing me to Gracie. She just knocks my socks off. Can't wait to see you guys again, even you Sis, and you see I didn't mention Douggie? Hah! Did you read that aloud?
 
With All My Love, Tommy 
 
 
 
My Dearest Reggie:
 
Not much of a note for you this time around. I should love to fill you in on the hijinks of the young and careless ("Miss V.C." has now conceived the idea that the university archives will reveal the secret of her "McKees." I cannot help but think that someone is pulling her leg. It is close enough to the story of Judith's people that I have actually mentioned it to her, but she denies it.) 
 
Well, that is already more than I intended to write. I really need to be going, and I think I linger at home because of the unpleasantness of my task, which is to somehow chivvy our mutual friend's young associate out of hospital, where he has booked in on pretext of tonsilitis in an attempt to escape a European tour. If I can. I fear that I have no leverage on him at all! In all likelihood, any chivvying to be done will be of our mutual friend, who is spooked of talk about "Section 60" in his contract, with much ominous shading to suggest that it will be the death of him if he breaks his contract. 
 
I hope that I am not flying between equally awful outposts on the continental lines when the invasion is announced. 
 
 
 
 

 

 
Time, 15 May 1944
 
International
 
The Marquess of Hartington marries an American heiress. The paper reports breathlessly. After what was reported as a six year courtship, I should hope so. Your youngest has known “Miss V.C.” for less than a year, and the sighs and distracted looks and moody poetry. A least he can bestir himself to tinker with his car and the dispatch motorcycle, so there is hope.
 
 The paper also informs us that the controversy between Poland and Russia is nearing its end. As with the Cavendish romance, it took long enough, but all’s well that ends well.
 
The omens are good in Naples, and Gandhi has malaria. Icelanders are excitable. I infer from the paper’s tone that it is appalled by the US Embassy’s behaviour in the recent attempted coup in El Salvador. Latin Americans are excitable, as the 6’7” Mistress of School Lunches in Guatemala, who stalks the street with a “ready pistol,” lest any dare to laugh at her mannish jackets and flowing skirts. If the paper applies the same vivid imagination to the Presidential race over the summer, I might even read it! I gather that MacArthur likes flowing skirts…
 
“Where?” The paper reviews possible invasion sites.  St. Nazaire has a good port and beaches on either side. Lorient, also. Brest is a major port, but heavily fortified on a rocky coastline. Nevertheless, there are ports across the bay, although an attack from Lorient would be more feasible. Cherbourg is a major port on a minor peninsula, but it is guarded by the Channel Islands, while the beaches are limited by cliffs. Le Havre has a great port and excellent beaches. Dieppe has good beaches, blocked by a formidable cliff, but we tried that. Boulogne is a small port with many beaches studded with dunes, and with cliffs. Calais, the port nearest England, has many fine beaches. Dunkirk is a fine port, but canals are hazards, defensive flooding possible. The ports of Belgium and the Netherlands have special flood defences, and reports from Belgium say that the Germans have already inundated defensive zones, but “low moats are not impassable to modern armies.” The Germans have been building fortifications, which the paper chooses to describe as “kolossal,” but, like the inundations, they can be overcome. A “comforting thing to remember.” Let me know if you ever need a copy of the letter you sent me after Dieppe, Reggie, or the enclosures. I will never forget your anger. In my mind, I saw again the boy volunteer, the day we steamed back into Lu-shun.
 
Anyway, enough of painful memories; the article is promoting Le Havre so hard that I come around to Calais as the invasion destination.
 
The paper adds new adjectives to the Bevin-Bevan fight. And implies that Bevin is a drunken brawler. Occupied Germany is to be divided into three parts, once we win the war. Bad news for Mars-Men, as it sets a precedent for Helium to come under Cossack rule once we conquer it.  Anthony Eden finally spelled out in the Commons that the French Committee of National Liberation will administer liberated France, which presumably commits Washington, which has declined to be committed, and puts de Gaulle’s wooing of Russia on the back burner, perhaps. (The idea is that Roosevelt is so conservative that he will make an accommodation with Vichy as readily as he will with some Latin American strong man. I shall have to remember this line the next time business takes me to the club. “Roosevelt is a conservative” is always good for a laugh.)
 
“The Long Wait” The invasion. What’s keeping it?
 
“The Wehrmacht” The invasion. What’s keeping it? Forty divisions in France, Belgium, Holland and Denmark, five to seven armoured divisions, Rommel, and “frosty, amoral beau ideal of Prussian militarism Field Marshal Karl Gerd von Rundstedt” want to know in France, a Falkenhausen in Belgium, and a Falkenhorst in Norway. (Biographies so short that they have no adjectives). The assumption is that Allies are landing at Calais, which is not that close to Belgium, and quite far from Norway.)
 
“Paper is Very Flammable: The paper is reminded of last month’s low-level attack on the Gestapo headquarters in the Hague by six Mosquitoes by the award of a DSO.
 
Secretary Stettinus has returned to Washingto from London. He held a news conference. Various newsmen amused themselves by trying to get him to say something controversial. He didn’t. It is confidently reported that “in England, he outtweeded the tweediest Britons.”
 
“Better Farther South” The paper tells an amusing anecdote about that idiot A.B.C. looking up a WREN’’s skirts. (Or perhaps some other “crusty sea lord,” but I prefer to imagine Randy Andy in the role.
 
“Again: Twin Aces” Bong, Foss and now Captain Robert S. Johnston, flying a P-47, are tied at 27 kills. The paper needs to look up “twin” in the dictionary.
 
“Koga’s End” The paper reports on Admiral Koga’s state funeral, and speculates on the cause of death. It also notes the appointment of a new CinC, of the Fleet, Soemu Toyoda, a “bitter-end jingo” who had hitherto succeeded in sitting the war out.
 
“Some Give Up” The paper finds it remarkable that Japanese troops will surrender if given a chance. It notices that these were rear-echelon troops, but not, explicitly that they gave up to US Army Services of Supply troops near Hollandia, and not to Marines.
 
“Design for Defence” The paper notices the Japanese offensive in Honan Province, directed against the Peking (the paper uses the current “Peiping”)-Hankow railway, inferring a Japanese intent to capture the full line of internal communications down to Kuan-tung Province, presumably to shift troops against an American landing on the coast. The paper also notes that the Eastern Capital is aflame. For the good of my stomach, I am going to pretend that that is hyperbole.
 
“Delivered for D-Day” “Lank, dandified  General Somervell” reports that 79 of 100 stores to be stockpiled for the invasion are now in their required quantity, and that “the mad supply rush was easing up.” 21,000 boxcars, 91,000 bazookas, 1,270,000 microphones, 9,000,000 gas masks, 17,000,000 neckties, 21,000,000 rifle grenades, 36,000,000 pairs of goggles, 52,000,000lbs soap, 98,000,000 chemical warfare defensive agents, 13,500,000,000 rounds rifle and .50 cal ammunition, 109,200,000 rolls of gause bandages, 617,000,000 sufadiziane tablets, 20,000 75mm tank guns. The general notes recent rushes, for example a hurry-up order for 7000 big truck tractor and semitrailer vehicles, which required taking 800 from army units in the States, rounding up 200 from “here and there,” and cutting back production of six other kinds of motor vehicles to give them priority so that they could be built and sent off. The army also required 30,000 rounds of a special kind of artillery ammunition. The factory that made it was out of production, so it was put back into it. A last minute requirement for 2000 medical kits was filled from a freight train “cached” in Kansas City. (Technically, the paper says that the kits were cached, not the boxcars. But you can’t have one without the other, and see my earlier comments about the rail system being overstrained.)
 
“Whimsical, sometimes irascible Bill Somervell” has been criticised for many things, many times. (The paper helpfully summarises), but has accomplished what he set out to do, which, apparently, is to get a great many neckties to supply dumps in Britain.
 
I am sorry, I know that the paper dangled the neckties in front of me, but I could not resist pulling on them.
 
“Mummy” Major Mary Bell, formerly dean of women at Coe College in Iowa, has been made the first female instructor at the Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.
 
“Into Hell Harbour” When the Allies landed at Anzio, the original plan was to not be there very long. Instead, here they are, and they require supplies. Consequently, Landing Craft, Tanks and Landing Ship, Tanks, have been delivering 8000 tons of stores across the beaches every 24 hours. Much credit goes to flotilla commander Lieutenant Commander John B. Freese, formerly a bond salesman and public works commissioner in Framingham, Massachusetts.
 
“.45 shotguns” Chrysler Corporation is making a scattershot shell to fit the regulation .45 pistol so that castaway sailors can hunt small game on Pacific islands. It does not sound like the worst way to spend one’s overseas service, at least until the ammunition runs out. One wonders why Chrysler is required for the work. Surely my boyhood memories are not deceiving me, and we did fire regular shotgun shells in from the .44s the Chief gave us for our birthdays that golden summer between Keyham and Greenwich?
 
“Tact” General Patton has ruined public speaking for the rest of the American general officer corps in Britain.
 
“Final Fling” The paper turns into Aviation. That is, planes were involved, and air marshals are disappointed that they will have to wait to the next war to win it from the air. Also, the Germans have flooded the Pontine Marshes, a trend that I hope does not spread. I take panic about imminent famine with a grain of salt, but this sort of thing will not help. A thousand acres flooded through the harvest might be less devastation than ten acres of city levelled by bombs, but the consequences of the former, unlike the latter, cannot be made up, however uncomfortably, by a winter under canvas. Or, more likely, corrugated iron, these days.
 
Domestic
 
Rumours which had the President everywhere from the Mayo Clinic to London were dispelled when Roosevelt returned from an extended vacation at the Hobcaw Barony, Bernard Baruch’s 23,000 acre South Carolina plantation. He either did “no paperwork,” or some, and kept up to date on all current affairs, having no comment on Sewell Avery, nor on the replacement for the Secretary of the Navy. The President is well-tanned, and has shaken off his winter sniffles and bronchitis. This all calls Harding and Wilson –and perhaps Coolidge-- to mind. The Presidency so often kills the men who work hardest and most conscientiously in office. Is that a swipe at the Engineer? I believe that it is!
 
Jim Forrestal is working hard as acting Secretary of the Navy. The paper says that the landing-craft programme is his biggest worry, and that he has personally visited eight shipyards to “exhort bosses and workers to   speed up production.” We do not need exhortations, Reggie. We need more reliable labour and timely deliveries of steel, and it is not hard to apply a little imagination and see that the two  problems are related. Good workers for the shipyards have to come from somewhere else, and the inland waterways and railways are obvious candidates. I hope that Mr. Forrestal has more to offer than exhortations, but the paper’s pocket biography does not fill me with confidence. Born a neighbour of the President in Duchess County, attended Princeton, served in the Navy in the World War, emerged as a lieutenant (j.g.) of 26, went to work as a bond salesman at a prominent firm, married an Ogden,  became a registered Democrat, stood at the right hand of his firm’s president from about the moment that the Democrats entered power, made friends amongst the Preident’s circile of would-be securities regulators, entered the government in 1940, rose to the high eminence of assistant secretary of the navy, remained there until death cleared his path to an acting secretaryship. It is not that such a mediocre trajectory leads me to eye his marriage more closely. It’s that it is so mediocre that I wonder if he married a first-classheiress!
 
A go-slow in Detroit is inspired by arguments about whether foremen should be union members or not. “Cousin H.C.” held forth in a rare rant on the folly of simultaneously putting more pressure on foremen and, at the minimum, appearing to deny them higher pay. “Plenty for How Long?” A ration holiday has been declared on meats except beef steaks and beef roasts. Stocks are on the increase, cold storage space critically short.(Having just shared my frustration at delays in steel deliveries due to rail congestion, I thought I would bring out this evidence of further trouble “down the line.”) The War Department has relaxed deferrments on 600,000 agricultural labourers. War Food Czar Marvin Jones says that food production is above schedule “all along the production front,” and promises ice cream in May and June.  But this plenty might not last long, depending on the invasion and the harvest. A poor feed crop harvest will bring back meat rationing on an even stricter basis than before. It has also been suggested that there might be some commercial alcohol manufacture at some point in the near future, perhaps in three or four months. Thank Heavens.
 
“Naziphile” George Viereck, on trial in New York for public indecency of the  Nazi-loving kind, was coldly told by his wife that his oldest son had died in action in Italy, just as she had been coldly told by the War Department. It is noted that his younger son is also in the army, and furthermore is a Nazi-hater.
 
“Still Solid South.” The race-baiting anti-New Deal insurrection in the South is failing to happen.
 
“Insurance” The Army has signed a contract for sixty million barrels of oil at $1.25/barrel from the Canol field on the middle Mackenzie, so as to justify its pipeline-and-refinery investment. It will be interesting to learn whether there are 60 million barrels of oil down there.
 
“Colliding Colonels” Colonel JamesCanella, air force commander at Santa Ana, California, has been convicted of corruption. Apparently, public sympathies were with Canella, as the prosecution was instigated by the army commandant, Colonel Robertson, an upper class swell who like to “play polo with cinema people and rich orange growers.” As a rich orange grower, may I be permitted to suggest that polo is a dreadful waste of a perfectly good ride? (I have that joke from a golfing fiend.) It turns out that Colonel Canella was selling jobs, taking kickbacks on the base’s milk contract and arranged the assignment of someone’s cousin as cook at the base on his being called up. He also sold concessions in the base PX. Rather naively, he put his money in the bank and spent lavishly.
 
“The Navy’s Ladies” More than half the Navy Department’s staff in Washington is now distaff. I am amazed anything gets done there. On a more authentically feminine note, the paper registers new summer uniforms for the Marine Women’s Reserve Officers (a neat white Palm Beach suit), enlisted WACs (tropical khaki, with a new garrison cap by Hatter Knox), WAVES and Spars in slate-grey seersucker with fitted jacket with four pockets, one real, three false. Somewhere in the middle, I hope they make time for running the war.
 
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 “Biddle’s Battle” Attorney General Francis Biddle is on the hotseat over the Federal takeover of Montgomery Ward (a management-union thing, you will recall, Reggie), a trial of eight laides of the evening from Washington’s Hopkins Institute that has turned from a prosecution of a “million-dollar call house” into a typically sordid prostitution case (who could have guessed that real-life prostitutes would turn out to be drab and troubled women?), and a trial of 29 alleged seditionists that is collapsing from the government’s found disinclination to prosecute the kind of people who get their amusement from saying outrageous things in public. (See above: “drab and troubled.”) The point of the story, buried at the bottom, is that Congress is going to investigate Biddle’s handling of the Montgomery Ward affair.
 
Science, Medicine, Education
 
Dr. Robert Burns Woodward (27), and William von Eggers Doering, also 27, both of Harvard, announced the artificial synthesis of quinine from coal tar this week. I note that if this the project of 27 year olds, then while the effort to synthesise quinine has gone on for 90 years, it has been aggressively pressed at Harvard for only four or five –since the occupation of the East Indies, in other words. Polaroid, sponsor of the research, is working to develop licensing for mass production, as US troops in the Pacific are in dire need of two-and-a-half billion tablets annually, twice the prewar output. It is hoped the further work on the “15 stepping stones to quinine” will uncover a permanent malaria cure.
 
“Elementary Murder” Dr. Le MoyneSnyder, medico-legal director of the Michigan State Police believes that in the future, many murders that currently go undetected will be solved by advanced scientific techniques of investigation, such as lie detectors and gunpowder residue tests.
 
“That’s Not My Baby” Mistaken baby identifications may or may not be rife at Los Angeles-area hospitals. Or possibly just the South Hoover Hospital. I shall take the high road, Reggie.
 
“Twentieth Century Seer” Large quantities of penicillin will be available for the invasion, and it is all thanks to the work of Dr. Fleming.
 
 
 
 Although deep in the article it is noted that others pressed the development of a manufacturing method, and the paper underlines the eight year delay between the development of the first practical penicillin treatment in 1933 and the beginning of factory production in the late war. Is there no form of progress, be it ever so purely beneficial, that was not delayed by the late Depression?
 
“Umbilicose” North Carolina Congressman Carl Thomas Durham and his House Military Affairs subcommittee has attacked a pamphlet distributed by the Army as communist. The paper jokes that it is because it represents Adam and Eve as having navels, which is heretical, and Communists might be heretical when they are not being atheistical. However, this is the “Races of Mankind” pamphlet of recent notoriety, and the Congressman might be more upset about its allegations of racial equality.
 
“For Negro Colleges” Yale spent seven and a half million dollars last year to educate 3,112 students. The United Negro College Fund Campaign aims to raise $1.5 million to be shared among 27 U.S. Negro colleges. With exquisite discretion, keynote speaker, Fisk University’s White President, Thomas Elsa Jones, suggests that given the advantage conferred by their skin pigment, the slogan for the Coloured graduate should be “Go south, east and west.” Because they suffer less from sunburn, you see, Reggie. So they should go away. To somewhere were their skin colour is an advantage. But not here. Thank, you, Dr. Fisk. You have been a real help to the cause.
 
 
 
“Jitters Recur” The colleges will not get their full allocation of tuition-paying profit units –I mean, students—from the Army’s Specialized Training Reserve Program. Some small men’s colleges may have to close for the duration.
 
“Berrer Veterans” The paper is amused by the prospect that discharged veterans will make better students in college, and so will learn to write ‘better.’
 
Business
 
“Good First-Quarter” We were warned in advane that earnings would show anticipation of the postwar slowdown. This did not happen. Sales are up 23%, profits very much less, due to renegotiation, which is still underway at many firms. Some firms did unexpectedly well (Libby-Owens-Ford Glass Co, Texas Co., GM). Others, notably the rail companies, did poorly, while steel was unable to make good on its alarmist predictions, disappointingly ending up on profits. But it surely all shall end in tears due to cutbacks, cancellations, and the like. After all, last year, the first-quarter numbers were among the year’s poorest, and the paper reads the auguries to discover that this proves that this year’s first quarter earnings will be the best.
 
People are talking about talking about oil; MGM is expanding in Britain’ farm earnings are up, debt down.
 
“The Big Drive” “To help him [move 45 million feet of lumber down river to the Van Buren Madawaska Lumber Mill in Keegan, Maine], Gardner has hired 150 0f the toughest woodsmen he could find. Most of them come from New Brunswick –hard-muscled, catfooted lumberjacks who like to wear the loudest mackinaw shirts that money can buy. They work in crews of six, travel in bateaux (over-sized row-boats)….[and] will seldom be dry until the logs reach Keegan late in June.” Etc, etc, romance of the woods, eat minced meat pies, baked beans and mashed potatoes, etc. There are a great many US dollars to be carried up the Restigouche to rustic cabins in the wood if the national target of 34 billion board feet is to be met.
 
“Big Steel Tries Prefabrication” US Steel has bought Gunnison Housing Corporation of New Albany, Indiana, which are prefabricated houses built in sections and quickly assembled. Attention, Big Steel: America already has a prefabricated modular home construction material that can be easily moved and quickly assembled on site. It is called “wood.” Or perhaps that is the voice of special interest, and this will turn out to be a roaring success. Whatever: I am not putting any of our money in it.
 
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“Furs: Chinchilla comeback?” It could happen.
 
Arts, etc.
 
The Hayes Code, which has recently banned sweaters in movies, now adds garters. “Hollywood publicity cameramen have taken to shooting backsides, which are still within the law.” Or perhaps Hollywood is beginning to depend on cameramen who have resorted to a certain morals disqualification to avoid call-up.
 
 
 
“On Sir Osbert’s Tail” The paper spends three pages on Sir Osbert Sitwell, who has written a book. Well, at least it makes a change from articles about comings and goings from great orchestras, art books, and the recently published memoirs of Washington PostShanghai correspondent Mark Gayn. Gayn predicts that the Pacific War will continue through 1948. since he also thinks Chiang can save China, he at least gives me a concrete date for future planning. If Gayn says it will continue through 1948, that is when it will have ended by. It is the Janeway effect.
 
“Bruce Barton, advertising tycoon, onetime GOP Congressman,” told 370 New Jersey socialites in a speech this week that Franklin Roosevelt was on the same low moral level as Robin Hood. Both justified their  thefts on the grounds that they took from the rich to give to the poor. Now that’s the way to win an election, Mr. Barton!
 
Professor Nicholas John Spykman’s last book, a treatise on geopolitics called America’s Strategy in World Politics reveals that Eurasia encircles America, which is thus under unfathomable threat by assorted Eurasians, and calls for a foreign policy that makes it impossible for any one power to dominate Eurasia and thus surround America.  I think with that in mind, before I plot my Eurasian ill upon America, I will dispose of the whiskey in front of me. It has me encircled, you see.
 
Flight, 18 May 1944
 
…And a pleasant evening was had by all. At least after your eldest was persuaded by his children to desist from talking about the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and its miracle machine, and melt into fatherhood.
 
 I will be there when you meet your grandchildren, Reggie.
 
Leaders
 
“Our New Transports” The paper is enormously pleased with the Short Shetland, and also all the other planes that have not actually flown yet, but mainly the Shetland.
 
 
 “The Lords Debate” of civil aviation did not contribute much. Though it is noticed that rail companies are trying to move in on the civil aviation business. One wants to smack their noses. That is our business to invade! More seriously, I find aviation a more than lucrative business to be in covertly. I have my doubts about whether we should involve ourselves overtly. It is not like shipping, for planes can only land where they land, and even that freedom is being taken away by radar.
 
War in the Air
 
Crimea falls! Aircraft were involved! We are bombing the “back areas” of Hitler’s Europe. Sounds rather naughty, Reggie. “Tank busters” are in operation in Burma, where a story is told of planes chasing two Japanese tanks a mile down the road before destroying them. Left unanswered is the question of how the Japanese got tanks into the Imphal valley. Hard work and ingenuity, I know, but these virtues are not to be attributed to the Japanese. For reasons perhaps relating to Captain Brown doing something, the paper revives the controversy over the death of Manfred v. Richthofen. Offensive in Italy! Aircraft were nvolved. Further to this summer’s project of flooding every acre of convertible land in Europe, bombers breached the Pescara dam to inundate the flanks of 8th Army and allow it to concentrate its attack. A. L. Wykes, managing director of Taylorcraft Aeroplanes, died this week in an ill-judged aerobatics display during a “Salute the Soldiers” event in Leicester. He leaves a widow, a young son, and an unintended example to the soldiers being saluted. A Mosquito of RAF Transport Command just bettered the Liberator-set record for a flight between Labrador and Britain by 2h, 10 minutes, to 5h, 40 minutes.
 
Here and There
 
France (the Fighting kind) now has a civil air plan. Sir Richard Fairey was in Vancouver last week 
 
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(better for everyone’s sakes than at Stockport), where he gave a speech to the Board of Trade about how at current rates of production, the industry could supply the world’s needs for aircraft in about three days. So build better aircraft more slowly! North American wants you to know that part of the armament of the B-25H Mitchell is in the form of “package guns,” and we are to be as amazed by this innovation as every other time it has been announced in the last five years or more. (I am thinking of the Blenheim Fighter, but doubt that it was original, either.) The American fighter jet is to be known as the P-59. The paper is pleased to announced that the USAAF now uses the Avro Anson as a trainer. Some of the wonderful anaglyphs of aerial devastation of Germany exhibited in Parliament by the Prime minister are now on show. It is suggested by a speaker to the Post Office Controlling Officers’ Association that after the war, mail might be flown about. I presume that the paper is subtly mocking. General Arnold says that the average life of a B-17 in the European Theatre of Operations is 231 days, or 21 operations.
 
“Postwar Civil Aviation” Is talked about
.
Norman Hall Warren, “Rhombic Ruminations: The Designer of the Warren-Young Tandem Explains Why the Machine Should be Viceless” The invasion. What’s keeping it? Oh, well, let us run this publicity hound’s bit, instead. The number can’t just be ads all the way through. The readers might feel cheated.
 
“Studies in Aircraft Recognition” Explain how to tell the Vought-Sikorsky KingfisherArado AR-196 and Vickers-Armstrong (Supermarine) Walrus II apart. Something that I would have thought would not have required explaining, since apart from the fact that all three are catapulted from battleships to correct naval gunnery, they look nothing alike. I think the moral of the story is that if you see any of the three, they are likely to be accompanied by one-ton shells flying about at 2000 feet per second, and you probably have more immediate worries.
 
Behind the Lines
 
The performance of the Japanese MitsubishiOB-01 bomber is announced. The N.C.T.1 announced by Hispano-Suiza at the 1938 Paris show, basically two Hispano-Suiza 12Yscoupled to a common driveshaft, has had its final drive appropriated for the He 177. Junkers is trying to recruit labour for its new plant in Milan. The Germans have a new fighter. A Berlin resident recently arrived in Switzerland reports that seventy to eighty percent of Berlin’s war factories have been put out of action by bombing. This would be good news, were it not so pessimistically refuted by Fat Chow, who will be out of the capital in less than two months, it looks, and is happy about it, but not because all the factories are levelled. I still cannot quite imagine him flying across Asia in a small aircraft cabin with a Japanese colonel, but Fat Chow is nothing if not cool. 
 
James Barlow, “Bombing Policy: Why I Believe in the Night Offensive” Editorial copy is like the chaperones at a high school dance for advertisments. Needful to keep the ads from touching each other, but a drag on the proceedings when it takes itself too seriously. Case in point.
 
“Camera Recorder: New Hawker Instrument Writes Time Histories of Acceleration, Control Movements and Stick Forces” The idea is that photographic film serves as the medium for recording the instrument outputs. Ingenious, in that the medium is rather a sticking point for all kinds of motor-driven recording. Wax cylinders work well enough, at least on land, but cannot be splices. With all due respect to your present, chemical paper is fragile and cannot be reused, unlike magnetic wire, which has its own limitations, but also the near-miraculous advantage of being able to replay sound. Film paper has many of the disadvantages of chemical paper, as you will know perhaps better than anyone, but can potentially record much more information.
 
“Aircraft Engineer Training: Recommendations of the S.B.A.C. Committee” SBAC prefers an apprenticeship scheme in which boys are enrolled beginning at 16, and graduated at 21. Only exception candidates will be enrolled above the age of 18, with the option of transferring to an aeronautical engineer programme. Premiums are to be abolished. Apprentice aeronautical engineers should have satisfactory grades in appropriate School Certificates, and graduates of Junior Technical Schools may be favoured. The firms will be in charge of the apprentice’s industrial training, while local technical schools will be used to further the apprentice’s theoretical studies, unless a works school is necessary due to distance. Your eldest fears that this programme is rather at risk of slighting young engineers’ mathematical training. In a practical sense, it is likely to keep the empyrean realms of upper management for University graduates of good birth and connections.
Then he blushes. It is good to see that he is aware of the privilege that wealth and family have brought him.
 
“Air Transport: viscount Knollys tells Empire Society What it Will Mean in the Future” In the future, you will be able to fly to New Zealand or India. Very nice for the man in a hurry to go to New Zealand. (Why?)
 
W. S. Farren, “Research” Farren’s Seventh Wright Brothers Lecture to the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences was too full of encomiums to research  to confine to a single number of the paper. In the future, planes will fly higher and faster, but not faster than 70% of the speed of sound, and not higher than perhaps 40,00ft, except with difficulties in both cases.
 
Correspondence
 
ATC officers should be allowed to wear caps, and ROC officers have not been giving away more precious “gen” than others. Gunpowder is so too a good aircraft fuel, ducted radiators are not well understood by people who write about them in letters to the paper, and the paper has received a very nice drawing of a “mail” heli-gyrocopter. In sum: letters to Flight are once again being written by people for whom time weighs heavy.
 
Time, 22 May 1944
 
This number of the paper has General Smuts on the cover, so it should be a rare treat.
 
International
 
Assorted Prime Ministers are in London to talk about talking. Curtin and Mackenzie King disagreed about where and when they should in the future talk about talking. Other premiers had other opinions, including the one from New Zealand, a country that I should have thought too small to be able to fit an opinion. General Smuts was there, but was too wonderful to contain to only a single article, so there is another one. Quite a long one. And perhaps more. I get a little vague when I am falling asleep. Eire was not there, as all the Eirish politicians were in Eireland squabbling about money, public contracts and elections. And also because this Commonwealth thing was never more than an excuse to get the British out of Ireland, even if some dullards still seem unaware of it.
 
“Fire in Bombay” A Canadian-built Liberty ship (so, actually, “Victory ship, dear paper) caught fire while unloading in Bombay. Being loaded with 300 tons of high explosive and 708 bales of cotton, the dockers understandably abandoned their work ahead of the fire brigade. The fire spread, causing 350 dead, 1815 injured. “Probably cause: spontaneous combustion. There was no sign of sabotage.” That is, the ship was loaded with $4,293,500 in gold bullion, and, apart from one 28 oz bar which fell on the verandah of a house a mile away, there is no word what happened to it. I hope that it was all recovered, but my cynical side suggests that it was not.
 
“Tito’s Yugoslavia” The Marshal had a press day.
 
“Theosophist’s End” The dictator of El Salvador, who so offended the paper some weeks ago, has resigned office and fled the country in the wake of a successful civil disobedience campaign. His Minister of War has assumed the governance of the country. All are pardoned, all is forgiven. Soon, democracy will sweep the isthmus.
 
“Muttering Left” Labour’s failure to discipline Aneurin Bevan means that the Tories will lose the next election, says the paper. People suspect hidden reserves of reaction.
 
Lacandone Indians of Chiapas State in southern Mexico are rustic, primitive, untouched by the corrupting ills of modern society. Etc.
 
“First Blow” The Invasion. What’s keeping it?
 
“Air Harvest” The invasion. What’s keeping it? Aircraft were involved.
 
“To Destroy the German Armies” Is the answer to the question put to General Alexander: Why are you attacking towards Rome? The paper notices that there are 20 divisions to be destroyed, and that right now they are cut off from supplies by the breaching of the Avisio rail duct in the Brenner Pass.
 
“Into the Mountains” Further in this line, the French under General Juin stepped off into the Italian nmountains this week. It turns out that French colonial alpine troops are quite good at mountain warfare, to the surprise of someone, somewhere.
 
“Landsale’s End” A short piece about the loss of the USS Landsale destroyerends with the information that the executive officer, Lietenant Robert M.Morgenthau, son of the Treasury Secretary, was amongst the vast majority of the crew saved.
 
“Off the Beam” A German pilotless, rocket-driven, bomb-carrying German aircraft crashed in south Sweden recently.
 
“The Light Goes Out” In the Crimea, where the last German resistance came to an end this week.
 
“The Calm Before” It was a quiet week in the Pacific as we wait for the next operation against an undisclosed location. The paper closes by noting that “the Navy’s three four-star top dogs, Admirals King, Nimitz and Halsey” met in San Francisco last week to touch up their plans for it. You will notice the conspicuous inclusion of Halsey rather than Spruance. Of course, as a theatre commander, Halsey has a right to be there. But as Lieutenant A. keeps brashly reminding me, the only American admiral ever to have lost two air-sea naval battles really ought to replace the only American admiral to have won one. For the good of the country, you see.
 
“Catastrophe in Asia” In Honan, the Japanese advance. In Burma, the Chinese do. The difference? General Stillwell has seen to the training and equipping of the Chinese force in Burma from American resources, and allocated U.S. trained officers to command. Perhaps they even take the time to pat Chinese soldiers on the head and tell them that they are good boys. And pay them; good pay being one of those things uniformly and coincidentally related to victories in the field.
 
“Fortunes of War” Gruesome, hopeful and tragic stories of the war in the air over Europe.
 
“No Stone Unturned” German troops garrisoning the Atlantic Wall were instructed to kill their 300,000 tame rabbits this week, lest they get loose in the bombardment and trigger mines. Oh, for the love of... They're just making these stories up,  Reggie.
 
“Cannons and Guns” Were you wondering what kinds of cannons the US Army has? The paper explains, and does not quite say (only heavily implies) that cannons were invented in the Civil War. American version. Given that anyone actually interested can learn these things in Popular Mechanics –as I should know, as I tripped over  a pile of the same on the stairs on my way up a moment ago- I would prefer to file this story under “waiting for the invasion.”
 
Domestic
 
The President’s health, the paper tells us, is not failing after all. But the details in text (wrinkles, spreading bald spot, inability to “overwork,” bad temper) go against the summary. The President’s ill-temper does seem justified, however. Montgomery-Ward cannot ignore the War Labour Board. There are laws. You do not defy them; you sneak around them. Though it should be noted that the company was returned to Mr. Avery a few hours after the press conference.
 
“Who Should Ratify the Peace?” A Gallup poll finds that the two-thirds requirement for Senate ratification of treaties is not approved by the American public.
 
“The Poll Tax Peril” A bill to abolish the poll tax in eight Southern States draws a dramatic performance from Senator Connally of Texas, even though the Senate had already arranged that the bill would not come to vote. It was just a painless way for southern Senators to demonstrate their fidelity to white supremacy in an election year.
 
“Indian Buyers” 10.9% of the E-bonds ($2,379,000,000) have been redeemed in the last three months, equal to a month’s sales by the rate of the latest drive.
 
 
Given the ferocious sales campaigns, the paper should really not be surprised. Honestly, what do you expect when quotas are handed down from on high?
 
“Lessons of History” Former US Ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grew, has his second fawning piece in the paper of no discernable content in two weeks. Make of that what you will.
 
“Baby Shortage” The nation’s wartime birth rate is declining froom its peak of 3.2 million in 1943. The Census Bureau expects the number to remain stable at 2.1 million per year for the remaining war years, to go through a temporary “birth boom” in the postwar years, and then to slump again, with the US population beginning to slump again within 50 years.
 
“Winners and Losers” Tea Leaves! The paper has them!
 
“What We Don’t Know” A Gallup poll finds that many Americans are unaware of some remarkably commonplace facts.
 
“Western Dewey” “Blue-eyed, baby-faced Byron Hirst, 31, the new county attorney” of Cheyenne, Wyoming, has been prosecuting vice and corruption, prominently involving the families of Coloured troops at the nearby base, just like Tom Dewey used to do in New York. No doubt he will be President someday. Cracking down on men mistreating the families of 2nd Cavalry Division should be just the ticket! In other vice-related news, a brothel owner from Minnesota who took two of his employees with him on vacation with him to Salt Lake City has been acquitted on appeal to the Supreme Court of violating the Mann Act.
 
 “Maybe Later” Shall America have a Secretary of Defence? Not if the Navy has anything to say about it.
 
Richard Bong has been rotated off the front lines.
 
“Fourth Gear” The paper notices that Mr. Roosevelt will be the Democratic Party’s candidate for President in 1944.
 
The Dies Committee on Un-AmericanAffairs may expire now that its former chair, a Texas Congressman, is not running in November. Other members of the Committee hope that it will be made a permanent House Committee.
 
“Mild and Bitter” A Martin Marauder B-26 of that name has just completed its hundredth mission, a rare accomplishment for a modern warplane. This proves that i) the B-26 is not as bad as people  make it out to be, and that ii) Blaine Stubblefield is not the only man getting Martin money to push that line.
 
Science
 
Too Many People?” Warren Simpson Thompson of Miami University (the one in Oxford, Ohio, of course) points out that there are Plenty of People in his recent book. Western Europe’s population has risen from 115 million in 1800 to 435 million in 1940, or, counting all of Europe, because GErmany kept growing, and if it is part of Germany it must be Western Europe, I suppose, to 542. Which, if these numbers are anywhere near correct, and the 225 is intended to be the 1975 number, implies a staggering, even catastrophic, rate of decline in the 1960s and 1970s. 
 
 
 
Perhaps my scornful attitude towards temporary housing was misplaced. Not only are prefabricated modular buildings a better temporary solution, but aging backs and shoulders will have an easier time clearing them away so that they can dig graves for each other, there in the silence of the moody oakwoods that will replace them.
 The US will rise to 160 million in 1975 and then begin to decline. “Eastern Europe, Russia and Japan, chiefly agriculatural nations, will increae in population for some time to come.” The Soviet Union, for example, will reach 251 million in 1970. India may grow from 389 to 500, China from 500 to 600.
At which point he pivots from what I would suggest is the obvious conclusion –that, overall, it is a wash with a negative trend  (390 million gained in India, China and the Soviet Union, 311 in lost in Europe), to taking about birth control. The Earth cannot withstand this burgeoning population, this pressure on resources, all that science and industry can do will not suffice, political explosions…
 
Actually, this perplexed me so much that I seen Wong Lee out to obtain a copy from a bookseller. It turns out that "Northwest and Central Europe" expect a decline from 237 to 225 millions in 1970. I notice, however, that no projection for 1975 is made, however. The question for the builder is, at what point does dilapidation fall below the rate of abandoment: that is, when it is no longer a question of not replacing housing stock, but of giving up still-livable housing for lack of tenants? Houses lacking tenants of less than twenty years life will begin to be built in Britain in, what, 1950? 1955? 1960? The water here is murky, and I should like, if demographers are to frighten us so, for a bit more confidence in stating their conjectures. 
 
Science and Medicine
 
Opthamologist Hedwig Stieglitz Kuhn, daughter and niece of assorted famous Stieglitzes, and Dr. Joseph Tiffin, Purdue psychologist, promise to revolutionise industry with revolutionary new vision tests. Because that is a reasonable thing to expect to happen.
 
“Magnetic Current?” Dr. Felix Ehrenhaft is irritated that no-one takes his theory that “magnetism, like water, flows in currents and can decompose water” seriously. Results of a confirming test of his decomposing apparatus were given to the annual session of the American Physical Association. Two scientists attending, Jacob Goldman of Westinghouse and James T. Kendall, over from the Metropolitan-Vickers laboratory in Britain for various reasons(!) gently pointed out that this was nonsense, hopefully without scattering Hamilton’s horrid quaternions all over the table, as your son did, when I asked for clarification. (Fortunately, his attention was soon distracted from his hapless victim by his wife, who apparently had opinions of her own in the matter. Much reference to Gibbs and that bizarre old crank, Heaviside, followed.)
 
 
“Docs Flock” Also conventioneering this week, notwithstanding the ODT’s beseeching reminders that there was a war on, assorted medical associations.
 
“Tuberculosis  Progress” There has been considerable. A drug treatment is eventually hoped for, but, in the mean time, mass x-ray methods are improving, and the survival rate from whole lung pnuemonectomy is rising from the old 35% fatality rate, and so can be considered much earlier in the progress of the disease than hitherto.
 
“Penicillin Echoes” New studies suggest that penicillin might be effective in late stage syphilis.
 
“Medicine: One Every Year?” Planned Parenthood has long advocated having children at a rate of one evey two years. Now Johns Hopkins’ Dr. Nicholson Joseph Eastman says that there is no reason to wait for a year, and good reason to get on with it and have babies every year. Planned Parenthood admits that they have been completely wrong, although “new research is needed.” 
 
What is happening in this country, Reggie? Has all of our traditional belligerence been shipped to camps in the south of England? Even Planned Parenthood has turned meek and mild, and the Dies Committee has disintegrated before our eyes. What hope other professional controversialists if Southern Congressmen and those "more deadly than the male" turn inward?
 
Although,of course, it may have something to do with the coming of summer. Or that everyone is waiting to write about the invasion.
 
“Ringside in the Solomons” Lunga beach is bloody again, this time with weekly amateur boxing matches. Winners get $5 in war stamps, losers $2.50. The beach is packed with spectators for huge cards. The promoter has a stable of 150 fighters, and one Saturday “popular card” saw Hawaiian soldiers against Marines, with the Marines taking 6 of 9. “MPs ruled no decision on five fist fights in the audience. Between you and me, Reggie, I think boredom is at risk of breaking out down there. I would also have liked to be there to see the three of nine.
 
In various government-related news, a debate was held last week between proponents of freedom and economic planning; a wealthy California businessman was fined for ignoring the FAA, establishing its right to regulate private aviation; Ford recognised that foremen were labourers entitled to union representation over the anguished protests of the Automotic Council for War Production.
 
“New Boss, More Goods” The War Production Board’s Office of Civilian Requirements has a new boss, Wiliam Yandell Elliot, replacing  “shy, gnome-like Arthur Dare Whiteside,” who went back to run Dun & Bradstreet. Various limits on production for the civilian market were relaxed or lifted. A “small bonanza” of farm equipment, household goods such as irons and baby carriages and textiles, such as children’s and infants’ clothes is expected. The WPB “has at last taken a firm stand against the Army & Navy’s demand for “everything of everything.”
 
Art
 
“Another Biddle, Another Show” Attorney General Francis Biddle produced “the picture of the decade” by having two U.S. soldiers carry Sewell Avery out of his own office. Now his brother has an exhibition of his war pictures! It’s not a stretch! Why is everyone forgetting about Montgomery-Ward already? Troops stationed around Manhattan are going to be treated to a free ballet. But it will be a vigorous, lively ballet.
 
 
Look, gentle paper: put your average, red-blooded American boy in the same room as a ballerina and he will spontaneously promise her fealty onto death. . Put him in a room with her, dancing, and he will melt to the ground in a puddle. Put him in the audience of a ballet in which she stars, and he will get bored. It is that simple.
 
 
The Radio intelligence Division of the FCC reports that it has suppressed all pirate radios and German radio-controlled spy networks in the Western Hemisphere. The Germans cannot be very good at this.
 
“Look Homeward Fighter” DuncanNorton-Taylor’s With My Heart in my Mouth is the TIME correspondent’s report of his southwest Pacific tour. By the time he got his ride to Kula Gulf, he was convinced that action had passed his tour by; then his squadron fell in with the Japanese at Kula Gulf, and he found himself in the middle of a sea fight. I can sympathise, as I well remember the experience  –even if we were  only twelve in our first, and Norton-Taylor won his. But I digress. Needless to say, the paper loved it, but the story is further evidence of the feminisation of the home front, or at least the paper, becacuse what it loved is the portrait of what “the warrior truly wants,” which is to “get back home and stay there,” the reviewer says.
 
Norton-Taylor’s favourite acquaintance along the way was Red Quigley, who “became a father at sea” and proudly showed his baby daughter’s red ringlet to Norton-Taylor. Karl Kawa, a married machinist from Buffalo, made a little model of the house he planned to build back home. And, finally, Duncan Norton-Taylor “got home to give a finis to his book which every fighter wants as a finis to his war:” his wife and his daughters “standing on the sidewalk in the dim light which fell from the windows of the Red Star bus station.” I don’t know, Reggie, but I think  that I detect a unifying theme in this review.
 
Caroline Gordon’s Come Die Along with Me is about assorted members of the distaff of a decaying family of Tennessee gentry in a decaying house who decay, have horses and black servants who also decay, and sometimes murder people. Mrs. Gordon’s prose lingers over the possibility that the Civil War was won by the wrong side. 
 
Letters to the Paper:
 
Get an English Girl

Sirs:
Elizabeth Gellhorn [TIME, April 13] and other jealous Yankee gals appear perturbed about so many soldiers being in England this spring. Elizabeth expresses her jealousy by denouncing the English mother of an American soldier's illegitimate quads. A friend of mine in a letter last week expressed it in classic parody: "Oh to be in England now that the Army's there." British females, given good girdles and such, silk stockings, high heels, a permanent wave and a good set of cosmetics, could easily come up to American standards of beauty. After five years of war they aren't doing bad now.
The startling thing I find about English girls though is their helpful and cooperative nature. Gladly will they darn your socks, wash your clothes, share their limited food rations with you, . . . listen to your bragging about central heating and then apologize for what five years of war have done to what appears to me a beautiful little island after the flat dry desolation of Texas and the stinking swamps of Louisiana.
Yes, indeed, the girls back home should worry, or else learn to ... darn socks or something else besides play bridge and sip cocktails all afternoon. The English say we spoil our women. After seeing and going out with a number of both I'm convinced we certainly do. My advice to any bewildered bachelor back home: send to England for a wife. The initial investment may be large but she will save you two thousand bucks a year in upkeep.

(PFC.) JOHN M. STEVENS c/o Postmaster New York City
Flight, 25 May 1944
 
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Cover: In the future, your daughter-out-of-law explains, when British girls fly home to Mother because their husbands have brought them one more sock to be darned, they will need to take the train to some dock dredged out to take a battleship. Or we can measure our words, and buy flowers when we don’t. Chances are, the latter will be cheaper, the former easier.
Leaders
“Weapons and Tactics” Dive bombers and tanks used to be thought of as the wave of the future. Then it was fighter-bombers and infantry. Perhaps in the future, it will be something else again. “Unfortunate Misunderstandings” The Civil Aviation Debate in the Lords has led to them in the United States and Canada.
“War in the Air”
The paper is pleased with the capture of Myitkyina. Or, rather, of Myityina's airfield. Myitkyina is a big place. 
1280px-Myitkyina-ayeyarwady-d01.jpg
It is also pleased with the carrier raid off Norway. French colonial troops, “led by French officers,” the paper adds, have distinguished themselves in Italy. I seem to recall something about the Rif War that suggests that they would probably distinguish themselves even more under their own chiefs. Although considering the language barrier, one imagines that that is, effectively, what is happening anyway. I know that it is what is happening in Myitkyina. The paper notes that with the heavy monsoon rains coming, the main requirement on that front is permanent quarters to maintain the health of the troops. For this, Myityina, not its airfield, is necessary, and hopefully it will fall soon. The paper notes that Hellcats were used as fighter bombers in the Norway attack for the first time, and that 5th Indian division was moved by air from Arakan to Imphal. Not, of course, with all of its stores and weapons. Certainly “Long Toms” cannot yet be moved by air, but it is a pointer towards the future. Last Saturday, a record 5000 Allied aircraft took off from Great Britain for the Continent.
Here and There
The RCAF is now 191,500 strong, plus 15,000 “Waafs.” Perhaps the English should  make an effort to feed them better? Keith Shackleton, who has done amusing illustrations for his father’s “Horace Says…” articles in this paper (which in my experience really are amusing, unlike much which passes for funny here and elsewhere) has had an exhibit. May there be many more. The paper prints a picture showing a vast armada of gliders being prepared. 
 
 
The reduction in US Navy fighter deliveries is noted. I am amused that news of the Budd Conestoga follows that. The largest stainless-steel aircraft ever constructed also got generous federal money on the strength of a willingness to play the President’s game.
 
Budd_RB_Conestoga_on_ground.jpg Very entertaining Wiki.
 RAAF Bristol Beauforts have a very low loss rate, attesting to their toughness, or reliability, or perhaps that there are no Japanese fighters left in the Southwest Pacific. Sir Oliver Simmonds, he of Simmonds Aerocessories, was most uncomplimentary about BOAC and the “chosen instrument” approach to international civil aviation in the House.
F. A. de V. Robertson, “The Prevention of Wars” What, my bar tab is due? And Flight has space to fill? Oh happy coincidence! The idea is that if the Axis ever plans to attack us again, we will make them not have planes, and, so, war is prevented! Add another dash of gin to that, would you, my good man?
Edward C. Bowyer, “Britain’s Overseas Air Services: Diary of a 26,000 Mile Wartime Tour: R.A.F. Transport Command and B.O.A.C. in Four Continents” The General Director of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors flew the world on a Warwick, C-54, Empire Boat, C-47, Hudson, Liberator and assorted De Havilland crates. I am a pretty seasoned air traveller, Reggie. I have flown to Chicago, Honolulu, Seattle and Vancouver, to Los Angeles several times, across the continent five times, Paris and Berlin any number of times in the old days, and once, before the war, to the East. But I cannot even conceive of 26,000 miles in 30 days. Apparently, the C-54 is fast, the Warwick is faster, the C-47 is a crate, the Atlantic services are tests of endurance, flying in January is cold, even in Mesopotamia, wakeup calls for aircraft boarding are far too early, and flying boats take forever to dock and disembark.
“Studies in Recognition” The difference between the Civil Lancaster, Lockheed Lodestar, and Curtiss Commando is explored. This is a better attempt at being thematic than most, I think to myself as my eyes glaze over at the thought of flying on any of them. I have the money. It will not be spent on anything less than the Constellation. Leave these reconditioned warbirds to younger bones.
Behind the Lines
Spanish sources report that there is now a version of the Me. 210 that actually flies, the Me. 210R. German air force transports will no longer land in Sweden. St. Gallen’s local paper reports that German aircraft production does not exceed 1500/month. It goes on to add that aircraft are the new number one priority, ahead of other number one priorities such as tanks and U-boats. Problems in the air include the fact that Messerschmitt and Heinkel are feuding, the curtailment of Luftwaffe ground engineer training back in 1942, and lack of fuel. Massed formations of German rocket guns are appearing on the front. They are terrifying. The Slovak army has raised a battalion of parachutists, which is not.
“Horace Says” In celebration of his son’s first exhibit, W. S. Shackleton returns to the pages of Flight for the first time in, I think, years. He seems less amusing than I remember. One or the other of us is growing old faster.
Z. Ciolkosz, “The Claims for Fair Participation by European Nations in Future Air Traffic.” If you want to fly over Poland, Poland gets a slice of the gravy. (This image of gelid gravy is brought to you by the fact that our housekeeper is out on the town tonight to see a film with Lieutenant A. I do not know how he makes time for her when his Admiral is in town, and it is not just for the sake of my diet of a late night back from the office that I continue to pray that a use will be found for the young man in New Caledonia. Although I urge the powers concerned not to let him fly to the South Pacific, as I can just imagine the boy in the vicinity of cockpit controls.) Where was I? Oh, yes, a an actual reason to have countries. They get you a slice of what would otherwise all go to London or Washington.
The Air Transport Association and Society of Licensed Aircraft Engineers are going posh, with coats of arms and meetings, and, perhaps, chains of office and ceremonial hats.
A Rotol ad reminds us that a pound of weight is £11/annum of savings in operating expenses. So every pound we smuggle is £11 lost to BOAC or the RAF? I almost feel guilty.
Correspondence
Persons believe that dispatch riders should learn to fly; that the Home Guard are idiots; that the ATC are young and callow. Turn the page over, and all the silliness is put in the shade by a letter from an expert who wants to explain, once and for all, how jet propulsion works. There are even footnotes, but he gives away the game by signing himself “E. Burke, M. Sc. (Eng.) Lond., A.C.G.I., D.I.C., A.M.I.C.E., F.P.S.” Need a job, due you, Mr. Burke? Then be more careful about the impression you make, because this makes you look like a would-be social climber.
Time, 29 May 1944
 
Another number, another gentleman on the cover in a khaki cap. This time, it is General de Gaulle.
 
“Partners for Peace” An invasion of Europe is planned, it says here. In anticipation Greeks, Poles and Yugoslavs have apparently been told to stop being so excitable.
 
“Sooner or Later” Spaniards, on the other hand, are free to continue to run about talking loudly, gesturing wildly and being Catholic.
 
“Coptic Quarrel” Ethiopians also. Except not Catholic.
 
“The Symbol” Who is General de Gaulle? I mean, really? Who is he? What kind of underwear does he like? Long socks, short socks? Also, is he a Fascist? Communist? Remarkably tedious questions like that. As for ideologies, it should be obvious that the General will have whatever will be required for  him to be important.
 
“Thirteenth Month” Germany is getting ready to collapse at some point in the next six months or so.
 
“Inside the Fortress” You know who is wonderful, Reggie? Tito. Marshal Tito is wonderful.
 
“Dictator Under Cover” But President Vargas of Brazil is not.
 
“I Lament” Rather like the former President of El Salvador. The paper now notices that Ambassador Wright made up for upsetting the paper by having a stern word with the former President. This led to his overthrow, and the coming of a new dawn to El Salvador, where from henceforth democracy and progress will reign.
 
“Fighting Hearts” a roundup of news from Norway, where the Germans abandon investment plants but not their occupation, includes a note from the “Essener National Zeitung,” which is concerned that the British are teaching Norwegian saboteurs the jujitsu touch of death.
 
“Unconditional Terms” Anthony Eden denied that this government is revisiting Unconditional Surrender this week. If the Germans want conditions, let them repel the invasion first.
 
“Inner Hunger” The invasion. What’s keeping it?
 
“Death at Stalag Luft III” the delayed revelation of the death of 47 Allied prisoners in a mass escape from that prison upsets the paper, and the Foreign Office.
 
“The Gathering Storm” The invasion –Never mind, Reggie. I notice that the press in occupied Europe believes there to be 40—50 Empire divisions in Britain, 40 American, 80,000 airborne troops, 10,000 aicraft, 10 million tons of shipping. That is quite the armada. (Last weeks, number had a review of a scholarly biography of the Eighteenth Century Spanish statesman, Cardinal Alberoni, I noticed it as out of the paper’s usual line, but didn’t think it worth mentioning. Now I read the paper’s inadvertent reference to the Invasion as a “great storm,” and remember the review’s comment that Alberoni attempted his own Spanish Armada, only to have it wrecked by a storm. Suddenly I do not feel quite like mocking others for being so palpably anxious about the invasion.
 
“Reflex” B-24 “Sweating it Out” is returning from Germany, damaged by flak, with bombs jammed up and unable to drop. Fearing a crash landing, bombardier Lieutenant Edward M. Gibbens, of Mountain Home, Idaho (a tenant?) takes a crash axe, removes his parachute, balances on the narrow catwalk of the bomb bay, cuts them free, only to slip on leaking hydraulic fluid. Catching a bomb rack, he pulls himself to safety to discover that he never let go of the axe. Heaven above, Reggie. The young men…
 
“Artillery, Frenchmen, Etc.” The paper is pleased by the progress in Italy. Poles, Indians, Americans, were all attacking, but it was Juin's Moroccan Goums, Senegalese infantrymen and Algerian riflemen who distinguished themselves. The paper cannot help adding that they are “serving under French officers and noncoms,” however. German prisoners complained of the effectiveness of Allied artillery, CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid reports.
 
“Here and There” Allied air attacks on the Kuriles, Wake, Truk, Palau, Marcus Island, even old Surabaya to force the Japanese to disperse their garrisons, I suppose.
 
“Before the Monsoon” The paper thinks that Stilwell may capture Myitkyina soon. That would be good, because the Ledo Road cannot be completed until the town falls. Of course, since the road cannot be completed during this war, it might be argued that the attack is a waste of effort. On the other hand, it keeps General Stilwell’s name in the news, which is nice for General Stilwell.
 
“Enemy’s Men” The paper notices that Rundstedt, Blaskowitz, Rommel and Sperrle are to command in the west. It supposes that Blaskowitz’s appointment is evidence that Hitler’s position is weakening.
 
“Aces” The paper supposes that the Germans inflate their aces’ scores. The paper also notices that Cassino has fallen, rather uncharitably noticing that there were German troops and equipment in it when it fell, implying that this means that they were there in February, too. And Eisenhower had lunch at the “Willow Run” officer’s cafeteria at Grosvenor House, and was unable to finish his lunch until prompted. The paper makes excuses, but would hardly have run the story had the obvious conclusion not already been drawn. Poor man. I am amazed that he can eat at all. (A footnote notices that Ernie Pyle has lost his appetite. Pyle is under as much pressure as Eisenhower, but is much more likely to be killed in action than is the General. Though, admittedly, Eisenhower, like poor old Jellie, can lose the war in an afternoon.
 
Domestic
“Prayer” The invasion. What’s keeping it?
 
“Anna’s Back” The President’s daughter, Anna Roosevelt Boettiger, has moved into the White House to supervise her father’s day and keep him from overstrain. This is a perfectly normal thing for a 62-year-old executive and should cause no concern whatsoever about the President’s health.
 
“Roger Lapham’s Triumph” The paper notes that Mayor Lapham’s recent successes on the public transportation front have caused his critics to reverse their low opinion of him to the extent that they now talk about him for the Senate in place of Hiram Johnson. Obviously Governor Warren would like to appoint a 62-year-old junior senator, but Lapham is too cagey to go for it. It will go to Joseph Knowland, I hear, unless Johnson makes it to '48.
 
“Government by Default” The Governor of New Jersey, and the paper, are sad about low voter turnout in the primaries.
 
“Home is the Hoosier” The death of Indiana humorist George Ade is big enough news to warrant a bylined story instead of an obituary. Fair enough, as it has only been 30 years since he penned his last bit of side-splitting mirth, at the retirement-worthy age of 48, after an arduous writing career of 24 years that enriched him to the point of being able to live as a squire. The imposter! You need to be born into that kind of money before you can deserve to live in a nice house and be treated with the greatest deference by all about. Not earn it, however agreeably! “His work constitutes a vast comedy of Midwestern manners,” says the paper.
 
“Unnecessary and Undesirable” General Arnold was up before Congress defending his WASP pilot-and-flight-crew training programme, which is apparently deemed an expensive luxury. Female pilots and aircrew are no longer needed. There is no mention of whether anyone particularly wanted t fly with female pilots!
 
“The Separated” Since Pearl Harbor, 1,163,000 men and women have separated from the army. 24,000 by death in combat; 34,00 by accidental death; 56,000 by capture by the enemy; 903,000 by honourable discharge. It is an interesting number that suggests just how many veterans are already out there working. Although later comments in the paper about the "neuropsychiatric" discharge are interesting.
 
“Assurance” The paper notices the $16 billion cut in army and navy procurement. Men are being laid off, and the Navy has told planemakers not to exceed production schedules. Nevertheless, Nelson, Forrestal and Robert Patterson were before Congress to ask for some kind of national labour registration. Secretary Forrestal noted the 60% annual turnover at the Navy Yards to make his case. Rather badly, if the Committee pressed for details, I expect. Though since only 3 of 18 Senators on the committee bothered to show up, that is not very likely. The paper is skeptical. “Citizens wondered how on earth the Navy had been able to get its ships.” Somehow, the paper says, public opinion has not been able to work up “any real rage over the latest wave of strikes.”
 
For some reason, the paper proceeds to ask “Rear Admiral Thomas L. Gatch” his opinion, which was that without a national service act, the fighting men at the front will resent the soft life of workers on the home front. Apparently, a man can get promoted in spite of being unable to keep his ship in action in the face of a blown fuse. And his opinions are worth soliciting. I imagine, had he been pressed for honesty, it would have been that “It is not what you know, but who  you know." His intuition is probably already intuited by all, and that intuition stands at the base of reluctance to embrace national service.
 
“Labor at the Polls” Representative John M. Costello (D, California) was defeated in this week’s primaries. He is the third member of the Dies Committee to go down this primary season, and the CIO is pleased at the success of their campaign. Enemies of “Un-American activities” may be less so.
 
“Men Around Dewey” The paper notices that Governor Dewey will be the Republican candidate, and devotes two pages to his brain trust of advisors, who are, the paper thinks, very brainy indeed.
 
“The Bin Runs Low” There is a grain shortage in Canada!
 
Medicine
 
The paper notes: a study showing that rich men have worse teeth than poor, due to rich diet; that “hormone” treatment, generally by injecting people with horse urine extract (stallions for “male hormones,” pregnant mares for “female”) is showing promise in the treatment of acne, terminal cancer. The services have discharged or rejected 1.1 million men as “meuropsychiatric” cases since Pearl Harbor, but there is no treatment for them, the American Pyschological Association reports. It is also concerned about the effects of battle on the mind and even body. One commenter rather crassly noted that psychosomatic conditions are even on the rise amongst Coloureds, “Who are not, as a rule, great fighters.” It is not clear to me how not being a great figher is supposed to immunise you against nervous breakdowns, on or off the battlefield.
 
Press
 
“America Firster” The New York Daily News has done an investigation to explain why it is so popular, and concluded that it is because of its isolationist, anti-New Deal editorial policies.
 
“Frederick Faust, et al.” Frederick Schiller Faust, 51, was killed by a shellburst in Italy last week while serving as a war correspondent for Harpers. Author of westerns, roamnces, whodunits and cinema stories, in total 30 million words, including 115 published books, under pseudonyms as diverse as Max Brand and Frederick Frost, he might have been the most famous American no-one had ever heard of, and now he is the 17th U.S. war reporter killed on duty.
 
Business
 
Management’s right to fire is confirmed. Harry Sinclair, the slippery customer who got out from under the Teapot Dome, is back in the thick of it, buying back shares from the company ahead of his announcement of a dividend increase that made him millions on appreciation in the shares. It is not illegal because rich people do it. The War Production Board is facing off with SKF Bearings, Ltd., in an attempt to put pressure on its Swedish parent firm to stop selling bearings to Germany. SKF responded with a production slowdown, suggesting that two can play the blackmail game. Brewster’s contract for Corsairs was cancelled almost as soon as we got out. It’s good to have friends, and “Cousin H.C.” can now posture about, complaining about the 10,000 imminent layoffs on three days notice in Brewster’s Long Island plants.
 
“Invasion Special” Radio Station RGBS, of Harlingen, Texas is offering to phone all listeners personally the moment that the invasion is announced. Some 400 customers have requested the service. I  hope they have not paid, as it is extremely unlikely that the invasion will be announced in the small hours, given the six hour time difference.
 
This week, Paulette Goddard and AnnCorio got married; while Captain Levi Plesner and Grandfather's old friend, Eugene Chen, has died. (I would be surprised indeed if that were news to  you.) This is the world we live in as we turn back the plate, stomachs heavy and anxious, hoping for the best, fearing for the worst.
 
Aero Digest, 1 May 1944
 
The semi-monthly publication schedule seems to be cutting at the meagre flesh of editorial. Fortunately, the paper has not obviously resorted to political opinionating to make up the space. Kidding, Reggie! President Roosevelt is an incipiently totalitarian tyrant, in case you were wondering. 
 
Albert Lodwick, “On the Threshold of the Invasion,” is a summary of things that this “Special Correspondent to the War Department” saw. Which is to say, fog. Not the fog of war, but the fog of Merrie Olde England, which kept his planes mostly grounded. The War Department photographs are provided, which illustrate the fact that bombs, once dropped, hit the ground. The stronger point, that the aircraft are over the places they are supposed to be bombing, is more difficult to show from the photographs, though I would be willing to concede it. On cloudless, beautiful days over Germany, the USAAF is doing a good job of blowing up the factories that it thinks are important.
 
“Hangar Roof Runway Terminal Airport” In the near future, when we are flitting cross-continent by rocket belt, these outmoded structures will be a quaint curiosity of the distant past. Wait! Page over, there is a costing estimate! A hangar big enough and long enough to support a runway will cost $700,000! And, apart from the crisscross of such hangars at the aerodrome of the very near future, there will be a flying boat and seaplane ramp. (Not an underwater city with a mooring station in its roof? I am disappointed.)
 
Washington In Formation
 
Richard E. Saunders summarises the discussion over the failure of the national service bill in a reasonably sane way (I say that in contrast to his passion over the Lea and McCarren bills, following.) He makes the point that servicemen overseas will be more impressed with the efforts of the homefront if they are told more about the “miracles of production” achieved at home. No worries on that score, Mr. Saunders! He Also reviews continuing talks about the winding down of government contracts. Some in Congress are fighting a rear-guard action for careful accounting of the contracts, but this is not likely to happen, as it would slow reconversiosn down too much. He also adds the interesting point, of which I was unaware (I hang my head!), that there is an allocation for advertising in Government cost-plus contracts. No wonder there is so much of it!
 
Editorial
 
“Damn the Experts: Go Ahead!” If we really, really want it, there will so be helicopters in every yard, in ten years, or perhaps five. The experts were wrong about man flying, back in the old days, and they will be proven wrong about every pessimistic prediction they make now. I think that underneath the blather is some kind of push for private flying. If the paper thinks that the taxpayer will subsidise the hobbyhorses of wealthy businessmen, doctors and lawyers, it has another think coming. (Ranchers, on the other hand, need aircraft to do their business, and should get some kind of tax writeoff.)
 
Aeronautical Engineering
 
The chief engineer of Aeromatics Propellers thinks that Aeromatic’s linen of propellers is wonderful. Albert E. Arnnhym, writing in “The ‘Forgotten Miracle’ of the All-Electric Airplane’,” thinks that everything would be all-electric everywhere if there were sufficiently efficient batteries, but there are not, so they aren’t.
 
Consolidated’s Model 39 Transport” Is a 48-seater that the company has cooked up for the postwar market.
 
 
 
 
Lieutenant Commander R. E. White, USNR, “Field Maintenance of Warplanes” Interesting problems include moisture getting into the oil; carburettor diaphragms being eroded by aromatic fuels; corrosion damaging undercarriages. Electrics require constant work, and fighter engines more frequent overhauls.
 
In other news, GM is making Wildcats, Ranger is researching new engines, the Tubular Alloy and Steel Plant in Cox, Indiana, just reopened, working three eight-hour shifts with an almost half-female workforce, used oil is being reclaimed, du Pont Nemours is afraid that you have forgotten that they are doing wood-impregnation and want to remind you, Lockheed has a radio-testing station, an engineer at Ventnor thinks that swarthy foreigners might buy gliders after the war for ….gliding things,and C. J. Reese, President and General Manager of Continental Aviation and Engineering Corp, shares his view of “Requisites of the Mass-Flight Age.” You could start by not appearing to refer tp potential customers as  “the masses,” Mr. Reese.
 
“Vacuum Forming Speeds Plastic Sheet Formation” is news to me. I have dilated before about the future possibilities of high-efficiency evacuation pumps, Reggie, so there is no need to remind you again about the potential for a “cold chain” providing refrigerated goods, motivating consumer sales of refrigerators and a nice boom –or however the chain of supply and demand might work--. The point here is that yet another industry that I had not even thought of before is buying evacuation pumps.
 
 
 
“The Allen Memorial Wind Tunnel” Is a new air tunnel going into service at Boeing’s Seattle works. It is the largest in private use.
And, after thumbing through pages of ads for ball bearings, control cables and even a “chart [which] will help Simplify ordering gages,” the prize for most boring ad of the number goes to Waldes Koh-i-Noor Inc.’s Truac Retaining Ring. It is, however, a much prettier ad than the David Brown one in Flight for “20 degree helical gears,” although that one sounded more impressively technical. It is the "degrees" and the "helical" which do the trick. 
 
 
 
Actually, I lied, as I should have waited to page through “Digest of the News” to find thereally boring ones.Shenango-Penn has centrifugal castings!
 
Digest of the News
 
The Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce met in Los Angeles and agreed that more money should be spent on planes after the war. New planes, thank you. Others agree. One aircraft manufacturer thought that a “standing air force” was  a good idea, while the association of feeder airlines think –but you are getting ahead of me, Reggie. Manufacturers are making enormous amounts of money, but their profits are meager, and will be threatened by the least Government move to tax them. Of more interest to me, Westinghouse Electrical manages $714 million in sales, net income being 3%, distributed as four $1 dividends in 1943. 115,000 people were employed at year’s end 1943, compared with 97,000 the year before, and 48,000 in 1939. Unlike four-engined bombers, I foresee a vigorous market for electrical engineering thingies --Again, I imagine you are ahead of me, Reggie.
 
Aero Digest, 15 May 1944
 
General Features
 
The indefatigable Mr. Bowyer has “A Message from England.” Which seems to be that England makes aeroplanes. Also, Scotland.
Tappan Collins, “Grondwork for a New Interprertation of the Problem of Air Navigation, Part One” The ‘Part One’ is especially deadly, Mr. Tappan. Your daughter-out-of-law likes to read books with titles that start with ‘Groundwork,’ usually rendered out of especially deadly German, but no-one else does. “Let us construe air navigation as a problem of rotation about a spinning Earth’ Yes, let us do, Mr. Collins.
 
“The Shape of Post-War Personal Flight” “It won’t be just wealthy men hobbying about, but I really cannot explain why I think that way, other than that there would be a great deal of money for me if that proved to be the case.”
 
Frank Herrus, (‘lifelong specialist in shipping and foreign trade’) “Wanted – A Bold Merchant Marine Plan” I think most of the summary above will serve.
 
A. D. Caddell, “Safety on the Production Line” The problem with sanity is that it is boring.
 
 
 
 
Nelson E. Metcalf, “Better Production Methods” Deadly boring.
 
Editorial
 
The paper wants a Department of Defence, and thinks that the President is carrying water for the Navy in forestalling it. The President is bad, Montgomery Ward, totalitarianism at home, the President broke the Constitution once, John L. Lewis a traitor. Can’t we have more articles about better production methods, instead?
 
Washington In Formation
 
Aircraft production is down, but that’s a good thing. Something about contract renegotiation, and then on to the question of a Department of Defence, which is linked to an independent air force.
 
Dr. Michael Watter, “”Introducing the Budd RB-1 ‘Conestoga’ Cargo Carrier and Troop Transport.’” Here is an interesting plane that will never be built in numbers!
 
“The Aeromatic Propeller Makes its Debut, Part 2” Part 2. Oh, good Heavens.
 
“Cooling Fan Raises Power Output of Engines” Is an article squarely aimed at anyone in America who is interested in this but who has never heard of the Focke-Wulf 190. Hello, Eugene Farmingham of Coeburn, New York!
 
“Calibration of Air Speed Meters” and “The Vose Memorial Altitude Test Chamber “ show that things that you never thought about are hard, and require a great deal of math and hardware.
 
“Post-War Versions of the Mars” Are a fantasy.
 
“The Percival Proctor IV Communications Plane” No-one cares about it in Britain, either.
 
“Adjustable Frequency for Model Plane Testing” Is actually about using airplane models in wind tunnel testst. To run their propellers at the necessary speed, quite extraordinary electrical motors are needed.
 
“Plywood Masts Expedite Field Radio Installation” As eager as I am to see plywood in more general use, making masts of it seems like a blind alley.
 

 
“Effects of Altitude on Electrical Insulation, Part 2” Part 2. Though, to be fair, those who care about electrical insulation in aircraft clearly are doing important work for the rest of us. I had no idea that the task of preventing "flashovers" was so complicated at higher altitudes, although, when you think about it, the rarefaction of air does put an extra load on the insulators, as electrons neither know nor care what is producing the uncrossable dielectric barrier, be it rubber or air. Lighter insulation, of course, will play its part in the future development of ground-level --tah dah!-- electrical engineering.
 
Franklin M. Reck, Detroit Editor, “Double Wasp Engine Now Mass Produced at Kansas City,” The plant has an output of 3 million horsepower a month (I assune that we are being invited to divide by 2000hp and come up with 1500 engines), and 641 parts are made in the plant.
 
C. J. Rigdon, “Analysis of Progress Trends in Aircraft Production” Charts prove that factories get better at making planes as they go along. With math! I think that the thought is that a logarithmic chart could be created to guide management in planning future aircraft production programmes, which strikes me as a bit of a leap of faith about the quality of data to hand.
 
“Highlights of Automatic Pilot Manufacture at Auto-Lite”  I am not terribly comfortable with the idea of exacting precision manufacture at a place where they cannot spell ‘light,” but the picture does not lie. The young ladies assemblilng the machines are wearing laboratory coats and everything! As with many other firms which publish advertising editorial material here, the company is proud of its specially-built testing equipment and the exacting cleanliness standards of its work rooms.
IMG_0247.JPG
It is remarkable how much the ladies making "electrical brains" here look like seamstresses. And a good thing for the employer, who can see if he can get away with paying them like seamstresses! (It is just as well that I see the family's future in selling houses to the young ladies, or my heart would be in danger of hardening to the cynicism I affect.)
 
Digest of the News
 

Talking about talking about civil aviation policy is a rousing success! New speed records set by Mustangs and Mosquitoes! “83443 Aircraft built in April as WPB Emphasizes Change to Combat Types.” “A(viation)W(riters)A(ssociation) Convention an Odyssey!” At what point are we allowed to call conventioneering the official craze of the (pre-invasion) summer? “Navy’s 1945 Program Calls for 37, 355 Planes.” 
 
And that, Reggie, is as much news as I have time to share. Rather a lot though you may think it, I find myself coming to a halt on time rather than on content, as my deprecating comments about the contents of Aero Digest might suggest. I do not relish yet another flight across continent, or the prospect of an entirely pointless interview with my young acquaintance. I have pretty much concluded that I shall have to call on the little brothers and make a show of force, which cannot end well unless some neutral party steps in to tell the man that his business is to be in Europe this summer.  
 
 
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aturday, July 26, 2014

Techblogging June, 1944, I: Come the Day!
 
Dear Suzie:
 
Sorry about the blotting paper again. Mom and Dad will get a proper V-Mail in a few days, now that the segregation's lifted. Right now, though I should say some things the censor shouldn't hear, and maybe Mom and Dad, too. At least, not in my words. You're the only person I can trust to dress it up right, Sis, honest injun.
 
 Does that sound curious enough? Well, my LCT has been going so fast I hardly have time to collect my wits. You might hear from Douggie's brother that my boat's ramp wouldn't lower, so we couldn't launch our tanks, and so we ran up on the beach under fire to do it. I don't think Mom needs to hear any more about that, whatever Douggie says. Then, soon as we were back off the shingle, it was back to Jolly Old to pick up our next load. 
 
First, though, I had to go on the carpet with the Admiral. He knows that the reason my ramp wouldn't lower was because of a sledge hammer in the bilge of my boat called "The Assistant Bo'sun." I had to, Suzie! It was choppy as all heck. The tanks obviously weren't going to get to shore. So the Admiral lays it out for me. Harry gets the credit, as I don't go on the list as boat commander until the 7th. He gets a "Mention in Despatches" with no mention of the 510th and its officers I get my boat. "That's way we did it in Manila," the Admiral says. 
 
Dad should hear that, I think. What I can't figure out how to tell them is that I somehow ended up taking Queenie to the midnight promenade the other night. Well, not quite midnight, as she had to be home by 11. Me in my officer's cap(!), her in a broad hat, in case some wise guy started something, dancing at the edge of the crowd to some nice jazz. We kissed, Sis, and now I can't think of anything else but Queenie. Not even the war.
 
Love, Your Brother, Tommy.
 
 
 
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Dearest Reggie:

 

Just a short note this time. I know that I am supposed to share warm pictures of the home front and not my troubles, but I've flown across continent three times in the last week, and the last was particularly awful, though at least I got my reading done. I was summoned to see our friend's young acquaintance, still feigning tonsilitis. He wouldn't see me, and I flew back to San Francisco, and was on the plane when the Invasion was announced.

 

When I landed, Wong Lee was waiting for me to tell me that our friend had called "Mrs. J. C." to say that we should make another press, now that it was obvious why the USO tour had been booked. So back I went. This time we're not talking with that little thug at all. We are talking with a big thug, a fellow named Mr. Gambino. Wong Lee went out the back window of the hotel an hour ago (Hoover's boys have their eye on Gambino) and is meeting with him to see if the "men of respect" have a more reasonable take on the tour than their protege. If not....

 

Oh, Reggie. Whatever will I say to Amy, Tommy and Suzie if Wong Lee does not come back?

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Economist,  3 June 1944

 
Leaders
 
“Employment Policy” The publication of the Government White Paper on employment is epochal! The Government acts on the developing logic of the last quarter century. It will take responsibility for maintaining full employment. From the White Paper, I see that the Tories have not gone all-in for the old ideas of “outdoor relief.” It talks, instead, of an “expansionist economy.” That is, the economic policy of the Government will be to maintain a steady growth of the economy, however that is measured (as it is my impression that we have moved beyond just toting up the “national income?”). This, the paper agrees with the Government, is a bold  departure. Full employment has twice been achieved in this country during wartime. But in peace? “It is true that some other industrial countries ---Russia and Germany, notably—have attained it in peacetime . . . .”, but we shall attempt to achieve it in peace without the kind of measures required in Germany and Russia. “Under free criticism and without conscription.” No country has ever done this, the paper says. The paper, and the White Paper then move on to, first, international trade. Everyone in the world  must buy British, details to follow. Second, location of industry. Means are to be found to make people build factories in Lancashire instead of London. Even so, “labour should be mobile. "Mobility” inferentially being in some danger of mutating in the labour being less choosy. Third, there must be “stabilisation of private investment,” an arcane concept because it is three concepts, “the weapon of the interest rate,” “government-owned industry,” and tax measures. The paper perhaps gives away its thinking on the first heading with the word ‘weapon,’ thinks the second a no-go, and perks its ears at the third, winding down with an arcane reference to inventory management that, I suppose, would point a more acute mind in the direction of the particular nation-saving tax measure it has in mind. The question of how much is to be spent on public works during downturns, accepting that it will be, is left unclear. There is the question of “maintenance of consumer purchasing power,” which is entangled with social insurance, as the best way of keeping a consumer consuming is to give him money when he has no income. Then there is talk of price and wage stabilisation. Full employment does not have to mean inflation, but that does not mean that no measures against inflation are necessary. And “restrictive practices” should be subject to “appropriate measures.” 

 

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After reading this through, I find that even I have been lead so far through the labyrinth of the paper's thinking that I have lost the chain of the thought I had at the header. Thanks to reviewing my earlier newsletters from 1939,  know that Britain twice achieved full employment in peacetime in the late 1930s, with a free press and without conscription. Has the paper forgotten this? My cynical suspicion is that forgetting is easy when events seem to contradict the paper's policy preferences. Knowing the paper, it is the suspicion that the Defence Loan had a positive impact on the economy that is to be strenuously forgotten.
 
“Colonial Progress” Not enough is being spent, therefore progress is less than it should be, something about Newfoundland, notable as a colony made up of White people, I suppose. Newfoundlanders do not want self-government, it appears. Perhaps all the dark people can be persuaded to be so complacent?
 
“Reflections on Philadelphia” The International Labour Conference had a conference! It issued a manifesto! Perhaps it will be set to music stirring enough to make we wade through threepages of minutiae at some future date.
 
Greeks are excitable.
 
“Employment: the White Paper” the leading section requires a summary as well as a summary of the summary. I shall not follow.
 
Notes of the Week
 
“Peace Plans” The new United Nations Organisation is to have police powers. A critic in the Commons thinks that it is unlikely that this will work as intended.
 
“To Rome” Although there is now no doubt that Rome will fall, the paper is disappointed that the chance to bag Kesselring’s army was missed.
 
Latins, Americans and British farmers are excitable.
 
General de Gaulle is coming to London! Apparently, he will not concede to political direction from Whitehall and Washington. The question of paying Allied soldiers in occupied France is acute. The Italian experience shows the catastrophe that can be unleashed on a domestic economy by liberal military spending. The thought is that they will be paid in Occupation Francs, which will be bought from the Provisional Government with pounds and dollars. Though since for this to work there must be a Provisional Government, Washington in particular will have to descend from the stick that it is comfortably sitting on and do something.
 
“Indian Reconstruction” Bombay industrialists, the Moslem League and the National Congress have embraced three approaches to reconstruction. By putting them together in a small room, Wavell aims to achieve compromise and consensus. Or a locked room murder mystery, whichever will do.
 
The paper notes 10,947 road casualties in April, an increase of 1743 over last April, with 567 deaths vice 396, the number of children being killed rising to 5 per day.
 
American Survey
 
“Is Isolationism Dead?” No, says Our Correspondent in Ohio. Why, just last week, a twelve-foot-tall, two-headed Colonel McCormick wandered through town, devouring damsels and breathing fire upon the thatched roofs of the cottages of Ohio cottagers. To what extent the recent Republican upsurge is evidence of the revival that  a passage ago required no evidence “is impossible to say.” OCH goes on to point out that is obviouslyevidence of same.
 
American Notes
 
“Remote Control” Governor Bricker will  be the Republican candidate, Reggie! You heard it here, first. Or perhaps, not to spoil the next number, Senator Taft. The point is, it will not be Dewey, even though it will obviously be Dewey. I suppose that political correspondents have to justify their expense accounts somehow.
 
“Full Employment” At the National Industrial Conference Board last week, Mr. David Beck, Vice-President of the Teamsters, and Mr. Ralph Flanders, President of Jones and Lamson MachineCompany, united to give a paper showing that for full employment at a 40 hour week, between 50 and 55 million jobs would   be necessary, with a “net national output of $130 to $140 million,” an “admittedly high total.” Moreover, as high as the total is, it is assuming that most of the wartime labour force (62 million) increment will dissipate with peace. Mr. Clarence Long, the actual author of the study, who is apparently not eminent enough to present it to the august Board, points out that most of the increment was of school age, and will be likely to resume their studies, especially given indications of generous Congressional provisions for this purpose. Many women, a quarter of the increment, will drop out, and so will many of the workers over 54. Mr. Long points out that the surprisingly low proportion of Americans enrolled in war work compared with Britain is largely explained by the larger number of younger women with children in America compared with Britain, as  opposed to the favoured British explanation of lack of American self-discipline, character, spine, etc.
 
“The Hog at the Door” The current high threshold ration price for meat is encouraging American hog-and-corn farmers to feed their corn to their hogs. The result is record high levels of livestock holdings and an alarmingly small amount of grain on hand. Short of lowering the meat price threshold (which, recall, acts as kind of a subsidy on the farmer) or confiscating grain (it is hard to tell whether the paper is floating this or presenting it as an absurdity), the current meat holiday is the much preferred half-measure.
“Political Action”
Unlike the AFL, the CIO has gone all in with lobbying. Governor Bricker is upset about the $5 millions with which it is reputed to be backing Roosevelt, while others speak of a “Red kiss of death.” Although by “others” one means the Dies Committee, and the recent defeat of three of its members suggests that the erstwhile paragons of “Un-American activities” investigations are a spent force, that rural America is becoming more unionised and so more Democratic.
Letters to the Editor
“Hire Purchase and Employment” The paper has been sitting on this interesting leter fromG. D.Rokeling since last fall, so it responds to no current story, but Mr. Rokeling’s point is that since we now understand business downturns to be responses to attempts to save money faster than savings can be spent, so hire-purchase is not just some frivolous show of lack of discipline, but a burgeoning channel for alleviating this press of savings by diverting it into the purchase of consumer goods, thereby using up savings (to subsidise the purchase) and encouraging capital investment in the production of goods to buy. If I understand him rightly. Would this not apply even more strongly for houses? I wonder how his calculations take into account new technologies such as "gyproc?"

 

IMG_0265.JPG
“Swedish Credit Policy” Sweden’s recent inflation is not due to German buying. Germans have been paying for their imports on a cash-clearance basis. It is “principally” due to Swedish shipping earnings on the high seas. I rather appreciate the “principally,” given the obvious subtext. Rich Germans get their money to Stockholm, where it must be cleansed of the stink of death, and what better way to "wash" it than through investment in Allied shipping? I am glad that Fat Chow is leaving Berlin soon. It will remove my temptation to engage in that kind of business myself.
The Business World
“Anglo-Indian Finance”
India used to be in debt to London, as is only right and proper. Now we are in debt to Delhi. The total shift has been over a billion pounds, and in the postwar era Britons shall have to work to pay Indian dividends and interest! The paper is appalled. All India has done to earn this is fight our war for us. (Although the paper sees this as Britain subsidisingIndia's war!) There is a bow in the direction of India in the form of a concession that it is all being balanced by inflation in India, with likely more to follow.
Business Notes
“Full Employment of Capital” If tawdry paupers are to be paid some subvention to keep living, then surely the fortunes of the rich should also be “fully employed.” While not objecting to the sentiment, I see an important distinction between not standing two percent, and not standing not having enough to feed your children.
“Equalising Returns” Government needs to make sure that certain industries reach the highest pitch of efficiency to secure overseas markets. These include coal, steel, engineering and shipbuilding, to which the paper helpfully suggests the addition of cotton. It is supposed that something can be done to make coal as profitable as electrical engineering? I would like to see just what, and as a landlord and a man of sense, I like not this “checking inflationary tendencies” talk. Manchester industrialists might like to hold operative wages down, but they are cutting off their noses, etc., the moment they think through the implications for the domestic market of which more. . . 
 
Below. “Lord Portal’sHouses” Speaking of renting out hovels to penniless labourers, the recent display of the “temporary factory-made houses” has led to “substantial improvements and alterations.” The height of the ceiling is to be raised from 7 feet to 7 feet 6 inches. The storage shed is to be detached. The W.C. is to be “adequately screened.”  An improved version, with three bedrooms instead of two, is to be hoped for, for persons of greater means. Costs are now pegged at £550, including £100 for fittings.
 
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“Scientific Instruments” This vital, if small industry has risen from employing 18,000 to 50,000 persons, and made up much of the ground lost to German competition between the wars. Nevertheless, the paper denounces the preferential tariff of 1921 and calls for efficiency and research to sustain the industry in the future. It is probably only after the last bit of reading that I morbidly associate  “efficiency” with “wage cuts.” It does seem a little unreasonable that any but the most obvious "efficiencies" not impact "research."
“Science in Industry”
There should be more research.
“Dunlop’s Record Profit”  Is a record. Who would have thought that tyres would be so profitable? I would, Reggie, I would. I wonder if the Board has ever considered cutting out the middle man and just selling to the black market?
“National Debt Milestone” £20 billion, less than six years after the paper conceded that it needed the word “billion.”
“Netherlands Indies Guilder” American soldiers in Dutch colonial areas will be paid in guilders bought from the Dutch, continuing arrangements already made with the Australians. The exchange rate probably predicts what will be paid in the Netherlands after liberation, for those interested in such things –or for the eventual settling of accounts with Dutch ships under charter! (See my earlier comments about the Swedes!)
 
Flight, 8 June 1944
 
 
 
Invasion stripes in an 8 June ad! Quck work by Dowty, and the rest of the paper has not quite caught up, with the result that in this week of all weeks, it is a “civil flying” number. I barely have patience for it, except for the note in the leading articles about the need for pressure cabins in commercial airliners. Hear, hear! Someone can. I can’t, three days after landing at Idlewild.
 
Leaders Apart from that, there’s a bit about the Cripps statement on aircraft production. Nothing here to dissuade me that this industry is a war growth. The investor may or may not nose around it in case stocks have priced in the postwar setback, but I am not. There’s far too much talk of postwar civil aviation, and far too little memory of how fair rail stocks benefitted promoters over investors.
 
War in the Air
We lead off with talk of the battle for Rome and a blow-by-blow of, sigh, the Times printing tags from some Latin writer orthe other. Pre-invasion bombing, we are told, focussed on the bridges of the Seine, which may  have special significance, as they can be repaired quickly. Of course the paper probably has the gen, and knows that this will probably be out after the invasion, so no harm in saying so. It is noted that Typhoons also fire rockets at land targets. The Chindits have been driven off their positions by the Japanese. General MacArthur might be striking at Timor next, or the Philippines, one or the other.  The paper also notices that Admiral Halsey is wandering about giving speeches, and that Somerville might, at some point, do something. No notice of Spruance, whose doings, one might think, are of rather more significance, givne that he has all of the carriers and the Marines.
Here and There
A Constellation has just set a 7 hour, 3 minute record for flying across the Continent. Notice that that is more than 18 hours, seventeen minutes, and, by my stopwatch, 55 seconds, taxicab to taxicab.
Also setting records were the Ninth Air Force, which dropped more bombs in May than ever before, and Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, the first American Coloured Colonel. Typically, instead of noting an all-Negro air unit, some of my acquaintances focus on rumours that they are not as good a fighter group as some others. Some Spanish officers were quite impressed by the aircraft that carried Samuel Hoare away from them, with many fond and lingering looks. Mr. Stimson notices that the USAAF is now the largest air force in the world. Had you heard, Reggie? It was news to me, too! The RCAF has reached 47 combatant squadrons, but half its  manpower is still enrolled in other, mainly RAF units. This ratio will be corrected towards  more Canadian units as quickly as the puppy grows into its feet. A Kellet autogiro is shown in Army colours, giving the no doubt quite unintended impression that it has been bought for routine service. I hope no investors make that mistake! It would be tragic, though not for Kellet. The Poles have WAAFs, the United States has fighter rockets, The “stay-in” strike at Brewsters is noticed.
“Britain’s Overseas Airways” More Bowyer. Bowyer observes that foreign parts have a strange phenomena called “weather,” which ought to be taken better account of in British civil aircraft design. For example, Canada is quite cold, and Africa is quite hot! Sometimes, parts of Africa can be cold and then hot! (And, perhaps, Canada, too.) Whereas all of the United States is quite temperate(!), so that American domestic civil aviation has quite an unfair advantage which we Britons must overcome with attention to better quality rubber, pressure cabins, heating arrangements, and so forth.
The paper publishes the obituary of Lt. Colonel Outram, a former Royal Engineer and former head of the Air Inspectorate Division. A sadder loss to the aviation world than many a high flying stunt pilot, I should think.
Behind the Lines
Gnome-Rhone’s three-speed supercharger, giving 2200hp in an 18 cylinder two-row radial, is shown. An older machine from the same shop, the 14N is to go into a six-engined Zeppelin ship, the ZSO-523, with a gross weight of 90 tons, which, I understand, will fly a direct service between Cloud Cuckoo Land and the Big Rock Candy Mountain. We are told that the German Army will now have National Socialist political officers, that the German Air Force garrison in Finland will play its part in preventing that country from surrendering more, and that Martin Hallensleben, chief military correspondent of the German News Agency, notices that Allied air bombing in advance of the invasion is intended to impair German mobility and reduce the advantages of their interior lines. A hilarious joke compares Herr Goebbels with a parrot. I wish that I had thought of that one, Reggie. Oh, wait, I know, perhaps I could suggest that Hitler is lacking a manly appendage!
Aircraft in Recognition
The Lycoming PT-25, Piper PT Trainer, Aeronca Defender and Interstate L-6 are told apart. Isn’t the  genius of American mass production the consolidation of multiple, minimally different types into a single production line of colossal proportions? Or am I the victim of Mr. Ford’s publicity organisation again?
“Power-Plant: Past and Future”
This is the second part of Mr. Fedden’s talk, where he explains why Bristol was wrong to fire him. It turns out that the sleeve valve is the best of all choices for piston engines. As to whether air-cooled or liquid-cooled is best in the long run, Mr. Fedden is, surprisingly enough, agnostic. He notices that after many years of development, cooling fin development may have reached a plateau, with modern fin-cutting lathes able to turn out “52 fins with 104 tools and removing 20lb of metal in the process.” I quote the numbers, in spite of total absence of context, to illustrate the fact that whereas a layman like me might assume that the progress in air cooling might have been limited by aerodynamical science or such, it turns out to have been very much a tooling problem! Fedden dismisses the turbojet as not a practical alternative for the next dozen years, and thus that internal combustion has an interim future. While this is certainly arguable, he goes on to predict 200hp per cylinder –and then goes onto predict a 28 cylinder, 6000hp, and a 42 cylinder, 8000hp engine, which strike me as quite fantastic. Who would invest in developing these when they will just be pipped at the post by jets and turboprops?
“Anglo-American Aircraft Production” Cripps again. Leaving the American numbers alone, the Minister notices that in the last twelve months, the industry has produced over 27,000 machine and done major repairs on 18,000. Spare part production amounts to an additional 50 to 60 aircraft for every 100 built.
Mr. Handley-Page also refreshed himself and gave a statement to the press on the theme of Free Enterprise, and the paper mourns the death of Major A. J. Palmer without explaining why, precisely, he was a “colleague.” He was in the Navy, than the RNAS’s Motor Machine Gun detachment, then the Tank Corps, then the “Upper Thames River Patrol” in the current war. He has lost a son in the RAF, has another on active duty, and a third with Short Brothers, tasked to replenish the family’s trust fund by any means necessary. I added that last bit.
“Coastal Command’s Share” The command shoots at any German freighter, submarine or E-boat as might appear on the Narrow Seas, and quite often hits.   
Correspondence
Correspondent “Z.Q.,” a medical student, makes a joke about castor oil that sails right by me, although the drift may be inferred as the paper being a man’s paper.

A. R. Ogston writes in with elementary chemistry to show that gasoline has 26 times the “piston pushing power” of an equivalent amount of gunpowder, and 15 times the energy. W. S. Shackleton amplifies the point. A correspondent writes that there should not be a “costly battle for aerial supremacy” in the field of large and luxurious airliners. His point escapes me, rather as the argument for higher property taxes escapes me. Only more urgently, because while pain in the wallet is abstract, my ears are still ringing!

 
The Economist, 10 June 1944
I should mention that, in spite of the date, this and my proofs of Fortune were the first things that I read for this letter. Which is to say, that I wrote them before emplaning, and so before the earrache  and Wong Lee's departure, which together leave me more irritable than usual. It may show.
Leaders
As a reader, I can only be grateful for the channels through which I receive my papers. The University library, "Miss V. C." informs me, just received its first of May number. "Miss V.C." has proven far too good a researcher for my tastes, having found the accounts of old Monterey. She brings me a certain entry for 1794 with wide eyes, and notes to me the similarities of "McKee" and "Maquinna." What do we call a red herring that draws the pack closer to the fox? A trip to Monterey is now proposed, and Lieutenant A. eagerly offered the hospitality of the Naval Air Station until "Mrs. J. C." put her foot down.
“June the Sixth” “Four years almost to the day after the last man was taken of the beaches of Dunkirk. . .” The paper notes that the victory on the beaches is to Churchill’s credit and to America and to Russia. It warns of dangerous days ahead, against premature uprisings in the occupied lands, and of the need for prompt measures to feed the liberated.
“Yet when all the thanks are made and all the contributions measured, here still remain the final artificers of victory, the men, who, in the King’s words, “man the ships, storm the beaches and fill the skies.” Although the first advances have  been secured with surprisingly little loss of life, the hardest fighting lies ahead. In the weeks to come, thousands of men will lay down their lives or suffer disablement, will endure pain and hardship and strain, will throw everything they have into the balance of victory without particularly asking why or counting the cost. For them at the moment there is not very much that people who stay behind can do. They can keep vigil, as the King has asked. They can face anxiety steadfastly. The can accept the losses when they come; but the real effort of gratitude will only be needed later on, when the men come hone.They will not have been given victory, they will have toiled and sweated for it from Alameins to Bizerta, from Sicily to Rome, in the jungles of Burma, on the landing beaches of France. They have been active agents of every military success. It is to their courage and initiative and adaptibility and common sense that have completed the historical reversal of the last four years. It will not be enough for their elders to give them “food, work and homes” –for the essentials of a decent post-war society. They must be allowed their place in that society they must be given scope and opportunity and responsibility to run it for themselves.”
I confess that I teared up when I read that, Reggie. It is all well and good for us to scheme and plot to get our share of the money that Washington and London and Ottawa (and Berlin!) are spending on this war on the authorisation of the great and good who say that we who have money must be allowed to earn more, lest we choose not to use it in the service of this great war. But when I look at my often self-satisfied gloating at the way that I scheme to make even  more money from selling the returning veterans places in which to live, and refrigerators and radios and high-fidelity recordings to put into them, I am a little ashamed of myself after reading.
We owe boys like Tommy Wong, Reggie. We really do. A “home fit for heroes.” And I know the irony of writing this to a man in the King’s uniform at your age, and that I am sounding uncharacteristically sentimental. I suppose that it is the emotion of the moment. Moving on, then…
“Capital and Employment” Three pages that I can boil down to it all being in the details of execution.
“Russia and the Balkans” A Russian summer campaign in the Balkans is expected. Bulgaria is expected to surrender more, which would seem to require Roumania surrendering more as well. This would seem more problematic, as surely Roumanian landlords and clergy will obdurately demand that the country hold onto its gains at the expense of Russia. Russia is the friend and elder brother of Balkan Slavs, and surely this will bear some fruit in the near future.
“Electoral Reform” The Sixth Reform Bill, as put forward, will …the paper inserts a short piece that it did not run eighty years ago due to pressing news from Crimea.
Notes of the Week
I would look more than ordinarily self-indulgent and silly if I were to explain to you what the paper, or, indeed, any paper thinks is going on in Normandy right now,  not when you are doing your part to make sense of it for the Supreme Command every day. Interestingly, the paper takes it as necessary to prepare us for “lulls” in the action. We all remember lulls that lasted the better part of four years the last time something like this enterprise was attempted. I hope not!
“An Administration for France” We really should settle who the Provisional French Government is at some point soon. (Hint: it is de Gaulle.)
“The Fall of Rome” managed to happen before the landings. What  a remarkable coincidence!
“Weatherwise” Perhaps weather reporting can cease to be banned, now?
“Location of Industry” Should be planned, but not too planned.
“Colonial Development” We should do that, and probably more than we already do.
“Education in the Lords” The bill on education was heard on June 6th. Lord Woolton spoke for the Government whilst riding a unicycle in bright yellow Wellingtons with a toucan on his shoulder, all while juggling three kittens and a short-sighted, flatulent Pekinese. Something about the children being the future of the nation? The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Chichester had a fine time directing discussion at what really mattered, an obligatory hour a week (or whatever) of CofE instruction on the Higher Things.
Bulgaria is surrendering more. Jugoslavs, Tynesiders, Poles and Portuguese are excitable. Wolfram!
“Prosperous Countryside” Pace some comments from a farming advocate, this highly desirable goal will be achieved by a prosperous agriculture with a small labour force, producing the cheapest possible food and industrial raw material.
American Survey
“The South and the Fourth Term” Our Correspondent in Virginia believes that if the President is nominated, he will carry the South. The notion that he would not, current a year ago, had much to do with overestimating the importance of the especially vehement Roosevelt-haters of the South, says OCV, who are “small coteries of manufacturers and business men” who loathe the President’s policies on labour and race. The Supreme Court’s recent decision  that participation on state Democratic parties cannot be confined to Whites is deemed particularly offensive, yet the great masses of Southern Democrats appreciate what the President has done for them, such as high cotton and tobacco prices and high wages. It is suggested that anti-Roosevelt Southern Democrats will seek to have Senator Harry Byrd of West Virginia nominated instead. This will not happen, of course, but the notion gives OCV a chance to discuss Senator Byrd, who manages, by some miraculous alchemy, to be both a direct descendant of William Byrd and a self-made man.
Only in America.
American Notes
Polish Americans are excitable. Texas is to have two Democratic conventions, due to a schism between those who accept the Court ruling requiring Coloured participation in the primaries, and those who do not. Secretary of State Hull and Senators LaFollette and Vandenburg have a bit of a tiff over how often it is necessary for Americans to assert that they love liberty and freedom.
“Wolf, Wolf” The War Manpower Commission has been so optimistic for so long that the new controls to go into effect on July 1st are viewed with suspicion. The paper seems more enamored of schemes to use threat of conscription into the army to coerce essential labour.
“Guaranteed Wage” Something about stabilising the market for steel?
“Enfranchising the War Worker” Due to the aging population and decline in the  birth rate, there has been a surprising gain in the proportion of voters in the population, hence the gain of 8 milllion voters since the last Presidential election. These then all moved from state to state seeking war work, and are now settled down, meaning that they can vote, meaning that the President’s party’s prospects next year are brighter than hitherto thought.
The World Overseas
There should be credits for Canadian industry; a federated university for west Africa, and something should be done to secure the prospects of the postwar Egyptian cotton industry.
Germany at War
“Fight to the End” The Germans continue to hope for a stalemate.
The Business World
“Liberated Currencies” The question of putting the currencies of the occupied countries back into good order is, of course, a very delicate one.
Business Notes
“Invasion Currency” Incredibly, American forces headed for France have gone into battle with “Invasion Francs” in their wallets printed by the United States Government and issued by it without regard for which government will redeem them. (British forces have been issued old Bank of France notes, but the supply will soon run short.) It seems that 80,000 million francs have been printed, compared with a Bank of France circulation of 500,000 million. A rate of exchange with regards to the metropolitan franc has been agreed at 50 to the dollar, 200 to the £, and this is the basis of payment in francs. It is likely that military notes will be redeemed in dollars and sterling, and credited to the French National Government. So we will have to have one, and it will have to be persuaded to do any such thing.
“Second Front Markets” It is expected that gains in the market in recent months cannot be sustained unless victory is quick and sure.
“Future of Engineering” Professor Postan, an economic historian, has given a paper to the Institution of Electrical Engineers on “the conditions that are likely to affect the future of the British engineering industry.” The professor deems the industry an important asset, and hopes to see wartime gains maintained. At the same time, he thinks this unlikely in shipbuilding, railways, textiles, likely in motors, aircraft, electrical engineering. But what of mechanical engineering? The Professor holds that it has been held back by the conservatism of British industry which has been slow to buy the most modern, American-style machine tools. We should do something about that. Although it is challenging, as the profit margins on machine tool exports are quite low.
“Aircraft Industry” Sir Stafford Cripps says that Britain has built an enormous number of increasingly large aircraft. Mr. Cripps estimates that a tenth of the industry’s capacity will be required after the war, Postan one quarter.
“Plaster Board Fusion” The paper disapproves of the merger of two producers of “Gyproc” gypsum plaster boards as undermining free competition. It deplores the way that monopoly is taking hold in an industry that has only existed since 1933!
“Institutional Savings” The Treasury Secretary is quite pleased by the share taken by insurance companies and building societies in the “Salute the Soldier” bonds-sale drive. This is quite interesting. I know that I have discouraged the Earl from investing in housing in the postwar on account of population trends, but this raises the point that the number of small savers has risen from 7 to 17 ½ millions during the war, and the number of savings account holders from 14 to 21 ½ millions, with savings instruments purchases of £272 million under “Salute the Soldier.” The structure of British small savings being what it is, much of that money is nominally aimed at funding homebuilding. What is it going to do in the absence of a demand for houses? Build them anyway? (Presumably of modern, scientific materials?) Probably not, I suppose. I still think that farming is a better use of good farm land….
“Wool Textile Problems” No workers, no production, no exports. This is rather like that one about the tree falling in the forest, isn’t it?
“The Syncrophone” “A combination of radiogram and pictorial charts, on which illustrations light up as the recorded talk proceeds.” The idea here is that the syncrophone has been used to train over a million RAF men, and is in wide use in industry now, and might serve to make up the gap in postwar training needs. Truly a revolution in training methods, etc, etc.
“The Bombay Disaster” London insurers have given much attention to the matter of the exploding of Bombay. In the interest of preventing distress to Indian interests, the Indian Government has negotiated a summary settlement ahead of investigation.
Flight, 15 June 1944
Leaders –Oh, the paper cannot be serious!
“A Notable Anniversary” Why, it is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first air crossing of the Atlantic! It is surely no coincidence that it occurs “within ten days or so” of the “Anglo-American invasion of ‘Hitler’s Europe.’”  The most important of these coincidences being, it appears, that the paper cannot reset the number that comes out the week after the invasion, which makes it into the press as the third leading article. The paper speculates that the Hamilcar glider was a surprise, which suggests a regrettable pessimism about the Germans’ willingness to read the paper! Also, the invasion is relevant to the Hawker Tempest, which the paper is now allowed to admit to not only exist, but be in production. This is illustrated with a picture of a Spitfire, one of a number of squadrons operating from airfields in Normandy “within four days of the invasion.”
War in the Air
The paper, perhaps wisely, does not go into many details of the invasion, probably covered better by the dailies. Various impressive numbers are repeated (more than a thousand transport planes and gliders; 20,000 tons of bombs dropped in preparation here and there in northern France, etc.) The American bombing offensive from Russian bases is stepping up, and neither the German nor Japanese air forces are inclined to come up to the Allied challenge. The monsoon will make transport flying in the China-Burma-India theatre dangerous, the implication being that the monsoon will not stop it –progress, indeed!
Here and There
Ellison Insulations is changing its name to Tufnol, Ltd.! Mr. Handley-Page’s remarks are more fully reported, to the effect that instead of “super-gigantic”airliners, we should aim for 50 seaters. If that is the level of business thought at Handley-Page, this is one aviation stock I am not investing in. Lord Brabazon is concerned with the PM’s disturbing statement suggesting that America might supply Britain with airliners after the war. Various persons are promoted at Westlands as a Petter is on the outs. No doubt a story there. Trans-Canada is to buy the latest version of DC-4.
“Invasion Close-Up” the paper’s correspondent with the invasion reports. Now here the paper can acquit itself well. Having been summoned from their beds urgently in the morning hours, the correspondent pool was held in a special room at headquarters by white-gloved US military police. Then came the electrifying news. “In exactly five seconds, the firs invasion communique will be released to the world. Gentlemen, you may leave.” The paper not requiring urgent filing, its correspondent made his way to a friendly Spitfire IX squadron, which served as his home on the day. Two hundred fighters were over the invasion at any one time, and virtually no German activity was seen. Our correspondent notes how quickly the invasion stripes begin to wear. The moral is that they were applied in haste and with regular paint, and comparing wear to them with wear to the regular paint job reveals just how far “aircraft dope” has advanced in the last few years. We are told that Typhoon pilots can put 70% of their rockets in a nine foot square, which sounds quite impressive to me, although this is, obviously,  not under combat conditions. The Typhoons were apparently hunting German armour far afield of the invasion day action, and struck tanks of the 21st Panzer Division, of North African fame. Rather lamely, the correspondent closes with word pictures of the photographs that he should have taken while overflying the glider landings in the evening, and at the airfield a little later. As a consolation, the article is illustrated with some Ministry photographs and the papers’ exclusives of Spitfire pilots sitting around listening to briefings.
The First Direct Trans-Atlantic Flight”  reprints Lieutenant-Colonel Brown's account of the famed flight. As the navigator, he has some eye-opening insights on the extent of progress in flight instruments and radio navigation from 1919 to today. There is no direct insight into the decision to let down in the first Irish bog to come into sight through the ground fog as they homed in on the Marconi station, but any veteran flyer can intuit Alcock and Brown’s condition after more than 20 hours in the air!

1280px-Alcock-Brown-Clifden.jpg
Studies in Aircraft Recognition
Armstrong-Whitworth Ensign, Douglas B-19 heavy bomber, De Havilland Albatross, Douglas Dakota. I can only conclude that the paper is doing it deliberately at this point.
Behind the Lines
The Germans are recruiting Russian minorities such as “Tartars” for police and AA units with the promise of farms, jobs, or, for exceptional cases, free education after the war. German youth are targeted for the Luftwaffe, while the Japanese are to make aircraft production their number one economic priority. The master races to the air, the subject races to the farms, with the technical high schools the racial bridge. (Calculus changes your bloodlines, unless they are African.) Commenting on the invasion, the occupied press suggests at some times that the opposing air efforts were about equal, that weather interfered with German air operations, that the Allied air effort was not as a great as it seemed; or that since Britain is one great “aircraft carrier,” there is little to be done. TheFokker G.1 is said by “a neutral source” to be in German service.
Edward C. Bowyer, “Britain’s Overseas Air Services” Mr. Bowyer deems maintenance and good flight stewards to be important, long runways less so.
The paper notices that the rate of US Army student pilots being killed in training has risen from 1.3% before the war to 2% since, mainly in the operational training phase.
Correspondence
C. Rupert Moore would like to know how he is to paint his models of the three famous Gladiators of Hal Far. Mr. R. Fulljames has useful suggestions about how the staff of an envisioned supra-national air force should be organised. One L. Shelford Bidwellcomments on how jets work, and one R. Hudson is upset that we are blowing up rail bridges in France, Belgium and Holland which our advancing forces will need later. He supposes that the rapid advance of the Germans in 1940 is accounted for by the fact that the Germans did not blow up bridges from the air. He suggests that the Germans will not blow up the bridges in their retreat, as they will be disorganised, in much the same way that French did not, as they were disorganised. This would be a fair point, were it not completelywrong! “Indicator” continues his letter column war with Mr. Blackburn on the subject of whether indicators have made test pilots as unnecessary luxury. Mr. Izard thinks we need to use our night bombers for day tactical bombing, and someone has strong opinions about the NASC.
 
I turn to the monthlies.
 
Fortune, June 1944
 
Letters to the Editor
 
“Imports or Else” Anthony Vickers, of Hydraulic Couplings, Ltd., points out to the paper that if America wants big exports, it must accept big imports.
 
Lieutenant Name Withheld writes to say that “You’ll Never Get Rich”  He is disgusted and appalled by this talk of a war bonus. After all, in peacetime, soldiers would never save a penny, whereas when they’re out on the frontlines, they save lots of money, and will end the war practically rich, so why should they get a bonus at all? Good point, Lieutenant Scrooge!
 
The Fortune Survey
 
The Republicans may well win the Presidency and achieve a majority in one or both houses of Congress. It is complicated, because the majority of voters describe themselves as “mugwumps,” that is, as being independent of either of the two major parties. So the question is who the “mugwumps” will vote for. The electorate is also cynical about its actual influence on party regulars, believing that the pressuring voices of labour unions and corporations are more significant, as they donate money. Or, rather, more money, or more effective money, than regular people.
 
I note, in way of nothing at all, an ad by a tyre rubber company proclaiming that “pent up consumer demand” will produce “capacity business all ‘round. That means employment for all who wish to work, wage money aplenty for all who wish to buy, more sales, more manufacturing, more employment.” 
 
It does seem to me like the old fallacy of lifting yourself up by your own bootstraps, Reggie, but certainly tyre makers are going to feel that way! I include it, however, because I have just perused another ad, by an earthmover maker, which claims to be getting ready for an inevitable building boom.
 
 
It is really getting hard to sort out whether we shall have a business boom or a business depression after the war. If the former, I almost think that I should rethink my opposition to the Fontana investment. The earthmover’s ad sees the “boom” in terms of viaducts and other grand reinforced concrete structures, and I must say that Los Angeles good use a few road viaducts, “cloverleafs” and suchlike. That would absorb quite a few girders!
 
On the other hand, my portfolio of Fortune ads also calls for an “automatic world” tomorrow, a television in every home, and an RCA electron tube-in-an-IBM-card-sorting-machine in every factory. I begin to recover my nerve. I have not, in the past, given much consideration of IBM shares, and those of its rivals. (I have bought Honeywell, however.) For all of its recent growth, it seems like another war baby. These gigantic card-sorting machines clearly have their place, but the use seems so limited that it is hard to see why anyone would buy a new one; and, one imagines, old ones will be on the market after demobilisation. The company can eke out sales from cards, of course, but new machines is another matter. Everything changes the moment that a significant new market for the machines opens up, however. 

 
 
And then there is Monsanto Chemicals, proposing a future eight-place dinner party served up with vacuum-dried beef, potatoes , fruit and tomato soup. That seems a little unrealistic, if I am to draw from experience with powdered milk and eggs.
 
IMG_0233.JPG
 
“Mr. Ickes’ Arabian Nights,” Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes’ elaborate plan for giving three big American oil companies access to Saudi Arabian oil seems to becoming unstuck.
Eliot Janeway, “The Republican Race” Last month, the revelation that Dewey would face off against Roosevelt justified printing a month old Janeway column speculating about –I forget what was he speculating about? Something about California going Democratic, unless Connecticut went Republican? In any event, this number requires an entire article, illustrated with political cartoons from the 1840s.
 
Allow me to sum up this and the pre-Convention article in The Economist. Unnamed senior party officials do not like Dewey, and hope that Calvin Coolidge will return from the dead to run. Failing that, they like Willkie, who would also have to return from the dead. Failing that, they hope that someone else will turn up to stop Mr. Dewey, the “Boy Wonder.” Even though “[f]or the class of people who live midway between the station-wagon set and the slums, he is everything he ought to be. Dewey is the favorite son of the suburbs.”
So everyone likes Dewey, he is the strongest candidate and has the most delegates, and therefore Stassen MacArthur Bricker Taft Harold Burton  Eric Johnston Earl Warren.
 
“France: The American Stake.” So, apparently, we can’t have France as a colony after the war. They should be completely independent, and completely subordinate to American interests, part of a “united states of Europe,” and of an Atlantic Community.
 
“The Ford Heritage” Henry Ford is 82, and the paper went to interview him. He is still healthy, and quite certain that control of the company will pass down through the family, in the immediate future to his grandsons. He has evidently heard rumours about turmoil in the upper ranks of the company, and may relish it for publicity reasons. He is, after all, a publicist, and the paper takes his more controversial public stances as evidence as his taste for publicitiy. This being so, it is noteworthy that he has a poster on his wall with pictures of General Short and Admiral Kimmell, captioned, THE MYSTERY OF PEARL HARBOR. The alleged mystery of Pearl Harbor is, of course, how the President managed to get the Japanese to bomb it, so as to force war on Germany and Japan. The paper supposes that Harry Bennett may be the next business manager at Ford, since his grandsons are young and feckless, and diplomatically notes his alleged underworld ties. At least until Henry Ford II is ready to take the helm. “Henry Ford II believes that the second car in the American garage is not an impossible hope.” It might have to be a small car, in which case the company will have to overcome America’s aversion to the small car, but it is not an impossible hope. Of course, he also believes that his new V-8 will sell like the Model T. I suppose that is why the second car will be small. And since Ford is family held, however old Henry mismanages the company, the family won’t be hurt.

Though, frankly, the plan to flog off so much of the Rouge to “Cousin H.C.” shows at least more acumen than the same! Ah, well, I have tried to convince our cousin-in-law to get out of aircraft, as I have tried to convince him to get out of steel, but he will have none of this idea of retreating back to his comfort zone of construction, nor of my notion of investing in electrical engineering –there is nothing on the horizon that seems as grand and dramatic as transport planes in matters electrical. Though you would think that television. . . .

 
“Air Passage to England” The paper’s reporter flew to England and back. The way there was quite nice, a summer flight in still air. The flight back, in February, was a hardship run. The 1942—3 winter was so foul that they almost couldn’t keep the route open. There were only 176 crossings. Remember the submarine war crisis at the same time? Putting this in perspective, the three year total is 800, with only two planes lost. I should go through my papers to see how many of those had our gold on board. Quite a few, I should think. I hope that the effort will finally buy some forgiveness in certain quarters over guiding money into the Southern Pacific. . . 

 

Westbound Liberators take off with 3100 gallons of gas, enough for 17 hours of still-air flying. As Mr. Bowyer points out elsewhere, taking off with that much gas itself implies a very long flight, or very long runways to divert to if something goes wrong. If Goose Bay orGander is open, pilots do not mind taking off into a 48 knot headwind. If they are shut down, a thirty knot headwind means a difficult calculation, since if the flight plan is over 15 hours, the pilots will not take off. The only escape then is to take a detour via Iceland, which puts the plane at full tanks another 738 miles closer to the American coast. However, the mere mention of Iceland puts shivers into experienced passengers, since  a shift of the winds may strand them there for weeks at a time. Planes have to fly above icing altitude –20,000ft or more, under oxygen. Differences in pressure make it hard to pass water, and the cabins, although heated, fall to 21 below. 

 

“The Farm Bureau” is a highly effective Washington lobby group. It is very concerned with soil conditions.

 

America and the Future has articles about William Penn, who was a hero and a man of conscience, the new British relationship with Russia (baffled but hopeful), and the Gas Turbine, about which I would know more were I not transfixed by the Apollonian beauty of Mr. Geoffrey Smith. Oh, and some airy-fairy bit of German philosophy by another of the academic emigres, Ernst Cassirer on “The Myth of the State.” Dr. Cassirer is apparently uniquely qualified by vast education to explicate the notion that the state is a myth. I do not know. A cruise or two as a pirate is, in my experience, also a good qualification, but I suppose that that is why the word “unique” is in there. Certainly most pirates do not have Ph.Ds. Though that might change if there were ever a surplus of unemployed young PhDs, one imagines.
 
Business at War

 

“The railroads of the country are headed for a manpower crisis,” warned the late Joseph Eastman last September. It hasn’t gotten any better. High seniority men, and low-paid maintenance workers with homes along the tracks have stayed on the job, but more junior people have jumped into war work. There is a 100,000 man shortage on the rails. It has been suggested that the railroads could do more. Some junior employees do not even get overtime, housing and lunchrooms have been neglected, training programmes are weak, and race and sex prejudice have dictated hiring. While Coloureds are only hired for certain jobs, the railroads are in the process of hiring 40,000 Mexicans. And labour, especially senior labour, is not employed enough due to featherbedding. So, essentially, the industry’s problems are not as bad as they say, because the paper thinks that it can work the men who have stayed with the industry harder. Although at least the paper has the sense to see that they must be paid more if asked to do more, which puts it over The Economist!

 

A domestic American essential oils and aromatic chemicals industry, weak before the war, has flourished during it. A continuing demand for scents and flavours across many industries may make it a good investment, because even men will prefer perfume in their soap if they are not asked.

 

 Beatrice Tank Company, a firm which makes sheet metal tanks and bins, has done quite well from the war, and hopes to continue to do quite well. It was unionised by the AFL, and the sky did not fall. Heres hoping that it continues in peace time, in which case this was the kind of company you should have been investing in. Whereas if it fails, it will have been the kind you oughtn’t. 

 

Aviation, June 1944

 

Down the Years in AVIATION’s Log

 

Twenty-five years ago, navy airship C-5 cruised 1100 miles nonstop under adverse air conditions …and then was wrecked by high winds in its moorings. So, not much has changed there. Fifteen years ago, Robbins and Kelly set a refuelling endurance record of 172 hours, flying circles around Wright Field, if I recall correctly, and actually flying alongside a racing auto to pick up fuel cans. The Curtiss Marine Trophy is won by Lt. W. C. Tomlinson at a speed of 173mph. Pitcairn-Cierva builds a $100,000 autogiro factory. (In honour of the anniversary, remind me to taunt the investors they fleeced, Reggie.) Goodyear-Zeppelin announces a training course for prospective trans-Pacific pilots. Night airmail starts between Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Ten years ago, the Chinese built “the first floating hangar,” and the Air Corps announced that the turbosupercharged Curtiss P-30 was….coming soon. 

 

AVIATION Editorial (Note that for some reason there is no line editorial this month)

 

Leslie Neville is impressed by the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce’s blueprint for America’s future of the air. (A big air force, large civil aviation, much money, lots of advertising, lots of research and development, free enterprise.)

 

Rear-Admiral Dewitt C. Ramsay, “America’s Prime Weapon: Carrier-Based Aviation” America has many aircraft carriers. Their planes shoot down six Japanese for every American lost. They blew up Truk. Soon, they will blow up other places. Flying planes from aircraft carriers is harder than it looks, but moving air fields have their advantages, such as there always being wind over the decks. Which, first, seems like cheating when comparing land planes to sea planes, and, second, is fairly obviously not an advantage you can count upon in a  sea fight!

 

“An American Air Power Policy” By a remarkable bit of prescience, I was able to summarise this article without even reading it! (Above.)  (My housing policy, Reggie: All Americans should live in large houses on large, suburban lots in Pacific Slope states. It’s for the good of the country!)

 

Johnn Foster, Junior, “Here are Your Markets,, Part II  --East and West North Central, East and West South Central Regions” In the postwar era, states with large populations of wealthy individuals will buy more aeroplanes than small, lightly populated ones. Therefore, Ohio will be a more important market for you than North Dakota. Also, statistics, which might actually make this article useful. For example, did you know that Louisiana has 1.7% of the nation’s buying power, but only 1.2% of its registered private aeroplanes? Perhaps it will be a worse market than Oklahoma, with 1.8 and 2.0, respectively! Unless there is a reason for this apparent discrepancy. Upon which matter Mr. Foster is silent. To think that someone paid for this "research."

 

Frederic Flader, “The Economic Future of Aviation Technology,” In the future, there will be money in flying mail, passengers and expensive goods. How expensive? Less and less expensive as ton-mile costs fall! For example, a decline from 51 cents per ton mile to 15 will increase traffic (Mr. Flader lays a ruler on a chart and measures off a set distance into dreamland) 300 times!

 

Chester S. Ricker, “Design Analysis No. 6: DeHavilland Mosquito” Here is part two of the very long design analysis promised. “Construction of these stabilizer brackets is very interesting….” Never a truer word spoken, Mr. Ricker! This number is devoted to control mechanisms and control surfaces (this is the right jargon for ailerons and rudders, is it not?). Ricker successfully establishes that these are very complex in order to do their job well, and reinforces the point made earlier, that the plywood used is carefully chosen and of high quality. 

 

Jean H. Hamelet, “Let’s Make Instrument Flying Easier” I have seen a great many articles like these, but I am sure that Mr. Hamelet’s views are useful and can make a contribution.

 

Stephen J. Zand, “Automatic Flight and Airplane Stability” The drawback to leaving my papers around is that when your eldest gets hold of one that interests him, it develops annotations in a spidery pencil script. I see that he was  very interested in this one. Or someone was, as the hand seems a little different. Perhaps your youngest? Or perhaps your son had a cramp, as it his favourite word --“stability” --which is heavily underlined. Since Mr. Zand is the director of the Vose Memorial Laboratory at Sperry Gyroscope Company, the very bastion of evil to your son’s mind, I suppose that the article is either an example of bad practice, or an extended guilty plea, and the check marks and a curt “It’s about time!” suggest the latter. Sperry has come to accept the need for the careful mathematical analysis of autopilots, and their individual design for specific aircraft. Or, at least, Mr. Zand has. 

 

“Forged Cylinder Heads Require New Technique." Wright wants you to know that the reason that the Cyclone, announced 18 months ago, is not yet in trouble-free service is not because the announcement was hopelessly ambitious, but because of the New Techniques. Which had to be implemented. And which were hopelessly optimistically predicted. Many machine tools are used, and an outrageous amount of scrap metal is generated. Fortunately, the new techniques will have many applications in the fut—is that a jet engine I see?

 

William N. Findley, “Load Characteristics of Cellulose Acetate Plastic,” Given that it is so widely used, perhaps we should measure its load bearing characteristics? And publish a paper? 

 

H. S. Golden, Assistant Chief Engineer, Buick Motors, General Motors, “Design Craftsmanship Cuts Engine Production Costs,” Originally, Buick was instructed to make new Pratt & Whitney engines with  no design changes. But, later, they made design changes that reduced engine production costs! From the sounds of things, this is the kind of article that every chief engineer of a contracting firm in America could write, Reggie. As production went on, the organisation learned to do it better. The products came out better, and not just because of the redesign of fine details such as the radius of the chamfer of the oil control rings, either. 

 

 “Convair Machine Sorts 50,000 Rivets Hourly,” Saving significant labour hours, Convair designed and built this automatic sorting machine, which it now markets to other interested manufacturers, with the assurance that, yes, it really does work.. The inventor, Mr. H. O. "Bud" Mills, might want to rethink having his photograph shot in profile, however. Or at least get  new haircut and a shave. 

 

 
Though, to be fair, Mr. Mills is making me rethink my IBM embargo, noted above. Rivets are, obviously, not punch cards, but the news that even some middle-aged Walter Mitty-type can design and build a new (rivet) sorter for his business's needs makes me think that while the company's machine business is surely saturated, there is probably a future in its punch-card trade.

 

“Methods for Forming Sheet Aluminum, Part II: Spinning of Aluminum” I think that one might guess from seeing complicated, radially-symmetric aluminum pieces that this is being done somewhere. And it is!

 

T. J. Kearney, Dexter Corporation, “New System Simplifies Engine Cleaning” I was all set to mock this until I noticed that your daughter-out-of-law has been at the number, writing, “I want one of these –G.,” underneath –in ink, yet!

IMG_0257.JPG

I am not sure why she would want a device for spray-cleaning small engine parts,however.

 

“Operation of Zero-Lash Valve Lifter” I have no idea what this means, but Franklin Engines thinks it worth advertising.

 

“Steps in Servicing Champion Sparkplugs” And now your youngest is clipping photos. I swear that I am going to get a second subscription at this rate. 

 

“Progressive Line Methods Expedite Engine Overhaul” My comments on the Buick article above will hold here.

 

The next article has been clipped entirely. I shall be having a talk with your youngest, although I assume that it is another routine maintenance article, and so of little interest to me. 

 

Two finance articles, on “Fly-Yourself Businesses,” and whether airline stocks are over-valued. (Probably.)

 

The paper has an article about the Budd steel cargo aircraft. 

 

Aviation News

 

The lead article is on the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce plan. Etc, etc. Two P-51s set a new trans-continental record (6 hours, 31 ½ minutes.) The April aircraft production total is below obituaries, although at the head of the “Aircraft Manufacturing” section. 8,343 a/c, if you were wondering. Old news, of course, so the only interest lies in wondering whether it is pushed so low out of embarrassment. It is surely not as surprise, after all. 

 

Washington Windsock

 

Blaine Stubblefield notices that jet aircraft will last longer than prop, and present challenges to aircraft manufacturers. Also, the bombing of Germany has been less effective because while he bombs did “all of the expected damage,” they have a lower velocity of contact, and so penetrate less! I do not see what difference that would make, if the bombs are doing all the “expected damage,” but I am not a Washington insider!

 

America at War

 

As the paper falls ever further behind events, so this feature becomes ever less interesting. In the news: we are bombing Gemany! 

 

Aviation Manufacturing

 

As already noted, aircraft production hit a new low not seen since October, although structure weight, although also falling, is off the record weight set in March. Boeing, the P&W plant in Kansas City, and the Packard Merlin production line are all worthy of notice. Convair’s projected six-engine mid-wing monoplane, the “mammoth Model 37 transport” might carry 400 passengers on two decks, and feature various new features, of which the only one that sounds as though it would support these ambitions, as opposed to being perennial good ideas never yet quite achieved, such as reversible propellers, is a mention that it will be fabricated of a new alloy. Perhaps his classified new alloy is why we no longer hear that the future belongs to magnesium or stainless steel? 

 

 
“Transport Aviation” is mostly concerned with the air law battle and prospects of traffic gains, although at least one messianic vision is touted, an airfield for “private flyers only” for St. Louis that, as far as I can tell is expected to form a modern Forbidden City of the aeronautical in the midst of the downtown. 

IMG_0260.JPG

 

Aviation Abroad

 

On the one hand, talks about talking about civil aviation continue. On the other, talk of a KLM buy of Avro Tudors has the American industry in a tizzy. It’s poaching, because KLM belongs to us. Well, the Dutch, technically.

 

Aviation Finance

 

Ray Hoadley notes that stocks have been on a declining trend since 1940, and price in more”postwar prosperity” than wartime boom. This is true of aviation stocks as well. I think the point here, combined with his earlier, longer piece, is that there is a safe “bottom” on aviation stocks. He notes a Harvard Business School study which uses the Lockheed case to show that high corporate income taxes would be bad for small business, that the Canadian excess profits tax is bad for business, and that Congress’s refusal to pass a bill allowing termination loans before adjourning until after the election could have disastrous consequences if the Germans fold before November. Which you have to wonder why they would conceivably do, given that a sharp victory followed by a GOP election on a “rethinking this whole war thing” platform is about their only hope. Surrender the day after the election, if the harvest looks that bad.
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Saturday, August 2, 2014

Postblogging Technology, June 1944, II: The Storm is Coming
 
Wing Commander R_. C_, D.F.C.
L_. House,
Isle of Axholme,
Lincs., U.K.
 
My Dear Father:
 
Time seems to have gotten away from us here in California, which is my way of apologising that this is so late. It would be later still if it were left to your cousin, who has been in New York for several weeks now, lately avoiding the telephone and telegraph, so that we are behind on news here. (Although it appears from the entertainment news that his main mission has been successful.) We are expecting him, and Wong Lee, in company with the westbound courier, who will turn around for Montreal without so much as a night's rest with this package, and so on to you.
 
You will no doubt be amused by the latest steps in Uncle's campaign for financial freedom of maneuver. You know your cousin's stubbornness and pride! Needless to say, the recent gains on the NYSE are a problem for him as Uncle's main objective is to remain free to buy what he wants to  buy, although I beg you not to be so frank with the Earl. With Timetrumpeting the success of Wilys-Overland, Uncle has to argue that it is all froth. Who in their right mind would put their money behind Sorensen at this point in his career? On the other hand, IBM and Honeywell are up nicely since his purchase. A stopped clock is right twice a day and all of that. 
 
You will be pleased to know that Uncle has set his best people to work on answering the question put by the Earl. (Or, rather, that he tasked the household. But good people are we!) We came up with a curve of the discount on expected returns on housing units per year that I append. Now I have to explain why it is nonsense and should be disregarded, even though to complete it I ended up in that library in Palo Alto where one is pretty much obligated to call upon the Engineer. I must say that the more that I see of him socially, the more I fancy that I detect the man that the electorate rejected twelve years ago, matters not being eased by  a lunch date with his eldest, at which fulsome were the complaints about the injustice of the Engineer's illegitimate son being to all appearances his "true" heir. What can I say? Once his grandfather decided to divert investor's money into the subterranean stream that is his little college, it could hardly emerge into the sun except to bubble up and water hidden roots, and that is all. As for favoritism, what counts for the Engineer is politics, and all of his sons, on whichever side of the blanket (how me must have struggled to do his duty!) are disappointments on that score. Imagine an actor in that office! Especially one who likes to tattle to the Feds about his enemies. You will be pleased to heart hat I held my tongue. 
 
So: the research. "Miss V.C.," has had some practice in this matter, and was willing to be persuaded to divert herself from her little family history. (Especially as she realizes that her trip to Monterrey can only be authorized by wheedling an indulgent Uncle, and he is not around right now.) To reinforce the troops, your youngest offered his eager assistance, and we also got something out of Uncle's housekeeper, and rather more from Lieutenant A., who turns out to have some grip on staff work. (I was beginning to wonder.) More usefully, Suzie Wong is available, now that school is out. In short, we compiled what poor numbers we have, both on housing stocks and the science of "demography," put our best statistical acumen to work, and came up with a curve of discounts on expected returns on housing investments in the United Kingdom 1944--1975, although James likens it to reinforcing concrete with rust-flavored gelatin. (Because rust is iron; never mind, it is funnier when James delivers it with his best BBC pronunciation.) 
 
Now I have to tell you why it is all rubbish, and that the Earl should disregard it and go all in for housing. The long and the short of it is that while a more careful reader would no doubt deliver more nuance, it seems to me that demographers are absolutely mad! Some of the finer details of the lunacy are rather indelicate for a letter from a daughter-in-law. I asked James to append something about "neo-Malthusianism," but he seems scarcely more comfortable talking about it with you than I! The argument, as I synthesize it, is that for a very long time, the human population of the Earth scarcely grew at all. Then, in the Great Prosperity of Ch'ien Lung-Ti, and in England as well, population began to grow quite quickly. The gentlemen scholars explained that in terms of proper rulership unlocking the fecundity of the Earth, but in England a clergyman named Malthus pronounced that it was "scientific," and a bad thing, since unchecked population growth must eventually overrun the Earth. by scientific, he vaguely meant a fedback process, although he perceived strictly negative feedback, and distinguished two kinds. These were "positive checks" by which Protestants restricted population growth through late marriages from the "negative checks" of poverty that afflicted themselves upon the superstitious poor of various places. The latter not actually being checks, as they did not work. The Reverend Malthus was no great engineer, although he is more highly regarded as an economist, and his point about "positive checks" was prescient.
 
Then, in the course of the Nineteenth Century, while population growth slowed under the late and vicious Ch'ing, that of England redoubled, to be followed in its turn by other Protestant nations such as Germany, but not, conspicuously, France and Ireland. So a new explanation was needed, which was generally given in terms of a fall in the death rate due to improving health. Then, about 1890, population growth in England and America began to fall, and yet a new one was required. Civilization had advanced, there had been a "demographic transition," and Malthus' positive checks were in general practice. 
 
A farrago of arguments followed that seemed to evade this obvious point, mainly by pointing at other countries where population expansion continued, such as Germany, Italy and Japan. Population expansion happened on its own, and caused war, or migration, or poverty, or checked itself by the sufficient cause of population density itself. Races might or might not flourish in various parts of the world, and some races  might be committing "racial suicide" by reducing their birth rate below the death rate. Mr. Thompson, whom Uncle ridicules, somehow came up with the argument that the Japanese were entitled to the lands of Manchuria, or of New Guinea on the other hand. (His views of whether the Japanese are best suited to Siberian or jungle airs have developed, much like civilization, over time.) The rather more obvious resort of California was ruled out by the fact that California, with thrice the land mass of Britain, was full up by his calculation of "optimum population density" at less than 6 million people! An English socialist and scientist calculated that the English are on their way to racial extinction. This is the view, refracted through the Luce press, which panicked Uncle.  This reading allows that the solution is socialism. Australians think that Australia is underpopulated and needs vastly more people, but for some reason these must be only White persons. Their solution is "neo-natalist" policies to promote the native birth rate. Mr. Thompson whimsically offers the Chinese Australia, or Australia the Chinese, and an Indian replies by offering them British Columbia and California. 
 
Is it unfair to notice that while we as a family like to complain about how unfair the Exclusion Act was, it has been a source of great profit to us? Continuing, my eyes began to roll even before I discovered the Icelandic Canadian explorer who thinks the high islands of the Arctic to be an unexploited frontier destined for populations in the millions.  
sptizbergen.jpg Source and Boookings
 
I am sometimes inclined to roll my eyes at Uncle's belief that racial passing is the secret key to American public life. He is so smug sometimes! But when I stare into the eyes ofVijhalmur Stefansson, I ask myself, "Mad? Or insecure?" 
 
Vijhalmur Stefansson:
 
garbo.jpg
 
 

 

 
Wait, sorry. That was from my "Neo-Malthusians and eugenicists make me uncomfortable" file. Here is Mr. Stefansson.
 
640px-Vilhjalmur_Stefansson.jpg 100% Nordic. IMG_0263.JPG Spitsbergen is the size of Ireland, Wrangel larger than Delaware. There is plenty of room for the White Race!
 
 
So what do I discover in the end? Ecology, which is the study of living systems and their environment in their totality, and, in particular, the best explanation for what happened in the two centuries before modernity. These are, in short, a decline in the death rate and a rise in the birth rate. The former continues today, while the latter came to an end, as I say, in the 1890s. Why? Ecology speaks of the recovery of depressed populations through "storm breeding," which occurs when high mortality opens up resources for them. Applied to humans, science recapitulates the statecraft of the ancient masters. Prosperity and good rule unleashes human fecundity. 
 
I would not be so bold as to speak of a heavenly mandate in this modern world of ours, but prosperity there certainly is. Thus, James predicts, a storm is coming. Build houses and more houses!*
 
 
GRACE. Santa Clara, 1944.
 
 
 
Time, 19 June 1944
 
Here is the problem with a weekly. The last issue of Time is cover dated 12 June, and has no invasion coverage because it covers the next week. But, looking back from this vantage, I have trouble remembering this, and when I turn to the June 19th issue, it is well on. I could clip and summarize the Chronicle,  but surely they have newspapers in the north of England!
 
International
 
“Allied Force’s Second Enemy: The Weather” Time notes that due to rough weather, unloadings, and the invasion, have fallen behind schedule. So, too, has the expansion of the beachhead. The paper notes the general problem of the slow rate of expansion of only three miles a day, and more specifically the failure to take Cherbourg quickly. Once it is taken, there is no doubt that it will be put to work quickly, but first it must be taken. With a half-million acres of the Carentan flooded in a gigantic defensive moat, this would be hard. Meanwhile, the British and Canadian forces were to guard the American flanks by driving inland quickly to Bayeux and Caen, taking them and setting up an “immovable roadblock” against Nazi counterrattack. It is thrilling to hear that the first tank battles of the campaign have already been fought. It is all so different from the narrow bridgehead of Anzio that Uncle feared so! Unfortunately, those battles involved 21st Panzer Division holding Caen by counterattack. Times quotes “Nazi spokesmen” as saying that more would have been accomplished, but troops must be held against further Allied invasions. It also supposes that the German Air Force will finally be seen when the German counterattack begins seriously.
 
“Battle of the Pacific: Curtain-Raiser” “Chester W. Nimitiz’s Pacific Fleet” struck at the Marianas this week. Domei expects a major effort in the Pacific to coincide with the invasion. Major-General Willis H. Hale’s heavy bombers have been attacking the Mariannas from the Marshalls –a distance of a thousand miles! So is this the signal that the next offensive will come in on Saipan, Guam and Tinian, or is it another feint? Meanwhile, in the south, the Japanese garrison of Bougainville has settled in to farm, provoking a 13th Air Force raid on the vegetable gardens, which seems a little cruel to me, especially as, after all, many of these men are actually Koreans and Formosans. On the other hand, it makes a nice punctuation to my report! Mr. Thompson is right. All of those east Asians can hardly wait to migrate to the South Pacific and raise sweet potatoes.
 
“Shuttle” Time is impressed that 15th Air Force is using Russian bases. Could this be a sign of things to come?
 
“Up the Boot” Defeated around Rome, the Germans are retreating! Am I wrong, or isn’t that how it is supposed to work? Various Latinly famous places are mentioned, to please those who studied Latin in school. (Latin tags bad! Confucian tags good!)
 
 
“Battle of Russia: Summer Opening”  “Bursting rockerst told of the reopening of the Russian front.” 8-inch guns roar in Karelia. The Swedes predict that the next three months will be crucial to Finland.
 
“The Other Front” An amusing cartoon is described in which a British capitalist in striped pants and a tail coat scrawls a sign on a factory wall reading, “Open a front in the East at once!” This doesn’t seem as devastating a jab to me as it must to the cartoonist.
 
“Summer Warmth” Moscow is currently not awful. Our correspondent is struck by racing shells and canoes on the Moscow River, but also the way that workers hurry home from the factories to “spade their victory gardens,” which strikes me as slightly ominous, all things considered. Businessman Eric Johnston continues his tour of the Soviet Union. Now, really, Mr. Johnston!
 
“Snubbed Again” “Touchy” French leader General Charles de Gaulle “was being most difficult when he was right.” General de Gaulle is touchy. 
 
“The Unliberated” The French seem remarkably unenthusiastic about their German conquerors and Vichy, and appallingly happy about the prospect of being liberated. Germany and Vichy seek a solution to massive sabotage and resistance. Marshal Petain finds “occasional doses of benezedrine” a fine remedy. Berlin radio hints that raisingJacques Doriot to the presidency might be a better one. In spite of the benefits of having a million in German prisons and one and-a-half million in German labour service, accompanied by debt and inflation, the French remain unimpressed. Clearly, the solution to getting occupied France working again is arresting more people. In liberated France, a touching story of cure and schoolmaster embracing with tears of joy on the steps of the liberated cathedral of Bayeux.
 
“Pure of Fascism” The new Premier of Italy is Socialist Ivanoe Bonomi, 71. Various persons, including a communist and a philosopher(!)  are in the cabinet. Badoglio is out.
 
“Sunshine and Scars”
 
Rome has been liberated. New York Times correspondent, Herbert Matthews, looks up an old friend, and “barelegged young women in summer prints and sportswear promenaded the Corso Umberto.” U. S. correspondents were annoyed that they had to pay $1.13 for two boiled eggs and a cup of weak tea at the Hotel Majestic, while thousands of Romans and refugees went hungry. Sugar is $10/lb, string beans $5.50/lb, rice $5/lb. (Which I think suggests that the sugar is being pilfered.) No-one has worked in months, and the scenes of atrocities are shown to correspondents.
 
“A Note for Voters” It is suggested that General Montgomery might run for the Liberals after the war. This seems a little silly.
 
“Each Man to ‘is Post” Because Britons drop their “hs!” The paper’s correspondent attents the Royal Horticultural Society’s flower show at Westminster, the debate in the Lords over the  Education Bill (Lord Buckmaster wants more whippings in public schools). In other news, the Zoological Society of London is to build a new elephant house, R. W. Sorenson, M.P. (Lab.) is concerned that the new prefabs have no bomb shelters, the milk ration has been cut, boiling fowls are 25 shillings on the black market, virtually unobtainable at the controlled price, and the correspondent’s dustman is worried about his son-in-law, who is in the Royal Navy. He is also the fellow who drops his "Hs.".
 
“In this Fateful Hour” Germany is having rallies. We are told that the first German reaction to the invasion was elation, because a rapid victory was expected that would free the Wehrmacht to “teach the Russians the futility of further efforts to advance,” followed by a negotiated peace. “Next day, a fear began to gnaw.” General Kurt Dittmar, ‘No. 1 military commentator,’ came on air to allow that the Atlantic Wall was never meant to be impenetrable and discourage excessive optimism. Some paper whose name I am supposed to recognize informs us that if the invasion succeeds it will be the end for the Furhrer, and men 65 to 80 are now to register for emergency labor service. But the counterattack is still confidently awaited. An escaped prisoner declares that there is no vestige of a German underground, and through Switzerland word that Hitler “still ranked first in German affections.”
 
The paper’s detailed Normandy coverage begins with a brief overview, continues with a kicks off with a detailed story about  Eisenhower (this week’s cover) and his staff and their decision to launch the invasion, extends with a brief interview with Indians in the pathfinder sections of the Parachute divisions, continues with General Montgomery’s address to thetroops and a brief account of Time correspondent William Walton’s battle jump  interviews with paratroopers, ends with an amusing story of a Landing Craft (Kitchen) on its way to the beaches. Incidental is word of the promotions of Colonels Richard Saunders and Clinton Vincent to general officer’s rank, giving the Army Air Force a distinct edge on youth over the Army, never mind the Navy. (Felix likes to joke about “General Issue Earhorn, M-2, and then grimly says that it is no joke, and seems to be getting worse, not better. I had this of him a few months ago, perhaps when he had the first word of the news to come, as we shall see.) The next story, which features Ninth Air Force service chiefHenry J. F. Miller’s quiet relief, demotion, and subsequent relegation to a hospital in Florida from “serious physical ailments not connected with his overseas service” makes the point even more strongly. The Army is now releasing details of Miller’s discipline for spilling crucial details of invasion timing, and of Ernest J. Dawley’s demotion, and Timenotes that the Navy is solicitious with its admirals and. “Not one has been broken.” Not even the grandfather of Lieutenant A., who let so many of our ships be torpedoed. (Though honestly it sometimes seems that that is a recommendation to the family in the Engineer’s eyes.)
 
Which reminds me that the Top of theMark has been put out of bounds to home-stationed “Army & Navy officials” because “in the dim light bartenders had sold drinks to servicemen under 21.”  
 
“Common Pool” From now on, Selective Service draftees will go to a common pool to be selected randomly for Army, Navy or Marines. You can either see this as long-overdue common sense, or a direct blow at the heart of the Marine Corps. Or both!
 
Domestic
 
“Look at the World”  The American press is quite taken with war news. It is publishing many maps in novel perspectives (notice that Fortune’s arch-cartographer, Richard Ede Harrison, has just published an atlas by this title), and also a recipe from the Pacific, a palm heart salad in vinegar. 
 
  Sherri Lynn Woodsey, 1971 Swamp Cabbage Queen of  Labelle, Florida; source, with suggested heart-of-palm salad featuring a topping of pistachio ice cream
Various Americans have taken an apartment in Naples, enjoyed a nice, Italian-style dinner in Tripoli, bought silk stockings in stores in Panama, found the South Pacific’s weather worse than Louisiana. And, “for all U.S. soldiers everywhere, the invasion spelt HOME in big, bright letters, like the neon signs in the corner saloons.” To which they will escape the moment that they have been HOME long enough, but I suppose I shall take things one step at a time.
 
“In Stride” Like 135 million other Americans, the President took news of the invasion in stride. Because he is perfectly healthy. Just ask his personal physician, who has insisted four times in the last four months that the President is hale and hearty, but must stick to his new, lighter schedule, including no lunch meetings. I would be very sick indeed, sir, before gave up lunch “meetings.”
 
“Prophet of Gloom” Young, curly-haired Leo Cherne, boss of the ‘Manhattan-famed’ Research Institute of America, predicts that the post war will see a depression, 19 million unemployed, big business getting bigger, small business shrinking, high taxes for the “plain citizen,” “Labor in full retreat,” greater political dissension, more pressure groups, more “government by bloc,” dangerous social cleavages between ‘ex-servicemen and civilians, white and black, Jew and gentile, business and labor,” more wars. Yes, people have saved quite a bit, but they will go on saving because of unemployment, falling incomes, high prices, and lack of demand, since everyone already has everything they need. (“Everyone-will-buy-a-helicopter” talk is nonsense.) Cassandra Cherne is particularly concerned that one fifth of American land belongs to the Federal Government, as this will lead to the end of freedom.
Though, after that, when everything is fixed, we shall reach “new levels of production.”
 
“Big Jim Goes” Jim Farley has broken with the President., denied any future plnas, gone off on a three-week business trip in his role as chairman of the board of Coca-Cola. Politics has been good to Mr Farley.
 
“Blackmail, Southern Style” If the President runs again, and keeps on advising the South on the “Negro Problem,” and nominates Henry Wallace as Vice-Presidential candidate, perhaps Southern Democratic politicians will do something drastic that will set the election on its ears!
 
“Eighteenth Year” Speaking of things that might happen, “North Dakota’s slick Gerald Prentice Nye” might face a real race for his seat in the Senate from various Republican alternatives. Usher Lloyd Burdick is a candidate whose weakness is that he “goes poorly in cities.” Fortunately, the CIO and the Daily Worker support him. This is all deemed to be a plot by his North Dakota colleague, William Langer, so others of Nye’s enemies in the state are backing one Lynn U. Stambaugh, a successful Fargo lawyer, thus deemed a city slicker by the average North Dakotan. I just quote what I read, here.
 
“Waiting on the Sky” To the disappointment of everyone who has actually talked about the subject , it looks like a bumper grain crop of 30 bushels an acre in Kansas, but they keep their hopes up with dreams of a summer deluge  or 100 degree heat wave or hail. Meanwhile, actual farmers offer $7-12 per day plus room and board, and appeal for more prisoners of war to work the fields, plus day labour from the towns. Women and teen-age kids will man the roaring tractors and drive the heavy grain trucks to the elevators, even operate the combines. A “harvest army” moves north across the plains from Texas towards Kansas.
 
“The Avery Problem” Reading the fair copy, I see that Uncle was in “day care” form talking about the D-Day debate on the education bill in the Lords. (You may roll your eyes at your cousin’s confabulations, sir, but the children in the day care below his office stare in bafflement, then charge him with questions when he plays the same game, and his smile can be seen across the yard.) My excuse for that memory is this story about Avery Sewell’s testimony before Congress, also on D-Day. Time says that  Mr. Avery put on a show as bizarre as Uncle’s imaginings, and that this is a problem for those who want to press the takeover at Montgomery-Ward as an election issue.
 
“Why?” Congress has extended the deadline for filing court-martial charges against Kimmel and Short. Mississippi’s Dewey Short wants immediate action, while the Administration relies on their old “military secrecy” defence. The House finds this tiresome. What military secrets could be important to “Japs huddled under bombs at Truk?” James peers over my shoulder to speculate that we have broken the Japanese codes, which would presumably be a door into the German codes. Wild speculation, he admits, because when has such a thing ever happened before? Apart from World War One and the Midway campaign? Of course, Congress knows as much about any of this as anyone. The real concern is that there will not be a court martial before November, and our last chance of winning World War II under the leadership of someone not named “Roosevelt.”
 
“The Vanishing Negro” Mississippi, which produces 7% of the nation’s cotton crop, is seeing “Southern whites” working in the fields, because while the state has the nation’s second largest Coloured population (the paper, of course, does not say “Coloured”) it is running short of them. In 1940, Mississippi saw whites outnumber Coloureds for the first time in a century, and an estimated half million of them have left the state since. “Many are in well-paid war jobs; some have quite domestic work to live on their dependency benefits.” A Negro paper claims hat “scores are moving away daily” because of Southern racial bigotry.  Time then notes that Mississippi whites continue to “tack up bigger and bolder Jim Crow signs.”  The Luce pressrelishes the situation. I am more curious about the human story behind the decline in the nation’s Coloured population shown in the 1940 census.  Perhaps it is just our family’s proud record of smuggling hard-working Chinese into America’s white paradise –smuggled in so many ways—
 
Science
 
Yale’s Professor Petrunkevitch is retiring after 34 years. He liked spiders, wrote poetry, was unpleasant about women, and is for this reason obviously national news.  Chemists at North Carolina State College think that milk should be kept in the dark.  U.S. plants made 100 billion units of penicillin in May, up one third from April, this is still far short of promises that all needs for penicillin would be met by January, but still enough to ship to a thousand hospitals around the country. In fact, the main reason that demand still outstrips supply is that new uses are being discovered. A story about frontline medical care notes that in WWI, 61% of those not killed outright eventually returned to duty, 64% in Africa, in about 90 days, that 70% of Russia’s wounded return to the front, and that the Army hopes to hit this mark in Normandy. I am amazed to hear that we have adopted many of the Red Army’s practices! Two researchers (John Henry Foulger and Paul E. Smith, Jr.) insist that they can detect borderline illnesses such as incipient colds with microphones strapped to the chest to record the sounds of the heart, and save sickness hours in the factories. Healthy people have heartbeats that go “bong,” while sick people have hearts that go “slush.” James comments crossly that there is a reason that these people are not saving lives at the Front.
 
Press
 
“Little and Late” Plans for detailed press coverage of the invasion broke down because it proved hard to file stories. The courier pigeons got lost! Bert Brandt of Acme got the best story by hitching a ride back to England with his negatives. Ernie Pyle’s first filing, on the other hand, only made it back four days later. Life, on the other hand, just did a panoramic picture patching together cut-outs of ships and planes against various possible invasion beaches, and then ran the one that turned out to be right. A story about the Pope’s post-liberation press conference chivalrously notices U.P.’s “hefty Eleanor (“Pee Bee”) Packard bulging in army slacks.” Someone’s mother will have words with him when he gets back Stateside. This actually appears under “Religion.” Some have more than others.
 
Business
 
“Candy, Tea and Vodka” “Handsome, granny Eric Jounston, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and No. 1 evangelist for free enterprise, last week continued to baffle (and please) the Russian people.” Johnston is in Russia, it is the highlight of his career so far, and he shakes hands “like a polished Wendell Willkie.” “At a luncheon on a collective fur farm he drank toasts in vodka, an hour later began yelling ‘Whoo-hoo!’” EitherTimes was moved to unironically compare Johnston to Willkie, and the rest of the story was written by someone else, or I can guess just who it is who is behind the ‘Johnston for President’ craze. Just a hint, dear Father-in-Law –I think it is Mr. Johnston. I know that Uncle thinks that time passed has erased the Johnstons’ debt to us for passage and his “midnight rebirth,” but I am beginning to have my doubts. This ridiculous presumption is bringing the cat out.
 
“By a Damsite” A story about FrankCrowe, the boss of the Shasta Dam project, who is getting rich building dams with Federal money but still hates the Administration and the “socialistic” cheap power they will produce. I am not sure what he thinks that the dam is supposed to do, but at least he hasn’t condemned irrigation and flood control in the San Joaquin Valley. Turning sheep pasture into market garden seems like a good enough idea to me!
 
“Argentine Corn” The United States finally acted to bridge the shortage of feed corn pending the harvest, buying 150,000 tons of Argentine corn and allocating shipping to deliver it to U.S. dairymen on the eastern seaboard.
 
“Colt Mystery” Somehow Colt Firearms has managed to have a losing year in the midst of the greatest ar in history. The old CEO, Samuel M. Stone, is out, and a new one, Graham H. Anthony is in amidst much poisonous finger-pointing.
 
“Nate the Painter” “Vat-shaped (200lb, 5’ 3”)” Nathan Schriber has a new $310,000 job, painting the new Sunflower Ordnance Plant in Kansas City, which will make a “highly explosive and highly secret new gunpowder.” Because this is the kind of work that his firm does.
 
“Henry’s Boy Gets a Job” Charles E. Sorensen is in at Willys-Overland. I hope I shall not have to call back any dacoits.
 
“Elementary Aesthetics” From a windowless suite of “ill-ventilated cubbyholes deep in the basement recesses of the massive Ministry of Information in London” came the all-night broadcasting of the invasion. Sponsored shows were cancelled (NBC carried nothing but D-Day coverage) and studio broadcasters talked their throats dry while CBS chief Paul White “plugged in his teletypewriter-lined news room to let listeners hear the buzz and bells that filled it.” Manhattan newscaster Bob Trout “was  a marvel of glibness and endurance.” William Brooks of Times was a marvel of accuracy on the Blue. Portable magnetic wire records and the Navy’s film recorder brought back war reporting with a vividness never seen before. “A BBC recording caught a bargeload of British Tommies singing ‘For Me and My Gal,’ and a correspondent caught the “fateful clicks” as paratroopers did up their release belts. There was a beachhead interview with a sailor from Brooklyn, and live account of a Nazi bomber attacking a flagship in the Channel. It is hard to reproduce what we all heard in our living rooms over here for you, Sir, since I know that you were overwhelmed with strip to “fix. “
 
 
 
Books
 
“Gloomy Debate” Harold Laski has just published Faith, Reason and Civilization, while Ludwig von Mises has written Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War. Both men think the world faces total breakdown. Mr. Laski thinks that the solution is a Marxist state that takes ove the means of production, while Mr. von Mises thinks the opposite. So, in sum, the world is on its way in a handbasket, both agree, but one man’s solution is the other man’s wide and curving path. Mr. Huxley publishes in support of Mr. Laski, and Markoosha Fisher in support of Mr. von Mises (approximately.)S. J. Perelman has a collection of columns out, often inspired by the absurdities of the magazines he reads. I suspect that he is the only one to get luncheon invitations, excepting Mrs. Fisher, who sounds amusing in small doses.
 
People
 
Charlie Chaplin is terrible. The sons of Eisenhower and Admiral King have both graduated from the academies and joined their fathers’ services. Charles Lindburgh, ”consulting engineer for United Aircraft ans since March 1942 a Ford special consultant with somewhat mysterious duties) at Willow Run, turned up in the Gilbert Islands, as a Navy instructor in high-altitude flying.” (I quoted the line to James to see if it sounded as fishy to him as it did to me, but he just put on a Midwestern accent and said,  “Your ships can’t do it, so don’t try. Next class, please.”  Aimee McPherson is recovering from tropical fever. Jeff Davis, “King of the Hobboes,” is amusingLana Turner threw a public temper tantrum when caught dancing at a night spot with Peter Lawford.
 
220px-Lana_Turner_-_1940_publicity.jpg Do not cross this woman
 
 
Flight, 22 June 1944
 
Thrilling news of science!
 
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Leaders
“Jettery Lords” The Lords are jittery about the takeover of PowerJets, continuing the theme of “Government versus free enterprise.”  Lord Strabolgi, who greets the takeover as a remedy to the problems of the old “Ring,” which occasions a scolding from Flight, which thinks that it was a fine thing. It also seems a bit more confused about how the “vengeance” robot bombs work than is Time, but is still sure that they are wasted effort.
 
War in the Air
 
The paper thinks that Germans must be feeling some despair, at least, over this latest setback of the whole invasion thing. Especially since the air raid on Gelsenkirchen met strong resistance, and the RAF is getting very tired of this nonsense, which cost 17 bombers to deluge 1400 tons of bombs on the synthetic oil plants, as well as on diversionary minelaying operations and an attack on Cologne. There is a lot of flying to be done, and it must be wearing, even without active German fighters.
 
Here and There
 
One of the first emergency air deliveries to the Normandy beachhead was more ether. 
 
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The Air League of the British Empire has put on a thrilling show in the Bristol Aeroplane Showroom in Piccadilly. Rotol shows off its new cooling fan for radial air-cooled engines. It is not just the Japanese who can imitate foreign technology now! Australia cannot begin making Lancasters until production of BEaufighters is “well under way.” Douglas has announced the DC-7. The Robin Line is the latest to apply for an air route to go with its shipping route. Petrol-engined model aeroplanes may now be flown in the north of England.
 
 
“Invasion Closeup”
 
The paper’s correspondent can now sit back and reflect in more dertail. He thinks that the dropping of 5600 tons of bombs in 80000 sorties (TAAF and AEAF) and 7000 tons in 3000 sorties (8th Air Force) to isolate the Normandy battlefield is the principal contribution made by air power.  The result was a “rail desert west of Paris.” 5,737 tons of bombs were dropped to break bridges. 4000 tons were dropped on coastal strong points, and 1700 sorties flown against “radio installations.” (As Uncle would say, radar is a secret this week.) The correspondent regrets that he cannot describe the large number of Tempests on show, and goes off to see forward maintenance and modification centres. Regrettably (tough he does not say so), a thousand hours must be put into making Canadian-built Lancasters ready for front line operations, though  a good part of that is installing turrets, which are too draggy to be flown across the Atlantic.
 
Behind the Lines
 
The main aim of Japanese operations in China, Tokyo says, is “the destruction of the Chungking regime.” The Japanese continue to imagine themselves in the place of the Ch’ing. The German army says that artillery, not aircraft, will answer Allied air power. The fall of the Atlantic Wall is due to overwhelming Allied parachute and glider assault.
 
Studies in Aircraft Recognition
 
Today, a KawasakiKawanishi T-97Mitsubishi. None are particularly modern looking. Uncle would probably be sarcastic, but Flight is stuck with the material it has, and the actual planes seen at the front are probably older than the brand-new planes just shown at the factory.
 
C. B. B. W., “Lockheed Lightning (P-38/J): A Review of the Unorthodox Single-Seat American Fighter”
 
 
 
And then there are articles that fairly announce that a plane’s day is done. It is a very long and detailed article, with many illustrations. It is just that it is so old! It is certainly not devoid of technical interest. The final incarnation of the P-38 was an extraordinary machine, packed with automatic machinery. It James is cynical in suggesting that much of it was added to remedy the deficiencies of the original design, but as Uncle has pointed out, it is a miracle of automatic interaction that will have enormous implications in industry as machines come to do things at speeds and with precision far exceeding human performance.  But we have heard it all before!
 
J. Elliot, “The Case for the Railways” Railway Air Services thinks that Railway Air Services used to be wonderful, and could be again.
 
Time, 26 June 1944
 
International
“Facts from Normandy” The Normans sold a vast quantity of provisions to the Germans, and have mixed feelings about the invasion with its attendant destruction. It is Paris that is going mad under repression. In a separate filing, Time sings a familiar refrain. This war is looking less and less like a crusade all the time. The men just want to win and go home. IN a separate filing, at the end of the first eleven days of fighting, American casualties are 3,283 dead, 12,600 wounded, no mention of missing or prisoners. Meanwhile, back from Normandy poured “15,000 prisoners wearing the Reichswehr green.” A surprising number were not even Germans. Some, strange stories related, were women, female snipers.
 
Washington’s  position on the administration of France continues to be that something will turn up, and hopefully it won’t look like de Gaulle. Everyone else’s position is that France, and most places, don’t want to be run(?) like Washington. Where the President’s Press Secretary walked out on the White House porch to find the correspondents rocking beside the wooden Indian chief, nursing their sarsaparillas, and handed them a mimeographed sheet which revealed the President’s plan for a post war world order: something like the League of Nations, only different. More might be said after the Conventions. Or not. Depending.
 
Uncle would say something about Turks (and Icelanders and Belgians) being excitable at this point, following a cabinet shuffle to keep Turkey out of the war again. We have a line on the Hump, so it looks like we shan’t need the Pan-Turks much longer, and I am fine with this.
 
“Death to Life” The shocking case of Coloured Corporal Leroy Henry, sentenced to death by an Army court-martial in Britain for a “somewhat dubious case of rape” has been defused by General Eisenhower, who has ordered a reduction in sentence. (There is more coverage in the June 12th issue sir. Very tawdry all around. )
 
“Heat on a Tyrant” Time does not like Guatemala’s president, who admittedly sounds awful.
 
“Snafu” “London” has told Premier Bonomi has been told to put Marshal Badoglio back in his cabinet. This seems to give credibility to the Italian Communist Party, which is also buoyed up by former partisans in recently liberated areas and Allied mishandling.  A “Catholic Communist” paper has sprung up in Rome. Time thinks this is amusing. Or dangerous. George Santayana gave a press conference in his rooms at Rome’s Convent of the Little Company of Mary. No-one remembers the details, but many have made this  joke.
 
“Battle of Japan: The Beginning” B-29 Superfortresses bombed the Japanese home islands from bases in China this week. Given that all the gas and ammunition has to be flown over the Himalayas, I do not suppose that this is much more than a beginning. Father says that what the planes should really be flying is silver, so that the farmers will hoard something besides rice. This is the kind of thing that makes him pessimistic about Chiang’s chances in the long run.
 
“Where it Hurts” The next step in the Pacific is revealed to be Saipan, as Uncle guessed, as it is in B-29 range of the Home Islands and the Philippines. 
 
“Mechanical Man” Admiral Raymond Ames Spruance, this week’s cover, is commander of the Fifth Fleet and of the invasion of Saipan, is a “cold, calculating, mechanical man.” No drinker, he is gunnery branch, studied electrical engineering and had dockyard assignments leading to his command assignment and victory at Midway. Even more damning than his poor taste in leading the American fleet air arm to victory in spite of not being a flyer, he did not letter at the academy! And, if you listen to some, he is far too cold to be a real leader. Because real leaders say things like “kill all Japs,” and go out with (understandable, all things considered, but still) skin ailments when they are given a chance to actually command in a real fight.
 
“The Admiral Shoves Off” Speaking of, Admiral Halsey has left the South Pacific to take over Third Fleet, “Which will operate the same way that the Fifth Fleet is operating under the command of Admiral Spruance.” Rumour parses this as cover for the relief of Spruance, who will be relegated to the beach on the argument that he (and his staff) will be charged with planning future operations, for which they will then be reassigned to the sea and “Third Fleet” reactivated in place of “Fifth Fleet.” By clever timing, Third Fleet will not be active until after the next campaign, and will go inactive before the tide of war reaches the Home Islands.
   
“Things That Go Bump” Time covers the “Vengeance Offensive.” The long-predicted self-propelled robot bombs began to fall on London this week.  The gyrocompass, it is noted, can only maintain heading, and will not deal with head or side winds. A gruesome picture of two robot-bombed hospitals is provided. I suppose that this means that there are a great many hospitals around London, which is sad but unsurprising.
 
“An Excellent Airplane” Is the B-29. Various concrete details are provided, or repeated, and Boeing is praised for incidentals like finely-balanced controls and an “uncluttered” instrument panel. James perks up at the thought of a plane that the pilot can actually manage. So do I, for obvious reasons. I was so happy last month, when they found time to take the train to Seattle together instead of flying. Although it is not as though the trains are that much safer, these days.
 
“The Return”
 
General de Gaulle returned to France last week. Elsewhere the paper attempts to present his appearance in Bayeux as being met with a muted enthusiasm. This dispatch tells a different story and adds one telling note. He set up Francois Coulet and Colonel Pierre de Chevigne as administrators of liberated Normandy. No-one protested, so I suppose that that is our occupied France policy. A strange way to run a war, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.
 
Domestic
 
“X-Day is Coming” Has the nation finally reached its wartime production peak? Various signs (I imagine the editorial board of Time hovering over an Ouija board) suggest that the answer might be “yes.” The Navy is cutting back on Wildcats and small landing craft, an alumina plant is closing, as is the plant erected to make Budd planes, plus the Brewster shutdown. Manufacturing employment has been declining since November, hitting a reduction of a million workers over six months last month. Nevertheless, the peak of war production is not predicted for another three months. Bernard Baruch and Jimmy Byrnes warn of mass unemployment if Germany collapses in the fall, if Congress does not act on various plans for reconversion.
 
“The Shadow” Many people would vote for a Republican candidate for President if the GOP were to nominated someone “better.” The problem, of course, is that they cannot agree on what “better” looks like, but the Luce press is inclined to note the “22.7%” who want a more liberal candidate, concluding that the GOP’s problem is that voters think that they are not progressive.
 
“E is For Egg” A drive to  increase egg production has overfulfilled, and now tractors will have to drop wagon loads of eggs into the Hudson if a press-radio campaign to persuade housewives to buy more eggs fails. Eggs not fit for  human consumption are being sold to feed plants. Isn’t that going to run into a chicken-and-egg problem? I was very short with the neo-Malthusian "overpopulation" people in my header discussion, sir, and well you may wonder about the concern that "we are running out of food." It is, after all, a bit of a theme in these newsletters! Well, after this story, I am closing the book on the subject. Inlast week's number we read about the emergency purchase of Argentina's grain surplus precisely to provide emergency feed for East Coast farmers. This week we hear of eggs being fed right back to chickens! Is there a "food crisis?" There may well (eventually) be, but you cannot trust farm writers on the subject!
 
“An American Attitude” Senators CarlHatch of New Mexico and Styles Bridges have an amusing exchange about who wrecked the League of Nations, and when. Which is national news for some reason.
 
“Eleventh Hour” “Dapper governor Tom Dewey” is a “country squire.” That is, he is supervising work at his 300 acre farm in Pawling, New York and, to all appearances, ignoring the upcoming GOP Convention, where anything could happen! I know that I am treading on Uncle’s brand of world-weary cyncisms here. What find interesting in this story is the description of the former New York prosecutor turned “Boy Wonder” turned Governor turned, soon, into Presidential candidate as a “country squire. “ How does a country prosecutor, even in New York, come to own a 300 acre farm in eastern New York? Shouldn’t there be at least a shadow of discretion cast over it? It’s like talking about your salary!
 
“I.O.U. to G.I.s” Uncle is of course deeply interested in anything to do with housing in this proposed “G.I. Bill,” which the President dusted off this week. A Government guaranteed of 50% of any loan of up to $4000 made for the purchase of a home, farm or business property, or for renovation of a property already owned! Now that is something! And there is more. A year of unemployment insurance at $20/week and a year of free college tuition, plus living expensed for the veteran and dependents,  extendable to three on good grades! There is also a disability and hospital settlement, of course, and apprenticeship and vocational assistance. You can see how James comes to his “storm breeding” conclusion! I admit that these are things happening in America, not Britain. The "storm" will no doubt wax stronger over here; but on the other hand our housing stock is not being blown up.
 
“Lost Majority” The Democrats have lost their majority in the House for the first time since 1931 as a result of the replacement of a Democrat in Illinois’s 19th District by an unopposed Republican, Rolla C. McMillen. Meanwhile, Mr. Willkie published his own recommended platform for the GOP. He thinks that the GOP should run to the left of Mr. Roosevelt, then presumably govern to his right? Mr. Willkie, agree with him or not, has a lot of cheek!
 
Science
 
“Food Freezers” This does not update the Fortune story, just covers  “propagandist”Boyden Sparkes, who thinks that tomorrow belongs to the home freezer. That is, he is arguing for home freezers as  opposed to the community walk-ins. I have to admit that the idea is attractive, and he (and Time) are perfectly correct to point to the high price of second-hand ice cream freezers. Frozen spinach might be good, too.
 
“Cure for Germans?” Professor Norman Maier of the University of Michigan, who, Timepoints out, has made his name by torturing rats into neurosis, suggests that the best cure for Germans is to not torture them with war crime proceedings, but to just keep them under the benevolent rule of military administration for ten years or so, keeping them working while waiting for the wounds to heal. This is good science, apparently, because rats do things and people fail to pick up hints consciously. Or unconsciously, if it is "H." ranting away in the Faculty Club and me, squirming and peaking at my watch. The annual AMA convention is against socialized medicine, in favour of penicillin. Radicalsplanchnicectomy is becoming safer and more routine.  Fertility medicine is improving. Malaria treatments are improving under the impetus of military requirements. A paper about jaundiced canaries suggests that doctors have a sense of humour.
 
“Honour in Death” Time reports with approval the Archdiocese of Missouri’s declaration of interdict against parishioners who participate in the use of Japanese remains as military souvenirs, notably the letter-opener made of a Japanese soldier’s forearm, presented to the President by a Pennsylvania Representative.
 
“Take a Trip to Berlin..” The CAB published its plans for postwar international air routes. Uncle would characterise this as “more talking about talking about civil aviation.” I can see why he has grown so tired of the endless talking, but at some point, all of this will sort itself out into an enormously important peacetime industry, and some of these stories will turn out to be relevant to developments. The wearying part is that, as with the Presidential campaign, we won’t know which until it is all over, so that to be “informed,” we must read them all. Oh, well, I suppose it sells cigarettes.
 
“A Geologist Gets a Job” EugeneHolman, onetime Texas geologist, is to be the first geologist to be chairman of Standard Oil (NJ). He is the man who contradicted Icke’s warnings of an oil famine, saing that the nation’s oil should “last for 1000 years or more.” He will earn $100,000/year, but doesn’t think that that is much, as “you keep so little of it.” The paper notes that he will get to keep $37,000 of it, and that of his $20,000 raise, he will receive but $4000 clear. Only enough to buy a smallhouse every year, and certainly not enough to raise him into the American peerage!
 
“Ring-Around-a-Morgenthau” To avoid credit inflation, not a nickel of the $16 billion Fifth War Loan is permitted to be sold to commercial banks. But since about a fifth of the purchases of the last Loan were financed with bank credit, while private investors sell Treasuries to buy war bonds, with the same effect.  The effect is that instead of soaking up excess buying power, the loans act in part to inflate credit. The complicating factor is that people are holding onto the money they saved by taking loans to buy Victory Bonds instead of spending it. Since the prospect of inflation is as exciting as the prospect of crop failures, Time goes on to darkly intimate that this behaviour will cease very soon now, leading to (more) inflation.
 
“Here to Stay” Sikorsky is making helicopters! Helicopter bus lines are coming!
 
“Bull Market” The invasion has succeeded and there is a buying spree of “peace stocks” on Wall Street, notably of IT&T, Packard and Wilys-Overland. James says that it is as exciting as railway stocks in the roaring forties. I think that if I knew more business history, I would be sure that my  husband is saying that we should stay out of this, instead of just assuming it.
 
Press, Books, Film
 
The men of Marshall Field’s Chicago Sun are appalled at the way that other publishers get in the way of freedom of the press. “Lili Marline” is not a very impressive British documentary. A life of John Severn, “Keat’s forgotten friend” tickles Time’s fancy with the subject’s domesticity compared with his friend’s larger-than-life, well, life. (Have I mentioned that I notice a theme?) Several novels by “proletarian” authors. Peter Domanig,Victor White; The Day is Coming, William Cameron. In striking contrast, 69 year old chairman of National Steel Corporation Ernest Tener Weir celebrates the birth to his third wife, 28-year old Mary Hayward Weir, of their first son; and Mimi Chandler, starlet and daughter of Kentucky Senator A. B. “Happy” Chandler celebrates her marriage to Army Ferry Comamnd Major John Cabell, 27, cousin to novelist James Branch Cabell.
 
Letters to Time, this time from its correspondents at the front: 
 
 

A third is from 
 (see FOREIGN NEWS), chief of the TIME & LIFE staff on the beachhead in Normandy:
"Your invasion team is all present or accounted for. Walton and 
 are with me, Landry is down the road. Scherschel is somewhere on the beach and Ragsdale, I hope, is on the way back to London. Byron Thomas and Bohrod are also said to be beachcombing somewhere. Reports from the second batch of correspondents arriving yesterday are that Belden and White are still held up in England.
"Walton, who landed with the paratroopers, is with the 82nd Airborne, which is probably the best spot here, and will stick with them. I will try to keep you covered on overall American action and am now proceeding with Capa for a closer look at the currently most active sector.
"Walton wants a pair of OD pants; and I want a pair of OD pants, one of my heavy shirts, some saddlesoap, a bottle of Vitamin C and a bottle of whiskey. We have plenty of brandy and Calvados."
So far we have no direct word from 
 on Saipan. Here's hoping he is not having as tough a time as he did on the beaches of Tarawa.

 
Flight, 29 June 1944
Is it just me, or has Flight taken on a somewhat nostalgic air of late?
 
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Leaders
Flight thinks that the vengeance rockets are a “pitiful expedient.”  Something about protesting too much? Flight actually seems disappointed that the sea-fight off the Marianas was resolved by the aircraft carrriers and did not lead to a gunnery clash. At least it makes palatable the cashiering of the only American admiral to win (and win two!) air-sea battles in favour of the only one to lose two, as Uncle would say. Of course, Raymond was not, technically, cashiered. Felix says that he will just not get another chance to fight the Japanese fleet.
War in the Air
Tempests, we are allowed to say, are taking the lead in the fight against the vengeance robots. Flight explains that shooting them down in the sky is not that useful, however. It is much more productive to attack the factories, if possible, and the trains bringing them up to the front. Best of all would be to take the launching areas in the Pas de Calais. Is this why there is so much talk of another landing in that area? Never mind. The last thing we want is for your mail to be intercepted and read. I have no way of knowing how you would render "Pas de Calais" into Hakka pirate writing, but James says that it would help a reader unravel our little code. Flight thinks that the Russians are less impressed by experiments in shuttle bombing than by the Second Front, It is impressed by the attack on Cherbourg, and disappointed with the pro-Hitler weather, which slowed down supply landings. (Tommy Wong’s long-awaited V-Mail, if not passed on to you, has quite a tale to tell about that.Flight suggests that a landing in southern France is coming.
Here and There
A picture of the new Northrop P-61, a muscled-up twin of the P-38, is shown. Itis hinted that B-29s may soon fly from England. Mr. Bowyer writes to thank Flight for its attempted support in the last number but gently correct it with the observation that there was never an aeroengine production “Ring.” The Society of British Aircraft Constructors is the only thing that looks like a “Ring,” and it is not. It is just a closed circle of private manufacturers that cooperates with the Air Force via the AID. Any firm the SBAC admits can be a member of the SBAC! Free enterprise! P-38s are now being used as high-alttiude bombers against Germany, which suggests that there might not be a better use for them. More than 1000 aircraft have been committed to the Cross-Channel Ferry.
“Invasion Close-Up”
Our correspondent flies with an RCAF Wellington squadron of Coastal Command tasked with anti E-boat work. He notes being fed twice on eggs and bacon and chips, once at the main base, once at the satellite, where the plane is bombed and gassed up for along night patrol. There are stiff winds and an icing altitude of 6000 feet, never mind that it is June, and he is provided with a pair of sheepskin-lined flying boots. The airplane must be a verynew Wellington,because it is loaded down to almost 30,000lbs and flies with Hercules XVI operating Rotol adjustable props
  Photo by Martin Waligorski, link above.
 
. After all the preparation and all the English food, regrettably no E-boats are found. They have not been seen very much since the big raid on Boulogne. To add action to this number, the paper throws in the 6th Airborne Divisions’s report of its assault.
Short pieces note that Switzerland has an aviation industry now, and that there have been experiments with “picking up” gliders in Normandy  for a return tow to Britain.
“The Air Torpedo” Is a very full description of the vengeance robot plane.  It is very definitely engineered for mass production, notably with compressed air services replacing hydraulic.
Behind the Lines
“Tin Foil” The Germans release an official statement that the aluminised foil strips used by the British to fox German radar is no longer effective because their radar has been improved. Except that it uses such loose and vague terminology that no-one who reads this number (but not others) will understand how it works. This brilliant bit of censorship will certainly keep the British from knowing how the weapon they are using works! The Germans have built a very big airfield in Norway, in case.
“Comfort in the Avro York” A portfolio of pictures reveal that the York is quite luxurious. Throw rugs over each seat suggest that “comfort” is still somewhat relative.
Studies in Aircraft Recognition
The He115 large floatplane and Arado Ar 240 twin-engined fighter bomber look quite different.
   
 
L. G. Fairhurst, “Wooden Blades: A Preview of Airscrew Requirements for Post-war Civil Air Transport” I am sure that Mr. Fairhurst means well, but any man of my  household who flies on a plane with wooden airscrews had better be ready to sleep on the sofa for a very long time.
W. Nichols, “Aircraft Laminated Plastics: Development of Low-pressure Laminates:Fabric Fairings: Reinforced Floors for Transports”  Low pressure laminates are cotton or paper sheets impregnated with plastic and then put into deflated molds, which are then inflated with steam. General Electric’s laboratory has been playing with these, and thinks that they can be used for all sorts of things, including low-stress components of civil aircraft. Given that use in aircraft is strictly hypothetical at this point, this is a remarkably long article for Flight. Perhaps a design analysis of the Tempest is being spiked from issue to issue? That would also account for the P-38 article in the last one.
Correspondence

Norman Philips thinks that the vengeance robots should be called “aerial torpedoes.” Kenneth S. Othick thinks that they are very inferior machines compared to what he would design. B. Bernard thinks that he is a very important person who can afford to write five paragraph letters that people will read to get to his point, which is that the RAF technical schools have trained “ many thousands of ” engineers in this war, and can continue to train them afterwards, whereas a proposed SBAC school cannot.  My thought is that unless we find better work for them, we shall quite an excess of engineers after the war, in that case. E. C. Ferguson writes to remind us that in 1940, there was an “Air Component of the BEF” in France with four fighter sqaudrons at the beginning of hostilities, as well s the two squadrons of the Advanced Striking Force, which gets all of the press. R. Davenport will not let the idea that gunpowder, or at least “modern gunpowders” might be a better propellant than regular gasoline.
Monthlies
Uncle usually summarises Aero Digest here. This is, I suspect, because he finds political news amusing, and the paper tends to be hysterically anti-New Deal, which he finds even more amusing. I tend to think that that is playing with fire in our situation, that he needs to be reminded of 1919. Aero Digest is the voice of industry, and industry has nothing to say. Or, rather, there are trainers who are tired of repeating themselves 
 
and send a piece to Aero Digest, 
 
people who are too giddy with fatigue to realise that something is a silly idea
 
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Advertisers of the strange and arcane
RECTIGRAPH+COMPANY+FIG.+3.jpg Sourcedetails.
 
and garrulous twits set to fill out copy with denunciations of bureaucrats and praise for American planes,presumably tasks set to them so that they will not interfere with important work.
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Sunday, August 17, 2014

Postblogging Technology, July 1944, I: Victory Comes Late
 
 
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My Dearest Reggie:

 

I see that I have once more broken the first rule of home front correspondents. I have worried you. No need for you to worry any longer. Firstly, Wong Lee and I have returned home, and there is no tong war in the offing. It turns out that even east coast "men of respect" have their limits. Our friend was delegated to break the news to his acquaintance that even his closest relatives had no time for malingering. There was a war on, and all he was being asked to do was tour and sing, something which he had taken on as an amazingly lucrative career, and he should get on with it.

 

Regrettably, men of respect only respect strength. Someone had to be seen to pay for encouraging the young man's selfishness, which is why I arranged an arrest even before D-Day brought this to  a head. You will, I am sure, have heard of that. What you may not have heard is that the case is quite thin. The arrested fellow has been an irritation for so many reasons that I do not feel the least guilty about moving forward, even though it is likely that this will degenerate and require even more extreme measures.

 

Well, that was a terrible attempt to lighten the mood! You may have heard that with school out, "Miss V.C.'s" research trip to Monterrey went ahead. Certain papers were seen that supplement the annals of old Monterrey, and I had an interesting conversation with the young lady on her return. She confirmed in the Santa Clara university library that Maquinna's daughter, Maria Jesus de Nutka, arrived in the old town in 1794, attended school in Santa Clara, married into an old Californian family, and had descendants. The portfolio at Monterrey added information about the "prince of Nootka" who accompanied her, of which of course I need tell you nothing, and led her to a family name (besides, obviously, her own, as she would have to be dense not to see the similarity) --and so, of course, back to the county records and to a reference to that old map in the family papers from the 1871 lawsuit.

 

"Do we still have it?" She asked. I did not see the point in denying it. It is not outside the realm of possibility that she will still need it. So I produced it from Grandfather's papers, seeing much else that I had forgotten for years, and waxing  nostalgic.

 

"1820 is awfully old for a house in these parts, especially such an Oriental-looking one," she observed from the date on the map. I shrugged. Even in those days there were wealthy sea captains in the Bay, involved in the tallow and coastal fur trades, I pointed out. And Chinese styles were in fashion in those days.

 

"Why is the name written in Chinese?" She asked. I shrugged again. I pointed out that the building was erected by Chinese artisans, and that this version of the property map had been drawn by one of them. "It means 'Arcadia,'" I said. No point in bringing up the awful Hilton book. Did you know that the Lady wanted to complete the estate with a pagoda on the south ridge? Imagine what our neighbours would think if we completed the bequest! 

 

"Et in Arcadia Ego," "Miss V. C." said. I started, and had difficulty controlling my expression. I had had no intention of feeding that clue to her. But it turns out that she was just quoting some snatch of popular writing.  "It's an odd place to find Chinese carpenters," she continued.

 

There were not many other places to find them around the Pacific in those days, I observed. Arcadia was quite a sight. I am just glad that it was never reported by someone whose reminiscences  went into print --at least, not into print in a fashion that the good fathers of the Mission were not as eager to see suppressed as was Grandfather. So many things were lost in the Earthquake....

 

"Is that why Meares brought Chinese carpenters to Nootka? And no-one ever says what happened to them."

 

You would be so proud of the artful way that I let my face slip at this point. What can I say? I shall be in Vancouver inspecting the refit, and it is a beautiful summer, I have a line on good tyres, Vancouver Island is beautiful at this time of year. and I can probably find an elder who is willing to lead her down the next step on this little journey of discovery of hers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Economist, 1 July 1944

 
Leaders
 
“Work and Wealth” The paper is disappointed with the quality of the Commons debate on the employment White Paper. The left should stop talking about public ownership. It was not part of the commission of the white paper, and will never happen anyway and wouldn't work if it did. The conversation that was not about this thing that should not be talked about (which will never happen) was about the size of the slice of pie that everyone gets, and not how big it will be. The paper is concerned about foreign trade, and dismisses talk of how higher productivity leads to higher incomes, as it, for example, is much more productive than it was in 1939. That just means that a smaller staff is “working very hard,” and would actually like to work less hard in the future, thank you. (Interestingly, just the line of thinking it projects on workers, whose demand for a 40 hour work week without reduction in earnings is rejected out of hand, and without so much as a glance at the mirror, either.)
 
“Leadership in Europe” Not only are Latins excitable, but, really, all Europeans except Britons are, and that is why they should be a great deal more grateful for British leadership than they are. Voltaire and Montesquieu, who from the names must be French, liked us. We must be nice! Gladstone and Palmerston and Canning were nice –an Opium War or another aside—so we are even nicer!
 
“Books in Distress” A shortage of paper is damaging the publishing trade. It should be realised that publishing is special –is that a plea for more paper? No, because the paper draws no conclusions and leaves the reader to draw only such conclusions as the reader might draw from the unvarnished facts plus adjectives in garnishment.
 
“Control of Land Use” The issue here is a White Paper on the way in which land under local authorities might be apportioned for various uses postwar, such as agriculture and land use. Fortune has a rather better-illustrated article on the same subject, and I have clipped and attached some of the artwork from my proof copies at the end of the newsletter, below. It is, of course, of interest mainly if you go against my advice and favour the younger generation’s hopelessly optimistic and romantic belief that the birds and the bees shall spring over a postwar Britain of cooing lovers and babbling babes. That is, if the Earl follows your daughter-out-of-law’s advice and get into private housing. There are, I notice at the end of the week, good reasons for not doing that, even if demand for housing in England is more robust than the doomsayers think. 
 
Notes of the Week
 
“After the Fall of Cherbourg” The taking of the port ends the first phase of the Normandy operation in its third week. It will soon be brought into use, and the focus of the fighting turns to outflanking Caen, where five major roads and four railways converge. The alternative to a stern test of strength there is a drive south in the Contentin towards St. Lo and Constance to gain more elbow room.
 
“Blows in the East” The powerful Russian offensive in the centre of the front ends a pause of many months which allowed the Russians to “recruit their strength,” as it used to be said. Heavy lossesof German manpower overshadow even the loss of ground. It is asked whether the Germans will really follow through on their promises of reinforcements for the Finns at the expense, it must seem, of Warsaw.
 
“Nazis at Bay” The vengeance robots are evidence of how sorely pressed Hitler is. Mr. Morison’s assurances that the bombing is ineffective compared with conventional bombing, so far documented only in astonishing figures shown to the fortunate few, should be given wider distribution so that the Manchester Guardian can stop panicking. (I assume that this is who is meant by “our more imaginative friends to the north,” although you will know better than I, Reggie, as I stopped the Guardian after Pearl Harbour because it was becoming too irregular in delivery.)
 
“Soldiers of Europe” Partisans are fighting, too.
 
“Far Eastern Success” The Japanese offensive against the Imphal-Kohima road is now officially at an end. Fears of another Bengal famine are now greatly eased, and Stilwell might finally take Myitkyina and advance the Ledo Road.
 
“Education in the Lords” “Homecraft, cookery and technical subjects” may be taught to boys and girls over the age of16 at the new Butler schools. Only a few years ago, Reggie, I would have had vast difficulty conceiving of the class of person who goes to school past the age of 16 as needing to know how to cook. That was before the best domestic I could get was an admittedly wonderful  neighbourhood girl  available for two hours after school.
“Young Persons” Speaking of, further coverage of the part-time schools for boys and girls between 16 and 18. They might be called “county colleges,” it is proposed. The paper suggests that their success will depend more heavily on what is taught than what they are called.
 
“Teachers Wanted” As the paper suggests, given the previous two items, not surprising. The paper again suggests that we must not lose sight of the need to improve the quality, as well as quantity of teachers. At least this time the wandering train of thought does not alight from that to the need to keep the burden of faculty salaries down. Indeed, the next item (on the McNair Report) even goes so far as to imply that “remuneration be equalised,” which would surely lead to higher pay.
 
“No Finnish Armistice” Finland has not yet finished surrendering.
 
“Where to Shop” The Plymouth Plan, which the paper has already reference with respect to land use control, is also interested in the development of shopping districts, whose location might also be controlled. 

 

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“Listener Research” The BBC is following American practice and making an effort to tailor programming to the desires of listeners.
 
“The Murders at Gorlitz” The summary execution of escapees from Stalag Luft III is an appalling crime.
 
“War and the Daily Worker” Sir James Grigg continues to deny the Daily Worker a war correspondent, which the paper deems to be little more than Red-baiting at this point.
 
American Survey
 
“Nominations at Chicago” “The National Convention of the Republican Party, meeting at Chicago, has done what was universally expected of it,” and nominated Governor Dewey on the first ballot. To be sure, the paper would have rather died than admitted that this was the “universally expected” result last week. How would it have excused itself to some poor child who believed that the Convention might somehow end by nominating Bricker or Taft? It is a game, to be sure, but one that wastes a great deal of everyone’s time, and puffs up people like the Engineer, back from Chicago in the highest of spirits, which I would at least excuse as putting the passing of his late wife behind him, if that had affected him very much. Regrettably, Governor Warren refused the Vice-Presidential nomination, which went to Bricker instead. (I have no idea if the offer was serious or a publicity stunt.)
 
 
Taft, as head of the platform committee, apparently produced something more to the liking of the “machine politicians” than Dewey himself, who offends by being at once popular and platitudinous. Or so says the paper, anyway.
 
American Notes
 
“Preparation for Peace” The paper covers Nelson’s announcement that beginning 1 July, manufacturers will be allowed to place orders for machine tools for reconversion.

 

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Does  this mean, to pick an example possibly not from thin air, the paper says, that Henry Kaiser will be allowed to go into automobile production while Ford and GM are still committed to war production? Yes, Nelson says, it would be unfair to hold back everyone until all industries are ready to move. The paper is here barking up the wrong tree. Assembly line car production requires vast tooling, and young E. has hardly even begun the work. His chances of breaking into the market are pretty slim, and Nelson must be aware of that. I am scarcely the best qualified automotive person to have said it to his face in my hearing! Returning to the paper, it gets in a last, snide comment to the effect that the firms which have been lavishing their advertising budget on ads extolling “free enterprise” are disconcerted by having it taken so literally on this front!
 
“Another Year of the OPA” The Office of Price Adminstration is extended for another year of inflation fighting. Although its pathetically-limited powers are further reduced.
 
“Hartzel vs United States” Mr. Hartzel cannot be convicted under the Espionage Act for merely writing and circulating horrible pamphlets denouncing the international Jewish plot to get America into the war. He has to actually do something more than offend, and the government failed to prove Hartzel’s intent to discourage enlistment.
 
“The Unauthorised Programme” The paper, struck by a reminiscence of the splendid Mr. Willkie (I question the paper’s taste, for Mr. Willkie is no Mr. G. Geoffrey Smith), is carried off in a swoon, and awakens to find itself prostrate on the settee. Or to put it another way, Mr. Willkie offers the GOP a platform of his own writing, to replace that offered by Governor Bricker.
 
“GI Bill of Rights” The paper notices the President’s proposal, more fully discussed byFortune, below.
 
World Overseas
 
Poles, Lithuanians and Ukrainians are especially excitable. As are the Irish, in a missive from Our Dublin Correspondent, which describes the Irish public as “waiting daily for news of the invasion.” I hope no-one is waiting for daily news of Ireland from the paper.
 
“Banking under Nazi Control” Quite the most serious issue facing Germany right now is the governance of its banks, which, of course, will in no way be changed after unconditional surrender. In other words, if despatches from Ireland are coming out a month late, why is this rubbish even printed?
 
The Business World
 
“Co-operation: The Second Century” The paper celebrates the inauguration of the second century of the co-operative movement with the same restrained joy it has shown throughout its first.
 
“Rubber Prospect –I” The supply of natural rubber increased from 628 million tons annually in 1920 to 1390 million tons in 1940. When Ceylon alone produces 89 million tons, and all of Africa, Latin America and the South Pacific together count as “other countries” producing 224 million tons, one can see little prospect for artificial rubber unless it is cheaper, better or both. As it is neither, the industry has only niche prospects producing special rubbers for special purposes. So do not invest in synthetic rubber unless you have better information about the specific stock’s prospects. Very helpful, paper.
 
Business Notes
 
Money Conference Opens” The international monetary conference at Bretton Woods is due to be formally opened on July 1st. As a legitimate businessman, I wish it luck. As the comprador of a pirate clan, I can only say that our bets remain hedged. In a perfect world, there will be  a solution that makes room for both ledgers to show a profit! As to the details of the matter, I am working on a summary, but there is little point in putting  it to paper until the conference closes.
 
“Reconstruction Loans” The New International Monetary Fund might offer loans for reconstruction. The Polish Government-in-Exile has already put in for one.
 
The Earl presumably does not need my opinions on the proposed reform of the London Stock Exchange, talks on the reform of rent control, and the related question of the shortage of houses to let, much less talk of building society mergers. I do notice the publication of the report on War Damage Repairs, which notes that over 2 million buildings in the country require repair. The Committee on War Damage Repair now puts forward its plan for financing these repairs. Unsurprisingly, strict financial control is likely to be impossible. Hmm. I know that if I were a shady contractor, this is where my money would go. To put it more clearly, the returns on reconstruction work are likely to be considerably better than the returns on new building for the foreseeable future.
 
“Status of Statisticians” The stature of statisticians may be affected by their station in life, which will determine how many status seekers rise to the status of statisticians, a question of the greatest statistical relevance. To be less(!) amusing, the Royal Society of Statisticians is concerned with these matters, as pretty much every professional society in Britain always is.
 
Cable & Wireless” The returns of this company show that it has flourished remarkably in the war. Details to follow in twenty-five, fifty and seventy-five years, Official Secrets Act allowing.
 
“Dock Labour” The National Dock Labour Corporation has had a very good year. In spite of turnover of 1500 men in the last quarter, it has maintained a creditably low level of job action and absenteeism (3.7%), while employing up to 7000 more men on casual labour on peak days. Much war work, including training of soldiers to do the work in France, has gone on.
 
 

Flight, 6 July 1944
 
Leaders
 
“Cobblers and Lasts” The paper indulges its favourite pastime of reshuffling the Service decks. Army Cooperation should go to the Army, anti-aircraft to the RAF, as usual. In the spirit of modern times, and because it cannot complain about air force control of the Fleet Air Arm any more, it adds that the Commandoes should go to the Marines. The question of control of the Met. Office can be deferred until the county cricket boards pull themselves together.
 
“Blasting a Way”  Word that aircraft are involved in the Normandy fighting pleases the  paper. It is especially pleased that Typhoons fire the “equivalent” of a six-inch cruiser broadside at obnoxiously non-dead Germans, and hopes to hear more about this.
 
“Flexibility” It is also pleased to hear about the heavy bombers attacking a concentration of German armour at Villers-Bocage, and hopes to hear more about that, as well.
 
War in the Air
 
The Germans have lost a great many men lately. The paper hopes that they cannot keep on indefinitely.  (The Economist, if it stopped to think about this,would by now be speculating that German science was busy inventing mitosis.) Bad weather has meant that aeroplanes were less involved than might have been. The paper notices that German reinforcements have been arriving and have been thrown into the fight. Once the Germans are fully committed, the paper hopes that a landing in the Pas de Calais will overrun the vengeance robot launching facilities. In the meantime, they are bombed day and night, and hopefully fighter interception will be more effective now that good weather has returned. A lucky hit on a French railway station in Orleans killed 120 German soldiers and wounded another 300 of a full battalion having a meal there. According to a German paper which promised, darkly, that the commander, had he not been killed, would have been executed for risking his men this way.
   
“Night Precision Bombing” We used to say that we could do this, and then the claim was “silently abandoned.” Now we say that we can do it again, using Pathfinder tactics. This is how we blew up the communications targets whose destruction delayed German reinforcements. Japanese air forces have abandoned New Guinea, and therefore MacArthur has reorganised his forces.
 
Here and There
 
Pravda proposes that the “flying bomb” has been introduced to reduce German pilot losses. The paper notices that another Indian Air Force fighter squadron has joined the fighting in Burma.  Sir Samuel Hoare is to be a Viscount for his services as ambassador to Madrid, but the paper celebrates because of his long tenure as Secretary of State for Air. All tumult and controversy past, it does look like he did good work there! Some airwomen of ADGB are soon to go over to Normandy. Group Captain JohnPowell, one of the stars of “Target for Tonight” has been awarded an American DFC. Master Sergeant John Mayer, Communications Chief with a Fighter Control squadron of Eighth Air Force, has been awarded a Legion of Merit for devising a new radio equipment. No less than 100 tons of priority cargo are being flown to Normandy daily. Evacuations of wounded will soon rise to between 1000 and 1200 a day. Juan Trippe of Pan-American thinks that America would be best served by a single American international carrier. The RAF is creating a special Locust Flight to “dust” swarms from the air in the Middle East. The expansion ofVokes business means promotions for all in the managerial suite!
 
“Invasion Close-Up”
 
Our correspondent went to an airfield in Kent to get the story of RAF Mitchell squadrons which had recently made a major attack on the steelworks at Caen, dropping 800 tons of bombs less than 1000 yards from our front lines. While there, he also had discussions with fighter pilots who chased “doodlebugs” and flew Typhoons to attack German armour, and even a German army corps headquarters. Wing Commander J. R.Baldwin, well-known for some daring low flying passes around te Eiffel Tower, is still alive, bless him, and  led the attack. (My late and excessive association with highbinders brings me to suspect that the “young and daring” I knew years ago might well, with a more mature eye, be seen more accurately as queer in the head.) 
 
 
 
Indicator discusses the “Retreat to Rationalism,” which he understands as a retreat from very expensive efficiency towards lower cost and less complicated solutions. The modern aeroengine, he points out, requires 70-odd gears! The carburetor, a hive of pressure aneroids, piston valves, pumps and mechanical and other compensating devices is another example. “Any carburetor which works satisfactorily is a monument to the ingenuity and persistence of the human race.” Ironically, at this very moment I have only to walk across the room to look down through the bay window at your youngest, who has some kind of disassembled apparatus from his Lincoln dismantled on a table on the garden patio. I do not know that it is a carburettor, but that is the way to bet from the language that floats up this Santa Clara August. Function must be perfect for the long trip to Canada, so that he can show up Lieutenant A, at last. Ah, well, perhaps he will have a turbineunder his hood soon.
 
I just hope that he does not succumb to temptation and start cleaning things with gas out in the garden, as Judith will have his hide.
 
“Ubiquitous W.A.A.F.s.” The Women’s service of the RAF has had its fifth birthday.
 
“Passing of a Famous Biplane” Swordfish production is being “tailed off.” It will be recalled that when the Fairey Barracuda was delayed in early 1940, then-Captain (A) M. S. Slattery, of the  Admiralty, approached Blackburn with a proposal that it take over the management of a manufacturing group in the Yorkshire and Lancashire areas that would take on a Swordfish production extension. A start was made on the new factory on 1 January 1940, and less than 11 months after work began, it delivered its first planes. The Barracuda, however, is steadily replacing the Swordfish in production.
 
“Idlewild Airport” Quite a long paper on the new New York municipal airfield being built on reclaimed ground at the head of Jamaica Bay. It says much about my state of mind last month that I went the better part of a week confusing this project with La Guardia.
 
New Fighter in Nine Weeks” the paper is very impressed with the Miles M. 20, an all-wooden fighter produced in just nine weeks during the Battle of Britain, when there was some concern that we were running out of fighters.
 
 
 
Behind the Lines
 
A special anti-tank bomb was used for the first time by the Germans against the invasion fleet. Japanese newspapers are appealing for grater aircraft production of “first-class” types. Germany is taking measures to secure its silk supply.  German optimism is fed by reports that London has lost 23 million work hours so far to the vengeance robot offensive, that London fire-watchers have been in a state of alert for almost 200 hours, and that the strain is showing; and that seven million Londoners are camping out, “and this is only the beginning.” But the German press also cautions that effective Allied countermeasures may be in train. A single weapon is rarely decisive. It might, however, lead to something more. It would be a pity if all of those defences along the Pas de Calais went unblooded.
 
 
F. J. Wingfield-Digby, “Fuselage Shells: Technical Comparison of Thick and Thin Skin Monocoque Construction” The Westland Whirlwind, an ephemeral fighter that went into and out of service in the mid-war years, was subject to extensive strain testing to show that its innovative, thin-skin magnesium rear fuselage was actually an amazing example of technological progress. It turns out that it was, and all concerns about the use of magnesium alloys in this role were misplaced.
 
Studies in Recognition Covers the Dornier Do 26K, and Siebel Si 204. I am somewhat skeptical as to the practical value of this edition of the series.
 
Correspondence
 

Blackburn Aircraft, Ltd, reminds us that random people named “Blackburn” writing to the paper are not related to the firm. Smith Aircraft, Ltd, must get this all the time. An anonymous author writes to ask why racing engines are not used in service, since they are so much more powerful than service types. A correspondent disputes claims for efficiency improvements from thrust augmentors, and the very optimistic F. C. Brown writes to ask whether exhaust-driven turbines might take over the entirety of aircraft auxiliary services. He thinks that this would allow the elimination of hydraulics, which, I am sure, he has had unpleasant practical experience. The question is whether routing tubes of high-pressure exhaust gas about the plane would be any improvement. 
 
The Economist, 8 July 1944
 
Leaders
 
“The Low Countries” The people of the Low Countries are not excitable at all. Which is to say, they are the Englishmen of continental Europe, and entirely admirable. (Belgians, actually, are somewhat excitable.) The dastardly Germans have flooded their seaward defences against invasion, but liberation will  more likely come through France, and soon, and it will find the affairs of the formerly-occupied countries on a thoroughly unexcited footing.
 
“Five Year Plans for All?” The successes of the Red Army against the Nazis suggest that there might be something to this “Five Year Plan” thing, after all. The paper imagines numbers which show that other countries would not benefit from a Five Year Plan. Wasn’t the old concern with the Five Year Plan that its numbers were imaginary? A fitting bookend of an article, then.
 
“The Trumpet Blowers” The paper is quite pleased by the way that the Ministry of Information has come along, but supposes that strict censorship and domestic spying will be  needed less, or  not at all, after the peace, depending on this and that. I have to say that a forthright “abolish the lot” would be a great deal more comforting, and wonder how all of the hardline anti-Nazi controversialists it has recruited actually feel about the prospects of a peacetime propaganda arm of the British government.
 
Notes of the Week
 
“The Russian Offensive” Pleases the paper. The paper hopes that the Red Army’s “conveyor belt” system of supply will keep it attacking all summer. This seems to me a little callous with Russian lives.  In 1917--19, no western army attacked relentlessly, because they were out of men. Does Russia have an unlimited supply of men? Do “Tatars” reproduce by mitosis? I should imagine that after this effort the Red Army will wait for next year's class to make its final effort, and meanwhile be content to pin German troops down with local offensives -which, of course, may go far if the Germans strip the East. And there you are, Reggie: your cousin, the armchair strategist. I also cannot help a little snort when I see the Russian services of supply praised as efficient.
 
“A Somewhat Lengthy Affair” The Prime Minister laid out the history of the “flying bomb” in the Commons this week. I am glad that it finally has a name –“vengeance robot” belongs in the pulps. The reference in the title is to the premier’s rueful admission that the offensive may go on for a while, and the paper’s bright claim that it is of little weight strikes me as already a retreat from the optimism of last week.
 
Danes are not excitable.
 
“To Balance or Not” Looking through our ancestor’s hoary correspondence, I am struck that if we replaced “National Debt” with the old “Sinking Fund,” politicians would not even need to give speeches any more, just, in the spirit of the lapidary Latin tag of yesteryear, a lazy wave in the air and a reference to “Spectator,06/1752, 46” would suffice. I wonder whether apoplexy would have struck him down sooner had he not had the outlet of the packets he sent to his Eastern Pearl, or did his indulgence of his splenetic rage against his critics in them hasten his end?
 
“Resettlement” Lord Nathan believes that the Government should begin work on a resettlement policy now. The paper believes that the best resettlement policy is no policy. I exaggerate, but the point is that everyone should stick to their place and their work until they are officially released after due consideration that will take as long as  is needed, or as long as  it takes to trace the paper’s twisting line of through extended passages, whichever is the longer. I am facetious because I cannot help comparing "resettlement" with the “G. I.  Bill of Rights.” That $4000 mortgage guarantee is bold, but the boldness will be rewarding to us, and perhaps even the whole United States.
 
“They” and “We” There are to be “Resettlement Officers”, and they are to be properly trained and not distinguish between ‘they’ and ‘we.’
 
“The Monetary Conference” Continues.
 
“The White and Keynes Commission” The paper’s attention is, understandably, on the two wise men of the national delegations, who must deliver the postwar financial order.
 
“The Place of Silver” Mexico is interested in the place of silver in the postwar financial order, the Chiang government pretends not to be. Or that may be unfair. The Chiang government does  not care because gold passes in the United States. As to what passes in China, what care Chiang  and his cronies of that?
 
Finland is surrendering more. Poles are excitable.
 
“Brake on Planning?” The more amenities are planned for in reconstruction, the less profit local authorities will earn as they face the movement of homes and amenities to outlying districts, which should also be controlled, at least more than they are. These are, again, matters that press the Earl so closely that, on the one hand, I feel remiss in not covering them in more detail, and inadequate in my ability to give them their proper due.
 
“An Ambassador Recalled” Argentines are excitable.
 
“Herring Bill” The decline of the industry is to be addressed with a subvention of 2-and-a-half million.
“Scottish Agriculture” The amount of land in cultivation will not increase, may actually decline, but it is hoped that Scottish farmers will raise more livestock. As a fellow mutton producer, I feel the pain, even if tempered by the fact that it looks like am going to be able to sell pasture land for houses.
 
American Survey
 
“His Own Man” Governor Dewey is very grateful to the Convention for writing this nice platform for him, and will give it all the consideration it deserves, which is not very much. If Taft wants to run for President, let him win some primaries.
 
“The Republican Governors” If Governor Dewey tacks left, he will  find there some Republican Governors, but not others. The others are aging old guard and will soon go.
 
“Service Warning” The news that war production was down 8% in May occasions a warning from Generals Marshall and Arnold, and Admiral King, that any slackening will extend the war. It is supposed that the reduction in May, especially in the lorry progamme, was due to a shortage of skilled workers, especially in the foundries, and that the new labour prioritisation scheme came not a moment too soon. The paper remains appalled, however, that the National Service Act remains stalled.
 
“Income for Full Employment” The Federal Reserve provides some guidance on the future. On the basis of available information, there will be 60 million workers. Maintaining full  employment will require “an unprecedented volume of production” due to natural population increase and  because of expected continued increases in the level of productivity. Thus, a gross national income of $170 billion will be required to maintain full employment. This will be down from $200 billion in 1943, allowable on the strength of reductions in the work force. Were national income to stabilise at 1939’s $108 billion, there would be 20 to 25 million unemployed, a crisis on a par with the Great Depression. No wonder the public has postwar jitters, says the paper. (Meanwhile, Fortune's version of the public is ready for a boom. The American public needs to stay away from Doctor Jekyll's serum!)
 
“Publicity for Reverse Lend-Lease” The paper thinks that there should be more. The paper seems to have a bit of a guilty conscience about cadging munitions from its rich cousin, and wants us to know that it, too, helps out with the family finances when it can.
 
“The Free Philippines” The Philippines will be at least as free after the war as they were before.
 
World Overseas
 
Poles are excitable.
 
“The Canadian Indian” Conditions on reserves and in residential schools are unfortunate, and the latter in particular are failing to provide the looked-for assimilation of Indians into Canadian life. This should change. Or home truths about how "assimilation" actually works should be pronounced to those whose shell-like ears could scarcely bear them.
 
“Price Control in India” Inflation has abated, further measures are proposed, rationing in the supply side and, on the demand side, a 25% increase in rail tolls to deflate the economy and the issue of smaller gold bars so that the less-rich can enjoy  the privilege of hoarding gold hitherto restricted to the very-rich.
 
The Business World
 
“The Rubber Prospect –II” Summarising last week’s article, I lamented the lack of guidance. This number goes no better. What if there is a rubber supply cartel? Might there then be room for the American artificial rubber industry? What if Buna-S actually does have promise in automobile tyres? Then our confident prediction that the artificial rubber plants will soon shut down looks less certain! I do not, dear paper, think so.\
“Post-War Building in America”  From Our New York Correspondent. Ah. How I have missed ONYC. I assume, recalling his habitual temper across the distance of a half-decade, that the fall of Cherbourg has finally relieved him of the fear of an imminent German landing on Manhattan, and he has emerged from under the bed to resume where he left off.

So! Back in the light of day, he has opinions. He notices Mr. Churchill’s speech, which lays out the British planning for postwar housing. Nothing so definitive, ONYC laments, has emerged over here. ONYC, not often an enthusiast for state planning, has developed a taste for it in housing --not surprisingly, because he thinks that Everything is Going Awry.

 

First, to review the facts from six years ago, he notices that the 1925 construction peak was 937,00 units, never subsequently equalled. A drop in building during the Depression led to a decline in the available housing stock, not made up by a tepid boom in 1935—6. By 1939, 29 million units, almost 29% of the urban housing supply, was below standard. The Federal Housing Administration’s long-term, risk-classified, standardised mortgage has developed and stabilised the mortgage market, and naturally led to more building, with 1940 seeing a rise to two-thirds of the 1925 volume. Up to 80% was single-family residences, and the building tended to move out into the suburbs. (You will recall that our Fort Vancouver development closed in 1940, although construction did not actually begin until after Pearl Harbour.) The peak of 613,000 single family residences built in 1941 is an interesting comparison with the mere 60% of building as single family residences in the 1920s.

 

Due to various factors, mainly price but also location and the character of the would-be renters (that is code for race, Reggie, if you had not noticed), single family housing remained inaccessible to the bulk of the population earning less than $1500/year. The war years have seen Government-led building, much of it of a temporary nature, even as existing housing stock continues to deteriorate in spite of attempts to liberalise financing –even as control on materials restricts us! Population has continued to shift into the Pacific slope (and the south Atlantic states). For the future, ONYC asks whether low-income housing needs will be better met by private builders or by the state, whether a focus on private home ownership really suits a highly mobile  population, and whether investment should follow migration. His concern is that we are getting the balance between ownership and rental wrong. Given his track record, I am tempted to run out and cancel all our apartment building projects right now.

 

Business Notes

 

“Monetary Agreement with France” It is about time.

 

“Reconstruction Equities” The volume of business is slackening, but reading the tea leaves suggests that in spite of anticipated further price increases, the market believes that the government will be able to keep interest rates down. The rentier must therefore needs invest in industrial stocks, and this explains the weakness in long-run government securities. Electrical engineering!

 

“To Let or to Buy” Given an expectation of gradually declining prices, prospective tenants will prefer to rent than to buy. This is likely to be the case after the war, as it was in the 1930s, and therefore it is foreseen that there will be a shortage of rentals. Something should be done.

 

 “Home and Colonial Changes” Lipton has been hit by the rising cost of tea due to Indian inflation.

 

“John Brown Re-financing” John Brown opens its war coffers to refinance its debt. The future might  not be as bright as the past for this maker of big guns and big ships, but there is nothing like money in the bank. And having once begun with steel, the paper moves on to coal and railways, neither very consequentially, as we only worry about these in the winter, when it is cold, and we wonder why something definitive was not done when there was still time, last summer.
 
Flight, 13 July 1944
 
Leaders
 
“Brutally Frank” The paper attended the Commons on the date of the Prime Minister’s Speech on the flying bomb, but apparently mistakenly sat in the wrong chamber, hearing a music hall comedian’s impression rather than the speech given before the correspondent of The Economist. In this speech, the flying bombs are quite effective and even horrifying, and the situation is unpleasant. Only the overrunning of the launching facilities can bring relief. There will not be reprisals. We will just keep on area bombing German cities, which are not at all reprisals. On a more morally honest note, the premier admits that the problem with reprisals is that they keep escalating.
 
 
 
 
“The Plight of the Luftwaffe” is pathetic. In the east, for example, the main defence of German forces against Russia aeroplanes is that the Russian spearheads have penetrated beyond the range of the Red Air Force, even though some squadrons are shifting air fields twice a day to keep up. One might almost suggest that this is an argument for longer ranged bombers.
 
“Caen Taken” The paper takes the same line as The Economist here, at least. It must by now have occurred to the Axis that they are losing the war. The paper also notices the use of 400 Bomber Command heavy bombers in the attack on Caen. The paper wonders if there was a special need, given that shells are usually more efficient than bombs for targets within their range.
 
War in the Air
 
Operations now often take the form of battles for airfields. This is not new. What is new is word that the fighting for Caen has devolved, or evolved, into a fight for Carpiquet Airfield on its southern outskirts.
 
“The Versatile Mosquito” Mosquitoes are being used to lay mines in German navigation canals now. The Swordfish is going out of production, it is announced again. Hitler has relieved Marshal v. Rundstedt, and relief from the “European monsoon” has made air action more effective this week. It is no coincidence, perhaps, that we have made major gains on land, then. The paper praises a particularly clever attack on a flying bomb depot in France, and the third B-29 raid on the Japanese home islands.
 
Here and There
 
Australia is looking into giving the United States airbase rights. The RAF’s Mark XIV bombsight is announced. This, of course, means that it has been supplanted. I asked your eldest, and a moment later regretted it, as those cursed partial differential equations of “stability” were trotted out again. Is there nothing in this world that cannot be described by an “x=[something] times cos x+ alphabetic monstrosity?
 
Having little else to say (Air Marshal Hill sometimes flies a fighter in active operations! Pan American has bought Bahama Airways! Roy Chadwick has received an honourary degree from Manchester! Eventually, British airliners will have jet engines! F. A. Oddie, of Oddie Fasteners, has died! Edward G. Robinson is to be in a Hollywood film about RAF aircrew!) the paper looks to an American contemporary which claims that America has five fighters capable of speeds over 400mph, while England has 3, Germany 2, and Japan no score. The paper makes fun, for Americans are hilarious.
 
Invasion Closeup 
 
This week, our correspondent visits the Fleet Air Arm and US Navy units flying artillery reconnaissance for the fleet in Spitfires. He notices that the bumpy grass forward airfields in Normandy are quite dangerous for high-powered Spitfire Vs, which cannot put the airmen in good sorts about slow progress at Carpiquet. This is a very substantial effort. 435 sorties were flown in the first 24 hours. 710 hours were flown in the first three days, with 85% serviceability maintained. The paper notices that communication with the ships is by W/T, which seems a great deal to ask of a single pilot in charge of a hot ship in hostile skies, but perhaps the process of encoding a Morse message has got a great deal simpler since our day. Certainly radio reception has, for all of these planes to be doodling about in such a small area calling shots!
 
“Indicator” takes on the “Retreat to Rationalism” again. His point here is that variable lift devices are inevitable. He describes auxiliary lift surfaces that can be retracted flush with the plane’s surface or angled to work as spoilers. Has he seen the Barracuda? How many more of those contraptions can they put on a plane?
 
“RAF Maintenance Unit’s Record” An unnamed RAF maintenance unit of unspecified size, working in western Italy, turned out 26 overhauled planes, mostly P-40s, in five days. This is a very creditable record for a unit of this unspecified size, working in this location on planes of unspecified type. Aviation  would have just called this the world record for aircraft overhauls and left it at that, and, for a change, I would have agreed with their editorial approach.
   
“Team Spirit in Industry” Sir Stafford Cripps toasted the aircraft industry, American and British, in a 4th July banquet put on by the Worshipful company of Coachmakers and Coach Harnessmakers. Replying for the industry, Sir Frederick Handley-Page said that the industry was pleased that he was pleased, everyone was pleased, and a bumper all around, and, oh, by the way, if workers want higher pay, they should show “a willingness to shoulder greater responsibilities.” Having spent my first week back in California trying to find new second shift foremen, I see his point.
 
A new edition of G. Geoffrey Smith’s Gas Turbines and Jet Propulsion in Aircraft is announced. It features a frontispiece of G. Geoffrey Smith in a cardigan, with his tweeds thrown over his manly shoulder in a delightfully relaxed posture, his hair pleasingly tousled by the exhaust of a screaming jet.
“Countering the Air Torpedo” Anti-aircraft and fighters require careful coordination to work together pursuing high-speed targets flitting across the Kent countryside just higher than the crests of the Weald at high speeds.  
 
“Mr. Churchill’s Statement” Persisting in refusing to admit that it was fooled, the paper gives us the music hall speech in full detail. We have dropped 50,000 tons of bombs on flying bomb sites. Imagine how many Germans this much high explosive could have “dehoused!”
 
Behind the Lines
 
Strong Luftwaffe detachments have been sent to the Eastern Front. A little late, don’t you think? German aeroengines are being redesigned with sleeve rather than ball-bearings due to the general shortage. That this includes the BMW Bramo Fafnir 9-cylinder, a low-powered training engine, tempers my jubilation. A German newspaper reports that the most important effect of the flying bomb is the jubilation it gives the German people. Jubilation all around this summer of our heart’s happiness. Another winter is coming. Suggestions that a German flying base bomb is being prepared in Tallin, Finland, to bombard St. Petersburg is met with fear, as it might be used to bombard Helsinki instead. Also, Southern senators might refuse to certify the Electoral College returns if an insufficiently white supremacist President is elected, throwing the election on the House, and tiny little exhaust turbosuperchargers, fed a trickle of exhaust gas from the engines, might soon be raising and lowering undercarriages. Pull the other one, in other words. Another Henschel high altitude aircraft, the Hs 130, is bruited. The paper indicates that it would have three engines, one running the supercharger, as in the proposed French design of 1940. Japan is evacuating its cities on nonessential population in anticipation of a major strategic bombing offensive.
 
Studies in Recognition
 
Today we cover the Noorduyn Norseman, Stinson Reliant and De Havilland DH 86 Dominie, which is not going to be easily confused with any plane but itself. The really remarkable thing here is that the paper still has not run out of American preliminary trainers to profile! Many people, on the other hand, will be pleased when we run out of Dominies to fly in…
 
 
 
R. H. P. Nott, “The Opposed Piston Engine: Limitations Which Preclude its Use in Aircraft” It is nice to have thatcleared up.
 
“United Nations Petrol Programme” As a result of a vast building programme, the Allies now have “approximately” 450 refineries and natural petrol plants engaged in making 100-octane fuel or its components. Which seems a rather vague and artful formulation intended to produce a more impressive number. I suppose the real question is how much 100 octane we shall need after the war.
 
“Consolidated ’39:’ New U.S. 48-seater Air Liner to Cruise at 240m.p.h.” Very nice pictures rather belied by the fact that it does not actually exist yet, whereas the Lockheed does. I should be very surprised, as I suggest below, if there is not a Boeing entry into the market soon, as well. Even the paper is unimpressed by intimations that there is no running water in the “water closets.”
 
Correspondence
 
A sad letter from the father of a man killed serving in France in 1940 moves your daughter-out-of-law to tears after I passed her the paper. The correspondence-provoking power of the combination of ability and boredom is quite clearly striking the great anti-flying bomb encampment in Kent. 
The Economist, 15 July 1944

 

Leaders

 

“Planning Criticisms” Yet more discussion of the Town and Country Planning Act, an important matter on which the Earl ought not be trusting my summary judgement! 

 

“Will UNRRA Work?” It will be recalled that this is the relief and rehabilitation agency, which has a vast remit. I can hear the Engineer ranting on.

 

IMG_0472.JPG
Even the paper notices that so far the agency only has half the funding available to him after the last war. This, it strikes me, more plausibly suggests that the funds available will be topped up than that starvation and unemployment will be allowed to stalk the continent of Europe after the war, in contrast to the aftermath of the last. But there are many pages for the paper to fill, and it is July, and it is this paper, so we must conjure with the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and no-one will be able to say that the paper did not warn them.

 

“Mother Russia” After the tour de force of review of the literature carried out by the younger generation, it seems almost too much to return to the subject, but I only summarise the paper. The point here is that current projections of the future of the Russian population are here compared with that of various Western European countries which can only look on with envy at Soviet Russia’s high birth-rate. “The uncanny vitality of the steppes seems to mock the ‘decaying vitality of the West.” With France, Britain and Czechoslovakia’s fertility all about 5% below replacement level, and Russia’s at 1.6, giving a 60% increase over a generation, is Europe doomed to be overshadowed by a Slavic colossus?

 

Maybe, maybe not, because things could change. Here the paper takes its characteristic tone. Things might be looking bright for Russia, and this must be wrong. Casting around for evidence (and material to eek out another half-page), the paper moves on to Russia's various pro-birth policies, which suggest that the Russians do not believe the projections, and that this means that they might be wrong. (As a newspaper, the paper also needs to cover the changes in Russia's pro-birth policies, announced this month, so the above is in the way of setting the scene, as well.)

 

So what are these measures?  A modest monthly subsidy for for each child in excess of 3, with the fourth as of the recent announcement earning for the mother 6100 rubles/month, all the way up to 23,000 for the eleventh. Children of large families are furthermore to receive a 50% reduction on kindergarten fees, will receive larger rations, medals, and will be restricted from overnight shifts and given a confinement leave to be  increased from 9 to 11 weeks. Even children born out of wedlock are to benefit! Although this is balanced by the removal of the right to press paternity suits. Unregistered marriages are no longer to be recognised, divorces made more difficult to get, as a means of promoting family stability. In all, the paper concludes, the policy is the most radical of its kind in the world, and seems intended to remove all material embarrassment from the parents of children. (This is especially important, the paper notes, when women made up 40% of the industrial work force even before the war.)

 

Italics mine, Reggie. 

 

Notes of the Week

 

“Victory Week” Caen and La Haye de Puit have fallen. The advance on Arezzo continues. The Russians have taken Vilnius. Japanese resistance on Saipan has ended. The air offensive on Germany has resumed with a massive attack on Munich. London has had three nights respite from the flying bombs. Yet casualties have been heavy (15,000 on Saipan alone), and the way ahead remains hard. The paper has never yet heard of, nor met, this “Pollyanna” of whom some talk.

 

“De Gaulle and Washington” General de Gaulle went to Washington, negotiated successfully, and did not throw a single titanic tantrum. The paper is amazed.

 

“Russia over the Bug” It is. Amusing things might be said.

 

“Hitler’s Generals” The Wehrmacht has lost more than twenty generals in the last three weeks. This has sparked dark rumours about political differences between the Nazi Party and the general officer corps, and some see the dark hand of Himmler’s thugs. This is an unnecessary hypothesis, although the paper does wonder if the relationship between the two is strained in the light of Rundstedt’s dismissal. Still, the younger officers are all good Nazis, and rumours of differences are greatly exaggerated. The paper, after balancing on the fence, comes gently down on the “no rift” side.  This, I suppose, means no military coup, and that the country will instead continue to leak its vital fluids through Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. What some call treason, others will call diversifying one’s portfolio for long-run prosperity.

 

“Capital Reconstruction” the strongest incentive to industrial efficiency is full employment. A tight labour market is the best thing for this, as it promotes labour-saving and time-saving appliances but this will in turn require investment in capital goods. British industry was undercapitalised before the war, and will be so at its end. Therefore, second best incentives for capital investment should be considered. Tax policy and investment strategies might be changed, and “Efficiency depends not only on capital equipment but on successful collaboration, the abolition of restrictive practices the elimination of the worker’s fear of unemployment and reduced piece-rates.” And so a paragraph that begins with a labour shortage ends with unemployment. The paper is the paper is the paper, Reggie.

 

“An Orderly Unwinding” Wartime controls are to unwound in an orderly fashion.

 

“Education in the Lords” The paper has reservations about attempts in the legislation to supervise religious instruction and tell students what to think about things. That sort of thing is better left to the free press. 

 

Bretton Woods continues.

 

“Gandhi and Pakistan” This is the question of partition. Not much to be done about it, just watch and wait to see if India follows Ireland down the path of partition, Canada that of federation, or America in civil war. That British departure leads to such things might almost lead… No, we shall not think such things! Though perhaps we could learn something as regards places yet to be left in Africa. 

 

Jugoslavs, Greeks, Argentines are excitable. 

 

“War Pensions” In a spirit of charity, the Minister of Pensions rises to defend himself against the notion that current policy ostensibly restricting pensions to those in need was in fact too generous. Further in the matter of disgraceful, spendthrift generosity to those merely dying in battle, the increases in services salaries and benefits announced in March go into effect this week, and will surely silence all critics. It is not as though soldiers and officers really need to be paid, when they’re just going to be  fighting over in France, with nothing to spend their money on save soldierly amusements! And what is that? Send money home to their family? Oh, don't be silly. They are the ones who administer the family trust fund in the first place!

 

American Survey

 

“Democratic Tug-of-War” The Convention is expected to be even less exciting than the Republican, since after all even the press can’t invent reasons to suddenly believe that anyone but Mr. Roosevelt will be nominated. The Southern states will continue their fight against Mr. Wallace, but the paper seems to think that just because the President has effectively thrown him to the wolves is no reason to suppose that someone else, such as Senators Truman or Barkley, or Secretary Byrne, might actually be nominated. Pressed to find a reason for thinking this, the paper comes up with the point that Mr. Wallace is pro-Negro, while Governor Dewey actually appointed a Negro politician to an important position. Thus, appointing one of the esteemed Southerners  noted will finally lead to the break between the Coloured voter and the Democratic Party, leading to the Coloured vote flocking back to the GOP in those states where it left the standard in the first place.

.

“Primary in Oregon” It is thought that Wayne Morris will unseat Senator Holman in the GOP primary and go on to defeat the Democratic nominee, an itinerant butterfly collector who lives in a hollow stump. The paper seems to care because it does not like Mr. Holman. 

 

“War Priorities” A smooth transition from wartime to peacetime production is in the balance as the War Production Board duels the services, which, revising their want list on Normandy experience, want more heavy shells, tanks,  trucks, and ships.  Heavy trucks now share top priority with landing craft and heavy artillery. Munitions output, which totalled 1.8 billion in May, must rise to $2.2 by autumn if the 1944 goals are to be met. Yet the steel industry has been losing ground steadily, from 99% of rateable capacity in May to 94.3% this month. It has been announced by Mr. Batt that Britain will export 100,000 tons of steel to the United States, and the industry needs another 50,000 men. This will test the new labour controls in the face of the recent trend to “labour evapouration” which seems best explained by an undetected movement of labour from war to civilian production. 

 

“Flying Bomb Isolation” It is thought that in some way the flying bomb is reducing American isolationism. 

 

“Surplus Aircraft” The War Department might sell surplus aircraft after the war. The industry is upset. There is reference to sales of supposed surplus hunting rifles that turned out to in fact be “very deadly weapons” that were snapped up by unknown buyers on the West Coast lately. Given how well armed the American hunter is, this does not make a great deal of sense, unless one bears in mind that many of the Army's automatic carbines were made with folding stocks, which would be very easy to conceal underneath a winter coat.

 

Not that I know anything about this.

 

World Overseas

 

“Saskatchewan Election” The election of a socialistic party in Saskatchewan is a clear indication of imminent apocalypse The paper agreeably quotes the Winnipeg Free Pressto the effect that it is all a pipe dream, and that tears must surely follow.

 

“Power Shortage in Switzerland” is happening. 

 

“The Middle East in 1962” Dr. A. Bonne, of the Jewish Relief Agency, concludes that the Middle East is underpopulated, not over-, that the problem is the low standard of living of its population, that a proper development of its agricultural potential could support a population of 30 millions, of whom 3.6 million will live in Palestine, comprising 1.5 million Arabs and 2.1 million Jews. (Turkey is to have 17.5 million and Egypt 24.) Though there are admittedly some political obstacles to be overcome. 

 

Letters to the Editor

 

“The Cost of Service” A department-store professional writes to rebuke the paper for supposing that various such retail service fripperies as escalators and tea-rooms were unnecessary and being paid for out of the paper’s pocket (harrumph.)  The secretary of the Co-operative Union responds to the paper’s birthday felicitations by pointing out that the taxation advantages enjoyed by cooperative undertakings ensure the movement’s bright future. 

 

IMG_0413.JPG

 

The Business World

 

“Debenture or Equity” Which to buy? Two pages of prose in which the paper drags us to a conclusion that I share in the technical matter at the end. 

 

“Inquest on Coal” I twitted last week’s number for ignoring coal in the summer and then announcing the end of the world in February. Not everyone is so neglectful. Here is a major report, which the paper calls “one of the most illuminating documents of the war.” The paper is appalled by the small amount of coal lifted from the ground during the war, and the White Paper on Coal Statistics” provides the explanation. It is the miners fault for getting old,tired, dying on the job too much, and getting too much black lung. The problem needs to be solved by Government control, national service, and also mechanisation where appropriate. The paper remains at a loss at how one could possibly encourage young people to enter a wage-earning industry, or remain in it when other industries pay more. What could possibly be done? It is racking its brains, Reggie! Racking them! It will probably turn out to have something to do with rationalisation, consolidation, national cooperation and coordination. For these are the obvious solutions.

 

In other news, open cast coal mining is not working out as well as expected. 

 

Business Notes

 

Bretton Woods continues, with talk of Keynes’s  view on gold standards. (He is against them.) In related news, the abatement of inflation in Iraq has led the government there to cease gold sales. 

 

A rise in the official cost of living will lead to wage increases in various industries according to the various schedules there existing. I suppose that it beats sorting it out through labour action, but it carries the risk of emptying vital trades of labour, as I snidely point out concerning coal, above, Reggie.
Union Castle’s official books show a slight increase in profits. I hope they are not so naïve as that. Good Lord, we practically had official permission to exceed the Lloyd’s Register tonnage on incoming ships in 1943!

 

Harland & Wolf follows John Brown’s lead, with its own twist (a preferred stock issue.)  Work hours lost to labour action was down again in April and May, year over year. The resources of the building industry are to be concentrated in the London area due to the flying bomb menace. Naval ratings, marines and airmen will assist with construction work. They will be billeted with private families.
 
 
 
Aviation, July 1944

 

Down the Years in Aviation’s Log

 

25 years ago, the London Daily Express offered a $50,000 prize for a flight from England to India with a one ton payload, and American Handley-Page, Ltd, registered as an air carrier at Ogdensburg, New York. Fifteen years ago, Frank Hawks flew twice across America in 36hr 49 minutes elapsed time, Amelia Earhart was appointed assistant traffic manager with Trans-American, Curtiss and Wright merged. Ten years ago, the air mail scandal’s aftermath continued, Cleveland Airport handled almost 12,000 passengers a month,Ranger was commissioned, James Wedell was killed while giving flight instruction, UAL ordered thirty de-icers for its Boeings, De Havilland bought British Empire rights for the Hamilton propeller, Admiral Reeves became the first pilot admiral, Hisso produced a 1140hp radial, New England Lobster buys a plane to “contact fishing fleet.” A quick check of the Navy List reveals that Admiral Reeves in fact qualified as a naval observer, but a bit of exaggeration is par for the course in this paper. Of an 1100hp Hisso radial engine, history appears to show no more. It is almost as though some people "hype" new technologies. 

 

 
Line Editorial

 

Junior is back! “Free Enterprise: The obligation of Management and Labor to Cooperate . . . in War . . . in Peace” D-Day is not just about fighting. It is about production! I, for one, am glad that we have James H. W. McGraw, Junior to assert these controversial and little-known truths. More substantively, there must be no strikes now, because American troops are fighting in France! But there were strikes! Nine thousand men were idled at Chrysler Detroit for six days, 25,000 lumber workers in the Pacific Northwest, etc. “By the end of the third week of May, 70,000 workers in 26 plants in Detroit were idle because of strikes.” D-Day seems to have happened rather earlier than I thought. 

 

Anyway, as usual, there is a curve in Junior’s pitch. Union leadership is doing its best to curb strikes, and deserves the support of management in promptly resolving grievances. Labor Boards, too, should hear grievances more quickly. Disputes are inevitable, strikes are not, and most unionised factories, at most times, run smoothly, and perhaps even more smoothly because they are unionised. Better labor-management relations will prepare the way to reabsorbing returning servicemen.

 

Aviation Editorial

 

“Invasion has Spotlighted Our Need: To Stay Armed” In the future, America should keep on buying warplanes at a high rate even in peacetime, because it will make us safer. Or help us win wars. Or we can build a giant ladder of airplanes to the Moon. The important thing is that Aviation says that we should spend a lot on aviation.

 

Herb Powell, Associate Editor, Aviation, “Boeing B-29 Superfortress: Biggest, Fastest Highest Flying Bomber Carries Largest Bomb Load Greatest Range” New details emerge. The wing section has been seen previously on the Sea Ranger, but to get the necessary strength at the stipulated wing length, sweepback and dihedral, the thickest Alclad section ever (3/16ths of an inch) have had to be used. The cabin pressurisation is maintained from the superchargers, regulated by two AirResearch controllers. The structure is made piecewise of tubular sections on jigs, then assembled, a method that proved disastrous at Willow Run but which presumably works well at Renton. It probably did not hurt that flush rivets were used throughout, and that Boeing took great care standardising fasteners and settings. Very large wing flaps give the B-29 the same landing speed as the B-17. (So there, Martin!) The plane is virtually all-electric, with 150 motors, although the landing gear is hydraulic. The B-29 has a dual nosewheel, “the first such ever devised,” which, given German experiments with very large aircraft , strikes me as unlikely. The difference is, of course, that Boeing’s installation actually works! Thee foot tyres were chosen, while those of the main undercarriage are 56”. 16-ply Nylon S.C. synthetic tread is used. The total weight of the landing gear is 7000lbs. Construction was so fast that “in numerous instances” production of parts of the plane were underway before the parts were blueprinted. It is to the credit of Boeing that the plane is actually a good one –experience counts, I suppose, although rumours of trouble with the Wright engines suggest that not all experience counts equally. 

 

Firms contributing range from Chrysler Dodge, brought in to supplement Wright engine production, Bendix, supplying the ‘super generator,” Minneapolis-Honeywell, of course, Libby-Owen-Ford, doing the plastic glass,  and so forth. In the spirit of throwing together the longest and most interesting technical paper possible without giving any classified material, Powell ends by directly pasting in (even the print font changes!) a description of the tortuous path of a new wing spar chord through various millers, straighteners, grinders and anodising baths and on to assembly shops. It gives one something of a sense of where all that money spent on capital goods has gone! If British industry really is as undercapitalised as The Economist thinks, it will have a very great deal of difficulty competing with Boeing. That is, if "mass production" aircraft become a significant thing.

 

On the same page, “Quality plus Quantity Made D-Day Air Power Possible”  “Ten-tenths air cover which featured great land-sea operations against Fortress Europe gives final proof of American manufacturers’ formidable smash-the-Axis doctrine.” Though the picture then provided is of C-47s, so “quality” here includes the plane that the Army wishes would go away so that it could get more C-53s! It would seem more accurate to say that the ability to land an entire corps of parachutists behind enemy lines is sufficient apology for keeping the C-47 in production, and in defence of the article writer, that is what he eventually gets around to saying.  

 

Vice Admiral John S. McCain, “The Blitzkrieg Goes to Sea,” Let us here remind ourselves that a man from the bottom tier of the Academy has arrived one “star” back from Raymond Spruance by virtue of becoming an aviator. (Or perhaps by being the son of Mississippi plantation aristocracy. Whichever.) The Deputy Chief of Naval Operations tells us that the United States Navy can “duplicate today, from the decks of carriers –in numbers of planes, at least—the ‘thousand plane raids’ that caused so much excitement in Europe a few months ago.” This, he says, would involve using only half of the Navy’s carriers. Really, Admiral? Assuming that half the aircraft are bombers, and that each carrier has 90 planes, are we saying that the Navy has the equivalent of 45 fleet carriers? Or are we, gasp, exaggerating? In Aviation

 

In the future, super-carriers with super-decks and more armour and better subdivision will still further increase the fighting strength of the carrier fleet. In conclusion, our carrier arm is a terrible juggernaut of the sea that can level whole island fortresses in a single strike and defeat the Japanese “Maginot Line” of the Pacific and win every war ever single-handedly. And we desperately need new supercarriers because the existing ones are so small and puny and useless. 

 

I take my earlier sneer back, Reggie. Low grades or not, Admiral McCain has this whole “admiraling” thing down as completely as any Admiral Lord Vaguely Nelsonian-Sounding Name, Ret., writing to the Times of London. All that is missing is a call to keelhaul the engineers for being so d—d greasy. 

 

“How Women Flyers Fight Russia’s Air War” I do not think that I need to review anything so blatantly cooked up, do I? 

 

“Here Are Your Markets, Part III –Mountain and Pacific Regions and Conclusions” California will buy more things than Montana, because it has more families! And more money! Mr. Potter is very aggressively avoiding saying anything useful here. Even when he stumbles into something that looks like an insight –his maps strongly suggest that population density in the west is related to average family income, suggesting just how mobile populations in the West are—he aggressively flees in the direction of recapitulating the Census yet again.

 

William E. Nelson, West Coast Editor, Aviation, “Design Analysis No. 7: The North American P-51 “Mustang” Hyperbole seems to be the disease of the week. Apparently, the P-51 is “officially credited” with being the fastest fighter with the highest ceiling, which I am pretty sure that the Air Ministry has never done. As Nelson notes, this is done in an aircraft that is not actually aerodynamically innovative to any great degree. Most of the article is therefore spent on details of construction. I know more than I ever wanted to know about what parts of the P-51 are made with 24ST, which with 24O. He briefly describes the Merlin engine, suggesting that is much more innovative. (I am looking through my notes to see if I had registered before that the two-stage supercharger has an aftercooler served by its own heat exchanger.) But there is little more detail than that, and no hint of how the P-51 achieves its range. (Large quantities of fuel are noted, though.) Although Powell also says that “second degree curves, calculated as mathematical expressions, are employed on the external lines of fuselage, fillets, ducting and air scoops.” Your eldest has an explanation of this that will go into a mere three pages of foolscap of closely-argued mathematical expressions, or "algorithms," as it is now the fashion to call them down on the water, where your son is involved pretty much full time in making the MIT miracle machine work on a boat.

 

Or he would, if he did not keep getting himself lost about two and a half pages and then wandering off to talk to his wife about something.

 

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Kenneth Campbell, “Fan Cooling ‘Ups’ Engine Performance” Quite a nice little bit of engineering here analyses the actual performance loss due to cooling effects of air-cooled engines (very high for high performance engines, so rather telling of the reasons for their failure in cold climates and successes in warm and humid ones, and th tradeoff between the not-insignificant power loss of running the fans against the gain in heat rejection. The conclusion is exactly the proof of what needed to be proved, that the fan pays for itself. 

 

Leland A. Bryant, Vultee, “Tooling Dock Technique Saves Time, Speeds Accuracy” There is a right and a righter way to use a tooling dock.

 

Charles W. Morris, AirResearch Mfg. Co., “So You’re Going to Pressurize?” Unlike some writing in this number, the representative of the company that solved the problem in the B-29 deserves a chance to swagger around the room. In short, it is harder than it looks. Apart from air circulation, it must be appreciated that there will be leakage. Given this, we can work out the air supply per passenger, hence the necessary volume at the blower. Now we have to deal with pressure differentials for elevation and with variations in outside temperatures and resulting variations in volume at specified circulation weights. It appears that cabin air will be quite dry at high altitudes, and that keeping cabins from being stuffy in tropical conditions will be a challenge. AirResearch, of course has something of a lead in developing solutions to these difficult issues. 

 

With that I draw my main conclusion. I cannot buy AirResearch, as it is not being traded, but the cumulative burden of this number is that it is going to be hard to beat Boeing into the “stratosphere” club, and I will be  taking a heavier position in Boeing. This is one aviation stock with a postwar future.

 

Herbert Chase, “Hole Piercing Proves Faster –And Cheaper Part 1” We have discussed whether rivets are best sunk in holes drilled by the operators, through holes drilled by the rivet driver itself, and by through predrilled holes. Martin Aircraft believes the latter, though Mr. Chase needs at least two numbers to prove this. 

 

William Findley continues with his vital and timely series on the load characteristics of cellulose acetate plastic. An editor continues on methods for forming sheet aluminum, with scrap allowances and punch and die clearances for various alloys provided in this number for blanking and piercing operations. 

 

“Electronics Smooth Supercharging” We are told –again—that Minneapolis Honeywell makes electronic automatic controls for turbosuperchargers. 

 

H. L. Wheeler, Chief Group Engineer, Armament, Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, Fort Worth, Texas, “Convair Classes Broaden the Specialists.” We haven’t heard for several months about how Consolidated Vultee, as it is now, trains engineers in “the latest developments in the other man’s department.” Wheeler’s point is that the programme he spearheaded at Fort Worth has now been adopted in San Diego, and he is quite pleased with himself. 

 

“How to Get Top Efficiency from your Vacuum Pumps” Pesco explains how to maintain their products. Aeroprop propellers and Eisemann magnetos get similar coverage. Various improvised maintenance equipment from airline shops across the nation are shown. 

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“Rebuilding the Clippers” An unsigned review article describes the work that Pan American’s Atlantic Division does in maintaining the Boeing 314s. Did you know that refurbishing these monsters, which have only been in service five years, required the replacement of 20 wing web members and 23 hull bulkhead numbers in each plane? That all tail surfacesm, propellers, hydrostabilisers, wingtips and outer wing panels had to be removed, and hoisted into an out-of-the-way corner, at which point the main hull and parts were put up in jigs, that skin was removed by drilling out rivets, and that every exposed piece was carefully polished with steel wool on each side before being reprimered to avoid  trapping any corrosion, which would apparently migrate through the hull, otherwise? I should like to clip this article and send it to Flight, although it also occurs to me to wonder how all of this maintenance is done on shipboard. (Your son snorts. They just dump old planes over the side and take on new ones. Not surprisingly, this is not exactly advertised in Congress. You can certainly see why the Admiralty likes its covered hangars!) 

 

A. A.  Hartsinck contributes this number’s contribution to talking about talking about civil aviation. 

 

Raymond L. Hoadley, “Industry’s Sales Soar …But Not Profits” To briefly summarise without bothering to read the article, the colossal revenue numbers returned by aviation industry firms have no bearing on profits, which are so meagre that even the slightest increase in the tax burden will cause the industry’s collapse. Also, the aviation industry is an excellent investment, and everyone should buy shares. To be fair to Mr. Hoadley, he does actually summarise the financials of the largest 14 aircraft manufacturers, including preliminary results for 1943. That those results are preliminary, and so can be presented in any way he chooses, is entirely accidental.

 

Aviation News

 

Twentieth Air Force Formed: New Global Bomber Fleet Poised to Strike Anywhere in the World” Twentieth Air Force will operate B-29s, and perhaps even use them against Germany as well as Japan under its remit as an “independent” force, not tied to any particular theatre.

 

Various persons authorise Americans to use the new words “airpark” and “flightstop.” Ferry Command uses a temporary spray finish to protect planes on the crossing from seawater corrosion. “Cousin H.C..’s brainstorm to build community airfields for private fliers gets satisfyingly little coverage. Hopefully the lack of attention will permit him to rein himself in and focus on the Hawaii project

 

America at War: Aviation’s Communique No. 31” “Germnany’s war machine took three staggering blows in one week: (1) when the USAAF completed its over-Europe shuttle terminus in Russia; (2) when Allied forces knocked Rome out form under Nazi Italy; and (3) when –finally and most emphatically—Anglo-American invaders poured into Europe paced by the power of 11,000 planes.” The writing of she English, it is a strangeness to the communique be-proser. I suppose that it is fitting that this page is illustrated with a picture of the Miles 35. One strange duck goes with another. The communique suggests that heavy, strategic bombing contributed to the success of the invasion by undermining German preparations. 

 

The Mosquito victory in the ongoing Blue Riband is noted here again.

 

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So is a decrease in labour at Boeing Vancouver from 10,000 to 9000, presumably as demand for Catalina flying boats and Jacobs trainers declines. 

 

Washington Windsock

 

Blaine Stubblefield notes, again, that during the Battle of the Atlantic, some cargo was flown for safety reasons, and marvels, again. Stubblefield also notes that it is hard to get everyone to agree on just what is the world’s fastest plane, that sometimes aeronautical developments are oversold to the public, and that people sure are talking a lot about civil aviation. For example, those people down at the end of the bar, talking so loud that the bartender can’t even hear Blaine ask for another bourbon, now that he’s done his column for another month. 

 

Aviation Manufacturing

 

“President reports 170,000 Planes Built; May Total was 8,902; Cutbacks are now in Sight” Actually, it looks like cutbacks are placing themselves in sight. Presumably we can look forward to even greater reductions at the end of the year, though not necessarily in number of types. General Arnold thinks it would be ideal if the Air Force could cut down to just two production fighter models, but standardisation is difficult in a competitive environment. Various Chambers, people, boards, parliaments on about contract cancellation and reconversion. Still no decision on Fontana, of course. It would be nice to have some sense of how long the war with Japan will last. Perhaps the President could meet with the Emperor and set a schedule? It would make financial planning so much easier. The Navy has officially cancelled the Conestoga. The world’s biggest wind tunnel, at the NACA Ames Aeronautical Laboratory in Moffett Field, California, is now in operation. 

 

People talk about civil aviation on a page illustrated by the “bomber-size” Hamilcar glider. 

 

Aviation Abroad
The paper reports British 12  month aircraft production of 27,273 planes, that the Atlantic has been flown 15,000 times since the war began, that the Tempest exists even more, that a new FW-190 with a 2000hp inline engine, and the He 219 also exist. Pictures of a Warwick illustrate. Those are very long wings! 

 

 
Aviation Finance

 

Hoadley reports that the airlines are  very happy about the  mass release of transport planes to the airlines, and that this will lead to a great increase in 1944 traffic –but, of course, to no increase in profits whatsoever. He also notes that “It has becoming a generally accepted fact that that provision for released war workers is the responsibility of government.” Apparently, the spirit of free enterprise generously extends to recognising the need for government in such areas of American life as might cost manufacturers money! 

 

Side Slips

 

I would clip the Maguire cartoon if I could bear it. Here is last month's, instead. Some of my London friends would probably detect subtle nuances, and invoke Doctor Freud.

 

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Sideslip's jokes are at least as hilarious. “We never thought the science of aeronautics would change the methods of raising babies, but it has. Friend of ours mentioned taking care of his year-old heart-breaker and we asked (naively it now appears) if he was good at changing three-corned pants. “They’re four-corned pants now,” he replied in a superior tone, “wing area is much greater and boundary layer control is much better.”

 

Fortune, July 1944

 

 
The Fifth Victory Savings Bond Drive is on, and Fortune celebrates its illustrators with the publication of Richard Ede Harrison’s Look at the World

 

The Fortune Survey
Americans are broadly in favour of peacetime conscription. They also think that veterans should have first call for jobs after the war by a two-to-one margin. 

 

Letters

 

Four correspondents, three Californians and one private writing from a post in Alabama, write to say that they are appalled by the paper’s gentle treatment of interned Japanese. One writes in favour of the article. The paper replies to the mistaken facts of the first three correspondents. As usual, it is argued that Japanese truck gardeners undersell Caucasian by losing money, and are reimbursed  by a vast and shadowy conspiracy. Hmm. Not to dictate policy to other shadowy conspiracists, but it would seem more economical to just buy liquor for the kind of Caucasian who uses conspiracies as an excuse for his inability to compete.

 

The Job Before Us

 

After the war, we should have some kind of league of nations. General Marshall says so, and there is now even an international food board, with all sorts of countries represented, even quite unimportant ones.

 

 

Various other boards and staffs exist, and are poised to do a better job than the often improvised arrangements of 1919, when a single man like Hoover might hold the strings of relief. 

 

“Management in the Transition: A Bill of Particulars for those Who Prefer to be Ready for Peace When it Comes” A detailed study of Firestone, which seems scarcely fair considering that the shortage of tyres in this country makes their transition to peace production all but assured. The real issue is whether there will be enough firms like Firestone to absorb peacetime unemployment, or whether the country will spiral into a depression. It is naïve to think, as some do, that government can maintain demand, and that it will suffice for industry to do the producing. The real question is the postwar balance of real to synthetic rubber, and this article gives me little more confidence in my ability to judge rival claims about their relative share of the market than I had coming in. I am fairly confident that the American synthetic industry will collapse, but, at the same time, some formulations will continue to be important, perhaps including in tyres. The paper seems to think that well-managed Firestone has a better chance than most to flourish. 

 

“Doctors of Management” Firms which make a business out of advising management are on the upswing. The “management consultant” has been around since the 1880s, and now the ‘industry’ books $20 million/year. I notice, however, that the category includes firms which I recognise as credit investigators and business investment newsletters. This is a very diverse business.

 

“America and the Future: For More Profitable Debate” The paper modestly proposes that since modern business cannot exist without modern government, that there be less talk of “laissez faire,” which never really existed in the first place. Private enterprise cannot cope with a multitude of social-economic problems, and, postwar, management of the business cycle will be a public-private affair prominently involving the Federal Reserve system. 

 

…And there follows a four-page “biography” of North Woods tall-tale Paul Bunyan, and, no, Reggie, I am in no way joking. Fortune has not managed to get D-Day coverage in to the number, but it does have something to tell us about “Babe, the Blue Ox.” 

 

“Security in the Antipodes”

 

 
New Zealand has a generous social insurance system and millions more sheep and cattle than people. Its generous social arrangements are attributed to its “homogeneity.” Page over, and we are told that it is a dominion “created by British newcomers,” and that “The Maoris are now a small but amicably treated minority.” I am sure that if you asked a Maori in his cups, this is exactly what he would say. “As small as we are in numbers, here in our ancestral land due to the influx of British immigrants, nevertheless we are quite amicably treated. Amicably, I say!” 

 

The paper does, however, manage to note that New Zealanders behave in various ways surprisingly differently from Britons, considering the small gap of time and distance. “They wear no jackets, and un-English like hats.” That they have socialistic medicine, and a surprisingly low infant mortality, save in the Maori population, might be stipulated as a futher difference. To stimulated recovery from the Depression, the government offered interest free housing loans that resulted in the building of 15,000 rental units. 

 

“Needed: Nine  Million New  Cars” Another sector of American industry that will be selling into a high-demand market. The nine million is the actual cumulative deficit against projected sales had the years 1941—45 been peace years with demand at established trends –established in a depression! The actual total expected to be made in the first five years after the war is 20 to 25 million! Fortune believes that there will be as much as $100 billion in savings in the hands of a public which has virtually abolished installment and individual demand. Broadly, this implies that if employment can be maintained, the real problem will be ramping up production to soak up the money without causing inflation! The matter is, however, clouded by the war plants. All the big car companies, save Nash, Willys and Hudson, are operating war plants. There is, therefore, a surplus of plant –but, at the same time, lost tooling for peacetime production. Willys proposes that the “Jeep” can be sold to farmers as a combined tractor/transport. Ford, the other major “Jeep” maker, thinks that this is ridiculous, that the Jeep transmission is not up to ploughing. Willys and Crossley are looking at smaller, cheaper cars; GM, Ford and Chrysler are aiming at larger cars. I cannot help noting which companies were deemed efficient enough to run war plants, and which ones were not. 

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Smaller cars might not be on the horizon, but lighter ones are. The 2000lb car is perhaps five to six years away, and will come about due to improvements in materials. So is the high-compression gasoline engine that will propel it with 90 octane gasoline, saving 20 to 25% on the fuel bill. A rear-engine car is a remote possibility. Price will be up. The wholesale price of a postwar Chevrolet, Plymouth or Ford may be $1200, a 60% increase over 1942. The industry anticipatorily blames labour, while labour complains that it will not be at fault, since wages will be up only 14%, and that productivity gains of 2%/year, accumulating over 5 years, more than justify this increase. The higher future prices therefore will have been caused by grasping future management. 

 

Farm Column

 

Some Southerners are tired of being treated as the nation’s No. 1 economic problem. True, farm acreage and employment is highest in the country in the states of the inner South and wages lowest, but at least they  have diversified out of cotton (down from 21,600 acres in 1926 to 11,400,00 in 1943) to kudzu, lespedezablue lupine and crimson clover, which I think that Ladd Haystead has picked out of a list for their colourful names. They are just fodder crops. More fodder crops, in rotation with cotton, can maintain the soil and crop productivity, plus perennials such as scuppernong grape, domestic blueberries and blackberries, all perennials which can greatly increase farm profitability. The example of “Negro farmer” Andrew Wilson, who once “mined” the soil the old way, and who is now being induced to plant long rotation fodder and perennial crops is conjured up. How, exactly, scientific rotation schemes differ from leaving the land to rest under rough grazing and berry picking is left up in the air a bit; I suspect that the “Negro farmer” bit covers it to some extent. Finally, there is the matter of poultry, which would add to Mr. Wilson, and other’ profitability, if there weren’t a bit of an excess on the market. 

 

Business at War

 

This month’s example is W. H. Nichols, of Waltham, Massachusetts, a firm of machinists. Nichols impresses the paper’s correspondent with his homespunness. He dresses plainly, shows him a modest, clapboard house near the mill, opens his mail with a jackknife on the floor, as he needs no office, and tells a tale of building his own bicycle as a boy in Hamilton, Ontario, on which he “set a world quarter mile record by his own telling,” then ran away to the United States when his father ordered him to a divinity school. He has been making precision pumps for the rayon and latterly nylon industries since 1932 and sells a very large number of his “Gerotors” every month. He runs a “one man show” of 750 employees, although in spite of having no office or support on management somehow manages to spend most of his time tinkering with a model locomotive. He thinks that the future is exciting and hopes to retain 500 employees under peace conditions.

 

“$275 million in Snacks” “US cheese eaters will get a little less cheese this year than they got in the depression year of 1932 –a mere 540 million lbs.” This is because their record production is largely taken up by the Army, Red Cross, etc. After the war, cheese will go from a dietary supplement (Americans ate no more than 6lbs/year per capita) to something rather more than that, if production totals hold. Moreoever, only 20% of the population ate 80% of the cheese, so broadening the base of consumpdtion also promises an expanded market. As a broad guideline, some Europeans eat four times that much; so could Americans. This is of course, unlikely. The business is not expanding on the basis of cheese becoming a staple, just a more important snack than it is now. 

 

“Idaho’s Henry Kaiser” dehydrates a lot of potatoes, mostly for the Army, but, postwar, etc, etc. 

 

 
 
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Techblogging July 1944, II: Hereditary Jaundice

 
 
 
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My Dearest Reggie:
 
Again I find myself breaking the rules of war correspondence, though not with news of fear and danger, but rather of business. Matters financial I leave to the bottom, where your daughter-out-of-law kindly appends a thorough precis of the "Bretton Woods" system. In short, she thinks it solid, for at least this generation. As far as I can make out, this is just female intuition, but it is ostensibly not unsupported by political arithmetic, and I cannot argue my case. The business, then, is concerned with more irregular matters.
 
First, Wong Lee has been to Los Angeles, and has established that the "Section 60" clause is no boilerplate. It was inserted into our friend's contract two years ago, in response to some marital issues which have apparently been resolved as far as they can be. Unfortunately, before he appealed to us, our friend took the rather desperate step of burning his own house down. This seems to have confirmed his employer in his suspicions at the same time that it apparently removed any evidence. Even more unfortunately, it now appears that his employer has been offered independent confirmation. Although it seems absurd that a morals clause would be triggered by such a barbaric law, our friend has relations who will not wish to see the facts emerge. The point here being not to humiliate someone in public, but leverage contract negotiations. Our friend wants his freedom --but at what cost?
 
Second, after diffident sniffing about submarine tours and various grandiose andimplausible aerial projects, Fat Chow is going homewards the way he came. His pan-Turanian friends may be both mad and pro-German, but the bomb plot has soured them on Berlin, and they are willing to extract him. He has the precious medium, and a device for "reading it," which the Gestapo, for its own reasons, has manufactured entirely of components removed from American aircraft --which should help if his belongings are searched. He will not, of course, proceed to the Panchen Lama and make broadcasts to set Central Asia aflame --he doubts even his Gestapo handler takes this  project seriously any more, never mind the Foreign Office girl assisting him. They just want to cultivate us, Fat Chow intimates. Well, we shall return the favour, however ambiguous. The girl and the man's family, anyway. I doubt that anyone will care very much if someone with that much innocent blood on his hands slips into the black waters instead of being delivered to Buenos Aires safe and hale. As for the Pan-Turanians, they get one last chance to bleed us. Fat Chow has been evasive about his route, but if they really do send him through Tashkent, I shall be quite cross. Considering its reputation, the NKVD is surprisingly inept, but I do not trust Russian slackness anywhere near that far.
 
However, whether via the Pansheer or the Vale of Fergana, Fat Chow will not be returning to California directly. You will have heard of the fall of Nomura. Now comes word from Nagasaki of a willingness to exchange yen-for-Hawaii dollars-for-US at a mostfavourable return. Or, indeed, for promissory notes on the right conditions. Some money is better than no money, it is thought, an American investment even better under the circumstances. I have word that our Hawaiian counter-parties are pleased by the idea of silent partners of such distinction. Moreover, though I have misgivings about dealing with the old enemy, the exchange will be done at the old house in Alicia, giving us the means to reward old retainers. Fat Chow will need to be conducted thence, and Nagasaki's assistance will greatly ease the trip from Kashgar to Zamboanga. If the matter does not disintegrate into a mutual massacre of Moros and Satsuma men, Fat Chow will then make his way to New Guinea and join me on Sparrow, and we shall see to the freight from there. 
 
Speaking of Sparrow, I am definitely taking a temporary leave of "Cousin H.C.'s" employ to drive to Vancouver to join my ship. I will be accompanied by your youngest, "Miss V.C.," my housekeeper, and one other. I have taken your counsel, and will not chance having someone with "Miss V.C.'s name register at the Provincial Archives. Rather than ask her to use forged papers, it proved a simple matter to arrange the accession of certain papers to the city's holdings. I get the sense that while the money is not unwelcome, ancestral memory weighs heavily on a house trying to forget its past.
 
 
 Whether the father or the mother more, I do not know. I could tell them that those days could be hard for an orphan girl, that not all who "gave honey for money" had their heart in the old trade. But I expect they would misunderstand, and my disapproval of their lack of filial piety might come through.
 
I may not approve of the lack of filial piety, but that just causes "Miss V.C.'s" inquiries to warm my heart the more. I do not think her lessons advanced enough yet to read the old papers, so I have asked that Miss Wong accompany us as translator. I imagine that your youngest could read them, but he has so far kept his oath of silence remarkably well. 
 
Young Lieutenant A. will be joining us in Vancouver from Bremerton at what I expect will be all-too frequent occasions. I gather that his admiral has chosen to fly his flag from the New Jersey battleshipnotwithstanding its dubious suitability. She will be returning to Pearl to make up its most serious deficiencies with some equipment to be assembled in Seattle under the young man's supervision. That is the admiral for you.
 
Have I mentioned that I met Lierutenant A.'s grandfather in Palo Alto? A younger sibling is in prospect of being sent to the college, and inasmuch as the  father is serving in the Pacific, it is left to the grandfather to see libraries and sororities and be jollied by his old chief. The Engineer  is as uncomfortable in the role of college booster as you would expect, and I managed to restrain the temptation to grab the old admiral by the lapels and yell, "Where are my ships?" For I gather that it was really all no-one's fault, or possibly that of the Admiralty, or of Stark, or King, or the President, or perhaps even tourism boosters who would not black out the coast. Heaven forbid that we should trouble the old man in his retirement!
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
Time, 17 July 1944
 
Foreign
Ribbentrop was in Finland to promise that there will be a negotiated peace in the end. Apparently, Germany will remain the dominant power in Central Europe, and the Anglo-Americans will end up arming it against Russia. Yes, you read that right, Reggie. We will arm Germany. Remarkably enough, all the picked troops whom the paper’s correspondent saw in Helsinki were in good spirits and well turned out!
 
In other news related to God-awfullyboring German operas with fat ladies singing andspears waving at the end oftime, but not soon enough for you and me (at least I had you there, Reggie, joking on a mile a minute), one Count Knyphausen has shown up in Sweden to spin tales of the horrible things that will happen in Germany if we do not see the error of our ways and negotiate a peace. I would provide details of alpine redoubtsand mass guerrilla movements, as if you had not heard them elsewhere, if I did not know a pitch when I see it.
 
“The Damnable Thing” The paper’s correspondent apparently got lost in Westminster and made the mistake of following Flight’s correspondent rather than the Economoist’s.Let that be a lesson about trusting the pessimist more than the optimist. Except this time, he has imbibed the pessimistic view from the fake Prime Minister’s speech. Perhaps I should stop belabouring this one. I doubt that it was funny the first time I trotted it out. The upshot is that the paper agrees that the flying bomb, or, as it still calls the thing, the “robot bomb,” is a new weapon of terrible power. The paper says that the flying bomb blitz is more terrifying than the Great Blitz. It may have killed only 2,752, wounded 8000 in the first four weeks of the campaign, but its power of disruption is terrible. New deep shelters are being opened, and special trains are evacuating 15,000 children a day. Twenty-four shows have closed in the West End. Our correspondent seems especially shaken by the death if his Ministry of Information handler, Kay Garland. Will there be bigger, more powerful, more accurate flying bombs? Time will tell.
 
“Don’t Touch” “Doc Salomon, the studio manager for Warner Brothers in England who scooped the world with a recording of a sound of a flying bomb, was killed by another one last week while out in his sound recording van looking to record another.
 
“The Ladies of Woodbridge” The paper is trying to tell us something. It begins with a vice patrol of Voluntary Vigilantes (“busy little Miss Wilby” and “Mrs. Juby, the Methodist minister’s wife”) patrolling a lover’s lane in the London suburb to prevent things from “going too far,” and continues with “Voices from the Poorhouse,” specifically Ernest Bevin and Lord Woolton saying that Britain has liquidated its foreign investments in this war, and with noble intent. The wallet is empty, the cupboard is bare, economy will be the word.
Well, the investments people were, er, patriotic enough to declare, anyway.I would choose another word, but I must salve my conscience with the thought that our black money was invested in making American guns.
 
Rumania is surrendering more. Czechs and Slovaks and Yugoslavs and Argentines are excitable. In the interest of making ending the war as difficult as possible, a German detachment massacres a village in Italy.
 
“Rhapsody in Red” The Soviet government having tightened up divorce laws and “otherwise encouraged the production of more babies,” the Moscow press rhapsodises the wonders of motherhood. Motherhood is “an inexhaustible source of human rapture,”Pravda says, quoting some Russian novelist. “And that’s why more women should be forced to do it,” the paper did not go on to add, as that would have muddled the story. Well, more people means a better choice of tenants, so I support the effort. I just doubt that it will work.
 
“The Girls” Speaking of the flight and plight of the masterless woman, American troops in Cherbourg decline to shelter 23 girls who prostituted themselves with Germans, send them into the demimonde instead. Of such people,  Koxinga  made a kingdom anddreamed of more
 
“Common Sense in Normandy” The Allied policy for running Normandy has shaken out as “Let the French do it.” Without telling anyone in advance, de Gaulle simply appointed a Regional Commissioner and a Military Representative on his first visit, then told Eisenhower that he had done it on his return. “At that moment, one of the great decisions of the war was made. General Eisenhower smiled and said that it was a splendid idea.”
 
“Germany Then and Now” Germans are living in one-room shacks due to bombing and building shortages, which is not what the Labor Minister promised in 1941, so let us all mock him, because he is an enemy politician who promised more than he could deliver, something never seen over here.
 
“Enough for My Family” Nicaragua dictator Anastasio Somoza speaks English well. married even better (the Debayle family), “liquidated” his main rival, Augusto Sandino, and secured office in a rigged election, and is now corrupt. Perhaps he will be troubled by unrest soon. Central American countries are like that, you know.
 
“The Face of Disaster” The Germans face disaster in the East. Is it because their eastern army is “sicker” than the western in some way, or is it because the Russians have a better grip on their enemy, and so take more chances than some other generals the paper might name but chooses not, who happen to command the Allied armies In the west? (I’ve the cat! Now where are the pigeons?)
 
“Fifth Column” It turns out that the French “Fifth Column” actually exists.
 
“Nazi Shakeup” The paper notices Marshal von Rundstedt’s relief. It is thought that his replacement by Marshal v. Kluge, an officer of much less prestige, will give Rommel a freer hand.
 
“Pursuit’s End” The Germans have almost finished falling back into the Gothic Line, after which they will probably hold in place through the Italian winter, especially after the Allies launch their amphibious invasion of the southern coast of some unknown country whose name starts with “France.”
 
“Target: Oil” The Combined Bombing Offensive is back to attacking oil targets. Storage tanks near the front were attacked by fighters and medium bombers, while the 15th Air Force attacked synthetic oil plants in Germany and Poland. The paper continues to be impressed by “shuttle bombing” from Russian bases.
 
“Gone to Earth” Robert Sherrod’s report on mopping up operations on Saipan make war sound ugly and cruel. And here I thought the entrails of a poor sailor wrapping around the terrified ears of a twelve year-old boy was romantic and glorious. You bore up so well that day, though, Reggie, never crying until we had to face our return in defeat. I have never understood how you do it.
 
“To the Victor: The Bases” A massive construction effort is underway on Saipan to prepare it for B-29 operations against the Japanese mainland. Too bad that bombs cannot give the kind of personal attention paid to Nanking. Meanwhile, MacArthur’s forces took Noemfoor Island off northwestern new Guinea, and are now 800 miles by air from Mindanao. Now if only Mindanao were not the Moor-infested back end of creation. Ahem. That’s rather ungracious to the memory of Subadar Haji Ali, especially under the circumstances. The point is that we shall certainly be bypassing Mindanao on our way north.
 
“The Unpredictables” The defence of Henyang by Tenth Army under Marshal Fang is going unexpectedly well.
 
“High Guns” Colonel Francis Gabreski gained a kill last week, raising his total to 28, first among American aces, while Wing Commander “Johnny” Johnston raised his to 35 and Alexander Pokryshkin’s bag increased to 53.
 
“Pick’s Pike” Once Stilwell’s troops clear the Japanese out of at least one route through northern Burma to Yunnan Province, “straight-backed, six-footer . . . .  dambuilder”Brigadier General Lewis A. Pick can get on with building the Ledo Road. With 9000 American engineer troops, a regiment of Chinese engineers, and 10,000 native labourers, he has already finished 167 miles of “twisting” road and six airfields over the rain-sodden, hills. Already, the rain has washed out some of the 700 bridges. Pike, former District Engineer of the Missouri River Basin, came to the effort from “Pick’s Plan,” a system of dams and reservoirs to tame the Missouri.
 
“The Cost Goes Up” After 31 months, the U.S. has suffered more casualties than in the 19 months of World War I: 262,179 killed, wounded and prisoners. Notably, the Philippine theatre still leads all others in casualties, at 31,285 to Europe’s 30,095. Rather brings home the scale of the Philippine fiasco, does it not?
 
“King of the Cans” Captain Arleigh Burke has been made chief of staff to Vice-Admiral Marc Mitscher, who will command “superpowerful” Task Force 58. Which is to say, all of Halsey’s carriers. I know what you are thinking, Reggie. A destroyer man? But it turns out that Burke was gunnery at the Academy. His destroyer background consists of having only held command of a destroyer on sea time back in 1931, then of a division in the Solomons, where he actually won sea fights against the Japanese, uncommon enough for living American admirals that I am surprised that he was not beached for embarrassing the side. I suppose being two aviators’ brains will have to be punishment enough.
 
“I Did What I Could” ‘Atabrine-yellowed’ Lieutenant Mitch Paige, USMC, a field-commissioned peacetime volunteer and Guadalcanal war hero, is back home in Versailles, Pennsylvania to show off his Medal of Honor. The paper is pleased to see that he is, quiet, private and self-effacing. Sounds like a good man, even if he has stolen our favourite excuse. Or perhaps making it “atrabrine” instead of “hereditary jaundice” makes all the difference.
 
180px-Paige_M.jpg
 
Domestic
 
“Midsummer Mood”
 
Ed Massey, a barber on Main Street in Kansas City, says that a number of his customers think that the war will end any day now. Perhaps by Labor Day, or Christmas. Meanwhile, war production is winding down and everyone has money to spend, while the shelves are full. Most books on the best seller list have nothing to do with the war, and the top song hits, “Swingin’ on a Star,” “I’ll be Seeing You,” and “I’ll Get By,” while the weather is good, and “the American woman, the slim prototype of world fashion, appeared in fewer clothes than ever before, with fashion, even in the office, running to bare backs, bare legs, bare knees, bare idriffs, to the lowcut, short-skirted, off-the-shoulder dinner dress.” The first hint of autumn includes advanced notice that Town & Country’s  July number will have more fur advertising than any American magazine has ever had before. Politics is “normal,” but terrible accidents include the fire in the Ringling Bros. circustent at Hartford, Conn., several train derailments, the loss of 64 coal miners, and an explosion at a dynamite plant, fortunately evacuated in time. Detroit weathered the first anniversary of its race riot, while the South and border cities were “pricked by the thorn of ‘nigger trouble.’” The hundredth Medal of Honor of World War II was awarded to the mother of an Eighth Air Force navigator, Walter Treumper. In conclusion, it is hard to fill out the paper in July.
 
“The President and the General” General de Gaulle was in Washington last week. He met with the President, saw various people. His longest and most revealing conversation (before the press) was with General Pershing, at the Walter J. Reed Hospital.
De Gaulle: “Mahomet once said that without war the world would be in a condition of stagnation.”
Pershing: “We have never had peace long enough to know.”
I wonder what de Gaulle’s France will look like?
 
“Six Minutes” The paper’s coverage of the disaster in Connecticut is heart-wrenching.
 
“If the People Command Me” President Roosevelt intimated his willingness to serve a fourth term.
 
“Half-Free, Half Open” The Democratic Convention will be free to nominate a Vice-Presidential candidate other than Henry Wallace. This is the greatest change in the way that party conventions has been done ever.
 
“The Well-Tailored Farmer” Governor Dewey dresses well. And he has a farm hear Albany! And he is running for President! All good Republicans everywhere agree with everything the Governor says about everything.
 
“White Primary” In order to avoid “violence” only a select few Coloureds turned out for the ostensibly open Georgia Democratic primaries, so as to create court cases. The paper notes that its contemporaries see signs of progress in said lack of violence, and notices that the Atlanta Constitution ran an editorial calling for Coloureds to be allowed to vote. If this is progress, than compared with the repeal of the Exclusion Act, it is pretty slow progress.
 
“The McSheehy” Mayor McSheehy is dead. We have become old, Reggie, without noticing.
 
Van Doos at the Vatican” The 22ndRegiment of Canada, which traces its regimental lineage from the Papal Zouaves, paraded for His Holiness this week in Rome.
 
“First Foot Forward” The CCF cabinet in Saskatchewan was unveiled. I cannot tell if the paper actually cares about a socialist provincial government in Canada, or if this is part of its obligation to provide a quota of Canadian coverage.
 
Science, etc.
 
“Fungus Fighter” Professor Elvin C.Stakman, famed University of Minnesota palnt pathologist, warns that wheat rust is rising to epidemic proportions, and intimates that further funding for his $300,000 laboratory is money well spent. The paper agrees.
 
“End of Infantile Paralysis?” Chicago researchers have found a way to make immunizing vaccines by exposing live germs to ultraviolet light. This has led to a promising polio vaccine, and promise for a number of other diseases as well, including salmonella, the staphs, one type of pneumonia, a strep, St. Louis encephalitis and rabies.
 
“Females in Factories” There are now 16 million U.S. women with jobs, 3,500,000 of them in factories. Women can be quite productive in jobs where strength is not required, but they are difficult to keep content. “So prone are they to complain, get sick, ache, stay home, quite. That many a factory supervisor will be glad when his women are paid off for good.” But Lockheed Aircraft has the answer, of course. Doctor Marion Janet Dakin, who spent four months incognito at their Burbank plant and concludes that riveting really is not that wearing on women. They are just mentally maladjusted to industry, and need a Woman’s Clinic, run by Dr. Dakin, of course, to look after their special needs.As a “Lockheed has a solution” article, I give this a solid second. The presence of a self-aggrandising doctor saves it from the Gentleman’s C, but the absence of punch cards in the solution keeps it from being first class work.
 
“Eureka” Doctor Samuel George Barker has become obsessed with the high standard of diet and oral hygiene of his dental assistant, Miss Lois Price, and has shown her to the clinic at the Iowa State Dental Meeting. Does Miss Price not have a responsible guardian?
 
“The Pursuit of Knowledge” The University of Chicago has dropped its requirement of high school graduation in favour of ostensibly rigorous entrance exams, and now enjoys the presence of  20-year-old “Sunny Ainsworth, thrice-married seventh wife of PlayboyThomas (“Tommy”) Franklyn Manville, Jr. The paper finds Mrs. Manville(?) amusing. I suspect that the alumni of the University find her less so.
 
Press, etc.
 
“Ernie Pyle’s War” A movie is being made of Pyle’s reportage. Like all coverage of Mr. Pyle, this ends by pointing out his increasing exhaustion and persistent premonitions of death. Someone has to get this man out of the war, but I fear that the problems run deeper than combat fatigue.
 
“Thought Control” The paper deems the U.S. Army too diligent in its suppression of political news. Pity the poor soldier, deprived of coverage of last month’s “Anyone but Dewey” landslide at the GOP convention, or the nail biting suspense over whether the President will run for a fourth term, without or without Wallace as his running mate!
 
The paper was amused by a hoax on Australian literary periodical Angry Penguins by two Australian army subalterns who made up poems from random phrases taken from a dictionary and created a properly modernistic-sounding poem out of them, thereby proving that modern art is bunk. I am sure I have heard this story before, Reggie. A Pekinese doing paintings? Composers who cannot tell the difference between a symphony and a bag of cans going down the stairs? It also quite liked Since You Went Awaywith, among others, the intriguing ingenue Jennifer Jones.
 
Duel_in_the_Sun.jpg
 
 
Religion
 
The paper runs four articles under this heading this week. When there is no real news, notes on the pulpit will apparently serve. We are falling short of Heaven's expectations, Reggie. Well, I don't know about you, but I am.
 
Business
 
“Washington War” War Production Board Boss Donald Nelson (“WPBoss,”) is fighting the colleagues over his reconversion order. In the paper’s formulation, the order is all to the good. Idle manufacturers would be allowed to “utilize the great masses of surplus aluminum and magnesium.” Also two-and-a-half million tons of steel in odd lots, shapes and sizes that has no use. Square in opposition to this are the army and navy, plus the majority of WPB members, who argue that the “U.S. soldiers had much better have too much and too soon than too little and too late.” The paper replies that at the moment we have a logistics, not oversupply problem. Yet it can be argued that the more peacetime manufacture builds up, the more likely that manpower will desert the war program for the long-time security of peace-plant jobs. Realistic American workers are skeptical of the idea that the war will continue much longer, and do not want to be the last to jump. There are critical labor shortages in steel, on the rails, on the farm in canneries and in lumbering, and steel production has slumped to 94.3% of capacity.
 
I know that I covered the numbers on the production side in my last, from The Economist, but I am struck by the paper’s lapidary explanation: “Individual Americans, in short, are cannily doing their own reconverting right now.”
 
“1,300 Men with a Mission” “When the Great Chief of the White House called the tribes of men together for a conference on wampum in the forest of New Hampshire, came the prophets of the nations, foremost in their craft and wisdom . . . .Keynes urged, “Be not slave to wampum, throw away the truss of wampum, start a fund for prudent lending, that all tribes of men may borrow, each get credit from the other, using anything for wampum, Sterling, beads or even fishbones.” Morgenthau, the Chief of Wall street, tighter strapped the belt of wampum. “My world bank for reconstruction must be ona  wampum basis.” So they reasons as they wrestled, whilte they both exclaimed together, “Let us order world finances, let us keep away inflation, let us stabilize exchanges, for the profit of the people. . . .”
 
This is rather too clever for the paper, and turns out to be the work of “Sagittarius,” of theNew Statesman & Nation. The paper thinks that funny doggerel is more likely to sustain the reader’s attention than the vital details of the proposals that might make up a whole postwar Bretton Woods System. I am not sure that I agree, but feel a little helpless in the face of the complexities of the proposals. Some more lucid summary seems needed. Fortunately, your daughter-out-of-law has acquired one of those queer feminine obsessions with the details, and promises you a lucid and short account with examples when it is finalised.
 
“Top Prices” Having sustained egg prices in face of what turned out to be an egg boom instead of an egg deficit, the War Food Administration has stepped in on the bumper billion bushel wheat crop to buy at the top of the market. Commodities brokers are disgusted at the fact that they will be unable to make proper returns on futures trading, and bread prices will be too high, but at least farmers will make the expected return. Meanwhile, all of the alarmists who predicted famine in the winter are lining up at a press conference in Chicago to admit their errors and recant. Kidding, Reggie!
 
“From Shadow to Substance” Detroit’s dream of the biggest peacetime boom in all autmotive industry history came closer to realization last week with … see Fortune for the details.
 
“Rock Bottom” Although another way of saying it is that the U.S. is almost out of new automobiles.
 
Flight, 20 July 1944
 
Leaders
 
“From the Horse’s Mouth” German officer Freiherr v. Imhorn suggests that the problems the Germans are having in Normandy stem from the fact that aircraft are involved. Which is more than good enough for the paper to run with as first leading article.
 
“Air and Sea in the Baltic” Also Russia!
 
Night and Day” Bomber Command has operated by day over Normandy, while the medium bombers of IXth Air Force have attacked by night. That will confuse those dastardly Germans!
 
“War in the Air” We are bombing Axis communications! American day bombers have been attacking Munich and Berlin. What is less clear is whether British night bombers have been doing the same, or whether the German night air defences are still the master. Our attempt to shoot down “air torpedoes” is meeting with mixed success, and bombing of French communications is said to be causing a food shortage in Paris. One can reportedly tell from the fact that Parisian women are all so thin.
 
Here and There
 
Canadian made Douglas DC-4s will get Merlin engines. Blackpool wants a Trans-Atlantic airport after the war. An American source wants to remind us that they were the ones who actually invented the flying bomb, back in the 1920s. A patent has been produced in a Kentucky courtroom, and word has it that rather than litigate in America, Verflugen Gebomben GmbH of Germany will concede American priority of art and take out a licence, paying the American rights-holders a fixed fee for every crater blown out of New York and points adjacent. The paper commemorates the anniversary of Britain retiring the Schneider Cup by virtue of no-one else wanting to compete in the delightful sport of diving under-engineered aircraft within five hundred feet of the ground at speeds in excess of 300mph. Prestwick wants a trans-Atlantic air port. De Havilland is launching a contest to name its next plane. I suggest settling for “Typical DeHavilland junk,” so as to get Australian sales through a claim to “truth-in-advertising.” (It is amazing how much higher the firm’s reputation stands in Canada than in Australia. Perhaps it is the lack of opportunity for floatplanes in Australia?)
 
“Invasion Closeup” The weather was terrible last week, so the paper’s correspondent visited an air-sea rescue station to see how men are saved from the drink. Their crates are old Power Boats machines powered by three Napier Sea Lions, which is pretty remarkable longevity, considering how long the monsters have been out of production. He also visited a press conference given by Group Captain P. G. Wykeham-Barnes, at which was described the “communications-interrupting” work done by his Mosquito wing, and the existence of new  jet fighters other than the much-publicised American crate is intimated.
 
“Indicator” discusses “Making Our Own Futures” Indicator thinks that overblown claims about present and future aircraft are a mistake, that we need to make a virtue of the necessity of honesty. Twenty medium-sized types might be wanted for every Brabazon, and, indeed, existing types are nipping on the heels of the predicted performance of monsters like the Super-Constellation, Brabazon and Mars.
 
The U.S.T.A.A.F. headquarters reports staggering figures of bombs dropped and sorties flown on an ever-increasing curve over the last six months. Soon we shall drop infinite bombs in just slightly-less-than-infinite numbers of sorties.
 
“Studies in Recognition” Helps us tell the Curtis Caravan C-76 from –the Whitley? And the Ju 52/3M? As if this parade of antiques is not enough, and the evidence of the complete inanity of this series suggests that it is not, we end with a new plane, the Go 244, which given that it flies with French engines, is not likely to be around very long unless the war goes very badly for us. But while we are not likely to need to “recognise” it, it is at least quite novel in appearance, and it has a better chance of being seen than the C-76, which was cancelled before series production began a year ago!
 
 
 
 
S. W. G. Foster, “Fire Risk in Aircraft” The Henderson Safety Tank Company has made the risk of in-flight fires and in crashes much less by its “Hencorite” technology. Various innovations in piping and valving reduce the risk of ruptures at these points. Electrical equipment can be carried adjacent to fuel systems if sufficient care against fires caused by shorts is taken. Fireproof fabrics are practicable, which would be a boon far beyond flying, I would think.
 
Behind the Lines
 
The German News Agency releases a public claim that the V-1 is not just a “political” weapon, aimed more-or-less at London and left to work its will by a vague reduction of civilian morale or whatever the euphemism is, but is rather capable of taking much more accurate targeting, so that the places attacked bear some relevance to a policy of retaliation in kind for Allied attacks.  Word of the He 219 heavy fighter reaches us. Again, if I recall correctly. Ah, well, I suppose that if I want to check this I need only ask your boy.
 
“Fighting an Implacable Foe: Engine Life Prolonged by Filtration: A Vokes Exhibition” Buy Vokes!
 
“Rotol Cabin Supercharger” Buy Rotol! In the absence of turbosupercharger, British experiments in cabin pressurisation have taken the form of this supercharger. As it is driven directly off the motor, extraordinary measures must be taken to keep the oil in the drive train and not get it into the air being compressed. All of this sealing turns out to have a little more relevance to the previous article than I thought it might have, but only a little. My basic position is still that American firms are likely to dominate the “stratospheric” air transport field because they have more practical experience, but perhaps Rotol is keeping up via whatever top secret strospheric experiments the RAF might be doing. (I need to seek your eldest out and see if I can raise an eyebrow. Unfortunately, he is off to Honolulu for the weekend to dowse some flames raised over torpedoes and check the pipes of a cruiser just returned from the Marianas for signs of the dreaded graphitisation.)
 
“Budd Conestoga” That one reader not tired of hearing of a plane that will not be built is in for a treat here! See how stainless steel can be used to make an aircraft, only provided that it does not have to fly!
 
Correspondence
 
Apart from more people correcting other people about jet engines, letters on the impracticality of the wider use of exhaust-driven turbines and the redundancy of great new ground engineering schools suggest that the brigades of the old and worldly, pessimistic and resigned, have recovered from whatever was distracting them earlier in the summer, giving them time to dash cold water on all and sundry.
 
 Time, 24 July 1944
 
“Report from Mme. Chideu” Madame Chideu runs a little grocery store near the Cherbourg waterfront, where the housewives come to buy necessities and gossip. Last week, the paper’s correspondent, William Walton, dropped in to talk to her about money. She reports that at first she kept and deposited invasion money separately from the old Bank of France notes. People suspected it, and unexpected reserves of old banknotes appeared on the market. (Walton reports that they were dug up from the vaults of a ruined bank, but I am inherently suspicious.) Prices might have ballooned out of sight at the shop had the Allies dumped all of their invasion money at once, but they did not, supposedly because the GIs were out in the country and only parted with their money for cognac and “amour,” because all their needs were met by the quartermaster. (Who does not provide amour or cognac in the American administrative system.) Thus, prices have not risen, and the Liberation Committee is recognised, and all is well, except perhaps for Mrs. Walton, whose husband does not seem to understand how speculating on money works.
In all seriousness, I take this as a good omen for China, even if I am perhaps clutching at straws. The French see a government with the mandate of history, and so are enthusiastic about getting their country back up and running. This means that they are willing to treat the new money with respect. The Italians are not, and so do not. A proper Chinese government will have the same good fortune.
 
“Exit Asmahan” Sultry Arabic torch singer Amal el Atrash has died in a motor vehicle accident. In Sudan, the heir of the Mahdi has stepped in to break the marriage market among his followers, because the bride price has risen to $400. When a good will not clear the market, the state, there is a coordination failure, and the state (or, in this case God’s Anointed) must step in, Sir Sayed Abdel Rahman el Mahdi Pasha seems to believe. As you can see, Reggie, I have benefitted a bit from trying to make heads or tails of the Bretton Woods system. At least I can talk like an economist. (Shoot me the day that I talk like the Economist.)
 
 
 
 
“The New Morality” Not only is Russia becoming more serious about marriage and family, but Eisenstein is making a movie about Ivan the Terrible, portraying him as a national hero. Which is highly moral, I gather. Perhaps related, the Russians are disappointed by the damage done to the Pushkin shrine at  Sviatoger Monastery by the retreating Germans.
 
“Miracle in the East” Four U.S. correspondents, including the paper’s Richard Lauterbach, were allowed to accompany Eric Johnston on his junket to Siberia where he saw that all the factories that made all the Russian war materiel actually exist, surprisingly enough. The works director at Magnitogorsk promises that it will grow up to be a real city at some point. We learn that Omsk is a very nice place, albeit afflicted with a an awful housing shortage because the brick works cannot keep up. (Because of course houses should be made of brick in a town carved out of a forest.) Novosibirsk “is becoming one of the world’s great cities, the Chicago of Russia.” Samarkand is “like southern California,” and Alma Ata is, oh, say, the Boise of Russia. Tashkent is promised in the title of the article, but does not appear in the body. I imagine that it is the Sacramento of Russia.
 
“Resurrection” Gandhi appears to accept partition.
 
“What Now?” Italy’s government holds its first cabinet meeting in Rome, spends it pointing out that the administrative situation in Italy is hopeless. Meanwhile, the leader of the Italian Communist Party attends mass in Naples and confers with the Papal Secretary of State. The Vatican signals not-complete-disapproval-of-all-Marxists-everywhere. Surely a grand compromise is in the wind!
 
“Sit-Down!” In the paper’s version of the town planning bill, it is a devious scheme to wrong-foot Labour.
 
“How Dare You!” Colonel Diogenes Gil launches an attempted coup against Liberal President Pumarejo of Colombia. The paper finds the incident to be full of anecdote-worthy Latin American moments. Moral: Latins are excitable.
 
“Gloom in the Reich” Newsflash from the paper: Germany is losing. This must have some impact in Germany, the paper supposes, and, oh, look, here are some tealeaves. The paper reads them. “Ace German military commentator” Lieutenant General Kurt Diettmar points out on the radio that the enemy was at the gates. Ace war commentators are those who have shot down at least five enemy prognostications. Christof von Imhorn, war correspondent in Normandy, notices that the Allies have air superiority. An anonymous correspondent notes that German army truck drivers behind the front are living on nerves.  A joke supposedly going the rounds in Germany and leaking out through Switzerland: “What is the only secret weapon that can save Germany? A long pole with a white flag on top.”
 
“The Germans Squealed” Reports suggest that the Germans are discomfited by the fact that Russian attacks are making gains in many directions that require endless hours of pouring over maps to make out. Takeaway points include that there is a sea in there somewhere (the “Baltic;” that the Russians have thoughtfully named towns “Minsk,” and “Pinsk;” that you have to go through a marsh to capture the latter; and that Germany has a province that is so far east that they named it “East” Prussia, and it might well soon be invaded by Russian troops who have been issued German phrasebooks: “Please point us to the loose women and alcohol, and give us your watches or we shall shoot you even more.”
 
“To the Line” The Allies are closing up on the Germans’ selected defensive position in Italy.
 
“War and Weather” The Germans are cheating in Normandy by enjoying bad weather.  The result is something of a stalemate, which cannot be allowed to go on. Since the Germans have 20 to 25 divisions in Normandy in good defensive terrain, a breakthrough may well be impossible. Marshal Kluge claims that the Allies planned on being in Paris on D+40, or D+60 against heavy resistance. They have, therefore, in his view, been stalled. In which case, the Allies must almost certainly launch another major invasion. Given Mr. Janeway’s prediction of a long war in Europe, I confidently predict that the invasion of the south of France will break the situation open before summer's end.
 
“Last Charge”
 
The heavy casualties of the Battle of Saipan ended with “the strange little men . . .[sweeping]. . . forward in alast, hopeless, noisy assault.” It was pointless and futile. You can tell that it was futile and had no chance of success from the way that the artillery had to defend themselves at the muzzle of their guns with captured rifles and the death of several battalion commanders in last ditch close combat.
 
“Death at Home”
 
The paper waxes blue about the state of London, spared for the last few nights of any nocturnal flying bomb attack, although plenty came over by day. The Germans promise more, and heavier bombardment.
 
 
 
“Saipan’s Conquerors” The names of the ground commanders on Saipan have been released. Careful examination indicates that the commander of the Army’s 27th Infantry Division was relieved during the fighting, and the paper reports a rumour that he was removed by the Marine commander. Congratulations, General. A U.S. Marine thinks you’re incompetent.  Words fail me, Reggie. The Marine commander, by the way, is nicknamed “Howling Mad.
 
Murder at Oradour” Disappointed that their colleagues in Italy and the East were getting to commit all the pointless massacres, some SS men of the Das Reich Division massacred the citizens of Oradour-sur-Glane last week. A Swiss newspaper reports that even the German occupation authorities were appalled, as the massacre was planned for the neighbouring village of Oradour-sur-Vayres.
 
“Combat Report” The Marines have been taking Coloured recruits since June 1942, breaking with a 167-year tradition of not giving the time of the day to persons of pigmented hue unless they had a good line about atabrine. The corps has no “public race troubles,” the paper reports. It has no Coloured officers, either, but it does have “16,000 strapping Negro enlisted men.” Some have reached as high as sergeant major, but  the real responsibility enjoyed by a newly commissioned Second Lieutenant is right out. Most of these are in service companies, but, in Saipan, Coloured Marines finally saw action in the line. Lieutenant Joe Grimes, a white Texan, thinks that they did well in combat, but really excel in their normal duties, being the hardest working men on Saipan. They were also surprisingly gentle with the White wounded, continued the Lieutenant, letting not a hint of irony escape.
 
“Mr. Smith Goes to Town” Have you heard that Jimmy Stewart is in the Air Force? He is! Fortunately, all involved eschew all publicity, which is why you are not reading this.
 
“After Four Years” After four years as head of Army Ground Forces, Lieutenant General Lesley James McNair is going overseas. Although his new appointment has not been announced, it is suspected that he will have the command of an American army group somewhere in Europe.  
 
Domestic
 
The Struggle” There is to be a struggle at the Democratic National Convention over the renomination of Vice-President Henry Wallace. It will pit Mr. Wallace against everyone else. I wonder who will win? Probably the one who gets the most votes. Let me see: one person versus more than one person. Hmm. I think I might be able to venture a prediction here, Reggie. In fact, I might go so far as to suggest that this is not much of  struggle! This goes to show that I am no political journalist. Also, the President informs the Convention that he will accept the nomination if offered.
 
“Wheat Dunes in Texas” Due to shortage of elevator space and labor, the Texas wheat harvest is piled in heaps on the ground, and farmers are worried that rain will spoil the crop. Worse, 4800 loaded cars are stalled in Kansas City, preventing clearing. Or being prevented from clearing by the “wheat dunes?” This bit is confusing.
 
“The Score” The score is being set for the next few months. War production will be cut back 50% as soon as Germany is beaten per Nelson’s plan, 35% per the Army/Navy plan. Even this will provide almost as much manpower, material and facilities for civilian production as before the war. Colour me skeptical on this one. Are we not predicting that many reluctant workers will leave the workforce? One thing that has not happened in the last six years is a significant increase in the American population. Ratiioning will continue until after the first peacetime harvest in Europe, probably until the fall of 1945. Meat will soon be rationed again, but canned goods will be more available. Sugar rationing will not be relaxed, as the supply has fallen 25% below 1941. Used cars will be rationed by year’s end, clothes not. “Shoemen” fear an end to shoe rationing.” Coal production is better than originally forecast (how extraordinary, after all those concessions to the coal miners!), but the Eastern Seaboard will still get only 87 1/2% of its normal supply. “No talk is heard of rationing wood, the nation’s No. 2 fuel supply, although the U.S. will be eleven million cords short of its needs.” Demobilization is likely to be only 250,000/month, and the Army expects to keep 2 million troops in Europe. Civilian good production will begin with simple necessities such as cocktail shakers, teakettles, washtubs, tableware, pots and pans, hairpins, safety pins, etc. After that will come things made in quantity but currently absorbed by the army, such as radios. The radio industry has expanded about twelve times; even an 8% cutback would take care of prewar civilian demands, but Army and navy demands for radio-radar (not secret this week) equipment is going up. (I have a suggestion: build more electrical engineering factories!) Third in line are goods with many or rotating parts, such as wife-savers like washing machines, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, irons, cooking equipment. Last in line will be articles using materials in which there will still be shortages even after Germany’s defeat, such as lumber, paper, textiles. The wage freeze will not be lifted before war’s end. No real tax cuts are expected until 1946.
 
“Ozark Rescue” The end of a ten-day saga that gripped the nation came this week, as the national press documented the greeting of a freed Drive the Coon Dog, liberated from a cave in Sugar Camp Hollow by 25 Ozark farmers  blasting through a 30ft limestone wall.
 
“66% on Roosevelt” I have mixed feelings about the man myself, but this headline is well worth taking up to the club just to see some peoples’ reaction. Or Palo Alto, if I dare. (the joy of twitting that man curdles in the chest in the face of his fish-eyed stare. Your daughter-out-of-law has taken to warning me not to do it, as he must have something in the works, but she is just taking the counsel of feminine fears.)
 
“The New Force” Sidney Hillman of the CIO was at the Democratic Convention this week, throwing his weight around, even though the old axiom is that no one can deliver the U.S. labor vote.
 
“Hot Blueblood” Most Massachusetts politicians toe the party line, but not Robert Fiske Bradford, a well-born Harvard graduate who is stirring things up. The paper is excited about his future. Teddy Roosevelt’s son, a brigadier-general recently promoted to divisional command, died at 56 of a heart attack near Cherbourg. See? This is why armies need a retirement policy. Imagine if, say, Halsey had a heart attack in the middle of a battle! Actually, never mind.
 
“Scrap” The American troops seconded to build the Alaska Highway are allegedly burning and scrapping the supplies sent north with them as they pull out of their grand construction job.
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The short-sighted see this as a grand boondoggle, but in reality we now have a delightful1700 mile highway to show for it. Now the American taxpayer can drive to Fairbanks, and all of the interesting places between, whenever they want!
alaska_hwy-1085-500.jpg *
So, really, there is no cause for complaint if we happen to burn a few tens of thousands of winter coats rather than go to the trouble of removing them from northern Canada.
 
“Beef for Beefeaters” Britain has made a deal to take all the Canadian beef that can be shipped in 1944-45. I hope this works out better than the egg shortage.  Will cows eat beef? In other Canadian news, all Canadian debt to Britain is now liquidated. All declareddebt. I know that I should not be so smugly self-satisfied, but it would do our interests well if you could remind the Earl about how right I was about that, and how much we have profited from my decision of August of 1939. In southern Alberta, the paper is amused to report that the Duke of Windsor has joined the oil-drilling craze on his ranch.The dispute over sending Canadian conscripts overseas heats up. How much good are a prospective 35,000 casualty replacements really doing in Jamaica and Prince Rupert?
 
Science, etc.
 
Genius at Home” Albert Einstein is a genius, and like all geniuses, an amiable eccentric.  Also, I notice that he has top-level security, suggesting that atomic physics has military implications. I mention this to your eldest, and he just rolls his eyes at me, as if to ask whether I could possibly be so naïve. I am not, of course, but I was hoping he would spill some “gen” without prodding. He did not, which at least suggests to me that the details of any atomic explosive are not technically interesting to him.
 
“No Shrink, No Shine, No Runs” Monsanto held a presser last week to announce chemicals that produce silk and nylon stockings that do not run, wool that does not shrink, blue serge suits that do not get shiny, wool pants that keep a sharp crease, even in the rain. Donald Howard Powers, the 43-year-old Princeton graduate who achieved these homely miracles, shrugged them off as only a beginning. “He is also working on a method of water proofing and flame-proofing circus tents.” Which seems like a tastelessly indiscreet way of framing that research this week. We can draw the conclusion if you only say “flameproofing canvas.” Anyway, Monsanto promises that eventually the bottled chemicals will be available for home application.
 
“Cures for Childlessness” Two books on sale by Lippincot this week offer useful checklists of factors inhibiting fertility in men and women. The former, with a blue bookjacket, is by Lieutenant Commander Robert Sherman Hotchkiss of Manhattan, while the latter has a pink bookjacket, and is by Dr. Samuel Lewis Siegler of Brooklyn. Infertility is far more common than is believed. From 1910 to 1930, for all reasons, 17% of native white U.S. marriages were childless, while 5 to 8% resulted in only one child. About half of all cases of infertility can be treated by diet, rest, abstinence from alcohol, relief of “nervousness” and general good health. And all that some “sterile” couples need is sex instruction. “This is true of many highly educated people who seek medical advice.” I know: I heard that joke at the club too, the other day.
 
You say that it is not meant to be a joke? I was pretty sure that the blue and pink furniture gave it away, but I could be wrong.
 
“In the Shadows” Back in London after a trip to Normandy, the paper’s female correspondent, Mary Welsh, reports on the field hospitals, which are achieving miraculous rates of survival amongst the wounded, in particular thanks to blood and plasma infusions.
 
Press, etc.
 
“Snafu” Senator Taft’s provision to the Soldier Vote Act, which was to prevent political propaganda from reaching the soldiers, has proved unworkable, because it turns out that all American journalism contains politics! Vote Warren in 48.
 
“Cissie Fuss” Eleanor Medill (“Cissie”) Patterson’s Washington Times-Herald published a bitterly anti-Roosevelt editorial that is generally deemed to have gone too far. I would not mention this were it not headlined by a note identifying the publisher of the New YorkDaily News as her brother, and Colonel McCormick as her cousin. This is the kind of thing that makes mad ranters mad. At least in our family we have the good grace to keep our conspiracies secret!
 
“17,000 Book Reviews” Lisle Bell has done 17,000 “brief, unsigned booknotes” in the last 26 years, as a sideline while working as a newspaperman, advertising copywriter and script writer. He is a master of the art form. Not bad for the son of a “real-estate developer who did not believe in education.” Given that he attended Ohio State, I wonder. There are some very large estates in Ohio, and I should think that an education that distracted the next generation of developer only so far as Ohio State and on to a career in freelance writing in New York so idle that he had time to read 17,000 bookswas a bit of a waste. I further note that the point of the story is that Bell has just broken his leg, which will, as happened last time, apparently curtail his output for some time. To break a leg once may seem an accident. To do it twice begins to sound like drunkenness.
 
“The Only One of Its Kind” The paper likes Passage to India so much that it reviews it, again, I assume, for the current second edition. It could be worse. The paper could spend more time reviewing Time For Decision and Candlelight in Algeria, although at least the latter has pretty people and exciting car-chase scenes. Which is why, I suspect, that I was dragged to see it.
 
Business
 
Sumner M. Slichter warns of a postwar shortage of consumer goods due to a boom that will overtax productive capacity. Senator Taft has foolish and uninformed opinions about the new international monetary fund, the paper says. Harold Laski predicts a postwar American depression as a result of the inability of the American free enterprise system to achieve full employment. The paper imples that Geoffrey Crowther, editor of The Economist, agrees. While I do not put anything I hear about The Economist’s down-at-the-mouth styles past that paper, what he said was that he is more frightened of an American depression than a British, and this is not saying that he thinks it more likely.This paper clearly falls in with Slichter’s boom, but Laski’s worry about a failure to achieve full employment causing a decline in demand leading to lower employment, etc, is not really address by Slichter, as far as I can tell. Also of the opinion that the transition to peace can be managed is Abraham David Hannath Kaplan, an economist from the University of Denver, who has a book out on the subject form McGraw-Hill.
 
“Houses to Live In” The paper notices the boom in suburban real estate. Few experts see the ‘boom’ going ‘bust’ any time soon, either. An exception, however, is Federal Home Loan Bank Administration Commissioner John H. Faley, who believes that too many reckless loans have been made, and that the “unsound wartime realty boom” must lead to a postwar wave of foreclosures worse than the last depression. Against this, it is pointed out that loans made so far are being amortised very quickly, that second mortgages have virtually disappeared, that modern mortgages, instead of running 3 to 5 years, are now going to easy 25-year terms comparable to rent. Nor is the buying really profligate speculation. ON the contrary, people are buying homes to live in, or as a hedge against inflation, or both. Prices are up: a Los Angeles home that sold in 1942 for $7,850 brought in $15,500 last winter. A home in Pittsburgh is up from $10,000 to $11.900 over six months.
The big boom, however, has not yet even started. 
 
 
Washington planners are counting on new residential building to support postwar employment. Estimates of building in the first full postwar year range from 560,000 to 1 million, and for 2 billion dollars expected to be spent on new building in the first postwar year, $3 billion will be spent on renovations and repairs. I, for one, am hoping to get a roof on the old house before the rain goes through the foundations. It is a race against time, and I dread what we might have to do with the phoenix floor and the Whale Man.
 
“Victory Over the Phone” Don Nelson has won the backing of Jimmy Byrnes in a phone call. Workers will not be forced to relocate to work industries, will be allowed to be released to make consumption goods of surplus aluminum. Also, Bob Hinckley, fresh from Sperry, is to be Director of Contract Settlement.
 
“Paper and Steel” The automobile industry is declining to avail itself of the War Production Board’s Blue Order, intended to allow phased resumption of production. The order’s future allocations of raw materials are too contingent, and the idea that the companies can start work on experimental models is mistaken, for they are shorter of engineer and designer labor than anything else. What the industry really needs is machine tools, and reconversion cannot really get started until the Government releases those.  
 
People
 
I am not sure that you care for me wasting your time with this section of the paper, Reggie, but my eye is caught by the death of Betty Compton (Mrs. Theodore Knappen), 38, of an illness following the birth of her first child. It seems as though one does not read as many of these melancholy notices any more. More normal is the news of Nancy Coleman (26), giving birth to twins. Or, regrettably, of John Rippey Morris’s (43) suicide and the death by heart attack of 48-year-old Captain Frederic John Walker.  The worst, though, seem to be enduring the stress. Mussolini wants us to know that he lost 50lbs and got ulcers in his last months in Rome, while Madam Chiang has arrived in Washington for an extended rest to relieve nervous exhaustion. On the other hand, the sad news of the death of Archbishop Hanna, in the same month in which we have lost Mayor McSheehy, at least tells us that good people who keep an even keel may hope to live long and prosperous lives. Their loss leaves me feeling sad and old.
 
The paper may be having the same kind of reflections, because it sub-heads “Knighthood’s Flower” to cover Margherita Clement’s damage suit against “former soldier socialite Sidney B. Dunn, Junior,” who attacked her with a paring knife and liquor bottle when she refused his suit, and the assault on Jeannette MacDonald, who got a black eye and facial cuts struggling with a 14-year-old bellboy who trespassed in her Santa Barbara hotel cottage, supposedly looking for souvenirs.
 
 
 
Flight, 27 July 1944
 
Leaders
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“The Tactics of Fusing” The paper is impressed by the way that the RAF has learned to adjust bomb fusing to give the maximum amount of useful support to the Army in the great bombardments now being used to advance our troops.
 
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“Superfluity in the Air” We have enough aircrew now, and the RAF is transferring men to the Army, in particular. Who could have imagined, six years ago?
 
“The Stars in Their Courses” Those who complain that the weather is on the enemy’s side should remember that it was perfect for us in the Dunkeque evacuation. Bad weather assists the weak.
 
“War in the Air”
 
The air attack on Caen preparatory to the last operation, in which 1000 RAF heavies were followed by 600 Americans, was too remarkable to describe in words. However, the paper notes an additional important fact, which is that the explosives dropped by planes did not have to be shipped to Normadny, and so did not count against the administrative backlog there. The paper is impressed by the “break-through into new country across the river Orne,” the fall of Ancona and Leghorn, and Russian victories. Forgetting to end on more than a nominal note of aircraft being involved (bombs, factories, oil shortage), the paper here breathes the hope that this war cannot go on much longer. Ultimately, the thought is inspired by the Hitler bomb plot, in which it cannot be concealed that aircraft were not involved. Not even a Luftwaffe general, it seems! Although the paper is pleased that the direction of Germany’s war effort did not fall into more competent professional hands. The same cautionary does not, of course, apply to the fall of Tojo, who might be good or bad, as who knows with Japanese statesmen.
 
Here and There
 
Captain C. Eric Smith has been elected chairman of Rolls-Royce in place of the late Lt. Col. Lord HerbertScott. The R.Ae.C. will close for nine days to give the staff a short holiday. Members sleeping at the club will have to fend for themselves for lunch and dinner. The daughter of Roy Chadwick has married Radio Officer John Dove. Manyprominent Cheshire people, sensing the way the future was going, attended. People are still talking about talking about civil aviation. Talk out of Stockholm is of a new type of flying bomb that weighes 10 tons, flies at 750 mph, can fly at 20,000ft, and can reach New York. The explosive is said to be 30 times more powerful than the ordinary. If the Germans have an atomic explosive, I am told, it is unlikely that they have so many that they can waste it in “flying bomb” attacks. Though, to be fair, “30 times more powerful” is such an underestimate that this might not be a sly intimation of same.
 
“Invasion Close-up” Our correspondent visits a reconnaissance squadron, which flies Mustangs equipped with Williamson F24 cameras, Spitfire XIs with F52 and F8 cameras. The F52 has a 36 inch lens! (Would this be the place to ask if you can obtain a supply of pancake makeup from a store of my acquaintance in London? Thick as lard, that stuff, and  it might make even me presentable under such nightmarish conditions. But, of course, you will be long since familiar with such things.)  The first Australian-built Mosquitoes have been delivered to the RAAF. Australian woods were used “to a great extent” in its production.  DeHavilland is to have an apprentice shool.
 
Maurice F. Allward, “Engine Mountings” Mounting engines is quite difficult due to all the stresses the mounting must absorb. Obviously the traditional engineering solution of adding more weight and hoping for more strength is out of the question in aircraft. Allward notices the possibility of improvements in radial engines in particular, given that, in spite of the success found with forged mountings in inline engines, it is strange that there are none for radials. This might be in part, I suspect, because American makers, who cover the majority of radial makers, are a bit behind hand in metal work in their shops. However, Bristol is an eminently British firm. But, however again, Bristol is leading the world with its interchangeable “power eggs,” and this kind of thing would be much easier on a machined-down casting than forged down to exacting dimensions.
 
“Indicator” supposes that we are “Asking Too Much of Adaptability” It has been a long time since Indicator has talked about flying. Has he been grounded? Father Time does catch up. The point of the column is to ask for more standardisation in utility aircraft.
 
Studies in Recognition
 
This week we feature the Blohm and Voss Bv 222, the colossal German six-engined flying boat,  The not-so colossal Grumman Gosling, the Dornier Do 24, and the Boeing B 314-A. No new jokes on the subject of flying antiquities occur to your humble correspondent, Reggie. I could swear that this is not even the first time some of these have appeared in this feature!
 
Behind the Lines
 
A German ace, Eugen Zweigert, has been lost on the Western Front. The Germans are short on planes in Norway, a breathless report from Norway confirms. The Germans have not enough new aircrew coming up, and so rely on their old ones. Japan is mobilising its scientific community to do science for the war effort. This might turn out to have been a bit late in the doing. It is reported (again) that the Germans are using the Fokker G.1 “operationally.”
 
F. E. Burger, “Aircraft Suspension Systems” In our March 30th, number, we published an article by Mr. R. H. Bound, who argued in favour of the levered suspension. Mr. Burger, assistant chief engineer of Sir George Godfrey and Partners, responds by putting the case for telescopic cantilever undercarriages and makes the case for a new bearing that will address “sticking” trouble.
 
Qantas’ D.H. 86 have now flown 1.5 million miles, most of it by Aussie pilots who wish they were DC-3s.
“In Northern Waters” Our carriers attacked a coastal convoy off Norway with more Corsairs than I would expect the convoy was worth. (Two 6000 GRT, one 3000 GRT “supply ship,” four(!) AA ships.) The convoy was “virtually” annihilated.
 
“Airfield Roads and Runways” Are being made with Somerfeld Flexboard tracking. We are shown a picture of the wonder material being used to “debogg” a Stirling, so presumably Stirlings are being used as transports into and out of Normandy. It is good that they have finally found a use to which that low aspect-ratio, deep wing is actually adapted! The flexboard sounds as though it might be useful in rough country, unless it is too expensive, in which case old-fashioned corduroy will do as well.
 
 
 
 
Correspondence
 
More sour notes on the hapless optimism of the young, from back in the days of late June, when they ruled the correspondence columns. One visionary, Major J. R. Gould, does make the case for diesel-powered flight, but only in the context of poo-pooing the idea that the current generation of petrol engines will ever be commercially practicable, given the exorbitant inspection and fuel costs. I am more struck by the gentle ridicule of the bad thermodynamics of an earlier correspondent writing in favour of gunpowder-burning aeroengines. It is a little late to get “in” on the joke, which envisions flying bombs, once launched, gliding gently backwards into the launching crew on the basis of the correspondent’s efficiency calculation, but I do notice that he is late in replying because of “some minor disturbance to my personal property caused by the Hun’s jet-propelled aerial torpedo.” Somewhere in England, one A. R. Ogston has capitalised a good understanding of thermodynamics into a sufficiently comfortable living that we should seek him out and repair his domicile for him on Government-guaranteed profits!
 
Time, 31 July 1944
 
Foreign
 
“New Front” The paper suggests that the new front is the domestic one in Germany, as a result of the bomb plot against Hitler, a statement given to the press by Lieutenant General Edumund Hofmeister, captured with 41st Armoured Corps in White Russia two weeks ago, and rumours of divisions mutinying in East Prussia, and the arrest and sometimes execution of 5500 Army officers, including 34 generals.
 
“Five Miles More” The paper is discouraged by the week’s end communique from Normandy that opened with “There is nothing new to report.” The late drive on Caen is the subject of this disappointment. Given the great air and artillery barrage, and the massive drive, with Montgomery putting his tanks ahead of his infantry for the first time since Alamein, greater things were hoped. Then, five miles in, they stalled against a “murderous screen of German 88-mm guns, mortars, cleverly emplaced tanks firing like mobile pillboxes.” Isn’t the point of a pillbox that it is not mobile? The paper suggests that Montgomery might have been “over-economical” of loss.
Reggie, I might have spent my world war trying to cure condensoritis (it does not sound very courageous in retrospect, but I think that it beat being bombarded by Japanese Quick-Firers, or sniped at by Boer commandoes, as much as I recall you differing at the time), but I remember the war news quite well enough to appreciate how much the men at the Flanders or Somme front would have treasured a man who gained five miles while “over-economising” on their lives! Well, the Germans are predicting an offensive on the American front to follow the one against Caen. Let us hope it meets the paper's expectations.
 
“Fragments” The paper dismisses the German forces in the East as such and hopes for the fall of Koenigsburg, while admitting that its natural and human-built defences are strong, also for the fall of Riga. The loss of Brest-Litvosk may be expected, and that of Pskov is imminent.  “Joseph Stalin and company would no doubt find a saturnine pleasure in dictating peace terms in Brest-Litovsk.” Let us hope that the Red Army does not have to fight its way into Paris before peace returns!
 
“Close to Earth” The Red Army is victorious, and aircraft were involved! No, I am not reading the wrong paper. “Novikov, Chief of the Red Air Force” is on the cover of this number. That is, Marshal Alexandr Alexandrovich Novikov. The Russians like “tactical” planes, by which is meant small fighters and single-engined and twin-engined bombers lacking high altitude performance. As for some reason the “Hun in the Sun” does not exist in the East. Russian pilots do not get combat fatigue, for reasons that we shall omit for long enough after the end of the war against the Nazis as to make it permissible again to imply things about the basic humanity or lack therefore of Tatar stock. I like the explanation that the Germans do not have enough planes rather better.
 
“Next to the Gothic Line” We are advancing in Italy. To the Gothic Line. Ancona and Leghorn have fallen.
 
“The Worst, and Worse to Come” The worst week of “robot bombing” has ended in London, but, you guessed it, worse is to come. “The explosions sometimes thundered seconds apart as the bombs arrived in groups, like artillery salvos. Some of the things sputtered in power drives, but many drove silently for whatever was in their paths. Londoners did not know what to expect. They were warned to expect worse.” Specifically, the larger, longer-ranged V-2. One bomb fell near a US headquarters, slightly wonded four WACs. Another flew by the paper’s office window.
 
“All We Had to Tell” Theodore White accompanies a failed attempt by 151st Division to relieve Henyang. The division had no artillery. Under Ch’ien-lung Ti, a Chinese army would never lack artillery
 
“Under New Management” Saipan, that is. (Guam and Tinian as well, the latter being better suited for airfields.) The paper broadly implies other changes. Perhaps General MacArthur will command the land forces in the invasion of the Philippines, and not some lunatic Marine? Professional lunatics beat amateurs!
 
“First at St. Lo,” American troops have penetrated as far as St. Lo. Good news, except that the story frames the incident as another Pickett’s charge. I do not think we are there to stay.
 
“Crack of Doom” The paper covers the German press coverage of the bomb plot against Hitler. Various rumours involve flung grenades, Teller mines, the death of Hitler’s double, the shooting of a thousand German officers at a Bavarian concentration camp, the arrest of Field-Marshal Kesselring, the execution of General Fromm, the suicide of four hundred German officers, a naval revolt at Kiel, SS fighting pitched battles with the Army in France, 10,000 people in hiding from Gestapo retaliation. That’s a lot of hiding.
 
“Gauntlet of Hate” 57,000 German prisoners were marched through Moscow on their way to internment while Russians did their best to be correct, the crowd hushing hecklers and Pravda warning, “No heckling.” The Germans, on the other hand, marched 2000 Allied prisoners through Paris and into a picked crowd of hecklers. Or so, at least, the paper tells us.
 
“Back to the Desert” The Grand Senussi has returned to Libya after twenty years of exile. The dawning of a bright new day for Libya is well indicated by the fact that Idris visited Tobruk and el Mrassas.
 
“The Bear’s Paw” The paper is upset that the Russian press characterised Chiang’s government in negative terms.
 
 
Poles and Japanese are excitable.
 
“No Problem” Segregated Japanese-American combat units have excellent records.
 
“Last of the Line” The 5,396th and last Dauntless rolled off the line in the El Segundo Aircraft plant this week, was promptly trundled over to a time machine and sent back to 1940, where it would find some use against time-travelling Japanese attackers. The paper notes that it has set a new record. Of the 95 U.S. planes lost in the battle of the Philippine Sea (of which we will say no more, lest it be noticed that we sacked the victor), “there was not one Dauntless.” I do not believe the paper intended this the way it sounded, as it goes on to suggest that the Dauntless has had a very good loss ratio since it was withdrawn from active combat and relegated to antisubmarine patrols and training.
 
“The Spearhead Sharpened” General Holland Smith is given command of Fleet Marine Forces in the Pacific. Which is to say, a command has been found for a Marine of lieutenant general’s rank that does not involve an Army tasked with taking the Philippines (or, to give the possibility of misdirection its moment, Formosa.)
 
General William Signius Knudsen is made chief of Army Air Force Service and Materiel Command, with the shepherd of the B-29 programme, Brigadier General Kenneth B. Wolfe, as deputy. Either this means that he is not going to go back to GM, or that we should watch out for a GM-built jet turbine. If I am not too cynical.
 
“New Margins” The Army is 150,000 beyond its planned 7.7 million strength, although this will not affect Selective Service callups. In fact, the Navy is asking for 194,000 men to speed up the Pacific War.
 
Domestic
 
“The Man Who Wasn’t There” Is Roosevelt, who did not attend the Democratic Convention, for fear that Little Orphan Annie would shoot him, or perhaps because he wanted to disassociate himself with the addition of Senator Truman to the ticket in place of Henry Wallace. The Convention did at least establish that it will be running against Herbert Hoover in the upcoming election. I suspect that the Engineer would have been pleased to have received the nomination, but, in an as astonishing a turn of events as the removal of Wallace from the Democratic ticket, Dewey carried the day instead. Perhaps someone should let the Democrats know this? At the convention, keynote speaker Bob Kerr rejected the idea that nominating a man who is obviously at death’s door was a mistake, because “Shall we discard as a ‘tired old man’ 59-year-old Admiral Nimitz . . . 62-year-old Admiral Halsey. . .64 year-old General MacArthur . . . 66-year-old Admiral King . . . 64 year-old General Marshall?” So there you have it, Reggie. America has given birth to no competent soldiers or politicians since 1885.
 
As to the new Vice-President, he is one of the President’s favorites. Not as favorite as James Byrne, but the latter’s record of filibustering anti-lynching bills was fatal, especially with Wallace making an idiot of himself by fighting for the nomination on the grounds of being the last hope for liberalism within the Democratic Party, instead of retiring gracefully. That is, Sidney Hillman of the CIO was the Convention (vice-) kingmaker, at least in the world of the Chicago Tribune, which may lie not unadjacent to our own.
 
“Light Him Up” “Block gangs” of “adolescent negroes,” armed with “’switchblade’ knives and crude, home-made pistols” are terrorising the law-abiding folk of Harlem, who can no longer “walk home from a dish of ‘rice & ribs’ at the restaurant.” “Gangs with names like Ebony Dukes, Imperial Huns, Pals of Satan, Slicksters, the Mysterious Five” engage in battle. A recent affray led to a boy being shot to death –by the police, which seems ridiculously tame compared to the old Tong wars, and look at how those boys turned out. (At least the ones who refrained from jumping into the bottle.) Not that anyone ever follows the average young “gangster” into middle-aged domesticity. Where’s the newscopy in that?
 
“Strange Cargo” The shocking explosion at the munitions-handling wharf at Port Chicago, which killed 321 and left “scores of buildings” damaged, and which could very definitely be heard from here, although not by me, as I was in Portland, gets a single page of coverage. I am sure that it will all turn out to be due to feckless Coloured stevedores. 
 
“Dewey Week” The Governor sees Eric Johnston, back from Russia, and is noncommittal about seeing John L. Lewis at some point. Given that the United Mineworkers have endorsed him, this might seem churlish. The problem is that theTribune has, as well. Governor Bricker suggests that no-one has heard of Senator Truman.
 
Science, etc.
 
Glimpses of the Moon” The word for your youngest is apparently ‘astronaut,” which describes people who dream of traveling through interstellar space. I rushed to tell him this, and he corrected me crossly. In no way is the Moon in ‘interstellar’ space, he tells me. Rockets, such as the ones described in the following article, can get us to the Moon, he says, but not to another star, which is thousands, if not millions of years away at the crucial number of twelve miles per second, which is the "solar escape velocity." We apparently only need 7 to get to the Moon, as the paper notes, and your youngest assures me that this is in sight, notwithstanding the fact that American pioneer Professor Goddard has not reached 700mph. Your son points out that nothing has been heard of Goddard since the war began, and happily predicts the imminent appearance of a proper “rocket ship.” Though your eldest throws cold water with abandon, pointing out that the ‘bazooka’ is more than enough explanation for Goddard’s silence. The boy takes ill of being corrected by his half-brother, vanishes to pitch futile woo at “Miss V.C.” I cannot decide which moon he is more likely to see.
 
I'm sorry, Reggie. But your son, in despite of superficial appearances, does not follow after you in these matters, and I count that a good thing. He will be the happier for not being the Lothario he imagines himself to be, and will find happiness far younger than you did. 
 
“DDT news” The wonder insecticide, which I neglected to wonder at by reason of neglecting the 12 June number of Time entirely, is credited with clearing out the gypsy-moth plague in a 20 acre woodlot in the eastern U.S. when applied at five pound per acre. It also, the entomologists report, got rid of all the other insect pests.
 
“More Casual Confinements” Dr. Morris L. Rotstein, taking a bit of a leaf from the “hardy jungle mother who stops by the path a few moments to have her child, then catches up with the rest of the child,” now lets healthy new mothers get up on the third or fourth day after delivery and sends them home on the sixth to eighth day, thus relieving ward crowding compared with the old stay of ten to twelve. “Many other doctors, convinced that civilized women, like many highly bred animals, is usually physiologically knocked out by the birth process,” disagree.”
For future reference, Reggie, do not discuss this article, or any like it, with your daughter-out-of-law, be your tone ever so reasonable and detached.
 
Speaking of unaccountably awkward conversations, William James Sidis died this month.
 
Press
 
Senator Taft demands that more magazines be allowed to circulate at the front under the terms of his own legislation. Senator Taft is looking like a complete fool here, although admittedly this is  the paper’s take on things, and Taft is no favourite of the Luces, I understand. Also, the Neosho Mo., Miner and Mechanic will from now on charge 10 cents/line for all poetry published in its pages. “We trust that readers sending in poetry will keep this in mind.” I hope that the charge for aimless political prognostication is set commensurately.  The story of the papers’ correspondent Stoyan Pribichevich’s adventures in Jugoslavia are continued in this number.
 
Business
 
“The Hot Jobs” The war-production slump continues unabated, and the War Department is thoroughly alarmed. Artillery, heavy ammunition, electronics, heavy tires, steel plates, tanks, tank destroyers, dry cell batteries, cotton textiles, TNT and other explosives are all short. Manpower in US foundries and forges are below minimum need, “there is not a single bomber tire in the Army’s inventory,” whatever that means. There is a need for 300% more heavy shells than anticipated, there is shortage of tents in the southwest Pacific and hospital tents in Normandy. Nelson has changed tack slightly, and wants to enlist 200,000 war-industry workers, and the War Department makes it clear that “workers’ failure to sweat it out in the toughest, most thankless war-production jobs may ultimately be measured in lost American lives.” Good thing that it is not the War Department’s fault for underestimating the requirement for heavy shells! (And, really, who ever heardof such a thing before?)
 
“Harvest Brigade” U.S. farmers only agreed to plant an additional 13.8 million acres in wheat when they were guaranteed that machinery would be made to harvest it. This ws done, and now a “brigade” of self-propelled combines is far ahead of schedule. As to how the brigade works in practice, we are given the example of A. C. Ruthenbeck, “a tall, ruddy farmer from Tracy, Minnesota,” who took delivery of his combine in Enid, Oklahoma last month, began cutting 200 acre of wheat for “Farmer Fred Ash.” Cutting 5 acres an hour at 30 bushels an acre, Ruthenbeck figured that he would cut 5000 acres in a summer-long northward trek to Minnesota, ending by harvesting his own fields, I think, though the paper does not say so. In any case, given that he charges $2 to $3/ acre he stands to earn $10—15,0000 on his trek, never mind his own fields. The combine cost only $2700. It is not all profit, but let me again laugh derisively at the thought of $5000 homes.
 
“Tire Trouble” It turns out that the tire shortage is not the result of lack of rubber, but of workers and equipment to produce heavy-duty tires. One by one, the nation’s essential trucks and busses are limping into garages to find no tires to reshoe them. The civilian sector will get only 25% of the second quarter allocation in the fourth, at best.
 
Art, etc.
 
“Hudnut versus Moses” Given that talk of city planning just might end up being important to real estate developers (imagine tones of heavy sarcasm, Reggie), I am pleased to report that the fight between New York City Park Commissioner Robert Moses and assorted city planning theorists continues in an elevated sprit of alternating, polysyllabic temper tantrums.
 
G.I.s, it turns out, like musical comedies, not “tinhorn war and home-front heroics.” They prefer Betty Grable over all other women, but also strongly favour Rita Hayworth, Ginver Rogers, Lena Horne, Alice Faye, Ginny Sinims, Betty Hutton, Ingrid Bergman, Greer Garson, Bette Davis. In Britain, where they can actually see women, Hope, Crosby, tracy, Cagney, Gable, Bobart, Abbott & Costello, Rooney, Grant and Kaye also rate mention in popularity contests. “In Iceland, oddly enough, five males vie with Miss Grable.” Apparently, Washington has discovered an effective means of  reducing fraternisation with our Icelandic allies. For troops in the Indian theatre, recent favourites include all-Negro musicals, while Casablanca is preferred in the Southwest Pacific,Cover Girl in Normandy. Documentaries are not appreciated, newsreels are.
 
 
 
 
It is reported that radio now beats the papers for news scoops, and that a collection of the famed Alexander Woollcott’s letters has been published, as well as a book by John Dos Passos, which is described as a picture of a wartime America too tired by its own exertions of production and learning to appreciate the miracle that it had accomplished, but also ugly, unfinished, and in some respects fearful of the future. That is, Dos Passos tells a story about a man who once kept a hundred Coloured on his plantation but who had sold it, so that while his former tenants were currently making $4/day on construction jobs, when the boom ended, there would be no-one to take care of them. Thank you, anonymous Alabamian, but the lesson here ought to be that when a good tenant is ready to be buy, you should be ready to sell. 
 
Speaking of the inadvertently patronising, the movie version of Pearl S. Buck’s Dragon Seed is out, and should be showing in Britain soon.  I suppose that I cannot criticise Sai Wai Yuan for providing for her future, but“by one of Hollywood’s curious conventions, the Japanese in this film are, as usual, played by Chinese, while the Chinese are played by the Caucasians with their eyes painfully plastered into an Oriental oblique. The result suggests Dr. Fu Manchu and an epidemic of pinkeye.” Grandfather, were he still able to read this and insist on his status as the inspiration for the “Devil Doctor” would demand that dacoits be sent to avenge the implication that he is Japanese. Okay, well, a bitJapanese, but that was long ago, and we (almost) all share that blood.
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chblogging August 1944, I: Ancient Scandals

 
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My Dearest Reggie:
 
The trip through the Oregon country was as wonderful as ever, although somewhat trying, in that Wong Lee and I were confined in close quarters with three teen-agers with considerably less patience with sweeping coastal vistas. Nor was the impatience much lessened by the experience of the sleepy pace here in Canada. Your youngest is amazed to see the way that time has stopped since he left! Ore perhaps he merely chafes under instructions to be circumspect in looking up old friends. Word is not likely to get back to the police, never mind the FBI or Border Patrol where it is not sought, but even so, I should hate to undo the work of his "midnight rebirth," and his American life will be the easier if there is never occasion to doubt his supposed American birth. 
 
Turning to your hospitality, I can only repeat my thanks, and apologise for the burden we impose on your wife, who has retired to your summer place on Bowen Island, as I am sure she will let you know. Fortunately, a few more days (and one more newsletter), and I shall be on my way to the South Seas, while Wong Lee adopts the role of teen-ager-wrangler-in-chief and chivvies the young ones back down the coast to California. 
 
 
If I can ask one more favour, could  you discretely seek out our friend and put some questions to  him? I distinctly recall him saying, on more than one occasion, that his grandfather came to the country to work on the railroad. Nor was he above the old joke, "Ching, Chang, Chong, the Old Names make the sound of the hammers," although careful to leave his own clan off the list. While I would not put it past the Old Man to lie to us in the matter, I am confident that Grandfather would have sought his own sureties in the matter of purging the relevant  records. Yet it seems certain now that our friend's employer believes that it has in its possession documentary evidence of our friend's grandfather's date of arrival in the country and racial origins. I know that you will regard this as a footling matter, but it is important to me that when discussions turn to breaking off the relationship, we have the upper hand, in the form of an offer to address their technical concerns, and not they, in the form of a breach of the morals clause of the employment contract. (If you are wondering about the fate of your "Christmas present," Bill and David have subcontracted the matter to a Santa Clara engineering student of the utmost discretion.)
 
Speaking of investigations, and morals concerns, you are correct that the fonds that I have directed "Miss V.C." towards in the Vancouver Archives are related to Old Liu, and, of course, the Honolulu arrests cannot go unmentioned, even after 39 years, as his family's continuing attempt to ignore their ancestor would anyways suggest. Yes, these are not matters that one wishes to discuss with an eighteen-year-old girl, and, yes, her mother's opinion of me can still go lower. However, they are also not a side of life that can be practically withheld from a young lady of her generation, what with the Andrews Sisters and burlesque dancers and worse on every radio and cinema screen. Old Lieu will introduce "Miss V.C." to the specific cargo that the whalers of the old McKee "triangle trade" brought in to Nootka, and the provision that was made to place that cargo on the trail and rails to Chicago. If she does not now think of the issue of the "Prince of Maquinna," it will be because she is diverted into the larger scandal, seeing in the fonds the connection to the Chinatown arrests that the family interest so promptly suppressed. 
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And that, apart from the delicious scandal of it all, will, I imagine, bring her back to the rails and the connection with her grandfather on another line of inquiry. 
 
I suppose. Right now, she is asking for my assistance in reaching Nootka. Naught but disappointment awaits her inquiries there, as you had the good sense to move our landings to more congenial locations in anticipation of the Volstead Act, but I can hardly tell her that! 
 
As I rather expected, we have seen more of Lieutenant A. than one might have expected. His employment in Seattle seems none too onerous, and his attendance at Pearl Harbour scarcely required, as in practice if not in strict chain of command the refitting of the new flagship's radio arrangements is in other hands. Fortunately or not, it now appears that the young man will continue his remote association with it, too. That is, he will join Nimitz's family in Honolulu, rather than that of his admiral at sea, for the forthcoming campaign, with signals responsibility. It does not appear that military service is  necessarily that onerous if you choose your grandfathers adroitly. It rather makes me wonder how "Sink-Us" got his appointment!   
 
I do not ignore your inquiries about Fat Chow. We believe that he is going to reach Kashgar via Herat, and when we know more, we will let you know.
 
 
 
 

 

 
Flight, 3 August 1944
 
Leaders
 
“While the Iron is Hot”  Germany is nearly beaten, and our bombing was never going to win the war by causing the German national morale to collapse (the idea that it might is all Germany’sfault!), but this is still the time to bomb the hell out of them, not to indiscriminately kill civilians, as the German “air torpedoes” are doing, but to “display our power in a way which all civilians can see.” This will not cause German civilian morale to collapse, because it won’t, but it will. Also, something about German war production and making Herr Goebbels work harder. Perhaps he has offended the paper by stealing its sweet papoose? Oh, no, G. Geoffrey Smith!
 
“The Rocket-firing Typhoons” Normandy is a typical Montgomery battle, in that he draws the enemy in one flank and then strikes and breaks through on the other. (Such genius is like a candle, suddenly lit on the darkness of the night of all warfare before him.) Thus, it is to Montgomery’s credit that it is the Americans who have broken out, and the ‘rocket-firing Typhoons,’ in spite of also having little obviously to do with this breakout, which was largely accomplished by ‘.50-cal firing Thunderbolts,’ have actually been quite important.
 
“Civil Aviation” We are talking about talking about civil aviation! In this number, the talking about talking is by the Tory Reform Committee, Dr. Edward P. Warner, and a fellow who rejoices in the title of “Inspector of the Czechoslovak Air Force.”
 
War in the Air
 
Today we talk about Normandy and rain, signs of  German Air Force activity, the bombing of tank factories, and an attack on “Sumatra’s naval base.” I read the last first, and it sounds as though Aceh was very heavily hit. As far as I know, all of our people are lying low in Zamboanga, but with Ramadan fast approaching, I fear some may already be on the Verandah of Mecca.
 
The lead item credits to the torrential rain in Normandy the German redeployment south of Caen, which held up a major Second Army assault in spite of a heavy commitment by ‘rocket-firing Typhoons.’ It is hoped that at least the redeployment of tanks and antitank guns had a knock on effect, holding up the delivery of flying bombs to their launching platforms. German fighters have not exploited the low ceiling, but night bombers have attacked the Caen area in some force. The paper notices the 3% death rate of American wounded in Normandy, and credits this amazing achievement to “whole blood, penicillin and the sulphanomides, and the rapid evacuation from the battle front, in part using air ambulances. Bombers continue to attack oil targets, but there is the thought that tank factories may be supplanting them as priority targets. Attacks also continue on possible “rocket shell” targets, and rumours that flying bombs are dropping incendiaries are refuted. “Slaughter in Jugoslavia” covers not one ethnicity/language/sect having its revenge on another, but the destruction of 38 locomotives from the air. More work for the foundries of the North! The paper notices that “old” Stirlings have been used in attacks on V1 and perhaps V2 bombsites, but this does not indicate a shortage of heavy bombers because of an argument too obvious and conclusive to be held up to the light of day here, any unmentioned persons who might have proposed the contrary being quite wrong, and probably unpatriotic, too.
 
Here and There
 
Ranger and Fairchild are now subcontracting the Merlin, because absolutely as many Detroit shops as possible should have access to British taxpayer-subsidised Derby research and development! Sir Stafford Cripps states in a written reply to a question by Mr. Granville (Independent, Eye), that the Ministry of Aircraft Production is, in fact, producing jet aircraft. U.S. experts are studying flying bomb parts, the paper greets the news that British bombers can shoot down German fighters as a welcome refutation of the idea that only “Flying Fortresses” can do this. BOA may soon fly in South America, says American Aviation, WAAFs arrive in Cyprus. The paper finds it noteworthy that a Sikorsky YR-1B helicopter was transported to a “northern airfield” for cold weather tests as cargo in a Curtiss Commando, “kangaroo”-style. Eighty fellowships to study aviation engineering, of an average value of £600/annum have been established by ICI. The Excess Profits Tax has clearly been kind to Imperial Chemical, and a good thing, considering all the benefits to modern life that chemistry will bring.
 
 
 Colonel Frederick MacKie, of Marks, Somerset, veteran of the Indian Medical Service and the Younghusband Expedition and long-time chief medical officer of BOAC, has died at 69. Air Vice-Marshal Stevenson, Commodore of the RCAF Pacific Coast Defences, is so bored by the lack of need for actual defending that he is doing a grand tour of the Pacific war zone with his staff and anyone else who wants to come along. They will be studying the influence of climate on strategy, and also hulu dancing. Glenn Martin has developed a method to avoid the prefreezing of perishables for air transport. It involves it being really cold in aircraft flying at high altitude, and the American Association of Waist Gunners is contesting the patent.  “Canopus,” first of the Short flying boat airliners, has racked up 11,000 flying hours while covering 1,500,000 miles. It turns out that many of Britain’s small aviation firms have spent the war repairing or converting aircraft, there was a celebratory luncheon in London in honour of Bleriot’s flight, and Flight Lieutenant P. M. C. Hill, son of Air Marshal Sir Roderick Hill, was killed on a bombing mission in Italy last month at the age of 26.
 
“Two Bells: The Bell Aircraft Corporation’s Unorthodox Jet-Propelled Aircraft and Helicopters: No Combinationof the Two –Yet.” Having developed the Airacuda and Airacrobra in the past, Laurence Bell’s firm can probably be depended upon for further novelties. Chicago-based Air Tech has published “exclusive” three-view silhouettes of the Bell jet fighter, giving the paper apparent license to reprint them. Equally vague is word of the Bell helicopter, and the “yet” is presumably an indication that the paper knows more than it is allowed to say. The one actual fact in the article is that GE has allocated space to the manufacture of the “Whittle-GEC prime mover.”
 
“Indicator” discusses “Inefficient Efficiency: Killing Individual Enthusiasm: The Need for Personal Interest in Aircraft Manufacture and Operation: A New King of Incentive: Debunking the ‘Power-Plotters”
In short, I infer that Indicator continues to be biter about what I assume was his grounding, causing to lash out at the various novelties of the age. And, actually, I should restrain my comments until I have read to the end of the number, because that is not theimplicit burden of this column. The last two paragraphs are a full-throated rant against “train ‘em young” and “paper-efficiency, even with the help of psychiatrists.” Although he does have a point, in that it is much easier to “catch ‘em” at 29 than it is at 18.
 
The paper is appalled by the army-centric, parochial view of the fighting in Tunisia presented by the recent Tunisia, as issued by the Ministry of Information. Although the photographs are nice. It calls for campaign histories to be issued by the Ministry of Defence, so that the contributions of all three services can be weighed even-handedly, and no pernicious distortions of therecord allowed to creep in to the record.
 
Maurice F. Allward, “Engine Mountings” Rather in the spirit of Aviation’s multipart series on, say, the load-bearing capacity of acetate or celestial navigation comes this second article on the subject of attaching engines to aircraft. I know that this is a matter of concern, but . . . Actually, while I was prepared to denounce this article on account of insufferable boredom, the further I read, the more I sense a kindred spirit.   One of my great regrets about leaving London as I did was that I never got to see the shattered mountings of Belfast’s machinery. I do not think that the profession gave the least thought to the potential consequences of using cast-iron to tie down the machinery, even after all the mining incidents of the first war, until the moment when we were faced with a ship whose fine and modern propulsive plant was sitting on the shards of its former mounting in the hull of the ship. The pictures of the reconstructive work that I have seen scarcely do it justice.
 
So mountings are a matter of import. Aircraft, of course, have used forgings rather than castings from the beginning. Did you know that a single one of the  forgings that holds the engine of the Bf109F weighes 30lbs, with total mounting weight coming in at 146lbs, whereas the mounting in the Hurricane Mark IIC weighes but 68lbs? So that is to the credit of the British engineer. On the other hand, the wing mountings of the Mosquito’s engines  weigh 87.8lbs each. De Havilland’s excuse of being outdone by Kingston-upon-Thames is that this but allows for welded construction, which eases mass production at the expense of considerable distortion, which the firms must carefully correct for various reasons, but not least to achieve the careful aerodynamics of the plane. Or they could just disguise the bad welds with packed-in solder until the whole thing lets go on its first contact with Arctic waters! The Airacobra is worth special comment, as the engine was notoriously at the centre of mass, requiring a 10 foot flexible shaft to be run through the structure, with a central bearing. The total assembly weighed 50.7lbs, and had to be supported to prevent fuselage flexing. This was achieved by using two massive strength girders running the length of the fuselage, which prevented flexing, but also servicing, since it is hard to imagine how a field shop could possibly repair these girders if damaged by enemy action, and the girder gets in the way of access, although the legend that it took three days and a “small army” of mechanics, engineer officers and Aircraftsmen “Plonks” to remove a broken instrument from the cockpit panel is probably just a rumour. The article ends by suggesting that research into hitching a Merlin to the extension shaft bearing is ongoing, which means that it is not complete, which explains why the Merlin has not yet been placed into the P-39, or somewhat more relevantly, the P-63.
 
“No Helicopters for Canadian Bus Lines” Well, that is that, then.
 
“Were They Jet Planes?” American periodical Iron Age suggests that German fighter jets have been seen in Normandy.
 
“Studies in Recognition”
 
This week’s number covers the HawkerHenley, the failed light bomber that became a target tug back in 1938 or so,
 
 
 the Boulton Paul Defiant that was so relegated after its failure in the Battle of Britain,Miles Martinet target tug that may or may not have replaced them both in the deep obscurities of the middle years of the war (flying a more expendable Bristol Mercury engine), and yet another American advanced trainer, the Beech Kansas AT-11, because the genius of American mass production lies in its ability to concentrate production on a single type of highly efficient design, thereby reaping the benefits of the assembly line.
 
Behind the Lines
 
German military commentator Sertorius says that planes were involved. The Rumanian air transport service has been taken over by the German General Staff. A “dispirited Reichswehr colonel” tells the driver who gave him a lift from Paris to Lisbon that the flying bomb might have been  a mistake, because it diverted air force efforts form the battlefield, where the supply lines are now in such danger that the troops are running out of ammunition. The driver then ran to tell Reuters what this visitor from the ancient past had to say. General Stumpf is promoted chief of the German metropolitan air force. Hanna Reisch is said to have test flown a flying bomb. A Berlin newspaper has admitted that the Allies have air superiority.
 
“Annular or Tandem?” Words fail me, Reggie.
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Correspondence
 
E. N. Bray believes that the flying bomb should be called “the flying bomb.” “Moorhen” compares the case of railways and civil aviation to the rubber trade, somehow, in a way that proves that the railways have a place in the future of civil aviation. F. Ashley believes that RAF training will not make up the shortfall in British aviation technical training as it is too superficial, and something about the South African Air Force Association. 
 
The Economist, 5 August 1944
 
Leaders
 
“An Interim Report” The Prime Minister gave a speech to the Commons which the paper sees in the way of being an interim report, inasmuch as it is about the war, and, although you may not have noticed this, Reggie, the war has not yet been won. Oh. You had noticed it? Well, there is still the matter of the flying bombs (and possibly “rocket shells”), which have so far killed 4,737; injured 14,000; destroyed 17,000 houses; rendered another 200,000 uninhabitable; with another 600,000 damaged. The paper is now prepared to concede that this is substantial, but we have still won the war, and this bombardment cannot change that. Unless it provokes a premature combined assault in the Pas de Calais . At this point this only seems likely if the Germans can restore their front, but look how long we were held on the Somme in the last! Now, I have Mr. Janeway’s assurance that the war will go on longer than expected, and since Mr. Janeway is always wrong, it follows that we will have a  new “Hundred Days” this fall. But what if some strange fever struck Mr. Janeway that day, and he is right for once? How long can London hold?
 
“Britain and Argentina” Argentines are excitable at the head of the paper, and at great length.
 
“The Health Controversy” Doctors are critical of proposals for the National Health Service. As of course they will be, for change is always frightening. Still, I have the first-hand experience of “Cousin H.C.s’ inadvertent experiment to insulate me against taking this controversy too seriously.
 
“Land Reform in Poland” Liberated by the Red Army, governed by a pro-Soviet rump, why of course the details are up in the air, and this is worth discussing! People have, of course, criticised collectivised agriculture at great length, but Poland’s agricultural sector is primitive and unproductive now. As the paper details at length. Perhaps there are wonder crops like kudzu in the offing!
 
Notes of the Week
 
Turkey is staying out of the war more. Finland is surrendering more. The Speaker’s Conference on Electoral Reform, in the course of condemning recent Conservative practice, recommends revolutionary changes that will transform British electoral politics forever by reducing the influence of money donations. Preventing politicians from spending or receiving money to influence the process is certainly something that strikes me as something that can work! Anything that would get the Santa Clara land commissioners out of my pocket…. Mr. Jinnah and Mr. Gandhi are meeting and agreeing, or not meeting and disagreeing. The Viceroy and British Government focus on economics, and, in general, everyone caught in the snowslide that is Indian independence is holding a detached wheel in front of them so that they can pretend to be the captain.
 
“Post-War Wealth”
 
The fifth Bulletin of the Tory Reform Committee is out, and seeks to find the middle ground between those who think that we cannot afford a social welfare state and those who promise the moon and the stars. The table here offered combines the official prewar numbers, the paper’s estimate for 1943, and the Committee’s projections.
 
 
1938
1943
Postwar
(£ millions)
 
 
 
Government Expenditure
837
3840
1250
Private expenditure on consumption
4138
3270
4100
Private net investment at home
305
-95
550
Public and private net investment abroad
-55
-485
150
 
5225
6530
6050
 
The paper thinks that the third column seems to be on the low side. There is also the question of where the national income stands. The Committee sees a 1000 million increase over 1938 to £6,225 million, but this supposes a 10% increase in productivity and a fall in unemployment to 5%, and the paper deems this optimistic. Such remarkable numbers are for America, where they will lead to depression through over-production. The Government’s margin for manoeuvre has already been lost, and that the future will be bleak and bare, etc.
 
Poles, Greeks and Latins (Free French) are excitable.
 
“Bomb Damage Repairs” The paper briefly reviews the measures taken to repair bomb damage and house the displaced. A skeptical “claims” garnishes Ministerial statements that all is going as well as might be expected. Perhaps the paper has moved to taking the flying bombs seriously? It seems not. The paper appends a table to show that far more were killed and wounded in the 1940 Blitz than by the flying bomb attack (1935 killed in June ’44 compared with 22,000 in Sept-December 1940), and that the latter number is not incomparable with road fatalities –which are also up disconcertingly over the year (401 in May 1943, 632 in May 1944).  Conspicuously absent are comparisons of “dehousings,” which, I thought, was the intent of the  most effective bombing campaign ever? (Ours, if you had not guessed.)
 
American Survey
 
“Midwestern Steel Town” Our Correspondent in Indiana writes that the 36,000 steelworkers of Gary, Indiana, are “partially or wholly producing more than 80 per cent as much steel as the whole of Japan.” This is far above what the Brookings Institution estimated might be possible a few years ago, and there is no intimation that this rate can be continued indefinitely. Steel production in Gary is up 75% over WWI, but has required double the workforce, and three times the average income. That is, $31.20 for a 40 hour week, but the average workweek is 50 ½ hours, and the time-and-a-half brings in another $12.28. This, however, is the average pay, and “many” get more. I am sure that the average reader of The Economist is grateful for this explanation of the way that “averages” can work. This income has had astonishing effects. OCI notes that saving funds have grown “astonishingly,” but that there is also much evidence of “foolish spending.” “the sale of cheap things has fallen off, while the demand for high-priced apparel can hardly be met. Jewellery stores are selling amazing quantities of costume jewellery.” Some think a terrible day of reckoning is coming for those who were so extravagant as to splurge on sheets and blankets (the example being an old Coloured woman who could never have afforded such things before), and those who note that there are 43,000 paid workers in Gary, and 30,000 savings depositers in Gary banks; while the tripling of currency in circulation since 1939 points to considerable cash-hoarding, as well. OYC is impressed by the congeniality of relations between business and organised labour, but there is some tension over Coloureds moving into new neighbourhoods, especially traditional ethnic neighbourhoods occupied by Poles and Jugoslavs. The question, again, is postwar jobs.
 
IMG_0505.JPG
 
American Notes
 
“The New South” The paper is pleased that several reactionary Southern politicians have been defeated in the Democratic primaries. It is hoped that progress in race relations will endure when the war ends and unemployment revives sectional tensions. Another politician of whom the paper disapproves, this one a Republican, is in some small difficulties. Hamilton Fish has admittedly been renominated in New York, but with a reduced majority, thanks to Dewey’s intervention against him, and the paper hopes to be rid of him yet now that he has lost some of his stronghold districts.
 
“The Coal Deficit” 610 million tons of bitumen against 626 million tons targeted, and 60 million of anthracite against 65 is certainly a deficit, but even the paper will not call it a desperate one.  (It does not notice, as Time does, that the deficit in coal is less than the deficit in firewood.) Production is up to 1500 tons per man, against 1250 in 1942, compensating for loss of labour, and no rationing will be required this winter. It is curious that this would follow on the generous wage awards of the winter strikes.
 
 
 
 
“Geared to Rubber” The rubber crisis is over. It is a tyre crisis now. The Rubber Director has stated that a deficit of 6000 men is all that stands between the public having enough tyres, and none at all, and it is all the President’s fault, and certainly not that of the authorities for not giving the tyre plants sufficientn priority for capital goods.
 
The World Overseas
 
Our Accra Correspondent dwells on issues related to “Secondary Industries in West Africa.” Primary exports have not been the salvation of west Africa, and malnutrition remains a problem. (As opposed to a disgrace that dishonours Great Britain.) Something must be done, as long as it is on a very long time frame in order to avoid heavy expenses, and allow all substantial changes to await a miraculous change in the habits and mentality of native Africans. Or else we will continue to be criticised for being oppressive and patronising colonial masters. discussion in Canada continues over the relation between Canadian oil and US policy. Canadian politicians are appalled at the lack of American interest in the Canol oilfields, just because they are stranded on the wrong bank of the Mackenzie River and isolated by hundreds, if not thousands of miles of –well, you cannot say “trackless” anymore, precisely—wilderness. Perhaps if enough more good money is thrown after bad, they will come to be a paying play in the distant future!
 
briefly considered driving the new Alcan Highway back home after my flying trip to Alaska a few months ago until I had the sense to mention it to someone, who hastily disabused me of the idea that there is actually a road along the line of the highway, as opposed to the tracks of truck drivers who make the trip by force of pure will, so I can imagine the mess that was made of the "Canol pipeline" route.
 
 
IMG_0518.JPG
 
Germany at War
 
“Last Ditch” Germany may or may not fight to the…
 
The Business World
 
“Electricity Shares” London utility shares are a bargain, as investors are staying away from them for some reason. (I am making an “explosion” sound as I write, Reggie. The paper seems to think this so irrational as not to require comment.)
 
“The Entry into Industry” With the decline in the birth rate, juvenile labour is becoming increasingly hard to come by (fallen by half!), and industry must work harder to attract and secure their share of 14-year-old school leavers and to train them for semi-skilled or even skilled positions. I end with the paper’s introduction, which was a mention of the former plight of 18 and 19 year old workers, who in 1931 were a disproportionately high proportion of the unemployed due to being displaced by new waves of school leavers –“Too old at eighteen.” That does sound like a disgracefully callous way of treating the youth labour force, and a mentality that needs to be dispensed with in this new era of fewer youth and more “county colleges.”
 
Business Notes
 
“Portal Bungalows” Minister Portal’s prefab bungalows have come in for much criticism. These criticisms are dispensed with by the observation that the choice is not between good houses and prefabs, but between prefabs and no houses at all. Who would not want to move into  a house whose “shell” was made by the Pressed Steel Company? It just makes me want to burrow more deeply and comfortably into chaise and robe. You  have a beautiful house, Reggie, and it has not escaped me that its "shell" is not by "Pressed Steel." Though even such a house would probably go for a pretty penny in San Francisco if it had this view. Ah, well, perhaps British Columbia real estate values will recover after the war.
 
“Equities after the War” If all things go well, equities in select classes will go up somewhat! Encouraged by this wild optimism, I manoeuvre to move money into the British market! The new Treasury Bonds sound more promising –or would if I had any confidence that the cost of living would rise more slowly than the value of the bonds. Talk of civil aviation, the cinema, the disposal of Government factories, of needful investments in roadways and farming (more science!) round out the number. Well, except for some financial data that I discuss below. Less facetiously, I do see possibilities in the British equity markets. They will, when you see them, restore the Earl’s belief that I have tiny little electrons on the brain. Perhaps I do; but, seriously, the future belongs to something, and why not little electrons? How can you go wrong with Metropolitan Vickers, STT, GEC and Marconi? (Even the paper manages to note that electrical engineering has the strongest industrial equities.)
 
IMG_0513.JPG
 
 
Flight, 10 August 1944
 
The front cover advertisement for Power Boats celebrates a fighter squadron that lost its leader in the drink on the return flight from Holland, landed, refuelled, and flew back to search for him, leading the RAF’s Rescue Launches straight to him. A little maudlin, but better than Hawker’s unfortunate ad that uses an unmistakeable silhouette of the Prime Minister, a Saunders-Roe ad that states that the future belongs to flying boats, and an ad for a British ball bearing maker that asserts that air supremacy belongs to “us.” (The inference that it belongs to Britain being an exercise in nostalgia, I am afraid.)
 
Or is it? I notice that Blackburn celebrates its history in naval cooperation with a drawing of the Baffin, while Westland offers a drawing of the Whirlwind, and Fairey one of the Barracuda. The drift of the discussion back in the spring, if I recall correctly, is thatWestland and Blackburn have new naval cooperation types in development. These, obviously, cannot yet be the subjects of ads, hence the appearance of satisfactory old crates. So perhaps Fairey does, too?
 
 
Leaders
 
“The Official Mind” The paper has clearly had an article about the technical details of the flying bomb squelched, and is upset.
 
“Air Power in the Offensive” Bombers bombing, rocketeers rocketing, air superiority achieved, etc.
“Sublime!” The Prime Minister credits the air forces with the success of the Normandy landings. A picture of the B-24 Consolidated Liberator Vultee Liner appears. Not shown: a Lockheed Constellation taking all of its markets.
 
War in the Air
 
The paper notices that these “aircraft carriers” have been quite a hit in the Pacific, and that Admiral Sir BruceFraser has been one of our most successful fighting admirals. So his arrival in Trincomalee intimates that our aircraft carriers will soon be doing even more than they have already been doing “in concert with Admiral Nimitz.” the paper suggests that he is old for the role. Many natives of Gibraltar are returning to the island now that the danger has past. (And there is room for them to live.) The July summary of RAF activities shows that the air force was quite active. We lost 221 machines over Normandy, 475 in Italy, 10 in the Middle East, 12 in Southeast Asia. Field-Marshal Rommel has been wounded in action, a victim of air attack. Turkey is staying out of the war even more.Germany is running out of oil even more, our correspondent at SHAEF reports that 36 groups of fighter-bombers softened up the Germans before the St. Lo attack, followed by 1,508 heavies, 9 more groups of fighter-bombers, and “the medium bombers of 9th Air Force.” In total, 2,423 aircraft dropped 61,951 bombs of 4,30s tons. To assist in air-ground cooperation, “tanks were fitted with radio sets to enable the tanks to make direct requires to aircraft for specified targets to be attacked.”
It is not surprising, given their small numbers, OSHAEFC says, that the German Air Force has not been seen often over the front. What is surprising is that reconnaissance aircraft are not the exception. It is also time to note the “Locust” airborne tanks, the thirteen US Army chaplains who parachuted with the troops on D-Day, and flying nurse orderlies such as Leading Aircraftwoman Venter, who has “been doing this work since D-Day,” and so might qualify as one of the (admittedly few) women who landed in Normandy on that day who should have been there.
Also, the air defence fight over southern England is apparently a “machine war.”
 
  *
 
“The B-29” The paper has been beaten to press by Aviation. (Not that anyone would know it in this city. Misplacing my copy, I drove out to the university in its splendid setting, albeit all too recently hacked out of the forest, and had to brow-beat the Library Staff into processing most of the last six months of technical magazines through to the reading room.)
 
 
The paper’s treatment, brief as it is, is not devoid of interest. For example, Boeing pioneered a new production method (for it). The tubular spar construction of the Flying Fortress wing was replaced by a web-type made up of heavy extruded aluminum flanges. The main web spar, at 255lbs, is the largest extrusion in use in a production aircraft. The wing is heavily loaded, giving a high stalling speed and thus high takeoff and landing speed, but this is mitigated by the modern flap wizardry. Control forces are less than on the B-17 using a simple control tab system rather than “hydraulic boost,” of the kind otherwise notable in the Lockheed P-38 publicity blitz. Reading between the lines, I think it is a sore point in Seattle that they were not able to implement hydraulic power boosting in the B-29’s controls. Certainly it will make it harder for them to move into competition with the Constellation with a B-29 adaptation. The engine nacelle is as small as possible, with air inlets concentrated in a single location. Again, given that air flow is so critical to radial engine cooling, this observation may conceal some operational anxieties. (Or, since I know how much you love your gossip, Reggie, I could just talk about the “Boeing Trimotor.”)  The B-29 is said to be the most heavily tested aircraft ever, this in the sense that since it was ordered “off the drawing board,” much of the work that should have been done on a preproduction series has had to be done on the early production models, instead.
 
Here and There
 
Mr. F. J. Mortimer, CBE, FRSA, Hon. FRPS, is reported dead “as a result of shock arising from enemy action.” The Society of Licensed Aircraft Engineers is having a meeting to discuss demanding that people respect them more, and print “F.S..L.A.E” after their names in the press, possibly with an “R.,” as soon as His Majesty be so obliging. Equal priority for airliners is demanded by someone of someone. The regular Rome-Lisbon air service is reopened. The B-29 is unique in that is the first heavy bomber designed originally with a pressure cabin to go into operational service, priority being denied the Ju-86P. Glass-plastic-balsa sandwich material is stronger than balsa-metal and balsa-plywood composites, and so might be used in aircraft fuselages. Lancaster “S for Sugar” is retired after 114 missions. The death of N. M. Polikarpov is announced. Nearly 10,000 Amereican aircraft have been supplied to the Red Air Force, approximately half having flown to Russia via Alaska and Canada. Inasmuch as many of them have been P-39s and P-63s, notice the discussion of them elsewhere in this letter. 
 
It is hilarious, think some, to imagine “doodle-bug” technology applied to road transportation, as the tails would be red-hot. The United States is to be allowed extensive use of five Canadian air bases around Hudson Bay and on Baffin Island, in the hope that so many Yankee dollars will be sprinkled around that some hardworking European sectaries will be persuaded to move there, start farming, and buy land from Canadian worthies upon which to do it. Preferably before they arrive on site. James Stewart has received the Oak Leaf Cluster to his Distinguished Flying Medal. Northrop Aircraft will convert their P-61 to a post-war transport by fitting it with a new fuselage. And if that doesn’t work, they can fit the new fuselage with new engines!
 
“Fairey Barracuda: How Aircraft production Group Scheme has Enabled Schedule to be Met and Even Exceeded “Parent” and “Daughter” Firms” Hard as it is to be believed, this beflapped monstrosity actually flies off of warship decks, and is built in large numbers. I suppose that it is some consolation that it could have been worse. Remind me to tell you over sherry when we meet in person next about the little project that Brewster had on the go when I arrived in Buffalo last spring.
 
Studies in Recognition
Covers the Vultee Vanguard fighter, Mitsubishi OB-97 Bomber-Transport, Brewster Bermuida, and, just for the novelty of finally being the fastest and most modern aircraft in a grouping, the Blenheim IV.
 
Behind the Lines
 
A Hamburger newspaper predicts that the new German fighter production programme will soon eliminate our air superiority. The German Air Force has a new chief of staff, as the old one, Colonel General Gorten, tried to blow up Hitler. An air smuggler trying to fly durable goods out of Sweden to Germany was caught in Stockholm, delaying the flight. Presumably, he roused suspicions by claiming to be Napoleon and disrobing in public, or alternatively by drooling and staring vacantly. Two months and more after the flying bomb campaign began, it is either noticed that a special training course for launching crews is required, or one is begun. A Rumanian captain and two lieutenants have been court martialled and condemned to death for suggesting that Rumania surrender more. No word on whether the sentences have been carried out, however. Perhaps this is too much hypocrisy even for Bucharest? Further details of Hanna Reisch’stest flights of a V-1 are given. A woman as impervious to flying conditions as most women are to good sense.
 
Jugoslavs talk about talking about civil aviation!
 
C. H. Potts, “Civil Aircraft Engines; Liquid-Cooled or Air-Cooled: The claims of the Radial: Vital Importance of Long Overhaul Life” The life of a civil aeroengine entering service right now should be long enough that it does not have to be overhauled before it is replaced by a turbine engine, I should imagine. But Squadron Leader Potts (ret.) is here to press the claims of the radial engine, which he sets in a fairly self-evidently false comparison with the Merlin and Sabre. Specifically, he thinks these actually existing engines have far too short an overhaul life notwithstanding claimed long lives, as he believes that these do not take auxiliaries into account. On the other hand, the 3000hp American radial of which he has heard only the vaguest of details is self-evidently the future of British postwar civil aviation.
 

 
Correspondence
 
In this light, it is no surprise to see that “Spot Landing” thinks that Britain is not paying enough attention to the helicopter, and that “Realist” thinks that no-one has thought of “jet-driven crewless mail planes.” “Tenderfoot” writes Flight, under the misapprehension that it is the newsletter of the Friends, to say that it does not give the RAF enough publicity,. Mercifully, we end on a cartoon, which at least tries to be whimsical.
Septembertechblogging3.PNG
 
 (Spoiling the indistinct punchline:
 
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)
 
The Economist, 12 August 1944
 
Leaders
 
“Terms for Germany” The paper is appalled by reports that Poland will be satisfied with East Prussia and Silesia and parts of Pomerania, while parts of western Germany are annexed to its neighbours. This amounts to a “Carthaginian Peace,” and will surely lead to another war. Everyone wants to be the new Lord Keynes, Reggie.
 
“The Monetary Agreements” Even Lord Keynes. As I have already mentioned your daughter-out-of-law has taken up the brush to cover this subject.
 
“The Administration of Policy” What a delightfully paperish headline! The question of how to administer such portions of the Beveridge Report as are, in fact, adopted arises.
 
“East Prussian Bastion” It is to be supposed that the Germans will attempt to defend East Prussia against the encroaching Russians.
 
Notes of the Week
 
“The Battle of France” The paper manages –almost—to be excited by the way that “the Battle of France is speedily mounting to a climax.” I personally think that we are mistaking a retreat on the line of the Somme for a German military collapse, but we shall see.
 
“Plot and Purge” In an unexpected turn of events, the Germans are punishing the unsuccessful bomb plotters. The paper supposes that in the coming weeks and months further fissures will appear between Party and Army, that “this is in reality the beginning not the end of the German plot.”
 
“The Pace of Parliament” Is too slow? Too quick? Just right? Well, a full paragraph of empty space dealt with, and good for that! Etc. The paper seems concerned that the Planning Act will not pass. I should think that a backlog of 600,000 damaged houses might focus attention!
 
“Story of a Rising” Warsaw has risen in rebellion, because, apparently, no-one there has read their Clausewitz (the quote to which I have been directed is to the effect that every attack eventually passes its “culminating point” and goes from being irresistible to being too feeble to hold its place, or some such. I do not see the Germans counter-attacking and advancing in the East when they are in danger of losing Paris, but even so.)
 
The paper also covers provincial elections in Canada, the British Medical Association’s continuing engagement with the proposed National Health Service, and summarises a Letter to the Editor from the aforementioned Lord Keynes, which points out that the paper has entirely misconstrued his Bretton Woods press conference. The paper justifies its own neglect by pointing out that it would have been hard for its correspondents to travel all the way to the conference setting and cover the conference in person, so it was only natural that they would simply recopy the report of a correspondent that was there. Good show, OWC/ONYC! The paper would have been glad to have sent a correspondent to the conference had someone else only paid for it.
 
“American and British War Efforts”
 
 
United States
 
United Kingdom
 
 
$billion
 
£billion
 
 
1939
1943
1938
1943
Government Expenditure
16
82.7
0.84
3.84
Consumption
61.7
70.8
4.14
3.27
Private Net Investment
10.9
1.8
0.59
-0.33
Gross National Product
88.6
155.3
5.57
6.78
 
Costs of War
 
United States
 
United Kingdom
 
Resources derived from-
$billion
%
£billion
%
Increased Production
66.7
100.0
1.21
40
Reduced Consumption
-9.1
-13.6
0.87
29.0
Reduced provision for, or drafts on, capital
9.1
13.6
0.92
30.7
 
66.7
100
3.0
100
 
The increase in American GNP is equal to the increase in government expenditure. Capital only suffered to the extent that consumption increased. In Britain, however, reduced consumption and drafts on capital financed a very large part of the war effort.
 
“Target for Tomorrow” It is to be regretted that the paper ignored Fortune on “194Q,” and waited for the Federal Reserve Bulletin to do its own much grayer version of the same exercise to respond. I regret it because, in the Bulletin’s version, “194Q” becomes “V+2,” or, it supposes, 1947, when with a fall in employment from wartime highs but still well above 1939, and with a ten percent gain in productivity per head, the American GNP will reach $170 billion, which will also be the benchmark for consumption. Demand must rise to this level to sustain employment. Private consumption might be $113 billion, Government $30 billion, and this leaves $27 billion to be made up in demand for private capital goods. The paper is alarmed to see an allowance for a favourable balance of trade, with a net export of $2 billion, as this will cut into British possibilities. It does notend on a theme of gloom and doom, if only because $2 billion is a small enough proportion of $27.
 
“Inquest on Irish Exports” Rumbling from Dublin that Britain did not buy enough, and did not pay enough, for Irish farm exports out of “mixed motives,” a dangerous impression, the paper supposes. Because terrible things will happen if the Irish are mad at you!
 
Lord Keynes’ correction follows, which is to say that he said nothing about bringing the gold standard back at the Bretton Woods conference. The technical details I leave in other hands, as I have had quite enough of attempts to explain the various kinds of gold standards to me, be “Mrs. J. C.” ever so clever in her explanations and analogies.
 
American Survey
 
“Post-War Rubber Supplies”
 
There might be a shortage again by “four years after the war.” This will not help the American synthetic industry, however.
 
American Notes
 
“The Philadelphia Story” The Army has broken the Philadelphia transport strike with threat of draconian penalties if the strikers did not return to work. Among the matters resolved were an end to discrimination against Coloured workers, the forcing of whom into the ranks of the Philadelphia Transport Company having been the proximate grounds for the strike. The paper fears for race relations when peace returns.
 
“The Peace President” Is how Governor Dewey is attempting to position himself. The GOP made  a brief and half-hearted attempt to embrace “state’s rights,” as the Democrats are seen to have abandoned the cause, but the idea did not sit well with the Republican Governors, who prefer to be appalled by the New Deal but not inclined to alter what was done.
 
“The Last Round-Up” Of civilian labour for war work is ongoing. Heavy guns and ammunition, trucks, tyres, tanks, bombs, radar and construction material and tentage fabric are all caught in emerging shortages. Some new regulations will hopefully avert National Service at this late hour.
 
“They Want to be Shown” Is a play on the state motto of Missouri, from which the new President, Senator Truman, originates. Or new Vice-President, for however many years the President has in him less four. Meanwhile, the senior Senator from Missouri, Champ Clark, has also been defeated in the primary, so that both of Missouri’s new senators will be new to the chamber. The paper supposes that this shows that the voters of Missouri are coming around to the idea that the paper has been right about everything all along. Colonel McCormick, the Hearst press, and the Dies Committee think that it is the sinister influence of the CIO’s Political Action Committee that is responsible, and that they are a bunch of secret communists.
 
“Wartime Migration” Americans have migrated where the war jobs are, notably to California, which has gained 1.6 million. That’s a great many houses…
 
The Business World
 
“Freedom of the Screen” I suppose that, having inadvertently backed into the penumbra of the shadow of “show business” I should care more,but I do not. My interest is confined to the tiny little electrons that make the radios (and, I suppose, projectors) go, and not to the interests of exhibitors against studios, which is the issue here.
 
“The Future of Fish” The fishing fleet declined by about a third in the 30s, from 348,00t to 262,000, the labour force from 98,900 to 51,550. Methods went ahead while catches went down with a decline in the domestic market and attempts at self-sufficiency in Germany. It is supposed that the price of fish will be sustained in the postwar due to shortage of meat, and that landings will temporarily increase, as they did in 1919-20. In the long run, however, prosperous people eat less fish and more meat, so the industry will have to find ways to encourage consumption, perhaps by encouraging refrigeration, which will ease concerns over freshness, or by proper education of housewives. This goes for herring; the white fish trade is another matter. Here the issue is low prices due to overfishing bringing more product onto the market.
 
Business Notes
 
Talk of civil aviation and of oil, the market showing some lift on events in Normandy, worries about the threshold at which the banks (and West African gold producers) will pay the Excess Profits Tax impacting on their share prices, price management in the Lancashire cotton trade talked of.   A detailed breakdown of the British diet shows that considerably more was spent to buy considerably less in 1943 than in 1939, that spam and powdered eggs have made solid inroads into the British diet, that milk consumption is up and dairy down, mainly on the strength of declining cheese consumption. At least British eaters are better off than in occupied Europe, where starvation comes ever closer.  An increase in the women engineer’s wage rate has been negotiated.
 
 
 
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Aviation, August 1944
 
Down the Years in Aviation’s Log
 
In 1919, the paper celebrated the three year anniversary of the New York-Washington air mail route, which carried an astonishing 15,643lbs of mail every month. The Cleveland-Chicago route had just flown its 75th consecutive non-stop flight ; R-34 flies from Scotland to New York and back in 4 ½  days coming and 3 ¼ going. Fifteen years ago, German liner Bremen catapults Heinkel K2 sea-mail-plane to expedite delivery to New York. The Army takes delivery of 40 Douglas observation planes and orders another 20. Chicago Municipal Airport handles 1,429 arrivals in one week. Ten years ago, PAA’s brand new S-42 Brazilian Clipper takes off in 18 seconds with 17 tons, climbs above 15,000ft in 47 minutes. General Foulois presents a plan for a 1000 a/c purchaes in 1934, while Westbound airmail averages 42hr 32 minutes coast-to-coast.
 
Line Editorial
 
Junior’s topic for the month is “The NATIONAL DEBT and your Postwar Job.” He reminds us that victory in this war has depended on our ability to produce (fortunately, not our ability to design). “The stark reality of war finally shocked us out of our economic lethargy.” Now, however, our national debt is astronomical and growing, and the “depression years’ fear of insecurity that all but paralyzed our spirit of enterprise, our inventive genius, and our natural instinct for expansion” will reappear if we do the slightest thing ever so slightly wrong. What wrong thing might we do? Junior tells us, although it is a little difficult to tell since the pages were cut off the square and I have to guess the line-ending words in the outboard paragraphs.  (Very professional work, paper!)
 
First, the debt is  huge, equal to 4% of the national income. If spread evenly, interest payments would take “at least $80 of every workers’ income per year, the equivalent of $1.60 out of each and every weekly pay check.”
 
This doesn’t seem as frightening to me as it must be supposed to be to someone Junior must now convince that the debt does not matter because “we owe it to ourselves.” What is this legerdemain? Well, Junior points out that one person’s debt is another man’s saving, or something like that, and that Britain has enjoyed prosperity coming out of wars in which it incurred vast national debts. Postwar, much will depend on the way in which the debt is distributed, and government expenses are met from taxation. Taxes on corporate profits will check investment. This would be bad. Surtaxes on people “who do a considerable amount of saving” will require that the debt be distributed in large part among small savers. This will balance the damage done to demand for goods as between the large savers with less, and the small savers with more. If tax revenues are drawn from sales taxes and income taxes on the poorer classes, there will be a heavy impact on demand, reducing the return from investments and so discouraging them, and producing a net transfer of wealth from poor to rich. This would be bad. (Junior appears to agree with Fortune and the Federal Reserve that maintaining demand is crucial.) If the national debt is widely distributed, and the expenses of government largely met by taxes on individuals, with stiff surtaxes on the wealthy, with substantial exemptions for investments and offsets for losses, then the wealthy will invest rather than sitting on their cash, the poorer classes will have the security of substantial savings, investment will be high because demand will be high, and, in short, the ship of state will sail securely into a golden future.
 
Are we there yet? No, Junior wants to see reforms of taxation policy, and a commitment to gradually pay down the national debt during “boom” years, when people and businesses will wish to redeem government bonds to buy, respectively, capital goods and durable consumer goods. Moreoever, the era of technological expansion is not over, indeed, has scarcely begun. Junior takes this as proxy for increasing productivity, hence national income. In the Twenties, purchasing power increased 50%, in 1929—39, by less than 6%. Supposing that national income grows more slowly than in the Twenties, more quickly than in the Thirties, say by 33% from whenever the fighting stops (hopefully 1945), then by 20% a decade, the national income (in current prices) will be $175 billion in 1955, 216 billion in 1965, $275 billion in 1975. The burden of the national debt will have fallen in half, even if none of it were to be repaid! But we have to tax the wealth-producing entrepeneurs less to see this golden future.
 
Aviation Editorial
 
Leslie Neville thinks that we have to be realistic about the postwar personal plane market. This doesn’t seem unreasonable to me, as no-one has told me to be unrealistic about it. (Except for “Cousin H.C.,” with his “municipal aerodrome on every flat surface.”)
 
C. L. “Les” Morris, “Teaching the First Helicopter Pilots” It turns out that flying a triple-coupled gyroscope is hard. Put that way, I am mildly surprised that it is not impossible.
 
Frederic Flader, “The Economic Future of Aviation Technology” Mr. Flader imagines three airlines, one with 1935—45 technology, one with “immediate postwar” technology, and one with Future technology. Based on these numbers, he proposes that in the Future, air traffic volume will increase 54 times.
 
IMG_0514.JPG
 
Design Analysis Number 8
 
Hall L. Hibbard, “The Lockheed P-38 ‘Lightning’” One of the most controversial and successful fighters of ever is given an objective analysis by the engineer who is still hurt by its withdrawal from service in Europe on account of its inability to compete against less controversial but more successfuller fighters. Lockheed really has got its old plane into all the papers. I hope that all of this effort pays off for the firm, somehow. You will notice above that I finally wrapped my head around one important innovation buried in here, the hydaulically-boosted automatic "manoeuvring flaps" are the one thing that Lockheed has that Boeing has not. So notwithstanding the defensiveness of this series, I would have bought more Lockheed shares had the Constellation not made this an obvious move, such that I suspect overpricing.
 
Wellwood E. Beale, “Boeing’s new Wind Tunnel Accelerates Research” It does, you know. It even has a spruce fan blade, made by Boeing people. (Who else would make it? Also, spruce?) Mr. Beale, one suspects, is finding counting all his money a bit boring and so puts pen to paper, but not so boring that he actually works on his article.
 
Ernest G. Stout, “Takeoff Analysis for Flying Boats and Seaplanes” Stay tuned for further entries in this number, “Hydrodynamics of China Clippers,” and “The Veterinary Science of Oxcarts!”
 
John B. Scalzi, Structural Weight Engineer, Curtiss-Wright Corporation, “A Method for Calculating Weights of New Flaps” Take the weight of the competitor’s flaps, multiply by 20%. This will tell you how much money you have to pay in bribes tdo the chief of Materiel Command to get  him to buy Curtiss-Wright junk. Er, I am sorry. The article is actually some classic engineering statics, and by “classic” I mean that it is curiously absent calculus given that it features things that move. Far be it from me to point the finger –I very well remember how much I deplored the intrusion of dots and dashes into my statics, so long ago, but the taint of corporate failure really does hang over this, and I hope that Mr. Scalzi is auditioning for a better job.
 
Kenneth Campbell, Wright Aeronautical Corp, “Fan Cooling ‘Ups’ Performance, Part II” Here at the other extreme is quite a sophisticated analysis of a complicated effect, delivered self-deprecatingly on the basis that the estimates are likely to be as much as 20% out, and that the point here is to avoid preliminary analyses that are “several hundred percent out,” which I imagine to be a pointed dig at someone who seriously mistook the case. (Presumably, given the absence of any such fans on American planes as opposed to German, to the pessimistic side.) It does appear, however, that Wright was experimenting with fans before the first FW190 was captured, so that it was not entirely a response to that panic. Experiments in 1932, 1935, 1937, 1939 and 1941 are cited. I note that the Curtiss-Wright shop abandoned the aerodynamic shaping of the fan blades as “unnecessary.” Taking this to be code for “too hard,” I am getting out of Curtiss-Wright stock.
 
 
Ed. C. Powers, Combustion Engineering, “This Aircraft Heater Won’t Blow Out” We have had a solid relationship with Combustion Engineer of Toledo, and I did not even realise that they were into aircraft heaters. It is a good news that they are in the business, not because aircraft heaters are a big business to be in, but because the first cold day in August caught us out for a scenic drive on Mount Baker, and I am acutely reminded that cars can get very cold, very quickly, in spite of the hot engine ahead. That Combustion Engineering is miniaturising its expertise from ships and locomotives to airplanes promises a further step downwards to a potentially very lucrative market.
 
 
 
Herbert Chase, “Hole Piercing Proves Faster –And Cheaper” Mr. Chase is arguing with someone about something less than fascinating, but the burden of the argument suggests that Erco putting-things-through-things machines are the best ones that Glenn L. Martin uses.
 

William N. Findley, “Load Characteristics of Cellulose Acetate Plastic, Part III” Today, he looks at stress and creep. 
 
Edward E. Thorp, “Looking after those Aerols” Aerols are a brand of landing shocks which need periodic maintenance.
 
AAF Devises All-Purpose LooseningTool” It seems to be a socket screwdriver with a rachet that allows it to convert a hammer blow on the handle into torque. I almost did not mention it here so as not to spoil the surprise –I have obtained one for you and it is coming by sea, hopefully to arrive in your hands before the war is over—but I am searching for the chosen vessel that will manfacture the thing for the Army in order to invest as much in it as I am allowed.
 
 
 
 
J. A. Wahle and Hugh Gourdin, Pan American Airways“. . . It Takes a Flight Engineer” Flight engineers beat pilot and automatic control of complicated power plants because they have the “human touch.” This is not a fight you can win, gentlemen. There are plenty of power systems for you to control on the ground and at sea.
 
B. Mattson Compton, “Addendum to Graphic Solutions to Celestial Avigation” it was just a few months ago that we were promised an introduction to air navigation, and now we have an appendix, admittedly to a particular method. It seems as though plenty of people are thinking about this, but relatively few want to write about it at any length.
 
Robert I. Colin, “Robot Engine-Tutor Talks Back” No word on whether it abducts the scientist’s beautiful daughter, though.
 
Raymond L. Hoadley, “What Price Stocks Now that Cutbacks are Here” The aviation firms, which managed to be on death’s door in spite of massive profits during the peak of war production due to the excess profits tax, will do just fine in the period of contract cancellation, and Wall Street should not dump their stocks. Perhaps they’ll get business making prefabricated housing or something, and, anyway, they are very liquid.
 
Aviation News
 
The lead story is that the Civil Pilots Training programme has been extended. The second is that Robert H. Hinckley has been named director of Contract Settlement at the WPB. The F7F is in testing. Something called the “China Aircraft Corporation,” an all-Chinese manned and owned organisation, has opened shop in San Francisco. My eyes are rolling, but I will leave this to the Benevolent Association –for now.
 
 
 
 
America at War Communique No. 32
 
Aircraft are involved everywhere. The Navy, it is announced, has added 22 fleet carriers to its line up since the beginning of the war, and the Army Air Force’s B-29 is the most significant military development of the war, so far, says General Arnold. (The fall of France? D-Day? Pearl Harbor? Pff. It is the fact that we can now bomb countries “everywhere,” something that militarists (at least militarists without a home defence air force) must now take into account, since “any country can be invaded, bombed, and shot up within two days.”
 
Washington Windsock
 
The paper’s Washington correspondent reports that B-29s give the capability to call anywhere in the world within 48 hours with heavy bombardment, aerial gunnery and parachute ground forces. B-29 bombing from China will intensify as gasoline deliveries there increase, which Stubblefield seems to imagine, or at least reports, is going to happen. Remember when the submarines were sinking all those ships, and the Navy came within a whisker of giving trans-Atlantic air transport the number one priority? Stubblefield does, but we’re probably too young to recall those long gone days. Anyway, it would have been a mistake, it turns out. Stubblefield thinks that Wilson, Donald Nelson, Ted Wright, General Arnold, Admiral Ramsey, Charles S. Gorrell and others not mentioned are wonderful. Bombing helped make the invasion possible by blowing up Germany’s things. Mr. Stubblefield cannot possibly be long for his job.
 
Aviation Manufacturing
 
Since it cannot be avoided further, the lead number takes notice of the monthly aircraft production figures for May. The total is down to 8,049 in June, a drop of 9% on May, and we can no longer point to weight growth as consolation, as it is static. Navy fighters, trainers and C-46s are down in particular. Harvard Business School offers a plan to the Government for disposal of military transport assets. Essentially, if the airlines have to pay enough for them, the industry won’t collapse.
 
Transport Aviation
 
Talking about talking about international civil aviation continues. Wichita proposes a plan to have 6 air parks. The War Department will return another 15 DC-3s to the airlines, bringing the total up to 257 in civil operation, compared with 324 in May 1943. About 80% of airmail is now moving by air, alleviating the winter bottleneck. (The paper says "scheduled routes," because the fact that airmail does not always go by air is one of the Great Secrets of American aviation.)
 
Aviation Finance
 
Curtiss-Wright’s 1943 sales are up 65% over 1942, which sounds impressive until you note that Grumman is up 94%, Pan American 95%, Sperry “double,” and that both Lockheed and McDonnell have declared special dividends.
 
Aviation Abroad
 
Robot bombs are destructive but inaccurate. You don’t say! Sir Roy Fedden is reported in The Aeroplane as believing that Britons are indifferent to technological progress, civil aviation, proper technical and managerial training. The solution is to be super-enormous landplanes and flying boats, plus possibly flying wings. I am pretty sure that I have read this novel before, although there is some small progress, in that the Established Church is no longer blamed. The only part I cannot script is the ironic ending, in which Fedden gives up his place in the lifeboat so that some bright young thing, played by Veronica Lake, can be saved, while he is tragically lost along with his creation to the  iceberg, playing the part of  "Thinly Veiled Allusion." Flying icebergs, perhaps? Or, more likely, flying boats that cannot take off.
 
“Sideslips” saw a prospectus of a postwar flying wing transport with an outdoor swimming pool, is amused, as also by the American Airplanes pilot who wasn’t concerned about a 250 foot ceiling because his plane wouldn’t go that high, and the USAAF sergeant hitching a ride on a B-29 who thought that its flap was falling off. (Silly man. They burn off.) If this seems inconsequential, a third of the column is devoted to the question of “Superfortress” versus “Super Fortress.” In other hilarity, a meteorologist is a man who can look a girl in the eye and tell whether, and is amused by a “companion reporter,” who, in a visit to a high-altitude research laboratory, spent his entire time chatting up the nurse.
 
Fortune, August 1944
 
 
This month’s cover illustrates “Reconversion in Typewriters.”
 
Letters
 
Professor Charles A. Dice, who teaches Business Organization at Ohio State University, is unimpressed with Baron Keynes.
 
The Job Before Us
 
John Chamberlain, “The Five Years After 1918” Were terrible. Let’s not do that again.
 
“Liberation: An Agenda” This story has been seen elsewhere lately. Belgium has plans for after Liberation!
 
John Davenport, “Mr. Jean Monnet of Cognac” Mr. Monnet is expected to be a man of account in postwar France. Mr. Monnet is already a man of account, and not above getting his name into the papers, if the right paper comes along, and that would be the Luce press.
 
“A Dream of Reconversion” The L. C. Smith & Corona typewriter factory of Syracuse, New York, struggles to meet military orders with resources left over from wartime production of percussion primers and rifles, dreams of peacetime prosperity. It will, however, need many machine tools for reconversion back to typewriter production.
 
“Science Comes to Langages” Apparently, languages can be studied scientifically, thereby increasing the supply of military translators. Two pictures illustrate, neither with a single woman in them. My experience suggests complete humbug on that score alone, but Doctor William S. Cornyn of Yale is shown teaching an interested class how to pronounce Burmese. The same methods have been used to teach Italian, Persian, Turkish, Thai, Chinese, Hausa. Then I turn over and hear that Franz Boas and Edward Sapir are mentioned as founding members of this Linguistic Society of America. They both struck me as first-class men when I knew them (though I vaguely gather that Doctor Sapir’s methods have been said to be unsound), so I suppose that should withhold judgement. Pursuing the matter, I am almost tempted not to tell you that the young man we remember (although in truth only four years younger than we) died in 1939! I hope that this does not depress you as much as I.
 
The point that comes up here and elsewhere is that there are not nearly enough Americans with foreign language skills to meet the demand for translators. Which makes me wonder about our society. The paper tells us that there were only 50 men in American universities studying Chinese literature, making it all the harder to train enough enlisted men as Chinese interpreters. Certainly no-one is denying that this is a persistent problem, but perhaps those who see the problem could also explore the reason why it is not a sufficiently pressing problem as to require a peacetime solution. The answer, of course, is to be found no further than Chinatown, and the unspoken inference is that the problem is that there are not enough of the right kind of Chinese speakers. With that kind of attitude, there will continue to be this deficit, it seems to me.
 
“Venture Dimes” Toronto’s gold mining stock promoters are vaguely criminal, although there is considerable gold mining going on.
 
“High Vacuum” Making vacuums was apparently an old technique (stills are instanced) that was refined for war needs to make electron tubes. This even though “high vacuum physics” was “a dominating force in the laboratory.” The nature of vacuum is explained, and the reason why it is so important –becacuse electron tubes “bottle” vacuum, as it were. Though there are many other uses, and the war such much investment on the other side of matters, vacuum pumps to make all the vacuum. As is often the case in the paper’s little vignettes, there is a starring firm, National Research, about which we have heard in connection with penicillin manufacture. It will be interesting to see who, besides electron tube makers, need vacuum pumps in peacetime. 
 
John Dewey, “A Challenge to Liberal Thought” Mr. Dewey is 84 and consumed with an argument that confronts him with the accusation of being hostile to “liberal” thought.
 
“The Elegant Era” As rendered ion nostalgic watercolours, old-time railroad cars were very elegant. Apart from the noise and drafts, that is. Page over, and the question is “Passengers: Profit or Loss” Modern railway cars are homey rather than elegant, and may or may not make money depending on how fares are priced in relation to peoples’s willingness to pay. Aviation would have someone pull out dubious numbers to prove that passenger miles will increase 54 times exactly, while this paper prefers pretty pictures of ways in which trains might go faster (streamlining and smoothing out curves.) Remember “Cousin H.C.'s” old argument, that if the road is to run down one side of the field where the railway already runs down the other, there was precious little point in the roadbuilder buying all the field? Finally he is wrong!
 
Given all this, perhaps 100mph passenger trains will be possible, and that will be grand. Fourteen hours New York-Chicago! But then what would be the overhead? The paper is taking so much time to make traction and go ahead in this number that I am beginning to wonder if it is practicing to be The Economist, until I am finally reminded that passenger fares are set by the ICC. Smoke is being blown –just not at me.
 
The Farm Column
 
Ladd Haystead notes the ongoing “agricultural twilight” of the Northeast, abandoned first by wheat, then vinyards and orchards and cheesemaking. In the 1940 Census, 1 of 20 Northeastern farms counted as abandoned, compared with 1.3 of a hundred for the country as a whole. Livestock now dominates Northeastern farming by value, mostly from dairying and poultry. Haystead supposes that “mining the soil” contributed heavily to this, or the unsuitability of weather, or the application of unsuitable foreign techniques from England, or competition from other regions, or, really, anything but the cause obvious from the development of farming in other heavily populated regions. Farmers close to cities produce milk, eggs, truck vegetables, fruit and flowers because that is where the money is. Or they sell to developers. This is  how  urbanisation works, I feel like yelling at Mr. Haystead, largely because I have not had the dread conversation with Michael. Having set off down the wrong path, he arrives at the same answer as always, although since he is dealing with the Northeast, there is no long list of exotic arables  ideal for soil-rehabilitation, only good old fashioned alfalfa, timothy, clover, orchard and broom grasses, with a bright new future of exotic legumes perhaps a glimmer of laboratory promise. 
 
When he turns to a particular operation, the large Seabrook farm in New Jersey, he at least notices truck gardening. The Seabrooks also believe that the demand from frozen foods will increase dramatically, giving the vegetable grower a more national range –although that means competing with other regions of the country, the one thing that gives truck gardeners near New York, or London, or Paris there competitive advantage. Other scientific advances he specifically notes (obviously not covering New Jersey farmers) include dehydrated orange juice. Yes, well, I do not know about that one, Reggie. It’s been a good wartime staple, but, when you get right down to it, they don’t really need to put oranges as such in the product. A little limonene for flavour and a great deal of sugar will do quite as well.
 
Business at War
 
Mr. Janeway’s byline is missing in this number. We cover the unexpected boom in surgical instruments, which require a particularly high grade of steel, and which were supplied largely from Germany before the war, and the music that plays in modern factories, which is supplied by the Muzak Corporation and RCA Victor. I have been exposed to this in some industrial settings, and while there is inevitably grousing about selections, it is pleasant enough where ambient sound allows it.
 
Survey
 
 
This survey tries to assess American attitudes towards “full employment.” Given unlimited opportunities to work,  most expect far more to work than did even before the crash in ’29. Given constraints, 36% think that married women with working husbands should not be employed, or other constraints on working time, while 44.3% prefer the development of new products and new markets. 27.3% are significantly and disproportionately worried about the national debt. Although the question seems to have been formulated as an opportunity to lecture, or hector, as the  paper points out that while on the one hand that the debt is no great problem and easily repaid, a “shockingly” high proportion of respondents did not know this. People tend to underestimate the taxes that others pay overestimate the number of trade union members, have no idea what “Little Steel” is, and in general know about some things (the farm population is small) but not other things (prewar exports were small). 
 
The general point seems to be that if Depression returns, there will be great pressure on women and probably Coloureds to withdraw from the waged work force. I tend to think that will not  happen for a few years, however. That is, "V+2" or "194Q" may well be as rosy as they are pictured as being by the Luce press. The concern comes after that, when the average American has made up for the deprivations of war. Given a radio, a car, a house, a refrigerator, perhaps a television, conceivably air conditioning or a private plane, what else could he possibly want? At that point, will his concerns not turn to the future, and making up any inroads on his wartime savings against an uncertain future? And without demand, how will we maintain employment? And if employment begins to fall, will the prophecies of the scare-mongers not become self-fulfilling?
 
 
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