Lawnmower Boy

With all due respect, no. This was actually a French innovation, enshrined in the Army Law of 1926, and by 1939 had been embraced by most countries.* The conspicuous exception is the United States. I guess it pretty much says it all that the WWII tactical game of my generation was "Squad Leader," which of course started with Germans and Russians and has only tepidly embraced Americans in late expansions. Yet the American army was the only one to use squads! The distinction here is fairly minor, I understand. The original French equipe of the 1926 Law was 11 men built around a Chatellerault LMG fire team. The American "squad" was typically 13 men, including a BAR along with a few more riflemen than an equipe. The difference is that the French began with the understanding that the equipe might shrink under attrition or to conserve manpower, perhaps to as few as 7 men, because the main weapon of the infantry was now the LMG, The Americans of course understood that the squad could similarly shrink in battle. The difference as that they continued to see the BAR as a supporting the rifle. *Oh, wait. Did I just suggest that the French were good for something? Forget this whole post. Obviously the Germans invented everything awesomely warlikely superior.

the neighbourhood kids are outside again, performing unstructured play-related activities. Twenty-first century childhood: you're doing it wrong.

I've given some thought to this, and come to the conclusion that, as always, you must reason from effects. This requires close attention to the actual text. Obviously, you want to begin with a VPP. It then occurred to me that it was not enough to just consider the early volumes of Wheel of Time. After all, New Spring gives us some signinficant new insights into Jordans' imaginarium. This may not be obvious at first glance, but the fact that he chose to spend time that he could have spent finishing Wheel of Time on the novellas of New Spring is itself evidence of its importance to him. But once we confront this ucomfortable fact, a larger question arises: what in Jodran's fiction, which, we know, includes exercises in several other genres, can be safely exclude? So while magic is not an obvious component of his historical fiction, his dance criticism implises that dnacce must be an important aspect of his magic system. NOt only dnac,e I would add, but criiticism. In fact, I can point to several instances in the later vollumes of Wheel of Time In which criticism plays an important role in shaping the plot and, thus, the magic that enables it. Call this metacriticism if you will. Jordan's sensititivity to criticism, especially ill-informed Ahem. I have just been informed that the university library opens up at 10, not 11, on Saturday in the summer. That means that I really should have already begun my chores if I want to be there by opening. Nevertheless, even though it looks like I have less than 30 minutes to complete this posting, finish a chapter, and get out to Point Grey, this seems like a completely reasonable work schedule to me, and I believe that I can afford to delve deep into.... Unfortunately, Lawnmower Boy proved not to have the time to finish this post. He has no idea how to model wheel of Time magic in the Hero System. The End. (Attention, Board members: Please only consider this whole post in deciding whether to "Like" it.)

Indeed. Once we have the cheap energy, this will be how we solve all the world's problems. CVNs take us a short step along the way. The process, and an atmospheric equivalent, are even more promising. There are many places around the world with hydroelectric, wind, or solar capacity that cannot be feasibly tapped due to transmission distances (or the fact that they're on remote desert islands) that could be used to put oil back into our petroleum based logistical infrastructure. However, as I imagine how my favourite project (a plant at the abandoned hydroelectric dam at Ocean Falls) would work, I can see the advantages of the CVN project. There are pretty serious ecological implications if all the dissolved carbon dioxide in a relatively constricted body of water is extracted, I should think.

I guess that I start with the premise that if you're going to make a Star Trek series, you've got two kinds of episodes. "Arc" episodes write themselves, plot-wise. Then you just have to worry about ensemble maintenance.Characters shouldn't go against established characterisation to get the plot resolved. That just requires that you define the characters closely enough to know what they won't do. Second, you have episodic stories --your planet of the week bits. Here, you're dependent on what walks through the door, and a great deal of this is going to be highly derivative. A writer submits a script on spec. Often, the process starts with the writer grabbing Darkover Landfall and asking themselves, "How do Archer and company react when they're placed in this specific situation?" As a showrunner, it is your job to make sure that these questions are easily answered: in-universe continuity is clearly really hard. Look how often it gets screwed up! That's why it is best to have key details hard and fast: villains, politics, if you're going to have them. The Vulcan High Command has a distorted view of the teachings of Surak and represses mind melding. That's a good place to start.... The real challenge, though, is character. A consistent vision of what your character is supposed to be is a crucial support for writers, who are, obviously, not all on the same page. If you don't have that vision, the characters, especially the central figures, above all the captains, are going to be a problem. I do not think that it is much of an exaggeration to suggest that by the end of his run, Archer seemed insane --and not in a nice way, either. What's worse, the deeper the hole, the more Mary Sue the character becomes as writers try to dig him out of it. In my mind, you can understand how this came to happen by looking at the three Star Trek captains who were successes, and the two who were weak. Shatner, Brook and Stewart were able to lean on broad strokes characterisations that both they and the writers understood. From this starting point, it was easy for talented actors and good writers to synthesise a compelling individual who could deliver bad speeches well, exude sex appeal, and make viewing audiences believe that they were inspiring their crews. Mulgrew and Bakula never had that support. As a result, Kathryn Janeway ended up annoying people, while Jonathan Archer ended up repulsing them. That is not the Scott Bakula I know from other work. I took a brief look at the TV Without Pity recaps, which I read along with as I was watching Enterprise on DVD three years ago, and I was struck by the recapper's comments in the last episode, when she fulminates over just how unlikable Archer has become, and how relaxed and funny Bakula was on the first season outtakes. It really looks as though Bakula was caught in the character as much as the writers were. So how do you go back to the beginning and avoid that plunge into darkness? You start with a simple, clear instruction. You, as a writer, are asking yourself: "What would Archer do?" You don't know! Of course you don't know. The script bible says that he's "philosophical" and "thoughtful." Gah! You end up writing a script where he gazes out of his window at the stars and then gives your best interpretation of a "philosophical" speech to the bridge crew. Which, of course, doesn't sound like what many perfectly good philosophers would say in this situation. It sounds like something you'd say, because you, the writer, have probably never heard a philosophical starship captain give an improvised riff on the Vulcan non-interference doctrine as he tries to get the transporter working. So what do you write in the script bible that will help a writer trying to put this scene together? I don't know: I've never been a show runner. I do have a proposal, though. Bearing in mind who Bakula is, and the context from which he comes, I cast around for a solid, sympathetic, male lead who meets the key criteria of being competent, experienced and a leader, in spite of not having any of the obvious distancing mechanisms available to previous successful captains (Kirk: only conventionally handsome leading man; Stewart: accent, intimidating shaved head; Brook: Black.) Is there an actor/character like that? Yes! So, my touchstone question is: "ask yourself: What would the Fonz do?" Yes, the Fonz was vastly overdone, to the point of being a walking caricature after 11 seasons, but that's because he was so writable. Forget what happens after you jump the shark. First you have to get to it! Having a sympathetic, compelling character at the centre of your ensemble is a huge part of getting there. At this point, it all comes together. Lets look at a specific episode, the one that, more than anything, brings to mind to me the wasted potential of the series: Season 1's Strange New World, which I have already mentioned. (TV Without Pity, Wikipedia playing it straight.) As I have said, this episode seems to me to be based, pretty clearly, on Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover Landfall. In that novel, the survivors of a shipwrecked Earth colony ship end up on the uncharted planet of Darkover. Trying to recover from the crash and orient themselves in their strange new world, they are overtaken by the "Ghost Wind," a turn of the spring weather on Darkover that causes certain flowers to release a pollen containing a psychoactive substance that causes hallucinations, disinhibited behaviour, and, most importantly in the long run, psychic experiences. For Darkover is not uninhabited, but rather contains a small population of space elves, possibly with mysterious ancient connections to humans. Anyway, they come out, have sex with the hoomans, and, ultimately, originate the future Darkovian psychic aristocracy. And while from reading this recap, you might think that I am reaching, I note that in Strange New World as it actually develops, "rock creatures" with an affinity for Vulcans become an important plot point. The connection with what was, perhaps, Spock's most famous mind-meld can hardly be accidental. The elements here in which T'Pol has the first stirrings of her mind-melding potential get so entirely lost in the wash that I would be going out on a limb to argue that they even happened. I don't know. Were they edited out? Are they there on close reading? Probably not. Probably, they were written out, for reasons I'll explore below, that come out if you focus on Archer. i) The basic plot is: Archer makes a mistake and exposes his crew to an unsuspected danger lurking behind the facade of this benign, uninhabited world. And yet there is another level to this. It is benign. Flowers bloom: spring springs, people cut loose. T'Pol certainly gets loose, getting emotional towards the end of the episode. We do not, however, want to say that Vulcans shouldn't repress their emotions. That's part of being Vulcan. Emotional Vulcans are not good things. Instead, we have tentatively decided that Vulcans are repressing the ready, empathetic reaching out via the mind-meld that will be a universal and healthy part of Vulcan civilisation in another 150 years. Since we, the audience, know tht Vulcans do mind-melds at the drop of a hat, and that it is an intensely personal kind of sharing, why not just go with this. It is very much true to the theme of the source novel. So: dilemma: T'Pol presents Archer with rules that will prevent him from doing something that he wants to do. (Vulcan first contact doctrine calls for an extended planetary survey before you go down and look around. ARcher wants to skip right to the "Go down and see this potentially "Minshara-Class" planet.)" Writer's solution: make Archer look like a somewhat crazed, adolescent douchebag, contradicting well-established Vulcan protocols because it's the Vulcans who said it, and rubbing T'Pol's face in it. Uncool, to say the least. Alternate solution: Ask yourself: What would the Fonz do? Is the Fonz a rules follower? No! The Fonz doesn't always follow the rules. His real-life experience on the hard streets of Milwaukee have taught him, the hard way, that Officer Kirk uses to make his life harder. Others, of course, make sense. The Fonz's experience doesn't always suffice to tell him whether a rule is correct, or just another bit of authoritarian, fun-sapping nonsense but it does teach him confidence in his own ability to get out of any scrape that results from breaking a good rule whose purpose is not immediately obvious. So that's how the Fonz phrases it. He knows what he is doing. Maybe not well enough to avoid trouble, but certainly enough to get out of it. Archer being a leader, he frames this in terms of his team. "Fine. We will do a full survey. But we only have two days here, and with a crew as talented as this, there is no reason to hang around in orbit when an away team of my best people can gather all the data needed on the surface in a few hours." Down they go, to look around. At this point, (as the wind begins to spring up?), T'Pol wants to stick around. Archer lets the away team stay, letting the story unfold. Why? In the story, this does not make any sense at all. But the Fonz is a successful lady's man and teacher because he understands and respects people. In this case, he understands T'Pol's (and Trip's) responses to this beautiful planet and idyll. I propose that what is going on here is that T'Pol, her inhibitions shredded by the Ghost Wind and her psychic powers enhanced, is subconsciously probing Trip; and Trip, with no training in repressing or even recognizing this, is responding. Archer/Fonz has no way of knowing what is going on, but he intuits it, and enjoys playing matchmaker. So he steps back to see what happens. So the camping trip goes wrong, as Trip succumbs to paranoia and draws a phaser on T'Pol. On Enterprise, we have weird shenanigans involving modes of transport. The shuttlepod can't get through, and the transporter can't lift people off the planet. It is good to keep the transporter wonky and dangerous, so that it is not available as a plot crutch, but the way this is solved is to work within its limits to get a hypnospray into T'Pol's hands so that she can sedate Trip. Fine: nnfortunately, this means that the climax has T'Pol being the rational one, solving the problem by play-acting, manoeuvring to get her hands on the hypnospray, and knocking out Trip. So much for exploring the the Ghost Wind's effect on T'Pol. So what would Fonz do? He'd hit the transporter beam and make it work right. Now, I can hear you saying something along the lines of "What?" But hear me out. I "hit things and make them work" at my job all the time. Not because I'm a magical sitcom character, but because I have almost 16 years of experience, and the clerks who are having trouble are lucky to have a year's. Their tills and power streaks don't work because they're pressing the "off" instead of the "on." That is Fonzie or Archer hitting the transporter beams. Thanks to years of experience with space and with the equipment of NX-01, he can make it do stuff. Of course, he can't do everything, all the time, but that's why he's training his crew! Archer makes the transporter work, beams down himself in a gas mask, knocks Trip out, then has to knock out T'Pol, who turns out be as crazy as Trip under her facade. So, back to the ship come our bedraggled crew the next morning. Did Archer make a mistake in letting them stay down there over night? Was he wrong? What does he do about it? Give a stupid speech? What would the Fonz do? Not give a speech. Fonz does not admit to being wrong in public. It undermines confidence in his leadership. Besides, the precise thing that he is wrong about is not something that he wants to talk about in public. That doesn't mean that Fonz doesn't know when he is wrong, and when he is wrong, he learns from it, and teaches others. As the series progresses, he goes from a juvenile delinquent dropout to a high school teacher, after all. So Trip gets a bawling out. Don't be such a cracker! (The lesson about staying in orbit for 48 hours when you only have 24 hours to do an "astrobiological survey" is a non-lesson, however. Space exploration requires some risks to be taken.) The real problem is that Archer/Fonz cannot trust T'Pol in these situations as far as he thought he could. Instead of being an equal upon whom he can rely, she is one of his crew, on her own voyage of self-discovery that it is Archer/Fonz's job to facilitate. Sigh. The burden of command is heavy indeed. Unfortunately, Archer/Fonz doesn't know Vulcans well enough to know what is wrong with T'Pol. Trip can be handled with a good old fashioned "Give your head a shake!" T'Pol, though... So Arthur/Fonz starts with his original intuition, that T'Pol engineered the sleepaway to spend more time with Trip. If that is sound, it means that T'Pol is acting in a most un-Vulcan manner.This shouldn't be surprising, since drugs were involved, but, in vino veritas. When Fonz has a book with the answers in it, Fonz reads that book. So we close with a last scene, with Archer cracking open The Big Book of Surak and looking for answers. In this rewrite, I've tried to bring out how having a clear character touchstone can improve the writing of the Archer character, underline how to do "philosophical captain," and set up some plotlines that will lead through the P'Jem episodes right through to the fourth season, allowing Archer to earn the right to carry Surak's katra, hopefully without being a Mighty Whitey. (Mainly, because, in the end, he doesn't reason his way to the correct interpretation of Surak. The Sybarrites have already been done that. His reading just helps him realise that they are right.)

See, I'm inclined to disagree. They took a tentative step or two in the direction of the Captain-philosopher, and then backed off in favour of a guy who gave lots of speeches that are meant to sound philosophical, but which were actually sanctimonious carp, making Archer's character seem even more unpleasant when the bendy-twisty-reversey plots required him to be a hypocrite. Actual philosophers in the real world do not give lots of speeches. They like to drink beer, hang out, and watch reruns of STNG. They even glare at you if you ask whether it was actually possible for Data to "have no emotions." The only guy who actually talks philosophy is a Humite goober who is clearly not on the same level as everybody else. (True story, as you might guess.) So what does an actual philosopher, who has been out there and encountered stuff and is going to be the ship's Dad look like? One word for you: the Fonz. Er, two words. Oh, sure, he's no Arthur Fonzarelli directly. He uses big words, he doesn't have a motorcycle... But I'm sure that he has a leather jacket, which he wears on ship, and to hell with the uniform dress code, and, no, that doesn't mean that you can break the dress code, too, Trip. And he has that copy of Surak's teachings that T'Pol gave him, which he is reading slowly, and carefully. (One of the things I'd establish about his backstory is that his almighty grandmother was a philosophy prof, who will give anyone who talks trash about Vulcans the fisheye, from childhood memories of a Sybarrite Vulcan doctor in her DP camp.) A heckuva lot more carefully than any modern Vulcan ever has, because that's the thing with religious teachings handed down from the ancients. Sometimes, they're not read carefully enough. At some point, Archer is going to tell T'Pol what is really up with the Sybarrites. At least as far as he knows, which happens to be a lot. But not 'till she's ready.

Archer was a pretty big problem, I agree --one that can't be laid to Bakula's feet. They just simply had a problem writing the characters. Mayweather was a problem, which was tragic, because he was also the connection to the Spacers, who ought to have been a bottomless well of stories. I have no complaints about Hoshi, and Trinneer did fine with Trip, and by the end I was excited about the direction they were taking his interspecies romance --not the only person in that boat, to be sure, and the last vision of him in the follow-on novels as a Vulcan patriarch is heartwarming. Reed was a disaster, I agree. Without strong direction, the show tended to be blown in the direction of that week's writers, meaning that the character's hook is key. And the prissy Englishman is not a good hook when he does not have reason to impose his character. Now, if the whole "Warriors Three" thing that they occasionally tried to do with Reed, Trip and Mayweather had worked, he would have played off the other two just fine. But it didn't, and he didn't. The Fourth season inspiration of having him as the Section 31 agent on the ship was a great redirection of the character --one that did not have time to gel. The captain, though, is the key problem. I agree with Vondy that the first seasons of TNG were weak. What saved it was Patrick Stewart as Jean Luc Picard, and, again, it is the hook factor that I want to focus on. Stewart could do the "stiff upper lips Royal Navy captain" thing in his sleep, so stories that called for him to do that thing just sang. More than that, TNG established that the Captain was pretty much the key role, and showed how to do that. If the scripts are going to come walking off the street, you want to inhabit a stereotypical role and make it your own. Once Avery Brooke was allowed to play Sisko as Hawk, DS9 was set. Everyone knows how to write the tough, streetwise Black sidekick, and, paradoxically, he worked even better when he wasn't a sidekick. You can see this idea working on TOS even without deliberate calculation. Kirk was the centre of a typcial Western ensemble. He knew how to do that, the writers knew how to write for it, every member of his cast had a counterpart in a classic Gunsmoke story, and, as a result, the science fictional setting was liberating rather than constraining. But Archer --who was he? The story did not have a template for him, and the writers never found one. (So too Janeway.) In my opinion, they should have fleshed out the character right to start with. Not just the backstory with Cochrane and his dad; not just the dog, although Porthos was a huge step in the right direction. I have some ideas about what they should have done, but the Time Patrol won't let me go back and reboot the series. Something about starting World War III EARLY with space Nazis?

"Assume"? We've pretty much gone to not staffing customer service at all. Which understandably upsets people, who keep trying to go up to the counter in order to be customer served. I can see their point (unless they're trying to return a $4.99 item. Suck it up, people!) But, come about 9PM, when I'm filling the merchandising ends across from the station, people will walk up to me and ask if I can get them cigarettes from behind Customer Service. Yes, I th ink yes I can. And so can the two cashiers standing at their tills reading Archie digests. Which you should know, dear customer, on account of the "Please Use Next Checkstand" signs festooning the desk. Important lesson: someone who needs to buy cigarettes at a strip mall grocery store at 9PM is likely to have some ...issues.

...I was just going to like this when I remembered that the vendor won't even let us have the keys to the DVD rental machine at work, so it's likely that we wouldn't get controls of the ATM turret, either. ....And it's right next to Customer Service, too!

This is my new religion.

Champions Worldwide gives us a couple of Batman homages. Germany's Der Bogenschutze even has an "arrowcave," while Saudi Arabia's Caracale (I think? I'd have to walk all the way across my apartment to get my book!) is named for his knife. In my CU fanfic (attention shutting down ...now), I play with the idea that it is Batman who is the homage. DC Comics models the original Batman on various pulp-era masked adventurers, and Bob Kane, who was never inclined to work for a living would go out and meet with shady figures and take notes on the stories they told him. (Then pass the beer-soaked cocktail napkins to Bill Finger and say, "Here, write this up.") Once they got tired of pulling Kane's leg, they recognise that the comic book is a great way of getting a sanitised version of their story in front of the public. Are you wondering why the Scarlet Archer is always fighting Oriental assassins? Well, without getting specific (libel action, compromised secret identity), there's someone out there like Ra's al Ghul.....

We like her for her personality.

There was just so much potential in that show. Let's look at the first season: The pilot features a Klingon warrior being set loose on Earth. He is promptly shot by a Kansas farmer. (No doubt acting out the post-apocalyptic stresses inflicted on his parents!) This turns out to be a scheme to start trouble between Earth and the Klingon Empire. Apart from the intended, unnecessary "temporal cold war" arc, this works pretty well. Earth has to rush NX-01 into service so it can go find the culprits and apologise to the Klingons. I would have developed the scenario a little differently from the writers, and I certainly would not have put the Klingon homeworld in easy range, but, you know, details. Visiting the Kingon homeworld is something to save for Season 5 sweeps, if you ask me. Then we have a scary stuff in space encounter. Again the execution wasn't up to the concept, but it didn't fall that far short. Then we have the "Ghost Wind" episode, which is what I want to focus on. Just to explain, the Ghost Wind is a plot device from Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels. It is the pollen season of a weird, unearthly plant from the weird, unearthly planet of Darkover. Every now and then in the spring, conditions are just right for a mass pollen release. Humans are affected; but instead of getting plugged sinuses, their latent psychic powers are stimulated. The result is a mass psychedelic craziness that works the same way that hippies used to think an acid party worked. Everyone gets freaky, there's lots of sex, a little paranoid violence, a little mindmelding. Now, in the context of the episode, the Enterprise has run into what is described as a "Minshara-class" planet. A review linked to the Wikipedia article reveals that I'm not the only fan who squeed when the classic "M-Class planet" was revealed to be Vulcan-derived terminology. (Another squee moment comes later in the episode, when they transport a casualty aboard ship, and a semi-malfunctioning transporter nearly kills him, confirming that the transporter is going to continue to be an unreliable and potentially lethal technology that won't be available as an obnoxious deus ex machina.) Captain Archer decides that since this is the first inhabitable planet that they've run into, they're going to go down and look around. And by that he means, "have a picnic." "Planets aren't picnics," says Vulcan Science Officer T'Pol, "Please show a little sense, you sophomoric goof!" Only she's a diplomat, so she phrases it as something like, "Highly illogical, Captain." So off they go. The metaplot is the cliched one that, of course, that the planet is, in fact, dangerous. Because of the Ghost Wind. Only no sex, please, because we are Broadcast standards-friendly. But never mind the metaplot, because look at the raw material we have to work with here. i) Humans are awfully distrustful of Vulcan motives, and of their Vulcan High Command-imposed Vulcan shipmate. Now there's a drug in the air to make them paranoid! And this, to be fair, is well and truly developed. ii) T'Pol is a pretty, pretty alien woman-type person. In a dark, post-apocalyptic future, there is only romantic tension! Unfortunately, the writers have decided to have an act-off between Trineer and Bakula to decide who is worthy of the toothsome T'Pol, and, given that, decide not to do anything with the sex stuff that is right there in the source material they are ripping off homaging. Oh, sure, they're way too high minded for that kind of stuff. We'll have to wait for just episodes and episodes for a tank-topped T'Pol to slather the ointment on Trineer's buff body in the uhm, err, "decontamination chamber." iii) Vulcans are psychic, right? They can mind-meld. Humans are potentially psychic, too, in this imaginarium. Although it might be that the only established way of developing this is by running them into the edge of the Galaxy. It will eventually be decided that the Vulcan mind-meld is the Official Metaphor For Teh Gayness in this series, so that T'Pol's development of mind-melding capability is a source of considerable emotional distress for her. The Vulcan High Command, in fact, officially oppresses the mind melders. This stuff was worked out as early as Episode 17, and even if it had not been written yet, which I doubt, it would not have cost the writers one iota to have T'Pol develop an unwitting, subconscious mind-meldy thing with one of the humans. To be precise, with Trineer, because I have my "Trip-T'Pol Official Shipper" badge right here. What a great way that would have been to develop Trip's paranoia and T'Pol's prejudice against the primitive, uninhibited Earthlings. Again, this is right in the source material! In fact, I can't believe that the writers didn't intend to do exactly this, given where their material is coming from. I suspect that a rewrite blanderised this stuff out. iv) Beyond that, Captain Archer's "Let's have a picnic" thing seems a little undermotivated. But here's the thing: this season has one excellent and a couple of passable space-horror episodes. The last third of the season turns into a mini-arc with Enterprise on its way to the pleasure planet of Rissa for desperately needed shore leave. Inserting this episode before the beginning of that arc would have turned somewhat inexplicable behaviour into evidence that the stress is getting to Archer. As, in real life, it would. All in all, an excellent way of moving a good overarching plot (humans and Vulcans becoming more self aware, moving towards the fall of the High Command) forward. All of that is there, in the source material, or in the first season as eventually shown. Why not put it in the episode?

Okay then. You can see that I've spent more time than I should thinking about how to "fix" Enterprise and fanwank the Eugenics War. (I also note that I'm completely unoriginal. D'oh!) So start with that foundation. Timeline: 2049: World War III starts. 2054--2079 "Atomic horror." 2063: First Contact 2151: Launch of NX-01 Enterprise. 2265: First episode of TOS. For a person living in 2151, the beginning of WWIII is as distant as the beginning of World War I. Many people, notably Captain Archer, knew people who were alive in 2049. The grandparents, or even parents, of most older people had personal experiences of it. World War III was a brutal conflict, lasting four years and terminated by a nuclear exchange. It killed 600 million people, presumably including casualties due to conventional fighting, disease, famine, and the usual. This relatively low(!) figure, plus the lack of a complete ecological collapse, suggests that the final nuclear exchange was a gentle exchange of love taps compared with the common Twentieth Century vision of the final apocalypse, consonant with the use of "minimum deterrent" arsenals. he end of the era of "atomic horror" is 76 years in the past, just a little longer ago than the end of WWII is for us today. Anyone over 80 has at least some memory of it. Anyone over 60, so including most senior policy makers, have parents who lived through it. Only very young children do not have grandparents who remember it. People who experienced the atomic horror were probably traumatised by it. It was horrible (it's in the name!) and would have been far less confident of it ending than they were of the end of the Great Depression, too. It also seems to have been far more severe. First Contact establishes the revival of a Western-style milieu (admittedly in Montana, but still) as of 2063, while the reconstructed court scene in Encounter at Far Point is very much of the Road Warrior aesthetic. It is in this general period that "Colonel Green" conducts a genocidal war against ...somebody. Enterprise established that the Greenites were purging genetic mutants, presumably due to radiation, and that their activities continued into the post-horror age. Enterprise also establishes that Earth militaries are still active in the immediate past of the launch of NX-01. Global security is not an accepted fact of life in 2151 --although the concern that has kept the United Kingdom in the nuclear submarine business and the United States(?) in Special Forces might be little more than nostalgia at this point. The Greenite/nuclear submarine thing leads me to propose that the era of reconstruction that began in 2079 was anything but instantaneous. For the people who lived through it, the privations of the post-atomic era, which would have included famine and disease unimaginable to us today, never mind people living in 2049, would have marked them deeply. I have suggested that the era of the "horror" was long enough for people to revert to a pre-modern demographic pattern (seven live births per woman, etc). The result of this would have been the typical "age bulge" expansion of the population after 2079 due to the rapidly rising average age of death. But I think that the lag in the transition from "pre-modern" to "modern" birth rates would have been longer. In many ways, the era immediately after 2079 would have been one of exhilarating prosperity and rapid expansion in the standard of living. More like the 1950s than the 1880s, and I am proposing a Baby Boom. Given the "gradual" onset of the new era, I am going to pull it out of my ass that this "boom" was delayed long enough that the NX-01 era has a Sixties-on-steroids vibe. So: theme music: Instrumental options Since it's not like I'm going to compose something for you, I shall now proceed to lift stuff direct from Youtube Traditional: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=westenra+shenandoah Or Folk Rock (the revival of folk rock in the 2140s was clearly all about the dance beat) Schmaltz Rock Oh what the heck

Modest proposal: the timeline actually happened that way. The big issue here is "the Eugenics War," which killed millions of people in the late 1990s, and led to the exile in space of a group of genetically modified superpeople in a ship called the Botany Bay.To be honest, I don't remember that. Maybe I was too wrapped up in the Lewinski scandal? More likely, there was a cover up.Clearly this was a big coverup, given that they (there's always a "they" in conspiracy theories) managed to reattributed millions of deaths to other causes. Apart from modifying 20 million death certificates to read "heart failure" instead of "blown up real good fighting the Battle of Angola-6,"* it's hard to imagine how that could have happened. Heck, the only outsized, single cause of death that I can think of off hand in the 1990s is AIDS. So let's go with that. The Eugenics War was a covert war; the deaths referred to are from AIDS. AIDS is a war plague, intended to kill off people for, uhm, eugenics reasons. Presumably the fact that it mostly killed gay men is incidental to its actual targeting, intended to obscure the fact that it is aimed at a small group of people with certain genes who are ultra-susceptible to it. So who is fighting? Khan's escape implies extra-terrestrial involvement, unless one or the other of our Illuminati-light groups has the werewithal to build a spaceship on the side. Two factions of extraterrestrials, fighting through proxies, are attempting to alter the future development of the human species. Who? Since we don't want to multiply entities unnecessarily, we want to start with known early contact era aliens. Vulcans are the pretty obvious candidates. There's even already a eugenics component here. Vulcans and humans can interbreed, and one known outcome of a genetic project combining human and Vulcan hereditary factors is an actually existing superhuman. Clearly the Vulcans, even given a secretly-Romulan-influenced Vulcan High Command (a plot element of Enterprise that I actually thought worked quite well), are not going to be down with this as an official policy. On the other hand, Vulcan society is as big and complex as any other, presumably, and another episode of Enterprise introduced us to an ancient Vulcan monastery on an undeveloped planet. (It would have been a perfect place for it to turn out that Sarek's space-soul was hidden away, but the writers blew that one.) Two other Vulcan factions --monks, corporations, renegade university departments, small RPG publishing houses, you take your pick-- have been manipulating the course of events on Earth in pursuit of their agenda. Eventually, they are defeated by a heroic, ragtag band of human rebels (rebels against what is not determined, but all ragtag bands are rebels) with some Vulcan assistance, perhaps, and the last remaining Human-Vulcan hybridish superhumans escape on a spare spaceship, renamed Botany Bay. None the wiser, a larger human society proceeds on its merry way to a mid-21st Century nuclear apocalypse, right at the threshold of warp drive, as it happens. No wonder, given the tragic prehistory of human-Vulcan contact, that a grief-stricken Vulcan society intervenes on Earth as soon as the development of warp drive authorises it per the Vulcan version of the Prime Directive. None of this, of course, prevents human society from "living rough" for a couple of generations. Stripped of many of the more refined comforts of advanced 21st century technology, human society sees something of a retrograde movement on the social justice front. Racism is not really revived, although there is some manifestation of xenophobia in the context of widespread, sub-nuclear national wars, but gender equality takes backwards steps, mostly invisible to contemporaries, who think that they are quite advanced on this front. As a historian of popular prejudice will be aware, from Victorian times down to the present, smug men have been congratulating themselves on how "advanced" their views on the "Woman Question" are compared with previous eras. "Now, could you please freshen my coffee, Yeoman Rand? That's a good girl." Meanwhile, living rough implies that the birthrate begins to climb back towards pre-modern levels, so that by Contact+88, Earth is just coming out of a renewed "population explosion." Earth's population is actually lower than it was in 2014, but Mars and the Moon have been heavily populated. And so we are moving back towards the society seen in +88 and even +150. Skewing young compared with our current population, rough, relatively unreflective on many social issues, aggressively liberal and confrontational on values issues, chafing at Vulcan "restraint," and with the secret of the genetic potential of a widespread human-Vulcan hybridisation hanging over the future of the two species, and, perhaps, the galaxy. My two cents. *Bonus Ron Goulart-inspired near-future post-apocalyptic reference!

Reasoning from effect means reasoning from what the power accomplishes. Consider the limiting case of Transforming someone into anything. Transforming someone into someone dead is the point of attack powers. Therefore, a Transform that makes someone dead should cost as much as an attack that can kill that person. (Allowing for different defences being in play.) If we visualise a more flexible power that can also render the target combat ineffective (Entangle), and so on, we can see that this NPC will be very expensive, and probably benefit from a VPP. Or you can follow the common suggestion for an NPC, and use Extra-Dimensional Movement, Usable on Others: to go to an other universe where the effects of the change apply. Note that we are talking about power effect, still, not special effect. Using EDM in this way does not commit you to having a multiverse. Clearly it is an utter, blatant bit of munchkining to allow a PC to have this power, but it does allow you to write up the NPC. One and done! Whether he'll be as much fun to use as you think is another question entirely.

Postblogging Technology, May 1944, I: Pent Up 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 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 I 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. 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? 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. 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. 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. 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. “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, I 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 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.

Rented Thor: The Dark World. Takeaways: i) it was okay. ii) Natalie Portman sure is good looking! iii) Darcy needs her own movie.

Hilarity was not the word over at Customer Relations, still reeling from the pioneering Denver orchardist's order for hydrological equipment. Cut off a head and, oh, cripes, are you sh*ting me?

Another thing you can do is tailor your build to an earlier part of She-Hulk's career. Body Switching is an enormously expensive power, for example, and, as you say, she hardly ever uses it. Just make her a bog-standard brick and 500 points will be far more than enough for garnish.

"Hotshot pilots," Marvel-style: -Iron Man and War Machine; Falcon and Nighthawk; -Star-Lord, before he lost Ship; -Corsair (and the Starjammers); -Darkhawk; -Rob Takiuchi (yes, I had to look that up) and Red Ronin; -U.S. One; -Razorback, at various points. .... and, of course, Stilt-Man.

If you're from anywhere. Mustard, relish, onions. Other people like other things, and other people are wrong.

You'll be disappointed, I suspect. I have some plans, but I've reserved the ambition for a D-Day series on my blog that plays it a little straighter.

Concerned Person: "You better give me those keys. You're in no shape to drive home." Raging Alcoholic*: "Why? Are you suggesting that I'm drunk? That I have a drinking problem? Because if you do, you're out of my life forever. Not that I'm going to say that, just think it real hard. You get what I'm sending?" Concerned Person: "Uhm, yeah. I get it. In fact, now that I understand that we can never have a relationship/friendship/family bond if I challenge your dependency, I will never again imply that you have a drinking problem." Raging Alcoholic: "Right on!" Concerned Person: "What?" Raging Alcoholic: "Never mind, just agreeing with the big-arsed thought balloon hanging over your head. You know, the one that answered mine? Never mind. Point is, you were going to say that I shouldn't drive home? Why? Hunh, why? What you got?" Concerned Person: "Uhm, you're half naked? Because you're wearing your pants over your head?" Raging Alcoholic: "Oh, so this is about my fashion sense, is it? You can't help yourself, can you? You see one person with better style, and you have to let your jealousy crush me and hold me back. It's all about your insecurities, isn't it?" Concerned Person: "I, uhm, I no. It's...they might slide down over your head and get in your eyes." Raging Alcoholic:" Oh, now you don't think I can drive? Is that it? Just because I'm a [something] means that I can't drive? Can't be an adult? You'll take care of me, put me to bed, tuck me in, then go do adult things?" Concerned Person: "Well, if it means you don't drive home tonight, then..." Raging Alcoholic: "You know what you need to do? You and your kind need to apologise for your prejudice against all [somethings]." Concerned Person: "Please don't say that." Raging Alcoholic: "Oh, now suddenly I don't have free speech any more? I've said something un-PC that hurt your tender feelings and now you're bringing down the hammer? Well, this is a democracy, bud! Get over your butthurt!" Concerned Person: "You know what? I'm just going to go be over there now." Raging Alcoholic: "See, this is why we can't have a debate over the issues! No-one will engage in rational discourse about the important things! You all suck! Now, where's my keys?" *The director will consider other castings with rewrite. Cf. "Raging Meth-head, "Raging Narcissist," etc.

Techblogging April 1944, II: He Is Risen 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. 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" I am not sure what there is to criticise here, for if there were a single plane that I 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? "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. "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. "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. The Earl of Lonsdale has died, far indebted and much travelled. 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. "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 Coronado, BV 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. -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. 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.