This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
United States............................................................................................................................... 734
Decontamination for Bikini Craft—Rocket Tests at Pt. Mugu— Holdout Japs on Peleliu—Joint Exercises—Leyte sails—No Atom Rockets Soon—All Army Divisions Should Move by Air—Navy Gives Vaccine.
Great Britain...................................................................................... '......................................... 739
Helgoland Razed—War spite Aground—Navy Discussed in Parliament —Home Fleet Exercises—Soviets Visit.
Atomic Development—Take Over LST’s—Admiral to Die.
Italy—Belgium
XHRP-1 Helicopter—XB46—Swedish Jets—XF2R-1 and Review of Fighter Jets—Ejection Capsule—British Rocket Tests.
Merchant Marine......................................................................................................................... 755
LST’s Run to Venezuela—Alcoa Sailings—First U. S. Gas Turbine Ship—Humidity Control—Lighthouse Radar Beacon—Decca for New York Harbor.
Miscellaneous............................................................................................................................... 758
Who’s Who in Atomic Race—World Police Force—Salvation Army.
733
UNITED STATES
Navy Can’t Find Decontaminant for Bikini Craft
New York Herald Tribune, April 7, by James Minifie.—After nine months of intensive research, Navy scientists have been unable to find a sufficiently powerful decontaminating agent to render vessels used in last July’s atom-bomb tests at Bikini safe from radio-activity, it was revealed today.
A score of ships are still so radio-active that they cannot be manned, nor can they be broken up for scrap for fear that dangerous radio-active metal would find its way into even more diverse channels. The reason is that upwards of fifty fission products may be present aboard them, and no decontaminant has yet been found to deal with all of these products.
“If we had such a decontaminant, we probably would announce it for the safety of the public, without regard to security,” said Rear Admiral William S. Parsons, Navy director of atomic defense.
The “hot” ships are to be kept by the Navy as objects of “continuing study” for an indefinite period. Some already are in quarantine at continental ports on the Pacific Coast, while others are at Pearl Harbor and Pacific bases.
The New York in Hawaii
The destroyer Hughes and the cruiser Pensacola will be towed to Bremerton, Wash., for study. The submarines Skipjack and Skate are already at Mare Island, San Francisco. The battleship New York is at Pearl Harbor, and the Nevada will soon be brought there. The attack transports Crittenden and Gasconade and the carrier Independence are due to go to Hunter’s Point, San Francisco. They are interesting both from the mechanical and radiological viewpoint. There are, in addition, a number of attack transports at Kwajalein which are interesting principally from the radiological standpoint. The destroyers Mayrant, Mugford, Rhind and Stack are also in this category.
The story of the Navy’s continuing work on these vessels was told to this reporter by Admiral Parsons.
The radiant activity of these vessels differs. But naval authorities would be unwilling to allow men aboard any of them for any length of time, quite as much for what is not known about them as for what is known. In an emergency some of them might be manned without regard for the consequences; it might be no more dangerous than many a routine war-time job. But in times of peace these ships are too “hot” to take chances with.
Navy is Cautious
The Navy is establishing a standard of safety on the cautious side: only one-tenth of a roentgen a day. (A roentgen is used in physics as an international unit to measure the quantity of X-rays.) A Geiger counter taken into the cockpit of a plane would register more than this from the radium paint on the dials of the instruments. But Navy officials stress that there is danger not only from the gamma rays given off by radioactive fission products, but there is also an “alpha-ray hazard” in the possibility of radio-active dust being absorbed into the lungs or stomach.
All the radio-active contamination was suffered as a result of the “Baker” test, in which the bomb was exploded below the surface of the water. The great column of water which was thrown up and then fell on the ships, either as rain or fog, carried the lethal fission products with it and sprayed them all over the vessels to leeward of the burst.
The earlier test, in which the explosion was in the air, carried the fission products up into the stratosphere.
The contamination, therefore, is a surface matter and not within the material of the ships itself. But it represents a tremendous problem because it is spread over the entire exposed surface of the ship. And upward of fifty fission products may be present. The problem is to find chemicals which will deal with all of them. Even if such a panacea were available, the difficulties of applying it to every nook and cranny are overwhelming.
Admiral Parsons illustrated the difference between the contamination effected by the air burst and the water burst by recalling that the day after “Able” test—-the overwater burst—it was safe to swim in the lagoon but that it was not safe to swim there a month after the “Baker” test. Most of this contamination, however, appeared to come from a film of radio-active oil. There was no sizable amount of contamination on the beaches themselves, as the main cloud did not go over the island. From the viewpoint of military information it might have been “interesting” if it had, Admiral Parsons agreed.
There is still no accurate knowledge of what would happen if such a bomb were exploded in the ground, although it is conceivable that radio-active dust and fragments might be carried hundreds of miles down-wind, much as happens in volcanic eruptions.
Until the ships have been decontaminated they will not be broken up for sale as scrap, Admiral Parsons revealed. Melting them down would only carry the radio-active products from the outside into the body of the resulting ingots, since they would not be affected by the heat of the blast furnacehaving been formed in a glow of millions of degrees they would not be affected much by a couple of thousand degrees. Such radioactive steel might be dangerous, and would certainly be disturbing to the users.
The Navy is reluctant to say how much longer the ships will be “hot.” There are too many unknowns. But they are expected still to be of “continuing interest” in a year or eighteen months’ time.
Rocket Tests Made on a Pacific Beach
New York Times, April 19, by Gladwin Hill from Point Mugu, Calif.—This 5,000- acre promontory recently frequented by artists sketching the quaint ways of fisher folk is now a center for some of the country’s most advanced experimentation in weapons of the future.
The sand that once was host to picnickers is now seared several times a day by great blasts of the most powerful combustion ever concocted by man, that propelling long- range rockets.
The lap-lap of the waves is regularly drowned out by the drone of strange, unmanned aerial vehicles controlled by a “push button” on the ground.
And the fishermen in the Santa Barbara channel are periodically startled by a booming voice from the sky a loud speaker mounted on a plane—warning them that strange missiles are about to come roaring overhead and hurtling into the sea.
A Chain or Islands Helps
A chain of islands stretching out to sea providing ground observation for 100 miles is one of the main reasons for this station s location. At present this chain is sufficient, because ground control of aerial robots still is limited to the horizon. A thousand miles further out in the Pacific lies Johnston Island. At present it is no factor in the station’s work. But all this work is aimed at the day when missiles can be controlled as far as Johnston and beyond.
The missiles themselves are not the wondrous instruments some people imagine have already rendered us secure for a future “push button” war. The station’s staple “tools” include such flying-bombs as the bat, the gorgon and the gargoyle, some of which were used in the war and which are not even classified as confidential.
A lot of work is done with the V-l-type “buzz bombs” which the Germans themselves superseded in the middle of the war. At Point Mugu they do not even bother with warheads (explosives) on the missiles, using sand or other ballast.
The point is that the development of the atomic bomb solved for some time ahead the simple question of destructive power. The problem now is to guide that power to the place where you want it. Once you have worked that out, with almost any sort of dummy vehicle, a weapon can be shaped the way you want and equipped with an atomic bomb or any other kind of warhead.
The Germans had no control over their V-l’s once they were launched. Those used at Point Mugu, with fuselages made by the Willys-Overland Automobile Company and jet engines made by Ford—at a reported aggregate cost of $15,000 each—are like the station’s other missiles, radio-controlled.
Control Still in its Infancy
But this “control” is still in its infancy. A V-l launched in a test today merely scudded across the beach and crashed into the sea a -few feet from shore, so it is evident that even the launching process is not foolproof. Even on short missile flights across the Santa Barbara Channel it is considered necessary to have a 500-mile-an-hour P-80 jet fighter race along with each projectile to shoot it down if it gets out of hand.
Radio-controlled model airplanes, introduced during the war for target practice, are another staple “tool” here. They fly at speeds of several hundred miles an hour for an hour at a time, maneuvered with the greatest ease by a man on the ground with a miniature control stick—as long as they are in sight. But all the bugs have not been ironed out even from them. Every once in a while one will misinterpret a signal and pop its recovery parachute prematurely.
An 8,000-pound miniature buzz-bomb crashed in flames during a demonstration today because of a technical kink. This type of missile is launched with its jet engine in “low gear.” The radio signal that shifts it into “high gear” once it is aloft is similar to the “nose down” signal. The missile faltered from insufficient power on its takeoff, but the operator could not “shift gears” lest the signal nose it into the ground. So he had to let it crash-land.
“We are no further along today in the field of guided missiles than the Germans were at the end of the war,” Capt. A. B. Scoles, the station’s test director, acknowledged.
Radio control, because of wave characteristics, is now limited to the visible horizon. This can be extended to 1,000 miles or more by use of high-altitude control planes. But even with this assistance, problems remain multifarious.
Point Mugu Has 500 Personnel
Point Mugu, in conjunction with the Navy’s desert ordnance testing station at Inyokern, parallels the Army’s White Sands, N. M., base, in a different line of research.
Operated by the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, with about 500 personnel at present, it is still a rough advance-type base, composed of reconditioned fishing shacks and worn-out war surplus temporary buildings. It has an ambitious five-year program costing $53,000,000, of which an initial $29,000,000 appropriation is now before Congress.
The base command, in staging a two-day press demonstration of its work, was frankly solicitous about financing.
“These tests today are elementary, and won’t accomplish the desired results,” said Rear Admiral Oscar Badger, commander of the Eleventh Naval District. “Before the desired results can be obtained, the cost may run into not millions, but billions.
“We in the United States must be willing to pay the bill for the development. If not, other nations will get ahead of us and our defense will lapse.”
Japanese “Banzai” Attack Held Possible on Peleliu
New York Times, April 5.—All Navy families living in the Base Twenty area near the Peleliu airstrip were hurriedly moved to the submarine base area a quarter of a mile east of the airstrip and away from Bloody Nose Ridge today. Further questioning of a surrendered Japanese holdout, Superior Seaman Tsuchida, revealed that the remaining thirty-two Japanese holdouts on the island may be planning a last-ditch “Banzai” charge on the main Marine Corps camp and naval installation surrounding the Peleliu airstrip.
Word of the evacuation was received here today at Headquarters of the Marine Garrison Forces in the Pacific from Peleliu where the Marines have been seeking to hunt down a band of renegade Japanese who have been at large in the Palau Islands since the war’s end.
Tsuchida, who surrendered to two Marines on patrol in a jeep two days ago, further revealed the identification of the holdout band including the names and ranks and organizations. Contrary to earlier reports, he said that a Lieutenant Yamaguchi, who is the renegade leader, is a former Japanese army man instead of navy.
The holdouts include twenty-one Japanese army men, seven navy men, and four Okinawa workers.
Faced with the possibility of a suicidal “Banzai” charge, Capt. L. O. Fox, the island’s commander, ordered that an immediate defense and security plan be formulated. Armed guards have been posted in the area and machine guns installed on the roofs of
the highest buildings. Marine patrols have been doubled at night and Marine lookouts posted with special flares for use if they detect any mass infiltration of Japanese toward the American base.
All automatic weapons, mortars and flame throwers have been made ready for instant use. In the event of an attack the naval personnel will also get weapons and will form a secondary line of defense. There are 110 naval personnel and thirty-five dependents on the island.
If the “Banzai” charge is staged it is expected to come after all the holdouts learn that Japan has lost the war and that they are completely deserted.
Tsuchida expressed amazement on his surrender when he was informed that the war was ended and there was such a weapon as the atomic bomb.
Meanwhile Rear Adm. Michio Sumikawa, who was flown to Peleliu from Guam where he was a war crimes witness, will continue in his efforts to persuade the holdouts to surrender. He is aided by an interpreter, George Kumi.
Army, AAF. Joint Exercises Open
New York Times dispatch from Fort Ben- ning, Ga., April 1.—Large-scale full-dress rehearsal of tactical cooperation between Army air and ground forces in the theoretical defense of the United States against an enemy which landed in Florida and secured the entire stage began here today.
More than 500 senior command and staff officers of the Army and Navy are watching the maneuvers, along with observers from the armies of Great Britain, Canada, China, the Philippines, Mexico,"and South American nations.
The first phase of the maneuvers occupies three-day periods, these to be repeated until about mid-May, by which time more than
2,0 officers from seven ground forces schools and staff colleges and the University of the Air at Maxwell Field, Ala., will have taken the course.
Basis of the Problem
The problem has been worked out to the smallest details.
The enemy, having taken over the Caribbean and Florida, has advanced into Southern Georgia and occupied positions along the southern banks of the Chattahoochee River in a drive northward.
The problem of the Americans is to contact the enemy and, while preventing his buildup, prepare and launch a counter-attack. The services are cooperating under a theatre commander, an Army ground forces man, appointed by the President.
From 150 to 200 jet fighters, probably the largest number ever gathered at one place in the United States, is cooperating in the maneuvers, which proved the first opportunity to work out new tactics for the speedy Lockheed P-80 jet fighters.
Tomorrow the Ninth Air Force, commanded by Maj. Gen. Paul L. Williams, who commanded the air landings in Africa, Sicily, Italy and Normandy, will strike at the enemy by landing a combat team of paratroopers plus glider-borne infantry. Maj. Gen. James M. Gavin’s famed Eighty-Second Airborne paratroopers of the Infantry Training School here will be in the combat team.
Lecture is Acted Out
For two days, staff and command officers wearing the patches of most of the infantry, armored and airborne divisions which fought in World War II, have been attending an “air indoctrination course.” They have heard a new type of lecture, devised by Maj. Hugh J. Nevins of the Ninth Air Force Headquarters, in which the problem is explained by officers acting it out in simulation of actual combat conditions.
Carrier Sails for Mediterranean
New York Times, April 3.-—The big Essex class aircraft carrier Leyte will sail out of Quonset Naval Air Station tomorrow to head a flotilla of warships, including the cruiser Providence, in a visit to the eastern Mediterranean during April and May.
The cruise will include stops at Crete and possibly Greece and Turkey.
Naval officials said that the Leyte would sail directly from Quonset to Gibraltar. They did not say whether a stop would be made there.
Atom Rockets Soon, Doubted by Navy
New York Times, April 10—The Navy Department, it was learned today, believes that discoveries as revolutionary as the atomic bomb are necessary before atomic rockets can be flung across oceans in a “pushbutton” war.
Barring unexpected developments, the Navy believes that atomic rockets capable of ranges of thousands of miles cannot be achieved for at least a quarter of a century.
In a deep doctrinal conflict with the War Department, the Navy virtually rules out bombing aircraft as insufficiently reliable means “of delivering scarce and expensive atomic bombs.”
The Navy has reached the conclusion that atom weapons preferably should be fired from floating or land bases within 500 miles of an enemy. It also believes that the next best solution for offensive purposes is to carry the atomic bombs in short-range, very high-speed jet-propelled bombers operating from close-in bases.
The Navy views are part of a study on the implications of atomic energy for this country’s national defense that is being conducted by the legislative reference service of the Library of Congress.
subsonic bombing aircraft are making great strides. Guided or homing missiles of the rocket type, fitted with proximity fuses, promise to give new potentialities to antiaircraft fire.
“Jet propulsion, permitting speeds far above those available to those of propeller draft craft, is much more suited to short- range fighter planes than to large, long-range bombers, due to the tremendous and rapid fuel consumption involved in the jet principle.”
The Only Trend at Present
d he Navy acknowledged that these trends might reverse themselves, but added that at present this was the only trend “we can see in operation.” And, it was added, “it decidedly favors—as against the recent past— the defense of large centers of population and industry.”
The Navy concept then moved on to the need for bases from which to deliver an atomic attack: '
Devers Wants Every Division Movable by Air
New York Herald Tribune dispatch from Fort Benning, Ga., April 4.—The United States^ Army of the future must be able to arrive first with the most men at any strategic area of the world by air transport, General Jacob L. Devers, commander of the Army Ground Forces, asserted today.
General Devers, who is attending the air- ground tactical demonstrations here for senior officers of the United States and eleven friendly nations, said it was the Army’s aim to make every division, including artillery and armored ones, “transportable by air.” He explained that the A. G. F. at present were “more interested in some phases of aviation than the Air Forces.”
“We want cargo and passenger-carrying aircraft with performances far beyond that of any plane now in existence,” General Devers said. “We are challenging industry and the Air Forces to get them for us.”
Navy Sees Means Neutralized
As reported in the New York Times yesterday, the War Department has concluded that strategic bombing is the “single most important element of our military capabilities,” affording the means of delivering great atomic destruction “cheaply.”
The Navy, on the other hand, finds this means virtually neutralized by late war developments. Its views on this, synthesized by Dr. Bernard Brodie of the Yale Institute of International Studies, who was specially engaged by the Library of Congress for the atomic study, are as follows:
“The large bombing aircraft * * * cannot be considered a sufficiently reliable means of delivering scarce and expensive atomic bombs against a strong and well-alerted enemy. The present technological trend is decidedly in favor of the defense as against the offense in ordinary strategic bombing.
“Means of detection and interception of
“The solution from the offensive side is the resort to high-speed, jet-propelled bombers or preferably to supersonic missiles representing an evolutionary development of the V-2.”
Depicts Aircraft Needed
The paratrooper and the glider-borne infantryman of today may be as obsolete as the armored knight in five years, General Devers said. In the recent war these soldiers accomplished missions of outstanding valor, but the cost was high in men and equipment “because they couldn’t carry enough firepower with them,” he added.
The A. G. F. has in mind aircraft which can carry masses of men to a specific destination, land in a small space at very slow speed, “slide off the troops in boxes” without injury and then speed off, “maybe by rocket propulsion,” to pick up some more, according to General Devers.
“Maybe the helicopter is the answer,” General Devers commented. “The Navy has developed one that can carry fourteen people, and that’s only the beginning. Perhaps somebody will discover a way of landing a conventional airplane at speeds approaching zero. If the Navy is able to land planes on the small deck of a carrier by using hooks, I don’t see why the Air Forces isn’t able to do the same thing in a field.”
Navy Gives Vaccine
New York Times, April 14.—The War and Navy Departments joined the City Health Department yesterday in its drive here to prevent the spread of smallpox.
Faced with the task of vaccinating New York’s residents in increasing numbers, Mayor O’Dwyer appealed over the telephone yesterday to Secretary of War Robert Patterson and Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal for vaccine.
Within a few minutes after the appeal
250,0 units of smallpox vaccine were transferred from the naval medical supply depot in Brooklyn to the City Health Department laboratories at Fifteenth Street and East River. The vaccine was distributed to the Health Department hospitals, private physicians and voluntary and private hospitals. This was in addition to the 333,621 units delivered earlier. .
Secretary Patterson ordered a survey of Army vaccine in the metropolitan area to determine the number of units that can be given the Health Department. All that can be spared will be flown here.
U.S.N.A. ’15 Buys out Class of ’21A
New York Herald Tribune, April 20.—A substantial majority of the common stock of Maxson Food Systems, Inc., has been purchased from the W. L. Maxson Corp. by a group headed by John D. Small, who recently resigned as Civilian Production Administrator. The consideration was not disclosed.
The same group also acquired an option on the balance of the holdings of W. L. Maxson Corp., thus giving it control of Maxson Food Systems, Inc. Mr. Small was elected president. W. L. Maxson and Harold Kondolf resigned as chairman and secretary, respectively, of Maxson Food Systems, Inc., but Mr. Maxson will continue to serve as a director. P. L. Maguire was elected secretary. Further changes are expected to be made at the time of the annual meeting. Raymond S. Perry, who was elected president of the company in April, 1946, resigned recently, and the office was vacant until Mr. Small’s election.
Maxson Food Systems, Inc., was organized in November, 1925, to engage in the manufacture and sale of pre-cooked frozen foods. Previously it had been operated as a division of W. L. Maxson Corp., which was established to engage in electro-mechanical engineering and manufacturing.
Mr. Small was graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1915. He was on active service with the Navy during World War I. He held the post of Civilian Production Administrator from November, 1945, until December, 1946.
Ed. Note: W. L. Maxson, U.S.N.A. ’21A, resigned in 1935, made his first million before the war, helped develop our war-time fire control equipment.
GREAT BRITAIN Helgoland Razed U. S. Scientists to Measure Blast
New York Times, April 18, by Dana A. Schmidt.—The British will blow up the island of Helgoland tomorrow.
When they do, United States Navy scientists will measure the shock at ten observation points scattered from Cuxhaven, Germany, on the North Sea to Udine in Italy.
Dr. John V. Atanasoff, chief of the acoustic division of the Naval Ordnance Laboratories directing the studies, said today that the explosion would be “the biggest ever set by man with the exception of that of the atomic bomb at Bikini.”
He estimated that 3,000 to 6,000 tons of TNT would be used, plus German ammunition stored in the island’s caves, and would create a shock about one-eighth that of an atomic bomb.
Dr. Atanasoff, and Comdr. Beauregard Perkins of the Office of Naval Research, who heads the group of ten civilian scientists, observed the Bikini explosions.
At the former German meteorological station on top of Feldberg, near Frankfort, where one observation point will be situated, Dr. Atanasoff explained that the study of shocks is expected to shed new light on the thickness of layers in the earth’s crust and the nature of the stratosphere. It may be possible, he said, to derive inferences regarding the “roots” of the Alps in the earth’s layers and to improve weather forecasting.
Balloons to Get Weather Data
Each observation point will be equipped with a seismograph and a barograph, and several free Navy balloons will gather weather data at the moment of explosion.
Sound waves of the explosion may penetrate into the earth to a depth of 200 kilometers [124.2 miles]. Traveling by different routes, the waves will be refracted upward to the seismographs.
Knowing the velocities of sound through various geological formations, the scientists, Dr. Atanasoff said, expect to estimate “the thickness in western Europe of the granitic layer, believed to be fifteen kilometers [9.3 miles]; of the basaltic layer, also believed to be fifteen kilometers, and of other layers below the Marovicic discontinuity.”
Near the explosion, the sound waves are expected to cause a displacement of the earth of one-thousandth of an inch. At Udine, if at all observable, the displacement will probably be only one-millionth of an inch.
In a similar manner, waves will be refracted from the upper strata of air and recorded by barographs.
A German professor, Ratje Muegge of
Frankfort University, and eight of his assistants and students will assist the Americans.
Mighty Blast on Helgoland
New York Times, April 19, by E. A. Morrow.—Helgoland, Germany’s North Sea Gibraltar, was effectively demilitarized today. The British Navy set off 3,500 tons of high explosives stored in the island’s intricate eight and a half miles of tunnel system.
The biggest non-atomic explosion ever attempted by man shot a red sandstone- tinted cloud 8,000 feet in the air in less than two minutes. The massive cloud hid the island from view for ten minutes until a gentle northwest wind carried it away and uncovered a crumbled fortress atop a radically changed topography.
Uncertain of the effects that may be caused by the detonation of explosives, which included depth charges, gelignite, torpedo warheads and TNT, the Navy would not permit the dozen-odd observer ships closer than nine miles. A naval landing party will inspect the island tomorrow to gather data on the results of what Navy men call Europe’s Bikini.
While appraisal of the damage was impossible today, a flight over the island a half hour after the explosion showed that about a sixth of the southeast portion of the island had been shorn off. It was this section that had contained the unbelievably massive submarine pens. Their concrete walls were now strewn like pebbles into the sea.
Nevertheless, the force of the explosion was so channeled by underground tunnels that some houses were left standing on the northern end.
Viewed from the air at a height of 4,000 feet and a distance of four miles, the explosion possessed Bikini-like qualities.
Although some minor charges had been set off before to scare away the birds at 12:59 o’clock, the island’s 180-foot cliffs still rose sharply from the North Sea. The red sandstone was reflected in the bright sun in the spectacular manner that used to attract thousands of tourists a year.
Precisely at 1 o’clock, as the fourth “pip” in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s time signal sounded, the island seemed to rise out of the sea in an even more spectacular red and black of explosive flame.
Although the explosion was reported heard as far as Hamburg, in the plane no sound could be heard as the varicolored cumulus cloud swiftly blossomed and rose above the aircraft. In seconds, the cloud was twice the size of the island, which formerly measured a mile long and 600 yards wide.
For a few seconds, the cloud took on the shape of a Bikini mushroom, but soon it became globular, with the wind gradually sending the top layers off in a southeasterly direction. As these top layers moved off, one could see and feel the particles of sandstone that gave the cloud its reddish tint.
Huge Cliffs Disintegrate
After the cloud cleared, a low-level approach to the island revealed great masses of cliffs had been hurled into the sea. The seawall that had been built to save the cliffs from the erosive action of the sea appeared to be mostly intact, as was the breakwater.
The island no longer possessed the luster it had had a few minutes before. Long paths of churned-up earth, under which were the tunnels, showed up like mole tracks. Although all the houses on the island were not razed, the ones that remained were few.
Navy observers who had also witnessed this demolition from the air said they believed the island’s fortifications had “had it.”
The blowing up of this island, which the Germans had called an unsinkable battleship and which had been a very sharp thorn for the British Navy in two wars, aroused much controversy for some time here. Newscasters to Germany were asked to play down the event.
The island was a famed tourist resort and a center of lobster fishing in peacetime. Its inhabitants’ dialect still shows the influence of the island’s having been a British possession until 1890, when it was ceded to Germany in exchange for Zanzibar. It is believed the inhabitants will be allowed to resettle if they wish. As one senior British officer explained, however, it will be difficult to refortify the island.
British Make Tour of Helgoland Ruins
New York Herald Tribune, April 20.— Lieutenant Bernard Cahill, of the British Navy, said tonight that the Island of Helgoland was so shattered “it looks as if there had been a volcanic eruption.”
He and Herbert Woosman, Royal Navy gunner, were the first men to set foot today on the former Nazi North Sea bastion after yesterday’s demolition of the island’s military installations by thousands of tons of explosives.
Lieutenant Cahill said the eight miles of tunnels honeycombing the island collapsed, leaving huge craters. The twelve-foot-thick reinforced concrete U-boat pen was destroyed completely.
The cemetery of the local inhabitants, carefully tended until the last day, survived the blast. The ruined houses of the old town, which was battered by Allied air raids in the war, also appeared much the same.
The lighthouse at the end of the breakwater was still standing, and the Biological Institute showed no visible alteration. There were no signs of fires.
In general, Adolf Hitler’s war base has become nothing more than a bird sanctuary and an occasional refuge for storm-tossed fishermen.
“Warspite Aground”
New York Herald Tribune, April 24.—The thirty-four-year-old British battleship War- spite was driven aground today at the tip of the Cornish coast, and the newly reconverted luxury liner Mauretania remained stranded outside Liverpool harbor for the fourth day, as a vicious spring gale continued to lash the British Isles.
The Warspite was being towed from Portsmouth to the River Clyde, in Scotland, where it was to have been broken up after service in two world wars, but in heavy seas it broke adrift and was flung onto the rocks of England’s rugged southwest coast. The battleship lies almost directly under a cliff near the resort town of Penzance, and seems doomed to stay right there until cut up for scrap.
British Navy in Action in Parliament
London Times, March 19, from House of Commons.—Mr. DUGDALE, Financial Secretary, Admiralty (West Bromwich, Lab.), presented the Navy Estimates on the motion to go into Committee of Supply.
He said this had been a year of run-down.
Like ourselves, the British have found that it takes more personnel to _ man ships now than before the war.
They had released 374,000 officers and ratings. Allowing for the intake, this represented a net reduction of 327,000, or enough to build 140,000 houses and produce 250,000 cars in a year. Most of the Admiralty’s total holdings of industrial and non-industrial requisitioned property at the beginning of 1945 had been returned to the owners by the end of 1946. A difficult problem would face the Admiralty until it was possible to rebuild the permanent storage space destroyed by enemy action.
During the war, not only we but the Dominions and the allied nations suffered heavy naval losses. In the Government’s view the Dominions clearly had first call when the time came to dispose of a number of vessels belonging to the Royal Navy. Accordingly, cruisers, a light fleet carrier, destroyers, frigates, and corvettes had been or were being transferred to the Dominions and India by sale, gift, or loan. In this way they had fostered to the utmost possible extent the integration of the resources of defence available to the British Commonwealth of Nations. They had also transferred a number of ships to the allies, including the light fleet carrier Colossus, which had been lent to France, the escort carrier Nairana, lent to the Netherlands, and the cruiser Aurora, shortly to be lent to China.
With a view to seeing that they had the minimum possible headquarters staff the Admiralty had decided to appoint departmental working parties with power to go into every department of the Admiralty and to make reductions wherever this was at all practicable.
“The Great Run-Down”
The plan to reduce the Navy to some
200,0 by December 31, 1946, had been ac-
complished, but the great run-down that it had involved had meant considerable difficulties and the acceptance of a lower standard of operational efficiency. Serious shortages had been experienced in certain categories, especially in the lower rates of the seaman and stoker branches, and in trained ratings for the radio and air branches.
1946 Minesweeping
How important was the need for minesweeping could be gathered from the fact that during 1946, in spite of the combined efforts of many nations, no fewer than 74 merchant vessels were sunk or damaged by mines: 95 per cent of these, however, were in waters outside swept areas or channels. Minesweeping had been carried out by our forces in places as far apart as the Denmark Strait to the north-west of Iceland, the Sicilian Channel, and the south coast of Indo-China. He was glad to report that no British minesweepers were lost or damaged, nor were any casualties suffered during the whole of 1946. Altogether, during last year alone, the British and Dominion Navies had accounted for 4,600 mines. He paid a tribute to the skill and devotion to duty of the men who had been engaged in these most hazardous and nerve-racking operations. (Cheers.)
The prevention of illegal immigration into Palestine by sea had been one of the most trying of the Navy’s commitments. A naval force had been maintained at Haifa throughout the year for this purpose. During the summer the work was particularly heavy, and between May and November no fewer than 14 ships were intercepted, each containing between 400 and 2,500 immigrants.
25% in Naval Air
To-day something like one-quarter of the Navy was engaged directly or indirectly in naval aviation and this proportion was increasing. Many of those operations were conducted from aircraft carriers, but they had also to have a number of airfields. There were today 23 airfields and air establishments in commission at home and abroad belonging to the Royal Navy which employed 22,500 men and women on shore jobs. There were too, some 2,500 air category officers and ratings borne in carriers, engaged on duties connected with flying which before the war were carried out by the Royal Air Force. We had to-day a force of flying sailors which hardly existed before the war. That made one of the biggest demands on the Navy’s man-power.
Another new item was the combined operations organization ashore. This employed 2,700 men. Then there were some 2,300 Commandos—making a grand total of new commitments of some 30,000 officers and men or about 15 per cent of our entire manpower, of whom the great majority were of necessity shore-based.
The second reason for the size of the manpower budget was the increased complexity of naval warfare. A modern warship needed a 20 per cent greater complement than she did in 1938. The most important reason for this was the development of radar. In 1938 only two ships were fitted with radar—and they were experimental. To-day radar was as much a part of the ship’s life as gunnery, navigation, or signalling.
This year there would be only two destroyers laid down, though the Admiralty were continuing the construction of such ships as were in a very advanced state of development when war ended. But they had to spend money on research, especially into the effects of the atom bomb on naval warfare.
We could not hope any longer to have the largest Navy in the world. But we could hope to have the best equipped—as we were certain that we should always have the best manned. The Admiralty had one plain duty -—to see that if ever they were called upon they could present to the nation or to the U.N. a first-class fighting machine. That task he hoped they were performing. (Cheers.)
Many of their ships were exceedingly old and had covered vast distances during the course of their lives. H.M.S. Cumberland, for instance, had covered 393,000 miles, while the aircraft-carrier Victorious had covered
356,0 miles since May, 1941. The Admiralty had decided, however—like some hon. members had done with their clothes—to “make do” for this year with the aid of some patching. A number of ships would be refitted and they would get certain improvements in living conditions.
So far 209 ex-W.R.N.S. and some 1,846
serving W.R.N.S. had been accepted for re- engagernent. In the light of the experience gained during the war, it had been decided that no change should be made in the present system of discipline for the W.R.N.S., who would not be brought within the scope of the Naval Discipline Act.
Before the war not more than 5 per cent of the officers came from the lower deck. That was not right in a democratic age. (Ministerial cheers.) It was hoped that in future it would be possible to select, over all branches except professional officers, an average of 20 to 25 per cent of officers either through the Upper Yardmen Scheme or through the scheme of selecting warrant officers for direct promotion to the rank of lieutenant.
Size of the Navy
CAPTAIN MARSDEN (Chertsey, C.) suggested that the reason why there had been no disclosure of the size of the Navy was that there was shame at its present size. When it was strong it was lauded to the world.
“Racketeering”
Mr. MALLALIEU said that the barracks he was in during the war was run not by the officers but under a most elaborate and carefully worked out system which was controlled by some of the most skilful racketeers in the service of the King. (Laughter.) That racketeering system had to be seen to be believed. The racketeers used to ease themselves into some of the key jobs where patronage could be dispensed and toll received. One type of patronage was to “dish out” freedom from draft ships; another was to hand over to a man a job in which he, too, could dispense patronage. He might be put into the compassionate leave hut. There were three men in the compassionate leave hut in the barracks where he served. One thing they did not have was compassion. They ran the compassionate leave hut as a strictly business concern.
He remembered a friend who got himself into a really good position; he arranged to get himself the job of showing visitors around H.M.S. Victory. When they reached the point where Nelson died his friend used to explain to the party of visitors that it was the custom to turn out the lights and doff caps. Having turned out the lights he promptly used to drop two half-crowns into his own cap and say: “Thank you, Sir.” By the time the lights went on his cap used to be full. (Loud laughter.)
All the little rackets which were run right through the barracks on the ratings’ side could not be stopped. During his (Mr. Mal- lalieu’s) time in barracks they tried to put them down by bringing in a number of Scotland Yard men—jet-propelled crushers they were called. (Laughter.) But, although they might have been jet-propelled, they were left standing. (Renewed laughter.) The atmosphere in the large naval barracks was corrupt. After one had been in them a week or two one had the ambition either to get into a racket or to loaf. Provided one looked purposeful enough one could get away with doing nothing. (Laughter.) His particular system was to walk around with a piece of paper in his hand. (More laughter.) Another friend of his used to carry an orange box around all day long during working hours to sit on. If there was an officer about he would pick up the box and march along with it.
Recruiting
Mr. DUGDALE said that conditions in the Navy prevented recruitment, while naturally they did not have all the men required they were exceedingly satisfied and the campaign was going remarkably well. If a slump occurred they would take steps to see that it fell as lightly as possible upon the welfare services of the Navy, but he did not for a moment admit that a slump was likely to come. They wanted to see that what was done in the best ships by canteen committees would be done in all ships by Admiralty Fleet Order, and the committees’ functions were being extended to deal with all questions of welfare.
The amendment was, by leave, withdrawn.
Mr. PAGET (Northampton, Lab.) thought that far too many obsolete ships and weapons were now being maintained in the Navy. The stage had been reached when there was no strategic justification for the maintenance of the battleship—a battleship which could not fly was obsolete. The authorities should be thinking of the next war, and get prototypes of the new weapons. There should be coordination between all arms of the air and the sea.
COMMANDER MAITLAND (Horn- castle, C.) said that the Navy was going through a difficult transitional period. Its functions might be changed and, therefore, it was difficult to plan far ahead. Investigations should be made into the possibility of designing and building ships which could be manned by fewer fighting personnel.
COMMANDER PURSEY (Hull, E., Lab.) said that Dartmouth College could become the university of the Navy, and not a monastic public school with some officers being trained there and others elsewhere. All officers should be trained together in one establishment at Dartmouth.
LIEUT.-COMDR. C. HUTCHISON (Edinburgh, West, C.) said the House should be told about the future of Rosyth and what were the Government’s intentions concerning a naval base on the Clyde.
Complaint of Secrecy
Mr. BRACKEN (Bournemouth, C.) said that the Estimates were utterly uninformative, and it was disgraceful that they should be presented in their present form. In peacetime Parliament was entitled to full information about the Navy. The time had come to end this silly policy of secrecy.
Had the Government devised a naval policy to meet the consequences of their wholesale withdrawals? One would have thought that atomic bombs and other weapons would have called for an expansion of scientific services, but instead there had been a big expansion in the cost of the Admiralty’s policemen and a sharp contraction in the cost of the Admiralty’s scientists. (Opposition laughter.) He did not believe the great barracks were run by racketeers.
Mr. W. EDWARDS, Civil Lord of the Admiralty (Whitechapel, Lab.), said that the Navy had a number of new types of aircraft, including the Seafire (Mark 47), the Seafury, the Seahornet, and the Firefly, and flying experience was being given at sea. Regarding the case of Lieutenant Wardle, R.N.V.R., who was court martialled for taking intoxicants with ratings on board ship the facts showed that the Admiralty regulations were wise and he (Mr. Edwards) saw no reason for interfering with the sentence. The cruisers Ajax, Achilles, and Leander had been accepted for use by India, but they might not go for a considerable time. The cost of the alterations to the Vanguard for the royal visit to South Africa was about £170,000. The majority of people would prefer that when the Royal Family were making visits abroad they should go in the finest battleship in the world. (Cheers.) There was no waste involved in transforming the ship.
The motion was agreed to, and the Votes were agreed to in Committee.
The House resumed and adjourned at 22 minutes after 1 o’clock.
Ed. Note: Our “Cousins” are having the same difficulties as we, but they appear to have considerably more Naval ranks in their legislatve body.
Home Fleet Exercises
The Aeroplane, March 21.—Returning from their Spring cruise on March 10, the Home Fleet were considered to be near enough to British air bases for a series of exercises to be planned. The Home Fleet consisted of a battleship, a carrier, a cruiser and destroyer escort. The R.A.F. aircraft which were to take part included a token force of bombers, and strike aircraft based at St. Eval and Thorny Island respectively. The Fleet were to be shadowed by Sunderlands of Coastal Command, Calshot.
The weather was so bad on that day that air operations proved impracticable and so presumably the “enemy” would have steamed close to British air bases in much the same way as the German fleet sailed up the Channel. Actually one Lancaster took off and found the Fleet off the coast of Portugal; the take-off was at about 04.00 hrs. in very poor visibility.
It was particularly unfortunate that weather prevented the exercise taking place. For the tactics were new (new in the sense that they were not used by the R.A.F. during the War) of using heavy bombers to attack ships under way. The R.A.F. were able to score effective hits with heavy bombs on the Tirpitz when the ship was a sitting duck in harbour, but one would have imagined that nothing less than a stream or many streams of aircraft would be needed to have any chance of hitting heavily armed ships steaming at 25 knots. On the other hand, some of the new bomb-sights have given very remarkable results when used for high-level attacks.
Meanwhile it seems that we have to accept the fact that streams of heavy bombers will be used against all kinds of ships. Defence against this threat will probably take the form of improved anti-aircraft armament and the wider use of proximity fuses, and very high-speed deck interceptors with heavy armament, improved forms of airborne warning radar, homing defence missiles and so on. In this way the Naval aircraft would seek to reverse the initiative and keep the attacking bombers on the defensive when near the ships.
Ed. Note: Our “Home Fleet” is not much larger.
Social Note
London Times, March 19.—H.M.S. Sheffield, flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir William Tennant, has just ended a five-day visit to Buenos Aires, during which more than 7,000 Argentines were shown over the ship. President and Senora Peron and the Cabinet attended a cocktail party on board.
Soviet Delegates at Army Display at Aldershot
London Times, March 26.—Members of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. who are visiting this country have to-day seen something of the British Army in training. They were keenly interested in all that was shown to them at the different establishments, and one gathers that they were most impressed of all with the remarkably fine display given at the Army School of Physical Training. The delegates, headed by Mr. Vassili Kuznetsov, were accompanied by Lieutenant-General Sir Sidney Kirkman, Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and Major-General Sir Charles Keightley, Director of Military Training.
At the fighting vehicle establishment, associated with the Military College of Science at Chobham, the delegates saw numerous types of tanks of many different nationalities. They then watched an exercise with flail tanks making their way through a minefield towards a strong point that was finally reduced by flame-throwing tanks.
The display at the Army School of Physical Training began in the open air with a squad of men, stripped to the waist, going through a brisk series of exercises that combined the elements of work and play. Other men followed in full battle kit to jump and climb all sorts of obstacles. Finally, in the gymnasium another team gave a display of somersaults and vaulting that must represent the peak of accomplishment short of professional acrobatics; they were enthusiastically cheered at the end of the performance.
After luncheon at the Staff College, Cam- berley, the delegates listened to a talk on methods of instruction at the college. The system was explained in simple outline and closed with a demonstration lesson by means of a cloth model on the floor, its tiny bridges being unexpectedly exploded.
The tour concluded with a visit to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, where 320 officer cadets were on parade.
FRANCE
Atomic Development in France
London Times, March 19.—The French Commissariat of Atomic Energy is creating a number of laboratories for developing this new source of power. Its programme is directed entirely to the utilization of atomic energy for peaceful and civilian purposes. Among the establishments being erected and planned are the Experimental Establishment at Fort Chatillon in the outskirts of Paris, a uranium refining plant at Poudrerie du Bouchet on the Seine, and an establishment at Saclay, also near Paris, which will correspond to the English atomic energy plant at Harwell.
French research on atomic energy was interrupted by the occupation. Since the liberation a new effort has begun under the leadership of Professor Joliot-Curie, the discoverer of artificial radioactivity, who, with Halban and Kowarski, was the first to prove that more than one neutron is emitted in the fission of a uranium atom and that therefore a chain reaction might be possible. The French possess a small group of brilliant scientists, some of whom, such as Kowarski and Auger, assisted in the British effort of development of atomic energy. Very few French scientists and engineers have, however, any direct experience of the methods of team research developed in England and America during the war. These have set a new standard of speed in discovery and development.
The first aim of the French is to train a number of scientists and engineers in the new techniques and points of view, so that a reservoir of suitable skill shall be available. The director of scientific services for the French Commissariat is Dr. L. Kowarski. The general scientific direction of the various establishments is under his control.
Fort Chatillon, which was built in 1875, was inspected by atomic scientists and engineers as a site for an experimental establishment in February, 1946. A building in the fortress, which had been badly damaged by the explosion of a munition dump, was repaired by the military very quickly, and is now a handsome laboratory, decorated in pale grey, of 24 rooms. The administrative headquarters of the establishment is in this building. The director, who also acts as chief electrical engineer, is M. Surdin, who worked on radar for four years in the British Admiralty’s Signals Establishment.
The first task is the design and manufacture of scientific equipment for the prospecting teams for searching the French lands for uranium. These include counters, amplifiers and ionization chambers which will be durable and portable in the field.
New Methods
The atmosphere in this laboratory is new to France. It is half university, half factory in spirit. They have difficulty in finding staff who are good technically and can also work in a team. This runs counter to the tradition, for French university scientists have not previously engaged in quite the same kind of team-work. M. Surdin’s experience of wartime research in England has convinced him that team-work is much more productive than the efforts of a few geniuses scattered in different places. He learned that nothing is impossible if you spend the money and make the necessary effort, and he has learnt to appreciate the advantages of compromise. One should get something workable and let it be perfected later. This is contrary to the French tradition, which aims at perfecting the instrument first.
The heavy fortress building has three floors, each containing seven long, cavernlike rooms. These are being lightly decorated and lit by fluorescent lamps. The ground- floor rooms have been fitted as workshops with magnificent machine tools, many of them reparations from Germany. The first floor is for chemistry and mineralogy and the top floor for physics and engineering.
The chemical section will be concerned with accurate analyses and research on such problems as the extraction of plutonium. In the physics section they will study the diffusion of neutrons in graphite. They will train young students in the “neutron sense,” a feeling for how they behave, which is something entirely new in physics. They will construct a small mass-spectrograph.
Building a Pile
On March 1 a designing group began plans for a 200-kilowatt plutonium pile. M. le Meur has been appointed chief mechanical engineer. His division will investigate such problems as the design of graphite bars and cadmium bars of appropriate strength and the design of remote controls.
They have a total staff of 55, mainly technicians, and a small group of theoretical physicists. They work regular hours from 8:3CPa.m. until 6 p.m., with half an hour for lunch, five days a week. Twelve German prisoners of war, mainly mechanics and carpenters, are employed on constructional work.
The establishment for refining uranium at Poudrerie du Bouchet was formerly an experimental plant for making explosives. It was converted into a pilot plant for chemical warfare and fell into disrepair during the occupation. A faint odour of Lewisite still hangs about one of the buildings. It is in a marshy wood by the Seine. The refining plant occupies twelve buildings spread over four acres. They are of the steel-frame type, with inset brick walls, and are easily adapted. The adaptation is being carried out for the Atomic Energy Commission, under the supervision of M. Gueron, by a French company which specializes in the preparation of the rare earth chemicals and has long supplied the Curie family with materials for their researches. The erection of tanks and flow-pipes is in an advanced stage.
The establishment at Saclay will contain large electrical equipment, such as a cyclotron.
These developments are small compared with what is being done in some countries, but they are being carried out in a lively and competent manner, with features new to French science. They promise a sound foundation for the development of atomic energy in France.
“Montcalm” Lands Men at Norfolk for LST’s
New York Times, April 10.—-The French cruiser Montcalm with about 500 crewmen and officers to man eight LST’s bought by France docked today at the Norfolk Naval Station after a twelve-day voyage from Toulon. Supplies for the landing craft were unloaded by the Montcalm, which will leave in a week for the West Indies.
On the pier was Mile. Marcelle Campana, only woman French consul, who came from Washington to greet Capt. Rene Lechate- lier, skipper of the cruiser, and his officers.
Also on hand were Lieut. Col. Allen M. Murphy, representing Lieut. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer, commander of the Second Army; Pierre Schmitz, French consul in Norfolk, and high-ranking naval officers from the Norfolk Naval Station, Fifth Naval District and Amphibious Command.
Admiral to Die for Scuttling Fleet at Toulon
New York Herald Tribune, March 30.— Vice-Admiral Jean de La Borde, who gave the order for the scuttling of the French fleet at Toulon on Nov. 27, 1942, which saved the fleet from the Germans, was sentenced to death by a High Court today at Versailles after a jury found him guilty of treason.
One main charge was that Admiral de La Borde had the warships scuttled rather than let them go to join Allied naval forces in the Mediterranean. His reply was that he merely obeyed orders from the Vichy government which were “in accord with the highest naval traditions.” At the time, the Germans were attacking Toulon, the chief French naval base on the Mediterranean, and were trying to seize the warships.
OTHER COUNTRIES ITALY
Italian Squadron on Maneuvers
New York Times, April 17.—A squadron of the Italian fleet retained by Italy under the peace treaty sailed from Taranto early this morning for battle maneuvers in the Central Mediterranean.
The squadron is composed of the 23,000- ton battleship Duilio, three cruisers, seven destroyers, several smaller units and submarines, as well as some fifty naval aircraft. None of the naval units ceded to the Allies under the peacy treaty is taking part in the exercises.
Belgium Presses Atomic Research
New York Times, March 30.—The study and development of atomic energy in Belgium are slowly gathering momentum. The immediate objective is to win approval of a state grant of 10,000,000 francs for the National Scientific Research Fund.
In view of Premier Paul-Henri Spaak’s announcement of Government control of the Congo’s uranium deposits and the setting up of a study group there, it appears as if the program will be supported.
Visions of a vast new industry, employing skilled workers in chemical and metallurgical work, are conjured by college professors and lecturers from abroad. In Belgium’s African possession lie rich mineral deposits estimated to contain 60 to 80 per cent of the world’s supply of uranium (the figures are Belgian and French). This has raised the hope that in the atomic age Belgium can become a leading industrial power.
The group studying nuclear energy was established by the National Scientific Research Fund in December, 1945. Since then it has worked to pool data, appraise Belgium’s position and maintain continuity of effort.
The University of Brussels has just organized a series of lectures on atomic energy. Another is planned at Ghent, Louvain and Liege.
The political aspects of the Congo’s ore has occasioned some comment. There have been periodic flare-ups in Parliament, which has sought to assure for Belgium’s research an adequate supply of fissionable material and to sell uranium abroad at a fair price. The Government that preceded M. Spaak’s said that in both respects the interests of the country were protected.
Any get-rich-quick schemes of Belgians who may feel that the wealth of the colony could be sold abroad, to the immediate and great advantage of the homeland, have been quashed by the authorities, who stress that the Congo stands first with respect to profits of colonial trade.
The means at the disposal of a small country in terms of raw materials and scientists are not sufficient to justify the monopoly claims advanced by certain elements in the nation.
AVIATION
XHRP-1 10 Place Helicopter
U. S. Air Services, April.—The Navy has unveiled its newest helicopter designated the XHRP-1 and built by the Piasecki Helicopter Corporation of Sharon Hill, Pa. The large transport type helicopter was demonstrated to the public for the first time on March 29, at the National Rotary Wing Aircraft Exhibit at Camden Airport.
Powered by a Pratt & Whitney 600 hp. engine, it can take off vertically with more than a ton of useful load, and accelerate to speeds of more than 100 mph.
Development of this new type helicopter was started during the war, and was instigated to fulfil Navy requirements for rescue operations with the fleet and transport of personnel and essential cargo between ship and shore.
Normally designed to carry a crew of two plus eight passengers, it can also be used to carry cargo, six litter patients, or as a medium range rescue machine capable of rescuing eight people within ranges of 300 miles.
The XHRP-1, which has been named the Rescuer by the manufacturer, is the first successful tandem rotor helicopter. Advantages of the tandem configuration, with rotors disposed fore and aft, have been demonstrated by the newly announced machine. Powerful lift forces located at each end of the stream-lined fuselage eliminate serious balance problems.
This new configuration provides about 400 cubic feet of useful space at the center of gravity of the helicopter in which to put the load of passengers or cargo which the XHRP-1 will carry.
Consolidated Vultee XB-46
Model Airplane News, May.—America’s first jet bomber and one of the “cleanest” aircraft ever designed, has been announced. It is a Liberator sized bomber powered by 4 General Electric TG-180 axialflow turbojet engines, mounted in pairs in streamlined nacelles with common air intakes and jet tailpipes. The extremely slim fuselage and thin, high aspect-ratio wing give the XB-46 a razor sharpness in appearance. Wingspan is 113 ft., length 105 ft. 9 in., and it is expected to be in the 500 mph. class. It is now undergoing ground tests at San Diego with first flight expected momentarily. The North American XB-45 is similar in appearance and was designed to the same basic specification.
Swedish Jet Developments
The Aeroplane, March 14.-—Current issue of the Swedish journal Flyg gives further details of new types of jet fighters projected for the Swedish Air Force. In 1941 the Saab conventionally powered J.21 twin-boom pusher fighter was chosen in preference to the J.23 because the airframe could be adapted as a jet fighter more easily.
In 1943 the prototype J.21 aircraft was completed and plans were prepared for the jet development known as the J.21R. At about the same time, a mission from Saab arrived here to gain experience of the de Havilland Vampire, and also to discuss the power-plant for the J.21R. It is recorded that, in Britain, we were at first surprised at the plan to modify an existing airframe for straight-jet propulsion, but after receiving details of the proposal we agreed it was practicable.
The main consideration in Sweden appears to be to build the aeroplane inexpensively, and one of the possible modifications, a pressure cabin, was abandoned for that reason.
Four J.21R jet prototypes are now under construction, and the first is expected to fly in March. The aircraft is expected to fly at a maximum speed of 530 m.p.h. and will have a somewhat greater internal tankage than the Vampire. The Swedish Air Force has ordered 120 production aircraft.
The same firm are also working on the project 1001, known as “The 1001 Nights” (which was first mentioned in The Aeroplane of October 4, 1946). This aircraft, known as the J.29, has a designed speed of 660 m.p.h. As Svenska Flygmotor A.B. are licensees of de Havilland, the J.29 may, therefore, be powered by de Havilland Ghost with a static thrust of 5,000 lb.
Ryan XF2R-1 and Review of Jet Fighter Development
Model Airplane News, May.—Adapting jet propulsion to the carrier plane has not proved a simple task. When jet propulsion was first announced to the public on January 7, 1944 it was immediately hailed as a miraculous new attainment of science and the layman stood convinced that it could do anything. The ensuing three years have proved, again, that the time element between invention and practicability is a long painstaking one, and although great strides have been made in gas turbine progress a tremendous amount of work remains to be done.
The first heartbreaking task was to examine and clearly recognize the limitations, if any, of this new found source of aircraft propulsion power. The first and still one of the most notorious disadvantages of jet power is its dependence on aircraft speed. The turbojet engine develops its maximum thrust when the airplane stands still on the ground. The instant the plane begins to roll forward, that thrust output starts to drop and continues to fall as the airplane increases speed. This disappointing state of affairs continues until the airplane reaches a speed of 375 miles per hour (about \ the speed of sound). Fortunately, at this point the thrust begins to increase and climbs steadily upward until the full rated thrust is again developed at about 750 mph. (the speed of sound).
Another method of stating this fundamental consideration is to examine the ratio of jet speed to aircraft speed, which is a definition of the propulsive efficiency. Propulsive efficiency of the system is 100% when jet speed and aircraft speed are the same. Since the jet speed exhausts from the tail pipe at just under the speed of sound, the airplane will achieve maximum propulsive efficiency at a speed of about 650 mph. at
35,0 ft., and about 750 mph. at sea level. At | the speed of sound the propulsive efficiency drops to about 66|%, and at the speed of sound this efficiency is only 50%.
These same considerations hold true for the reciprocating engine-propeller combination with one important difference: the “jet speed” (the air mass thrust rearward by the propeller) can be easily and carefully controlled, and the airplane can be made to fly normally at practically its “jet speed,” thereby resulting in very high propulsive efficiency at all times.
The Army Air Forces’ and the Navy’s tactical problems vary in detail. The Army saw in jet propulsion a means for creating a super-speed, high altitude interceptor. Its slow speed characteristics proved little hindrance because of the Army’s ease in building 5-10,000 ft. runways. The Navy desired the high power possible from jet propulsion, but its sea-going runways are limited to less than 1,000 ft. (frequently less than 400 ft. due to the necessity for parking planes over the rear of the flight deck). Its first jet aircraft project, therefore, was a combination propeller-jet, the Ryan XFR-1 Fireball, powered by a conventional Wright R-1820 Cyclone engine driving a Curtiss propeller plus a General Electric 1-16 turbojet engine in the tail.
This combination proved an immediate success and the FR-1 demonstrated a takeoff distance of 639 ft., a rate-of-climb of 4,665 ft. per min., and a top speed of 405 mph. A' similar project was the Curtiss XF15C-1 powered by a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp and a DeFIavilland Halford turbojet engine. This fighter is considerably heavier, larger and slightly faster than the FR-1, but stability difficulties have slowed its development.
A total of 3 experimental XFR-l’s and 66 production FR-l’s was completed during 1945 and three squadrons equipped for carrier duty. Service tests with the Fireball have proved beyond a doubt that the combination propeller-jet powerplant is a practical and tactically satisfactory solution to the incorporation of jet propulsion to the aircraft carrier. However, the next problem was increased performance, particularly top speed and rate-of-climb. This could have been accomplished by installing a more powerful reciprocating engine in the Fireball nose, but the increased weight would have necessitated a complete re-design of the structure and relocation of component parts. The Navy, technically interested in the prop jet unit, decided that the Fireball might prove an ideal workhorse for experiment with this unit, as well as to provide a basic study of combination propjet-turbojet powerplant.
The Ryan XF2R-1 is the result of this planning. Basically it is the standard FR-1 Fireball with a General Electric TG-100 turboprop unit replacing the Wright Cyclone in the nose. The turboprop, hailed from the outset as the most promising immediate solution to the problem of applying the gas turbine to aircraft flying at speeds less than 500 mph. has encountered enormous development difficulties. One major problem has been propeller gearing. The 1-16 turbojet engine, for example, has a speed of 16,500 rpm. To keep the tip speed below that of sound, a 10 ft. propeller cannot turn faster than about 2150 rpm. Thus a reduction gear ratio of about 8:1 would be required between the turbine shaft and the propeller.
However, the gas turbine engine cruises at about 90% of maximum rpm., indicating that the turbine engine is a substantially constant speed power producer. To attain the flexibility of thrust required becomes the responsibility of the propeller and its pitch changing mechanism. The rate-of-change of the mechanism must be increased from the present 5° per second to about 15° per second due to the wide power variation of the gas turbine with comparatively small changes in rpm. The solution lies in two-speed or, perhaps, three-speed reduction gearing, a problem extremely complex.
The TG-100 turboprop unit utilizes an axial-flow compressor and “straight-through” individual combustion chambers exiting through the turbine. The turbine drives the compressor, which in turn drives the propeller reduction gearing. About 1700 hp. is delivered to the propeller, and approximately 350 hp. is provided to a large flush opening at either side of the fuselage in the form of a high-speed jet. This power is achieved at the maximum speed of the airplane, slower speeds resulting in lowered jet hp.
The TG-100 is about twice as long as the Wright Cyclone engine but the complete powerplant requirements are radically different. The familiar engine mount, large oil tank and various accessories are eliminated and a compact powerplant assembly substituted. For this reason the XF2R-1 is only about 4 ft. longer than the FR-1. This increased nose length, however, requires the use of a large dorsal fin to provide increased lateral area aft of the airplane center of gravity. The TG-100 drives a large Hamilton Standard Super Hydro malic four-blade square tipped propeller to absorb the increased power.
One of the most important technical features of the composite powerplant fighter plane is that the basic operating condition is the total power being supplied by the front engine. The 1-16 turbojet engine, both in the FR-1 and the new XF2R-1, is an auxiliary engine only. Under normal operating conditions only the propeller engine is used for takeoff, climb, cruising and landing. The only operating conditions specifying use of both engines are accelerated takeoff, takeoff with an overload, accelerated rate-of-climb, and maximum high speed conditions. The 1-16 unit burns about 250 gals, of high octane fuel or about 160 gals, of kerosene per hour, about twice that of a reciprocating engine. The FR-1 for example carries only 380 gals, of fuel in standard tankage, which, with the Cyclone burning about 100 gals, per hour, would give the plane a range of only a few minutes more than one hour, or about 425 miles. By operating on the Cyclone alone the range can be more than trebled. Another aspect of the range problem, however, is the standard Navy fighter plane requirement
Official U. S. Navy Photograph
ONE OF THE U. S. NAVY’S NEW JET FIGHTERS
Making more than 500 miles per hour, this new F6U jet plane is designed for use on U. S. Navy carriers.
that, in addition to the standard combat radius, fuel must be provided for a 30 sec. warmup period at full power, 30 secs, for takeoff at full power, 10 min. for idling, and 10 min. at full power at 15,000 ft.
Normal operating conditions indicate a takeoff with both powerplants at full fuel gross weight, climb to 15,000 ft. and level out, followed by throttling of the jet engine. Cruising at reduced power is then accomplished on the propeller engine above, with the jet engine being started as combat appears, and return home on the propeller engine alone.
Carrier operation of jet aircraft poses numerous problems, some of which have been developed by the FR-1 and others that will be introduced by the XF2R-1. One serious feature is the jet blast, which prohibits the interlocking plane stowage so familiar to carrier aircraft operation. A number of proposals were made and studied to solve this problem. One is the use of express elevators and special handling equipment which would bring only two or three fighter aircraft to the deck for takeoff at a time; upon their clearance for takeoff another trio would be brought up. Although much novel equipment has been proposed in connection with this idea, it appears so far that the launching time would be greatly slowed by this procedure. Another suggestion is that special heat-resistant barriers be installed behind each tailpipe, the barriers being retracted down into the deck as each plane moves forward.
The FR-1 has proved admirably suited to carrier operation in this regard, due to the
fact that it normally takes off on the propeller powerplant alone. The new XF2R-1 introduces the problem of the jet efflux from the TG-100, but this amounts to only about 15% of that of a straight turbojet fighter and is not expected to present a serious problem provided certain precautions are taken.
The TG-100 turboprop installation has a lower weight per horsepower than the Cyclone but its actual installed weight is about twice as much. The removal of numerous items of equipment permitted thereby, however, results in an increased gross weight of the airplane of only a few hundred pounds. The low specific weight of the turboprop and the turbojet is an antidote to its high fuel consumption. For example, a complete power- plant for a 2000 hp. reciprocating engine weighs about 2600 lbs., whereas a complete 2000 hp. jet engine installed weighs only 1000 lbs. This difference in weight amounts to about 260 gals, of fuel, or enough for an additional hour’s running of the turbojet or turboprop engine. Comparisons between reciprocating and jet engine fighters, then, must be made on the basis of total power- plant weight including the weight of fuel. At high speeds (550 mph. or more) fuel consumption of the jet engine is actually comparable to that of a reciprocating engine.
The XF2R-1 has a 40 ft. wingspan and is 35 ft., 11-7/32 in. long, 12 ft. 4J in. high. The air inlet for the turboprop engine is located on the lower segment of the nose with internal ducts carrying this ram pressure air across the propeller reduction gear box and into the air compressor intake. Air for the turbojet engine is taken in at the root of the wing leading edge, is carried rearward and into the fuselage where the duct enlarges to a bell-shape for entry into the turbojet air intake. The rear fuselage is attached by four bolts which, upon removal, permits the aft section to be moved back, exposing the turbojet engine for servicing. The engine is actually mounted on a trolley, permitting it to be rolled forward and aft for removal and installation.
The XF2R-1 was completed in October, 1946, and delivered to Muroc Army Air Base, Calif., for flight tests in November. It completed the first “cross country” flight of an American turboprop airplane recently when it flew from Muroc to the Ryan factory in San Diego. It shares honors with the Consolidated-Vultee XP-81 as the only turboprop aircraft of American design to have been successfully flown.
Ejection Capsule for Planes of Supersonic Speed
New York Herald Tribune, April 12—The Navy’s air arm has developed an “ejection capsule” for bringing to earth safely the crew of an aircraft involved in an accident while flying at supersonic speeds in the stratosphere, Commander Norval R. Richardson told members of the Society of Automotive Engineers yesterday in the Hotel New Yorker. _ _
Commander Richardson, who is cockpit development co-ordinator of the research and development group of Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, said that the seats developed during World War II for catapulting a pilot clear of his aircraft would not be practical in future aircraft types. He explained that pilots probably would be torn apart if they were ejected by such seats at supersonic speeds and might die from lack of oxygen, if they survived the initial shock.
“If that didn’t finish them off they would freeze to death before they reached the earth,” Commander Richardson continued. “Assuming they survived all of the above they might land in a trackless ocean—or possibly in the Arctic waters.”
The Navy believed that the only answer to all these problems was to provide pilots and crew members with ejection capsules which could be pressurized and automatically jettisoned in a moment of danger, Commander Richardson explained. When a predetermined altitude was reached, he said, a parachute would open and let the capsule down gently.
“Possibly the pressurized cockpit capsule will serve as a life raft on the ocean and its occupant will proceed to radio for help, munching in the meanwhile on stored rations,” Commander Richardson predicted. “He might break out oars or start a put-put and head for shore, or if he should land on some Arctic waste he would have a protected home with food and radio to help him out of his plight. In the event he decided to hike, he
would have his mukluks and capsules in his locker to equip him properly for Arctic travel.”
Commander Richardson noted that the matter of ejection capsules still required considerable study and discussion by aeronautical scientists, but he revealed that the Navy already had one installed in “one of our experimental high-speed aircraft.” The Navy has built several rocket-powered aircraft for the purpose of breaking through the so-called trans-sonic barrier” at speeds in excess of the notice stated, might be seen diving into the sea from a height of approximately
40,0 ft. above sea level. The tests would take place in daylight only.
These tests are designed to pave the way for safe flying at supersonic speed. Robots are being used because little is known about the results of flying beyond the speed of sound (762 m.p.h. at sea level, decreasing to 660 m.p.h. at 40,000 ft.), and the authorities decided not to expose pilots to such great risks. The rocket-propelled aircraft, which
760 miles an hour, and turned over one of its rocket motors to the Army Air Forces for use in the Bell XS-1 now undergoing preliminary trans-sonic speed tests at Muroc Lake, Calif.
Robot Flights at High Speeds
London Times, March 21.—Exhaustive tests with supersonic rocket-propelled aircraft, the outcome of which will have an important bearing on developments in aviation, are shortly to be carried out by the Ministry of Supply off the coast of Cornwall.
A Ministry of Civil Aviation notice to airmen yesterday gave warning that pilotless “model aircraft” would be operated within a radius of 11 § miles of a point 14 miles west of Bishop Rock, Scilly Isles, during the period of six months from April 1. These aircraft, have been developed by Vickers-Armstrongs will be carried by Mosquito aircraft based in Cornwall. The robots’ behaviour in flight will be automatically recorded at a ground station in the Scilly Isles. A telemeter inside the machine records the readings of instruments and transmits them to the ground station. The aircraft will also be tracked by radar and will be photographed by Gloster Meteor jet-propelled fighters of the type which holds the world speed record.
1,000 m.p.h. Maximum
The rocket-propelled machines are powered by bi-fuel motors using T-Stoff and C-Stoff, chemicals which the Germans used in V2 rockets. The original motors were expected to give a speed of between 800 and 880 m.p.h., but recent improvements in the
rockets have advanced the maximum speed to about 1,000 m.p.h. The aircraft have a fuselage 12 ft. long and 18 in. in diameter, and the wing span is 8 ft.
Fifteen seconds after the experimental machine has been detached from the Mosquito which carries it to a height of about
40,0 ft., the automatic pilot will level out the robot, which will then fly at high speed until its fuel is exhausted, when the automatic pilot will cause it to dive into the sea. The fuel supply lasts about 70 seconds, during which time the robot will cover well over 12 miles.
MERCHANT MARINE 2 LST’s Will Start Runs to Venezuela
New York Times, March 31.—Defense materials and other cargo purchased from this country by Venezuela will be carried from New York to La Guaira soon on former Navy Landing Ships (Tank), it became known yesterday.
Robert G. Drake, president of the Drake Shipping Company, 67 Wall Street, operating agent for the Venezuelan Government, said that two LST’s would begin regular New York-La Guaira runs as soon as they could be dispatched here and loaded. Other vessels of the same type eventually may be used in the service.
The craft were acquired from the United States by the Venezuelan Navy and are manned by regular members of that service. The cargoes will be mostly military and will include explosives, Mr. Drake said.
Each of the vessels will make three trips every two months between the two ports. It is estimated that the run will take about thirteen days under normal weather conditions. Each shipment will total at least 2,500 tons.
Mr. Drake, who is 25 years old, established his company in 1944. Formerly a student at Harvard University, he served in the war as a B-17 pilot and as an operative of the Office of Strategic Services in the Middle East. His father is John H. Drake, retired president of Drake Bakeries.
The Drake Shipping Company is attempting to charter seven freighters from the Government for cargo service to ports in Africa and the Middle East.
In its freight forwarding operations the company handled air shipments of coke to Cuba last year when there was a critical shortage of fuel for sugar mill foundries there. The company also handled a shipment of shoe factory equipment to Ecuador. The equipment was to be used in the manufacture of Ecuador Army shoes.
One of the company’s pending projects is the shipment of 200 tons of concentrated picric acid to a consignee in Hong Kong. Mr. Drake does not yet know how the highly explosive acid will reach its destination but he is confident that some arrangement for its delivery will be made soon.
Alcoa Ships Will Begin Cruises on May 2
New York Herald Tribune, April 13.—The Alcoa cruise ship Alcoa Cavalier will sail from New York on her first voyage to the West Indies, May 2. She will touch at the Virgin Islands, Martinique, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Vincent, Grenada, and Trinidad on her seventeen-day voyage. Two sister ships, the Alcoa Clipper and the Alcoa Corsair, will start cruises to the Caribbean and South America from New Orleans in May and June, respectively. The ships were built by the Oregon Ship-building Corp., Portland, Ore. Each accommodates ninety- eight passengers.
1st Gas-Turbine Ship is Facing Delay to 1948
New York Herald Tribune, April 13.— Tests of the first American merchant ship to be powered by the revolutionary gas turbine are likely to be delayed until next year. The Maritime Commission, sponsor of the project, had hoped to place the ship in operation this summer, but production delays and lack of a suitable ship are expected to postpone experiments.
The gas turbine has been called the successor to diesel and steam power plants since the early days of the war, but engineers caution that too much should not be expected until extensive tests permit accurate assessment and development of improvements. The gas turbine’s advantages are its lightness and simplicity and its operation at high efficiency without boilers and boiler water, providing greater cargo space.
In a gas turbine, air is compressed, heated and introduced into a combustion chamber, where it combines with burning fuel, then expands and rushes over turbine vanes, which provide rotary power geared to the propeller.
Gas turbines are in use in planes where they are employed with jet power plants. The marine version is not a jet power plant, but an application of the windmill principle. Several gas turbine locomotives are being built for American railroads and the British are reported to be constructing a gas-turbine ship.
The Maritime Commission’s plans call for installation of a gas turbine in an existing Liberty-type collier, replacing the ship’s reciprocating plant. The turbine is under construction at the Jeanette, Pa., plant of the Elliott Company and will be installed in the ship by the Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, Kearny, N. J. Federal is designing the layout of the machinery in the ship and is procuring the auxiliary machinery, propeller and shaft.
Work on the designs by the Elliott concern began two years ago and construction began early in 1946. The turbine is expected to be completed this year, possibly by fall, according to B. H. Van Dyke, an Elliott engineer. Mr. Van Dyke said the thirty-five- ton power plant has two turbines, a 2,600- horsepower high-pressure unit for operating one of two compressors and a low-pressure unit which provides 3,000 horsepower for the propeller shaft and 3,000 more to run the second compressor.
There is no visible exhaust or smoke, Mr. Van Dyke said, and only heat waves will be seen leaving the stack. The exhaust is used to help heat the compressed air before escaping. Reversing the ship will be done by a variable-pitch propeller, and the engine will be started by a small electric motor, which brings the plant up to one-third speed before air is admitted and the combustion process commenced. Mr. Van Dyke said the plant must be warmed up for one to two hours before it can be turned over by the starting motor. Concerning expense, Mr. Van Dyke said that this first unit will cost more than it is worth, but that gas-turbine construction costs “will be competitive with steam and diesel when standardized.”
C. H. Johnson, chief engineer of the Federal shipyard, said the experimental turbine’s thermal efficiency will be about 30 per cent. The highest recorded diesel thermal efficiency was about 38 per cent, with 30 per cent the highest for steam. It is believed that should the gas turbine experiment prove a success, thermal efficiency will be increased in engines of later designs.
Mr. Johnson said that the experimental plant will use diesel oil for fuel but that gas turbines must be designed to use grade C bunker fuel oil, which is 60 per cent cheaper than diesel oil, “if the engine is to make any headway at all.” Powdered coal is to be used in at least one gas-turbine locomotive, but oil is considered better for ships, as it is cleaner and requires less stowage space than coal. Installation of the plant will require two months.
The gas turbine is not a new idea; Hero of Alexandria, one of the earliest recorded steam engineers, is said to have built a crude forerunner, and experiments were made in the nineteenth century. Lack of metals capable of withstanding gas turbine’s extreme temperatures, rising as high as 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, retarded progress and attention was diverted to the steam turbine. Now new war-developed metals are available, making possible the application of an ancient idea.
British Gas Turbine Ship
Weekly News Report, April 2.—The first gas turbine-drive ship will be the British tanker Amis, now under construction in a British yard. First plans called for Diesel propulsion. The Auris is being built for the Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company.
Ed. Note: See article before, the race is on.
American Shipowners Get Jump With Humidity Control Methods
Maritime Reporter, April 1.—American ship owners can take pride in the fact that their vessels, equipped with the latest in dehumidification and ventilation systems, are drawing new business in that they offer increased cargo protection against all types of weather conditions.
O. D. Colvin, president of the Cargocaire
Engineering Corporation, who recently returned from a trip abroad where he surveyed the building of foreign-flag freighters, points out that the U. S. ship owners are attracting many cargoes which formerly went to Scandinavian and British ships.
“These countries have for generations produced highly trained crews and they still have an outstanding reputation for the skillful handling of difficult cargoes in all kinds of weather,” Mr. Colvin stated. “As a result, there was a heavy movement of goods in pre-war days to these lines.
“However,” he continued, “despite the use of skilled personnel, there have been many occasions where even the best handling and the best knowledge are of no avail. Heavy weather which prevented the use of old fashioned ventilating systems forced many ship owners to fall back on the time- tried excuse of ‘inherent vice of the cargo’ and ‘peril of the sea.’ ”
Mr. Colvin cited several recent instances which have forcibly demonstrated to shippers the advisability of using only modern- equipped tonnage. One example dealt with the costly losses of oranges shipped from Jacksonville, Fla., and the Mediterranean to northern ports in foreign flag vessels. Those losses ran as high as 50 per cent, he said.
On the other hand, he declared, Lykes Brothers Steamship Company is regularly bringing in grapefruit from Texas ports and landing them at Antwerp with no loss.
“These grapefruit, shipped without refrigeration, are arriving in perfect condition in Cargocaire protected holds,” Mr. Colvin asserted. “Similar shipments of onions, oranges, apples and lemons by the American President Lines from our own West Coast to the Philippines have likewise arrived in perfect condition.”
As additional evidence of the superior cargo protection methods used by American ship owners, Mr. Colvin told of a Moore- McCormack ship landing 14,000,000 eggs in Sweden, while at the same time foreign shipping lines were bringing in eggs with “poor outturn.”
Commenting on the general shipbuilding conditions as he found them in Europe and Great Britain, Mr. Colvin said “Sweden, while striving to maintain its shipyards in high gear, is very troubled by the lack of labor and material. Orders are booked into 1950 and they are falling behind from month to month in the delivery of electrical equipment.”
Some British officials he talked to say that the shorter work week in the mines and the five-day work week that was just started in British shipyards were definitely slowing down the entire shipbuilding program in Great Britain.
While in England, Mr. Colvin collaborated with Sidney J. Duly in presenting a technical paper on the control of humidity in cargo spaces before the North East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders at New- castle-on-Tyne.
Small Radar Beacon for Use in Lighthouse Produces Bright Ray on a Ship’s Screen
New York Times, April 15.—A small radar beacon for light-houses, designed to supplement and in time perhaps to replace the conventional lighthouse light, has been perfected by the General Electric Company, it was announced yesterday.
Called an “electronic beacon,” the unit was built for the Coast Guard and emits signals invisible to the human eye that are easily picked up by radar-equipped ships, regardless of weather conditions.
The beacon, it was explained, sends out signals, which appear as a bright ray on a ship’s radar screen, showing the exact direction of the beacon in the same way that the lighthouse is located by its beam of light.
The experimental unit consists of two parts, the transmitter, which is said to beam radar waves in all directions at a speed of
186,0 miles a second, and a vertical dipole antenna, which resembles a police nightstick in appearance. It is powered by one tube and operates in the 3,200-megacycle range.
The unit will be shown for the first time publicly to delegates of the International Merchant Marine Radio Aids to Navigation Society, when they convene here for technical sessions starting next Monday. A practical demonstration will then be held aboard the Maritime Commission training ship American Sailor off New London, Conn., on May 5.
Radio “Pilot” Test Slated in Harbor
New York Times, April 3.-—A new marine navigation system, used for the first time by the Normandy invasion fleet and employed more recently to guide coal-bearing ships up the fog-blanketed Thames River during the British coal crisis, is scheduled for introduction in this country soon, it was disclosed yesterday.
Known as the Decca Navigator System, it operates by means of radio signals recorded on the dials of a compact device installed on the bridge of a vessel. It reputedly can keep a master or pilot advised of his position within yards.
The Decca Navigator System, Inc., American subsidiary of the British company that developed the method, has applied to the Federal Communications Commission for temporary use of four long-wave frequencies to demonstrate the device here to shipping companies and airlines.
Transmitters Sites Chosen
The corporation is now arranging for the construction of transmitting stations in Yorktown, Westchester County; Patchogue, L. I.; Redhook, Dutchess County, and Andover, N. J., which will serve shipping in and around the Port of New York.
If the application is approved by the FCC, a series of trials is contemplated in which ships would be guided into New York Harbor under the worst possible visibility conditions, according to D. II. Toller-Bond, chief engineer of the corporation.
In no way related to radar, the system operates with such accuracy that a vessel approaching through the Narrows would be able to adhere to within thirty feet of her plotted course, Mr. Toller-Bond said. He added that it operates equally efficiently in the air, irrespective of altitude, and that it is not affected by weather.
Effective in Invasion
The system underwent its first operational use on D-Day, when minesweepers and leading landing craft reached the Normandy beach-head within a few yards of predetermined positions, it was said. Since then more than 150 British merchant ships have been outfitted with the device and it has been used to guide ships through still unswept mine fields in the North Sea and in other European coastal waters.
British Prime Minister Clement Attlee described the system last week as “one important step forward in solving the British coal crisis.” Receiving equipment installed in many large colliers, he said, enabled them to move up the Thames regardless of fog and made it possible to transport coal continuously.
MISCELLANEOUS Who’s Who in the Atomic Race?
Marine Corps Gazette, By Stefan T. Possony.-—The invention of the atomic bomb has modified the economic geography of military power. No country can hope to maintain itself in a conflict fought with atomic weapons unless it possesses the elements necessary to manufacture these new implements of war in sufficient quantity and superior quality. Three major elements are required for the production of atomic arms: radioactive raw materials, a large output of electric power, and a big, efficient and technologically progressive industry.
Atomic Raw Materials
Atomic bombs are produced today from uranium and thorium. Although uranium is present in most granitic rocks and appears in more than 120 minerals, it can be mined only at very few places. Thorium is three times more plentiful, but it is mined at even fewer points than uranium. Important deposits of both elements may still be discovered. Yet during the search for radium, most large uranium deposits seem to have been located —at least outside Asia. Both elements are extremely rare. (They are, in fact, so rare that they can hardly ever become a major source of industrial power.)
The energy available in one pound of uranium is equivalent to that gained by the combustion of 1,000 tons of coal. Yet roughly 750,000 tons of uranium would have to be mined every year if coal were to be replaced as the prime source of power in the world. The total amount of recoverable uranium is probably far less than 750,000 tons. To be sure, there is enough uranium
available to destroy the world’s large cities. Yet if uranium and thorium are extensively used for civilian and defensive purposes, the use of uranium bombs on a mass scale might be precluded by the exhaustion of the raw material.
Uranium Deposits
Before 1922, the carnotite mines in Colorado and Utah were the main producers of uranium (and radium). In that year rich deposits of uranium were discovered in the Belgian Congo near Elisabethville, department of Katanga. In 1930, the world’s largest layers of uranium were located near the Great Bear Lake, Canada. A fourth major deposit is on the French island of Madagascar.
Canada has secondary deposits of uranium near the lakes Athabasca and Common and near Port Hope, Ontario. In the United States, uranium is found in smaller quantities in California, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and North Carolina. In the African region, uranium is also available in the Transvaal and in the Uruguru Mountains. Although it is at present not possible to calculate exactly the magnitude of these various deposits, it is probable that between two-thirds and three-fourths of the globe’s uranium are concentrated in North America and Africa.
Within the British Empire, uranium is also found in Cornwall as well as in southern and western Australia. The largest European deposit is at Joachimsthal or Jachimov, on the Czech-German border. Norway, Bulgaria, Sweden (Karelia), Finland, Germany (Saxony) and Italy (Piedmont) have small amounts of the valuable element, which is also found at three points in Japan and in the state of Minas Geraes, Brazil.
The uranium resources of the Soviet Union are uncertain. It is assumed that there are no important deposits in European Russia. Some uranium has been discovered in the Urals. Mendelyeevite, an uraniumbearing mineral, is found near Lake Baikal, Siberia. The richest known Soviet deposit is in Turkestan, in the Tyuya Muyun Mountains near Ferghana. None of the Russian deposits seem to be really rich, yet since large parts of the granitic formations in Russia are as yet poorly explored, Russia may actually possess greater reserves of uranium than would appear today. Some European deposits are situated close to the Russian frontier.
Thorium Deposits
Thorium is extracted from monazite sands. The state of Travancore on the Malabar coast in British India, together with Ceylon, supplies almost 80 per cent of the world’s needs. The rest comes from Bahia, Brazil, and from the Dutch East Indies. Monazite sands are in Florida and in both Carolinas. Additional British Empire resources are at Villeneuve, Quebec, in New South Wales and in England proper. Thorium is also produced in small quantities in Colombia, Southern Norway and Finland. Russia has by no means inconsiderable resources of monazite, particularly in the gold-bearing regions in the Urals and in the Ilmen range; monazite has also been reported from Siberia.
Electric Power
Extensive use of atomic weapons is impossible without the large-scale production of plutonium. It has not been revealed how much plutonium is used per bomb, although it is known that the amount is by no means small. The production of this element requires a great amount of electrical energy. In the first experiment in atomic fission in 1939, 15 times more electric energy was required than was released. Power is still needed in extremely great quantities. According to the report by Dr. H. D. Smyth of Princeton University, the production of one kilogram of plutonium a day would require a plant capable of delivering between 500,000 and
1,500,0 kilowatts. In fact, plutonium output was already in 1945 “very large,” according to the Smyth report.
Besides plutonium, atomic bombs can be made of U-235 which must be separated from the more common U-238. This separation requires large amounts of electric power by whatever method is chosen. Although a large part of the separation work went on at a site where power produced by TVA could be used, one “of the largest . . . steam power plants . . . ever built” was there constructed.
It may be then assumed that, to make an
appreciable number of atomic bombs, one million kilowatts of installed power plant producing 8,000 million kilowatt hours of energy per year must be set aside. As a comparison, the total installed power plant of the entire world in 1924 was estimated at 53 million kw. At present, only three countries -—the United States, Germany and Russia—• produce more than 30,000 million kwh per year, an output that would seem to be the minimum requirement for a substantial fabrication of atomic bombs. Since Russian power stations utilize more than 60 per cent of their capacity, while Britain exploits only 22 per cent, England should be included in the group of the chief producers of electricity.
While Germany can no longer be counted as a unit, France, Belgium and Holland, including the parts of Germany occupied by France, could together attain a production of
30,0 million kwh per year. Yet only the United States actually turns out enough power to embark upon a large mass production of atomic weapons at the present time.
A nation’s total power output indicates its capacity to manufacture atomic bombs. Yet without very large individual power stations, production would become even more complicated than it actually is and power requirements would increase on account of losses by long-range transmission. The startling fact is, however, that in the whole world there are not more than 29 power stations with a capacity of more than 500,000 kw. Of these, 25 are in the United States and Canada; two are in Germany and two in Russia. There are only eight power plants with a capacity larger than one million kw; all of them are in the United States and Canada.
Potential Water Power in HP Africa—274,000,000
Belgian Congo & Ruanda-Urundi— 130,000,000
French Equatorial Africa—50,000,000 Asia (without Russia)—84,000,000 India—39,000,000
China including Manchuria—23,000,000 Soviet Union—78,000,000 Siberia—64,000,000 European Russia—14,000,000 North America—77,000,000
U. S. A.—33,500,000 Canada—25,500,000 South America—74,000,000 B razil—36,000,000 Europe (without Russia)—60,000,000 N orway—16,000,000 F ranee—6,000,000 Spain—5,700,000 Italy—5,400,000 Sweden—4,000,000
Russia’s third Five Year Plan envisaged the construction of a dozen power stations on rivers Volga, Kama and Oka. One of these—■ to be situated on the big bend of the Volga near Kuibyshev—shall become the largest in the world and develop 3.4 million kw. Another large station is planned in the neighborhood of Kaluga. The ultimate output envisaged by Russia is questionable.
Electrification
To what degree can the power plant of the various countries be enlarged? For the production of 8,000 million kwh of energy, about ten million tons of coal per year must be consumed. This seems little in terms of American output. England, too, could set aside such a quantity. Also Germany could mine more coal than she did before her collapse. Coal production in Russia is comparatively small and continuously lags behind plans. The Soviet Union has very large deposits of excellent coal. Although most of it is located in out-of-the-way Siberia, difficulties will be overcome as soon as the transport system has been substantially improved. At present, Russia moreover has access to the coal in Silesia. France is so deficient in coal that even if she retains the Saar region and federates herself economically with Belgium, she would be unable to base the production of atomic weapons on coal.
Large-scale increases in the world’s electric plant will probably be based on water power. Although the initial costs of hydroelectric plants are higher than those of steam plants, they offer considerable advantages from the military point of view: once in operation they require neither manpower, nor raw materials or transportation.
What are the hydroelectric reserves of the various countries?
Industrial Potentials
“Just as the automobile replaced the horse and made work for millions of Americans, the atomic explosive will require the services of millions of men if we are compelled to employ them in fighting our battles.” (General Marshall.)
The manufacture of atomic bombs requires huge and numerous industrial installations. Moreover, these weapons can be used with impunity only by the side which has secured command in the air, is able to fill the skies with numerous heavy bombers, fighters, long-range rockets and rocket interceptors, and which also protects its own industry and population against atomic reprisal. It seems, therefore, obvious that only the countries with the biggest industrial output will be able to make and employ atomic weapons. Since the industrially strongest nation can produce more atomic bombs and more means of protection than any other country, it should henceforth enjoy a premium of strength greater than that enjoyed by it in previous industrial wars.
Industrial Efeiciency
Efficiency and productivity cannot be expressed in quantitative terms. Many people think that, once the secret of the atomic bomb has been pierced, other nations will be able to produce that weapon. The loss of the American scientific monopoly of the atomic bomb is ultimately unavoidable, yet not every country will be able to manufacture atomic bombs.
Efficiency and productivity of industry become fairly obvious if a nation’s production record is examined. An industry which never pioneered, made few contributions to technological progress, boasts of no or very few major inventions and which does not enjoy the services of first-class scientific and creative personnel, is very unlikely to pioneer on an important scale within the foreseeable future, or even to imitate the fabrication of complicated products.
There are no secrets in automobiles, but the overwhelming majority of cars are built in North America. Mass production plants in England, Germany, France and Italy are partly American-owned and equipped with
American machinery. While England and Germany specialized in high-quality automobiles, the United States made trucks for almost the entire world.
Russian cars were built with American patents and with American tools. Russia contributed no important improvement to automobile engineering, and had to import great numbers of cars, trucks, and even tractors, the very basis of her mechanized agriculture. (For that matter, Dnieprestroi was built by an American firm and much of the machinery was imported from the United States.) Russia’s industry as a whole still depends upon the importation of machinery and tools from leading industrial countries.
The industrial preponderance of Western Europe and North America is gradually broken with respect to commodities of more or less easy and standardized manufacture. Yet it is more pronounced than ever with respect to products of complicated design requiring precision work on a large scale.
Only the United States and Great Britain were able to turn out satisfactory heavy bombers. They had an unchallenged monopoly in bombsight and radar equipment. No other country was ever able to build efficient aircraft carriers and to equip them with aircraft as effective as land-based planes. High octane gasoline, although invented by a Russian, was produced largely in the United States, Great Britain and Germany and had to be imported during the war into Russia. Other examples could be quoted ad limitum. Germany alone was able throughout history to compete technologically and industrially with England and America.
Even if technological secrets are revealed, the know-how of production will not be transferred to other countries. Numerous Anglo-Saxon “secret weapons” were known to all belligerents, but few were successfully imitated. The production of atomic bombs is unquestionably the most difficult industrial task ever performed. For example, uranium must be purified to a degree far exceeding the purity of materials needed in laboratories. An impurity in granite of one part in
50,0 is considered undesirable. The cooling system requires a sheath “that would protect uranium from water corrosion, would keep fission products out of the water, would transmit heat from the uranium to the water, and would not absorb too many neutrons.”
Can similar—almost superhuman—problems be solved by industries which heretofore only occasionally manufactured complicated and revolutionary equipment and which receive the bulk of their precision tools from abroad? The history of industrial production indicates that such an achievement is most unlikely.
Inventiveness
Yet suppose that rapid industrial progress will enable other countries to catch up with the production of the atomic bomb. Will the United States and Great Britain be able to retain their lead in the development of atomic weapons and to produce them in a superior quality?
Will the Great Powers embark upon competition for the control of Africa’s uranium deposits and hydroelectric potential? Will they compete for the uranium deposits and the power plant of Central Europe and Scandinavia? These are the major problems of tomorrow’s international politics.
Conclusions
In terms of industrial efficiency, only the United States and Great Britain can be considered as capable of making atomic weapons within the near future, even if the secret cannot be maintained. The industries situated between the Ruhr and the Loire are efficient enough to take up atomic production, although they would have to import their raw materials from overseas. Yet in the absence of economic and political federation, atomic production in Western Europe may be ruled out as unlikely. On the basis of the historical record, it would be very surprising if Russian industry could engage in atomic competition.
The only region which possesses all the elements needed for atomic production is the United States and Canada. The continent of North America is thus the geographic center of atomic power. Little is in view to indicate that within the next decades that center will be removed to other areas. The invention of the atomic bomb has, so it seems, enhanced the strength of the already potentially and actually strongest military power—the United States. If moreover the United States and Great Britain pool their intellectual resources, as they did so successfully during the war, an almost permanent and crushing superiority in atomic production will be assured for democracy. This is, perhaps, the most solid reason for the hope that, this time, peace may be of a more durable quality.
Proposed World Police Force Believed Doomed to Inactivity
New York Herald Tribune, April 21, by G. F- Eliot.—-The Military Staff Committee of the United Nations is composed of professional army, navy and air-force officers—gentlemen whose whole training and experience forbids them to indulge in wishful thinking.
When they say bluntly—as reported in the New York Times—that their committee has decided to limit the proposed world police force to one that can handle only such trouble as may arise in or between the little countries they are merely facing the cold, hard fact that the United Nations, as presently established, cannot deal forcibly with aggression by a major power.
The committee might well have added what is implicit in their decision, that the proposed world police force is not only limited in its objectives to trouble caused by little countries, but is further limited to trouble caused by little countries which have no powerful friends willing to go to bat for them when they are hauled on the Security Council’s carpet.
The committee might even have gone so far as to say that, it being difficult to find any such friendless little countries in this day and age, there is not much prospect that the proposed world police force will ever be used at all, and that to create it will only serve to build up illusions of security in the minds of unthinking people. Such illusions could conceivably be much more dangerous than a frank admission that a world police force is useless to the United Nations under existing circumstances, and its creation had better be deferred until the great powers have come to some adjustment of their present differences.
Illustration is Given
An excellent mental exercise in practical application of these difficulties may be obtained by asking ourselves what would happen if, after the International Treaty of Trieste has been finally set up, our good friend and ally, Marshal Tito, of Yugoslavia, should find that the conditions in that territory were intolerable to him, that “outrages” were being committed against the persons and property of the Slav inhabitants by the Italian majority, that the governor was not taking the action in these circumstances which Marshal Tito deemed imperative, and that, therefore, there was nothing to do save to move in with the Yugoslav Army and take over “temporary” control of the whole business.
Of course, such a thing would not occur to the marshal until after the withdrawal of American and British troops from the free territory, which under the present arrangements must take place within 135 days after the governor is selected and takes office, unless the governor thinks he cannot keep order without them. Not that 5,000 American and 5,000 British troops could prevent the Yugoslav Army of some 600,000 effectives from coming into Trieste; but they would fight, and Marshal Tito is hardly to be imagined as taking the risks involved in an attack upon the armed forces of two major powers even if he can gain a local and temporary success. The game would not be worth the candle.
Nor could Tito expect the Soviet Union to protect him by force of arms against the consequences of any such rash piece of business. He had a taste of that last summer when he tried out the temper of the United States by shooting down a couple of our transport planes which strayed over his territory. He was called very sharply to account—and the attitude of the Kremlin was (as described by a “neutral” diplomat): “When the Yugos call up, we just won’t answer the telephone.”
Alternatives for U. S.
But if he had only to fear the intervention of the world police force, at the behest of the Security Council, he would be in a very much happier position. Being in possession of Trieste, he could and would build up a terrific volume of carefully prepared “evidence” to show the terrible “atrocities” that had been committed against the Slav inhabitants (on the order of the well-remembered Czech “atrocities” against the Sudeten Germans). The Russians wouldn’t risk a war for him, but they would certainly be happy to argue the case in the Security Council until doomsday, and to veto any use of force against Tito’s usurpation of Trieste.
So as far as we are concerned, we would be right where we are now: we would either be compelled to use our own force, in association with those who might be willing to join us, to take action outside the framework of the United Nations to restore the authority of world law and uphold the sanctity of treaties, or we would be compelled to acquiesce in an act of gross and outrageous defiance of law which would be protected by the terms of the United Nations Charter.
It may be said that the Italians could take action under Article 51 of the Charter, assuring them the right of self-defense—but then, we have been so careful to cut down the Italian armored force to 200 tanks, the Italian air force to 200 fighter and 150 reconnaissance planes (absolutely no bombers), and the over-all strength of the Italian Army to 185,000 men plus 65,000 Carabinieri, that we have assured permanent Italian military inferiority to a fully mobilized Yugoslavia. If the Italians took action—-as they probably would—and called on us for the air support which would be life or death to them, would we, or could we, refuse it? Yet if we gave it, we would be “by-passing the United Nations” in a big way.
The Military Staff Committee is indeed to be congratulated upon its contribution to realistic thinking at a time when realistic thinking is a very necessary exercise for American citizens.
No Salvation Army in Germany
Manchester Guardian, March 14.—The Salvation Army has been refused permission to carry on its work in Germany after a Russian complaint that it is quasi-military and that its members wear a military uniform.