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United States.................................................................................................................... 1002
Army Decentralizes Map-Making—Global Air Base—Navy Ends Pacific Rule—Substitute for Wool—Veteran Shifts Moorings—
Early Warning—Shipbuilding—Submarine Engine—Experimental Destroyer
Great Britain................................................................................................................... 1007
New Rifle—Carrier Completion—Arctic Voyage—Pilot Training— Resistance Test Results
U.S.S.R.................................................................................................................................... 1008
Atom Bomb Stocks
Other Countries................................................................................................................. 1008
Germany—Italy—Scandinavia—Spain
Aviation.................................................................................................................................. 1009
Super-Carrier Bridge—Speed—Sub-Killer
Science................................................................................................................................ 1010
Crude Oil Process—Test Lab Grows Wings—Danish Clock—New Coal Power Tap—Fresh Water—North Atlantic Waterway
1014
Merchant Marine..........................
Cost of Atomic Age Ships
International.................................................................................................................. 1014
Operation Progress—French Weather Base
UNITED STATES Army Decentralizes Map-Making
Providence Journal, June 27.—A U. S. Army map-making project expected to employ 450 persons and be the largest of four in the nation will set up shop Monday morning at Harborside Industrial Park. Most of the 450 employes will be Rhode Islanders.
Edwin J. Talbot, manager of the project—• the Providence field office of the Army Map Service—said one of several motivating factors in the selection of the local site was the large number of technical schools in this area, nearly all of which have courses in drafting.
He added that selection of the Providence site came after a study by government of scores of possible locations.
The Map Service will be housed in the former Mold Loft Building, in which the Army has leased 42,000 square feet of floor space—the entire second floor. During World War II plans were designed in the same location for the ships built by the Walsh-Kaiser shipyard.
Selection of the Providence site comes with the decision by the military to decentralize map making. Maps are so vital, the Army cannot afford to risk all its eggs in one basket. One bomb might wipe out the entire available supply.
Other map making projects were recently set up in Louisville and Kansas City. The fourth is earmarked for Cincinnati about Sept. 1.
Global Air Base
Baltimore Sun, July 9.—By the end of ^iext year, airlanes fanning out from Friendship International Airport may circle the globe, extend south to Rio de Janeiro and north to remote bases in Alaska and Canada.
This is the plan of the Military Air Transport Service.
It will become an actuality, along with the “next-year” time-table if Congress approves recommendations already made by' the Department of Defense.
As a result, Baltimore’s new municipal airport would become one of the world’s largest air-embarkation bases.
Estimating from what officers call “normal expectancy,” an average of 100,000 passengers would move through the MATS base each year. The MATS planes rising from runways at Friendship would be expected to carry cargo totaling 50,000,000 pounds each average year.
The size of the operations planned at Friendship was outlined by MATS officers at the Andrews Air Force Base, Md., global command post for the air transport service. Step by step, they detailed some of the requirements to establish a major air-embarkation base.
As the first step, Congress has been asked to appropriate s$43,478,000, this to be in addition to the more than $16,000,000 spent by the city of Baltimore to lay the present runways and erect the terminal.
“Friendship is practically empty today, for there’s nothing there which we can use but the runways,” one officer commented.
At a similar-type base, it was explained, there are now about 600 buildings scattered throughout a 4,300-acre area, with new construction and repair continually in progress.
At Friendship there are no buildings within the 3,000-acre tract except the terminal and its internal facilities that are adaptable to MATS requirements, but logistics planners here do hope that surrounding communities and Baltimore will help absorb some of the residential housing load.
Needed will be a number of huge hangars capable of housing the largest of present and planned aircraft, as well as additional ramps leading to the MATS operational area.
No decision has been reached yet as to what extent MATS would make use of the tower, weather and terminal facilities, but it is recognized that some improvements, including installation of Ground Control Approach equipment, would be required.
Navy Ends Pacific Rule
Christian Science Monitor —July 7.—With a few quick pen strokes in his cool, oval green office, President Truman has turned over some 96 inhabited islands and atolls of the Pacific world to the civilian overlordship of the Interior Department.
The freeing of American Samoa and the “Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands”—a long name on the Mercator’s projection, that'—from Navy rule is something of an historic event in men’s march on the slow road of local self-government.
Who knows but that Washington and its nearly 1,000,000 citizens may yet fare as well as the 55,000 dwellers of the vast oceanic domain which Admiral Chester Nimitz’ Marines and seamen wrested from the Japanese Empire in the costly sea and air campaigns of World War II!
But Washington does not begrudge the natives of the Marshalls and the Northern Marianas or the Western or Eastern Carolines their “liberation” from the high com- missionership of Vice-Admiral Arthur Radford, United States Navy. Nor does it question the inclusion of these remote island people into the great white paternalism of Interior Secretary Oscar Chapman.
For as President Truman has pointed out, it conforms with the long-established American tradition of having the affairs of civil populations conducted by civilians rather than military authorities. And it represents, possibly, further progress in the fulfillment of Mr. Truman’s civil rights program for the Pacific islands.
All this does not detract from the administrative record of the Navy. For over 50 years, a United States naval officer of the grade of captain had served as governor of American Samoa until January of this year.
In signing the order of transfer President Truman praised “the splendid record” of the Navy government since Samoa’s cession to the United States by treaty with the German Empire in 1899, and since the end of the war m the trust territory.
Late in January, civilian officials began taking over the administrative work of the Pacific islands in anticipation of the executive order of transfer which the President has just signed.
A New York lawyer with the emphatic name of Phelps Phelps moved into the palm- shaded, double-veranda government house at Fagotogo early, this year as the first civilian governor.
About that time, President Truman nominated Elbert D. Thomas of Utah to be the first civilian high commissioner of the trust territory. Dr. Thomas is a former professor of political science at the University of Utah.
More recently he was a United States senator.
High Commissioner Thomas’ temporary headquarters are near Admiral Radford’s, high on the breezy eastern slope of Makalapa Crater overlooking the gray steel naval bastion of Pearl Harbor.
Eventually he will shift his residency and government offices across some several thousand miles of rolling blue water, perhaps to Truk in the Eastern Carolines or Saipan farther north and west in the slightly less tropical climate of the Northern Marianas.
A liberal Democrat, and a wheel horse for work when it came to dragging President Truman’s fair deal program through the reluctant 81st Congress, Mr. Thomas fought hard for the President’s civil rights program.
Now he will have a chance to put it to a practical test in the trust territory of the Pacific islands. Among these 96 islands and atolls of the far Pacific dwell groups of widely different cultures. Some eight different native languages are spoken. It would be surprising if the new high commissioner could not speak some of them. He speaks Japanese fluently.
The islands are described geologically as “high” volcanic and “low” coral. Most of the volcanics lie in the western part. They are the exposed peaks of a submerged mountain range cast up in the chaos of paleolithic times.
The ridge trends southward from Japan through the Bonins, the Marianas, past Yap and the Palaus in the Western Carolines to New Guinea in the south equatorial Pacific.
Eastward of this ridge lies a series of “submarine elevations” which form the rest of the Carolines and the Marshalls. Excepting the volcanic outcroppings at Truk, Ponape, and Kusaie in the Carolines, these islands to the east are coral, mostly in the form of atolls.
The climate of trust territory is tropical with small seasonal changes. The temperature averages about 75 to 85 degrees, but the humidity is high. Average relative humidity in the Palaus is 77 per cent and 86 per cent in Ponape.
Many a Yankee whaler three years out from Nantucket and hungry for a sight of Sankaty Head would have traded 10 casks of
sperm for a day’s “dungeon” fog to relieve the blistering monotony on these west Pacific hunting grounds.
Yankee whalemen contributed their names to the charting of these vast island realms. Baker and Howland were both masters of New Bedford whaleships.
But the Spaniards found most of what is now known as Micronesia. Magellan was nearly 100 days from the straits which now bear his name in the year 1519, bowling through hundreds of Pacific islands without sighting one of them until the 98th morning his lookout hailed the deck that there was high land ahead. It was Guam, now under the United States territorial governorship of Carlton Skinner, navigator of the Coast Guard cutter Northland in World War II and later public information officer in the Interior Department.
Portuguese navigators stumbled across many of the Micronesian atolls in their quest for the Spice Islands. In 1526 they discovered Yap and Ulithi. European sea powers gobbled them up by the score centuries later, particularly Spain and Germany.
With the coming of steam, coaling stations sprang up all through the remote Pacific islands. Joseph Conrad’s magnificent story “Youth” is the story of his voyage as third mate of the bark Judea of London, taking coal “out east” from Wales.
Coal to keep the flag of commerce flying over American ships was the main reason for the United States setting up a naval and fueling station at Tutuila in Samoa at the turn of the century. And for nearly a half century after the passing of the Yankee clipper ship era coal kept the lordly renaissance of Maine sailing ships alive, making firms like the great shipping house of A. & E. Sewall of Bath strong and active, taking coal to the far Pacific stations and sugar and pineapples home.
Substitute for Wool
New York Times, July 4.—Use of wool “substitute” claimed to have all the properties of the natural fiber and to be better than regular wool in many ways has been approved by the Department of Defense for military uses.
Eric Johnston, chief of the Economic
Stabilization Agency, disclosed today that his agency had sought adoption of the synthetic product as a means of bringing down the price of natural wool. He said the new product would be used in proportions of 20 to 30 per cent in mixtures of natural wool for uniforms and for other uses of the military.
“Wool is one of the raw materials on which prices have been rising steadily ever since Korea,” Mr. Johnston said. “It was necessary to find some means of halting the advance and this substitute, because it appears to be just as good as regular wool under supervised tests, should do the trick.”
So far only pilot plants are producing the new product, but Mr. Johnston has recommended that an extensive tax amortization plan be instituted by the Government to encourage the building of mills large enough to turn out the fabric on a mass production basis.
The Economic Stabilizer is known to feel that within a period of years the synthetic wool will do to natural wool what nylon did to silk.
Government officials for some time have been protesting to Australia, major source of American wool, that prices on the natural product were too high. They have asked that the Government there fix export price ceilings on the commodity as we have done on exports of our products, in order to protect friendly nations from price gouging by producers.
Australian officials have expressed sympathy with the American viewpoint but have insisted that the imposition of price controls on wool exports would prove impracticable.
According to American officials, wool prices were around $1 a pound early last year but after the outbreak of fighting in Korea a steady rise began that carried them well above S3 at one time. There has been a slight recession but prices still hover about the $3 mark and Australian traders have predicted that quotations would go to S4 this fall.
Veteran Shifts Moorings
New York Times, July 3.—A sort of nautical nightmare floated down the Hudson River here yesterday morning. As she moved
ground the Battery shortly after noon the idlers gaped and the Staten Island ferryboats shied away in alarm, giving plenty of leeway and a few whistle toots.
The strange craft was the U.S.S. Prairie State, a half-barn, half-battleship long fa- rniliar to motorists on the West Side Drive. She was moved by four Dalzell Towing Company tugs from West 136th Street, where she had rested for fifteen years on the Hudson’s muddy bottom, to the East River at Twenty-fifth Street. There she will continue to serve as a floating armory and a training station for naval reserves and naval roilitia-men.
The bottom, or battleship, half of the Prairie State was originally the U.S.S. Illinois, launched fifty-three years ago. The Illinois was disarmed in 1924 and converted 'nto a floating armory. Her superstructure was then ripped off and a barn-like shed about 300 feet long and seventy feet wide Was built on the main deck of the old battleship hull.
Close to 5,000 naval officers were trained aboard her during World War II. She was moved up to 136th Street on July 1, 1936. In 1940 the Navy wanted the name Illinois back, because it planned a new battleship. So what was left of the old Illinois was dubbed the Prairie Stale.
As she moved for the first time in fifteen years yesterday in charge of Comdr. Thomas H. Byrd, commander of Battalion 3-20 of the New York Naval Militia and the United States Naval Reserve, she rode about twelve feet higher in the water than a battleship should because of weight removed when she was disarmed.
This exposed her heavy steel “rammer,” which should have been under water at her bow. The rammer was designed to enable the °ld Illinois to sink other battleships by Puncturing them. It was never tried in combat.
Early Warning
Christian Science Monitor, July 18.—Almost 25,000 Air Force Radarmen now are on steady watch at stations and control centers m the United States and Canada to detect the approach of any strange and possibly hostile planes.
The aircraft warning system has reached the point wjiere it is 97 per cent manned, the Associated Press has been told by officials.
Three years ago, in the days of economy and before the swift buildup of military strength which started with the Korean war, only about 3,000 to 4,000 men were in the entire warning system. That system then consisted of a few isolated defense areas where radar scanning of the skies was conducted part time. There was no coordinated warning system.
However, the fact that warning stations now are almost fully manned does not mean that the United States has all the warning system it plans or wants or that all the equipment used at those stations is necessarily modern.
The Air Force’s air-raid warning organization is composed of 12 groups of regular troops and three of federalized Air National Guard outfits. This does not necessarily mean there are only 15 stations; each group has personnel enough to man a number of stations.
The exact number of warning stations and control centers and their locations are secrets.
The stations in the United States and Alaska work with those of Canada under the mutual Canadian-United States defense plan.
Shipbuilding
Weekly News Report, July 18.—The Navy on July 11, announced the award to the Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. of a contract to construct a super aircraft carrier to cost an estimated $218,000,000. The carrier, to be completed in 36 months, will displace 59,900 tons, be 1,040 feet in length, have an extreme width of 252 feet and accommodate the largest and heaviest Naval aircraft.
The Navy also announced the award of a $15,000,000 contract to the Bath Iron Works, Bath, Me., for a 1,450 ton destroyer escort especially designed for anti-submarine work.
Bids will be asked in the near future for estimates on construction of 17 mine sweepers, 30 smaller mine sweeping boats and 32 utility landing ships.
Submarine Engine
Maritime Reporter, July 1.—A new engine, announced in Washington by the Navy Department, was previewed in Cleveland by Secretary Matthews, interested Navy officials and the press. Five years and more than $10,000,000 were required to develop the engine which has 16 horizontal cylinders and is so compact that it requires one-third less space than anything comparable used in World War II.
For all its compactness, the new diesel develops twice the horsepower per pound of any submarine engine previously used. Rear Admiral Wilson D. Leggett, Deputy Chief of the Bureau of Ships, declared that the engine will give American submarines “superior characteristics to any submarine in the world today” and added that the Navy is depending on diesel power in preference to atom-driven underseas craft.
While many of the details of design and performance of the new engine are secret, Admiral Leggett explained that some of the advantages are the engine’s power and compactness. For example, he said that if all the space saved were used for extra fuel, it would give American underwater craft the greatest range ever achieved and that submarines equipped with the diesel would be able to appreciably increase their torpedo fire power, radar, and other electronic equipment, plus carry additional fuel.
Four of these engines have already been installed in new “attack” submarines, according to George W. Codrington, vice president of General Motors and general manager of the Cleveland Diesel Engine Division. There is evidence that this marks the beginning of a program by the Navy to be prepared immediately to take the offensive underseas in the event of another World War. “This is not the only thing we have in store for the future,” Secretary Matthews added cryptically.
In pointing this up, he declared that the United States had almost lost two wars to enemy submarines and that the Navy has given submarines top priority on its agenda.
Admiral Leggett announced that besides the “attack” submarine designed to hunt out and destroy enemy surface vessels, the
Navy had recently announced production of the “killer” submarine which will concentrate on destroying enemy submarines. Picket submarines will set up a radar screen to intercept enemy shipping. Without disclosing the horsepower of the new engine, Admiral Leggett said it weighed approximately 10 pounds per horse-power as compared with 20 pounds per horsepower in World War II, and from 70 to 120 pounds per horsepower in engines in submarines immediately following World War I.
The cost of developing the engine was shared by the Navy Department and by Cleveland Diesel, which supplied 70% of the power for submarines in World War II. Mr. Codrington revealed that some 400 supplier firms are involved in producing the new diesels.
Experimental Destroyer
Maritime Reporter, July 1.—The Bath Iron Works Corporation, Bath, Maine, recently launched a new, experimental destroyer, a vessel which is very likely to have a strong bearing on all future naval power- plant design.
The U.S.S. Timmerman, a light-weight, advanced-design destroyer, has been developed around experience obtained during the war in destroyer power plant design and operation. According to Bath officials, reduction in weight far beyond anything yet attempted has been incorporated in this vessel to determine to what extent steam and electrical machinery for naval use can be lightened and yet produce a power plant of the required ruggedness. While it is not anticipated by the Navy that the advance made in the design of the Timmerman will prove to be totally acceptable or practical in ships to be mass produced in case of emergency, the feeling is that a substantial advance in reducing weight will be possible from the lessons learned in building this experimental ship.
The experiment, which involved a tremendous amount of research and development work in the plants of all the principal naval machinery manufacturers, is expected to contribute to improvements in such factors as fuel capacity and range, speed and ordnance and fire power.
The keel of the Timmerman was laid on October 1, 1945, as the last of the World War II destroyers constructed at the Bath Iron Works. Shortly thereafter, work was suspended to permit the development of the new design and construction of the new Machinery. Completion date of the vessel has not been announced.
GREAT BRITAIN
New Rifle
British Information Services, June 28.— The British Army is to be rearmed with a new light self-loading rifle, states the War Office.
Three years of tests were followed by two years of exhaustive practical trials before the final decision was made by the British War Office. The result was the new rifle, 12 ounces lighter than the old .303 when unloaded and with its cartridge 18 per cent lighter than that now being used. In addition the cartridge is much shorter, resulting in a big reduction in bulk when large quantities of ammunition are being handled.
Recoil is less than with the present rifle, yet the penetrating powers have been found to be more effective. The rate of fire is three to four times greater, and it has been found more dependable in adverse conditions to dust and extremes of temperature.
Carrier Completion
London Times, June 21.—H.M.S. Eagle, a carrier of 36,800 tons displacement, is due to commission in October and will join the Fleet early next year. She and her sister ship Ark Royal, due to be completed at the end of 1952, are the largest British aircraft-carriers ever built. The Eagle has accommodation for about 100 aircraft. These will be the new Vickers-Armstrongs Attacker jet fighters.
The new Fairey GR 17 anti-submarine aircraft is to be called the Gannet. This was the name of the R.N. air station at Eglinton, Northern Ireland, which was used during the war as an anti-submarine flying base. The R.N. air station at Machrihanish, Argyllshire, which was reduced to reserve as an economy measure after the war, is to be made operational again and used for antisubmarine training squadrons.
Deck landing trials of the new Sea Venom will be carried out in H.M.S. Illustrious at the end of July.
Arctic Voyage
London Times, June 28.—Arrangements have been completed for the departure today from Montreal for the eastern Arctic of the patrol vessel C. D. Howe, on the yearly task of taking officials and supplies to isolated settlements in the far north. The ship will go farther north than any Canadian vessel has attempted for 20 years, and her itinerary includes a point beyond Craig Harbour, on Ellesmere Island, some 700 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
The vessel will travel nearly 10,000 miles during the next four months. The ship carries a helicopter to land officials and supplies at ice-bound settlements and to aid navigation through leads in the icefields.
Pilot Training
London Times, June 20.—To assist its greatly expanded aircrew training programme the R.A.F. is employing civilian flying schools and instructors for the first time since before the war. These schools are for national service pilots and navigators.
The first of them is at Booker, Buckinghamshire, and is being run as a basic flying training school for pilots by Airwork, one of the leading air charter companies, which is undertaking other R.A.F. training in different parts of the country. There are at present 45 pupils at Booker, 11 of whom have just completed their course. Booker has 16 instructors, and training is given on de Havil- land Chipmunks, which have replaced Tiger Moths as basic trainers.
Air Vice-Marshal T. N. McEvoy, Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Training) at the Air Ministry, said here to-day that whereas last year the pilot intake was restricted to 300, the R.A.F. would now accept for pilot training an unlimited number of young men of the required standards. Many more navigators were also needed. The R.A.F. hoped to train for flying duties thousands of national service men. They would serve for five and a half years—normally two years in the regular R.A.F. and three and a half years in the R.A.F. Volunteer Reserve—but short service
commissions for four or eight years were open to them and they could also apply for permanent commissions.
Resistance Test Results
London Times, June 27.—Experiments with a former Clyde paddle steamer in which four aircraft jet engines had been mounted were described at the opening session of the international conference of naval architects and marine engineers in London yesterday. Rolls-Royce Derwent V jet engines were mounted on a cradle on the deck of the old paddle steamer Lucy Ashton to give speeds varying from five to 15 knots, so that full- scale resistance tests could be carried out on the hull by the British Shipbuilding Research Association.
Reading a paper on the subject, Sir Maurice Denny said that the results gave proof of the sensitivity of full-scale ship resistance to small roughnesses. Fairing the seams of the hull reduced the total resistance by about 3 per cent When the hull was painted with bituminous aluminium paint— which was smoother than red oxide—the resistance was reduced by about 3§ per cent.
Water temperatures varied from 43deg. Fahrenheit at the end of March to 59deg. in early June. At the latter date the hull showed a fine growth of short grass and on the bottom there was a slight scattering of small limpets. At what might be normal surface speed the total resistance had been increased by about 28 per cent. This was larger than in December and January and suggested that water temperatures had a large effect on fouling.
U.S.S.R.
Atom Bomb Stocks
Forces Aeriennes Frangaises. June, 1951.— One of the recent arrivals in Western Germany “choosing liberty” is Vassili Shaposh- nikov, son of the late Marshall of the Red Army, and one of the five directors of the five-year rearmament plan. He brought with him a dossier complete on aviation materiel but for one detail: the number of atomic bombs now available in the U.S.S.R. According to these documents, says Figaro, all Soviet atomic bombs are stocked at a spot 240 kilometers southeast of Tomsk (Siberia) in the Kuznetsk basin. In the same region is located one of the four plants that manufacture the bomb. The three others, located in the Caucasus, Kazakstanand, and Turkestan, will soon be transferred to Siberia. The geographic center of Kuznetsk, in central Siberia, is not readily vulnerable to American strategic bombers, since it is at the limit of the B36 radius of action.
The bombs are located in shelters 45 meters underground. A testing ground of
6,0 square meters in the same region is used for experiments with atomic materials. This entire “atomic region” is protected by over 2,000 fighter-interceptors based at 55 new aerodromes.
OTHER COUNTRIES Germany
Nautical Magazine, June, 1951.—German Shipyards.—German shipyards are now working at three times their 1950 pace, and their total output this year is expected to be more than 350,000 gross registered tons. Order books are full until 1953. German productive capacity is estimated at 400,000 gross tons, but this figure could be increased by extensions and modernisation of some of the yards. Several shipyards—including Blohm and Voss of Hamburg, and Wilhelms- havener Werft—are expected to make early applications to the High Commission for permission to rebuild dismantled shipyards. Shortly after the restrictions of size, speed and tonnage of German ships were removed, 18 tankers totalling some 200,000 tons were ordered. Orders are expected from Nord- deutscher Lloyd for four 16,000-ton, 32-knot motor-vessels, each to carry 600 passengers on the New York-Hamburg service; and from Hapag for two 28,000 tons, 28-knot vessels, and two 12,500-ton, 30-knot vessels for Far Eastern Services.
Italy
Revue Maritime, June, 1951.—Within the framework of the law of March 8, 1949, the so-called Saragat law of aid to naval construction, Lloyd Triestino, one of the four great shippers of the Finmare group (1), is resolutely implementing its policy of new construction and eliminating over-age units.
Thus, the Australia, which recently began
millions of pesetas): |
|
|
| ||
Dept. | 1949 | 1950 | 1951 | Increase | Per cent |
War | 3,161 | 3,166 | 3,392 | 276 | 19 |
Air | 1,299 | 1,391 | 1,441 | 50 | 8 |
Navy | 1,034 | 1,147 | 1,080 | 67 | 6 |
Total | 5.494 | 5.704 | 5.913 | 209 | 33 |
service on the Australia line, will be followed by two sister-ships, the Cosenia and the Neptunia, which will make the trip from Genoa to Sydney in 28 days. These vessels are of 13,000 tons, make 18 knots, and carry 100 first-class and 750 second-class passengers.
The Montfalcone yard at Trieste announces the launching of the mixed passenger motor-ship Africa for the South-African line, and the San Marco yards the laying down of the Victoria and the Asia, destined for the Indian and Pakistan line (11,400 tons, length 147 meters, speed 18 knots, two Diesels, 100 first-class passengers, 200 tourist, and 84 emigrant-class passengers.).
It should be noted that Lloyd Triestino, with about 107,700 tons, will have by 1952 a fleet in which 95,400 tons will be new vessels. This will enable Trieste to cope with all the exigencies of a traffic that is constantly increasing in step with the industrial development of the region.
Scandinavia
Navitecnia, March 1951.—In Sweden and Denmark the construction of ocean-going steamships has practically ceased, and in Norway a similar tendency is observed. Of 1,620,840 tons ordered in the three countries, only 4% will be steam vessels; the other 96% will be motor ships. In Sweden and Denmark, this percentage of steamers is still less, being 2.5 and 3 per cent respectively.
Spain
La Revue Maritime, May 1951.—The State budget in Spain for 1951 amounts to 19,502,526 million pesetas, as compared to 17,940,872 million pesetas in 1950, or an increase of 1,560 million over the 1950 budget, which was 1,300 million more than that of the preceding year.
Military Budgets
The individual budgets for the three military departments are as follows (in
To these figures are added a further 219 million representing the share of the ministries’ obligations still to be liquidated.
Besides the military credits, properly speaking, it should be noted that the heading Spanish Morocco includes 717 millions in military expenses. If we add the expenses for internal order (Guardia Civil, Armed Police) of about 1,350 millions, it will be found that the total military expenses amount to 8,207 millions, or 42% of the General Budget.
In 1951, the Naval budget represented 18.3% of the military budgets, compared to 20% in 1950 and 18.8% in 1949.
The breakdown of funds is about the same as it was in 1950. The only increases noted occurred in the articles on expenses for personnel. Those for materiel, and particularly for construction and repair, are unchanged.
AVIATION Super-Carrier Bridge
New York Times, June 29.—Washington.—The touch of an elevator button will transform the Navy’s new $228,500,000 super-aircraft carrier into a flush-deck ship for handling large planes and night operations, naval sources said today.
They disclosed that naval designers had decided on a plan to mount an “island”—a carrier’s bridge—on an elevator. The “island” would be lowered to make a flush- deck for plane landings.
Construction of the super-ship is scheduled to start within a few months, probably at the Newport News, Va., Shipbuilding and Drydock Co. It will take about three years to build. Funds to start the vessel are included in the 1952 military appropriations bill now before Congress.
Congress also is considering legislation to name the carrier the James V. Forrestal, in honor of the late first Secretary of Defense and former Secretary of the Navy.
Speed
Christian Science Monitor, July 5.—Los Angeles.—A supersonic Hummingbird, the Navy’s Douglas Skyrocket, has zoomed nearly 70,000 feet into the stratosphere at a dazzling speed of more than 1,000 miles an hour.
The rocket-propelled craft bettered all records for speed and altitude in a June 11 test, the Navy announced guardedly. The exact figures were withheld for security reasons, but speed conjectures ran from 1,200 to 1,500 m.p.h.
The Air Force’s X-l, previous unofficial record holder, zipped 1,000 m.p.h. to an altitude of 63,000 feet.
At the controls of the needle-nosed Skyrocket was the veteran Douglas test pilot, Bill Bridgeman. He said the record was made in level flight after he climbed wide open to the desired altitude.
Mr. Bridgeman told reporters that the ship burst smoothly through the sonic barrier—the speed of sound is 661 m.p.h. above
35.0 feet—and handled easily during the 15-minute flight over Edwards Air Force Base at Muroc, Calif.
The 40-foot rocket ship was launched at
35.0 feet from a B-29, from which it hung suspended.
The accepted world’s speed record is 670.891 m.p.h., set at Muroc in 1948 by a North American F-86. But the Air Force’s Bell X-l piloted by Maj. Chuck Yeager in 1947, by official announcement, flew “several hundred miles faster than the speed of sound.” The X-l’s ceiling was given as 63,000 feet, exceeding the official record of 59,492.
The new record breaker is the product of six years’ work by the Douglas Aviation Company’s El Segundo plant near here. Chief Engineer E. H. Heinemann said: “It has passed the speed of sound by a considerable margin, greater than the wildest expectations of our most optimistic engineers.”
The hummingest bird of them all has swept-back wings only 25 feet across, a pointed five-foot nose, and weighs about
15.0 pounds. It is normally powered by both jet and rocket engines, but for the record flight the jet engine was removed and an extra fuel tank was installed for the rocket motor.
Sub-Killer
Aviation Week, July 2.—-First production Martin P5M-1 flying boat made its initial test flight near Baltimore last week and remained airborne for about 20 minutes. After a series of tests by the Glenn L. Martin Co., the twin-engined plane will be delivered to the Navy Air Test Center at Patuxent, Md., for further tests before delivery to an operational Navy unit.
The big, gull-winged seaplane is powered by two Wright Turbo-Compound engines each developing 3,250 hp. Wing span of the P5M-1 is 118 ft., length 90 ft. 3 in., and height of the plane from keel to top of stabilizer is 35 ft. 2 in. Designated the Marlin, the P5M-1 is comparable in size with its forerunner, the PBM Mariner, but is considerably heavier.
The Marlin is scheduled to replace the World War II Mariner as soon as production is stepped up. Designed for a primary mission of detection and destruction of enemy submarines, the plane is said to be one of the most completely electronically equipped planes ever to be put into operation by the Navy.
SCIENCE
Crude Oil Process
New York Herald Tribune, June 21.— Denver.—Development of a continuous process for producing crude oil from shale at a cost competitive with natural petroleum was announced here today by J. H. East Jr., regional director of the United States Bureau of Mines.
Mr. East disclosed that the bureau has awarded the chemical plants division of Blaw-Knox Co., Pittsburgh, a $333,870 contract for the construction of a demonstration-scale retort at Rifle, Col., to exploit a “very promising gas-combustion retorting process” developed by the bureau.
The retort will have a capacity of 150 to 400 tons of oil-bearing shale daily and is patterned after a six-ton-a-day pilot plant which already has proven the gas-combustion method to be the most efficient and economical of any process tested so far for the utilization of the nation’s vast shale resources.
Boyd Guthrie, chief of the bureau’s oil- shale demonstration plant at Rifle, listed major objectives of the new plant as: To determine mine cost and yield data to permit an accurate evaluation of the gas-combustion technique; to provide technical information that industry needs to design commercial plants and to supply crude shale oil in the quantities required for the bureau’s refining studies. Plant design, he said, will permit a wide range of experimental operating conditions.
“We think we have found just what we wanted,” Mr. Guthrie said. “Test runs in our small pilot plant during the last six months have been most encouraging, with good oil recoveries at high throughout rates. However, only a demonstration unit can confirm our development research.
The new gas-combustion process has two novel and important features, Mr. Guthrie explained. It is so named because it produces and uses as a source of heat for retorting a low thermal unit gas obtained from the shale itself and burned in the presence of air; also, unlike other retorting processes, it requires neither air, water, nor an elaborate system for condensing the liquid products that come from the retort in the form of mist.
Test Lab Grows Wings
Christian Science Monitor, June 27.— Tullahoma, Tenn.—The future power of America’s air arm depends on how well unknown horizons are charted in a giant testing facility near this airy southern town.
The prime Air Force project to test and develop aircraft, jet engines, and guided missiles is being built at a pace in tune with the national emergency. The first of three units will be in operation early next year.
It is dedicated in honor of the late Air Force Chief Gen. Henry H. Arnold.
Air Force natural scientists and engineers consider the Arnold Engineering Development Center a major factor through which the nation can assure its future safety.
The AEDC will supply many answers in the little known realm of speed faster than sound, and solve many problems of jet propulsion. Its initial cost will be $157,500,000.
Each building of the center’s three units will be about 450 by 600 feet—big enough to house six football playing fields within its walls.
The estimated 400,000 horsepower called for by the entire center is about what a city °f 400,000 persons needs. Only electric power—all to be provided by the Tennessee
Valley Authority—will be used.
It is a branching out and step forward from the vast testing facilities at Wright-Patter- son Air Force Base at Dayton, Ohio.
In the center’s mass of tunnels, tubing, and chambers, natural scientists will study the behavior of planes and missiles in speeds of three high ranges:
Transonic—From just below the speed of sound (760 miles an hour at sea level) to just above the speed of sound.
Supersonic—From the speed of sound to five times the speed of sound.
Hypersonic—From five times the speed of sound, and upward.
Should a plane ever be developed for hypersonic speeds, it could cover the 750 miles from here to Washington in less than 10 minutes.
Air Force spokesmen say the AEDC’s gas dynamics facility will test scale models of aircraft, and their component parts such as wings and tail surfaces, in the hypersonic ranges, too.
The engine test facility—for turbo-jet and ram-jet engines—is the one now well on the way to completion.
The gas dynamics unit is next on contractors’ schedules. The third will be the propulsion wind tunnel. Into it will go the world’s largest piece of rotating equipment, a wind-creating compressor.
Cooling water will jacket the testing tubes, and draw away the intense heat caused by friction from air moving through at high speed.
The Army Corps of Engineers, building the whole project for the Air Force, is damming nearby Elk River to make a 12-mile- long reservoir. From it will come 100,000 gallons of water a minute, equal to that a city the size of Washington requires.
Even the air the great machines inhale will be some of the best. AEDC is going up on a breeze-swept plateau on Tennessee’s highland rim.
1954 is the target date for full operation of this great laboratory to develop the nation’s air power of the future.
Danish Clock
Chicago Tribune, July 10.—The world’s most accurate clock, estimated to lose only one second in 1,000 years, soon will be set up in Copenhagen’s town hall.
The 7 foot high timepiece has 10 faces which record the day, month, and position of the sun and planets. It will indicate the time and place of future eclipses of the sun and moon and will foretell the day on which any date within the next 4,000 years will fall.
The clock will perform some calculations extending over 25,700 years and such a period must elapse before the slowest moving wheel in the mechanism has completed one turn.
The invention was the life work of Jens Olsen, a Danish astromechanic, who completed it before his death in 1945. Other Danish technicians designed a stainless steel mahogany lined case for the timepiece.
New Coal Power Tap
Providence Sunday Journal, July 8.—For the first time in the United States, engineers have undertaken an extensive project to gasify coal underground electrically.
Twice before, once in 1947, and again in 1949, U. S. Bureau of Mines and Alabama Power Company engineers have started fires in an outcropping of the Pratt coal seam in that state by using thermite bombs.
But the other day 2400 volts were passed between two giant electrodes sunk 200 feet underground into the coal seam.
Dr. J. L. Elder, Bureau of Mines gasification expert in charge of the experiment, has estimated that varying voltages up to the 2400-volt maximum will be passed between the electrodes during any 24-hour period. Then, Dr. Elder estimates, the electrified coal area will be glowing hot.
When the current is cut off, researchers will begin injecting air at high, controlled pressures through blowholes sunk into the earth at both ends of the affected area.
At this point, project engineers expect this third major experiment to resemble the 1949-50 experiment, in which they succeeded in producing high-quality synthesis gas. Gas turbines were operated successfully during the earlier experiment with the captured gases.
Principal object of the combined experiments in this coal field a short distance west of industrial Birmingham, has been to prove the practical value of “mining” coal without digging it.
The idea is to heat the coal, causing it to give off gas. The gas is then drawn off in pipes and used as a fuel.
The two earlier experiments were set fire after tunnels had been sunk through the coal seam. Roof falls, seepage of gases and other problems have prompted engineers to attempt a third burning and gas capture by firing an almost completely buried coal section.
Directing the electrical work on this third experiment is Dr. Eric Sarapu of the U. S. Bureau of Mines, who also conducted the only other experiment of this kind on a smaller scale at Hume, Kan.
Dr. Milton H. Fies, director of the Alabama Power Company’s mines, has been a consulting engineer.
The estimated cost of these first large- scale experiments ever undertaken in this country has been borne by the power company and the Bureau of Mines. Thus far, a total of almost $1,000,000 has been spent.
Fresh Water
Technical Data Digest, July 1951.—A small gadget weighing 12 lbs. and occupying less than a cubic foot of space may be the answer to a quick and pure water supply for small bodies of isolated troops.
The device was demonstrated at the Air Force School of Aviation Medicine, Randolph Field, Tex., recently by Dr. Alexander Goetz, Professor of Physics and Physical Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. It was perfected there by Dr. Goetz and his research associates shortly after the end of World War II.
A five-gallon pail of raw sewage which had a bacteria count of two and a half million per cubic centimeter was drawn from the Randolph out-fall sewerage line for a demonstration. According to a subsequent chemical analysis it came out of the apparatus pure and sterile.
-On a field test conducted by Lt. Col. Harold V. Ellingson, head of the Department of Global Preventive Medicine at the aero- medical school, stagnant creek water found near Randolph was purified and drunk by
Colonel Ellingson himself. The creek water had a bacteria count of 92,000/cu. cm., and was drawn under conditions with which any isolated group might well be confronted.
“The creek water had a faint taste of vegetable matter,” Colonel Ellingson said, “but it tasted pure and good, and one very thirsty would never complain about that.”
Colonel Ellingson added that the device seems to hold promise for use by small military units in isolated situations.
The apparatus is known as an S-Filter, °r Emergency Water Treatment Unit. It Will supply, without further treatment, a group of 50 to 100 men with sanitary drinking water within 15 to 20 min., according to Dr. Goetz. It will fill a regulation canteen of one quart capacity every 30 sec. under normal pumping.
The unit, made of metal, is operated by a simple hand pump. At one of its attachments is a hose of any desired length which is inserted into the water hole or stream. The water is pumped up through the unit and comes out pure through a short hose on the opposite side of the filter.
On the hose that is placed in the water is a strainer which catches the algae and coarser foreign matter, but not the bacteria. The latter are killed by a chemical agent. This is a powder placed in the filter, which forms a cake on contact with the water. This cake filters out other suspended matter and kills the bacteria on contact. Although much of the bacterial population remains in the water after it passes through the filter, it is sterile and harmless.
The chemical is a colloidal carbon which carries traces of silver and insoluble alkali peroxide, the combination of which produces the lethal action on the bacteria, Dr. Goetz explained.
North Atlantic Waterway
Providence Sunday Journal, July 8.—The Gulf Stream has a central core, 10 to 15 miles 'wide, running five miles an hour, which is a writhing serpent a thousand miles long.
This rushing stream swings in snaky loops as much as 200 miles in a single week. It is faster than the marine charts show, or than shipmasters have believed. It does not always run either where or in the direction they calculate.
It is as meandering as the Mississippi River, but without dikes to confine the current. It swings from side to side some times at the rate of 10 miles a day. lew large rivers have the speed of this Gulf Stream, and none are anywhere near as erratic.
In this snaking face are written some data which scientists hope to use to understand long-range weather forecasting puzzles.
These Gulf Stream discoveries were made by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which for years has been studying the stream. The institution now has its latest expedition out for five months to study the unknown part of the stream which leaves the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and drifts eastward across the North Atlantic.
The central core of fast water sometimes breaks off to form huge eddies, that continue to circle for weeks in a fixed position, while the stream that started them continues uninterrupted one or two hundred miles distant. Why the eddies form is not known. Some times cold water from deep down boils up near an eddy. The top waters of the stream are tropical but the depths are nearly as cold as ice.
The eddies run in the opposite direction to the hands of a clock when they are on the eastern and southern side of the stream. They run clockwise when on the side of the North American shores.
In one eddy, which they nicknamed Edgar, Woods Hole oceanographers saw European-bound steamships ploughing ahead against a current of nearly five miles an hour. The skippers thought they were in the stream flowing toward Europe. They were not aware of the eddy, nor that at that time the stream they thought they were following eastward was nearly a hundred miles north of their course.
The weather prospects are for this strange stream to be a laboratory for understanding the movements of upper air that control the weather. The motor power of the Gulf Stream is the earth’s rotation. The same motor power drives the peculiar upper
streams of air, which are as surprising as the great water serpent.
The rotation drives the recently discovered jet stream of air which lies at many miles altitude. This stream runs up to 150 miles an hour.
The new expedition is charting the stream as it takes off from the Grand Banks region. Charts show it dividing into two streams. The Woods Hole men believe there are probably three streams.
They are using the earth’s magnetic field as a lighthouse to detect ocean currents and drifts that are invisible. A ship in a current has no means of knowing which way the current flows, for there are no sharp banks, and no signs of the water’s motion.
The Woods Hole ship, the Albatross, carries a new instrument, the GEK, trailing astern on a wire. The GEK contains two electric blades, or electrodes. These detect the unchanging lines of force of the earth’s magnetic field. They, like the ship towing them, drift across these magnetic lines along with the unseen ocean currents. The crossing of the lines tells the direction and speed of the ocean current.
MERCHANT MARINE Cost of “Atomic Age” Ships
New York Times, June 26—-Washington. —The Maritime Administration awarded contracts today for five more of its new “atomic age” cargo ships, at sharply higher costs than the twenty-five ships of this class now under construction.
The award went to the New York Shipbuilding Corporation of Camden, N. J., at $9,290,000 for each ship. The first ship must be delivered within 480 days, the last within 690 days.
This cost compares with an average of about $8,000,000 for the first twenty-five ships, described as “Mariner Class dry cargo vessels.”
When bids for the first ships of this class were taken about six months ago, New York Shipbuilding offered to construct five at a cost of $9,227,000 each, but its bid was passed over. A spokesman for the agency said the higher figures now reflected a rise in construction costs.
Mariner Class vessels are to have a top speed of twenty-two knots, highest for cargo ships built in this country, and are to be armed with their own torpedoes, guns and helicopters to scout for submarines.
Originally, the Maritime Administration hoped to build about fifty ships with its authorization of $350,000,000. The contracts awarded so far, however, put costs for the first thirty ships above $246,000,000. The $104,000,000 remaining would suffice for only about eleven more ships, or forty-one vessels in all, at the prices of the newest contract.
INTERNATIONAL Operation Progress
La Revue Maritime, July 1951.—A large- scale inter-allied exercise, in which naval units of Britain, Denmark, France, Netherlands, and Norway participated, took place June 1-6 in the Atlantic and the English Channel.
Participating surface units rendezvoused in Douarnenez Harbor on June 1 as follows:
Britain
1 carrier, the Indomitable;
1 cruiser, Swiftsure;
5 destroyers, Agincourt, Corunna, Gabbard, Saint-
James, Scorpion;
2 DE’s, Sainl-Austell Bay, Veryan Bay;
4 Submarines, Sea Devil, Tireless, Tiptoe, Aeneas;
6 PT boats.
Denmark
2 submarines, Storen, Saelen.
France
2 cruisers, Gloire, Georges Leygues;
1 submarine tender, Gustave-Zbdd;
3 DD’s, Marceau, L’Alsacien, Le Lorrain;
7 DE’s, Bambara, Sakalave, Touareg, Soudanais,
Tonkinois, L’Escarmouche, La Surprise;
4 submarines, Roland-Morillot, Africaine, Blaison,
Bouan.
Netherlands
1 cruiser, Tromp;
2 destroyers, Kortenaer, Marnix;
2 DE’s, Dubois, Van Ewijck;
3 submarines, Zwaardvish, Zeehond, Tiggerhaai. Norway
2 destroyers, Stavanger and Bergen.
In addition, some sixty planes from the “Coastal” and “Fighter” Commands of the R.A.F., the “Royal Naval Aviation,” and the French Naval and Army Air Forces took part. Because of the unavailability of the
Arromanches, French carrier aviation was not represented.
The exercises took place under the command of Vice-Admiral Pothuau, commanding the Escadre Franfaise, in the presence of Admiral Sir Philip Vian, Commander-in-Chief of the “Home Fleet.” The British naval forces were under the orders of Vice-Admiral Mansergh; the Dutch naval forces were under Rear-Admiral de Booy. Captain Sorenson commanded the Norwegian destroyers, and Commander Petersen the Danish submarines.
June 2 was devoted to preliminary conferences and drills at the anchorage.
On the following day, the combined fleet got under way for a series of manoeuvres having as a general theme anti-submarine and anti-aircraft warfare. Defense of a naval force against night attacks by PT boats or surface “raiders” was studied. Fire support operations against shore objectives were likewise conducted.
On June 6, the combined fleet reached Cherbourg, where the analysis of the operations was held. Here Vice-Admiral Pothuau told the journalists aboard: “I regret that I could not always place you at the most interesting spots, but this is not as regrettable as it might seem. Confined to your ships, you could realize the difficulty a commanding officer has in sizing up the overall situation and making his decisions.
“And yet it is on the rapidity and accuracy of these decisions, plus the exactness of their execution, by all subordinate commands, that determines the success or failure of an operation. I must point out the absolute necessity of a common doctrine which indeed exists in the texts but must be backed up by a discipline of the spirit which can only be acquired by group operations at sea. Hence the interest of the exercises you have just witnessed.
“I had no more difficulty in commanding the present combined fleet exercises than I have when the French squadron is on independent manoeuvres. However, there was plenty of unforeseen difficulty, especially the fog, which obliged us to modify established plans. All my orders were executed with
the greatest promptness and precision.
“This was due to the skill of the group commanders as well as to the training of the crews in the ships I had the honor of commanding. Further, it indicates that the patient labors and perfect entente of our various admiralties is bearing fruit.”
French Weather Base
Chicago Tribune, July 6.—An expedition of 62 French scientists and technicians has established a series of permanent bases and weather stations among 300 remote islands in the southern Indian ocean, half way between the Cape of Good Hope and Tasmania.
Martin de Vivies, expedition chief, has returned here to report on the expedition’s progress and to urge the government to reassert French sovereignty over the islands.
It took the group 26 days to disembark with 180 tons of equipment and also cost the life of a sailor, de Vivies said. The expedition’s first task was to create a two mile network of roads. Jeeps were used extensively.
Since 1949, two permanent bases and meteorological posts have been set up on the largest of the hitherto unsettled islands, Kerguelen and Amsterdam.
Kerguelen, roughly comparable in area to Corsica, was discovered in 1772 by a Breton noble, Yves Joseph de Kerguelen-Tremarec, who afterward dubbed it Desolation Land because it did not prove to be the rich island of his hope.
The 45 Frenchmen on Kerguelen, when they are not taking weather data or servicing the hydroplane which flies regularly to Amsterdam and to the French island of Madagascar, spend their time pulling lobsters from the sea. Their only companions on the mountainous, volcanic isle are penguins.
Headquarters for the other 17 scientists is tiny Amsterdam island, located in waters teeming with cod and seal.
The French tricolor also flies over the antarctic Adelie land, on the polar circle; the Crozet archipelago and Saint Paul island, all situated between 39 and 50 degrees latitude south.