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United States................................................................................................................................ 335
Race for Antarctica: Last Great Unexplored Continent; Florida Site Picked for Satellite Tests; XH-17 “Flying Crane” Testing Completed; Last of ’07 White Fleet Winds up 54-Year Career; Deep Pacific Trough Found; Improved Small Boats for the Navy; Arctic Tests Seek an Aerial Ice Gauge; Navy Underwrites Aerodyne Research; New Sound Device Maps Ocean Floor; New Optical System Speeds Radar Plotting; Military Transport by Air Sets Record; Small Atomic Submarine Planned.
Foreign............................................................................................................................................. 343
Proposal Revived for Dam Across Neck of Japan Sea; First Atlantic Telephone Cable; Bonn Will Launch Its Navy in April; Atomic Torpedoes; Severe Jolt over Porkkala Awaits Finland; Britain’s Bomb Test; Britannia Royal Naval College Jubilee; Streamlined Submarine; Reinforcements via Northern Route.
UNITED STATES
Race for Antarctica: Last Great Unexplored Continent[1]
By Anthony Leviero
New York Times, December 11, 1955.— The icy Antarctic will probably generate warm good-feeling during the forthcoming geophysical explorations. Beyond that, however, the forbidding continent looms as a Prize that will be bitterly contested in what ttray well develop into the world’s cold war II.
For the strategists of the major nations have been applying their dividers to the Polar projection of the nether side of the World. They measure there a vast realm for testing or even warring with the latest weapon, the intercontinental ballistics missile with a hydrogen bomb fora warhead.
They view Antarctica as a vast strategic center from which air and naval fleets may control the vital seaways around the far corners of the African, South American and Australian continents. And they surmise that deep under the ice are great deposits of natural resources which a depleted world will have to tap some day at all costs.
The fact that modern technology, perhaps based on nuclear power for heat and light, may make life tolerable in the uninhabited land spices current thinking about Antarctica.
Vast and Unknown
What is the region like? Most of its inner reaches have never been seen, much less
trod, by man. It has been said that probably more is known of the sunlit side of the moon than of Antarctica. It is more than 5,000,000 square miles in area, nearly as vast as South America.
It has a coastline of nearly 14,000 miles. Unlike the Arctic, it has plenty of land, volcanoes, high mountain peaks, hardly any vegetation, and formidable formations of ice—cliffs, barriers, ice tongues. The Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans surround the solid belt of ice that walls in the whole continent.
This is the land that grasping hands of sovereignty have already sliced into big piecuts. When the asserted claims of several nations are marked off along the converging lines of longitude on a South Polar projection, they make vivid triangles. These triangles overlap and in that is the pattern of future conflict.
Only one great piecut is devoid of formal claims, and that encompasses most of the area into which the United States has sent its explorers, notably the five successive expeditions, including the present one, of Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd.
Some officials feel it is high time that the United States staked out its claim and proclaimed its interest and aspirations in Antarctica. But the considered policy now is not to agitate a new and vexing problem when the world already has so many.
This country wishes the work of the International Geophysical Year, 1957-58, with its promises of scientific rewards, to go forward unmarred. The several expeditions now heading for Antarctica will participate in worldwide observation of weather and other terrestrial and astronomical phenomena. It is a great cooperative effort of forty nations in man’s never ending quest for knowledge of his environment.
But what happens after science is put aside? Some officials are convinced that the United States and Russia, as well as other countries, will convert their scientific camps into permanent bases for the purpose of asserting territorial title. The United States has made no public suggestion that it will do this, but did announce on Nov. 2 that it would establish a permanent agency for antarctic activity, with Admiral Byrd as its chief.
The strategic importance of Antarctica from the American point of view may be summarized as follows:
(1) In an age when the nuclear devastation of the Northern Hemisphere is possible, the Southern Hemisphere assumes a new strategic importance. The antarctic continent is its geographic center, and the three oceans link Australia, New Zealand, South America, and Africa.
(2) Submarine and raider bases in Antarctica would be of considerable importance to Russia in attacking allied shipping. Such bases would not be easy to operate, but even small deposits of armaments, food and fuel hidden before hostilities would make serious raids possible.
(3) The oceans washing the periphery of the icy continent already have strategic importance because some of the newest United States warships are too large to transit the Panama Canal. Hence they have to pass south of Cape Horn, less than 600 miles from the Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica.
(4) It is important from the military standpoint to press United States scientific interest in Antarctica because comparatively little is known about its effect upon radio and weather. Moreover, as a land mass, it may contain great natural resources that may now be discoverable with new scientific instruments.
(5) Relatively cheap options taken now may prove richly rewarding in the future. Alaska, once “Seward’s Folly,” is the classic case of a forbidding country that has proved immensely valuable for natural resources and strategy.
The major claims that have been asserted are shown on the accompanying map.
No Formal Claim
Russia has not asserted a formal territorial claim but has been saying of late that a Russian, Admiral Fabian von Bellingshausen of Alexander I’s Imperial Russian Navy discovered Antarctica in 1821. The United States claims, however, that a Yankee whaling skipper, Capt. Nathaniel B. Palmer, first discovered the continent while voyaging 111 the region from 1819 to 1821.
Most Arctic jurisdictional disputes have been settled according to norms worked out
120
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ANTARCTICA—CLAIMS AND SCIENTIFIC BASESf
various international conferences and agreements. No norms have been formulated, however, for Antarctica and it appears that some new law will have to be developed.
The United States recognizes none of the claims to Antarctica as valid. Some legal authorities believe international law on effective occupancy should be redefined for areas that cannot normally be used for human habitation. The present position of the United States is that no claim should be recognized or considered settled until an international conference is called to deal with all of them.
f See “Operation Deepfreeze Fits Out,” page 279 of this issue of the Proceedings.
Florida Site Picked for Satellite Tests*
By James E. Warner
New York Herald Tribune, January 14, 1956.—The Navy and Air Force announced that Patrick Air Force Base, Cocoa, Fla., will be the site for launching what this government hopes will be the first manmade earth satellite in history.
The base already is in use for testing rockets and missiles far out over the Atlantic on ranges guarded, when necessary, by
air and surface patrols. It was picked for “Project Vanguard” or man-made moon tests, the two services said, because it is “suitable to scientific needs of the program” and also on the basis of operational requirements for large rocket launchings.”
Soviets Claim Lead
The Soviet Union has announced that its experts are at work on a similar project, and boasted that they are far advanced. Target date for the American program, announced July 29 with the approval of President Eisenhower, is to get a satellite into outer space circling the earth before Sept. 30, 1957.
No target dates were given in the announcement, which said merely that components of the artificial moon, designed to circle the earth every ninety minutes at 18,000 miles an hour at an altitude of 200 to 300 miles, whould be tested first at Cocoa.
“A complete Vanguard unit will be launched after flight tests of the components indicate that there is a good chance of putting the satellite into orbit,” the statement said.
21-Inch Sphere
Scientists at the time of the White House announcement last summer described the proposed satellite as about the size of a basketball. Recently it was discovered that the metallic sphere will be twenty-one inches in diameter and will weigh twenty- one and a half pounds.
It will carry the latest recording and transmitting equipment to send back to earth its observations at a height never before reached by man or any of his machines. It may provide the scientific basis for ultimate development of vehicles which will carry men into outer space and possibly to other planets.
The greatest rockets in history will put the “baby moons” into their orbits, and this government plans to launch “several” and possibly as many as ten. The satellites will be carried in giant three-stage rockets, launched vertically. At a height of thirty- five miles the first stage rocket will expire after having boosted the remaining components to a speed of nearly 4,000 miles an hour. Although launched vertically, the big rocket automatically will be levelled off into more horizontal flight after reaching an altitude of a mile or more.
Aiding momentum the second rocket charge will carry the satellite to 130 miles above the earth and a speed of 11,000 miles an hour. Momentum being even more powerful at this altitude, the third rocket will fire the projectile 300 miles above the earth, giving it the boost to orbital speed of 18,000 miles an hour.
Then the “baby moon” will be on its own, its own momentum in space making an orbit of the earth at an altitude varying from 200 or 300 miles to 800 miles. Experts estimate it will last for several days, possibly several weeks, transmitting its information to earth before falling and disintegrating in dense atmosphere, as its booster rockets will have done earlier.
For All Nations
It was announced last year that frequencies on which the satellite will transmit intelligence will be given to all nations, including Russia, as the experiment is part of the observance of the International Geophysical Year, in which forty nations are participating. Originally estimated cost of the project was $10,000,000, now considered to be low.
The Cocoa range extends seaward southeast from the Florida base, a joint one for all three services, along the West Indies. With the co-operation of the British government, observation stations are maintained in the various islands to observe behavior of test missiles. Ultimately, with the co-operation of South American governments, the range will be extended to 5,000 miles on a course terminating in the South Atlantic between Africa and South America.
XH-17 “Flying, Crane"
Testing Completed .
Aviation Week, December 19, 1955.— Three years after its first flight, the Hughes “Flying Crane” has completed its test program and “proved the feasibility of pressure- jet, single-rotor helicopters for heavy-duty cargo carrying,” according to an announcement by the Aircraft Division of Hughes Tool Co.
Built under an Air Force contract and designated the XH-17, the huge copter has picked up a trailer van, largest object ever lifted by rotary wings, the company said. It did not announce how heavy the van was, but said a helicopter of the XH-17 design could carry loads of more than 10 tons.
For military use, the company says an aircraft of this type could be used to lift a pod with 75 troops and their combat equipment, a 155 mm. howitzer, a 2^-ton truck, a bulldozer or an assembled bridge.
Hughes engineers found they could increase blade life and reduce stresses by as much as 50% by building weights into the blade at strategic points. Blades on the XH-17 are 130 ft. in diameter.
In the recent tests, they were flown in excess of 70 miles an hour, lifting a gross weight of more than 46,000 lb.
The XH-17 is powered by two modified General Electric J35 turbines, forcing gas under pressure to tip burners on the rotor blades.
Last of '01 White Fleet Winds up 54-Year Career
Washington Post and Times Herald, January 1, 1956.—The Prairie Stale, the last of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Great White Fleet” that toured the world in 1907, wound up its 54-year career without even a farewell part to ease her to the scrapheap.
Once classified in the same category as the Constitution, the former battleship Prairie Slate is now just another old tub that has outlived its usefulness as the world’s largest floating armory where tens of thousands of Navy officers and Navy and Marine Corps Reservists have studied and drilled.
In Need of Repair
Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, commandant of the Third Naval District, said the wooden structure capping the battleship’s hull no longer has adequate classrooms or sound-proofing for modern naval training needs. The whole ship is badly in need of paint and repair.
* * *
On January first, the Prairie Stale reverted to New York State when the Navy and Marine Corps Reserve Training Center
ended its tenancy. The state naval militia received title in 1924 when the ship was demilitarized under the Washington Naval Disarmament Treaty. Gov. Averell Harri- man must make a recommendation to the Navy Department for final disposition of the hulk.
Navy to Decide
The rusting, towerless battleship with its grimy 3-story armory will remain at Pier 73, East River, until the Navy Department decides where it will be scrapped—or sunk.
The Prairie State was commissioned as the USS Illinois in 1901, one of the last three American battleships built with 13-inch guns. With a complement of 686 officers and men, she sailed round the world with the American fleet as part of Roosevelt’s “big stick” project to impress foreign powers with United States naval might.
In 1902, the 375-foot, 11,000-ton ship took part in the fabulous naval review that marked the coronation festivities of Edward VII, and in 1905 she escorted the ship that brought the body of John Paul Jones back to the United States for final burial. A newer battleship was given the name of Illinois in 1941, and the old Illinois became the Prairie Stale.
Deep Pacific Trough Found
Navy Times, January 14, 1956.—The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution reports discovery of a trough nearly five miles deep in the South Pacific off Chile.
News of the discovery came from Parker Trask, the chief scientist aboard the institution’s research craft, the Atlantis. He said his instruments had recorded a deep of 25,980 feet about 39 miles off Antofogasta, Chile, in the Bartholomew Deep.
The Challenger Depth, 200 miles southwest of Guam, is 35,640 feet.
The Woods Hole team used a new echo sounding method devised by the institution. It found the Bartholomew Deep to be a 7,500-foot-wide slit bounded by steep cliffs.
Improved Small Boats for the Navy
By William R. Graner
Bureau of Ships Journal, January, 1956. —Engineers and technicians within the
Navy work to improve small boats with as much zeal as “big ship” designers and engineers. Progress in this direction comes from the combined efforts of the operating people in the Fleet, engineers in the Bureau of Ships and personnel at the shipyards. Commercial organizations also lend a hand, either through Navy contracts or through independent developments of improved materials and methods.
Since World War II
Since World War II, the plastic industry has succeeded in bonding and laminating such materials as glass fibers to produce materials with high specific strength and toughness.
The advantages of glass-reinforced plastic for small boats are obvious: The material is light in weight and durable, the manufacturing process is simple, and maintenance costs are low.
In 1946, several 28-foot glass-reinforced plastic boats were ordered for Navy use. Two of these experimental boats were framed with wood covered by laminate. The wood absorbed moisture and swelled, cracking the laminate. The later boats were framed with aluminum, which also was unsatisfactory because of salt water corrosion.
Vacuum Injector Method
The Norfolk Naval Shipyard used another method—the vacuum injection method—-to make a 26-foot glass reinforced plastic whaleboat. With this method stiffeners of precast laminates are used rather than wood or metal. They were inserted into the glass layup before impregnation.
More recently, the Norfolk shipyard used a vacuum pressure impregnation process in which the resin is injected under slight pressure into the bottom of the mold while a vacuum is drawn at the top.
Also, the Norfolk yard redesigned the boat to make it almost 100 per cent reinforced plastic. In the original boats, much o the outfitting was done in wood, including bulkheads, seats, gunwales, and other trim-
Today, the only “foreign” hull material5 are the wooden rub-rails and steel channel- for mounting the engine. Even the latter may soon be eliminated.
12-Foot Wherry
The 12-foot wherry was selected as the next plastic craft for Navy service. The Puget Sound Naval Shipyard undertook this task, and between 1951 and 1953 it turned out about 200 of them.
Service performance soon showed the need for strengthening the hull. This was done by using glass cloth in addition to mat and by installing thwart brackets and breast-hooks.
The Puget Sound shipyard is still constructing a 12-foot plastic wherry, but the boat has been completely redesigned, to improve its seaworthiness and to make it more suitable for use with an outboard motor.
A recently developed form of glass reinforcement, “woven roving,” is now in use. This product greatly reduces production costs while improving hull strength.
Size Limits
The size limits of plastic boats are rapidly being raised. At present, designs are being completed for 40- and 50-foot craft. A 57- foot hull with honeycomb sandwich material has been under construction for some time, and a preliminary design study to determine the possibilities in the 80- to 100-foot size range is under way.
What the size limitation will be for plastic boats in the Navy probably depends on the results of these projects. Today, the designer ls hampered by lack of design information and the backlog of experience so necessary to successful drafting room design. In addition to design, there are materials, construction, and economic factors that must be resolved as the program moves along.
Arctic Tests Seek an Aerial Ice Gauge
New York Times, December 17, 1955.— Air Force scientists are rushing research on a problem of growing importance to the United States and Royal Canadian Air Porces in the Arctic. •
They hope to develop an airborne indicator °f snow and ice thickness and strength for safe landing fields. The Air Force Cambridge Research Center said that “the problem of safe landings and takeoffs by heavily loaded aircraft has reached major proportions,” ^ith the increasing significance of the Arc- 9c in defense.
From now until May, scientists of the center, a unit of the Air Research and Development Command, will be setting off TNT in the far North. Helicopters will drop projectiles from various heights.
Researches will saw out big ice beams and load them to the breakage point. They will cut out cylindrical samples of ice for testing. Ice crystals in process of growth will be studied under microscopes.
Experts from the Terrestrial Sciences Laboratory of the Geophysics Directorate, Air Force Cambridge Research Center and three other agencies will conduct seventeen separate experiments in Labrador between now and spring.
Navy Underwrites Aerodyne Research
Aviation Week, January 16, 1956.— Under Navy sponsorship, Dr. A. M. Lippisch has developed a wingless, tailless aerodyne model powered by internal propellers.
The model has undergone successful tests at Collins Aeronautical Research Laboratory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Dr. Lippisch hopes the research program will lead eventually to an aircraft able to rise and descend on a vertical plane, capable of supersonic speeds and similar to the artist’s sketch below.
Principal design feature behind the proposed aerodyne is the internal propellers that provide power by drawing in air at the top and expelling it at the bottom.
Dr. Lippisch, a native of Germany, is best known for his World War II design and development of the Messerschmitt 163, the world’s first operational rocket-propelled fighter.
His later work included designs for a ramjet-powered delta-winged fighter that utilized a fuel consisting of processed coal.
Neiv Sound Device Maps Ocean Floor
New York Times, December 20, 1955.— A new underwater speed-of-sound indicator that can determine chemical purity and may help scientists map ocean bottoms more accurately has been developed by the National Bureau of Standards.
The device works automatically and continuously and it reports the speed of sound in a liquid with great accuracy.
* * *
In the ocean depths where man cannot go with his rulers and surveying equipment, sound is an important measuring rod. The time it takes for the sound to get from one point to another gives the distance between the points. But the true speed of sound, which varies widely with temperature, depth and salinity, must be known for the distance figure to be accurate.
The conventional method to get the speed of sound at a site has been to drop a thermometer overboard, assume an average salinity and determine sound speed indirectly from the temperature with a mathematical formula. The result is sometimes inaccurate.
The instrument was developed by the Bureau’s Sound Laboratory for the Office of Naval Research.
At one end of the tube-like device is a sound pulse source that gives off short clicks. The noise is focused on a sound sensitive receiver about four inches away. As soon as the receiver picks up a click it retriggers the sound source to give off another click and the cycle begins again. The number of clicks per second indicates the sound speed.
New Optical System Speeds Radar Plotting
Aviation Week, January 9, 1956.—A new optical device, called Sky Screen, is expected to speed the display and identification of radar-detected aircraft for military and possibly civil air traffic control operations.
Sky Screen enables a single operator to handle several times as many aircraft as
previously possible, according to Northrop Aircraft Co., whose Anaheim (Calif.) Division is now producing the device.
* * *
Aircraft radar “blips” which appear on a radar tube mounted atop the device, are optically transferred onto a 16-inch plotting surface. An operator then places a small rectangular glass-chip marker over each target, moving the marker as the radar blip moves. The glass markers contain an arrow to show direction of aircraft movement, and identifying numerals. Each side of the marker is painted with a different fluorescent color. The color of the marker side turned up indicates whether the aircraft is enemy or friendly.
An optical system then projects this plotting surface display onto a large screen, which shows aircraft position, heading and identification.
Previously, plotting systems required specially trained personnel to translate radar blip position into verbal directions, which were transmitted by interphone to other personnel who plotted it (in reverse) on a transparent surveillance screen.
Sky Screen is designed to be disassembled into five sections for airborne shipment. Total weight, including packing cases, >s 1,140 lb.
Military Transport by Air Sets Record
New York Times, January 12, 1956. ' The Military Air Transport Service reported it flew more passengers and cargo farther and in greater safety in 1955 than ever before in its seven-and-a-half year history.
Its planes flew 1,180,000 flight hours with missions ranging from carrying President Eisenhower to last summer’s Geneva conference to the penetration of hurricane storm centers and relief of flood victims. .
The service, set up in 1948 under the A>r Force, includes Air Force and Navy planes- It carries out transport, rescue, evacuation weather, research and other duties for the Government.
One hundred round trips a month were flown to Greenland supporting the g'anl military base there. ,
Transport operations made up almost ha of the flying time, which was 24 per cent greater than in 1954.
Atlantic Division planes crossed the ocean 3,000 times and carried 321,500 passengers. That was almost half the 733,400 passengers and patients moved on the global and domestic system. Service to Spain was started by the Altantic Division last April.
The Pacific Division crossed 6,100 times and carried 316,000 passengers. Last July it made its 50,000th Pacific crossing.
The Continental Division delivered 6,300 planes to both domestic and foreign points in ferrying operations.
Small Atomic Submarine Planned
New York Herald Tribune, December 10, 1955.—The Navy announced plans to build a small streamlined atomic submarine that could speed through the depths faster than the Nautilus.
The vessel will have a new hull design that may lead to a revolution in the shape °f underwater craft. The Navy hopes the flat-sided, fish-like hull design will give it an atomic submarine smaller than the Nautilus and more comparable in size to the efficient attack class submarines of World War II.
The new hull design will be similar to that °f the Albacore, an experimental 1,200-ton submarine launched in 1953. The Albacore can do better than twenty knots under water and, in short spurts, can outrun the Nautilus.
The vessel will be half the size of the 3,000-ton Nautilus. Because of its improved hull design, the Navy said it will have a utaximum underwater speed of more than the twenty-five knots credited to the ^ autilus when it is submerged.
The Navy also announced that three conventional Diesel-powered submarines in this year’s shipbuilding program will be changed t° the new hull design.
The Navy said the new small submarine will be “superior to the Nautilus, Sea Wolf or ?uy of its other nuclear-powered predecessors |n all aspects of its underwater character- tstics.’’ It will be powered by one instead of two propellers.
FOREIGN
Proposal Revived for Dam Across Neck of Japan Sea
By Gordon Walker
Christain Science Monitor, December 21, 1955.—One of the most debated and controversial of modern oceanographic construction projects—a dam or causeway connecting Siberia and Sakhalin Island to raise the temperature of lands bordering the Japan Sea—has once again found its way into Japanese newspaper headlines.
The scheme won recent prominence when a Japanese freighter captain, hauling timber from Soviet ports on Sakhalin Island, reported through the Japanese Maritime Safety Board that the Soviets had indeed constructed such a causeway, and that he had actually seen it.
This report was denied recently by a trio of visiting Soviet oceanographic professors, attending an international conference. But the Japanese skipper’s report, nevertheless, once again has raised speculation over the geopolitical consequences, particularly from a military standpoint, if such an effort were made to change the course of northeast Asia’s ocean currents.
Two Purposes Cited
Japanese engineers, who have long dreamed of such a project, contend that an ocean dam of this type across the Tartar Straits would serve two major purposes.
It would block the cold currents which flow down from the Sea of Okhotsk into the Japan Sea, and permit only the warm water of the so-called Black Current to circulate in this semi-landlocked body of water.
This, they claim, would raise the entire temperature of the Japan Sea by some 20 degrees centigrade. Land temperature along the entire four main islands of Japan would be raised.
And such Soviet Siberian ports as Vladivostok, normally iced in for six months out of each year, would be rendered operable the entire year.
One of Japan’s leading exponents of the scheme was one Usaburo Chizaki, a construction company president from Hokkaido, who drew up plans for such a causeway and
attempted to win approval from the Japanese Government during the early part of the Pacific war.
The causeway, as he envisaged it, would extend across the Tartar Straits just south of Nikolaevsk, along a line roughly 52 degrees, 13 minutes north latitude.
At this point the Tartar Straits, known to the Japanese as Mamiya Straits, are less than five miles across, and range in depth from four to nine meters (about 13 to 29^ ft.) with a generally sandy bottom.
The Japanese plan was to dump stone weighing in the neighborhood of five tons each to form an outer shell for the causeway filling in the interior with smaller stones of one ton dimensions.
Because of frigid winter conditions, it is estimated that work could be carried on for only six months of each year, allowing two years for the entire job.
Once the dam was completed, according to the Japanese contention, the cold water from the north would be blocked from the Sea of Japan.
These currents normally flow southward into the Japan Sea, meeting the warm water of the Black Current which enters the sea from the south through Tsushima Straits off southern Korea.
Cold for Location
For a time, the warm water continues northward, but is eventually cooled by the southward flowing cold currents. The result is that Hokkaido, which is roughly on the same latitude as London and Berlin, is buried under heavy snow for a large portion of the year.
If the cold currents were blocked off, it is argued, Hokkaido and northern Honshu Islands would be capable of raising two crops each year, thereby helping to solve Japan’s acute food problems.
The benefit to the Soviets, it is argued, would be even greater. Moscow would fulfill its life-long dream of warm-water ports in the Soviet Far East. And the southern regions of Siberia might be capable of producing such semi-tropical crops as oranges and mandarins.
First Atlantic Telephone Cable*
World Science Review, November, 1955.— The final splice in the first telephone cable ever to be laid across the Atlantic was made off Oban in September, and the testing of the cable from its terminals near Oban and at Clarenville, Newfoundland, is now proceeding. . . . •
This cable is the first of two which will form the trans-ocean link in the transatlantic telephone cable system due to be completed towards the end of next year. It is about 2,000 nautical miles long and includes 51 repeaters.
1,500 Miles of Cable
The task of laying the world’s longest repeatered submarine telephone cable, at depths never before attempted, has been completed by HMTS Monarch ahead of
HMS MONARCH, LARGEST CABLE SHIP AFLOAT
schedule. In the early summer she laid out from Clarenville, Newfoundland, 200 miles with five repeaters and buoyed the seaward end.
On August 8, after loading more cable and repeaters at Erith, Kent, the Monarch picked up the buoyed end and laid 1,500 nautical miles of cable with 29 repeaters, in one length, across the deepest part of the Atlantic. The weather was kind in the early stages but the difficult operation of buoying off the end of this cable on the Rockall Bank was carried out in a fierce gale. It was succesfully completed on August 18.
After again loading with cable and repeaters the Monarch left Erith on September 12 to pick up the buoyed end on the Rockall Hank and lay the last 500 nautical miles to Oban. Meanwhile, the Iris, a smaller cable ship, had laid a short shore end out from the terminal station near Oban, and the final splicing of the 2,000 nautical miles of cable, stretching back to Newfoundland, with this shore end took place on board the Monarch.
Joints X-Rayed
The splicing operation took 8 hours and when completed and the joint had been tested (X-rays were used), the cable was lowered overboard and for the first time Newfoundland and Great Britain were hnked by a submarine telephone cable. Not until the second cable is laid in 1956 will twoWay conversations be possible, since each cable carries speech in one direction only.
Bonn Will Launch Its Navy in April
New York Times, January 7, 1956.—The first units of the new West German Navy will put to sea in April, the Defense Ministry announced. A flotilla of eighteen minesweepers will be the vanguard of the Navy, scheduled to expand to 170 ships and 17,000 men by 1960.
The “heavy” vessels in the German navy, which had two of the biggest warships in the world fifteen years ago, will be twelve light destroyers West Germany hopes to acquire from the United States on a lend- lease basis.
The fleet that the Defense Ministry plans to build in the next four years will be largely a second-hand navy. Many of the 170 vessels, including those in the first minesweeper flotilla, will be German-built ships of World War II vintage seized by the Allies. The craft will be given to West Germany.
The West German fleet is to be tailored to fulfill the mission assigned to it by Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers in Europe. This will be to defend West Germany’s Baltic and North Sea coasts and anti-submarine operations in those waters.*
The largest vessels will be 2,500-ton minelayers and will include 1,200-ton antiaircraft vessels and submarine chasers of the same tonnage, torpedo boats and landing craft for amphibious operations.
A 4,500-ton school ship has been acquired for training naval cadets. By 1960, the navy
will have two groups of aircraft for combined air-sea reconnaissance and anti-submarine operations.
The Navy will be divided into North Sea and Baltic fleets, the former to be based at Wilhelmshaven and the latter at Kiel. In the event of war the German Navy would be under the operational control of Supreme Allied Headquarters.
Atomic Torpedoes
Rivisla Marittima, November, 1955.—A recent article in the Communist Youth periodical Komsomolskaya indicated that Soviet submarines are to be equipped with torpedoes having atomic warheads. The statement was made in an expose of Soviet naval strategic doctrine. Such a torpedo exploding a few hundred yards from its objective could sink a battleship or a cruiser. A hit with eight or ten ordinary torpedoes would be necessary to achieve the same result.
It was also indicated that present Soviet submarines are faster and have a greater cruising radius than those operating during the Second World War. Moreover, they are supposed to be able to charge their batteries during submerged cruising.
Severe Jolt over Porkkala Awaits Finlandf
Christian Science Monitor, December 21, 1956.—A heavy disappointment awaits the Finnish public after the Soviets hand back Porkkala, observers informed on developments inside the Communist enclave forecast.
Much, probably most, of the property that fell into Soviet hands when the 50-year lease took effect in the fall of 1944 will no longer be there, according to these sources.
The Soviets have systematically shipped out everything that might prove of value and could be loaded on ships and freight cars. And they have blown up installations that they could not possibly take along.
Curtain Kept Tight
How far Soviet destructiveness has gone, no one knows—but certainly far beyond what most Finns seemed to expect.
Such are the indications, as observed from the Finnish side of the border. The Iron Curtain around the enclave is still sealed as tight as it ever was, which means practically airtight. Accordingly, all observations have to be made from a distance.
The doings of the Soviet garrison at Porkkala have not, however, been made public by the Finnish authorities. It is against the national postwar policy to give offense in any way to Moscow, so as not to provoke reprisals by the mighty but touchy neighbor.
When Moscow’s intention to give up its 50-year lease on the strategic military base was announced in the middle of September, a wave of wishful thinking swept Finland.
It was generally believed implicitly that the Soviets would leave the buildings and installations in the enclave pretty much intact for the benefit of the Finns. It was felt that the Kremlin could afford such generosity, for one thing, and would figure, moreover, on thereby making valuable gains on the propaganda front.
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Optimists are due for a rude awakening, the latest military observations along the border indicate.
For instance, where the gun turrets of the island fortress of Makiluoto stood silhouetted against the sky until recently, there are now piles of wreckage.
Just before these naval sightings, a succession of violent explosions was heard, followed by columns of smoke rising over the island.
The fortifications on Makiluoto had been built by the Finns before the war and, accordingly, fell into Soviet possession upon the establishment of the Soviet military base at Porkkala.
They were among the most elaborate and costliest military intallations in Finland. The series of batteries of 12-inch guns moved up and down on lifts inside their turrets of reinforced concrete.
Accommodations for 400 men, a hospital and a railway for the transport of munitions had been blasted underground out of solid granite.
Those Finns, who could never expect good to come from across the eastern border, did not think the Soviets would be ruthless enough to demolish the Makiluoto installations.
However, as far as can be determined from a distance through powerful field glasses, this is precisely what has happened.
Britain's Bomb Test
Manchester Guardian, December 28, 1955.
■—The next series of British atomic tests will be held in April in the Monte Bello Islands, off the northwest coast of Australia. They may include the first explosion of a British hydrogen bomb, although no confirmation on this point can be obtained in London. The tank landing ship Narvik, from which the tests are to be directed, will sail from Portsmouth soon.
Official statements on the tests were issued in London, and Canberra. The Australian Minister of Supply, Mr. Howard Beale, said that a great deal of preparatory work had already been done by the Royal Australian Navy. The London statement said only that the tests would take place in April but gave not further details.
The Narvik will lead a special squadron, with Commodore Hugh C. Martell, R.N., as its senior officer. She has been at Portsmouth since early this month preparing for the voyage to the Antipodes. She will be joined in Australian waters by other ships °f the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy, and she is carrying a deck load of several minor landing craft. She is of 5,000 tons displacement and carries a complement °f about 250. She was one of the vessels which took part in the 1952 tests in the Monte Bello Islands, when the flagship was the escort carrier Campania.
Intermediate Tests?
It is possible that the tests in April will be concerned only with mechanisms intended to act as “triggers” for hydrogen weapons. I'he small size of the expedition, compared jv'th the larger number of ships and scientists tnvolved in 1952, would appear to point in that direction. The hydrogen bomb program has, however, had high priority in the British defense effort.
The announcement that the British Government had decided to proceed with full-scale production of thermonuclear (hydrogen) weapons was made in Parliament in February 1955. At that time no date was given for the explosion of the first British hydrogen bomb, but unofficially it was suggested that many months must elapse before that would be possible. Recently the Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, has insisted that Britain’s right to test its hydrogen weapons must not be prejudiced in any negotiations on a limitation of experimental explosions. He has said that an agreement should have relation to the number and type of tests already carried out by each country.
The atomic explosion on October 3, 1952, was visible from the small mainland port of Onslow eighty miles south of the Monte Bellos. It was seen as a brilliant flash, followed by a cloud which spread to more than a mile wide. A wave of air pressure was felt at Onslow about four minutes after the explosion. The explosion was also seen and heard at other points on the mainland, although the coast north of Onslow is sparsely populated.
The second series of atomic tests took place in October, 1953, at Woomera, in South Australia. They were conducted by a joint team of British and Australian scientists, under Sir William Penney. A third series, concerned with triggers, were to have taken place this summer. It is not known whether they took place in complete secrecy or were postponed. After the Monte Bello tests in April it is expected that further experiments will be carried out at the new testing ground at Maralinga, in Central Australia, later in the year. It has been promised, however, that no hydrogen bomb will be exploded at Maralinga.
See the pictorial article “The Royal Navy’s Part in the British Atomic Test,” page 195, February, 1953 Proceedings.
Britannia Royal Naval College Jubilee
By A. Cecil Hampshire
The Crowsnest, December, 1955.—The jubilee of the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, celebrated recently, marked not only the 50th anniversary of this famous “British nursery” for naval officers, but the beginning a new era in its history.
The College is to become more a university and naval training establishment than the public school with a naval bias it resembled in the past.
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THE BRITANNIA ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE. DARTMOUTH, ENGLAND, HAS MARKED ITS 50TH ANNIVERSARY AND THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA. AS SEEN IN THIS PICTURE OF THE COLLEGE, RIFLE AND FOOT DRILL ARE STILL REQUIRED, BUT SUCH SUBJECTS FORM ONLY A MINOR PART OF THE CURRICULUM.
This change has come about due to the higher entry age of cadets in the Royal Navy and a broadening of the educational qualifications. The age bracket is now 17 years 8 months and 19 years. A scholarship scheme has also been introduced whereby a certain number of boys may be selected by interview at the age of 16. Selection guarantees them a place at 18 and the provision of financial assistance to finish their schooling.
Started in May of 1955, cadets under the new scheme now receive an all-through course of training centered at Dartmouth before going to sea as acting sub-lieutenants. Midshipmen ex Dartmouth will eventually
disappear completely from Britain’s seagoing fleet.
The course lasts seven terms, in three phases. Phase I, which the lads undergo as cadets, lasts two terms and consists of a general introduction to naval life, and education to academic standards in mathematics, mechanics, science and basic naval history- Phase II, lasting one term as cadet, is devoted to sea training in ships of the Dartmouth Training Squadron, comprising a destroyer, two fast frigates and two fleet minesweepers. On board the boys become part of the rating complement and live on the lower deck. During this phase they als° undergo ten days’ flying instruction at a naval air station.
Phase III consists of four terms after promotion to midshipman. During this period they receive technical training consisting of seamanship, gunnery, torpedo and antisubmarine, engineering, navigation and communications. Also included is instruction in what the modern Navy calls “ABCD,” or defense against atomic, biological and chemical attack. During this phase the midshipmen will go to sea for short periods in the training squadron to put into practice afloat what they have learned ashore.
Integrated with the professional will be a considerable amount of academic instruction. There will be a strong thread of the Humanities through Phase III to counteract the narrowing effect of a lengthy professional course.
The university system of lectures, tutorial periods and private study will be used. Naval discipline will be maintained, but the oldtime regimentation is to disappear as unsuitable for the young men of today. The new Dartmouth trainees will be encouraged to think for themselves, work by themselves and employ their leisure profitably.
To cope with the increased technical train- >ng now to be given at the College the naval staff is being augmented, and new and up- to-date equipment is being installed, includ- lng the main engine of a destroyer, a battery of modern guns and the latest radar.
Considerable structural alterations are also being made to provide new type accommodation and private study facilities to these young naval officers of tomorrow.
Streamlined Submarine
Britain’s Royal Navy is streamlining its submarines to give greater speed and better general performance underwater. Last-war subs so streamlined are unofficially reported to have upped their underwater speed from ^ to 15 knots. The Artful, 1,620-ton Royal ^uvy, streamlined, post-war sub, shown above, surfaces in foggy weather in the English Channel. Her bridge and conning- tower are enclosed in a fin-like structure. She is snorkel-fitted and carries a crew of 60.
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Reinforcements via Northern Route
La Revue Maritime, December, 1955.— According to press reports, a large Soviet naval force proceeded during the past summer from the Arctic to the Far East. The vessels in question were: two Sverdlov cruisers; twelve modern destroyers; twelve escorts; twelve submarines.
So far as is known, it is the first time a naval force of this importance, composed of such valuable warships, has used the Northern Sea Route. This would prove that the infra-structure of the Northern Route has been considerably developed, and that the Russians have acquired a mastery of the art of navigation in waters which even in summer can be traversed only with the help of ice-breakers. After passing Cape Dzhneva and passing through Bering Straits, the Soviet force is reported to have reached Vladivostok via the La Perouse Strait.
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