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This F8U-3 Crusader III push-button fighter carries either the Sparrow III or the Sidewinder missile. Manufactured by Chance Vought and powered by a J-75 Pratt and Whitney jet engine, rated at 26,000 pounds thrust, the Crusader flies at twice the speed of sound.
“Seawolf” Surfaces After Establishing 60-Day Underwater Record
By Richard H. Parke
The New York Times, October 7, 1958.— The nuclear submarine Seawolf sailed triumphantly into her home port here late today with an underwater cruising record of sixty days. She achieved it at precisely 11:45 o’clock this morning when she surfaced in a sundappled sea fifteen miles south of Block Island. She began her trip at that hour Aug. 7 at an undisclosed point in mid-Atlantic. The previous record of 31 days 5| hours was set last May by a sister ship, the Skate. The 3,260- ton Seawolf, second of the Navy’s atomic submarines, logged more than 14,500 nautical miles during the journey. Her return was dramatic. Watchers from the submarine rescue ship Skylark, waiting at a pre-arranged rendezvous, first caught sight of her twin periscopes and twin radar and radio antennas at 11:19 am. They came knifing through the calm water like shark fins.
Navy Protocol
Then, twenty-six minutes later, the Sea- wolf's sail, or conning tower, broke the surface. The 338-foot vessel, dun gray in color, rose on even keel. Water cascaded in plumes from her superstructure.
Following Navy protocol the first man on deck was a quartermaster, Benjamin P. Ward. He was followed by the executive officer, Lieut. Comdr. Charles S. Carlisle, and then by the commanding officer, Capt. Richard B. Laning of Amherst, Va.
Captain Laning, who was a commander when the Seawolf left in August but won his four stripes today, had no time for talking then. But later at a news conference after his ship had docked he described the trip as “uneventful.”
“Everything ran beautifully and the crew behaved marvelously,” he said.
The 40-vear-old skipper said the vessel could have remained submerged indefinitely. He later qualified this by putting the limit at “once as long again or half as long again.”
Governor and Admiral
Gov. Abraham A. Ribicoff of Connecticut, Rear Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, so- called “father of the atomic submarine,” and Rear Admiral Frederick B. Warder, Commanding Submarine Force, United States Atlantic Fleet, were on hand to welcome the submarine’s 116-man crew when she docked at 4 pm.
Governor Ribicoff extended a “welcome home” on behalf of his state and presented citations to Captain Laning and crew members.
Admiral Rickover, who conveyed a well- done from the Secretary of the Navy, Thomas S. Gates, Jr., praised the Seawolf’s feat, but warned against complacency.
“Someone else may be able to do it if we can,” he asserted.
At the news conference, Captain Laning said that the Seawolf engaged in “tactical exercises” during the trip. He declined to disclose her various courses except to say that at one point she came “within a few hundred miles of Iceland.”
The morale of the crew was reported excellent. The only problem appeared to be worry expressed by the men for their families.
Captain Laning said that 80 per cent of the crewmen were married and that two became fathers during the trip.
The Seawolf sustained minor damage to the starboard side of her superstructure plating on the trip. A section of the steel plating some ten or fifteen feet in length was torn away, apparently by the seas, but it did not affect her speed or maneuverability, Captain Laning said.
The atomic submarine Nautilus, which recently crossed under the North Pole, was on maneuvers this morning not far from where the Seawolf surfaced. At 10:50 am, Capt. E. P. Wilkinson, Commander of the 102d Submarine Division, who was aboard, sent a “congratulations and welcome home” message to the incoming vessel.
Mission Also Humanitarian, U. S.
Fleet Saves 131 Chinese
The Baltimore Sun, October 11, 1958.— The United States 7th Fleet put an airlift into operation and rescued 131 passengers whose ship ran aground after leaving Red China.
“When human life is at stake we make no distinction in political beliefs,” Vice Adm. Frederick N. Kivette, 7th Fleet commander, said.
The flagship, the heavy cruiser Helena, dashed across the South China Sea from war exercises off the Philippines to the Nationalist-held Paracel Islands for the mercy mission on a plea from the stranded craft, the 3,405-ton Hoiwong flying the Norwegian flag.
The Hoiwong, outbound to Singapore from Red Swatow on Formosa Strait, had run hard aground on Bamboo reef in the Paracels, 420 miles southwest of Hong Kong, at 2:30 am Monday. The hull was punctured and the No. 2 hold flooded. Heavy seas battered the ship.
United States Naval headquarters here told of the rescue:
Two helicopters handled the transfer, flying above heavy seas that precluded removal of the passengers by routine methods. Two Hong Kong tugs had failed in an effort to float the Hoiwong. A freighter stood by helplessly.
Most of the passengers were women and children en route to their homes, in Singapore and elsewhere, after visiting relatives on the Communist-ruled mainland. But any ideological differences were brushed aside.
Sailors broke out ice cream and candy for distribution to the children as they landed on the cruiser and showed them cartoon movies.
The Helena expected to land the passengers at Hong Kong, a British Crown Colony.
Maneuvers Stopped
The skipper of the Hoiwong had called for assistance from the 7th Fleet, the guardian of
Formosa Strait, late yesterday. He feared for the safety of the passengers in view of the pounding seas.
Kivette stopped maneuvers in the Philippines area and headed the Helena at full speed to Bamboo reef. The hours-long rescue operation started at 10 am.
Navy Tests Create and Dissolve Clouds
By Russell Baker
The New York Times, September 24, 1958. —The Navy announced that it has successfully used carbon black to create and dissipate clouds at will in a series of tests over the coast of Georgia.
The demonstration, conducted July 29 and 31, used a technique suggested by Dr. Florence W. van Straten of the Naval Weather Service.
Dr. van Straten holds a doctorate in physical chemistry from New York University. She emphasized that the July tests amounted only to the demonstration of an “effect” that still must be studied and scientifically proven. She said further tests and research were needed before the Navy could make claims for it as a weather-control technique. In seven attempts at cloud dissipation, however, a Navy plane seeding with carbon black particles successfully destroyed seven clouds in periods ranging from two-and-a-half to twenty minutes.
In five attempts at cloud-making, Dr. van Straten said, the seeding technique produced four clouds and failed once. In the one failure, she said, the package containing the carbon black particles fouled during the drop and may have failed to open.
Carbon black is a soot such as forms on a pane of glass when it is held close to, say, a burning kerosene wick. It is commonly used in printer’s ink and tires and has the virtue of low cost. Dr. van Straten said that the total value of the carbon black used in the cloud tests was $5.
In some cases, Dr. van Straten used it in powdered form in one-and-a-half pound lots. The particles were about two-millionths of an inch in diameter and were so finely divided that they showed almost no tendency to fall.
Carbon in Liquid
In another demonstration, six pounds of carbon were suspended in five gallons of liquid. This was a cloud-making test. The solution was dropped along a one-mile aerial track. By the time the test plane had made its turn and come back along the track, a cloud was forming that extended from a base of 3,000 feet to a top of 6,000 along the entire mile-long course.
In a typical cloud-dissipation test, a cloud towering from a 5,000-foot base to an 11,000- foot top disappeared within twenty minutes after seeding.
In the dissipation process, the carbon black is put into the cloud at its top. To create a cloud, the particles are sown at the altitude where its base should be.
The implications of cloud control are immense from both military and civilian viewpoints. Dr. van Straten, however, makes no claims that her technique may be effective in dissipating fog or thunderstorms or in rainmaking.
The process, she said today, obviously requires the presence of water vapor in the atmosphere.
“We couldn’t make a cloud over the Sahara desert,” she said.
The technique is the result of years of puzzling by Dr. van Straten about what creates rain in tropical areas. The long-accepted theory of what creates rain in the middle latitudes is that sub-freezing temperatures in cloud tops cause slow-evaporating ice crystals to expand at the expense of fast-evaporating water droplets. The heavy ice crystals then fall, melt and emerge as rain.
This theory had no validity for tropical climates, however, where temperatures at the cloud tops rarely reach freezing. Eventually, Dr. van Straten theorized that the process depended upon differing evaporation rates among water droplets in the same cloud.
Evaporation Rate
In turbulent tropical air, it was reasonable to assume that water droplets with a 1-degree temperature difference would frequently come close to contact. Thus, the droplet with the lower evaporation rate would expand at the expense of the one with the higher rate
and might be expected to drop as rain.
If this theory was correct, the question arose of how to induce temperature differences artificially in the atmosphere. The answer was carbon black, which has the property of absorbing heat. Presumably the atmosphere would warm in the area where carbon black was introduced.
Introducing the carbon black near the base of the cloud, Dr. van Straten theorized, would tend to raise the rate at which air cools with increases in altitude. A high rate of cooling makes for atmospheric instability, which creates clouds. Conversely a low rate of cooling—as might be achieved by seeding clouds near their tops with carbon black—makes for stability, which should tend to dissipate clouds.
This is the reason the carbon is seeded near the top to eliminate cloud and at the base to create it.
Among those who worked closely with Dr. van Straten in the preliminary work done to date are Robert Ruskin and Dr. J. E. Dinger, both of the Naval Research Laboratory here.
Fighting the Ice Menace
By P. E. Burke
Humber Industry & Fishing Review.—Swedish and Finnish icebreakers are working in complete co-operation to keep open the sea lanes in the northern Baltic between Stockholm, the Aland Islands and the Finnish ports of Abo and Helsingfors.
At the invitation of the Royal Swedish Navy your correspondent recently took part in a Swedish icebreaking patrol to keep the sea lanes open not only for ships of the two countries concerned but also for the nations with which they trade.
Icebreaking is vital for the continuation of commerce in the Baltic during winter and these joint icebreaking patrols prevent “Admiral Winter” from freezing much of the life of these countries to a standstill.
Boarding the modern Swedish Naval Icebreaker Oden at 9:30 in the morning off Furu- sund in the outer reaches of the Stockholm Archipelago, after a two-hour road journey from the Swedish capital, we set out almost immediately to batter a channel through the ice which covered the archipelago.
We also broke up ice found between the Swedish coast and the Aland Islands, the Swedish-speaking, Swedish-populated islands just off the coast of Sweden, which were incorporated with Finland after the First World War—one of the unnoticed mistakes of the League of Nations, but an extremely painful one for the population concerned. From the Alands, Finnish icebreakers would take over.
The Oden is the largest and most modern ship in icebreaking service in the Baltic; it is of 10,500 shaft horse power and was built by Wartsila Koncernen AB at Sandvikens Skeppsdocka, in Helsingfors, Finland.
This is by far the foremost builder of icebreakers in Europe and in addition to supplying icebreakers to Sweden, Finland, Canada and Argentina, the yard has recently delivered three modern vessels to the Soviet icebreaking service.
The Oden is the fifth vessel of its class—the other four were all built in the same yard—• and it embodies all the latest developments in the field of icebreaker construction. It is a diesel-electric vessel with four screws, two in the stern and two in the bow.
The advantage of two bow propellers is that they produce a strong symmetric wash around the bows resulting in lower friction between the hull and the ice. The four screw system also gives a remarkable maneuverability especially as the diesel-electric machinery allows all screws to be controlled directly from the bridge.
The power distribution is also flexible as the main part of the power can quickly be switched to where it is most urgently needed, either to the forward or after screws. These features make the Oden more efficient in icebreaking than the older icebreakers of corresponding power and displacement.
The hull is of the very latest design and construction; the length-breadth ratio of 4.14 and the 22° angle at the water line and 20° angle of the side plating are considered the most effective for icebreaking.
The Oden's diesel engines and generators are of Swedish design and construction, some of the auxiliary equipment is English, the radar system being entirely English, while
the only piece of American equipment on board seems to be the loud-hailer.
The Oden cruised through the ice off the Stockholm Archipelago churning it up into pieces the size of footballs. Then we came to the coastal ice, which lay in a huge sheet stretching from the Swedish coast as far as the eye could see.
It was fascinating to watch the thin black crack lines shoot out, lightning-like, for a long distance across the wind-swept ice in front of the bow of the Oden. Then the cracks would widen and water would ooze up over the edges and where there was snow it would dampen and blacken it at the edges.
Then the Oden would catch up with these widening cracks and there would be a cracking, crunching sound. The ice, which was 9 inches thick, would be broken into large pieces the size of a dining room—or at least of a dining room table!
Sometimes the smaller of these pieces would be sent skimming across the surface of the still intact ice to the sides, but then the 65 foot width of the Oden was upon it and more, bigger and wider lines ran out sideways from the icebreaker. The cracks would become gaps and sometimes large pieces of ice were churned under the surface of the water and took on a ghastly green hue, and behind the Oden lay the open channel.
We cruised through this coastal ice and came to the open Baltic. It was now the task of the Oden to start looking for ice, to pursue it and break it up—and pursue we did! A hard wind had driven a huge mass of pack ice (ice formed into a chaotic mass by the squeezing and freezing together of ice floes) away from the coast and toward the Aland Islands. It was on the course of shipping and had to be dealt with.
Captain Ange Christensson took his bearings from the Decca radar chain, which the English company had built along the Swedish coast, and which Sweden’s Prince Bertil had opened last year, and set his course accordingly.
After a time the radar screen began to show flecks—ice floes—and then a large mass was seen. The word “iskanten” (edge of the ice) was marked on the chart . . . and we moved in.
The pack ice appeared on the horizon and as we came near it seemed like a rough field covered with snow floating on the sea. The Oden closed in on it at 16 knots. Nearer and nearer it came and then we hit it—a lurch, but that was all—we smashed our way through it at the speed of 8-9 knots!
After the pack ice had been dealt with by the Oden, Captain Christensson took the vessel to break up the ice around the islands off the Swedish coast and stopped in the thick ice just before Soderarm, one of the best known lighthouses in Swedish waters. Here the ice was over 18 inches thick.
The crew put a ladder down and the Swedish cine-cameraman for the Rank newsreel, the representative of Tass, and I descended on to the ice. The captain then maneuvered the Oden for the benefit of the newsreelman, while the Tass representative and I mused on the likelihood of a good story for other journalists and possibleinternational complications if it was impossible to get us back again—indeed for a few moments it was feared that the representative of Mr. Rank would drift away on an ice floe by himself!
On board again the captain and his crew gave us a picture of the icebreaking service in the Baltic officially organized by Sweden in 1926. The Swedish municipalities are responsible for keeping open passages in their own ports and outer harbors and Swedish naval icebreakers keep open the outer reaches and the sealanes.
The 42 million Swedish kronor (£3 million) which the Oden had cost had come from the budget of a Swedish Government Department doing the work of the British Board of Trade and the Ministry of Transport, but the vessel was in the charge of and manned by the Royal Swedish Navy.
On board the Oden Captain Christensson had under him four officers, eight warrant officers (including four technical warrant officers), 12 petty officers and 40 national servicemen. The latter are often attached to icebreakers for their entire national service so that they become icebreaking specialists— and their quarters on the Oden must be the best of any branch of any navy anywhere. There is even a Turkish bath on board!
The icebreaking season begins in November (from October if the equipping and fitting out of the icebreakers is included). The idea of the service is to follow the edge of the Baltic ice as it comes southward—it is of course impossible to hold it back, but by forcing channels through it the northern ports can be kept open for some weeks or even months after the ice descends upon them.
Even with the stoutest and most powerful icebreakers in unlimited numbers it would be impossible to keep the northern part of the Baltic open for sea traffic all the year round. Sweden’s northern iron-ore exporting port of Lulea is closed from the beginning of November to about the middle of May in a normal year while the smallish port of Gavle, 125 miles north of Stockholm, is closed as a rule from the beginning until the last week of March.
In a normal winter the icebreaker service is able to maintain a channel for shipping between Stockholm^ the Aland Islands and the Finnish ports of Abo and Helsingfors. When the ice starts retreating northwards the Swedish naval icebreakers pursue it to open up the ports of northern Sweden ahead of the thaw.
The icebreaking season ends in May, and even given the worst weather the crews get home for Midsummer’s Eve, the most important festival in Sweden.
Sweden pays out over five million Swedish kronor (£350,000) a year for upkeep and staffing of icebreakers (both naval and municipal), hire of other icebreakers, usually Danish. However, this amount does not provide for depreciation of the craft and equipment. Icebreaking is regarded largely as a public service and the various fees which came in last season totalled only 570,000 kronor— barely one-tenth of the cost of the service! Sweden co-operates with Finland to keep the northern Baltic open for shipping as long as possible and there is the hope of future Soviet co-operation, especially now that the joint Swedish-Finnish-Soviet sea rescue service is working so well.
★ ★ ★
Pioneer Rose 79,173 Miles
By Richard Witkin
The New York Times, October 13, 1958.— The Pioneer rocket launched from Florida yesterday in a vain attempt to circle the moon reached a maximum altitude of 79,173 statute miles, about a third of the way to its goal, it was announced today.
Scientists here predicted that the 82.7- pound “space probe” would re-enter the atmosphere and disintegrate about 8 am Eastern daylight time October 14 unless a final rocket piercing the center of the vehicle could be fired by remote control.
At 5 pm the Pioneer had descended in its curving path to an altitude of 70,197 miles.
They planned to make a last attempt to fire the “terminal” rocket and hoped to know very quickly whether it had worked.
Atlantic Impact Seen
[In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said preliminary computations indicated that the rocket could be expected to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere in the area of the midsouth Atlantic Ocean, The Associated Press reported. That computation was on the assumption that the terminal rocket did not fire.]
The unsuccessful attempts to fire the last stage had been made before tonight. Six were from Cape Canaveral, Fla., from where the four-stage launching vehicle was sent aloft at 4:42 am yesterday, and four from the Kalae Field Station near Naalehu, Hawaii.
The final attempt was to be made from Hawaii.
The Pioneer has been pouring valuable scientific data onto miles of tape at stations listening to its signals around the world. A successful firing of the fourth-stage rocket would prolong the life of the vehicle indefinitely by putting it into an orbit around the earth.
Might Orbit at 110,000 Miles
The maximum possible apogee or high point of the orbit would be 110,000 miles and the perigee, or low point, would be 20,000 miles.
The scientists would thus be assured of receiving carloads more of valuable data over the three weeks or so the batteries could be expected to retain sufficient power.
But the chances of getting the final rocket to respond to a signal radioed from earth appeared to be small. Scientists feared that the battery power aboard the space probe had been weakened by temperature. They did plan, however, to send out a stronger signal tonight than any used before.
Despite the failure to achieve the maximum objective on the moon shot—an orbit around the moon—the scientific team that directed the experiment was more than pleased with the degree of success that was achieved.
Pleased with Vehicle
They were pleased particularly by the al- most-perfect functioning of what they considered the most complicated vehicle ever launched, and by the excellent functioning of the communications system ferrying scientific data to earth.
Maj. Gen. Bernard A. Schriever, commander of the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division, said at a news conference:
“We must, of course, feel some disappointment at not going all the way. But certainly it was a very great achievement, from the scientific and technical standpoint. We feel we can look with greater confidence toward the achieving of our ultimate objective of an orbit around the moon. We feel sure that this will not be in the too distant future.”
It was expected another attempt to hurl a rocket around the moon, which was 223,700 miles from the earth at firing time yesterday, would be made early in November.
General Schriever’s organization was in over-all charge of yesterday’s launching. The greatest part of the actual scientific work was performed by the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation’s Space Technology Laboratories, which has been providing technical direction for the entire Air Force ballistic missile program.
The figure for maximum altitude of the space probe was given here as 68,800 nautical miles, measured from the surface of the earth. The figure was compiled at the computer center here, which is the receiving point for data relayed from stations all over the world. The figure translates into about 79,120 statute miles.
It was confirmed officially that what kept the rocket from going all the way to the moon was a 3 5-degree error in the angle at which the first stage was lofted into space.
Velocity Was Too Low
The velocity aimed for was 35,250 feet a second. By aiming too high and having to work more directly against gravity than planned, the rocket achieved the slightly lower velocity of 34,400 feet a second.
Welin Plastic Lifeboat Approved by U. S. Coast Guard
Maritime Reporter, October 1, 1958.—Two years of research development and design work were successfully concluded by Welin Davit and Boat Division of Continental Copper and Steel Industries, Inc., when the U. S. Coast Guard recently issued approval to the division for a plastic lifeboat.
The detailed work of carrying out Welin’s plastic lifeboat development program was done under the direction of R. Carroll, Welin’s Chief Engineer. The first step taken was to determine the most suitable size and
WELIN PLASTIC LIFEBOAT
best desired features of a plastic lifeboat. Discussions were held with ship owners, the Military Sea Transportation Service and design agents. Glass and resin suppliers were consulted on the properties and best uses of the material. Results of all investigations were submitted to the USCG and Maritime Administration for comment and/or approval.
The boat selected as a prototype size was 24 feet by eight feet by 3.5 feet, 40-person capacity. One of the country’s foremost authorities on plastic boats, W. R. Chance and Associates, was commissioned to assist Welin in this development work.
Prime consideration was given to features of safety and performance. All plastic parts are made of fire-resistant self-extinguishing resins. Plastic foam flotation material was installed in such quantity as to make the lifeboat unsinkable, even when fully loaded and completely filled with water. It is interesting to note that if the Welin Plastic Lifeboat were riddled with holes or actually cut in two, each half would still remain afloat and act as a life raft.
Stability of the Welin Plastic Lifeboat was established by maintaining basically the lines used on metal boats. Strength and high impact resistance were obtained by special hull design and monocoque construction offered by the use of glass-reinforced plastics. The boat is streamlined, lightweight and impervious to rot, corrosion and exposure. Maintenance is reduced to a minimum and repairs are inexpensively and easily made.
For the uniform distribution of the total load from the boat to the Rottmer Release Gear, the stem and stern posts in the boat are of aluminum construction. However, the keel is plastic. Fittings used are stainless steel. Lifelines are nylon and the buoyant floats are plastic. Plastic thwart knees are special premolded units.
The USCG established the following set of severe tests which all initial plastic lifeboats must undergo: seating; light freeboard;
loaded freeboard; towing; rowing; flooding; suspension with 100 per cent overload; Rottmer Release Gear drop with 110 per cent load; chock test by water with 100 per cent overload; eight-foot swing; 10-foot drop into water; hand rail and grab rail; 200-pound drop on each thwart; stability, and seaworthiness.
The eight-foot swing test, for example, required that the Wclin Plastic Lifeboat be fully loaded with 7,400 pounds of sand bags and be freely swung through an arc of 20 feet for a distance of at least eight feet into a steel bulkhead. The 10-foot drop test requirement was that the boat, fully loaded (7,400 pounds), be freely dropped into the water from a height of not less than 10 feet.
The Welin Plastic Lifeboat passed all tests satisfactorily with the result that Welin now has the only USCG-approved plastic lifeboat, suitable for installation on American-flag cargo and passenger vessels.
The Defense of Sweden
By Admiral Eus Bjorklund
Translated from an article in the Revue de Defense Rationale, June, 1958.—As Soviet armed forces increase their offensive power, Western nations will be interested to know about the resistance potential of countries outside of the Atlantic Pact. Without going into the special problem of the Baltic, we shall explain briefly how Sweden plans her defenses and organizes her armed forces.
Sweden has been able, not without difficulty, to stay out of the conflict in two world wars. She intends to continue this policy of non-alliance in peacetime and neutrality in war. However, she does take seriously her obligations as a member of the United Nations, a guarantor of the status of the Aland Islands, and is mindful of her traditional policy of freedom of navigation in the Sund. But she wants to stay out of any future conflict and preserve the Scandinavian peninsula from the cold war.
Sweden feels that the East is almost the only danger. Hence she is anxious not to create any difficulty which might incite the USSR to occupy Finland, which would be bad for Finland, but likewise for the Scandinavian countries. Sweden’s position is different from that of Norway and Denmark, NATO members. Sweden’s policy should be understood not as one of strict neutrality, but as one of independence and non-belligerence.
The Soviet Union considers the Baltic a Russian sea, and is constantly building up surface and submarine fleets in the area. Soviet missile bases exist in the old Baltic states, Poland and Eastern Germany.
Sweden must be able to resist the threat resulting from this situation, a blockade of her maritime communications, submarine atomic attack, aerial offensive and invasion.
The infantry or tank brigade is the large tactical unit. Wartime strength of the army is 500,000 men, not including civil defense personnel. Men are subject to call between the ages of 18 and 47; duration of active service is 394 days, of which 90 days are spent in units on a wartime footing. Great attention is given to winter and atomic warfare.
In case of tension, the Swedish army can concentrate rapidly in threatened zones and build up reserves in central positions to oppose naval or airborne landings.
The principle of defense is to abandon no part of national territory without a fierce struggle. Mobilization is decentralized. This makes for a minimum tie-up of active operations and a maximum of secrecy.
The brief military service in Sweden has been criticized abroad, but experience indicates that the Swedish conscript assimilates his training rapidly.
Navy. 98% of Swedish foreign trade is maritime, and half of the population lives on a narrow coast. Protection of Swedish sea lanes and coasts requires a vigilant navy, ready to repel any attempt to invade continental Sweden and its islands.
The future Swedish fleet will consist of three cruisers, 19 destroyers, eight frigates, 27 submarines, two mine-layers, 52 torpedo boats, and many special units. This will be a powerful force with its two modern cruisers, new missile-armed destroyers, new submarines trained for day and night operations in all weather.
Depots, repair shops, and shipyards are located at Hiirnosand (on the islands facing Stockholm) at Karlskrona and Goteborg. They are protected by a coastal artillery of four regiments, one of which is under naval command, plus a detachment equipped with atomic artillery and missiles.
Special attention has been given to defense of vessels against aerial atomic attack and robots. Vast shelters hollowed out under the mountain can receive the largest vessels, and a system of AA defense consisting of Bofors and rocket-robots is already in place.
Air Force. Sweden does not have strategic air units, but its air formations can meet an air attack on the country and operate in cooperation with land or naval units.
Civil Defense. The mission of this organization includes the evacuation of large centers, construction of underground shelters, the setting up of alerts, the storing of valuables, the care of the wounded, fire-fighting, and keeping clear the avenues of communication.
Every citizen, male or female, between the ages of 16 and 65, is at the disposal of the Civil Defense, both in war and in peace. Total strength is up to 650,000. Training is constant. Local commanders cooperate with military commands.
A special commission of Economic Defense enables the civilian and military authorities to work out together the problems of economic defense in case of a blockade. Billions of Swedish kronor have been spent in the construction of shelter-storehouses and stockpiles of raw materials.
Psychological defense of the population against enemy propaganda is worked out in peacetime. A commission presided over by a high civilian official works with the military, the press, radio and television, and the movie studios. Their purpose is to ward off a panic at the opening of hostilities, to make the population understand that food restrictions will be inevitable, that freedom of movement will be limited. Security services are necessary to combat propaganda and espionage.
The military budget. The military budget went from 2,027 million kronor in 1953—54 to 2,071 million kronor in 1956-57. Presently Sweden is spending only 4.1% of its national revenue on military defense. The budget is divided as follows: Navy, 417 millions; Air Force, 774 millions; Army, 889 millions. Half of these funds are spent on material.
Sweden’s defense is strong for the size of its population. At the outset of a conflict Sweden could resist, but could not continue to fight, without outside help. This means that her defense must be brought as soon as possible to a potential which would cause an adversary to refrain from aggression. Modernization is a continuing problem and will require increase in military budgets.
6 SeaMasters Making Test Flights
The Baltimore Evening Sun, October 9, 1958.—The Martin Company today has six new P6M SeaMaster jet seaplanes making daily test flights from its Middle River seadrome, the firm announced today.
The 600-mile an hour seaplanes, which suffered two crashes in earlier test flights, are unique in design among all modern jet-age aircraft.
They can use the waterways of the world as indestructible runways and are capable of high-speed, low-level penetration of enemy territory below hostile radar screens.
They also can deliver a 30,000-pound payload of conventional or nuclear weapons, including one of the currently planned Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles, a Martin spokesman said, and can be used for high speed toss bombing maneuvers.
Six Navy P6M SeaMaster jet seaplanes line up on the flight ramp at The Martin Company.
Squadron Prototype
The P6M’s are a squadron prototype today of what top Navy officials in 1954 first heralded as a coming new “integrated force” of attack seaplanes, seaplane tenders, and submarine tankers.
The seaplane striking force concept was first publicly described as follows by the then Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air, James H. Smith, Jr., in a speech to an American Legion post in New York city November 11, 1954:
“Also promising, I think, is the long range attack seaplane. This has an additional advantage which the carrier force lacks—they can be widely dispersed overseas in many small, relatively inexpensive units, in areas where maintenance of other forces would be too costly.
Maintain Threat
“Two or three seaplane squadrons in an area thousands of miles from American soil could maintain a threat to an entire flank and require a diversion of enemy defenses from other fronts, without exposing vulnerable fixed bases to an enemy’s counterattack.
“Failure to exploit this advantage would leave an enemy able to concentrate his forces in areas closest to the targets he seeks in the United States. . . .
“With perhaps half a dozen seaplanes, a single tender, and a pair of tanker submarines, we could provide an integrated force that an enemy could not ignore.”
Today, the essential components for such a new integrated force now exist in the six P6M’s at Baltimore and a new seaplane tender, the USS Albemarle, based in Norfolk, the spokesman said.
Base Gives Navy Data on Coast Water
The Baltimore Sun, October 7, 1958.—A new and highly secret naval shore station in northern California will make it easier for the United States to deal with foreign submarines which approach its shores.
The Naval Facility for Oceanographic Research, built last year at Centerville Beach near Ferndale, Calif., will gather information on ocean currents, temperatures and other factors involving submarine operations. Electronic methods which were not previously available will be used.
The Navy said today the secret nature of some of the work and the equipment used have made it necessary to restrict visitors at the facility.
Germans Had Better Data
In answer to a query as to the purpose of the unit, the Navy said that during World War II it often found itself at a severe disadvantage in the dealing with enemy submarines because of inaccurate information on water conditions off the continental coasts.
At the end of the war it became apparent that the German Navy had better information on ocean areas than the United States had.
“As a result, since the war the Navy has had a continuing program of oceanographic surveys designed to provide detailed information on currents, temperature, salinity and other factors, in order that in any future war we should not suffer from the same disadvantage,” the Navy statement said.
Previous Procedure Slow
Oceanographic surveys heretofore have involved ships operating in various areas throughout the year, normally a slow procedure because of inability to assign ships on a continuing basis for this duty alone.
“However, due to the rapid advances taking place in the field of electronics, certain methods have been devised which make it possible to obtain part of this information more effectively and expeditiously from shore stations,” the Navy said.
A spokesman added that the northern California facility is a station of this type.
Trip Started in Antarctic
The Baltimore Sun, October 17, 1958.—The National Academy of Sciences today announced a party of scientists left Little America yesterday on a four-month, 1,400-mile tractor journey in the Antarctic.
The academy called it the start of one of the major Antarctic exploration projects of the Interntational Geophysical Year.
The group is led by Albert P. Crary, of Canton, N.Y., deputy chief scientist for the academy’s United States-IGY Antarctic program. It will cross the ice shelf from Little America IGY station to the Skelton Glacier, then work its way up the glacier to the Victoria Land Plateau.
Purposes Outlined
The course then will lead westward to approximately 130 degrees east longitude. From there the group will turn back toward the United States Naval Air Facility at McMurdo Sound.
Chief purposes of the trip arc to determine the snow and ice characteristics and thickness on a line extending directly into the main Antarctic highlands; to study the Skelton Glacier and the geophysical aspects of the transition from low-lying ice shelf to high plateau; and to detail some specific anomalies of water depths between little America and Minna Bluff, found on an exploration during the last Antarctic summer.
3 Reactors Will Power Russia’s Nuclear Ship
By Tom Lambert
The New York Herald Tribune, September 28, 1958.—The Russians report that their atomic-powered icebreaker will be driven by three nuclear reactors, and hint that the ship may be ready for sea trials early next year.
7’hc Soviet Information Bureau’s news digest said “all of the three reactors already have been installed” on the icebreaker. It was launched last Dec. 5 at Leningrad.
The report said the Lenin's builders have resolved, in honor of the twenty-first Soviet Communist party conference to be held in January at Moscow, to complete dockside tests early next April. If those tests arc satisfactory, the Lenin presumably could begin sea trials shortly thereafter. The news digest said much of the ship’s other machinery has been installed.
As far as is known here, the Russians have not said before that they are using three atomic reactors to power the Lenin, which may be the world’s first nuclear-propelled surface ship. The United States has several multi-reactor Navy ships in various stages of development and for several years has been operating submarines powered by single reactors.
The Soviet Union has not indicated specifically the type of the atomic reactors reported installed on the Lenin, but there arc some indications that they are of the water- cooled variety. The Russians also presumably are working on application of atomic power to submarines.
The Lenin's reactors will convert water into steam to turn three turbines generating 44,000 horsepower to propel the ship.
The 16,000-ton icebreaker is 438 feet long and has a beam of eighty-eight feet. It is designed for an open-water speed of eighteen knots and is scheduled to carry enough nuclear fuel to travel more than 70,000 miles without putting into port.
Earlier reports here have said the Lenin will be able to smash through ice more than six feet thick and clear ice-free lanes into north Russian ports.