Largest Diesel Engine in World Has Just Been Completed

THE first of the pair of Diesel engines that are to drive the White Star liner M. V. Britannic across the Atlantic has just completed its test run. This ten-cylinder double-acting four-stroke power unit, which was built by Harland & Wolff, Ltd., of Belfast, is the largest Diesel yet made and on test it gave 10,000 h.p. at 110 revolutions per minute on the dynamometer.

Being double-acting it gives the propeller twice the number of power impulses per revolution that an ordinary single-acting engine does and as it gets ten driving impulses per revolution, a degree of smooth running hitherto unattained with internal combustion engines will be achieved.

Each of its ten cylinders has a bore of 33% inches, while the piston stroke is no less than 59 inches. Each of the valves stands higher than a man. When one of them and its cage is removed a man can easily crawl through the aperture into the cylinder. Thirteen automobiles have parked in a space marked out on the ground the same size as this giant’s bed plate.

The exhaust of the two engines is passed through four special boilers where it will generate steam for auxiliary services.

Vest-Pocket Life Preserver

DURING many an over-ocean, wartime flight as service inspector of B-24s in the China-Burma-India theater, Engineer Bill Baker’s thoughts of home kept reverting to a time when he. and his sister were lake sailing and their boat capsized, pinning the girl under the sail. Both escaped—but from then on his sister’s love for sail-boating was spoiled by her fear of the water.

Now, high above the Indian Ocean, Brother Bill glanced down at his Mae West life jacket and got an idea. Why not make a tiny life preserver, quickly inflated with carbon dioxide, for water sportsmen who often need life jackets but seldom carry them because of their bulkiness? After the war he finally perfected the Res-Q-Pak, which he (and we) hope will help reduce America’s annual drowning death toll of 7000 and bring confidence to those who aren’t too sure of their swimming ability.

Divers Explore New Depths in 1-Man Sub

DEEP sea explorers are now enabled to fathom the ocean’s secrets to a depth of more than 815 feet, thanks to the invention of a (living suit which has been dubbed the “one-man sub.”

Until recently divers could only descend to a depth of about 200 feet, while submarines could only go a little deeper, about 300 ft. In submarines it was not possible to work around in wrecked ships or examine the ocean floor.

The new diving suit, which amounts to an adjustable case carrying a crew of one man, permits minute exploration of the ocean bottom with complete comfort and the utmost flexibility of movement. The upper part of the suit has four windows of thick compressed glass and contains the signal and light controls, the valves and the instruments for measuring pressure and temperature.

The suit is made of Siemans Martin Steel and Fundit Aluminum and weighs only 1000 lbs. Depths attained are seen in drawing.

Lots of Wheels With VW Push

WITH 16 of its 20 wheels powered, the 2200-lb. Nobel-Amphibil travels quickly over ditches, rocks, mud, snow, or ice— through clinging undergrowth, swamps, and swift streams, according to York Nobel Group, Ltd., London, which holds world production and sales rights.

The twin front wheels on each side are un-powered; they absorb road shocks and help guide the vehicle on steep slopes. The prototype Amphibil shown here, during tests in Norway, averaged close to 40 mpg. It’s driven by an air-cooled Volkswagen engine at up to 40 mph. The one-piece fiber glass body will hold six passengers or four passengers and about 440 lbs. of luggage. Wholesale factory price is expected to be $2,250.

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IT’S NEW!

SWAMP WAGON’S nine-ft. tall rear wheels have hickory treads steel-clamped to 28 in. rims weighing 700 lbs. Vehicle is designed to clamber over Florida’s soft muck bogs.

TOTCYCLIST Brad Bradley drives cut-down 125 cc Harley Davidson like a pro. Five-year-old was taught to ride 50-mph machine by his Dad. Brad began career at 18 months.

MANY-LENSED Italian Summa camera has revolving turret housing regular lens, wide angle lens and two for direct sighting. It also has hand grips and flash attachments.

NO FANCY PANTS, Solly Davis holds Geiger counter inside Goodyear’s new one-piece vinyl film anti-radiation suit Inflated by compressed air, suit is air-conditioned.

BLOW-UP house can be inflated by a man in three minutes. British rubber hut is nine ft high with floor space of 30×19 ft. It has all comforts of home—phone, lights.

SINKPROOF claims Danish inventor Clous Sorensen of his novel lifeboat which has its rudder and screw hidden in tube. Mate is strapped in seat under plastic hood.

DIRECTOMAT in Times Square, N.Y., issues a card with directions to get to any station in subway system when destination button is pushed. Great aid for out-of-towners.

SUPER SOFT Terra-Tires allow this plane to taxi at high speed over scattered 2×4 blocks. Goodyear is testing them for use by aircraft on rough ground cluttered with obstacles.

MOTO-VAC sucks up dirt in car when attached to exhaust pipe and engine is started. Nobby British invention comes with 12 ft. hose, operates by exhaust jet extraction.

TINY TV camera developed by Lockheed will give engineers ringside seat when studying the performance of control surfaces on new aircraft during flight operations.

FLASHLIGHT is latest Russian all-weather jet fighter. Sleek craft is swept-wing, twin jet, dual-placed job which gives the appearance of being effective interceptor.

RED TV antennas bristle atop these wooden shacks in the suburbs of Moscow. Soviet citizens like video and many houses that have no running water boast a TV set.

Rescuer Walks to Victim With New Life-Saving Device

REDUCING danger and increasing speed of movement through the water arc the features of a new German life-saving device which permits the rescuer to walk to the drowning person.

Giving the wearer the aspect of a winged mercury, the device consists of a waterproof suit with a life belt around the middle, as illustrated in the accompanying photo.

On the feet are worn a pair of hinged fins which automatically lock when the foot is moved backward for propulsion and fold up when the foot moves forward for a new stroke. Arm paddles also aid propulsion.

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Bazooka Bomb: Newest Sub-Killer

IN World War II the German commanders of the Panzer divisions were mystified by a new American weapon which effectively was knocking out their tanks. At first they thought it might be a new kind of mortar. Actually they were being introduced to our bazooka and its shaped-charge shell. In the Korean war this same weapon proved to be a potent threat to the Communists’ heavy armor.

The shaped charge was designed in 1887 by Charles Monroe, an American explosives expert, but its military research did not begin until early in the last war.

Its principle—and formerly its secret—is simply its shape. A very powerful explosive, TNT or Pentolite, is placed in a container with a conical, steel liner indenting its forward end. The charge is not allowed to touch its target, but is held at a definite “stand-off” distance. When it explodes, the force is funneled forward, compressing the sides of the conical liner into a solid slug and driving it out with tremendous impact. The result is that a hole is punched in the target. As a bazooka bomb it blasts holes in a similar manner through a tank’s steel sides.

MI artist Frank Tinsley has designed a new use for our shaped charge, and that is as an anti-sub weapon. Small projectiles can be dropped in a pattern from hovering helicopters. Upon striking the skin of the sub, they would punch a number of holes through it causing the commander to surface his ship where it could be attacked easily by naval planes and guns. •

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IT’S NEW!

HYDROFOILS in kit form are easily installed on almost all outboard craft from 12 to 16 feet Safe, smooth, they literally make boat fly. Atlantic Hydrofin, Miami. Fla.

GROWING UP LAMP’S base has yardstick with spaces for marking date, weight, height of little Oscar, who likes to see how much he “growed.” Device was exhibited in Chicago.

SLIT SPECS, originated by the Eskimos, are considered the most on Canadian ski slopes these days. Glassless, slits guard against sun’s glare. This pair costs $20.

ONE-MAN HELICOPTER developed by Goodyear Aircraft Corp. and designed by Paul Ziegler, weighs slightly over 400 pounds and is capable of more than 60-mph.

ROCKING BED equipped with bellows is tested as possible replacement lor iron lung in Chicago trial. Rhythmic see-saw action of bed acts on bellows, supplies oxygen.

BICYCLE CART made from two standard bikes is going over big in Brunswick, Germany. Assembled in five minutes, it totes two. tot, luggage. Frame costs $15 to $20.

GOGGLE-EYED flight suit will protect its wearer for 80 hours at 100.000-foot altitude, according to University of Illinois tests made for the Toronto. Canada, manufacturers.

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Threat To America… THE RED FLEET!

By Arthur Kranish

While we raise massive defenses against the Red air menace, the Russians are building an atomic navy designed and trained for global domination.

HUGE atomic submarines for round-the-world espionage or attack missions. . . Fantastic new missiles ready to flatten almost any city in the U.S. from under-sea hiding. . . . Hundreds of new, missile-carrying cruisers and destroyers. . .

This is the new Russian Navy, a fleet that may soon be powerful enough to isolate and destroy this nation in a single sneak attack.

A Pentagon study of this seaborne threat shows that at any moment a handful of sleek Red submarines and missile-launching ships, disguised as merchantmen and spotted strategically off the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts, could kill an estimated 65 million Americans, destroy our industrial might and cripple our power to retaliate.

Is the Red Navy Russia’s prime secret weapon? That’s what our top defense planners are wondering today. Have the men in the Kremlin, they ask, bluffed us into a massive buildup against possible air attack, while quietly embarking on a gigantic campaign of naval expansion?

With the suddenness of a nightmare Russia’s mysterious naval force has grown in size and striking power. Since World War II the Soviets have quietly built more modern cruisers and destroyers than the rest of the world combined. Her huge sub fleet prowls the globe, her immense atomic icebreaker threatens to blaze new attack routes in the Arctic, her vast array of surface ships stands ready to sever the lifelines binding the free nations together.

It was only a few years ago that the Russian Navy was considered a second-class flotilla among the world’s great sea-going powers. Her leaders were poorly trained, her equipment antiquated, her reputation sullied by disgrace in combat and by Moscow politics.

What happened? What caused the sudden, spectacular growth that now threatens us all?

Someone in the Kremlin, our experts believe, finally took a good hard look at the map. He saw that two-thirds of the Earth is water. He saw the United States pouring millions into air defense while ignoring more ‘than 6,000 miles of vulnerable coastline. He saw the day when long-range missiles launched at sea could bring virtually all of the U.S. into easy range. He gave the orders.

Suddenly, Communist shipyards began to hum. There was no time for research and engineering. Instead, advanced designs from the drawing boards of a vanquished German Navy were speedily adapted to Russian use. Ideas, and even components, from Britain and the United States were pressed into service.

Soon Allied intelligence officers began receiving reports from behind the Iron Curtain that showed Russia was out- building the U.S in submarines by six to one, in destroyers by nine to one, in cruisers by 14 to one.

This has been warning enough that an important revolution in strategy may be in the making. But it hasn’t helped our own Navy speed its modernizing plans.

Witness this grim estimate by Vice Adm. T. S. Combs, Deputy Chief of Staff: “Our ships are aging faster than they are being replaced. We are now at the point where large numbers of our ships are close to their 20th birthday— and unless we intensify our efforts now, by the middle 1960s our forces will be grossly inadequate to meet the challenge of a fully modern Russian Navy on the high seas.”

Each day that margin of safety looks less assuring. Right now the Kremlin controls the largest submarine force in naval history, much of it capable of operating within sight of our coastlines. More than 450 underwater behemoths sport the Red Star, a fleet eight or nine times the size of the Nazi submarine armada at the outbreak of World War II.

Meanwhile, Russian shipyards are known to be capable of turning out as many as 100 new long-range subs each year. Our entire active submarine force is just a bit above that figure.

The spurt in surface fighting ships is also causing deep concern in Allied naval circles. Russia has been launching record numbers of sturdily armed and fast destroyers and cruisers as well as mine-laying craft and “fishing” trawlers which keep close tabs on our naval maneuvers and our shorelines—just as the Japanese Navy did in the years preceding World War II.

But there was something puzzling in all this.

Why, our intelligence officers asked, were the Reds pouring huge amounts of critically short steel, electronics and skilled manpower into a fleet that was essentially of World War II design? Why weren’t they switching their attention to the nuclear-powered, missile-launching navies of the future?

As if to answer these questions, Russian shipyards last year suddenly became strangely quiet. Few new fighting ships took shape. Submarine output ground to a virtual halt.

Why? By now bits and pieces of information have lead to this informed analysis: The Russians are turning their attention to radically new types of craft—posing an even greater challenge to our defense forces.

It’s more than a guess that the Communists will soon announce construction of mammoth “underwater sputniks”— nuclear-powered submarines which can travel for months without refueling— carrying 1,500-mile missiles with an H-bomb punch.

Meanwhile, they’ve been perfecting a German plan to permit any of their fleet of existing submarines to fire long-range ballistic missiles—something this nation hopes to be able to accomplish with its complex Polaris system within the next few years.

The Nazi-Russian system is an ingenious short-cut. Missiles and a special launching canister are towed behind submarines in water-tight containers. When the subs are within range of their targets the rocket to be fired is placed, by remote control, in the launching device. A predetermined amount of water fills the canister, which then turns up into firing position. At a signal from the submarine the rocket is thrown clear with a blast of compressed air, its own engine and instruments carrying it to the target.

The Reds are also believed to be converting their newest surface ships to mobile missile launching platforms. And here, too, they may be ahead of the game.

Our experts say there is real reason to fear that the Russians have been able to develop a simple, powerful fleet missile. While no details are available, it is believed that the weapon could be used for long-range attacks against ships or cities, for destroying enemy submarines or for defense against air attack. Our researchers— hoping eventually to replace our complex family of single purpose rockets—haven’t yet been able to match this.

With such a seaborne arsenal, the Reds could wreck unimaginable destruction in a surprise attack. Even if Soviet ship or sub-launched missiles were only capable of a 550-mile range, their first nuclear blow might well destroy 43 of our nation’s 50 largest cities, 85 per cent of American industry. At the same time, other Red Navy missile units could go after the retaliatory power of the Strategic Air Command, striking many of its bases from predetermined offshore hiding places.

Meanwhile, the global Soviet fleet could well have the size and power to defend the Russian coastline against attack and to sever Allied sea lanes—thereby isolating U.S. and Allied forces in Europe and Asia, where they would be clay pigeons for the Red Army and Air Force.

Each day now, Russian Navy leaders grow more bold in their thinking. They warn of “quite different, more modern weapons.” They boast of Soviet Warships having “the greatest firing power in the world.” They hint at, but keep secret, Red Navy progress in atomic power, long-range rockets, nuclear weapons.

Their 800,000 men and nearly 3,000 ships, their sudden rise as a naval power are already causing restless nights in the capitals of the free world. What will happen tomorrow when our own aging fleet is surpassed by modern Soviet naval might?

Our own navy has the will and the skill to make sure that that day never comes. But the premiums on that kind of insurance come high. It means more men, more money, more missiles, more ships, more planes. Will the price be paid in dollars today—or in lives tomorrow?

Life Guard Speeds to Drowning Swimmer on Motorized Surfboard
SURFBOARD riders won’t have to depend on outboard motors or speed boats to pull them over the water in the future. Below is shown a motorized surfboard scooter recently invented in Australia. The small motor in the rear furnishes the power and also sets the board at the proper angle in the water. A good machine for life guards.

Little Liberty

NOBODY ever launched the Andrew A. Nelson, but this Liberty ship is certainly doing its bit for the U. S. Merchant Marine. It’s a cutaway scale model which is used by our Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, N. Y., to teach embryo officers the essentials of cargo handling. The miniature is built so that the instructors in the Department of Nautical Science can easily demonstrate the correct methods of stowing cargo in the hold and on deck.

At the end of their four-year course, the cadet-midshipmen go on to become deck or engineering officers. But the Andrew A. Nelson stays behind to be used by the next crew of underclassmen.

Scottish Engineer Builds Auto That Speeds Over Lake at 7 m.p.h. Clip
A COMBINATION motor boat and automobile, capable of a speed of 40 miles per hour on land and 7 miles per hour in the water, has been invented by a well known Scottish engineer after a long period of experimentation to produce a practical and serviceable vehicle. Powered by a 9 h.p. unit, the “Hydrocar,” as the inventor calls his brain child, takes easily to the water on any bank with a smooth slope, the wheel gears being disengaged and the power transmitted to the propeller when the machine begins to float. Steering is done by the wheels, which are disk type to form an effective rudder. The body is boat-shaped, as shown in photos at right.

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Graphic Section

All the characteristics of a mammoth ocean liner are reproduced in the “Columbus,” the miniature ship shown above. It is 25 feet long and was constructed by a German engineer at a cost of #4000. Top photo shows the model coming into dock under its own power after a practice spin; below it appears a close-up of the ship. It is driven by an electric motor.

Neil Hamilton, movie actor, demonstrates a revolving camera for taking “dizzy” shots in which rooms and people tumble all over the screen.

Novel Automobile Is Driven By a Single Wheel at Rear.

Half automobile and half motorcycle, the novel vehicle shown above was built by an Englishman to take his bride on a honeymoon trip. The car is driven by a motorcycle engine and rear wheel.

British machine gunner with gas mask and latest type rapid fire gun.

The above model of the first commercial electric generating station, designed by Thomas A. Edison in 3 882, was made for Henry Ford’s museum at Dearborn.

Tandem Motors, Long Floats, Mark Unique Air Racer.

This shows a Savoia Marchetti twin-motored seaplane with its pilot, Dal Molin, standing alongside. This is Italy’s fastest airplane, capable of a speed of 200 m.p.h. Note position of pilot’s cockpit between the two motors.

Static lift of dirigible gases combined with dynamic lift of airplane wings is expected to make the novel aircraft shown above the air leviathan of the future. Its inventor, John Hodgdon of Long Beach, Cal., claims that the presence of wings will prevent the rolling and pitching common to blimps and will make it possible for his ship to land without the aid of a ground crew.

One of the largest guns in Uncle Sam’s army was inspected by West Point cadets of the graduating class who visited the Aberdeen proving grounds near Washington. The Big Bertha shown in the above photo is a 14-inch mounted railway gun which fires a projectile weighing 2000 pounds a distance of 32 miles, and can pierce 14-inch armor plate.

Uncle Sam Manufactures 2,000,000 Mail Bags Each Year.

This special machine cuts, prints, folds and stacks the mail sacks in one operation.

The machine shown above rivets the grommets, or metal eyelets, into the mail sacks. More than 20,000,000 grommets are manufactured and placed in the sacks every year. Although the bags are made out of the most durable canvas, the government carries such a huge volume of mail every year that the factory must run without a stop to keep the postoffice supplied with sacks. Practically all of the manufacturing machinery is specially designed for its purpose. Like the government printing department, the mail bag factory saves Uncle Sam thousands of dollars every month through efficient large-scale production.

Largest American – Built Airplane Carries 32 Passengers.

Designed to carry 32 passengers, the new Fokker F-32, shown above, is the largest airplane ever built in America and the largest land plane in the world. The photo shows 47 persons standing in line under the giant’s wings and gives a good idea of its tremendous size. The huge ship successfully passed its trial flights before a committee of aeronautical experts. It is powered with four radial motors mounted in tandem under the wing. This type of power plant mounting, it is predicted, will soon displace the tri-motored type in which one engine is mounted on the nose of the fuselage where its efficiency is somewhat impaired.

Built-in furniture as an integral part of the decorative scheme will distinguish the apartment of tomorrow. Above is a built-in radio and phonograph with disappearing doors.

This faithful replica of a Viking ship stopped off in London on its way around the world.

Speeding Motorboat Endangers Crowd in Thrilling Upset.

Spectators sought cover in a hurry when the motorboat Invicta II leapt the bank in a recent race at Rickmansworth, England. The remarkable action photo above shows the motorboat just as it bounced over the bank. Note the woman spectator underneath the boat. Fortunately no one was hurt —not even the pilot, who was flung out of his craft in making a sharp turn.

Old motor oil may become a source of new if the experiments of W. H. Herschel of the U. S. Bureau of Standards, shown above, perfects the apparatus on which he is working. It is claimed that oil refined by his process costs only two-thirds as much as new oil, and that it has a greater resistance to heat owing to the fact that unstable elements have already broken down.

The plane shown above taking off at a sharp angle by means of automatic interconnected wing slots and flaps is the Hand-ley-Page entry in the Guggenheim contest to determine the safest airplane. It is claimed that the wing slots make it impossible for the plane to stall or fall into a tail spin. The wing slots can be seen in the leading edge of the upper wing.

Seadrome for an Ocean Landing Field Nears Completion.

The ocean seadrome designed by Edward B. Armstrong to provide a safe floating landing field for trans-Atlantic airplanes is shown above nearing completion in a Delaware shop. Only one of the units is shown in the picture. Hollow ballast-filled bases support the platform solidly in the water.

Novel forms of radio loud speakers ate illustrated in this picture by E. L. Rice, Washington inventor who has been experimenting along this line. The tapestry on the wall forms a loud volume speaker; the photo easel contains more speaker cells, as does the pillow at his arm. In his hand he holds a vest pocket speaker, and in the vase is another packet which makes it a talking vase.

Army Tank Built on Auto Chassis Makes 45-Mile Speed.

Built on an ordinary commercial auto chassis, the armored car shown above is the invention of Col. Bruce Palmer of Fort Riley, Kansas. It is a cross between a tank and an automobile. It can maintain a speed of 45 miles an hour and carries a machine gun on a flexible mount. In addition to the regular pneumatic tires there is an auxiliary set of solid rubber on which the car rides in case of punctures by enemy bullets. The circle at the right shows a close-up.

Spraying of insect-killing chemicals from an airplane is the method employed by up-to-date fruit raisers in eliminating plant pests. Photo shows plane with funnel-like device designed for this work.

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Silent Sea Engine for Nuclear Subs

A magnetic pump with no moving parts, this simple device may propel our submarines silently along the ocean floor

By JAMES G. BUSSE

In the silent world of underwater warfare, the slightest noise can bring sudden death to a submarine. The electronic ears of the enemy can detect conventional engines and screw propellers as far as 100 miles away. A computer interprets the sounds and directs a deadly homing torpedo to their source in minutes. How do you go about maneuvering a 3,260-ton nuclear submarine without making a sound? Two medical researchers at St. Louis University’s School of Medicine may have found the answer—a revolutionary undersea propulsion unit dubbed the “sea engine.”

The interesting phenomenon upon which the sea engine is based was first observed in 1964 by Alfred W. Richardson, a physiologist, and Sujoy K. Gulia, a young biomedical engineer from India. The two men were looking for a method of simulating the How of blood through the human body. They tried various types of mechanical pumps without success. The pumping action was too irregular.

While investigating the effects of magnetic fields on weak salt solutions similar to blood, the two researchers stumbled across an interesting fact: They could make the electrically charged atoms in such solutions move in one direction by applying a magnetic field in just the right way. Then they made a second important discovery: The moving atoms dragged water molecules along with them so that the entire solution moved.

Richardson and Guha suddenly realized that they had the makings of a new type of pump. They quickly assembled an experimental model and found, as they had expected, that the device really worked. Their “pump” consisted of nothing more than an unimpressive collection of junk-box electronic components. Yet the instant they connected it to a source of electrical power, a weak salt solution inside it began to move. A number of tests were made and new models were constructed, some of which permitted very accurate control over the quantity of liquid being pumped, and others which made the liquid move in a series of pulses, duplicating the pumping action of the human heart. Amazingly, the pumps could move a variety of liquids—including ordinary tap water—without difficulty. Then a visiting scientist from the Office of Naval Research suggested they try pumping sea water. The pump worked better than ever.

The sea engine is a form of electromagnetic pump, which is nothing new. Units working on the same principle have been used to pump liquid metals such as sodium through nuclear reactors for coolant purposes. However, a pump had never before been constructed to move seawater—electronically, with no moving parts, with no sound. And that’s what intrigues naval engineers.

The Navy problem. Nuclear-submarine skippers have had to develop a variety of ways of escaping detection. At times, they dive to fantastic depths where sub noises may be confused with other ocean sounds. Or they may sit quietly on the bottom and wait for the enemy to come to them. In any case, starting the engine may mean immediate destruction.

An electromagnetic pump large enough to propel a submarine would require a lot of electrical power, but this would present no problem on a nuclear submarine. Naval engineers made a study of an advanced pump constructed by Richardson and Guha, and found that conversion from pump to sea engine necessitated only minor changes.

A submarine would be equipped with two sea engines: one to port and one to starboard. Each engine would operate independently, the direction and force of its propulsive jet of seawater changed by the mere flick of a switch. In this way, the sub could move forward, backward, or turn by pumping water in one direction on one side and in the other direction on the other side.

Most likely, sea engines would be installed along with conventional high-speed screw engines for normal use. The sea en- gines would enable the sub to engage in silent warfare by gliding along the ocean bottom and maneuvering close to its prey.

How it works. The simplest form of sea engine consists of two metal-plate electrodes mounted parallel to each other inside a rectangular chamber called a “cannula.” An opening at each end of the cannula permits seawater to flow between the electrodes. The cannula is mounted between the poles of a powerful electromagnet, so that the magnetic field is concentrated on the water between them.

When alternating current is applied to the two electrodes, large numbers of ions-sodium and chlorine ions in seawater—are immediately attracted to the water between them. These ions attempt to move back and forth between the electrodes. Their individual magnetic fields (each ion is surrounded by its own tiny electromagnetic field) are repelled, however, by the powerful external magnetic field. Many of the ions are thus forced to move sideways, away from the electrodes. As they move along, they drag water molecules with them, causing the water to move out of the cannula. More seawater enters from the other opening, producing a continuous flow.

Torpedoes and destroyers. There is every reason to believe that a sea engine will power a radically new type of torpedo. The ones we’re using now produce a relatively loud sound, giving an alert enemy a chance to duck. A somewhat slower fish, powered by a silent sea engine using high-capacity batteries, would change this.

Highly specialized types of surface ships, such as the hunter-killer destroyers, could also profit from periods of silent running with sea engines.

How about the pumping of blood—the application of the electromagnetic pump that Richardson and Guha first set out to explore? Experiments are currently under way to use a modified sea engine to temporarily replace the human heart during surgical operations. Another model may one day be used to pump waste from a patient’s body during long operations.

Fifteen years ago, a government report said: “Undersea warfare is … a deadly game of blindman’s buff, in which the winning side is likely to be that with the most acute hearing.” A footnote might add, “and the quietest engines.”

How to Build Your Own Sea Engine

Switch on the power and watch a stream of salt water mysteriously begin to flow around and around a closed loop of plastic tubing. How? Build your own sea engine—a fascinating gadget for the amateur scientist or a top-flight science-fair project. It costs just a few dollars. There are many things about it that still puzzle scientists; perhaps you can make an improvement.

Make an electromagnet from an isolation transformer with a 100-watt rating. Cut through the transformer laminations in two places with a hacksaw (see drawing below) and remove these pieces. Next, cut a 5/8″ gap (no larger) in the remaining laminations. Connect primary and secondary windings in series (A to B in the schematic at far right below). Connect C and D to the AC line. Quickly test the gap for a magnetic field with a screwdriver tip. Try connecting A and C together and B and D to the AC line, and again test the gap. One hookup will give a much stronger field than the other: That’s the one to use.

Make a cannula out of a length of hollow plastic towel bar, sheet plastic, or similar material. It must fit into the magnet gap. Two copper or stainless-steel electrode plates are mounted inside the cannula. Copper is best, but is attacked by salt water and eventually it has to be replaced.

Carefully solder wire leads to the electrodes. They leave the cannula through snug holes sealed with a good cement (one containing methyl ethyl ketone). Use the same cement to attach ends to the cannula. The ends have holes fitted with short lengths of glass tubing. Two tiny holes drilled through the top of the cannula will allow captured air to escape, permitting it to fill with water. The holes can later be sealed to prevent leakage. Run a length of plastic tubing in a closed loop from one end of the cannula to the other. A “T” connection in the loop will aid in filling. You can get the tubing—called “disposable plastic catheter” —from a medical-supply house.

The assembly. Use stove bolts to hold the transformer laminations together. Mount it on a base, with some type of supports to keep the tubing at the level of the cannula. Switch SI is optional. Do not use a lower-wattage resistor for R1. It can be found at most surplus or large electronic-parts dealers. Since it will give off some heat, mount it and R2 (optional) on asbestos.

Fill a glass with tap water and let it stand for a day to eliminate air. Add half a teaspoon of table salt and slowly stir until dissolved. Carefully fill cannula and tubing with the salt water. Work out all air bubbles.

Check all electrical connections before ap- plying power to the model. Inspect the cannula for leaks, particularly where the lead wires and glass tubes pass through the walls. If everything is okay, plug it into an outlet and throw the switch. Watch tiny dust particles and other impurities in the water to detect flow. If there is no visible movement, try adding a tiny drop of ink to the water in the tubing as an indicator.

Try various resistances for R2. Eliminate it entirely and note the result. Vary the resistance of R1 by means of its slide contact and see what happens. With a little experimentation, you’ll quickly find the best settings for maximum pumping action. Watch the effect of increased conductivity (adding more salt) on flow rate.

Aquatic telephones let skin divers talk under water

This swimmie-talkie uses water as a medium for sending high-frequency sound waves, on the principle of the hydrophone employed in the early 1900′s for communicating between ships, and in World War I for detecting submarines. Being adjusted here on a frogman, the Aquavox includes a face-mask mike, transducer (on belt, left), transceiver (right), earphones (on thigh). Cotton Associates, Philadelphia, developed it.

Getting there is half the fun!

Autumn is ideal for your visit to Europe… when Britain and the Continent are at their sparkling, uncrowded best… and ideal, too, for a gay, relaxing ocean voyage! When you go Cunard, each day at sea and each brilliant, enchanted evening is a glorious new adventure shared with interesting companions amid all the comforts of a great seaside resort. You’ll delight in the bright conviviality, the thoughtful, attentive service for which Cunard is famous… and the marvelous food, prepared for your sea-sharpened appetite by internationally trained chefs.

See your travel agent about Cunard’s lower “Thrift Season” rates.

No wonder more people prefer Cunard

From New York: QUEEN ELIZABETH • QUEEN MARY • MAURETANIA • CARONIA • BRITANNIC • MEDIA • PARTHIA
From Canada: FRANCONIA • SCYTHIA • SAMARIA • ASCANIA

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LIFE ABOARD BATTLEWAGON

By Lt. Com. John T. Tuthill, Jr.

As described in his book “He’s in the Navy Now”

THE alarm sounds for general quarters. Across the steel decks of the mighty new battle wagon the bluejacket races on the double to his gun station in a turret.

He takes his appointed place near the monster weapon and waits, tense and overwrought while the rest of the gun crew tumble into the turret. A sudden hush falls on the scene and he notices that the other sailors are poised as taut as stretched strings. It’s like playing football on the high school team, back in Tennessee. They’re a team waiting for the quarterback to call signals.

The quarterback is the captain, far above, standing cool and proud in his station with a finger near the button which will fire nine 16-inch guns, the main battery, and ten 5-inch guns simultaneously. Proud of his new ship and crew.

The gunnery officer sings out over the telephone: “Report when manned and ready!”

Gears whirl on his gun. Wheels and machines turn and click. Now it’s like being inside the works of a gargantuan clock. From the handling rooms come big 16-inch shells. Then powder bagged in silk. The guns are loaded, primed, laid and ready. Gun muzzles swing. His turret is trained on the beam, he observes.

Over the ship’s battle circuits and loud speaker the word comes: “Stand by … stand by.” In breathless suspense he waits, motionless, alert. He has a moment to realize he is a part of this drama. A small part, but with definite responsibilities, A member of a team.

The captain’s finger presses the button.

A bone-shaking shock rattles the bluejacket’s body. Red flames shoot skyward above the mastheads and streak across the ocean’s surface, disappearing somewhere among the distant waves. Thousands of pounds of smokeless black powder have hurled tons of heavy steel projectiles into space in an instant.

His ears are stuffed with cotton, but still the roar is deafening. The hot breath of the great guns penetrates the turret. Again a hush falls over the group. He winks at the sailor who is grinning his way. It’s something like smacking the ball out of the park—a home run in the ninth with bases loaded—this job of firing one of the fleet’s big guns.

It’s teamwork on Uncle Sam’s team.

Everyone aboard the huge, new battlewagon had been waiting for this drill which was to mark the final test of a series given every new ship to determine the effect of firing on its structure. In this test the entire main battery and half of the secondary battery were fired simultaneously from a single key, not much larger than a doorbell button.

He wonders, as the ship plows ahead in a brisk 25-knot wind with the acrid, ether-like smell of powder still hanging about her, how she had stood it. His own sense of shock had disappeared and his mind has turned – to the ship. Pretty soon word seeps throughout the craft. It gives every man a warm thrill.

This battlewagon is okay.

It isn’t the kind of activity that makes the headlines, this testing of new ships and new crews. This training of new American teams to play the game of war on the widest field of action the world has ever seen. But the life of the nation depends on it. And as every new ship and every new crew passes the test, the day of victory is brought nearer.

Today, the nation can rest assured on this: American warcraft and American crews are passing the teamwork test in the greatest numbers in history.

To produce these teams, life on a battlewagon is conducted by strict rules, though it is pleasant enough if a man conforms willingly. . From the moment the bluejacket climbs the gangway and salutes the colors before stepping to the deck, his duty is to learn his particular job whatever it may be, so that when the time comes to fire the 14- or 16-inch guns of battle, he will function as perfectly as a cog in the great machine. He has certainly spent months, he may have spent years in the Navy preparing for that moment—a moment that might change world history.

The 16-inch guns can discharge tons of shells every thirty seconds or less, and such discharges can sink anything afloat. Therefore, it is imperative that everything be in readiness and that every man know his job when the great moment comes to fire them. Every officer and enlisted man in the far-flung naval organization has exerted his energies toward this end. The men detailed to recruiting, to the ordnance offices, to the shipyards and other vessels of the fleet—to all the vast interlocking network of naval activities in their many ramifications— have applied themselves throughout their careers to the end that at the zero hour our dreadnaughts can get into proper position to discharge their broadsides speedily and accurately before the enemy has a chance to fire first.

Battleships are about 95 percent steel and so compactly arranged that regulations governing the conduct of the men aboard must necessarily be more stringent than they are in an army camp. To prevent our ships from sinking they are divided into many watertight compartments separated by heavy steel doors which can be shut, isolating the compartment, if it is damaged by a torpedo. These doors are marked with big letters on each side. The newcomer quickly learns, if he has not known it before, that the letter “X” on a door means that particular door always must remain shut; that the letter “Y” on another door means it must remain closed after working hours, and that the letter “Z” means that doors so designated must be kept open at all times during battle.

Living space aboard some ships is sometimes limited to the point where the crew may have an insufficient number of bunks. In that event the new bluejacket must sleep in the hammock first issued to him. The place assigned to him for sleeping quarters is known as his billet. On a crowded ship this billet may be a gun turret where he hangs his hammock from hooks in the steel hood covering the gun, rolling and stowing it out of the way when he is not using it.

Since everyone is cramped for space he stows his belongings in his seabag and a small steel box about two feet square. The only thing stowed separately is his heavy waterproof raincoat which is hung on a rack.

Once a week he must remove all his effects from his bag and spread them on the deck in a straight line with the clothing arranged on top for bag inspection. Everything must be folded or rolled and placed in proper position as prescribed by regulations.

Clothes are usually scrubbed with stiff brushes, each man doing his own washing. He hangs his clothing on lines along the deck to dry, observing strict regulations as to how they shall be hung or “triced up.” If he occupies a cot, he must air his mattress periodically. Some of the larger ships have laundries where the bluejacket who feels flush and chooses to indulge in the luxury may have his clothes washed cheaply. Every item must bear his name, clearly marked with a stencil and ink. His blanket must even be marked eight times, in each corner on both sides, so that his name will always show, no matter how he folds it.

All sailors must learn to handle and shoot rifles, and periodically they receive target practice, but primarily their job is to help operate a warship, whose big guns must be kept free of dirt and water. Men detailed to the gunnery department must be experts in caring for and firing the guns. To keep them clean they plug the ends with tampions and protect them with canvas covers known as bloomers.

Anticipating the day when the ship may go into action, all activities aboard are carefully planned, and much time is devoted to drills. Periodically the fleet engages in target practice, training the guns at wooden targets towed to sea by a tug. Dirigibles may hover over the targets to observe the marksmanship.

Again, a man-overboard drill may be scheduled, in which event the ship is stopped and parties attached to the deck force are sent overboard in rowboats to search for the practice dummy, popularly known as Oscar.

Other standard drills are fire, abandon-ship and collision drills, and all bluejackets must proceed to their stations on the double with fire extinguishers, rations and repair equipment.

Drills are usually announced by a gong, with a bugle call following almost immediately over the ship’s loudspeaker system. This can be heard even by men working deep in the bowels of the ship who hustle to their stations on the double quick, in their work clothes known as undress blues.

Along with the drills which are held several times a week and which present the practical aspect, every bluejacket must attend classes. He may spend an hour in the morning on gunnery and another hour in the afternoon in a seamanship class where he becomes acquainted with the problems aboard his individual ship.

Most bluejackets have learned all about bugle calls in training school, so the sound of reveille coming over the amplifier at 5:30 a.m. is nothing new. Then comes the bo’s'n’s mate with his “Up all bunks” or “Rise and shine,” which means business. There is no more sleep. All hands wash and dress before turning to at 6:00 a.m. Five minutes before sunrise the quartermaster’s striker hoists the “prep” on the starboard side of the yardarm and turns off the anchor lights.

The master at arms and the police Petty Officers who arouse the crew are called at 5:10 a.m. by a bluejacket on the anchor watch who also turns out the battle lights. By 5:35 a.m. all hands are stirring except late bunks, men who work in the laundry or have night details. They have an extra hour.

When the men have stowed their hammocks or triced up their bunks, the smoking lamp is lighted in the living and mess compartments—an old tradition.

A bo’s'n’s mate passes the word to “pipe all sweepers” and promptly at 6:00 a.m. all hands turn to. They scrub and wash down all weather decks, shine the airports and various brass appurtenances. With several hundred hands at work, it doesn’t take long, but the job must be thorough.

At 7:30 a.m. the meal pennant, or “bean rag,” is hoisted on the mainmast yardarm, and breakfast is ready.

At 7:50 a.m. the Guard of the Day is called and the word is passed over the loudspeaker system to go aft and make ready for the call to colors. The band plays the National Anthem. At 8:15 a.m. on the deck, the division officers outline the plan of the day and detail working parties.

At 8:30 sick call is piped for those requiring medical attention, while all others clean their quarters. After that come the various drills and classes, which occupy the morning.

When the meal pennant has been hauled down after noon-day chow, a bo’s'n pipes the sweepers to clean the mess, the living compartments and “topside.” At this time bedding may be aired.

Promptly at 1600 by the ship’s clock (4:00 p.m.) all bluejackets not on special duty may knock off work. If the ship is in port, those with liberty cards can make ready to go ashore. The liberty call is sounded over all the crew circuits at 1630. At 5:30 p.m. the meal pennant is hoisted and the crew is piped for supper.

Ten minutes before sunset the Guard of the Day is summoned by the band or by all the duty buglers. At five minutes before sunset the prep is hoisted. After it has been hauled down at sunset, the evening colors are hauled down.

At 1800 the anchor watch, which changes every two hours, is mustered, and frequently the motion-picture screen is rigged, usually on the afterdeck, weather permitting.

Taps is sounded by a bugler on the quarterdeck at 2100—9 o’clock. Tired, but with a fatigue which brings a contented feeling, the bluejacket turns in. He doesn’t realize it, perhaps, but most of his activities of the day are part of the drill, the teamwork which brings perfection and coordination. But it is all teamwork.

That’s life aboard a battlewagon.

U.S. Tries Alaskan Crabbing To Prove It Economical

TO PROVE that the Japanese are not the only fishermen who can catch crabs, the Fisheries Division of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service last summer dispatched an expedition to Alaskan waters. The United States imports annually almost $4,000,000 worth of canned crab meat, much of it king crab caught near Alaska. American fishermen who have tried crabbing there in previous years have failed to make a profit because they did not know the hows and wheres of catching and canning the crabs. The fish and wildlife authorities hope that their venture will encourage Pacific Coast commercial fishermen to go after the king crabs, which grow so big that one claw makes several canfuls.

Speed Boat May Cross Atlantic in 30 Hours

MESSIEURS Moyne and Clement, French inventors, have devised a remarkable new type of speed boat with circular fins that they expect will propel their new submarine shaped craft across the Atlantic ocean in 30 hours. The model of the craft is being put through tests. There are stabilizing fins at the bow and stern. The principle of operation included two helices rotating in opposite directions to counteract torque. The surfaces of the craft that offer friction are designed to do useful work, the helices minimizing the skin friction present in the ordinary boat hull. The inventors of the new boat which they have dubbed “Venus” anticipate that the full sized craft will accommodate 125 passengers as well as the crew. There will be comfortable cabin space for the passengers in the low riding boat which the inventors expect to skim the surface of the ocean expediting passenger, mail and express transport of the seven seas. If perfected, this invention would be one of the greatest achievements in the realm of transportation. The inventors visualize many of these strange appearing craft speeding across the ocean cutting the tops of waves and flashing by the present-day fast liners on their missions of commerce.

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RAISING the German Fleet

By JOSEPH W. GRIGG, Jr.

TOILING in the icy depths of Scapa Flow, the broad landlocked harbor in the Orkney Isles, north of Scotland, British engineers and divers today are enacting what probably will be hailed some day as the greatest salvaging epic in the history of the sea.

Though the world at large hears but little of their feats, they are dragging to the surface one by one of the giants of Germany’s once proud High Seas Fleet, now battered rusted hulks, which have lain for 17 years fathoms-deep beneath the swirling waters of Scapa. The iron from some of those very ships is being used today by the modern Germany of Adolf Hitler in the great European armaments race.

To recall the first act of the drama of Scapa means going back to a sunny June morning in 1919 when line upon line of iron-gray German warships—some 74 all told—were swinging lazily at anchor in the harbor which had been Britain’s chief naval base throughout the Great War. Kaiser Wilhelm’s High Seas Fleet had been interned there since it was surrendered by Germany at the Armistice. Allied jealousy prevented the British receiving the ships and the German crews remained aboard.

That morning of June 21, the bulk of the British fleet was out at torpedo practice in the North Sea. Only a few drifters steamed up and down the German lines. Suddenly the crew of the Kaiser Friedrich der Grosse were seen leaping into small boats. Then before the astonished eyes of the British sea- men the great German flagship heeled over and sank. Ship after ship followed her. An urgent radio message brought the British fleet scurrying back two hours later. All the British could do, however, was to beach a few of the German destroyers. The Germans had opened the valves and scuttled their fleet.

Out of 74 ships the great majority sank to the bottom of Scapa Flow that day. For 12 years now salvagers have ventured their lives to float them again. As one corroded giant after another is laboriously pumped and hauled from the ocean-bed, its bulky carcase is towed 250 miles to the ship-breaking yards at Rosyth or Rothesay, both in Scotland, for breaking up and sales as scrap-iron. Hundreds of tons of that iron have been bought by Germany in the past two years, to be melted down and recast into big guns, shells, tanks and new battleships. Hundreds of tons more are going into armor-plating for British warships and into building Britain’s merchant fleet. Some of the same salvaged iron is fulfilling the more prosaic role of girders in palatial new movie-houses, blocks of new apartment-houses and hotels in London.

With ten of the largest ships still to be recovered the world’s biggest salvaging job already has cost more than $3,000,000. The value of the ships so ruthlessly scuttled is estimated at close on a hundred times that figure. Yet the salvagers have barely, if at all, recouped themselves for the expenditure involved.

For more than five years the German High Seas Fleet lay rusting at the bottom of Scapa Flow. None even of the recognized salvaging experts was willing to risk the cost of trying to bring the warships to the surface again. Then one day early in 1924 a virtually unknown Londoner named E.F. Cox took a trip up to Scapa. At that time he was in his late thirties and managing director of the iron and steel merchanting firm of “Cox and Danks,” of London. He had had no previous salvaging experience, but a friend had suggested to him that there was a mine of scrap iron rusting away beneath the waters of Scapa Flow, waiting for whoever was prepared to bring it up. Cox’s imagination was fired and he spent several days surveying the wreckage. A few weeks later he had an Admiralty contract in his pocket for salvaging 25 German destroyers.

Cox immediately got together the best engineers and divers in Britain. His equipment alone including sections of a German floating dock cost him a round $200,000 at the outset. In April, 1924, the greatest salvaging job ever undertaken was begun. On August 1 Cox watched triumphantly as the first destroyer, caked in muck and green sea slime, was hauled to the surface. By April 30, 1926, all 25 destroyers had been raised, several of them in less than a fortnight.

The salvaged destroyers ranged between 750 and 1,300 tons each. In one case three were located in a heap with two lying crosswise over the third. Most, however, were lying alone. The technique employed by the salvagers was to sink sections of the floating dock and place them along each side of the wreck in i a kind of hamsandwich fashion. Wire hawsers were secured under the keels of the ships which were then hauled up gradually to the surface. In some instances they were actually dragged up by sheer manual labor with winches and tackle.

As a rule, however, the rise of the tide was put to work to supply the requisite lifting power. At low water the tough wire hawsers would be hove taut under the vessels and the rise of the tide was sufficient to lift them off the bottom. Gradually they were dragged towards the shore, with each rising tide lifting them a little further from the ocean bed, until they were beached and patched up for refloating. Each hulk was then put to sea again and towed something like 250 miles for breaking up.

With 25 of the destroyers salvaged, Cox set himself the tremendous task of stealing from the ocean’s clutches the giant battleships and battlecruisers, once the pride of Germany’s navy. Some of these weighed nearly 30,000 tons and lay mostly bottom-upwards or on their sides in 15 to 18 fathoms of water. No one had ever attempted to raise ships of this size before. Daring freebooters of the Orkneys already had stripped the partly visible Seydlitz of all valuable metal above the water line and had even fished brass fittings from underwater.

Attention had been attracted to the possibilities of compressed air shortly before by Major Gianelli’s raising of the overturned Italian battleship, Leonardo da Vinci. The Italian expert paid a visit to Scapa Flow, presented Cox with a volume describing the raising of the Italian ship and urged him to attempt the technique with the ponderous German wrecks. After spending $165,000 in a futile effort to float the big Hindenburg by old methods, Cox turned with the new to the smaller ships.

The salvagers began with the 23,500-ton battle cruiser Moltke which lay on the ocean floor with a list of 16-1/2 degrees. As a preliminary operation, tall cylindrical airlocks had to be bolted to the sunken hulls. Men worked inside these under air pressure which kept the water from rising to more than a certain level through the various holes in the decks below. For months they toiled with oxy-acetylene apparatus fathoms below the surface of Scapa in a foetid, stinking atmosphere, dripping with slime. All the time they risked explosions from the foul air. Explosions did occur, although fortunately only one man lost his life.

Gradually the Scapa salvagers worked their way through each gigantic hulk, cutting away pipes and ventilating shafts that passed through the bulkheads. As they did so they patched up the holes left and made each compartment watertight. Then, when every hole had been sealed, came the critical moment for attempting to raise the vessel. This was done by pumping air into the interior under tremendous pressure. Either the bow or the stern would be brought up first, then more air would be pumped into other parts of the vessel, until it righted itself and floated.

After feverish months of toiling, Co:: and his band of salvagers one day in June, 1927, watched the great battlecruiser Moltke lurch to the surface just eight years after the swirling currents of Scapa Flow had closed over it. In November, 1928, the 25,000-ton Seydlitz was raised, followed by the battleship Kaiser of 24,500 tons in March, 1929, the cruiser Bremse in November, 1929, the Hindenburg of 28,000 tons in July, 1930, the 20,000-ton battlecruiser Von der Tann in December, 1930, and the 25,400-ton battleship Prinz Regent Luitpold in July, 1931.

Of those seven ships the toughest proposition of all was the 28,000-ton Hindenburg, larger than any vessel ever raised from the ocean bed before. She lay right side up in 70 feet of water with the tops of her masts protruding. Cox tried the first time to bring her up in 1926. For months his men worked on her, with four large floating docks to hold the masses of gear necessary. Finally they raised her to the surface with thousands of cubic feet of compressed air pumped into the enormous hull. But their victory was only temporary. They saw the Hindenburg list more and more dangerously until it was apparent that she must capsize. To prevent disaster they let her sink again.

For nearly four years more the Hindenburg lay on the rocks. Then work on her was resumed in March, 1930. The salvagers made over 800 patches in her hull, one of them measuring 750 square feet placed over the hole where one great rusted funnel had been sawed bodily away. The cost of work on the Hindenburg was so tremendous that Cox decided to remove one of the turrets, weighing 560 tons, to sell for ready cash. He did so, but he said afterward that the price he got for it was only a quarter of what it would have been worth had it been left in position.

Once again, for months, more than two hundred men worked to raise the Hindenburg. Forty pumps continually forced compressed air into her hull. Around one side of her stern was built a 600-ton block of concrete to steady her as she came out of the water and to forestall any danger of her heeling over again as she had done in 1926. She was raised early in June, 1930. Again she listed perilously to starboard and again was allowed to sink. The salvagers swallowed their disappointment and encased her stern in more concrete. Then a few weeks later she rose again and floated steadily on the surface. The biggest salvaging feat in maritime history had been accomplished. But to Cox, the man who carried it out, it meant no financial gain. He barely recovered the money he had spent on her. But it was the greatest adventure of a lifetime for him. This is how he described it: “I had spent £40,000 ($200,000) of my money when she beat me and very nearly broke my heart. I did not give up and went on spending money. Then came a day when I had spent £75,000 ($375,000) and in two minutes I was to know whether I was ever to see it again. My man with a lifebelt around him began to sing out the degrees of her list as she was being raised. ’2-1/2 degrees’ came the message, ’3 degrees . . . 4 … 5 … 5-1/2 … 6.’ My heart almost stood still. Then ’6-1/2.’ Here he stopped. Then came the voice, ’6-1/4,’ and all was well. I was like a schoolboy, I was so elated.”

Next after the Hindenburg, the 20,000-ton battle cruiser Von der Tann was pumped up from the floor of Scapa Flow. She was found bottom upwards about a hundred yards from the Hindenburg. In her case, the prow was lifted first, but she developed a heavy list and was allowed to sink back again. More airlocks were inserted and she was finally brought up in December, 1930. Four men were injured in an explosion during the work on this vessel.

Six months later, the 25,390-ton battleship Prinz Regent Luitpold was added to the list of salvaged vessels. She was found in a hundred feet of water. Giant airlocks were made both in bow and stern but when air was pumped into her the stern rose twenty feet into the air, water swirled into her open portholes and again she sank. At the second try the salvagers were successful.

In March, 1933, Cox abandoned the task. In ten years’ work at Scapa Flow he had recovered 32 ships and spent more than $2,500,000. Yet at the end of it all he found that instead of making money he had netted a loss of between $50,000 and $75,000. Since he started work the price of scrap iron and copper had slumped to about half of what it had been. He said afterward that the prices fetched by the Von der Tann and Prinz Regent Luitpold together were less than for a cruiser.

Cox himself kept as souvenirs the bells of most of the ships he had salvaged. All his equipment he sold to the firm of Metal Industries, Ltd., of Glasgow, who took over the contract from him. The man now in charge of the job was a Glasgow Scot named Thomas McKenzie.

In April, 1934, work was resumed on the 28,000-ton battleship Bayern, which lay bottom up in twenty fathoms of water, with a list of nine degrees to starboard. As with the other giants, compressed air was used to float her. Seven tubular airlocks between 70 feet and 100 feet long connected the men working below with the surface. The men themselves worked at an air pressure of 50 pounds to the square inch. Night and day for nine months McKenzie and his men toiled on the Bayern. She was brought up once but, like several of the ships salvaged by Cox, developed such a list that she had to be sunk again. Tragedy marred the work on her when Diver John Bee of Portsmouth collapsed and died shortly after coming up from the ocean floor in July, 1934.

One day in September, 1934, the Bayern swung to the surface and floated there, bottom upwards. She took just thirty seconds to rise. As she appeared above the surface, columns of water shot skyward, forced out by two million cubic feet of surplus compressed air inside her. Later she was towed 250 miles to Rosyth yards to be broken up. In April, 1936, the Koenig Albert was raised, followed only a month later by the 25,000-ton battleship Kaiserin.

Ten giant ships still rest on the floor of Scapa Flow, waiting to be salvaged. They are the Derflinger, Karlsruhe, Koeln, Brummer, Markgraf, Koenig, Dresden, Kronprinz Wilhelm, Kaiser Friedrich der Grosse—the flagship of Admiral von Reuter—and Grosser Kurfurst. So far it is estimated the salvage work has cost approximately $3,000,000. It is not known for certain just how much Germany’s once proud High Seas Fleet has brought in the junk market, but it is probably little if any more than the cost of salvaging, owing to the slump in metal prices. Experts estimate it will take another six years before the last ship is salvaged and the curtain is finally rung down on the drama of Scapa.

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On the FIRE – A PREVIEW OF TOMORROW IN SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY

• In the field of detecting and measuring atomic radiation there’s a new dual-purpose Dosage-Rate Survey Meter (see illustrations above) designed by scientists of the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. When held upright, this 1/2 lb., pocket-size instrument gives a direct reading of radiation intensity in a range of 0-100 milliroentgens per hour (the lower range encountered in laboratory health surveys where radioactive materials are used). But, when inverted, this survey meter measures radiation intensity from 0—50 roentgens per hour (the higher range required for catastrophe survey work following A-bomb raids or other large quantity releases of radioactive materials). Secret of this meter’s operation is the J-shaped quartz fiber, contained in the electrometer, which twists in accordance with the intensity of the radiation, the twisting movement being projected onto the direct-reading calibrated scale. Readings in the lower range are made possible by connecting the electrometer across a 500 billion ohm resistor. Turning the meter upside down causes a loosely-hinged billion ohm resistor to fall into position in the circuit, thus making readings in the higher range pos- sible. The new dosage meter has no switches and is always “on” and ready for use. It measures both X-rays and gamma rays and requires no adjustments, zero-settings or calibrations during its lifetime.

• Now in the planning stage, but scheduled for completion in three years, is the 59,900 ton aircraft carrier USS Forrestal shown in the artist’s conception below. It will be the Navy’s first carrier with a retractable bridge, and its four catapults, four elevators, and large flight deck will enable it to carry the heaviest carrier based aircraft. Overall length will be 1040 ft.,, and the carrier will have an estimated 128 ft. beam at the waterline and a 252 ft. beam at the widest point of the flight deck. This new super-carrier, which will accommodate 3,500 men, will be able to cruise at 30 knots (that’s about 34-1/2 mph to us landlubbers), and remain at sea for three months without replenishing. The cost? In rough figures, an estimated $218,000,000.

• Whether this will soothe the jangled nerves of the nation’s automobile drivers is a moot question, but Floyd J. Dofsen of San Francisco has just received patent #2,574,090 on a talking road. His idea is to set special lengthwise panels, which have an undulating upper surface conforming to the shape of the predetermined sound wave, in the surface of the pavement. The edges of these panels or “sound tracks” will lie just above the road surface, so that the vehicle rolling over them in quick succession produces audible words such as “danger” or “crossing.” The car’s body will act as a sound box to make the warning words understandable to the driver.

• You can add another name to that list of lightweight aggregates on page 69. After we put our story to bed, word came in that Poole Maynard of Atlanta, Ga. had received patent #2,569,323 on a method of turning phosphatic volcanic ash (from the large pebble phosphate deposits in Florida) into a lightweight aggregate for concrete. Maynard’s method is to dry the ash and make it into pellets which are fired into a rotary kiln for about 10 minutes at temperatures above 1600° F., then to crush the bloated pellets. The resulting product weighs about 25-30 lbs. per cu. ft.

• Phillip Flagge and Melvin Gerds of Milwaukee, Wise., have it in for burglars. In fact, they have just received patent #2,570,438 on an alarm that not only gives audible and visual alarm signals when the burglar trips over a triggering wire stretched around a building, but also sets off a tear gas bomb.

• You’ll find the first letter commenting on our new car testing series in this issue’s Reader’s Round Table. As we go to press, other letters are coming in and you’ll see many interesting comments about this testing program in our next issue. Meanwhile, let’s have more suggestions about how we can improve these tests. We did a better job on the reports in this issue (see page 70) but there’s still plenty of room for improvement. So write us just what you want to see covered in these tests, and we’ll revise our tests to include as many of your ideas as we can.

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Giant Slingshots of the Navy

by Rear Admiral E. R. Stitt (U.S.N.)
and Lt. Com. J. C. Adams (U.S.N.)

Senior Flight Surgeon, Aircraft Squadrons
Fighting seaplanes of Uncle Sam’s navy are launched into the air by means of powerful catapults which throw them into the air like giant slingshots. This is only one of the unusual stunts which naval flyers are required to perform—which explains why only the most perfect pilots win the title of “naval aviator.”

FLYING an airplane is usually regarded as being a thrilling sport in itself—but being thrown off the deck of a battleship, flung into the air like a pebble tossed by a gigantic slingshot, is not only thrilling sport, but an every day incident in the life of one of Uncle Sam’s crack navy pilots. Flying from carrier decks in land planes and shooting off catapults aboard battleships test the skill of the aviators and the latter proves one of their most interesting and exciting experiences.

Planes aboard battleships are seaplanes. They take off from the catapult after having been “shot” by powder or compressed air. The powder catapult operates much like a big gun. Exploding powder expands the air in a cylinder which operates a pis- ton that picks up and propels the carriage along the runway. In the compressed air catapult the air is built up to an enormous pressure and suddenly released.

The plane is held securely to the carriage to prevent its soaring away before reaching the end. A tripping mechanism automatically releases it at the proper moment, however, and plane and pilot climb rapidly into the air.

In a catapult takeoff the pilot must guard against the sudden jolt by holding his head firmly against a cushion. The sensation resembles that of being struck sharply by a human hand just below the base of the neck.

Lt. Rhea Taylor, commander of the squadron aboard the U.S.S. Omaha, flag- ship of the Destroyer Squadrons, Battle Fleet, in taking a younger pilot aloft from a catapult recently had an unusual experience.

“On this flight,” as he relates it, “I was in the after cockpit as passenger. On my first catapult flight, I recalled, the force of the shock caused me to pull the throttle back and I almost dived into the water.

“Fearing my junior pilot might do the same thing 1 sat there with one hand shoving the throttle full open while with the other I hugged a radio set against my stomach.

“It is difficult for one to imagine the sensation. You sit there waiting for the powder to blow you into the air, suddenly the back of the seat presses hard forward, your head jerks backward against the rest, you dip over the side of the ship, then your engine pulls you on upward into the air. Will Rogers described his catapult experience as one of his finest in aviation.”

Having taken the air, the catapulted plane must get down again at the conclusion of the flight. If the battleship happens to be at sea the landing may be complicated.

In a long, rolling, glassy swell the pilot must land with the swell regardless of the wind. He picks the top of a crest and settles down on it. If he tries to land across crests, he may and probably will nose his pontoon under and turn his plane over. Possibly the most difficult landings are in a choppy sea where conditions are favorable for a turn-over.

The “naval-aviator,” a hard – won title, who achieves the right to represent Uncle Sam in the cockpits of his aerial eyes does so only after rigorous training. His physical qualifications are first determined, then flight surgeons examine his mental makeup to determine whether he is of the type who will continue year after year to enjoy the duties imposed on him.

Once through the preliminary and advanced training, he sets forth monthly on exercises in which his aerial work is coordinated with that of surface ships. He becomes at once an adjunct to the battle ships and their defender against attack from the heavens.

Throughout his career flight surgeons watch him to make sure he is not “getting up his wind” or going stale. If, perchance, he suffers some accident they examine him to learn whether he suffers a permanent nervous reaction.

The aviator, once in the air, cannot be watched. He flies alone in the trim little fighters and must be thoroughly reliable. Mistakes are too costly both to the flyer and others depending on him to permit a mental failure.

You can understand why such care is taken of the pilot when you realize he may be called on to lake off from a land station, rendezvous 150 miles at sea with a carrier and land on the small area of after-deck permitted for landings.

The secret gear provided for bringing his flight to a rather abrupt halt would avail him nothing should he “land in the air,” “over shoot” or crash into the stern because of too low altitude.

Navy flyers must be absolutely and not relatively precise. As a result they are the best trained aviators in the world. Theirs is a career offering at once danger and pleasure. The danger largely disappears if they are mentally awake, but let their brains slow down and it appears again. Thus they become as automatic in their decisions and movements as the machines they operate.

Aviators in order to meet the peculiar needs of navy aviation must be able to think and act almost automatically. Otherwise they cannot meet sudden emergencies.

Their flying becomes at once so rigorous and exacting that nerves, in the popular sense, cannot be tolerated. The navy aviator must be ready for a dog fight in the clouds, a cross country flight under adverse conditions or a “prevision” landing on the small area provided on the carrier flight deck.

The latter requirement is one reason we require the aviator to possess “super-normal” vision, with excellent depth perception and accommodation.

Selection of navy aviators lias become in a large degree a psychological problem.

His physical abilities may be accurately measured according to standards already established. When it comes to measuring his temperamental adaptability, his power to continue to fly under the strain without going stale, the flight surgeon faces a more difficult task.

During the war the specialists in medical aviation attached the greatest importance to normal functioning of the internal ear, as determined by the Barany chair turning tests; although psychologists insisted that methods for determining the temperamental qualities of a candidate for aviation were paramount.

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Making SUBMARINES SAFE for SAILORS

by ROY DEAN

NINETY-NINE men who have perished at the bottom of the sea in the thirteen American submarine disasters since the E-4 went down off Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on March 25, 1915, may not have died in vain. Spurred on by their heroic sacrifice —and particularly by the loss of the 73 who perished in the S-51 off Block Island and the S-4, rammed and sunk by the Coast Guard Destroyer Paulding off Providence— the navy has at last perfected a complete group of submarine rescue devices which are expected to save all who escape the first rush of water and find refuge in watertight compartments.

More than 5,000 people submitted rescue ideas to the navy following the S-4 disaster, which claimed forty lives, the greatest loss in any one submarine sinking in the American navy’s history.

None of the ideas adopted, however, were by any means new—they had been suggested time and again, but it took an appalling disaster to get them put into practice.

The devices adopted are: An escape hatch by which members of the crew can emerge from the submarine while under water.

The Momsen “lung,” which looks something like a combination gas mask and hot water bottle, and takes the place of a diving suit and air compressor while the wearer ascends to the surface.

A telephone buoy, which can be released from within the submarine, when it rises to the surface and affords telephone connections by which the rescue ships can communicate with the crew of the submarine.

A marker buoy, which rises to the surface and marks location of the sunken sub.

Air valves for all compartments to which rescuers can attach hose to pump air to the crew and blow water out of flooded compartments.

Pad eyes lining both sides of the hull, to which lifting chains can be attached for raising the submarine, eliminating the necessity of passing chains under the hull.

The escape hatch is mounted in the ceiling of the forward crew’s room, situated between the bow torpedo room and the control quarters under the conning tower. It consists of an air lock, with doors top and bottom. In operation the sailors—as many as can crowd into the lock—enter through the bottom door, which is then closed and dogged down. A hand valve operated from within the lock then admits water, after the sailors have adjusted the “lung” diving helmets. When the lock is filled the outer door can be opened, as the sea water pressure outside has been equalized. A buoyed line shoots to the surface, and the men ascend it one by one using the line to check the rate of ascent and so avoid the “bends” or diver’s cramps, which are caused by too rapid decompression of the body.

The lock, however, can be used only by men who can reach the crew room, and only when the crew room escapes damage and flooding in the accident. As it is impractical, because of weight, to equip every compartment with an escape hatch, equal attention has been devoted to the other safety features. Chief reliance is placed on the improved air lines, by which fresh air can be sent down to the imprisoned men, and water blown out to reestablish the buoyancy of the boat, and in the pad eyes, which enable rescue crews to quickly attach the pontoon chains. Days were spent by the divers tunneling under the S-51 off- Block Island in order to pass the chain slings under the hull. An underwater jet nozzle had to be developed to blow the sand out, under tremendous pressure, and one diver narrowly escaped with his life when his tunnel caved in behind him.

With the pad eyes the divers will have no tunneling to do, and no dangerous climbing over the hull, in constant risk of fouling their air lines.

The marker buoy is expected to eliminate hours of dragging to locate the wreck— provided there is any one left alive aboard the submarine to pull the release lever, and the telephone buoy, with connections to all compartments, will eliminate the tedious and unsatisfactory undersea telegraph, or hammer tapping on the hull—the method that spelled out the dying message of the six who perished in the S-4′s torpedo room.

The great difficulty in devising rescue equipment was the necessity of avoiding any appreciable increase in the weight of the ship. On the surface a submarine is quite like a surface ship and will float as well under varying loads as a 10,000 ton cargo boat does empty or loaded.

But under water it is in a state of equilibrium, and must weigh exactly as much as the amount of water it displaces. Given that state of equilibrium and the horizontal diving rudders or planes can force it down to any desired depth, and maintain it there. For quick diving, however, it must have greater tank capacity than the amount of ballast water needed to establish equilibrium, so that a negative balance can be established, and the boat dragged down by its greater weight, until a safe level is reached for blowing out the excess water.

It follows then that if any great amount of weight is added to the hull and equipment the disposable weight of water ballast will be cut down, and with less disposable weight to work with, the performance of the boat will suffer.

Ordinary diving suits would be impractical for a submarine, even if some way could be found to supply the air for them, because the weight of sufficient suits for an entire crew would be prohibitive.

Church Goes To Sea

WHEN the congregation can’t go to church, the church goes to the congregation, along the Parana River in the Argentine.

This floating church, 108 feet long, has steeple, stained glass windows and altar. Built in the government’s Buenos Aires shipyard, the hull of an old vessel was transformed into a church by the Lincoln arc-weld process.

Before this floating church made its appearance, many of the church-goers of that section were unable to attend formal worship.

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Bridge of Boats to Guide Trans-Atlantic Air Mail

by BEVERLY BARNES

Within a few weeks you’ll be able to drop a letter in your local mail box and have it delivered in Europe in a few hours, carried by airplane all the way. How this trans-Atlantic air mail will be guided by a bridge of boats or seadromes is explained in this timely article.

THE “bridge of boats” which America rushed to completion thirteen years ago to carry an American army to France and help win the war, may become a bridge again to guide the first trans-oceanic air mail line across the North Atlantic.

While this is being written, in early March, the postoffice department at Washington is busy preparing an advertisement soliciting bids for a trans-Atlantic air mail service. By the time these words appear in print the invitation will have been issued, and it is possible that the first mail flights may be made before the end of the year.

Irving Glover, second assistant postmaster general, in charge of all air mail activities, is sponsor for the suggestion that some of the old war-time vessels, laid up by the shipping board years ago, be refitted and anchored at intervals across the Atlantic to form service stations, radio beacons and mile posts for the air mail line. Ten ships anchored at intervals would be sufficient to safeguard the route from New York to Bermuda and Bermuda to Lisbon, Portugal, by way of Fayal, in the Azores. The use of the old ships as radio and light ships and spare parts and fuel stations would be only a temporary expedient until the “floating islands” designed by Edward R. Armstrong can be built and placed along the route, as his company plans to do.

Glover’s suggestion of using the war-time ships depends on who the successful bidder is, for the method of hopping off across the ocean will be left to the winning bidder.

If carried out, however, a single ship anchored midway between New York and Bermuda would divide the first leg of the ocean hop into sections of slightly less than 400 miles each. From the ship constant radio bearings could be sent day and night, assisted by a beacon light at night.

Seven ships anchored between Bermuda and the Azores would be sufficient to divide the longest leg of the flight into 300 mile sections. With ships at those intervals the planes would never be more than 150 miles from a radio direction beacon, and a fuel and repair station, while in event of a forced landing between ships the nearest vessel could drop its moorings and proceed to the rescue.

Two, or possibly three ships, would be needed between the Azores and Lisbon. From the Portuguese city a land route via Bordeaux and Havre would connect with London, or a shorter land and sea route could be laid out up the Portuguese coast, across the Bay of Biscay to Brest, and from there to Southampton, England.

The French Compagnie Generale Aeropostale already is operating an air mail line from Europe to South America, although fast steamers have been used for the comparatively short hop from Dakar, West Africa, to Natal, Brazil, by way of St. Paul Rocks and Fernando Noranho, the famous Brazilian penal island off the coast of South America. The steamers are shortly to be replaced by seaplanes, and, in fact, several experimental trips have been made by plane.

At Natal, the French line connects with the east coast lines of the Pan-American Airways, the American mail and passenger lines which reach from Miami, Florida to Buenos Aires, by way of Cuba, Porto Rico, the Leeward and Windward Islands, and Trinidad, Georgetown, Cayenne, Para, Maranhao and Natal. The ocean hop from Dakar to Natal on the French route is not much greater than the famous flight of the U. S. Navy’s “NC” boats from the tip of Newfoundland to the Azores, just after the war.

Regardless of whether or not Glover’s suggestion to use the war-time ships as floating islands is adopted, it is practically certain the successful bidder for the first north Atlantic air line will use either flying boats or amphibians with boat hulls, and not land planes. The experience of the Pan-American air lines, operating, with its subsidiaries, a total of 19,190 miles of air mail and passenger routes, has shown that multi-motored amphibians, such as the Sikorski, are sufficient for the fairly short hops between the islands of the West Indies and across the Caribbean.

Outboard Motors Propel Floating Theatre in Holland
ALMOST every canal bank in Holland, the land of canals and dykes, is a prospective theatre auditorium for the operators of a floating motion picture theatre. An enterprising theatre man conceived the idea of building a boat which would carry the projection apparatus and a ground glass screen, the entire equipment being propelled by outboard motors. The projector and operator are housed in a large steel structure at one end of the barge or boat and the screen is located at the opposite end. Two seahorse motors propel the theatre at a rate of four or five miles an hour.

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Cheating Davy Jones of Three Hundred Ships

By H. H. DUNN

Captain Whitelaw, dean of salvors, wrested nearly 300 ships worth $50, 000,000 from savage seas. He here tells of many ingenious means of raising ships and the dangers encountered.

MORE than sixty years ago, a boy of twenty, sitting on the rim of a dry-dock in San Francisco Bay, saw a small vessel rammed and sunk only a few hundred yards away. He had been working about a year as a carpenter on the drydock, putting on patches, stopping leaks, doing rough work with hammer and nails and saw. It was his first job, taken when he landed, a tenderfoot from New England, inside the Golden Gate. He knew nothing of the top of the sea, far from its bottom, but when the one diver in San Francisco died trying to save the sunken schooner, he rented his diving suit, went down and stayed down four hours on his first trial, patched the broken hull so that it could be towed into the drydock, and received $200 for the job. A professional diver would have received $1000.

There was made the greatest ship-salvor of them all. Combining his knowledge of carpentry with a speedily acquired skill in diving, the then “Tommy” Whitelaw began a career, not yet ended, in which he has rescued more vessels from the sea than any other man, living or dead. He is today Captain T. P. H. Whitelaw, still in San Francisco, known from Point Barrow to Sydney and from Seattle to Shanghai, up and down and across the Pacific, as the record “lifter” of sunken and stranded ships.

Under his magic hands, 290 hulls have been saved from destruction. Entering on his eighty-fourth year, he plans to “make it an even three hundred.” He has returned more than $50,000,000 worth of property from the sea to its owners, and vessels he salvaged half a century ago still are moving up and down the trade-lanes of the seven oceans. His long, black, cutaway coat and his huge “iron hat”—he buys them by the dozen—are as well known on the Embarcadero or on California street, in San Francisco, as they are on his own tugs and barges. He never has regarded a wrecked ship as a “loss” unless she went down in water so deep that his divers could not reach her, and in his sixty-three years of beating the hungry sea, he has failed to return to their owners only three vessels of all those he has attempted to save.

“The problem of all ship salvors, and, strangely enough, the underlying principle of the saving of all vessels, is to make the wrecked hull float itself,” said the captain. “Wrecking tugs and barges cannot get sufficient ‘purchase’ on sand or rocks, or surface of the sea to lift several thousand tons of water-filled hulk. It is, therefore, necessary that the ship salvor do the same thing the ship builder did, i. e., create an artificial buoyancy within the hull sufficient to make the vessel lighter than the water whose space she occupies. His task is ten thousand times more difficult than that of the ship designer or builder. In each wreck, the salvager meets a different problem. I never have seen two wrecks exactly alike, and the salvager must be able to devise, quickly and surely, new methods for each condition, remembering that he may succeed only by making the hull lighter than water.

“They told me I could not save the oil tanker, ‘Rosecrans’, which went on a reef off the Oregon coast, with loss of twenty-five men, but I did save her, and with peculiar methods which would not have salvaged any other ship unless it had been in exactly a similar position. Waves rolled continuously over her topmast, one hundred and forty feet up from her keel, so that at times we could not see her at all from the barges which we brought up for the rescue.

“About ten feet of solid stone pinnacle, about ten feet wide at the base, projected into the tanker’s hull, holding it firmly on the reef, yet giving the heavy seas just the resistance they needed to batter the ship to bits in a very short time. The situation was full of danger for the ‘Rosecrans’ and of peril for the salvors. The stone spike could be reached only from the inside of the hull, but the opening into the particular tank in which the reef projected was too small to admit a fully-uniformed diver.

“The only way to move or save the tanker was to remove this rock. After long study, during which I .walked over every foot of the sea-drenched deck, with a lifeline tied about my waist, I put a small amount of dynamite under one of the deck plates, directly over the rock. This plate was lifted enough by the explosion to enable four of my men to take out the bolts, and, working between waves, slip the plate to one side.

“Then the diver went down through this hole, sawed his way through the iron wall of another tank (really a bulkhead), and then he finally reached the big stone needle. For four days, he worked, with drill and hammer, driving seven small holes into this rock. In these he inserted small charges of dynamite, one-quarter of a stick to each hole. Wires were carried to a control box on my wrecking steamer, and when I pressed the switch, the pinnacle was blown up, gently and with only a muffled report, inside the hull. The ship was not damaged by the blast, but the rock was so shredded that it could be removed with pick and shovel, and placed at one side within the ship. I venture this is the first, possibly the only, time in which a stone obstacle to navigation was removed from the inside of a vessel.

“The top of the base of the pinnacle was then leveled off even with the bottom of the hull, and steel plates shaped to fit and bolted into place. Finally, we got her in tow, and took her to a dry-dock. Thus, with dynamite, cement, steel and pumps, a $250,000 ship was saved for many years’ more work on the sea.”

The element of personal danger never is absent from the world of the ship salvor. On one occasion, when Captain Whitelaw was supervising the raising of a small vessel, sunk in Puget sound, the diver called for an extra line. This was passed down, retained a few moments by the undersea worker, and the signal given to haul up. When the line was pulled in the dead body of a man was attached to it. On a second signal, the diver came up, towing another short line, to which was fastened the body of an octopus with 12-foot tentacles. The diver’s story was that he had encountered the devil-fish, standing on its tentacles, over the body of the man. With his long, sharp, narrow-bladed spade, he had attacked the octopus, which stood on three tentacles and fought him with the others. He finally succeeded in chopping these off, one by one, with the exception of a single ‘arm’, which gripped him about the middle.

Drawing his shark-knife, the diver at last severed this tentacle, though the piece, about five feet long, wrapped round his waist, had to be pulled off after he had been hauled onto the ship. Meanwhile, the devil-fish refused to leave its prey, and it was not until the diver, one Gluberson, had chopped into its body that he was able to attach the line to the dead man, who, by the way, never was identified.

As may be imagined from these incidents, the diver in this work is a highly-specialized workman, as well as an independent technician, who frequently is confronted with under-water problems which he must solve, instantly, without reference to higher authority. He is paid from $25 to $50 a day, rarely works more than four hours, unless it is imperative that a particular piece of work be completed at once, when he may remain below six hours. And the supply of men competent to do this diving is always far below the demand. Such men not only are the highest trained of all divers, and the most capable, but they also must be able to handle explosives; cut, fit and place steel plates after they have burned holes in hulls; mix and place cement under water; and do all manner of heavy carpenter work at all depths to 100 feet. They also must be familiar with the principles of ship-building, have at least elementary knowledge of hydrostatics, and be able to estimate quickly and accurately the strength of bulkheads, plates and supports necessary to withstand water and air pressure.

“I recall vividly the most thrilling salvage job of my 63 years of work on top of and beneath the sea,” Captain Whitelaw said, “and it was not out in the ocean, but on San Francisco Bay. The full-rigged ship ‘Blairmore’, British by registry, suddenly turned over and sank, while lying alongside the dock. For some time, the cause of her disaster was a mystery, but it afterward developed that the stevedores, in removing her cargo, failed to substitute ballast in the lower holds. Her topheavy masts, beaten by a sudden wind, coupled with an unusually strong tidal current, tipped her over as neatly as if she had been picked up and dropped, masts down, into the water.

“When I was called in, ‘Blairmore’s’ deck was completely under, and only a small section of her keel, amidships, was visible, rising like the back of a huge whale, from the surface of the bay. This situation presented still another problem in salvaging, and one which had to be solved immediately, both to save her owners from heavy ex- pense, and to get the ship out of the way of other vessels wishing to use the same pier. The vessel had to be righted before she could be pumped out; because, if we pumped her out, the air, rising inside her, would keep her floating, keel uppermost, in spite of anything we might do to right her.

“I took two hours out to study the situation. The result was that we built, on the exposed part of the hull, a little to one side of the line of the keel, a platform, running lengthwise of the ship, and extending out about 40 feet, at an angle of 45 degrees. This, as you doubtless have seen, formed a long and powerful lever, with the water on the same side of the ship as a fulcrum. If we could apply enough ‘power’ — that is to say, weight— to the outer end of this lever, we could turn the ship over. So, at the outer end of the platform, we built four, large, water-tight, wooden tanks. Divers then attached strong lines to the three masts on ‘Blairmore’, well down toward their ends, near the bed of the bay, and carried them to three tugs, on the side opposite our ‘lever’.

“We then pumped water into the tanks, and as we bumped, the tugs pulled on these lines. Slowly the ship turned, on her longer axis, as if rolling in a trough, or on bearings, until the tanks on the end of the platform-lever were touching the surface of the bay, and the ship rested on her side, instead of on her masts. Then the tugs moved up closer, held her by her masts, while we emptied the tanks and moved the platform further up the hull, toward the deck. By pumping water into the tanks again, we lifted her until she was half-way righted. Then we pumped some of the water out of her hold, leaving merely enough to give her ballast to counterbalance her lofty masts, and she slowly came up to an even keel. Thereafter she was towed to shallower water, re-ballasted with stone, her masts repaired, and she was towed to the dock again, where her outbound cargo was stowed, and she went on her way. So far as I know, she still is in service, though she may have been lost, or left the seas before the economic pressure of steam-driven vessels.”

But there are times when the best efforts of the most skilled ship salvors go for naught. The mighty hand of Neptune reaches into the midst of the most carefully prepared plans and seizes the vessel even while the salvage gangs are at work. There was the big ship, “Drumbarton”, wrecked on Point Pedro, on the California coast. Captain Whitelaw’s fleet of tugs and barges, and his small army of divers and salvagers gathered around her. There was nothing particularly difficult about the job in hand, since the ship was hard and fast on a point of rock, which was firmly wedged into her hull. It was a matter of breaking out the rock, patching the hole, pumping out some of the water, and towing the vessel to dry dock. Suddenly and with no previous groans or cracklings, there came a thunderous crash and the hull split across and lengthwise, the parts falling into the sea.

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SEADROMES to DOT the ATLANTIC OCEAN

AN experimental model has proved a success, plans are now being made for the anchoring between New York and Bermuda of the first seadrome for ocean flying airplanes and it is the hope of the supporters that as a result such seadromes will eventually dot the oceans providing safe landings for aircraft.

The one-ton steel model of the seadrome was placed in the Choptank River at Cambridge, Md. The model was one-thirty-second the size of the intended dromes. It is essentially a large platform supported by hollow steel columns, each ending in a circular disk. Air in the cylinders supports the platform well above the water and beyond wave action. Speedboats flashed around the model without rocking it and it is expected that the large dromes will not be affected at all by wave action.

The inventor of the seadrome which he calls the “Langley” after the late Samuel P. Langley, designer of one of the first airplanes, was confident of the success of his model. He was formerly a navy engineer and now is consulting engineer for an eastern concern.

After devoting sixteen years to his schemes and experiments for safe sea bases for aircraft he succeeded in interesting the duPont and General Motors financiers in his plans. They have provided Armstrong with three quarters of a million dollars to finance his first seadrome which is now under construction.

This seadrome, will have a clear runway 1,200 feet long by 200 feet wide. There will be side rooms or quarters as shown in the illustrations herewith for hotels, hangars and a variety of services. The platform will rise 80 feet above calm sea level. No waves have ever been reported more than 45 feet high so the platform is never expected to be awash. The buoyancy pillars will extend 160 feet below sea level.

The engineer, Armstrong, plans to anchor his first full-size seadrome halfway between New York and Bermuda. He studied hydro-graphic charts of the region he had in mind and calculated that there must be a high place in the ocean floor and with the aid of a navy survey ship he found the location desired some 400 miles from Manhattan and 375 miles from Bermuda in a virtually straight line. The table on the ocean floor is six miles long and four miles wide. It is only two miles below sea level. The surrounding depth is three to four miles.

The difference in depth will make a considerable saving in securing the 3-1/2 inch steel cable which will be laid to hold the seadrome in place. The huge anchors of the round bobbin type will dig into the sea floor and prevent drifting of the seadrome.

Mr. Armstrong hopes to have the Lang- ley completed and in place by next fall before Bermuda’s tourist season begins.

The engineer expects that as the Langley makes financial returns he will construct eight similar seadromes between the thirty-fifth and fortieth parallels and some 375 miles apart between New York and Plymouth, England. The 375-mile distance has been determined upon because it is an easy jump for any airplane and would be sufficient to safeguard trans-oceanic air tourists.

Mr. Armstrong, who is seeing his dream come true estimates that with these seadromes and the servicing made possible by them there will be safe Atlantic air crossings in as fast a time as 20 hours. If his plans materialize as he confidently expects and his experiments would indicate, it is possible that before many years have passed dangers of air travel over the seven seas will have been enormously reduced.

Maybe something more muscular, like “Car-BO-Plane” (over-hyphenation and making one word ALL CAPS was very popular in these mags). Or maybe something personal like “The Skeeter” or “Skeetsmobile”.

What do you think?

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The Car-Boat That Flies

Skeets Coleman’s three-way gadabout will be a performing fool and as easy to pilot as a ’56 car.

THE GREAT advances in aircraft design of the past 15 years have had little effect on the looks or performance of the small private planes now being built; you could have landed any of them at a small airport in the mid-30′s without scaring anybody. But with Skeets Coleman’s Aeromarine design the field of private plane building may begin to catch up with the times.

The Aeromarine, which is still in the workshop stages, will be a high performance plane that can be operated from land or water or driven like an automobile—making it ideal for the all-around week-end sportsman.

Compared to the many hybrids of this type that have preceded it, the Aero-marine has a convincing, unified look that you would expect from a man of Coleman’s background and that takes it clean out of the Rube Goldberg class. Its modified delta wing structure in particular reflects Coleman’s recent experience as test pilot on the Navy XFY-1 Convair Pogo, the vertical takeoff fighter. For his achievement in making the first-ever flights in this radical type of plane Coleman won the 1955 Harmon Trophy.

In his design Coleman has concentrated on creating a go-anywhere airplane—which meant cutting down on its performance as a car or boat. As a car it will be a power tricycle with a top speed of 50 mph. Power for humming down the highway will be fed to the rear wheels of the landing gear; steering will be through the single front wheel. As a boat—well, it’ll float fine. If you want to go up the lake for more bait, why not let down the hydro-ski under the hull and make a short hop of it?

But as a plane the Aeromarine is expected to show considerable class. It will have a range of 800 miles on 80 gallons of gas, a top speed of 225 mph. Cruising speed, with five aboard, will be 200 mph. It will take off with a run of 800 feet, land at 57 mph. Simple controls and instruments, plus the stability and no-stall characteristics of the delta wing, will make flying easy for anyone.

One device designed just for the amateur pilot is a miniature delta wing mounted on a fulcrum on the nose of the Aeromarine. This “radiator ornament” will tell the pilot at a glance if his plane is in a safe altitude in relation to airspeed and wind—the most important thing to know when flying a delta wing.

An extremely advanced feature for high lift on takeoff and landing will be a system for sucking boundary air off the leading edge of the wing. This will be an aid rather than a necessity; if the system conks out it will still be quite simple to land or take off safely. •

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America’s Floating Power Plants

Should the United States be attacked, these new ships will supply light, heat and power to cities whose power plants have been bombed or sabotaged.

THE armada of floating “stand-by” electrical power barges which the United States plans to station along our waterways adjacent to important production centers, is the direct result of lessons being learned by American observers in the present war in Europe.

The 2nd World War, unlike the 1st, has not developed into wholesale slaughter of humans.

Instead, it has resolved itself into systematic destruction of property.

Both Britain and the Axis combatants have concentrated upon power plants as targets for merciless bombings from the air. For, to destroy or damage sources of power, is to halt the fly wheels of industry upon which the processes of modern war utterly depend.

Without adequate energy for power, light and heat—business, industry and normal life disintegrates. And fear, thus engendered, if cycloned into mass melancholia and hysteria, may easily become the fat hammer for canny war lords to seize upon to break down the tempered edge of enemy resistance.

Wise Uncle Sam! How well he knows that anything can happen in a world torn by hate and envy. So, with weather eye peeled, the old gentleman is embarking upon an unprecedented venture: The construction of powerplant-carrying boats that can be towed anywhere on navigable waterways and serve as supply sources of electrical energy during periods of emergency.

Patterned after Great Lakes freighters, each barge is to be 290 feet long, 43 feet wide, and draw a maximum of 10 feet of water, loaded. Their double bottoms serve an additional purpose than storage for fuel and ballast.

They can be pumped out to “lift”‘ them over shoals. Or loaded extra heavy to drop under low clearance structures. When their hinged smokestacks are lowered, the barges can pass under bridges only fifteen feet above water surface.

The War Department, father of the plan, has designed the unique craft to develop 50,000-kilowatts. Refueling can easily be done from oil tankers brought alongside.

“A large part of the key industrial areas of the nation can be reached by such boats from United States harbors, lakes and rivers,” declares Prof. Royal W. Sorensen, of California Institute of Technology, and president-elect of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

A glance at a map of the United States shows that this is true.

Let your eyes search-out the centers of heavy manufacturing. Where are they?

Automatically your finger follows along the three coastlines of the United States. Thence over the contours of the Great Lakes. And lastly you trace along those black threads that denote such navigable streams as the Mississippi, Ohio, Delaware, Hudson and Columbia. The airplane carrier Lexington, by its “rescue” of the city of Tacoma, Washington, is the prototype for this amazing “power flotilla” project. In 1929 when Tacoma’s hydro-electric system failed because of water shortage, the city was suddenly flung into darkness, its industries idled, its shops distressed. From the city’s docks, one could readily see the giant carrier riding at anchor in Puget Sound—180,000 horsepower at leash within her huge steel hull.

Wires fled ‘cross continent.

Then an amazing thing happened. Permission was granted the electrically propelled warship to splice her “juice” lines into the city’s power circuit. And for several days and nights, while the civilized world looked on in awe, the Lexington’s mighty generators kept a city of more than 100,000 persons in power, light and heat until its own supply defection was healed!

Perhaps it is true that no lesson being taught by World War No. 2 is more trenchant than that the powerplant engineer is in greater jeopardy of life and limb than an infantryman.

This same type of threat is gaining head in the United States, with this single difference: Subversion by sabotage supplanting the aerial bombings of the European picture. So bold and dire have become these plots that extra guards patrol all major factories where war orders are under way, and visitors are unwelcome in most power plants.

On the other hand no nation is so bountifully supplied with electricity for every purpose as is America.

And happily, an impressive percentage of existing power lines in the U. S. interlock with circuits of other power houses, and in this manner are able to serve as “stand-by” plants, on call.

However, due to America’s welling defense efforts, certain areas of the country are so meagerly powered that havoc to a single power unit would throw the industry of a whole region out of gear.

The flotilla of steam generator electric power plants is Uncle Sam’s answer to this problem. The unique barges can be towed into virtually every important manufacturing region of the nation, save the Rocky Mountain area. Nor need their usefulness be restricted to the United States alone. Other equally Jules Verneish uses have been proposed.

For instance, in supplying electrical current for the development of mining operations in Antarctica, whose known resources in minerals remain untapped because of the power difficulty.

Or the seasonal electrification of our valuable Alaska fish canning industry.

Or providing light, heat and power for the duration of colonization or exploitation periods in out-of-way regions which are, however, accessible to watercraft, such as the vast areas of the upper Amazon and its tributaries.