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Uncle Sam’s School for Sailors

WHEN you march through the main gate of the Naval Training Station at San Diego, Calif., as a raw recruit you leave the land behind. You will spend two months learning to be a sailor before you are assigned to the battle fleet but even though you are still on dry land, things are a lot like they are at sea.

In a couple of days you will know that a floor is really a deck and you’ll not make the mistake of calling a bulkhead a wall. You will ask whether the smoking lamp is lit instead of whether you may smoke and you will be telling time by ship’s bells instead of by hours.

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Paris Balloon-Homes Are Gas-Proof
REASONING that if balloon silk can hold gases, it can likewise keep gases out, Parisians are building balloon houses—-grim shoe-like affairs which provide safety from much-feared gas attacks.
Entire families will find refuge in each of the inflated structures. Fresh air would be pumped in through a filter which neutralizes poisonous gases, just as do filters on gas masks. Frames of wire hold the balloon silk in position when the air pump is not operating.

Texan Builds Novel Electric Gun

GIANT projectiles pulled at terrific velocities through powderless cannon by magnetism, leaving the barrel with scarcely more noise than that made by a .22 rifle, may set new problems for range finders.
The electric gun invented and patented by Virgil Rigsby of San Augustine, Texas, is similar to an electric motor with the field poles unrolled. Powerful magnet coils mounted end to end along the barrel of the gun are supplied with electricity by an electrical timing switch in such fashion that the magnetic pulling force is always ahead of the projectile.

Gee, things sure have changed a whole lot since then.

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OIL - Modern WAR GOD Threatens the World

Black gold, precious underground liquid, is food for the modern war machine. Deprived of it, a nation’s military campaign is threatened with failure. Will oil become an instrument to enforce peace or to cause war?

WITHIN the last few decades, oil has changed from an almost unknown and unnecessary commodity to one of the world’s most vitally needed materials. Oil, unlike nitroglycerin, has always been an innocent, viscous fluid used for lubrication and fuel. But harmless petroleum, like Dr. Jekyll, has undergone a startling transformation. Oil may yet be the means whereby the flaming torch of war is carried across the world.

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Plane Wing Carries 14 Men
SOVIET military aviators have converted an ordinary two-seater airplane into a troop transport carrying 14 soldiers by building a special compartment onto the bottom of the plane’s lower wing. The men lie in a prone position within the compartment and are fully protected from the wind.
In test flights the converted plane earned 14 men and gas spreading equipment with a total weight of 4,400 pounds at a speed of 111 m.p.h. The plane will be used in time of war to land special troops behind enemy lines, a military strategy resembling Soviet experiments with mass parachuting of troops. The plane can also be used to transport wounded soldiers to base hospitals.

This is the first in a really weird series of ads I’m posting from the Ford Instrument Company. All of them involve these two little dolls doing things like launching missiles or torpedoes, shooting guns, or manning radar stations. Very odd stuff.

about missile guidance
…AND FORD INSTRUMENT COMPANY
To make sure that a missile hits its target, Ford Instrument provides it with a guidance system that is sensitive to the variable conditions it meets along the way. If you have problems in this field, it will pay you to talk them over with Ford engineers. Guided missile devices are typical of the systems that Ford designs and manufactures for the Armed Forces and the Atomic Energy Commission. Thousands of Ford specialists are now working on such projects as electronic, hydraulic, mechanical and electrical servo-mechanisms, computers, controls and drives.

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PEACE MAKER
They called this weapon the Peacemaker. In the hands of the Western lawmen, it brought peace and order to the turbulent frontier.
In the West today, Sandia Corporation engineers and scientists explore new frontiers in research and development engineering to produce modern peacemakers . . . the nuclear weapons that deter aggression and provide a vital element of security for the nations of the free world.

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The plane that helped win the war now helps win the peace
—the Douglas C-54
Last August nearly 4,000 Moslem pilgrims bound for Mecca were stranded in Beirut 800 miles from the holy city.

In one of the finest demonstrations of international good will, the Department of Defense provided a “magic carpet” in the form of the Military Air Transport Service to speed these pilgrims on their way.

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Farm Tractor Is Also War Tank
LIKE a broken down plow horse turning I into a snorting, spirited cavalry charger, a new farm tractor has been devised that can be converted into an armored tank equipped with gas and machine guns in a space of two hours.

The tractor is of the caterpillar type and is capable of surmounting anything from ditches to fallen trees. Its traction wheels are especially good for work in mud. Scrap metal was used to armor the original model.

CORPORAL E STAR PERFORMER WITH PRECISION GUIDANCE
Motorola’s precision engineering in the missile field has made a major contribution
along with Jet Propulsion Laboratories in the development of Corporal
navigational devices • radar • countermeasures • analog computers communications equipment • digital computers • data transmission • data processing and presentation indicators • plotting systems • telemetering • remote control • servomechanisms • transistor circuitry • operations research • dynamic systems analysis • subminiaturization solid state physics • semi conductor research • transistor development
Positions open to qualified Engineers and Physicists
MOTOROLA COMMUNICATIONS & ELECTRONICS DIVISION

First in a series of ads for the Lycoming corporation by Boris Artzybasheff.

New “ticker” for tanks

For a dependable tank “heart” — 500 horsepower’s worth of rugged air-cooled engine—U. S. Army Ordnance looks to Lycoming’s precision production.

Rumbling over rugged terrain . . . crushing enemy obstacles . . . surviving heavy fire—our “G.I.” tanks must have powerful, dependable engines to stay “alive” in combat. That’s why the Army Ordnance Corps relies on Lycoming to turn out air-cooled “tickers” for new-type tanks now in production.

Maybe you need a complete engine, or a single precision part. Maybe you have “only an idea” in the rough or blueprint stage that needs development. Or a metal product that needs precise and speedy fabrication. In any case-look to Lycoming! Lycoming has a long-tested reputation for meeting the most exacting and diverse metal-working requirements, both industrial and military. Whatever your problem—look to Lycoming!

Lycoming’s wealth of creative engineering ability,its 2-1/2 million square feet of floor space, its 6,000-plus machine tools stand ready to serve your needs.

Ray of Death Kills at 6 Miles
LATEST of the death rays designed for I modern warfare comes from Bourges, France. Henri Claudel, well known French scientist, is the inventor.
Recent experiments with the delicate apparatus have proved it to be unusually deadly when directed at small forms of life. The inventor estimates that the machine, which he calls “Rays of Death,” will kill any living thing at a distance of 10 kilometers, or approximately 6-1/4 miles.
The rays are projected by means of a slender tube mounted on a tripod, permitting the operator to send them in any direction or at any angle. Details regarding the construction of the death ray machine are being kept a closely guarded secret, only the results of the experiment having been made public.