May 1960 - Our Navy Magazine - Wing Walker

May 1960 Our Navy Magazine

OUR NAVY May 1960
Vol. 55 No. 5
The Navy Man's Magazine Founded 1897

On the Cover: Americans visit the East, where "no man is his brother's keeper" (see article beginning on Page 3).

CONTENTS

  • Inside the Navy 2
  • Where No Man Is His Brother's Keeper 3
  • Set Assistant 6
  • The Alaskan Patrol (Part I) 8
  • The Crisis 10
  • USS Spikefish (SS-404) 12
  • Career Man 14
  • The Day the Navy Used A Wing Walker   16
  • Atlantic Report 17
  • Pacific Report 24
  • Inland Report 30
  • Science & Space Report 31
  • Washington Briefs 34
  • Pentagon Report 37
  • Sports Report 42
  • Movie Report 44
  • Cab Report 46
  • Reading Report 48
  • Salt Shakers 56
  • Contacts and Swaps 59
  • The Wind in The Rigging 60
  • Editorial 64

All photographs are official Department of Defense or Our Navy photos unless otherwise credited. All opinions are those of the editors or contributors, and are not necessarily the official views of the Navy Department or the U. S. Government.

Entire contents copyrighted, 1960, by OUR NAVY, Inc.

Publisher's Letter

ONLY A HANDFUL of now active Navymen were in the Service just a little over thirty years ago when six men, with vision, and what must have seemed like foolhardy determination, started an aircraft factory in the midst of this country's worst depression. Today, the same six, along with 25,000 additional men and women, make up the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, with assets approaching a billion dollars.

I decided to visit this organization to look for a few answers to the questions that often are asked: What is to become of airplanes now that missiles are beginning to take over? Now that fewer and fewer aircraft are being ordered each year, where will they stop? What does the future hold for the thousands of Navy-men that are trained in aviation rates?

Actually the Navy officially is not making plans for the elimination of the airplane. Manned aircraft will be used through, and beyond the next decade. As the bomber becomes less and less a factor for retaliation, so, too, will the fighter become a scarcer item. It is not surprising, therefore, that 1960 is the first year in the past 23 that Grumann does not have a single fighter in production for the Navy. They have not stopped making aircraft, for at year's end they had orders in excess of 260 million dollars and this March they were awarded a Navy contract for an additional 128 million dollars worth of new planes: S2F, A2F, and W2F.

In the next 30 years Grumman may show Navymen many fantastic changes, such as a workable hydrofoil craft capable of 80 knots in any kind of sea. This could very well be one way for surface ships to keep up with speedy nuclear submarines, or for providing a hard-to-hit target for transporting many more Marines to beach landings than can now be accomplished with helicopters.

You may also see them create a workable VTOL plane that could take off or land in a vertical direction from any ship, but with much greater horizontal speed SHORVEY now possible with helicopters.

Their experimental SHEEPSKIN carried out with the only 100 knot hydrolic testing facility in the U. S. may solve some of the anti-submarine problems, and their hypersonic shock tunnel will undoubtedly unveil a few answers to our eventual landings on other planets and then the re-entry problems on the return trip. Probably most of you will be Fleet Reservists when tomorrow becomes today.

OUR NAVY
SINCERELY,

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