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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 12, 1963)
12 A MONDAY. AUGUST 12. KM MEDFOHD MAIL TRIBUNE. MEDFORD. OREGON Ocean Floor Map Needed t 5 I 5 y.s.. By A. ROBERT SMITH Mail Tribune Washington Correspondent : Editor's note Tha Unit ad Statai and Russia are engaged in an intenst ri valry gel to the bottom of the world' oceans and find a treasure chest oi oceanographic knowledge which will have a host of p r a c 1 1 a a 1 applications. Overshadowed by the more dramatised race to the moon, the duel beneath the seal is no less significant, either in terms of cold war strategy or the resources it holds for man in a peace ful world. This is the first In a aeries of five articles by our Washington corres pondent on this subject. Washington W hen the , atomic submarine Thresher perished this spring in the North Atlantic, some Navy officials speculated that it ' might have crashed into an unknown underwater sea mount, lust as aircraft occa tonally collide with moun tains. ' The theory was later dropped but. It betrays the Navy's anxiety about one of the little known perils facing the latest, most advanced war Vessels of the United States as they operate amid the ancient mysteries of the ocean depths. That peril is that submarine navigators don't have complete road maps of the ocean floors. The sea mount theory was con ' aidcred only because the Navy Just doesn't know where all the . underwater mountains nd valleys are located. This points up a critical military problem, but it stems fundamentally from man'a abysmal ignorance of the sea around him. As Interior Secretary Stewart Udall put It recently: "The . ocean is the newest and the last frontier of the world. I would hasard a guess that we know more about the stars and the space above us than we do : about the water and the land beneath it covering more than two-thirds of ) this planet." The problem caused by this ! basic ignorance has suddenly become critical because the Eiyssio cold war has been extended today is attributable to the imigoge ddd EScoce To Heach ioom off Sea to the ocean depths. The So viet Union is concentrating virtually all of its sea power in a .mighty submarine force of some 600 vessels, and the United States is turning out nuclear submarines "like pancakes." as one congress man put it. Consequently, both nations have become in tensely concerned about solv ing the mysteries of the deep. In a word, the united States and Russia are locked in a race to get to the bot lnm of the ocean. In the broadest sense. For this reason the Ken nedy administration with out fanfare has expanded significantly the govern ment's oceanography pro gram and laid out a decade-long effort to conquer the unknown. A decade ago the fed eral budget lor oceanog raphy was about $10 to $15 million a year. Last year it was $124 million; and this year President Ken nedy has asked Congress for $156 million. During the coming decede from 1963 to 1972 the govern ment plans to spend over $2 billion in oceanography, making it a major thrust of the U.S.A. About 95 per cent of the impetus for this expanded ef fort Is military, according 10 kev government official. Nevertheless, some 20 dif fcrent federal agencies are involved in oceanographich research, civilian as well as military. They are measur ing ocean temperatures, sa linity, currents and waves. surveying the undulations of the bottom, exploring the mineral potential of the sea, looking for ways of increas ing and utilizing the vast fish population, observing move ment of icebergs, determin ing the influence bf the ocean on weather, and ascertaining the affect of mans various activities such as disposal of atomic and industrial wastes on the oceans. Research in some of these areas would be underway by both federal and private re search institutions even if there were no threat from a foreign power, but the ex tent of the American effort Need vacation money? ti r -.lie Russian submarine threat, As a matter of fact, the U.S. has shown almost knee-jerk reaction to foreign submarines. The history of oceanographic studies shows that the U.S. government over the years has been vl tally concerned only In di rect proportion to the rise of foreign threats to the nation s security on the high seas or beneath them. It started in the first World War when the German U-boat proved a new menace. The Navy reacted by developing the crude hydrophones with which to detect the slow, noisy undersea craft. After the war, further attempts to venture into the unknown of the sea lagged. With the advent of World War 11. German submarines threatened once more. This time they were improved boats which could go down to 400 feet. The Navy re acted to the crisis by re cruiting scientists for a new thrust into the neglected field of oceonography. This lime they developed sonar, an electronic device for de tecting undersea objects by sending out sound impulses and receiving the echo when it bounces off the object. Both the hydrophone and sonar were based on certain principles learned by ocean ographic research, chiefly the peculiar characteristics of sound waves as they travel through water. There are many variables which make the art of detection and com munication underwater ex tremely difficult and uncer tain - and this still baffles scientists to a degree. Today's standard sonar can detect another vessel at a dis tance of 4,000 to 5,000 yards, or say three miles at most. American engineers are work ing on advanced design sonar which they expect will extend the reliable detection range out to 30 miles. U. S. scientists are also working on ways of bouncing, sound waves off the bottom of the ocean for longer range communication and detection. While generally sound trav els faster through water than Get an HFC Traveloan Wishing won't take you places ... but an HFC Traveloan will! So take that vacation now. Borrow confidently repay sensibly. Phone or come in. MONTH It PAYMtNT NANS 14 X II Tail tobt sfcowi unpli ""' "'' feoti plant. Too can bor- l0 S 5.M S 6.72 $10.05 S18.46 nm en. n, i U.81 13.44 20.09 3ti.nL' 7T cmT"" up Me 17.71 LTj.16 30.14 55.38 11300 end orrongt M 28.86 32.97 49M Pl.tW monMf oarnwifi lo f 1oe 53.89 62.21 95.64 179.56 rour need. I 77 87 90.38 140 57 L'66.36 MeeiieeU i W u JiM wmmtkiy tU e . 141 firl V m Mf jirWiejf l.tOt), .' tint ri f m tUm,t tej ) or f 100 mmt a.eetfie tiOO, mmd t mm NMiaiff, Suburban Site Not Always Best Business Move New York - IUPII - The growing number of office building and plant sites In the suburbs of major - metropol itan areas is a familiar factor In today's regional planning layouts. But the city vs. suburbs choice in a selection of a site for a new headquarters or plant sometimes may be a complex problem, not to be settled on the basis of cost alone or of convenience for some employees or for some portion of a company's oper ation. Heart of the site selection matter stems from the unde niable fact that wherever you set up operations, you have to hnve people to run them. With that in mind, the down town site may sometimes as sume a more attractive ap pearance than originally ex-, pected. 14-Story Tower This was Ihe experience of Phoenix Mutual, one of the nation's leading insurance firms, which later this year will move into a new 14-story, elliptical glass tower in down town Hartford, Conn., a city where a redevelopment pro ject is well under way. Five years ago, the com pany was getting ready lo go into Ihe suburbs of Hartford. It had the land and the build ing was under consideration when it was decided to re view the choice. For months, in conjunction with their architects and with their personnel officers, com pany executives reviewed the advantages of one site against the other. Much of their ma terial they gathered from em ployees. Some of the factors considered were Intangible such as would a move to the suburbs put the company out of touch with the (inani-il and business establishments of the city. Selection finally was made of Ihe city site. MUSGH 121 Eat! Main St., 2nd Floor-Phone: 773-5301 User Mm. Wire Ttwt. It N IM-Fri. 18 Is 7 P. M. MISHAP KILLS DIVER New York-IUPI-A skin diver stabbed himself to death with his own spear gun Sunday when he was knocked olf bal ance by a huge wave crash ing against a stone Jetty near Jones Beach. Authorities said Robert Petty. 31, Westbury. N.Y., was adjusting his face mask and had wedged his spear gun between rocks when the wave came, impal ing him on the spear. through air, the scientists must contend with such curi ous phenomena as the banding of sound waves as they pass through the sea, and the in fluence of water temperatures and depth on the velocity of sound waves. These unique and trouble some characteristics of the ocean, plus the unknown con tours of the ocean floor, sug gest the military necessity for the expanded oceanographic program. The problem of the unmapped ocean floor is more recent than the one of sound wave movement. For it wasn't until after World War II that occanographcrs d i s c o v ered they were mistaken in assum ing that the deep sea was not simply a vast and compara tively level plain. They had known, for a century of such major topo graphic features as the At lantic Ridge, a 10,000-mile long range of peaks whose highest summit, emerging as the Asores. is 27.000 feet above the ocean bed. And they had known about deep depressions such as the Min danao Trench, an awesome pit over six miles deep east of the Philippines. But until the 1940s they didn't know that there are about 160 flat-topped sea mounts between Hawaii and ihe Marianas. How many others may rise from the floor of ihe world's vast ocean stretches remains to be discovered. The reason it is imperative to find out such facts is that advancing submarine engi neering is producing vessels which are capable of traveling at greater speeds and with standing the pressures of in creasingly greater depths. As one Navy spokesman put it: "The task of navigating a submarine at high speed and deep submergence without bottom information that is ac curate and adequate can be compared with diving a 10 ton truck on a freeway blind folded." Inasmuch as America's most prized submarines are equip ped with nuclear Polaris mis siles, a deterrent power in which the United States has a clear advantage over the Soviets, the nation's military strategists are anxious to re move the blindfold from our submarine skippers. That is a prime task of oceanography in America to day. Next - What the Soviets are up to. WOW... HAS SAFEWAY COME UP WITH shenandoah Rock Cornish Weight range C-) y XSEt6 18-20 oz. LCla Check These First-Of-The-Wcek Money Savers MILD CH M BUTTER Safeway Cheddar. 20 oz. loaf, random weight chunks, or 12 oz. Snack Bar Lucerne. 100 tweet cream. 1-lb. Print 59 59 VAN CAMP c lb pork & beams It's Time For Refreshing Fruit Salads RAP Thompson Seedless or. 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