Novel Defense Plan

FRANK E. AUSTIN '95, retired professor of engineering at Thayer School, last month advanced a novel plan for making grounded airplanes and gasoline storage tanks safe from attacks by tanks or bombing by planes. In an article in the Manchester Union, he advocated the horizontal, curving tunneling of the mountains of the country, and of Mt. Washington in particular, to enable the establishing of airplane fabrication and storage plants deep within their sanctuary.

Said Professor Austin: "The same inane mentality that returns flood victims year after year to sites of annual washouts causes mankind to build and rebuild airplane factories and to store gasoline in large conspicuous tanks in wide open spaces in full view of bombsights As there are natural sites where complete protection may be realized, there is no reasonable excuse for not exploiting them in the interests of national existence and for the safeguarding of human rights Mt. Washington, in national defense, is worth more to America than the Rock of Gibraltar is to the British Empire."