Lays Alabama Tunnel

FIRST ENGINEERING FEAT of its kind in the Deep South is the Bankhead Tunnel, $4,000,000 self liquidating traffic artery under Mobile River at Mobile, Ala., which reduces by seven and a half miles the distance between that city and points to the north and east via heavily traveled U. S. Highway 90.

A twenty year controversy over a bridge project was settled in the summer of 1938 when Wayne F. Palmer of the firm of Wilberding & Palmer, Inc., engineering and financial consultants, placed before the City Commissioners of Mobile a unique,

economical tunnel plan. Under Wayne's guidance, and with the support of Alabama Senators John H. Bankhead and Lister Hill, a P.W.A. grant of $1,500,000 was secured. The remaining $2,500,000 was forthcoming under a R.F.C. loan secured by revenue bonds, since sold to private investors at a profit to the Federal Gov't.

Bankhead Tunnel was not bored through the earth but was constructed by the trench method. The 2,000 foot steel and concrete tube was built generally above the river's surface in seven sections, each of which was sunk into position in a dredged trench cut across the river's bed. The twenty months required for the actual building of the South's first subaqueous vehicular tunnel breaks all records for rapidity of construction, and the low cost, high quality, safety features and operating economy of the new artery have brought Wayne a similar contract for Galveston County, Texas, and a ten mile causeway, trestle and tunnel across Tampa Bay, in Florida.

Trying to beat this MAGAZINE'S family album record (See the Stockwell eight pictured heretofore exclusively in these columns), your scribe has been trying for a picture of the Palmer nine, but they've kinda gotten separated 'way down yonder, and here's their Pa's alibi: "Since your original request they have never been all together. You forget how time is plowing us under. My oldest boy (Class Baby!) is a married man trying to solve the problems of his own establishment. Several children are away at school, so the chances of getting a group picture are fortunately slim.

Having descended from generations of clan gatherers, that period of my existence is closed. Although I have a real feeling that Mobile offers the home town I have been seeking for years, yet of late I have developed a keen longing for a short experience in the chill winds and settings of New England. Two matters recently shocked me: the rapidly approaching 25th reunion, and the ghastly statement that a Classmate had become a grandfather! Regards to the gang."

Wayne's greatest avocation is writing. He has had one book published: "Men and Ships of Steel." Liberty ran a serial "Mad Days on the Devil Ship Emden." This was published serially and in book form in England and Germany. A number of his articles on Naval and international matters have appeared in Reader's Digest,Outlook, American Mercury, Naval Institute Proceedings, and King Features Syndicate, over a period of years.

WAYNE F. PALMER '17