SEA LEVEL WATERWAY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26634, 3 December 1947, Page 5

SEA LEVEL WATERWAY

PROPOSALS FOR PANAMA PROOF AGAINST ATOM BOMBS Rec. 9 p.m. WASHINGTON. Dec. 1. The Governor of the Panama Canal Zone. Brigadier-general Joseph Mehaffey, proposed to Congress to-day that under a 10-year programme the canal be converted to an atom bomb proof sea level waterway at a cost of 2,483,000,000 dollars. The proposed programme would eliminate the locks whicn how raise parts of the canal 85 feet above sea level. President Truman sent Brigadier-general Mehaffey’s recommendation to the House and Senate. Brigadier-general Meliaffcy said the canal now “ is totally lacking in security to meet future needs of national defence. The service that the canal performed in the recent war was made possible only because it was not attacked.”

He stated that by about 1960 the canal would be unable to meet the demands of interocean commerce without causing delays that would become increasingly more serious as further traffic increases were realised. Several ocean-going ships were already too big to'go through the locks, and the canal's size had been a factor for many years in limiting the size of the navy's capital ships. Even a sea-level canal could be closed temporarily in war-time bysinking one or more ships in the channel or by blocking the channel with debris resulting from a direct hit by an atom bomb, but such closures would be of short duration compared with those that could result from an attack on a lock of the canal.

Brigadier-general Mehafl'ey said the construction of a sea-level canal could be accomplished “ with insignificant interference with the operation of the present canal and would follow the present canal's route with considerable improvement in alignment.”