PANAMA CANAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 October 1939, Page 6

PANAMA CANAL

SWEEPING THE SEAS

PRECAUTIONARY ACTION. FIVE-YEAR PROGRAMME. On the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Panama Canal, the United States Government decided to add two new locks, at a cost of 300,000,000 dollars. The decision was made after receiving reports from four agencies of the Administration, the Departments of State, War, Commerce and the Federal Maritime Commission, that the proposal to build a canal across Nicaragua, at a cost double that of the Panama Canal, was not economically advisable, and that its defence advantages would not justify the expenditure. In recent years the United States has been increasingly concerned about the defence of the Panama Canal, especially since the whole of the Navy has been based in the Pacific, and the cruising range of bombing aeroplanes has widened. The canal is already defended at the Atlantic and Pacific ends by huge secret fortifications, but strategists have for some time been urging strengthening of these forts and establishing more air bases in the area. The present defence set-up includes a garrison of mobile troops, army, navy, air and submarine bases. There are 14,000 troops in the zone now, to be reinforced by a further draft of 6000 men shortly. The chief threats to the canal are the bombing aeroplane and sabotage from within the zone itself. There are 12,000 foreign labourers now working there. An increasing number of spies calls for continuous precaution. Civilians are not permitted to fly over the canal and only high-ranking officers of the Army and Navy know the exact location of the defences. Foreign ships, numbering 30 daily, pass through the canal. Each must be regarded as a possible of danger in times like the present. The locks, each a mile long, are not invulnerable; hence the decision to build by-pass locks which will be bombproof. They will enable quicker and safer transit of the largest warships when they are completed, five years from now.

Possible objectives of sabotage have been fully exploited by the United States authorities. Chief of these would be the hydro-electric station at Gatun, which generates electricity for the canal zone. Wrecking of the lock chambers at Gatun might drain Gatun Lake, but authorities believe emergency dams would prevent this—dams such as the present Madden Dam, on the Chagres River, which impounds 22,000,000,000 cubic feet of water. Consideration has also been given to the possibility of an attack being made on the Panama railroad, the only land link between the Atlantic and the Pacific ends of the canal.

The canal is now regarded as a paying proposition. Its annual traffic is 18,000,000 tons, compared with 32,000,000 tons passing through Suez Canal.