PUZZLE IN PANAMA^ 



By Waldo G. Bowman 

 Editor, Engmeering News-Record 



[With 8 plates] 



A good many tilings came to an end when the atomic bombs exploded 

 over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And not the least of those things that 

 were lost forever was our confidence in the security of the Panama 

 Canal. 



That fact is now being reflected in a comprehensive engineering 

 study to determine whether the present Canal or any canal in the 

 same or any other location can be made safe for our merchant and 

 naval fleets in wartime. And, of equal concern, if not of the same 

 grimness in consequences, is the problem of the adequacy of the Canal 

 to meet the growing demands of peacetime shipping. It all adds up to 

 a puzzle of first-order magnitude. 



Nor is the puzzle simplified (although the scope for its solution 

 is undoubtedly broadened) by the fact that the atomic bombs not only 

 blasted confidence in the present Canal, but also raised up a ghost — 

 that of a Panama sea-level canal whose earthly body was interred on 

 June 29, 1906, when Congress adopted the lock-type canal favored in 

 the minority report of President Theodore Roosevelt's board of con- 

 sulting engineers. And to this sea-level canal ghost the present in- 

 vestigators may well repeat Hamlet's famous questions to the ghost 

 of his father, "Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned? Say, 

 why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?" Sea level or not, 

 and if not, then what ? That is the question, and the present puzzle in 

 Panama. 



Because a proper solution is of vital importance to every American, 

 and of major interest to all engineers and construction men, a first- 

 hand account of the progress of the studies was deemed timely and 

 desirable. Wliat the conclusions and recommendations will be is not 

 now known, indeed will not be Imown until they are reported to Con- 

 gress late this year ( 1947) . But after 2 weeks in the Canal Zone talk- 

 ing to officials, witnessing tests, traveling the canal, clambering over 



> Reprinted by permiesion from Engineering News-Record, vol. 138, No. 18, May 1, 1947. 



407 



