408 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 194 7 



its famous once-sliding banks, inspecting its locks and dams, and listen- 

 ing to scuttlebutt and rumor, a reasonably complete account of "Isth- 

 mian Canal Studies — 1947" can be rendered. This is it. 



OBJECTIVE AND PLAN OF THEIR STUDIES 



The studies had their beginning on December 28, 1945, when Public 

 Law 280, Seventy-ninth Congress, first session, was passed. In it 

 Congress said to the Governor of the Panama Canal, "Tell us how we 

 and the American people can best be assured of a ship crossing of the 

 isthmus that will be safe from war hazards and of ample capacity for 

 many years to come. Give us a recommendation for the best type of 

 canal and the best route, no matter where located, in Panama or out." 

 Included in the studies, of course, was to be a revaluation of the $277,- 

 000,000 project to build a third set of locks, larger and removed some 

 distance from the present pair, begun in 1939 (Engineering News 

 Record, September 14, 1939, p. 330) and suspended because of the war 

 in 1942 after most of the necessary excavation had been completed. 



Maj. Gen. Joseph C. Mehaffey, Governor of the Canal Zone, and him- 

 self an Army Engineer officer with a long record of service on the 

 Canal, lost no time in initiating the authorized study, for which about 

 $5,000,000 has been provided. Assigning the task to the Canal's 

 special engineering division, which was created to handle the third 

 locks project, he appointed Col. James H. Stratton as supervising engi- 

 neer. Enjoying an outstanding reputation as one of the ablest tech- 

 nical men and administrators in the Corps of Engineers, Colonel 

 Stratton was soon successful in assembling an unusually capable staff 

 of civilian engineer specialists to head up the various phases of the 

 work. Supplementing his own organization with a board of eminent 

 consulting engineers to afford continual guidance and advice, he went 

 to work. And as need developed, individual specialists from private 

 life and from the Office of the Chief of Engineers were called in while, 

 in addition, special research contracts were awarded so as to bring the 

 nation's best talents to bear on the problem. 



The procedure of the studies is simple and effective. Investigations 

 of each particular subject — routes, lock design, dredging, drilling and 

 blasting, soil mechanics, flood control, hydraulics, construction plan- 

 ning, to name a few — are carried out by the staff specialists through 

 their own research and analysis and aided by the outside research con- 

 tracts. As the study of each phase or subject is completed, a report 

 or memorandum is prepared. Then, at the periodic meetings of the 

 consulting board, the section heads present the memos (No. 183 hav- 

 ing been reached on March 1, 1947) , which are approved, turned down, 

 or returned for further study. 



The eventual result of this whittling and sifting will be a set of 

 conclusions from which a final recommendation can be made to the 



