96 Miracles Ahead! 



tions, located at major airports. The control centers use a 

 10,400 mile teletype circuit to check and clear movements 

 of swiftly traveling aircraft along the airways. Finally, at sev- 

 enty-four designated fields the CAA operates airport control 

 towers. This number will be increased, at the request of the 

 military, to one hundred and twenty or more in 1943. 



Since 1941 the Alaskan Airways System has been expanded 

 and improved until Alaska now has as fine a system of air- 

 ways and airports as any section of the United States. 



The Federal Airways System now operates six interconti- 

 nental superradio stations capable of communicating with air- 

 craft at any point on the globe. These stations have placed 

 the United States several years ahead of any other nation in 

 the world in the development of intercontinental airways. 



The immediate postwar problems of the airways, as seen 

 by the CAA, will be the rebuilding of the entire domestic air- 

 ways system by substituting ultrahigh-frequency for the old 

 standard intermediate frequency. Ultrahigh frequency will 

 eliminate static and provide airmen with aerial "highway 

 markers" as easy to follow as those along our best highways. 



The CAA reports that, exclusive of certain military air- 

 dromes, there will be about eight hundred and sixty-five major 

 airports in the United States by the end of 1943. All of them 

 will have paved runways of thirty-five hundred feet or more, 

 capable of handling the largest craft. Less than one hundred 

 such fields existed in 1940. In addition to these there are more 

 than two thousand lesser fields. Within the past few years 

 numerous new airports for the use of military transports and 

 combat planes have been built with American and Allied 

 funds throughout the country. After the war many of these 

 fields will be available for civilian use. 



In planning future airways and other facilities, the CAA 

 figures that before 1950 the United States may well have five 

 hundred thousand private, commercial, and military planes in 



