Art: Globes on Parade

War-smartest museum in the U.S. is St. Paul’s (Minn.), which last week had on tour a map show called “Can America Be Bombed?,” at home a map show called “Strategic Elements of Naval Warfare.”

No quick bids for public interest, both shows were results of nearly two years of hard work on the part of the St. Paul Science Museum and its director, Dr. Louis H. Powell, who got tired of seeing stuffed birds and fish on display, decided the museum should be livelier. With the aid of the museum’s chairman of the board, former Artillery Major Charles Lesley Ames, Dr. Powell drew up a series of scenarios for maps on current events. The Minnesota WPA Art project lent artists to make models and globes, the Minnesota Legislative Emergency Committee gave $4,000 in State funds, and a map workshop, which today uses 45 artists, was set up.

The first show, “Can America Be Bombed?” (the answer is “Yes” if a hostile power gains control of the sea approaches, “No” if America and Britain keep control of the seas),* went on display in St. Paul last spring, arrived in two freight cars at the Buhl Planetarium in Pittsburgh last month.

Feature of the traveling exhibition was “This Shrinking World,” a series of smaller and smaller globes of the earth measured in terms of travel time over the past 100 years, from 150 days of circumnavigation in 1840 to eight days in 1940, from clipper to Clipper. Using the British Whitley bomber with its 700-mile range as typical of most medium bombers today, pictograph charts show that the raider theoretically can carry 6,250 lb. of bombs for a distance of 50 miles, but that it can carry only one 500-lb. bomb for a distance of 700 miles.

Pictorial maps, diagrams and descriptive labels point out that U.S. coastlines are reasonably safe from bombings of the Coventry type. They also point out, however, that the U.S. has a back door through the Canadian wilderness direct to the vital Minnesota iron mines which furnish the raw material for half the world’s supply of steel, to the Sault Ste. Marie locks through which passes all the ore, to Niagara Falls which supplies 37% of New York’s hydro electric power. Whether the U.S. can be repeatedly bombed via the back door depends on sea-lane control which alone can keep the enemy from establishing nearby provision bases.

“Strategic Elements of Naval Warfare” fills a large auditorium in the St. Paul Science Museum. Twelve globe sections, seven and a half feet in diameter, are ranged around the auditorium walls, show phases of American naval strategy and problems, the major strategic bottlenecks of the world (Windward Passage, Panama, Gibraltar, Suez, Malay Straits, English Channel, Skagerrak, Kattegat). A huge revolving globe (Dr. Powell believes most people get wrong ideas of distance from looking at flat maps) shows the principal trade routes of the world. In the center of the auditorium, spread out on a huge table, are model ships in the standard dia grammatic layout of a grand fleet action.

Last week St. Paul’s staffers were busy designing ”thrust arrows” to indicate on their globes the direction of U.S. or Japanese drives, following the news as fast as it appeared. They were also busy on a supplementary map & chart series to show the potential range of “suicide-squad” bombers. Until the Japanese crisis they had never considered the range of planes sent to die with their victims.

* The U.S. could be bombed by long-range bombers direct from Germany, but such attacks could only be sporadic.