Flying Enterprise Sank With Rare Metal Cargo

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27796, 22 October 1955, Page 9

Flying Enterprise Sank With Rare Metal Cargo

LONDON, October 21.

The United States freighter. Flying Enterprise, which sank nearly four years ago off the south-west coast of England, was carrying six metal boxes containing almost the whole of the world’s supply of pure zirconium—a metal used in atomic power plants. This was reported today in a frontpage story of the “News Chronicle.” The Flying Enterprise sank off Falmouth, Cornwall, after her master. Captain Kurt Carlsen, stayed days and nights alone on the sinking ship. The “News Chronicle” said that there was no zirconium ore in the United States, and that the Flying Enterprise wenjt to Brazil to pick up a consignment of ore and take it’ to

Germany—the only country with the chemical engineering plant to reduce the ore to pure metal. It was on the return journey that the ship foundered, but neither Captain Carlsen nor anyone aboard the two United States destroyers which stood by the stricken vessel was told what the metal was. This was to prevent any hint leaking out about the line that United States atom power research was taking, the “News Chronicle” said. Now that the United States and other countries are making large quantities of the metal, an American atomic scientist has been allowed to let his British colleagues know,the story, the newspaper said.