DEFENCE OF PANAMA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 150, 22 December 1938, Page 8

DEFENCE OF PANAMA

LAND FORCE AT WORK

JUNGLE SCOUTS

AMERICA'S PRECAUTIONS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, November 23. For the defence of the Panama, Canal the United States has inaugurated a new phase—regiments known as Jungle Scouts. No longer is it felt wise to leave the defence of the canal to sea and air fortifications at the Pacific and Atlantic terminals. Many units are now at work surveying the jungles and exploring further and further east and west of the canal. One group, 1800 strong, with 250 mules, cut a singlefile trail, fording rivers, laying pontoons through swamps, sleeping in mosquifo-infested areas, and came out without a casualty beyond three mules drowned in the Rio Chagres, where the buccaneer Morgan, in his quest for Panama gold, lost so many of his followers. The new tactical defence plan provides for infantry, with its jungle scout detachments, holding forts unseen from .the air, while big guns and bombing planes attend to approaches by sea. Secret anti-aircraft gun nests have been placed east and west of the canal. So dense is the growth that these guns and their crews have not been spotted from the air in manoeuvres. An incident will serve to illustrate this. Fifty miles west of the canal, an army of infantry, engineers, chemical units, field artillery, and observation planes guarded the approach. They were only five miles from the Pacific. A battalion landed on a Pacific beach under cover of darkness, and, turning north into the Central American jungle, followed a circuitous route, unseen and unsuspected, passed around the garrison, and came out on the PanAmerican Highway, 40 miles from the canal, between it and the guarding army. No air observer had caught sight of them! AMERICAN NAVAL. SECRETS. The American War College is now concentrating on the canal. The situation in Europe and the Orient makes it more vital than ever before. The presence off the Panama Canal of scores of Japanese fishing boats leaves no doubt as to the need to meet every possible contingency. It is claimed, for instance, that agents #of foreign Powers are seeking information about the exact undersea route of the tunnels connecting the fortified islands with the Pacific coast at the canal's entrance. These tunnels, hidden from air bombing, are avenues of supply and communication between the islands and the mainland forts. What is the nature of the instruments, known to exist, for "stethoscoping" an entering ship and discovering whether it carries a secret, undeclared cargo of dynamite or other explosive? Thus the possibility of some ship being blown up in the locks has been guarded against. -. .

Intelligence agents watch all foreign activity throughout Latin America, especially those of Japanese attempts, as in Mexico, to acquire land concessions, under other names, which could be converted into military or air bases. The exact depth, within 200 miles east and west of the canal, is a navy secret, also all soundings which could be charted and used by submarines in an attempt to land men or planes unseen. There are only a few places where a submerged boat can lie hidden until it noses into the coast. To counteract known activity by agents from abroad, the "prohibited" area of the canal zone has been widely extended in recent months.