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SUBMARINES MEAN SUBSTITUTES

To produce weapons, we must give up many “daily necessities.” Here’s the story of the sacrifices we must make.

by W. M. Kimball

MAYBE you’ve noticed it already.

There isn’t any opener tucked into your box of beer in cans. There’s a slight yellowish tinge to your white wrapping paper. And your wife’s nylon hose have lisle tops.

These straws show which way the wind is blowing American necessities. The wind is the war with its submarines, its terrific demand for ships and goods, its overwhelming shakeup of American industry—a new mechanical revolution that will affect civilization for years to come.

Inevitably, the tremendous destruction in Europe means SUBSTITUTES in America. Substitutes for a thousand and one things in common use; but science and Yankee ingenuity may make some of these substitutes even better and more efficient than the originals. Most will work just as well.

At little additional cost silver will be substituted for copper wires (it is a more efficient conductor of electricity than copper). It may even be used as plating for the interior of cans. For silver is the least expensive of all the non-priority metals!

There is no telling how Mr. and Mrs. We are going to look upon these substitutes—we will not be aware of many of them, for they will be on the inside workings of our appliances—and we really have no choice in the matter. They are being made necessary by the stupendous demands placed on American industry. Here’s what experts say of the immediate future: “There will be no such thing as a plentiful material. The needs are too fantastic; the requirements are too vast,” said a veteran Washington consultant last week.

The OPM has been besieged by frantic businessmen and manufacturers declaring their impending ruin. But quiet men have begun telling them what to do, what materials will work just as well as those on the priorities lists.

Woodworkers and cabinet makers soon will be able to get only 378 kinds of wood screws. The manufacturers agreed to cut out 507 types.

There will be no more white galoshes—because white rubber requires zinc and zinc is needed badly in defense. The manufacture of roller skates has been cut 30%—because ball bearing steel is at a premium.

Soon you will find different kinds of tips on your shoelaces—plastic tips on 500,000,000 pairs of shoelaces will save 500,000 pounds of tin. ‘ All this may change, of course, in only a few months. Gargantuan efforts are raising new factories, producing new supplies, changing present requirements. Design is playing an important part in the changing needs of defense. Already mechanical design has knocked protuberances off of car and truck frames, simplified any number of attachments and mechanisms without sacrificing strength.

Redesigned cardboard cartons are more compact, thus saving pulp and cargo space.

Paper will be lighter. There are some heavy bonds that have already been discontinued, other types will go as soon as the situation tightens. The greatest shortage is in waste paper. For that reason there is being inaugurated a “waste paper drive,” similar to last summer’s aluminum drive.

Though there will be a shortage of fine steel casting rods for the sportsman, the lazy fisherman will still be able to get his long Tonkin poles. These poles are imported green, years in advance of sale and dried in this country. Silk fishing lines will disappear, but there is an adequate supply of linen lines.

There is now a definite shortage of Prestone and other “permanent” cooling liquids. “Shortage” is not quite the proper word—for instead of going to civilian use, such liquids are being used in the nation’s war machines. Whether there will be enough alcohol to use as a substitute is an unanswered question. The assumption is that SOME compound will be found to answer civilian need.

Though the zinc supply is improving, some experts believe there will be a definite shortage of “galvanized” products. Galvanizing requires zinc. So we will see and use enameled iron—and even resort to porcelain —for there is no shortage in ceramics.

In fact, manufacturers look for ceramics to fill the space that will be left on the shelves where the plastic gadgets now stand.

Porcelain tubs may even take the place of the enameled steel baths long in use. But tubs have gone entirely by the boards in the government’s defense housing projects. Stall showers are recommended in these houses and the stalls are being built of tile and even of Masonite, a bonded board, as well as common wallboard made impervious to water by lacquer and enamel. Showers don’t require so much copper and brass hardware.

The new houses will have wooden gutters instead of copper or galvanized metal. And speaking of baths, Colonel George S. Brady, chief of Substitute and Secondary materials in the office of civilian supply, is worried about the effect of non-lathering soap on public morale. For, said he, “We can make soap out of any kind of fat and lye, but without at least a small percentage of certain tropical vegetable oils and imported essential oils we would have to revert to the coarse, unlathering old-fashioned soaps that would affect the morale of a people that respects cleanliness.”

That colonel is unduly alarmed, for available chemically, there are compounds (such as the soapless shampoo, “Drene”) that would cover Hardy and completely becloud Laurel in a lather bath.

Wire is a problem. One New York cleaning firm recently notified its customers that because of defense needs it “would no longer be able to return clothing on coat hangers.”

Farmers will revert to the old rail and pole fences, or adopt the single electrified strand to keep their horses and cows out of the corn. For barbed wire is a war essenital and all of it is being used in that respect. The glamour girl may have to do without sequins ultimately—but in their place will be bright ceramic bends, glass and even wooden decorations. Those screwy hats will be just as screwy, but they will be lacking the bright brass, copper, chromium bangles that have enlivened cartoon art in the last three years. So, too, will be affected the lapel and ear ornaments so dear to the gals’ hearts. Even the popular metal “V” for Victory will be changed from metal to some other material.

Two years ago, writers and observers hailed the development of plastics. Plastics, said they, will free metals for war—if war should ever come—and supply civilian needs.

Now, defense and armament are utilizing nearly all of the plastic material the factories can put out. The funny little trays and statuettes. The ornamental wall pieces and even some of the utility pieces of furniture will vanish from the shops soon, unless the factories now building and the raw materials now being gathered catch up to the terrific pace of defense manufacture.

Those dainty little waterproof aprons, and transparent shower curtains and kitchen fabrics that are impervious to water and stain, may be scarce. Koroseal went on priorities; and distributors of the Goodrich synthetic announced recently that the existing supply would be rationed on a basis of 1940 orders.

But the Goodrich plants at Akron, Ohio, and Niagara Falls, N. Y., are boosting Koroseal production and building at Louisville, Ky., is a huge new factory. These new efforts will increase production of the thermolastic (made of coke, limestone and salt) beyond essential defense requirements and make available many substitutes for civilian use. (Experimental Koroseal heels are reported as wearing many times longer than rubber.) This is but one of the plastics that are being turned to defense uses. Koroseal is requisitioned for insulation on complex gun control mechanisms. The Navy has taken the entire output of another synthetic. Another plastic is being used for “blisters” on bombers because of its high transparency and strength.

The government is urging the utilization of wood. Wood is a “quick crop.” By spring, there can be a plentiful supply in the drying kilns, and though the reserve is not now huge, it is adequate to take the place of some of the steel that is going into guns and tanks.

Household and schoolroom furnishings, filing cases, office desks and chairs, cabinets and all those pieces of equipment that have been made of steel for years will be turned out in wood.

They will probably be fire resistant, for new impregnating techniques have been developed to make them so. Plywood, already with hundreds of uses, will have hundreds more.

Familiar packages will change—that is almost certain. Even now the Hershey bar comes in a wrapper that only simulates the original foil. The ends of an impervious paper are tinted silver. Wrigley’s gum is sealed in a non-metal wrapper. Cigarets will soon be on cigar store shelves sealed the same way—without foil.

Tin cans will no longer be made of tin—IF the Far Eastern siutation becomes serious, and cuts off the tin supply. You may see cans with iron tops and fiber board sides. Goodyear has developed a PLIABLE container of Pliofilm. Pickles in liquid, and orange juice have already been sealed experimentally in this flexible, unorthodox container. A welding process has been developed so that iron can be used instead of tin to preserve the foods.

A coating of lacquer is inside most tin cans now, and the outside is usually covered by a label or lithographing. Germany has already adopted the welded iron can.

The conservators of our tin have already suggested that TWO cents’ worth of silver would SILVERPLATE the inside of some containers that may be used for luxury items. Tin foil tubes are giving way to lead tubes with tinplated insides for toothpastes and cold creams.

Cosmeticians are working madly to get substitutes for the zinc that makes facepowder “stick”— and reports are that by the time their zinc supply is curtailed, they will have perfected powders with even better adhering qualities.

Beer in cans may have to give way to beer in bottles. But the bottlers have another problem facing them. The supply of cork is threatened and what good is a bottle without a cap? Crown closures have little cork fillers that keep the carbonation inside the bottle.

If the crown closure manufacturers are forced to use pulp paper for their caps, be warned that you will have to keep your pop, soda and beer bottles lying on their sides in the refrigerator—which is a good idea anyway. Placed on the side, the liquid in the bottles keeps the caps moist and prevents leakage of the carbon-dioxide with which they are charged.

Here are some of the little-thought-of-angles to this substitute program: Golfers will return to hickory shafts for their clubs. There may be a difference in golf balls— though it is hardly conceivable that golfers will revert to the ancient Scott’s feather and leather ball.

Zippers will become scarce.

There will be a shortage of gaudy juke boxes— for which some may praise Hitler. They are made of plastics.

Bicycles, already popular as a sports vehicle.

may become necessities. New York stores report a hundred per cent increase in orders for bikes in anticipation of gas rationing.

The “croakus” sack (“gunny sack” to you Northerners) may be a thing of the past. This two-way carrier is made of jute and the lack of bottoms is curtailing the supply from abroad. The government has called for increased manufacture of cotton bagging.

Your new radio tube will not have an aluminum cover. They are being made now with impregnated fiber. You won’t know it, but the nickel electron-emanating plate inside the tube will not be solid nickel any longer. It will be nickel plated.

“Red pop,” cream soda and root beer makers are worried because of a growing shortage in citric acid. Imported lemon oils are also scarce.

It may be hard to get an alarm clock—most manufacturers of clocks are four to six months behind on orders.

Flower essences were smuggled out of France as the Nazis moved in and there is a fair supply for perfumes—but, unless American essences are perfected soon, there will be no mere Eau de Cologne.

Canvas luggage, cloth belts, fabric gloves are sure substitutes because of the heavy defense demands for leather.

European rabbit fur has been the basic material for felt hats—but we are now making hats and even other fabrics out of milk. Casein is the basic material for a new fiber already in production.

Spun glass is being used extensively as an insulator, and is finding other uses as a defense and substitute material.

Many of these things England has already experienced. Germany began its “ersatz” manufacturer years ago in anticipation of this day. America can and will surpass European production.

Until recently Germany had an absolute monopoly on one necessary item. Americans know the secret now—and even if the secret were not known, a Colorado scientist has perfected a technique which makes possible the manufacture of GLASS EYES from plastic material.

And here’s a final bit of information for the kids of America, for the cartoonists and the Joe Miller jokesters: Think up a substitute for this. There’s a shortage of CASTOR OIL!

Also, henceforth I am going to use the spelling “computor”.

By the way, if you’re at all interested, this army training video detailing how an mechanical fire control computer works is amazing.

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Flying Missiles CAN Be Stopped!

Here is a sure-fire plan to down supersonic rockets like ducks—and wipe out the terror of sneak attacks.

By Frank Tinsley

HITLER was right when he ranted about the fearful havoc a “secret weapon” would wreak on his enemies. His V-2 rockets unleashed such terror on battered Britain that they nearly won the war—for the Nazis. For there was absolutely no defense against these mighty 3500-mph missiles—and no way to tell when—or where—they would strike next.

Today our military experts are still searching frantically for a weapon to kill the terrible menace of the V-2 type missile. Rocket specialists are concentrating on ground-to-air projectiles to intercept and destroy enemy rockets. But the experts admit that practical development of mechanical minute-men is years away. Right now, we are as wide open as a blind, broken-armed boxer— with still no defense against the knockout punch of the flying missile.

But even with the old ack-ack guns of World War II, high-flying supersonic missiles can be stopped. Here’s how we could set up a sure- fire anti-missile system this very moment: An enemy wants to blitz a key target— such as New York. Unlike wartime London, with rocket-launching sites just across the narrow English Channel, New York would be vulnerable only to long-range missiles— from another continent or—more probably—from rocket-firing subs off the coast.

Search radars—girding New York by ship and by high points from the outer tip of Long Island through northern Connecticut and the Catskills, then south and east around New Jersey—would warn of the attack and track the oncoming missiles. The nearest radar ship or station flashes by telemeter the exact bearing and position of each missile to the closest ack-ack batteries.

A central electronic brain controls the distribution of targets among the guns. Radars attached to every battery track the assigned target and keep close tab on the missile’s precise speed and trajectory. Instantaneous battery computors figure the lead, wind allowance and time of the shells to intercept the rocket. Then, based on these calculations, the guns point and fire the instant the target comes in range. As each salvo roars out to ring a missile, the computors pick a new aiming point for the guns and set ‘em up for the next blast.

Proximity fuses explode the anti-missile shells when they’re within lethal range of the target. When the shells go off, hardened steel balls hurl forward in overlapping cones so that the blasting projectiles form a circular, shotgun pattern, densest in the center. This deadly shrapnel wrecks the missile’s delicate mechanisms, throws it out of control or explodes it in midair.

Basis for this anti-guided missile setup is the recently revealed plan General Sir Frederick Pile, chief of Britain’s antiaircraft defenses during the war, developed in the hope of combatting the V-2.

Pile’s ingenious plan won the approval of Britain’s War Ministry in March. 1945, and might have checked the V-2 campaign. Before he could set up his system, however, the invading Allies overran the Nazis’ launching areas in France and Holland and cleaned out the V-2 bases. The plan then was buried away with other top secrets in the British war office.

To prevent surprise atomic attacks, defense rings could be maintained around every important target area in the United States. The cost in money, time and effort, of course, would be huge—but not so staggering as the destruction and panic that may hit our vital centers if they remain sitting ducks for rocket attacks. So, till our missile men finally do perfect those long-range counter-rockets, it’s comforting to know that we can stop flying missiles—with the equipment we have on hand today.

Treating A Big Gun’s “Sore Throat”

BIG guns on the battleship bark their songs of death—and soon develop sore throats. Then they must go to the doctor for care. In the Battle of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, British Men O’ War rarely go through more than one engagement without having to return to the shops to have their big guns refitted. A 15-inch gun cannot be fired more than 200 times, at the most, under battle conditions, without its lining being worn out. The picture at the right, below, shows the method by which such a gun is re-lined. A series of gas burners are placed about it, the outer casing is heated until it expands, the lining is slipped out, and a new lining, shown at left, is slipped in.

That’s really not how lasers work at all. It’s like saying electricity good because there is an unlimited supply of electrons.

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Death Rays Are Here… NOW

IF you had a security clearance, you could walk into any of about 30 laboratories in the United States and Canada and watch a death ray in action. You would hear absolutely nothing. You would see only a harmless looking bluish ray of light emerging from a small hole in one end of a long, complex, electrical apparatus.

The device is an ion beam projector. The blue ray is a stream of ions—charged particles that, in the vacuum of space, could catch and destroy a spy satellite or an orbiting weapon.

The ion gun is but one of several different kinds of futuristic weapons—death rays, they have been called—that are now operating or soon will be. In other laboratories you would see white light from a tiny bulb enter a small steel lens-like chamber and emerge as an intensely hot, blinding flash of red light. Unlike most light beams that spread as they get farther from the bulb, this light produces a tiny, brilliant spot on a wall 40 ft. away.

Melting a Tank. Soon, at an Army Ordnance Corps testing center, you would be able to see the light ray in action against a mock enemy. The tiny bulb would be replaced by a small, high-intensity arc. In another version under development, the bulb would yield to a very thin wire that explodes with a bright flash when overloaded with electrical current. In either case, the result would be the same: A tank lumbers over the crest of a hill almost 1000 yds. away. An Ordnance officer squeezes a hand switch. A small radar antenna revolves once, points toward the tank, and quivers slightly. The tank is now 800 yds. away. The barrel of the optical killer swings toward the tank. Now 500 yds. Then—there is a fleeting, almost imperceptible, flash. The tank stops.

You see a round hole less than a foot in diameter burned smoothly through the heavy armor. For an instant the entire tank was on the verge of melting. Then you notice that the huge tank had been pulled along a track by a chain.

Before the optical gun becomes operational, the Army wants to be able to set the weapon to oscillate enough so that the beam will sweep the entire vehicle, making it virtually disappear, melted by a beam many times hotter than the Sun’s surface.

Weapons of the Future are here. For want of a simpler term, and because they so closely meet the popular image, most people call them simply “death rays.”

Already a tight light beam around which one type of death ray is being built has been fired nearly 25 miles. And even before the death ray is fully developed, scientists say the beam could slightly alter the orbit of a satellite 1000 miles away.

For several years, a University of Illinois scientist was a senior consultant on death rays to the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency. Prof. Arnold T. Nordsieck recently left to head the technical specialties department of the General Motors Defense Systems Div., Santa Barbara, Calif. Nobody will say what projects Dr. Nordsieck will conceive and supervise at the company’s elite and highly classified California installation. A look at the Defense Department contract files doesn’t help much either: GM has hundreds of contracts, dozens with classified titles.

This is true, too, of most of the other private contractors active in death ray work. Electro-Optical Systems, Pasadena, Calif., has half a dozen contracts whose titles confirm that the company is deep in advanced weaponry. Texas Instruments, Austin, Tex., and Varian Associates, Palo Alto, Calif., are in the same category.

An indication of what Dr. Nordsieck is capable of doing at Santa Barbara is offered by a top secret paper he delivered at a very hush-hush meeting held in Williamsburg, Va.

Serious Dynamite. In February 1960, the Advanced Research Projects Agency assembled in Williamsburg the top technical men from nearly every major defense contract firm. Over 800 carefully-screened scientists and managers met to hear secret reports on the state of our defense against ballistic missiles. For days, security agents commanded hotels and meeting facilities.

Seriousness of the dynamite served up at the three-day meeting is pointed up by a banquet speech delivered somberly by Dr. Hector Skifter, assistant director of Defense Research and Engineering, in charge of air defense. Dr. Skifter doubted that present methods of missile defense ever would be effective. Until a futuristic weapon could be fully developed, our best defense would lie in an ability to absorb heavy punishment and still re- • tain the power to retaliate. In his highly classified speech (the’ author has seen an unclassified digest) he made it clear that some people would have to be regarded as expendable and that our defense should be concentrated around our retaliatory forces.

It was amid this sort of frank revelation that Dr. Nordsieck delivered what one official observer described as “one of the most intriguing papers” of the meeting: “Particle Accelerators and Radiation Weapons.” Details of the paper are secret. It is known, however, that Dr. Nordsieck presented computer solutions to problems of using death ray weapons in missile defense.

Since Williamsburg, it has become clear to observers who frequent the Pentagon and military research offices that ion beams and light rays and other futuristic weapons have been tapped for our major missile defense effort. Ion beams for use in space and light rays for use in space and on land are just two of the death ray systems moving into advanced weapons arsenals here—and in Russia.

The Russians are readying a system that could poke out the eye of our Samos spy-in-the-sky satellite. Russian scientists also are developing a weapon based on a principle our Air Force checked into and then laughed at because it was first described in a popular magazine instead of a technical journal.

Among the military powers there are about a dozen futuristic weapons systems in various stages of research, development, and production. They fall roughly into eight classes:

1. Coherent light beams.

2. Ion beams.

3. Focused high-flux beams of particles other than ions.

4. “Brute force” electromagnetic radiation.

5. Controlled sound waves.

6. Neutron bombs.

7. Ball lightning and “doughnuts” of pinched plasma.

8. “Blue sky” techniques such as direction-ally controlled earth shocks, multiple explosions in phase, amplification and recycling of low frequency brain waves.

In the United States, work is being done by ARPA and each of the military sex-vices. Most of the Air Force’s basic research in death ray weaponry is under the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, which monitors work at universities, here and in Europe. The Office of Aerospace Research, AFOSR’s new parent organization, also has other work in progress at the Aeronautical Research Laboratories and the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories.

The bulk of the Navy’s work, directed by the Office of Naval Research, centers in the Naval Research Laboratory and the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, both in the Washington, D.C. area.

Lt. Gen. Arthur Trudeau is responsible for coordinating the Army’s research on advanced weapons. Because of its experience and capability in electromagnetic areas, the Signal Corps has made major contributions far beyond communications. The Ordnance Corps has been active on several frontiers of ray weaponry, including light beam weapons.

The Army Chemical Corps has carefully avoided the field, apparently because the Corps already faces public relations problems arising from misunderstanding of its chemical-biological warfare and defense work. Scientists at the Ft. Detrick, Md., Biological Warfare Center, however, have secretly been working in the new science of bionics; they’re trying to use animal sensory organs, wired to automatic alarm systems, as detectors for chemical warfare toxic agents. Research in this science may lead to advances in futuristic weapons that play on neurological reactions.

In Russia, most death ray research is channeled through the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Considerable work on high-powered electromagnetic radiation and ball lightning has been done at the Krzhizhanovsky Power Institute. Reports indicate other work is being done at Moscow University, Leningrad University, and Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. The Soviet Institute of Energetics and Leningrad Polytechnic have controlled ball lightning, and one scientist has described how it would be used as a weapon.

In a suite of offices on the third floor of the Pentagon, our Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) is in its third year of studying and developing Buck Rogerish weapons. It is for the battleground of space—against missile, reconnaissance satellites, and orbiting weapons—that death rays are coming most rapidly. The sci- entists on the third floor have sent progress reports on several futuristic weapons systems to the floor below, to one of the most hush-hush suites of offices in the Pentagon. On each door is a small blue and white card lettered simply—W S E G. This is the Weapons System Evaluation Group, whose evaluations of certain advanced systems by-pass the usual red tape and go directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Exactly what those reports have said is highly classified, but the results are well known.

It Is No Secret that ARPA’s Project Defender gets over $100 million a year to continue its work on solving the missile defense problem by developing systems not related to the Nike-Zeus anti-missile missile. Defender primarily studies conditions of missile flights that make them vulnerable to destruction by advanced weapons.

ARPA sponsors work in every area of possible kill systems. Super-hot light beam, ion beam, and intense-microwave death ray systems already are being pushed close to the speed limit of scientific progress. No reasonable area is being overlooked.

On the contrary, ARPA is exploring even the unreasonable areas. The agency is guiding U.S. scientists into the so-called “impossible” areas by means of project GLIPAR— Guideline Identification Program for Antimissile Research—an intensive effort to spot unorthodox approaches to missile and military satellite defense.

GLIPAR touches even such “impossible” areas as anti-gravity devices and anti-matter weapons. ARPA does not expect to convert the impossible or the improbable into reality; the agency simply uses such areas as levers to pry scientists away from traditional thinking.

Probably as Active as ARPA in ray weaponry is the Air Force. The first reliable public hint of the Air Force death ray work was dropped on April 16, 1959, by Lt. Gen. Roscoe C. Wilson, Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Development, giving testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee: Chairman George H. Mahon—”Gen. Wilson, in your statement you referred to research into so-called death rays. In the ARPA presentation we also heard about death ray research. Is your program a part of the ARPA program? If not, how are the programs coordinated?”

Gen. Wilson—”The Air Force death ray program involves research into the possible use of radiation energy as the lethal technique in an Air Force weapon”. This program is not an ARPA program. This Air Force program was fully coordinated with the ARPA by a formal presentation. Further, the Air Force and ARPA programs have been jointly presented to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Research and Engineering, to ascertain whether funding through DOD emergency funds should be granted these programs in fiscal year 1959.”

The reference to possible use of fiscal year 1959 Department of Defense emergency funds suggests that the DOD either had suddenly discovered a need for death rays, or that somebody had accomplished a breakthrough that would be worth following up immediately. The ARPA testimony referred to was classified. Many times since then, there have been public references to closed-door sessions on death rays.

A Sensitive Subject. The Air Force is very sensitive about its death ray work. When I presented a list of 11 immediately possible death ray weapons for comment, one officer demanded to know where the list originated: “Who released this? Don’t you know this stuff is classified?” Actually, that early list was prepared from a careful reading of unclassified material and talks with physicists.

Another Air Force officer refused to believe that such a list could be compiled from unclassified sources—and added, “Besides, anybody who even asks questions in these areas ought to be investigated.”

The Air Force’s touchiness stems in part from reasons other than military security. Some officers writing or speaking unofficially often speculate wildly. The public often fails to divorce their words from Air Force policy (even though this divorce is clearly stated by the officer) or fails to recognize and appreciate stimulating and imaginative speculation. This leaves the public wrongly charging the Air Force with wasting money on some very weird programs (Fig. 3).

An example is an unofficial article written several years ago. The author discussed the possibility of orbiting sand storms in every probable approach path of Russian ICBM’s. There are at least a dozen reasons why this would not work. The suggestion was offered only as one attempt to stimulate unconventional thinking. But the public grabbed the gist, tied it to the Air Force, and clamored for an end to “such nonsense.”

Little wonder, then, that the Air Force is reluctant to discuss one sand weapon that will work. This is a sand sprayer under study for use on our satellites, such as SAINT, that will intercept and inspect Russian satellites. If the sophisticated sensing instruments on SAINT—Satellite Inspection Technique—decide a Russian satellite is spying or carrying a weapon, SAINT will pepper its lens with a barrage of sand-like grains, or push it out of its potentially dangerous orbit.

The Space Age brought urgent importance to science fiction dream weapons and made feasible many death ray weapons that were impossible of accomplishment on Earth.

Out in space, there is no limit to the size of particles that you can shoot. In a vacuum, there is no difference between a fair-sized projectile made of lead and shaped like a bullet and a much smaller projectile made of silicon dioxide and shaped like a sand grain. Then, why not use projectiles even smaller— say, atoms? Strip an atom of one or more electrons and it becomes a projectile with a charge, an ion.

Ions have size and weight and they move at high speeds. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Air Force, and many private firms are working on rocket engines that will exhaust ions instead of hot chemical gases (Fig. 2).

Weapons designers can make a beam of ions travel many miles at very high speeds, make it as dense or “strong” as needed, and focus it accurately. Says one physicist: “I see absolutely no difference between an ion rocket and a death ray weapon.”

Delivering the Light. Many things will kill people. The problem is delivery. X-rays can kill, but you would almost have to set the X-ray unit on the proposed victim. Even ion projectors and high density electron guns are useless within the atmosphere.

There is one killing ray, however, that transmits through the atmosphere nearly as well as through space—visible light.

Modern solar furnaces use mirrors 3 to 6 ft. in diameter to focus the Sun on metals to be melted. But the metal must be at the mirror’s focal point, usually just 2 or 3 ft. away. A mirror large enough to focus a hot image of the Sun on enemy tanks at usual battle distances would have to be a quarter to a half-mile in diameter.

A way was needed to amplify light and make it “coherent” so its rays could be concentrated in a narrow beam and aimed long distances. Last year Hughes Aircraft Co. announced the development of an optical maser —a light amplifier whose output was a coherent beam. Hughes called it a laser—for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (see page 94, Nov. ’60 S&M).

Already lasers are at the heart of several types of death rays being developed. One laboratory near the Pentagon claims successful development of a device that will project an intensely hot beam that can burn through steel plate 10 miles away. Bell Telephone Laboratories publicly demonstrated transmission of a thin, intense beam over 23 miles.

Many advantages of a light beam weapon are obvious. The three most important:

1. With light’s high speed there is no need for complex computers to determine how long a lead is needed to take on a fast-moving target; just aim directly at it.

2. A soldier, tank, or spacecraft does not need to carry projectiles.

3. There is an unlimited supply of light.

“Brute Force.” If, in science fiction, there is one weapon that can be called the standard death ray, it is the focused, high-powered electromagnetic beam, the “high-frequency radiation gun.” This is close kin to today’s radar. Indeed, some of our bigger radar antennas require wire shielding to prevent “frying” of nearby persons.

About three years ago, the Air Force looked into such “brute force” weapons possibilities but decided that units would have to be too large and weapons would have to carry the Grand Coulee dam for power.

Does this mean brute force systems have been ruled out forever? Hardly, but the electromagnetic death rays now under study are not really “brute force” weapons, although they still involve high-powered electromagnetic beams.

About the time that the Air Force was washing its hands of monster radiation weapons, Westinghouse Electric Corp. announced its now-famous molecular electronics—moletronics—a technique that literally grows an entire circuit as a tiny crystal.

Thanks to moletronics, the number of parts in a device can be greatly decreased. Needed power inputs have dropped from thousands of watts to just fractions of a watt. Science fiction’s favorite weapons are back in the running, and the Air Force is pursuing them.

The Most Spectacular death ray to watch in action is controlled ball lightning. It is sometimes seen in nature—lightning balls a few inches to over 2 ft. in diameter rolling along power lines after a storm, dancing for several seconds or minutes on fences.

When an electric current passes through a gas, or a mixture of gases such as air, the gas ionizes, becomes a plasma. In nature, just as in laboratories, a portion of the plasma can be “pinched off,” set free. In labs, the result is a plasma ring. In nature, ball lightning.

About 30 years ago, Russian and German physicists learned that high-frequency electromagnetic energy, such as a radar transmitter’s output, can be focused at a distance from the antenna if the antenna diameter is greater than the wavelength.

Prof. Georgi Il’ich Babat at the Soviet Academy of Science’s G. M. Krzhizhanovski Power Institute pointed out in 1959 that an antenna 18-1/2 ft. in diameter, propagating a 1 -cm wave, would produce a lightning ball at a point half a mile from the ground.

Prof. Babat then suggested defending cities with arrays of two huge, movable, radar-like antennas whose focal points would meet wherever needed to vaporize an incoming plane or missile.

Ball lightning normally has a surface temperature of nearly 9000°F. Its discharge produces pressures up to 100,000 psi. This could be a serious threat and Congressmen asked the Air Force to look into it. The Air Force replied that Prof. Babat’s proposals ‘were made in a popular magazine, not in a technical journal, and weren’t worth pursuing.

Laughing It Off? This reply left the impression that the Air Force was not aware of 30 years’ work—reported in the most respected scientific journals—by Prof. Babat. It gave the impression of discounting the huge, well-staffed and equipped ball lightning laboratories just built in Russia. The Air Force seemingly laughed off the radar pro- duction of ball lightning at the Ernst Mach Institute in Freiburg, West Germany.

At that time, the Air Force even appeared to be without knowledge of the large amount of ball lightning research going on in the United States—at Armour Research Foundation, Chicago, and especially the concentrated efforts at the Bendix Research Laboratories, Southfield, Mich. Here, American scientists were routinely producing free space electrodeless discharges.

Maybe the Air Force knew more than it cared to admit. Or perhaps something later changed its attitude. In any event, this contract award appeared last spring: Raytheon Co., Wayland, Mass.; AF 08(635)-1958; $89,000; for High Energy Spherical Plasmoids.

The Air Force told me it could not discuss this contract, nor could it confirm or deny any magazine article describing it as a ball lightning or death ray contract.

Just how close a ball lightning death ray weapon is to operational reality, nobody can say. Informed guesses are that it is in an advanced stage of research or, at best, in an early hardware development stage.

“Bug Him to Death.” Further off are some of the most imaginative futuristic weapons. But they are very definitely under development. Included are small explosions detonated in cones which greatly magnify their force and aim their waves in the desired direction (Fig. 6). Sound waves as killers were studied by the Army, but dropped because they lose their effectiveness as they travel through air. New developments in ultrasonics, though, have brought Army attention back again to sound waves.

The most imaginative concept calls for a sensitive, selective receiver to pick up a soldier’s low-frequency brain waves, amplify them many times, and feed them back to the brain. The waves would drive him crazy instantly—”bug him to death,” says a physicist.

That may sound Buck Rogers-like, but so did this item when it appeared in the 1957 edition of “Inventions Wanted by the Armed Forces,” compiled by the National Inventors Council, an official body organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce: “450. DESTRUCTIVE RAY. — Scope — Equipment of usable size capable of producing destructive or death rays effective at 500 yards without excessive power input . . . Status—Investigations to date indicate that tremendous amounts of power would be required using present techniques and that a completely new approach is indicated.”

Did any inventor come through? When problems have been solved, the National Inventors Council cancels them. The next regular issue of “Inventions Wanted,” 1959, contained a short list of problems cancelled from the 1957 edition. In the list: No. 450.

HOW MUCH IS ∛2589¹⁶
The Army’s ENIAC can give you the answer in a fraction off a second!

Think that’s a stumper? You should see some of the ENIAC’s problems! Brain twisters that if put to paper would run off this page and feet beyond… addition, subtraction, multiplication, division — square root, cube root, any root. Solved by an incredibly complex system of circuits operating 18,000 electronic tubes and tipping the scales at 30 tons!

The ENIAC is symbolic of many amazing Army devices with a brilliant future for you! The new Regular Army needs men with aptitude for scientific work, and as one of the first trained in the post-war era, you stand to get in on the ground floor of important jobs

YOUR REGULAR ARMY SERVES THE NATION AND MANKIND IN WAR AND PEACE
which have never before existed. You’ll find that an Army career pays off.

The most attractive fields are filling quickly. Get into the swim while the getting’s good! 1½, 2 and 3 year enlistments are open in the Regular Army to ambitious young men 18 to 34 (17 with parents’ consent) who are otherwise qualified. If you enlist for 3 years, you may choose your own branch of the service, of those still open. Get full details at your nearest Army Recruiting Station.
A GOOD JOB FOR YOU

CHOOSE THIS FINE PROFESSION NOW!

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Climate Control Is Coming

If Spain could have subdued the devastating storm that swept its Armada from the English Channel in July 1588. would all the Americas be speaking Spanish today?

If Napoleon’s proud legions could have neutralized Russia’s secret ally, “General Snow” how would the map of Europe look now?

If the Nazis could have ordered gales to batter Gen. Eisenhower’s vast invasion force off Normandy on June 6, 1944, what would historians now be writing about World War II?

Armchair strategists have long de- bated the tantalizing “ifs” introduced into history by the vagaries of weather. In military operations, weather is usually a potent foe or a mighty ally.

Up to now, man—at war and in peace—has remained at the mercy of nature. But there is mounting evidence that this will change. U.S., Russian, and other meteorologists are engaged in a critical race to impose their wills on the winds to create weather—even climate—to their liking. Or, conversely, to harass an enemy with storms or droughts.

Indeed, the question is no longer: “Can man modify the weather and control the climate?” but “Which nation will do it first, the United States or the Soviet Union?”

One of those working to tame the elements for the West is Capt. Howard T. Orville, U.S.N, (ret.), who for four years has headed President Eisenhowers Advisory Committee on Weather Control. In submitting his committee’s final report Orville said: “If an unfriendly nation gets into a position to control the large-scale weather patterns before we can, the results could even be more disastrous than nuclear warfare.”

One of Orville’s consultants, Dr. Bernard Vonnegut, a pioneer weather-control researcher, has compiled a separate report which lists some of the astonishing possibilities for weather control now being explored both in America and Russia. His study, soon to be made public, ticks off uses of weather as a weapon and in long-range economic rivalry.

Cloud-seeding techniques might be used to open large holes in cloud formations to increase visibility for air raiders, Vonnegut states. The same principles might also be employed to increase cloud cover over enemy territory — perhaps eventually to hang a long-lasting curtain over a given area, blotting out all sunlight.

Doctor Edward Teller, the hydrogen-bomb scientist, recently described the potentialities of such a fair-weather monopoly, “Please imagine,” he told the Senate Preparedness subcommittee, “a world . . . where (the Soviets) can change the rainfall in our country in an adverse manner. They will say, ‘we are sorry if we hurt you. We are merely trying to do what we need to do in order to let our people live.’ ”

To this warning Prof. Henry G. Houghton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorologist, added: “I shudder to think of the consequences of a prior Russian discovery of a feasible method of weather control … an unfavorable modification of our climate in the guise of a peaceful effort to improve Russia’s climate could seriously weaken our economy and our ability to resist.”

The meteorologists’ growing understanding of how and where weather is born is allowing man to intervene more and more with the elements. Earth’s weather is brewed in the comparatively thin (8 miles deep) layer of the lower atmosphere by an exquisite balance of cosmic and terrestrial forces.

Life-giving solar radiation pours down on the earth’s surface; some heats the ground, some is reflected back to heat the air, and some evaporates water in the world’s oceans, lakes, and seas. > Overhead, like a glass roof of a giant greenhouse, the atmosphere imprisons the heat of the day, preventing it from radiating away into space at night. This heat balance, together with the rotation of the earth, propels the mighty ocean currents and the great rivers of air which determine what kind of a day it is today, and how it might change tomorrow.

Man is experimenting with this basic knowledge in new, ingenious ways. For example, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union are trying to put the free energy from the sun to work for them. One plan to reclaim frozen areas involves sprinkling sunlight-absorbing soot over snow-covered lands. They hope the resulting thaw will eventually permit productive agricultural use of such plateaus.

In a world where water is becoming the most precious mineral, control of the moisture balance between air, land, and sea becomes more and more important. The U.S. Geological Survey’s experimental laboratory in Denver, Colo., is using a harmless, tasteless chemical film (hexadecanol, a substance also found in ladies’ lipstick) that actually can seal in bodies of water to reduce evaporation.

If it could be done on a large scale, this would deprive adjacent land areas of rain. Other chemicals might be used for the opposite effect: By speeding evaporation, rainfall could be increased.

There has been much speculation about using hydrogen bombs to break up hurricanes. But the weather experts now think they have better ways to fight the fury of the winds. Sometime during the hurricane season this coming summer, the U. S. Weather Bureau may attempt to divert a hurricane away from the southeastern U. S. coast by using the heat updraft from massive patches of burning fuel oil poured on the sea at crucial points.

As for H-bombs, they may someday prove valuable in trimming mountaintops to redirect wind patterns. Atomic Energy Commission officials have hinted at such mammoth landscaping tasks for the radiation-free bombs it is trying to perfect. One early beneficiary of such a project might be smog-ridden Los Angeles;- if science could trim the surrounding mountains, a new wind pattern would sweep the smog away.

Some of today’s most spectacular weather-taming plans involve the Arctic and Antarctic iceboxes, principal breeding areas of the worlds cold fronts. Changes in the size and shape of the polar icecaps would have profound effects on the rest of the world. In the ultimate remodeling—say, the thawing of the north polar region—ocean levels would rise an estimated 40-100 feet, inundating New York, London, Le Havre, and other near sea-level ports.

Two methods to alter the polar packs have been discussed by would-be weather controllers: First, using scores of nuclear bombs to thaw some of the deep-ice areas in the Antarctic and, second, redirecting warm ocean currents—by dams, channels, or jetties—to reduce the Arctic’s ice fields.

The Russians have long been interested in the Arctic for strategic reasons and because so much of their territory borders the Arctic Circle. Dr. Harry Wexler, chief of research for the LI. S. Weather Bureau and a frequent polar visitor, gives this assessment of the Soviet efforts there to date: “They have been conducting big arctic expeditions since 1937. Literally they have covered the whole arctic basin within 100 miles of the North American continent. They make our own efforts look puny by comparison. They have clone excellent work in climatology, and in basic cloud physics, and have much greater facilities for studying weather.”

Aware of this challenge, Capt. Orville’s presidential committee recently urged more vigorous government support of basic meteorological research. Specifically, the committee suggested research in solar effects on weather, global air circulation, dynamics of cloud motion, and origin and movement of large-scale storms.

A confirmed believer in the feasibility of large-scale weather control perhaps in 20 or possibly fewer years, Orville says it “is essential to have some international cooperation in this field, possibly through the U.N.” Pending such agreement, however, he wants the U. S. second to none in weather knowledge.

U. S. Weather Bureau chief Francis W. Reichelderfer is all in favor of more money for such basic research but he also is convinced that a “crash” effort “will not give us the basic knowledge we need for a real weather program.”

Reichelderfer is supported in this warning by many meteorologists. Forecasting, for all the new rocket probes, radar plots, and electronic calculators, is still an imprecise science. Before man intervenes, for example, to increase solar radiation intake by blacking snow and speeding water evaporation, he must be sure what the over-all effects will be.

With imperfect knowledge, it is possible weather changes will boomerang on man, and his massive efforts to harness climate might instead initiate the return of the glaciers and a new Ice Age.

Despite this warning, the race to master weather—to make it a weapon—accelerates in the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

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Bazooka Bomb: Newest Sub-Killer

IN World War II the German commanders of the Panzer divisions were mystified by a new American weapon which effectively was knocking out their tanks. At first they thought it might be a new kind of mortar. Actually they were being introduced to our bazooka and its shaped-charge shell. In the Korean war this same weapon proved to be a potent threat to the Communists’ heavy armor.

The shaped charge was designed in 1887 by Charles Monroe, an American explosives expert, but its military research did not begin until early in the last war.

Its principle—and formerly its secret—is simply its shape. A very powerful explosive, TNT or Pentolite, is placed in a container with a conical, steel liner indenting its forward end. The charge is not allowed to touch its target, but is held at a definite “stand-off” distance. When it explodes, the force is funneled forward, compressing the sides of the conical liner into a solid slug and driving it out with tremendous impact. The result is that a hole is punched in the target. As a bazooka bomb it blasts holes in a similar manner through a tank’s steel sides.

MI artist Frank Tinsley has designed a new use for our shaped charge, and that is as an anti-sub weapon. Small projectiles can be dropped in a pattern from hovering helicopters. Upon striking the skin of the sub, they would punch a number of holes through it causing the commander to surface his ship where it could be attacked easily by naval planes and guns. •

The article that forecast “bat wings” was posted here

“Bat-Men” Troops Join California State Guard

Major MALCOM WHEELER – NICHOLSON, military expert, forecast the use of circus “bat-wings” for parachute troops, in the August issue of Mechanix Illustrated. Now, as a preliminary test, the California State Guard has organized just such a unit of “bat-man” paratroopers, under the leadership of Mickey Morgan, famed jumper (left). Bat-wings, it is claimed, makes paratroops more maneuverable-and swifter.

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PARATROOPS by the PACKAGE

Like rations or ammo, infantry squads in metal containers can be dropped behind enemy lines.

By Frank Tinsley

SURPRISE packages have become America’s newest war weapon!

Engineers in the Air Materiel Command are testing a 6,000-pound capacity container which can be used to drop an entire infantry squad, completely equipped, from an airplane.

A universal-type container, along with another cargo container, recently designed by the laboratory, will be used in the newer cargo airplanes such as the Fairchild C-119. The second container has been developed for use with the overhead mon- orail of the C-119. Still in an early research and development stage, the universal container holds great promise. Besides its use as a transporter of infantrymen and equipment, engineers foresee its utilization as a complete weather station, rescue station and survival and rescue hut for Arctic use. Military Air Transport Service already is considering it as a weather station, to be dropped with men and equipment into inaccessible areas.

The container consists of a framework of tubular sections mounted atop a metal landing skid provided with plywood flooring. Four movable aluminum triangular compartments are attached to the framework. They can be arranged as a square box to carry cargo or can be rearranged to carry troops. The framework will not obstruct the exit of troops if they are forced to bail out during an emergency. It is quickly removable for easy loading and unloading.

Two types of parachutes may be used for the descent—a single 100-foot chute for loads up to 3,500 pounds and two 100-foot chutes for loads up to 6,000 pounds. The parachute assembly is placed atop the container. Then, a small pilot chute pulls out the 16-foot extraction chute, which pulls the container out of the airplane.

Landing or impact deceleration is provided by four large air bags constructed much in the shape of barrels. They are fastened underneath the skid and remain completely deflated until the container is dropped from the aircraft. One-way openings in the bags permit air to rush in during descent, inflating the bags so they form a cushion to absorb most of the landing impact.

The container, which is designed to withstand a landing shock of 6 G’s, measures 96 inches square and 70. inches high. Four of the 500-pound units will fit into the C-119.

Ground operation is possible with the use of four wheels, one on each corner of the container. They are removed when the device is loaded into the aircraft and may be carried along for use after landing.

The other type of container, designed for use with the C-119 overhead monorail, has a 500-pound capacity. It can drop such equipment as small arms, ammunition, fuel and food. To land this container, an expendable 24-foot muslin parachute is used. Tests indicate a 500-pound load can be dropped safely at an aircraft speed of 175 mph. A 400-pound load can be dropped at 225 mph. Overall dimensions of the container, fully packed, are 20 by 30 by 60 inches.

Air Materiel Command engineers have not yet jumped in the revolutionary containers although indications are that the first descents will be made soon. When they do take place, it will be the first time U. S. Air Force personnel has ever descended in just an enclosure.

If the time comes when these weapons must be used, our enemies will discover that while good things come in little packages, knockout blows come in slightly bigger ones. •

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Threat To America… THE RED FLEET!

By Arthur Kranish

While we raise massive defenses against the Red air menace, the Russians are building an atomic navy designed and trained for global domination.

HUGE atomic submarines for round-the-world espionage or attack missions. . . Fantastic new missiles ready to flatten almost any city in the U.S. from under-sea hiding. . . . Hundreds of new, missile-carrying cruisers and destroyers. . .

This is the new Russian Navy, a fleet that may soon be powerful enough to isolate and destroy this nation in a single sneak attack.

A Pentagon study of this seaborne threat shows that at any moment a handful of sleek Red submarines and missile-launching ships, disguised as merchantmen and spotted strategically off the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts, could kill an estimated 65 million Americans, destroy our industrial might and cripple our power to retaliate.

Is the Red Navy Russia’s prime secret weapon? That’s what our top defense planners are wondering today. Have the men in the Kremlin, they ask, bluffed us into a massive buildup against possible air attack, while quietly embarking on a gigantic campaign of naval expansion?

With the suddenness of a nightmare Russia’s mysterious naval force has grown in size and striking power. Since World War II the Soviets have quietly built more modern cruisers and destroyers than the rest of the world combined. Her huge sub fleet prowls the globe, her immense atomic icebreaker threatens to blaze new attack routes in the Arctic, her vast array of surface ships stands ready to sever the lifelines binding the free nations together.

It was only a few years ago that the Russian Navy was considered a second-class flotilla among the world’s great sea-going powers. Her leaders were poorly trained, her equipment antiquated, her reputation sullied by disgrace in combat and by Moscow politics.

What happened? What caused the sudden, spectacular growth that now threatens us all?

Someone in the Kremlin, our experts believe, finally took a good hard look at the map. He saw that two-thirds of the Earth is water. He saw the United States pouring millions into air defense while ignoring more ‘than 6,000 miles of vulnerable coastline. He saw the day when long-range missiles launched at sea could bring virtually all of the U.S. into easy range. He gave the orders.

Suddenly, Communist shipyards began to hum. There was no time for research and engineering. Instead, advanced designs from the drawing boards of a vanquished German Navy were speedily adapted to Russian use. Ideas, and even components, from Britain and the United States were pressed into service.

Soon Allied intelligence officers began receiving reports from behind the Iron Curtain that showed Russia was out- building the U.S in submarines by six to one, in destroyers by nine to one, in cruisers by 14 to one.

This has been warning enough that an important revolution in strategy may be in the making. But it hasn’t helped our own Navy speed its modernizing plans.

Witness this grim estimate by Vice Adm. T. S. Combs, Deputy Chief of Staff: “Our ships are aging faster than they are being replaced. We are now at the point where large numbers of our ships are close to their 20th birthday— and unless we intensify our efforts now, by the middle 1960s our forces will be grossly inadequate to meet the challenge of a fully modern Russian Navy on the high seas.”

Each day that margin of safety looks less assuring. Right now the Kremlin controls the largest submarine force in naval history, much of it capable of operating within sight of our coastlines. More than 450 underwater behemoths sport the Red Star, a fleet eight or nine times the size of the Nazi submarine armada at the outbreak of World War II.

Meanwhile, Russian shipyards are known to be capable of turning out as many as 100 new long-range subs each year. Our entire active submarine force is just a bit above that figure.

The spurt in surface fighting ships is also causing deep concern in Allied naval circles. Russia has been launching record numbers of sturdily armed and fast destroyers and cruisers as well as mine-laying craft and “fishing” trawlers which keep close tabs on our naval maneuvers and our shorelines—just as the Japanese Navy did in the years preceding World War II.

But there was something puzzling in all this.

Why, our intelligence officers asked, were the Reds pouring huge amounts of critically short steel, electronics and skilled manpower into a fleet that was essentially of World War II design? Why weren’t they switching their attention to the nuclear-powered, missile-launching navies of the future?

As if to answer these questions, Russian shipyards last year suddenly became strangely quiet. Few new fighting ships took shape. Submarine output ground to a virtual halt.

Why? By now bits and pieces of information have lead to this informed analysis: The Russians are turning their attention to radically new types of craft—posing an even greater challenge to our defense forces.

It’s more than a guess that the Communists will soon announce construction of mammoth “underwater sputniks”— nuclear-powered submarines which can travel for months without refueling— carrying 1,500-mile missiles with an H-bomb punch.

Meanwhile, they’ve been perfecting a German plan to permit any of their fleet of existing submarines to fire long-range ballistic missiles—something this nation hopes to be able to accomplish with its complex Polaris system within the next few years.

The Nazi-Russian system is an ingenious short-cut. Missiles and a special launching canister are towed behind submarines in water-tight containers. When the subs are within range of their targets the rocket to be fired is placed, by remote control, in the launching device. A predetermined amount of water fills the canister, which then turns up into firing position. At a signal from the submarine the rocket is thrown clear with a blast of compressed air, its own engine and instruments carrying it to the target.

The Reds are also believed to be converting their newest surface ships to mobile missile launching platforms. And here, too, they may be ahead of the game.

Our experts say there is real reason to fear that the Russians have been able to develop a simple, powerful fleet missile. While no details are available, it is believed that the weapon could be used for long-range attacks against ships or cities, for destroying enemy submarines or for defense against air attack. Our researchers— hoping eventually to replace our complex family of single purpose rockets—haven’t yet been able to match this.

With such a seaborne arsenal, the Reds could wreck unimaginable destruction in a surprise attack. Even if Soviet ship or sub-launched missiles were only capable of a 550-mile range, their first nuclear blow might well destroy 43 of our nation’s 50 largest cities, 85 per cent of American industry. At the same time, other Red Navy missile units could go after the retaliatory power of the Strategic Air Command, striking many of its bases from predetermined offshore hiding places.

Meanwhile, the global Soviet fleet could well have the size and power to defend the Russian coastline against attack and to sever Allied sea lanes—thereby isolating U.S. and Allied forces in Europe and Asia, where they would be clay pigeons for the Red Army and Air Force.

Each day now, Russian Navy leaders grow more bold in their thinking. They warn of “quite different, more modern weapons.” They boast of Soviet Warships having “the greatest firing power in the world.” They hint at, but keep secret, Red Navy progress in atomic power, long-range rockets, nuclear weapons.

Their 800,000 men and nearly 3,000 ships, their sudden rise as a naval power are already causing restless nights in the capitals of the free world. What will happen tomorrow when our own aging fleet is surpassed by modern Soviet naval might?

Our own navy has the will and the skill to make sure that that day never comes. But the premiums on that kind of insurance come high. It means more men, more money, more missiles, more ships, more planes. Will the price be paid in dollars today—or in lives tomorrow?

New Christmas Toys Declare All-Out War

A GENERATION of mothers and fathers, most of whom were determined a few years ago that they “wouldn’t raise their boys to be soldiers,” find themselves confronted this year with a selection of Christmas toys almost exclusively of a war-like nature. The toy-makers explain that the children demand them—and 5-year-old Billy Navard and Craig Smith, shown on this page, seem to be enjoying their martial playthings immensely. Above, Craig rides a pedal fighter plane and scans the skies for enemy craft. At left, Billy fires a coastal defense gun which shoots wooden bullets, while, below, he speeds over rough terrain in a motorized division’s army supply truck.

DIVING SPIDER PLANE To HURL Big BOMB

AVIATION’S newest wartime l threat is rumored to be a plane, tiny enough so that a fleet of them will fit into a dirigible, which, when released, will guide huge, two-ton bombs to within a few hundred feet of their objective.

Like giant spiders clutching bottle flies, they will zoom into power dives, each carrying tons of destruction.

Fantastic? Not if recent experiments are carried to their logical ends. The use of the power dive as a means of attack is not new.

When attached to a carrier, the bomb becomes an integral part. It is released only when a direct hit is a certainty. After releasing the bomb, the plane can return to the carrier or act as a interceptor fighter.

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Graphic Section

All the characteristics of a mammoth ocean liner are reproduced in the “Columbus,” the miniature ship shown above. It is 25 feet long and was constructed by a German engineer at a cost of #4000. Top photo shows the model coming into dock under its own power after a practice spin; below it appears a close-up of the ship. It is driven by an electric motor.

Neil Hamilton, movie actor, demonstrates a revolving camera for taking “dizzy” shots in which rooms and people tumble all over the screen.

Novel Automobile Is Driven By a Single Wheel at Rear.

Half automobile and half motorcycle, the novel vehicle shown above was built by an Englishman to take his bride on a honeymoon trip. The car is driven by a motorcycle engine and rear wheel.

British machine gunner with gas mask and latest type rapid fire gun.

The above model of the first commercial electric generating station, designed by Thomas A. Edison in 3 882, was made for Henry Ford’s museum at Dearborn.

Tandem Motors, Long Floats, Mark Unique Air Racer.

This shows a Savoia Marchetti twin-motored seaplane with its pilot, Dal Molin, standing alongside. This is Italy’s fastest airplane, capable of a speed of 200 m.p.h. Note position of pilot’s cockpit between the two motors.

Static lift of dirigible gases combined with dynamic lift of airplane wings is expected to make the novel aircraft shown above the air leviathan of the future. Its inventor, John Hodgdon of Long Beach, Cal., claims that the presence of wings will prevent the rolling and pitching common to blimps and will make it possible for his ship to land without the aid of a ground crew.

One of the largest guns in Uncle Sam’s army was inspected by West Point cadets of the graduating class who visited the Aberdeen proving grounds near Washington. The Big Bertha shown in the above photo is a 14-inch mounted railway gun which fires a projectile weighing 2000 pounds a distance of 32 miles, and can pierce 14-inch armor plate.

Uncle Sam Manufactures 2,000,000 Mail Bags Each Year.

This special machine cuts, prints, folds and stacks the mail sacks in one operation.

The machine shown above rivets the grommets, or metal eyelets, into the mail sacks. More than 20,000,000 grommets are manufactured and placed in the sacks every year. Although the bags are made out of the most durable canvas, the government carries such a huge volume of mail every year that the factory must run without a stop to keep the postoffice supplied with sacks. Practically all of the manufacturing machinery is specially designed for its purpose. Like the government printing department, the mail bag factory saves Uncle Sam thousands of dollars every month through efficient large-scale production.

Largest American – Built Airplane Carries 32 Passengers.

Designed to carry 32 passengers, the new Fokker F-32, shown above, is the largest airplane ever built in America and the largest land plane in the world. The photo shows 47 persons standing in line under the giant’s wings and gives a good idea of its tremendous size. The huge ship successfully passed its trial flights before a committee of aeronautical experts. It is powered with four radial motors mounted in tandem under the wing. This type of power plant mounting, it is predicted, will soon displace the tri-motored type in which one engine is mounted on the nose of the fuselage where its efficiency is somewhat impaired.

Built-in furniture as an integral part of the decorative scheme will distinguish the apartment of tomorrow. Above is a built-in radio and phonograph with disappearing doors.

This faithful replica of a Viking ship stopped off in London on its way around the world.

Speeding Motorboat Endangers Crowd in Thrilling Upset.

Spectators sought cover in a hurry when the motorboat Invicta II leapt the bank in a recent race at Rickmansworth, England. The remarkable action photo above shows the motorboat just as it bounced over the bank. Note the woman spectator underneath the boat. Fortunately no one was hurt —not even the pilot, who was flung out of his craft in making a sharp turn.

Old motor oil may become a source of new if the experiments of W. H. Herschel of the U. S. Bureau of Standards, shown above, perfects the apparatus on which he is working. It is claimed that oil refined by his process costs only two-thirds as much as new oil, and that it has a greater resistance to heat owing to the fact that unstable elements have already broken down.

The plane shown above taking off at a sharp angle by means of automatic interconnected wing slots and flaps is the Hand-ley-Page entry in the Guggenheim contest to determine the safest airplane. It is claimed that the wing slots make it impossible for the plane to stall or fall into a tail spin. The wing slots can be seen in the leading edge of the upper wing.

Seadrome for an Ocean Landing Field Nears Completion.

The ocean seadrome designed by Edward B. Armstrong to provide a safe floating landing field for trans-Atlantic airplanes is shown above nearing completion in a Delaware shop. Only one of the units is shown in the picture. Hollow ballast-filled bases support the platform solidly in the water.

Novel forms of radio loud speakers ate illustrated in this picture by E. L. Rice, Washington inventor who has been experimenting along this line. The tapestry on the wall forms a loud volume speaker; the photo easel contains more speaker cells, as does the pillow at his arm. In his hand he holds a vest pocket speaker, and in the vase is another packet which makes it a talking vase.

Army Tank Built on Auto Chassis Makes 45-Mile Speed.

Built on an ordinary commercial auto chassis, the armored car shown above is the invention of Col. Bruce Palmer of Fort Riley, Kansas. It is a cross between a tank and an automobile. It can maintain a speed of 45 miles an hour and carries a machine gun on a flexible mount. In addition to the regular pneumatic tires there is an auxiliary set of solid rubber on which the car rides in case of punctures by enemy bullets. The circle at the right shows a close-up.

Spraying of insect-killing chemicals from an airplane is the method employed by up-to-date fruit raisers in eliminating plant pests. Photo shows plane with funnel-like device designed for this work.

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Flying Bombs Being Perfected to Deal Death in Next War

THE advantages to be obtained from flying bombs are self-evident and the various nations of the world have been trying to develop these mechanically controlled, death dealing planes for the past many years. Every so often an article appears in a newspaper which indicates that France, England, Italy, or some other country has perfected an airplane which takes off, flies through the air for an appreciable time and lands without human hands touching either the airplane or engine controls. The average person when he reads of these mechanical marvels thinks in terms of transports for carrying pay loads and perhaps the commercial companies will find use for them but behind the screen of secrecy is always the thought that such devices would be of untold value as military weapons.

In general flying bombs are of two types; the radio controlled and the mechanically controlled. The radio controlled bombs can again be divided into two classes; those that ride a radio beam from the point of take-off to the target and those that are guided through the air by a directing plane.

Flying bombs are nothing more or less than small airplanes. The size of the device varies with the load of explosive to be carried and the distance to be covered. In all cases provisions are made for the bomb to go into a dive when it reaches the target. In the bombs which ride a radio beam, the beam is directed toward the target and the planes launched as fast as they can clear the take-off platform. In this way a perfect stream of flying bombs may be directed toward the target with no danger of having any flying personnel caught in the anti-aircraft barrage.

Some inventors favor the mechanically controlled flying bomb on account of the danger of the enemy jamming the air and causing the radio controlled types to go “hay wire.” The mechanically controlled type usually is started and held in the right path by means of a gyro-compass.

It is essential with both of these types that the distance to the target be known very accurately as the bomb must be made to dive on the target a hundred miles or more away from the operators. This dive may be the result of a radio signal or it may be caused by some mechanical device which functions after the bomb has covered a given distance.

Flying bombs moving under control of a directing plane can be made very accurate for the personnel in the plane are able to follow the course of the bomb and actually direct its course. Usually the plane can stay just outside of the anti-aircraft defense zone and send its messengers through with no danger to itself.

With this type there is always the danger of a hostile plane driving the directing plane away and the bombs then veering from their course. Furthermore, the directing plane can only control a limited number at one time. Then, too, while there is but a small possibility, it would be sort of sad if one of the bombs should have its mechanism go to the bad and start chasing the directing plane.

The idea of the flying bomb appeals strongly to the military mind. With such weapons it will be possible to direct a steady stream of planes each carrying 200 pounds or more of explosive against an enemy concentration camp, munition dump or other military establishment. The hostile aircraft can shoot them down if they so desire but the resulting explosions will make other hostile airmen a trifle more cautious. Anti-aircraft batteries can knock them from the skies but scores of others will take the place of those knocked down. Somewhere out of the danger area there will be an airman who will watch these flying messengers of death as they dive to the earth and who will send back data by which the ground force some hundred miles away will send more bombs out with corrected settings to secure hits instead of misses. Such a method of fighting leaves but one course open to the troops at the receiving end, abandon the area under fire with a minimum delay.

Checkerboard Searchlight TRAPS Planes

BRITISH war officials have just announced the development of a new anti-aircraft searchlight of radical design which, instead of throwing the usual cone of light into the sky, projects a gigantic criss-cross pattern which looks something like a checkerboard on the clouds.

This unique feature enables the position of raiding airplanes to be computed in the same way that artillery targets are plotted on squared maps. There are 16 squares in the checkerboard beam, and as soon as a plane crosses any two lines in the pattern, all the data necessary to direct anti-aircraft fire is obtained.

Pilots flying into the checkerboard would be unable to elude the beam, it is claimed, and they would be unaware of its existence until they entered its rays. Details of the invention are not disclosed, beyond the Tact that the searchlight casts 300 parallel shafts of light, each directed by a mirror
along the path it is to occupy in the completed checkerboard pattern.

The completed searchlight is mounted on a truck, and its round body resembles the tank trucks used in carrying milk and other liquids.

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TRAPPING ENEMY SPIES

by THOMAS M. JOHNSON

Author of “Our Secret War” and “Without Censor”

“A SPY simply must communicate with his master,” the foremost American hunter of spies told me. Then he added, fervently; “Thank God!”

For the very act of sending his precious stolen information to the country he serves, places the war time spy in deadly danger. The “spy wireless” by which he sends it, is his strength only if it be safely hidden; once discovered, it is his weakness, betraying him to death at dawn before a firing squad. Through that fatal weakness, American spy hunters recently have detected an astounding number of spies for foreign countries, here among us, stealing our defense secrets.

Late this summer, the famous G-men of the Department of Justice startled a nation that usually thinks spies a good joke, by announcing that prowlers from overseas were so active they must be rounded up. Other government departments are taking precautions unprecedented in peace time. Nevertheless, Navy safes and confidential papers have been tampered with by eavesdroppers seeking information about our new billion dollar defense program, and they have stolen so much valuable information that Admiral W. H. Standley admits the Navy may change its fleet tactics.

It is not sensational but true that today there is more spying the world over, including our unsuspecting country, than in any period of so-called peace in history. In Europe alone spies great and small number hundreds of thousands, and the number arrested has trebled this past year. The world is preparing for war, arming; its powers sizing one another up, trying to steal war plans and inventions such as Yankee ingenuity has produced in such numbers. Foreign agents haunt Washington, seeking patent papers. But there is more.

For selling secrets to Japan, a former American navy petty officer was sentenced recently, to 15 years imprisonment, and a former lieutenant commander awaits trial as this is written. There have been other recent amazing spy cases. In each, has appeared the “spy wireless,” unknown to science, yet sometimes, scientific, whereby the spy smuggles the papers containing vital information purloined from a government office, a battleship, even a locked safe, to the master spy who is not infrequently an official of a madly ambitious foreign power. Actually, “spy wireless” may be a hidden radio, an encoded telegram or a letter in secret ink, a carrier pigeon, a double-bottomed trunk, a book binding, the hollow barrel of a key—anything to conceal a tiny roll of tissue paper with its microscopic writing. In international secret service, the art of safe communication has been refined into a fascinating black art.

Arrested last July was Lieutenant Commander John S. Farnsworth, called “Dodo” at Annapolis, where he was graduated with honors. In naval aviation he went high, but crashed; his family says the accident left him “queer.” Soon afterward, in 1927, he was dishonorably discharged from the navy. Needing money, he was charged with selling out as a spy to the Japanese, who in four years were alleged to have paid him $23,000, and using friendships with navy officers and wives to gather and give the Japanese “inside stuff” heard over bar and bridge table or, sometimes, lifted from desk drawers. Once it is said he boarded a destroyer, pretended to be a commander, and tricked an awed ensign into lending him maneuver data which he hurriedly photostated, then returned. But a new Japanese attache cut his pay. Desperate, Farnsworth is said to have offered his confessions to an American newspaper for $20,000, and a 72-hour start for Europe aboard the Zeppelin Hindenburg. But Farnsworth confessed none of this; only to newspaper men he said that he sold the Japanese two “harmless monographs” for $1,000.

The “thirty pieces of silver” for which Harry T. Thompson betrayed his country, were $700. Yet his stealthy attack weakened the great United States Fleet, riding majestically at anchor in the Pacific, guns pointed toward the rising sun. A former navy yeoman, Thompson donned his old uniform, visited naval vessels, asked questions and brought back papers describing Pacific Fleet training. He camouflaged these as harmless brown-paper packages and delivered them to his master, also a Japanese naval officer. Their correspondence, also camouflaged, was read in court. But a letter can be opened, without leaving a trace, by slipping beneath the envelope flap, a stick with a slot in which the letter is caught and drawn out by gently winding the stick, read, and returned. On July 3 Thompson was convicted. In Los Angeles jail, common felons scorned the traitor spy.

In nearby San Pedro, two weeks later, came a visitor to the U.S.S. Saratoga. Aircraft carrier secrets are closely guarded since a foreign power obtained movies of one of them. When the stranger began asking questions and taking hurried notes, a dozen gobs sprang upon him.

“Why, these notes are in code!” they cried, angrily.

The code-writer went behind bars; final disposition of his case is shrouded in mystery.

So is the whole necromancy of codes and ciphers, the side of secret service that to the average reader, seems most occult of all. He little dreams that in these days of “peace,” just as in war, the hidden struggle goes on between spy and spy-hunter, between code-writer, or cryptographer, and code-reader, or cryptanalyst.

“The spy hunter may tap his suspect’s telephone, watch his mail and telegrams (which is almost universal in many foreign countries) —but that is only a beginning. You must watch everything—even his laundry! How can a dirty shirt hide a secret message? Well, suppose the shirt has 26 pleats, and spots scattered over the pleats—yes, in a pattern spelling words. Ridiculous? It’s been done! And once you know the spy’s laundry is his post office, the laundryman a confederate, then through that laundry you may send falsified reports to the master spy behind the scenes, and perhaps ultimately, unravel a whole spy network . .. thanks to spy wireless.

In Washington, in an inconspicuous wing of an unimpressive building, is a remarkable room. Its double-doors lead to a real “black chamber” with walls covered by blackboards, which in turn are covered by numbers and letters. Those cabalistic symbols are used by the piercing-eyed genuises of this secret cabinet, to break the messages of spies in our midst; messages on which may hinge life and death, safety and danger, peace and war. To read them, the patient cryptanalyst’s greatest aid is his frequency tables, showing which letters and words are most commonly written in English.

The usual order of letters in “American” is: ETAONISHRUDLCFMPWGYBVKXQJZ.

Exhaustive studies have shown, too, that in any message, about 15 per cent of the letters will be E, only 2 per cent K, X, Q, J and Z together. Also the TH, HE and ER are combinations often found, that U is seldom found doubled, and other quaint but practical bits of information. Those are charms of the crytographer’s Black Art. Yet even with their aid, to break a long code message of hundreds, perhaps thousands of words and phrases arranged numerically and alphabetically, is a wearing task of days, weeks, perhaps even months. But, once that message is solved, every other message in the same code will be solved . .. if it is known to be a code message.

But such messages are not labeled “via spy-wireless.” How guess about that dirty shirt; or about the string, with knots spaced to fit a ruler with twenty-six notches, one for each letter; or about the pencil “bought” openly on the street from a “peddler,” its twenty-six bands bearing pin-pricks? Then there is the stencil, with holes at fixed intervals. Place it above the innocent-looking letter, and in the holes appear the key words cleverly interspersed in that letter by a writer with a duplicate of the stencil. And the book-code, in which words are written as strings of numbers; page, line and word of a book, perhaps a dictionary, previously agreed upon by the correspondents. How could any one know which book, of millions? Well, no one need know, to solve the message! William F. Friedman, the leading American cryptographer, has solved book-code messages, without knowing what book had been used! Largely by tables showing the frequency of use of words and letters, he broke up a Hindu plot to start a revolution in India.

And now that the colleges are open again, many night students of a New England institution pass the dimly lighted windows of the chemistry laboratory, “Prof’s working late,” they remark. “Making new stinks.”

There would be bad odors indeed, if some of the Professor’s secret alchemies were made public. So he keeps but one lamp burning. It silhouettes his figure, bending over a drawing-board. On the drawing-board is tacked a sheet of paper, but upon its fair white surface appears no mark. Slowly, across the paper the Professor draws a toothpick, around which is wrapped a spill of cotton, stained brown. It leaves a trail of rich sepia.

Suddenly, startlingly etched upon that brown background appear white letters, words. But, with a chill of horror, the Professor sees them begin to fade. Hastily he copies them, thrilled at their import. Somewhere in New York, is a woman spy, on a dangerous mission. So the Professor reports to Washington, whence Uncle Sam sends him not infrequently, a call for help when he has a secret ink message to solve.

Most such messages can be developed by the iodine treatment, either brush or vapor, which shows up the tiny paper fibres ever so slightly disarranged by the pen in writing. So some spies use a ball-pointed pen—but that is a giveaway when they are caught. To destroy such damning evidence, one spy swallowed his pen and nearly killed himself! Spies usually write secret messages in their invisible ink, between the lines of a harmless letter written in ordinary ink. To prevent being caught possessing invisible ink, spies may soak a black sock with silver preparation, and when they want ink, soak it again in water and write with the solution. Or they may use ferrocyanide of potassium, cobalt, dilute sulphuric acid, copper oxide, acetic acid, solution of chloride of nickel.

If spies use such chemicals, to conceal thought, spy-hunters use other chemicals, to reveal that thought. Secret services have laboratories, compounding new secrets or solving the secrets of others. Mussolini’s secret service, the Ovra, suspects travelers carrying aspirin, “a substance for making secret ink.”

An alert American postal clerk opened an undelivered dead letter. Eyes popping, with trembling fingers he withdrew diagrams and plans of the Panama Canal. Who could be sending them, to whom? Down in the Canal Zone, prison bars clanged behind a Brooklyn youth, a tall young man with dark, intelligent face, a Regular Army corporal, but a Reserve Lieutenant. Stationed near the Canal, he had access to secrets that foreign powers could use to destroy our water-link between Atlantic and Pacific. At a court-martial, the prosecution tried to prove that those secrets were reaching Communists. Col. E.A. Buchanan accused the corporal of corresponding with Reds under false names, and accepting money. He admitted Communist sympathies.

“Twenty years at hard labor!” the court decreed.

President Roosevelt ordered a new trial, and the corporal was acquitted. Over a year ago he left the service, having proved two startling facts; The Army was letting its secrets lie around rather loose, perhaps because its regulations protecting them lacked teeth. Then the Navy too, was jarred by the case of Commander Matsuda, Japanese naval officer caught photographing our cruisers. Both services made anti-spy rules of which the latest, just before the Thompson and Farnsworth cases, forbade discussing or revealing to outsiders, especially foreigners, information about planning or producing of special equipment. Also, whoever gives away or sells “any writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, blueprint, map, model, etc.,” about such a project may get twenty years—in peace time. In war, he may be shot. Farnsworth was charged with violating this regulation.

Since the Navy began shadowing him, a year ago, it has closely guarded confidential papers, and one officer has been disciplined for relaxing vigilance. The Navy has also invoked the aid of civilian Reserve Officers to hunt spies about Pacific naval bases, while the Army covertly watches Hawaii’s large Asiatic population. The last congress passed a law forbidding photographing in 24 strategic areas; military, naval, aviation.

To protect the unequaled products of American “air-brains,” strict guard is kept at fields like that at Dayton, O. Nevertheless, a German was caught recently trying to smuggle aboard an ocean liner drawings of a flexible aircraft machine-gun.

He got off, for our weak laws poorly protect the products of our own inventive brains, against thieving foreign spies. No wonder part of Japan’s $12,000,000 secret service budget is spent to buy our Navy’s secrets; yet Japan morbidly fears spies within her gates, and arrests American tourists for snapshotting scenery. The Japanese are not the only ones. Two French girls were caught recently tempting American officers ashore at Marseilles, to reveal inner workings of the cruiser Pittsburgh. The celebrated Soviet Ogpu recruited here Switz, Jacobson and other Americans for international rings spying upon France and Finland.

These cosmopolitan groups of men and women in Soviet pay included other Americans and Canadians, Frenchmen, Russians, bribed chemists, technicians, code experts in French government laboratories. Most of the 32 were convicted in March, 1935. The Switzes won release by confessing, that the spy-wireless was their room? in the American Student Union in Paris, whereby the gang communicated with one another and with Moscow. Arvid Jacobson of Detroit, Soviet spy in Finland, was released only recently. A Soviet spy ring of a hundred was recently rooted out of Rumania.

The largest international spy case of the summer was the great Trotsky conspiracy to kill Stalin, seize power in Russia, and lead a Red world revolution. It ended bloodily in August with the execution of 16 men including high Soviet officials. The plotters communicated by a code giving page and line in the Arabian Nights.

The Gestapo should have done better if, as was charged, it aided the plotters. Hitler’s secret police looms today as among the world’s most formidable secret services. Its ruthlessness appeared recently in the sensational case of two German noblewomen, the Baroness Von Berg and Frau Von Natzmer who for $100 a month sold stolen German military secrets to a dashing Polish cavalry captain, Yurek Sosnowski. At midnight of February 17, 1935, the beautiful women’s heads were chopped off; for 14 months, Sosnowski was kept in a dark cell, his food lowered through a trapdoor. Released last May, wrecked in health, he thinks only of the face of the woman he loved, the Baroness Von Berg, and of her despairing cry: “Yurek, help me!”

Nazi Germany sends into other countries, especially France, spies to steal their secrets. One of them, La Belle Sophie Drotz, ran a cabaret frequented by soldiers and workmen on France’s new underground frontier fortification. Other German women spies in France the past year have have been Mile. De Versi, a snake dancer who lured Foreign Legionnaires, and Lillian Oswald, whose prey were young naval officers on new war vessels. And Germany claimed an American girl, Isobel Lillian Steele, was a Soviet spy, and held her four months. A movie depicting her adventures appeared recently.

Many women have flickered across the screen of international intrigue these last two years; Marie-Louise who tempted the Highlander Captain Bailie-Stewart to betray British secrets; Frau Littke, Polish dancer who spied for two countries and ensnared Regent Horthy’s bodyguard in Budapest; the mysterious Mile. D. who stole Mussolini’s secret codebook; Cecilia Tokuda, Japanese woman spy and flyer, and many others.

What has been their reward? If successful, usually a pittance; if unsuccessful, prison or a firing-squad, such as ended the career of Mata Hari, the dancer. Their employers usually disown spies. Peace time spying has no public reward. Some war time spies have received decorations, but few. France gave the Legion of Honor to Mme. Georges Herlieg, who ran a wireless behind the German lines; to Marthe Richard and to Marie-Leonie Vanhoutte, whose gallant companion, Louise de Bettignies, received its white cross after her death in a German prison. A monument has been erected to her, also to Lody, the brave German spy shot in the Tower of London.

We have our monument to Nathan Hale in New York, but generally, we do not reward our secret agents publicly. An American I know accomplished daring feats, including going to Berlin in disguise, was recommended for the Distinguished Service Medal, but never got it. Another American spy got a British decoration but not an American. Yet their superiors, intelligence officers, sometimes received the D. S. M. So it goes in that perverse game of secret service.

Our small Military Intelligence budget permits “employing agents” but these and the Navy’s few operatives spy not on foreign powers, but on the spies foreign powers send to our peaceful shores. For they do send them. Europe alone is spending this year some $50,000,000 on secret service. Every power is trying to find some means of communication that is absolutely secret; perhaps infra-red rays, perhaps a really inviolable, practical enciphering machine. Experts say one may be invented any day—and then will begin a new and even more startling era of spying, intrigue, and war.

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ALL DRESSED UP and SOME PLACE to GO!

YOUR Uncle Sam is not only a first class fighting man, but he’s the world’s greatest tailor, too.

In addition, he is a haberdasher and style dictator and decides what the best dressed man will wear. Just now, the fashion is running strongly toward uniforms. Uncle Sam’s activities in procuring garments for some 4,000,000 soldiers produces figures which are easy enough to read, but are so huge that no human mind can envision the separate articles.

Take a single item, like wool. If you discover this winter when you buy a suit or overcoat that it isn’t quite up to former standards, remember that one soldier in his first year of service is issued necessary clothing containing a minimum of 200 pounds of wool.

That produces the staggering figure of 800,000,000 pounds of wool. But a soldier needs 45 more pounds of wool as soon as he goes into combat service. Add 180,000,000 pounds. There go 980,000,000 pounds of wool. Since there is no reason to believe the Army will be limited to 4,000,000 men, the round figure of 1,000,000,000 pounds of wool might be a simple one to keep in mind.

If you can’t imagine 1,000,000,000 pounds of wool, perhaps thinking of it in terms of sheep and their fuzzy coats would help. It takes 26 sheep to produce the first 200 pounds of wool per man. That’s 104,000,000 million shearings. Combat service will require another 20,000,000 shearings. There you have roughly 125,000,000 shearings, much of which will come from the 50,000,- 000 or more sheep which are nibbling grass in the United States to add to the stockpile.

And now cotton. It takes approximately four times as much cotton as it does wool to equip an army.

Not all of these textiles go into uniforms, of course. Some are used in other garments. In fact, a mere 90,000,000 yards of wool will go into uniforms for 4,000,000 men. Cotton goes into hundreds of items. Some 15,000,000 blankets will use both wool and cotton. And then there are 9,000,000 pairs of gloves, 40,000,000 pairs of socks, 10,000,000 undershirts, 10,000,000 drawers, 42,000,000 yards of flannel shirting and 30,000,000 yards of overcoating for the army-to-be. There are also ties, hats, gloves, mattresses, sheets, pillow cases, tape, buttons, thread, medal ribbons, flags, banners, guidons, mosquito nets, nurses’ clothing and a host of special items for cold and warm climates.

Each selectee is furnished with a uniform and equipment, consisting of some 60 items valued at the army wholesale cost of $200.00. Exclusive of specialized equipment for such forces as paratroops, air corps, and ski troops, which cost more, the basic list of clothing includes: one woolen coat, six pairs of trousers (two woolen), one woolen overcoat, eight pairs of shorts (both woolen and cotton), nine undershirts (both woolen and cotton), two caps (one woolen and one cotton khaki), one cotton field jacket with woolen lining, one pair of woolen olive drab gloves, nine pairs of socks (both woolen and cotton), four neckties, three herringbone twill jackets, three pairs canvas leggings, one herringbone twill hat, one khaki waist belt, three pairs of shoes, six white handkerchiefs, and one steel helmet.

Most of these products are made or purchased in one spot, along with numerous others such as band instruments and flag standards, and that spot is the U. S. Army’s main Quartermaster Depot. It’s one of the busiest places in the business world today.

Clothing the Army is not only a supply job. It is a morale service, too. No soldier is going to feel much like fighting in the Arctic wilds with cold feet. No man in the tropics can battle mosquitoes all night and Japs the next day. A soldier is likely to wonder what he is fighting for if his uniform turns out to be shoddy.

The life of an American soldier may depend on the fastness of the drab, brownish yellow color, imparted by khaki dyes. Improperly dyed khaki fades into a yellowish white which makes a uniformed man a conspicuous target for a sharpshooter. Tropical suns, wear and repeated washings demand top quality dyes and in getting them, the Army has had excellent cooperation from chemical corporations. The Du Pont Company risked $43,000,000 in plants and experiments to be used largely for this purpose.

Nothing made by man in such quantities as the supplies turned out in the huge depot can be absolutely perfect, but the staff is on the job night and day in a miniature city of nearly 100 acres which has its own police and fire protection, water and heating systems, street markings and traffic control. This “City of Supplies” maintains its own fleet of trucks and even its own railroad system, operating over three and one-half miles of track, complete down to the roundhouse which shelters four locomotives.

One laboratory building contains one of the best textile laboratories in the world. Here, fabrics and items of uniform are tested to make sure the high standards required in Army specifications are maintained. Such vigilance has often been referred to as “the first line of defense of the soldier’s health and comfort.”

Textiles are tested for tensile strength, water repellency, wind resistance, resistance to wear, color-fastness, shrinkage, chemical composition, wool content, resistance to the passage of moisture as in raincoat fabrics, reaction when laundered or dry cleaned, and construction of the fabrics. In addition, buttons are tested in a special crushing machine.

Slide fasteners are tested on a machine that subjects these fasteners to thousands of slides. A “robot” machine measures the yardage of spools of thread. The diameter of wool fabrics is magnified 500 times to determine the grade of wool. This machine is used in cases where the visual inspection of the depot’s wool grader is doubtful. Samples are set out on the roof of the laboratory to insure their reaction to weather conditions.

Two cold rooms, capable of producing temperature as low as 68 degrees below zero, are used to determine the warmth of certain fabrics and combination of fabrics. Every conceivable type of chemical and analytical test, including the reaction of gold and other elements from button platings, is conducted in the laboratory building, which is called the “House of Magic.” 1 All testing procedures are established in an effort to determine whether or not the fabrics or finished garments meet specifications established by the research and development branch of the depot.

The cloth which the depot procures is inspected before it goes to the contractor, who fabricates the finished garment. The contractor works from government patterns, uses the government’s materials and findings, and returns the finished garment plus the scrap which is reused. 1 The manufacturing division, which has about 4,000 employes, makes all types of outer clothing, including the latest garments designed for parachute troops and for wear in cold climates. However, it makes only a part of the clothing required by the Armed Forces. The remaining items are produced by private contractors.

One of the most interesting subdivisions of the factory is the special measurement section which takes care of men built out of proportion, both large and small. It recently made a uniform for Joe Louis. Another was made for a sergeant having the following measurements: height, 6 feet; weight, 310 pounds; chest, 60 inches, and leg (inseam) 32 inches. It required approximately 6 yards of cloth to make this man a uniform. The average allowance is 2-1/2 yards.

The manufacturing division occupies a vast amount of floor space and is the largest and most modern uniform factory in the United States. The specifications for the Army wardrobe are the result of careful and long experiments to determine the best materials and best construction. The strictness of the government’s examination of all uniform materials, and their insistence on specified high grades of wool, make manufacturers particularly careful in fulfilling Army orders and guaranteeing “perfect deliveries.” Today’s uniforms and equipment are superior in many particulars to the uniforms furnished officers, during the World War. The aim is not to make a dandy out of the men in service, but to furnish them with good and durable uniforms of excellent quality. Says Major General Edmund B. Gregory, the Quartermaster General: “Our job in the Army is to deliver the goods and that means, among other things, making the American soldier the best clothed soldier in the world.” So, if you find it necessary to skimp somewhere along the line in clothing during the next year, the chances are the Quartermaster Corps has grabbed something for the lads in uniform who deserve the best and all of it they can get.

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LIFE ABOARD BATTLEWAGON

By Lt. Com. John T. Tuthill, Jr.

As described in his book “He’s in the Navy Now”

THE alarm sounds for general quarters. Across the steel decks of the mighty new battle wagon the bluejacket races on the double to his gun station in a turret.

He takes his appointed place near the monster weapon and waits, tense and overwrought while the rest of the gun crew tumble into the turret. A sudden hush falls on the scene and he notices that the other sailors are poised as taut as stretched strings. It’s like playing football on the high school team, back in Tennessee. They’re a team waiting for the quarterback to call signals.

The quarterback is the captain, far above, standing cool and proud in his station with a finger near the button which will fire nine 16-inch guns, the main battery, and ten 5-inch guns simultaneously. Proud of his new ship and crew.

The gunnery officer sings out over the telephone: “Report when manned and ready!”

Gears whirl on his gun. Wheels and machines turn and click. Now it’s like being inside the works of a gargantuan clock. From the handling rooms come big 16-inch shells. Then powder bagged in silk. The guns are loaded, primed, laid and ready. Gun muzzles swing. His turret is trained on the beam, he observes.

Over the ship’s battle circuits and loud speaker the word comes: “Stand by … stand by.” In breathless suspense he waits, motionless, alert. He has a moment to realize he is a part of this drama. A small part, but with definite responsibilities, A member of a team.

The captain’s finger presses the button.

A bone-shaking shock rattles the bluejacket’s body. Red flames shoot skyward above the mastheads and streak across the ocean’s surface, disappearing somewhere among the distant waves. Thousands of pounds of smokeless black powder have hurled tons of heavy steel projectiles into space in an instant.

His ears are stuffed with cotton, but still the roar is deafening. The hot breath of the great guns penetrates the turret. Again a hush falls over the group. He winks at the sailor who is grinning his way. It’s something like smacking the ball out of the park—a home run in the ninth with bases loaded—this job of firing one of the fleet’s big guns.

It’s teamwork on Uncle Sam’s team.

Everyone aboard the huge, new battlewagon had been waiting for this drill which was to mark the final test of a series given every new ship to determine the effect of firing on its structure. In this test the entire main battery and half of the secondary battery were fired simultaneously from a single key, not much larger than a doorbell button.

He wonders, as the ship plows ahead in a brisk 25-knot wind with the acrid, ether-like smell of powder still hanging about her, how she had stood it. His own sense of shock had disappeared and his mind has turned – to the ship. Pretty soon word seeps throughout the craft. It gives every man a warm thrill.

This battlewagon is okay.

It isn’t the kind of activity that makes the headlines, this testing of new ships and new crews. This training of new American teams to play the game of war on the widest field of action the world has ever seen. But the life of the nation depends on it. And as every new ship and every new crew passes the test, the day of victory is brought nearer.

Today, the nation can rest assured on this: American warcraft and American crews are passing the teamwork test in the greatest numbers in history.

To produce these teams, life on a battlewagon is conducted by strict rules, though it is pleasant enough if a man conforms willingly. . From the moment the bluejacket climbs the gangway and salutes the colors before stepping to the deck, his duty is to learn his particular job whatever it may be, so that when the time comes to fire the 14- or 16-inch guns of battle, he will function as perfectly as a cog in the great machine. He has certainly spent months, he may have spent years in the Navy preparing for that moment—a moment that might change world history.

The 16-inch guns can discharge tons of shells every thirty seconds or less, and such discharges can sink anything afloat. Therefore, it is imperative that everything be in readiness and that every man know his job when the great moment comes to fire them. Every officer and enlisted man in the far-flung naval organization has exerted his energies toward this end. The men detailed to recruiting, to the ordnance offices, to the shipyards and other vessels of the fleet—to all the vast interlocking network of naval activities in their many ramifications— have applied themselves throughout their careers to the end that at the zero hour our dreadnaughts can get into proper position to discharge their broadsides speedily and accurately before the enemy has a chance to fire first.

Battleships are about 95 percent steel and so compactly arranged that regulations governing the conduct of the men aboard must necessarily be more stringent than they are in an army camp. To prevent our ships from sinking they are divided into many watertight compartments separated by heavy steel doors which can be shut, isolating the compartment, if it is damaged by a torpedo. These doors are marked with big letters on each side. The newcomer quickly learns, if he has not known it before, that the letter “X” on a door means that particular door always must remain shut; that the letter “Y” on another door means it must remain closed after working hours, and that the letter “Z” means that doors so designated must be kept open at all times during battle.

Living space aboard some ships is sometimes limited to the point where the crew may have an insufficient number of bunks. In that event the new bluejacket must sleep in the hammock first issued to him. The place assigned to him for sleeping quarters is known as his billet. On a crowded ship this billet may be a gun turret where he hangs his hammock from hooks in the steel hood covering the gun, rolling and stowing it out of the way when he is not using it.

Since everyone is cramped for space he stows his belongings in his seabag and a small steel box about two feet square. The only thing stowed separately is his heavy waterproof raincoat which is hung on a rack.

Once a week he must remove all his effects from his bag and spread them on the deck in a straight line with the clothing arranged on top for bag inspection. Everything must be folded or rolled and placed in proper position as prescribed by regulations.

Clothes are usually scrubbed with stiff brushes, each man doing his own washing. He hangs his clothing on lines along the deck to dry, observing strict regulations as to how they shall be hung or “triced up.” If he occupies a cot, he must air his mattress periodically. Some of the larger ships have laundries where the bluejacket who feels flush and chooses to indulge in the luxury may have his clothes washed cheaply. Every item must bear his name, clearly marked with a stencil and ink. His blanket must even be marked eight times, in each corner on both sides, so that his name will always show, no matter how he folds it.

All sailors must learn to handle and shoot rifles, and periodically they receive target practice, but primarily their job is to help operate a warship, whose big guns must be kept free of dirt and water. Men detailed to the gunnery department must be experts in caring for and firing the guns. To keep them clean they plug the ends with tampions and protect them with canvas covers known as bloomers.

Anticipating the day when the ship may go into action, all activities aboard are carefully planned, and much time is devoted to drills. Periodically the fleet engages in target practice, training the guns at wooden targets towed to sea by a tug. Dirigibles may hover over the targets to observe the marksmanship.

Again, a man-overboard drill may be scheduled, in which event the ship is stopped and parties attached to the deck force are sent overboard in rowboats to search for the practice dummy, popularly known as Oscar.

Other standard drills are fire, abandon-ship and collision drills, and all bluejackets must proceed to their stations on the double with fire extinguishers, rations and repair equipment.

Drills are usually announced by a gong, with a bugle call following almost immediately over the ship’s loudspeaker system. This can be heard even by men working deep in the bowels of the ship who hustle to their stations on the double quick, in their work clothes known as undress blues.

Along with the drills which are held several times a week and which present the practical aspect, every bluejacket must attend classes. He may spend an hour in the morning on gunnery and another hour in the afternoon in a seamanship class where he becomes acquainted with the problems aboard his individual ship.

Most bluejackets have learned all about bugle calls in training school, so the sound of reveille coming over the amplifier at 5:30 a.m. is nothing new. Then comes the bo’s'n’s mate with his “Up all bunks” or “Rise and shine,” which means business. There is no more sleep. All hands wash and dress before turning to at 6:00 a.m. Five minutes before sunrise the quartermaster’s striker hoists the “prep” on the starboard side of the yardarm and turns off the anchor lights.

The master at arms and the police Petty Officers who arouse the crew are called at 5:10 a.m. by a bluejacket on the anchor watch who also turns out the battle lights. By 5:35 a.m. all hands are stirring except late bunks, men who work in the laundry or have night details. They have an extra hour.

When the men have stowed their hammocks or triced up their bunks, the smoking lamp is lighted in the living and mess compartments—an old tradition.

A bo’s'n’s mate passes the word to “pipe all sweepers” and promptly at 6:00 a.m. all hands turn to. They scrub and wash down all weather decks, shine the airports and various brass appurtenances. With several hundred hands at work, it doesn’t take long, but the job must be thorough.

At 7:30 a.m. the meal pennant, or “bean rag,” is hoisted on the mainmast yardarm, and breakfast is ready.

At 7:50 a.m. the Guard of the Day is called and the word is passed over the loudspeaker system to go aft and make ready for the call to colors. The band plays the National Anthem. At 8:15 a.m. on the deck, the division officers outline the plan of the day and detail working parties.

At 8:30 sick call is piped for those requiring medical attention, while all others clean their quarters. After that come the various drills and classes, which occupy the morning.

When the meal pennant has been hauled down after noon-day chow, a bo’s'n pipes the sweepers to clean the mess, the living compartments and “topside.” At this time bedding may be aired.

Promptly at 1600 by the ship’s clock (4:00 p.m.) all bluejackets not on special duty may knock off work. If the ship is in port, those with liberty cards can make ready to go ashore. The liberty call is sounded over all the crew circuits at 1630. At 5:30 p.m. the meal pennant is hoisted and the crew is piped for supper.

Ten minutes before sunset the Guard of the Day is summoned by the band or by all the duty buglers. At five minutes before sunset the prep is hoisted. After it has been hauled down at sunset, the evening colors are hauled down.

At 1800 the anchor watch, which changes every two hours, is mustered, and frequently the motion-picture screen is rigged, usually on the afterdeck, weather permitting.

Taps is sounded by a bugler on the quarterdeck at 2100—9 o’clock. Tired, but with a fatigue which brings a contented feeling, the bluejacket turns in. He doesn’t realize it, perhaps, but most of his activities of the day are part of the drill, the teamwork which brings perfection and coordination. But it is all teamwork.

That’s life aboard a battlewagon.

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MAGIC-LANTERN CARTOONS TRAIN ARMY MECHANICS

Magic lanterns have joined the Army.

Projectors that are direct descendants of the parlor lanterns of a generation ago are now being used to train rookies in the mechanics of modern motor vehicles.

They are used with what are known as “educational reading slidefilms,” because this has been found to be the speediest and most effective means of training mechanics. And speed is necessary, because by this coming June the Army expects to have 190,000 motor vehicles.

The “textbooks” are 35-mm. films on which are recorded the intricate details of the anatomy of automobiles. The films are projected one frame at a time, and are moved through the projector manually by a knob on the side of the machine. Step by step they present all the theoretical information that an Army mechanic needs, starting with the reason for the existence of various parts, and ending with complete instructions on how they should operate and how to keep them operating that way. If the lighting conditions in the classroom are carefully controlled, there is sufficient illumination for the students to make notes and even copy the sketches and diagrams as they are projected on the screen.

The “Army kit,” which was made by the Jam Handy Organization, producer of industrial motion pictures, comprises 35 separate films, and to make them more than 3,000 drawings and a year’s work were required. This course, for specialized training, is divided into five smaller kits, covering internal-combustion engines, power transmission, factors of mobility, electrical systems, and general service and repair of automobiles.

Forty duplicate kits are now in use. They are in part responsible for the Army’s ability to turn out a trained mechanic in three months or less.

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MIGHTY MIDGETS OF FILMDOM

MODERN total war has the bewildering effect of changing our values, eliminating many of the things which seemed essential in peacetime and giving a terrific boost to the importance of others.

Microfilm is in the latter class.

Strangely, these little films have now attained gigantic value because of their small size. They are suddenly mighty for the very reason that they are midgets. Even the larger type is only as wide as a man’s thumb from tip to first joint. The smaller microfilm might be compared roughly to the size of the nail on that section of the thumb. Yet, they are doing a Herculean task.

Industry has awakened to the fact that engineering drawings, contracts, corporation records, insurance policies, building plans, checks, correspondence and hundreds of other irreplaceable documents are vulnerable to bombing raids, especially to the fires which inevitably follow. Recorded on microfilm, instead of perishable paper, these valuable records may be stored in fireproof and bombproof vaults for an indefinite period in about one or two percent of the space they formerly occupied. About 400,000 films a day are exposed for this purpose.

The Army and Navy, with the cooperation of postal authorities, are microfilming the mail of service men. The “V-mail” letters are filmed so that millions can be shipped in a few packing cases to faraway lands where the messages are printed just like photographs on thick paper, folded into half the original size, and distributed to men hungry for word from home. Huge numbers of microfilms are being used for this patriotic task.

Newspapers are hurriedly microfilming their back files, museums are copying their works of art, hospitals are photographing X-ray plates, libraries are pre- serving their volumes. And spies and propaganda agents are having a field day, thanks to the mighty midgets of the photographic world.

The Chinese, always an ingenious people, have matched America’s V-mail with what is called bee-mail, a clever spy system based on the fact that a bee will return to its hive as long as the queen reigns. During most of the war with the Japanese, the Chinese have been on the retreat because of their lack of mechanized equipment and combat supplies. As their lines move backward, their spies capture a number of bees from a farmer’s backyard, carrying them in tiny cages. Microfilming their messages and printing them on very thin paper, they attach the paper to the bees and release them. The bees wing their way back to the hive at a speed of 30 to 40 miles an hour just as efficiently for short distances as homing pigeons which are employed in the same manner. The message is picked up at the hive. This system works both ways across the lines.

Most of the atrocity and propaganda articles which filter mysteriously out of conquered nations like Poland to see the light of day in American newspapers are transmitted to this country by refugees who have concealed microfilms around their persons and baggage, or by spies who turn them over to allied agents in neutral nations like Switzerland or Portugal. A single microfilm will easily transmit from 5,000 to 10,000 words of information printed in fine type.

Many of the anti-Nazi publications which continue to circulate in a wide underground network throughout Europe are read in the form of small photographic prints from microfilm, or are enlarged and published in hideaways from articles transmitted by microfilm.

As in the case of the Chinese and the bee hives, this use of microfilm works both ways, to get facts into the United States and to get them smuggled out. Nearly every important spy trial since America entered the war has revealed that Nazi and Japanese spies are making full use of microfilm. In one case a hidden movie camera caught the spies in the act of operating with the mighty midgets. In this case, too, the small size of microfilms is the key to their value.

The little fellows certainly lend themselves to concealment. One popular method of transmitting spy messages is to pry up the sole of a shoe, particularly if it is rubber, slip the film in and let the sole fall back into place. Fountain pen caps will hold a microfilm and the pen, too. Trimmed down, microfilms are concealed beneath a postage stamp. The new style filter pipe in which the stem fits over the interior section where pipe and stem join, is helping spies. Microfilms are slipped between rows of matches in a paper match container. No one notices if a spy discards an apparently empty paper match container, or hands it to an assistant. In addition, microfilms may be hidden in the nose, in seams of clothing, in a woman’s coiffure and they are even slipped into capsules, usually of silver, and swallowed.

They fit nicely in the back of watch cases and in one instance a trapped Nazi spy was found to have bleached a microfilm and substituted it for a lens in his eye glasses, indicating that the Germans have a process which will restore the message on the bleached film.

But they have more respectable war purposes, too. In cases where one war plant wishes to farm out contracts for intricate mechanical parts to a number of other concerns, the objects themselves or the detailed plans are being microfilmed and shipped by air mail. At the receiving end, these pictures are enlarged and scanned in a reader, or photographic prints are made. Weeks of delay are avoided. A tiny spot can be blown up as big as a door mat.

They are valuable for the making of templates, when not too large, for the metal may be coated with sensitive emulsion and the pattern printed right on the plate.

Testing airplanes has been speeded up along with experimental flying to discover the efficiency of various types of plane de- sign and equipment. It has been standard practice for a test pilot to make a flight in the morning with a pad of paper and a pencil on his knee for notes. He spent the rest of the day calculating what his instruments recorded and preparing his data for other tests the next day. Now a microfilm camera goes aloft with him, constantly recording the facts told by his instruments as he concentrates on flying the plane. On landing, he is able to scan records within an hour or two and then take the craft aloft for additional tests.

New uses crop up constantly. The state of New York recently destroyed 7,000,000 canceled checks, filming them so that the record was just as good with a saving of 99 percent of the storage space. Draft numbers are always microfilmed so that they show the date and time they were drawn to establish the proper order. The famous Westinghouse time capsule, buried deep under the site of the New York World’s Fair for the benefit of future generations, contained microfilm records which will give a complete picture of contemporary civilization.

One great newspaper, the New York Times, microfilms its pages daily and readers may subscribe for the film edition, which is mailed to them. Another, the Philadelphia Inquirer, keeps its back files in this manner and even supplies a Philadelphia library with copies so that anyone can search for an item with a microfilm reader which throws the type into clear enlargement. This is far simpler and easier than thumbing through hundreds of pages in a bulky volume which soon wears out. The editions for an entire month occupy little more space than a bar of soap.

Tiny films were used as far back as 1870, during the Franco-Prussian war, to fly messages out of besieged Paris by tieing them to the legs of pigeons. However, it is only during recent years, and particularly in the last few months that the business of microfilming has boomed. This volume concerns itself principally with the haste of business concerns to protect their records from bombing and, possibly, sabotage by fire.

A number of new companies have sprung up because of this available business, also a number of theories about the best methods of microfilming. These theories deal largely with the size of the film, whether they should be filed in strips or rolls, and type of equipment.

One of the leaders is the Microstat Corporation of Norwalk, Conn., founded by V. E. Pratt, a former advertising man. After he retired from business, he set up a workshop in his barn in Silvermine, Conn., and in 1938 completed the first model of his microstat camera which takes pictures, enlarges, prints and projects them. Now, microfilming trucks of his company thread the highways across the nation.

His instruments are completely motor controlled. They will separate lines packed together as closely as 3,000 to the inch. Their focus is calibrated accurately to .00025 of an inch. They make duplicates on transparent paper, photo-sensitized tracing cloth and transparent acetate. A whole book can be condensed on a dozen inches of film.

In addition to this device, the Pratt company has developed a six-pound film reader. Although it is so small it can be carried in a suitcase, it can hold a million pages of material copied on microfilm.

Among his other inventions which will be produced for sale after the war are a teledex reader to replace the cumbersome big city telephone book, and an optigraph reader which will make books easier to read.

Another leader is the Recordak Company of New York City, an affiliate of the Eastman Kodak Company. On its equipment, records can be condensed to about one percent of their volume. A 100-foot strip of 16-mm. film will reproduce 2,352 letters or 4,812 filing cards. The film is stored in a carton 4 by 4 by 1 inch. Copies of books can be microfilmed as fast as the pages can be turned. Bank checks can be recorded at a rate of 140 a minute. On its machines, 1,600 pounds of V-mail can be reduced to less than 15 pounds, which indicates the approach of trans-Atlantic airmail in volume.

Aside from microfilming, its big brother, photocopying, is performing much the same commercial function. The principal difference is in the size of film used, the larger film having advantages and disadvantages, according to the job.

All types of film, most of which were developed by Du Pont and Eastman Kodak, are fire and water resistant acetate and will “keep” for generations if properly stored.

These mighty midgets are booming business right now and it looks like an attractive field for an ambitious man, but the truth is that machines are rarely sold since it is almost impossible to obtain the materials essential to their manufacture. Instead, microfilming has tended to become a service, operated by experts. Later on it will probably be different.

The boom is not likely to end with the termination of the war. Microfilms, in postwar jobs may be as important as the mighty midgets in “uniforms” are today.

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YOUR VICTORY CAR

By Brooks Stevens – Industrial Designer

THE American civilian is recovering gradually from the shock of his country’s complete entry into the greatest war in history and its necessary sacrifices. Production of passenger cars ceased months ago, and the public is getting used to the idea that the family auto must last for the duration, possibly longer.

It is not premature to talk of the postwar possibilities in this field of manufacture, for certainly it is one of the country’s largest, and one upon which the people are definitely dependent.

Although the general public may feel that the postwar car will be a radically styled, all plastic, rear-engine vehicle with a completely transparent top, it is only wise to discount this to a great extent. The length of the war will, of course, be a powerful governing factor. If the war should come to a quick end, the first postwar cars undoubtedly will be revisions of the 1942 models. This would be the only practical measure in consideration of the thousands and thousands of dealers who have been hit so badly by the cessation of automobile manufacture.

Conversion from war production and a resumption of passenger car manufacture will be effected more quickly in this manner than to attempt complete retooling for radically designed models. In fact, revisions of 1942 models might be available six months after the war as against retooling completely for rear-engine or other radically styled models which might require 18 to 24 months before reaching the market.

Reasonable revisions will include a greater emphasis on the elimination of individual fenders, as such; front fenders will blend gracefully into the body instead of being applied appendages; and complete elimination of individual rear fenders will be effected through widening of the body to absorb them. This makes for fewer individual stampings, smoother exterior streamlining, and from a practical stand-point the generous smooth surfaces can be reshaped more easily after accidental denting.

Sacrifices made by civilians during the war and a general attitude of restraint will only be satisfied by the elimination of superfluous bright work, chrome grills, stripes, bars, and other useless ornamentation. The simplified front-end treatment will include concealed or retractable headlights, already in use, and more functional air scoop intakes as a part of a substantial bumper design.

There will and should be increased vision in this postwar model. The panoramic full-vision windshield, accomplished by moving the heavy door and corner post outward and back from its former position, will allow for 180-degree driver vision. Safety glass windshields will be bent at the % point to accomplish this partial encirclement; however, they will be bent in one plane only. Curved plastic windshields, long the dream of many designers, have not yet proven hard enough to withstand windshield – wiper action in conjunction with grit and dirt present in rain. Spherical shaped plastic windshields are apt to distort vision. Plastics, however, will play an ever-increasing role in tomorrow’s car, certainly in connection with all inter i or trim, instrument panels, control levers, and the like. Interesting and satisfactory upholstery has already been executed from woven plastics. Permanent color and durability will be the keynotes. Plastics may also play an increasing part for many small elements in connection with the power plant. 1 There has been considerable speculation as to the use of molded plastic body panels and fenders to replace steel. This is doubtful at least for the first postwar car. The tremendous increase in the production of aluminum, which in 1943 will be several times the 1939 production, will result in an increasing use of this material in automobile bodies. Stronger lightweight steel is also being experimented with.

The real postwar car will not appear until enough time has elapsed to develop a completely new type of automobile. Before touching on this “postwar car,” I should like to make another reasonable and conservative prophecy: With the ever-rising cost of this war and the possible taxation measures brought on by it, we may find the average American forced to accept an undersized car in comparison to prewar models. It is entirely possible that a civilian version of the army jeep might be a most acceptable and desirable piece of transportation equipment. Conservatively styled versions of this jeep could be manufactured during the war to fill necessary civilian needs. This conservatively styled model, in both open and closed types, could be executed with simple tooling and a minimum of fabrication expense, yet it could have pleasing lines within these limitations.

The civilian jeep could then be projected into a postwar “victory car” in a more completely styled form. This model will take on graceful lines through the elimination of fenders and stressing of longer and more sweeping lines in an effort to make up in appearance for a short wheelbase. This car would have maneuverability, reasonable speed, greatly increased operating economy, and could be moderately priced. The trend toward simplicity will do much in connection with initial cost, yet predictions on cost are dangerous because of the unknown economic results of the war.

As the world gradually emerges from war conversion to peacetime manufacture, we may find the rear-engine type as an ultimate and desirable possibility. Passengers will be moved forward for further increased vision, more interior lounging space, more complete body streamlining. The placing of engine noise, heat, and fumes behind the passengers instead of in front of them is a long-desired change. The rear engine design offers traction over the rear driving wheels, yet there is speculation as to whether it might reduce the weight over the front wheels to a point where satisfactory steering characteristics might be reduced. Moving the passengers forward enables the rear-engine car to approach more nearly the teardrop shape; however, the degree to which passengers can be moved forward is limited by the space required to turn the front wheels when steering. The rear-engine car with its relocated power plant will eliminate the need for drive-shaft tunnels and the car can then be lowered to a somewhat greater extent than existing models, yet this, too, is governed by ease of entry and exit and by existing curb heights.

Plastics will predominate and may be applicable to windows, windshields, and perhaps to some body panels, yet we must remember that three important industries will be competing for the same business— steel, aluminum, and plastics. It is impossible to say whether this business will be shared or dominated by any one material.

Smaller air-cooled engines requiring less space and offering greater operating economy will be utilized. Functional streamlining will help maintain reasonable performance with less power. There will be no tendency to offer the general public 100 to 150 miles per hour speed.

The field of automotive transportation undoubtedly will be enhanced in the postwar period by addition of a new method of merchandising a line of products. I am speaking of the definite development of sales cars or traveling display rooms. This method of demonstration and selling has been through the preliminary stages. Five years ago, we were commissioned by a client to design and produce an experimental vehicle for this purpose. Each succeeding year has brought improved models of which a number have been custom-built and put into service. A complete office and showroom on one motorized wheelbase within a length limitation of twenty feet, bumper to bumper, is the result. These sales cars are held to twenty feet in length to facilitate parking in downtown areas. The units have six feet two inches headroom, a comfortable lounge for customers, storage space for samples, a radio, heaters, fans, and the other comforts of an office. The control cabin forward, partitioned from the sales room, provides the salesman or chauffeur with air-liner vision and safety of operation. Note here the similarity to the windshield prophecy we have just made in the postwar car and the rear engine car. Powered by a standard V8 engine and utilizing tubular steel construction throughout, we have light weight and flexibility. Top speeds of 85 miles per hour are safely possible, and performance costs have shown an average of 15 miles per gallon of fuel. This type of project is applicable to many businesses, and may supplant the trailer as a mobile home because of its ease and safety of operation.

The postwar advent of freight-hauling cargo airplanes will influence commercial cross-country truck design. Cross-country haulers, already designed and ready for construction, are capable of carrying 22,000 pounds in one streamlined hull with the same driver advantages of vision pointed out earlier in this article. This truck body of welded tubular steel construction literally becomes a fuselage on wheels. The body has been designed around a practical pay load, as well as taking into consideration aerodynamic qualities and advertising appeal. Each succeeding week of worldwide warfare will find new scientific and technical discoveries which will influence the transportation field. Because of his work in almost every field of manufacture, the industrial designer is qualified to observe and prophesy acceptable trends and consumer demands.

Plane Silhouettes on Playing Cards Help Identify Aircraft

Civilians can join in one of the soldier’s favorite pastimes—identifying combat aircraft—with playing cards that have silhouettes of Allied and enemy planes on their faces. The United States planes are spades, British are hearts, German are diamonds, and Japanese are clubs. In the corners are the “pip” signs. The airplane card idea was suggested by officers of the Third Air Corps, Tampa, Fla., who have been conducting classes in aircraft identification.

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FOOLING the SPY in the SKY

NATURE camouflages fish by making their bodies in a two-toned pattern, light on the bottom to blend with illumination from the surface and dark on top to merge into the dusk of the depths. She protects birds in a similar manner. She mottles the coats of deer so they are almost invisible in a forest. She makes insects look like twigs and gives butterflies the form and coloration of leaves and flowers.

She seems to have neglected mankind, apparently never anticipating that millions of the lordly creatures which rule the globe would be forced to hide themselves and their creations from attacks of their own man-made monster, the airplane.

But today civilians around the world, particularly in the United States where the home workshop abounds, are beginning to do what nature forgot: fooling the spy in the sky with camouflage. A recent estimate indicates that more than 5,000 civilians have taken up camouflage research as a serious occupation, about 80 percent of them without pay from the government. Many more work at it as a pastime in cellar workshops. The result is that many extremely valuable ideas have been fed into the military and civilian defense organizations. So intriguing has the study of protective concealment become it is likely that no less than 25,000 specialized civilian brains will be backing up the experts of our armed and civilian defense forces within a year or so. This is aside from experimenters in the military forces, where anyone who displays a working knowledge of camouflage is snapped up quickly.

New York City experts organized a Civilian Camouflage Council. Corporations like General Motors encourage research men to tackle the problems. Schools like Pratt Institute, Rutgers and Syracuse universities, New York State Institute of Agriculture and Kansas City Art Institute are cooperating with army, navy and civilian defense officials. Philadelphia high schools have classes. Brooklyn Museum and American Museum of Natural History are doing their share. It has even become a business; companies like Camouflage Engineering Corporation of New York have been formed.

Artists, architects, engineers, photographers, industrial designers, stage designers, magicians, chemists, sculptors, mathematicians, modelmakers, taxidermists, landscapers and movie technicians whose special training fits them for angles of the fooling game are contributing to the national effort. From dentists, who learn to camouflage teeth, to paint and dye experts, who know the importance of color in protective concealment, the list is long. In fact, camouflage research is showing signs of growing into a hobby. Any fertile mind can help, and the best ideas may yet come out of a home workshop.

Much of what was learned in previous wars has become practically useless because of the color camera and infrared photography which spot color differences invisible to the eye. The development of gigantic flashlights for night spying, combined with the use of the airplane, have made it extremely difficult to fool the enemy. The fundamentals of camouflage, however, are still simple.

Since military camouflage is well in hand, the best point of approach to the subject is industrial or civilian camouflage, because the problems are million-fold and each has a different aspect. Every important building, every road, every gas or oil tank within reach of possible bombing needs protective concealment. The government has not yet completely coordinated local civilian camouflage efforts, and most manufacturers and municipal officials have not really tackled the problem. But eventually every important spot requiring camouflage will be photographed from the air, maps will be made, concealment designs worked out.

Camouflage will be applied, aerial mapping will test the results.

Meanwhile the field is wide open for patriotic and inquisitive minds. Cooperation and information will be given by the office of Civilian Defense in Washington, D. C. to responsible persons.

The basic idea is to provide either concealment or confusion of identity, or both. An example of concealment would be the application of splotches of paint to the roof of a small factory and the construction of screens and ragged extensions to the roof, to blend it into nearby trees and shadows. An example of confusion of identity would be to change the exterior of the factory and add fences, smaller buildings and vegetable patches to make it look like a farm, or to build similar fake rooftops nearby.

A railroad spur which gives away the presence of a factory, can be made to look like a road, or extended beyond the factory with dummy tracks and ties to mislead the bombardier. Roads which lead to an important building can be extended by false work so that they rise to the roof, cross it and continue beyond. Concrete roads can be painted blue, as they have been in Europe, or brown in the winter and green in the summer to merge with surrounding fields. Many materials can be suggested to prevent roads from shining with reflected sky light when wet. Dyed crushed stone, oil and sand are useful. Better materials may be available in local supplies.

Important highways can be given the benefit of confusion by adding parallel or intersecting false roads. Strategic road junctions can be disguised by painting out some of the known roads, screening others, covering the junction point with nets and using detours, both real and fake. Plans are needed. Smoke pots have been found valuable to hide roads, their efficiency depending upon the visibility, the wind and time available to get them in operation. Parking fields are another telltale sign of a big factory and any bright mind can work out irregular arrangements of trees, nets and screens to make a parking lot look like a grove.

Tanks can be painted dark and their shadows broken up with false work extending to the edge of the roof and beyond. Paints should match surrounding colors. Dazzle painting is called for in some cases. Or two tanks can be connected with falsework and squared off to look like an innocent barn. Docks can be shielded with irregular roofs projected from adjacent buildings, and painted so they harmonize with the nearby water, even to the ripples.

Smokestacks can be removed and forced draft installations substituted to carry smoke to a point some distance from a plant needing concealment Or other sources of smoke can be added to produce confusion. Windows can be treated in many ways to lessen reflections. Landscaping arrangements can be planned for roofs. New materials to simulate grass can be found. Bridges are hard to hide, but approaches can be masked and the bridge structures painted to blend with water beneath. Where one prominent object exists which cannot be concealed, like a tank, the erection of a number of dummies in the same vicinity will cause confusion.

Two general principles must be kept in mind.

Nature creates rivers, hills, trees, shrubbery and other features in her landscape in irregular patterns and colors them with many contrasting hues. Man builds his roads and docks in straight lines, his buildings in rectangular form and paints in one or two tones. The straight line, the oval, the triangle, the circle, the square and rectangle in somewhat perfect form are his invention. The object of the fooling game is usually to restore the diffused pattern of nature.

The second thing to remember is this: thanks to the scientific perfection of the modern aerial camera, a shadow is often easier to see than the object itself and the aerial camera is so good it can spot a man’s footprints on grass from two miles in the sky. The camera can pierce fog opaque to the eye.

One way to conceal a shadow is to paint another on a building so as to extend or confuse its outlines. But painted shadows, valuable as they are, have a fatal drawback. They do not shift with the sun and the seasons like real shadows. Thus shadows must be painted so as to look natural at the most likely time of aerial reconnaissance or bombing raid and must often be shifted with the seasons.

To provide this shadow information throughout the year, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N. Y., has put into operation a sun machine which will calculate the direction of a shadow cast by any object, any second of the day, any day of the year in any part of the world. This information is available to anyone.

Other organizations which will cooperate with information are the American Institute of Architects, National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association, the American Society of Civil Engineers, National Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers and the Camouflage Society of Professional Stage Designers which have a camouflage laboratory in New York City.

Since most of the preliminary research is done with miniature, table-top models, which may be tested by table-top photography, it is likely that camouflage will develop into a widespread home workshop hobby if the war lasts long. Lots of us will be fooling the spy in the sky.

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RAISING the German Fleet

By JOSEPH W. GRIGG, Jr.

TOILING in the icy depths of Scapa Flow, the broad landlocked harbor in the Orkney Isles, north of Scotland, British engineers and divers today are enacting what probably will be hailed some day as the greatest salvaging epic in the history of the sea.

Though the world at large hears but little of their feats, they are dragging to the surface one by one of the giants of Germany’s once proud High Seas Fleet, now battered rusted hulks, which have lain for 17 years fathoms-deep beneath the swirling waters of Scapa. The iron from some of those very ships is being used today by the modern Germany of Adolf Hitler in the great European armaments race.

To recall the first act of the drama of Scapa means going back to a sunny June morning in 1919 when line upon line of iron-gray German warships—some 74 all told—were swinging lazily at anchor in the harbor which had been Britain’s chief naval base throughout the Great War. Kaiser Wilhelm’s High Seas Fleet had been interned there since it was surrendered by Germany at the Armistice. Allied jealousy prevented the British receiving the ships and the German crews remained aboard.

That morning of June 21, the bulk of the British fleet was out at torpedo practice in the North Sea. Only a few drifters steamed up and down the German lines. Suddenly the crew of the Kaiser Friedrich der Grosse were seen leaping into small boats. Then before the astonished eyes of the British sea- men the great German flagship heeled over and sank. Ship after ship followed her. An urgent radio message brought the British fleet scurrying back two hours later. All the British could do, however, was to beach a few of the German destroyers. The Germans had opened the valves and scuttled their fleet.

Out of 74 ships the great majority sank to the bottom of Scapa Flow that day. For 12 years now salvagers have ventured their lives to float them again. As one corroded giant after another is laboriously pumped and hauled from the ocean-bed, its bulky carcase is towed 250 miles to the ship-breaking yards at Rosyth or Rothesay, both in Scotland, for breaking up and sales as scrap-iron. Hundreds of tons of that iron have been bought by Germany in the past two years, to be melted down and recast into big guns, shells, tanks and new battleships. Hundreds of tons more are going into armor-plating for British warships and into building Britain’s merchant fleet. Some of the same salvaged iron is fulfilling the more prosaic role of girders in palatial new movie-houses, blocks of new apartment-houses and hotels in London.

With ten of the largest ships still to be recovered the world’s biggest salvaging job already has cost more than $3,000,000. The value of the ships so ruthlessly scuttled is estimated at close on a hundred times that figure. Yet the salvagers have barely, if at all, recouped themselves for the expenditure involved.

For more than five years the German High Seas Fleet lay rusting at the bottom of Scapa Flow. None even of the recognized salvaging experts was willing to risk the cost of trying to bring the warships to the surface again. Then one day early in 1924 a virtually unknown Londoner named E.F. Cox took a trip up to Scapa. At that time he was in his late thirties and managing director of the iron and steel merchanting firm of “Cox and Danks,” of London. He had had no previous salvaging experience, but a friend had suggested to him that there was a mine of scrap iron rusting away beneath the waters of Scapa Flow, waiting for whoever was prepared to bring it up. Cox’s imagination was fired and he spent several days surveying the wreckage. A few weeks later he had an Admiralty contract in his pocket for salvaging 25 German destroyers.

Cox immediately got together the best engineers and divers in Britain. His equipment alone including sections of a German floating dock cost him a round $200,000 at the outset. In April, 1924, the greatest salvaging job ever undertaken was begun. On August 1 Cox watched triumphantly as the first destroyer, caked in muck and green sea slime, was hauled to the surface. By April 30, 1926, all 25 destroyers had been raised, several of them in less than a fortnight.

The salvaged destroyers ranged between 750 and 1,300 tons each. In one case three were located in a heap with two lying crosswise over the third. Most, however, were lying alone. The technique employed by the salvagers was to sink sections of the floating dock and place them along each side of the wreck in i a kind of hamsandwich fashion. Wire hawsers were secured under the keels of the ships which were then hauled up gradually to the surface. In some instances they were actually dragged up by sheer manual labor with winches and tackle.

As a rule, however, the rise of the tide was put to work to supply the requisite lifting power. At low water the tough wire hawsers would be hove taut under the vessels and the rise of the tide was sufficient to lift them off the bottom. Gradually they were dragged towards the shore, with each rising tide lifting them a little further from the ocean bed, until they were beached and patched up for refloating. Each hulk was then put to sea again and towed something like 250 miles for breaking up.

With 25 of the destroyers salvaged, Cox set himself the tremendous task of stealing from the ocean’s clutches the giant battleships and battlecruisers, once the pride of Germany’s navy. Some of these weighed nearly 30,000 tons and lay mostly bottom-upwards or on their sides in 15 to 18 fathoms of water. No one had ever attempted to raise ships of this size before. Daring freebooters of the Orkneys already had stripped the partly visible Seydlitz of all valuable metal above the water line and had even fished brass fittings from underwater.

Attention had been attracted to the possibilities of compressed air shortly before by Major Gianelli’s raising of the overturned Italian battleship, Leonardo da Vinci. The Italian expert paid a visit to Scapa Flow, presented Cox with a volume describing the raising of the Italian ship and urged him to attempt the technique with the ponderous German wrecks. After spending $165,000 in a futile effort to float the big Hindenburg by old methods, Cox turned with the new to the smaller ships.

The salvagers began with the 23,500-ton battle cruiser Moltke which lay on the ocean floor with a list of 16-1/2 degrees. As a preliminary operation, tall cylindrical airlocks had to be bolted to the sunken hulls. Men worked inside these under air pressure which kept the water from rising to more than a certain level through the various holes in the decks below. For months they toiled with oxy-acetylene apparatus fathoms below the surface of Scapa in a foetid, stinking atmosphere, dripping with slime. All the time they risked explosions from the foul air. Explosions did occur, although fortunately only one man lost his life.

Gradually the Scapa salvagers worked their way through each gigantic hulk, cutting away pipes and ventilating shafts that passed through the bulkheads. As they did so they patched up the holes left and made each compartment watertight. Then, when every hole had been sealed, came the critical moment for attempting to raise the vessel. This was done by pumping air into the interior under tremendous pressure. Either the bow or the stern would be brought up first, then more air would be pumped into other parts of the vessel, until it righted itself and floated.

After feverish months of toiling, Co:: and his band of salvagers one day in June, 1927, watched the great battlecruiser Moltke lurch to the surface just eight years after the swirling currents of Scapa Flow had closed over it. In November, 1928, the 25,000-ton Seydlitz was raised, followed by the battleship Kaiser of 24,500 tons in March, 1929, the cruiser Bremse in November, 1929, the Hindenburg of 28,000 tons in July, 1930, the 20,000-ton battlecruiser Von der Tann in December, 1930, and the 25,400-ton battleship Prinz Regent Luitpold in July, 1931.

Of those seven ships the toughest proposition of all was the 28,000-ton Hindenburg, larger than any vessel ever raised from the ocean bed before. She lay right side up in 70 feet of water with the tops of her masts protruding. Cox tried the first time to bring her up in 1926. For months his men worked on her, with four large floating docks to hold the masses of gear necessary. Finally they raised her to the surface with thousands of cubic feet of compressed air pumped into the enormous hull. But their victory was only temporary. They saw the Hindenburg list more and more dangerously until it was apparent that she must capsize. To prevent disaster they let her sink again.

For nearly four years more the Hindenburg lay on the rocks. Then work on her was resumed in March, 1930. The salvagers made over 800 patches in her hull, one of them measuring 750 square feet placed over the hole where one great rusted funnel had been sawed bodily away. The cost of work on the Hindenburg was so tremendous that Cox decided to remove one of the turrets, weighing 560 tons, to sell for ready cash. He did so, but he said afterward that the price he got for it was only a quarter of what it would have been worth had it been left in position.

Once again, for months, more than two hundred men worked to raise the Hindenburg. Forty pumps continually forced compressed air into her hull. Around one side of her stern was built a 600-ton block of concrete to steady her as she came out of the water and to forestall any danger of her heeling over again as she had done in 1926. She was raised early in June, 1930. Again she listed perilously to starboard and again was allowed to sink. The salvagers swallowed their disappointment and encased her stern in more concrete. Then a few weeks later she rose again and floated steadily on the surface. The biggest salvaging feat in maritime history had been accomplished. But to Cox, the man who carried it out, it meant no financial gain. He barely recovered the money he had spent on her. But it was the greatest adventure of a lifetime for him. This is how he described it: “I had spent £40,000 ($200,000) of my money when she beat me and very nearly broke my heart. I did not give up and went on spending money. Then came a day when I had spent £75,000 ($375,000) and in two minutes I was to know whether I was ever to see it again. My man with a lifebelt around him began to sing out the degrees of her list as she was being raised. ’2-1/2 degrees’ came the message, ’3 degrees . . . 4 … 5 … 5-1/2 … 6.’ My heart almost stood still. Then ’6-1/2.’ Here he stopped. Then came the voice, ’6-1/4,’ and all was well. I was like a schoolboy, I was so elated.”

Next after the Hindenburg, the 20,000-ton battle cruiser Von der Tann was pumped up from the floor of Scapa Flow. She was found bottom upwards about a hundred yards from the Hindenburg. In her case, the prow was lifted first, but she developed a heavy list and was allowed to sink back again. More airlocks were inserted and she was finally brought up in December, 1930. Four men were injured in an explosion during the work on this vessel.

Six months later, the 25,390-ton battleship Prinz Regent Luitpold was added to the list of salvaged vessels. She was found in a hundred feet of water. Giant airlocks were made both in bow and stern but when air was pumped into her the stern rose twenty feet into the air, water swirled into her open portholes and again she sank. At the second try the salvagers were successful.

In March, 1933, Cox abandoned the task. In ten years’ work at Scapa Flow he had recovered 32 ships and spent more than $2,500,000. Yet at the end of it all he found that instead of making money he had netted a loss of between $50,000 and $75,000. Since he started work the price of scrap iron and copper had slumped to about half of what it had been. He said afterward that the prices fetched by the Von der Tann and Prinz Regent Luitpold together were less than for a cruiser.

Cox himself kept as souvenirs the bells of most of the ships he had salvaged. All his equipment he sold to the firm of Metal Industries, Ltd., of Glasgow, who took over the contract from him. The man now in charge of the job was a Glasgow Scot named Thomas McKenzie.

In April, 1934, work was resumed on the 28,000-ton battleship Bayern, which lay bottom up in twenty fathoms of water, with a list of nine degrees to starboard. As with the other giants, compressed air was used to float her. Seven tubular airlocks between 70 feet and 100 feet long connected the men working below with the surface. The men themselves worked at an air pressure of 50 pounds to the square inch. Night and day for nine months McKenzie and his men toiled on the Bayern. She was brought up once but, like several of the ships salvaged by Cox, developed such a list that she had to be sunk again. Tragedy marred the work on her when Diver John Bee of Portsmouth collapsed and died shortly after coming up from the ocean floor in July, 1934.

One day in September, 1934, the Bayern swung to the surface and floated there, bottom upwards. She took just thirty seconds to rise. As she appeared above the surface, columns of water shot skyward, forced out by two million cubic feet of surplus compressed air inside her. Later she was towed 250 miles to Rosyth yards to be broken up. In April, 1936, the Koenig Albert was raised, followed only a month later by the 25,000-ton battleship Kaiserin.

Ten giant ships still rest on the floor of Scapa Flow, waiting to be salvaged. They are the Derflinger, Karlsruhe, Koeln, Brummer, Markgraf, Koenig, Dresden, Kronprinz Wilhelm, Kaiser Friedrich der Grosse—the flagship of Admiral von Reuter—and Grosser Kurfurst. So far it is estimated the salvage work has cost approximately $3,000,000. It is not known for certain just how much Germany’s once proud High Seas Fleet has brought in the junk market, but it is probably little if any more than the cost of salvaging, owing to the slump in metal prices. Experts estimate it will take another six years before the last ship is salvaged and the curtain is finally rung down on the drama of Scapa.

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LATEST SUBMACHINE GUN IS DESIGNED FOR MASS PRODUCTION

ANEW submachine gun which shoots .45 caliber automatic , pistol bullets at the rate of 500 a minute is now being- turned out by the Harrington and Richardson Arms Company, of Worcester, Mass., at the rate of 1,000 guns a day.

Although in its present form the gun weighs only 6-1/2 pounds as compared with the 9-3/4-pound Thompson submachine gun and the U.S. Army’s new 9-1/2 pound Garand rifle, the inventor, Eugene G. Reising, is confident that eventually he will cut its weight down close to the five pounds which the War Department considers ideal for parachute troops, air infantry, motorcycle riders, and the close-up work of mechanized units. He is also adapting it to fire the .30 caliber carbine cartridge.

Just as important as its light weight, however, is its simplicity. The Reising has only three moving parts—the hammer, bolt, and action bar—compared with eight in the widely used Thompson (“Tommy”) gun. According to the Worcester experts, it is easier to make a complete Reising gun than it is to turn out any one of the three most complex parts of a comparable weapon. Because of the simplicity of its construction the tolerances of error allowable in the Reising are much wider, making it entirely practical to manufacture the gun in any machine shop without special tools. Actually a large part of the machine tools being used at the present time to produce the 1,000 Reisings a day are fifty years old.

Although special tools are not required, several are being used to speed production. Notably, the Reising barrels are being rifled by the broaching method. Heretofore gunmakers have rifled barrels by a process requiring the tool to make a number of trips through the barrel, cutting the rifling grooves slightly deeper each time. By broaching, the 11-inch barrel of the Reising is rifled in one trip through, taking only one minute instead of the old method’s 15 minutes. With the installation of an automatic lathe, only 12 minutes will be required to finish a barrel, from the solid steel bar to the final bluing.

Simple as it is, the Reising is capable of grouping a high percentage of its shots inside a ten-inch circle at 200 yards, and that, remember, is with standard .45 automatic pistol ammunition. One reason for this accuracy is the compensator, which is screwed onto the muzzle like a silencer. Slots on its top side permit the gases leaving the muzzle to expand upward, while a small shelflike projection on the under side of the compensator takes a downward push from the gases, and these two effects combine to keep the muzzle down and on the target, eliminating almost all the “jump” of the muzzle. The recoil, or kick, also is very slight.

The Reising can be fired either semiautomatically, one shot at a time, or automatically at full speed by holding down the trigger. No handheld weapon, of course, can be as accurate when fired automatically as when fired one shot at a time and sighted for each shot. Also, the shortness of the barrel prevents accuracy equal to a rifle’s. Like most submachine guns, the Reising has an effective range of 300 yards.

The .45 caliber bullet leaves the muzzle at a velocity of 900 feet a second. Velocity and the bullet size both figure in the hitting force and penetrating power. Rifle and carbine bullets tend to drill a clean hole through a man, and he may continue to advance for some yards after being struck in certain parts of his body. The .45 caliber slug, on the other hand, will almost always knock a man down or spin him around—a valuable asset in close-up fighting where it is necessary to disable the other fellow before he can get you.

The Reising gun takes a 20-shot clip magazine, and a 50-round drum can be adapted to it if wanted. Thanks to its simplicity, it can be sold for around $85, or, in military mass production, for $45 to $50, which is a lot less than the $225 price of a comparable submachine gun now in wide use.

Like the Thompson, the Reising gun is of the delayed blow-back reloading type. A pressure of 42 pounds is required to force the bolt to cam itself out of a locked position. A shoulder half encircles the upper part of the bolt; this fits snugly up against a mating recess in the upper inside part of the receiver. These locking parts are milled at an angle to provide transfer of the reaction from one plane to another. The reaction pushes the fired cartridge shell back until it engages the ejector and is flipped out. The same movement cocks the hammer. A retracting spring pulls the bolt forward; on its way the bolt picks up a loaded cartridge from the clip and feeds it into the chamber and then fires it. The whole takes (at the rate of 500 a minute) about 3/25 of a second.

Despite its short barrel, the gun has a sighting radius of 18-1/2 inches. The barrel, of nickel chrome steel, has cooling fins similar to those on the Thompson gun. After 100 rounds rapid fire it is not sizzling hot, and one of the first Reising guns made has been fired more than 9,500 times without any signs of charring the stock and also without overhauling.

The gun can be taken apart without even using a cartridge as a tool. Unlike other submachine guns, it does not have to be lubricated continuously, and Army tests at the Aberdeen, Md., proving grounds showed that it could even be fired dry of oil. In these tests, 3,470 rounds were fired with but two failures, one due to a defective cartridge and the other ascribed to incomplete locking of the breech.

The inventor, Reising (pronounced “Riseing”) holds more than 60 patents on pistols and guns. Many experts consider his .22 caliber automatic pistol the best ever made in this country. Of Swedish stock that came to Delaware in 1635, Reising was born at Port Jervis, N.Y., son of a railroad engineer who died when Eugene was an infant. The boy attended Lehigh University three years, then punched cattle in Texas and Mexico a few years. On returning north, he went to work for Colt, testing and selling arms. He helped John Browning develop the famed Colt .45 automatic pistol.

Just before the first World War, Reising designed a simplified machine gun. Later he designed repeating and automatic rifles for Mossberg & Sons, Marlin, Savage, and Stevens. The keynote of nearly all his 30 designs is ease of manufacture.

Besides the U.S. Army, the war departments of Great Britain, Greece, the Netherlands East Indies, Iraq, and several South American countries have expressed keen interest in this apparent answer to an ordnance officer’s prayer: a simple, very light, easily made arm, sturdy, dependable —that can be turned out in a shop without costly equipment.—Walter Holbrook.

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Giant Slingshots of the Navy

by Rear Admiral E. R. Stitt (U.S.N.)
and Lt. Com. J. C. Adams (U.S.N.)

Senior Flight Surgeon, Aircraft Squadrons
Fighting seaplanes of Uncle Sam’s navy are launched into the air by means of powerful catapults which throw them into the air like giant slingshots. This is only one of the unusual stunts which naval flyers are required to perform—which explains why only the most perfect pilots win the title of “naval aviator.”

FLYING an airplane is usually regarded as being a thrilling sport in itself—but being thrown off the deck of a battleship, flung into the air like a pebble tossed by a gigantic slingshot, is not only thrilling sport, but an every day incident in the life of one of Uncle Sam’s crack navy pilots. Flying from carrier decks in land planes and shooting off catapults aboard battleships test the skill of the aviators and the latter proves one of their most interesting and exciting experiences.

Planes aboard battleships are seaplanes. They take off from the catapult after having been “shot” by powder or compressed air. The powder catapult operates much like a big gun. Exploding powder expands the air in a cylinder which operates a pis- ton that picks up and propels the carriage along the runway. In the compressed air catapult the air is built up to an enormous pressure and suddenly released.

The plane is held securely to the carriage to prevent its soaring away before reaching the end. A tripping mechanism automatically releases it at the proper moment, however, and plane and pilot climb rapidly into the air.

In a catapult takeoff the pilot must guard against the sudden jolt by holding his head firmly against a cushion. The sensation resembles that of being struck sharply by a human hand just below the base of the neck.

Lt. Rhea Taylor, commander of the squadron aboard the U.S.S. Omaha, flag- ship of the Destroyer Squadrons, Battle Fleet, in taking a younger pilot aloft from a catapult recently had an unusual experience.

“On this flight,” as he relates it, “I was in the after cockpit as passenger. On my first catapult flight, I recalled, the force of the shock caused me to pull the throttle back and I almost dived into the water.

“Fearing my junior pilot might do the same thing 1 sat there with one hand shoving the throttle full open while with the other I hugged a radio set against my stomach.

“It is difficult for one to imagine the sensation. You sit there waiting for the powder to blow you into the air, suddenly the back of the seat presses hard forward, your head jerks backward against the rest, you dip over the side of the ship, then your engine pulls you on upward into the air. Will Rogers described his catapult experience as one of his finest in aviation.”

Having taken the air, the catapulted plane must get down again at the conclusion of the flight. If the battleship happens to be at sea the landing may be complicated.

In a long, rolling, glassy swell the pilot must land with the swell regardless of the wind. He picks the top of a crest and settles down on it. If he tries to land across crests, he may and probably will nose his pontoon under and turn his plane over. Possibly the most difficult landings are in a choppy sea where conditions are favorable for a turn-over.

The “naval-aviator,” a hard – won title, who achieves the right to represent Uncle Sam in the cockpits of his aerial eyes does so only after rigorous training. His physical qualifications are first determined, then flight surgeons examine his mental makeup to determine whether he is of the type who will continue year after year to enjoy the duties imposed on him.

Once through the preliminary and advanced training, he sets forth monthly on exercises in which his aerial work is coordinated with that of surface ships. He becomes at once an adjunct to the battle ships and their defender against attack from the heavens.

Throughout his career flight surgeons watch him to make sure he is not “getting up his wind” or going stale. If, perchance, he suffers some accident they examine him to learn whether he suffers a permanent nervous reaction.

The aviator, once in the air, cannot be watched. He flies alone in the trim little fighters and must be thoroughly reliable. Mistakes are too costly both to the flyer and others depending on him to permit a mental failure.

You can understand why such care is taken of the pilot when you realize he may be called on to lake off from a land station, rendezvous 150 miles at sea with a carrier and land on the small area of after-deck permitted for landings.

The secret gear provided for bringing his flight to a rather abrupt halt would avail him nothing should he “land in the air,” “over shoot” or crash into the stern because of too low altitude.

Navy flyers must be absolutely and not relatively precise. As a result they are the best trained aviators in the world. Theirs is a career offering at once danger and pleasure. The danger largely disappears if they are mentally awake, but let their brains slow down and it appears again. Thus they become as automatic in their decisions and movements as the machines they operate.

Aviators in order to meet the peculiar needs of navy aviation must be able to think and act almost automatically. Otherwise they cannot meet sudden emergencies.

Their flying becomes at once so rigorous and exacting that nerves, in the popular sense, cannot be tolerated. The navy aviator must be ready for a dog fight in the clouds, a cross country flight under adverse conditions or a “prevision” landing on the small area provided on the carrier flight deck.

The latter requirement is one reason we require the aviator to possess “super-normal” vision, with excellent depth perception and accommodation.

Selection of navy aviators lias become in a large degree a psychological problem.

His physical abilities may be accurately measured according to standards already established. When it comes to measuring his temperamental adaptability, his power to continue to fly under the strain without going stale, the flight surgeon faces a more difficult task.

During the war the specialists in medical aviation attached the greatest importance to normal functioning of the internal ear, as determined by the Barany chair turning tests; although psychologists insisted that methods for determining the temperamental qualities of a candidate for aviation were paramount.

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SMOKING OUT JAP SPIES

by Don Eddy

If you are not yet awake to the peril of invasion on our west coast, this article will give you a jolt. For weeks Mr. Eddy has been hot on the trail of enemies in our midst. He has seen U.S. agents uncover nests of spies working with short-wave radio, blinkers, signal flags, and carrier pigeons. And we’ve been handling these deadly snakes with kid gloves! Eighty per cent of them slip from the Army’s grip through legal loopholes. With our shores in imminent danger, this article is a challenging call for action.

JUST before midnight on last December 22, a young California farmer and his girl were sitting in a parked automobile at the brink of a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It was a clear, crisp night.

It was the girl who first noticed a mysterious pin point of light on the sea. It went on and off, on and off, then vanished. The man got out of the car to watch. Several hundred yards away, on a sharp promontory, he thought he saw a small light blinking seaward.

Afterward he told investigators rue-fully, ” I knew I should have gone over there!” But the girl was frightened. So they went back to town for a soda. They told the soda jerker. He was apathetic. “Just some kind of Navy maneuvers,” he said.

A few hours later, and not many miles distant, a Japanese submarine fired two torpedoes at an American oil tanker which had crept out of a darkened port under secret orders. The tanker zigzagged and escaped. So did two others. These three were the Larry Doheny, the H. M. Storey, and the Idaho. A fourth, the tanker Montebello, was less fortunate.

Ninety minutes before dawn residents of a beach settlement were awakened by gunfire just offshore. They reached their front windows in time to see and hear a tremendous explosion. That was a Japanese torpedo smashing into the Montebello’s bottom. She sank quickly. Thirty-eight members of her crew were saved by villagers after their bullet-pocked lifeboat capsized in the surf.

Next day the farmer led investigators to the headland where he had seen the lights. There were prints of a small shoe (“Jap-size,” they decided) in the sand and a mark where a five-celled flashlight had been dropped.

Thus that wartime bugaboo, that butt of endless satire, the “flashing signal from the shore,” has entered the secret annals of the new war. This time it was no laughing matter. Authorities believe spies saw the tankers leave port and blinked word to the submarine.

Day and night, in every nook and cranny of America, the grim work of tracking enemy spies is going forward. I have talked with scores of our anti-espionage agents since Pearl Harbor. Not one doubts that powerful spy rings are operating inside our borders, at least three, loosely coordinated, on our Pacific coast. Irrefutable evidence has been unearthed that spies are using all the time-honored methods of communication—blinkers, invisible ink, signal flags, even carrier pigeons—plus one we didn’t have to worry about last time: ultra-short-wave radio.

Running down enemy spies is one of the most difficult and unsatisfactory of wartime jobs. Why? Because suspecting them and convicting them are two different things. True, several hundred have been interned for the duration. A few have committed suicide, but not one has been condemned to death.

Other warring nations treat spies as military offenders; judgment is swift and final. Until recently we have given them kid-glove treatment, handling them through civil agencies, notably the FBI, and bending over backward to give them all their legal rights.

Fortunately for the spies, and perhaps unwisely for national safety, our democratic laws provide loopholes that even dangerous enemy agents can slip through.

One of these is the fundamental that every individual is presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty. That puts the burden of proof on the arresting officers, and circumstantial evidence is seldom sufficient. Even a rookie cop knows that conspiracy, of which espionage is a form, is one of the most difficult accusations to prove to legal satisfaction.

So here is one disturbing result: Of the thousands arrested on reasonable suspicion in the first roundups after the outbreak of the war, almost 80 per cent have been released with polite apologies for lack of conclusive evidence! In fact, they were not even taken to court.

This is the secret reason for the current evacuation of Japanese, German, and Italian aliens from our Pacific coast “theater of military operations” in the states of Washington, Oregon, and California. The first real clamp-down on the spy menace in this area came on February 20, when the President issued an executive order giving the Army authority to evacuate anyone, alien or citizen, from military areas. Such areas are to be defined by Army officers, and may include the entire west coast if that is considered advisable. Until this order was issued, the FBI controlled persons of Axis descent who were aliens, but was powerless to deal en masse with those who were citizens.

BEFORE it is over, the lives and fortunes of about 300,000 individuals will have been affected. About a third of these are alien enemies and the rest are their American-born progeny.

Anti-espionage is a jigsaw puzzle of tiny bits that must be patched together painstakingly to make a whole design. Young Eddie Good wasn’t thinking of that as he fiddled with the dials of his short-wave receiver on his father’s farm in the Pacific Northwest one February night. Eddie is one of the great “ham” fraternity of short-wave enthusiasts. His sender had been sealed by the government; all licensed amateurs were shut down. He was dialing through the band from force of habit when he intercepted a strong dot-and-dash signal. Listening, he decided it was gibberish. Nothing made sense, yet Eddie realized that the hand on the key was swift and sure.

He got a pencil and paper and copied the message: “KLGYD MCLSJBX JN KSMYCYH . . .” There was a lot more of it. Eddie thought it was funny, so he sent it to one of his friends in the Army. The friend passed it to his sergeant, and eventually it found its way to G-2, the Department of Military Intelligence, and things began to happen.

Onto the Good farm one twilight swarmed a squad of soldiers with elaborate wireless equipment. They concealed their truck in an outbuilding, ran up a system of antennas, and sat down to listen. The air was soundless all that night; it was, in fact, two nights later before the mysterious sending station came back into action.

A few minutes later one of the soldiers backed out the truck and roared away. One of his comrades told Eddie, “He’s gone to the next station.” Gradually Eddie learned that three listening stations were in action at widely separated points. Each had equipment to determine the direction from which the signal was coming. With this information, it was necessary only to draw lines on a map until they crossed. The sending station was located where the three lines met.

But it wasn’t as simple as that. The place where the lines intersected proved to be an open field on the slope of a hill, about two miles outside a fishing village. A dirt road passed along one side of the field, then meandered up the hill, connecting eventually with a main highway. The road was watched, and the listening posts continued their vigil.

Again, on the third night, the mysterious signals came through. This time a watcher on the road discovered that at the time the dots and dashes were heard, a wholesale fish truck from the village ground slowly up the hill. On the third night after that, when the truck returned, soldiers pounced out of hiding and stopped it.

There were four men in the truck, two on the seat and two apparently asleep on boxes of fish in the back. A search revealed nothing, until one of the soldiers crawled under the truck and discovered a secret compartment containing extra storage barreries. By following the wires they found the sending set—smashed to smithereens under a heavy box of fish.

Yet, under our tolerant laws, this was not sufficient evidence to convict the truckmen of espionage! Why? Because there was no satisfactory proof of conspiracy; in other words, no proof that the truckmen were actually sending messages to the enemy.

In almost any other country the four would have been summarily executed; they are living comfortably in a concentration camp for the duration. Yet investigators are convinced these men were units of a spy ring, picking up information on ship movements at the harbor cannery where they delivered their fish, and flashing it to enemy submarines on the return trip.

More recently, a fresh rash of mysterious wireless signals had broken out along the Pacific coast. Authorities believe that at least two other mobile sets are operating, quite likely encouraged by the gentle treatment we accord enemy spies. . . .

PACKS of Japanese submarines off our west coast just after Pearl Harbor were brain-teasers to anti-espionage agents: Where were the subs being refueled? Most likely area was Baja California’, Mexico, that 760-mile finger of wild, sparsely settled land jutting down from San Diego, Calif. About 1,000 Japanese aliens live in that desolate region. Many are fishermen.

In January, two husky young American sportsmen decided to explore the coast line, fishing as they went. One was an expert abalone diver, able to go down several fathoms and wrest shellfish from the rocks.

Far south of Ensenada, the last settlement, they came one afternoon to a fisher-man’s shack on a cliff above the sea. They noticed it particularly because of a galvanized tank resembling a water tower. The tank stood on the seaward side of the house. The place was deserted except for a snarling dog. The young men made a camp on the beach some distance away. That night they went back to investigate.

They found that the water tank was empty and smelled strongly of oil. From the bottom, a three-inch pipe passed into the ground. They went back to the water’s edge, and after some search found the pipe again. It came out of the sand and extended into the sea. One of the men, the diver, followed it until the depth became too great.

Back in the United States they reported their find. The information was flashed to the commander of Mexican troops in the area. After a time word came back that the shack had been occupied by a Japanese family, who had been evacuated to the interior a week earlier.

HERE is a typical piece of an anti-espionage jigsaw. Was this a makeshift fueling station for enemy submarines? Were sub commanders able to take bearings from shore, grapple and raise the end of the pipe, while agents ashore dumped drums of fuel oil into the tank? Nobody knows the answers.

Yet our agents know that at least two bands of carrier pigeons are being worked almost daily across the Mexican border. One was shot by a hunter, and many others have been seen. Apparently this is part of an international spy ring’s operations, possibly to convey information from the United States into Mexico, from where it can be disseminated with less interference. It takes little imagination to hypothecate a case: a submarine flashing instructions to an agent in California by wireless; the agent sending word across the border by carrier pigeon; agents in Mexico standing by to refuel the sub at the appointed time.

But imagination has little place in trapping enemy spies. . . .

Raids on alien nests along the west coast have revealed amusing and astonishing things.

In one house, officers found a complete set of U.S. Navy signal flags. The head of the family explained naively that they were used in “Boy Scout work.” Three people lived there—a man and wife and her brother. The youngest was 47; the oldest 52. The officers thought they were a little mature for Boy Scouting and took them along.

After neighbors became suspicious because a Japanese housewife hung out an enormous washing every day, anti-espionage agents raided the place. They found a closet stacked to the ceiling with baby’s diapers, some in regulation squares and others sewn together. The house stood on a cliff above the sea. On the brink of the cliff, running parallel to the sea, was a wire clothesline 300 feet long. They deduced, since there was no baby in the house, that the diapers must have been used for code signaling—the regulation size for dots and the double-width for dashes. But they can’t prove it.

One hundred miles inland, an indigent German farmer suddenly began to spend money lavishly. He paid off his mortgage, bought miles of barbed wire, hired workmen to make a tight fence. When a troop of United States cavalry on maneuvers blundered along by mistake, he came out brandishing a shotgun and ordered them away. They went, but a few days later a raiding party swooped down and found three other Germans hiding in a root cellar. Their conflicting stories indicated they were being smuggled into the country, and agents think they broke up a way station of an enemy “underground railway.”

On a bitter night, a raiding party moved into a middle-class Japanese home to talk with its occupants. The house was frigid. Noticing that a fire had been laid on the hearth, an agent asked permission to light it. The Japanese said nothing, so the agent started a blaze. But the chimney didn’t draw. Smoke backed up, filled the house, and forced them all outdoors. The Japanese thought it was a great joke until an agent climbed to the roof and found that an automobile spotlight had been fitted into the top of the chimney. When the smoke cleared they traced the wires and found a concealed push-button switch. The device was evidently intended to signal airplanes.

MUCH less conclusive is Los Angeles’s own mystery—the mystery of the green sedan. For three weeks after Pearl Harbor this wraithlike vehicle cruised the vicinity of military emplacements at night. On twelve occasions its occupants fired on military sentries. Their aim was usually indifferent. Eventually the sedan vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared.

In San Francisco snipers and sluggers created a mysterious reign of terror among guards around strategic areas. In one night they ambushed four state guardsmen on duty at bridges, beating one so severely he will be hospitalized for months. All these attacks seem to have been senseless, since sabotage was not attempted. Some investigators think they may be dress rehearsals for mass attacks at later dates.

Mexicans with whom I have talked in Baja California are convinced the Japanese will make their first assault on the Pacific coast in May. This seems to be generally believed among the peons, who say their Japanese neighbors tell them that one large California city will be a “mass of smoking ruins” that month. While military authorities take this skeptically, all armed forces are kept in a state of continuous alert, both for invaders and for enemies within.

Of the aliens evacuated from west coast areas, some have filtered into the Mississippi Valley. A few others have gone to the Great Plains. But most of them are clinging to the fringes of the prohibited zones and have settled in the interior valleys of our westernmost states.

One town in California has lost almost half of its 6,000 inhabitants in evacuated alien Germans, Italians, and Japanese. Many towns have lost one third or more of their people. Evacuees include persons of almost every occupation, from laborers to professional men and bankers. I talked with an evacuated Italian doctor who has been in the United States 52 years, owns property, pays taxes, has voted for every President since William Howard Taft—but had never bothered to become a citizen.

There remains, however, the indisputable fact that enemy spies are operating on our west coast and that some of them, at least, must be among the alien population. Military authorities feel safer with all of them out of the potential combat zone.

What an organized fifth column ashore can do to assist an invading force is becoming increasingly apparent as details of Pearl Harbor continue to be revealed. Best-known incident is that of Japanese farmers who cut enormous arrows in fields of cane, the arrows pointing to military bases. In our Northwest, Seattle had a similar scare a few nights after the outbreak of the war. Airmen reported a string of “signal fires” pointing straight to the blacked-out city. An investigation revealed them to be brush fires started by state workmen along a main highway.

Less well known is the fact that the old targetship Utah, of no military value, was sunk at Pearl Harbor because she was moored where an airplane carrier usually lay. The carrier, blacked out, slipped out of the harbor Saturday night and the Utah moved over to her place. It was no more than a routine fleet operation, and apparently went unnoticed by spies ashore. Next day dive bombers concentrated on the Utah, evidently believing they were hammering the carrier.

Comparable to many of the mysterious happenings on our own west coast is the advertisement which a Japanese silk-importing firm placed in Honolulu newspapers the first week in December. It was apparently an innocuous bid for trade. But our anti-espionage agents found a cut-out screen which, when fitted over the advertisement, revealed certain words that spelled out a warning of the time and place of the impending attack.

THESE are the things authorities on our west coast intend to circumvent, if they can, by removing all aliens from preparedness zones. They don’t expect they can eliminate all danger of fifth-column activity; too much of it, they are convinced, is centered in traitorous American citizens.

The argument they hear most often is that hardships are being imposed on loyal aliens by lumping them with a few who may be disloyal. Their answer to this is sound: “All who are loyal to America must make sacrifices for the war effort. This is your sacrifice, your opportunity. Surely you won’t mind a little inconvenience if you can assist in saving American lives and property.”

And there’s only one answer to that.

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Fighting Planes of the World

by H. H. ARNOLD

Experts agree that the next war will be decided in the air. How, then, are the great powers prepared for such a war? H. H. Arnold, who has been actively engaged in military aviation for twenty years, this month compares the world’s fighting forces.

IT IS always hard to get reliable figures concerning the actual numbers and performances of the military planes of the different countries. Accordingly any figures given will probably be more or less out of date. However as all of the data will be about the same amount behind the times, an idea as to the comparative aerial strength of the various countries can be obtained. Accordingly the figures given herewith should not be taken as being absolutely correct for the aerial forces as of 1931.

For years France has been nervous concerning her national security. She has always had a strong army and since the World war, has built up a very strong Air Force. As a matter of fact the French have more military planes than the United States and Great Britain combined. With France leading with 4516 airplanes, the United States is a poor second with 2226 planes. The United States’ figures include Army, Navy, National Guard and Marine airplanes.

During the periods immediately following the World war the French concentrated on getting great numbers of planes. The British during the same period built only enough planes to carry on with. They figured that the next war could not come along for ten or more years and concentrated on permanent structures, development of new types of planes and engines and building up of airdromes where they would play important parts in national defense. During recent years the British have been bringing out airplanes with far better performances than those of any other country, though numerically inferior to France and the United States.

It is but recently that the Italians have taken up aviation with much constructive vigor. They are gradually building up a strong airforce with planes having good performance. The recent flights across the South Atlantic show the improvement of military types. In numbers the Italians are fourth but they have greatly increased their production. Our five year program has made it possible for the United States to stand second in point of numbers. In performance we rank second also.

In bombing planes the United States, France and Poland, all have provisions for carrying a 4000 pound bomb. The Italians provide for a 2000 pound one and the British light bombers for but an 800 pound bomb. Thus the British light bombers can carry just about one fifth the bomb load that can be carried by our Condors.

Each country seems to be influenced in its aircraft development by its national characteristics, geographical location, or topographical situation. France, surrounded by prospective enemies, has a large air force which it always keeps up in numbers. England, surrounded by water, has built up a highly efficient aviation outfit. However, in order to take care of its many outposts in the colonies, it has built up large cargo planes capable of carrying heavy loads, long distances. Italy has spent much time on water planes. Poland had support from the French in building up its air units and accordingly uses many French planes. The Japanese are completely isolated and do not seem to have taken much advantage of designs from other nations. Their planes seem to have lines all their own. In the United States we have long distances to cover in going from one place to another. Accordingly we have planes with large gas tanks and at the same time planes which give performances well above average.

It should be noted that when any one of the nations find out a new wrinkle or create a new design which gives better performance, it does not take the others long to find it out. Accordingly there will never be much difference between the climb, speed, or cruising range of the planes of the same type.

CORRUGATED PLATING DEFLECTS ARMOR-PIERCING BULLETS

BY FURROWING the surface of metal plate with angular ridges, a Philadelphia inventor has materially increased the strength of armor designed for use on tanks, warships, and aircraft. In recent ballistic experiments conducted before ordnance experts, high-powered bullets fired from a distance of fifty yards pierced a test section of flat armor plate one half inch thick. When a slightly thinner section of corrugated armor was used, however, bullets fired from the same distance failed to penetrate its surface, but ricocheted off the sides. Armor penetration depends on a bullet’s angle of impact. Corrugated armor plate, the inventor explains, presents a surface inclined at an angle of forty-five degrees; bullets strike it a glancing rather than a direct blow.

Air Photos Made by Army Pigeons

TINY aerial photos, snapped by a little camera attached to a carrier pigeon, are being made in Germany, where these birds are trained for military purposes. One of the small cameras, fastened to a pigeon’s body, can take six automatic snapshots while the bird is in flight. They give views so clear and accurate that they can be used as the basis for military maps and charts. Thus another office, that of the air photographer, is assigned to the birds that were found to be of great value during the World War.

A carrier pigeon has been known to carry a message as far as 1,040 miles, but one hundred miles is said to be as far as should be attempted with pigeons under a year old. The average rate of flight is thirty-seven miles an hour. During the war the messages were made on a fine paper or film and inclosed in a goose-quill capsule. This was attached by a waxed silk thread to a feather in the pigeon’s tail.