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Automatic Aiming Cannon Could Hit Invisible Aircraft

New anti-aircraft gun aims itself by sounding device to guard America from air raiders.

PEOPLE who lived in London during the late World War will vividly recall the feeling of helplessness that possessed them when Germany bombed that city on several occasions.

They will tell you that the murderous cargoes of bombs were dropped from Zeppelins and Gothas which cruised the thin upper realms of the heavens with nothing more harmful than an occasional searchlight beam touching them. The anti-aircraft guns were powerless. Why? Any aviator familiar with anti-aircraft ordnance could tell you. He would laugh at the thought of an anti-aircraft gun actually scoring a direct hit. Planes brought down by shrapnel from the ground were planes that were just “in the way,” he would tell you. And he was right— about those old anti-aircraft guns. But he would be wrong about the new “Robot Gun,” and well might he change the tone of his argument, for the new weapon is well nigh invincible, according to authorities in the army. What happened to London can never happen to America, they say. Here is the reason. There will be guarding all of America’s strategic cities batteries of guns which automatically and instantaneously compute trajectory, wind density, elevation and speed at which the target is moving, and which can hit aircraft too far away for the eye to see! These guns function through the medium of a new device called a torque amplifier, which automatically “lays” the gun, a field parlance has it. From three points, which define plane in which the target is moving, ears gather the sibilant the sibilant sounds of a distant motor. Instantly, as to a human brain, nerves of wire and stimuli of electricity instruct the torque amplifier as to the location of the target. With the speed of Electra the gun is aimed and fired. Not an attendant is near. The gun functions until a hit kills the droning of the motors.

With the old anti-aircraft guns data required for laying the guns were telephoned from a central station to the men directing them. Numerous instruments had to be used in observing the planes and computing the firing data. So many men were required to receive all the information and set the scales that not merely one but many errors resulted.

Then, after all was done the low velocity of the shells and the speed of the planes caused the projectile usually to be late in arriving where the plane had been, if it got that far. Little improvement was made over that system for some years after the war.

Today through the use of the equipment devised by the late Major W. P. Wilson of the Ordnance Bureau, the electrically controlled robot guns, which are three-inch pieces, are being proved through tests conducted at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland.

Army officers regard the new guns as almost human, in the same way people speak of the linotype and the adding machine; even more than human, because they minimize the effect of errors by the personnel.

It is predicted that a new day has dawned in the use of anti-aircraft ordnance, and that America will be immune from any attack by airplanes, formidable as the winged explosive carriers may be!

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UNDERSEA SPIES

BY JAMES NEVIN MILLER

BACK in December, 1944, Lieut. Earl E. Cook of Seattle, won the Navy Cross for a unique achievement. First, in a successful effort to locate three enemy depth bombs known to be in immediate danger of detonation, he dove deep inside a patrol bomber sunk in a vital channel off Oahu, Hawaii. Then for three never-to-be-forgotten days he directed a six-man team of divers which finally recovered the death-dealing weapons.

This daring young officer was one of a group of “undersea spies” who undertook the most dangerous and difficult assignments of the war. Trained with painstaking care in a unique type of Intelligence work, most of them were members of the Navy’s underwater demolition teams.

Unarmed, dressed only in swimming trunks, members of these teams swam to action, braving enemy fire and sharks, to clear with explosives any natural or man-made obstacle from the beaches chosen as objectives of our amphibious landings.

These “spies in trunks” in many instances were provided with revolutionary equipment that furnished underwater photographic eyes for their special brand of sub-sea Intelligence. Incidentally, this new equipment is expected to have important applications in peacetime salvage. Right after Pearl Harbor, faced by the problem of determining accurately the amount of damage to American warships crippled or destroyed by the Jap sneak attack, the Navy found existing underwater photographic equipment and techniques impractical in the extreme depths and dirty water in which they were forced to work. Sketches made by divers from personal exploration took precious time and lacked the extreme accuracy and detail required for salvage work. So it happened that the en- gineers of Photo Utilities, Inc., in cooperation with the Navy, developed an electrically-operated multiple exposure camera capable of withstanding pressures at depths up to 225 feet. In this connection they used the automatic motor and film transport mechanism manufactured by Graflex, Inc., the 90 mm. wide-angle Graflex Optar lens in the Graflex synchronized shutter originally designed for Speed Graphic press cameras, and a special aluminum pressure case with pressure type controls for lens diaphragm and shutter. The camera, using only standard film, filters and flashbulbs, can be operated from the surface by remote control, yet it is compact enough to be carried and operated by a single diver.

Because of the extreme murkiness of choppy waters and great depths, most undersea photographic work requires from one to four standard size flashbulbs. Special waterproof socket reflectors developed by the Mines Equipment Co., prevent the danger of short circuits and make it possible to change bulbs under water. In crystal-clear areas of the Pacific however, standard snapshot exposures are possible at depths as great as 100 feet.

Extreme depth of field and focusing from two feet to infinity are possible with a helical mount which moves the film toward and away from the lens instead of the opposite standard procedure.

A dome-shaped aluminum pressure case protects the camera from damage by water or pressure. For the first time in undersea equipment, the curved protecting glass over the lens forms an integral part of the optical system, providing critical definition under all conditions. Special waterproof compartments within the camera prevent total damage in case of accident to one or more sections.

Getting back to the exploits of the “underwater spies”: exactly how they were able to invade enemy beachheads to pave the way for landings in force probably never will be told in its entirety. This much, however, may now be revealed: They were the first ashore and al- ways faced the risk of heavy casualties. In fact, their losses in Normandy were as high as 40 per cent.

Yet their work was vital to the success of our landing operations. They cleared enemy beaches of obstructions. They blasted ways through reefs so landing ships might enter. Their sacrifices helped to keep down the casualties among the soldiers who arrived on the succession of D-Days in the Pacific, invariably days after the sub-sea Intelligence experts had done their work.

The first training school for underwater demolition teams was organized by Commander Draper L. Kauffman of Bethesda, Md. He and his daring associates went through a big part of the Pacific war. * “Every time our men went in,” he said, “they expected to suffer heavy casualties. After one or two operations we felt certain that the Jap would take steps to prevent our accomplishing future jobs other than by simply shooting at us. We expected to be blown sky high by mines waiting for our swimmers and to find other traps specifically designed to stop us when the teams left their boats and swam in to carry out reconnaissance and demolition of obstructions. These the Jap failed to do and contented himself with plastering us with cannon, rifle and machine gun fire. We didn’t want to emphasize his mistakes.”

In open daylight jobs destroyers and converted destroyers, cruisers and even battleships, along with bombing and strafing planes, kept the enemy at bay while our underwater experts worked around reefs and along the beaches.

The value of the sub-sea spies was twofold. They obtained information as to whether mines and obstacles lay in the way of a planned landing operation, and they eliminated obstructions wherever necessary.

Their attire was simple—swimming trunks, light swimming shoes sometimes fitted with a fin to speed up swimming, and large goggles for working under water. Their tools, besides the sub-sea camera, were explosives and fuses and gear for securing them into position.

Their mother ships were converted destroyers which carried smaller landing craft for transporting personnel when close to the reefs. From here on in, small rubber boats and swimming were the only means of transportation.

Underwater spying had to be rapid and sure. Often on exposed reefs where a man was too clearly a target, the demolition men had to work for short periods when tides partially or fully covered the reefs. Early in the work our officers and men learned that it was very difficult for the enemy to hit a human head bobbing in the water. Normally the demolition men laid their high explosives, connected by cords of instantaneous explosive material, around a large group of obstacles to be blown out. When the safety fuse was touched off, the whole area of obstacles went up together. Synchronized watches and radio contact were used among the platoons or groups of men to assure that explosives were not touched off prematurely. On pre-arranged signal, all swimmers would get out of the area of danger as fast as they could to their rubber boats, thence to landing craft to escape the deluge of flying coral, concrete, steel and broken timbers.

They not only blew up these obstructions but often cut channels through the reefs so that the larger landing craft could bring men and tanks to the chosen beaches. Time after time secret reconnaissance was required at selected landing beaches without leaving a trace that the beaches had been visited.

Balloons on Helmet Make Targets for Cavalry Combat

PUNCTURING a balloon on the head of an opponent with the skillful thrust of a rapier is the unique means employed by cavalry students to score points when engaging in “armed combat” at Urban Military Academy at Beverly Hills, California. The balloons are tied to the helmets of the combatants, and the first fighter to burst the balloon of an “enemy” wins the encounter.

Although swordsmanship is a thing of the past, as far as modern warfare is concerned, this kind of practice is of service in teaching agility, alertness and horsemanship. The contest is a part of the training for the annual spring maneuvers of the academy.

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AIR WAR OVER THE ARCTIC

Our planes are waging a relentless battle to conquer polar cold and guard America against sneak attacks across the world’s roof.

By Major General K. P. McNaughton, U. S. Air Force

FOR nearly four centuries the Arctic defied the hardiest explorers from the temperate zones. This vast ice-locked world with its midnight sun, Aurora Borealis and paralyzing cold has been an impregnable barrier across the shortest route between the East and West.

Now the development of long-range aircraft is wiping out that barrier and, for the first time, exposing America to bombing and invasion by air. The polar regions have become vitally important to our national defense. For, should that dreaded World War III suddenly explode upon us, the key battles probably will be decided in the air over the Arctic.

By traveling the polar routes, military aircraft now

may fly with ease from the major cities of Europe and Asia to the industrial centers of the United States. For example, by way of the Arctic, the air distance from Chungking, China to New York City—two of the world’s most strategic cities from the military viewpoint—is a mere 7800 miles against 12,700 by land and sea. Long-range jets could cover that shorter route in a matter of hours, where the conventional surface journey would take at least three weeks.

Should an airfield be set up on the frozen wastes near the North Pole, cities open to shuttle air attacks would include New York, 2950 miles away; San Francisco. 3150; Detroit, 2850; Moscow, 2050; Berlin, 2200, and London, 2300.

In these tense times, America therefore must keep a watchful “aerial eye” guarding the top of the world. To fill this need, the United States Air Force is training and organizing what might be called an “Arctic Air Force” to meet and destroy any enemy bombers or guided missiles before they can strike our industrial targets.

Three large Air Force fields are now in operation in Alaska. At Ladd Field, near Fairbanks, an outdoor cold-weather test unit is maintained. In the immediate area, at Mile Twenty-Six, a World War II fighter base has been enlarged to accommodate our heaviest bombers. To the west, near Anchorage, Elmendorf Field is under expansion. Emergency airfields are located throughout Alaska and at strategic points along the Aleutians.

Flights by Alaska-based squadrons during the past two years have shown our Air Force how to operate planes and equipment efficiently in the polar regions and have proved that U.S.A.F. units can fly anywhere in the Arctic during any time of the year. It is no accident, moreover, that jet planes have been undergoing intensive tactical exercises up there for well over a year.

Within recent months remarkable progress has been made in our knowledge of polar aerial navigation. Alaska has been mapped comprehensively for the first time in history. Our airmen have cleared up much of the mystery concerning the magnetic north pole—which is really three poles in a magnetic field in the vicinity of Prince of Wales Island. Now, thanks to such discoveries as this and a revolutionary system of navigation, a pilot can fly anywhere and fix his location to within one mile.

When the 46th Reconnaissance Squadron arrived in Alaska, navigators found their maps were marked with huge white areas marked “Unexplored.” They also found that the charts used in the lower latitudes were not practical for polar, or high-latitude, navigation.

Converging latitudes at the top of the world made guesswork out of most attempts to navigate by means of ordinary maps. Near the magnetic poles, compasses perform like roulette wheels. Northern lights and sunspots black out radios and electronic equipment.

Sounds have terrific carrying power in the cold, clear air. During World War II the Japs on Kiska didn’t need air-warning devices. They could hear our bombers taking off from Amchatka, 75 miles away.

For many months jet fighters have been going through rigid tests in the Arctic under simulated combat conditions. The Air Force’s “Hat-in-the-Ring” Squadron, equipped with Lockheed P-80B “Shooting Stars,” arrived at Ladd Field, Fairbanks. Alaska, in December, 1947, for the first mass tactical operation of jet aircraft over the polar area. This was a unit of the First Fighter Group, based at March Field, Calif.

Before taking off, the planes were winterized. To withstand temperatures down to minus 65 degrees F., they were modified so that their GE-Allison J-33 turbo-jet engines could be started with gasoline, because that fuel is more readily combustible. Later they switched to kerosene, the regular jet fuel. Recently the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics and the AiResearch Manufacturing Co. of Los Angeles have developed the first successful starter for jet and turbo-prop engines. This new self-starting system may solve one of the problems of jet operations in the Arctic.

Exact training procedure for the jets is, naturally, secret. In general, though, when not supporting the ground forces in simulated combat the jets “go upstairs” to fly top fighter cover for bombing missions and aerial supply flights. Officials have expressed complete satisfaction with the jet fighter as experimental, first-line equipment in the Arctic. Using the faster jets, pilots can complete their missions in about half the time required in conventional aircraft.

Special weather-equipped B-29s make regular flights over the Arctic. The 375th Reconnaissance Squadron has been handling two vital missions for more than a year: first, to observe weather conditions over the North Pacific from the Aleutians to Japan, and second, to maintain weather recon reporting facilities in the polar area. Because of the scarcity of ground weather stations, there is a negligible amount of forecasting data available north of 70 degrees latitude.

Polar prowls are made thrice weekly by the 375th Recon Squadron, flying out of Ladd Field. In these nights, B-29s take off with capacity loads of 134,000 pounds on 17-hour missions. At takeoff they carry 8500 gallons of fuel, 14 crewmen.

For most of the trip these planes fly level at 10,000 feet which is high enough to evade most bad polar weather. However, they must go up to 20,000 feet till they are north of the Alaskan mountain ranges.

Summer missions are flown in continuous daylight and winter missions in continuous darkness. To aid comparison of all types of information, the planes usually follow the same route: From takeoff point the 375th heads for Aklavik on the Arctic Sea Coast of Yukon Territory, then to Cape Manning on the southern tip of Prince Patrick Island, from there northward up the 123rd meridian to the Pole. The return trip is via Point Barrow, Alaska.

Radar is vitally needed for Arctic flying. The operator can track and determine active cold fronts 50 miles away and identify various types of ice formations.

There are few manmade landmarks such as cities, roads, railways and towns. Natural landmarks like lakes, rivers and coastlines are often so badly obscured by snow that it is next to impossible to distinguish them from land.

By a new grid system, radar operators have learned to estimate wind, drift and ground speed to a fine margin, even through an overcast. The margin of error in figuring the drift has been narrowed to one degree. Ground speed can be computed to within five knots.

Actually polar weather isn’t as treacherous as legend would have it. The air is mostly stable and the greatest hindrances are fog, snow and ice haze. In winter there are few clouds and it is fairly clear although of course darkness prevails all, the time.

Right at the North Pole it often is warmer than at Ladd Field. Strong winds are prevalent, one mission hitting a cyclone over the polar cap. ‘ Pertinent weather information is relayed by a Naval weather-teletype machine to all points of the U. S., Canada, Alaska and even Hawaii. Such information is extremely important since Arctic weather today foretells the world’s weather tomorrow.

The Air-Weather Service operates a network of sub-Arctic weather stations that have shown the feasibility of sustained operation in the area. It also operates daily round-trip weather flights from Fairbanks, Alaska, to the North Pole and is experimenting with auto- matic weather stations in remote Arctic regions where it is impractical to assign personnel.

Following a new rotation system for training in Arctic air war, the 43rd Bomb Wing, a Strategic Air Command unit is rotating three five-plane units of B-50s to Alaska for 45-day special field exercises, ending March 15. The four-engine Boeing B-50 is an improved postwar version of the B-29, with a top speed of 400 miles an hour, a cruising speed of 300, and service ceiling of 30,000 feet.

Wing headquarters for these first B-50s in Alaska is at Davis-Monthan Air Force base, Tucson, Arizona. Under the plan the bombers are flown from Tucson to Eielson Base near Fairbanks.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the danger of the effect of intense cold on metals, plastic and rubber. Equipment must be thoroughly winterized. Plastic brackets on aircraft crystallize at low temperatures and must be replaced with metal. Hydraulic propellers are hard to “feather” and give way to those that are electrically controlled. All exterior plumbing has to be specially wrapped. Sometimes truck engines have frozen right while they are running.

When a plane lands, the fuel must be drained or it will freeze in the fuel lines. Engines, tail surfaces, wings, turrets and carburetors air scoops must be covered. Covers have to be pulled skin tight to prevent moisture from forming underneath, then freezing.

Batteries are removed and stored in a warm place. Mats are placed under all rubber tires so that they won’t freeze to the runway, go flat or have the bottoms torn off.

All parked aircraft must be tied down because of the Alaska Williwaws. These storms, often including 100-mile-an-hour winds are caused by wind piling up against a mountain and then “boiling over” on the leeward side. They strike suddenly and toss unsecured airplanes around like chips. Luckily, it’s easy to anchor a plane against one of these violent storms. A crewman tosses the loose end of a .rope on the runway and pours a bucket of water over it. In a moment the rope’s end freezes solidly and securely to the runway.

Other changes to adapt our planes to subzero operations include the use of new greases, cold-weather packing around hydraulic units and the installation of an electric blower to defrost the pilot’s windshield and canopy. Synthetic rubber, brittle under severe cold, was replaced with natural rubber, including the sealing of the pressurized cockpit.

When a plane is prepared for polar flight, the covers must be removed. Snow, frost and ice (which may form instantly) must be cleared from all surfaces. All parts of the plane must be checked carefully because metal sweats and ice forms wherever there is moisture. The same cold that will freeze a man’s bare hand in two minutes will cause the small amount of moisture discharged from the exhaust of a single plane to create an ice fog that may settle over an entire airfield and paralyze operations. The engines must be preheated by ground-heating units before they can be started and aircraft weapons thawed before they will operate.

Many of these winterization problems in the Arctic are being solved despite temperatures as low as 65 degrees below zero. Among the test planes being used are Fairchild Packets loaded with special equipment. The huge twin-box car is provided with snow and ice tires for the main landing-gear wheels. These tires have small slivers of steel impregnated in the tread to provide better traction and protect the rubber from ferocious slashing by the elements.

In one recent and very successful test with the Packets, additional heat for the cargo compartment, cabin and also for the outside wings, fuselage and tail surfaces was provided by four specially designed hot-air exchangers, instead of the two inboard exchangers formerly used. These furnish enough heat per hour to warm over 200 big rooms in a good-sized hotel. In this new system air, introduced by scoops, is heated to 350 degrees and forced under pressure to the leading edge of the wings and tail surfaces. The temperature on the outside surfaces of these equipment items, rises to about 130 degrees, preventing the formation of ice.

Training exercises for Arctic maneuvers have been conducted in various parts of Alaska and the United States by the Army and Air Forces since 1946. In 1948 two of these were held, “Yukon,” at Big Delta, Alaska, and “Snowdrop” at Pine Camp, N. Y. They proved the efficiency of transporting men, equipment, material and supplies by air to a combat, cold-climate area, fully prepared to engage an enemy. They also revealed improved methods for parachuting equipment and for landings and takeoffs by gliders on ice and snow.

The Air Force’s new crash rescue system deserves special mention. Since 1947 the A. F. has maintained parachutist teams of medical technicians and guides to be used by the 10th Rescue Squadron in Alaska. The teams each include two medical technicians, two Alaskan guides and a jump surgeon and do remarkable rescue jobs when aircraft are forced down in inaccessible areas.

For more than a year the squadron also has been using long-range Douglas C-54 Sky-masters for glider hauls and pickups. With the new method, rescue squadron can fly gliders loaded with medical aidmen and Arctic survival equipment to the scene of a crash without trying to land the four-engine transport the airmen “snatch” injured and survivors back to safety.

The squadron now includes four separate flights, each having two twin engine Catalina amphibious aircraft (for air-sea rescue), two four-engine bomber-type aircraft, two helicopters, two liaison-type aircraft and one twin-engine transport.

The four-engine jobs B-17s carry large lifeboats. The boats are dropped to crews forced down in the water. The long-range bombers also are used to locate crashed aircraft.

Often the parachutist rescue teams accompany the bombers in locating downed aircraft. These teams jump immediately on their missions of mercy rather than await arrival of the transports.

Helicopters have conclusively proved their usefulness in the Arctic. Back in September, 1947 an A. F. Sikorsky R-5 helicopter 10th Rescue Squadron at Ladd Field, made its first rescue mission above the Arctic circle, flying to Bettles, Alaska, 185 miles northwest of Fairbanks, to rescue George Plucinski, a trapper, stranded for two weeks on an inaccessible river bank.

Since this dramatic rescue the air force has been testing for frigid climates the new R-5F helicopter, which holds three passengers and the pilot—two more than earlier models. A tricycle-type landing gear and “high-lift” rotor blades provide better performance.

The R-5F can carry a covered Utter or rescue hoist on each side of the cabin. Cruising speed is 85 miles per hour, range is 245 miles and climb rate is 1200 feet a minute.

Realizing that morale and efficiency are all-important in combating the rigors of Arctic flying, the Air Force set up an Arctic Indoctrination School at Nome, Alaska in September, 1947, to teach air crews how they can best survive the subzero cold.

Fliers are warned not to bail out of their planes in emergencies unless there is immediate danger of explosion. Chances of survival in the bleak polar wastes are much better if the crew rides the crippled plane down to a crash landing, then sticks near it both for shelter and for easier spotting in the snow and ice by search parties.

The men learn how to live off the land and build snow houses for survival in the face of 60-below-zero weather. They must get used to wearing clothing loose enough for air to circulate. Tight garments cause perspiration, which quickly freezes in the cold and thus forms a frost lining next to the skin. The men also find out that they may suffer a frostbitten face unless they shave regularly, as the moisture in the breath will freeze on a beard and turn it into an ice mask. On the other hand, the face must be protected with a special shield, or heavily greased, to prevent sunburn. Goggles, too, must be worn all day outdoors as a precaution against snow blindness from the intense glare.

After a course in the new school, the men still respect the Arctic and its very real dangers, but they show more courage and confidence in facing the rugged polar life.

The late General “Billy” Mitchell, noted air pioneer, said: “Whoever holds Alaska will control the airlines of the world.”

So far, our only challenge for control of those airlines has come from a nonhuman enemy, the polar cold. Should this cold air war over the Arctic suddenly grow hot, at least we’ll have the pilots and planes right there on top of the world—ready to spring to America’s defense and strike back a powerful counter-blow.

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CAN THIS WAR BE WON?

Modern fortifications along the Maginot and Siegfried lines have made France and Germany “invasion proof.” The result may be a war no nation can win!

by Maxwell Hamilton

WHAT happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?

This age-old problem in physics, a familiar question to every school boy, seems destined to find an answer in Europe’s latest armed conflict. For the present “war to end wars” is a contest between two of the world’s! greatest immovable objects—the Siegfried and the Maginot lines!

Imagine, if you can,, an advancing horde of 2,000,000 men. It is armed to the eyes with high-speed, rapid-firing tanks, motorized cavalry and infantry, mobile artillery and ammunition units, every known type of poison gas, and the most modern and efficient equipment available for pouring forth a ceaseless storm of shot and shell, endless tons of lead, steel and flame. Magnify this glittering array of death on the march five times over—and, against it, the French defenses on the Maginot line still would remain impregnable!

On the other hand, should the Allies abandon such snug security and launch an attack of their own, just as much power and strength and cunning, multiplied many times over, would avail them nothing. The German Siegfried line—not 10 miles away— is just, as redoubtable, just as impossible to penetrate, as the French fortifications.

It is Armageddon, giant against giant, with victory in the lap of the gods.

Of the two great bulwarks, the French Maginot line would seem to have whatever slight advantage exists. Begun 10 years ago, it has cost France $300,000,000 and has taken all of the intervening years to complete. It is modern, it is thorough, it is highly scientific. The German counterpart, on the other hand, is a product of feverish building over the short space of the last year and a half, with the natural weaknesses of hasty construction deemed certain to appear under fire.

It is to the late Andre Maginot, ex-War Minister of the French Republic and veteran of the First World War, that credit for these amazing fortresses must go. Lying wounded and despairing in a 1917 base hospital, Maginot, a sergeant of artillery, stared at the bullet-pocked ceiling above him, gritted his teeth and groaned with pain.

“I hate war,” he muttered. “I abhor it.”

Eighteen years later, in a meeting of France’s Supreme Council of National Defense, Maginot, the new war minister, 6 feet 2 inches of man, rose to his feet, outlined on a map the French border from Luxemburg to Switzerland and stated his position coldly and determinedly.

“We must build a wall along here,” he said, “that the devil himself can’t break through!”

The result: the Maginot and, later, the Siegfried line.

In a time of peace, you might cross and re-cross the Maginot fortifications and see nothing but rolling hills, dense thickets and an occasional peasant’s shelter. If you were particularly observant, you might note a scattering of small, dome-shaped mounds protruding from the earth, mounds which— in any other locality—would certainly be taken for underground reservoirs or drainage tanks.

Far from drainage tanks, these mounds mark almost the only visible evidence of the greatest fortifications in the history of France! These are pill-boxes, heavily armed, constantly manned—and facing east. What looked like an ordinary thicket turns out to be an enormous cruel mass of twisted barbed wire, and what might have been taken for a peasant’s shelter is, in reality, a block-house, with walls 60 inches of cement and steel and blended into the color of the hillside.

The Maginot defenses really comprise three parts.

The first consists of the pill-boxes—the dome-shaped mounds—built along the base of the hillside. Although connected with the other fortifications by underground passageways, each pill-box is a separate unit, isolated, to be sold out to the invader at the highest price. It is manned with the very latest type machine guns that can fire for 24 hours without a stop. It has sanitary facilities and is stocked with ammunition, food and water; for it is its purpose to impede the enemy, discourage his advance and then surrender only when its occupants are dead. For volunteer “suicide squads” will man these outposts.

Behind the pill-boxes are the block-houses, containing machine and field guns and connected with each other, and the rear, by subterranean tunnels. They, too, are independent units, capable of standing on their own and—when pill-boxes have fallen—of setting off mines in the passages between these units in order to cut off access through that quarter. The third part of the line also consists of block-houses, only this time they contain more powerful defenses—75 and 155 millimeter cannon (3- and 6-inch)—radio stations, observation posts, field headquarters, and so on.

But these are but surface manifestations of the great Maginot defenses, and, like an iceberg, France’s newest forts are 7/8ths under the surface. Behind the three front lines, and deep in the bowels of the earth, are the living quarters and administration divisions of the defenders. Thus, as fast as front line troops grow weary, fresh detachments are ready and able to go into service. And should the enemy penetrate the three outer walls, he is met back of the lines by brigade after brigade of well-equipped fighters who pour out of the cavernous reaches of the underworld from all sides.

Within the heart of the hillsides, an army can live for months in the ingenious recesses of which Andre Maginot dreamed. There are comfortable steel-lined barracks, air-conditioned and strengthened to withstand five times the assault put upon them in their first tests. There are escalators from one level to another, kitchens, hospitals, ammunition dumps, reservoirs—even wine cellars and recreation rooms. Telephone cables are steel-insulated to withstand the shock of high explosive, and when they fail there is the radio. If that goes dead, then pigeons go into action.

The fact that the superstructures are located on hilltops minimizes the poison gas nuisance. Gas needs dry weather and low, windless country; but, even if it came, the Maginot line would be ready for it. Guns are set in water-tight jackets and embrasures that defy the entry of gas; and the smoke and fumes from gun discharges within the fortifications are ingeniously disposed of through ducts which permit exit but not entrance. The air in these defenses, aided by pressure, is as pure as that of a mountain cave.

As safe as they are inside, the inhabitants i of both the Maginot and Siegfried lines are amply protected on the surface. Andre Maginot, as well as his rivals across the German border, realized that such defenses might be surmounted or crushed easily by the fast and powerful tanks of the war that was to come, and this angle has been taken into consideration.

Machine gun nests, block-houses and other defensive works are skirted by a veritable morass of tank traps. Thousands of steel rails, set end upright in solid concrete and steel, and with their upper ends protruding at different heights out of the earth, stand like a garden of irregular bean poles to impale the fastest tank and strip its belt tracks. If an enemy driver successfully skirts this “asparagus,” and is not disabled by the withering anti-tank cross-fire which besets him from pill-boxes and block-houses* on all sides, his troubles have just begun. For he will find that the most solid earth will turn out to be a deep, wedged-shaped pit, concealed by grass and underbrush, and into which he will sink out of action.

In the meantime, the infantry is having its troubles in jungles of barbed-wire, carefully woven and supported in days of peace, when things can be done carefully and devilishly. In some instances, these nests of wire are even electrified to put the crusher on any army that dared to try to pass or cut them.

In this latter respect, the German and French defenses are much the same and present no dissimilarity to the casual observer. The German “asparagus” protrusions are different only in that the rails have been encased in concrete and stretch in columns of four for miles and miles along the border. They were built by Fritz Todt, German road expert, who drove an army of 500,000 workers for more than a year before completing the project last Summer.

With this minor difference, and despite the denials of Adolf Hitler, the German West Wall—as the Siegfried line is called in the Reich—is almost a copy of the Maginot fortifications. There are reputed to be almost 600 of the hillside, pill-box forts of the Maginot type on German soil, all complete with living quarters, air conditioning, latest type armanents, plumbing, telephones, radio and recreation facilities.

The German barricades extend more than 400 miles along the frontier, are drilled—in some places—as much as 30 miles into German territory, and are said by Der Feuhrer to be able to withstand any attack, whether from air, by tank, by gas or heavy artillery.

The British have deprecated the efficiency of the German line on several occasions. According to their reports, the subterranean dug-outs of the Germans may be able to thwart any human enemy but were flooded by the high waters of the Rhine last Summer, forcing a hasty evacuation. Furthermore, they say, the German soldiers are unhappy underground because of the fact that the galleries are crammed to overcrowding with ammunition, the air conditioning doesn’t work and ventilation is bad, and there has been a marked shortage of food, forcing the troops to come out and show their hideaways.

Regardless of these rumors, however, it is apparent that both teams have power aplenty to stave off attack from all sides, and neutral observers are of the opinion that this new war really may be the war to end wars. They point out that, with neither side able to gain any ground on the other, they will have to resort to air raids and bombing of non-combatants, and eventually—like invincible knights of King Arthur—both sides will battle to exhaustion. And the conflict will be at an end.

But man’s best laid plans sometimes go awry. Both Germany and the Allies are rumored to have some secret and amazing weapons which they are saving till the real scrap begins. If these rumors are true, then guesswork goes out the window.

The question is, however—Have the boys got such weapons?

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Washington’s Brassy Influence Peddlers

Retired generals and admirals cozy up to their old buddies to swing billions of dollars in defense contracts!

By FRANK DEGNAN

LAST JULY, three of the largest defense contractors in the nation readied plans to entertain Air Force Lt. General Bernard S. Schriever, head of the Air Research and Development Command. Party invitations described the affair as cocktails and dinner with an off-the-record chat by General Schriever about his plans and problems.

The party was suddenly cancelled when a newspaper carried a report on it. Why? Because at that very moment the House Armed Services Committee was investigating influence peddling by retired high-ranking officers suspected of using undue influence and pressure to get defense contracts amounting to millions of dollars for their new employers.

Hosts for General Schriever’s party—scheduled for the Pan-American Room of the Statler-Hilton Hotel in Washington—were Frank Pace, Jr., Secretary of the Army during 1950-53 and now chairman of the board of General Dynamics Corp.; Dan A. Kimball, Secretary of the Navy during 1951-53 and now president of Aerojet-General Corp., and William B. Bergen, president of the Martin Co.

Washington is famed for its parties for high Government officials, foreign dignitaries, industry moguls and hundreds of lesser lights. None of them outdo the serenading the high Pentagon brass gets from friendly emissaries of defense contractors with the emissary usually being a retired general or admiral. When the evening wears on and conviviality runs high, conversation turns to the lush multi-million dollar defense contracts that big companies fight for.

Up and down Connecticut Avenue and Sixteenth Street; in swanky homes and former embassy mansions; in fine hotels like the Mayflower, the Congressional and the Shoreham; these nightly gatherings entertain Government officials and generals and admirals responsible for awarding defense contracts.

Before the generals and admirals switch to civilian life on retirement, they are courted assiduously by the defense contractors who dangle the lure of high salaries to get their influence and friendships inside the Pentagon on contract letting.

How serious is this influence peddling? At a recent Presidential press conference, these generals and admirals and other influence peddlers working for large defense contractors were referred to by President Eisenhower as a “munitions lobby.” And they certainly are! In the scramble to get and keep defense contracts it’s invaluable for a company to have a few retired admirals or generals on tap. And companies spare no efforts to see they do have a few sitting around the board rooms, ready for a trip to Washington for a chat with a key Defense Department official. Here’s the importance North American Aviation, Inc., of Columbus, Ohio, places on a military man: The following is an advertisement placed by North American in the Wall Street Journal of May 7, 1959:

MILITARY ADVISOR To advise—counsel—report to high level management on military matters as they apply to long range development planning. Must be personable with high degree of speaking and writing ability. Military background with rank of Air Force Colonel or Navy Captain or higher. Experience on Joint Staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff desirable. (Author’s italics) Mail Resume to: Mr. J. A. Swanson North American Aviation, Inc.

4300 East Fifth Ave.

Columbus 16, Ohio Asked Representative F. Edward Hebert (D., La.), chairman of the House Special Investigations Subcommittee, about this advertisement: “In effect you were trying to buy not only the ability of the applicant but also the knowledge he acquired in the Joint Chiefs of Staff organization where all the papers are secret?”

How many retired military officers are now working for defense contractors? Unofficial estimates place the number at 2,500. Senator Paul “Douglas (D., Ill.) revealed that there were 769 officers holding the rank of Colonel in the Air Force or Army, or Captain in the Navy, and above, in the employ of companies that got nearly three-fourths of all defense business, with contracts running into billions.

These retired officers using their names and influence to wangle fat contracts for the companies now employing them boost the nation’s defense bill, since most of the contracts are negotiated rather than let by competitive bidding.

Listen to Representative Alfred E. Santangelo (D., N.Y.): “If we are to reduce the wasteful defense expenditures, we must eliminate the Pentagon influence by former retired general officers upon those who let contracts.”

A former assistant Air Force Secretary admitted that retired military officers did try to influence decisions at the Pentagon—at least while he was there several years ago. Edwin V. Huggins, now executive vice president of Westinghouse Electric Corp., testified to this before the House Special Investigations Subcommittee. Mr. Huggins said that while he was a top Air Force official from 1952 to 1953, some retired officers were “too evident” by their presence in the Pentagon. It was clear they were “around too much,” he added.

Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, father of the atomic submarine, was asked by a Congressional committee: “Do you have visits from former associates?” He replied, “I used to, but the word got around that I’m obtuse. But they go higher up and I sometimes get pressures from that.”

Commenting on influence peddling to get lush Government contracts, Senator Douglas said that 85% of all defense contracts are negotiated by the Pentagon, rather than awarded to the lowest bidder. “When companies with defense contracts hire officers of high rank, some of whom negotiate with their fellow officers, or who may sit in the back room while such negotiations are going on, or who have information from their former comrades which is useful to their companies, the potential and actual abuses of the negotiated contract system are magnified,” added Senator Douglas.

Negotiated contracts have resulted in the Government getting gypped many times in the past. On one occasion the Government was overcharged more than $12 million on contracts because of careless negotiation. Even Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Cecil P. Milne admitted to a House Committee that the Navy did a “bad job” on the contracts.

The Government has had its pocket picked before. Largely forgotten, but still good examples of what indifference to influence peddling can cost, are past scandals. Remember the five-percenters! In July, 1949, Major General Herman Feldman, 59, who joined the army as a private and served for 42 years, finally reaching the post of Quartermaster General, was suspended by Army Secretary Gray. The charge—furnishing a contractor’s representative procurement information under irregular circumstances.

At the same time Major General Alden H. Waitt, 56, head of the Chemical Corps was also suspended because he “improperly furnished personnel data” to a civilian.

The two generals were friends of retired Army Colonel James VK Hunt, a five-percenter, whose friends helped him get defense contracts.

Getting weapons contracts from the Government is still too often conducted on a close personal basis. Recently, a top official of the Martin Company, missile manufacturers, admitted to House investigators that his firm had flown high-ranking military officers to an exclusive country club in the Bahamas for gay weekend parties. This official was George M. Bunker, chairman of the board.

Martin deducts the cost of the junkets from its tax payments. Martin has about $800 million worth of defense work under contract. Bunker said the purpose of the weekend pleasure trips was to bring about a “closer relationship” between Martin officials and those in the military, the Government and industry. He said the Martin Company picks up the tab for the weekend entertainment at an exclusive country club called Eleutheria on one of the Atlantic Ocean isles off the Florida coast.

The cost of all this entertainment to benefit the companies’ and tickle the vanity of the generals and admirals comes out of the taxpayer’s pocket. And on top of that he can get stuck again by lax negotiating of contract terms when influence creeps in.

That’s not all! The retirement pay of ex-officers also comes from the lean wallets of the taxpayer. Retired generals on defense contractors’ payroll are also on Uncle Sam’s payroll. “Double-dipping,” Representative Hebert calls this. He says, “Isn’t that In effect getting two paychecks from the Government? Isn’t the officer—as we call it down in Louisiana—double -dipping?”

Retired officers are still members of the armed forces and subject to court martial. Existing laws bar officers from drawing retirement pay while selling to their former services. The Navy prohibits a retired officer from drawing retirement pay as long as he sells defense materials to the Navy. The Army and Air Force hold up retirement pay for two years after an officer retires if he is selling material to them.

But, what is selling? Anybody that knows anything about salesmanship knows that the days of the old time drummer are gone. Today’s salesmen use the soft sell techniques and hidden persuasion. They pretend to be anything but a salesman. To avoid the law, it’s easy enough to have the retired general close the sale and send an order-taker around to pick up the contract Apparently this is what happens.

Thomas S. Gates, as Deputy Secretary of Defense, said it was common for a retired officer to come to him to “talk business.” He said none had tried to exert pressure on him. But Senator Douglas accuses Defense Department officials of trying to “cover up” abuses by claiming that limitations on the employment of retired officers would hurt the defense program.

Are the services taking any action to prevent influence peddling? Mr.

Gates said that the Navy was investigating 300 cases that indicated “some possibility of conflict of interest” among retired Navy officers now working for defense industries. He said the Navy sent out more than 4,200 questionnaires to former officers. Replies were received from about 3,400. From these come the 300 cases under investigation.

That’s about as far as it gets. The only recent case of a retired military officer being penalized for representing a defense contractor is a retired Navy lieutenant commander forced to forfeit his retirement pay during an eight-month period when he sold beer to officers’ clubs and ships’ stores.

Representative Santangelo charges that an “unsavory aura” has been cast over all defense procurement by the “extensive hiring of retired military personnel. This practice of hiring retired officials smells to the high heavens,” he declares.

He advocates a ban on defense industry employment of senior officers for five years after their retirement. And Representative Charles E. Bennett (D., Fla.) has introduced a bill to make it a crime for any business that has dealt with the Government through a particular officer to employ him or offer him employment for two years before as well as two years after his retirement. Either of these two bills, if passed, would go a long way toward cutting down on the influence-peddling.

The pressures generated within the Pentagon and in Washington by the billions of dollars expended annually for defense are enormous. Can we be sure we are getting the best weapons for this money if contracts are awarded on the basis of influence?

Hardly! What happens when a company is in danger of losing a lucrative government contract or isn’t getting its supposed share of a new one? What happens is a mobilization of forces and pressures by the company on a scale of vast proportions. If it’s a missile contract that’s being withdrawn, for example, the company fights back by advertising the missile’s great importance in magazines and newspapers; and their inside men swing into action with retired officers leading the charge.

Gates, the new Secretary of Defense, said he didn’t like magazine advertisements by companies with defense contracts pointing up their contributions to defense. He might have added that the taxpayer doesn’t like it either, since all the crowing is paid for by him. The cost of the advertisements is tax-deductible as a business expense.

Representative Hebert, chairman of the House Special Investigations Subcommittee, says: “The American people are alarmed and aroused at what they see and what they hear today about the conduct of our weapons procurement and about the alleged conduct of some military men who depart from the ranks of defense for lush places on the payrolls of defense contractors.”

That’s no overstatement.

In an atmosphere of big spending and the urgency to keep up in the missile race, the cost of war readiness goes up faster than a high speed rocket. The tab runs into billions. Corporations are adept infighters at competing for this business. Their methods are costing us all more than it should to protect ourselves. And when influence decides who gets a contract there is always the possibility that we are getting something less than the best. We can’t afford any undercover alliances between big defense contractors and officers of the armed services. • • •

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Made in Germany

Right under the noses of their unsuspecting Nazi guards, GI-PW’s turned out these ingenious devices.

By Louis Hochman

THE American Gl is an ingenious fellow. Given the right tools, he can produce anything he sets his skill to. Take away his tools and leave him with only a penknife, old razor blades, and some broken glass and he’ll still produce anything he sets his heart on. This amazing fact was clearly brought to focus, recently, when liberated Gl prisoners of war, or “Kriegies” as they dubbed themselves after the German “Kreigsgefangenen,” meaning “prisoners of war,” displayed samples of their craftsmanship made with just such primitive implements during their months of incarceration.

Shown at the Museum of Science and Industry, the exhibit of over 800 articles of Kriege Krafts was collected and flown back to the States by ex-Kriegie Lt. Col. Charles Ross Greening, one of the original Doolittle Tokyo raiders and inventor of the 20c bombsight used on that historic mission. It tells the story of the hunger, privation, and discomfort suffered by inmates of Stalag Luft 1, a Nazi prison compound in Barth, Germany, catering to the A. A. F. trade. It also tells of an indestructible sense of humor and high morale maintained throughout the ordeal by the GI-PW’s.

Food was a major problem in Stalag Luft 1, as in all other German prison camps, and to stretch their meager rations, rations which would never have sustained them if it hadn’t been for occasional Red Cross packages they received, the Kriegies made all sorts of kitchen utensils from wood, stolen barbed wire, and Klim cans (j)owdered milk cans). Flattened sheets of Klim can tin, joined together to form larger sheets, went into the making of double walled baking ovens, baking pans, and pie plates. An improvised Klim can flour grinder grated hard biscuits into flour for making pancakes. Professional-looking geared egg-beaters were made from tin and wood. Geared and belt driven turbo-superchargers (blowers) were made to create a forced draft through the German stoves in order to burn the cheap coke provided by the Krauts.

To augment their supply of workshop tools, they converted table knives into saws by filing teeth into them. Teeth filed into strips of tin which were stretched on wooden frames and tightened by shoestring tourniquets also made efficient saws. Door knobs attached to wooden handles became hammers. Heavy flat iron bars removed from German stove door latches were handy for flattening and shaping tin. To attain a smooth finish on wooden surfaces, they used broken glass and sand.

Since the possession of tools was punishable by solitary confinement, the Kriegies posted guards around the barracks to warn of approaching Nazis. A nosey Nazi immediately touched off the warning cry, “Goon, coming up!” and all tools went into hiding. The Nazis never caught on.

Next to food, escape was the top topic at Stalag Luft 1, and the engineering that went into this vital and dangerous enterprise still staggers the imagination. With tin can shovels and bellows-powered forced ventilation through tin can pipes, the Kriegies burrowed through the earth in attempts to tunnel their way to freedom. Most ingenious and successful of these attempts was a tunnel which started its horizontal journey 40 feet below the earth’s surface. Hundreds of prisoners worked a year to complete the tunnel which boasted a Kriegie constructed elevator shaft and an improvised railroad for dirt disposal. Sixty British airmen escaped through it. Another record-breaking tunnel ran 350 feet below the Fatherland before the Nazis discovered it. To foil tunneling attempts, German guards sent their “Hundfuhrers,” dogs trained to ferret out tunnels by digging wherever they sniffed fresh dirt, into the compound. The resourceful Kriegies, however, soon put a sneezing stop to these measures by sprinkling pepper around the tunnel sites.

Dirt disposal, a top priority problem in tunnel digging, was solved by passing the tin cans of dirt to a Kriegie in the barracks rafters who dumped the dirt in the space between the ceiling and the barracks roof. Eventually, the dirt became so heavy that the ceilings sagged under the loads and in one barracks room, two stomping Nazis on a tunnel hunt came to sudden grief when the ceiling gave way overhead, sending two very much surprised Nazis to the hospital.

That these PW’s never lost their sense of humor is evident in many items they made during their imprisonment. A modernized chess set, carved from a broom handle, consisted of outhouses for pawns, toilets for castles, and a nude couple for the king and queen. The horses were represented only by their posterior portions. One Gl, who made a very efficient, tin-lined mousetrap from a Red Cross carton, kept score of the mice it caught by-painting swastikas on the trap for each one. Another elaborate affair gave the mouse a sporting chance. It consisted of a Chinese maze of twelve tin can cells connected by tin corridors. Six of the cells contained death-dealing devices: one, a hangman’s noose; another, a weighted bludgeon; the third, a spiked board; the fourth, poison; the fifth, a guillotine; and the last, solitary confinement. If the mouse chose the right corridor at each fork in the road, he passed through the other six cells to freedom. It took our GI’s to build a better mousetrap.

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PEACE – OR ELSE!

HUMANITY is faced with the greatest decision it has ever had to make. The atomic bomb, in three gigantic, flashes, has transformed our planet into a world which has only one choice left. Earth has become a world of Either/Or.

Either—we are firmly determined that there shall be no war, and spend as much energy, thought and money on the problem of preventing it as we now spend in preparing for it. In that case—and if we succeed—the future promises a period of incredible achievements, of unlimited progress, of infinite riches of knowledge and material riches, of immediate preliminaries to humanity’s spread through the solar system as a first step to a spread through the galaxy.

Or—we blunder into irretrievable errors, such as trying to outlaw atomic energy, or believing that size and distance will save us, or thinking that there can be war only between other nations.

If we choose the latter course, we will almost inevitably become involved in another war—an atomic war. …

Atomic war will come without warning and without declaration, with a fury so monstrous that the mind cannot conceive it. The first authentic publication on the subject, the report written for the War Department by Professor H. D. Smyth, (Atomic Energy for Military Purposes), has already pointed out that the atomic bomb is especially suited to sudden, unannounced attack—blitzkrieg to make the Nazis’ version of it pale into insignificance. “A country’s major cities might be destroyed overnight by an ostensibly friendly power,” as Professor Smyth puts it. Overnight destruction of America’s major cities means the death of eighty million people in twelve hours— 57% of the population! That is, tragically for us, not a nightmare, but a very definite possibility.

The possibility can in no way be done away with by preventing potential aggressors from obtaining the “secret.” Several nations stood on the threshold of atomic energy when the war started: we barely won the race. Within five years} every nation will be able to construct atomic bombs, even though they will not be able to keep that fact secret. The prevention of war, therefore, is not a scientific problem—it is a political problem. Of course, destruction would be mutual. The Intelligence Service would know that war was brewing, and the military could get ready to hit back. The result would be destruction of all the centers of population and manufacture of all the belligerents, with nothing left after two days of war but small and unimportant villages and only about one-quarter or one-third of the populations of the warring nations still alive. It is a prospect so incredible that the mind rejects it, but in order to understand it clearly we must try to visualize the details. For that purpose we must understand a few pertinent facts about the atomic bombs which have been used. The atomic bomb has a mimimum size. It has been officially declared that the two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just about as small as they could be made. The destruction achieved in Japan is, therefore, the minimum destruction possible. British sources claim that these bombs weighed about 400 pounds, most of which was not the atomic explosive, but the mechanism required to make it safe in handling and to set it off. Furthermore—the bombs were set off in the air. The deaths of 100,000 Japanese in five microseconds was, therefore, the gentlest possible application of the smallest possible atomic bomb.

Our purpose was to put a stop to the face-saving, delaying tactics of an already-defeated enemy, but a future aggressor would aim at maximum destruction of life and property. He would use bigger bombs, and he would not use them relatively gently in the air to avoid both dangerous after-radioactivity in the ground and earthquakes: he would want the reverberations of earthquakes which might be set off by atomic blasts on, or in, the ground; and he would have no reason to avoid post-explosion radioactivity.

Size and weight of the bomb determines its use.

Airplanes, at first glance, appear to be the most obvious method of transporting bombs to target. Anything from a fighter bomber up can carry them. They cannot be used in projectiles, either because the projectile is too small, or because, if large enough, the firing battery would be within the destructive range of its own bombs. Only the primary turrets of battleships would have the necessary size and range, provided that the fuze mechanism of the bomb could be shot from a gun.

But guns will be of little use in an atomic war.

If the air defense is too violent, there are the German V-weapons. Of course, radar-equipped A.A. batteries shot them down in droves—but the A.A. battery which shoots down a V-1 flying bomb with an atomic warhead, cruising at an altitude of a few thousand feet, will never fire a shot again: it will be vaporized. Those V-1’s which got past the A.A. batteries were taken care of by fighter planes. Londoners, in spite of strict orders, used to stand on the rooftops and watch, cheering if a fighter pilot exploded a V-1 in midair.

But if the warheads had been atomic, there would no longer have been a London after three such “successful” exploits. Furthermore, the V-1 of the future will not be the clumsy robot which could fly only in a straight line at a set altitude. Since far fewer would be needed, they could be highly developed and expensive jet-propelled planes, without pilots, but with television sets, guided by means of television screens placed underground and well camouflaged in the aggressor’s base.

Still, theoretically you might cope with airborne atomic bombs if carried by aircraft or by robot planes. Here it is still a question of distance: robot fighters, also guided by television, and robot A.A. batteries might explode them some fifty miles from the city limits. The great difference is that only o?ic need get through. In World War II, London absorbed some 2000 robot bombs that got through, and continued to live and work.

But there is V-2, the long-distance rocket, against which there is no known defense. Couple V-2 and the atomic bomb (it can be done today) and you have a destroyer of cities against which there is no defense once the rocket is in the stratosphere. (It can be disturbed at take-off.) And if the long distance rocket can be equipped also with an atomic drive instead of a chemical, liquid-fuel, rocket motor, it can reach any point on earth from any other point on earth. It seems fairly certain now that V-2 was actually a part of the German atomic program; the rockets were finished in time, but the atomic bombs were not.

But there is no need to elaborate on the subject of atomic destruction. Future war is almost certain to be a sudden assault from a nation which is not openly hostile. There will be traffic and exchange of goods with that nation up until the very moment the bombs fall. It is all too probable that a potential enemy will be able to ship atomic bombs into a country with trained agents, store them in a corner of a commercial warehouse or in the basement of a private house rented for that purpose, bury them under the slagheaps of an industrial town—and set them off when ready.

At this moment of history, science does not know any counter measure whatever against atomic explosives.

Some writers have thought of a kind of force field into which no atomic explosive could be brought without being instantly exploded. But there are drawbacks to that idea. The most important is that such a field still has to be invented. If it were to be invented years from now, it might be highly dangerous to turn it on. If it were to be invented soon, it would also prevent the existence of atomic industries. To say that it should be used in such a way that it affects only quantities approaching critical mass is absolutely no solution, even if that restriction could be applied. The simple pieces of Plutonium in an atomic bomb are all below critical mass until the bomb is ready for explosion.

To find out about them we need nuclear research, the more the better; it is the only possible source of information. But quite aside from scientific research, we need to realize that a new era in human relations is here, an era that no longer permits the concept of war which now means complete, mutual, atomic destruction. What we have to learn is to live with atomic energy!

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The Most Important 30 Minutes of Your Life

By Lester David

AT 12:30 p. m. an atomic bomb is going . to explode in your city! Radar has spotted an enemy airplane and disclosed its course, speed and the arc on which it is traveling.

It’s noon now and you have 30 minutes— 1800 crucial seconds—to prepare for the bomb. What will you do?

You and your family can survive if you take the proper precautions at the proper time. Atomic scientists, civilian defense authorities, army officials and Red Cross disaster chiefs agree on this.

But what are the proper precautions?

How can you. best utilize those precious 30 minutes once the siren warns of an attack?

Out of the mass of data offered by the experts, a specific pattern of action emerges. Here are the three basic rules, more vital than any you have ever read.

1. Do not try to run away.

2. Get to a shelter.

3. Stay in your shelter until it is time to leave.

Your first impulse in the face of an atomic attack would be to run somewhere, as far and as fast as possible. But it won’t help—first, because you couldn’t get far enough away to be any safer; second, because the resultant stampede would endanger everyone’s life and impede rescue efforts by clogging roads at the very time when they should be free. How far and how fast can you go during a simple holiday traffic jam? Multiply that a thousand times and take stock.

Arthur W. Wallander, former police commissioner of New York City and now director of the city’s civilian defense program, told Mechanix Illustrated “I cannot stress too strongly the importance of remaining calm. Panic and stampeding can cause more injury and damage than enemy action.”

Therefore the first rule: Do not try to run away.

Shelters can protect you from the four deadly horsemen of the atomic bomb— blast, heat flash, gamma radiation and falling debris—if they are thick enough and far enough from the scene of the explosion.

The U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey No. 5 undertaken by the U. S. Air Force, states flatly: “The most instructive fact at Nagasaki was the survival of the few hundred people who were properly placed in tunnel shelters. Without question, shelters can protect those who get to them against anything but a direct hit.”

The best protection from shock, radiation and heat is reinforced concrete; almost as good is closely packed earth. The thickness required to protect you fully depends, obviously, on the distance from the blast. How much protection and at what distances? Well many other factors influence the effect of an atomic blast, including height of the burst, direction of the blast and types of buildings in its path. The government handbook, The Effects of Atomic Weapons, estimates that at a half-mile from the explosion, a 12-inch reinforced concrete wall inside a building would provide enough protection.

The following thicknesses of concrete or closely packed earth will prevent death by radiation: inches of inches of distance concrete earth from blast 26 43 1,500 feet 22 37 2,000 feet 12 20 3,000 feet 2 3 4,000 feet Shelters should be located in fireproof, reinforced concrete or steel frame buildings that are resistant to collapse. They should be on lower floors, in basements, halls or in the interiors. Outside shelters should be located well clear of buildings to avoid falling debris and fire.

The British government recommends construction of raid shelters on the order of the Anderson-type, built outside many British homes during the Hitler blitz. These were steel arches, six feet high and four-and-a-half feet wide, half buried in the ground. Civil defense authorities assert that if three feet of earth were piled above the arch, the shelter could protect all inside from the four main causes of death and injury. So, the second rule: Get to a shelter.

Don’t be in a rush to emerge from your hideout—stay there until you have been assured the bomb will not be dropped, long enough for radiation outside to wear off.

How long should you wait? Fifteen minutes after the blast there is about one-fifteenth the amount of radio activity which existed a minute after the explosion. After an hour it diminishes to one-sixtieth.

Don’t get into an unreasoning panic about radioactivity. The human body can absorb a great deal of it without serious injury. Imme diately after the Bikini tests, teams of men boarded heavily contaminated ships and pulled out the animals which had been placed on board to determine radioactivity effects. These men stayed several minutes at a time and nothing happened to them.

So, the third rule: Stay in your shelter until it is time to leave.

Those are the three simple, basic rules. Now, let’s get more specific.

IF YOU ARE IN YOUR HOME . . . first you must try to make it flameproof. An atom bomb can set fires more than two miles from the point of detonation since it pours one-third of its tremendous energy into thermal or heat radiation. Take the following precautions: put dry leaves, trash, oily rags, any readily inflammable material into metal cans and cover them tightly. Shut off all utilities—the oil burner, the pilot light on the gas stove and water heater. Batten down the draft doors of your coal-burning furnace and wood stove. Then prepare for a fire just in case—make sure a stirrup pump and a hand fire extinguisher are available and place pails of sand and water at strategic locations.

Second, you must make your home as airtight as possible. Close all doors, windows, chimney vents, lock shutters and draw curtains, drape sheets or other fight-colored material around them. Radioactive wastes can enter your house through the tiniest fissures.

Then go to your shelter which will be either the basement or a small area dug into the ground from the side of the basement. Even before the alert, you should have prepared your shelter with emergency equipment, including a flashlight in the event that the electricity is knocked out, a supply of canned food and an axe to chop your way out if the entrance is sealed off by the blast.

In addition, you should have a first aid kit, containing a burn salve, soft cloth, gauze, absorbent cotton and an antiseptic. If you suffer any cut, no matter how trifling, wash and bandage it immediately to prevent radioactive particles from entering and damaging the bloodstream.

You should have drawn several gallons of clean water and stored them in the shelter for use directly after the raid because there is a possibility that the water in your pipes may become dangerously radioactive. Don’t boil it because boiling concentrates rather than removes radioactive particles.

As soon as the water supply has been okayed after the raid, take a shower. But a good one! Radioactivity can cling to you, but only a bit more strongly than ordinary dust or dirt. Scrub yourself thoroughly with soap and water, paying particular attention to your fingernails and hair. Then don a complete change of clothing, burying your old ones.

IF YOU ARE IN YOUR OFFICE . . . leave the upper stories as quickly as possible. Not only are you in danger of having the floor fall out from under you, but there are few barriers in the form of steel, concrete and wood to shield you from the radiation. Head for the basement as soon as the siren sounds and remain as close as possible to heavy, supporting columns to avoid the danger of collapsing beams. Stay away from all entrances and all windows. If there are heavy steel doors and shutters, close them.

IF YOU ARE WALKING ON THE STREET . . .

get out of the open. Remember that flash and flame burns killed 50 per cent of the 106,000 persons who died in the atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and accounted for 75 per cent of all casualties. The bomb’s heat rays travel in a straight line—so all you have to do is get inside.

Head for the nearest official shelter. If there aren’t any, a subway—the deeper the better—will do as well. Or enter the nearest, strongest-looking building and head for the basement. If you are crowded out of there, get against some partition in some interior, as low to the base of the building as possible.

IF YOU ARE TRAPPED ON THE TOP FLOOR OF A BUILDING . . . and descent to the basement is prevented by jammed elevators and stairs, don’t join the mob battling to get down. Proceed to a point as close to the center of the building as possible and lie against a wall or strong supporting column, out of line of the windows. Or crawl under a table, sofa or desk which would provide protection against flying glass.

IF YOU ARE IN A CAR . . .

do not try to flee the scene. You will speedily find yourself caught in a maelstrom of traffic. Park your car at once, but do not obscure the traffic lanes. Leave your keys in the auto in case it has to be moved to make way for emergency equipment. Close the windows and head for shelter.

IF YOUR ARE IN A TROLLEY, BUS OR SUBWAY …

follow the evacuation instructions of the engineer or driver. If you are on a subway platform, remain where you are.

IF YOU ARE IN A CHURCH, THEATER OR SCHOOL . . .

all these places should have shelters in their basements and specific people whose job it will be to lead you to them. If they do not or if there is not time to reach the shelters, lie down as close to the outer walls as possible.

IF YOU ARE ON THE BEACH . . . the chances are that you won’t be too far from cover of some sort. But get your clothes on first. Clothing will help reduce the danger of flash burns. If at all possible, wear long trousers or slacks, a loose-fitting blouse and a hat. Light-colored clothes are much more effective shields against burns than dark ones. But in any event, cover as much of your body as you can, then take cover in a shelter. Buildings around a beach are usually of comparatively flimsy construction, so judge whether you can get far enough inland to reach a strong building in the time you have. If you can’t, then find shelter where you are. Get into a rock depression, behind a massive tree or, if nothing else is available, dig yourself a foxhole and lie in it face down.

IF YOU ARE FISHING ON A LAKE . . . gauge your distance from shore. Can you make it? If you can, head for the nearest heavily-wooded inlet or largest rock and snuggle against it. Select a rock on the side facing away from the city, because that’s where the enemy is aiming his bomb.

If you are too far out to make shore, dive into the water and stay there until the explosion comes, keeping averted the side of your head facing the city.

IF YOU ARE A FARMER IN YOUR FIELDS . . .

proceed to the closest atom-bomb shelter. If there is none, even a furrow in a plowed field will give you some protection if you lie in it.

If the atom bomb is ever dropped on your city, there is no doubt that it will cause devastation on a scale you have never seen before. But that is no reason for you to give up hope for your own life.

You have read about the things which you can do to safeguard yourself and your family. They will increase your chances of survival a hundredfold. When and if the time comes, remember to do them and the 30 minutes before the bomb falls will certainly prove to be the most important 30 minutes of your life! •

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Jap Pilots Ride to DEATH on Flying Bombs

By Ray Holt

The current conflict between Japan and China has brought out an amazing revelation of the methods by which Japanese pilots assure air bombs reaching their target by putting a man inside to steer them. Why? Read the reasons in this article, and you’ll have a better understanding of Japanese psychology toward the machines of war.

IMAGINE yourself strapped within a hollow chamber inside a huge air bomb, surrounded on all sides by high explosives. In front of you is an airplane type rudder which steers the tail unit of the bomb. Windows in the nose enable you to see ahead. You’re loaded into the bomb, which is placed in its nest under the fuselage of a bombing plane. The bomber takes off, soars above a target—say, an ammunition dump of the enemy. Up above you, the pilot of the plane pulls a lever.

Down you go, plunging toward the ground with terrific speed. You see that you aren’t going to strike the ammunition dump, but will land many yards to one side of it. So you twist the control rudder, swerving the bomb’s course. Success! The dump looms up directly below the windows of your bomb. And that is practically the end of things for you.

Sounds like the superheated imagining of a Jules Verne, doesn’t it—the sort of absurdity that a sensible man would laugh off as being unheard of, an astounding, amusing impossibility?

It’s nothing of the sort. It’s an actual fact of warfare, a method used by Japanese pilots who deem it an honor transcending all others to ride to glory for the mother country. They know that their memory and their families will be forever honored in their homeland.

Rumors of the flying bomb death ride have filtered out of the conflict now being waged by the Japanese and Chinese. Necessarily this information has been of a confidential, undercover nature, but not long ago it was given nation-wide publicity by a radio commentator on international affairs.

Japanese and Machines To make the man-steered bomb a credible actuality, an understanding of the peculiarities of the Japanese character is necessary. And some such understanding may sooner or later be forced upon, the great powers of the world who are all too likely to become involved in the aggression of Japanese militarists in China, where the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany do much business.

In the field of machinery the Japanese mind is at a peculiar disadvantage. They 1 are able to turn out an exact copy of any mechanism that comes into their hands, but the type of mechanical imagination which went into its original creation—which, for want of a better term, is sometimes known as Yankee ingenuity—they are at a loss to duplicate.

The simple truth of the matter is that -a man is practically required to steer Japanese bombs to their mark because they haven’t been able to develop the bomb-sighting machinery which makes Uncle Sam’s flyers, for instance, so deadly in their accuracy.

Peculiar Oriental Psychology As to why Japanese soldiers fight among themselves for the honor of being the bomb pilot who can look forward to being blown to certain oblivion, that’s a matter of psychology not so easy to understand. Patriotism rules the Japanese to an almost fanatical degree, and love of country is so bound up with religion—the emperor being regarded as an incarnate god—that to be blown up in a bomb to further the successes of Nippon becomes something to be desired above all things.

When one understands the popularity that hara-kiri, a form of suicide by self-disembowelment, has had among the Japanese for centuries, the national willingness to dive to death in a bomb, or in any other way, becomes credible.

Hara-kiri, as formerly practiced, was compulsory upon a noble of the higher class Who received a courteously phrased message from the mikado intimating that he must die for some offense of lawbreaking or disloyalty. The suicide, using a jeweled dagger customarily sent by the mikado for performing the act, proceeded in a prescribed ritual. Seated on a dais, surrounded by officials and friends, the suicide plunged the dagger into his stomach below the waist on the left side, drew it slowly across to the right, and turning it, gave a slight cut upward.

This compulsory suicide has been abolished, but the idea has such a striking appeal for the Japanese imagination that some 1500 hara-kiris take place annually as a purely voluntary gesture.

In the final analysis, the amazing thing is not that the Japanese should succeed in finding pilots for their man-bombs, for volunteers for such a mission of certain death can be found in any army in the world, but that such a weapon should be necessary. It simmers down to the fact, as hinted at above, that the Nipponese are conscious of their inferiority in developing new and fearful weapons of war, and are forced to rely on man-power.

A country like the United States would approach the problem of directing bomb flight in an entirely different way. Some method of mechanical control of the bomb would be sought—in fact, the idea of controlling a bomb or gun shell by radio is already being worked on, as described in Modern Mechanix and Inventions some months ago. It will be seen that, entirely aside from making the sacrifice of a man’s life unnecessary, radio control of a bomb is much more accurate and less liable to error through the failure of the human machine in a moment of critical nervous tension.

Superiority of American engineering brains over the Oriental variety is well demonstrated in the newest United States army bombing plane, a photograph of which is reproduced in these pages. It is a monoplane of all-metal construction—no wood or fabric to catch fire from incendiary bullets of the enemy—and is so well streamlined, with its landing gear pulled up under its belly, that it can do a top speed of 200 miles an hour, fully loaded with a two ton cargo of bombs. This is 80 miles an hour better than the speed of the Curtiss bomber, a biplane, previously used by the air corps.

Features of U. S. Bomber A revolving turret to protect the gunner in the nose of the ship is another feature. It diverts the rush of air and makes accurate aiming much easier. At high speeds, the windstream is so powerful that, in an ordinary ship, it has a tendency to wrench a swivel mounted gun out of the gunner’s control.

In connection with the possible need of protecting our country from Pacific aggression, the news that a government expedition has just left for an extensive survey of the Aleutian islands (which constitute the tip of the Alaskan peninsula) is important. A map, reproduced herewith, shows the extremely important location of these islands in their relation to Japan and the Orient.

Geologically, these islands are thought to be the sunken peaks of land that once connected the mainland with Asia. Siberia is but a stone’s throw distant, and the northern islands of Japan not much farther away. Since, by a recent bill passed in Congress, the United States has relinquished control of the Philippine islands, we will have no Pacific base of importance other than Hawaii and Guam, which makes the Aleutian chain all the more important in the scheme of national protection.

Strategic Importance of Islands Airplanes are being carried by the expedition and these will make a careful aerial survey of the islands. A weather observation station will probably be established on Tanago or Adak island, and the best suited of the nearby islands will be chosen as a possible base for an airplane field. Harbor facilities will be carefully charted with a view to possible installation of a naval base for ships and submarines. Alaska, of course, is a United States possession which we are free to fortify as we may see fit. An incident of the World War which has just come to light illustrates the ingenuity of the western mind in the world of machines. German engineers designed a mine fitted with clockwork which permitted the device to float in toward English shores when the tide was right. When the tide ebbed, the mine automatically sank to the bottom, where it waited the proper interval and then released itself again to float closer to the shore. The British were unable to figure out how the mines got there.

Zig-Zagging Target Tests Gunners’ Skill

THE Field Artillery, U. S. Army, has long experienced difficulty in obtaining practice against fast-moving targets. To meet this need, the Artillery Corps has recently perfected a target which can be towed behind a rapidly-moving automobile and yet zig-zag across the landscape like a drunken jackrabbit.

The device consists of a sleeve target mounted on a tripod, the tripod being secured to the rear of a sled made of galvanized iron and having a bow constructed of boiler plate. The wire used in towing is 3,300 feet long and attaches to the sled with a bridle arrangement which gives stability to the target.

A clever device has also been invented for use in making turns at full speed. It consists of a wooden platform pegged to the ground and upon which is mounted a bicycle wheel countersunk in the platform to prevent the wire from running under the wheel. Two blocks release the wire when the polo ball, threaded onto the wire ahead of the target, comes in contact with the contrivance. By threading the tow wire through several wheels, the target assumes a zig-zag course without requiring the car to change direction.— Courtesy of The Field Artillery Journal.

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Best Mechanics will Win if U.S. Fights Japan

War clouds brewing in the Pacific point to the day when America may become involved in battle with Japan. Nobody is eager for such a war, but if it ever comes the result will be decided by war machines built by American and Japanese mechanics—two fundamentally different types of genius. Read this keen analysis from the pen of a noted naval expert.

by LIEUT. JOHN EDWIN HOGG
U. S. Naval Reserve

AS THESE lines are written international diplomats are gathered together at Geneva. They are assembled at the world’s first general disarmament conference, ostensibly to work out a plan for preventing armed conflicts between nations. The God of War looks down from a neighboring planet upon a world bristling with every possible device for killing the greatest number of people with the least effort. And in Shanghai war rages between Japanese and Chinese troops.

Japanese Have Efficient War Machine Japan is today the most disturbing element in any consideration for world peace. She is the world’s last, great, militarist monarchy. Monarchies have always been, and always will be a threat to peace-loving, democratic neighbor nations. Japan now possesses the best, most efficient, and most highly organized war machine that the world has seen since the great German war engine of 1914.

She is ruled by a small group of war lords, who by systematic propaganda and a subsidized public press, may at any time hoodwink the Japanese population into any military conquest the leaders may see fit to dictate. Already the Japanese military aggression in China threatens to involve Soviet Russia. International treaties are in jeopardy. The Policy of the Open Door in China, to which the United States is as definitely committed as we are to the Monroe Doctrine, may easily become a mere scrap of paper.

The whole situation is one of grave uncertainty that may easily lead to world-wide complications. Just as a great forest fire usually starts from a single match, the embers of Shanghai may light the fuse to plunge the United States into another foreign conflict. Such is the possibility, unless the Japanese statesmen are correct in their apparent belief that the rest of the world is too busy with its own troubles to take any notice of what Japan does to China.

Japanese Expansion Requires More Land There is, of course, a Japanese side to the story. The Island Empire consists of a land area of 261,832 square miles, or slightly less than our state of Texas. Less than one-fifth of Japan is arable land, and largely poor, volcanic soil at that. Yet she must feed and clothe a population of nearly ninety millions of people. Japan is appallingly over-populated. She cannot begin to provide food for her multitudes. Yet the rest of the world has slammed the door in the face of every Japanese attempt to colonize elsewhere.

How Japanese and U. S. Interests Clash Territory acquired by Japan since 1865, the year in which Commander Perry of the American navy opened up the country to western civilization and dreams of Pacific dominance, includes the island of Formosa, half the island of Saghalien, Korea, and lately Manchuria, richest prize of all. Most recently Japan launched her attack on Shanghai, ostensibly to protect Japanese interests in China, and to inform the world that Japan courts no competition in China.

Japan is admirably situated to nose American industry out of Chinese markets. She could sink our commercial ships and ten us to take our commerce off the Pacific ocean, and about all we could do about it for at least two years would be to write notes of protest. If Japan were to declare war upon us today we wouldn’t have a Chinaman’s chance of holding the Philippines or the Island of Guam. This is for the reason that those two strategic positions have been rendered practically defenseless under the terms of the London Naval Treaty. Our navy, weakened far beyond our needs by the same treaty, would be wholly inadequate to avenge any insult or injustice that Japan might see fit to heap upon us. The accompanying charts of the naval strength of the United States and Japan tell the whole story. But here, we cannot even compute sea power in mere terms of comparative tonnage without being led to false conclusions. There are a lot of other factors entering into the situation that tend to discount what naval strength we still possess.

Losing Guam and the Philippines would only be part of our misfortune if we were to become involved in a war with Japan. We would also probably lose the Aleutian Islands, and would see them taken over by the enemy as bases from which to raid our Pacific commerce with aircraft and submarines. We’d be fortunate indeed if we didn’t lose the whole of Alaska during the first two weeks of such a war, and with Alaska in the hands of the Japanese we’d probably see air raids carried out upon such American cities as Seattle, Portland, Spokane, Butte, and Anaconda. (The latter two cities are our major sources of copper.) The Japanese battle line of nine capital ships would not be a serious menace to the present American sea forces if the combined battle fleets of the two nations might come together early in the war to fight a decisive battle. If this were to happen it is entirely possible that the American fleet might destroy the Japanese fleet. Such a circumstance would lay Japan wide open to every form of attack, and would speedily force her to sue for peace. But here another consideration creates a disturbing factor.

The exigencies of the situation would certainly demand that we carry our campaign into the western Pacific. We would have to re-capture Guam and the Philippines. In -attempting to do all this we would have no naval bases nearer the scene of action than Hawaii. Thus, the value of Japan’s navy would become very similar to that of the German navy during the World war. As long as Japanese fighting craft could operate unchallenged in the western Pacific, they could effectively throttle our trans-Pacific commerce.

In that event the conflict would simmer down to a long, drawn-out campaign of “steam and hunt,” with an occasional bat- tle between a few ships until one side or the other would suffer defeat. The average American who has lived his life in an inland state probably has no conception of the enormity of such a task. But ponder the fact that the Pacific Ocean consists of 97 million square miles of water—nearly half the surface of the entire earth, and we have an idea of the job.

7000 Miles Across Pacific The re-capture of Guam and the Philippines would involve sending our battle forces on a 7000-mile drag across the Pacific, encumbered with a huge train of slow-moving transports, supply ships, oil tankers, etc. This would be a gigantic enterprise —beyond the scope of any overseas naval offensive in history. The task of keeping the lines of communication open and of protecting the huge convoy against enemy submarines, cruisers, and aircraft, would be but another detail of the situation facing the American Commander-in-Chief.

He’d also have miscellaneous other worries such as protecting the Hawaiian Islands, keeping the enemy away from our home shores, and guarding the Panama Canal. Obviously, our present navy would be so hopelessly inadequate for such a task that the first two years of a possible war with Japan is sickening to contemplate. Distance Complicates Naval Strategy These considerations, however, would not be the worst of it. As the American convoys advance across the Pacific the danger from raids by enemy submarines, cruisers, and aircraft, would become increasingly great. Then, if our fleet and land forces succeeded in re-capturing Guam and the Philippines our troubles would just be getting nicely started.

Due to our having been so badly worsted in previous “disarmament conferences” there isn’t a dry dock west of Hawaii (ex- cept in enemy territory) that could accommodate a damaged battleship or airplane carrier. Our fleet, if based on Manila Bay would be within striking distance of air raids from the Japanese mainland. And, to make the situation still worse, both our land and sea forces would still be dependent upon the shores of California, 7000 miles away, for supplies of fuel, ammunition, and the bulk of its provisions.

If such a war were to break out today we’d be fortunate indeed if our present forces might be able to keep the Panama Canal open and the enemy off our home shores. Our one and only great good fortune would lie in the fact that Hawaii is under the American flag and is our strongest outpost of naval defense in the Pacific. The Island of Oahu upon which our principal naval establishment is located is considered virtually impregnable.

Mechanical Resources Will Decide There is, howTever, another side to the dismal picture of a possible war with Japan that would ultimately spell defeat for the Mikado’s Empire and victory for America. This, of course, is assuming that the enemy didn’t catch us napping to knock us out during the first few weeks of the war. The next war will be a war of machinery, and the nation possessing the best mechanics will win. America has the mechanics. We also have the necessary natural resources, and no other nation possesses both in similar abundance.

If we could stave off defeat temporarily in a war with Japan, and we undoubtedly could, our military and naval strength would immediately begin to increase. In the course of 18 months or 2 years we could throw a force against the enemy to overwhelm any nation or alliance of nations foolish enough to invite such a disaster upon themselves.

Mechanical Genius Concentrated in U. S. By far the vast bulk of the world’s best mechanical and scientific genius is now assembled in America. Not all of it is native born. America has been importing such talent for many years from every other nation that could produce it. Let any other nation produce a great inventor, an extraordinary chemist, or a skilled technician in any line—and what happens? American industry usually gets him. He finds a better market for his talent here. We hire him and soon convert him into an American citizen. The list of inventions and scientific discoveries originating in other countries is not very impressive. To be sure, there have been some, mostly of German, British, or French origin, but they are few and relatively unimportant compared with the contributions to human progress made by Americans, or by men of foreign birth who are now American citizens. This constant hiring of the best brains of Europe, and of every other country by America has long been cause for alarm among European statesmen, but apparently there is nothing they can do about it. American money talks to the man who has brains for sale, and all the fine appeals to his patriotism don’t lift the curse of poverty for him!

Japanese Copy Western Progress In this respect Japan is tremendously handicapped. Her entire civilization is a composite counterfeit of the most progressive ways of Europe and America. We may scan the list of great inventions, great scientific discoveries, and the like, and not one do we find of Japanese origin. The germ cells of men like Fulton, Edison, Steinmetz, Marconi, the Wright Brothers, Maxim, Colt, Holland, Millikan, and a list of Americans or naturalized Americans that reads like a city directory, were apparently bred out of the Japanese people during their centuries of feudalism, if they ever existed.

Give the Japanese a fine Swiss watch and they’ll make you a cheap imitation of it. Give them an American automobile and they 11 build an automobile that looks exactly like the original, but not as good. Let them get their hands upon anything and they’ll counterfeit that article. They’ll work like bees at any task they undertake, but when it comes to originality of thought along mechanical or scientific lines—there apparently isn’t a brain cell working in the whole of Japan!

Japs Lack Mechanical “Feel”

To us they are a strange people—brilliant, industrious, thrifty, cunningly clever in many respects—and tremendously backward in others. Only about one Japanese in ten thousand can ever be taught to fly an airplane. It often takes years to make a very poor automobile driver out of an average Japanese citizen. Their patriotic devotion is a form of fanaticism not even approached in some forms of religion.

If we are forced into a war with Japan, the President, upon the very day war is declared, will undoubtedly be empowered to draft manpower, labor, and capital. The entire nation would be speedily drafted to the sole task of winning the war. Civilian armies would be drafted to grow the crops, and every industrial plant capable of conversion for the production of war equipment would be commandeered by the government. Motor truck factories would soon be turning out tanks. Automobile factories would begin building airplanes. A thousand small machine shops would turn out small arms and munitions. Chemical plants would concentrate upon the manufacture of explosives and poison gas. Every shipyard would be turning out battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, transports, and supply ships.

If our present armed forces might be capable of holding the enemy at bay for a period of 18 months or two years, we’d be in position to mop up the earth with Japan. A short and decisive land campaign would drive the Japanese out of Korea and Manchuria. This would cut Japan off from her present supplies of coal and iron.

With the recaptured Philippines as our base of naval operations we’d merely have to throw a blockade around the Japanese islands. With her commerce throttled she would be cut off from essential supplies of war materials, and starved into submission within three months after the blockade became effective.

Proof of the dependence of the Japanese on the brains of foreign mechanics may be graphically proven by one of the photographs accompanying this article, snowing a fleet of Japanese battle planes. The significant fact here is that practically all the planes are of British manufacture. Japan, in other words, has built up her air fleet by purchase from foreigners—few of her planes are built by Japanese mechanics, and practically none of them show these touches of refined ingenuity which are constantly apparent in the latest additions to Uncle Sam’s fleet.

Jap Plane Carriers Are Novel In the construction of airplane carriers Japan has achieved her one claim to distinction. In contrast with American and British practice of mounting the smoke stacks in a mast projecting vertically from the extreme side of the ship, the Japanese have strung their smoke stacks lengthwise of the vessel, leaving the top deck entirely free from all encumbrance.

The theory of this presumably is to keep vital control units protected inside the ship, and to eliminate obstructions on deck in case of inexpert landing. Unique as this method appears, it has its disadvantages. There is a real reason for tall masts on a battleship. Observers in the crow’s nest can cover an infinitely greater area of the sea than a man can from a low deck. Defense and attack fire can be directed much more efficiently.

Prevailing features of battleship design are principally of British and American origin. Battleships are armored much more heavily beneath the water line than above, for the reason that this is the principal region of vulnerability. Whereas above water six-inch armor plate is usually standard, below the water line it may vary from 12 to 22 inches in thickness.

To be effective, a shell must penetrate this armor and explode inside the vitals of the ship, wrecking boilers and machinery. Numerous bulkheads keep a battleship afloat, even though it may be shell-riddled and filling with water. Longitudinal bulkheads divide a battleship in two. There are at least two power plants, one on either side of the ship, so that if one is destroyed the other still functions. Four separate drive shafts are usually employed on battleships.

Airplane carriers are particularly important in any consideration of possible war with Japan, because our air fleet would be a vital element in deciding the conflict, and our three plane carriers are the only means we have of transporting planes overseas.

In one phase of air defense the United States navy is without a peer—that is in the use of dirigibles. The common conception of a dirigible, such as the Los Angeles or the new Akron, is of a highly vulnerable mechanism which would be immediately destroyed if it tried to make itself useful in time of war.

Dirigibles Unrivaled as Scouts But there are good reasons why the navy refuses to abandon the dirigible. Experience has proved conclusively that it meets an invaluable naval requirement that can be met by no other type of aircraft. It is a powerful auxiliary to a navy of battleships, destroyers, airplanes, and submarines. Its field of operations is far out at sea beyond the striking range of airplanes.

No airplane has yet been built that can operate in all weather. Rain, sleet, snow, hail, fog, and lowering clouds, still put our airplanes on the ground. The dirigible has nothing to fear from such weather. High wind is its only weather enemy, and even that bugaboo is apparently due to disappear by reason of recent structural improvements.

The modern dirigible has a load-carrying capacity that is equivalent to a whole fleet of large bombing planes. It can remain in the air for days at a time. Its cruising radius is hundreds—thousands of ¦ miles at sea completely independent of land or floating bases of operation. The discovery of helium and its production in sufficient quantity eliminated the cause of most previous airship disasters. Helium has, also, rid the dirigible of its former major element of military vulnerability.

The invaluable function in the dirigible is its ability as a scout. Thousands of miles at sea, beyond the operating radius of airplanes, and at high altitudes not feasible for airplanes, an airship such as the U. S. S. Akron is capable of operating for days at a time, and at twice the speed of the fastest surface ships. It is the only aircraft that offers inhabitability to men during such protracted voyages, and the only aerial vehicle capable of carrying a powerful and dependable radio equipment on such long flights.

Airships Mostly Defensive Weapons Thus, for deep sea scouting purposes the airship meets a naval requirement that is highly important to the United States navy. And to all these advantages must be added the airship’s ability to cruise at slow speed, to hover over any spot for detailed observations, the capacity for making photographic records and developing them immediately, and the ability to communicate by radio with our war department at any and all times. If necessary, the airship can carry substantial loads of ammunition, stores, and supplies.

In no sense does the American navy look upon the airship as an instrument of offensive warfare. It is a scout, a repeller of naval attack against our seacoasts, and a destroyer of enemy submarines and merchant shipping. Nothing more is claimed for it, yet in these roles there is every reason to believe that a large fleet of dirigibles such as the U. S. S. Akron would render the United States immune from naval attack —hence, immune from having war waged on us.

What 100 Akrons Could Do For Us Let us suppose, for example, that we have a fleet of one hundred airships such as the U. S. S. Akron. Then let us assume that Japan declared war upon us. We could logically expect the enemy to attempt a surprise attack upon our seacoast. He would, also, undoubtedly try to seize the Panama Canal.

Under such circumstances our airship fleet would immediately put to sea. We could assign 40 airships to scout duty in the Atlantic to completely frustrate any possibility of surprise attack. Those 40 airships would establish a patrol, beyond the striking range of airplanes, from Canada to South America. The other sixty airships would be assigned to the greater water area from the west coast of South America to Hawaii, and from Hawaii to Alaska.

These airships on patrol duty would fly at an average speed of 60 miles per hour, and with normal visibility extending 20 miles on each side of the ship, a single airship would be capable of scouting 57,600 square miles of ocean every 24 hours. This is an area equivalent to the combined area of all the New England states, through which not a whale or a school of porpoises could swim without being sighted. A fat chance the enemy would have to get at us with battle fleet, aircraft, or submarines!

But the dirigible is of great size and highly vulnerable to gun fire, claim the critics of the navy’s faith in the airship. Quite right. The navy knows it. But that does not help the enemy after an airship has done it’s work and spoiled his chances for success. Such an airship fleet would “spot” any Japanese fleet attempting to make a sneak upon us while it is still many hundreds of miles at sea. The position of the enemy fleet, together with highly important information regarding the nature of his attacking force, would immediately be radioed from the discovering airship to our war department Our battle fleet would immediately steam out to meet the enemy on the high seas.

It is entirely possible that we might stand to lose the airship discovering the enemy fleet at sea. The airship would probably be brought down by gun fire from the enemy’s battleships. By that time, however, the airship would have completed her all-important mission. Her officers and crew would parachute out with life preservers to be picked out of the sea as prisoners of war. We would have lost a crew of about a hundred highly-trained officers and men, and a $4,000,000 airship. That would be a nominal price for the information that would frustrate a naval attack upon the Panama Canal, or upon some seacoast city such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles, or San Francisco.

Airships Defend Against Submarines In addition to its value as a scout the dirigible is a veritable hell-hound for enemy submarines and merchant shipping. From an airship slowly cruising at an altitude of 500 or 1,000 feet a submarine has about the privacy of a fish in an aquarium. And once discovered by the airship—there is no escape for the sub! The airship can hover right over the submarine to let down a depth bomb with deadly accuracy.

It has often been said that the airship is cursed with great size and vulnerability. Theoretically this is true. Nevertheless, a dirigible such as the U. S. S. Akron coming in contact with an enemy battle fleet isn’t quite the fat pig in the slaughter pen that it appears to be. A few tracer bullets fired through the U. S. S. Akron would do little or no damage, and since the helium is carried in numerous cells it would be necessary to virtually riddle the ship before she could be brought down.

The vulnerability of the airship to airplane attack is unquestionably much over-rated in the public mind. The aviator attempting to attack an airship such as the U. S. S. Akron would discover to his sorrow that such a raid lacks much of being an old-fashioned, World War balloon busting sport! Our modern dirigible carries its own fighting planes which can be released and taken aboard again while the airship is in flight The aviator trying to attack the airship would have these fighting planes to reckon with.

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Let’s Use Helicopter Cavalry

Swooping in suddenly, helitroopers on powerful “sky horses” could wreak havoc with enemy troops.

By Frank Tinsley

SCATTERED along the western slope of the Asiatic coastal range, the copter troopers and their mounts cluster in little groups as the rising sun climbs behind them. The jump-off moment is fast approaching. Within minutes, the sun will burst blindingly above them to cover their westward assault.

The first elements of the blitz landing—submarine-borne marines —had hit the enemy coast only three days ago, seized the controlling crests and passes of the coastal hills in bloody fighting, well covered by massive flights of water-borne jet fighters.

On the second day, the supporting units of army troops arrived. They came in widely dispersed waves of huge, A-powered flying-boats that landed beyond the breakers and nosed ashore to land men, machines and supplies. This was an almost undetectable operation, stretching along a hundred miles or more of shoreline like a thin but strong garrotting cord. Nowhere was there a great enough concentration to draw an I enemy A-bomb. Toward the center of the invasion sector, a narrow valley traversed the mountainous country in a westerly direction, forming a winding corridor toward the industrial and agricultural heart of the area. Late yesterday afternoon, newly landed tank columns started up the valley and bogged down immediately under hilltop artillery fire. But a new element has entered the picture since the Italian campaign of World War II. The old horse cavalry has been reactivated recently and is now available, mounted on swift, one-man helicopters. The well-dispersed brigade has been in constant radio-telephone communication and as the zero hour draws near, commands begin to crackle along the mountainsides. “Check your revs. . . Prepare for take-off!” Starting rockets twinkle in tight circles as the blast of hundreds of tiny ramjets settles into a sustained roar.

Like a swarm of wasps, the troops assemble in midair, fall into the prescribed formation and high-ball for their objectives. Skimming over hill-tops, through gaps .and along narrow gorges, the agile copters take advantage of every possible cover. Although the flying is dangerous, ground-hugging keeps them below the zone of radar detection and enables them to burst upon ground positions in full force.

Like Indians galloping around a beleaguered wagon train, the cavalrymen circle their hilltop prey. In moments, the battery is a hell of pinging bullets, bursting grenades and flaming napalm. As soon as the position is secured, re- ports go over the air, fresh fuel and ammo arrive and the platoon settles down to guard the peak. Dust rises from the valley as the advance guard of tanks rolls forward.

If all this sounds a bit fanciful, please remember that this description of air cavalry action includes nothing that the helicopter has not already done a thousand times. And for a long time now, army and marine teams have been developing combat copter tactics and are currently testing machines that range from single-seaters to big boys capable of carrying a whole platoon.

In January of this year the Pentagon established a new Army Aviation Division under Brig. Gen. Hamilton H. Howze. Howze is particularly well qualified for the job. A West Pointer, he served for years as a horse soldier in the 3rd, 6th and 7th cavalry regiments. He served as Tank Battalion, Armored Regiment and Combat Command Commander of the First Armored Division in WW II. In 1951 he won his jump badge as a paratrooper.

When the last of the horse cavalry was disbanded in 1944, a serious gap was left in the ground force combat teams. The troopers had served as the “eyes of the army,” providing the detailed information that enabled an infantry commander to make sound decisions. Hard experience in World War II soon demonstrated that road-bound tanks and armored cars were just not up to the job. A new concept would call for the replacement of the tank company by a flying cavalry squadron of sufficient strength to cover the enlarged fronts and guard against in- . filtration of its rear areas.

The Army will not discuss its plans for new types of units but it is logical to assume that they must soon organize aerial cavalry units to regain the necessary mobility of their reconnaissance and screening elements.

“Jumping Jim” Gavin of wartime paratroop fame, who was recently promoted to Lieutenant General and named Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Research, is one of the principal proponents of aerial cavalry. A veteran of air-ground combat, he well realizes the need for helicopter cavalry.

So does Major General Paul D. Adams, the army’s Acting Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3. Having personally experienced the difficulties of relying only on mechanized reconnaissance in Italian and Korean mountain country, he is sold on helitroopers as advance and flank guards for roadbound armor. “The new copter-mounted troops could function precisely as did the horse troops in the Civil War,” says Gen. Adams, “with the added advantage of flight. Jeb Stuart would have loved to do it this way!”

No helicopter proposed to date seems to meet the requirements of a practical cavalry mount. Mechanix Illustrated has, therefore, come up with what it believes to be the first military “helicycle” designed from scratch to carry the new aerial trooper. The ramjet-driven, four-bladed, coaxial rotor shown possesses several advantages for. the small copter. First, its small overall diameter permits tighter formation flying and easier concealment on the ground.

It also eliminates the awkward tail-rotor or boom-supported rudder. The lifting rotors are separate, two-bladed units, turning in opposite directions to neutralize torque. In the event of damage to an individual blade, it and its twin can be jettisoned simultaneously, instantly stopping the destructive vibration which can soon wreck a helicopter. This leaves the trooper with one completely balanced rotor with which to limp to safety. For field or storage use the four blades fold downward forming a conical frame over which a tepeelike shelter can be spread. In addition to providing a tent for the trooper, this also acts as a tie-down for the copter.

Unlike conventional chair-type copters, the MI Helicycle employs the straddle seating of a horse or motorcycle. This, we believe to be the firmest, most comfortable and least exhausting posture for a small military copter. It en- ables the trooper to hang on like a leech during the wildest rough-air gyrations. Although a safety belt is provided, he is not completely at its mercy as he would be in a chair seat.

The saddle combines the safety and comfort features of a stock saddle and the bucket seat. With his tail confined -by the high cantle, his thighs anchored firmly beneath the bucking swells of the pommel and his feet in the capped stirrups on the running boards it’s hard to shake the trooper loose.

The saddle shell is moulded of light Doron armor (see June 1952 MI) to protect against small arms fire from the ground. Its side flaps are of flexible plastic and the seat may be padded with foam rubber if desired. To permit emergency transportation of an infantryman or a grounded fellow trooper, passengers can be carried on the flat packed cantle roll behind the saddle. This roll contains the camouflaged tent-cover, blankets, spare clothes, etc., and is secured to the frame with straps. A grab rail with eyes for fastening an extra safety belt is provided behind the cantle.

The main frame of the Helicycle is welded magnesium tubing, rounded on top to accommodate the saddle and fitted with three spring steel landing legs bolted to the bottom. Inside the frame is a removable fuel tank of Fiberglas, lined with puncture-proof, self-sealing compound. A moulded Fiberglas nose cone and fairing streamline the forward end of the machine and provide stowage space. The hinged cone tilts up for access and contains a battery-operated spotlight for night landings. This is removable for ground use.

A similar tail cone contains the personal gear, spare rations, ammo, etc., formerly carried in the saddlebags. Atop it is a tail fin and hand operated trim tab for maintaining directional stability. The rotor pylon is also adjustable fore and aft to compensate for the changed center of gravity when carrying an emergency passenger.

Flight instruments—compass, altimeter and air speed indicator—are mounted in the broad flat top of the saddle pommel. A tachometer mounted beneath the rotor head, is directly connected to the rotors.

A set of light, auxiliary floats converts our Helicycle into an amphibion. Fastened to the flat bottom of the frame is – the main float, faired to streamline the copter’s belly in flight. Three cylindrical “outrigger” floats fit over the ends of the landing legs to balance the machine on the water.

The rifle or submachine gun, is fastened by quick-release clips to the Helicycle frame in a horizontal position beneath the trooper’s right leg. Fitted with a large capacity mounted magazine, it can be fired in flight like a fixed machine gun. On the left side of the frame, is a folding magnesium paddle— standard liferaft type—for water maneuvering with dead engines. Armored flak-jackets and helmets will be worn during combat. Radio phones attached to the combat pack provide voice communication. Earphones and mikes are mounted in the helmet.

Thus mounted and equipped, we have air-borne troopers capable of rapid, fluid movement over all kinds of terrain. They are able to skim large areas in extended formations or drop down in squads and platoons for surface check and interrogation. Organized in troops, squadrons and regiments, backed by larger squad copters carrying mortar crews, recoilless gun teams, rocket projectors, engineer and demolition squads, etc.—much like the “flying artillery” of Civil War fame—these formidably armed units should prove invaluable in screening, holding, covering, raiding and all sorts of special hit-and-run operations.

In addition, they perform the classic cavalry function of detailed reconnaissance faster and more completely than any existing unit. In short, the airborne trooper promises to resurrect the army’s long lost eyes and ears, to revive the old light horse cavalry on modern, sky-busting steeds, swifter and more dashing than any thoroughbred of old.

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OUR FORTS ON WHEELS

By RENE BACHE

TAKE an ordinary touring car. Sheathe it with armor-plate. Build a citadel on top of it, with a revolving turret and a machine-gun inside. You have then a fort on wheels.

This is an idea on which the War Department has been working for some time past. We soon shall have whole squadrons of such armored cars. Doubtless we shall send them in numbers to the fighting line in France.

It costs $2,000 for the alterations. The vehicle, when used for war purposes, is expected to have a speed of from forty to fifty miles an hour.

As a preliminary to its equipment for war purposes the touring-car is stripped clown to chassis. Then it is clothed with plates of ^-inch metal—not ordinary sheet steel, but manganese steel armor, proof against a rifle or machine gun bullet at one hundred yards.

The citadel with its turret is clad in the same thickness of armor. It is expensive stuff, this kind of steel plating; the War Department is paying close to $1 a pound for it. But, in buying it under contract, no requirement is made as to composition. All that is demanded is that it shall pass successfully a test to which it is subjected by firing rifle bullets at it. If, at one hundred yards, it stops the bullets, it is accepted; otherwise, not.

A converted automobile of this description is reinforced to some extent, the strength of many parts being increased to enable them to withstand nearly double the stress of peace service.

The War Department has contracted, also, for the quick delivery of great numbers of armored cars, built for fighting purposes from the ground up. These are quite a different proposition. They are true automobile forts, completely clad in quarter-inch steel plate, and mounted on the chassis of a truck.

There is—as in the other case—a revolving turret on top. At one side is a steel door, for entrance and exit. In front of the driver’s seat is a steel shutter, which can be lifted to enable him to look out. The gasoline tank is be- neath the vehicle. The machine carries three men, the driver, a, gunner and an assistant gunner. A traveling fort of this pattern can “do” about twenty-five miles an hour only.

Such an armored motor-car costs $5,000. There is, however, a larger and more formidable type, costing $8,000, which has two turrets, providing for two machine-guns, and carrying a “crew” of five or six. The front turret is higher than the rear turret, so that the gunner inside of it can fire over the after turret if there is occasion so to do—as, for instance, while running away from a pursuing enemy.

The mechanism of this superior type of fort on wheels is so modified that power is applied to all four of the wheels. Thus it is enabled to run over much rougher ground than would be practicable otherwise.

The newest wheeled forts of this description have a second steel shutter at the back, with a rear seat for the driver. This provision is made in order that the vehicle, if desired, may be driven rear end first. In fact, one of the most important advantages of this type of armored motor is that it can run backward as readily as forward, and at an equal speed. It is, in effect, a “double-ender”—a great convenience in an emergency, when it may not be easy or safe to negotiate a turnabout.

Attached by straps to the rear end of each fort are a pickaxe, an axe, and a spade-shovel, which, if the military motor happens to get stuck in the mud, can be used to dig it out. There is also a lantern, set inside of an armor-plate bucket that is riveted to one of the steel plates at the back.

In the present war the fort car has proved a most valuable fighting auxiliary, being utilized to advantage in a great variety of ways. Being proof against anything but artillery, it ventures boldly into the zone of rifle and machine gun fire. Its occupants are safe against “snipers,” and it can run fearlessly through the streets of villages in which enemy groups are hiding in cellars and behind walls. In a retreat, it can linger as the “point” of the rear guard and retard the progress of an advancing foe. If Napoleon had possessed a bare half dozen of these machines, his retreat from Russia could have been accomplished with a loss of not over one thousand men. Even today, when means of attacking such monsters are tremendously better, they still are vitally important, as the British troops have proved. Also, just as these machines are used in the rear guard, they can be used in advance guard formation. The usual custom has been for the soldier in hot fighting to be nothing more or less than a free target for the enemy’s fire. In case he came upon a detachment of the enemy, he was almost certain to be killed. The tank or armed fort is to change this, however.

Death Rays from Silent Sounds

THE day of death rays in warfare was foreshadowed in an experiment conducted recently at Johns Hopkins University in which a beam of ultra-frequency sound waves instantly converted glass into a thin white powder, oil into thin vapor, and wood into a burst of flame.

These amazing new sounds, with frequencies as high as 300,000 vibrations per second, inaudible to the human ear, were created with a standard radio oscillator of the vacuum tube type, as illustrated in an accompanying drawing. In converting this wild but powerful current into sounds, scientists make use of what is known as pieze crystal which contracts and expands violently when subjected to a periodic electric field set up between two metal plates connected to the radio oscillator.

In demonstrating the death-dealing effect of the “silent sounds,” a frog was placed in a beaker, which rested on the quartz crystal. The frog died almost instantly, due to the coagulation of red corpuscles in the body. In another experiment glass exposed to the waves was shattered to a fine white powder. To date no attempt has been made to extend the terrible killing power of these sound waves beyond the laboratory bench, but army experts who have witnessed the experiments believe that here, for the first time, they have discovered the real “death ray.” In this discovery, warring forces would have a weapon that would not only annihilate armies, but would also bring airships and planes spinning to earth in a mass of flames.

SCOOTER CANNON combines scooting with shooting. French gun is a short-barreled, 75mm re-coilless job. It carries six ammo shells in place of saddle bags.

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IS THE PILOT OBSOLETE?

Missiles and rockets guided by “machines that think” are already in the air. Do our fantastic plans for tomorrow doom all piloted aifcraft?

By R. C. Sebold,
Vice President of Engineering, Convair, As told to B. W. Von Block

THE war of the future? Giant intercontinental missiles hurtle through space at 10,000 miles an hour —untouched by human hands. Pushbuttons send a screen of supersonic interceptor missiles streaking skyward to blast the attackers to bits with atomic warheads. . .

This is what you read in Sunday supplements. Tomorrow, say the aeronautical crystal gazers, the only humans left in the skies will be passengers. Not only fighters and bombers will be controlled by electronic brains, but so will commercial passenger and cargo transports. The pilot, these pundits claim, just isn’t stylish anymore.

Let’s take a realistic look at guided missiles. Convair and other manufacturers are developing—and producing-— these weapons today for the Armed Forces. Some are far advanced, others most decidedly are not.

Development is following three avenues: aerial defense, tactical ground support and strategic warfare. Since World War II engineers and military planners have been working hard to produce missiles of four basic types. These are: 1. Air-to-air missiles to intercept and destroy attacking enemy aircraft.

2. Ground-to-air missiles to blast those enemy ships which get through first-line interceptor defenses.

3. Air-to-ground types with which to strike the enemy in his own back yard— and smash his industries, communications—his will to fight.

4. Ground-to-ground missiles — the real key to “pushbutton” warfare. These are the automatic, long-range weapons supplement writers envision being lobbed from continent to continent with frightful accuracy and devastation.

Most of these missiles have been given colorful descriptive names, such as Falcon, Meteor, Oriole, Sparrow, Sidewinder—all air-to-air types. Among ground-to-air missiles, examples are the Convair-Navy Terrier. This is in production and the Navy announced recently that it has proven itself so accurate that the Terrier knocked drone targets out of the sky with direct hits. This is especially remarkable because the missiles used in the tests were not armed with explosive warheads but brought down the targets by colliding’ with them!

The Talos and Lark are missiles for shipboard use. The Army’s Nike—first in-service U. S. Air Defense missile— will soon be protecting 15 major American cities and later our Alaskan bases.

Air-to-ground weapons include the B-63 Rascal rocket and the “Petral”—a turbo-jet powered type designed for use by aircraft and helicopters against en- emy submarines and surface vessels.

Ground-to-ground missiles have not been neglected either. These now. include the B-61 Matador, a medium-range Air Force pilot less bomber. The Matador is now operational in Germany. The Navajo and Snark (a swept-wing pilotless bomber) are strategic intercontinental missiles. Also in production is the Regulus for cruiser and submarine launchings against enemy ships and submarines. Also in this impressive arsenal is the Atlas ballistics missile.

The-missile is a complex, costly one-shot weapon—usable only once. The Convair-Navy Terrier and similar types must find their targets and blast them to bits (destroying themselves in the bargain) or they are wasted. They do not return if they miss, nor can they be recovered.

Every missile component must work perfectly. If only one tiny part fails to function—for even a split-second—the weapon is lost, the mission is a failure. In this age of nuclear weapons, no sane military planner or aircraft designer would entrust the nation’s air defense entirely to robots. Certainly not until every possibility of mechanical defect or malfunction is eliminated completely.

Can missiles or similar electronically-controlled devices carry out the military missions now entrusted to conventional aircraft?

Military observers and experts point out that a nation begins to fight each new war with the weapons on which it relied in the previous one. While the work in the laboratories and on the drafting tables goes on, designing, developing and producing the weapons of tomorrow, the military strategists must be ready to fight with what is available today.

Is the human pilot obsolete or obsolescent? Or is he likely to become so in the next few crucial years?

The aeronautical engineers—the men who do the planning and building of tomorrow’s aircraft—don’t think so. Guided missile research, development and manufacture proceed at full blast but there is still a heavy demand for piloted planes.

There has been no cut-back in military orders for F-86 or F-100 series fighters. In fact, Convair has just come up with a new interceptor or bomber-destroyer, the F-102-A. Supersonic, delta-winged, this all-weather Air Force jet will be rolling off production lines for years to come.

The F-102-A is an interceptor. It will not soon become obsolete. And it is a piloted aircraft. And, unlike a pilotless guided missile, it can be used again and again on combat missions.

The fine judgment and quick reaction of the human pilot are required for another kind of mission—tactical air support. In attacks supporting ground troops, situations change in moments. Battle lines are fluid, flexible, as troops attack or retreat. New “targets of opportunity” may present themselves suddenly.

Such a mission is meat for pilot-controlled planes. A new Convair-Navy ship, the XFY-1 Pogo is ideally suited for tactical air support. The delta-wing Pogo can take off straight up from a base no bigger than half a tennis court! The Pogo flies its mission—then lands, backing down, tail first, on a pinpoint. In the air, it is able to hover over its target, or dart away at more than 500 miles an hour! No electronic device yet invented could duplicate a Pogo attack pilot’s job!

The bomber forecast? Convair designed and built the intercontinental B-36 bomber—the Strategic Air Command’s long-range bombardment giant that carries much of America’s retaliatory Sunday punch. Equipped with four jets and six 3,800-horsepower pusher-type reciprocating engines, this 200-ton aircraft is still far from being obsolete.

The B-36 won’t fly itself. It needs a crew of 16—including a five-man relief crew—to keep it airborne. Convair is now building the B-58 supersonic bomber—a faster and different type intercontinental ship than the B-36. It, too, will be piloted.

In commercial aviation, the trend toward pilotless aircraft is far less evident than in other areas. In the first place, few indeed are the passengers who would travel in a pilotless aircraft Even if—in years to come—he only sits in the cockpit for the purpose of monitoring automatic equipment, Joe Pilot will be there. Safety factors as well as psychological ones will demand his presence.

Robot air cargo carriers are perhaps the farthest off of all pilotless planes. The payload sacrificed through the presence of the pilot and co-pilot is negligible when compared with the tremendous cost of the complex electronic brains needed to replace them.

The line of aviation development will, as always, follow the course directed by military and civilian customer demand and the extent of funds available for re- search, experimentation and development. Aside from guided missiles for interception and long-range use, customers have shown little interest in pilotless aircraft.

It will be many decades before electronic devices are as reliable and tamper-proof as our old, familiar friend, Pilot Joe.

A tube blows or a relay burns out. It happens. Then your robot bomber misses its target. A tiny switch fails for a split-second and the pilotless transport or cargo ship refuses to land—until, fuel exhausted, it plummets to earth. An electric impulse goes haywire—a multimillion-dollar ship or a vitally-important weapon nosedives into the ground.

It will be a long time before even the miraculous advancements in electronics approach levels of human skill and resourcefulness. Until this happens, the human pilot cannot become obsolete!

ROCKING-HORSE TRAINS BRITISH RIDERS
Mounted on rocking-horses, recruits of the British cavalry are now receiving preliminary training in horsemanship. At the Army Equestrian School, at Weedon, England, the wooden horses were recently installed to give rookies the feel of the saddle and practice in mounting and dismounting before they tackle the spirited animals stabled at the school. In advanced horsemanship, the wooden horses are also employed in teaching acrobatics and trick riding. They are said to be especially useful in helping riders acquire the right balance when a horse takes a hurdle. Dismounting from one of the rocking-horses, by means of the spectacular neck-roll, is being demonstrated in the photograph by the chief instructor.

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Are Skyscrapers Bombproof?

American Type of Building May Be Answer to Raiders

AMERICAN skyscrapers, often the butt of foreigners’ jokes, stand ready to attain a new and indispensable usefulness. In the view of experts, they constitute a highly satisfactory, if not impregnable, defense against all types of bomb attacks. Even without added safeguards, they can safely protect millions of city dwellers and workers from explosives, gas, and incendiaries. And by the addition of sandbags and steel in vital sectors, they can be made almost as safe as the most elaborate shelter.

Those same Europeans who have laughed at our huge towers of steel and reenforced concrete regard them enviously today, for they have seen their own buildings of wood, brick, and masonry crumble to dust and rubble, graveyards for their hapless occupants. Their few modern structures, however, have withstood the heaviest assaults of incendiary and demolition bombs. Residents of New York with its Empire State, Chrysler, Bank of Manhattan, and forty other towers more than 400 feet high; Chicago, where the Board of Trade, Temple, and almost a dozen others top 500 feet; Detroit, with the Penobscot, and Pittsburgh, with the Gulf Building, enjoy ample protection. Every American city has buildings that afford a large degree of safety.

In the opinion of Ely Jacques Kahn, eminent architect of New York City, skyscrapers are “naturals” as a bomb defense. The common demolition bomb of 550 pounds will penetrate a maximum of eight stories through a steel roof and steel and reenforced concrete floors. With the added protection of sandbags the penetration may be limited to three floors. The most powerful explosive, upon hitting the street, will not hurl fragments able to penetrate modern walls higher than three stories. Poison gas cannot rise more than two or three floors above street level. Incendiaries, weighing only a few pounds, may not penetrate even through a modern building’s roof. Even if they do, they must burn through almost completely fireproof floors and walls.

Refugees in a skyscraper, then, provided they remain three floors above the street and five or six floors below the roof, are safe from anything except a direct hit which may be directed at them slantwise. For bombs never fall straight; they strike whatever is in their path at an angle. Experience abroad, however, has shown that even a hit like this is a minor catastrophe. It will undoubtedly kill or wound persons sheltered at that level. Striking at the 25th floor, for example, it may penetrate diagonally down to the 20th, killing and maiming en route. But the building’s steel frame is flexible; it will take the shock without collapsing.

No surface structure, modern or otherwise, can be made impervious to a direct hit except at terrific cost, and it is likely that skyscrapers will have to continue to take that risk. Important safeguards such as sandbagging on the top floors, placing sandbags between floors and windows to protect against flying fragments, and bracing windows or covering them with metal sheets, will add greatly to the general safety.

The skyscraper’s defense role however is not limited to protection alone. Military experts concede that the heavily reenforced roofs would easily support antiaircraft-gun emplacements, and shelters for gun crews.

Unique and permanent underground shelters may be the solution in our cities’ most crowded areas. In emergencies they may be used as shelters for almost indefinite periods, completely equipped with food-storage, sanitary, and dormitory facilities; power units for lighting, heating, and ventilating; and ample ingress and egress motorways. A seven-foot layer of reenforced concrete, and reenforced concrete walls, would give them protection against demolition bombs.

In time of peace these subterranean palaces, acres in area, may be transformed into useful civic projects. Thousands of automobiles may find storage and parking space there, new municipal markets, theaters, skating rinks, swimming pools, gymnasiums, auditoriums, and schools may be located there, far from dirt, noise, and traffic.

Ely Jacques Kahn together with his partner, Robert Allan Jacobs, has even envisaged these combination war-and-peace villages as the modern answer to the problem of slum clearance. Mr. Kahn is famous for the designing of many of New York’s best-known buildings and department stores, such as the Squibb Building, 120 Wall Street, Bon-wit Teller, Bergdorf-Goodman, and Jay Thorpe. Slums, he says, are peacetime hazards; they are worse in wartime. Raze them, therefore, and in their stead erect vast areas of parks, playgrounds, and apartment houses, with permanent shelters beneath them.

naval fire-control… AND FORD INSTRUMENT COMPANY

Firing at a target many miles away from a pitching and rolling ship, steaming at full speed, requires rapid, complicated computations. Special computers and drives must do this job.

Throughout the past forty years, engineers of Ford Instrument Company have been specialists in this field — from their design of the earliest Rangekeeper in World War I to the latest great Naval electro-mechanical-electronic computers. As in their missile and aircraft instruments, their nuclear controls and weapon systems, the criteria of dependability and precision are the characteristics of Ford designed and manufactured computers and controls.

Ever since 1915, when Hannibal C. Ford built the first gunfire computers for the U. S. Navy, Ford Instrument Company has been a leader in applying the science of automatic control to American defense and peacetime industry. For more information, write for free illustrated brochure.

FORD INSTRUMENT COMPANY
DIVISION OF THE SPERRY CORPORATION
31-10 Thomson Ave., Long Island City 1, N. Y.

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Secrets of the Mystery Gun that Shelled Paris

By COL. HENRY W. MILLER

Chief Artillery Engineer, A.E.F.

The secrets of the Paris Gun! For the first time in any magazine, Modern Mechanics here reveals the inside facts concerning the most startling and closely-guarded mystery of the World war—the official story of the giant German guns which, in 1918, dropped shells on Paris from a distance of 75 miles, a feat so incredible that artillery experts refused to believe it possible, thinking for a time that the shells were bombs dropped by high-flying aircraft. After the war the guns were destroyed and all information concerning them locked in secret archives. It was declared high treason, punishable by death, for anyone who possessed vital information concerning the guns ever to divulge it. Nevertheless, Col. Miller, author of this article and of the gripping book, “The Paris Gun,” obtained military pictures and technical secrets from confidential German sources which has enabled him to reveal to Modern Mechanics’ readers the astonishing story of the longest range guns the world has ever known.

ON THE morning of Saturday, March 23, 1918, as all the world knows, a supposed air bomb dropped into a Paris street and, when the fragments had cooled enough to be picked up} it was discovered they were marked with the lands and grooves of rifling, something no air bomb ever possessed.

By the time five or six more had crashed down, at intervals averaging about 15 minutes, the French artillery department had definitely decided Germany had accomplished the impossible and was shelling Paris with a gun that must be at least seventy, and probably seventy-five miles

away. What that meant may be visualized by recalling that the longest land bombardment in previous history occurred in 1915 when the Germans shelled Dunkirk from a distance of 23V-J miles with a 15-inch naval gun mounted on a railway truck.

Twenty-five shells dropped into or near Paris on that March Saturday, killing sixteen and wounding twenty-nine people.

The long range gun, or rather guns, for there were seven of them built, in all, and six were actually used at the front, remained one of the war’s greatest mysteries for years after the armistice, guarded by the death penalty for anyone caught revealing it. No gun was ever found in place, but we did find an almost complete emplacement in France, abandoned when the Germans retreated too fast to destroy it, and we did find an almost complete gun in Belgium, and the measurements of the two coincided. Long after the armistice 1 learned that our artillery destroyed the railroad junction at Soissons just two hours too late to catch the last of the guns as it was retreating.

But, while the guns remained a mystery, their location did not, for within two or three hours after the first shell fell, artillery experts had figured out where the monsters must be located. An aerial photograph of that district, taken on the previous March 6th, showed two railway spurs which must have been used to place them, and within a short time sound-ranging apparatus at the front had confirmed the diagnosis by identifying the sound as they fired. All that was done before dusk that Saturday, despite elaborate camouflage arrangements that even included trees with six-inch trunks set in slots in the railway line at 30-foot intervals to hide even the tracks to the gun from aerial observers.

Now that the rest of the story can be told, consider the guns themselves: There was a barrel 120 feet in length, approximately twice as long as the biggest guns built to that time—so long, in fact, that the end had to be supported in the air to keep it from bending down and being shot off by its own shell. In fact, that very thing happened to the first of the guns tested at the German proving ground, for the barrel bent a full inch under its own weight.

Next they fired a shell 75 to 80 miles or more, over a total trajectory ranging from 90 to nearly 100 miles.

To do that the shell was shot 24 miles above the earth, higher than any man-made thing, save possibly a small sounding balloon, had ever penetrated. At that extreme height the shell traveled through what was almost a vacuum, at a temperature of far more than 100 degrees below zero.

The shell, traveling at an average speed of 30 miles a minute—or sixty times as fast as the usual legal rate for automobiles — took three minutes to complete its aerial flight of 90 miles. It remained away from the earth so long, in fact, that the old world revolved on in space while the projectile was away, so the gunners had to aim a half mile east of the target in order that the target might be there when the shell arrived to hit it.

And, finally, the Paris gun, as I have called it, was the first ever built that contained within itself a device that told where I he shell had landed—in fact, the gunners could tell where the shell hit before it had actually hit there.

And to that might be added one other thing—the fact that the speed with which the Allied artillery chiefs located the guns and took steps to silence them defeated their main object, that of stampeding the people and scaring them half to death by the mystery of the thing. For the mystery, as has been said, didn’t last through the first morning.

The long range guns, it might be well to explain, should not be called “Big Berthas.” The “Big Bertha,” named for a fancied resemblance to the matronly figure of Frau Bertha Krupp, was a short, squat, wide barreled seige mortar, a seventeen -inch piece with which the Germans reduced the stone and steel fortifications of Liege in the first weeks of the war.

The long range guns were the conception of Dr. Von Eberhardt, a German physicist, who, early in 1916, with his chief, Dr. Rausenberger, convinced General Ludendorff that a cannon with a sixty-mile range could be built. Work was started, but at the end of the year there came a sud- den wire from the front ordering the range to be increased to seventy-five miles. The German high command had decided to retreat the next spring from the Somme to the Hindenburg line, and a sixty-mile gun would no longer be within range of Paris. To build the giants the Krupp factory took 15-inch, 45 calibre naval rifles, with railroad mounts, reduced the bore to 8.26 inches and just about doubled the length by shrinking into it the end of a 98-foot long rifled tube. That was the plan for the original 60-mile gun, and it had been built when the order came to increase the range to 75 miles.

No one had ever succeeded in joining two rifled tubes together and keeping them in alignment, and there was no boring mill in Germany big enough to bore a barrel twenty feet longer—the extra length needed to increase the range. For every millimeter added to a gun’s length the projectile will go three meters farther, and it figured out that twenty more feet of barrel would turn the trick. So the Germans decided the rifling in the 98-foot tube was sufficient to start the shell revolving and keep it from wobbling in the air, and, therefore, the extra twenty feet could be smooth bore tube, and that is how they did the job.

By the summer of 1917 the work was far enough along, it was believed, to order the emplacements built for the first three guns. They were to be placed in what was known as the Laon corner, a salient which enclosed the forest of St. Gobain, and was the nearest approach of the Hindenburg line to Paris.

The guns had been built, but then a hitch developed, for every shell tried was a complete failure. It was not until the following January that a shell was designed which proved saisfactory, and it was this shell that was used on Paris in March.

Ordinary cannon projectiles are smooth steel cylinders fitted with copper “driving bands.” As the shell passes through the rifled barrel the soft copper is engraved in grooves by the rifling, imparting the twisting motion which keeps the projectile from wobbling while in flight. The copper bands also act as piston rings to keep the gas from escaping from behind the shell.

But with a pressure twice as great as anything used theretofore the copper bands were sheared off the long range shells. Finally the German engineers created shells with rifling grooved in the steel walls, and copper bands behind the rifles to keep the gases in place. The shells were screwed into the barrel rifles at the breech and when fired, the rifles, with 4-degree pitch, started the projectiles spinning at 107 revolutions a second when they left the rifled portion of the barrel.

The shell had an enormously thick base and lower side walls to withstand the tremendous pressure of a million pounds. It was fitted with two fuses, to lessen the chance of failure to explode — and in fact not a single one did fail. The load was eighteen pounds of T.N.T. After it was shoved up and twisted into place in the rifled barrel two silk bags and one brass cartridge case of powder were inserted in the I breech, a total I of 431 pounds of powder for the initial charge in a new gun.

The firing table for the gun was one of the weirdest wonders ever conceived in bal listics. It took into consideration the state of the gun bore, the wind direction, velocity, barometric pressure, and even the compass bearing of the target, to allow for the turning of the world. The gun was fired at only one elevation—55 degrees—and the range “was corrected by changing the powder •charge. Another addition had to be made to each powder charge to compensate for the wearing of the barrel during the previous shot. The powder chamber of a gun is bored larger than the rifled portion of the barrel, and where the two meet the chamber is tapered down to barrel size in what is called the pressure cone. Each time the gun is fired tiny bits of the cone are •eroded, so each following shell slips a little farther up the barrel, and thus shortens the useful barrel length.

How the Gun Wore Out Cone wear of a fraction of a calibre up to one calibre is usually considered sufficient to warrant sending the gun back to be rebored. (A calibre is the diameter of the shell, thus a 6-inch gun of 50 calibres length has a 25-foot barrel.) But in the German guns cone wear progressed up to six feet of barrel length before they were discarded. This excessive wear explains the fact that shells fired at Paris the first day traveled ^n average of three miles farther than the ones fired the second day.

The muzzle velocity—practically a mile a second—was the highest ever reached in a big gun. The shell started out at 5500 feet a second; had dropped to 3300 feet by the time it had climbed to twelve miles, and was down to 2200 feet at the height of its trajectory, 24 miles in the air. But more than three-fourths of the total trajectory was up in the rarefied air, where resistance was practically nil, which explains the extreme range attained. When gravity began to pull the shell nose down toward earth the velocity climbed again to 3300 feet, but as it continued to fall it actually lost speed, due to air resistance, and was not traveling more than 2450 feet a second when it hit Paris. The initial energy when the shell left the muzzle, by the way, reached the enormous total of 8 billion foot pounds. (9,000,000 h.p.w.) I mentioned some paragraphs back that the gun contained a device to tell the gunners where the shell hit, even before it had hit. This was a pair of pressure recorders, set into the breech, to measure the gas pressure at the moment of discharge. German powder varied so much in quality the last year of the war that the muzzle velocity differed as much as 100 yards for various discharges, so the gunners never knew until after the shell was on its way where it was going. But as soon as they had the pressure figure they could tell from their tables where it would arrive.

Despite all these handicaps it is interesting that of the 25 shells fired the first day, 12 landed within a two mile circle. Two, however, were more than eight miles apart, both falling outside of the city walls on opposite sides of Paris.

¦ To take up the shock of the recoil when a million pounds of pressure started pushing a shell up the 120-foot steel tube required an enormous emplacement. In the later installations a pit eight feet deep and forty feet across was dug. On the bottom heavy “I” beams, arranged in a radial pattern, were laid, and on these a doughnut shaped steel caisson was assembled, with manholes in the tops through which it could be packed tight with sand bags. The turn table, key plates and the mount for the railroad gun carriage were built up on these, with a track down the center for the railway car. On either side additional railroad tracks carried a gantry crane of 175 tons capacity to handle the gun barrel.

When all was ready the railway trucks of the gantry crane were unloaded from their car on ramps provided for the purpose, and on them the gantry legs were set up and bolted down. Each gantry leg was topped by a jig crane, and with these the cross beam of the gantry was hoisted into place. Next the gun carriage, on its own wheels, was rolled onto the revolving turntable-like center section of the mount, a turn table that revolved on 96 steel balls 8 inches in diameter. Four powerful hydraulic jacks lifted up the carriage while the railway trucks were detached and rolled out of the way, then lowered it into place and it was secured to the turn table.

The gantry then picked up the 150 ton gun and swung it into place over the carriage. It took two weeks or more to prepare the emplacement and mount the gun.

Because of the complicated firing data, and the natural dispersement of the shots due to the extreme range, gun wear, wind drift, poor powder and other causes, only one target was ever used. That was the geographical center of Paris, a spot at the east end of the Palais de Louvre.

It is interesting that within an hour and a half after the first shell fell Allied officers had not only calculated the location of the gun but estimated the target on which it was laid probably was the “zero point” in Paris, the exact center of the Place in front of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, on the Isle de la Cite, in the Seine. The distance between the geographical center and the zero point is about one-half mile.

The location of the gun and the probable target were both calculated by charting the first seven shell bursts and drawing a line along the center on which they seemed to he falling. It is a curious thing that a number of shells fired from the same gun at the same target usually will be so equally spaced that if you draw a rectangle around all the bursts, and divide it with eight vertical and eight horizontal lines, 25 per cent of the shells will be found to have fallen within the first spaces on either side of the center lines, either up and down or across; 16 per cent in the next spaces; seven in die next and two per cent in the outer ones.

After the war when it became possible to talk to German officers, view the ground and consult German records we found just how effective the counter activity of the Allied artillery and aerial observers had been.

Five German long range guns were used at the St. Gobain woods position. One gun had burst while being fired and killed its own crew. Two positions, within the first week, had been shelled until they could no longer be occupied. A third was practically untenable when orders came to abandon it. The fifth gun fired just 64 shots before it was worn out. In five weeks 5,000 French heavy caliber shells fell on and around the gun emplacements. Toward the end they dropped as fast as 100 shells an hour. And in that five weeks the five German guns had fired just 183 shells in and around Paris!

New Boeing “Death Angel” to be World’s Fastest Bomber

THE latest addition to Uncle Sam’s air forces is a veritable flying fortress-Dubbed the “Death Angel” because she is capable of attaining highest speed of any bomber and can carry a ton of explosives, four machine guns fore and aft and a crew of five men, the giant Boeing bombing plane shown above will prove one of the nation’s most fearful weapons. The plane has a wing spread of 86 feet and is powered by two 575 h.p. motors mounted in the wings.

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World’s Greatest Radio Listening Post

RADIO fans take pride in the number of stations they can “log” and verify, especially if these are at a great distance. Contests for the most successful listening are as popular, now that one may hear Australia or South America, as they were in the days when people sat up in the hope of hearing Pittsburgh or Schenectady. However, the prize for the world’s most systematic listening should go to Mdlle. Marianne (the personification of the French Republic, as Uncle Sam is that of the United States). She has erected the world’s most elaborate receiving station for the purpose of listening to and recording broadcasts, as illustrated here.

In the old fort of Bicetre, which formed part of the defenses of Paris years ago, a casemate, or bombproof vault, no longer required for military purposes, has been set aside, giving about 1500 square feet of floor space for the installation of radio receiving apparatus; while a series of antenna masts was mounted above. Here reception* was found naturally good, while the fort is sufficiently far from the city to minimize man-made static. Twenty long- and short-wave receivers are installed here, and kept in use for the continual reception of programs, French as well as foreign. This station is connected by 28 direct wire lines to a “radio central,” where the listeners—who are distinct from the engineers who do the tuning in—note down anything of importance in news or announcements. If in a foreign language, it is promptly translated into French, and delivered to M. Mandel, the Minister of P. T. T. (telephone and telegraph posts) who has official supervision of radio. Other features include the study of the technical features of broadcasting; such as constancy of transmitting frequency, arrangement and quality of musical programs. In addition to the stenographic staff, there are six sound-recording devices —four phonographs with very thin aluminum discs, and two steel-tape machines, which record magnetically, on the telegraphone principle; so that a permanent record can be made for reproduction whenever it is desired. There is a full force on duty, 24 hours of the day; for international transmissions, round the world, are continuous.

We are sorry for taking the joy out of the lives of so many radio fans, who have fondly imagined that they themselves had the world’s best listening equipment—but there it is.

Safety Computer Forecasts Atomic Fall-out Pattern

How “safe” is it to test an atom bomb ? Will wind-blown radioactive dust or charged rain clouds endanger life or crops in inhabited regions?

The National Bureau of Standards recently developed a “portable” analog computer to assist in predicting radioactive fall-out from a nuclear explosion. The fall-out pattern appears instantly on oscilloscope (left of photo) after weather data and the size and type of bomb are “told to” the computer by setting dials. As computers go, “portable” means that it will fit into a truck.

Wind-carried fall-out even from “small” atomic tests has traveled as far as Paris and Tokyo when caught in the “jet stream” of the upper atmosphere.

German Firemen Protected by Odd Sprinkler System

IT’S a far cry from the old bucket brigade to modern fire-fighting efficiency. Even now the American fireman is known as a “smoke-eater,” but that term would hardly fit the present day fire laddie in Germany, for with the new portable sprinkler system adopted by some of the larger cities of that country a fireman may approach quite close to the flames without becoming singed.

The outfit, which looks like a deep sea diver’s uniform is equipped with a sprinkler helmet which operates off a connection attached to the nozzle of the hose. The fireman can control the spray by a simple movement of a hand lever.

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“Nerve Center” Guards New York

ARMY AIR CORPS SETS UP ELABORATE DEFENSE SYSTEM AMERICA’S most elaborate air-defense information center has just been completed in New York City. It is the best equipped in the world. Minute-by-minute reports from more than 6,000 field observers will enable Air Corps experts, working” at tables that resemble pieces from a giant jig-saw puzzle, to plot the progress of enemy bombers and to direct the swift climb and attack of interceptor planes. Even before the bombers reach the coast, the Army’s latest locator system will spot their position and, as soon as they wing inland, observers at five-mile intervals will flash in their reports—giving the type, number, height, and direction of the invading planes. As each flash reaches the New York nerve center, a marker, known as a “plotter’s pip,” will be placed on one of the jigsaw tables at a point that coincides with the position of the reporting observer. The table is called the “filter board” because here mistaken reports are filtered out. The men who place the markers on the board are designated “plotters.” Behind the plotters stand the “evaluators.” As soon as these trained Air Corps men decide the course the invaders are taking, they replace the pips with arrows—colored red, blue, or yellow, according to the time of the hour the reports are received. Instantly, “tellers,” sitting in a balcony overlooking the board, speak into telephones and similar arrows appear on a similar board in an adjoining room. This is the “operations board” from which final decisions are made.

There follows a swift succession of events. In a soundproof balcony overlooking the board, the controller, flanked by a pursuit officer and a radio control officer, assigns the invading “target” to one or more pursuit squadrons. In a matter of seconds, the complicated machinery of aerial defense is in full motion. Even before the interceptor planes begin skyrocketing up from the air field, pursuit officers in one of the six interceptor offices at the center are plotting the best course for engaging the enemy. These officers, in constant radio contact with the fighting planes, direct the whole attack from the ground. When plotting their navigation charts, they use colored pencils, changing every five minutes to coincide with changes in the color of the arrows on the operations board.

While this activity is going on, the civil air-raid warden is flashing out warnings to communities in the path of the attack; members of the intelligence division are noting down details of the raid for later study; officers of the First Interceptor Command, watching a third board in another room, are keeping track of developments and coordinating activity throughout an area that extends from Maine to below Cape Hatteras and from the Atlantic Coast as far west as Minnesota.

This vast area will be safeguarded by 13 information centers, each in a major city. Every center will have an auxiliary station ready to take over in less than eight minutes if the main center is destroyed or disabled. In New York, for example, is located the auxiliary filter board for Scranton, Pa. In all parts of the country, air defense nerve centers, similar to the one in New York City, are under construction. In the near future, between 30 and 40 will stand guard, fully equipped for emergencies.

What good is a $10.00 raise … if it then costs you $12.00 more to live?

Sure WE all want a raise . . . but raises today are bad medicine. And here’s why… Suppose you do get a raise . . . and a lot of others get one, too. What happens? The cost of manufacturing goes up. Naturally your boss has to add this increase in cost to the price he asks the retailer. And the retailer, in turn, raises his price to the consumer… that’s YOU.

So what good is a raise if your living costs go up even faster?

Of course, it’s hard to give up the luxuries of life … and even harder to give up some of the necessities. But this is War! And when you think of the sacrifices our fighting men are making… many of them giving up their lives for us … no sacrifice we can make should be too great.

So… start doing these seven things now…
1. Buy only what you need. Take care of what you have.
2. Don’t try to profit from the war. Don’t ask more than you absolutely must for what you have to sell.
3. Pay no more than ceiling prices. Buy rationed goods only by exchanging stamps.
4. Pay taxes willingly.
5. Pay off your old debts—all of them.
6. If you haven’t a savings account, start one.
If you have an account, put money in it —regularly. Put money in life insurance, too.

7. Buy and hold War Bonds. Don’t stop at 10%. Remember—Hitler stops at nothing!

Use it up … Wear it out. Make it do … Or do without.

HELP US KEEP PRICES DOWN

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What About Those… SECRET WEAPONS?

Every war has its weird whispers about death rays, super gases and invisible submarines.

By Clive Howard

THE businessman got the word from the son of a scientist who heard it from a college professor working in nuclear research. Now it’s traveling with a speed that would embarrass sound. From tongue to tongue, from ear to ear the whispers twist the story about America’s newest secret weapon.

What is it? You mean you haven’t heard? Well, at last report it was a combination Geiger-radar-rocket-fire control unit which detects atom-bomb bearing planes and directs robot missiles, at them automatically!

Thus begins a new chapter in the fantastic history of the secret war weapon—a history that goes back almost to the beginning of time. Probably the original story about a secret weapon made the rounds shortly after a man discovered that a large rock could kill an enemy.

Any competent sociologist might have concluded that the atom bomb would end for all time the myth of the secret weapon. After all, nobody could possibly invent anything more fantastic. Instead, the bomb caused the reverse— people seem to reason that a civilization that could produce the atom bomb may well produce something even more spectacularly lethal.

So the post-atomic crop of mythical weapons tops everything that has gone before. For instance, in Florida in the early months of 1.950, an inventor was supposed to have perfected an instrument that could produce tidal waves anywhere on earth. A scientist before a huge control board throws a switch and somewhere thousands of miles away the ocean floor is thrown into upheaval. Enormous waves begin to move shoreward. In a matter of hours the target city—perhaps even a whole country—is under water..

Then there’s the arctic death mist. This is a gas, supposedly almost perfected by Nazi scientists, which can freeze solid everything it touches. Colorless and odorless, it can wipe out all the inhabitants of an entire country. The death mist neatly fits the newer concepts of war—in time it evaporates, thus allowing the enemy to capture a country and its resources intact.

In all the recorded history of the world, there has never been a war in which one side or the other did not come to believe that the enemy possessed a secret weapon far deadlier than any actually in use. In the winter of 1942, for instance, the rumor of a new German submarine spread through the United States Merchant Marine. There was ample reason to believe the story—the toll in ships and lives taken by German submarines on the Murmansk run had been tremendous.

The new submarine—so the story went— was completely invisible. Radar couldn’t detect it and it couldn’t be seen by the human eye even in broad daylight. But it could surface in the middle of a convoy and only a lucky, blind hit would keep it from sending every ship to the bottom.

And in England, in the winter of 1943, American and British pilots began hearing of two fantastic anti-aircraft weapons the Germans had been holding in reserve. One was a giant magnet that could suck down from any altitude whole fleets of invading aircraft. The other was an airborne flamethrower that would roast a pilot in his cockpit.

The weapons never existed, of course. But they took a toll in fear and lowered morale. How does the myth of a secret weapon get its start? No one can say for sure. Some just seem to grow out of thin air—especially when a nation is on the losing side of a war. Many are the deliberate plants of warring nations. Others, the kind that persist in time of peace, are of vaguely scientific origin. And some, of course, get their start in pulp magazines and comics.

In all the history of the mythical war weapon, one grimly prophetic fact emerges. Eventually, the most persistent myths nearly always become real weapons—and the real weapons are usually more lethal than the ones invented by imagination alone.

The Archimedes myths are a perfect example. In 220 B.C., the besieged city of Syracuse was a cinch to be taken by the Romans. But then word spread among the Romans of a new weapon possessed by the city and invented by Archimedes, the celebrated Greek mathematician.

It was a gigantic glass. Aimed at an invading ship when the sun was in the sky, the glass would cause its target to burst into flames. Although Archimedes had, in fact, experimented with the principle of the magnifying glass, no such weapon existed. Yet the fear of it prolonged the war by at least three years.

Some time before, Archimedes had made an astounding statement which attracted much attention. “Give me a base somewhere off the earth,” he said, “and I can control the earth. I can stop it, start it, make it turn faster, turn it in the opposite direction.”

>That theory was debated down through the centuries. Some scientists called it possible; others labeled it ridiculous. Then, in April of 1946, U. S. technical experts probing through Germany’s secret war files, came up with a fantastic bit of news. German scientists had been working on a weapon that combined Archimedes theory with his magnifying mirror!

What they planned was a sun gun—an enormous mirror which would float just above the gravity area. The satellite Would revolve with the earth but its altitude would remain fixed. The Nazi’s hoped to use the satellite to focus the sun’s rays on a target—a city, a military installation, an atomic-bomb production center—and burn it to a crisp.

The story of the satellite planet might have died right there but for a few lines of type which kept the rumors alive. They appeared buried in the first annual report of the national military establishment made public by the late James Forrestal in December 1948. The lines read: “The earth satellite vehicle program, which is being carried out independently by each branch of the military service, was assigned to the committee on guided missiles for coordination.”

The common insect has been one of the most persistent of the mythical weapons. When bubonic plague reduced London to a city of corpses and weary gravediggers, many believed an enemy had sneaked thousands of infected rats into the city. In both world wars, stories of bug weapons were as numerous as stories of upcoming furloughs. And they persist even between wars. When the dread hoof-and-mouth disease broke out among cattle in Mexico in the summer of 1946, many believed it was the work of saboteurs. The disease, according to the belief, had been implanted by enemy agents so it would spread across the border and decimate our entire beef supply. In the fall of 1949, Russia was said to have invented a new and quickly fatal disease which could be implanted in bugs and transmitted to humans. And in the spring of 1950, when East German potato crops failed, Russia blamed the whole thing on the United States. The real cause, according to Radio Moscow, was a beetle dumped on the crops by American airplanes. In North Korea, in the fall of last year, American troops stumbled into a macabre laboratory. It contained hundreds of diseased rats and equipment that indicated the laboratory had been engaged in implanting disease germs in small animals.

Almost at the same time, in a public statement which has never been refuted, Rear Admiral Ellis M. Zacharias said, “Our American germ weapons are already superior to out’ atomic weapons.” Remember that this statement was made 300 years after the myth of bacteriological warfare, had spread through plague-stricken London!

In these jittery days, Russia comes in for her share of secret-weapon speculation, too. Recently a rumor was making the rounds about the Russian scientists who are supposed to have tested a new weapon that would make the atomic bomb obsolete.

The instrument is a cosmic ray gun. Red scientists, according to the story, succeeded in harnessing the same deadly rays given off by the sun but until now rendered harmless to man by distance and atmospheric interference.

There are at least two versions of how the ray will be used. One story says Russian soldiers will carry lightweight cosmic ray guns which resemble flamethrowers. Airplanes will be equipped with giant guns that sweep the beam over a wide area—killing everything.

The other version is a gigantic instrument nearly the size of the tallest skyscraper. Set up along Russia’s borders, such guns would aim the ray at cities thousands of miles away, killing all the inhabitants in a matter of seconds.

But perhaps the most puzzling of all modern-day secret-weapon myths is the mystery of the flying saucers. First they were thought to be Russian machines, then vehicles from another planet. Now, another belief is taking hold and spectacular rumors are rife about them again.

The latest whisper found a spot in a New York gossip column in which the author stated definitely that the Air Force will release an official explanation of the flying saucers early in the summer of 1951.

Another rumor? The start of another myth? Perhaps. But, nevertheless, when June rolls around thousands of people—including you —will be waiting expectantly.

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U.S. Navy Inventions Build Great Industries

by John Edwin Hogg, Lieut., U.S.N.R.

An amazing scientific workshop afloat —that is the peace-time function of Uncle Sam’s Navy. The discoveries made by navy engineers and scientists have been responsible for the creation of vast new industries, from which you benefit in many ways, as told here.

TO THE average person, perhaps, the American navy is a tremendous engine of destruction draining the Federal treasury of approximately $350,000,000 every year, and serving no useful purpose to the nation except in time of ‘war.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The American navy in times of peace is a great progressive institution that extends its ramifications into many fields—scientific, mechanical, social, and diplomatic. Its contributions to the progress of industry alone would more than justify its maintenance cost even if its guns were never called upon to fire a hostile shot. The navy’s errands of mercy have saved an infinitely greater number of lives than its guns have ever destroyed. And, without the navy’s pioneering in fields of mechanical and scientific research, American industry would have lagged far behind the growth and development it has attained today.

The American navy is probably the world’s greatest laboratory of applied science, mechanics, and invention. It is constantly experimenting, fostering mechanical developments, and stimulating research. Important scientific discoveries, inventions, and mechanical developments made originally by the navy for the solution of its own problems have found their way into industry.

Navy Products Advance Civilization These activities have often been the means of new industries being established, of established industries being greatly expanded, and of providing gainful employments for literally hundreds of thousands of American men and women.

Indeed, much of the progress of civilization in which America has gained world leadership has been the direct result of the industrially helpful naval policy originally planned by George Washington.

We live in such a highly developed industrial age that innumerable important mechanical and scientific developments affecting our everyday lives have been accepted and become commonplace. Yet, many of these things are distinctly contributions of the navy to the industrial fabric of the nation, as well as to the comfort and welfare of the individual citizen.

We go to the theatre, for instance, and are amused and entertained by seeing athletic and other performances projected upon the screen in slow motion. We are not apt to connect this form of entertainment with any activity of the navy. But such a connection does exist. It goes back to 1913 when the navy found the need for a high speed motion picture camera for recording the motion of gun projectiles in flight.

Navy First to Use Slow Motion Camera No camera capable of making such pictures then existed. So, that year engineers in the naval gun factory at Washington designed such a camera and collaborated with Thomas A. Edison to build three of them.

These cameras were motor driven. They were capable of making more than 100 exposures per second, as compared with 15 exposures per second for the fastest camera previously in use. The film actually started and stopped 6,600 times per minute. Yet, they were thoroughly successful for the purpose for which they were designed and built.

The navy used them successfully for several years, and in due time such cameras became obtainable commercially to gain the well-recognized place they now have in entertainment and educational fields.

How Cranking of Autos Was Eliminated We step into our automobiles, press a button, and the motor starts. Here we must thank the navy for the development of the storage battery that has made possible electric starters and electric lights for our motor vehicles.

People all over the country were breaking their arms cranking automobiles, and motor car manufacturers were experimenting with all sorts of spring contraptions for starting automobile engines while navy electrical engineers labored to develop a dependable storage battery as an underwater power unit for submarines. After the navy developed the storage battery the automotive industry found one of its most perplexing problems practically solved. Electric starters and electric lights soon became standard equipment on all good cars. Without such electrical equipment the automobile industry would not be what it is today.

Naval Chemists Develop Smokeless Powder Prior to 1890 black powder was one of the curses of life in the navy. So, in 1891 naval chemists began working in collaboration with the Du Pont Company in an effort to develop an ordnance powder that wouldn’t fog up the whole ocean and make navy ships look as if they’d been dug out of a mine disaster after each bit of target practice.

Nitrocellulose seemed to be the most likely substance from which smokeless powder might be developed, and after endless laboratory experimentation it was made to yield a smokeless powder that was far superior to the old saltpeter powders formerly in use.

Many Products From Powder Experiments.

Now several hundred thousand sportsmen will testify how smokeless powder has contributed to their pleasure. But smokeless powder was only the small acorn from which a figurative oak forest of industry has grown. » In developing such powder for the navy the various chemical solvents of nitrocellulose were discovered, and out of those discoveries have come all the pyroxalin products—pyralin, artificial leather, various floor coverings, adhesive cements, paints, varnishes, lacquers, improved motion picture film, new photographic emulsion carriers, numerous dyes, non-shatterable glass, bakelite, rayon silk (made from cotton), and all the cellophane wrappings in which so many of our food products now come to us in sanitary form.

The industries that were created out of the navy’s ‘desire for smokeless powder now rank among the. nation’s greatest— contributing employment, wages, and business profits to literally hundreds of thousands of people.

In our own homes we turn on the radio and listen to a speech or entertainment program from a broadcasting station hundreds, or even thousands of miles away. We have accepted the radio, and we now find one in nearly every American home.

Yet, back of the radio in our living room is the story of how the navy is directly responsible for its development, as well as for the tremendous industry that radio represents to us today.

When Marconi discovered the principle of the so-called “wireless telegraph” the American navy was the first sea-going organization to recognize its possibilities for a new era of communication at sea. At that time not an ounce of “wireless telegraph” equipment was being manufactured in America.

Navy Responsible for Growth of Radio The first all-receiving sets were designed by naval engineers and built for the navy. Public demand and quantity production brought the prices down. The boon that radio now is to the entire nation, as well as the vast industry into which radio has developed, is largely a peacetime contribution of the navy to the American people.

If we step aboard one of the latest ocean liners for a voyage to the Pacific Coast, we will soon find ourselves cruising in a ship that is speedy, economical to operate, and virtually free from machinery vibration.

Most fast ships are plagued with vibration, but these new ships are practically vibrationless because they are the first commercial ships to take advantage of the electrical driving machinery developed by the navy for the propulsion of battleships.

Some years ago the navy found that the jolting, jouncing, vibrating, reciprocating machinery commonly used in ships had a bad effect upon the accuracy of naval gunnery, and sought to develop something better. They experimented with the electric drive—steam turbines driving huge dynamos, and the dynamos supplying the power for electric motors that turn the propellers.

Such developments made by the navy are always the property of the American people, and merchant shipping firms having recognized the advantages of electrically-driven ships have now given us the electrically-driven passenger liner.

No phase of naval activity is so closely lined with the march of progress in industry as is naval aviation. From the time of the first flights by the Wright Brothers, 27 years ago, the navy has been actively interested in aviation.

As early as 1912 the navy established the first aerodynamical laboratory at the Washington navy yard. This laboratory also included the first wind tunnel in which so much of the coordination between theory and practice has been worked out to the untold benefit of aviation.

To the navy also goes most of the credit for the development of the seaplane, the amphibian, vastly increased efficiency in airplane design, dependable motors, and the creation of the catapult for launching airplanes from the decks of ships.

Several large steamship firms are now definitely considering the use of the catapult and airplanes as a time saver for ocean commuters and world tourists whose time is limited.

The principle of lighter-than-air flying is so fundamentally sound that men of great vision and foresight in the American navy have turned a deaf ear upon all the calamity howlers who have termed the dirigible a failure. The vast bulk of all the dirigible flying now being done in this country is being done by the navy.

The commercial possibilities of the helium-floated dirigible are beyond the imagination of the average man in the street. Yet the navy has virtually realized the success in this field it has long visualized.

The radio compass, and the system of radio compass stations that now dot our seacoasts are brain children of the navy that have saved innumerable human lives by snatching many a ship out of trouble among the reefs and shoals.

Floating dry docks, improvements in wharf and dock machinery in seaports throughout the world, improvements in ship hull design, better propelling machinery for ships, the de-salting of sea water for use aboard ships at sea, important chemical discoveries, the development of optical instruments, most of the advances made in the refrigeration of foodstuffs in ships, and important contributions to the sciences of medicine and surgery, are but a few additional things that the navy has done from which the entire nation has benefited.

The navy’s annual contributions to the progress and development of industry would justify every penny it costs us for its maintenance at its peak of international treaty efficiency, even though its guns may never again be called upon to fire a hostile shot.

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Smoke ~ The Modern Armor

By FAIRFAX DOWNEY

Armor plate for soldiers went out of style with the Knights of the Round Table, but modern armies go into battle clad in an entirely new type of protective armor—smoke! Important recent advances in the wartime use of smoke screens are set forth in this authoritative article.

WHEN knights joined combat with dragons in the old wonder tales, the monsters did not depend on their tough scales to protect them, but puffed out heavy snorts of smoke through their dilated nostrils. Most of the stories relate that the knights went right ahead regardless and slew the dragons. Still there must have been some occasions, which did not appeal to the story tellers as good material, when the hero, lost in his adversary’s fog, suddenly found the dragon on his neck and became a casualty.

The fabulous old dragon defense has become an actuality of the present. Already well established for use by battleships, the smoke screen has been moved from the seas to the land, and tests have proved that it can be laid down in a novel and effective manner by airplanes, tanks and mortars. This is among the recent developments of the Chemical Warfare Service of the United States Army.

Smoke joins the artillery barrage and armor to shield the troops who must advance against the tremendously heavy fire of numerous machine guns as employed today. Cannon and munitions are expensive. So is armor as represented by its modern survival in the plating of tanks and in helmets and sniper breastplates. As Major General H. L. Gilchrist, Chief of the Chemical Warfare Service, points out, smoke as a supplement to these other major protective devices is both economical in permitting the reduction of the masses of artillery required, and saving of life in the concealment it affords.

“Smoke is about the only possible protection other than the speed of the mechanized force itself, against the semi-automatic weapons, ” said Maj. Gen. Gilchrist, a veteran of the Spanish and the World wars. The Infantry Board has carried out a test of the smoke screen apparatus for tanks. The board found that the mechanical elements and their functioning were in general mechanically satisfactory, and that the smoke properly laid down will assist in the advance of attacking riflemen.

Tanks advancing under cover of clouds of smoke in which they envelop themselves will not only afford a greater degree of safety for their accompanying infantry but for their own advance. In spite of increased speed and higher proof armor, tanks are still vulnerable to direct hits by field artillery and the lighter types can be put out of action by the armor-piercing bullets of heavy machine guns. Smoke shields will do much to destroy the accuracy of anti-tank fire.

Another new agency for the spread of the smoke screen is the low-flying airplane.

“Specifications for the construction of atomizing apparatus for airplanes have been prepared, and instructions for their use have been written, ” Maj. Gen. Gilchrist declared. “A number of these apparatuses have been constructed and successfully employed for the production of smoke screens in a great number of demonstrations and field tests. ”

The airplane atomizers are an adaptation to special war use of the smoke spreading machines used by airplanes for combating boll weevils and other insect pests and for sky writing. They make of a plane a great rocket with a dense column of smoke for its train. Tetanium tetrachloride, which combines with the moisture of the air to form a dense, white smoke, is the chemical sprayed from the atomizers.

Airplanes equipped with atomizers may be employed not only to thicken the tank smoke screen for advancing infantry, but as an auxiliary to their own arm, the air service. Smoke apparatus may be installed on the swiftest pursuit planes to allow them to blanket an anti-aircraft position or a column of infantry or artillery on the road. The speed of these planes will reduce their own hazard. After them will follow the slower, more vulnerable bombing planes which thus will be able to attack in comparative safety targets which are both clearly defined by the narrow column of smoke, enclosing them and largely prevented from returning an effective fire by its blanketing clouds.

Smoke shells for forming heavy clouds in the positions of the enemy to confuse their aim and force the use of masks are still in the province of the field artillery. Smoke is also used in the Livens projectors, high-angled tubes buried in the earth in a row and firing their bombs when detonated by an electrical connection. But high explosive shell or shrapnel is usually a more useful ammunition for field artillery, as the projectors are limited to a range of 1, 500 yards; this involves difficulties in locating them so far forward, and their usefulness is also impaired by their lack of mobility. The preeminent weapon for smoke bombs is the Stokes mortar, which is now rifled. Copper rotating plates fitted around the base of the new projectile expand slightly on the explosion of the powder charge, catching in the rifling grooves and giving the mortars greater accuracy and a range increased to 2, 500 yards.

This flexibility has been added to by an innovation in the training of the experimental mechanized force at Fort Meade, Md., where platoons have been armed with 4. 2 chemical mortars mounted on hand carts. To accompany a motor transport train, the mortar carts and their gun crews are carried in trucks. Unloaded from the trucks in the vicinity of the “front, ” the cart platoons have no difficulty keeping pace with the infantry in attack problems. Mechanization and the use of the smoke screen follows the recommendation of Gen. Charles P. Summerall, Chief of Staff, who stressed the fact that the army must to the fullest practicable degree use machines in place of man power in order that our man power can occupy and hold positions without terrific losses incident to modern fire-power.

The Chemical Warfare Service is now organizing a most unique unit, a field laboratory chemical company, one of which will be included in the strength of each field army of our forces.

“Such a laboratory, ” Maj. Gen. Gilchrist declared, “is necessary in order that enemy compounds, if used, may be analyzed and protection secured. ” It will readily be understood that quick action would save many lives in the event of an enemy springing a surprise attack with a new chemical agent. Instead of having to depend on the collection of data by line troops without chemical training and undergoing the delay of transmission to a laboratory at a base, the field unit, which is motorized, will soon be on the spot. Its experts will have their equipment at hand to solve the problem and plan counter-measures.

The scientific nature of modern warfare is epitomized by the tables of organization of this unit. It will consist of both a chemis try and a physics laboratory with all the required apparatus and instruments. The personnel, under the command of a major, will consist of officers who are chemists and physicists, with master sergeants and other trained non-commissioned officers for their assistants. Two officers will be mechanical engineers. There will be two translators whose duty it will be to decipher the marks on enemy shells and fragments and interpret captured books of instructions for new devices in use by the enemy and other documents obtained. Special munitions handlers will bring in the enemy’s duds or unexploded shells for analysis of their content. Samples of contaminated soil and materials will be analyzed for new enemy chemical agents and emergency protection devised. It is probable that the laboratories will be called on for advice in cases where there is a contamination by persistent gases of places which can not be evacuated and which do not readily respond to the ordinary de-gassing measures. Draftsmen and mechanics are on the roster to aid the scientists in devising up-to-the-minute protection. Orderlies, cooks and other personnel required by an army outfit complete the unit.

Details of the post-war gas masks already are known; its elimination of the old uncomfortable nose clip and mouth piece, the passing of the breath inhalations of the wearer over the eye pieces to clear them, and in the type for troops requiring a communicate, a pressed metal diaphragm, impermeable to gas but transmitting the voice. Newer improvements are embodied in a type with a universal size face piece, screw-type eye pieces and a sun-proof hose tube. Further experiments are being made toward the improvement of voice and vision transmission, particularly in an optical type mask designed to facilitate the use of field glasses.

Foresight in the procurement of materials vital in war has prompted the investigation in the field of substitutes for gas mask canister filling. The present standard filling is activated cocoanut carbon. Since the stoppage of some of our sources of cocoanut supply is a war possibility, a substitute for use in an emergency has been found in an activated coal carbon. This has been produced in a small scale experimental plant.

Protection of the skin of the soldier as well as of his lungs against chemical agents has also had the attention of the Service, Maj. Gen. Gilchrist reported. The possibility of a great advance over the cumbersome rubber clothing in use during the World war is seen in the satisfactory conduct of tests on the regular uniform treated with a protective impregnation. Research will delve deeper yet in the study of defense measures to be taken against chemical agents which may affect automotive and mechanized equipment. Just as the horse has been provided with a gas mask, his companions in transport, the truck and the tractor, may conceivably require protection against some ingenious chemical attack. Devices to protect ships, too, against chemical agents may be necessary, and this project has been undertaken by the Chemical Warfare Service at the request of the Navy Department.

The Chemical Warfare Service maintains one R. O. T. C. unit at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and holds an annual camp at Edgewood Arsenal, Md. Two hundred and ninety reserve officers were trained last year at the Arsenal and in other groups.

With these preparedness measures for national defense, the Chemical Warfare Service continues its collateral work on peace time problems. Recent prison breaks have shown the value of the tear gas bombs which the Service put forward as far back as 1920. It was prompt to investigate and report fully on conditions incident to the Cleveland Hospital X-ray disaster. It has made valuable experiments in preservative chemicals for pilings, posts and ship bottoms. Its work on boll weevil killing agents has been of economic importance. Also it has had a share in the development of ammonia and other masks, as well as in other means of protection against industrial poisoning.

In a recent mimic battle staged by the Army air corps above the city of Sacramento, California, an airplane equipped with smoke-laying apparatus flew above the city in a spiral course, spouting a dense cloud of chemicals from its tail. It was a bright, sunshiny day, but within a couple of minutes the city lay in the shadow of a thick cloud in an impressive demonstration of the speed and effectiveness of chemical defense.

It is to the achievements mentioned in the foregoing article and to others that the Chemical Warfare Service points as justifying its continual research to maintain chemical defense in peace or war.