Space Cops to Enforce World Peace
Man-made satellite rocketships may soon revolve in endless orbits around the earth, policing our civilization.
By Frank Tinsley
NATIONS of the world are racing to send the first man-made satellite revolving in an endless orbit around the earth. In the hands of an agressor, such a machine might mean slavery for all mankind, but as a police unit of the United Nations, it holds a promise of world peace.
Back in the closing days of 1948, when Secretary of Defense James Forrestal disclosed the existence of an “earth satellite vehicle program,” the press and public reacted with a gasp of incredulous amazement. For the first time, responsible officials had dared to admit that they were seriously investigating the fantastic dreams of Sunday-supplement screwballs!
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Can Russia Defeat Us With Atom Bombs?
Assuming that the Reds have enough A-bombs and the planes to deliver them—could they blast us into military, social and economic chaos by a sneak bombing attack on certain key American cities?
By Ralph Coniston
“THIS is WQZ, your favorite local station for music and news, bringing you a noonday program of recorded hit tunes. The first number on today’s show will be. …
“Just one moment, please. Here’s an important bulletin from our newsroom, just handed me. It’s date-lined Washington, D. C.
“A terrific explosion has just wrecked downtown Washington. The blast, of unknown origin, seems to have damaged communication lines out of the city.
“I can’t tell you any more because there is no more to the bulletin. So, until further news comes in we’ll return to our.
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Wouldn’t the noise of it’s own passage mask any sound an engine would make?
Plans Rocket Driven Bomb to Chase and Wreck Plane
A bomb that could chase an airplane in the air and destroy it is the amazing war weapon proposed by a San Diego, Calif., man. Launched from the ground automatically, the self-propelled rocket bomb would be guided in the air by the sound of the plane’s motor. No matter how the pilot might twist and turn, the bomb would follow him until it overtook the plane. The impact would set off a charge of high explosive.
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THE TRUTH ABOUT Poison Gas
By ALDEN P. ARMAGNAC
FRANCE sells gas masks to its citizens on a five-year installment plan. Germany reveals that it has secretly been manufacturing a new type of gas mask for noncombatants, by the million. Startled Britons learn that the world’s first factory for civilian masks, at Blackburn, England, has passed its 9,000,000 mark and is turning out 100,000 a day to reach its quota of a gas mask for every man, woman, and child in the British Isles.
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TRAINING ARMY AIR FIGHTERS
A LARGE percentage of each year’s graduates of the West Point Military Academy enter the autumn class at the Air Corps Training Center, Randolph Field, Texas. This fact, and the further fact that the flying school is conducted along lines similar to the Military Academy, has caused this Air Corps school to be popularly termed “The West Point of the Air.”
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Flying Cameras Map America for War
By ANDREW R. BOONE
FROM aerial photographs snapped by giant bombers soaring four miles above the earth, U. S. Army engineers are compiling maps that will serve as eyes for our armed forces if they ever have to wage a defensive war on American soil.
Flying out of Fort Lewis, Wash., the camera planes have recently been engaged in photographing all unmapped areas between the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific, from Puget Sound to the Siskiyou Mountains of California. With their multiple cameras they make five pictures at a crack, one straight down and four at angles ahead, astern, and to the sides. Finished prints of the photographs are sent to the 29th Engineers at Portland, Ore. Here, in two old school buildings, they are turned into topographical maps showing all important features that would figure in wartime plans.
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THE FEEL OF DEATH IN THE AIR
This report of an aerial combat was written in a hospital at the request of the medical officer attending the pilot. The physician was eager to know, as accurately as possible, the pilot’s thoughts and emotions as he fought and suffered his near-fatal wounds.
by Pilot Officer Stanley Hope, R.A.F.
WE WERE on one of the usual offensive sweeps—a daylight raid on some works near Lille. During a widespread dogfight over the target I chased a 109 down several thousand feet, but lost him in a cloud. Pulling up to regain my height, I found the sky completely empty.
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Phonograph Disks Run Crewless War Tank
Machines can execute complicated maneuvers and return after their mission has been performed WITH the discovery by a French scientist that phonograph disks can be used to record mechanical movement as well as sound, the dream of airplanes and tanks that operate by remote control is brought nearer to realization. The practicability of completely automatic control was demonstrated recently at Paris where an electric truck started, changed its course, backed up, reversed its direction, and finally stopped without the guidance of a human hand. Phonograph records, used in the experiment, could guide a torpedo into a fortified harbor to destroy an enemy battleship; or drive a tank against enemy machine gun nests, rake them with fire and return the tank to its own trenches. The movements of the torpedo or tank would be carefully calculated in advance. A master control arm on a recording device would then be manipulated to create electric impulses corresponding in timing to the desired evolutions of a complicated maneuver. An electric pick-up would convert these impulses into mechanical energy and the needle of the pick-up would impress them on the disk.
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