MACHINES THAT WILL FIGHT THE Next War
By Arthur Grahame
MANY writers have painted grim and lurid word pictures of the next war—pictures of mighty cities blown into reeking ruin by a hail of bombs from out of the sky; of the merciless slaughter of combatants and noncombatants alike with gases a hundred times more deadly than the mustard and phosgene of 1918, and with the stealthily sowed germs of malignant diseases; of gigantic tanks, land battleships that will crush thousands beneath their grinding tracks. They have drawn pictures of air armadas so mighty that they will decide the issue before ever a soldier marches across a frontier; of robots that will do the front-line fighting in place of flesh-and-blood men; of strange electrical weapons that will send dreadnaughts plunging to destruction and wipe out armies before they can fire a shot in defense; of war so terrible and so devastating that it will annihilate our civilization.
Read the rest of this entry »
Coming_the Radio that Was Shot from a Gun
The tiny elements used in a great war invention are now ready to go to work in civilian transceivers.
By Harland Manchester
CARRYING a complete broadcasting station in the palm of his hand, a radio engineer walked out of his laboratory at the Bureau of Standards in Washington the other day, talking as he went down the stairs and out of the building. His voice came to us from a loudspeaker in the room he had left, as clearly as if he were still there. His transmitter, containing microphone, tubes, circuits, batteries, and aerial, was enclosed in a plastic box about the size of a pack of cigarettes.
Read the rest of this entry »
THE STORY of RADAR
The Army has lifted the veil of secrecy from its miraculous “seeing eye.”
ONLY at rare intervals during the war have we heard the word, radar, mentioned and then only in a hushed tone. We have known for quite a while, however, that our military has possessed a mysterious device which can reach out and “see” through clouds, fog and darkness, and that this same instrument has been a factor in Allied victories.
Read the rest of this entry »
Rocket’s Flight Kept In Sight
Gun-mounted camera eye keeps movie record of V-2 missile as it speeds into space at 3,500 miles an hour.
By Martin Mann
POPEYE is a seeing machine. Popeye can see things yon can’t see. His big glass eye can follow a V-2 zooming 3,500 m.p.h, and tell you just what it does at the 100-mile peak of its flight. But even Popeye is no match for enemy guided missiles—he could not spot an attacking rocket soon enough to sound the alarm.
Read the rest of this entry »
Umm, no. Actually they don’t blend at all. What they really need is some of this amazing British camouflage.
Soldiers in Camouflage Suits Blend with Trees or Snow
Camouflage uniforms developed by United States army engineers blend snipers into trees, shrubbery or snow, making detection by the enemy difficult. Believed to offer greater concealment than designs used by European armies, some of the suits are worn like long coats and others like regular uniforms.
Who needs a flight simulator when you’ve got one of these? Wait. Is that a roomba prototype on the left?
Torpedo Attack With these toylike devices the Navy trains its torpedo bomber pilots to hit targets. The cockpit on wheels, the mobile mount for the model carrier and the cart on which the tiny torpedo rides are all driven by electric motors at speeds exactly proportional to their size and the size of the floor. The pilot on the trainer fires the torpedo; the carrier is controlled separately (note operator’s hand at left).
ATOM-BOMBER Carries 3 Jet Fighters
Meet the B-36. Its wing span is twice the distance of the Wright Brothers’ first flight at Kittyhawk. It’s 3 times as lethal as the B-29 and can hop to any spot on earth.
THE U. S. Air Force has a “Sunday punch” ready to slug any enemy who tries to start World War III with another Pearl Harbor.
It’s a sleek super-dreadnaught of the skies, the Consolidated Vultee B-36 long range bomber—and it’s ready today to exploit to the fullest the awesome power of the atomic bomb. Carrying its own fighter protection in its belly, it will serve, in the event of war, as the “throwing arm” for the most destructive force in history.
Read the rest of this entry »
That certainly is a big bomb. Exactly what would you use to carry that? Especially in 1950.
Right, man is dwarfed beside Earthquake bomb which is 27 ft. high, weighs 42,000 pounds and could level many city blocks
