This is how we end up with killer bees.
How Science Made a Better Bee
Amazing new discoveries bring improvement to nature’s masterpiece, enabling the busy little insect to do a better job for war.
By ALFRED H. SINKS
Photographs by WILLIAM MORRIS and ROBERT F SMITH
THE tiny honeybee—far more important to both war industry and our food supply than most people realize—is getting a lot of attention nowadays. Though nature has produced few animals as remarkable as these industrious little insects, entomologists and geneticists have found the means to improve on its handiwork. They are actually producing bees that work harder and so produce more honey—bees that are more industrious and energetic, healthier, and better able to protect their bee cities against natural enemies. Truly amazing are some of the results of this partnership of science and nature, and its future achievements may be greater still.
Read the rest of this entry »
Battles in Code for World War Secrets
by THOMAS M. JOHNSON
Amazing secret battles of spies and cipher experts, involving the use of codes and cryptograms on which hung the lives of millions of men in the trenches, played a vital part in determining the course of the World War. Kept secret for years in confidential archives, some of the startling exploits of American cryptographers are brought to light here.
“The enemy has our secret code!”
The dread tidings were whispered through the corridors of Washington; War Department, State Department, even the White House. They brought a cold chill of fear. Could it be that at the climax of the greatest fighting effort in our history, the Germans were reading our leaders’ most confidential messages, knew their inmost thoughts and plans? We must stop that, at once.
Read the rest of this entry »
This is a pretty cool looking rail gun.
ELECTRIC MACHINE GUN IS SILENT
Electricity replaces gunpowder in a silent, smokeless, machine gun recently perfected for defense against hostile aircraft. Without betraying its location, this weapon is declared capable of firing 150 bullets or high-explosive shells a minute. Projectiles are hurled from its muzzle by a series of electromagnets spaced along the barrel, which start the missile moving and successively raise its velocity as they become energized.
Why Don’t We Have… BATTLEVISION
Tomorrow’s generals may be able to tune in on the battlefield courtesy of television, relayed to headquarters by battle-going TV Seeing Eyes.
By Colonel Robert Hertzberg
Signal Corps, USAR
THIS is no fantastic rambling of science-fiction!
If there is another war, it will provide definite opportunities for the use of modern television miracles.
TV set owners now enjoy better views of athletic contests than do most people right on the scene. Powerful telephoto lenses reach across playing fields and give spectacular close-ups of a runner dashing for the goal line or of a fielder snatching a high fly. Wide-angle lenses broaden the view and produce panoramic effects of great sweep.
Read the rest of this entry »
It seems like this would just get stuck in the mud. Also, where do you store fuel and ammo?
Why Don’t We Have… Baby Assault Tanks
Tiny but deadly insect-like tri-tracks would spearhead our advancing infantry.
By Frank Tinsley
WE are living in a machine age and our wars have become mechanical, but it’s still the muddy, tired infantryman who must storm the enemy’s stronghold in bloody assault.
In some cases the tactical situation and nature of the terrain make this necessary. In many others, however, the brunt of the attack could just as well be absorbed by light, heavily armed machines. Why, then, can’t we send in a first wave of baby assault tanks and use our irreplaceable GI’s for the less hazardous chore of mopping up?
Read the rest of this entry »
HOW GOOD ARE THE NEW WAR MACHINES?
By ARTHUR GRAHAME
SINCE shortly after the World War ended, we have read and heard much about marvelous new weapons that were going to win “the next war” between major powers. We have been told that swarms of airplanes would bomb the world’s greatest cities into piles of smoking ruins—or at least win the war before a soldier could march across a frontier, by pulverizing transportation arteries and destroying concentrations of troops and war materials. Monstrous land battleships would crush resistance beneath their ponderous tracks, while deadly little tanks would spin across-country so fast that there could be no effective defense against them. Gases would suffocate and poison soldiers and noncombatants alike. Germs, death rays, and new explosives of terrific power would reduce the infantryman, who for centuries has ruled the battlefields of the world with his rifle and his bayonet, to the ignoble role of a mere mopper-up after the devastating new machines of Mars.
Read the rest of this entry »
Judging by the man in the picture, I would look for these “secret tests” somewhere really close to a tennis court.
Germans Try Out Mystery Gun
The novel one-man antiaircraft gun seen in the photograph below is now being tested secretly by German army experts. The gunner, seated behind the barrel, controls the gun accurately and rapidly by means of foot pedals and hand levers, according to reports.
Spy Hunters Find Clews in Secret Codes
WORKING swiftly, Federal agents a few-weeks ago spread a tight dragnet over New York City. In a midtown hotel, they nabbed a former U. S. Army sergeant. At a near-by Air Corps base, they detained a foreign-born private in the Army aviation service. And as a large transatlantic liner nosed into her dock, a few days later, two secret operatives emerged from the shadows of the pier to arrest a woman attendant in the ship’s beauty shop.
Next morning, the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed that with the capture of the two men and their attractive confederate, they had smashed a particularly dangerous ring of international spies.
The men were accused of relaying stolen military information to an unnamed foreign power through secret code messages carried abroad by the beauty-shop operator. Rumors hinted that their booty included the secret code of the Army Air Corps.
Read the rest of this entry »
It’s MORE FOOD for LESS MONEY
Send, CARE Food Packages Abroad… $10.
INSURED • GUARANTEED • DELIVERY
DUTY FREE • RATION FREE
NON-PROFIT • GOVERNMET APPROVED
CONTENTS:
1 lb. Braised Beef
2-8 oz. tins of Liver Pate
2-8 oz. tins of Corned Beef loaf
2 lb. Shortening
1 lb. Chocolate
2-8 oz tins of Cocoa
2 lb. Whole Milk Powder 8 oz. Egg Powder
1 lb. Apricots
1 lb. Raisins
7 lb. Flour
2 Ib. Sugar
1 Ib. Coffee (For Britain: 1/2 lb. tea) 2-3 oz. Bars of Soap 1/4 oz. Yeost
Read the rest of this entry »
Whew! It’s difficult to imagine how the army could defend us with out using Polo. I assume West Point now has some ten-million dollar, full immersion 3D polo simulator to keep our boys at peak polo readiness.
Wooden Horses Help Army Cadets Learn How to Play Polo
“Saddled” and- “bridled” a wooden horse is used by West Point cadets to practice on when they begin learning how to play polo. Tne “animal” is braced securely to the wooden floor in the center of an inclosure surrounded by wire netting. To keep the balls within striking distance at all times, the sides of the cage slope toward the center.
If the A-Bombs Burst
Here is what to expect, what you can do today to prepare yourself, what you can do then to survive
By Clifford B. Hicks
8:15 a.m., August 6, 1945. A single plane flies over the city. The only warning is a blinding flash of light. A ball of fire explodes in the sky, hanging there for a moment as it grows in size and fury. Then in a crackling instant the world’s second atomic explosion races down to strike the earth at a spot called Hiroshima.
Sixty seconds later 70,000 Japanese are dead, caught above ground. The heart of the city has been blasted into rubble which still plummets down on the dead and dying.
10:15 a.m., January 2, 1950. A stenographer in Manhattan shrugs her shoulders over her mid-morning cup of coffee and says to her girl friend, “I’m tellin’ you, there’s nothing you can do to save yourself —just one bomb will wipe out New York. Me, I’m headin’ for the country if things get worse.”
At the same moment the sky above Chicago’s Loop is split by a bright flash of lightning from a sudden winter storm. A nervous executive freezes in terror for an instant, then smiles sheepishly as he returns to the morning mail. But he can’t help wondering whether the bomb would demolish his home and kill his family in a suburb 14 miles away.
Read the rest of this entry »
