Clinch Valley news. [volume] (Jeffersonville, Va.) 18??-2019, 1918-10-25
U. S. GETS READY TO BOMB
GERMAN CITIES.

ohsiAhh<tLN vi
Washington, October 12.-Rombs.
air bombs, of high explosives from
iiiftv to five hundred pounds. penetrat-
ing bombs, incendiary bombs, shrap-
mel bombs, incendiary bombs that will
pierce as well as scatter continuing
flame at surface contact-America
has them, in thosaunds, in such num-
bers that there are not airplanes suffi-
cient to drop them as rapidly as they
are produced and the ordnance de.
partment is waiting on the airplane
program now to begin the hail of
explosives over Germany for the final
pyiotechnics of the war
The manufacturers who make these
bombs, at least seventy-five per cent
of them, from the bomb manufac
turers association, in company with
ordnance and aviation officers of the
United States and Great Britain. saw
just how their message to the kaiser
were proof read today at the great
proving grounds of the ordance de-
partment at Aberdeen, Md, near
llarve de Grace
Here, with $500 acres of old farm
land to shoot around in some ten
thousand men TO shift the scenes the
air full of planes to drop the bombs
and watch the projecties' flight from
cannon, howitzers and trench NOR
tars, all decked in camouhage, the
day was one long assortment of vieing
noises, from the swish of the flying
pig out of the Stokes Newton NOR
tars to the growing of the large
shrapnel shells through the outraged
air to the point of the burst.
Most of it was technical, to show
to the manufacturers how defects
were discovered by the tests, just
what the tests were and why, when an
occasional failure occurred, the pro-
jectile or bomb was defective. There
was no dramatization of the demon
stration-it was just routine day in
this vast camp whose day-to- day is
pust one round after another Of shot
and shell.
But almost everything on the west
front was there, Just about as it is on
the battle line, for the conditions of
test are battle conditions and worse.
There are more than twenty type,
of heavy ordnance there, in addition
to the drop bombs and artillery is
tested as we'll as explosives and pro-
jcctiles.
Observation of the high explosive
ohNi'o s'iih Viz ttl uOitlDlllG WlIn
various types of bombs, were made
from tower about sixty feet high
and the one big thrill of the day came
when, after almost getting used to
seeing the huge black misles come
wobbling down from point appar-
emily over the top itself, one started
directly overhead and burst with high
explosive within hundred and fifty
yards.
The tower shuddered. So did the
hundred OF so persons OH it. Even at
that distance and at that height, caps
were lifted by the conclusion and one
staggered against il. Such tremendous
force had shattered the earth in Ii
deep, wide crater that finely pulver-
lied dirt siftcd down two minutes or
more afterward.
This was the high explosive, bui
only little one of fifty pounds of
L n I, not to be compared with the
i've hundred pounds aerial bombs,
whose charge is half the weight. And
there others, shrapnel and the spec
tacular incendiary bombs of Their
mite, whose heat is such that a table
spoonful of it eats hole in the armor
plate as an ember would eat through
butter. This is the kind that is used
for buildings.
The demonstration had all the in
terest and confusion of Il three ring
circus. Everything was going at once
There was the flare of the incendiary
bombs, still burning from their deep
holes, the brown uphcavals from the
banging siX-inch mortar battery high
explosives, the graceful palm tree
OF whirling gases, formed in the vor-
tees from the penetrating T N T aer-
ial bomb, the wallowing flying pigs
in comparatively lazy arcs and, al
ways overhead, far out of shell range,
the glinting planes soaring with new
missiles.