The Nenana daily news., 1919-06-03
Achievements of Army Engineer Corps Told of
 In Official Publication


 and at the close of the war there were 12 complete outfits, each cov- ering five mile stretch of front, at work on the American lines.
 Similar development of instru- ments for locating hostile airplanes were carried out until it was possible to determine the location of raider at night within an angle of three degrees. The American types pro- duced were easily portable and quickly set up to aid the search lights. A hint at the scientific de- velopments which were in sight in connection with these sound ranging devices is contained in the follow ing paragraph:
 "When the fighting stopped our military scientists and others CO., operating with them were working on the development of sound ranging apparatus intended to give troops warning of shells fired by the enemy in their direction. The preliminary experiments found thar at 4.1 miles these machines could detect the firing of the gun as long as 19 seconds before the shell ar rived, thus giving the troops ample time to get under cover. Such a development was possible because of the far greater speed with which earth vibrations travel than those of sound in the air.
 Except for lack of time in the brief seconds between the firing of the gun and the arrival of the shell, it would be quite possible with this proposed apparatus to cal culate almost exactly where the shell would land.'
 The corps produced also new form of searchlight more powerful than any that had preceded it in any army and with which the second field army had been partially equipped.
 Ut weighed" the report says, "one-eighth as much as lights of former design, cost only one-third as much, was about one-fourth as large in bulk and threw light 10 per cent stronger than any other portable projector in existence"
 The engineers were at work when the fighting ended upon mechanism which would enable them to control searchilights from distance.
 The chapter devoted to the work of the engineer corps in France draws vivid picture of the duties of the combat engineers who played their full part in the fighting from the beginning to the end. It also tells in detail of the building of the railways; the cutting down of French forests to convert them into barracks for American troops; of the miles of highways built and constantly rebuilt as shell fire tore them to pieces; of cement mills taken over in France by American troops to provide trench materials :: of the great map printing plant where the engineers finally were able to produce not only all maps needed for the American army, but even supplied the French Seventh and Eighth army with base maps for their fronts. In this huge plant at Langres. in November, over 100000 Photographic prints were made and. over million sheets of type work done. There is told the story of a camouflage factory at Dion where material to blind enemy airplanes' eyes and to con fuse the enemy pickets was turned out in vast quantities.
 "Utilizing and applying the new knowledge and scientific achieve ments of recent years," the report says in concluding that portion de- voted to the engineers, drawing upon the fund of experience ac- quired by the regular army in its theoretical studies and past wars, making available the vast amount of technical skill which has assisted this nation to it's present commercial and industrial status, the engineers of the United States army worked and fought, planned, and accom- plished in France a work which in magnitude exceeds any similar un- dertaking recorded in American his tory. From base port to first waves of assault upon the cnemy's positions, engineer troops have been