The Washington herald., 1921-10-08
Terrible Devices of War
Shown at the Aberdeen
Proving Grounds.
SHELL SHRIEKS ~
35-MILE COURSE
,000-Pound Bombs Show
What Devastation May
Be Wrought.
BY WATSON DAVIS.

AbErDEEN' hu'' OCl. '.-ll was
a merry old war.
Roads ankle deep in sticky mud,
packs, rifles. gas masks, helmets,
hard-boiled shavetails-
Petites. jolies Madelons, vim blanc,
cognac, crap games
Death in clouds of green smoke
over tangled ravines, death in the
rattling nests of machine guns in
the misty. cold morning.
But if the bugles ever call
Yankee doughboys down the red
roads of battle again it will be all
death-death in such frightful
forms that the most extreme .paci-
fists never have imagined them.
Devices Are Demonstrated.
This was shown at Aberdeen
proving grounds. today. Some of
the latest and most terrible devices
for snuffing out the lives of enemy
troops and cities were demonstrated
for the benefit of engineers, high
army officers, automobile manumac-
turers and invited guests.
hirty-five-mile guns, flashless
powder. submarine tanks, tank
wrecking machine guns, two-ton
bombs any one of these might
have turned the tide of battle to
any of the warning nations during
the darkest days of the greatest war
the world has ever known. But
these were weapons unprotected.
As a result, probably, some of US
are here today, not under a little
patch of poppies with a white cru
citiX over US.
Fires 35-MiIe Gun.
Here are few peeps into the next
war:
A she'll shrieking over the sea
toward the worlds best armed bat
tleship and hitting it before the ship
is in range. The worlds most ef-
fective and accurate gun for coas.
protection. the sixteen-inch gun.
seventh feet long. that will land
2,4oO pounds of steel thirty-five
miles away was fired for ten first
time yesterday. as was a similar
gun mounted to fire this same large
charge once every minute
In the depths of night there will
be the sharp report of the famous
75mm. Eyes will be strained for the
revealing flashes, and they will be
able to seen othing. Flashless pow
der has been achieved.
Gives Faint Red Spurt,
A stErGy 75mm. tonight barked
with regular Snruinn
der charges that flashed lige Light
ming. Then the new flashless
smokeless powder was used. and in
stead of flash of flame there was
only faint red squirt of light and
touchdown report. Eventually
the secret powder will be used in
the big sixteen-inch guns.
Big guns, mounted on self-pro-
PEELED caterpillar speed demons, will
rush over gullies and hills at thirty
miles an hour, and plunge through
streams that all but submerge the
driver. Through a pond of muddy
water. under movie camera fire, a
lO5mm. motor carriage plunged sue
cessfully today
VIII Smash Tank Plates.
Half-inch bullets with tracer bull
lets will smash through the plate
Of the courier tanks of the next
war. A Browning gun. tha- handles
the bigger cartridges as thoaeh they
were regulation 80 caliber, has been
perfected.
Wide-spreading bombing planes
Will create out of forest. cities or
farms, cratersSdeep enough to hide
two or threS ordinary dwellings,.
AT Aberdeen there are great holes
in the earth where INT incased in
steel has lazily dropped down from
above. Today a new bomb-made
valley was fashioned by a 1000
pound bomb. and water of The
marshes was sprayed into the air
for many feet by smaller 600-pound
bombs
Times to Thousandth OF Second.
Mechanisms, more accurate than
the finest watch, will cap heavy
shells on their way through inches
of steel and then explode them,
with a thousandth of a second ac-
curacy. These mechanical time
fuses tonight burst clusters of
shrapnel miles away from the pro-
pelling six-inch gun. An error OF
a hundredth of a second would
mean a miss of 800 feet.
There will be noiseless tanks.
shooting smokeless, fiashless guns.
Rubber vulcanized on the inside
moving parts 'of the caterpillar
tread and careful design of high
horsepowered engines has muffI 81
the noisy iron hore of war, and a
few years more will see tanks run
as quietly as automobiles.
Guns Run by Electricity.
Heavy guns run by electricity
feed on cable from its tractor
horse, safe to the rear of the ac-
ton, will be able to creep upon the
enemy. On the field of Aberdeen
today there travelled a silent big
caterpillared gun, seemingly drawn
by a loose tow rope from a spnt-
tering gasoline tractor, which on
inspection was seen to contain a
small-sized electrical power house.
Twelve and fourteen-inch guns
will travel by fast trains over the
railways of the area of the next
war, and ip six short hours, from
a secure implacemnt on any con-
venient railway siding, will be
raining shells into an enemy city
Material Awaits War. NJ
These are some of the sights
that nearly 1000 people saw at the
Aberdeen proving grounds of the
army ordnance depaftment today
at the third annual meeting Of the