Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1940-11-24

|OASiiCotCl, WlilIli 10 pCllldpo WHY
toward the Alleghanies The note
is pitched higher and has almost a
| whine in it.
There is an uneven cadence to
it. This is the result of the two
motors being out of synchronization.
The pilots of twin motor commercial
planes adjust their propeller revolu-
tons until the motors synchronize
and the note you hear is even and
constant. The pilots of the bombers
over enemy territory throw their
motors out of step in order to make
it harder for sound wave catching
devices to locate them. The ex-
perienced can tell when a German
bomber pilot gets the wind up by
the sound of his motors When anti
/ aircraft fire gets hot around him
he is liable to open both throttles
wide, throw his motors back in
synchronization.
Sound Definitely UnfriendIy.
Ed Murrow says the German
bombers over London hum a nasal
refrain which goes, Where are you?
Where are you? Where are you?
The sound is definitely unfriendly.
Like the searchlights, the planes
too, seem to be searching. They are
searching. They 60 back and forth
| and round and round.
AS you look into nothing and hear
them you may think. There is
man sitting and in his hand is
push button on the end of wire
like the button hanging down over
the back of your bed in hotel And
when he presses that button the
steel fingers that hold the bomb in
the belly of his flying machine relax
and the bomb drops. He could
squeeze the button now. Or now.
Or now. And on when he sQueezes
will depend whether the bomb that
falls\will land five miles away, five
miles the other way, or come down
through the roof over my head"
This is all fantasy because I
shall presently explain, most of the
bombs dropped over London are
probably released automatically by
wireless control dictated in the Luft-
waffle headquarters. But once you've
seen the innocent looking little but
| ton the bombers have to press to
release their loads, you cannot get
out of your head the whimsicality
of the dropping of death and des-
truction from the air.
Hyde Park Gun Goes Of.
The German motors over my head
| moved away. Suddenly the gun in
! Hyde Park went off. 1t went off so
suddenly and violently it almost
literally threw me back from the
window. The conception of gun
crash splitting the air is inadequate.
1t seems to fractionalize it. The
curtains and I blew back together
Out of the center of the all envel-
oping noise came a high, thin
whine, fading rapidly. A whine
with swoosh in it.
When I first heard it I only knew
! it was there. Later I came to rec
/ ognize it as the whistle of the shell
going up. l knew the crash was a
gun and it did not frighten me. I
leaned back out the window and
started to count to see if I could tell
when the shell was to explode.
1t came, a sharp, white flash,
this time not where I was looking
in the dark, but off to the right.
| And then second later the noise
of the shell bursting a hollow thump
like some one knocking on heaven.
1t released something in me. I
suddenly felt very angry at the
plane over London and very good
about the bursting shell. I wanted
the gun below me to shoot again
and again. I wanted 1t to reach
up and slap that plane down.
The plane had come up from the
south, crossed overhead and was
proceeding north. The guns on the
other side of London began to
shoot at it. I found I was so anx-
/ ious that they'd hit it that I was
leaning out the window painting.
Important to Morale.
Every once in while when I
was in London that feeling would
come back to me. And in bed, half
asleep, the dull thuds and crashes
of the anti-aircraft guns would be
comforting to me- These guns were
on my side. They were shooting at
people who were trying to kill me
and whom I didn't like. This is
what people mean, I suppose, when
they say that half the Importance
of anti-aircraft fire in a city is its
good effect on the morale of the
inhabitants.
The noise of the guns does not al
ways work this way. I have come
home to the Dorchester tired and
cold and had the gun outside the
window make me jump and hate it
every time it went off. 1t has made
me want to get down and crawl in
the cellar where I wouldn't hear it.
But when you hear the German
first and then the gun shooting at
him, that's fine sensation.
On the first evening, after that