The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-08-26

J ago that the shooting began-how ,, time does fly-but in the lovely har- vest season of '39, an airplane that could do $50 miles sn hour was all right. Today it must do 400 tot 450, or be shot down. Airplane engines that could rate 1000 or 1900 horse power could gst by, but today 200O h. D. is a minimum, and 2500 or better must be achieved soon if there is to be superiority in the air. Planes that could climb to 30,000 feet were safe in '39, but today they
 must reach 10000. Two machine guns and one cannon made combat planes pretty formidable in the old
 days, hut today they pack three or four cannons and six or eight ma- chine guns.
 Newest device of death and de- Struction is reportedly the acoustic or harmonic mine. It is a successor 1 to the magnetic mine, which be- came obsolete as soon as the mag 1 netic belt was invented and all ships
 were equipped with this ring of l cables through which 8 current was passed to set up an induction field that would ccunteract the magnetic field of the mine, making it harm less.
 Not much is known about the acoustic mine, but the principle of l its operation is ,fairl simple. Instead l of being set off by the ships natur- al magnetic field, it is set off by the vibration of the ships engine, the transmission of sound waves through water.
 It being practically impossible to build a, vibrationlesS or perfectly si- left ship, licking this acoustic mine may be lot harder than overcom- ing the magnetic mine. One report in Washington is that the Germans have discontinued using the magne- tic mine at sea, converting those on hand into land mines to drop by parachute from bombing planes.
 THIS MOTOR MISS NO MISS
 Another ingenious use of sound waves has been figured out by the German .tecflnicians. When German bombers first came over England, it was noticed their engines, instead of having a steady, even roar, seemed to exhaust unevenly and at variable pitch. British plane builders were at first inclined to scoff, saying the Nazis didn't know how to build good motors. But when the British plane detecting devices tried to pick up German planes by means of me chanical ears and radio listening posts, it was found that this uneaen beat of the German motors made extremely difficult the task of tell ing quickly the height of an attack ing bomber. Now, it is understood, British bombing plane engines are also being re-geared to give off the uneven drone beat so as to throw off German listening posts.
 Chatter about the mysterious ] Sperry bomb sight, perfected for use by U s. bombers, has of course been limitless Hailed as the greatest se- cret weapon of the present war, it enables bombers to drop their eggs in the pickle barrels from 15,000 feet ! with uncanny regularity. It has been generally assumed that this device
 was given to the British, but there now comes from England that the
 Sperry bomb sight is of questionable value, for the reason that it's use is l dependent on perfect visibility a condition frequently found on the
 bombing ranges near Denver and i the California deserts, but only in-
 frequently in Europe.
 ANTI-AIRCRAFT
 ANTIQUATED?
 Speaking of anti-aircraft guns, quite a point has been made that
 the United States defenseS were practically a blank on this type of 1 equipment. But some observers have
 returned with the theory that it
 doesen't make much difference, for
 anti-aircraft batteries seldom bring
 down plane, and their usce in
 keeping the bombers up high applies
 only to the area immediately amove
 the battery.
 1 Another idea of defense that the
 British have had to modify to cer- tain extent is the use of volunteer
 fire fighters to combat conflagra-
 tions started by incendiary bombs.
 At first, it was the idea that the
 good tough Britons, springing from
 every cot, health and hedgerow,
 would stomp out the fires and pro- tect their homes from the despoiler.
 But it hasn't worked out quite that
 way. It takecs nerve to chec kthese
 incendiary fires when thousands of
 bombs are dropping over city, and under this type of raid, the volun-
 teer is next to useless.
 1 What 1t takes is professional fire
 fighters on the job all the time.
 And the real reason that British
 ship yards, docks, munitions plants
 and plane factories have been able
 to keep up their splendid records of production is that all these strategic
 centers have been protected by pro-
 fessionar fire fighting units who
 stick on the job like soldiers, while
 the volunteers head for the bomb
 cellars or the hills.
 Any place you look, you'll always
 find poor professional beating a Onnd amateur Even sak soIdierinr