Evening star., 1941-09-04
,,iiachine Gun Bullets
Won't Even Dent New
Plane Armor Plate
Quarterback Thickness
Of Metal Is Hardened
BY Secret Process
-XXTXA>XAA COME 0NE-COME ~
\N\\\N\SAAsAR6nl - BARGAINS GALORE
BY DEVON FRANCIS.
The Stars Special News Service.


ELIZABETH. N. j., Sept. Al
watched a machine gunner pour q
stream Of 80 caliber bullets-the
kind most commonly used in pursuit
plane ammunition belts-at a piece
of aircraft armor plate only quar-
ter Of an inch thick without so
much as putting a dent in its sur
face.
The range was a bare 100 yards,
quite close as firing distances go to-
cay in air combat between swift
fighting planes.
The armor plate, hardened by
Socret process, is going into United
CsateS Army bomber and pursuit
planes.
1t is MADE by the Breeze Corp.
here at one of its five plants, and
was developed by two men who
sloshed through New Jerseys SHOWS
for weeks. on an improvised test
range, finding out what their plate
would do before they submitted it to
the War Department.
One of the men was A. Langstaff
Johnston, jr., native of Richmond,
Va, and a lieutenant commander in
the Navy in the World War, who is
vice president in charge of research
and development.
Sch0olmate of Messerschmitt.
The other one was Rostislaw S.
Komarnitsky, born in the Russian
Ukraine and a onetime fellow stu
dent in Berlin of Willie Messer-
schmitt, builder of the most famous
brand of pursuit planes now being
used by Germany.
Good armor plate for fighting
anes is of extraordinary concern to
re Army air forces right now. Maj.
Zen. Henry H. Arnold. deputy chief
q staff, listed it few months ago
one of the "musts" for the new
lachines rolling off the factory pro-
luction lines.
1t protects air fighters and, IN
Kicker gauges, is used as screen
'ehind which gunner in bomber
IN fire on his attackers.
The idea of armor plate for air
1lanes is not new, but the current
lpplication is.
In the closing months of the World
Var allied airmen rode to battle sit
ting on stove lids contributed by
trench farm matrons to lessen the
chance of being hit on the seat of
he pants by an enemy shooting
rom below.
introduced in Spanish War.
Airplane armor plate, as such, was
introduced by the Russians and the
Germans in the Spanish civil war.
The Breeze plate, face-hardened
like that used on battleShips, is not
perfect protection against bullets.
While it stops armor- piercing bull
lets of 80 caliber, it will not stop
those of so caliber in range of
less than 450 yards in the quarter
inch gauge. Mr.. Johnston did not
care to state what his plate would
Withstand in greater thicknesses.
He makes it to a gauge of an inch.
Now in use in the European war are
aircraft cannon firing contact-fuse
shells Of considerable penetrating
quality. Reports from the war front
say warplanes struck by such shells
frequently disintegrate.
The origin of the Breeze plate goes
back about three years, when Mr..
Johnston and Mr.. Komarnitsky de-
cided existing plate could be pene-
trated too easily.
Years before Mr.. Johnston had de-
vised method, universally adopted,
for hardening automobile tire
chains. Strangely enough, that
contributed to the development of
today's aircraft armor plate.
Mr.. Komarnitsky was schooled at
the Naval Academy in st. Peters,
burg now Leningrad and at Ber-
Inns Institute of Technology. and
in 1873 fought with the white
Russians against the Reds.
Tested Secretly at Pistol Range.
Mr.. Johnston's and Mr.. Komar-
nitsky's experiments, once they had
decided they could make better
plate, lasted almost through the
winter season of 1939-40. To insure
secrecy, they carried their pieces
of test steel to a pistol range near
Montclair, N. j., and peppered them
with bullets.
They trudged from the gun
stand to the target to see what
had happened, then trudged back
again, quitting only when 1t got
too cold to work.
Finally they were satisfied. So
was the Army when the plate was
tested at the Aberdeen Proving
Ground.
AL the Breeze people will say
about their plate is that it is llq-
uid-carburized in electric furnaces.
Carburizing means making the face
of it extra-hard by baking carbon
into it. The process is three to
four times as fast as any other
used.
All else about the plate is on the
Army's list of restricted informa-
ton.
But 1t can take .3o-caliber bull
let's.
Holding the piece 7 saw tested
on the company's machine-gun
range was a framework of tough
but unprocessed steel. The frame
was punctured literally with bull
lets. Some of them had penetrated
an inch and a half.
Little smudged spots showed
where the bullets had struck the
armor plate. That was the only
evidence. The bullets appeared to
have fused the plate at the sur
face Of contract but stopped there.
ADVERTISEMENT.