Evening star., 1943-02-25
Second OF q SerieSJ
BY WALTER McCALLUM,
Star staff Correspondent

:
| Perhaps you've thrilled to the split
! second precision of the backfield of
/ a well-drilled football team. 1t may
/ have been the Information that gave
/ you the kick of matchleSS training
in handling slippery leather oval.
But the football boys, good as they
are. could learn lot from the agile
antics of a well-trained crew of anti
aircraft artillerymen.
Here is timing at its zenith,
men handling the tools Of death
with accuracy and ureciSion for
a precious purpose. None of the
futilitv of a touchdown play. The
anti -aircraftmen play for keeps.
Keep 'em falling" is their slogan.
They do it with such precise timing.
such co-ordinated team play that
YOU marvel at the ease Of manner
with which they handle q 2-foot-
long shells weighing scores Of
pounds. in a series Of regimented
movements
Sweetheart of the anti-aircratt is
the Comm. gun. which suits death
many miles intO the sky and keeps
EN- falling in blazing death pyres for
enemy airmen, The distance the
shell will travel to blast opposing
aircraft into flaming ruin is mill
tary secret, but it will shoot far
enough to reach any high-leveI
bomber
Beyond R0mmers Glass.
lo+ oln
man 88-mm gun with which Rommel
is supposed 10 have done a Job on
British mechanical units when the
fox of the Afrika Korps was knock
ing at the door Of Egypt before he
began back tracking last November
Don't lie, any one fool you about the
88. It's good gun, but it isn't in
the class of the 90, used by Amer
lean anti-aircraft.
At Aberdeen, Md, the immense
Army Ordnance Proving Ground.
the experts put a captured 88 and
a 80 side by side and shot them
The performance was credit to
the American-made 80. Not only
is it more graceful and easier to
handle, but it shoots more accu-
rately and faster.
Here at Camp Davis the men who
handle the 80 make no secret Of
their love for the piece which keeps
'em falling, for the precision ap-
paratuS which trains and tracks the
gun on the target, the way it Will
shoot That crew Of IS to 20 men
is a carefully trained team
Back of the guns is a lot of Sc
cret apparatus. You go to Sears
Landing, where many batteries of
90s stand. their long muzzles reach
ing toward the zenith. You see
the secret apparatus. But it isn't
discussed.
Detected With Motor Of.
1t works something like this: An
enemy bomber approaches an i'm
portant military target and shuts
off his engine, feeling confident that
with only the swish Of air across
his wings he cannot be heard.
How wrong he was he knows when
Comm. shells begin to tear his
ship TO pieces, although he may be
10000 feet in the sky, in the sub
stratosphere.
Crews of the anti-aircraft knew
where he was long before he neared
his objective. They knew how high
he was, how fast he was travelling.
Sensitive ears" ceaselessly scan
ming the sky. had tracked him, had
transmitted information which plot
ted his course, while secret locaters
had him pinned to the spot in the
sky in which he would be when he
approached within range Of the
guns.
Remember the enlisted man at
Pearl Harbor, working on his own
time, who sounded a warning of
planes when they were more than
100 miles away that fateful morn
ing of December 7, 1941? But the
secret devices do more than that.
Having located the approaching air
craft or flight of bomberS, these de-
tectorS transmit their findings into
director, operated by skillful men
who know its intriCacies and under
which it operates. This director by
day or by night, puts the guns on
the target.
1S Shots a Minute.
AirplaneS move fast. They come
and are gone quickly. Their bombs
drop fast. But the airplane and its
bombs is no faster than the speedy
team of st-handling Comm
gun crew and fast shooting, ac-
curate gun. Here at Davis, heart
OF anti-aircraft training, we'll
trained gun crews can turn up l8
aimed shots a minute per gun
That's lot Of high powered steel
to go shrieking high into the sky
But I saw them do it. The anti
aircraft men, trained to match
speed with speed do their job
A 90-millimeter shell is a little
more than 81 inches in diameter
/ Mounted alongside the slender tube
Of the gun barrel is a fuse cutter
/ 1t takes only second to set the fuse
/ to explode at the right height and
ram the she'll in the barrel of the
+ gun. Elaborate firing data all care
fully worked out govern the op-
/ eratiOnS OF all units.
1t takes around 10 seconds for a
shell TO reach plane at 26.OO0 feet
travelling at 300 miles per hour.
That means the gunners must lead"
the plane as a duck is led by a
hunter, by nearly a mile, so that
target and shell will meet at a pre-
determined point in the sky. You
can imagine that takes a lot of fig
urlng, which it does.
Shatter Targets.
'Wham, Wham, so the guns.
Z "Wham Wham Wh3n7 " Ynu oa2e