Evening star., 1943-11-25

say, repaying a Thomas R. Henry.
.long-standing grudge.
!. Hatred OF the "tedeschi" fairly
dropped from the lips of the colonel
in command of the fighter group to-
day as he discussed the latest opera
.tions of his men. Being obliged to
flight on the German side, he said,
was a bitter dose for the airmen to
swallow when all their personal SYM
.pathies were with the Allies. But
few Allied air officers ever have
been heard to criticize the sky war
fare of these men. aside from the
claim that they sometimes were fool
hardly brave and suffered unneces-
.sarily heavy losses by sticking to
hopeless flights.
A fighter had just returned safely
from Albania yesterday and made
: a safe. landing, despite the fact that
lone of It's wings had been practi-
..cally sawed off by bullets from 3
German craft with which 1t had
fought. And in other respects it
was so badly shot up that only a
combination of the utmost skill and
a miximum Of good luck had en-
..abled the pilot to bring it in. The
colonel ruefully surveyed the craft
land explained angrily what had
.happened. The Germans, he said,
had ttrned against it an italian
-"secre weapon"-an exploding bull
sslet. He himself had taken part in
:the experiments with this bullet two
-yeaB ago. At the time, of course,
..the secret had been shared freely
with the Germans and now they
~are making good use of 1t.
Ihis particular device, he said,
-resalted from Photographic studies
:of' the course of a 20-mm. bullet
through tunnel with adjustable
-sr pressures in much the same
way that the behavior Of airplanes
is studied experimentally. The
tendency of such a bullet is to pass
straight through a wing or fuse
lage. leaving a clean hole. Little
damage may result unless some
vital point is hit American planes
have come back literally sieved with
hundreds Of bullet holes, little the
worse for their experience. Now
the Italian experiments showed, the
colonel explained, that it was pos
.sible to devise bullet which would
explode at the instant of contact.
His own fighters, he said, were
just starting to use it during the
last few months and he believes
>tlat nothing could have chewed up
q wing so badly as the one that lay
Ee-ore him.
A major function OF the Italian
ali transport service, equipped with
few planes OF newstype which
We're just coming into production
at the time of the armistice, is to
crop food and ammunition of
bodies of their countrymen fight
ing a. guerrilla warfare of increas-
ing effectiveness in the noun
tain valleys of Yugoslayia and AL
bania. The service has taken over
pretty much the entire Job of sup
plying these troops and an entirely
new technique of dropping supplies
from high attitudes with a minimum
of waste has been worked out, the
colonel explained. This is about
the only way of keeping these iso-
lated troops fed and of supplying
them with arms and the necessary
warm clothing. The Italian air.
men are confident that these men
will prove a very significant factor
> when the time comes to strike a
major blow in the Balkans.
The italian flyers are even over
anxious to prove their mettle to
their new associates these days and
take off on missions in the face of
threatening weather which others
would brave only in case Of an
emergency. They also are display
ing lot of ingenuity in rebuilding
planes from parts Of craft which
have been smashed up-in an effort
to keep respectable force in the
air without any means Of replace
ments, since all their major fac
tories we're in North Italy, now in
the hands of the Germans.