The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-06-17

pital, where some nurses and pa- tients were killed and other per- sons injured. Others took roofs off houses.
 Many were brought down, and some were exploded in the air by counter measures-perhaps one phase of the British retort to what in the first flush of excitement had been repre- sented in some quarters as a serious threat. Home security minister Her bert Morrison gave assurance late yesterday, however, that the damage was relatively light and could not impede the Allied war effort.
 All the facts known about the weird machines were being given to the public, limited only by security considerations, after Q day of con- lecture that reached a higher realm of fantasy than the pilotless planes themselves.
 No Propeller The device was understood to have no propeller. It is powered by a motor which congresses gases in the projection tail, accounting for the engine beat like motor boat as well as the spewing of smoke and sparks.
 It carries an equivalent of a 2,000- pound bomb, Is very thick-skinned and apparently explodes on contact. The extent of the Nazi control was not yet clear but in any case the robots were unable to return to base and on their own after being launched on a straight, unalterable course.
 Any air force which is forced to use @ Rube Goldberg like that one certainly must be in & bad way" a military source said in typical comment.
 While some of the first confused, conflicting reports put the speed of the pilotless plane at perhaps 500 miles an hour, a more reliable con- sensus indicated, 1t was about 22o well within the range of pursuing fighters.
 Although there had been no offi- cial announcement that fighters had attacked the strange craft, the Ger man radio hinted at such threat to their secret weapon and indicated they were sending their own fighters to escort them. They said that in clashes over England during the night two allied night fighters were shot down.
 Less Vulnerable
 The pilotless plane Is less vulner- able in size than normal craft. It presents a target roughly one- third the size of a spitfire fighter. Its l6-foot wingspan, 25-foot length and tiny round body do not con- stitute an ideal target, but on the other hand the casing around the explosive Is not immune to machine gun fire.
 The plane look like flying tor pedo with an additional tubulGS jet propulsion unit mounted above the tail
 Five to IS seconds after the sound of the tiny engine stops, the ex- plosion can be expected, with con- siderable blast effect.
 In one south England town four persons waited in water up to their necks for six hours as hremen strove to release them when they were trapped under a shop wrecked by a pilotless plane. Fire broke out in the wreckage, and the water turned on 1t nearly drowned the four be- fore they were rescued.
 The rocket or jet-propelled robots crashed and blew up with their cargoes of explosives in number of sections of southern England the appellation which the ministry of home security now applies to all of England. including London. south of a line drawn from Bristol in the west to the wash in the east.
 Several fires were started and British authorities acknowledged in a preliminary announcement that there had been damage and casual ties.
 The fiame-spitting aircraft roared across the coast at intervals of 20 minutes to an hour or more and were followed across the night sky