Evening star., 1945-10-10
Atomic Bomb Secret
Not Exclusively Ours,
Gen. Marshall Warns

Overshadowing all other techno
logical advance of the war was tn
timely Allied development of tn
atomic bomb-a secret which Ger
George C. Marshall warned the Ma
ton today will not be ours exclu
sively Indefinitely"
While this tremendous militar,
advantage" should give American
confidence in their destiny" salt
the Army Chief of Staff, he eau
toned 1--WE must be extremely care
full not to fall victim to overconfi
dence."
Gen. Marshall, in critical com
pariSon of American and enem,
weapons in his biennial report, CAV,
the Germans credit for superiorit,
in the first two years of the war.
Germans Had Start.
I'm the years of peace between
two world wars we permitted Ger.
many to far outpace us in the de-
velopment of instruments which
might have military use," he wrote
AS consequence, German develop
ment of long-range rockets and ri.
lotless aircraft, stemming from
years of peacetime research, was ia,
more advanced than our own, which
began in earnest only after the wa,
had already started
But American bombs and the
newest fusing and control device,
which guide them to their target.
had no counterpart" he said, ane
radar equipment developed by tht
Allies was superior to the electronic!
devices of either Germany or Japan
During the past two years the
United States Army was well armed
and well equipped" Gen. Marshall
said.
THE fact is we dared to mount
operations all over the world with q
strategic inferiority in numbers OF
troops. Were it not for superiority
IN the air and on the sea, in mobility
and f1repower, we could not have
achieved tactical superiority at the
points chosen for attack nor have
prevented the enemy from bringing
greater forces to bear against u.s."
B-e Unmatched.
American ''know-how" in aircraft
production soon gave the Allies both
q qualitative and quantitative ad-
vantage over Germany and Japan, u
the Germans themselves admitting
they did not even foresee our de-
velopmentS in the long-range fighter
he pointed out. Unmatched, also,
was our development of the B-29
long-range bomber.
Although the Germans first intro
duced the jet engine in combat, it
was not because we had made no
progress in this field. They were
at the disadvantage of testing them
first in combat or not at all. The
German jet fighters were limited to
a maximum endurance of little over
an hour" he said. ours already
had the endurance to fly nonstop
from San Francisco to New York" "
In two basic items-the triple
threat 68-mm. gun and smokeless
powder-the Germans held an ad-
vantage almost to the end of the
war. The 88-mm. gun was un-
matched by our 90-mm. gun as an
antiaircraft, antitank and antiper-
sonnel weapon.
Our own peacetime research hac
given the American Doughboy two
good advantages over the German
enemy the report said. One was the
Garand semiautomatic rife, which
the Germans were never able te
duplicate. The other was our ad.
vantage of motor vehicle transport
principally the "jeep" and the "a.
ton truck.
In the field of amphibious assault
craft, the report empasized, the
enemy had nothing which com.
pared with or even resembled the
big landing ships of the Allies.