The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-03-06


 create lot of damage where they land, and as a psychological or ter- Tor weapon they have their effec- tiveness since there is no place to go to get out of their range.
 Up to the present time there has been no weapon which could effec- lively cover what may now be con- sidered the middle distances yond the range of artillery. An ex- ception must of course be made for bombs dropped from airplaneS. But airplanes can seldom take the place of artillery, and an improved robot, launching it's missiles from tn ground, could extend the range of artillery tremendously.
 Vel HAS LONG RANGE
 The V-l Is of course the flying bomb which the Germans launched against London from bases across the Channel in France, Belgium and Holland, range Of nearly 200 miles. With an explosive head of from one to two tons, the robot bomb can make the biggest field gun look like a toy weapon. The 240 nm. 1928 inch) howitzer fire 360-pound shell for 25,000 yards. or ust under Is miles.
 The tight-inch field gun has a range of 35,00u yards or 20 miles. Use of the V-type flying bomb at distances under It's present maxi mum range of around 200 miles is therefore a highly desirable de- velopment. But to appreciate it's full significance 8 clear distinction must be made between rockets, artillery and robot or flying bombs.
 The robot is neither rocket, nor is 1t artillery, nor is 1t an airplane, but a combination of all three. It has wings like an airplane and g. jet-propulsion engine which flies 1t at speeds up to 400 miles an hour. The rocekt has no engine but, like A rocket, the robot bomb must car- ry it's own fuel load right along with 1t. Robots must be launched from a long, fixed-position ramp. Since this ramp cannot easily be changed to point in varying directions, the TO- bot bomb cannot be carefully aim- ed like artillery at a variety of tar gets in the same area. If the Japs are now using a rocket that is fired from a mortar, as indicated by re- cent dispatches from Two Jtma, they may have something new.
 The limits of range on a flying bomb are in the amount of fuel the robot can carry behind it's explosive head. As used by the Germans against England, the robots kept on flying till they ran out of fuel, then crashed and exploded.
 Tn using robots for ranges beyond the 20-mile limit of artillery, but less than their own 200-mile maxi mum, the Germans are apparently putting in only enough fuel to fly the bomb the desired distance. Naturally. they're not doing very accurate shooting that way.
 NEW CONTROLS NECESSARY
 Future development of the robot bomb as long-range artillery will therefore be dependent on new con- trols to govern their flight more &C., curately. Such aiming" might be done in several ways:
 1. Better gyroscopes and auto matic pilots might be developed to hold the flying bombs on truer courses and drop the explosive head more accurately on wider selec- ton of predetermined targets.
 2. Radio controls might be de- veloped so that the robot bomb could be guided Into their targets from observation planes or control stations many miles away.
 3. New electronic devices which have come out of this war might be hooked up so that the robot would literally fly itself to a desig- mated point on a map.
 Such controls are in all likelihood weapons for the next war. Their mere conception is enough to indi- cate that in this next war. areas far beyond the range of modern artil- lery will be active zones of combat
 The rocket, like the robot bomb. is just in its infancy. For ranges be- yond the present 20-mile limit of the German Vel type of flying bomb the Germans resort to the rocket principle for the V-2 bomb. The V-2 has no wings, no jet engine. But 1t carries its own rocket pro- pellent charge, is driven faster than 75O miles an hour which is the speed of sound, sails into the Strato- sphere above 30.000 feet before 1t falls to earth at ranges which may be upwards of 400 miles from launching site to target. This is real long range artillery If you choose to call 1t that, but so inaccurate that 1t is almost useless except as a weapon of terror against great centers of population like the city of London.