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To June 30, 1942
United States...................................................................................... 1166
The Battleship Question—Midway Diary—Night Air Attack at Midway—Small Boat Fleet—Air Ferrying and Transport—Various Notes
Great Britain....................................................................................................................... 1171
Cunningham’s Review — Cologne — H.M.S. Penelope — Bomber- Fighter
Germany................................................................................................. 1177
Luftwaffe—New Air Tactics—Various Notes
Japan...................................................................................................... 1180
New Type Sub—Japan’s Rule
U.S.S.R.................................................................................................... 1183
Soviet Cavalry
Aviation................................................................................................. 1185
Training Paratroops—New Liquid-Cooled Engine—Biggest Engine Laboratory—Rocket Bombs
Merchant Marine............................................................................................................ 1191
New Records—Sea Oiler Passes Test
Miscellaneous................................................................................................................... 1191
New Weapons—The Gas Turbine—Secret Weapons
UNITED STATES The Battleship Question
Baltimore Sun, June 17, by Mark Watson.—One odd result of the reported victories of our sea and air forces in the Pacific these last six weeks is that they have encouraged exactly opposite conclusions with regard to the immediate future of our battleships. Our successes have been gained by airplanes, some of them land-based, some of them sea-based, some of them carrier-based. The few losses we have sustained in the last six weeks have been inflicted chiefly by enemy planes. Rarely have surface ships even come within sight of enemy surface ships, their functions being simply to launch planes into the air, or to protect the ships which did the launching. Hence, some of the more air-minded Congressmen are again stating confidently that our battleships are useless and that our whole future depends on carriers or land-based planes.
But in curious contrast is a naval officer’s sober judgment. He points out that the very victories referred to have actually tended to make our battleships more, rather than less, useful for the immediate future. The distant future is something else, but at present the chief concern in the Navy is over the extremely critical war of 1942 and 1943.
The reasoning is simple and direct. The battleship’s reign, to be sure, has been severely threatened by air power. Whereas, the dreadnought’s former foes were enemy dreadnoughts and enemy submarines, to those foes have lately been added the enemy’s airplanes and his carriers. In the very recent past our forces have sunk or damaged perhaps ten of Japan’s carriers, including at least four of her best. In other words, with the loss of only one of our own carriers, we have very greatly reduced Japan’s prime weapons against our battleships.
Therefore, it is reasoned, our battleships are opposed by fewer of their new foes than they were before, and for that very reason are actually moving back toward their former eminence. If, indeed, every Japanese aircraft carrier could be disabled, our battleships, freed of that major threat, would again be a mighty naval weapon in our hands, whether for an offensive against the enemy, or for a stouter counterattack against a raiding fleet (if the enemy would dare send out a fleet unescorted by carriers). In either case, it now is obvious, the battleship must have air support, and in any offensive it (or the carrier either, for that matter) must actually possess a local air superiority before it can hope for success. As to the carrier, it must be said that the last six weeks’ experience has proved its vulnerability, as much as its great offensive strength. The tragedy of the Coral Sea aftermath is that our great carrier Lexington, which was largely responsible for the smashing of the enemy and the sinking of two of his carriers, herself fell victim to the enemy’s planes. In brief, the present type of carrier, superbly strong in offense as it is, is clearly too vulnerable to be universally satisfactory. Nor is there in view at the moment any substitute design which is clearly better.
Smaller vessels would be less efficient. So would more heavily armored vessels. Compromises between carrier and dreadnought are likely to have the defects of both without the sure virtues of either. Land-based planes would turn the trick, to be sure, but no land-based plane now in production has the needed range for long overseas actions, and in the interim the Navy would have to fall back on some form of surface carrier. There is small doubt that some years hence the land-base planes will solve many of these problems, but this war of 1942-43 is going to be fought with 1942-43 weapons. That means weapons not greatly unlike those now on hand—carriers, battleships, cruisers, and all the rest, and the most efficient planes we now have or can produce in the coming months.
As was hinted some weeks ago, it is increasingly clear that the Navy is not now going through with the long-range battleship program once scheduled. There is, however, a strong belief that those battleships which are very near completion may prove very useful indeed, and the sooner and the more completely our forces dispose of Japanese carriers and land-based planes, the more useful our own battleships, new and old, promise to become.
Midway Diary
New York Herald Tribune, June 22, by Wendell Webb, with the United States Pacific Fleet, June 4 (delayed) (AP).— A trail of lire, death, and destruction streaked across Mid-Pacific today. There were blazing ships to the north and west of us. There were pilots of the Rising Sun dying for want of a place to land. If the Battle for Midway is not already won, its course now is unmistakable. Tonight the Pacific Fleet is headed straight for the scattering survivors of Japan’s attempt to carry the war to the Occident. If we could have one wish it would be that the blazing western sun could tell us all that has happened. There is no story that would give the whole of this day’s engagement. One might tell of bombs and flaming planes that fell like rain around the cruiser on which I am writing. Another could tell of a game ship winning a fight to quell fires from a Japanese bomb. A third story might show in humble part the skill and heroism of these pilots, living and dead. But a retrospective picture of the grim drama strung out over 100,000 square miles of ocean will have to come at a later time. From the time the Japanese planes assaulted Midway Island this morning until the last tired gunner lay aside his work, this area, 3,000 miles from the United States west coast, was the scene of a battle that well could be all-decisive. We do not know tonight that all the would-be invaders are retreating, but as nearly as can be determined there were three great tentacles of power reaching for strategic Midway. It now appears that two of them are withdrawing to the west with whatever they have left to withdraw. The action today, against planes, carriers, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, hurled back at least the vanguard of the enemy push. His chance to get at Midway now is gone. As far as the Japanese were concerned, they had planned only an offensive. Tonight the tables are turned, and what started out defensively for the men from Pearl Harbor has turned into a pell-mell race to destroy.
June 5.—A dazzling victory V shot into the skies tonight to climax one of the most dramatic episodes of this far- flung encounter at sea. It was flashed as a guide to naval bombers returning from the west, where a major Japanese force was harried and crippled and striving desperately to beat its way back home. Our ship’s regular lights were on, in defiance of any lurking challenge, and the entire fleet was hot on the chase. It hoped to close in at dawn near Midway. Carrier- borne planes had gone out early in the evening for one last assault before dark. Now they were roaring in by two’s, three’s, and six’s. We counted and cheered as their wing lights broke the clouds. There were cheers, too, with each safe landing. But the darkness deepened fast, and our count was incomplete. We wondered what was wrong. It was then the searchlights flared their V. Minutes later more planes swept in and circled for their mother ships near by. There were few, if any, missing then. One flattened and crashed. His wing must have hit the water. It was too dark to see what had happened. A light flashed on the waves. The pilot had lived, and a destroyer picked him up. The fleet plowed on. All the lights are out now and there’s blackness that only a night at sea can bring. This has been a daring action, but big dividends have come from such bold and decisive strokes. It took planes to do it and cool skill and courage to bring them in.
June 6.—A blazing warship was abandoned by the Japanese 500 miles west of Midway tonight. Word of the abandonment was flashed by naval dive-bomber pilots, who had a field day over fleeing enemy forces, but the flyers’ radioed conversation indicated they wanted no part in strafing the helpless survivors.
“We ought to take those Japs in the lifeboat, but I don’t go in for that stuff,” one flyer was heard to comment.
“I agree with you on lifeboat,” another flyer replied.
The scene they were witnessing was the grand finale of a 3-day battle which wrought destruction or damage to a large part of the attacking Japanese force and apparently destroyed its sea-borne air power. The radio conversation of several American pilots told of the windup of daylong assaults on the now scattering enemy ships.
“Oh baby,” said one, “did we put that destroyer on fire!”
“It looks like the battleship is burning.” “Hit him again.”
“They’ll never get that fire out.”
“Did you see where your bomb hit?” “Mine hit on the fantail.”
“Okay, some of you hot-shots. There’s a perfectly good cruiser back here.”
“Go over and get that boy.”
“Put them right smack on the bottom.” “That one blew up, too.”
“Looks like he’s turning over.”
“Let’s get a couple of those destroyers.” “Atta boy. There’s a hit on a cruiser.” “Today’s a field day, boys.”
“That was a beauty, right down the stack.”
“There goes another hit. We got her right on the bow.”
“Boy, he sure exploded below decks. I betcha.”
“Look! They’re firing anti-aircraft. That destroyer is sure putting it out.”
“I wish I had one more bomb.”
“Do you see any gas coming out of my plane? There’s no fuel on the gauge.” “Yeah. You got a hole in your tank.” “Report the results of your attack.” “Attack complete; heavy cruiser gutted afire; battleship and cruiser afire and heavy explosions; one ship’s nose is heavy.”
“I sure would have liked to have given it this damned torpedo.”
And so it was that the Navy’s wish came true, for it was in mortal combat with the enemy in its own backyard.
Night Air Attack at Midway
Chicago Daily Tribune, June 17.—How the United States Navy’s long-range patrol bombers discovered the Japanese fleet off Midway and made a night torpedo attack against the invaders was disclosed today in new accounts of the battle. Captain Logan Ramsey of Philadelphia, operations officer for the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps land-based planes at Midway Island, said the night torpedo attack was the first one in history. The crew of one patrol plane, forced down by fuel shortage, were eight days at sea fighting off sharks which ripped at the rubber of their small lifeboats. Ramsey said the achievements of the large patrol bombers [PBYs] in discovering and attacking the enemy formed one of the greatest chapters in the newest form of naval action which he termed “aero-amphibious warfare.” He estimated that the Japanese threw several hundred aircraft into the battle. Other reports have stated most of the enemy planes were destroyed. Surrounded by heroes of the engagement, Captain Ramsey outlined the general action and each in turn filled in the details.
“In general,” he said, “the mission of the flying boats is to obtain information about the enemy; to go great distances from bases to penetrate areas in all kinds of weather, evaluate information and get it back to headquarters. The fortunes of the entire fleet depend frequently on the information of these young men.”
He said Ensign Jewell Reid, 28, of Paducah, Kentucky, made the first discovery of the Japanese fleet June 3 while on routine patrol hundreds of miles from his base. Here is Reid’s story:
Before dawn on June 3 we left Midway on a routine patrol. Hundreds of miles out in midmorning we sighted several objects dead ahead on the horizon, but they were not distinguishable at our high altitude. We closed in and made out the objects to be enemy warships. The weather was clear with very little haze, and we knew we stood out well for A-A fire. We reversed course in order to ascertain the track and speed of the enemy and to get more information to our base. We got abeam the main body of the enemy and proceeded in close enough for another look. Then we sent in an amplified report. We saw 11 ships, including two battleships, heavy cruisers and troop ships. We spent several hours in the vicinity getting all the information we could. I don’t think we were seen. If we had been we would have been shot down. This was the enemy’s occupation force. Through a few scattered clouds we got astern of the enemy fleet to avoid any enemy air forces ahead or on the side, and to observe without being seen, meanwhile sending reports to our base.
Captain Ramsey interjected:
That night of June 3 we decided to launch a night torpedo attack by Navy flying boats. It was a very hazardous mission and was placed on a volunteer basis. We wanted to hit some troopships and give the slant eyes a bath. This was a difficult job. It had never been done before. The distances were very great. We hesitated to do it, but felt we had to hit the enemy.
Lieutenant William Richards, 31, of Collingswood, New Jersey, executive officer to Ramsey related:
We had four flying boats. We were all ready to go by the time the army bombers returned. We four took off together and headed for the location of the enemy. When we came into sight of the enemy fleet it was impossible to distinguish types, but we saw two columns of large ships with several smaller ships ahead and astern. They had no lights. They were heading straight for Midway.
Once we started our night attack, each pilot was on his own. Lieutenant Charles P. Hibbered of West Springfield, Massachusetts, and myself were at the controls of my ship. I gave the attack signal. I had already spotted what I believed was the largest ship. It was too far away and too black to identify, but I hoped it would be a carrier. We made a long, straight approach to our objective and encountered no anti-aircraft fire. They didn’t even know we were coming, so we were able to get in close and let go our torpedo without opposition.
As soon as we released our torpedo we pulled away in a sharp right turn over the stern of the target ship. My two rear lookouts reported a huge explosion and heavy black smoke on the ship we attacked. Three of our ships dropped torpedoes, two of which definitely were hits. Our hit was on a big troopship of about 8,000 tons. A second transport of about the same size was hit. This was the first time such a thing ever had been done by flying boats, and we were more than 500 miles out from our base.
Small Boat Fleet
Baltimore Sun, June 28.—In a move to put a great fleet of small boats in the war against submarines off the Atlantic and the Gulf coasts, the Navy called today for all owners of seagoing craft to volunteer the services of themselves and their vessels. It was hoped, an announcement said, that 1,000 additional small boats might join the anti-submarine patrols being conducted by 1,200 craft.
The Navy said “requirements have been relaxed” to qualify additional boats, but gave no details as to what the new requirements would be. It was indicated, however, that the sole test would be whether, in the opinion of officers conducting the anti-submarine warfare, the boat in question could be useful. Saying that Vice-Admiral R. R. Waesche, commandant of the Coast Guard, desired an organization of yachtsmen as Coast Guard Reserve officers to assist in operation of these craft, the Navy announced: “Physical requirements are limited only to immediate ability of the men to serve.”
Submarines already have sunk over 300 cargo ships in the western Atlantic and Caribbean, many of them close to the United States continental shore line. There have been complaints in Congress and elsewhere that the Navy’s restrictions were so rigid that many useful craft and experienced watermen were ruled out of the fight against the undersea craft. The text of the Navy’s announcement:
Requirements have been relaxed to qualify additional numbers of small craft and crews for anti-submarine patrol duty. Approximately 1,200 small boats are in such service now and arrangements have been perfected for the Coast Guard, operating as part of the Navy, to take further reinforcement into the temporary reserve. It is hoped that upward of 1,000 additional small boats for offshore navigation may be added to the auxiliary. All yachtsmen, fishermen, and other small boat owners may offer their services and their craft immediately. If found capable, the men will be enrolled in the temporary reserve of the Coast Guard in appropriate rank or rating. Boats found to be qualified will be equipped with radio, armament, and suitable anti-submarine devices as rapidly as possible.
The enrollment of small boats and crews will be carried out by the district Coast Guard officer in each of the naval districts and on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. When ready for the sea, the boats will be under the direct command of the naval commanders of the Eastern and Gulf sea frontiers. Vice-Admiral R. R. Waesche, commandant of the Coast Guard, has consulted with the officers of the national yachting organizations and others authorized to act as spokesmen for small boat owners, with regard to the immediate acquisitions of boats and crews.
Vice-Admiral Waesche desires an organization of yachtsmen as Coast Guard Reserve officers to build up and assist in the operation of these craft for anti-submarine duty. Physical requirements are limited only to immediate ability of the men to serve. Pay of members of the temporary reserve, while on active duty, is the same as that of the regular Coast Guard, and the reservists are given an allowance for uniforms. Temporary reserve members are obligated for limited duty only.
Air Ferrying and Transport
New York Herald Tribune, June 27.— All air-ferrying and transport operations of the Army have been consolidated under the command of Brigadier General Harold L. George, commanding officer of the ferry command, to assure the most effective utilization of all air transport facilities, the War Department announced today. The consolidation, which will go into effect on Wednesday, will give the new organization control over personnel and air transportation priorities, functions formerly conducted by the air division of the transportation service of the services of supply, and the personnel and operation of the cargo division of the Air Service command. It will be known as “the air transport command.” General George, in a press conference, said that before long the Army will be using super-transport planes to carry supplies and personnel to all parts of the world.
“I say that there is very little in the way of size and range of aircraft that we don’t have,” he said, “and it’s not on the drafting boards; it’s far beyond that stage.” The general added that he could foresee unlimited use for the big, new 4- engined transports that his command will get, not only just for the duration of the war, but afterwards, when peace comes.
“The air lines form the reservoir, the nucleus upon which we are going to build this huge network of military air transportation throughout the world, to provide an air transportation system that will support our military operations throughout the world. To this end, nothing is more important than an efficient, logical system.”
Already the United States has such a system in its ground forces, he added, and one is being built up in the air. In reply to questions about the use of gliders, General George said that they might be put into service soon.
“There is no question but that the glider is going to be one very efficient means of increasing the cargo-carrying capacity of transport planes.’1 he said, “Just how big a glider one transport plane can carry I don’t know, but it can come pretty close to duplicating the pay load of the transport plane at a sacrifice of only a small part of its speed.” The duties of the new command will include the transport of “anything that goes by air for the War Department anywhere in or outside the United States,” he said.
Various Notes
Simon Lake disclosed today he is at work on another invention—designed, ironically, to offset the menace of his most famous creation, the submarine. Lake, after several years of experimenting, completed in 1902 a boat which was the basis of the present-day submarine. He looked on the submarine as a major merchant carrier instead of an instrument of destruction, and still is convinced that huge cargo undersea boats would be the answer to the nation’s shipping problem.
“The only way to combat the submarine is with another submarine,” he said, “and a cargo submersible would be the answer. A military submarine would differ greatly from a huge cargocarrying submarine, and there still are many ways that a military submarine can be improved.” He has conferred with builders about construction of these supersubs, capable of carrying cargoes up to 7,500 tons or as many as 2,500 troops. He said this undersea craft would be 400 feet long and would displace 12,000 tons, nearly twice as large as the 6,000-ton U-boat which the Nazis reportedly use in supplying troops in Libya. He estimated its cost at approximately $3,000,000, considerably less than that of a fighting submarine.
Lake, who is 75 years old, came here to perfect a new type of concrete pipe, able to withstand terrific internal pressure, which could be used in cross-country lines to carry oil and gasoline. Lake believes his new type of pipe would save thousands of tons of steel in the construction of pipelines such as that now being considered by Congress to carry fuel. Details of Lake’s newest invention have not been made public because they are considered of military significance. It is being tested by a commercial producer.—Chicago Tribune, June 2.
Worried over the nervous strain the war is inflicting on its pilots, the Navy is about to embark upon a recuperation program it hopes will keep its fighting men out of hospitals. Approximately $1,800,000 for this purpose was voted Wednesday by the House in a naval appropriation measure now before the Senate. It will be used, the Appropriations Committee was told by Commander J. L. Reynolds, to provide comfortable places of relaxation, such as the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in
Hawaii, for Navy personnel “showing nervous strain and breaking down.” Commander Reynolds said commanders afloat have found that personnel assigned to aircraft, submarines, and destroyers have been working under “tremendous pressure” and are “decreasing in their powers of co-ordination.” The purpose of the rehabilitation centers, he explained, is to provide a place where an exhausted fighter can, on the orders of a physician, rest a week or ten days “to prevent his being hospitalized.” Six of the recuperation centers are under consideration, Commander Reynolds said. Present plans arc for the Navy to rent resorts or hotels, with the regular management continuing to operate them. The Navy already has contracted for use of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel at a cost of $17,500 a month. Enlisted men are operating the hotel. A daily average of 300 Navy men are recuperating at that center, Commander Reynolds told the committee.—New York Herald Tribune, June 6.
Cloth and resin have been combined under heat and pressure to produce a crash-proof helmet for Army use which will stop an 8-pound iron ball dropped a distance of 2 feet, or a one-pound hammer dropped 16 feet. For combat service a metal lining is added to the helmet. This increases the stopping power of the helmet to 50- foot pounds with relatively little addition to its weight. Eugene R. Perry, superintendent of the Westinghouse micarta department, in Pittsburgh, which is turning out great quantities of the helmets, says, that in the 15-foot-pound test the helmets give only of an inch. This indicates, he says, that at the point of contact the helmet has a resistance of nearly half a ton.—New York Herald Tribune, June 14.
GREAT BRITAIN Cunningham’s Review
London Times, May 27.—Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, who was Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet from June, 1939, until a week ago, reviewed the course of operations in the Mediterranean at the Ministry of Information yesterday. He pointed out that the British forces had consistently lacked the essentials of victory. The lesson of Crete was that adequate air forces were an indispensable part of sea power. As our forces in the Mediterranean grew we should, if we had learned the lessons, rapidly and surely overwhelm the enemy. Admiral Cunningham said:—
The war has fallen into four fairly distinct phases. The first of these covers the period which I sometimes feel was rightly named the “phoney” war, though the name was not well received at the time. During this period the Mediterranean was quiescent. Italy was sitting on her precarious fence and our duties east of Gibraltar consisted merely in that most irritating and unsatisfactory of activities—commercial blockade. In September, 1939, we had assembled at Alexandria a magnificent fleet of ships trained by the present First Sea Lord and his predecessor, Sir William Fisher, to a standard which would have led to the speedy disintegration of the Italian Navy had their leader then taken the plunge. For the moment, however, he contented himself with fulminations at our blockade, while we—as I think, unwisely— tried to woo him with concessions which only made more inevitable his entry into the opposite camp.
Since there was little activity in the Straits, and Germany was developing her submarine and air activities against our coasts and those of France, it was inevitable that the main body of the Fleet would be dispersed, and in consequence we soon found ourselves with little more than a token force. Then the pendulum started to swing, Germany attacked France, Italy started to menace, and it became necessary to take immediate steps to rectify the position. Those were anxious days. Our Fleet consisted of a few old cruisers and destroyers and nothing else, and if reinforcement was to come in time it must pass the Narrows. It was in fact a near thing.
Actually, when Italy struck at France a large proportion of our force was made up of French warships. These were fine ships and in the short time they were to work with us they showed the greatest keenness and enthusiasm. They took part in the first bombardment of Bardia, and when France fell were actually on the way to sea to take part in a large-scale operation which was to include a F’rench bombardment of Tripoli. To my unending regret this had all to be called off, and the sad fate of those good ships and men has been to lie idle in Alexandria after only a few weeks of fighting, though they had entered the war with such high hopes and prospects of overthrowing the enemy who had so effectively stabbed them in the back.
The second phase is that during which our forces brought Italy to the verge of complete defeat, and lasts until early in 1941. As I have said, we started very weak at sea and even more so in
the air. However, because of the very fact of our weakness our policy had obviously to be one of aggressiveness, and it paid handsome dividends. We started with a series of sweeps of the Central Mediterranean, but these were not fruitful, particularly in view of our weak air reconnaissance. The uncertainty during the French collapse hampered operations considerably, and our offensive actions were also tempered by the need to pass convoys constantly through the Mediterranean. Indeed, nearly all the major sea clashes have been caused by covering convoy movements. The chief incident of this period was the action off Calabria, July 9, 1940.1 think in retrospect that the enemy intended to draw our fleet close to his coasts and to destroy it on his home ground as it were. But things don’t always work out right, and if that was the enemy intention the bait was left just too close. By magnificent shooting H.M.S. Wars pile damaged the Italian Fleet flagship at 26,000 yards, air attacks from H.M.S. Eagle threw the enemy into confusion, and the ordered withdrawal to the place where we were to be annihilated became precipitate. Much smoke was used, and before very long the enemy aircraft in the confusion started attacking their own ships. The enemy had several knots speed on us, and eventually, when we were in sight, within 25 miles, of the Calabrian coast, it seemed wiser to call off the pursuit.
The enemy fleet was left only bruised, but the effects were visible for many months to come in the cautious policy of avoiding cruises fax to sea, and this led to the attack on Taranto as the best means of getting at the enemy main strength. The withdrawal from Calabria was done under the intensive attack of the greater part of the Italian Metropolitan air force specially laid on for us. Again and again ships disappeared completely from view. The Warspitc alone reckoned that during the two days of these attacks some 500 bombs were dropped round her, yet there was not a single direct hit scored. It was, however, far from pleasant, and at that time we had no fighters yet available to break up attacks. The next big event was Taranto. We had intended to do this attack a month earlier, but an accident prevented us and, as luck would have it, the delay was in fact all to the good. The results were far-reaching and strengthened our position immeasurably. Of the skill and audacity of the F.A.A. pilots and crews there is nothing new I can say, but I would not have you forget the work of the carrier and covering forces which had to bring the attacking aircraft to within 150 miles of the enemy main naval base. The rest of this period is a story of the continued passage of convoys, of attacks on the enemy sea flank in Libya, and of the gradual cs- tablishmcnt of air superiority at sea. This last was of vital importance. When the war started we were at the mercy of Italian bombers, and had they been more accurate the talc might have been very different. But with the arrival of aircraft carriers and fighters, and by the brilliant development of fighter technique in H.M.S. Eagle and H.M.S. Illustrious in particular, a stage was reached when the enemy reconnaissance aircraft dared not approach the Fleet or were shot down if they did. In consequence the Fleet stayed unlocated and unbombed. This air superiority, coupled with the results of Taranto and of magnificent actions such as H.M.A.S. Sydney’s against Italy’s two fastest cruisers, and the Ajax’s brilliant night action off Sicily, reduced the Italian Fleet to a state very near impotence, and the opening of the Mediterranean route was well-nigh an accomplished fact. General Wavcll’s offensive had destroyed the Libyan army and Italy was nearly “out.” The Germans saw a major defeat in sight and rushed to fill the gap.
This brings us to the third phase, which is overshadowed throughout by German air superiority. The ultimate victory in war, let there be no mistake, is won by the foot-slogging soldier in his thousands forcing his way over enemy defenses into the enemy country. To achieve this he has first to be landed and supplied by sea. For this, sea power is essential, and never have we seen the fact more clearly demonstrated than in the Mediterranean in 1941 and in the Far East in 1942. But an indispensable ingredient of sea power in modern war is the air. Just as the gun and torpedo are weapons carried by ships to hit the enemy, so is the airplane just such another weapon. When great distances are involved this weapon must be transported in carriers, but in confined spaces like the Mediterranean it can be shore-based, given suitable aircraft and technique.
The Germans exploited this to the full. Great numbers of long-range and dive bombers and of fighter and reconnaissance aircraft came to Italy’s aid. Despite this formidable reinforcement our work went on. Convoys were passed right through the Mediterranean, whole divisions were taken to Greece, and our offensive in Libya was supported by sea. But the losses started too. The Illustrious made her historic effort off and at Malta in early 1941, and each time our forces went to sea the scale of attack increased. Emboldened by the German success and stiffening, the Italian Fleet came out in March, 1941, probably to try and interfere with our convoys to Greece, but I am glad to think that we were able off Matapan to teach them a lesson which kept them out of the ring for the rest of the year.
It is not too much to say that the epic of Greece and Crete which followed took place under the shadow of Matapan, and was made possible by it.
I call it epic because air power under uniquely favorable conditions was pitted against the forces at sea. That our ships performed their tasks to so large an extent, that they landed and re-embarked tens of thousands of troops in the face of such unparalleled attack, is indeed an epic, and I believe no other body of men could have done it. Battered incessantly from the air, sustaining appalling losses, without sleep, with their ships hopelessly overcrowded, the Mediterranean Fleet and the grimly determined merchant ships with them carried out their task. It may be said with some truth that Greece and Crete were reverses— perhaps—but I count it my greatest pride to have been privileged to command those men in that time of adversity. But we must so work that these situations cannot again arise. We must learn the lesson that sufficient and trained air forces are an indispensable part of sea power, and make very sure—as and when our resources allow—that sea power properly armed can operate to the full discomfiture of the enemy.
And now we come to the present day. After the affairs in the Aegean we had our Syrian and then our Libyan campaigns. The Far East has made inevitable calls on our Middle East strength, but that nevertheless the offensive spirit is still alive was demonstrated to no mean tune by Rear Admiral Sir Philip Vian in late March, when he drove his convoy through to Malta in face of a greatly superior Italian Fleet, damaged the enemy licet flagship, and sent the whole party packing home—this with light cruisers as his heaviest ships. When naval history is next written that action will be recorded as a tactical masterpiece.
Today we see in the Mediterranean a campaign of mutual destruction of supply lines. We attack by air and sea the enemy supplies to Libya; on his part he attacks our jumping off base at Malta and our convoys thereto, and so the war goes on.
Cologne
Baltimore Sun, June 2, by Mark Watson.—The RAF’s blow to German arms production by its pulverizing raid on Cologne demonstrates (largely for American enlightenment, one may hope) what can be done by a grand accumulation of fighting strength, and, conversely (and also for our enlightenment), what cannot bp done without such an accumulation. For the success of that devastating raid on the Rhineland’s great industrial city waited upon a combination of several essential circumstances, including these:
(1) Possession by Britain of actual local (not necessarily total) air superiority, as to numbers and quality of bomber planes, their protective fighter planes, and trained pilots and crews and equipment for both.
(2) Possession of a reserve of still more in very large numbers, so that the possible loss of the whole first string would not prove an irretrievable loss.
(3) Enough airfields, properly distributed, in easy range of the objective, to permit the almost instantaneous launching of over 1,000 fully loaded planes; precise timing was essential.
(4) A methodical and extremely complex plan, fully worked out long ago, and fully understood by all participants, ready to be put in operation at, literally, an instant’s notice.
(5) Arrival of the right weather condition. The last comparable raid on interior Germany had been at Mannheim eleven days previously, following by eleven days the May 8 blasting of Lue- beck. In April, on the other hand, Rostock had been smashed on four successive nights. Bad weather, which causes too many fatalities among attackers, and too few among attacked, was a factor in compelling those intervening delays.
There are a great many other items of interest about the Cologne raid, such as the fact that all the bombing planes (and most of the fighters as well) seem to have been of British manufacture, which suggests anew how strong is Britain’s present aircraft industry, and how large the air attacks may be when America’s output of planes is added.
Likewise there is interest in the importance of the mission. Through Cologne pours approximately SO per cent of all the east-west rail traffic between Germany and the western occupied areas’ munitions factories, also a great deal of the north- south trade in coal headed for the iron and steel plants. Cologne’s own part in munitions manufacture has been enormous. Even a temporary dislocation of it could be very damaging to Germany’s behind-the- lines performance. But the items which are of prime application to America’s war problems (and to America’s war thinking) are those numbered 1, 2 and 3, above.
Before the Cologne raid could be planned Britain had to have all three of those essentials, which she did not have a few months ago. This is why Britain’s offensive operations against interior Germany—that is, the creation of a “western front” of a sort—had to be very severely limited.
Our own lesson with regard to what America can hope for in the Pacific fairly speaks itself. We, too, can engage in a great offensive against Japan when we, too, have: (1) A sure superiority in air and other strength on the spot. (2) Adequate launching points in proper range, from which to initiate our air attacks. (From Hawaii to Tokyo is ten times as far as from London to Cologne.) (3) A stout and soundly based determination on the part of our command, which will enable us to undertake a grand offensive with a willingness to accept the losses which it involves.
For no victory, save in fiction, takes place without sacrifices by the victor. Britain admits the loss of 47 planes in the Cologne offensive. That is probably close to 5 per cent of the total number of British planes involved. The damage inflicted upon the enemy justifies it, because the 47 can be instantly replaced, and no doubt have been replaced already in the very formations which lost them. Yet that sacrifice would not have been possible a few months ago. Even if the same damage to Cologne could have been guaranteed, the RAF would not have dared forfeit 47 new bombers to attain it, for at that time bombers of those types and trained pilots for them were very few. The risk of their loss could not have been undertaken by the RAF or by the Government.
That fundamental principle of the bold offensive—first having adequate strength, so that large risks .can be calculated and accepted in exchange for victory—applies to every form of warfare. It was seen in Poland and Flanders in 1940, where the Nazis, vastly preponderant in strength, pushed boldly forward, took their initial losses and by pouring in more men instantly gained victories in rapid succession. The Japanese followed this same principle repeatedly, taking heavy losses at the outset of every campaign, because they had ample reserves, and as a result, winning a whole series of campaigns.
It was seen in Russia’s bold fighting south of Kharkov in the past fortnight. This was not an offensive victory by Russia, to be sure, but Timoshenko’s strong thrust forward into the German ranks quite clearly blasted the German plans for their own offensive in that area. Timoshenko could not have undertaken it unless he had possessed large resources and had been willing to sacrifice some of them. Unless he had been strong enough to take the “calculated risk,” it is likely he would have suffered far greater losses a little later. One can forecast that the same consideration will ultimately determine our own campaign against Japan—not to waste time in small attacks. Rather the aim seems to be to accumulate such great strength that, once initiated, our attack resources will be able to accept losses at the outset, but that our momentum will carry through to victory.
Nor is it difficult to assume that this same consideration is the present design for American-British co-operation in Europe. If the war’s exigencies permit, the hope would surely be that somewhere in the British Isles we may be able to build up combined British and American air and ground forces to a preponderance over Germany’s possible strength on the Western front. Only then can a wholly satisfactory grand offensive be undertaken. But that end can be achieved only when we can produce the shipping and the other resources which so vast an enterprise requires. And the question is whether the other exigencies of this world-wide war will permit us time to carry out that plan methodically, or whether we may have to initiate the atta'ck somewhat earlier than we might wish.
H.M.S. “Penelope"
Washington Post, June 7.—The thrilling story of one of the fightingest, stanchest ships in the British Navy—the light cruiser H.M.S. Penelope—was related at this port today by its modest skipper. The Penelope’s captain is Angus Nichol, who described himself to newspapermen as a former “humble pen-pusher in the Admiralty.” His story disclosed better than any high-flown adjectives that for a “pen- pusher” he is one whale of a fighting skipper. Captain Nichol’s account was of the events leading up to the arrival of his bombed and battered man-o’-war at this port for overhaul and repairs, its guns worn out and its ammunition exhausted. It was an almost incredible story of punishment inflicted on an immobilized ship in dry dock at Malta, and of how her crew fought back against tremendous odds. The Penelope’s saga began when the British left Norway, and the cruiser was rebased at Malta. Day after day the warship was pounded by tons of bombs. A bomb which dropped between pier and ship caused the first serious damage to the Penelope, its explosion ripping a great hole in the cruiser’s hold, forcing her to be placed in dry dock. Then the Nazis really went after the ship.
“In one day,” Captain Nichol said, “we were attacked seven times by waves of German bombers. They came over 15 or so planes at a time. They pounded away at us for a fortnight, and we had so many holes in us from shrapnel that we were renamed H.M.S. ‘Pepperpot’ until we plugged the holes with wood plugs. Then with all these plugs sticking out of us, the ship was called H.M.S. ‘Porcupine.’ ”
“The longer we stayed in dry dock,” the captain went on, “the more our guns wore out. We fired 75,000 rounds of ammunition from our small guns in a month and 5,000 rounds from our 4-inch guns. I asked the gunnery officer how much longer we could go on and he told me that the guns were already nearing the point where they would explode prematurely. Strangely enough, on our last day in dry dock, we did have a premature explosion and it killed the gunnery officer—the one man on the ship aside from myself who knew the dangers.
We got attention every day and at night sneak raiders came over. Although we know we got three bombers, severely damaged five and probably many others in co-operation with the shore batteries, I knew we should have to get out of there and make it an action job. We got some welders and other help from the Army and finished in four days a job that was estimated to take a month. We left with what we were told was a “sporting chance” of being seaworthy. We had lost the gunnery officer, 3 men, and had about SO wounded and 120 scratched or damaged by shrapnel—I got a splinter myself in a place not generally mentioned—and we left the more seriously wounded behind. There was a fair chance that we might have to take to the lifeboats and having wounded men aboard would have complicated things.
The first morning out, Italian planes showed up. They were the first we had seen at Malta, and they whistled up some more from Sardinia. We had five attacks from eleven in the morning until four in the afternoon. Our ammunition ran out after the fifth attack and some of our guns could not be fired, but fortunately there wasn’t a sixth attack. We were very heartily bombed, too, but you feel different about it at sea. You can move around a bit and you rather feel that your dignity would be hurt if you were hit.
The Penelope put in at Gibraltar, had her guns replaced and some more of her holes welded up, and then headed across the Atlantic. She experienced no excitement in the crossing except that a day or half a day out of port the captain believed two periscopes were sighted.
“We just sighted them for a second behind us,” he said. “We dropped a depth charge just to show them they’d better be careful—then we ran like a frightened kitten. In our condition we weren’t going to do anything belligerent—we weren’t hunting subs.”
Bomber-Fighter
Scientific American, June.—A new airplane with a dual personality—fighter as well as bomber—has enabled the British to develop a technique of bombing entirely new even among the novelties of modern aerial warfare. In a day when new planes are being equipped with superchargers to cruise in the heights of the substratosphere, this latest air weapon hugs the ground and even dips into hollows or ravines to hide from enemy fire. While most bombers are heavy, lumbering craft requiring for protection convoys of fast fighters or the shelter of high altitudes and masking clouds or darkness, these new ships need no escort and make no attempt at high-altitude flying. With military experts pinning their faith on intricate bomb- sights, these pilots use no aiming devices at all, according to Science Service.
Machine-gun “strafing” from low altitudes is something European fighters have been familiar with since the days of World War I. Dive bombers are by now taken for granted. But this new sort of “horizontal bombing” from planes grazing the tops of the hedges, and whizzing by at 340-mile-an-hour speed, has provided the Germans with a complete surprise. The British journal Flight reports it as fact that the Germans are building 30-foot anti-aircraft towers in order to be able to shoot down on these new bombers. The new technique has produced its own problems in ballistics. When a bomb hits the ground from such a low height, it ricochets along the ground horizontally and hits the target from the side instead of from above. This is all right for a huge target. But one pilot who watched a companion attack a railway station reports that the bombs went clean through both walls of the station and exploded harmlessly some 300 yards away.
The airplane is in some danger from its own bombs at such low altitudes. In order to be reasonably safe from the explosion of a 250-pound bomb such as those carried by the new Hurricane, an airplane must be at a greater height than 1,500 feet—2,000 feet would be better. To get around this, delayed-action bombs that do not explode on impact are being used, and formations have abandoned their sentimental attachment for the V symbol in favor of flight abreast. If one plane flew behind the others, the last man would be blown up by the bombs dropped by the leader.
The regular procedure has been this. The planes cross the channel flying in formation at economical cruising speed. As soon as the coast of France is reached, they throw the throttles wide open and zip across country at full speed, some 500 feet per second. At this speed anti-aircraft fire finds them a very difficult target, and they have approached, passed, and gone before interceptor planes can leave the ground. The two bombs carried by each plane are both dropped at one time, some distance from the target to allow for the tendency to ricochet along the ground in the direction of the plane’s flight. Before their bombs explode, the bombers are already away—and no longer bombers. With their loads discharged, these dualpersonality aircraft become fighters with all the speed and maneuverability for which the Hurricane is famous, capable of dealing with any interceptor planes.
GERMANY
Luftwaffe
The Aeroplane (London), May 15.— From an administrative point of view, the Luftwaffe is an independent branch of the services, but strategically and tactically it is dependent on the decisions of a higher authority, the Obcrkommando der Wchr- macht (OKW) under Generalfeldmarschall Keitel. Although Goring is technically head of the German Air Force and holds a rank higher than that of Keitel, the chief of the OKW has greater powers. He plans the operations of the German armed forces and allots to the Commanders in Chief of the Army, Navy, and Luftwaffe the parts their units will have to play in them. Keitel, and not the three Service Chiefs, issues the daily communiqu6s.
The Chief of the OKW has his own general staff, on which all three services are represented. The Luftwaffe’s permanent representative is Colonel General K. Bodenschatz, Goring’s A.D.C. in the last war. Through these liaison officers close collaboration between the OKW and each of three branches has been established, and this collaboration is further strengthened by inter-service liaison officers. The Luftwaffe has one liaison officer each with the Commanders in Chief of the Army and Navy, Generals of Aviators R. Bogatsch and H. Ritter. These officers have to maintain liaison between the Commanders in Chief, direct the operations of those Luftwaffe formations which are immediately under the command of the other two services and supervise the work of the Luftwaffe officers and their staffs attached to the Groups of Armies, to the Armies, Army Corps, Divisions, and Brigades. Such a complicated scheme for the collaboration of the three services may be considered cumbersome, and the Germans themselves admit it. Yet, so far, they have had no cause to try another. The collaboration of the Army and the Luftwaffe during the Battle of France was judged to be as good as could have been expected.
Since the beginning of the Russian campaign, the collaboration has been further improved by putting a reconnaissance squadron, a wing of dive bombers and a battalion of anti-aircraft artillery under the operational command of each Panzer Division; the airplane types are the Hs 126, the Fw 189, the Ju 87n or the Ju 88A6 and, occasionally, the Hs 123 biplane dive bomber, up to about 50 in number. Should these airplanes require fighter protection, the chief Luftwaffe liaison officer with the Group of Armies puts a squadron or a wing at the disposal of the Luftwaffe liaison officer with the individual Panzer Division, who employs them according to the orders of the divisional commander. During the first month of the fighting in Russia, German papers published maps of the front which showed the distribution of the armed forces. According to this map, the three Air Fleets were attached to the three Groups of Armies whose commanders were in charge of the operations. The officer-incharge of an air fleet takes part in the daily meetings of the Commander in Chief of the Group of Armies and of the officers commanding the armies under him, during which the proposed operations of the following day are outlined and discussed.
Anti-aircraft artillery units co-operate with the other services on almost the same lines. Until the beginning of 1941, mobile anti-aircraft units were part of the Luftwaffe, whereas batteries working from fixed sites—the Festungsflaks—were under the Army. Since then, the Army has formed its own anti-aircraft artillery units. Should the commander of an Army unit require additional anti-aircraft protection, Luftwaffe formations are put under his command and not under that of the highest Air Force officer in that area.
Collaboration between the Luftwaffe and the Navy is organized on similar lines. The Kiistenseeflugkommando fulfils the functions of both the Coastal Command and the Fleet Air Arm. It provides the units for long-distance patrols over the sea, for mine-laying or torpedo attacks, and ship- borne airplanes for German warships. Should the aircraft-carrier Count Zeppelin, which is now in the former Polish port of Gdynia, ever be completed during this war, the flying personnel will doubtless be taken from the Kiistenseeflugkommando.
This unit does not consist exclusively of members of the Luftwaffe. It also includes men from the Navy. Observers, and pilots, too, are often chosen from naval personnel. Flying units working with the Navy are under the command of the Navy. If, for instance, the commander of the U-boats, Admiral K. Donitz, requires air support for an attack on a convoy or for reconnaissance over the Atlantic, the Luftwaffe formations sent are under his operational command. From this, the conclusion might be drawn that Luftwaffe units always fight under the command of other services. That is far from the truth. There have been occasions in this war when operations ordered by the OKW have been directed by officers of the Luftwaffe. This does not include the Battle of Britain, which was a Luftwaffe undertaking from beginning to end, and was directed by Luftwaffe chiefs.
But the conquest of Crete and the withdrawal of the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prim Eugen from Brest to North Sea ports were operations in which Luftwaffe officers commanded military and naval forces as well as air units. The conquest of Crete was directed by Generaloberst A. Lohr, of the 4th Air Fleet, who had command not only of Army units, but also of German and Italian naval formations. The move of the three German warships was directed by Marshal Sperrle, and ViceAdmiral Ciliax, the commander of the naval vessels, acted as a junior officer.
This survey shows that the Luftwaffe is not so independent as is sometimes claimed by speakers and writers in this country. What must always be remembered in assessing the status of the German Air Force is that at one moment it may be the servant and the next the master of the other two services. German military strategists do not view war from three distinct angles, but from one, and the primary role is given to the service that must play the most important part.
New Air Tactics
Washington Post, June 7 (by Walter Kerr, copyright by New York Tribune, Inc.), Moscow, June 6.—In the recent battles in the Kharkov area, where the Red Army, by a surprise attack, warded off a planned German offensive against Rostov, the German Army revealed certain changes in its tactics and the existence of new equipment. When the Germans counterattacked in the Izyum-Barkcnkova sector, south of Kharkov, they used none of those reckless, all-out maneuvers that were successful throughout Europe until they reached the gates of Moscow. Instead, they moved carefully. In the air, the Germans disclosed the most important changes in tactics and introduced two new pieces of equipment; one was a new plane, the Focke-Wulf 198, a single-engine machine of the pusher type with a double fuselage and machine guns firing to the rear; the other was a small explosive bomb dropped by means of a small parachute from unescorted bombers to protect the bombers in the rear from Soviet fighter planes. The new Focke- Wulf has not yet been used in combat, but a number of them were downed on reconnaissance. The small parachute bombs were timed to explode in the air several hundred yards from the bomber.
Last summer the Germans used about half their aviation in depth and the rest on the battlefields, but this spring, that is, in the last two or three weeks, they have concentrated almost all their available forces over narrow sectors of the front in order to obtain temporary superiority in that area and so aid their ground troops either on defense or offense. Sometimes they have assigned as many as 4 planes to a mile of front, and in decisive sectors have made as many as 1,000 to 1,200 flights daily.
The second great tactical change is that the bombers fly higher than before, averaging now altitudes of 3,500 meters instead of 1,000 meters and so putting their planes up somewhere between 1$ miles and 2 miles.
The purpose is to avoid Soviet infantry weapons which now are being massed against enemy aircraft. To concentrate a great number of planes in one sector, the German air force resorted to many tricks in order to camouflage their intention. One was to send their bombers aloft from one field, bomb, and then fly to another field nearer the intended operational zone.
The third great tactical change, all part of the same objective, which is to mass planes in a vital spot, involves giving up the normal system of escorting bombers with fighter aviation. In attempts to make this possible, the Germans send out large forces of pursuit ships to force a battle, if possible, with Soviet aviation and thus obtain temporary superiority. During that period, if they achieve it, the bombers fly unescorted while the fighters hammer the Soviet ground force.
The plan is easier to describe than to carry out, for it can be countered by the intelligent use of reserve aircraft by the defending side. Frequently, to crack the German plan, the Russians assemble three or four times as much fighter aviation as usual in a sector where they anticipate trouble. The result is that both forces keep switching squadrons from one sector to another.
When sending pursuit planes ahead to clear the way for bombers, the German air force sends Messerschmitt 109s at a comparatively low altitude. Above them fly the modernized version, or the Messerschmitt 109-F, not looking for trouble but hoping to find Russian planes off guard. If they do, they make one fast dive, then resume their high position and continue the hunt. These “shock formations,” which try to create temporary superiority, number from 8 to 12 planes and sometimes 20. But when the Soviet Air Force has enough fighters in a sector selected by the Germans, the latter are forced into as many as 20 to 25 battles daily on a 12-to-15-mile front, with the result that they must abandon the plan and return to escorting bombers. The bombers themselves, when unescorted, come cither in one great formation or in echelons. The latter system normally involves 25 to 30 planes after an objective, with one or two or three planes following them, then another group, and so forth throughout the day. The group of bombers break up into formation of seven to nine planes when they near their objective. These smaller formations in turn break up into groups of from two to three planes over the targets themselves. The purpose is to hammer the ground troops in as wide an area as possible for as long a time as possible and so exhaust anti-aircraft guns. On the defensive, the Germans first strike at enemy headquarters staffs, communications, and command posts.
Various Notes
The Moscow radio today broadcast a Tass dispatch from Geneva reporting that Grand Admiral Erich Raedcr of Germany recently commissioned 500 German graduates of French naval schools in Bordeaux and Brest. Several hundred already had arrived at Toulon, where they visited the French ships. Tass reported the ships’ officers were instructed to give the Germans the utmost assistance in inspecting the ships as they arc supposed to participate in the “local maneuvers” of the French Fleet in the coastal zone. The Soviet agency also said it was reported an Italian warship and two submarines called at Toulon simultaneously with the German navy men.—Chicago Tribune, May 31.
More News of the Blohm und Voss Bv 141 single-motor unsymmetrical monoplane was given recently from the German Radio Station at Zeesen, which claims that it has been used successfully on the Eastern front in some numbers. The motor—a 1,600-hp. BMW 801—is mounted on the port wing in the nose of a long nacelle which carries the half tailplane. The enclosed cabin- nacelle is mounted on the starboard wing. It has accommodation for a crew of three. Armament includes cannon and machine guns—most likely two cannon and two movable machine guns fixed to fire forwards and one in the tail cone turret. The Germans claim that the cabin oilers an excellent view in all directions. This cannot be true of the side view to port which is interrupted by the big motor boom. A further claim is that it is “very fast and has great maneuverability as well as a fast climb.” If the motor is indeed a BMW 801, rough calculations suggest that the top speed is likely to be about 290 m.p.h. at 17,000 ft. The Bv 141 is designed by Dr. Ing. Richard Vogt chiefly for tactical purposes and is said to have been in quantity production for some months at a new Blohm and Voss factory in Eastern Germany. As we go to press new photographs have been received of this interesting oddity. We hope to publish them next week.—The Aeroplane, May 22.
JAPAN
New Type Sub
Washington Post, June 7.—An inspection of one of the four Japanese submarines sunk in an attack six days ago on Sydney Harbor revealed today that the salvaged craft cannot be classed with the midget type employed at Pearl Harbor, but is obviously of a large midget class and apparently represents a new development in Japanese submarine designing. The submarine, which has been placed on large wooden blocks on an isolated island still has a torpedo containing 600 pounds of explosive protruding from its bow. The missile, its release cap still closed, apparently became caught in the twisted frame of a steel sawtooth cutting device used for severing cables and submarine nets. There were two such cutters, one at the bow and the other before the oval conning tower.
The stern has been torn away perhaps by an interior explosion, and there are deep indentations in the hull aft of the conning tower, indicating the effectiveness of depth charges dropped by the harbor defenses. The Japanese craft and its mates succeeded in sinking an old ferry boat before they were destroyed. The salvaged vessel measures 57 feet. It is 37 feet from the nose to the center of the conning tower, the point of balance of the craft. The circumference at its greatest size is 22 feet and the beam at its widest about 6 feet. The stern was sheared off at a seam about 20 feet aft of the conning tower. The Japanese crew apparently operated under severe conditions, for a central passageway measured only about 18 inches in width and was not more than 4 feet in height. Persons of medium height could not possibly squeeze through it. Until the interior has been explored the number of the crew will not be known. On the port side the figure 21 is printed in large numerals. The starboard side is marked with vertical white stripes, possibly indicating the positions of interior chambers.
On the way to the island where the submarine was placed yesterday, the inspection party passed the ferry boat which was the only casualty of the enemy attack. The ship lay with its tall smokestack and a part of its superstructure showing. It is too early to be certain that the enemy submarine squadron has been completely destroyed, although four of the craft were sunk off Sydney and three others were reported blasted later by Allied airmen. The salvaged submarine appears too large to have been launched from a mother submarine. However, since it apparently had a limited radius of action it would seem likely that the undersea vessel must have come from a mother ship, the search for which is still under way.
Japan’s Rule
New York Herald Tribune, June 21, by Wilfrid Fleisher.—A combination of the mailed fist and the gloved hand seems to characterize Japan’s policy in her newly acquired territories of the southern Pacific, according to the limited information available from Japanese broadcasts, the only source of news from the conquered regions. In the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies Japan seems to be applying the mailed fist, while in Indo-China and particularly in Thailand, the policy is that of the gloved hand with the evident intent of winning over the native populations to Japanese rule. These deductions are based on the personalities of the men who have been placed in control of the conquered territories. In the Philippines it is Prince General Yasuhiko Asaka, commander of the Japanese troops that captured and ravaged Nanking in December, 1937, who is Governor General, and that speaks amply for itself. In the Dutch East Indies the commander in chief is General Count Juichi Terauchi, former War Minister and former commander in chief of the Japanese forces in north China after the outbreak of Chinese-Japanese hostilities in the summer of 1937. Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura is in command in Borneo and Lieutenant General Tomayuki Yamashita in Malaya. This means military rule, and any one familiar with Japanese military administration knows that it can only be a ruthless one.
On the other hand, Indo-China is under the administration of Japanese Ambassador Kcnkichi Yoshizawa, a former Foreign Minister and generally classed in Japan as a liberal. He went to Indo-China soon before the beginning of the present Pacific war when Japan was pushing her way into southern Indo-China in preparation for her thrust into Thailand. Teiji Tsubokami, a little known diplomat, is ambassador to conquered Thailand, having also taken up his post immediately before the invasion. The policy in Indo-China seems to be to win over the natives by showing them that they are no worse off under Japanese administration than they were as a colony of France, while in Thailand Japanese policy seems to be to treat it as a puppet state by extending a “cooperative” hand and leaving Thai officials in executive posts. The Japanese seem to have come to the conclusion, probably based largely on the degree of resistance they encountered, that the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies are going to be difficult countries to deal with and that they can expect little co-operation from the natives. The Filipinos fought with the American forces of General Douglas Mac- Arthur and later Lieutenant General
Jonathan Wainwright to the very end, and many months longer than the Japanese probably calculated. They gave clear evidence that they were prepared to make every sacrifice for their country, and there seems to have been no “fifth column” in the Philippines.
Prince Asaka, who flew to Manila in an armored plane in March to become Governor General of the conquered Filipino territory, is a cousin of Emperor Hirohito and was reared in the Japanese Army. He is 55 years old and received his early military education in France. He became an instructor at the Military Staff College in Japan and in 1930 was placed in active command of an infantry brigade. In 1933 he was appointed commander of the important Imperial Guards Division in Tokyo, and two years later he was removed to adorn the shelf of the Supreme Military Council. When war with China broke out in 1937 he was in command of the Japanese forces which attacked Nanking, and was the commander directly responsible for the outrages in that city. When his army ran amuck and the Japanese high command sought to re-establish some discipline, he was recalled to Tokyo, as was General Iwane Matsui, then commander in chief of the Japanese expeditionary forces. So far as is known, General Matsui has never had another command since.
General Terauchi, who is supreme commander in the southern Pacific, with jurisdiction particularly over the Dutch East Indies, is one of the main figures in the Japanese Army. He is the eldest son of Field Marshal Count Seigi Terauchi, a former Premier, and himself has frequently been mentioned as likely to be named field marshal. He became War Minister in the Cabinet of Premier Koki Hirota set up after the military revolt of February 26, 1936, at a time when the Japanese Army was honeycombed with rebel elements and it was not known how widespread the revolting group was. Terauchi was said to be popular with all factions of the army, and he was strong enough to have the rebel officers shot. Later, when war broke out with China, he was made commander of the Japanese forces in the north. When the present European war began, Terauchi was on his way to Nuremberg with a Japanese mission to attend the Nazi party congress. The congress was called off and Terauchi and his companions never got farther than Switzerland. Their mission was presumably intended to align Japan in a formal military alliance with the Axis, a purpose not effected until a year later. Terauchi had long been a strong advocate of fortifying the mandated islands, which Japan was prohibited from fortifying under the mandate but which, it has since become clear, she violated. Under Terauchi the Dutch East Indies can expect an outright military administration with innumerable decrees and restrictions. Recent Japanese broadcasts have betrayed some of the conditions which are being imposed on the natives of the Indies. One broadcast told of a Japanese order to native girls between the ages of 12 and 25 to serve in canteens of the Concordiat Society, a Japanese Army organization, while another broadcast revealed that natives were prohibited from withdrawing an amount of more than 30 Dutch guilders from any bank. Throughout the conquered territories the Japanese have forced local populations to accept their military currency, in the same manner in which the Germans have forced their paper marks on the conquered peoples of Europe. The Japanese military currency is in yen value, but has no backing whatever.
The case of Indo-China is different. Yoshizawa, who went to Hanoi as ambassador with a staff of 300 assistants before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, is a son-in-law of the late Premier Ki Inukai, who was assassinated by army and navy cadets in 1932. Yoshizawa has long been regarded as a liberal and as opposed to army dominance in Japan. He was ambassador to France and Japan’s representative in the League of Nations when Japan invaded Manchuria, and he was-so poor an apologist for the Japanese cause that Japanese leaders at home never quite forgave him. When the Japanese wanted to gain time in their dealings with the Dutch, they sent Yoshizawa to the Indies to negotiate an oil deal. A man of characteristically slow action, he managed to drag the negotiations out for months, but the Dutch never yielded an inch and Yoshizawa returned to Japan a year ago empty-handed but not discredited, since nothing else had been expected of him. What has come as a surprise is that Yoshizawa agreed to serve the cause of the militarists, first in the Indies and now in Indo-China. Yoshizawa told me in the summer of 1940, when we traveled together up to Karuizawa, a 4- hour railway journey, that he had no use for the militarist government of Premier Prince Fumimaro Konoye. He expressed profound sympathy for the French, who had been conquered by the Germans. Yoshizawa’s appointment to Indo-China seems to signify that Japan is to attempt a different policy there and that his task will be mainly to try to win the natives over. In view of the schism that existed in Indo-China between the Vichy authorities and Free French sympathizers after the fall of France, and the consequent loosening up in the administration of the French colony, the Japanese may figure that the natives will be no more adverse to Japanese rule than they were to their former masters if they are treated with care, in the beginning at least.
This policy of the gloved hand is being carried even a step further in Thailand, where the Japanese maintain the fiction of “co-operation” rather than conquest. Thus as in the case of Indo-China, a Japanese Ambassador is the main figure and Japanese broadcasts from Thailand have significantly omitted any mention of Japanese names, in contrast to broadcasts from the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies, where decrees bear the signatures of Japanese commanders. The impression the Japanese are trying to create in Thailand is that Thailand remains a separate state, but within the sphere of Japan’s “new order.”
U.S.S.R.
Soviet Cavalry
New York Herald Tribune, June 7, Copyright, 1942, New York Tribune, Inc. —Probably no arm of the service has undergone such a radical change on the long eastern front during the fall, winter, and spring fighting as the Red cavalry. Not only has the horse not given way to the tank, truck, and armored car, but the Soviet Army has increased the number of cavalry divisions, and the Germans for the first time in the war are using large cavalry formations this spring. And that does not mean cavalry in the sense of a lot of vehicles and a lot of horses. It means that horses are carrying and drawing plenty of fire power supported, when the situation requires, by tanks and planes. I talked today about the cavalry in this war with a soldier who knows as much about it as any one. He is a Cossack from the Urals, Major General Victor Timofeivitch Ubu- kov. General Ubukov is 41 years old. He fought in the Russian civil war after the revolution, and he knows his business. General Ubukov told me that the Red Army found the Germans for the first time using cavalry this spring in formations as large as a brigade and a division. They have been situated on the central front and in the direction of Kharkov, and he said that I could expect to hear this summer of an engagement between the opposing cavalry forces. He seemed to enjoy the prospect.
The cavalry leader told me, too, that cavalry divisions had doubled their antiaircraft and artillery equipment and had increased the number of anti-tank weapons during the winter and spring. He said that the cavalry hits harder today, though it hit hard enough last summer, fall, and winter. General Ubukov also told me that a saber charge wasn’t a thing of the past, though, of course, it could only be used in special circumstances. And he told me that a modern cavalry division wasn’t afraid of a tank division. Here are stories that the general told me to illustrate his points, but first he wanted me to make clear that the basis of theory on the use of the cavalry in the Soviet Union was its use in large formations, from a division to larger formations equipped with modern weapons and with air squadrons in support, fighting in a front of their own and not attached to the armies. Only after understanding that, he said, was it possible to understand what the cavalry has accomplished here. He thought that the trouble with the cavalry in Poland and France was its use in small formations, dispersed about the front and often handicapped by too many vehicles. In principle, the Soviet cavalry avoids vehicles, if possible.
One example of the cavlary’s striking power that he cited occurred last year near Pervomaiks, in the Ukraine, when Lieutenant General Pavel A. Belov’s 1st Guards Cavalry Corps ran into a German motorized force in March. It went into battle directly and captured the town of Balta. It made its way to the rear flank of the German 19th Motorized Division and the 293d and 297th Infantry Divisions. The three German divisions were routed, their counterattacks repulsed and their loss boosted to 4,500 men by the use of anti-tank guns. That was an example of the cavalry’s striking power in an engagement. An example of the cavalry on the defense is the battle between a force under Major General Kruchonkin, defending the banks of the River Ikva last June 26 and 27, and the German 11th Armored Division. The attacks of the Nazis were beaten off, the enemy leaving 60 machines destroyed on the field, together with the personnel of two infantry battalions and a number of guns. That cavalry force had as its mission the delay of the enemy and then a withdrawal.
As the war progressed, the Soviet cavalry learned to increase its fire power, still sticking to the principle of not using vehicles when they might interfere with the mobility of the horse units. An example of the cavalry in an attack was last November’s counteroffensive, which liberated the important city of Rostov. The city had been seized when a German armored force broke through the narrow front, but it made the mistake of leaving its north flank wide open. The attacking Soviet cavalry, composed of several divisions and supported by light tanks and air power, struck swiftly and routed the Nazi 16th Tank Division and the 60th Motorized Division. In that instance the cavalry followed the tanks and, behind a curtain of fire, charged with drawn swords. Other examples of the cavalry on the offensive against armored forces occurred south of Moscow, where General Belov’s corps routed German General Heinz Guderian’s force, and west of Moscow, where Major General Lev Dovator routed another Nazi unit. Belov’s attack followed a forced night march. The rule of most of the marches is that the cavalry carries its fodder along. General Ubukov said that the ordinary steppe horse is best. They are about 55 inches high and of greater endurance than the Anglo-Don from the Don and Caucasus.
“Mounted saber charges,” the general admitted, “are rare, but they are still made. At the end of 1941, Dovator’s corps charged into the German 6th Army west of Moscow and destroyed a whole infantry regiment, killing 2,000 officers and men. Cavalrymen in that engagement captured more than 300 vehicles, 100 cannon and many machine guns and other weapons. They even routed the headquarters of the 6th Army, and prisoners said that a rumor spread that 100,000 Cossacks had broken through. They were Cossacks, but there weren’t 100,000 of them.”
Of the Soviet cavalry today, 7 divisions have been named Guards Divisions for their excellent work. One of the Red cavalry’s greatest losses was General Dovator, who died in a Russian hospital after receiving injuries from the explosion of a land mine.
AVIATION Training Paratroops
Aero Digest, June.—The goal of 2,000,000 officers and men in the U. S. Army Air Forces announced recently by the War Department lends added interest to the fact that improved technique is reducing injuries incurred by parachute jumpers almost to a vanishing point. Uncle Sam’s Parachute Battalions turn out men who, in the opinion of many, have the highest morale and are the hardest and toughest of any soldiers in the Army. It is true that the parachute jumper undergoes a severe and rigorous course of training, but the popular belief that the rate of parachute injuries is alarmingly high is false. Accurate records have been kept on injuries since the activation of the Parachute Battalions, and these records show there has been a gradual decrease in the number of injuries as improved methods of training have been utilized. The intensive ground training prior to the actual jumping from the plane is undoubtedly the reason for the relatively small number of injuries.
In a recent report to the American Medical Association, Lieutenants John T. Vandover, Laurence J. Cohen and William J. Tobin of the Army Medical Corps disclosed that during the 18-month period ending January 31, 1942, out of approximately 21,000 jumps, there was a total of 217, or 1.04 per cent, injuries. Of these, ' 171, or 0.82 per cent, were minor mishaps. There were 46 fractures (no compound fractures) or .23 per cent. Approximately
4,0 men took part in these jumps, with each man making an average of 5 or 6 leaps. An average of from 5 to 6 days was allowed for treatment, during which period the men were removed from duty. Only one parachutist, jumping from 750 ft. was killed when his main and emergency parachutes failed to open completely. Jumping from this height has been discontinued owing to inadequate time required for the parachutist to use his second ’chute. Nearly all of the injuries occurred during the last phase of the jump, or upon contact with the ground. There are many reasons which may cause such a casualty, including cross-wind currents, uncontrolled oscillations of the parachute, and irregular terrain. Either a combination of these factors, or varying degrees of each, may result in different degrees of injuries.
Wind is the main hazard to jumpers. If cross-wind currents are strong, the increased oscillation will cause the parachutist to strike the ground unevenly. If one of his ankles should hit first and the wind is on the parachutist’s side, a violent sheering force may be developed sufficiently to break the ankle joint. Oscillation may also result from inexperience on the part of the parachutist handling the risers. The wind currents within 200 ft. of the ground are most dangerous, because at that level the parachute jumper must prepare to land. The irregularity of the ground also constitutes a definite factor in causing injuries, for if one foot lands at one level and the other at a lower or higher level the resultant unequal distribution of weight may cause an injury. Requirements for men chosen for parachute jumping are strict and rigid. The applicant must be unmarried, under 30 years of age, in excellent physical condition, and emotionally well-balanced. Each man is practically hand picked, and when he enters training school, he starts through the toughest course ever devised for an American soldier. Through a 6-week period he is hardened into physical perfection and undergoes a series of exercises which make football look like child’s play. He sprawls on the hard earth, clambers up ropes, somersaults off platforms forward and backward. In order to accustom him to landing with a forward motion, he is pulled along an inclined trolley and dropped. He must learn to spring to his feet while being jerked headfirst along the ground.
The course of ground training includes two types of jumps—the platform and the tower jumps. The platform jumps are made from levels of 4, 6, and 11 ft., although the latter have been discontinued in recent months because several injuries occurred at this unnecessary height. In this phase of training, the jumper, with harness attached, attempts to simulate what actually takes place when he lands during a parachute jump. He is taught the method of landing in order to take up the shock. He is instructed to land equally on the balls of the feet so that the shock may be partially absorbed. The shock of landing is transmitted through the ankles, legs, knees, and hips. If the procedure is carried out correctly, there is little danger during the landing phase. The student is supposed to land with the legs shoulder-width apart and the ankles held firmly, but not rigidly, and to fall forward in a roll, so that the shock may be broken at the knees and ankles. Following ground training, the pupil is ready for a jump. There are two types of tower jumps. One is known as the harness or control tower jump, and in it the student is attached to the harness with an open ’chute controlled by cables. He falls about 250 ft. and lands on a rubber steel spring mattress. In these 250-ft. towers, modeled after the one used at the New York World’s Fair, he makes five descents in a chair and four in harness. Then he is strapped horizontally in his harness, hauled up 150 ft. and at a signal told to pull his rip cord for a 15-ft. drop which jerks him into an upright position. During this phase his nerve is tested by an odd device: he holds a tiny rubber ball in his left hand and if he loses the ball he hasn’t full control of himself. This shock test eliminates a few men; a few more are washed out in the next step—two jumps from the top of another tower with an open parachute. Having passed all tests thus far, the soldier is now ready for the jump from a plane. Certain precautions have been made to condition him psychologically so that it will be difficult for him not to jump. This is done partly by making him familiar with his ’chute. Every man packs his own, learning how to do this in twelve 4-hour lessons. Plane flights give inexperienced men the feel of the air. A seasoned jumper goes along and after two hours of riding, takes the beginner to the open door, talks to him casually about jumping out. Because the parachutist has been building up to it for six weeks, the first jump is not the hardest. The second jump is still not too difficult as part of the emotional stimulation of the first jump carries over to the second. Another factor involved is that the men feel if they don’t make the second jump their comrades will think they were scared by the first. But by the time for the third, fourth, or fifth jump, the excitement is over, his curiosity is satisfied, and he has proved he has the nerve. Now he realizes clearly that jumping is a tough and sometimes a painful job. A parachutist in training can aways refuse to jump, and a man who refuses is merely sent back to the ground troops—with no hard feelings. He is sent away immediately and is never permitted to mingle with the parachute troops, obviously both for his own sake and theirs. The instructors never attempt to push or to persuade a man to jump from a plane. They prefer to lose misfits early rather than late. After a man qualifies, however, that is when he completes one solo and four mass jumps, a refusal to jump is treated the same as disobedience of any military order. Out of 150 men who start, there is an average of 22 rejections: 5 on the towers, 5 in the planes, 3 for physical reasons, 2 for inability to learn ’chute packing, and 7 for minor injuries. According to many of the trainees, the take-off of the plane is the worst moment for most parachutists. After that, tension begins to ease, the men indulge in light conversation in their scats, chew gum, smoke cigarettes. But as the plane makes a preliminary swing over the jumping field, tenseness again mounts. Every man is silent, some are perspiring, their minds working at terrific speed. At this time behavior is contagious—“buck fever” can run through the cabin. In one instance, there were 5 refusals in the same plane. At an order of “Stand up” from the jumpmaster, the 12 men fill the aisle. Tension vanishes at once. At the second order, “Hook up,” each man hooks a snap fastener to a cable extending along the cabin roof. A line attaches the snap fastener to the cover of his parachute and when he jumps, this line will jerk the cover off. The jumpmaster— usually a sergeant or lieutenant—shouts “Go!” He jumps first, his men come piling after, and all are out within 10 seconds.
A parachutist does not step out. Neither does he dive. He jumps. First, he quickly spreads his feet, grabs the sides of the door, leans head and shoulders into the air and jumps straight out, pushing with feet and hands so that he stays upright. The propeller blast gives him a half turn and he is facing the rear, feeling with his right hand for the rip cord of his reserve ’chute. If he keeps his eyes open (and some cannot) he may see the plane’s tail passing over him. He may see a ’chute opening below, or another jumper up above. There are some who say there is no sensation of falling; others maintain such a statement is pure bunk—that there is a definite feeling of dropping. And then the ’chute opens.
At best, there is a rough jerk, and it may be a hard wrenching one if the parachutist has fallen into a head first position or if the plane was not slowed down to about 95 m.p.h. But on one point all jumpers agree—no matter whether it is terrible or merely tough, the jerk is welcomed. The relief is so great that many parachutists have failed to notice pain until after landing. The third stage, the period of floating down, is the one parachutists like. They even refer to it as delightful. They shout to one another as they come down. As the jumper gains experience he learns that there is less worry about the jump, more about the landing. A few feet before landing a parachutist gives his riser cords a hard tug which pulls him up and cushions his fall. He bends his knees slightly, checking a natural impulse to pull them all the way up. If there is a strong wind and he is being pulled in a diagonal fall, he tries not to hit on his feet but to land in a tumble. Immediately upon landing he tries to collapse his ’chute. Racing to get it between him and the wind, he knocks it down and unbuckles the harness. If any risk is involved in testing new equipment or technique, an officer tries it first. The first jump into water, the first with a gas mask and with a heavy camera were all made by officers. When information was needed on the method of slipping in on a target from 3,000 ft. two officers went up and tried it. After qualifying as a parachutist, the soldier makes an average of about one jump a month. The important job at this stage is combat training, and parachutists must develop speed in getting to their weapons, which are dropped in separate parachutes. They must develop also expertness in turning these weapons upon targets which have been selected in advance. The parachute jumpers practice during military maneuvers so that operating under actual combat conditions may be imitated as closely as possible. A parachute attack is planned down to the small- cst details. The enemy territory is mapped from the air. The terrain is then modeled on sand tables, and each company, platoon, or squad is given a definite mission. All parachutists are trained to use pistol, rifle, tommy gun, grenade, mortar and machine gun. Some in each platoon are trained as demolition experts. Parachutists can destroy parked planes in a tenth the time it would take infantrymen to do the same job. In 30 minutes, 12 parachutists could disrupt the water system of a city of
50,0 persons. They know exactly what to wreck. The fact that the number of injuries in all phases of aviation is surprisingly small, and that the percentage of such injuries has decreased rapidly during the last few months due to improved methods of preliminary training, is of vast importance to every person in the United States. The National Institute of Health at Bethesda, Maryland, is constructing a temporary building to house new facilities for research on problems of aviation medicine. This building is intended primarily for a new low pressure, low temperature chamber, and accessory refrigerator chamber, and accessory refrigerating equipment for the purpose of testing every type of apparatus used by aircraft personnel, including such items as oxygen equipment and clothing.
The new decompression chamber is expected to provide simultaneous rapid lowering of temperature and pressure to simulate ascent from the ground at atmospheric pressure and 70° F. to an altitude pressure equivalent to 45,000 ft. and a temperature of — 70°F. The rapid change of temperature and pressures obtainable will exceed that encountered in ascent by any modern aircraft. In addition to the work on apparatus and equipment for aircraft personnel, studies are being made on the effects of sudden decompression to low pressures, the effects of anoxia, and the influence of altitude exposure on visual functions.
New Liquid-Cooled Engine
Baltimore Sun, June 4.—In an announcement foretelling a revolutionary change in naval aircraft design, the Navy disclosed today development of a huge new liquid-cooled aviation engine approaching 2,000 hp. If the Navy’s use of this extraordinary power plant follows the same general line of airplane construction adopted by the Army with liquid-cooled engines, then a new series of naval fighter craft, faster and more powerful than any now on first-line duty, is in the making.
With liquid-cooled motors, the Army developed the P-40’s which have performed brilliantly in battle from England to Australia; the speedy new P-39, or Bell Airacobra; the twin-tailed P-38 and the P-51, a “mystery” fighter. The Navy has built up its carrier-based fighter plane force almost exclusively on air-cooled engines. The best of these now produce between
1,0 and 1,200 lip., while some of the newer army pursuit craft are reported to exceed this figure. Official silence cloaked both the performance figures and future uses of the new engine. The formal announcement that it had been completed and placed on contract described it only as “considerably larger than any other liquid- cooled aircraft engine now in production,” with power sufficiently great “as to compare favorably with that of the largest- type aircraft engine presently in use.”
Biggest Engine Laboratory
U. S. Air Services, June.—Cleveland, Ohio, emerged last month in an important role aeronautically, when Dr. George W. Lewis, director of research of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, officially started activities in the committee’s new aircraft engine research laboratory at the airport. It was another step by Cleveland toward becoming a world center for aeronautics. The importance of this laboratory can’t be overstated. The site, west of the Municipal Airport, was selected in the autumn of 1940. A month later the first contract was awarded and January 23, 1941, ground was broken by Lieutenant General George H. Brett, now United Nations Deputy Commander of the Southwest Pacific in charge of Air Forces. Because of the expense and the time necessary, commercial companies cannot undertake the study of radically different types of engines. It costs more than a million dollars to develop a new type. It takes years. There is not enough aspirin to go around to take care of the headaches. Getting the bugs out of new types of engines is an art, science, and profession, combined. To find out whether there is anything in some of these radical types, we need a lot of fundamental basic knowledge about them. The work has to be done by men who burn with the desire to know everything that can be known about aeronautical engines, exclusively. It is men of this sort that will do the job for the United States in the new NACA laboratory at Cleveland. We are in a new and enterprising kind of war requiring the sharpest and most original and creative thought. On the NACA falls the burden of meeting the scientific challenge of the German laboratories to gain superiority in the technical development of aircraft.
America is spending many billions of dollars on the production of aircraft. Its plans for winning the war depend largely on its ability to achieve supremacy in the air. This of course calls for large production of aircraft, but it is equally important that their performance be at least equal to those of the enemy. It falls to the aeronautical laboratories not only to provide the new ideas to insure superior performance but at the same time to prove in advance the soundness of new designs as a whole. The contributions of the NACA have kept America in the foreground in the development of aircraft. In order to develop aircraft to the fullest, scientific research must be prosecuted with vigor and imagination.
Dr. Lewis said in an address delivered on May 8 on the occasion of the starting of research at the new Cleveland laboratory that the ceremony in itself might seem of small moment in this war-torn world, but that to him it was highly significant as the beginning of a great undertaking that will, in a very large measure, be responsible for the excellence of our aircraft of the future. He added:
I recall many years ago the dedication at the NACA laboratories at Langley Field, Virginia, of the first wind tunnel, by Admiral David W. Taylor. That wind tunnel, in light of present advances, was small, operated at low speeds, was constructed of wood, and would be considered at this time a rather inadequate piece of research equipment. Admiral Taylor, however, in dedicating that wind tunnel, stated that it marked the beginning of a great aeronautical research laboratory which, in his opinion, would prove to be the mecca of all aeronautical engineers in the world. This has come to pass. I have the same feeling with reference to this laboratory in which engine research starts today. It will be the mecca of all aircraft-engine research engineers and designers. Probably the most famous statement made during the present war was on the conclusion of the Battle of Britain fought between the air forces of Great Britain and of Germany, when Mr. Churchill stated that “never before in history have so many owed so much to so few.” In thinking of this statement one is very apt to forget that what made possible the performance of the Spitfires and Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain was the Rolls-Royce engine; and one is apt to forget also that for the past 20 years at Derby, England, a group of engineers and designers had been working year in and year out to develop that engine from 400 hp. to 1,300 hp. It is impossible to overstate the importance or the significance of aircraft-engine development in the winning of this war. Upon those excellent engines produced by American skill and ingenuity—the Pratt & Whitney, the Wright, and the Allison—and others now in the development stage—upon their performance we must largely depend for our air strength. There is no question as to the importance of the airplane in this war or any future war, and the aircraft engine is the heart of every airplane. To be assured both of superior performance in our military airplanes and of the highest efficiency in our commercial airplanes, we must of necessity provide the very best facilities for carrying on aircraft-engine research. Here in Cleveland the
United States Government, through the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, is providing the greatest engine-research laboratory that has yet been constructed. When this laboratory is in operation we can all feel reassured that the United States always will have the best aircraft engines in the world.
There will be sixteen units in this engine- research laboratory on the 200-acre site, at a cost of $18,171,000. Since Pearl Harbor construction has been expedited. Two of the major functions to be carried out in the new unit concern engine lubrication and cooling systems. These fields today are confronted with unprecedented problems because of the extension of aerial warfare to altitudes above 30,000 feet. Military airplanes no longer strive for just 25,000 to
30,0 feet; they’re reaching up to 40,000 feet and we have to make our engines effective at these ranges and higher. To simulate conditions at 40,000 feet the engine research wind tunnel must be equipped to have an air density of only one-fourth normal, flowing at 500 m.p.h. and temperatures of 48 degrees below zero. The two torque stands in the new building are capable of testing engines up to 4,000 hp. Five other research units are under construction: an engine research laboratory, the only engine research wind tunnel of its type in the world, a fuel and lubricant building, a flight research hangar and an ice tunnel. The engine research building will be equipped to study multi-cylinder power-plants in units of a single cylinder or in their entirety. Engine accessories, the stress on engine parts and the recovery of heat lost through the exhaust or through the cooling of cylinders also will be studied. Present exhaust type superchargers utilize some escaping heat, but attempts will be made to increase power by greater utilization of waste heat.
John F. Victory, NACA Secretary, on the occasion of starting research in the Cleveland laboratory said:
In the national effort to put first things first, the importance of assuring supremacy in the air cannot be over-emphasized. That goal is definitely dependent upon the efforts of the NACA.
The NACA is now engaged 100 per cent on the solution of critical problems for the Army and Navy air organizations and they depend upon the Committee constantly to improve the performance of American aircraft. As improvement in airplane performance is built largely around improvement in engine performance, the importance of the new engine research laboratory at Cleveland looms as a timely and important factor in the nation’s efforts to gain and hold supremacy in the air. Important as other aspects of the war effort may be, including ship-building, no other aspect of our preparations gives any prospect of winning the war without supremacy in the air.
The laboratory’s toughest problem will be to increase horsepower without boosting materially the size and weight of the engine. In the last 10 years power has been doubled without increasing size, and major factors are high octane fuel and more efficient lubricants, which also will be studied.
What scientists discover in these investigations will be tested Anally in flight. A large ice tunnel will be used to investigate ice formation on wind shields, propeller blades, and intake manifolds.
Rocket Bombs
Chicago Tribune, June 19, by Larry Rue.—In the attack on British convoys in the Mediterranean this week axis planes used a new type of rocket bomb, according to information published here this morning. These bombs, dropped from low flying planes, are said to achieve a velocity and penetrating power greater than any other form of bomb. They are claimed to represent the nearest approach to an artillery shell yet achieved in an air weapon. Rocket bombers have already been used by the Russians against German tanks, and are said to have proved even deadlier than dive bombers and less vulnerable to antiaircraft fire or fighter interception.
Almost all of the major powers, it is reported, have been experimenting with the rocket bomb idea, described as the most important development since the magnetic mine, and likely to supplant dive bombing. Self-propelled, the new axis bombs are attached to the under side of the wings and are aimed by pointing the plane’s nose directly at the target. When discharged they leave a trail of sparks like the tail of a comet.
MERCHANT MARINE New Records
Baltimore Sun, July 1.—The cargo ship Joseph McKenna was delivered to the Maritime Commission today—but there’s a lot more to that announcement than meets the eye. Behind it is a story of records being broken almost as rapidly as they are set.
The McKenna is the fifteenth ship delivered by California Shipbuilding Corporation’s yard this month—a feat the commission described as a world record. It was outfitted 18 days after its launching. It was launched 57 days after its keel was laid. That’s a total of 75 days from bottom to top. But its original delivery date was October 23. Thus it was ready to sail 115 days ahead of schedule. This record probably won’t last long. Almost every new ship has been trimming the time mark of its predecessor. Today the Unipcro Scrra went down the ways 41 days after its keel was laid.
The credit goes to approximately 40,000 employes at a yard which a little more than a year ago was swamp land on Los Angeles Harbor’s Terminal Island. Only slightly more than 1 per cent of the 40,000 had any experience in shipbuilding, or allied industries, prior to their present jobs. The John C. Fremont, first ship of a contract of 55, was delivered last February, 273 days from its keel-laying. Monthly deliveries since have risen steadily—to a mark of 15 in June.
The McKenna was the thirty-fifth ship of the original contract. New contracts have since boosted the total on order to 165. But no sooner was the Serra off the ways than workmen began laying the keel for the fifty-fifth and last ship of the first contract. That, the yard’s employes say, is their answer to all-out sub warfare.
“Sea Otter” Passes Test
Chicago Tribune, June 23.—The revolutionary cargo vessel, the Sea Otter, development of which was allegedly retarded by the Navy Department and Maritime Commission, returned triumphantly to the war shipping picture today.
Senator Ralph O. Brewster (R., Me.), member of a Senate Naval Affairs Subcommittee which has been demanding “full and fair consideration” for the experimental ship, hailed last fall as an answer to the submarine menace, announced a new Sea Otter design has proved satisfactory in tests. Several of these vessels will be built immediately by lend-lease authorities for coastwise and South American trade, Senator Brewster said. He did not explain why construction of the ships had been taken over by lend-lease authorities or why they would not be used for transatlantic shipping.
The Sea Otter is a seagoing development of the outboard motor principle. Its proponents say its draft is so shallow that torpedoes could not harm it, while its construction is adaptable to mass production.
MISCELLANEOUS New Weapons
Baltimore Sun, June 22, by Walter Kerr, Moscow, June 21.—It was just a year ago at dawn tomorrow that a German army of 170 divisions, flushed with victory from campaigns that delivered half of Europe into Nazi hands, turned its back on England and went to war with the Soviet Union. What this country has done during twelve months of battle is well known to the outside world. It retreated with its striking power intact. It evacuated its industries, its equipment, its people to the East. It resisted the attack of 40 German divisions against Leningrad and held off 50 more that were flung at Moscow.
Then in the cold winter months when the Nazis were close to the capital, it struck with all of the force that only a united nation can summon. It beat that Germany army and before spring had recaptured a fifth of its lost territory. But things have happened during the year that are not so widely known. New weapons, new tactics, new models of planes and tanks and guns have been introduced; lessons have been learned. For those reasons the war today differs from the war a year ago. All of the new arms and all of the lessons learned will be used during the coming year when the American and British forces will be hammering in the West, and which the Soviet Government believes will be the last struggle before the peace, at least so far as Germany is concerned.
Here are some of the new weapons: First must come the Red army’s most secret weapon, a gun invented by A. G. Kostikov, which is credited by the people of Moscow with having saved the capital. They call it Katusha. So far as I know, no foreigner has ever seen it or has any idea how it operates or what it does.
The second in interest is the German “jumping mine.” The Russians know all about it. It’s a land mine used against personnel. It has two separate charges, two separate explosions. When stepped on, there is a small explosion that sends a box 5 feet in the air, where a second explosion occurs that hurls out 280 steel fragments.
Then comes the Red army’s new antitank rifle, simple in design and easy to manufacture. While it is light in weight, it is said to be able to pierce armor plate of 1J inches at 150 to 200 yards.
Finally, there are several other German weapons, none of which thus far has been effective. One is a parachute bomb, a number of which are dropped from a bomber timed to explode seconds later near the attacking pursuit plane. Another is a photomagnetic type of sea mine, equipped with lenses. Russia now has several new models of planes, one of the most effective being that known as the Mig Lagg Yak. The Germans had never heard of that model until they met it in the air with painful results. New type Soviet bombers include the PE-2 and PE-3. They also have an improved model of attack planes, the IL, named after its designer Illeusin. It is being used against troops, tanks, and fortifications. German prisoners call it “Black Death.” A new German pursuit plane, the Messerschmitt 109-F, is better than the Messerschmitt 109 and one fifth of all German pursuit planes on the Russian front are of the new model.
The Germans have a fast night fighter, the Heinkel 113, but it is so vulnerable that it is seldom used. Other new models are the Focke-Wulf 198 and the Messerschmitt 115, the latter having a longer fuselage than the Messerschmitt 109-F. In the list of the latest weapons in use there should be included a number of new-model tanks, but little is known about them except that, generally speaking, they are heavier and better armored, carrying heavier firing power. The Red army’s KV, the factory for which was transferred from Leningrad to the Urals, is doing exceptionally well.
There probably should be included also a number of tanks and planes manufactured by Great Britain and the United States, which have been sent here to aid the Soviet Union. There are two types of tanks—light and medium, the latter not having been as yet in action. The British have sent Hurricanes, but not any of their best fighters, the Spitfires. The Americans sent over first their Tomahawk, then their Kittyhawk and the Airacobra.
Among lessons learned by the Russians about equipment in this war is that, above all, armies increased their anti-aircraft and anti-tank fire. There wasn’t enough of either a year ago. Both the Germans and the Russians increased their use of horse cavalry, the Nazis sending out units as large as divisions this spring. The use of sub-machine guns likewise was increased. In the latter respect, it is amusing to learn that the Russians solved their problem neatly by taking old rifles, sawing the barrels in half and using the half barrel for their gun of a type designed by Degtaryev. That little gun is extremely light, has only 83 pieces of metal, and carries a drum with 71 rounds of ammunition.
The Germans started the war without enough light artillery, relying for that type of fire in their light and medium mortars. They have tried hard to overcome the deficiency. Meanwhile, the Russians found that they had plenty of light and medium heavy artillery, but what they needed was mortars for short-range firing. The Soviet Government, to solve the problem, established a special mortar commissariat last November. The gains of the Russians showed the value of guerrilla fighters, and this spring they began organizing guerrilla detachments as large as a regiment. This is part of the picture as the Red Army tomorrow enters the second year of the war, during which it feels, as President Mikhail Kalinin wrote in the newspapers this morning, that the Germans, though still a strong defensive force, will be unable to launch a general offensive.'—[Copyright 1942, by N. Y. Herald Tribune.]
The Gas Turbine
Journal of the Franklin Institute, June.— Dr. J. T. Rettaliata discusses the development of the gas turbine, thermodynamic considerations, thermal efficiency and applications in number 7 of Current Trends, one of a series of engineering bulletins published by Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Notwithstanding an ancestry traceable to the time of Hero, the gas turbine has attained commercial significance only comparatively recently. Its successful development is intimately associated with the utilization of elevated temperatures and a highly efficient compressor. Much of the progress realized, therefore, is directly attributable to the efforts of the metallurgist and aerodynamicist. In addition to its application in the oil refinery industry, where it furnishes compressed air to a catalytic cracking process for the production of high octane gasoline, the combustion gas turbine is also being employed in the generation of electric power, as well as for locomotive drives. A recapitulation of the material presented indicated that the future of the gas turbine becomes more promising with the adoption of higher temperatures. Continued metallurgical advances and effective cooling methods bring operation at elevated temperatures ever closer to the realm of practicability. Field experience with the units already in operation indicates their design to be conservative, and no troubles attributable to operating temperatures have been encountered. Based upon this experience, as well as that of supercharger work, it is believed that operation at temperatures higher than those now in use is entirely feasible and that it can be accomplished with an adequate margin of safety. Improvement in thermal efficiency, made possible by the use of regeneration and increased temperature, makes the gas turbine a serious aspirant as a prime mover for certain applications. Because of the low grade of fuel it can use, the gas turbine even when operating at present temperature levels without regeneration compares favorably on a fuel cost basis with other methods of power production. Undoubtedly the gas turbine has certain natural applications which make the cycle appear attractive. The advantages associated with the elimination of the high pressure, high temperature steam boilers, and the attendant feedwater problems from a power plant are obvious. At present the cycle is only applicable where liquid or gaseous fuels can be used although research has shown some promise for the application of pulverized fuel for this service. The gas turbine is not regarded as the answer to all power problems since its limitations are well recognized. It is believed, however, that it possesses definite features which ideally adapt it for certain classes of service; and it is toward this end that the present development is being directed.
Secret Weapons
Baltimore Sun, July 7.—The skipper of a tramp steamer told today, with official sanction, of a wire-tailed rocket weapon which British merchant ships have used secretly for more than a year to entangle enemy planes swooping to attack them. The contraption, fired from the decks at the approach of hostile planes, is a projectile which opens into a parachute with long wires attached.
Describing his first use of the rocket weapon, the captain told a naval officer:
“We had just been attacked and what with all the excitement I pulled the string too soon. The blighter saw the wire and he dodged it. He did the most wonderful acrobatics dodging that wire. It was a treat, indeed it was.”
“Never mind,” counseled the naval officer. “Next time you’ll remember to pull the string a second later.”
“Maybe,’’ said the captain, “but I ought to tell you that after those acrobatics that pilot fell upside down into the sea.” Meanwhile, a last-minute censorship was clamped down on the disclosure of a spectacular development in Britain’s anti-aircraft defense after the London Daily Mail had protested against their revelation. (This was not the new wire-trailing rocket.) Details of the new secret weapon, the result of five years of experimentation, had been released for morning newspapers when the censorship was imposed with the explanation that “new instructions have been issued.” A front-page criticism by the Daily Mail against exposing the weapon presumably influenced the decision. The new device, it was said, has already been used successfully against enemy raiders.