BIGGER, DEADLIER 'ROBOTS' ON THE WAY
Williams, Al
Bigger, Deadlier 'Robots' On The Way By AL WILLIAMS SOMETIMES the English have seemed to have an inferiority complex. When Hitler first talked of secret weapons, the English sat back and began to...
...Those responsible for news releases in England played right into the hands of the Nazis on the latter by bungling and fumbling explanations to the public...
...This defensive psychology kept them on the receiving end and permitted the Nazis to trot out the capture of forts in the Magi-not Line as the result of using mysterious means for immobilizing the defenders...
...Wrhat's next in pilotless, winged airpower machinery ? The answer requires no prophetic powers...
...When Hitler first talked of secret weapons, the English sat back and began to guess out loud as to what these weapons might be, instead of blasting right back with their own threats of super-secret weapons...
...Of course, and more than is generally known...
...And I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that when it comes down to whipping the robot game, we'll supply the answer, not because we are the super-people of the world, but because we start any job on the right psychological foot by knowing we'll lick it...
...But where has the orthodox scheme of many bombs and many bombings stopped a determined nation to date ? The answer is that most aggressive airpower thinkers didn't go all the way, and while they were expanding their short-sighted plans, the ground defenses improved in striking back and in providing air-raid shelters...
...The American slant on all this super-dooper secret weapon stuff, however, is radically and entirely different...
...We are surprised when any other nation beats us temporarily with a first in anything, and with the surprise as a priming charge we immediately set about turning the tables...
...It was our own Admiral William S. Sims who virtually took the English by the pants and forced them into adopting the convoy system to beat the German subs in the last war...
...Someone is going to increase the destructive payload with improved robots...
...Well, just think it over, because these "robots" are only the first and there must be more to come...
...The Sims convoy system saved England from starvation, which at the time was estimated by Sims to have been about two months distant...
...Bigger and far bigger "robots" are coming-real soon, I fear...
...It establishes a trend of unimaginable import as to what is coming because it was the first time airpower or any other arm ever sent its machinery to war and kept its manpower at home...
...the other was to disturb public morale...
...The Germans were then winning the war and unless something was done right away they would win it for good...
...Add up the bombing score to date...
...We must be prepared for anything, because the Nazi3 are evidently desperate...
...Manpower Spared The Nazis launched the "robots" against England with two purposes: one was military damage...
...When these giant "robots" come they will come over at housetop altitudes where even anti-aircraft hits will wreak destruction on those below...
...Once having tasted the success of sending its machinery to war and keeping its manpower home, airpower will drive ahead on this revolutionary principle with unknown potentialities...
...Damage to war machinery of production and.morale...
...So were the early war planes made of sticks and cloth, with feeble engines, short range, and unreliable performance...
...To dismiss the "robot" bombing as of minor importance is ridiculous because this employment of winged war machinery is comparable to the most radical development of war mechanism recorded in the pages of history...
...Then came the magnetic mine and the air invasion of Norway, plus the disastrous error of refusing to understand the role airpower would play in this war against old-fashioned sea-power...
...Nazis Are Desperate If any group of men had been enterprising and fore-sighted enough to understand airpower at the outset and had been freed from inflexible rigidity of Maginot mindedness, they could have won this war by planning accordingly...
...Did those shortcomings eliminate aircraft in warfare...
...And so it has been down to the present robot bombing where again the English fiddle and fuddle around, inciting the public to think of that logical development in the machinery of warfare as something mysterious...
...Thousands and thousands of bombs have been dropped, thousands and thousands of planes employed, and other thousands lost...
...This stuff about super-dooper secret weapons doesn't get to first base with Americans...
...Giant bombers equipped with automatic pilots and radio control, which have been and can be flown without pilots and crews, could have their destructive payloads increased by many tons of explosives...
...We start out by knowing and telling the world that whatever anyone else builds or does we can and will build better...
...We impute no unusually super qualifications in the field of engineering to any nation...
...Even to date I haven't read one single authoritative statement from England as to just what the robot bomb is, all of which contributes greatly to the psychological effect the Nazis had planned—mystery and uncertainty, verging into weird super stuff...
...And still the blockbusters haven't stopped any nation...
...If there is any super-dooper war stuff coming, we don't fear it because we'll always have our own bag of tricks to upset any Nazi stunts...
...As far as I know, the biggest bomb today is an 8,000-pound affair hailed in true Hollywood style...
...What now of pilotless bombers carrying explosive payloads ranging into 20, 30, 40, and 50 tons ? Just how many such blastings by 80,000 or 100,000 pounds of super explosive do you think it would take to render any modern city helpless—air raid shelters and all...
...The current "robots" are crude affairs, of limited range and destructive power...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 29
