STREAMLINED FOR SUICIDE
Meyer, Ernest L.
Streamlined For Suicide By ERNEST L. MEYER IN THE first issue of the new magazine Pageant, dated December, Maj. Alexander P. de Seversky has a featured article entitled "Our Floating Maginot...
...13 had this report from Dayton, O: "Plans for the manufacture of a launching propellant for American models of the robot bombs (the V-l) were announced here tonight by the Army Air Force Technical Service Command, Wright Field, and officials of the Monsanto Chemical Co., which will turn out the launching racks...
...It is not good sense to say, either, that all might be well'if these modern instruments of destruction would be harnessed by the "good" nations...
...Tonight's statement follows earlier announcements that the Monsanto Co...
...de Seversky's plea for long range crew-manned bomber airplanes as outmoded as'yesterday's trench warfare which he derides...
...Frank Thone, .admits that V-2 bombings of New York, Washington, and other American cities are theoretically possible but practically unlikely in this war...
...A New Future For War "Having won the first World War in the trenches/* he points out, "the French were 'sold' on static trench warfare...
...No civilized country would tolerate such barbarism...
...They dismissed with contempt the newfangled ideas of a fluid war of movement with tanks and planes...
...Prof...
...10), Prime Minister Churchill revealed in the House of Commons that the Germans had for several weeks been bombarding England with giant, comet-like V-2 rockets that attain a speed greater than 1,000 miles an hour, faster than sound, and rush to earth from a high point of 50 to 70 miles in the stratosphere...
...We will catch up...
...For on the same day that the magazine Pageant hit the news-stands (Nov...
...An^American scientist...
...It proceeds to stake its future security on these methods, which meanwhile are outmoded by technological progress...
...Victory, too, has its dangers...
...The "good" nations are horrified...
...cathedrals and cities and civilians...
...War would be completely dehumanized...
...that emulation of atrocities and*excelling in them does not cancel atrocities...
...Still in its first experimental stage and highly inaccurate, the new V-2 holds alarming potential power for wholesale, long-range destructiveness...
...de Seversky's arguments for a fleet of ocean-hopping bombers became themselves outmoded by technological progress on the very day that his arguments were advanced...
...Then the "bad" nations invent a mechanical robot monster called the V-l...
...that the de Seversky's of our age must concentrate not on the scientific problem of excelling in war but the sane social problems of eliminating war, and that unless we lay all our stress on such a goal we might as well call it a day for homo sapiens and give the good earth back to the protozoan in the primordial ooze...
...What will the Satanic scientists of the enemy think of next...
...As a practical aeronautical engineer and designer," he writes, "I can attest that warplanes for direct operations across oceans have been technically feasible for years...
...And eventually we will catch up to the murderous mechanics of the huge long-range V-2...
...Experts At Slaughter So we will catch up to the murderous mechanics of the little V-l...
...de Seversky says that the fate of France provides a warning...
...Alexander P. de Seversky has a featured article entitled "Our Floating Maginot Line...
...Unheard and unseen, the super-robot carries a ton of explosive from launching sites estimated at anywhere from 150 to 450 miles from London...
...These are, he maintains, makeshift methods in a transition period...
...And bye and bye we will improve on the V-l and V-2 and improve on the modern and marvelous methods of blasting cathedrals and cities and civilians and children and grandchildren off the face of the map...
...We will become experts of the exterminator squad...
...In urging our country to "anticipate technological progress and channel our resources into a strategy of preponderant air power," Maj...
...By an odd coincidence, Maj...
...The major is already out of step in the grand march to mass extinction...
...He forgets that better men than he are straining their wits to send the world hell-bent and stream-lined to suicide...
...But— The United Press on Nov...
...We will catch up with everything but the simple notion that all inventions aimed at the destruction of lives must be controlled or suppressed...
...In the near future," he said, "armies within 300 to 500 miles of each other will be within range, and that is going to alter the entire attitude towards war...
...In it, the aviation expert and former ace attacks antiquated military strategy, especially the current popular amphibious and triphibious operations and the so-called task force...
...A. M. Low, a London scientist, told the United Press that rockets would change entirely future warfare...
...The "bad" nations in their bombing raids blast cathedrals and cities and civilians off the face of the map...
...These, then, are the technological advances in robot bombs which make Maj...
...The "good" nations in retaliation invent bigger planes, bigger bombs, and rejoice that with God and B-29's and block-busters on their side they can erase gratifying quantities of enemy...
...The greatest is this: that the winning side naturally tends to glorify the methods which defeated the enemy...
...He makes a powerful plea for a vast American super air-force which will ignore oceans in carrying strategic offensives to an enemy...
...They regarded the airplane merely as an adjunct of the surface forces...
...They have not been built, because those who planned our strategy considered them unnecessary...
...In wars all ethics evaporate, and there are no boundaries to brutish-ness...
...was building an $8,000,000 plant at Kar-nack, Tex., for production of the robot-type bombs...
...In the remoter future, he added, wars will be fought at a range of about 1,000 miles with the contenders following the course of rockets by means of electronic devices...
...If there should be a third World War," he writes, "they may very well happen, but unless Nazi scientists have become Satanic miracle-men there isn't time enough left for the necessary technical development to be worked out...
Vol. 8 • November 1944 • No. 48
