THE EXPLOSIVE BULLET.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 123, 27 May 1931, Page 8

THE EXPLOSIVE BULLET.

N.Z. INVENTOR'S EXPERIENCES

MORE ABOUT THE "GHOST"

STORY.

JOHN POMEROY INTERVIEWED.

Mr. John Pomeroy, the Invcrcargill man who received £25,000 reward for his invention of explosive ammunition during the war, and is to-day selling pics and coffee from a stall in Melbourne, told the "Melbourne Herald" that he lost his money in further experiments and in investments in the United States.

He received £20,000 from the Ministry of Munitions for his patents for explosive ammunition, £5000 for his personal services, and £1000 from the Admiralty for a device for exploding enemy mines submerged in the sea. Mr. Pomeroy says he has no regrets in having spent his fortune. His job, he says, is an honest trade, and enables him to continue his experiments in a small factory in City Road, South Melbourne. There he is evolving instruments of peaceful, industrial and domes.tic value. One lias for its objective the freezing of citrus fruit juice so that it will not lose its taste and virtues; another is a mixture of stone and metal for setting razors, and a third an' alloy for cleaning silver-plated ware.

His White Trousers. The manner in which his name came into prominence in London recently he considers not quite within the realm of pure physics or chemistry or mathematics. It is true, he admits, that he aid wear white trousers and a tweed coat. Major Colley was always cracking some joke about it. Ho rather suspects from the cable accounts that the major is '•pulling someone's leg about it now." "No spook was needed to tell the War Ollice at that stage about the explosive ammunition," he says. "There was already a big file about it in the War Office, with the records of many official tests in England aud still earlier in New Zealand, dating back to 1902." He produced ample proof of his own identity. He still has the War Office certificate of admission to Industrial House, and seven parchments by which he assigned his patents to the Crown, one being signed by Mr. Lloyd George, one by Mr. Bonar Law and five by Viscount Milner. "And if further proof is needed, he has a photograph of the £20,000 cheque. Fight the Navy.

He conceived the idea of the explosive bullet in 1902 upon seeing in a New Zealand paper the picture of a German airship built by Count Zeppelin. It struck him that if they ever were made invulnerable, they would spell the end of the supremacy of the British navy. The formula of the ammunition cannot be published even now, but it can be said that its principle is based on the centrifugal force within a spinning bullet. By this means the chemical ingredients in the lead casing are thrown apart, to become highly explosive on contact.

The first experiment in firing thorn demonstrated that they burst into thou sands of fragments upon striking sheets of paper or sheepskins. Then they were fired at dogs and animals. Later, under War Office supervision, they were tried on small balloons and miniature air-

ships. It was necessary to penetrate a Man keting of carbon monoxide with which the Germans protected.the hydrogen in the Zeppelin, .believing that this made them invulnerable from explosion. Pomeroy's invention exploded them in one shot, and when supplied to our airmen brought down every Zeppelin at which they were fired, except those in one raid. * On that occasion they flaw abnormally high and got away under cover of clouds.

How It Was Spent. Mr. Pomeroy declares that £11,000 of his first reward was spent in the experiments by which he evolved a later and greater invention, but for which he received no reward. He spent a further sum in unsuccessful litigation, and, after the war, went to the United States, where he lost the balance in investments, the greater part of these losses were in shares in a cotton-picking machine. The machine was good in principle, he says, but the negroes of the south proved it ineffective because it could not be given the intelligence not to cut the plant where the cotton w&& thin, and to cut more heavily where it was thick. As one negro remarked: "Dat machine don't discriminate/'

To-day Mr. Pomeroy has no illusions about officialism. It took, him 12 yearn to persuade the War Office to look ai his invention; and another 15 months to persuade them to use it. "Departmentalism," he says, "kiHs invention/'