WAR FIRE-BOMBS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 269, 13 November 1935, Page 18

WAR FIRE-BOMBS.

WILL RAZE CITIES.

HORRORS OF THE FUTURE.

RAYS ALSO MAY BE USED. (By THOMAS R. HENRY.) WASHINGTON, October 6. The fire-bomb—presiimably already perfected—will be one of the terrors of the next war. Aeroplanes will shower them by the thousands over city roofs, according to an article in "Military Surgeon," organ of the United States Army Medical Corps, by Lieut.-Colonel Jules Voncken, Belgian medical officer and secretarygeneral of the International Congress of Military Medicine and Pharmacy. This fire bomb, Colonel Voncken intimates, promises to be the most striking and effective new weapon of future warfare. It has actually been developed, while more deadly gases and methods of dispersing and controlling bacteria remain in a nebulous stage. "It is deplorable," writes Colonel Voncken, "that such scanty attention has been given to the roll of fire in war of the future. Aero-chemical warfare will be surpassed in devastating effects by aero-incendiary warfare. Bombs now in use develop a'combustion temperature of 2000 centigrade. They induce combustion of comparatively uninflammable substances. Fire will break out regardless of atmospheric conditions. Easily combustible substances I may be ignited from long distances by rays.

Bombs Of Small Size. "It is probable such weapons will become deadlier in the future. The danger is increased by the difficulty of extinguishing such fires. Use of water will bo prohibited, on account of its producing violent explosions. These incendiary bombs are of very small size, weighing from five-tenths to one kilogram. The reason is to ensure an easy penetration into attics and upper storeys of buildings. "An ordinary 'plane can carry a/bout 1000 such bombs. The passage of a single 'plane of ordinary type over a city would cause about 200 fires in a very short time. A squadron of such 'planes, carrying five tons, could drop 00,000 such bombs on a city and cause 15,000 fires." Speaking as a medical officer, Colonel Voncken continues: "Too much has been said of the use of bacteria to disregard the possibility. Man holds in his hands billions of the most deadly organisms of epidemic and infectious disease, and thus has this power of destruction. The idea of how to use it lias germinated in his mind for so long that it is too late to check the thought." Green Flash Seen at Sunrise. The green flash—a green fireball in the heavens on the rim of the rising or setting sun—is a phenomenon which meteorologists are lucky to sec once in a lifetime. One such observation has just been reported by F. T. Davies, of' the Terrestrial Magnetism Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. It was seen from the deck of a steamship in Hudson's Bay, just at sunrise. As described by Davies: "There was a vivid green point, quickly changing to a fairly sizable ball of green fire, preceding the first glimpse of the sun. The whole lasted two or three seconds. Long billows of clouds covered nine-tenths of the sky, but it was clear three or four degrees above the eastern horizon."

Twice before, at sunset, lie has observed the same phenomenon, Davies says. The green flash, he explains, is a "light refraction effect, although it sometimes has been interpreted as an "after image" due solely to physiological processes in the eye of the observer. The rim of the sun is just below the horizon. Owing to dispersion, the blue and o-re'en rays of its spectrum are more powerfully refracted, or bent, than the red and yellow. Thus the very edge of the disc, as it appears or disappears, is not orange but yellow-green or bluegreen. The fact that the flash sometimes is seen and sometimes not probably is due to the temperature difference between the atmosphere and the water. With the water colder than the air, the normal gradient of refractive index of the air "vould be increased by chilling o.f the laver near the water. With the water warmer, tba reverse would be the case and conditions would be highly unfavourable for the appearance of the green flash.

The observer of the green flash is "seeing" a little further over the edge of the earth than is normally possible because of this increased bending of light rays.—(N.A.N.A.)