GIGANTIC BOMBER

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 32, 8 February 1943, Page 2

GIGANTIC BOMBER

I LATEST U.S. MODEL VAST RANGE AND POWER (0.C.) SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 10. A design for destruction on an undreamed-of scale was placed on view at Wright Field in Ohio in the model of a bomber which would dwarf the Flying Fortress and the Liberator. In the model the material centre of the U.S. Army Air Forces displayed the kind of super warplane that Lieutenant-General Henry H. Arnold, commanding the Army Air Forces, had in mind when he said recently that "The B-17 and the B-24 are the last of the small bombers."

This specific bomber may never be built. Brigadier-General F. O. Carroll, chief of the experimental engineering division of the centre, explained that it is just a "design study," not a production model, but it disclosed the shape of things to come. The highly successful American .50-calibre machine-gun, which has enabled'the B-17's and B-24's to outshoot enemy interceptors, is mounted in this new design in multiple batteries and in revolutionary new turrets. The design calls for a fuel capacity which would vastly extend bombing range, and over this greater distance the plane would carry more than twice the bombload of America's present heavy bombers.

The bay has space for huge demolition bombs much larger than the present "block busters," or for a large number of smaller bombs of perhaps 20001b each. There is even room for the largest torpedoes.

This model was one of a series of exhibits in which the technical work of the material centre was shown a group of newsmen by BrigadierGeneral A. W. Vanaman, commanding general at Wright Field. In the centre a spacious new wind tunnel, the world's largest single unit electric induction motor—4o,ooo h.p.— blasts air through the 20ft tube at speeds up to 450 miles an hour, giving technicians an exact picture, through the use of models hung in the airstream, of the lift, drag and other aerodynamic characteristics of complete planes, or of particular parts. Photographic developments were displayed below a placard, quoting German General Werner von Fritsch, that "The nation with the best aerial reconnaissance will win the war."