SPEEDBOATS AS BOMB TARGETS

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 21050, 29 December 1933, Page 9

SPEEDBOATS AS BOMB TARGETS

CREWS UNCOMFORTABLE KIT SAFE LONDON, November 2-1. Remarkable developments are reported in the Royal Air Force in the use of unsinkable speedboats as targets while carrying out bombing practice. The speedboats are covered with armour plating over the crows and engines, and arc packed with expanded rubber of 10 times the lightness of cork, which makes them unsinkable, in spite of the half-inch plates used as protection against the bombs. The crew wear ear-defenders, crash helmets, and gas-masks. Their work is most uncomfortable, but there is not, as one might imagine, any danger to life. The speedboats arc so hard to hit that the manoeuvres are bringing the bombing practice of the navy to the highest state of efficiency. The bombs, weighing from Rib to 111b. are dropped from heights of from 15.000 to less than 1000 feet, in diving bomb attacks. The small boats, costing £ 1 an hour to run, save the heavy cost of a battleship and an attendant destroyer manned by several hundred men.