RUSSIA MAKING TRANS-OCEAN ROCKETS AT “FULL SPEED”

Grey River Argus, 28 September 1949, Page 5

RUSSIA MAKING TRANS-OCEAN ROCKETS AT “FULL SPEED”

LONDON, September 26.

German scientists are producing for Russia a trans-ocean rocket they designed lor Hitler just before the war ended, says the Associated Press correspondent, quoting Soviet zone informants, who have access to the offices of the Soviet-backed East German police. The informants said a mammoth underground munitions plant at Peenemunde, on the Baltic coast, is turning out rockets at full speed. Allied intelligence officers said they know of “certain activity” at Peenemunde, but declined to elaborate.

The new rocket, said the German informants, was dubbed “Fire Lilly” by th e Nazis, who never had a chance to use it. The name comes from the fact that the rocket “blossoms” into eight to ten separate aerial bombs when it arrives over the target, scattering destruction over an area of three square miles. The report says its range and accuracy are sufficient to hit a target 5000 miles away.

Peenemunde is now guarded by a barricade of high-voltag e wires and mine fields, and patrolled by 3500 members of the Soviet security police. Flotillas of speed-boats are used to guard the seaward approaches and all supplies for th e plant and workers are delivered by sea for security reasons. Russia Said to Have Bigger Atomic Stockpile Than Britain PARIS, September 26. In Paris to-day, Professor Jean Thibaud, Director of the Lyons Physics Institute, said that Soviet Russia seemed to have leaped years ahead of the most optimistic forecast in atomic energy competition. Professor Thibaud said he considered Russia’s stock of plutonium and her atomic energy installations in general must be greater than those now operating in Britain. France, he said, had passed definitely to the rank of a second-rate nation. Her state of unpreparedness for any scientific war which might come was worse than in 1939-40. She had neither atomic piles, plutonium stocks nor sufficient scientific workers.