DARTS DROPPED

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3110, 24 April 1942, Page 7

DARTS DROPPED

RAIDERS DROP HUNDREDS ECONOMISING IN BOMBS? News that a German airman dropped hundreds of darts from a. bomber upon a Grimsby trawler, the Russell, may mean (though it is unlikely) that Germany is economising in bombs, or that some of her airmen are reverting to the methods practised against the Anzacs’ on Gallipoli.

In those days, bombing from the air was almost unknown. Both the British and French used darts, which were known as “flechettes” (little arrows), but soon gave them up.

They were streamlined and about sin long, being so shaped that they fell point downward, and were capable of easily penetrating a steel helmet.

A canister containing 250 darts was fitted below the body of the plane, and the pilot, by pulling a cord, opened the canister and released its contents. The failure of the dart as an effective weapon was so well established that the experiment was not continued 1 .

• When it was employed by German or Turko-German planes over Gallipoli, the Anzacs were accustomed to talcing pot shots at the planes.

“Well, the cow got away,” said one of them, who had noted the fall of the dart, “but I knocked some of the spokes out of his wheel-” . ,