AERIAL TORPEDO

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 106, 5 April 1926, Page 8

AERIAL TORPEDO

GREAT POSSIBILITIES. NEW ZEALANDER’S INVENTION. PURCHASED BY THE WAR OFFICE Received April 5, 12.35 p.m. LONDON, April 4. The newspaper People says that the War Office, after years of exhaustive tests, have purchased tlie invention of a New Zealander, Captain Allan Roberts. It is an aerial torpedo believed to be capable of torpedoing entire cities and air fleets one hundred miles distant. It resembles a miniature aeroplane with small wings. The flight and speed and the moment of explosion are directed by wireless from the ground. It is used similarly to a torpedo from a battleship. The War Office stringently tested Captain Roberts’s claim that the invention could not be influenced by any other forces, Captain Roberts using to control the apparatus only half the power of that with which officials attempted to influence the torpedo’s course successfully guided it along the ground as fie willed, thus eradicating the War Office’s chief fear that the machine could be turned during flight against the launchers by superior enemy wireless control. It is claimed that the torpedo can he cheaply constructed and can he safely launched under tho control of one man.—Sydney Sun cable.