WAR INVENTIONS FOR PEACE-TIME USE

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25048, 11 November 1944, Page 10

WAR INVENTIONS FOR PEACE-TIME USE

Many war weapons which have teen developed especially for the march t against the Reich will* prove of the' greatest value in the future. 'Adapted to peace-time needs, they .•will play an important part in opening up territory which now lacks good ports, roads annd airfields. They can also speed up the processes 0f importing and exporting, and thus Inake their own contribution to the raising of living standards. Britain's Bailey Bridge, for instance, lias revolutibnised speedy bridge-build-ing. Consider also the British Sommerfield Track. This is simply a special type of steel mesh that can be laid at great speed over reasonably level ground and anchored in position by steel pegs. The result is a road able to take heavy military traffic. Tracks, side by side, can create an airfield on which the heaviest aircraft can land safely. The mesh, binding earth and stone, makes a firm Burface over which wheels run easily. There are several advantages. In-

By PROFESSOR A. M. LOW, British Scientist and Inventor

stead of laborious road building by a thousand men at the rate of a mile or two a day, a team of 60 men can lay a Sommerlield Track road at the rate of a mite every eight hours. Fifteen standard tracks, laid 6ide by side, can create an airfield from virgin ground in a matter of -dpys. The weight of materir,l to be carried is small. Fifty miles of road weighs 2000 tons —a very small shipload; six trucks can carry one mile of road. This type of road will not be used in England, of course, but it will be invaluable in new countries. It is worth recalling that a mesh road which Britain built in Sinai during the last war is still being used. Another invasion weapon likely to be valuable in peace-time is the American "duck." These amphibious trucks can carry nearly three tons with equal facility on water or on land. When a "duck" enters the water the driver couples the engines to the propeller shaft by a simple manipulation, and without pausing the "duck" goes on at ten miles an hour. The process is reversed as the wheels touch bottom again. Thousands of these vehicles made

possible unloading on open beaches at a speed that could hardly have been anticipated before the war. In many instances "ducks" were already packed with the materials they would carry ashore. They were stored on ships' decks, and after arrival off-shore were swung out by cranes, carrying munitions to destinations without further handling. In peace-time "ducks" will transform unloading possibilities at places where the water's depth is not sufficient to allow large ships to dock. Constructing deep-water ports is expensive. Loading into lighters, which must be unloaded when they reach the shore, and then carrying the goods to train or trucks, is a slow business. Thousands of these amphibian vehicles will work in Middle Eastern and in North and West African ports. They will be used to take cargo speedily and passengers comfortably ashore. Liners may even pause briefly at intervals to pick up mails and passengers from "ducks" that have come out from the shore to meet them. The "duck" has a considerable range in the water—scores went to Italy direct from Sicily. It requires reasonably smooth water, but is powered sufficiently to cope with all ordinary tides and currents.