THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Monday, June 19, 1944. THE ROBOT PLANE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25565, 19 June 1944, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Monday, June 19, 1944. THE ROBOT PLANE

„The sensation which' the enemy has caused with his robot plane—or aerial torpedo, as from descriptions it might be better named—must have beer: gratifying both to the Nazi command and the greatlybombed German people. The new weapon has made a fair bid to crowd the news of two much more important developments in the war, on the coast of Normandy and north of Rome, from the main columns of the press. It would be a mistake, to judge from the voluminous and somewhat excited reports that have been received concerning it, to disregard the public apprehension that has been aroused in England by these uncanny and destructive missiles. Their lack of an apparent human directing force has invested them, irrationally but understandably, with a fearsomeness greater than if they were controlled by pilots. But a moment’s reflection should bring the realisation that aircraft piloted by flyers of suicidal inclination would be many times more to be feared. The robot plane’s inability to take evasive action, or to locate its target exactly, making allowance for unpredictable conditions, renders it at best a weapon very much inferior in military value to even a small strategical force of bombers. The potential ambit of its operations is limited, and its destructive power must be in large part expended at random. These factors considered, it is seen in clear perspective as a very ingenious, and within its limits effective, means of reprisal for the Allied bombing of Germany, and as a temporary distraction of the thoughts of the German people from their past and present sufferings and their dismal future. It would appear that, although the Allied command has by no means been taken unawares by the robot plane, and has methodically hampered its construction, a fully efficient counter to it has still to be brought into operation. The history of “ secret weapons,” from the time of the inventive Archimedes on, provides, however, a complete assurance that these devices may on occasion win battles—as did the English longbow at Crecy—but have very rarely been a decisive factor in wars. There is none which has for long resisted defensive measures, and the Power with the greatest resources has frequently succeeded in turning a new weapon terribly upon its luckless authors. In the present instance the Allies, collectively, are that Power. The new weapon of most practical military value used by the Nazis in the present war, the . magnetic mine, was mastered within a week of its first alarming appearances. There is no reason to think that the robot plane’s meteoric career will proceed unchecked for long. Deep concern and sympathy will be felt in other Allied countries for the people of England in this latest trial inflicted upon them after four’years never free from the fear of attack from the air. '•They have endured much, and it is doubly hard that a new instrument of death from the skies should have come to plague them when everywhere the fortunes of war have changed in their favour. They may, however, find strength in the knowledge of the impotence of these obnoxious visitants to change the course of the conflict to the enemy’s advantage; and for all the Allies manifestation of the indefatigable German resource for waging war should be a sharp rebuke to unrealistic anticipations of an easy defeat of the Nazi tyranny.