WAR SECRETS REVEALED

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 16769, 19 June 1920, Page 9

WAR SECRETS REVEALED

SUPER-TANKS READY. EXTRAORDINARY GUNS AND MESSAGE ROCKETS. In the appended article is told for the first time the intimate details of , some of tho marvellous inventions that the war brought forth—in some cases too late for use. The writer is Captain \V. H. G. Goako, A.M., M.8.E., who was tho Australian representative for the British War Boaru of Inventions, ami whose first-hand experience Ims enabled him to write with authority. Perhaps tho most bitter regret of the war to those who were familiar with the wonderful inventions perfected is t!ic fact that not more than 5 per cent, of tho greatest inventions was completed in time to ever reach Trance. This is entirely ' attributable to the fact that up to the end of 1916 invention. if not definitely discouraged, certainly did not receive the slightest help or encouragement from the W.-tr Office. The recently-cabled description of a super-tank, with a speed of ‘2O miles per hour, does not in any way adequately convey the progress that was eventually made in tanks. The Mark 11 Tank, upon tho trials of which tho writer ispent three months at tank headquarters just before the armistice was declared, was as different from tho early Somme tanks as the present automobile is from that of 1907. This super-tank had a speed of 20 miles per hour, and sufficient fuel warcarried for 40 beams’ continuous run; it coaid climb up an incline of 45 degrees, and as its weight was in excess of 30 tons, nothing constructed by tho hand of man could stop it. All the weaknesses discovered in previous mo dels had been overcome. Land mines —sunken mines exploded by the weight of th? tank—wore provided against Ivy fitting the tank with a forward roller which exploded tho mines before the tank proper reached them. WONDERFUL SMOKE SCBEFN. As protection against artillery fire, a truly wonderful smoko screen apparatus was fitted, and, by using the new chloro-sulphonic acid smokp, a wall of dense grey, low-lying fog was formed round the tank at a distance of 100 yards on all sides, which rendered rt absolutely impossible for the gunners to discern any exact target at which to aim. Tho improved armour-plating was also of such sufficiency that a direct hit by a Sin. shell was the only possible nienus of putting the tank out of action, and this had to be an ar-mour-piercing shell, ordinary high explosive shells having no effect. And whereas in the early tanks it needed the whole attention of two of the crew to steer tho tank, in the mo- ; dern land battleship steering conid bo done by the pressure of one finger, the famous Williams Jamie gear (for many years used in swinging the turrets of "cur battleships) having been adapted to'the tank. Wireless communication between tank and tank,and between tank and aeroplane had 15ion perfected to such a degree that a whp|p line of tanks could advance at given intervals, and a complete smoke coreon could be sat up. by the combined tanks .over a continuous, five-mile front. By the use of tho self-propelling roc- [ ket-messenger-carrier written communication could bo kept up continuously during an advance with headquarters anywhere within two miles in the rear. In addition to four'machine .guns, each having an all-round traverse, two muabnnproved Stakes mortars were fitted by which an automatic barrage at the rate of 20 shells per minuto from c-ach gua could bo kept up. A new aiming device (the invention of an Australian) allowed each gun to.drop a shell every 10 yards over a front of 600 yards; in addition, there were three high-velocity guns, one at each end and one in tho front, and two smoko barrage mortars. A WONDERFUL ROCKET. Message carrying was indeed a knotty problem, and one in which the whole of tho warring nations had spent r.any years. On many occasions during the war the lives of 1000 iflen and the experditure of £1,000,0(X) has depended "cn tho success or failure of getting back a five-word message from on advanced position to those in authority in the rear. Modern artillery has made it impossible to lay telegraph cables in tire actual front line ; no matter how deeply bulled. They were always destroyed at tho critical moment by delay action shells Tho device sought after was some type of projectile which would bo selfpropelling. as it was impossible to carry equipment in action wherewith to shoot it back. It must travel at least a n ilo and a half or any lesser distance. It must have means whereby it could n alto itself known on arrival at its destination, and it must be possible for tho man vvho fired it to know that it had been correctly received, it most ho so constructed that it would fall where directed, and not be lost if it should full in mud or water. , It remained for an Australian invet- ' tor to produce a device which move than fulfilled tho above specifications, and tliis message-carrier was used in thelust six months of the war and by its aid communication, was never lost. Briefly, the device may bo described ns a super-rocket, but the comparison ends there. The range obtained was ever two miles; ro apparatus for firm;was required. The rocket was simp's placed on tho parapet of the trench, pointing in the direction of headquarters, or other destination. A friction disc would he drawn across a short fuse; with a roar like tho discharge of a gun, the rocket would leap into the air, and speed on its way in xho direction pointed. , Immediately it obtained its maximum height, an intense white flare came inr-r action, which would be visible even in the brightest sunlight; at tho same time a powerful siron-whistlo would shriek by _ the pressure of tho air through which the projectile was travelling, tin arrival at its destination tho while i flare would give place to a dense volume of smoke, which would continue he-'- ' nig ”o" TO .»• antes Should the reel- •• ■ hv \ f; v'nto a sh 'll-linlp of water

; ' "vdrp v;;'v r -' co 1 be extinguished. ft would rw (.) (ho surface in the *ai'm_ of huhh'oa giving off smoko for 10 minutes. The inossa.go was eonta'nod in .a waterproof contained in Mo body of tho rocket, and sn successful was tilo moans of identification both hv day and night that only six nut of 28,600 used during the final ollonsivn wore last.

.When it is considered that tin's do moo only weighed a pound and that U could ho adjusted in the fraction of a second so as to travel anv distance from IOC! vards to two miles.'it will not aopear extraordinary that this was co:i-

sklered' ono of the truly valuable discoveries of the last year of the war, and was utilised by all the Allies. REVOLUTION IN GUNS. From the earliest types of bronco ennnem up till .the time the first shell fell on Paris from ‘‘Big Bertha” 70 miles away, there bad been no revolutionary change in the construction of big guns. It was an axiom with the designers of big guns that the greater the projectile fired, and the gic-ator the aim ranged at, the greater must he the length of the hand. This is illustrated by the terriffic length of the 12 and 15-inch guns on the modern hatt'eships. Imagine the surprise and incredulity of the Woolwich Arsenal experts when at about the end of 1917 a civilian engineer submitted drawings of a smooth bore gun having a 20-inch bore, and with a barrel only 36in. long. This .gentleman, without any military training, had entirely revolutionised tho world’s knowledge of gunnery. Experiments were instantly undertaken with the greatest secrecy—not more than six experimental ollicers in Britain were aware of the secret. It is quite impassible to realise now what the potentialities of’ this revolutionary discovery meant, but it will be readily understood that the reason big guns could not be used in the front line was because of their immobility. Even a 10-inch gun can only ho used on a specially constructed railway. and hero was a design of a gnu with 20-inch bore that could bo lifted by four men, and which could be manufactured at the rate of 1090 a day. Tho a.'.touudingly simple secret was that the shell, instead of being free, to travel when the charge was bred was tied to tho base of the gun by a steel connecting rod which held the nholl in position until tho colossal pressure, of gas behind it was so great that this connecting rod was sheared. To understand just what this entirely original innovation meant the reader must understand that tho great length of barrel is absolutely necessary in the old type to allow of tho complete burning of the propelling charge before tho shell escaped from the barrel, and also for this reason that the rifling-is designed to help toTOtard the shell in lie i ravel through the barrel—all with the objcct of generating terriffic pressure behind the shell before it is released. EPOCH-MARKING INVENTION. It will now be seen that the whole of these objects wc. -.- obtained by simply tying the shell in with a steel rod, and allowing this rod to be snapped when any desired pressure had been reached The writer was present at the trials of this ppoch-ir-.arking invention; and shells carrying ocivt. of high explosive were fired a- distance of 10 miles from a simple smooth-bored mortar that looked for all th-3 world like a steel drain pipe with a bottom in it. No elevating gear was, used, the mortar being fixed -at 45 degrees, .and the range governed by tho thickness of the steel tie rod used to hold the projectile in. Many thousands of these wonderful weapons were in course of manufacture at the signing of the armistice, and it is absolutely impossible to conceive of trench warfare, or in fact any type of warfare that could be carried on under the rain of 5001 b. bombs that con'd he hurled from a battery of these easily carried inexpensive, quickly-made, and wonderfully effective weapons, particularly as they could bo used from pra - tically front line positions, and their rapidity of fire was almost that of tho Stokes gun.