NEW WAR AUTOMOBILE.

Waikato Independent, Volume V, Issue 321, 8 January 1907, Page 6

NEW WAR AUTOMOBILE.

—,t. 20 ORDERED FOR THE FRENCH AH.VIV, 1 An armoured automobile '‘gallopfug” across broken country, leaping '.'.itches like a hunting horse, impenetrable to Rebel bullets and shrapnel, firing its hidden battery at the rale of (iOO rounds in sixty seconds, mowing down a battalion of infantry in two minutes, and wiping out a squadron of dragoons . at a hun-dred-yard range. Such is the Thing of Terror with which the French army is providing itself. This sounds, I know, like the romances of our late Jules Verne or the English Hl.Wells but it is all plain military fact as Lefevre now makes public in La Vie au Grand •\ir.

" An order for twenty of those wat chariots—the first is to be delivered in about a fortnight—has been placed by tiie French Government with the factory of Charron-Girarciot-Voight. This order follows a series of experiments conducted with great secrecy on a field of military manoeuveres and of which 7J. Lefevre was a witness. To these experiments all the heads of the military departments were invited by card, and by them the most exacting conditions were imposed on the experimenters. It was insisted that in a state of war the automobile artillery would not be aide to use the pul.lie highways, and that it must be aide to come to the front across any sort of country ; that it must be imper\ions to infantry fire; that i;s interior organs must he elVecth ly protected ; that its crew—dri\i ig and firing— must be long, aim that its wheels must not h-e at the mercy of any destructive a; ent. All of these conditions wore met in the most remarkable fashion, Tim war automobile, which is ot JO-lior.se power, was seen to bo completely encased in armour, yet _ ran i y' l ' s Og'htly as a road niacnine. .Neither the driver nor mechanwas visible, while the crew ol tnc mitrailleuse were likewise invisible. being concealed in a revolving turret. dho first test was one of speed over every class of country, the result being an average rate of thirty kilometres an hour. Next came the test of the ditches and Girardol, one of ' the constructors, accomplished the feat of leaping into and out of an excravation ten metres deep and twenty metres wide without break of speed. Next, came a manoeuvre directed against a battalion of infantry. A Hotchkiss was installed in the turret and the machine, dashed into the infantry with its turret swinging to every quarter, succeeded in firing 3,800 rounds in three minutes. was the unanimous opinion of the military judges that not a soldier would have remained fight after this terrible discharge. Next a regiment of dragoons was sent charging into the plain, neither the crew of the war chariot nor the commander of the dragoons having been informed of the foe to be met. Ihe war chariot did not see the chagoons until they were but 300 metre's distant, then, crashing out a hail of projectiles that would lui'.e swept hail the saddles clear, it fled across country and was out of danger in a minute.

Next came the tost of the war automobile s armour. A company of infantry was drawn up. th e motor car remaining a stationary target. At 20 to 20 metres the Lebtl bullets penetrated the armour, which is .light, supple and wonderfully resisting : 'at .10 metres they remained imbedded in the plates ; at 300 to 330 metres the bullets produced a depression and were thrown off.

Lastly, the tyros wore attacked and it was found that, even when pieuod with ton bullets they wore serviceable for twenty minutes or time enough to get out of dangor.

Such is the now arm—an artillery of great swiftness in attack ami flight, practically invulnerable and capable' in the hands of a clever handler of delivering terrific attacks in various parts of a field ol battle in an exceedingly short time. It is to he hoped that these new internal, machines will so add to the horrible prospects of combat that war will soon become an impossibility.—“ Now York American.”