"GASSED" TANKS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXVI, Issue 17534, 29 March 1919, Page 5

"GASSED" TANKS.

AN AMERICAN YAKN.

An ingenious defence against tank attacks, which momentarily put an «nd to their usefulness, was used by the Germans some time ago, according to Paul S. Baley, an American writer, in the New York Illustrated World.

The German method of knocking out the tanks, says Mr. Baley, was by the use of gas—employed not against «he pilots and gunners running the tani\?, but against the motor-mechanism of the tanks themselves, paralysing them and putting them out of action. In the neighbourhood of the advancing tanks tons and tons of unweild'v projectiles were dropped. These we;e apparently innocuous enough in thet^ action. Each one exploded with a noise no louder than 'that made by a sma-1 calibred pistol. Not suspecting anything terribly dangerous, the tanks continued on their way methodically Then they, stopped, and were batters I to nieces by the enemy guns.

Each of the impotent looking projectiles was a carbon dioxide bomb, fired from a hand mortar. On bursting, eac'i projectile filled the atmosphere in that vicinity with a tremendous amount of gas. "Now, carbon-dioxid gas is not really dangerous to human life. It is only when the oxygen is vitiated in a stuffy room that it really has the ability to do much harm.

"The gas did not inconvenience'the drivers or gunners in the tanks in the least. Tt simply stopped the engines!

"How this wns done can be understood readily when it is remembered that a tank is nothing but an armoured fort set down on top of a gasoline-truck chassis. As long as the gas-motor runs, the tank can move. When it stops, the tank is immovable. No gasoline-engine can deliver an explosive mixture to chs carburettor in an aftmosphere of carbo'idiioxid. When the air became Kilted with this gas the tanks became useless.

According to the writer, the fact that attacks were subsequently made by tanks could only mean one thing, and that was that the Allies had evolved a gas-mask rendering tanks immune from the new German gas attacks.