HITLER'S BOMBS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 222, 18 September 1940, Page 10

HITLER'S BOMBS.

FURY OF EXPLOSION. BRITAIN'S UNDAUNTED SPIRIT. It was inevitable—the German being what he is—that indiscriminate bombing of London, a start towards which has now been detected, should occur. It is firmly planted in the German mind that you can hammer a people into submission. Germany worships as much to-day as she did in the days of "Hoch der Kaiser!" the mailed fist and all tnat it implies. The German is, and has been for Generations, a dragooned 'being—the puppet of the junkers, and of the various types of masters that have succeeded them. And he has always had an enormous capacity for believing what his leaders told him—hence the fanatical reliance of the Germans on propaganda. He

cannot understand the mentalitv of men born and nurtured in personarfreedom, or the spirit of a people that has been always accustomed (within the bounds of very tolerant laws) to tell authority to go to the devil. And so the Germans believe they can break the British spirit. Hitler and: his gang believe they can do it because they so successfully broke the German spirit. And. therein, thev did nothing novel. William Hohenzollern and his Prussian cohorts did it before. The German people 'believe they can break the British spirit because their leaders tell them so. They believe it can be done by the same methods that have always broken the German spirit—the bludgeon. British People Different. Indiscriminate bombing, they argue, would inevitably break the ' German spirit—hence it must break the British spirit. The terror of screaming bombs, they believe, would break the British spirit because it would break the German spirit. They judge the British by themselves and do not and cannot understand that the British are different. There have been screaming bombs in London. A screaming bomb does just the same amount bf damage as an ordinary demolition bomb plus the fact that it makes a most appalling racket when falling. It is fitted with twisted vanes or with "organ pipes." The air, racing through these, causes the noise.' But noise doesn't kill you. If you are wise—and the British 'people have been warned to be wise—it will merely annoy you. It is the blast of the bomb, and, less frequently, the fragments of the bomb, that cause the casualties. And the blast occurs so fast, and the fragments fly so fast (about three times as fast as a rifle bullet) that if you are to be killed by an ordinary bomb, well, you won't hear the explosion! Blast From a Bomb. , You must try to appreciate just what < the bursting of a bomb means if you i are to have any understanding of what 1 London people are putting up with at i the present time. When a 5001b demoli- i tion 'bomb (that is about the usual size) t bursts, every pint of T.N.T. with which t it is charged, become instantaneously 18,000 pints of white-hot gas exerting pressures up to 150 tons a square inch, c You won't be able to imagine just what f that means, but, anyhow, you can trv. r This may assist you. When the o bomb bursts under this terrific pressure 1 and the fragments fly outward, the re- a leased gas, flying much faster than the t fragments, passes them with a velocity 1 of the order of 7000 ft a second. Imagine I a gale of wind of 7000 ft a second—47oo e\

miles an hour! Nothing within range can withstand the effects of that terrible blast unless it has been specially constructed for the purpose. Human bodies, of course, cannot possibly stand it. It is the blast, rather than the flying fragments, that does the damage.! There is a good chance that the spreading fragments may miss you, but there is no escape from the blast. Suction Effect Produced. Mr. Alan Brooksbank, who wrote a booklet on the subject about a year ago, gave this opinion of the probable effects of the blast:—"Ornamental projections from buildings may be torn off clean, brick chimneys may be disintegrated and individual blocks hurled about. Owing to what is termed 'suction' effect, which follows the wave of air driven out by the force of the explosion (as a trough follows a wave in the ocean) walls usually fall outwards and pile the streets with debris." Whole buildings are not necessarily demolished. Most often that side nearest the explosion is blown or sucked out, so that the place is left minus one wall,, with the inner floors collapsing or sagging precariously. Brick walls, as a general rule, will not be demolished if more

| than 50 feet from the point of the explosion. Windows, however, may be blown in or sucked out a quarter oi" a mile or more away. Demolition. Effect Momentary. The demolition effect, though terrific, is momentary. By the time the main damage has been done the destructive force has passed and is being dispersed. Glass in the immediate vicinity will be blown in; then there is an intermediate area where 50 per cent will be blown in and oO per cent sucked out; and then the outer area where practically all the glass will be sucked out.

To the immediate devastation caused by the demolition bomb must be added the (ires caused by the incendiary bombs which are freely dropped with them. The object of the incendiary bomb is merely to ignite whatever it falls on. Its explosive force is practically nil-merelv sufficient to release the combustible substances, but the damage it causes may be many times that caused by the explosive bomb, particularly in built-up areas. It is probable that in London, as in Germany, much more material damage has been done by the fires than by the explosive force of the big bombs. Ordeal of Londoners. With that information to guide vou it may be possible for ytfu to form" some taint idea of the ordeal through which the people of London are passing at the present time. There have been many casualties and there will be manv more. I here has. been a lot of property damage and there will be a lot more. But can that sort of thing win the war? Nobody outside the enemy countries will believe that British people will submit under treatment of this sort. It is just the very treatment calculated to fill them with the urge to fight on. And, they are fighting on.

One of the. most encouraging features of the air war is the range and persistence of the British raids over enemy territory. Britain, it will be noted, is not bombing Berlin in reprisal for the London raids for the very rood reason that the R.A.F. lias better targets for its bombs. The war will be ended by bombing out of existence those things that permit Germany to keep the war going.

The German war machine can be crippled and destroyed by smashing the factories that make the aeroplanes and munitions and by destroying the stocks of oil and petrol and other war material That is just what the R.A.F. is doiii" and it is doing it on a scale that proves that Britain has no lack of machines. Therefore, Germany's* hope of wearing Britain down seems more hopeless than ever.