BULLETS SENT BACK

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 33, 25 March 1942, Page 6

BULLETS SENT BACK

CLAIM FOR GUN SHIELD

AN AUSTRALIAN INVENTION

A gun shield that will kill enemy tommy-gunners with their own bullets is claimed by an invention submitted to the Australian .Army Department. The inventor is Mr R. JWhite, a bridge contractor, of Wagga, New South Wales. The face of the shield is shaped to ricochet bullets in the direction from which they came. Mr White claims that trials have shewn the shield to be so deadly that a man firing a pea-rifle at it from .'3O yards Avould almost instantly be struck with his own bullet. He says .303 bullets, would ricochet back for half a mile. "But I think it could be most effectively used to ward off tommy-gun attacks on fixed defences," added Mr White. "I have sent details of the shield to Mr Evelyn Owen, the inventor of the Australian Oiwen gun, as well as to the Army Department.

The Army already lias adopted practical suggestions made by Mr White for convcj r mg military transsport over bogs, cuttings and other obstacles. Last j'car his "rocket barrage," for the protection of ships and aerodromes from dive-bombers, was referred to. the Admiralty by Navy authorities. This provided for. the firing of thousands of high-pow-er rockets which, at the peak of their ascent, disgorge small parachutes, each trailing entangling wires. Mr White has also sent to the Army details of an invention by which tanks e.r other vehicles can escape under their own power from tanks traps. Details of this invention are secret. Mr White first used it toi remove a tractor from a creek after all other efforts had failed.