NOVEL WAR WEAPONS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2729, 25 March 1916, Page 13

NOVEL WAR WEAPONS

NERVY WORK WITH DEADLY MISSILES. Mr. William G. Shepherd, special correspondent at Salonika of the United Press of America, gives interesting details of novel implements of war. He writes: —

At last the men in the great war have got down to using ordinary clubs—for braining purposes. The Austro-German soldiers are supplied with bludgeons, and on certain parts of the British front tho Allied soldiers have been furnished with clubs that are covered with spikes. These British clubs look much liko tiio "big stick" which American cartoonists used to picture one of our ex-Presidents as using. The clubs wore intended for use by tho Germans in entering British trenches on?the sly and slaying noiselessly, so that mon in other parts of the trenches might'not know what was going on. The British; needless to say, have prepared themselves to do tho same sort of thing when occasion arises.

One of the newest, missiles in the great war is a huge\shell. which, the Germans have been throwing in the neighbourhood of the Dardanelles. Only air-guns could throw the shell without exploding it, and these new air-guns must be ten inches in bore and many feet long. One of these big shells which foil in the British line unexploded ha.vbeen taken apart by experts. It was ten inches in diameter and fifteen inches high, made of sheet steel, with wooden plug discs at eac\ end. This big steel can oontained 76 pieces of scrap iron and 251b. of trinitrotoluol, and the whole missile weighed 511b.

The firing of the big shell must have been touchy.work. Imagine a "firecracker," ten inches thick, that would blow a hole in the earth six feet deep and ten feet in diameter. Imagine yourself facing the duty of lighting the fuse'on this 511b. cracker, and then, while the fuse was spluttering, placing the cracker in the mouth of a giant air-gun, and firing-ofE the gun in time to get the cracker out of your neighbourhood before it wont off.

Most hand bombs do not go off by contact. Tliey must be lighted first, and then thrown. Sometimes the. lighting is done with a match or cigarette; othor times by pulling a little string, which rubs two strips of sulphur together somewhere in the handle of the bomb. Both sides in the great war have bombs of various sorts for various needs. If the. enemy is coming on, I lor instance, you must have a bomb that will explode quickly; if you are rushing toward him you need a bomb that you can throw far ahead, and that wiTl have done ; ts job by the time you reach the scene. The slowest bomb, perhaps, is the Serbian. It is shaped like a pocket whisky-flask—neck, stopper, and all—and is of iron and brass. The thrower unscrews the brass top, hits a firing-pin on a stone or the butt of his rifle, and then, after a space of seven seconds, throws it. The bomb throbs in his hand three seconds beforeit is due to explode, giving him warning. If he throws the bomb too soon the other fellow may pick it up and throw it back at him. Bomb exports figure that any soldier can pick up a lighted hand bomb and throw it away from himself if he has five seconds to spare.