FIGHTING AIR RAIDERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 October 1939, Page 6

FIGHTING AIR RAIDERS

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SKY BOMB COUNTERPART OF SEA MINE. The threat of unrestricted bombing in England has brought development of a number of weapons designed to fight raiding; bombing planes. One of the latest of these to be considered by the Air Ministry, according to reports, is the sky mine, an aerial counterpart of the sea mine laid to protect shipping and coastlines from enemy vessels (writes Wayne Thomas in the “Chicago Tribune”). The sky mine consists of a nine or 10 ounce light-gauge rolled steel canister filled with high explosive. This is floated into the air on a six-foot rubber balloon attached by a 40ft length of fine wire. By regulating the size of the balloon and the amount of gas each one carries these floating mines can be scattered about the sky at varying altitudes between the ground and 35,000 feet. Total cost of the unit would be about 3s, so that enormous quantities of them could be released. Furthermore, they could be released at the rate of about one a -minute by one man in any open field. The floating bomb was invented by Major H. J. Muir. It would explode on contact with a plane and would swing against any machine that hit the balloon or the wire. The explosive in any one bomb would not be enough to destroy a plane utterly, but it would shatter a wing or fuselage, so that the terrific air pressures generated by high-speed flight would tear the damaged plane to pieces. The bomb has four firing pins, arranged so that one or more of them must strike any object that hits the bomb or the balloon wire in the air. Any one of the pins set off the detonator that explodes the main charge. Also included in the bomb is a simple timing device that sets off the detonator automatically after a predemined length of time. This self-destroying device is needed in order to prevent the skies from becoming crowded with these bombs and preventing friendly aircraft from ramming live bombs.

The bombs would be released so that the wind would carry them toward the enemy. They would be scattered by calculation at all levels in a very few minutes after a raid warning was received. There are many advantages to this defence. It would not be as costly as maintaining a full-sized balloon barrage around an area like London, but probably would be equally effective. It also would not subject the populace to the dangers of falling shell fragments —a very real danger when antiaircraft guns would be firing at bombers manoeuvring over a city. The bombs are so constructed that their fragments are harmlessly small.

Minefields of this kind would be laid in all kinds of weather and would protect cities even when interceptor pursuit planes would be unable to co-operate. Tests of these bombs already are being made by English air authorities, and the sky mine may become the ideal reply to sky raiders.