GUNS IN FRANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 December 1939, Page 3

GUNS IN FRANCE

BRITISH ANTI-AIRCRAFT. An interesting description of British anti-aircraft guns in France is given in a despatch from France by Mr Douglas Williams, the London "Daily Telegraph" special war correspondent. "They looked dangerous and efficient weapons, each fitting in its hol-lowed-out pit ready for immediate action," he said. , "Their crews stood around polishing or cleaning or stacking shells in convenient piles for quick handling. "In the background stood the rangefinder and the predictor—instruments of precision and delicacy which communicate to each gun by electrical contact the exact range and position of enemy aircraft the moment they appear in sight. “So precise is anti-aircraft gunnery science today that the crew manipulating the predictor—an innocent-look-ing box so packed full of mechanism that it costs £Booo—set in action an electrical current which repeats on dials at each gun exact and momentarily changing instructions for each layer. "The action of the gun crews engaged in actual firing is thus purely mechanical, and each gun at any given moment is pointing at precisely the same point of the sky and its shell fused for the same -range as its fellows. “As the predictor moves so does each gun. and as I watched the men clustered like robots around the foursides of the predictor twirling dials and repeating calculations I thought back with a twinge of reminiscence to the cruder methods of gunnery employed in the war of a quarter of a century ago. “Today the element of human error has been largely eliminated by the invention of intricate instruments that take the place of the more cumbersome calculations with pencil, side-rule and notebook of the artillery officer of 1915. “The men working the predictor, I was told, need a light touch. ‘Women,’ said the officer who was showing me around, ‘could do this work excellently. They have the delicate fingers we need for this kind of work.’ No enemy aircraft has yet shown itself over the British front, but a hot reception is being prepared for any that do.”