INVADING BOMBER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1939, Page 6

INVADING BOMBER

ANTI-AIRCRAFT BATTERIES. The interceptor in the air is not the only lion in the path of the invading bomber. It will also have to pass the den of the anti-aircraft artillery. Even in the last war the British 3in. gun had their occasional successs. The present anti-aircraft weapons —of 3.7 in. and 4.5 in. bore —are far more formidable; and the Bofors gun, of about l,6in„ for use against dive-bombing attack, is also a very effective weapon. The larger guns owe their ness largely to the use of the predictor, a separate instrument which enables its “crew” to track with great precision the course of an aircraft flying at a great height and transmits to the gun crew electrically the information necessary for aiming the gun. The predictor was unknown in 1918. The height-finder is another essential instrument which has been perfected since that date. . The British 3.7 in. is the counterpart of the German 22bb gun, which was very successful in Spain. Until it arrived in Spain the losses of the Republicans bombers had been practically nil. After its arrival they could ventue only at their grave peril over the Nationalist lines. Indeed one French expert holds that no aircraft whose coiling is of the order of* 16,500 ft. will be able to survive the fire of the modern anti-aircraft gun in clear weather. It may pass unnoticed in the clouds at altitude about 20.000 feet. “But the instant it is seen within range its destruction is assured. “The progress already made in artillery is such that bombing aircraft will have to resort to stratospheric Hying." That, other experts would say, is claiming too much for anti-aircraft artillery, but. there is no doubt that the strides made by it since 1918 have been immense.”