VALUABLE DEVICE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 November 1943, Page 3

VALUABLE DEVICE

AMERICAN ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUN DIRECTOR. AMAZING ACCURACY AGAINST PLANES. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, November 10. The United States forces are using an amazing electrical flak-pointer which has been shrouded in secrecy since the first model was created in the Bell laboratories a week before Pearl Harbour, says the “New York Daily News.” It is known as the “M 9 gun-director.” The new device automatically measures a plane’s height and speed, allows for drift, muzzle velocity, gravitational pull, air density and wind, and then points the gun and sets the shell’s fuse so that the burst occurs within lethal distance of the target. The laboratory spokesman described the device as super-human, since the human mind is unable to make the necessary calculations at sufficient speed. He added that the M 9 operates electrically, thus differing essentially from all previous gun-pointers, which have been operated mechanically. It has been used with amazing success in New Guinea, the Fiji Group, and New Caledonia, and has proved effective against targets at 30,000 feet. In the South Pacific M9’s recently brought down 12 out of 16 Japanese bombers at a height of 14,600 feet. General Vandegrift, marine commander in the Solomons, reported that guns equipped with the M 9 on Guadalcanal brought down a Japanese plane from 30,000 feet with every 90 shells, whereas in the first World War an average of 17,000 shells was needed to bring down one plane. The designer of the gun is Dr. David Parkinson.