Rubber and Buckskin

Clearing weather over Western Europe last week was the signal for renewed reconnaissance flights from both sides of the Maginot-Siegfried stalemate. Allied soldiers restudied their pattern charts to be sure they remembered which planes to shoot at. But still both the Allies and Germany stayed their hands from grand-scale air warfare, for the same reasons that have ruled for 21 weeks: economy of men and planes, fear of reprisal, unpreparedness, weather. But a piece of air news came from London, about a German device:

Only two comparatively intact German warplanes had been brought down on British soil. All others damaged either crashed in flames, sank at sea or limped home. It had been rumored that the German planes had "puncture-proof" fuel tanks which, though riddled, enabled them to fly beyond capture. Last week Britain released details of the puncture-proofing, learned by experts from examination of a Heinkel bomber downed in Scotland's Lammermuir Hills in the war's eighth week.

No metal is used in the new tanks except for pipe connections and caps. The inside shell is fibre sheeting braced with fibre ribs. Over that is a layer of buckskin, next a layer of raw rubber one-eighth inch thick, covered by a thin skin of vulcanized rubber. When a bullet pierces the tank, the raw rubber reunites and the buckskin is swelled by leaking gasoline, so that together they plug the hole.*

Puncture-proof tanks are not the only reason intact German ships are scarce in Britain. No amount of buckskin and raw rubber can withstand the buzz-saw effect of eight machine guns, set in fours in the leading wing-edge of British pursuit planes so that their fixed fire converges. The British censorship last week released photographs of such a pursuit ship: 1) being fed its python-like ration of bullets; 2) standing over a drift of empty cartridges during a trial burst of fire.

*U. S. airplanes have gas tanks similarly designed, but do not mount them for peacetime flying because they are heavy, expensive.

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