Beautiful New Bomb

Last week Minister for Aircraf Production Lord Beaverbrook praised two boys "from the back room" who had helped design "the big beautiful bombs" which were Britain's new present to Germany: Squadron Leader Robert Henry Garner and Air Commodore Patrick Huskinson.

The nature of the bombs was naturally not divulged, but their effect was something to see. In a raid over Hamburg, a pilot who dropped one said: "After it burst I could see a great circle of red, and on the rim of it, quite a distance from the center, I saw buildings going up into the air. Although I have been on 31 raids, I have never seen anything to match the effect of this bomb." Another described what he saw when a new bomb dropped as "a huge heaving mass like a volcano in eruption, which rose and settled down into a great red glow fully half a mile in diameter."

The back-roomers wanted to see for themselves. Squadron Leader Garner got permission to take a machine-gun post and fly all the way to Emden to see one drop. "After all," he said, "if you've got up some new idea it's only fair to go along and see how it works." Air Commodore Huskinson could not go to see. In a German raid on London fortnight ago, he went to his window to see what Nazi bombs looked like as they fell. One fell close by, its blast flooded his eyes with blood, and he was blinded.

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