Buck Rogers Goes to War

The Nazis have boasted long & loudly about "secret weapons." By last week they had disclosed some humdingers.

> In North Africa, the Nazis launched their Nebelwerfer (smoke thrower), a multibarreled, rocket-propelled mortar which U.S. and British troops dubbed "screaming meemie." Set off electrically, its rocket shells fling long fingers of metal.

> A flying bomb approaches its target on the wings of a rocket-assisted glider. It may be launched from a plane beyond the range of an enemy warship or bomber formation, may be controlled by radio.

> In Russia the Germans are using a wheeled anti-tank torpedo, as big as a motorcycle sidecar, electrically guided and detonated by a cable trailing from the torpedo to the operator. The Russian defense: cutting the cable.

> Magnetically guided acoustically detonated torpedoes have appeared in the Atlantic.

Rockets v. Rockets. Many new weapons come from the weird and wonderful union of rocket propulsion, aerodynamics and electronics. The rocket principle, in effect giving missiles a second kick after they have been fired from guns or mortars, is also being applied to heavy aircraft (if they can be shot off the ground, they can save gas for longer flights with heavier loads).

The U.S. Army's anti-tank bazooka is a rocket weapon. Two U.S. rocketeers, Drs. Theodore von Karman and Frank J. Malina, are cooking with propulsion for the newly founded Aerojet Engineering Corp., in Pasadena. The Luftwaffe is using highly effective rocket guns on its fighters. Unconfirmed, but believable, is the report that the Germans have at least one more rocket weapon: a gun which will outdistance the Big Bertha of World War I and hit London from the Channel coast.

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