Daisy Cutters

Marine landing parties at Arawe in New Britain gave the Japanese defenders one of the war's hottest surprises by plastering the beaches with murderous barrages of rocket projectiles fired from banks of rocket launchers in amphibious "ducks."

Correspondents who saw the attack and later operations at Cape Gloucester and Saidor were allowed to report last week that the rockets burst in a spray of raking death and spread like burning balls, scorching large areas along the beaches. At Saidor the entire landing area was bathed in flames before the troops piled ashore. Admiring Marines promptly nicknamed the skipping, hell-raising rocket shells "Daisy Cutters."

Technical details on the rocket artillery were necessarily vague, but it would appear to be an adaptation of the well-publicized Army bazooka, an open tube which uses an electric spark to launch a short-range rocket projectile.

According to one description, the launchers are arranged like a flat bank of ten organ pipes at the bow of a small naval landing craft. The crew takes shelter in the bottom of the craft to avoid the backlash of flame from the rockets. The firing is directed from a steel, asbestos-lined turret in the stern. Navy officers conceded that the rockets had proved of value, but discouraged over-sensational treatment of the weapon, pointing out that it could only supplement the heavy-artillery barrage before a landing.

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