Things That Go Bump

Britain finally felt the lash of Adolf Hitler's long-threatened secret weapon last week and found it much like its sponsor: nasty, unpredictable, incapable of achieving final victory.

The weapon turned out to be just about what British military and Government leaders had predicted months before--a self-propelled "robot bomb." It has stubby wings (16 ft. across) and tiny tail surface; its only pilot is a gyrocompass control box, intended to keep it on a steady course.

It is launched like a big rocket from frames or catapult installations in the Pas-de-Calais area, nearest to England across the Channel. The bomb is driven by a cleverly designed jet propulsion engine built on above its tail (see cut) which sucks in air, mingles it with fuel, explodes the mixture and drives the whole assembly along with a rapid, continuous series of jet thrusts.

The main body is an iron tube loaded with explosive roughly equivalent to a one-ton aerial bomb. This blows up when the fuel is burned out and the robot hits something. Speed is about 300 m.p.h. ; maximum range, possibly 150 miles.

Long Odds. As a precision instrument of war the robot is something to make soldiers weep. It probably cannot be "aimed" at any target smaller than a fair-sized city. The Germans themselves admitted that it could not be used on the Normandy battleground without endangering their own troops.

The gyro device can only hold the bomb on a single compass heading. Winds may drift it miles to one side; headwinds may bring it down miles short. The chance of hitting a good military target is good only because there are a lot of military targets in southern England.

The fact remains that wherever the robot bomb does hit, it does as much damage to any luckless person, building or section of landscape as though the projectile had been precision-aimed.

The first robot bombs hit at night. Then for five days last week they crashed down on southern England. British authorities, unwilling to tell the enemy what he was hitting, suppressed all details of the places struck (German propaganda implied that London was the chief target), but acknowledged that damage had been done, people hurt and killed. If any military targets were hit, the Germans did not get the satisfaction of learning about it.

Two hospitals were robot-bombed. A nurse in one said she was awakened by the approach of something "like a ball of fire in the sky." Seconds later "there was a terrific explosion and the whole place seemed to blow up. . . . When I got myself free I found a part of the home demolished. I heard cries of nurses trapped under the debris. We got some of them free by clearing away the wreckage with our hands."

Ghoulies and Ghosties. At other places grownups and children alike were killed, injured, buried in rubble. Citizens who escaped injury uneasily referred to the robot as "that Thing," or "It" (see below).

The whole unpleasant business was right out of the old Scotch litany:

"From ghoulies and ghosties, long-leggity beasties, and things that go bump in the night, good Lord, deliver us!"

Nevertheless, the British took the Nazis' open attack on their morale with war-tempered resignation. One daytime robot rumbled over a cricket pitch, trailing a 30-ft. lash of flame, and exploded in a nearby field. The game went on. A milkman told a customer that one of the things had hit near his place the night before, then added: "Blew a hole in a field. That won't do much good, will it?"

Everyone was curious about the robots. An 80-year-old woman commented: "Seems horrible queer to me. I believe I'd rather 'ave bombs." A policeman, cocking a wary eye skywards, admitted: "Weirdest night I ever had." A delivery boy explained his reaction: "I don't like the idea of nobody in those planes. I don't know why, but it's sorta ghosty.

But we'll get used to 'em like we did the rest."

Goebbels Gobble. The German reaction was equally characteristic. If the new weapon was of no use to Rommel on the beachhead, it was a godsend to Goebbels on the radio.

All the stops were pulled out. The robots were nicknamed "Dynamite Meteors" and "Hellhounds." The German people were solemnly told that they were falling like rain; that England's fate was sealed; that Britain had already been forced to order immediate evacuation of London. How this build-up would react on the German people when the anticlimactic truth came back was just another one of Dr. Goebbels' problems of the close future.

In London Home Secretary Herbert S. Morrison told the House of Commons that countermeasures were being taken against the robots and that no exaggerated importance would be attached to them. Visible countermeasures: 1) a heavy flak barrage to explode the bombs in air; 2) more heavy and concentrated bombing against the Pas-de-Calais district; 3) Spitfire patrols which shoot many of Goebbels' gismos into the Channel.

Military experts observed that the robot might be regarded as a parallel to the famed Pariser Kanone of World War I, which shelled Paris at extreme range (76 miles) and disconcerted many people without affecting the outcome of the struggle in the slightest. An elderly Englishman in a shelter ticked the robot off more tersely:

"I think it will come to a sticky end. I don't think it will be a success at all."

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