Sending End

A large force of R.A.F. Halifaxes spent 90 minutes of one night last week in a concentrated pounding (with six-tonners) of Watten, on the Pas-de-Calais coast. The targets: launching sites for the expected elephant-sized Nazi V-2 rocket bomb.

This and other such heavy bombings were notice that the Allies take seriously the Nazi promise of a new civilian terror weapon. British censors let pass a commentator's statement that Paul Joseph Goebbels' ecstatic threats about new weapons "may not be sheer propaganda."

Also censor-passed: an "unauthenticated" description of the rocket bomb by a Reuters correspondent in Normandy. The bomb was pictured as a monstrous thing: up to 90 tons in overall weight, with an explosive head of ten to 15 tons. Its rockets would propel it through the stratosphere at 40,000 feet. Its 250-mile range would bring Birmingham, Manchester, Hull into peril.

All the propaganda stops were pulled out in Germany for the Herrenvolk to get what hope they might out of V-1's success, V-2's promise. Radio Berlin told a modern witch-on-a-broomstick story.

The witch was tiny (95 lb.) Hanna Reitsch, famed glider and helicopter pilot (who was a U.S. National Air Races stunting favorite in 1938). The story: in 1942 V-1 had a tendency to shake off its wings. In a robot fitted with landing skids

Aviatrix Reitsch rode an empty explosive compartment, spying on the wings through a periscope. She found the trouble, was seriously injured after four days of such superwoman tests. For her pains: the Iron Cross, First Class.

By Pressing a Button. From the German press came a first detailed story by a front reporter of the robot bombs' launchings. The German nicknames for Vi: "Paula" and "Pauline." Soldiers often wrote messages on the missiles: "Revenge for Frankfort. . . ."

The reporter spelled out the launchings in heartfelt detail: "An NCO presses a black button. The earth trembles. A hellish sound. . . In a fraction of a second the gigantic explosive missile shoots off and glides as quick as lightning over the launching track . . . with a gruesome roaring and thundering."

Britain knew too well the gruesome roaring and thundering. And nothing came from official quarters to dispel Britons' conviction that they would hear it awesomely multiplied if the war did not get over in a hurry.

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