New Tools

At the Aberdeen Proving Ground last week, the Army proudly showed President Harry Truman its newest fighting tools--some so new that details are still secret. Most impressive of the new weapons:

Rifle: the lightweight, .30-cal. T25 with a tremendous (750 rounds-a-minute) rate of fire. Two and a half pounds lighter than the standard infantryman's Garand, the T25 uses a 20-round clip, can be fired automatically or singleshot. Its purpose: to replace not only the carbine and rifle, but also the submachine gun and possibly, when it gets a better barrel, the reliable but heavy (19 lbs.) Browning automatic rifle as well.

Machine Gun: a .60-cal., air-cooled weapon with the highest muzzle velocity of any gun of its type. It can be electrically fired by remote control, thus giving the gunner the advantage of a sheltered firing position when the muzzle blast discloses the position of his gun. Another distinctive feature: the barrel can be unscrewed and replaced by a 20-mm. barrel.

Tank: the new T-41, called by the Army "the world's best light tank" (TIME, Jan. 15). Designed as a highly maneuverable patrol and reconnaissance vehicle, it has a speed of better than 40 m.p.h., an air-cooled engine with an automatic torque converter transmission, is maneuvered by a simple control stick. Its high-velocity 76-mm. gun packs a lethal punch, and is fitted to a gyroscopic sight which keeps the gun on target over the sharpest bumps. Weighing only 25.8 tons, it can be transported by air, is already in limited production at the Army's Cleveland plant. At Aberdeen last week, Chief of Staff J. Lawton Collins officially christened the T-41 the "Walker Bulldog," in honor of the late General Walton ("Little Bulldog") Walker, the Eighth Army's commander, who died in a jeep accident in Korea. Collins, admitting that the first U.S. light tanks in Korea had been unable to stand up to the Russian T-34 medium tanks, asserted flatly: "I can assure you this little baby will be able to do it."

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