New Tune

Relishing both his story and the telling of it, gruff, grizzled Major General Levin H. Campbell Jr., chief of Army Ordnance, last week stripped some of the mystery from one secret U.S. weapon, the rocket-firing anti-tank gun which soldiers have dubbed the bazooka.

General Campbell told a Cincinnati audience that bazookas are:

> Light enough to be lugged and fired by one man.

> So simple that orderlies, clerks, truck drivers and others unskilled with firearms can use them.

> So efficient in short-range armor-piercing that a foot soldier is "master of any tank which may attack him."

Long chafing under security restrictions preventing public discussion of the weapon, General Campbell described how bazookas batter tanks, blow gaping holes in fortifications, smash pillboxes and "perform other seeming miracles." Said he: "During recent operations in Africa, a small but strong fort gave considerable trouble. One lone American soldier detached himself from a landing party, waded ashore and with one shot effected surrender of the fort. That will be known as the saga of one American soldier and his bazooka." In another African engagement, an astonished German tank commander surrendered thinking he was under fire of 155-mm. guns because he had seen a bazooka shatter a large tree near by.

Except for saying that they fire rockets "built on the Fourth of July principle," General Campbell left the design and structure of bazookas still a secret. The tune they play was not.

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