Gadget War

As every airman knows, piloting a heavy bomber is a tiring job. To keep a plane steady in formation flying (especially in rough air and under fire), takes the combined efforts of the pilot and copilot.

Pilots often return from such a mission utterly exhausted.

But aircraft engineers, whose job nowadays consists mainly of finding ways to prevent the flying machine from over powering its human users, announced last week that they had found a solution to this little problem : a gadget which enables a pilot to control a heavy plane as easily as a child steers its bicycle. The device, called a "formation stick," has an arm rest and a pistol-gripped lever, which can be flicked in any direction by a finger touch. Electronics does the rest : the stick's motion is converted into an amplified electrical signal which operates the motors which operate the plane's control surfaces.

Developed by Air Technical Service Command engineers and the Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Co., the formation stick is now in use in all theaters. Pilots consider it one of the most helpful inventions of the war.

Last week, with the approach of German collapse, there was a marked slackening of Allied censorship over weapons all along the line. Some other new weapons demonstrated to newsmen by the U.S.

Army:

P: A radio mine against which ordinary defense measures, such as flails, are useless.

The mine, which has a miniature radio receiver, must be detonated electrically.

An operator sits at an observation post watching the minefield; when the enemy enters it, he dials a number on a contraption like a telephone, which sends out radio waves that set off the mines (all tuned to the dialed frequency). The device also can set off underwater mines, at a 20-mile range.

P: A light, portable sound locator for spotting enemy guns. Using a directional microphone, 'the device instantly calculates the position of a firing gun and marks the location by means of an arrow on a cathode ray screen (as in television).

P: An electronic director which automatically keeps a searchlight trained on a maneuvering plane in the air.

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