Abilene Reporter-News from Abilene, Texas • 26

THE ABILENE REPORTER NEWS Tune on KRBC European victory Edition PAGE TWO Nazi 'Secret Weapon' Lost to Better Allied Ordnance and Tactics Sketches show some of the principal weapons of the Reich and counterdevices which played a major part in overcoming them ALLIED WOMEN PLAYED BIG ROLE IN DEFEAT OF GERMANY chsnko tha sniper who killed 351 Nans and whose poise and preV dominantly feminine qualities Impressed those who saw her on her visit to this country Many other Russian women aaw service et the front and many whose names are unknown their lives In the fierce gucrril struggles behind German lines In England Churchill's daughter Bre ALLIED WOMEN Tg 13 Cel 1 'BLITZKRIEG' IDEA LEADS TO DEFEAT OF GERMANY By ROBERT FARRINGTON AP Feature Writer Germany'! aucceaa waa reiponilble for her defeat Because she did not have the resources to vase too Ions a war successfully the "blitzkrieg" Idea Incorporating a much-heralded arsenal of "secret waa adopted Actually the only thing secret as which weapons were going to bo the one women's uniformed serv-abroad: the WACs which began an auxiliary and are now Fully Incorporated Into the Army MaJ Ruth Streeter commanded the women Marines The air transport command set up an organization of filers under the com mand of Mrs Nancy Love In the service at aea the WAVES were heeded by Lt Comdr Mildred McAfee BPARs were commanded by Lt Comdr Dorothy Stratton In the allied cause abroad one of the outstanding women heroes was Russian Lt Liudmila Pavllu- AP Featuru There's been no double standard In this war In which woman well men have not only put all their patriotic effort Into the battle an the home front but also donned uniform and gone Into the lines with their husbands and brothers In this country tha President's wife pointed up the moral lessons of the conflict in many talks throughout the land and abroad and visited the wounded In the hospitals Col Oveta Culp Hobby headed Ice whose members have been ent Battle Heroes AP Feature! In pre-war yean Axis leaden belittled America's potential telling the world this country had become soft and couldn't fight They quickly learned their error witness this cross-section of heroes of United States forces In the Afro-European theater: Lt Gen Mark Clark secret agent laid groundwork for diplomatic invasion of Africa leader of victorious Fifth Army MaJ Gen Ira Eakrr commander of Eighth Air Force in luting Germany's Industrial citadels Vice Adm Henry Hewitt chief of amphibious operations Brig Gen Maxwell Taylor and Col William Gardner flew secretly to Rome to arrange Italy's capitulation Major Levi Chase first to shoot down 10 Axis planes In North Africa Staff Sgt Donald Crowley high scoring aerial gunner shot down 11 planes In 30 ralda Sgt David Weedy credited with killing 300 Germans in two hours In North Africa with rockets flying bomba and "silver fire" Silver fir a flaming mass of phosphorus discs wu dropped on bomber formations by enemy planes Glider bombs controlled by radio and rockets fired by enemy planes were also used The answer again wu firepower We knocked down the enemy planes by arming bombers with longer-range guns and by providing long-distance fighters Rockets made a come-back despite their Inaccuracy compared to orthodox shells because lack of recoil made them a natural for launching from airplanea or by Infantry Nazi mines and booby traps were murderously Ingenious The Oar-mens wired the bodies of dead both Allied end their own hid duth In doorknobs stairways faucets toilet handles wine bottles whistles radios and apple tree Nazi sea warfare wu waged almost exclusively by a huge fleet of lubmarinee many using magnetic or sonic torpedoes designed to blast at the nearest mass of metal or throbbing propellor The British discharged floating magnetic mines by flying over them with a huge steel hoop slung below a plane Airplanea found and destroyed hidden sub When we had enough warships for convoy work the submarine menace faded and wu never ageln a major threat In the air emphasis shifted to big heavily armed and armored bombers Fundamentally this wu the same thing as had happened in the evolution of artillery guns Increase In range and size Constantly one type of weapon hu had to be Improved to meet the threat of another In American arms anti-aircraft range hu been Increased over 100 per cent tank speed 700 per cent bomb size well over 300 Individual soldier's firepower over 350 The farm Improvement program produced 35 new crop varieties in 1043 I used next Aerial blitz dive bombers panzers parachute troops mag-Detic torpedoes rocket guns "silver and flying bomba were limply tactical surprises The Reich strategy anticipated a fast sweep through all Europe before the United States and Great Britain could mobilise full strength It felled because It wu too ambitious Germsny'a strategy had roughly three main parts: clever propaganda a sudden attack and a mopup designed to crush seeds of future revolt Significantly the turning point came when Hltler'i troops finished their sweep across the continent from Poland by licking France His warlords were not ready to follow up Dunkirk with an Invasion of Britain for they had not anticipated sweeping success so qulcklly The Luftwaffe hammered and blasted Ragland In familiar pattern there were no plana to enable ground troop to follow up Battle Lesson Difficult The breathing spell proved-sufficient time for the Allied war machine to get under way Next for the Allies came- the Job of learning how to beat the enemy's weapons The lesson wu not simple The formula for halting an aerial blits wu painfully worked out in blood and broken cities Barrage balloons and anti-aircraft defenses though Improved tremendously were not enough so the RAF met the Luftwaffe out over the Channel The powerful battery of mi-ehlneguns in British wings luted the swastika planes from the underlining the military axiom: got to meet firepower with firepower" The Job wu not one of having to Invent new weapons but of getting enough bulc guns assembled at the right time end the oldest military headache in the world Dive-bombers tanka and panzer divisions crushed Prance end sent the public Into a tizzy clamoring for similar weapons Actually all France needed was mors powerful anti-tank guns and greater mobility for her famous Held piece Later desperate Russians fighting with "Molotov cocktails" (gasoline-filled bottles) TNT end grenades probed tank weaknesses We developed the tank-destroyer essentially a standard cannon on a fast truck The T-Ds waited In ambush and popped out at sure-death range Capping the tank-mesheri came the bazooka a two-man contraption for firing a powerful rocket which enabled our Infantrymen to convert any tank into scrap metal Machine Guni Deadly Another Oerman surprise the Stuka dive-bomber was king until we learned to murder It with heavy- rallber machine guns end quick-sighting anti-aircraft Trucks were easy meat until we mounted fast-swiveling machine guns above the cabs Because It had to follow a certain path to plant Its bomba a path that could be anticipated by a cool-nerved gunner the Btuka became a clay pigeon Our machine guns though little mentioned In the headlines became truly terrible weapons because of Improved firepower and lighting devices In the hands of masters they have stopped tanks planes ships and submarines as well as troops Parachute troope another surprise were Ineffective against strong ground resistance Further drawbacks: they could not get through a heavy screen of fighter planes rn route to their target In broken or woodrd country they could not land uninjured nor locate their equipment and food once on the ground they could not hold a captured position without support Their main advantage wu a diversion Development 6f our existing fighting tools plus mechanical gadgets radar and sound Instruments wu responsible for ruining the Nasi myth Full details must sbll be secret Our sntl-slrcrsft guns sometimes used ss snll-tsnk wespons too lesched miles Into the iky to bring down Nazi planes Mechanical "brains" ast In the middle of a group of A-A calculating height speed direction windage end a half dozen other factors Rag Of Tricks When the long retreat to Berlin finally began the Germans dipped deep Into their bag of tricks They tried to slow the land pursuit with mines and booby traps to half the pulverizing long-range omblng i the Jap next On this day let us give thank's that the death' and destruction in Europe is now at an end and let us pray that such wanton destruction and ruin can never be visited on innocent peoples ever again And after the last vestige of tyrannical oppression is wiped from the world let us be Sure that a lasting Peace is written A Peace that will guarantee to every man the right to live and worship in freedom a Peace that will insure the right to rear children with the knowledge that they can live in a world free from fear and serfdom Pray that this will come to pass Not until the last Zero has been knocked from the skies the last Jap sub sunk in the Pacific the last invader driven from every captured island then BUT NOT UNTIL THEN can we re-lax our war efforts There can be no compromise with the Nips Unconditional surrender is our goal We will be content with nothing less! 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