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November, 1931  U.S. AIR SERVICES   33

from a height which would place the bomb-dropping pursuiter just out of the bomber's gun-fire range if he wished his bombs to explode at the same altitude at which the bombers were flying. Besides, with a timed fuse you didn't have t oget an actual hit to have the bomb go off.*

COMING back to Aberdeen, we saw three fifty-pound practice loaded bombs released from an A-3 with Sergeant Smink as the pilot-bomber, explode about a fabric sleeve towed by Lieutenant McCaffery. Smink was flying at 2,000, McCaffery at 1,000 feet. With a rough formula of "time of falls equals one quarter the square root of altitude" we find that the fuses were set for an eight-second time interval. Simple

Meanwhile the six bombers, Keystone B-3s, 4s, and 5s from the 49th Squadron at Langley Field, Virginia, and under the command of Lieut. Laurance S. Kuter, had taken off and were almost standing still, bucking a stiff wind aloft as they climbed for altitude. Over the bombing range, several miles away, the two leading bombers each dropped a 2,000-pound bomb. This size bomb is a cylindrical one coming in three styles, MK I, the MK I M-I, and the MK M-11. The explosive charge, TNT, is about 55% of their total weight. Over a ton of this yellow explosive thumped the ground under our feet several miles away, as the two bombs hit. A volcano of smoke arose. The formation slowly turned and raced down-wind to turn again and make another up-wind pass at the target. The spectators looking aloft were greeted by a shower of sand and grass, thrown aloft minutes ago by the explosion and wafted down-wind. At the second pass the remaining four bombers each dropped two six-hundred-pounders, the eight six-hundred-pounders giving another presentable shock to that pat of Maryland.

Chemical warfare played a part in the next act, when three A-3-Bs piloted by Lieuts. Reuben C.Hood of Edgewood Arsenal, and William C. Mills and Kenneth R. Crosher of Ft. Crockett, Texas, raced across the field with FM(Titanium Tetrachloride) smoke pouring out of the spouts of the two 15-gallon tanks carried by each airplane. These tanks were the cylindrical type, CWS-E-1 to be technical, and so placed under the wings to allow a minimum of corrosive liquid to hit the fabric of the fuselage belly as it left the tanks. The three smoke screens, or trails of white fog, formed in one blanket above the field, demonstrating the manner of blanketing friendly ground troop movements or hostile A.A. observation. Major Minton, at the loud speaker, shooed the spectators to the trains which would take them to the Plate Range where the next acts would be staged. The crowd turned their backs and drifted toward the trains.
And then the wind, in turn, drifted the smoke, drifted it down around the crowd until from looking at a stunt they were actually part of one, the friendly ground troops blanketed by the smoke screens. It was something to remember - "in the battle of Aberdeen in 1931 I was in just such a smoke blanket and you couldn't see, etc. . ."
The show at the Plate Range opened with the firing of one round from a 14" and one from a 16" gun, after which the newsreel cameramen moved with the operators a half-mile down to the anti-aircraft range. There the 3" anti-aircraft guns barked away at one of the Michael Field O-1-Es piloted by Lieutenant Cork and towing the regulation sleeve at 6,000 feet altitude.