Aberdeen Show

One afternoon last week at Aberdeen Proving Ground (Md.), a fringe of people stood behind a hemp rope. A soldier passed down the line proffering a roll of cotton batting. The people were advised to stuff bits of the cotton into their ears, stand on their toes, gape their mouths. A moment later there broke forth from eight sinister-nosed 75mm. anti-aircraft guns a maddening, vicious cacaphony that made trouser-legs tremble and skirts sway in waves of force. High in the bright ceiling, some 2,000 ft. above, innocent bits of cotton appeared, no bigger than those in the ears of the crowd, trailing a red finger towed by a tiny airplane.

Three times the airplane dragged the "sleeve" target, at the end of a 2,000 ft. line, across the sky. Once it was not fired upon because both ship and target were too close to the sun. Once only two guns of the battery had firing data from the new electrical automatic range-finding apparatus. Spectators at the show--the 11th annual meeting of the Army Ordnance Association--later learned that the total of 200 rounds fired had made only a score of shrapnel tears in the red cloth finger. Previously they had seen two four-gun, multiple-mounted .50 calibre Browning machine guns blow forth eight sulphur-colored blossoms, fling white-hot missiles at a similar aerial target to score 36 direct hits.

A new Christie light tank, powered with a Liberty motor, plunged and reared across a churned-up field at 40 m. p. h. With the track-laying belt removed, this tank had gone 69 m. p. h., might go 90 m. p. h. on a good road.

From a flight of six Curtiss Condors 7,000 ft. aloft, the largest U. S. Army bomb was released, a 4,000 Ib. mass streaking down into a bullet-nibbled, shell-gnawed wood. A majestic, gloomy geyser of earth and debris arose, hiding the trees. At the edge of the range, some two miles away, listeners heard a long dull booommm.

Accompanied by a small thunderclap and two cinnamon clouds, a railway-mounted 14-in. coastal gun hurled a 1,560 Ib. projectile 25 miles out into Chesapeake Bay.

Watching wave follow wave of infantry, machine gun and artillery units in a mimic motorized attack, the maneuvers' distinguished guests, including Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams in a brown and battered Harvard hat, knew that few soldiers would walk to the next war.