Rockets?

Nothing is quite so good for military technology as war. At the start of World War I, airplanes and poison gas cut no figure as military weapons; tanks were unheard of. All three proceeded to make big names for themselves. Since the Armistice, military theorists have speculated much about weapons that might be developed in the "war of the future." Now that the "war of the future" has started, speculation is hotter than ever. One device closely watched by advance scouts is the rocket--not small signal rockets, but big rockets carrying high explosives.

Rockets work by the principle of recoil: the combustion of fuel under pressure drives a jet of gas particles to the rear, and the recoil sends the rockets ahead. Rockets were used as war missiles in the early 19th Century. They had ranges up to two miles, better than the artillery of that day, were discarded only with the advent of breech-loading guns with longer ranges and rifled barrels.

Foremost U. S. rocketeer is Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard, who, backed by Guggenheim funds, runs a rocket-experiment station in the New Mexico desert. In his early experiments taciturn Dr. Goddard used ordinary gunpowder for fuel, has since switched to liquid fuels, such as a mixture of oxygen and gasoline, or oxygen and hydrogen--tricky to handle but highly efficient. He has sent rockets up vertically to heights of a mile and a half. His chief interest in rockets: as a possible means of carrying scientific instruments up higher than stratosphere balloons can take them. But experimenters abroad, especially in Germany and Russia, are reported to be busily developing rockets for use in war.

Early this year Major James R. Randolph, U. S. Army Ordnance Reserve, predicted in Army Ordnance that rockets would eventually assume a major role as carriers of high explosives. Hardheaded Major Randolph declared that "in the present state of the art, there probably would be no great difficulty in equaling with rockets the performance of the German long-range gun that bombarded Paris from a distance of 75 miles. But instead of firing shots of moderate caliber at long intervals, a rocket plant could fire the equivalent of 24-inch shells about as fast as desired. Such a job would be no more ahead of present practice than wartime bombing raids were ahead of the airplanes of 1913."

Tubes for launching the rockets, not having to withstand much pressure, would be light and cheap (costing less than 1% of equivalent cannon). These tubes could be carried into mountains and other difficult terrain where big guns cannot go. They could be manufactured in great quantity. "When a fortified position is to be reduced by cannon," declares Major Randolph, "the bombardment often lasts for several days, giving the enemy ample time to bring up reinforcements. With rockets, the whole artillery preparation would probably be shot off at once. . . followed immediately by the attack."

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