Rdo

How did the Allies, from supposedly fog-bound British airfields, manage to keep an aerial counterattack hammering at Von Rundstedt's Ardennes offensive? This is a question which must have racked the German generals with agonizing curiosity. Last week the British unwrapped the answer.

Known officially as Fido (Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation), the system that kept 15 British fields active during last winter's bitterest fighting consists of an installation of horizontal pipes laid parallel to each side of a landing strip. Gasoline is forced through and out of the perforated pipes with tremendous force. When ignited (by men running alongside the pipes with torches), a wall of flame roars from the jets with the noise and smoke of a forest fire. The intense heat first vaporizes the fuel in the upper (feeder) pipe, causing the smoke to subside, then burns off the soupiest fog.

Since July 1943, Fido has shepherded more than 2,500 Allied planes to safe landings. At a cost of 6,000 gallons of gasoline per landing, its price would still not be too high on fog-bound civilian airports.

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