Category: Military History

The Battle for Stalingrad, by Vasiliy Ivanovich Chuikov – 1964 (1963) [Unknown artist] – October, 1968 [Robert Emil Schulz] [Revised post…]

(Created in March of 2021, I’ve now updated this post to include the cover of Ballantine Books’ 1968 paperback edition of General Vasiliy Chuikov’s The Battle for Stalingrad.  See below…)

The cover design of Holt, Rinehart and Winston’s 1964 English-language translation of Russian General Vasiliy I. Chuikov’s The Battle for Stalingrad is simple, subtle yet powerful.  As seen in my (rather bedraggled!) copy below, most of the cover is occupied by a black (not blue, not gray, not red) sky, empty except for a translucent pillar of white smoke rising from the ground below.  And, that “ground” is not simply “ground”, but the ragged skyline of a destroyed city, with a river and hills behind:  The city of Stalingrad (once Volgograd, and again Volgograd) on the banks of the Volga River. 

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Akin to other works of military history published in the 50s and 60s (such as Day of Infamy and We Die Alone) the book’s cover interior includes situation maps illustrating the location of military forces pertinent to the book.

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The book also includes several photographs (some posed publicity images, some portraits, some random images of the battle) of which I’m showing two, here:  A meeting between General Chuikov and his military commanders during November, 1942, and the General’s encounter with famous the sniper Vasiliy Zaytsev. 

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From the book: “(Left to right) General N. Krylov, Lt.-General V. Chuikov, Lt.-General K. Gurov, and Major-General A. Rodimtsev discussing strategy in a bunker. (Camera Press)”

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A much better image of the same meeting appears in William Craig’s 1974 Enemy At The Gates, albeit the four commanders have different poses and facial expressions, thus indicating that at least these two – and perhaps more, yet unknown? – photographs were taken of this event.

The caption: “Leaders of the Russian Sixty-second Army in command bunker near the Volga.  From left to right: General Nikolai Krylov, Chief of Staff; General Vassili Chuikov, Commander; Kuzma Gurov, Political Commissar; General Alexander Rodimtsev, commander of the 13th Guards Division.  (Note the severe eczema on Chuikov’s bandaged hand, caused by nervous tension which mounted as the war progressed.)”

Here are General Chuikov’s two military award citations:

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Here’s another image from Chuikov’s book:  “The celebrated Russian sharpshooter, Vassili Zaitsev (far right), looks on as General Vassili Chuikov examines the lethal weapon. Commissar Kuzma Gurov is at center.” (Enemy at The Gates)”.  As you can see from the innumerable WW II-era images of Zaytsev, his face bears virtually no resemblance to that of Jude Law, who played him in the sadly underwhelming 2001 film Enemy at the Gates.  (No criticism of Law; criticism of the script.)  A vastly closer match (at the very least, in terms of appearance) would be Wes Chatham, of The Expanse.

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Here’s Vasiliy Zaitsev’s Hero of the Soviet Union award citation. 

General Chuikov and Commissar Gurov’s signatures appear in the “second line from the top” on the upper half of the second page.  

The central text of the citation itself – visible in the bottom half of the document’s first page – appears below this image, in Cyrillic and with an English translation.    

“За период с 10 октября по 17 декабря 1942 года в уличных боях за Сталинград снайпер Василий Зайцев уничтожил 225 немецких солдат и офицеров.  Участвуя в оборонительных и наступательных боях, он ежедневно пополнял свой боевой счет.  Непосредственно на переднем крае Зайцев обучал снайперскому делу бойцов и командиров.  В результате умелой организации и личного примера Василий Зайцев подготовил 28 отличных снайперов.

Его ученики-снайперы: П. Двояшкин уничтожил 78 немцев, Морозов – 66, Шайкин – 58, Куликов – 51 и др.  Всеми снайперами 1047-го стрелкового полка уничтожено 1106 немцев.  Велика заслуга снайпера В. Зайцева перед Родиной.  Достоин присвоения высшей правительственной награды “Герой Советского Союза”.”

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

“During the period from October 10 to December 17, 1942, in street battles for Stalingrad, sniper Vasiliy Zaytsev destroyed 225 German soldiers and officers.  Taking part in defensive and offensive battles, he replenished his combat account every day.  Directly at the forefront, Zaytsev taught sniper fighters and commanders.  As a result of skillful organization and personal example, Vasiliy Zaytsev trained 28 excellent snipers.

His pupils – snipers: P. Dvoyashkin killed 78 Germans, Morozov – 66, Shaykin – 58, Kulikov – 51 and others.  All snipers of the 1047th rifle regiment destroyed 1106 Germans.  The great merit of the sniper V. Zaytsev to the Motherland.  Worthy of being awarded the highest government award “Hero of the Soviet Union”.

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Here’s the cover of Ballantine’s paperback edition of The Battle for Stalingrad.  Published in October of 1968, the book features wrap-around cover art by Robert E. Schulz, which, typical of Schulz’s illustrations, is dramatic and directly representational, unlike that of the book’s (first) hardcover edition.    

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Here are a few other covers by Robert Schulz in the genres of science fiction, military history, and military fiction.

The Best of Barry N. Malzberg – January, 1976

Sands of Mars, by Arthur C. Clarke – June, 1959 (April, 1952)

I Robot, by Isaac Asimov – 1956

The Last Parallel, by Martin Russ – 1957 (1958)

HMS Ulysses, by Alistair MacLean – 1953

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Here’s Hanson W. Baldwin’s introduction to General Chuikov’s book, which is fascinating in its detail and perspective, given that it was written in the early 1960s, during the (first ?!?) Cold War.

—

INTRODUCTION
by Hanson W. Baldwin

At Stalingrad, as Winston Churchill wrote, “the hinge of fate” turned.

Stalingrad and the campaign of which it was a part was a decisive battle of World War II.  It was the high-water mark of German conquest; after January 31, 1943, when Field-Marshal Friedrich von Paulus surrendered what was left of the German 6th Army, the paths of glory for Hitler and his legions led only to the grave.

In late June, 1942, Stalingrad, strung along the west bank of the Volga for some thirty miles where the great river makes its sweeping loop to the west, was the third industrial city of the Soviet Union.  The front then was far away.  The Nazis had been halted at the gates of Moscow in November and December, 1941, and the war of Blitzkrieg had been turned into the war of attrition.  Pearl Harbor had brought the United States, with all its immense potential, into the war, and in North Africa, despite Rommel’s victories, British armies still held the gateway to Egypt and the Suez Canal.  Hitler faced the specter that even he dreaded – war on many fronts.

Yet the USSR was sorely hurt and German armies still held a 2,300-mile front deep within the Russian “motherland.”  The Reich that was to last a thousand years mobilized new units and called on sixty-nine satellite divisions – Rumanian, Italian, Hungarian, Finnish, Spanish, Slovak – to bolster German strength for a gargantuan effort.

For the 1942 campaigns Hitler substituted economic for military goals.  His eyes shifted from Moscow to the oil fields of the Caucasus.  The Drang nach Osten (push to the East), which had lured the Kaiser, influenced his plans for the German armies.

The basic German objective in the great seven-months campaign, of which the battle for Stalingrad was a key part, was the oil of the Caucasus and penetration of that great mountain barrier.  Russian armies in the Don bend – where the river looped far to the east within a few miles of the westward-looping Volga – were to be destroyed.  Stalingrad was originally envisaged as a means to a more grandiose end; the Russians were to be deprived of its “production and transportation facilities” and traffic on the Volga was to be interrupted either by actual seizure of the city or by artillery fire.  The city was not a key objective.

At the start of “Operation Blau” in late June, 1942, about 100 Axis divisions had been concentrated in Southern Russia opposite about 120 to 140 Soviet divisions.  Army Group A was to drive deep into the Caucasus; Army Group B, of which the 6th Army was a part, was to clear the banks of the Don of all Soviet forces and hold the long northern flank of the great Caucasian salient, from Voronezh, the pivot point of the operation, through Stalingrad southward toward Rostov.

The huge German offensive had sweeping initial success; Russian forces were shattered, Voronezh fell, and the 6th Army drove eastward into the loop of the Don.  Through the gateway of Rostov and across the Kerch strait, Army Group A drove deep into the Caucasus.

But late in July, 1942, Hitler, who fancied himself a master strategist and who handled every detail of military operations on the Russian front, shifted the schwerpunkt, or main weight of attack, northward from the Caucasus toward Stalingrad.  Stalingrad gradually became an end in itself; Hitler came to realize that the city on the Volga dominated a key part of the exposed northern flank of the southern offensive.  In General Franz Halder’s words he understood, too late, that “the fate of the Caucasus will be decided at Stalingrad.”

August, 1942, was a black month for Soviet Russia and for the Allies.  In the West the Dieppe raid was repulsed bloodily.  In the Caucasus German tanks captured the Maikop oil fields and the Nazi swastika flew on the Caucasus’ highest peak – 18,481 foot Mount Elborus.  On August 23rd, after a 275-mile advance in some two months, Panzer Grenadiers of the German 6th Army reached the Volga on the northern outskirts of Stalingrad and the long trial’ by fire started.

The five-month battle in and around Stalingrad – the subject of this book – was only a part of a far vaster drama played across an immense stage of steppes and forests and mountains.  As the southern campaign progressed, the vast spaces of the Russian land – which had defeated Napoleon – muffled the German blows.  Army Groups A and B were engaged in divergent attacks, each with weak and insecure flanks, separated by some fifteen hundred miles of hostile “heartland.” Logistics, the problem of supply which can make or break the best-laid plans of any general, became more and more important the deeper the Germans drove into Russia.  And as stiffening Soviet resistance, plus their own difficulties, slowed the German advance Hitler milked more and more troops away from the vital northern flank of the deep salient – the hinge of the whole operation from Voronezh to Kletskaya – to re-enforce Paulus’s 6th Army at Stalingrad.  This flank, which held the key to the safety of the German forces at Stalingrad and in the Caucasus, was held by the Hungarian, Italian, and Rumanian armies with only slight German support, the weakest of the Axis forces in the most important area.  And south of Stalingrad, almost to the communications bottleneck at Rostov, there was an open flank of hundreds of miles, patrolled for many weeks by only a single German motorized division.  The front was, in truth, “fluid.”

Except at Stalingrad.  In July and early August Stalingrad might have been easily captured, but the German schwerpunkt then was toward the Caucasus or was just shifting toward Stalingrad.  From September on, as Paulus, ever obedient to Hitler’s orders, drove the steel fist of the 6th Army squarely against the city on the Volga, resistance stiffened.  The German advantage of mobility was lost in the street fighting, and the battle of Stalingrad became a vicious, no-quarter struggle for every building, each street.

When the main German attack to seize the city started in mid-September, Paulus and his 6th Army, with the 4th Panzer Army on the southern flank, held with five corps (about twenty divisions in all) the forty-mile isthmus between the Don and the Volga.  From eight to fourteen of the German divisions fought in the city and its suburbs.  Paulus was opposed in Stalingrad by the 62nd (Siberian) Army, commanded by Lieutenant-General Vasili Chuikov (the author of this book), who originally commanded some five to eight divisions (subsequently re-enforced).  Moscow created a special Stalingrad Front (equivalent to an Army Group) commanded by Andrey Yeremenko and elements of the 64th Soviet Army, astride the Volga, and the 57th Army faced the 6th Army outside Stalingrad and the German 4th Panzer Army south of the city.

These were the forces that asked no quarter and gave none in one of the bloodiest battles of modern times.  Stalingrad, between September, 1942, and February, 1943, became a Verdun, a symbol to both sides; for Hitler it was an obsession.  In its battered factories, from its cellars and sewers, from rooftops and smashed windows and piles of rubble, Paulus and Chuikov fought a battle to the death.

At first the Germans were on the offensive, inching forward yard by yard here, reaching the Volga there.  Front lines were inextricably confused; there were few flanks, no rear; fighting was everywhere.

But by mid-November, with the Battle of El Alamein lost in Egypt, Paulus was almost through.  On November 19th, when the iron blast of winter had hardened the steppes, some half-a-million Soviet troops and fifteen hundred tanks, concentrated on the flanks of the Don and Volga bends, struck.  The first blows broke through the vulnerable northern flank held by Germany’s hapless allies, and by November 22nd, the Don Front (Rokossovski) and Yeremenko’s Stalingrad Front, with some seven Russian armies, had closed their pincers at Kalach on the Don bend, encircling in the isthmus between the Don and the Volga and in Stalingrad more than two hundred thousand soldiers of the German 6th Army, a few units of the 4th Panzer Army, elements of two Rumanian divisions, Luftwaffe units, a Croat regiment and some seventy thousand noncombatants, including Russian “Hiwis” (voluntary laborers who aided the Germans) and Russian prisoners.  When the encirclement was complete the Germans in the Caucasus had pushed to within seventy-five miles of the Caspian Sea.

The Kessel, or encirclement, originally covered an area about the size of the state of Connecticut, not only the city of Stalingrad itself but large areas of frozen, wind-swept open steppe westward to the Don.  Hitler called it “Fortress Stalingrad” and forbade any attempt at breakout; where the German soldier had set foot he must remain.

The rest is history – sanguinary, brutal history – the slow, and then the rapid, death of an army and of a city.  An airlift was organized to supply Paulus on November 25th, and in the bitter winter weather of December, Manstein, possibly the ablest German commander of World War II, attempted to break through the Russian encirclement to relieve Stalingrad.  He almost succeeded; his Panzers driving along the Kotelnikovski-Stalingrad railway reached to within thirty miles of the 6th Army’s outposts by December 21st, but Paulus, obedient to Hitler’s stand-fast orders, made no effort to break out.  By Christmas Day all hope had gone; Manstein was in full retreat and the last days of agony of the 6th Army had started.

On January 31, 1943, a dazed and broken Paulus surrendered in the basement of the Univermag department store in what was left of Stalingrad.  But Hitler was right in the long run, the 6th Army did not die in vain.  Until the end of December Hitler had forbidden the withdrawal of Army Group A deep in the Caucasus, though the northern flank of the great salient on which its safety depended was in shreds.  But in January, while the 6th Army died, Manstein – repulsed in his attempt to relieve Stalingrad – fought desperately and successfully to hold open the gateway to safety at Rostov, as Germany’s conquering legions in the Caucasus withdrew in a brilliant but precipitate retreat across the mouth of the Volga and the Kerch strait from the conquests they had so briefly held.

The 6th Army, ordered to fight to the death, undoubtedly diverted Russian divisions from concentrating against the Rostov gateway and prevented, by their sacrifice, an even greater Soviet triumph.  Army Group A in the Caucasus escaped to fight again, and the war’s ultimate end was still two long years away.

The Battle of Stalingrad was even more important politically and psychologically than it was militarily.  An entire German army was destroyed for the first time in World War II; of some 334,000 men, only about 93,000 survived to surrender (plus some Rumanians and 30,000 to 40,000 German noncombatants and Russian “auxiliaries” and civilians).  The shock upon the German mind was terrific; the myth of invincibility had been forever broken.  After the Battle of Moscow and the entry of the United States into the war the Germans had no hope of unconditional victory.  After Stalingrad they had little hope of conditional victory, of a negotiated peace with Stalin.

Hitler at Stalingrad attempted to achieve unlimited aims with limited means; he became obsessed with his own infallibility.  His lust for global power recoiled in blood and death from the ruins of Stalingrad; from then on, the German tide was on the ebb.

Soviet military history – like all Soviet history – hews to the party line: it does not hesitate to make black white; it sets out to prove a point, not to accumulate and relate the facts.  Truth, in terms of dialectical materialism, is relative; it is what the party says it is.

These faults, which were even carried to such an extreme as to obliterate totally from the record the names of Russians who cast their lot with the West (such as Vlasov), were particularly pronounced under Stalin.  But, since his death, the gradual “thaw” which has influenced Soviet life and mores has affected even the writing of military history.

The official Russian history of World War II, now being published – though still reticent in many areas – is refreshingly frank as compared to the polemical sketches of a decade ago.  However, there have been relatively few book-length memoirs or authoritative personal accounts by Soviet wartime leaders; it was safer to be inconspicuous than to bring down the possible wrath of official displeasure by putting anything on the record.

In fact, the historian of the Russian front has found, until recently, very little grist for his mill; the German records are excellent but one-sided.  Of the available Russian material, accounts published in military magazines were perhaps the best, though most of them were brief and devoid of details.  A few official Soviet accounts, which had been written for official use only but which had fallen into U.S. hands, presented a somewhat less biased picture.  A notable example of this kind of document, which deals with the battle for Stalingrad, is a study of the battle under the title Combat Experiences, published with the sponsorship of the Red Army’s general staff in the spring of 1943 for a restricted military audience.  A translated copy of this document – which, unlike most publicly available Soviet history, admits mistakes and is relatively frank – is in the files of the Office of the Chief of Military History of the United States Army in Washington, D.C.

To these sparse sources this book by Marshal Chuikov is a very welcome and an important addition.  During the battle Chuikov commanded the 62nd (Siberian) Army, which was directly responsible for Stalingrad’s defense; he might be called, in Western parlance, “the Rock of Stalingrad.” Chuikov is now, at writing, commander in chief of Soviet land forces, and his book makes it obvious that he pays obeisance to Premier Khrushchev.

As judged by Western military memoirs The Battle for Stalingrad appears episodic, fragmented, and far from complete.  But by past Soviet standards it ranks high.  It provides very considerable new insight into the battle in the city itself, and there are many surprising flashes of frankness.  The memoir adds materially to our knowledge of a struggle which was the beginning of the road to ultimate Allied victory.

Occasional frank tributes to German combat effectiveness, open criticism of some Soviet commanders, admissions of tactical mistakes and of very heavy casualties, accounts of confusion and supply and medical deficiencies would all seem to attest to the essential validity of this account.

More than a thousand soldiers of the 13th Guards Infantry Division reached Stalingrad with no rifles.  The Soviet system of political endorsement of military orders is described.

The narrative makes clear that Stalingrad was in truth a Rattenkrieg, or “war of the rats”; its horrible hardships and bitter fighting are implicit in Chuikov’s account, although the pitiless nature of the struggle and the atrocities on both sides that accompanied and followed the battle are glossed over.

Mother Volga was always at the back of the Russian defenders in the Stalingrad battle; it was at once comfort and agony.  For all supplies had to be ferried somehow across this great river to the rubble heaps and cellars of Stalingrad, and the wounded had to be removed across the same water route.  Chuikov’s description of some of the expedients resorted to during the period of major supply difficulties from November 12th to December 17th, before the river was frozen solid but while it was full of huge cakes of floating ice, provides a kind of thumbnail tribute to the strengths of the Russian soldier – the strength of mass, of unending dogged labor, of sweat and blood, of love for Mother Russia, of courage.

Chuikov contributes, too, specific details of battle orders issued by him and by other unit commanders, and he fills in gaps in the West’s knowledge of the Russian units that fought in the Stalingrad campaign.  There are interesting and informative sections dealing with the contributions of Russian women, as soldiers and auxiliaries, to the defense of Stalingrad.

On the whole, The Battle for Stalingrad adds materially to the data on Stalingrad; indeed, it presents from the Russian point of view more detail of the battle in the city itself than any other volume in English.

The book, of course, does not entirely escape from the inevitable polemical fetters which handicap every Soviet historical work – despite the new liberalism.  The author time and again pays sycophantic tribute to political commissar Khrushchev, who was the Communist Party representative at the Stalingrad Front headquarters east of the Volga, but who never once – as far as this book indicates – entered the shattered city of Stalingrad during the fighting.  The real architects of the great Russian victory in the Stalingrad-Caucasus campaign – the then Generals Georgi Zhukov, Alexander Vasilievski, and Nikolai N. Voronov – receive no credit.  Stalin is conspicuous by his absence.  German losses and German troop strengths are exaggerated, and, despite frequent mention of heavy Russian casualties, the reader will search in vain for that rarest of all statistics: specific figures of Soviet casualties.  And one will find no appreciation of the “big picture” or of the contribution to final victory of the United States or Great Britain.

Despite these weaknesses – inevitable in the Soviet literature of war until communism changes its stripes – this book is an addition to history, a chronology of a famous victory, and a study in command and tactics.

Despite the dialectical cant with which Moscow has tried, until recently, to cloak Soviet military concepts, all soldiers in all armies draw common lessons from the common heritage of war.  Marshal Chuikov shows himself in his memoirs to be a perceptive and vigorous commander.  And despite his Communist ideology, he sums up his experiences at Stalingrad – one of the world’s great battles – in terms often used at military schools everywhere:

1.  Use historical examples, but don’t repeat them blindly.

2.  Don’t “stand on your dignity”; listen to your subordinates and don’t encourage them to be “yes-men.”

3.  Don’t cling blindly to regulations.

Stalingrad – its name now changed by one of those ironic twists of which Communist policy is so full to Volgograd – stands today restored, enlarged, a monument to disaster and to triumph, a symbol of man’s inhumanity to man, a site of awful carnage, of fierce patriotism and burning loyalties, a city which will forever live, like Troy, in the tears and legends of two peoples.

New York

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My other Battle-of-Stalingrad relate posts pertain to Russian-Jewish writer Vasiliy Grossman’s book The Years of War and his novel Life and Fate, serialized for BBC Radio, and adapted by Sergey Ursulyak as a 12-episode television mini-series produced in the Russian Federation, the latter available through Amazon Prime Video (19 5-star reviews).  I watched every episode, and would entirely concur with the 5-star reviews.  Given the novel’s size, complexity, number of characters, and especially the depth and profundity of Grossman’s writing and beliefs about human nature, freedom, and tyranny, Ursulyak did a magnificent job of adapting the story for television. 

I think you’ll like it.   

Information for Your Further Distraction…!!!

Craig, William, Enemy at The Gates – The Battle for Stalingrad, Ballantine Books, New York, N.Y., 1974

Hanson W. Baldwin…

…at Wikipedia

Hanson W. Baldwin Papers…

…at Inventory at Syracuse University

…at Archives at Yale

Battle of the Century (Сражение века – Srazhenie Veka) – Describes General Chuikov’s experiences during the Battle of Stalingrad (in Russian), at militera.lib.ru

End of the Third Reich (Конец третьего рейха – Konets Tretego Reykha) – Describes General Chuikov’s experiences during the last months of the war, ending with the Battle of Berlin (in Russian), at militera.lib.ru

Soviet tactic of “hugging the enemy” in contemporary battles, at Quora

Battle of Stalingrad…

…at Wikipedia

…at Brittanica.com

TIK History (“Filthy detailed and super-accurate” World War 2 documentaries”.)  Much emphasis on the Eastern Front, but a wide variety of other topics are also covered. 

Vasiliy Ivanovich Chuikov…

at WarHeroes.ru

…at Wikipedia

Vasiliy Grigorevich Zaytsev…

…at WarHeroes.ru

…at Wikipedia

Volgograd…

…at Wikipedia

209 – March 7, 2021

The Age of Advertising: Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation – May, 1945

A simple, visually compelling advertisement by Grumman aircraft.  The innumerable silhouettes receding to the horizon are all of the same aircraft, probably representing the company’s F6F Hellcat fighter plane.

The emblem of the 7th War Loan would place the ad’s date at somewhere after May 7, 1945.

A Book in Memory, A Book of Memory: “Fighter Pilot”, by 1 Lt. Levitt Clinton Beck, Jr.

Originally created in February of 2019 and having appeared at one of my Brother blogs, ThePastPresented, I’ve now updated and modified this post – about the book “Fighter Pilot” – comprised of posthumously published letters written by WW II Army Air Force fighter pilot 1 Lt. Levitt Clinton Beck, Jr. – to appear “here”, at WordsEnvisioned. 

Though the book by definition pertains to aviation and military history, by virtue of being a “book” per se (well, that’s what it is!) and bearing two examples of Lt. Beck’s own art, its historical significance and unusual nature merit that its author not be forgotten.  

Enjoy!

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“On the other hand,
if I don’t make it,
everything I have written will be here for anyone to read,
and I feel it will make a better ending to my life than just to be
“missing in action.”

“When you read all this I shall be right there looking over your shoulder.”

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This photographic portrait of Levitt Clinton Beck, Jr. is from the National Archives’ photo collection “Photographic Prints of Air Cadets and Officers, Air Crew, and Notables in the History of Aviation – NARA RG 18-PU”.  Though I don’t know the Advanced Flying School from which Lt. Beck graduated and received his commission, the large pin that he’s wearing, bearing the abbreviation “43-B”, indicates that he received his wings in February of 1943. 

No words are needed to convey his pride and determination.  

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Military literature from all eras is replete with autobiographical accounts of the wartime experiences and postwar reminiscences of its participants.  Such narratives, whether published during the immediacy of a conflict, or afterwards – years, and not uncommonly decades later – are typically based upon combinations of official documents, letters, diaries, photographs, illustrations, and above all, human memory, however fickle, imperfect, or uncertain the latter may be.  The commonality of most such accounts, regardless of the era; regardless of the war; even regardless of the identity of the soldier and the nation for which he fought; is that the participant of the past, would become the chronicler, creator, and literary craftsman within the present, for the future. 

Among the vast number of books and monographs presenting the story of a soldier’s wartime experiences, is another kind of literature, bearing its own nature and origin.  That is, stories about the lives and military experiences of servicemen who never returned from war, created by family members – typically parents – sometimes by former comrades – as living memorials that exists in words, and grant indirect testimony of and witness for those who can no longer speak.

A striking example of this genre of military literature is the book Fighter Pilot., created and published in 1946 by Levitt Clinton and Verne Ethel (Tryon) Beck, Sr., of Huntington Park, California.  The book is a posthumous autobiography of their son, First Lieutenant Levitt Clinton Beck Jr., who served as a fighter pilot in the 514th Fighter Squadron of the 406th Fighter Group, of the 9th Air Force.  Centrally based upon the thoughts, musings, retrospectives, and then-undelivered “letters” penned by their son, and including transcripts of correspondence several photographs, Fighter Pilot is historically fascinating, detailed, and from a “human” vantage point, a literary work that is best termed reflective – for the reader, and, by Beck, the writer.

Shot down during a brief encounter with FW-190s of JG 2 or JG 27 on June 29, 1944, Beck crash-landed his damaged Thunderbolt (Bloom’s Tomb; P-47D 42-8473) south of Dreux, France, near Havelu.  His loss is covered in MACR 6224.

Taken to Les Branloires by Roland Larson, he was given civilian clothes by a Mr. Pelletier, and then taken to the town of Anet, where he remained for three weeks, hidden by Madame Paulette Mesnard in a room above her restaurant, the Cafe de la Mairie (on Rue Diane de Poitiers).  There, while safely hidden (Fighter Pilot reveals that Madam Mesnard insisted that Lt. Beck remain there until Anet’s liberation by Allied troops…) he would compose the writings that would eventually become Fighter Pilot.

Three weeks later, Lt. Beck was taken to the home of Mr. Rene Farcy, in Les Vieilles Ventes.

One week further, Beck was picked up by a certain “Jean-Jacques” and the latter’s female companion, “Madame Orsini”.  Ostensibly a member of the Underground, Jean-Jaques was actually Jacques Desoubrie, a double agent who worked for the Gestapo.  Desoubrie took Lt. Beck to a hotel in Paris, on Boulevard St. Michel.

The next day, the Lieutenant was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to the prison of Fresnes.

From there, in accordance with German policy (as of the Summer of 1944) towards Allied aviators captured while garbed in civilian clothing and without military identification (dog-tags), and, in association with resistance networks in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, Beck was one of 168 captured Allied aviators sent to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

A very detailed account of the mens’ experiences at Buchenwald can be found at the Wkikipedia biography of RNZAF pilot Squadron Leader Phillip John Lamason, DFC & Bar, who became the senior officer of the group.  As quoted, “Upon arrival, Lamason, as ranking officer, demanded an interview with the camp commandant, Hermann Pister, which he was granted. He insisted that the airmen be treated as POWs under the Geneva Conventions and be sent to a POW camp.  The commandant agreed that their arrival at Buchenwald was a “mistake” but they remained there anyway.  The airmen were given the same poor treatment and beatings as the other inmates.  For the first three weeks at Buchenwald, the prisoners were totally shaved, denied shoes and forced to sleep outside without shelter in one of Buchenwald’s sub-camps, known as ‘Little Camp’.   Little Camp was a quarantine section of Buchenwald where the prisoners received the least food and harshest treatment.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“As Buchenwald was a forced labor camp, the German authorities had intended to put the 168 airmen to work as slave-labor in the nearby armament factories.   Consequently, Lamason was ordered by an SS officer to instruct the airmen to work, or he would be immediately executed by firing squad.  Lamason refused to give the order and informed the officer that they were soldiers and could not and would not participate in war production.   After a tense stand-off, during which time Lamason thought he would be shot, the SS officer eventually backed down.

“Most airmen doubted they would ever get out of Buchenwald because their documents were stamped with the acronym “DIKAL” (Darf in kein anderes Lager), or “not to be transferred to another camp”.   At great risk, Lamason and Burney secretly smuggled a note through a trusted Russian prisoner, who worked at the nearby Nohra airfield, to the German Luftwaffe of their captivity at the camp.   The message requested in part, that an officer pass the information to Berlin, and for the Luftwaffe to intercede on behalf of the airmen.  Lamason understood that the Luftwaffe would be sympathetic to their predicament, as they would not want their captured men treated in the same way; he also knew that the Luftwaffe had the political connections to get the airmen transferred to a POW camp.”

Eventually, the men were transferred out of Buchenwald, with 156 going to Stalag Luft III (Sagan).  Ten others were were transported from the camp over a period of several weeks.

Two of the 168 did not survive:  They were Lt. Beck, and, Flying Officer Philip Derek Hemmens (serial 152583), a bomb aimer in No. 49 Squadron, Royal Air Force.  Hemmens’ Lancaster Mk III, ND533, EA * M, piloted by F/O Bryan Esmond Bell, was shot down during a mission to Etampes on the night of June 9-10.  Ironically, Hemmens was the only crew member to actually escape from the falling plane.  His fellow crew members died in the crash of EA * M.

Lt. Beck, weakened from an earlier bout of illness from the conditions in the concentration camp, died from a combination of pneumonia and pleurisy while isolated in the camp’s “hospital”, on the evening of September 29-30, 1944.

He has no grave.  His name is commemorated on the Tablets of the Missing at the Luxembourg American Cemetery.

Similarly, the name of F/O Hemmens, who died on October 18, is commemorated at the Runnymede Memorial.

Well, there is at least some justice in this world, even if that justice is not speedy:  Jacques Desoubrie, whose infiltratation of two French Resistance groups eventuated in the arrest of at least 150 Resistants, fled to Germany after France’s liberation.  He was, “…arrested after being denounced by his ex-mistress, and executed by firing squad as a collaborationist on 20 December 1949 in the fort of Montrouge, in Arcueil (near Paris).”

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For one so young at the time (Beck was 24), the overlapping combination of seriousness, introspection, contemplation, and literary skill (and, some levity) in his writing are immediately apparent.

A central and animating factor in Beck’s words was the realization of the danger of his predicament, and the possibility that – however remote, at the time; for reasons unknown, at the time – he might not return.  He was realistic about this.  Whether this feeling arose from a premonition, or objective contemplation of the danger of his situation, either or both motivations spurred him to record thoughts and create letters for two eventualities:

His return, and the creation of a permanent record of his experiences, perhaps for the sake of reminiscing; perhaps for eventual publication.

His failure to return, and a document by which he could be remembered by his parents and friends.  (He was an only son.)

As he recorded:

“The idea has been growing within me these last few days that I should like to take all these experiences and others I have had, and have my book, “Fighter Pilot,” published after the war is over.  There is the thought, too that “Lady Luck” may not be able to ride all the way with me.  So, while I have a few days to wait for the French Underground to complete their plans for my escape back to England, I see no reason why I shouldn’t write every day, all that I can, so that just in case my luck has run out, you will know what has happened to your wandering son.”

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I obtained a copy of Fighter Pilot some decades ago.  The book was republished in Honolulu by “Book Vompay LLC” in 2008, with the book’s Worldcat entry stating that, “This edition is a revised and corrected version of the original, which was first published in 1946.”  As of this moment – late 2022 – two original copies are available from two eBay sellers, at $20 and $40, while Kissinger Legacy Reprints has republished the book for a selling price of $40 to $50.  

Some extracts from the book’s text, as well as some images, are shown below.  These will give you a feel for the book’s literary and historical flavor.

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The book’s dust jacket bears an image of a bubbletop Thunderbolt, almost certainly sketched by Beck himself.  Though the canopy frame bears a kill marking denoting a destroyed German plane (see account below), this aerial victory was not confirmed: USAF Credits for the Destruction of Enemy Aircraft, World II, contains no entry for this event.

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A poem by Beck, composed at the age of twenty.

I SEE IT NOW

(Written in 1940)
By L.C. Beck, Jr.

I WATCHED the day turn into nite,
Creeping shadows reached the sky;
Birds flew to their nests,
Still singing as they went;
All mankind lay quiet at rest,
As though to heaven sent.
Quiet ne’er before was like this –
Even wind hung softly about the trees,
As is afraid of waking birds,
Sleeping in their nests;
‘Twas like another world to me,
And I found myself wishing –
Wishing it were true.

I’ve suffered – and have hated it,
But in my mind a thought was born,
Making a new path for me –
On which I now find my way.

I see it now –
While I suffer here
I must not question of it;
It is the way of life –
Too much happiness would spoil me;

I’d grow too fond of life on earth
And the after life I seek
Would not be so sweet -.
We must have our troubles here;
Our hearts torn by loss,
Our hands made bloody by war,
Our future left unknown.

Once again the time has come
When day and night do meet, –
But all are going in ways apart
And but touch here in their passing;
I’m glad that God mas made it so
For it thrills me to my very soul
To see so bright a luster of the day
Meet the sweet sereneness of the night.

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The book’s simple and unadorned cover.

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1 Lt. Levitt Clinton Beck, Jr., in an undated image taken in the United States.

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Pilot, propeller, and power.  Given Beck’s rolled-up sleeves and the intense sunlight, this picture was probably taken somewhere in the southeastern United States.  Another clue: 406th Fighter Group P-47s did not have white engine cowlings.

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Dated March 8, 1944, this picture is captioned “Officer’s Party, AAF”.

Fighter Pilot lists the names of the men in the photo.  They are (left to right):

Front Row

Billington, James Lynn 2 Lt. (0-810463) – Queens County, N.Y.
KIA June 24, 1944, MACR 6346, P-47D 43-25270
Dugan, Bernard F. 2 Lt. (0-811868) – Montgomery County, Pa.
KNB April 15, 1944 (No MACR)
Born 8/16/19
Arlington National Cemetery; Buried 7/19/48
Beck, Levitt Clinton, Jr., Lt.

Middle Row

Long, Bryce E. Lt. (0-811938) – Edmond, Ok. (Survived war)
Van Etten, Chester Lumley Major (0-663442) Los Angeles, Ca. (Survived war)
Gaudet, Edward R. 2 Lt. (0-686738) – Middlesex County, Ma.
KIA June 29, 1944, MACR 6225, P-47D 42-8682
“Atherton”
Benson, Marion Arnold 2 Lt. (0-806035) – Des Moines County, Ia.
KIA June 17, 1944, MACR 6635, P-47D 42-8493

Rear Row

Cramer, Bryant Lewis 1 Lt. ( 0-810479) – Chatham County, Ga.
KIA August 7, 1944, MACR 7405, P-47D 42-75193
Cara Montrief (grand-daughter)  According to Fighter Pilot, Cramer’s daughter was born three weeks after her father was shot down.
Dorsey III, Isham “Ike” Jenkins – Opelika, Al. (Survived war)
David “Whitt” Dorsey (brother)

Note that Major Van Etten is wearing RAF or RCAF wings.

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Lieutenant Beck’s loss in combat is covered in Missing Air Crew Report 6224.  However, Beck’s own account of his last mission, written while he was in hiding at Anet and providing the “other side” of the Missing Air Crew Report, appears in Fighter Pilot.  His final radio call, “Eddie, I think I may have to bail out,” – probably to 2 Lt. Edward R. Gaudet – was heard and reported as “My airplane is hit.  I think I’ll have to bail out,” by 1 Lt. Bryant L. Cramer, who himself was shot down and killed less than two months later.

As for Lt. Gaudet, he was shot down and killed during the very same aerial engagement as Lt. Beck, while flying P-47D 42-8682.  His loss is covered in MACR 6225.

Images of MACR 6224, and Lt. Beck’s story as recorded in Fighter Pilot, follow below:

CHAPTER TWO

My First “Victory”

WE WERE TO fly the “early one” that morning of June 29th.  We dashed down in the murky dawn, that only England can boast about, for breakfast and briefing.  Both very satisfying, we took off and headed for our target, just a few miles south-west of Paris, along the Seine river.  My flight carried no bombs, as we were to be top cover for the squadron on their bomb run.  It was a group (three squadrons) mission.

Just before we reached the first target, a bridge, the flak opened up and we did some evasive action to go around it.  None of it came very close to my flight, but we were not giving them very much of a target to shoot at, I guess.  The clouds made it rather hard to keep the others down below in sight, so I dropped down to about 12,000 feet.  We lost the rest of the squadron for a while and then I spotted them to the west, being shot at.  I started over there with my flight and as we neared the others, someone in my flight called:

“Break, Beck, flak.  Break left!”

I did, and then, Eddie, I believe, said: “It’s a 190.”

I turned 180 degrees and saw the 190 in the middle of three 47s — Cramer, Eddie and Unger.  I gave it full boost and started back after the little devil.  He looked very small among the Thunderbolts and I had no trouble recognizing him as a 190.  He was breaking up and then I think he saw me coming after him as he turned around and we were then going at each other head on.  For a brief second I thought of breaking up into a position where I could drop on his tail, but he was the first Jerry I’d ever seen and I wasn’t going to let him live that long if I could help it.

I knew, however, that his chances of shooting me, at head on, would be just as good but I was a little too eager and mad to give a damn.  I squeezed the trigger and I think the first round hit him because I saw strikes on his cowl, wing roots and canopy all the way in.  I guess I’d have flown right through him, but he broke up a little to the left and I raked his belly at very close range.  I thought to myself:

“Becky, there’s your first victory.”
Just to make sure, though, I turned with him and started down but I didn’t seem to be going very fast.  I rammed the throttle with the palm of my hand but was rather astonished to feel it already up against the stop.  I flipped on the water switch but that didn’t seem to do any good either.  I looked down at my instruments and then it was very clear.  My engine had been shot out.  I felt a little panicky at first but settled down and started “checking things.”

Nothing I did seemed to have any effect, so I called:

“Eddie, I think I may have to bail out.“

Oil started licking back over the cockpit.  Here we go again, I thought.  Just like Cherbourg.  She is even worse this time, I guess.  The damned engine was just turning over and that was about all.  I knew I could never make the channel but I was still trying, I guess, because I was messing around with the throttle and everything I could get my hands on …  6000 feet now.

I still had my eye on my “victory”, though.  He was going down in a spiral to the left, smoking very badly.  Wham!  Something hit me in the back and threw me forward.  I didn’t need to look to know what it was.  I broke to the left pulling streamers off everything and there he was.  A sleek little 190 sitting on my tail – gray and shiny, spitting out flames of death up at me.  It wasn’t a very pretty sight, I must say — looking down his cannons — I knew then that I was no longer fighting to get the ship running again.  I was fighting for my life!!

I was pretty scared for an instant, but it seems that just when I get that feeling inside and almost think I’m a coward, something snaps.  It did, and I was once again the mad fighting American I had been, with an engine.  I forgot for the time being that my engine was dead, I guess, because I watched him flash past and then jerked my kite around to the right to a point I knew he would be.  I hadn’t looked out the front of the canopy for some time and now as I did, all I saw was the reflection in the glass, covered with oil, of my gun-sight.  I cursed and pulled the trigger, shooting in the dark, but at least I felt better.  I kicked the ship sideways to have a look out of the side and there was Jerry — just a hundred yards up front.  I swung the nose around to about the right position, I thought, and fired.  I don’t know whether I hit him or not, but he seemed in pretty much of a hurry to get the hell away.

I pressed the “mike” button and said:

“I’m bailing out.”  But all I heard was deathly silence.  I knew then that my radio had been blown to bits by the Jerry on my tail.

I thought that I’d better jump at about 4000 feet, so I undid my safety belt and just then my ship shuddered and I heard terrific explosions all around me.  I looked out of the only clear space left in the canopy, and saw more flak than I’d ever dreamed possible in one small area.  I couldn’t see which way to break so I just went to the right, because the ship did, I guess.  I knew then that to bail out would mean sure capture and I still had just a wee bit of hope left for my chances of getting away.  I decided to stick with the ship and try a trick that “Benny” and I had talked about one night before he was killed.

I opened the canopy a crack so I could see the ground and when I did, I saw the longest clear stretch of land I think I ever saw in France.  It was just about the right distance away, I thought, for me to make my dive to the deck and then scoot over there, at tree top level, and belly in.

I remembered that I had taken my safety belt off, so I started trying to put it on and still keep my eye on Jerry at the same time — also fly the ship— without an engine.  Some fun, and if you want to try your ability at being versatile, it is a good trick.

I got under Jerry without his seeing me, I guess, and then down among the trees; I had to keep a keen eye out of the cockpit, so I gave up the idea of buckling my belt again, and decided that I would stretch my luck a bit more, by doing the impossible.  I really had no choice, but to hell with the belt.  Here comes Jerry again.  I had about 275 MPH, so I felt pretty “safe”, you might say.  I would wait until he got in range, then break and throw off his aim and then belly in.  It was very simple, when you happen to be the luckiest guy in the whole air force.  I put one hand on the instrument panel and waited until I got slowed down a bit.  I eased her down slowly and was just about ready to touch the ground when I realized that I had not put my flaps down and my stalling speed would be much too fast.  I pulled up, but just before I did, I felt my prop hit the ground.  I pushed the flap handle down and then watched the grass go by on either side.  It seemed as though I’d buzzed half way across France by now and I must be running out of field.  I kicked the ship sideways and looked.  The trees were still quite some distance ahead, so I eased the old girl down and then I was sliding.  I put my “stick hand” on the panel, too, and just braced myself and waited.  It shook me around quite a bit, but as I had ridden quite a few rough roller coasters without a safety belt, I was doing pretty well without one now at 100 MPH or so in a 7 1/2-ton hunk of metal.  Just before the last few feet, the ship turned to the right and threw me crashing into the left side of the cockpit.  It was then that I realized that my back and ribs were already sore from the shock I’d received from the 190’s cannon.

Flames were licking up over the cowling of my ship and I had no more than enough time to get out.  I knew I wouldn’t have to destroy my ship.  I jumped out, parachute and all, and again hit on my left side, on the wing.  I was pretty sore around that part of me by now, also quite excited and too mad to care much.

A few yards from the ship I stopped long enough to take off all the equipment strapped to me.  I considered taking the escape kit out of my ‘chute pack, but there wasn’t time.

When you are 100 miles inside enemy territory, naturally one has the feeling that every bush hides a German.  I was quite inexperienced in ground fighting, so I didn’t look forward to shooting it out with the Germans with my .45 pistol.

Thoughts were running through my mind about just what to do and how, all during those first five or ten seconds.  I even thought about hiding my ‘chute as we had been instructed in a lecture, but I looked back at my airplane and almost laughed.

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At approximately 0815 on 29 June, I was flying the wing of Yellow Flight Leader, Lt. Beck, at 13,500 ft. on a heading of 260o over Dreux.  The flight was jumped all too effectively at this time by four FW-190s, who came out of the clouds directly over us.  Lt. Beck and I broke left, bit one of the 190s got hits on Beck’s airplane before I could get it off his tail.  His engine was smoking rather badly, and as I followed the enemy aircraft down in a dive, attempting to close into effective range, I heard Lt. Beck call on the radio and say, “My airplane is hit.  I think I’ll have to bail out.”  I can not say for sure whether he made the jump successfully or not, nor am I positive he did jump.  It is quite probable, however, that he did jump, and successfully.  A pilot from the 513th Squadron, flying below us at the time of the encounter, reported seeing an unidentified, black fighter dive into the ground, and saw a chute open up above it.  The Focke-Wulfs were silver.

Missing Air Crew Report 6224…

Here’s NARA’s digital version of the original Luftgaukommando Report (“Meldung über den Abschuss eines US-Amerikanisch Flugzeuges” – Report about the downing of an American airplane) covering the loss of Lt. Beck and his Thunderbolt: J-1582.  Note that though Lt. Beck was shot down on June 28, 1944, this document was actually compiled only a little over four months later: November 2, 1944.  Lt. Beck had died two months before.

Also from Here’s a list (list number 28, to be specific) of four of the Allied warplanes shot down in France on June 27-28, 1944.  Data about losses appears as black typed text, while identification numbers of pertinent Luftgaukommando Reports appears in bright red.  The Luftgaukommando Report numbers are KE 9108, KE 9065, J 1582 (Lt. Beck’s plane), and KE 9064.  Note that Lt. Beck, name then unknown, is reported as being a “flüchtig”: close translation “fugitive”.

I’ve been unable to correlate KE 9108 to any aircraft, but KE 9064 definitely pertains to Lancaster III JB664 (ZN * N) of No. 106 Squadron RAF,  piloted by P/O Norman Wilson Easby, and KE 9065 covers Lancaster I LL974 (ZN * F), piloted by F/Sgt. Ernest Clive Fox.  Of the seven men in the crew of each aircraft – both of No. 106 Squadron RAF – there were, sadly, no survivors.

As described in W.R. Chorley’s Bomber Command Losses, Volume 5:

JB664: T/o 2255 Metheringham similarly targeted.  [To attack rail facilities at Vitry-le-Francois.]  Crashed 2 km E of Bransles (Seine-et-Marne), 16 km SE of Nemours.  All [crew] were buried in Bransles Communal Cemetery.

LL974: T/o 2255 Metheringham to attack rail facilities at Vity-le-Francois.  Shot down by a night-fighter, crashing at Thibie (Marne), 11 km WSW from the centre of Chalons-sur-Marne. All were buried locally, since when their remains have been brought to Dieppe for interment in the Canadian War Cemetery.

Though KE Report numbers – covering British Commonwealth Aircraft losses – appear in NARA’s master list of Luftgaukommando Reports, I don’t know if (well, I don’t believe) they’re actually held at NARA.

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Here’s a postcard view of the main street of Rue Diane de Poitiers in Anet.  Lt. Beck lived on the third floor of the building on the right, in the room with the window directly below the small “X”.

Below, is a 2018 Oogle Street view of Rue Diane de Poitiers, which (well, to the best degree possible!) replicates the orientation and perspective of the above 1940s postcard image.  Akin to the postcard, the view is oriented south-southeast.  The window of Lt. Beck’s hiding place is visible directly beneath the leftmost of the two television antennae.

The location of Madame Mesnard’s restaurant was (in 2018) occupied by a branch of the Banque Populaire, while the business to the right (_____ Centrale“) was at the time the Pressing Diane Anet laundary service.

Below is another 2018 Oogle view of 16 – 18 Rue Diane de Poitiers.

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Here’s s a very different view of Rue Diane de Poitiers: The drawing, sketched by Lt. Beck himself, shows buildings directly across the street from the window of his room.  His self-portrait appears as a reflection in the lower right windowpane, with his initials – “By LCB” – just below.

Below is a 2018 Oogle street view of the building directly across the street from Lieutenant Beck’s room.  In 2019, it was the home of the Boulangerie pâtisserie chocolaterie à Anet (Chocolate Bakery Pastry Shop in Anet).

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Here are Lt. Beck’s last diary entries and final words to his parents, composed just prior to his departure from Anet, and, his ill-fated attempt to return to Allied forces:

It’s a very beautiful day today, the first nice sunny one in over a week. I shall just have to lie in the sun awhile, even though I won’t get much written.  As I said previously, I was to leave at 8:00 o’clock at night.  That was wrong, I find, after talking to Paulette about it.  It was at 8:00 o’clock in the morning.  That means that I don’t have tomorrow to write and so today must wind up my writing from France.

It has been lots of fun writing all this.  I guess that I am just halfway glad that I got in on this part of the war.  Just a few hours after I set my plane down in France, I thought to myself:

“Boy, what a story this will make.”

Even if I don’t get out of France, ever, this will, by mail, and that is one reason why I have taken it so seriously.  Had I felt that it never would be read I should not have written so much.

Writing something like this that will not be mailed right away gives me a chance to say just anything I feel.  If I get back to England and finally to America again, I can just tear up anything that was meant to be read if I were killed trying to get back.  On the other hand, if I don’t make it, everything I have written will be here for anyone to read, and I feel it will make a better ending to my life than just to be “missing in action.”

No one wants to die like that — just without anyone knowing what happened.  I feel then that I have really accomplished a great deal in leaving these passing thoughts behind.  Hoping with all my heart that they will be of some comfort to all my friends, and especially to my Mom and Dad.

When you read all this I shall be right there looking over your shoulder.  (You may not see me but I am here.)  You can feel that I have not gone away, but have, instead, come back to you.  (I am so much closer than I was in England and France.)

You should see my tan now.  I’m either mighty dirty or very tan, one or the other.  At least I like it and feel much more healthy when I’m brown, as I have told you before.

I’ll be darned if Larson didn’t bring me two packages of cigarettes.  He must have killed two Jerries to get them.  What a guy!!!

How can a guy feel sad and lonely with someone doing everything in the world for you – ?

Mom, if you will, I’d like you to write a letter to Paulette and to Larson.  They can get the French lady I spoke of, to translate it for them.  You can write two or just one letter — suit yourself.  Address it to Larson Roland, Anet, France.

He has lived here all his life and everyone knows him.  Also, if you like, you can ask them to write and tell you just what happened.  You will want to know I am sure and if there is any way humanly possible, they will find out and write you.

So, as this lovely day draws to an end, so does my writing.  Always remember this saying which you put at the bottom of so many of your letters.  It is truly a short, sincere, and very simple statement but holds a world of comfort and thought:

“Keep smiling.”

I have kept smiling every day and it has made each day of my life joyously happy.  Just remember me as always smiling, Mom.  And now it is you and Dad who must, “Keep your chin up” and “Keep smiling”, always.

I shall always be, Your loving son

— L.C.—

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Earlier in the text appears a letter to an unknown “Helen”:

Helen,

You didn’t think I would forget you, did you?

After knowing a girl as lovely as you, for twelve years, a guy would be absolutely a “dope” if he did!

Thinking of all our wonderful times together is easy but to forget them would take more than a lifetime.

I guess something must have gone wrong with the machine that “puts names on bullets”.  We both were quite sure, weren’t we?  I really felt that I would live to be a hundred, but I suppose I can say, quite safely, that in my 24 years I have had my share of living.

It’s always nicer, anyway, to end a story at its best climax.  My story ends just as I like it.  Full of thrills and excitement and with the blood tingling in my veins — Fighting.

I guess there isn’t much else to say.  You know how I always was about such things.  Perhaps leaving things unsaid at times is better.  Just now, anything I say might sound foolish or untrue.  Perhaps it would be, but when a person writes a note of this type he doesn’t very often say things he doesn’t mean.

If you can see my point I shall only say this and no more.

I loved you dearly when we were at our best.  You must have known.  Surely you could tell.  As for some of the time, I will admit that I wasn’t sure.

Our love affair was, ’tis true, quite irregular and although it might have been better, I shall always think of it as a very wonderful part of my life.

Perhaps had we been a bit older when we met and I a bit more settled, as well as you, we would have been married.

As it turned out you are much better off as you would be a widow now instead of a beautiful young girl, with a fine future ahead of you.

Well, “Sweet Stuff,” I shall say Byeeeee now, with a kiss for old times.

I want to wish you every happiness that can be yours.

Until we meet again — I shall be waiting.

Love, L. C.

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Finally, just before his departure from Anet:

If anything happens to me, I hope that you can finish my story.  It would be my last wish and I think a very nice way to end a thus far, perfectly swell life.  Naturally, I truly hope that I shall be able to finish the story myself, but if not, the ending will be for you to finish.  Paulette will have someone write you and tell you just what happened, if the French Underground can find out.  This is quite an unhappy little note, isn’t it?  I feel much the opposite, however.

______________________________

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Here are images of four of the pilots mentioned by Beck, or, appearing in the group photograph above.

This is “Dorsey III”, namely, Isham “Ike” Jenkins Dorsey III, of Opelika, Alabama.  He survived the war.  Contributed by his brother, David “Whitt” Dorsey, this photo appears at Isham Dorsey III’s commemorative page at the Registry of the National WW II Memorial.

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“Unger”, mentioned in the account of Beck’s last mission, is listed in Fighter Pilot as “Lt. Edwin H. Unger, Jr., New York, N.Y.”  His image, as an aviation cadet, appears in a composite of photographic portraits of servicemen from Nassau, New York, in the Nassau Daily Review-Star of May 26, 1944, accessed via Thomas N. Tyrniski’s FultonHistory website.  (That’s where the “If you are reading this you have too much time on your hands.” is from!)  Lt. Unger survived the war.

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This is Major Chester L. Van Etten of Los Angeles, who’s seen (wearing RCAF or RAF wings) in the center of the above group photo.  This image, also at the Registry of the National WW II Memorial, appears in a commemorative page created by Chester L. Van Etten himself.

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Also appearing at the WW II Memorial Registry is this image of Lt. Bryant L. Cramer, appearing on a commemorative page created by his grand-daughter, Cara Montrief.  Given the markings on the P-47s cowl, I assume that this image was taken in the Continental United States.

Here’s Lt. Cramer’s portrait, taken in August of 1943, from the National Archives’ collection “Photographic Prints of Air Cadets and Officers, Air Crew, and Notables in the History of Aviation“.

References

Beck, Levitt C., Jr. (Beck, Levitt C., Sr.), Fighter Pilot, Mr. and Mrs. Levitt C. Beck, Sr., Huntington Park, Ca., 1946

Chorley, W.R., Royal Air Force Bomber Command Losses of the Second World War Volume 5 – 1944, Midland Publishing, Hinckley, England, 1997

USAF Credits for the Destruction of Enemy Aircraft, World War II – USAF Historical Study No. 85, Albert F. Simpson Historical Research Center, Air University, 1978

First Lieutenant Levitt Clinton Beck., Jr. – FindAGrave biographical profile

P-47D 42-8473 “Bloom’s Tomb” – at 406th Fighter Group

Lancaster ND533 – at Aerosteles

Lancaster ND533 – at North East War Memorials Project

Lancaster ND533 – at WW2 Talk

Jacques Desoubrie – at Wikipedia

Allied Airmen at Buchenwald – at Wikipedia

Allied Airmen at Buchenwald – at National Museum of the United States Air Force

Squadron Leader Phillip John Lamason, DFC & Bar – at Wikipedia

 

War in Space, 1939 – III: “Space War Tactics” in Astounding Science Fiction, by Malcolm Jameson and Willy Ley (1939) – Readers Respond!

And now, we come to the third of three posts about space warfare, as seen in 1939.  This comprises readers’ letters to Astounding, in response, praise, and criticism, of Willy Ley’s and Macolm Jameson’s articles.

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The appearance of Willy Ley and Malcolm Jameson’s articles about warfare in space, in the August and November issues of Astounding Science Fiction of 1939, generated – unsurprisingly – a small fusillade of laudatory comment in the magazine’s issues of October and December, 1939, and, May of 1940.  The contributors were Thomas S. Gardner of Kingsport, Tennessee; A. Arthur Smith of Ontario, Canada; J.M. Cripps of Manhattan, Kansas; James S. Avery of Skowhegan, Maine, as well as Jameson and Ley themselves, in the October and May issues, respectively.

In the October issue, reader Gardner gives his evaluation of the literary merits of the August, 1939 issue, and follows with agreement about Ley’s article, albeit suggesting that “rays” might be safer weapons than projectiles, albeit not explaining how. 

In the same issue, Malcolm Jameson’s letter provides insight into his career in the Navy.  Then, he segues into the “core” of his own article, which pertained to locating, tracking, and aiming at an enemy spacecraft.  He also addresses the technology of guns, or more accurately, cannon, in terms of the weight (mass) of the gun itself, qualifying this with the realization that his comments pertain to guns in terrestrial conditions, not space.

Reader Cripps, in the December Astounding, turns out to be an advocate of “rays”, under the proviso that, “if you [Willy ley] admit-their scientifictional credibility, it won’t strain you too much to realize that there is just a possibility that those same projectors might not be either so weak or so sensitive to shaking or jarring as you seem to think.”  He premises this on the assumption that spacecraft can be propelled – be powered and reach escape velocity; leave a planet’s gravity well – solely by means of “ray projectors”, rather than, “the sort of chemical rocket that can he designed today.”  In this context, he suggests that energy released from a cyclotron could be transformed into electricity and then projected into space via a “ray generator” or “refractory projector”, without (!) expanding onto how said generator or projector is specifically to function.

Okaaaayyyy. 

Well, feasible or not, it’s something!

As for addressing Willy Ley as “Herr Ley”?  Is that a sign of respect, sarcasm, or an ethnic dig?  Who knows!

In the issue of May, 1940, reader Avery’s comments parallel those of Gardner in 1939, addressing the magazine’s literary content, and positing a question concerning Jameson’s analysis of a spacecraft versus spacecraft battle.  Then, Willy Ley explains his advocacy of guns versus “torpedoes”, by focusing on the suitability of 37 and 75mm cannon, specifically in terms of the weight of the former.  As for the “37”, “…that they are effective enough has meantime been demonstrated by the new 37-millimeter anti-tank guns of the U.S. army that “disintegrated” 1 ½-inch steel armor plate at a thousand yards without a moment’s hesitation.  That 1,000 yard range means, of course, in air – for space conditions it might safely be multiplied by a hundred or even more.”  Perhaps as much for space warfare?

However, in terms of (terrestrial!) anti-tank combat, while the 37mm (M3) gun was a suitable weapon against pre-war tank designs, Japanese tanks throughout the war (in a general sense), and light (including German) German armored vehicles, it was not an effective weapon against the Panzer IV and later German tanks.  Emphatically not. 

Anyway, to liven things up a little bit, included are images of the covers of the relevant issues of Astounding, those for October, 1939 and May, 1940, having been found on the Internet.  There’s also a lovely piece of black & white interior art, I’m certain by Henry Richard Van Dongen.     

Astounding Science Fiction
October, 1939 (pp. 154-160)

Malcolm Jameson plans to expand on Ley’s ballistics!

Dear Mr. Campbell:

I regret to have to give Astounding Stories a very good rating for the August, 1939, issue.  I repeat, I regret, because it is very difficult to keep up such a high standard as Astounding has been setting for the past six months.  I am afraid that I will be disappointed one of these issues — although I know that you will do every-thing to prevent such a catastrophe.  Now to business:

Cover – good.  It strikes a note of action and force.  I like the contrasting reds and darker colors.

Your little editorials are quite Interesting – in spite of the fact that sometimes I do not always agree.   However, this month we agree.

“General Swamp, C.I.C.”  Quite a good and logical story – parallels the American Revolution.  Your characters are well drawn, and I am glad to see the individualism shown, for it is passing out in America now.  Of course, it is harder to fight a war with people who are free individuals – as we found out in 1776.

“The Luck of Ignatz” – A good character, I should like to see more of this character.

“The Blue Giraffe” – Humor can be used well in s-f. and de Camp handles it best of any that I have seen.

“Pleasure Trove” – The type of story that made old Astounding under Clayton liked – scientales with a punch.  Thanks for the breathing spell from the heavy stuff.

“Heavy Planet” – Good.  A logical and well-handled situation.

“Life-Line” – Very plausible and better on the second reading.  The doctor didn’t completely believe his own theory and proof until he failed to save the young couple – then he knew that his own time was about up and he couldn’t change the future.  That was cleverly put in the story.

“Stowaway” – Fairly good story and a good poke of fun at Earthlings.

“An Ultimatum from Mars” – The best of Cummings that I have seen in a long time.

“Space War” – Fine.  Willy Ley sure knows his engineering and some ballistics.  The article was the best of its type for some time.  He is dead right – guns are going to be really tough to handle in free space.  The trouble is in hitting the object – a whole new science of ballistics will have to be worked out – something like the multiple body problem on a small scale.

Tell Ley that rays might be safer – it they are developed on a large scale due to their spreading – for space around a battle will be uninhabitable for long distances due to unexploded bombs, et cetera.  Of course, the h.e. shells will travel far away if they don’t hit.

Inside Illustrations – I still like them O.K.

General make-up was O.K.  So you see why I regret to have to give it such a good rating – for can yon repeat next month?  I hope so. – Thomas S. Gardner, P.O. Box 802, Kingsport, Tennessee.

SCIENCE DISCUSSIONS

Malcolm Jameson is one of the country’s few real experts on really heavy guns.

Dear Mr. Campbell:

Up to now I have been one of the most inarticulate of your contributors, but Willy Ley’s “Space War” in the August Astounding, is like smoke in the nostrils of an old fire-horse – it starts me itching to hop into the ring with him for an unlimited bout where we can hurl back and forth the fascinating facts of ballistics – both interior and exterior – and drag in that other science that utilizes both of them and some other things – Fire-Control.  Ordinarily, I approach your science articles with a good deal of deference and with appropriate modesty, but when anybody starts writing about ordnance he is on ground where I think I know my way around.  It happens that I spent eight or nine of the best years of my life where ordnance was being designed, manufactured, tested and used – in gun factory and laboratory, at proving grounds and on warships, both in peace and war, and in the field with troops.  So if I make bold to comment: on Mr. Ley’s article, it is because I feel that I am competent to do so.

Not that I mean to imply I have fault to find with it.  On the contrary, I am all for him – barring a few minor points.  I like his demolition of the heat-gun and ray-screen doctrines, and the way he sails into other fantastic gadgets.  I am in thorough accord with his choice of propelled explosives as the most probably final weapon of future warfare.  My chief criticism is that he did not go far enough.  He tells us what projectiles will do to the hostile ship, but not how to find it and hit it.  The problem of finding the enemy and maintaining contact long enough to hit him, considering the stupendous reaches of the void and the colossal speeds involved, seems to me to transcend all other considerations.  But then, that is the subject matter for another article entirely.

It occurs to me, however, that readers of Astounding may be interested in some expansion of several of the things Mr. Ley mentions; and also I would like to take issue with him as to one or two of his statements.  Merely to list and briefly describe the many known factors that enter into gunnery would require pages, so I will confine myself to a few of those touched on in the article.

He spoke of the retarding effect of the air in the rifle bore ahead of the projectile.  I can cite an instance that illustrates that beautifully and it won’t be necessary to swamp you with graphs, formulae or statistics.  When the battleship Mississippi went into commission, Dr. Curtis of the physics department of the Bureau of Standards was one of the experts who went with us to Cuba to hold her experimental battery tests.  Among other things, he desired to measure muzzle velocity under shipboard conditions.  M.V. determination up to that time had been done only at the Proving Ground where it was possible to fire the shell through two successive screens hung in front of the gun.

Dr. Curtis rigged two metallic fingers at the muzzle of the gun, protruding slightly above the bottom of the rifling grooves, and also stretched a wire across the bore opening.  These were parts of two electrical circuits, each hooked up to oscillographs.  The idea was that the nose of the emerging shell would break the wire, thus interrupting one current, and that the bourrelet, or rotating hand, would wipe the fingers and complete the circuit of the other, thus producing two wiggles on the oscillograph tracing.  He knew, of course, the exact distance from the shell-top to the lending edge of the bourrelet.

The first readings were absurdly low and Dr. Curtis correctly guessed that it was because the outrushing air had broken his wire before the shell got there.  He put in heavier wire.  Then a steel rod.  Believe It or not, it was not until he had worked up to an iron bar, of something like 3/8 of an inch by a couple of inches, set edgewise like a girder across the opening, that he found something that would stay there until the projectile emerged.  Even at that he had trouble with its fastenings.  Some breeze!

I note Mr. Ley’s complaint that designers simply do not pay attention to weight unless the question of transport is involved.  I assure him he Is quite mistaken.  If the guns of a battleship could be reduced in weight by so little as five per cent, it would mean the saving of many tons which could well be utilized for other purposes.  Actually, other characteristics of the gun being equal, gun weights have steadily declined – due chiefly to improvements In steel-making processes, notably heat treatment.  Presumably, the trend will continue as better methods and stronger alloys are found.

The reason for the present weight of guns is stark necessity.  It takes a lot of metal to withstand a suddenly applied force of upward of twenty tons to the square inch.  When he says that reducing the thickness of gun barrels shortens their service life, he is dead right.  It shortens it all right – is likely to cut it down to one terrific and fatal blast.  If he had had the opportunity as I had, of seeing many ruptured field guns lying on Southampton dock during 1917, he would not think the factor of safety overstressed.

As to the difference in thickness between a worn-out gun and a new one, it is almost imperceptible to the untrained eye.  Gunners keep a careful record of the number of rounds fired and star-gauge their guns often, for that is the only way they can keep track of the erosion.  A worn bore, and the wear may not exceed the thickness of this sheet of paper, permits the powder gases to escape past the projectile, thereby seriously reducing its velocity.  It also fends to promote wobble in flight.

In the vicinity of the breech not only are the pressures greater, but the temperatures are terrifically high, and I suspect that the lining of the powder chamber and the face of the breech-plug is for a moment In a virtually molten condition.  I witnessed a blowback once, through an infinitesimal hairline scratch on the seat of the gas-check seal.  It was a brand-new 14” gun under proof and the breech of it was ruined.  The gases escaping through that little hole blew I the metal out in a line spray, like butter under a blow torch.  Of course, the speed of the leaking gases added vastly to the damage, but it must be hot in there.

I doubt very much whether a strictly non-recoiling gun is possible.  The recoil begins much earlier than most people Imagine – shortly after the projectile has started moving within the barrel.

In regard to the “optimum” elevation of 45 degrees, I might say that that is the elevation that theoretically gives the maximum range.  I have seen heavy guns fired all the way up to fifty degrees, but there is little gain in range after the upper thirties, and a progressively greater loss of control.  The famous German long-range gun could only be effective against a target as large as the city of Paris.  Hitting somewhere within a ten-mile circle is not an artilleryman’s notion of marksmanship.

As to streamlining, that has been tried but is not practicable for several reasons.  However, that does not mean that the shape of the shell is unimportant.  The “coefficient of form” is an important one; long-pointed shells travel farther than short blunt ones.  Armor-piercing projectiles that have to be stubby are equipped with false noses for that reason.

Of course, I realize that all this quibbling is about Earthly conditions and is not very applicable to what happens in the void.  I am writing only because It may be of interest to our fans.  As to the extension of Space Warfare to take in such matters as scouting, range finding, tracking and spotting, I am very much tempted to break out as an article writer myself.  Then Mr. Ley can slip in a new ribbon and do a little sniping of his own. – Malcolm Jameson, 519 West 147th Street, New York, N.Y.

Maybe you can use rays, at that!

Dear Mr. Campbell:

I want to make a few comments about the August number of Astounding.

First point is Willy Ley’s article on the weapons of space combat.  Frankly, I’ll still stick to the flaming rays and scintillating screens; Mr. Ley’s argument against them starts off with a bit of a self-contradiction.  On page 74 he states: “That they (ray projectors) do not exist now is immaterial; science-fiction is not only concerned with things that are, but also with things that might be.”  And forthwith proceeds to argue them out of existence on the grounds that the equipment necessary to produce them would be so ponderous compared with present-day artillery as to make them impracticable.  Come, come, Mr. Ley!  Surely, if you admit-their scientifictional credibility, it won’t strain you too much to realize that there is just a possibility that those same projectors might not be either so weak or so sensitive to shaking or jarring as you seem to think.

You say the projector would need a power plant, and “power plants are notoriously heavy.”  O.K.  But it also appears to me that even an unarmed ship might need a fair-sized set of generators just to lift it into space; unless, of course, you insist on limiting the poor writer to the sort of chemical rocket that can he designed today.

You say that the ray generator would be sensitive, “since we have to assume tubes of some kind.”  Do we, now?  Let’s try a spot of assuming, and see what sort of power plant and ray projector we can dream up, even without going too far beyond our present scientific knowledge.

Power plant first.  Suppose we make it an atomic energy set-up, using the fission of uranium 235 under neutron bombardment.  We’ll need a source of neutrons to start off that reaction.  Cyclotron, perhaps, since you seem to like a heavy power plant; though I think that with U-235 a simple, light, insensitive radioactive source might work as well.  A cyclotron would have tubes to go out during an engagement, all right, but we needn’t worry about that; we’ll just use it to touch off the process at the start, and keep steam up afterward, since the reaction is self-perpetuating.  Probably need a direct hit now to put that job out of action.

Ray projector?  Well, I suppose we could turn the released energy into electricity, to be later transformed into some deadly radiation In a delicate ray generator.  It seems to me that a stream of those 200-million-volt atomic nuclei given off by disintegrating uranium, and released in the general direction of the enemy through refractory projectors would be just as deadly and a lot simpler.  That question of refractories Is a delicate one, I admit; but we’ll need them, anyway, for the power plant, so let’s not strain at gnats while swallowing camels.

Do I hear an objection from Mr. Ley?  “If there is an insulating material that holds out against the energies released at the giving end, it is hard to understand why the same insulator should not be usable to safeguard the bull of the ship that is being rayed.”

Same answer as to the question : Why not armor-plate the ship against solid and explosive projectiles from Mr. Ley’s heavy artillery?  Too heavy; and, perhaps, a whole lot more expensive than even the best nickel-steel armor.  But if you insist, I’ll make my ship invulnerable to ray attack; only you’ve got to reciprocate, and turn yours into a flying fort, complete with 30-inch plate all round.

This begins to look like stalemate.  So let’s compromise; fit out our warships of space with both rays and guns, ray screens, insulation, and armor-plate, and see what new forms of deviltry the boys can think up with that equipment.

It should be interesting. – A. Arthur Smith, 131 Aqueduct Street, Welland, Ontario, Canada.

Astounding Science Fiction
December, 1939 (p. 108)

To the defense of rays.

Dear Sir:

As a rule, your stories are good and your articles better; the article entitled “Space War,” by Wily Ley, is however, the exception that proves the rule.

Before I attempt to back up the above statement, perhaps I had better give my qualifications.  I have some sixty-odd hours of college chemistry, twenty-two hours of college physics, and thirty-four hours of college math.  I spent three years in the National Guard attached to a battery of 155 mm guns.

I am too lazy to attempt to check Herr Ley on his statements of armor weight, gun weight, et cetera, but they seem reasonable, so I will allow them to stand without argument – they would probably stand, anyway.

Taking up Herr Ley’s arguments in order, I wonder if it ever occurred to him that it would require quite a good power plant to lift a “fair-sized spaceship, about ninety yards long and twenty yards in diameter,” from the surface of the earth and then set it gently down again?  It seems to me that the weight of the mechanism required to divert part of this power from drive to ray generator would not be prohibitive.

Vacuum-tubes are delicate, but could be made stronger if necessary, and, if not, I believe would rather risk having a tube blow during the course of a battle and leave me without effective weapons than to have an enemy shell land in the ship’s magazine.

He kindly granted the possibility of dangerous rays and then stated that he did not believe they could be developed in the near future.  Micro-waves – radio – from 30 cm. down in wave length would be quite disconcerting if there were some 50,000 watts being fed into them.  You see, they are picked up by a metallic conductor as heat.  They may not be what the science-fiction author has in mind when he refers to heat rays, but they’ll work quite nicely, I believe, and they focus into the neatest tight beam.  As for ray shields, there is always heterodyning.

As to the impossibility of “holding a ray on a fast-moving distant target, that might be practically invisible with black paint against the background of black space,” just how many men could hit a black disk twenty yards in diameter on a dark night such a range and moving with such a velocity that a searchlight – just another ray – could not hold it?

In space a heat ray is an accumulative affair in that heat is dissipated only by radiation, which is a notoriously slow process at ordinary – 0-200 C-temperatures.  This would mean that the heat ray would not have to be held on the target.

As for the disadvantages of guns, Herr Ley has neglected to mention that in warfare on earth, when a heavy gun is firing at a target the gun is relatively motionless with respect to the target.  This simplifies aiming considerably.  Dog fights between planes are never long-range affairs because of their relative velocities.  Going back to ground fighting, however, a miss of twenty yards or so is as good as a hit because of the bursting range of the shell.  A miss of one cm. in space is as good as if the shell had not been fired.

When Herr Ley advocates the use of 75s in space, it is obvious that he has never been around them when they were fired.  I have, and I wouldn’t care to be in a closed room – even if it were evacuated – with one firing several rounds to the minute.

During the World War gas was used frequently so as to force the men to don gas masks.  The masks cut down the firing efficiency noticeably.  I wonder when effect a space suit would have on accuracy?

The science of exterior and interior ballistics is built around the presence of air and a fairly strong gravitational field.  It would take some time to develop a science of vacuum ballistics.

Reading this over it appears that I have laid the foundations – or destroyed them – for a good way – right here on earth between Herr Ley and me.  I’ll try to prepare myself for his counter-attack, because I don’t believe I destroyed him entirely.  – J.M. Cripps, Manhattan, Kansas

Astounding Science Fiction
May, 1940 (pp. 159-161)

Yes, but who’s going to use a slow spaceship if the enemy has fast ones?

Dear Mr. Campbell:

It seems now that the latest vogue in science-fiction stories is that of rocket-racing, and it is only natural that you should secure the best of that type yet published.  By this, I refer to the clever and well-written “Habit” by Lester del Rey in the November issue.  This excellent little piece has that “certain something” that sets it off as a typically Astounding story.  I honestly believe that were I given an armful of untitled, anonymous, and as yet unpublished manuscripts, I could tell within ninety percent or better which would find refuge in Astounding and which would go to your umpteen competitors.  It’s style, not plot, that makes Astounding the “class magazine” that it is.

May I add a line or two to the rumpus stirred up over the merits of the “General Swamp” serial.  To my mind it ranks with the best of any two-part serial yet published.  Its handling was so uniquely different that it captivated me from the very start.  It was realistic to the point of having me half believe I was reading actual reports and military accounts!  Kick on the hard-to-pronounce names?  Not me! surrounded as I am by left-over handles of the Indian period – Skowhegan, Messalonskee, Norridgewock, Kennebec, Mooselookmeguntick, Cobbseecontee, et cetera.  How does Arkgonactl and Golubhammon compare with these?

Space war articles and letters by Ley and Jameson appeal greatly to me, despite the fact that they hopelessly destroy – and quite logically, too – my pet dreams of flashing ray battles In the void.  But wouldn’t two ships traveling a parallel course at equal or near equal speeds be visible lo one another?  Jameson seems to think not.  Also comes up again the slow-speed spaceship theory that blasts the seven-mile-per-second principle – page 70 of “Space War Tactics” – off the records.  Still, Jameson accepts that, too, … – James S. Avery, 50 Middle Street, Skowhegan, Maine.

SCIENCE DISCUSSIONS

Experts transposed?

Dear. Mr. Campbell:

That the problems of spate war and space war tattles are infested with wide gaps of knowledge and with difficulties of all kinds is proven by one fact: I recommend guns, while an old gunnery expert like Malcolm Jameson prefers rocket torpedoes!  If it were the other way round, nobody would be surprised.

My reasons for recommending guns were already stated in my article “Space War,” the principal one being that guns with ammunition are lighter and less bulky than rocket torpedoes, provided that an appreciable number of rounds is to be carried.  And since my comparison was based on rocket’ torpedoes capable of attaining the same velocity as gun projectiles, I think that the argument is still valid, if the torpedoes were to attain higher speeds they would he still heavier and still bulkier.

Answering first to Mr. Jameson’s letter I hasten to assert that I do not think that the weight of large caliber guns could he reduced very much, unless by the use of new alloys.  I was speaking of small guns, 75 millimeter and less, and I still hold that I am right.  The new anti-tank guns in all armies prove that point; they are much lighter than anything built so far.  (I may add that those of the Swiss army are also equipped with a recoil eliminator.)  And that they are effective enough has meantime been demonstrated by the new 37-millimeter anti-tank guns of the U.S. army that “disintegrated” 1 ½-inch steel armor plate at a thousand yards without a moment’s hesitation.  That 1,000 yard range means, of course, in air – for space conditions it might safely be multiplied by a hundred or even more.

As far as tactics of combat are concerned, I, having neither experience nor theoretical training, have to be quiet.  I cannot help but feel, however, that the tactics of sea or aerial combat do not apply to a very great extent.  We always have to hear in mind that an orbit in space and a course in air or on the high seas are not exactly the same.  Spaceships are not steamers that travel at will, but rather canoes in swift and powerful currents.  These canoes have paddled that permit some movement at will and some steering, and If the “currents” were not as regular and ad calculable as they are the case would be hopeless.

Spaceships, therefore, will either pass each other in opposite directions and at such relative speeds that hardly anything could be done, or else they will follow about the same course and by necessity have about the same velocity.  It is the latter condition I had in mind, and it is in that condition where guns will he advantageous.  Mine laying is, of course, a nice idea, but again I do not quite see why mines should be superior to guns, generally speaking.  Mr. Jameson is trying to do something that is very hard to do when he proposes that the space mines, or iron pellets, should be “shot out of mine-laying tubes clustered about the main drive jets.  They would be shot out at right angles – and given a velocity exactly equal to the ship’s speed, so that they would hang motionless where they were dropped.

The latter does not hold true exactly; the pellets would at once start moving in the general direction of the Sun – If they are exactly motionless it would be the exact direction toward the Sun – but since that movement would he very slow at first and the enemy ship reaches the area of the mine field In a few seconds, that factor can he disregarded.  What bothers me is the problem how the mines could be shot out with a velocity exactly equal to the ship’s speed.

That speed is assumed to be about 20 – 25 miles per second.  Muzzle velocities of guns will be between one and – possibly – one and a half miles per second.  And even the gas molecules in the rocket exhaust do not travel faster than, say, three miles per second.  If a method could be found to shoot the space mines away from the ship with 20-25 miles per second, that method should be applied to throw shells.

Since I have started criticizing other people’s Ideas, I might as well say a few words about Robert Heinlein’s enjoyable story “Misfit.”  Generally speaking, I think that moving an asteroid for the purpose of using it as a station in space is a very wasteful business.  It would take much less fuel to transport building material to the chosen spot in space from Earth or Mars.  An asteroid possesses an awful amount of useless mass that has to be transported, and each pound of mass requires so and so much fuel.  It Is somewhat like moving a large mountain from one continent to another because there is a forest growing on top of the mountain and the larger trees of that forest are to be used to build a raft.

But even if we concede lo the waste of fuel to move the asteroid, there Is no reason to waste more than half of that fuel in giving “88” “a series of gentle pats, always on the side farthest from the Sun.”  What has to be accomplished is to slow down the orbital velocity of the asteroid so that the gravitational attraction of the Sun gets the upper hand and draws it closer.  Which is done most effectively in setting off the rocket charges in such a way that they point “ahead,” at right angles to the line drawn from the asteroid to the Sun.  The resulting movement would be along an elliptical curve – somewhat distorted, to be sure – but not a hyperbolic curve.  And there is no need for such unnecessary accuracy.  If the asteroid should finally possess a few hundred feet of orbital velocity more or less, is really unimportant.  It would make a difference of ten or twenty miles – or even fifty or a hundred – in the average distance from the Sun.  There is no reason why that should matter, just as it does not matter whether an island in the Atlantic Ocean is half a mile farther west or not; it only matters that captains know where It is.  Besides, the orbit of the asteroid could be corrected at any time, if desired.  But I wouldn’t move asteroids at all.

I wish to say “thank you” to Mr. E. Franklin of Jamaica Plain for his nice and interesting letter in the October issue.  The real trouble with articles is that they have to be shorter than the “Gray Lensman.” – Willey Ley, 35-33 20th St., Long Island City, N.Y.

War In Space, 1939 – II: “Space War Tactics” by Malcolm Jameson, in Astounding Science Fiction, November, 1939

Here’s the second of three posts about war in space – circa 1939 – covering Malcom Jameson’s article “Space War Tactics” in the November issue of Astounding. 

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Three months after the appearance of Willy Ley’s article “Space War” in the August, 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, Malcolm Jameson penned (well, in all probability, he typed – remember typewriters?) an article of similar length and concept, but focused on a different aspect of spacecraft-to-spacecraft combat:  The actual tactics of battle.  Thus, Jameson – perhaps reflective of his background as a naval officer – accorded attention to the maneuvers utilized by opposing spacecraft, only later in his article discussing weapons, and unlike Ley, being an advocate of “rocket torpedoes”.

Jameson’s article is supplemented by two diagrams which illustrate the trajectories of opposing spacecraft engaged in combat.  (You can see his signature at the lower right in each.)  In both diagrams – here limited to two dimensions, and viewed from “below” – the track of “our” spacecraft is on the left, and the enemy ship to the right.
In the first diagram, our craft is on a straight trajectory, with the enemy ship taking an abrupt “right” turn at position “7”, the weapons employed by our spacecraft presumably being rocket-torpedoes.

In the second diagram, the pair of spacecraft are on a converging trajectory, the weapons being mines as well as rocket-torpedoes.

Paralleling my post about Willy Ley’s article about space war, here are some general “take-aways” from Jameson’s article:

1) Military conflicts, regardless of the era or the nature of weapons employed, can be expected to follow the same general principles.  Thus, though “space” is ostensibly different from traditional battle settings, traditional concepts and assumptions about warfare can be expected to hold there, as well.

However (!) two primary differences stand out:  “Space” differs from taken-for-granted terrestrial settings (any planetary setting, really) in terms of its (apparently limitless) extent, and, the speed of the craft involved.  The implications and challenges of the latter, in terms of maneuver, as well as locating, tracking, aiming, and firing at enemy craft, cannot be underestimated.

2) Given the speed of combat between spacecraft, gunnery computations will demand the use of a “differentia calculator”.  (Like Willy Ley’s August article, Jameson’s analysis is based on the assumption that spacecraft armament will comprise some form of weaponry firing either simple mass weapons or explosive projectiles, rather than an energy weapon of unknown design and function.)  Though he doesn’t elaborate, Jameson seems to have been conceptualizing such a device as ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), the existence of which was announced to the public ten months after his death. 

3)  The spacecraft’s armament is simple, whether by the standards of the late 1930s or the 2020s:  The craft shoots projectiles comprised of “a simple sphere of meteoric iron”.  Due to the velocities involved, explosives are entirely unnecessary: The momentum of such a projectile is entirely adequate to damage or destroy an enemy spacecraft.

4) A substantial portion of Jameson’s text – specifically pertaining to Figure 1 – pertains to the manner in which “our” spacecraft will locate, identify, and track the enemy vessel, and, plot a firing trajectory for its weapons.  Here, Jameson description of the craft’s “plotting room,” the “most vital spot in the ship,” seems (unsurprisingly, given his naval background) akin to a description of a battleship or aircraft carrier’s combat information center, “the counterpart of the brain”.

Then, his essay gets really interesting, for – in the context of describing the tracks of two spacecraft engaged in combat, as diagrammed in Figure 2 – he postulates the nature of space-borne rangefinders and target-bearing transmitters, suggesting for the former determining distance – “sounding” by radio waves – and the latter something akin to a thermoscope, or simply put, a device showing changes in temperature, against a given background.

In other words, he seems to have been respectively anticipating both radar, and, what is now known as IRST: Infrared Search and Track.

5) Interestingly, unlike Willy Ley, Jameson’s also an advocate of the use a form of what he dubs “rocket torpedoes” rather than shells, due to the latter’s “advantage of auto-acceleration” and the “ability to build up speed to any desired value after having been launched,” versus the delay inherent to the sequence of events involved in the the actual firing and movement of a shell from a gun.  Of course, even assuming the enemy vessel is attacked with “rocket torpedoes”, such devices – in the context and era of Jameson’s article – would have no internal guidance or tracking system of their own, their “flight” path being entirely dependent on course adjustments of the firing platform – “our” spacecraft – itself.

6) Where mentioned, I’ve included conversions of given velocities (“miles per second”) to velocities per hour, in both English and Metric systems, the former in statue miles.  These are denoted by brackets.  (e.g., [90,000 mph / 144,840 kph]).

As in the post covering Ley’s article, the most notable passages of the text are italicized and in dark red, like these last thirteen words in this sentence.  The post concludes with links to a variety of excellent videos covering spacecraft-versus-spacecraft battles, and “space war”, in greater detail, in light of (quite obviously!) contemporary knowledge.   

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You can read the Wikipedia article about Malcolm Jameson here, while the Internet Speculative Fiction Database compilation of his writing can be found here.

Jameson’s memorial tribute (I guess penned by John W. Campbell, Jr.?) from the July 1945 issue of Astounding, follows:

MALCOLM JAMESON

December 21, 1891 – April 16, 1945

Malcolm Jameson, a man possessed of more shear courage than most of us will ever understand, died April 16, 1945, after an eight-year writing career, initiated when cancer of the throat forced him to give up the more active life he wanted.  Any author can tell you that you can’t write good stuff when you’re feeling sick.  Jamie never quite understood that – perhaps because he began when he did.  X-ray and radium treatment controlled the cancer for a time, but only at a price of permanent severely bad health.

He sold his first story to Astounding in 1938.  [“Eviction by Isotherm“, August, 1938.]  That was followed by such memorable and sparklingly light stories as “Admiral’s Inspection,” the whole Commander Bullard series, and his many other stories in UNKNOWN WORLDS.

The man who could accomplish that under the conditions imposed on him was not of ordinary mold.

The Commander Bullard series grew out of Jameson’s own experiences as a Lieutenant in the United States Navy from 1916 till his retirement in 1927.  He had much to do with the development of modern naval ordnance; his work is fighting in this war, though he himself was not permitted to do so.

He is survived by his wife, his daughter, Corporal Vida Jameson, of the WAC, his son, Major Malcolm Jameson, in the Infantry and now overseas, and his brother, House Jameson, better known as “Mr. Aldrich” of the “Aldrich Family” program.

The Editor.

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You’ll notice that Hubert Rogers’ iconic depiction of a space fleet control center (for E.E. Smith’s “Gray Lensman”) as the cover of the November, 1939 issue of Astounding, appears below.  Further down in the post are two interior illustrations – from the November, 1941, and February, 1948 issues of Astounding – in which Rogers created views of the same scene for Smith’s “Second Stage Lensman” and “Children of the Lens”, respectively.  (The image of the control center in the 1948 issue was scanned from an original copy, and photoshopifically “niced up” to bring out the details, for this post.) 

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And so, on to Malcolm Jameson’s “Space War Tactics” from the month of November, in the year 1939…

SPACE WAR TACTICS

Expanding on Willy Ley’s recent article, Jameson brings out some important details – not the least of which is that a space battle fleet gets one shot at the enemy in months of maneuvering!

By Malcolm Jameson
Illustrated by Malcolm Jameson
Astounding Science Fiction
November, 1939

I.

Ship to Ship Engagement

A working knowledge of the game of chess is a useful adjunct in understanding the art of war.  War is not a series of haphazard encounters hut a definite understanding governed by principles that never change, however much the weapons and uniforms and the colors of the flags may.  Like chess it is a continuing struggle between two opponents, each trying to estimate the strength of the other and to divine his purposes and most probable objective, and what his next move will be.  It is a marauding and movement of forces, a series of threats and feints, of advances and withdrawals, punctuated by sharp conflict as one or the other forces the issue.

As the rules of chess govern the movement of each piece, so does the field of operations in war, whether it is rocky terrain or swampy, the open sea or the cloud-streaked skies, or the vast reaches of space itself.  Tactics, and in a measure the weapons, are rigidly determined by the controlling environment.

We can, therefore predict with some assurance the general nature of space warfare, for we already know something of the properties of the void and what characteristics ships that traverse it arc likely to have.  With such ships and in such a theater of operations, we have only to apply the principles of warfare developed by men through centuries of strife to arrive at an approximation of the tactics they will use.  We can be fairly certain of the kind of weapons and instruments they will have, for the very advent of spaceships is presumptive of continued advance in science along much the same lines we have already come.

There are two great factors in space warfare that will set it off sharply from anything else in human experience, and those two factors will modify fighting-ship types, strategy and tactics profoundly. They are: (a) the extent of space, and (b) the tremendous speed of the vessels.

At the risk of boring those who have already read and thought a good deal about travel in space and who feel that they long ago formed a satisfactory idea of what the limitless reaches of the void are like, I want to dwell a moment on the subject of the vastness of space.  It deserves all the emphasis we can give it.

Psychologists assert that it is beyond the capacity of the human mind to conceive of quantities, extents or durations beyond rather close limits.  We may nod understandingly at hearing mention of a billion-dollar appropriation, but we grasp the idea solely because we are thinking of those billion dollars as a unit sum of money.

If we tried to visualize them as coins we would fail utterly.  The mind cannot picture ten hundred thousands of thousands of silver disks.  “Many” is the best it can do – there are too many dollars there for one mindful.  And so it is with distance.

It has been my good fortune to have traveled extensively; I have crossed oceans as navigator, stepping off the miles made good each day or watching them slide by under the counter.  Thus I have a hazy notion of the size of the Earth – it is oppressively huge.  What, then, of the two or three million-mile straightaway covered in a single day’s run of a rocket-ship – represented by a quarter-inch pencil mark on the astragator’s chart of the ecliptic?  The Earth he left but yesterday had already dwindled to a small bright disk and before the week is over it will be seen only as a brilliant blue star.  In that incredibly vast celestial sphere in which lie is floating – stretching as it does without limit before, behind and to every side, above and below – where and how can we hope to find his enemy?

For even if he passed another ship close aboard, he would not so much as glimpse it.  Speeds in space are as stupendous as the spaces they traverse.  Needing seven miles per second to escape the Earth and another twenty to make any reasonable progress between the planets, even the slowest vessels will have speeds of twenty-five miles per second [90,000 mph / 144,840 kph].  Warships. presumably. according to type, will have correspondingly higher speeds – perhaps as high as fifty miles per second [180,000 mph / 289,682 kph … or, 0.000268 c] for the faster scouts.

Speeds of that order are as baffling to the imagination as the depths of the void.  When we recall that the fastest thing most of us are familiar with is the rifle bullet, whizzing along at a lazy half-mile per second [1,800 mph / 2,897 kph], we see that we do have a yardstick.  The ships mentioned above proceed at from fifty to one hundred times that fast – invisible, except under very special circumstances.  It is barely possible, we know, for a quick eye to pick up twelve-inch shells in flight if he knows just where, when and how to look, but a momentary glimpse is all he gets.\

When we talk of gunfire or any other means of offense, we have to bear these dizzy speeds firmly in mind.  The conclusion is irresistible that scouting, tracking, range finding and relative bearings will all be observed otherwise than visually.  Even on the assumption of attack from the quarter, the most obvious approach – and for the same reason that aviators “get on the tail” – the overtaking vessel must necessarily have such an excess of speed that the visual contact can last but a few seconds.

Each of the combatants must compute the other’s course from blind bearings and ranges and lay their guns or point their torpedo tubes by means of a differentia calculator.

However, in this blind tracking there is one peculiarity of these ships that while it is in one sense a source of danger to them, is of distinct assistance.  In the fleeting minutes of their contact, neither can appreciably alter course or speed!  This is a point that writers of fiction frequently ignore for the sake of vivid action, but nevertheless it is an unavoidable characteristic of the [e]ther-borne [?!] ship.

The human body can withstand only so much acceleration and the momentum these vessels carry has been built up, hour after hour, by piling increment of speed on top of what had been attained before.  In space there is no resistance.  Once the rockets are cut, the ship will soar on forever at whatever velocity she had at the moment of cutting.  Her master may flip her end over end and reverse his acceleration, but his slowing will be as tedious and cautious as his working up to speed.  Jets flung out at right angles merely add another slight component to the velocity, checking nothing.

Rocket experts have stated that an acceleration of one hundred feet per second per second can be withstood by a human being – perhaps one hundred and fifty in an emergency.  The master of a vessel proceeding at forty miles per second [144,000 mph / 231,745 kph] applying such an acceleration at right angles would succeed in deflecting his flight about one hundred miles by the end of the first minute, during which he will have run twenty-four hundred – a negligible turn, if under fire.  Applied as a direct brake, that hundred miles of decreased velocity would slow him by one twenty-fourth – obviously not worth the doing if the emergency is imminent.

With these conditions in mind, let us imagine a light cruiser of the future bowling along at forty miles per second on the trail of an enemy.  The enemy is also a cruiser, one that has slipped through our screen and is approaching the earth for a fast raid on our cities.  He is already decelerating for his prospective descent and is thought to be about one hundred and fifty thousand miles ahead, proceeding at about thirty-five miles per second [126,000 mph / 202,777 kph].  Our cruiser is closing on him from a little on his port quarter, and trying to pick him up with its direction finders.

So far we have not “seen” him.  We only know from enciphered code messages received several days ago from our scouting force, now fifty millions astern of us, that he is up ahead.  It would take too long here to explain how the scouts secured the information they sent us.  The huge system of expanding spirals along which successive patrols searched the half billion cubic miles of dangerous space lying between us and the enemy planet is much too intricate for brief description.  It is sufficient for our purposes that the scouts did detect the passage of the hostile cruiser through their web and that they kept their instruments trained on him long enough to identify his trajectory.  Being neither in a position to attack advantageously nor well enough armed – for their function is the securing of information, and that only – they passed the enemy’s coordinates along to us.  This information is vital to us, for without it the probability of contact in the void is so remote as to be nonexistent.

The ship in which we are rushing to battle is not a large one.  She is a bare hundred meters [328 feet] in length, but highly powered.  Her multiple rocket tubes, now cold and dead, are grouped in the stern.  We have no desire for more speed, having all that is manageable already, for after the few seconds of our coming brush with the enemy our velocity is such that we will far overrun him and his destination as well.  It will require days of maximum deceleration for us to check our flight and be in a position to return to base.

Our ship’s armament, judged by today’s standards, will at first sight appear strangely inadequate.  Our most destructive weapon is the “mine,” a simple sphere of meteoric iron about the size of a billiard ball, containing no explosive and not fused.  The effectiveness of such mines depends upon the speed with which they are struck by the target ship – no explosive could add much to the damage done by a small lump of iron striking at upward of thirty miles a second.  Then there will he torpedo tubes amidships, and perhaps a few guns, but it may lie well to postpone a discussion of the armament until we have examined the conditions at the place of battle.

Although we know in a general way where the enemy is and where he is going, before we close with him we must determine his course and speed very accurately, for our ability to hit him at all is going to depend upon extremely nice calculations.  Our speeds are such that angular errors of so much as a second of arc will be fatal, and times must be computed to within hundredths of seconds.

This falls within the province of fire-control, a subject seldom if ever mentioned by fiction writers.  There is no blame to be attached to them for that, for the problems of fire-control are essentially those of pure mathematics, and mathematics is notoriously unthrilling to the majority of readers.  Yet hitting with guns – or even arrows, though the archer solves his difficulties by intuition – requires the solution of intricate problems involving the future positions and movements of at least two bodies, and nothing more elementary than the differential calculus will do the trick.  In these problems interior ballistics, for all its interesting physics, boils down to a single figure – the initial velocity of the projectile, while exterior ballistics evaporates for the most part the moment we propel our missile into a gravityless vacuum.  In space we are to be concerned with the swiftly changing relationship of two rapidly moving vessels and the interchange of equally swift projectiles between them, the tracks of all of them being complicated curves and not necessarily lying in a plane.

In its simplest statement the problem of long-range gunnery is this: where will the enemy be when my salvo gets there?  For we must remember that even in today’s battles the time the projectile spends en-route to its target is appreciable – fully a minute on occasion, at sea, during which the warship fired upon may move as much as half a mile.  Under such circumstances the gunner does not fire directly at his target, but at the place it is going to be.  That requires very accurate knowledge of where the enemy is headed and how fast he is moving.

At sea that is done by observing successive bearings and ranges and plotting them as polar coordinates, bearing in mind that the origin is continuously shifting due to the ship’s own motion.  This work of tracking – the subsequent range-keeping and prediction of future ranges and bearings – is done in our times in the plotting room.  This is the most vital spot in the ship, for if her weapons may be likened to fists and her motive power to legs, her optical and acoustical instruments to eyes and ears, then the plotting room is the counterpart of the brain.  There all the information is received, corrected, digested, and distributed throughout the ship.  Without that co-ordination and direction the ship would be as helpless as an idiot.

Well, hardly that helpless today.  Our individual units, such as turret crews, can struggle on alone, after a fashion.  But not so with the ship of the future.  There the plotting room is everything, and when it is put out of commission, the ship is blind and paralyzed.  It will, of course, be located within the center of the ship, surrounded by an armored shell of its own, and in there will also be the ship control stations.

The best way to approach the problems our descendants will have to face is to consider a simple problem in tracking that our own warships deal with daily.  It is an absurdly simple one compared to the warped spirals to be handled in space warfare, but it will serve to illustrate the principle.  In Fig. 1. it is shown graphically, but in actual practice the elements of the problem are set up on a motor-driven machine which thereupon continuously and correctly delivers the solutions of problems that would take an Einstein minutes to state.  As the situation outside changes, corrections are cranked into the machine, which instantly and uncomplainingly alters its calculations.

In the figure we have the tracks of two ships, ours the left-hand one.  For the sake of clarity and emphasis I have made the ratio of speeds three to one, but the same trends would be shown at the more usual ratio of, say, 20:19

At positions “1,” “2,” “3” and so on, we observe the range and hearing of the target, and plot them.  By noting the differences between successive readings and the second differences between those, we soon have an idea of the type of curve the rates of changes would plot into.  In a short time we can also note that the rates themselves are changing at a certain rate.  This is a rough sort of differentiation – by inspection – and to one familiar with such curves these trends have a definite meaning.

For example, it is apparent that the series of observed angles “Beta” are steadily opening, signifying that we are drawing past the target.  Any sudden alteration of the second differences, such as occurs at “8,” at once indicates a change of condition on the part of the enemy.  He has either turned sharply away or slowed to half speed, for the bearing suddenly opens nearly two degrees more than the predicted beating.  We learn which by consulting our ranges.  It could be a combination of changed course and changed speed.

The ranges during the first seven lime-intervals have been steadily decreasing, although the rate of decrease has been slowing up, indicating we are approaching the minimum range.  At “8,” though, the range not only fails to decrease, but the rate of change actually changes sign.  We know without doubt that the enemy has turned away.

The importance of having the machine grind out predicted bearings and ranges, aside from the desirability of speed and accuracy, is that at any moment smoke, a rain squall, or intervening ships may obscure the target.  In that event the gunners need never know the difference – their range and bearing indicators arc ticking away like taximeters, fed figures by the controlling range-keeper.  It would not have mattered if sight had been lost of the enemy at “4”; the gun-fire would have been just as accurate up to the time he changed course as if they had the target in plain sight.

As a matter of fact, the guns are not pointed at the target at all, but in advance of it, as is shown in Fig. 1 (a), both range and bearing being altered to allow for the forward movements of the target while the shells are in the air.  The projectiles may be regarded as moving objects bandied on a “collision course” with regard to the enemy vessel.

Speaking of collision courses, it is an interesting property of relative bearings that when the bearing remains constant – except in the special case of the vessels being on parallel courses at identical speeds – the vessels will eventually collide, regardless of what their actual courses and speeds are.  Hence, from the time the shots of the salvo left their guns – Fig. 1 (a) – until they struck their target, the target bore a constant angle of thirteen degrees to the right of the nose of the shells.  (This knowledge has some utility in estimating the penetration of armor at the destination.)

In the example above, all the movement can be regarded as taking place in a plane; the ships follow straight courses and they maintain constant speeds.  Our terrestrial problems are in practice much complicated by zigzagging, slowing down and speeding up, but at that they are relatively child’s play compared to what the sky-warrior of the future must contend with.

His tracks are likely to be curved in three dimensions, like pieces of wire hacked out of a spiral bed spring, and whether or not they can be plotted in a plane, they will nowhere be straight.  Moreover, whatever changes of speeds occur will be in the form of steady accelerations and not in a succession of flat steps linked by brief accelerations such as we know.  Computing collision courses between two continually accelerating bodies is a much trickier piece of mathematical legerdemain than finding the unknown quantities in the family of plane trapeziums shown in Fig. I.

Yet projectiles must be given the course and speed necessary to insure collision.

The gunnery officer of the future is further handicapped by rarely ever being permitted a glimpse of his target, certainly not for the purpose of taking ranges and bearings.  In the beginning of the approach the distances between the ships is much too great, and by the time they have closed, their relative speed will generally forbid vision.

Since optical instruments are useless except for astrogational purposes, his rangefinders and target-bearing transmitters will have to be something else.  For bearings, his most accurate instrument will probably be the thermoscope – an improved heat-detector similar to those used by astronomers in comparing the heat emission of distant stars.  It will have a spherical mounting with a delicate micro-vernier.  A nearby spaceship is sure to radiate heat, for it is exposed constantly to full sunlight and must rid itself of the excess heat or its crew will die.  Once such a source of heat is picked up and identified, it can be followed very closely as to direction, although little can be told of its distance unless something is known of its intrinsic heat radiation.

Ranges will probably be determined by sounding space with radio waves, measuring the time interval to the return of reflected waves.  It is doubtful whether this means will have a high degree of accuracy much beyond ranges of one light-second on account of the movement of the two vessels while the wave is in transit both ways.

At long range the need for troublesome corrections is sure to enter.

Such observations, used in conjunction with one another, should give fairly accurate information as to the target’s trajectory and how he bears from us and how far he is away.  This data will be fed into a tracking and range-keeping machine capable of handling the twisted three-dimensional curves involved, and which will at once indicate the time and distance of the closest point of approach.  Both captains will at once begin planning the action.  They may also attempt to adjust their courses slightly, but since the rockets evolve great heat, neither can hope to keep his action from the knowledge of the other owing to the sensitiveness of the thermoscopes.

The rangekeeping instrument suggested, while far surpassing in complexity anything we know of today, will represent a much smaller technical advance than the rockets which drive the ships that house them.  We already have similar machines, so that their counterparts of the future would seem much less mysterious to us than, say, the Walschaert’s valve gear to Hero or Archimedes, or the Jacquard loom to the weavers of the Gobelin tapestries.

Assuming we have, by observation and plotting, full knowledge of the enemy’s path and have come almost into position to commence the engagement, we find ourselves confronted once more with the two overwhelming factors of space warfare – great distance and immense speeds – but this time in another aspect.  We have come up close to our foe – in fact we are within twenty seconds of intersecting his trajectory – and our distance apart is a mere four hundred miles [643 km].  It is when we get to close quarters that the tremendous problems raised by these lightning-like speeds manifest themselves most vividly.

Look at Fig. 2.

The elapsed time from the commencement of the engagement until the end is less than twenty seconds.  Our ship is making forty miles per second, the other fellow is doing thirty-three.  We will never be closer than fifty miles, even if we regard the curves as drawn as being in the same plane.  If one rides over or below the other, that minimum range will be greater.  What kind of projectile can cross the two or three hundred miles separating the two converging vessels in time to collide with the enemy?  Shooting cannon with velocities as low as a few miles per second would be like sending a squadron of snails out from the curb to intercept an oncoming motorcycle – it would be out of sight in the distance before they were well started.

Projectiles from guns, if they were to be given velocities in the same relation to ships’ speeds that prevail at present, would have to be stepped up to speeds of three to four thousand miles per second!  A manifest impossibility.  It would be difficult, indeed, to hurl any sort of projectile away from the ship at greater initial velocities than the ship’s own speed.  Such impulses, eighty times stronger than the propelling charge of today’s cannon, would cause shocks of incredible violence.  It follows from that that an overtaken ship is comparatively helpless – unless she is in a position to drop mines – for whatever missiles she fires have the forward inertia of the parent ship and will therefore be sluggish in their movement in any direction but ahead.

Another difficulty connected with gunfire is the slowness with which it comes into operation.  This may seem to some to be a startling statement, but we are dealing here with astonishing speeds.  When the firing key of a piece of modern artillery is closed, the gun promptly goes off with a bang.  To us that seems to be a practically instantaneous action.  Yet careful time studies show the following sequence of events: the primer fires, the powder is ignited and burns, the gases of combustion expand and start the shell moving down the tube.  The elapsed time from the “will to fire” to the emergence of the projectile from the muzzle is about one tenth of a second.  In Fig. 2 our target will have moved more than three miles while our shell is making its way to the mouth of the cannon!  It looks as if guns wouldn’t do.

I come to that conclusion very reluctantly, for I am quite partial to guns as amazingly flexible and reliable weapons, but when we consider that both powders and primers vary somewhat in their time of burning, there is also a variable error of serious proportions added to the above slowness.  It is more likely that the rocket-torpedoes suggested by Mr. Willy Ley in a recent article on space war will be the primary weapon of the future.  They have the advantage of auto-acceleration and can therefore build up speed to any desired value after having been launched.

The exact moment of their firing would have to be computed by the tracking machine, as no human brain could solve such a problem in the time allowed.  But even assuming machine accuracy, great delicacy in tube-laying and micro-timing, the chances of a direct hit cm the target with a single missile is virtually nil.  For all their advanced instruments, it is probable that all such attacks will be made in salvos, or continuous barrages, following the time-honored shotgun principle.  For the sake of simplicity, only two such salvos are shown on the diagram, but probably they would be as nearly continuous as the firing mechanisms of the tubes would permit.  Any reader with a flair for mathematics is invited to compute the trajectories of the torpedoes.  The ones shown were fired dead abeam in order to gain distance toward the enemy as rapidly as possible.

It is desirable that these torpedoes should vanish as soon as practicable after having overrun their target.  To that end their cases are made of thin magnesium, and between the head and the fuel compartment is a space filled with compressed oxygen and a small bursting charge The tip of the head is loaded with liquid mercury.

Such a massive projectile would penetrate any spaceship with ease, but if it missed it would burst as soon as the fuel supply was spent and then consume itself in brilliant flame, thus avoiding littering the Spaceways with dangerous fragments.

Spotting, as we know it, would be impossible, for the target would be invisible.  Hits would have to be registered by the thermoscope, utilizing the heat generated by the impact.  The gunnery officer could watch the flight of his torpedoes by their fiery wakes, and see his duds burst; that might give him an idea on which side of the enemy they passed in the event the thermoscopes registered no hits.

If there were guns – and they might be carried for stratosphere use – they could be brought into action at about “15,” firing broad on the starboard quarter.  The shells, also of self-destroying magnesium, would lose some of their forward velocity and drift along in the wake of the ship while at the same time making some distance toward the oncoming enemy.  These guns would be mounted in twin turrets, one on the roof and the other on the keel, cross-connected so that they would be trained and fired together.  It the ships center of gravity lay exactly between them, their being fired would not tend to put the ship into a spin in any direction.  What little torque there might be, due to inequalities in the firing charge, would be taken care of by the ship’s gyro stabilizer, an instrument also needed on board to furnish a sphere of reference so that the master could keep track of his orientation.

If upon arriving at point “16” the enemy were still full of fight and desperate measures were called for, we could lay down mines.  These hard little pellets would be shot out of mine-laying tubes clustered about the main driving jets.  They would be shot out at slight angles from the fore-and-aft line, and given a velocity exactly equal to the ship’s speed, so that they would hang motionless where they were dropped.  Being cheap and small, they could be laid so thickly that the enemy could not fail to encounter several of them.  If she had survived up to this point, the end would come here.

The end, that is, of the cruiser as a fighting unit.  Riddled and torn, perhaps a shapeless mass of tangled wreckage, she would go hurtling on by, forever bound to her marauding trajectory.  The first duty of our cruiser would be to broadcast warnings to the System, reporting the location of its own mine-field, and giving the direction taken by the shattered derelict.  Sweepers would be summoned to collect the mines with powerful electromagnets, while tugs would pursue and clear the sky of the remnants of the defeated Martian.

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Illustration by Hubert Rogers, for “Second Stage Lensman – Part I“, by Edward E. Smith, PhD., from Astounding Science Fiction, November, 1941, page 35.  (Cover, below, also by Rogers.)

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Illustration by Hubert Rogers, for “Children of the Lens – Conclusion“, by Edward E. Smith, PhD., from Astounding Science Fiction, February, 1948, page 122.  (Cover, below, by Alejandro Canedo)

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— References and Related Readings —

Malcolm R. Jameson, at Wikipedia
Malcolm R. Jameson, at International Science Fiction Database
Hubert Rogers, at International Science Fiction Database
Space War, at Atomic Rockets
Vacation in the Golden Age of Science Fiction, by Jamie Todd Rubin
Warfare in Science Fiction, at Technovology
Weapons in Science Fiction, at Technovology

— Here’s a book —

Wysocki, Edward M., Jr., An ASTOUNDING War: Science Fiction and World War II, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, April 16, 2015

— Lots of Cool Videos —

Because Science – Kyle Hill

Why Every Movie Space Battle Is Wrong (at Nerdist) 5/11/17)
The Truth About Space War (4/12/18)

Curious Droid – Paul Shillito

Electromagnetic Railguns – The U.S Military’s Future Superguns – 200 mile range Mach 7 projectiles (11/4/17)
Will Directed Energy Weapons be the Future? (6/12/20)

Generation Films – Allen Xie

Best Space Navies in Science Fiction (2/10/20)
5 Most Brilliant Battlefield Strategies in Science Fiction (5/8/20)
5 Things Movies Get Wrong About Space Combat (5/12/20)
6 More Things Movies Get Wrong About Space Battles (5/28/20)
Why “The Expanse” Has the Most Realistic Space Combat (6/21/20)

Be Smart – Joe Hanson

The Physics of Space Battles (9/22/14)

PBS SpaceTime – Matt O’Dowd

The Real Star Wars (7/19/17)
5 Ways to Stop a Killer Asteroid (11/18/15)

Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur (SFIA) – Isaac Arthur

Space Warfare (11/24/16)
Force Fields (7/27/17)
Interplanetary Warfare (8/31/17)
Interstellar Warfare (3/8/18)
Planetary Assaults & Invasions (5/17/18)
Attack of the Drones (9/13/18)
Battle for The Moon (11/15/18)

The Infographics Show

What If There Was War in Space? (12/23/18)

War In Space, 1939 – I: “Space War” by Willy Ley, in Astounding Science Fiction, August, 1939

Is art a science?  Perhaps.

Is science an art?  Maybe.

The two in combination made a notable appearance in Astounding Science Fiction in 1939, in the form of two articles (and letters in reply) concerning the technology and tactics of war in space.  This material is fascinating from the perspectives of culture and history, and a few years back, I posted transcripts of and commentary about these articles at one of my brother blogs, thepastpresented.

Though that blog isn’t presently “up and running” (oh, well!) I’m recreating these posts here at WordsEnvisioned, because they so nicely compliment the themes of this blog, which include science fiction, pulp magazines, and – to a greater or lesser or uncertain extent! – technology and military history, as displayed in book and magazine art.

So, “this” is the first of these three posts:  Covering Willy Ley’s article “Space War” in the August, 1939, issue of Astounding.  Enjoy!

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So.

…lately, I’ve been perusing my collection of science-fiction pulps – Astounding Science Fiction; Analog; Galaxy Science Fiction; The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; Startling Stories; Beyond Fantasy-Fiction, and more – admiring cover and interior art; admiring the primacy of pigment on paper versus the stale purity of pixels; and especially appreciating the contrast between the first time I read “such and such” story in a paperback anthology; say, Fredric Brown’s “Arena“, in Volume I of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame – versus that tale in its original incarnation in the June, 1944 issue of Astounding.

It seems.

…that the very contrast between things; events; images – as we remember them – and as they actually are, can be of deeper impact that those very “things” themselves.

And.

…that “contrast” can easily extend to the taken-for-granted realms of ideas or technology.  In the realm of science fiction, striking examples of this – in juxtaposition to the “world” of the 2020s – appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in August and November  of 1939, in the form of articles by Willy Ley and Malcolm Jameson.  Respectively entitled “Space War” and “Space War Tactics”, both authors presented analyses of how battles between spacecraft (specifically, ship-versus-ship combat) would actually be conducted.  It’s particularly fascinating to read these articles in the context of science and technology of the late 1930s, versus how such combat would be imagined in subsequent decades.  

Well.

…I enjoyed reading these articles.  And, in light of contemporary and ongoing news about “space” having become a realm of military activity, at a level even beyond what’s transpired since the early 1960s, I thought you’d appreciate them, too.

Anyway.

….what I’ve done is fully transcribe both articles as separate posts, as they originally appeared in Astounding.  The posts include the illustrations and captions that appeared in the original articles, to which I’ve tossed in some videos, links to additional sources of information, and biographical information about one author – Malcolm Jameson – in particular.  In the latter article (in the next post), velocities listed in the text have been recalculated as miles (statue miles) and kilometers per hour. 

Purposefully.

…These posts aren’t intended to critique the technological validity of the analyses and conclusions arrived at by Ley and Jameson.  Rather, they’re instead to open a window upon the intellectual, scientific, and even social “flavor” of the times.  While some of the authors’ analyses and conclusions will be incorrect, quaint, or passe in light of scientific and technological developments that have occurred in the eight decades since their publication, I can’t help but wonder about the relevance and validity of at least some of their insights, in terms of general concepts about kinetic (projectile) weapons versus “rays”, “beams”, or, aspects of identification, tracking, and aiming by opposing spacecraft.  So, each article is preceded by a summary of its central points, with the most notable passages of the text being italicized and in dark red text, like these last fourteen words in this sentence.  Both posts conclude with links to videos covering spacecraft-versus-spacecraft battles, and “space war”, in greater detail.     

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Here’s Willy Ley’s “Space War” from August of 1939.

Some general “take-aways” from his article are:

1) The technology needed for spacecraft already exists, even in rudimentary form.

2) The possibility exists that civilization will progress to such a point where war will become outlawed.  But, given human nature, in the more likely alternative, the potential and impetus for human conflict that’s always existed on earth will continue as man explores space. 

3) By definition, the nature of space conflict will parallel aerial combat between warplanes, by occurring in three dimensions.

4) In literary depictions of space warfare, a common plot element has been the use of directed energy weapons, like infrared projectors.

However, a weapon far more mundane and less dramatic, yet more effective, practical, and solidly within the realm of technological development and practical use is some variant of “the gun”:  “Well, I still believe that there is no better, more efficient and more deadly weapon for space warfare than an accurate gun with high muzzle velocity.  And I believe that an intelligent being from another planet, that is advanced enough to build or at least to understand spaceships, will look like a man – at least to somebody who does not see very well and cannot find his glasses.”

5)  The technology envisioned for energy or beam weapons – “ray projectors” – even if these can successfully be developed – is prohibitively heavy and bulky for use in spacecraft.

6)  Assuming that some form of “gun” is used in space warfare, the projectiles fired by such weapons would be analogous to those used in conventional, “earth-bound” conflicts, albeit specifically relevant to spacecraft-versus-spacecraft battles.  These would be: 1) High explosive thin-walled shells, and 2) Shells containing large numbers of individual non-explosive projectiles.

7) Some science fiction depictions of space warfare rely on the concept of defensive “screens” (analogous to the use of deflector shields in Star Trek?).  But, can “screens” of whatever nature – “gravity screens” in particular – even be developed, n light of current and future knowledge about the nature of gravity?

8) Rockets would be a possible weapon in space battles, albeit this being 1939, Ley is discussing unguided rockets.  The disadvantages of such weapons are that they could be (relatively) easily spotted, it would be impractical and dangerous to store a large quantity of combustible and explosive material aboard a spacecraft, and, the size and mass of such weapons.

9)  Space battles would be characterized by craft camouflaged “night-black”, using any possible measures to reduce their thermal signatures.

10) Ammunition would be used “sparingly” due to the danger of intact ordnance remaining in orbit around the Sun.  (Or, any old sun.)

11) It would be essential to compensate for the recoil effects of any weapon – or more likely combination of weapons – located at scattered points on a spacecraft’s hull (think of an analogue to the five gun turrets (four remote-control) of a WW II B-29 Superfortress), on the spacecraft’s trajectory, by the craft’s main engine, or, maneuvering thrusters.

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Oh, before we start with Ley’s article, a comment about this issue’s cover art:  This is the only issue of Astounding Science Fiction for which the cover illustration – for which any illustration, really – was created by Virgil Finlay.  Given Finlay’s superb – sometimes astonishing; almost preternatural; in my opinion quite unparalleled – artistic skill, I’d long wondered why an artist of his caliber had no other association with Astounding, given the magazine’s centrality to the development of science fiction as a literary genre.

The answer to this question – excerpted this from this post – follows:

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VIRGIL FINLAY – Dean of Science Fiction Artists
by SAM MOSKOWITZ

Worlds of Tomorrow
November, 1965

Except for an unfortunate experience Finlay might have become a regular illustrator for Astounding Science-Fiction, then the field leader.

Street & Smith had launched a companion titled Unknown, to deal predominantly in fantasy.  Finlay had been commissioned to do several interior drawings for a novelette The Wisdom of the Ass, which finally appeared in the February, 1940 Unknown as the second in a series of tales based on modern Arabian mythology, written by the erudite wrestler and inventor, Silaki Ali Hassan.

John W. Campbell had come into considerable criticism for the unsatisfactory cover work of Graves Gladney on Astounding Science-Fiction during early 1939.  So it was with a note of triumph, in projecting the features of the August, 1939 issue, he announced to his detractors:

“The cover, incidentally, should please some few of you.  It’s being done by Virgil Finlay, and illustrates the engine room of a spaceship.  Gentlemen, we try to please!”

The cover proved a shocking disappointment.  Illustrating Lester del Rey’s The Luck of Ignatz, its crudely drawn wooden human figures depicted operating an uninspired machine would have drawn rebukes from the readers of an amateur science-fiction fan magazine.  The infinite detail and photographic intensity which trademarked Finlay was entirely missing.

No one was more sickened than Virgil Finlay.  He had been asked to paint a gigantic engine room, in which awesome machinery dwarfed the men with implications of illimitable power.  He had done just that; but the art director had taken a couple of square inches of his painting, blown it up to a full-size cover and discarded the rest.
The result was horrendous.  A repetition of it would have seriously damaged his reputation, so Finlay refused to draw for Street and Smith again.

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And so, now on to Willy Ley’s article…

SPACE WAR

Suggesting that rays, ray screens, and all super-potent weapons of science-fiction aren’t half as deadly as a weapon we already have.

By Willy Ley

Illustrated by Willy Ley
Astounding Science Fiction
August, 1939

ABOUT ten years ago, Professor Hermann Oberth, the famous rocket expert, made an interesting experiment which, although having to do with rockets, required neither laboratory nor proving ground.  It was a legal experiment.  Professor Oberth submitted to the German Patent Office a complete description, with drawings, of a “Space Rocket.”  It was, virtually, a spaceship with all the details he had been able to think of in many years of study.

After the usual acknowledgment, there was complete silence for some time.  Then one day a bulky letter arrived from the patent office, containing the expected rejection.  But it was more than just a rejection.  Patent offices do not reject things without explaining why.  And the staff of the patent office did explain.  They had pried the plans apart and patiently and expertly examined every part of them.  And after really tremendous research and labor they had arrived at the conclusion that Professor Oberth’s plans could not be patented because every part and device was known to engineering science and had been patented before in some country by somebody else. (1)

The decision, or rather the explanation given, was in a way more valuable than the granting of a patent would have been.  It proved that spaceships arc not so far beyond the horizon as most people think – the very conservative and very careful staff of a patent office had found that they existed already – only in parts scattered all over and throughout civilization.  Periscopes, air purifiers, air-proof hulls, automatic devices and instruments of all kinds, water regenerators, et cetera, et cetera – they all exist and not even the much-discussed rocket motors are really novel.  Devices very similar to those needed on a tremendous scale for spaceships have already been built on a small scale for gas turbines.

It is, of course, true that, in spite of the decision of the patent office, space-ships arc still to be invented.  Every one of the thousand and one parts needs special adaptation, re-designing and re-research. There is still a tremendous amount of work to be done, and much has to be “invented.”  Point is, however, that there is nothing new in principle that is needed for space travel.  It was almost the same story with airplanes forty years ago.  Everything needed to build an airplane existed.  There was steel tubing and the art of welding it.  There were sheet aluminum and rubber.  There were wheels and propellers, wings were known and gasoline engines could be bought.  The invention of the airplane was delayed because those engines were too weak – it is exactly the same with rocket motors.

With more powerful engines came airplanes.  And with airplanes came thoughts of military application.  At first only observing was contemplated.  Even in actual war – 1914 – airplanes did not combat each other at first.  They observed enemy movements were fired at from the ground and retaliated with primitive bombs.  But the pilots of two airplanes meeting in the air are said to have saluted each other – flying alone was dangerous enough.  Then one day somebody began to shoot with a pistol and soon planes were having machine- gun combats.

It is only logical to assume that space war will follow the advent of the spaceship as aerial warfare followed in the wake of the airplane.  Not from the very outset, probably, because the first space-ships will entail sufficient risk of life in themselves.  But later spaceships will have means to combat each other in space and one day somebody will find, or create, a reason to use these means.  It is possible, though not any too likely, that mankind will have progressed beyond the use of brute force when space travel has advanced to a fair degree of perfection.  And if by then war has already been successfully outlawed, there will be space police and blockade runners.  There will be combat, even if not war.

So much for the likeliness of battles in space – even without the famous invasion from an alien solar system.  How will these battles be fought?  New means of transportation bring new kinds of battle tactics.  Roman chariots fought in another manner than the horsemen of Dshingis Khan.  Byzantine galleys employed other tactics than Sir Francis Drake, and he had other ideas of naval battle than the commander of the U.S.S. Washington.

IN AERIAL BATTLE a new element became important, the maneuverability in three dimensions.  It was not the better gun or the faster plane that decided many single engagements, but the Immelmann turn.  Evidently space war will develop its own tactics – but tactics depend also to a very great extent on the type of armament in use.  That, of course, does not present any question to the science-fiction fan.  He knows it by heart from hundreds of stories, the authors of which neither overexerted their imagination nor perceive a need for too much originality.  Traditionally spaceships attack each other with heat-ray projectors of incredible temperature and tremendous capacity; they probe into each other’s vitals with searing needle rays.  They bombard each other’s screens with proton guns and barytron blasters.  They waste energy in appalling quantities, they do anything but shoot.

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Figure 1.  Pressure curves the barrels of guns. 

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To pull the lanyard of a shiny 75-millimeter nickel-steel gun would be too trivial a thing to do.  Just about as trivial, in fact, as to picture a race of bearded men in white silk dresses armed with crossbows on a planet of Beta Draconis.  The beings that live there must be walking octopi, waving heat guns and disintegrator pistols in their tentacles.  Normal human-looking people would not be hostile enough to the visitors from Terra, and spaceships with simple guns would certainly be ridiculous and puny.  Besides, guns would be to no avail against the ultrarefractory super alloys of the spaceships, and the shells would simply be deflected by force fields.

Well, I still believe that there is no better, more efficient and more deadly weapon for space warfare than an accurate gun with high muzzle velocity.  And I believe that an intelligent being from another planet, that is advanced enough to build or at least to understand spaceships, will look like a man – at least to somebody who does not see very well and cannot find his glasses.

Before going into detail about the advantages of guns it is advisable to contemplate the relative merits of ray projectors.  That they do not exist now is immaterial; science-fiction is not only concerned with things that are but also with those that might be.  How would they look if they did exist?  They would consist of two main parts, the mechanism that produces and projects the rays and the power plant that feeds said mechanism.

Power plants are notoriously heavy and, even if we assume atomic power, the power generator will not be just a vest-pocket affair.  It would probably need a lot of insulation and a powerful cooling device.  We can say with certainty that it would be heavy and bulky.  Also, it will probably be sensitive against shaking and jarring, and it would be unpleasant indeed to see all the atomic converters go out of action in the middle of a battle.  The ray generator itself would most certainly be sensitive since we have to assume tubes of some kind.  And these sensitive ray projectors would have to be in the outer hull of the ship – or even outside the outer hull – so that they do not damage the wrong hull.

So much for the “merits” of ray generators.  Now the rays themselves.  Even the most powerful and most fantastically destructive ray will need some time to inflict damage.  Which implies the need for complicated sighting and focusing devices.  How well the rays will focus is another question.  Almost invariably the beams will spread out with distance.  The farther the target is away the weaker the radiation becomes.  The weaker it becomes the longer it has to strike.  But holding a ray on a fast-moving distant target, that might be practically invisible with black paint against the background of black space, is no small job.

Besides, those rays are supposed to be more than mere searchlights.  They are supposed to have unpleasant destructive qualities, being twelve thousand degrees hot, for example.  Naturally the generator has to be able to endure its own heat.  But, if there is an insulating material that holds out against the energies released at the giving end, it is hard to understand why the same insulator should not be usable to safeguard the hull of the ship that is being rayed – especially since the energy concentration at the receiving end is only a fraction of that at the giving end.

John W. Campbell evaded all these troublesome questions nicely in his “Mightiest Machine” by introducing the transpon beams.  These rays are fairly innocent in themselves, but they have the ability of carrying a large variety and an enormous quantity of vicious radiations originating elsewhere and not touching the projectors.  It is possible that something like this might be accomplished one day, but ordinary rays, as they are usually featured in science-fiction stories, have no place in actual future space war.  Even if they could be generated they would not have any practical military value.

A GUN is a much nicer instrument.  It is compact and sturdy, cannot be damaged by anything less potent than a direct hit from another gun, and does not require a special power plant.  Compared to what one would have to carry around to produce even feeble rays the weight of a gun is small.  Besides, a gun is something we do know how to handle.  More than six centuries of continuous use have taught us how to take advantage of the fact that certain mixtures of chemicals burn with utmost rapidity and produce large quantities of gases while doing so.

That fact permits three main types of possible application, every one of them in use in ordinary warfare and fit to be used in space war, too.  The large volume of gas that is generated suddenly can either he used to destroy its container and whatever happens to be around – that’s the principle of the bomb.  Or it might be discharged comparatively slowly through a hole in the container so that the recoil moves the container – the principle of the rocket.  Finally it might be discharged suddenly through a tube which is blocked by a solid movable object that is then blown out vehemently at high speed just like a dart from a blow gun – the principle of the firearm.  All three, bomb, rocket and gun, were invented in rapid succession soon after the discovery of gunpowder.

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Figure 2.  Three types of explosive shells.  Type A is a light, bursting shell, for surface damage.  B, heavily cased with armor, is designed to penetrate steel and concrete armor before bursting.  C is a sort of “flying machine-gun,” a shrapnel shell to scatter hundreds of deadly pellets as bursting. 

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Figure 3.  Antirecoil device for gases.  The explosion gasses, turned backward, tend to kick the rifle forward as hard as the bullet’s recoil kicks it backward. 

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The latter was found in China around the year 1200 A.D., certainly not much earlier – the statements of old encyclopedias notwithstanding.  Bombs and powder rochets were used for the first time in 1232 during the bottle of Pien-king.  They were then “newly invented.”  As to guns we think that we even know the exact year of their invention.  The Memoriebook (chronicle) of the city of Ghent contains under the year 1313 the entry:

“Item, in dit jaer was aldereerst gevonden in Duitschland het gebruik der bussen van eenen mueninck.”  Translation: “By the way, during this year the use of bussen was discovered for the first time by a monk in Germany.”

“Bussen” meaning portable guns.  The oldest picture of a gun can be found in an Oxford manuscript, De Officiis Regum, from the year 1326.  Eighty years later guns were known in all civilized countries.

[Note:  I believe that Willy Ley made an error in the manuscript’s title – De Officiis Regum – which should actually be De nobilitatibus, sapientiis, et prudentiis regum, which translates as “Of the Nobilities of Wise and Prudent Kings“.  Indeed penned Walter de Milemete in 1326, the book was, “…commissioned by Queen Isabella of France [as a] treatise on kingship for her son, the young prince Edward, later king Edward III of England.”  The book’s now available at Archive.org, where it’s described as having been “Reproduced in facsimile from the unique manuscript preserved at Christ Church, Oxford [1913], together with a selection of pages from the companion manuscript of the treatise De secretis secretorum Aristotelis, preserved in the library of the Earl of Leicester at Holkham hall.”

The illustration referred to by Willy Ley can be found on page 140 (248 of the digitized book), where it appears at the bottom of the page…  

Though the digital version of the the Oxford edition appears in black & white, the specific illustration in question – the oldest known visual representation of a gun (actually, a cannon) – is found in the Wikipedia entry for Walter de Milemete.  Here is is…]

But it took more than four centuries until the science of ballistics came into being.  A great many other sciences, especially mathematics, had to be developed first before the performance of a gun could be predicted to a certain extent.

Ballistics arc extremely complicated, and it is hard to tell whether interior or exterior ballistics present fewer or lesser headaches.  The term “exterior ballistics” applies to the movement of the projectile from the moment it leaves the muzzle of the gun until it hits the target.  “Interior ballistics,” consequently means the movement of the projectile within the gun barrel.  The principles are simple in both cases.

The distance reached by a projectile is determined by its muzzle velocity that should be as high as possible and by the angle of elevation where 45 degrees represents the optimum.  High muzzle velocity is, therefore, the main goal, and the laws of interior ballistics tell how it can best be attained.  There are only a few forces at work.  The expanding gases that result from the explosion of the driving charge push the projectile ahead of them, the higher the pressure, the faster.  And the longer the barrel the more time to push.  Counteracting forces are the inertia of the projectile and its friction against the walls of the barrel.  It seems, therefore, that the barrel should he very long and very smooth, the pressure very high and the projectile very light.

Unfortunately it is not quite as simple as becomes apparent if we follow the events in a more detailed form.  The shot begins with the ignition of the driving charge.  It is here where things look most beautiful.  One kilogram of ordinary black gunpowder produces 285 liters of gas at the temperature of zero degrees centigrade, the freezing point of water.  One kilogram of TNT develops 592 liters, one kilogram of nitroglycerin 713 liters, and one kilogram of nitro-cellulose powder even 990 liters.  Now these volumes are valid for zero degrees centigrade.  But the gases are hot, their volume increases by about one third of the zero degree volume for each 100° C. rise.  And the temperature of combustion is high, about 2000° C. for black powder, 2600° C. for TNT, 3100° C. for nitroglycerin and 2200° C. for nitro-cellulose powder.  There is a limit as to what the barrel can stand and don’t forget that it is supposed to have a service life, too.  Things are a little easier if the powder burns rapidly but not instantaneously; the reason, incidentally, why only a very few known explosives can be used as driving charges.  A short moment after complete combustion of the driving charge the internal pressure reaches its highest point, afterward expansion alone works.

THE LENGTH of a barrel is usually expressed not in inches or centimeters, but in calibers, a word which came from the Arab, where it means “model” (standard).  Very short stubby mortar barrels are 12-15 calibers long, heavy naval gun 40-50 calibers and infantry rifles even 90 calibers.  They are not smooth but “rifled”, having a spiral groove which forces the projectiles to spin around their longitudinal axes.  Artillery shells fit the barrel loosely – the rifle effect and the gas tight fit are accomplished by copper rings laid around the shell.

We have arrived at the point where the gases drive the shell by their expansion only.  The speed of the projectile is still increasing then, but not for very long.  The infantry rifle 98 [referring to the German Gewehr 98 bolt action rifle?] that was and is in use in a number of European armies and has been investigated very thoroughly, may now serve as an example, its bore is 0.3 inches, the “bullet” weighs 10 grams, the driving charge 3.2 grams.  The barrel is 29.1 inches, or about 90 calibers long.

The bullet leaves the muzzle with a velocity of 2936 feet per second, involving a small loss of energy since the muzzle velocity could be 66 feet higher if the barrel were 45-4 inches or 150 calibers long.  These figures show how much the friction in the barrel retards the bullet.  To attain a speed of 2936 feet per second a barrel length of 90 calibers is required.  But an additional length of 60 calibers would increase the muzzle velocity by only 66 feet.  No wonder the designers preferred to save these 66 feet, and save weight and material.  If the barrel was much longer, the bullet would not leave it.  That’s what would happen in the case of rifle 98 if the length of the barrel surpassed 23 feet.

In special cases longer barrels were built: The 80-mile gun that fired at Paris from the forest of Crepy in March, 1918 (2) had a barrel that was 118 feet or 170 calibers long.  However, only three quarters of that barrel were rifled, the last 45 calibers of length were smooth.  Another retarding factor, not often mentioned and apparently not yet fully determined is the air above the shell in the barrel.  Since the projectile acquires supersonic speeds, that air cannot escape but has to be compressed, which might mean a considerable loss in the case of a long gun of large caliber.
Point one in favor of guns in space war: they do not have to spend that energy.

When the projectile leaves the muzzle the trouble really starts.  Older books say that the trajectory is a parabola – it is elliptical with the center of the Earth as one of the focal points of the ellipse.  The trajectory is influenced by the rotation of the Earth, by the attraction of large mountains, by barometric pressure and by the humidity of the air and by a number of other factors that might be avoided by careful design.  Incidentally, streamlining would be useless; we deal with supersonic velocities.  While the shell rises the velocity decreases until the peak of the flight is reached.  Then the velocity increases again, due to gravitational attraction, and decreases with mounting speed due to increasing air resistance.*

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*Most of these factors become noticeable only in long trajectories.  The changes in velocity are beautifully shown in the following table, calculated by Max Valler for the trajectory of the Paris Gun – authentic data are still secret.

angle distance (km) altitude (km) velocity (km/sec) time (sec)
54 0 0 1.5 0
53 3.45 4.67 1.3 4.2
50 10.83 14.00 1.06 14.3
45 19.70 23.72 .93 27.3
40 26.80 30.33 .86 38.2
25 43.07 41.04 .72 62.1
0 63.34 46.20 .65 94.5
25 83.55 41.60 .71 120.0
40 99.06 31.20 .84 150.5
50 115.99 16.60 .95 173.3
53 122.00 6.12 .94 191.0
58 126.00 0 0.86 199.0

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The main factors are therefore, gravity and resistance – two more points in favor of the use of guns in space.  There is no air resistance and the gravitational fields are weak where spaceships usually travel.

That bullet from infantry rifle 98 has near its muzzle 3000 foot pounds of kinetic energy.  When it hits a target 3280 feet (1 kilometer) from the muzzle its kinetic energy is only 336 foot pounds, and at 2 kilometers a mere 88 foot pounds.  The extreme range of that rifle is about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles), but if there were no air it would carry more than 70 kilometers (43.5 miles).  Rifles do not attain more than 5% of their vacuum range under normal surface conditions, field artillery pieces attain about 20%, heavy artillery shells about 25%, long naval rifles of large caliber 30%, and long-range guns up to 50%, because the longer part of their trajectory is situated in the near- vacuum of the stratosphere.

In space in a weak gravitational field, the infantry rifle bullet would arrive at a target 20 miles distant – you could hardly aim without a telescope at something farther away – with about 3020 foot pounds of kinetic energy.  No, “3020” is not a printing error, because the muzzle velocity would be higher, due to the lack of air resistance in the barrel!

AFTER being pleased so much with the performance of a portable rifle we’ll have a look at “real” guns.  There exists an especially nice field piece, La Soixante-quinze, the famous French 75 millimeter gun.  It has a 20-caliber barrel, about 7 feet 4 inches long.  Its shell weighs 14.3 pounds, the muzzle velocity in air is 1970 feet per second, the kinetic energy at the muzzle about 2,800,000 foot pounds. [!?]

From Copper Range Productions, here’s an interesting video about the history, design, and use of the French 75 gun.

The barrel of the .75 weighs about 680 pounds, each cartridge about 22 pounds, so that gun, additional equipment and 150 rounds of ammunition amount to about two tons – not excessive a weight for a ship that does not have to carry passengers or cargo – say a Patrol cruiser – but very impressive an armament for a spaceship.  Of course, the gun would not be a three-inch field piece.  In a French paper on Avions de gros bombardement it was very recently pointed out that guns are much heavier than necessary.

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Figure 4.  English war-rocket.  This rocket shell is listed in the official British tables of war equipment – a modern, practical rocket shell.

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Designers simply did not pay much attention to weight as long as the gun did not become too heavy for land transport, or if – in case it was too heavy – could be divided into easy loads.  Besides, military experts have their ideas about service life.  One of my closest friends once designed a new type of compass for a firm working for one of the large European navies.  After exhaustive tests that compass was rejected because it was too light!  It was later redesigned with parts and casings that were not stronger than the original parts, but multiplied the weight.  The weight of gun barrels, to get back to the topic, could be reduced to about half without visibly shortening of service life and it could be reduced to a quarter if a shorter service life would be accepted.  That brings even a six-inch long-range gun within reach for large cruisers that do patrol duty; for example, in circling planets.  “Six-inch long range,” incidentally, means just that in space, it could shoot at enemies farther away than a portable telescope could show.

So there is certain no need for a special weapon.  How about special shells?  On Earth three main types are in use: One that dumps as much high explosive as a thin-walled shell will hold on the enemy; one that has to pierce armor and has, therefore, thicker walls and a very strong tip, and one that contains little explosive and many lead balls to scatter around against living targets.

Your first guess is probably that the armor-piercing type is the given projectile for space war.  Which raises the question how much armor is to be pierced.  Terrestrial field guns are equipped with a shield supposed to protect the gun crew against rifle and machine-gun fire and smaller splinters.  Before the World War a shell of 3 millimeters was considered sufficient, but direct rifle fire from distances of a thousand feet or less penetrated them.

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Figure 5.  Cross-section of proposed space rocket shell.  To get striking power in a rocket equivalent to a 75 shell, the driving charge of the rocket would be inordinately heavy. 

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Light battle cruisers on the seas carry a six-inch armor around; it would afford protection against hits from fairly distant 75 mm. guns.  However, a six-inch armor is considered light; most warships carry ten-inch armor plate, and the heaviest battle wagons show up to 30 inches of armor.  Now a battleship has only an armor belt, protecting the sides where hits are most likely, and protecting those spots where hits would be most destructive.  A large section of the ship is protected by the water in which it floats.  Spaceships are not so lucky as to have vulnerable points: they are vulnerable all around.  Therefore, they need armor plate all over the hull.

The weight of such an armor is a nice example for mathematical enjoyment at breakfast or during a subway ride.  We’ll say that a fair-sized spaceship is 90 yards [82.3 meters; 270 feet] long and 20 yards [18.3 meters; 60 feet] in diameter.  To make matters easier we shall assume that the shape is cylindrical, to make up for the difference in surface between cylinder and cigar shape we’ll forget about top and bottom of the cylinder and restrict ourselves to the curved surface.  That surface is equal to the length of the cylinder, multiplied by the diameter, times pi which makes 5070 square yards.  One square yard of six-inch armor plate weighs not quite a ton.  Multiplied by the number oi square yards we arrive at, roughly, twelve million pounds!

You can cut down for the thickness of the armor as much as you want.  It will always be too heavy, until you arrive at plates of a thickness the outer hull would haw to have anyhow.

In short, a Spaceship cannot be protected by plate armor.  Its only defense is its offensive power, since it can always carry guns hundreds of times as powerful as the heaviest possible armor.  So we don’t need armor piercing projectiles, any projectile will penetrate the hull – even rifle bullets.

The important difference is that a spaceship cannot be sunk either – a fact not stressed enough by science-fiction authors.  When a battleship gets a few really serious holes, it is soon out of action and it is relatively unimportant whether the crew abandons ship or sinks with it firing as long as they are above water.  A few bad hits that struck a spaceship may disable it as a means of transportation, but it still does not disappear.  If every man wears a spacesuit the loss of air can be temporarily disregarded.  The various gun posts can and will continue firing until every man on board is disabled. (3)

Space war, therefore, calls for shells that either blast the enemy to smell pieces at once or for shells that quickly disable every man on board.  Which means that either high-explosive shells with thin walls and much H-E are used, or else those shells that contain large numbers of individual bullets should be steel balls and not lead balls, as in terrestrial warfare  If the range is short – as “short” ranges in space go – machine guns are not bad at all, or else that nice contraption that goes under the name of “Chicago Piano,” consisting of eight one-pounder rapid-fire guns mounted on one beam, each firing 200 rounds per minute.  [QF 2-pounder Mk VIII naval gun, a.k.a. “multiple pom-pom”.]  If a spaceship were subjected to the concert of a Chicago Piano for only one minute it would certainly look even worse than after a treatment with heat and disintegrator rays, especially since those rays are usually blocked in stories by adequate screens.

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“An eight gun 2-pounder QF Mk VIII anti-aircraft ‘Pom Pom’ gun installation.”  (From History of War.)

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 “If a spaceship were subjected to the concert of a Chicago Piano for only one minute it would certainly look even worse than after a treatment with heat and disintegrator rays…”

“The pods, assholes!”

(From The Expanse – “Doors and Corners“)

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THOSE screens deserve a short discussion, too.  As far as ray screens against hostile rays are concerned, we do not need to worry for long.  Without effective rays there is no need for ray screens.  But it is another story with those fictive screens that are supposed to offer protection against flying pieces of matter charged with kinetic energy.  Could those force fields, or meteorite detectors, or whatever you like to call them be made to actually protect a spaceship?  Strong electric or magnetic fields can deflect material bodies, but the influence is much too weak to avail against bullets with supersonic speeds.  To create a field of such power and range would require equipment of such a ponderous mass and weight – even assuming atomic power – that nickel-steel armor might be lighter.  Only gravity screens would really afford protection.

A gravity screen is supposed to set up a difference in gravity potential and to create what might be called a gravity shadow.  A projectile that were to enter a gravity shadow would need as much kinetic energy as is normally required to overcome the difference of gravity potential in question.  Since it is also usually assumed that the power of gravity screens can be made to vary, the commander of the ship could “adjust” his screens according to enemy fire.

The trouble with gravity screens is not that we do not know how to make them, but that they cannot be made at all.  Devices that “shield off” gravity belong to the category of “permanent impossibilities,” things that cannot be done just as you cannot construct a seven-cornered polygon or trisect a given angle.  The problem of the gravity screen has to be regarded as having been solved just as the problem of the perpetuum mobile has been solved: negatively, it cannot be done.

All this applies, however, only to “gravity screens” of the cavorite type and similar marvelous compounds.  It does not hold true for what may be termed a “counter field.”  Unfortunately we do not know what gravity really is – but it is certainly a force of some kind.  If, one day, somebody discovers the truth about gravity he might also find a way to create gravity fields artificially.  Now we can conceive of a magnetic field that could eliminate the influence of Earth’s field if the latter were magnetic instead of gravitational.  (I am not speaking about Earth’s real magnetic field.)
Similarly we can conceive of a counter field eliminating the effects of the natural gravity fields.  To build up a field of the required strength needs lots of power, to be sure, but one might assume that the initial supply could be furnished by a stationary power plant.  Such a counter field would, of course, have most of the features of cavorite – among them the protection against projectiles of less kinetic energy than the difference of gravity potentials in question.

With this vague hope for possible protection of spaceships we may safely return to the original topic: means of destruction.  Guns and machine guns were found to do nicely – and rocket shells?

Rockets began as weapons of war, they were revived for this purpose by Sir William Congreve in 1804 when there was no other competition for them than smooth-barreled guns of tremendous weight that carried a mile without any accuracy worth mentioning.  In fact, Congreve’s rockets and Hale’s later stickless rockets were more accurate than the contemporary guns; hard to believe, but stated in many of the old reports on rocket tests.

And, contrary to popular belief, war rockets were retained in the Service by Great Britain even in the beginning of the twentieth century.  The “Treatise on Ammunition,” issued in 1905 [see 1915 edition at Archive.org] by the (British) War Office, still stated: “Rockets are employed in the service for signaling, for display, as weapons of war, and in conjunction with the life-saving apparatus.”  The war rocket officially termed, “Rocket, War, 24-pr., Mark VII, (C). painted red,” was described as being made of steel tubing and cast iron.  The average range given was 1800 yards, they had no guiding stick but a device to make them rotate in flight.  If these rockets were still used in 1905 or later, they were probably used in colonial service.  Despite very many attempts made just at that time to revive war rockets, no army introduced them.  Rocket shells behaved, in all the tests that were made, even more erratically in the air than ordinary shells.

It would be different in space.  No air resistance would disturb the flight of a rocket-driven shell.  And instead of a heavy steel barrel only a thin-walled launched tube would be needed that could even be made of aluminum or magnesium alloys.

The first military objection against rocket shells would be that they could be more easily seen.  This, however, could be overcome in using a very high acceleration with short burning period.  The driving charge, incidentally, should be powder, not liquids.  Powder it not as powerful and not as adaptable as liquid fuel, to be sure, but easier to handle and less expensive because it eliminates the need for mechanisms like combustion chambers, injection nozzles, pressure devices and a host of valves.  Powder has the further advantage of having a natural tendency for shorter combustion periods and higher accelerations.

But guns are still superior, this time because of lesser weight!

If the shell part of the rocket shell shall be the same as that of a 75 mm. gun. and if the final velocity of the rocket shell, after complete combustion of the driving charge, shall be equal to that of a gun projectile the comparison of weights looks as follows:

GUN

weight of the gun – 880 pounds
weight of 100 cartridges – 2200 pounds
total weight – 3080 pounds\

ROCKETS

launching tube, etc. – 45 pounds
100 shell heads – 1430 pounds
100 rockets with sufficient driving charge – 4300 pounds
total weight – 5775 pounds

Thin, of course, does not mean that rocket shells will not be built.  For patrol cruisers guns are better, but other ships will not carry 100 rounds of ammunition all the time, as soon as less than twenty rounds are carried, the rockets are lighter.  (There are a few story plots hidden in this statement.)  One might conceive of heavy space torpedoes built along the lines of rocket shells, 10 feet long and weighing 1 1/2 tons.  But I simply won’t like so much powder in one piece on board – and the construction of such a torpedo with present-day methods of manufacture is, by the way, impossible.

SPACE WAR certainly has its peculiar features, quite different from those pictured in stories, but peculiar just the same.  The story picture of shining ships that battle with searing rays and flaming screens is so highly improbable that it can simply be termed wrong.  There won’t be any rays and there won’t be screens, especially not the latter because you would be unable to shoot while you had them working.

Instead there would be ships painted night-black, the camouflage of space, carrying guns of incredible range and immensely destructive power.  The ships would be extremely vulnerable, but at the same time they could not sink and would be capable of inflicting fatal damage as long as a soul on board is alive.

They would not steam into battle with flying colors, but try to approach unseen with all lights extinguished, avoiding the light background of the Milky Way.  If the battle is finally opened ammunition would be used very sparingly, not only because the supply is limited, but because missing is almost as bad as being hit.  The 2000-3000 feet per second of muzzle velocity do not count very much as compared with the orbital speed of the planets and all the shells that missed show up again at the point of battle after one or two or three years when they have completed their full orbit around the Sun.

That their own fire throws them off course is another reason for few shots.  Each 75 mm. shell, weighing 14.3 pounds and leaving in space the muzzle with a velocity of say 2300 feet per second, produces a recoil of 1000 pounds.  And the powder charge, weighing, say, 6.5 pounds, and leaving the muzzle with approximately 6600 feet per second produces another 1300 pounds of recoil.  A single shot would naturally not influence the course of a 3000-ton patrol cruiser very much, but during a prolonged battle there will be deflections to be corrected by the rocket motors.

On second thought I take that back.  The guns do not have to have a recoil that influences the ship.  Several years ago Schneider in Creuzot (France) announced a recoil eliminator, based on the difference in speed between shell and driving gases.  Since the gases are between two and three times as fast as the shell, they overtake it as soon as it clears the muzzle.  The Schneider-Creuzot device was intended to catch these gases and to deflect them by 180 degrees so that their recoil counteracts that of the shell.  The example of the 75 mm. gun has shown that the gases, weighing only 6.5 pounds, produce theoretically 1300 pounds recoil, because they are about three times as fast as the 14.3-pound shell that produces only 1000 pounds of recoil.  If all the gases could be caught and deflected a full 180 degrees, the gun barrel would actually jerk forward with each shot.  Naturally some of the gas simply follows the shell – but tests have shown that the remaining recoil is very low.

There is one remark I wanted to make all through this article, but up to now 1 did not have an opportunity to do so.  What I wanted to say was that there was no talk of armament in Professor Oberth’s patent application.

(1) This decision was entirely in accordance with German patent laws.  In other countries a patent might have been granted under the same circumstances.
(2) Usually miscalled “Rig Bertha”: the official name was “Kaiser Wilhelm Gun,” the common name “Paris Gun.”  “Big Bertha” was the tame of the mobile 17-inch mortar of Krupps.  Both guns were designed by Professor Rausenberger [Fritz Rausenberger].
(3) I recall only one story where this point was stressed.  Campbell’s “Mightiest Machine.”  The fact is also hinted at in Dr. E.E. Smith’s “Skylark III” during the first encounter with the Fenachrome, but it is not especially emphasized.

— References, Related Readings, and What-Not —

Willy O.O. Ley, at Wikipedia
Virgil W. Finlay, at Wikipedia
Space War, at Atomic Rockets
Warfare in Science Fiction, at Technovology
Weapons in Science Fiction, at Technovology

— Here’s a book —

Wysocki, Edward M., Jr., An ASTOUNDING War: Science Fiction and World War II, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, April 16, 2015

— Lots of Cool Videos —

Because Science – Kyle Hill

Why Every Movie Space Battle Is Wrong (at Nerdist) 5/11/17)
The Truth About Space War (4/12/18)

Curious Droid – Paul Shillito

Electromagnetic Railguns – The U.S Military’s Future Superguns – 200 mile range Mach 7 projectiles (11/4/17)
Will Directed Energy Weapons be the Future? (6/12/20)

Generation Films – Allen Xie

Best Space Navies in Science Fiction (2/10/20)
5 Most Brilliant Battlefield Strategies in Science Fiction (5/8/20)
5 Things Movies Get Wrong About Space Combat (5/12/20)
6 More Things Movies Get Wrong About Space Battles (5/28/20)
Why “The Expanse” Has the Most Realistic Space Combat (6/21/20)

Be Smart – Joe Hanson

The Physics of Space Battles (9/22/14)

PBS SpaceTime – Matt O’Dowd

The Real Star Wars (7/19/17)
5 Ways to Stop a Killer Asteroid (11/18/15)

Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur (SFIA) – Isaac Arthur

Space Warfare (11/24/16)
Force Fields (7/27/17)
Interplanetary Warfare (8/31/17)
Interstellar Warfare (3/8/18)
Planetary Assaults & Invasions (5/17/18)
Attack of the Drones (9/13/18)
Battle for The Moon (11/15/18)

The Infographics Show

What If There Was War in Space? (12/23/18)

Art: “The Luck of Ignatz” – Virgil Finlay’s Preliminary cover for Astounding Science Fiction, August, 1939

Pinterest
Artnet

The Road Back, by Erich Maria Remarque – February, 1959 (1945) [Unknown artist…]

“So, that is love,” thought I dumbly, despairingly, as we picked up our things;
“so that is the love my books at home were so full of
– of which I had expected so much in the vague dreams of my youth!” 

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The Road Back is a book I’ve read a b o u t, but not yet actually read, having learned about it at ChicagoBoyz.  There, the book is discussed in the context of literature of First World War in general, and, the war’s impact and legacy, in intellectual and cultural terms, in particular, on the generation of soldiers who fought in it.  Much more importantly – with relevance for the world of 2022; our world – is the way in which the war altered ways of understanding, living in, and acting upon (and catastrophically against?) the world, for veterans of the conflict and especially those who came after.  

Like Signet Books’ 1959 edition of Arch of Triumph, I’ve no idea who the cover artist was for this 1959 Avon paperback.  

Akin to Remarque’s to Arch of Triumph, The Road Back was transformed to film in 1937.  The full movie, at Sir Jänskä’s YouTube channel, can be viewed here…

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This photo, (Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R05148, Westfront, deutscher Soldat) supposedly shows Remarque as a soldier in the German Army during World War I.  He was driven from Nazi Germany to France, and in 1939 came to America. 

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The Old Man decides to humor us at all costs. 
We are too many, and Willy stands there too formidably trumpeting before him. 
And who can say what these undisciplined fellows may not be doing next;
they may even produce bombs from their pockets. 
He beats the air with his arms as an archangel his wings. 
But no on listens to him.

Then suddenly comes a lull in the tumult. 
Ludwig Breyer has stepped out to the front. 
There is silence. 
“Mr. Principal,” says Ludwig in a clear voice, “you have seen the war after your fashion –
with flying banners, martial music, and with glamour. 
But you saw it only to the railway station from which we set off. 
We do not mean to blame you. 
We, too, thought as you did. 
But we have seen the other side since then,
and against that the heroics of 1914 soon wilted to nothing. 
Yet we went through with it –
we went through with it because here was something deeper that held us together,
something that only showed up out there,
a responsibility perhaps,
but at any rate something of which you know nothing,
and about which there can be no speeches.”

Ludwig pauses a moment, gazing vacantly ahead. 
He passes his hand over his forehead and continues. 
“We have not come to ask a reckoning –
that would be foolish; nobody knew then what was coming.  – 
But we do require that you shall not again try to prescribe what we shall think of these things. 
We went out full of enthusiasm, the name of the “Fatherland” on our lips –
and we have returned in silence, but with the thing, the Fatherland, in our hearts. 
And now we ask you to be silent too. 
Have done with fine phrases. 
They are not fitting.
 Nor are they fitting to our dead comrades. 
We saw them die. 
And the memory of it is still too near that we can abide to hear them talked of as you are talking. 
They died for more than that.”

Now everywhere it is quiet. 
The Principal has his hands clasped together. 
“But, Breyer,” he says gently, “I – I did not mean to – “

Ludwig has done.

After a while the Principal continues. 
“But tell me then, what is it that you do want?”

We look at one another. 
What do we want? 
Yes, if it were so easy a thing to say in a sentence. 
A vague, urgent sense of it we have – but for words? 
We have no words for it, yet. 
But perhaps later we shall have.  (97-98)

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At last came my turn. 
The man who had been before me stumbled out and I stepped into the room. 
It was low and dark,
and reeked so of carbolic acid and sweat
that I thought it strange to see the branches of a lime tree just outside the window,
and the sun and wind playing in the fresh, green leaves
 – so withered and used up did everything in the room appear. 
There was a dish with pink water on a chair
 and in the corner a sort of camp-bed on which was spread a torn sheet. 
The woman was fat and had on a short, transparent chemise. 
She did not look at me at all, but straightway lay down. 
Only when I still did not come, did she look up impatiently;
then a flicker of comprehension showed in her spongy face. 
She perceived that I was still quite young.

I simply could not; horror seized me and a chocking nausea. 
The woman made a few gestures to rouse me, gross, repulsive gestures;
she tried to pull me to her and even smiled as she did so,
sweetly and coyly,
that I should have compassion on her
 – what was she, after all, but a poor, army mattress,
that must bed twenty and more fellows every day?
– but I laid down only the money beside her and went out hastily and down the stairs.

Jupp gave me a wink.  “Well, how was it?”

“So, so”, I answered like an old hand, and we turned to go. 
But no, we must go first to the A.M.C corporal again and make water under his eyes. 
Then we received a further injection of protargol.

“So, that is love,” thought I dumbly, despairingly, as we picked up our things;
“so that is the love my books at home were so full of
– of which I had expected so much in the vague dreams of my youth!” 
I rolled up my great-coat and packed my ground-sheet,
I received my ammunition and we marched out. 
I was silent and sorrowful, and I thought upon it:
how now nothing was left me of those high-flying dreams of life and of love,
but a rifle,
a fat whore
and the dull rumble out there on the sky-line whither we were now slowly marching. 
Then came darkness, and the trenches and death.  –
Franz Wagner fell that night, and we lost besides twenty-three men.  (157-158)

For Further Thought

World War One, and the Transformation of Civilization, With Relevance for Our Times, at Chicago Boyz…

… Germany’s Descent Into Naziism

… Book Review: The Road Back, by Erich Maria Remarque

… Some World War I Book Recommendations

The Road Back, at…

… Wikipedia

… GoodReads

… Internet Movie Database (1937 film)

Eric Maria Remarque, at…

… Wikipedia

… Internet Movie Database

… Good Reads

… Holocaust Encyclopedia

 

The Gunner, by William Stevens – June, 1969 (1967) [M. Hooks]

M. Hooks cover art for The Gunner appropriately depicts an aerial gunner in a shearling leather flying jacked and draped with a belt of 50-cailber ammunition, given that the protagonist of William Stevens’ 1967 novel is Sergeant Thomas Deacon, an aerial gunner on B-24 Liberator heavy bombers in the Italy-based American 15th Air Force. 

Rather than being a fictional exploration of the nature of military service and combat flying in the Second World War, the novel’s focus is quite different: While the opening pages present a dramatic but somewhat abbreviated account of aerial combat culminating in the horrific crash-landing of Deacon’s B-24, virtually the entire remainder of the novel deals with Deacon’s adventures (and misadventures) on “the ground” afterwards, in terms of his psychological rehabilitation for combat, and, his interactions with non-flying military personnel, as well as civilians. 

Though interesting in concept, unfortunately, I felt that the novel was more than underwhelming, dwelling until its conclusion (which I shall not divulge here!) on Deacon’s mental state and mood, to the point of real tediousness.  The main problem is that Deacon seems to be a palimpsest or cipher, reacting “to” situations and people, yet lacking a true inner life, distinctive mental state, and character, let alone a fleshed-put pre-war biography in terms of family and social ties, vocational history, or formative experiences.  Or, if he does possess any inner life, this remains largely unexpressed.

Of course, one can’t help but notice the one endorsement (by James Jones, a fantastic writer) and five book-review excerpts gracing the cover of this Signet edition.  Perhaps these snippets are just that, mere snippets of the reviews in their entirety (with any criticisms of the novel left on the “cutting room floor”).  Perhaps these reviewers genuinely felt positively of the book.  If so, I can only conclude that I neither read nor recognized the “same” novel, for I felt that The Gunner, while nominally interesting in a fleeting way, was anything but brilliant.  

On July 3, 1968, The Knickerbocker News published this brief news item about The Gunner: 

‘The Gunner’ Novel To Become a Film

“The Gunner,” a World War 2 novel by William Stevens, has been purchased by Universal and will be produced by Dick Berg, it was recently announced.

The dramatic story centered around an Air Force sergeant in Europe was published recently by Atheneum.

It would seem that things never proceeded beyond the “purchased” stage.  As memory serves, and verified at the Internet Movie Database, no such motion picture ever emerged.  

Being that the novel was penned in 1967, I wonder about the degree – if any – to which Stevens was influenced by Louis Falstein’s 1950 Face Of A Hero, or Joseph Heller’s astonishingly over-rated, near-irredeemably over-inflated, fortuitously-timed Catch-22 (*** gag ***) which without question is the worst of the trio, while the forgotten Face of a Hero is easily the best.  It’s notable that the three works all center around the experiences of American airmen in either the 12th or 15th Air Forces in Italy, circa 1944-1945 (this was noted for Falstein’s and Heller’s novels, back in 1999), thus revealing a commonality of influence which found markedly different expression – well, yeah, admittedly, there are some similarities across all three works – in terms of the protagonist’s understanding and interpretation of his experiences and self-understanding, manifested through plot, character development, literary style (and for lack of a better word!) ideology, albeit the latter is really only manifest in Face Of A Hero.  

As for Stevens, I know little about him, other than the blurb that appears on the jacket of the hardbound edition of The Gunner: “William Stevens was born in Flushing, New York, in 1925.  He served with the U.S. Army during the Second World War and then worked as an electromechanic on guided missiles.  Subsequently he was a war-surplus junkyard scout, a buyer and a purchasing agent from 1947 until 1964, when he moved his family to Marth’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and began writing seriously.  His first novel, The Peddler, was published in 1966.”  So, just a thought: Given that so much of the The Gunner – at least early in the novel – occurs in the context of combat fatigue and psychological rehabilitation, and for this his writing is crisp and delineated – I wonder if Stevens’ military service occurred in a medical setting, rather than as an aircrewman.  Just an idea.  

According to Worldcat, Stevens’ literary oeuvre consists of the following titles:

The Peddler, 1966, Little, Brown

The literary “flavor” of The Peddler – perhaps drawn verbatim from the blurb on the book’s flyjacket? – can be found in an advertisement for the ninety-seventh anniversary of Ulbrich’s (whatever Ulbrich’s was!) in the Buffalo Courier-Express of October 6, 1968:

Book Sale $1 and up.
Publ. at much higher prices

Reprints of bestsellers, publisher’s overstocks – many in full color

Subjects of interest to everyone.  Treasures for your own library – welcome gifts for friends.  All at once-a-year savings!

The Life and death of a salesman, THE PEDDLER, by William Stevens. The story of a twelve-grand-a-year peddler who hawks goods in the most ruthless market place in the world – New York City. Like thousands of other peddlers hustling their ware in the city before catching the 5:12 to suburbia, he dreams of making it. Whenever the pack grows too heavy he puts it down and swings through a few martinis. But he cannot swing indefinitely, and there is always another buyer to see, another sale to close. Pub. at $5.95. Sale $1.00.

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The Gunner, 1968, Atheneum

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Cannibal Isle; A Novel, 1970, Little, Brown

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Best of Our Time, 1973, Random House

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William Stevens, in a jacket photograph (by Howell’s Photo Studios) from the hardbound edition of The Gunner. 

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To conclude, here is an opening passage from The Gunner:

One there had been one crew, one ship.
They trained on the flat Midwestern plains,
in untroubled skies,
dropped dummy bombs and made long transitional flights.
They beered it up in Lincoln, Kansas City, Cheyenne,
sported coin-silver wings and corporal’s stripes.
One crew, forging an arrow, men and machine a single instrument to be brought to the war.

The airplane was taken away.
They were jammed into bucket seats along with other crews and flown across the ocean in a C-47.
They were not surprised to touch down in England.
Everyone knew that it was one huge airfield,
that the Eighth was winning the war,
that flight pay brought a lot of action in Piccadilly.
The Quonset huts were bearable, the beer strong, everyone spoke the same language.
That was what the war was all about – off to a day’s work, then home at five to pipe and slippers.
But the Eighth was primarily a B-17 air force.
The ship the crew had been trained for was being flown from Italy.
Someone arranged a slow boat for them, arranged to have waiting an airplane that could fly.

Jerry Juicer had made sixty-three missions, too many. 
They knew it would never take them through their tour,
knew that no ship could last one hundred and thirteen missions. 
Jerry Juicer was a relic, bald spots showing through its olive-drab paint,
flak patches creating crazy checkerboard patterns on the wings and empennage. 
It was sure to die, to take them with it. 
They needed a brand-new airplane, a new average to work against, new luck.

The crew took the ship up to get used to it.
The pilot found the controls sluggish, and number-four engine touchy.
He wanted the ship worked on, wanted an instrument fit for combat.
They were put on a mission alert their second day in the field;
if Jerry Juicer could get off the ground, it was fit enough.
It took them through four missions,
through a seven-hundred-plane raid on Ploesti
where ships much newer glittered all the more for being torn into fragments.

Jerry Juicer was breached over Toulon.
Flak shattered the nose section,
cleared away the co-pilot and bombardier.
It took a skilled nurse, a determined hand, to get them back.
They put down at Foggia,
left the ancient bird to be towed to the junkpile
where it would be cannibalized and made a part of other ships.
The crew was taken by truck sixty twisting miles to their own field,
had their first real look at Italy: barren roads, sodden orchards, the dismal towns of Apulia.
They crossed the Ofanto on a pontoon bridge stretched next to a string of bombed-out arches,
came home just as the uncertain sun failed, came home to the strange corroded gullies,
the bleached stones,
the sky turned a red deeper than that on the splotched walls of Jerry Juicer.

The crew got their new luck, their new airplane.
Shining silver, it was christened Peaches,
the name running beneath the figure of a flamboyant nude with fuzzy breasts.
Their replacement bombardier was a recruit,
their co-pilot a seedy-looking second lieutenant with twelve missions.
Both were outsiders.
Although their number had been diminished, there was still a single crew.

Peaches seemed to be a lucky ship – for everyone but the ball gunner.
He was blown out over Salon.
Caesar Cantori joined them, another veteran from a broken crew,
already twenty-one missions up the ladder.
Peaches lucked them right through a Bucharest raid
where the crazy Luftwaffe put up an effort so intense they attacked the bombers over the target, braving their own flak, salvoing into the hunched formations.
The enemy fighter quit only when they were out of ammunition, low on gas.
Peaches came through it with no more than a few small holes,
but the radio operator went on sick call for the next nine consecutive mornings.
He was finally removed from flight duty.
Zimmerman, who had been flying as a temporary replacement, became a fixture.

The original crew was down to a slim six,
but they still had something of that old nostalgic hang-together.
With their fatalities already thirty percent,
they were approaching the point where the averages began to work for the survivors.
The furious Oil Campaign kinked the graph slightly;
it figured that one,
maybe two,
more would have to go to the long way before percentages swung solidly in favor of the rest.
Tough on the losers, but you couldn’t have winners without them.

They lost another charter member, but it didn’t count on the scale.
On a raid over Vienna the sky seemed to come apart and most of the controls were shot out.
Both Horton and the pilot were wounded,
the pilot stiff and bleeding at the wheel as he wrestled and coaxed the ship,
a piece of Swiss cheese hanging on shredded propellers.
It was a marvelous performance, took them all the way home.
They fell into each other’s arms, a lucky crew after all.
Horton and the pilot compared wounds.
Both showed more blood than hurt.

Jerry Juicer had made sixty-three missions, too many.
They knew it would never take them through their tour,
knew that no ship could last one hundred and thirteen missions.
Jerry Juicer was a relic, bald spots showing through its olive-drab paint,
flak patches creating crazy checkerboard patterns on the wings and empennage.
It was sure to die, to take them with it.
They needed a brand-new airplane, a new average to work against, new luck.

The seedy shavetail became a first lieutenant and the airplane commander.
They got a co-pilot from a broken crew.
The tail gunner came down with malaria just as the weather broke.
Quinn joined them fresh from the replacement point.
They were given Bawl, Buster.
The ship had made eleven runs, a good safe number.
It had enough in it to take them through their tour.

But now they had been up seven straight days without incident
and Bawl, Buster was daring them for the eighth.
And now they were no longer a crew, or lucky.
Only the navigator was left of the original officers,
of the gunners only Deacon and Horton and Fitzgerald.
The men of Bawl, Buster were sweating out individual tours,
each deep in his own net of Fifty.
They were strangers, riding strange airplanes.
Each thumbed blindly for the catch of his own release, had his own magic number.

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Something Further to Refer to…

… The Gunner, at GoodReads

If – December, 1966 (Featuring “Relic of Empire”, by Larry Niven) [Jack Gaughan] – “Doing what I had to do…”

Well, I thought I’d seen this one before…

Not the cover, though I noticed that, while perusing issues of Worlds of If at Archive.org.

Rather, Dan Adkins’ illustration for Neal Barret, Jr.’s story “Starpath”.  It shows a space-suited soldier running across a barren alien landscape, with a nondescript alien spacecraft in the background.  The most compelling aspect of the composition is not its setting, but rather, the posture and position of the soldier:  He’s depicted in mid-run, right foot on the ground and left foot raised, body bent, head raised and looking ahead, carrying a rifle (note the strap) in his right hand.  Then, I remembered:  The original soldier wasn’t a spacemen.  Much more earthbound, he was a United States Marine in the Pacific Theater during the Second World War…

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Jack Gaughan’s cover illustrating Larry Niven’s “A Relic of Empire”.  The story was republished by Ballantine in a 1978 anthology of Niven’s stories, which featured cover art by Rick Sternbach.


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Here’s the image that caught my eye, and, my attention:  Dan Adkins’ illustration for “Starpath”, by Neal Barrett, Jr. (pp. 58-59)  (I created this image by using Photoshop Elements to combine two images.  Pretty straightforward.)

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Below, Adkins’ likely – probable – almost certain inspiration: Note the parallels between the photo and art, in terms of the Marine’s posture, the position of canteen and rifle, and, the barren landscape (notice how the terrain is rising to the right?).  Born in 1937, Adkins would have been twelve years old during 1945; probably aware even then, and doubtless with an artist’s perceptive eye after, of the striking nature of the photo.

But, who was this man?  It turns out that information about him is readily available.  He was PFC Paul Edward Ison.  While serving as a Private First Class in the First Marine Division, he was photographed while running through Japanese fire at “Death Valley”, Okinawa on May 10, 1945.  Born in Ashland, Kentucky, in 1916, he died in Fort Myers, Florida, in 2001.  Further information about him can be found at Wikipedia.

As for the image itself, the caption of the photograph (the image can be found at Wikipedia) states “Through “Death Valley” – Moving on the double, a Marine dashes to a forward point of cover through a hail of Jap machine gun fire.  The Marines sustained more than 125 casualties in eight hours while crossing this draw and dubbed in “Death Valley.””  From the Photograph Collection (COLL/3948), Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections OFFICIAL USMC.”

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And, a very nicely done colorization of the photo, posted at reddit by ColorizedHollywood.  

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“DOING WHAT I HAD TO DO”

Here’s Mr. Ison’s tombstone (from FindAGrave), by Helen Farrell. 

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Utterly different in style and technique than Dan Adkins, this issue of If provided a venue for the unique and striking work of Virgil Finlay.  Though a digest-size magazine unfortunately did not provide a format for best possible display of Finlay’s creativity, for his work (and income!) it provided a format, nonetheless: Here, an eye floats – serenely? – in a box, in the waters of a stream.    

Illustration by Virgil Finlay, for “Call Me Dumbo”, by Bob Shaw (p. 97)

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And, two examples of the work of Dwight Morrow, for Algis Budrys’ “Be Merry”.  Slightly on the Wally Woodish side, but distinct in their own way.  

Page 9

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Page 30

The Youngest Tigers in the Sky, by William W. Wyper – 1980 [William W. Wyper – the author as artist!]

William W. Wyper’s The Youngest Tigers in the Sky is rather unusual in terms of the book’s cover illustration, for the artist is none other than the author – William Wyper – himself.

Appropriately, the cover depicts a pair of of P-51D Mustangs bearing the markings of Wyper’s unit – the 342nd Fighter Squadron of the 348th Fighter Group – which comprised red and white rudder stripes adjacent to a blue vertical band upon the aircraft’s fin.  Similarly, I think (?) that the blue spinners may be another form of squadron identification. 

The book includes a number of small black and white pen and ink (?) drawings of aircraft and vignettes based on events during Wyper’s pilot training and combat missions.  While not shown in “this” post, these illustrations add an appropriately “light” touch to the book.

Oh, yes, as to the book itself?  

I enjoyed it, particularly in terms of how the content is divided – about half-‘n-half – between accounts of Wyper’s training in the United States, and, his actual combat service.  The text, written in a straightforward and direct style, maintains a very nice balance in covering the substantive, serious, and sometimes tragic aspects of combat flying, and equally, the sometimes ironic, odd, memorable, and (yes) occasionally humorous experiences inherent in military aviation.  And, in terms of aviation history, the book is valuable by its very nature in covering an aspect of WW II aviation history entirely other than 8th Air Force and European Theater.   

In a literary sense, the book does not have the deeply philosophical and pensive nature of such a work as John Boeman’s Morotai, but this not to its disadvantage, for I think Wyper’s intention was entirely different: To tell the story of how one became military pilot, during an era that by now – almost eight decades later, in 2021 – is largely receding from public memory.  (At least, in the United States.)  In this, the book entirely succeeds.  I do note, however, that for all those pilots who were killed in training or on combat missions, Wyper eschews mentioning their names, perhaps a measure of respecting confidentiality and privacy even decades after the war’s end.      

My one criticism – and this is actually an indirect compliment – is the book’s paucity of photographs.  (!)  Other than the two images shown below (and another, showing the author at the controls of his Beechcraft Bonanza in the 1970s), there just ain’t no other pictures!  I would liked to have seen more.

I think you’ll enjoy this one.

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“Another axiom regarding war in the air: the sky has always been the exclusive battle area of the young.  Unfortunately, all of the young men who struggled for the chance to do battle weren’t afforded the opportunity to become great aces, but they were no less tigers.  Some were killed during their struggle to become tigers.  Others were killed, not by the enemy, but by their own inability to master the unforgiving demands of their specialized profession.  This book is a reminiscence of experiences of one of those once-young tigers in the sky.  It is dedicated to all of the young men who fought in the skies, especially those who never lived to reminisce.”

Wyper’s cover art…

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The author standing before a P-40N Warhawk.  The location would be either Eagle Pass, Texas, or Fort Sumner, New Mexico.  

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The author in the cockpit of a P-51D Mustang of the 342nd Fighter Squadron.

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A little searching at Ancestry.com yielded William Wyper’s Draft Registration Card.  Note that Wyper was employed at the Douglas Aircraft Corporation in Long Beach, California.   

References

Green, William, Famous Fighters of the Second World War, Hanover House, New York, N.Y., 1958

Rust, Kenn C., Fifth Air Force Story, Historical Aviation Album, Temple City, Ca., 1973

Ward, Richard, and Shores, Christopher F., Curtiss P-40D-N Warhawk in USAAF – French and Foreign Service, Arco Publishing Company, New York, N.Y., 1969