Word: antiaircraft
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Production of antiaircraft guns and first-line fighting planes still lags below Britain's output in 1918. There has been no rush to fill the ranks of Britain's little army. Civilians who were scared stiff in September by the threat of Adolf Hitler's bombers were recently informed that there was neither time nor money to build deep, underground bomb shelters, that steel shanties to ward off splinters would have to suffice. Even the long trenches gouged in London parks and golf courses for air-raid "protection" have been allowed to crumble and flood...
Outstanding needs include: anti-tank guns (none on hand; 228 on order); antiaircraft guns (a piddling 24 in service east of the Rocky Mountains; 338 ordered); semiautomatic, 30-round-per-minute rifles (8,000 in service; Army arsenals can produce 5,000 a year); gas masks (100,000 in service, 300,000 needed for the first-line fighters); heavy artillery (only four of the Army's new 155-millimeter field guns are in service); aircraft bombs (the War Department won't release the figures for fear of encouraging potential enemies...
...averse to military spending, such professionals as Messrs. Craig and Leahy of course prefer professional planning. In the tremendously increased Army Air Corps, antiaircraft defenses and other armaments projected by Corcoran & Co., they foresee fundamental changes in balance between Army and Navy, between related branches of the Army...
...Britain, however, they do things differently. Last week Secretary for War Leslie Hore-Belisha, the man who is rated the livest live wire in the Chamberlain Cabinet, rose in Parliament to declare that the antiaircraft equipment of London during last September's crisis was in an utterly chaotic state. Mr. Hore-Belisha added many unpleasant details...
...Roskilde, near Copenhagen, the Danish Army planned to black out the town for three nights during antiaircraft maneuvers. Businessmen grumbled. Pacifists took direct action, bought up all the fireworks in town, planned to set them off and march in torchlight parades to "lighten the dark nights...