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Gun Sprays Slugs Like a Fire Hose
Latest Surprise for Enemy Has Remarkable Speed.

CHICAGO.—A machine gun comparable to a fire hose in leaden fire power is the latest Yank surprise for Japs.

The new, ultra-speed .50-caliber gun, disclosed for the first time by the army ordnance department and Frigidaire division of General Motors, spews bullets at the record rate of 1,200 a minute—20 shots a second—to spray the target.

There is nothing spray-like in the way the bullets hit, however, the ordnance experts report. Used in the 14 guns of a B-25 bomber, for example, 280 bullets would be fired in a one-second burst.

"The very low mortality rate among our bombers can be largely credited to the basic .50-caliber machine gun now in use as an air forces weapon all over the world," Maj. Gen. L. H. Campbell Jr., ordnance chief, stated. "They account for over 90 per cent of all aircraft firepower."

From this analysis of what the .50-caliber gun has meant heretofore, it is quickly understandable that its increase in firing rate will raise the annihilation average against the Japs.

"Surely, Hirohito is going to need more than a white horse," a G.M. official said. "And his top-hatted followers will have to dream up something more potent than Fourth of July balloons to compete with this kind of Yankee ingenuity."

The Frigidaire division, which already has delivered 350,000 standard .50-caliber guns, completed the first of the new weapons for army inspection last August after a record-breaking engineering development.