National Defense: AIR: Gadget

For peacetime economy the U. S. Army has long used miniature gadgets to train its troops. Artillerymen have learned to fire 753 by shooting tiny cannon on indoor ranges. Air Corps fliers have learned instrument flying on hangar-installed Link trainers which stand in one spot, burn no gasoline, etc.

Thoroughly convinced that the foundation of flying can be taught more soundly in a trainer than in an airplane, the Air Corps has produced many another gadget for ground training. One of them is a rubber-tired scaffold of steel tubing, topped by tandem seats for a bombardier and a pilot. By hours spent twelve feet off the ground sighting on a wooden-box target, bombers of the great Army base at March Field, Calif, learn how to work

12,000 feet and higher in the air without fumbling. Last week, pleased with their gadget, March Field officers allowed photographers to snap it. Carefully hidden by a cloth (see cut) was the Air Corps’s secret pride and joy—the service bomb sight.