Science: Flying Eyes

The battle sites of World War III will have no privacy. Airborne television tubes will watch cities dissolve, flashing the action on generals’ screens in deeply buried dugouts. Even bombs and rockets as they fall will watch and report their dive to the target with unblinking electronic eyes, until they and it vanish simultaneously.

Selected guests of the Navy last week got a preview of this technique of battle-watching. They sat in a darkened gymnasium in Washington while three television-equipped airplanes took off from nearby fields. On television screens the spectators saw what the planes saw: they flew by proxy to Baltimore, watching a brush fire on the way. They made a sight-seeing tour of Washington, spying on the traffic in the streets. At one point, eleven Navy fighters made a mock attack. If a battle had been in progress, the spectators could have eyewitnessed it from their comfortable chairs.

The Navy has two types of airborne television transmitter, both developed in cooperation with RCA. One, called “Block,” is light and expendable. It was developed primarily to serve as the “eyes” of various radio-guided bombs. The larger type, “Ring,” can flash its pictures 200 miles.

In peacetime, RCA has plans for Block and Ring. They will spy on parades and sporting events, take television addicts on scenic tours by air.