ARMY AND NAVY NOTES.

Nebelwerfer 4I.--WILLY LEY. (Coast Artillery Journal, Vol. LX X X V I , No. 4.) When the Red Army retook Veliki Luki the first specimens of a pecu- liar German weapon were captured and examined. This weapon, the existence of which was, of course, known to mili tary men, was the Nebelwerfer 4I which means Fog (or Smoke) Thrower Model i94I. The Russians referred to it as a six barreled rocket mor ta r which is a good descriptive term.

The Nebelwerfer is mounted on a somewhat modified carriage of the German 37 ram. ant i tank gun and consists of six thin-walled launching tubes, 15o ram. in diameter and open at both ends. The six tubes are mounted around a central shaft in such a way that they can be spun around it and that the whole assembly can be elevated as a unit. A fingerlike projection at the rear end of the launching tubes prevents the rocket shells from sliding out backwards when the tubes are elevated. Inside the launching tubes there are three straight guide rails about } of an inch deep.

The rocket projectiles, according to Russian sources, weigh 25 kilograms (about 55 lbs.) before firing. They are ignited electrically, the fastest rate of fire observed was the discharge of all six tubes in as many seconds. Full range seems to be around 6ooo yards, the flight of the projectiles is fairly steady, the accuracy is also fair, although far inferior to artil lery fire under similar con- ditions, as can be expected from projectiles with steadily shifting center Of gravity.

While the name Nebelwerfer indicates tha t the weapon was primarily developed as a chemical mor ta r for the laying of smoke screens, most of the shells used by the Germans at Veliki Luki and at Stalingrad seem to have been of the high explosive variety.

And just as the name Smoke Thrower is not quite correct, the designation 4I seems to be misleading too. The weapon may have been adopted in I941 but it is much older. In fact it seems to go back in a straight line to the "aerial torpedoes" (Lufttorpedos) advocated by the Swedish Baron yon Unge during the first decade of this century.

R. H . O .

The Diet of Chinese Soldiers and College Students in Wart ime. - -T . SHEN of Tsinghua University, Kunming, China, gives some very interesting data on this subject in Science, Vol. 98, No. 2544. Based upon I,I78 rations issued in 124 messes in South China in the spring of 194o and the food consumption data of I 1,338 soldiers for a month, a base ration has been formulated. I t consists of 953 grams of rice, 274 grams of leafy vegetables, IO grams of fat and 13 grams of salt.

The ration provides probably enough calories for an adult having physical work, enough protein, nearly all from rice, and a very small amount of fat, which furnishes less than 3 per cent of the total calories of the diet. I t supplies

248