THE BATTLE OF FRANCE
He patted a great highly-polished barrel
affectionately*
'A 4-5,* he said, 'it'll fire to a height of thirty
thousand feet with ease. A grand weapon/
Somewhere else a factory more vast still is making
aeroplanes, huge bombers constructed by an entirely
new process. It was like some giant Meccano model,
and all done with a few components of a very light
metal, assembled according to ingenious plans.
This method reduces the amount of metal used by
two-thirds. And, moreover, since the wings are
much lighter than wings of solid metal, the effective
weight that can be carried by the aeroplane is
correspondingly increased.
'But/ I asked the engineer, 'how can these frail-
looking wings stand up to terrific pressures?*
'Think/ he said, 'of a Romanesque church and a
Gothic church. The walls of the Romanesque
church are massive: in the Gothic church they are
broken by airy and fragile windows. Nevertheless
the Gothic church is every bit as safe as the Roman-
esque church. And why? Because the pressures,
instead of being spread over the mass of the whole
building, are concentrated at certain points—on the
pillars and the buttresses. This is the same idea and
it has passed every test/
Over the wings that take their shape from the
impeccable junction of these shining metal pieces,
innumerable young girls dressed in overalls of a
120