Word: starlighters
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That jungle firefight took place more than two years ago, but it is still remembered as one of the first successful combat tests of the "starlight scope"-one of the prying electronic gadgets developed by the Defense Department "to take the night away from Charlie." Lieut. Hibbs was well briefed on the scope's importance; though mortally wounded, he smashed it against a tree rather than let it fall into the hands of the enemy. He won a posthumous Medal of Honor for his performance on that night patrol. Since then, thousands of starlight scopes have been shipped...
Puzzled, a group of University of California astronomers ran their own tests at California's Lick Observatory. No luck. Then someone had a bright idea. While working with the same spectrographic equipment that the French had used to examine the dwarf starlight, one of the astronomers struck a match. Voilal Potassium lines! The Californians' conclusion, reported in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific: the potassium "flares" were probably produced when French smokers-not dwarf stars...
...popular teacher at Paris' Royal Academy of Architecture who designed giant globular monuments as a means of classroom elucidation. Among the remaining sketches of his works is one of a projected monument for Sir Isaac Newton, consisting of a giant sphere pierced by tiny openings to simulate starlight. Today's planetariums and, indeed, even Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes recall his precedent...
...tanks. It can dash 400 miles at a top speed of 42 m.p.h. without refueling (v. 100 miles and 18 m.p.h. by the Panzer IVs of Rommel's famed Afrika Korps). It can cross rivers simply by driving underwater, locate targets in the night with infra-red and starlight viewfinders, and pinpoint their range with a laser beam. Automatic devices have reduced the standard four-and five-man crew to three, and a sophisticated stabilization system keeps a big 152-mm. gun so steady that it can fire artillery shells or guided missiles accurately even as the tank rumbles...
...kill. During Operation Junction City last March, they demolished a convoy of oxcarts carrying weapons and supplies and killed 50 Viet Cong. But the night run is more often a modest operation that catches smaller groups of Viet Cong at meetings or trudging along trails. Through such harassment, the Starlight snipers hope to cut V.C. troop and supply movements at night, and deny the Communists what has been virtually a nighttime sanctuary...