Valuable as both a defensive and offensive aid in modern blitzkrieg is the United States army’s new “lightning borer” mounted at the rear of a heavy truck. It is designed to keep pace with a fast-moving army, quickly drilling holes in the earth for the placement of explosives in laying tank traps, in destroying roads, bridge foundations and railroads. Likewise it will speed up construction of temporary bridges and roads as well as foundations for artillery emplacements, An out-growth of smaller drills used for digging holes for telephone poles, the machine can bore a hole twenty inches in diameter and six feet deep within three minutes, and the drill can go fifty feet deep and be adjusted to dig holes as much as forty-two inches across. The drill can be operated at any angle up to forty-five degrees. The power plant which operates the borer is a four-cylinder, forty-horsepower, water-cooled engine.