Southampton, Nov. 20 - X-ray machines are not being used here to detect GI brides who try to smuggle aboard troopships in duffle bags, Lt. Robert A. Lucas, troops movement officer, declared today, refuting a report printed in the London Sunday Dispatch that a “special X-Ray plant” screens each man’s baggage near the gangplanks to detect English wives of American soldiers.

“Our X-ray machine is intended to detect weapons brought by furlough and leave troops to the UK,” Lucas explained. “Those soldiers are forbidden to bring their weapons into the UK under and circumstances.”

Meanwhile, more than 50,000 GI brides, hoping to enter the U.S. legally, were heartened by a U.S. Navy official’s deliration that they would be able to join their husbands “far sooner then was possible a month ago,” because of the new program to use aircraft carriers and other warships as troopships.