Corky

The Skip bombing carried over into the P-51's. The technique taught
was to drop short of the vessel and let the bomb
skip off the water into the side. Fuse was a short delay to let
aircraft clear the explosion. By dropping early if the pilot made a
mistake and actually dropped late, he would drop directly into the
side of the vessel which was a good hit.

One skip was ideal but I've see some dropped at high speed and skipped
several times before hitting. Remember all pilots felt that speed was
a life saver when being shot at in combat.

Big John

On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 14:39:42 GMT,
(Corky Scott) wrote:

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 20:46:24 -0500, "Bob Chilcoat"
wrote:

It's my understanding that after Pappy Gunn had modified a B-25 for
straffing, with six 50 Cal Brownings in the nose and a 75mm field howitzer
under the floor of the cockpit, and had used it very successfully against
Japanese shipping, North American sent an engineer out to see what this
lunatic was doing. After looking over Gunn's field modification he just
shook his head and asked "Where the hell is the center of gravity?" Gunn
just shrugged and told him "Aw, we threw that out to save weight." The
engineer went home and North American started mass producing a properly
engineered variant of Gunn's cludge, the B-25G.

Pappy Gunn did not install any 75mm cannon's if I remember correctly.
He felt that the firepower of the .50 caliber machine guns was
adaquate, but more than that, he felt that it was necessary to
saturate the defenses with a dense volume of bullets to make them keep
their heads down while the bombers made their runs to the target.

The 75mm installation was done at the North American factory. Gunn
never liked it much. The fire rate was slow, it was inaccurate and
the recoil and flash were problematic. Most of the 75mm models had
their cannon removed from the airplane and replaced with more machine
guns once out to the war zone.

The skip bombers and the B-25 strafers actually developed side by
side, but independant of each concept. Initially, the skip bombing
technique was worked up by guys flying four engine bombers, mostly the
B-17. They practiced the run-in on a wreck out in Port Moresby's
harbor. Kenney always felt the bombers were too unwieldy for this
role and about the time a convoy of Japanese ships was detected
heading for New Guinea across the Bizmark Sea, he decided to attack it
using all his air forces.

Several B-17's did make attacks on the transports, but Australian
forces made attacks as well. The main thing though was that the B-25
strafers came into their own during this battle. They proved to be
extremely effective with their withering fire as they bore in at
wavetop height with all their machine guns blazing away. They'd
perfected the skip bombing technique by that time, which involved
dropping the bombs one by one in quick intervals, usually in a salvo
of four. This ensured that at least one would be at the right height
to penetrate the hull and detonate inside.

The Japanese literally had no counter for this tactic, which has got
to be one of the most successful field developed attack techniques of
WWII. So deadly was this technique that even the best destroyer
captains lost sleep pondering how to counter it, as nothing seemed to
work. See "Destroyer Captain" by Hara.

It must have been a truly terrifying situation to be in for the
Japanese as the B-25's normally attacked in pairs which limited the
maneuvering options of the target, no matter how fast and maneuverable
it was. The pilots split up and attacked from either side which split
the target's AA counterfire. But it did not split the attackers fire.

When the B-25's opened up, as many as 8 forward firing heavy machine
guns (ten if the top turret was swiveled to fire forward) poured an
absolute hail of bullets against the ship which caused even the
bravest sailer to flinch or duck for cover.

It wasn't all gravy for the B-25's though. Low level attacks like
this were extremely dangerous as any battle damage put the airplanes
into the ocean or jungle almost immediately. Many were lost.

Corky Scott