WW II Navy Dive Bombing
Two Seconds Short of Suicide
Click to Play Video Clip
As a squadron of U.S. Navy dive bombers, flying at 12,000
feet, closed in on a Japanese target the sky ahead would fill up with bursting
anti-aircraft shells as the Japanese defenders ranged in their guns. A high
speed run in to 10,000 feet placed the squadron almost two miles high over the
target in the midst of the bursting anti-aircraft shells.
The leader signaled
attack and rolled over into a vertical two mile dive, followed at 3 second
intervals by the 12 planes of the division. As pilot of the seventh plane in the formation Chuck
Downey steepened his dive until he hung suspended from his shoulder straps,
hands busy of the control stick and throttle, feet working on the rudders.
Chuck looked straight down at the six planes below him with their dive flaps
deployed. He was aware of them but did not see them… his eyes were focused on
the Japanese warship below him, his target. He was also aware of anti-aircraft
shells bursting around him but he did not see them…all that mattered was the
target he was lining up in his sights…
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| Manila Bay sky full of anti aircraft missiles |
“All of a sudden
there was a huge flash. Everything blew up in my face about 400 feet in front
of me … the whole thing just blew.” The Helldiver in front of Downey had
exploded, hit by anti-aircraft fire. It had been flown by Johnny Manchester, a new young pilot nicknamed “School Boy.”
“There was nothing there, no airplane, pilot, gunner, bomb,
load of gas,” Downey recalls. “It was all just gone, no smoke, no nothing. The
whole thing just blew … and I just kept diving through it.” His attention
remained focused on his target as he passed through the cloud of fragments
clicking like hail against his fuselage. He planted his bomb on the bridge of a
Japanese cruiser, his target, and pulled out of his dive low over the water.
Dive bomber pilots
experienced many such challenges throughout the Pacific War as they
participated in sinking 175 Japanese warships,1 more than any other weapon. Time after time in a six months tour of
sea duty the pilots would fling themselves seaward, charging through a barrage of Japanese anti-aircraft fire and tracer bullets. Casualties were to be expected.
Both Downey and Manchester were 19 years old, teenagers
hurling 8 tons of Helldiver out of the sky, delivering 2,000 pounds of bombs
straight down into the inferno of fire shielding the target.
When World War II began in the Pacific, the weapons the Japanese Navy brought into battle outclassed the United States Navy in every category except one. The SBD Dauntless dive bomber surpassed Japan’s Val dive bomber in speed, range, bomb load, and diving accuracy. This one weapon provided the tactical edge that proved decisive at the Battle of Midway on June 4, 1942 snatching victory from defeat. This changed the course of the war in the Pacific, and possibly saved England and Russia from defeat at the hands of the Axis partners of Germany, Japan and Italy in 1942.
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| Battle of Midway Painting by Captain R. Rasmussen |
(The torpedoes with which our
submarines and torpedo planes were equipped were defective during the decisive
years of 1942 and 1943, a time when the outcome of the war with Japan was still
in doubt. In all of 1942 only 1 seaplane tender and two destroyers were sunk by
submarines, 14 minor warships in 1943.1
Our Navy’s most effective offensive
weapons were the Marines on the ground and the dive bombers in the air. We
did not have reliable torpedoes until September 1943, almost two years after
Pearl Harbor.)
The
dive bomber was the first “smart” bomb. Dive bomber pilots were programmed in
the ready room aboard the carrier. They were launched from the deck and
directed over sea and land to targets. Once over the target they tipped over
from 10,000 feet or higher and visually locked in on the target. The difference
between the piloted plane and modern-day guided munitions was that the pilot of
a dive bomber pulled out after releasing the bomb.
In diving at 300 knots the two-mile dive
took 30 seconds as the aircraft plummeted seaward, and the image of the target grew
ever larger in the windscreen.
As the war progressed bombs were released at
1,000 feet before pulling out. At 506 feet per second this was only two seconds
before impact. 2
The
only difference between our Navy’s dive bombers and the Japanese Kamikaze was
these two seconds. The only difference between the WW II dive bomber and the
Tomahawk missile was these same two seconds. We were the first “Smart Bombs”
and the Japanese were the first to employ aircraft as suicide weapons.
Ideally our dive bombing aircraft, in a vertical 90 degree
attitude, plunged along a 70 degree flight path because of the remaining lift
on the wings. Without some lift the aircraft would not be able to pull out of
the dive.
In a well-executed dive the pilot would hang suspended
from his shoulder straps, looking straight down. The target, at 24 knots would
travel 1,214 feet while a plane dived from a two mile altitude. Wind was also a
factor. The aircraft was literally flown down the dive path at constant speed,
using ailerons and elevators to continually adjust the point of impact until
release of the bomb and a high gravity pull out at about 1000 feet, two seconds
before impact.
Helldiver Painting by Tom Freeman
The
post WW II U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey documented the futility of
indiscriminate area bombing, 3 and the necessity for pinpoint
accuracy that is now employed. The dive bomber showed the way.
Even pilots of other services have a minimal
understanding of dive bombing. All military pilots have put aircraft in
vertical dives, and many have dropped bombs from a diving plane, but our Navy’s
dive bombing was different from the diving attacks of conventional aircraft.
The unique
features engineered into the SBD and SB2C enabled the pilot to fly a
controlled vertical flight from 10,000 feet or more to sea level, tracking a
moving target ship as small as 40 feet wide which was taking evasive action. Of
these features the most important was the split wing perforated dive flaps or
“dive brakes”. These were opened on the trailing edge of the wings to slow down
the dive and allow more abrupt pull outs. Wings were strengthened to withstand
the high G forces. A yoke was designed to throw the bomb clear of the
aircraft’s propeller as the bomb was dropped in a vertical dive.
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| A Slim Target for Japanese Gunners |
Neither the Stuka
nor the Japanese Val was designed for
bombing with extremely steep dive paths4. Both had fixed landing
gear, and a dive brake that deployed 90 degrees below the main wing spar.
Elevator tab adjustments were necessary to trim the aircraft. This meant that
the aircraft in a dive could assume a vertical flight attitude but, because of
the lift aerodynamics, the flight path would not exceed 65 degrees.
German Stukas JU 87
Japanese Val Dive Bomber
Our U.S. dive
bombing was not the screaming power dive of some historians. Even the Japanese
author Mitsuo Fuchida in his personal account refers to the “screaming
Hell-divers”4. The
image of the screaming dive bombers was created by the Stukas, which used sirens activated by air pressure as a terror
weapon against troops and civilian refugees. Our pilots retarded the throttle
and put the propeller in high pitch, while arming the bomb and deploying the
dive brakes. There was no way Fuchida could have heard even the engines over
the normal sounds of his ships activity and thundering anti-aircraft fire.
The dive bomber was always under control. With dive flaps
deployed it would quickly reach a constant speed (terminal velocity). This
could not be achieved with an aerodynamically clean plane that would continue
to accelerate while plunging earthward in a vertical dive.
In late
1943 the Douglas Dauntless SBD of Midway fame was replaced by the Curtiss
Helldiver SB2C. The Helldiver was a larger aircraft, eight tons when loaded,
compared to five tons for the Dauntless. It flew further, higher and faster
than the Dauntless and carried a heavier bomb load in an internal bomb bay. It
had two twenty millimeter cannon firing forward. However, it was more difficult
to land on an aircraft carrier because the long nose obscured the pilot’s
forward vision.
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| Homing Helldivers Curtiss SB2C-3 |
The
high flying dive bombers were less vulnerable than the torpedo bombers to
anti-aircraft fire and attacks by the Japanese fighters.
The near vertical
dive was our defensive edge. Japanese ships had few HA (high angle)
anti-aircraft guns. A target ship could not elevate most of its anti-aircraft
guns to fire straight up. The diving plane also presented a slim head-on target
profile to enemy gunners. Screening ships had very difficult deflection shots
and only 30 seconds to adjust aim.
On the other hand torpedo planes flew low over the water
at slow speed through the entire enemy fleet. Fighters and the screening ships’
anti-aircraft fire picked them up as far as twenty miles out and tracked them
all the way in under constant fire to their drop point 800 yards from the
target. To launch their torpedoes the pilots maneuvered slowly for beam shots
on the Japanese warships and were exposed to the broadside barrage of all the
target's AA guns.
In fanning out at sea level to make individual attacks
from varied bearings the torpedo bombers lost the massed defensive firepower of
their gunners’ machine guns, and were easy prey for Japanese fighters. Each
torpedo plane became a one on one target for the Zero fighter’s machine guns
and cannon, a terribly uneven match.
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| Douglas Devastator TBD Torpedo Bomber |
Dive
bomber squadrons maintained a tight stepped down gaggle of V-formations,
enabling them to bring the massed fire power of the gunners’ machine guns to
bear on attacking enemy fighters. These dense defensive formations were
maintained right up to peeling off into the dive on the target.
The dive bombers did more than sink Japanese warships.
They supplemented the submariners’ achievements by sinking many tankers,
troopships and merchant ships. Dive bombers supported Marine and Army landing
troops with pre-invasion bombing of landing beaches, shore installations and airfields,
destroying many Japanese planes on the ground. Some blew up oil refineries and
oil storage tanks in such faraway places as Camranh Bay and Saigon in Southeast Asia.
With extra fuel
tanks installed in the bomb bay Helldivers
navigated long range searches covering 1000 miles. These eight hour flights,
with pilot and gunner strapped into a single engine plane, were an endurance
test with nothing to look at but ocean in all directions. Navigation was dead
reckoning, using the plotting board which slid out of the instrument panel.
Since wind force and direction varied at altitudes most of the search was made
at a low 50 feet altitude in order to measure the force and wind direction from
the whitecaps of the ocean’s waves.
With a K-56 camera mounted under the fuselage Helldivers served as photo planes for
reconnaissance and damage assessment. Crewmen were trained to use K-20 cameras
as well as the machine guns.
During the carrier raids on Tokyo dive bombers attacked
tactical targets with as much precision
as today’s Tomahawk missiles, bombing
airfields, hangars and manufacturing plants to supplement the high altitude
strategic blanket fire-bombing of the B-29
Super Fortresses.
One of
the reasons that this visually spectacular dive bombing weapon never attracted
the attention of the film or TV producers is the fact that it had a short life.
It was born early in World War I when German and Allied pilots began throwing
grenades at troops on the ground.
Before they had mechanical bomb releases
twenty pound bombs would be wrapped in burlap fastened around the fuselage of
the plane. Over the target one end of the burlap would be released spilling out
the bombs.
It soon
became evident a steep dive was necessary to hit small targets on the ground,
or moving ships. There are conflicting claims over who made the first vertical
dive bombing attack. It appears to be Lieutenant Harry Brown of the Royal
Flying Corps of Great Britain when he sank a munitions barge by dive bombing on
the Western Front in 1917 5.
During
the 1920’s the U.S. Marine Corp perfected dive bombing for tactical support of
ground troops in Haiti and Nicaragua.
Japan’s
invasion of China during the 1930’s proved the value of the dive bomber as a weapon
and their experience in China enabled Japan to enter WW II with superbly
prepared dive bombing squadrons. The Spanish Civil War was a testing ground for
the Germans, Italians and Russians. The Stuka JU 87 proved its worth in Spain
in action against ground targets and as an anti-ship weapon.
However, neither Britain’s RAF nor the U.S.
Army Air Force adopted the weapon. The Royal Navy’s air arm was part of the
RAF. As a result the British Navy was starved for modern aircraft as the RAF
concentrated on strategic bombers. Fortunately, far sighted aviators of the
U.S. Navy were able to pursue development of dive bombers at a time when
aircraft were regarded by many ranking officers as merely scouts and spotters
for the Main Battle Line.
In 1931
Hollywood released a film called Helldivers,
starring Wallace Beery and Clark Gable. This has been the only film ever
produced about our Navy’s dive bombers by Hollywood or the TV producers.
That was over 70 years ago.
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| The First Helldiver Curtiss SBC-4 |
By the
end of World War II the unrecognized contributions of the dive
bombers to the
Battle of Midway and to the defeat of Japan were forgotten as the weapon
approached obsolescence. Propeller driven dive bombers were replaced by jet
aircraft firing rockets and guided missiles Accurate targeting no longer needed
to expose pilots and aircraft to point blank enemy fire. With the new threat of
guided missile anti-aircraft batteries it became necessary to perfect new
attack procedures, just as we now adjust to the new attack tactics using
drones.
Nevertheless history
should record the accomplishments of our Navy’s WW II dive bombers, in
particular the part they played in the Battle of Midway. The YouTube video
below addresses this issue:
DVD Available on YouTube. Just click:
http://youtu.be/5BQLmk1DiLU
Download my book for $1.99
Searching for the Truth about
The Battle of Midway
click below or copy and paste the URL in your search box
http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Midway-Searching-Truth/dp/1508893810/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428539218&sr=1-1&keywords=battle+midway+walsh
Download my book for $1.99
Searching for the Truth about
The Battle of Midway
click below or copy and paste the URL in your search box
http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Midway-Searching-Truth/dp/1508893810/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428539218&sr=1-1&keywords=battle+midway+walsh
LINKS TO MY QUIXOTIC BLOGS
http://www.divebombervsblackshoeadmiral.blogspot.com/
http://midwaydawn.blogspot.com/
FOOTNOTES:
1 Warship Losses of WW II, by David Brown, Table Page 229
2 Helldiver Squadron, by Robin Olds, Pages 141, 144, 188
3
Scientific American, April 1961, Pages
161-165
4
Midway, by
Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya.
5
History of Dive Bombing, by Peter C. Smith,
1981, Page 18.
© George
J. Walsh 2014
Lt. Cmdr. USNR (ret)
