Admiral Beez
Major
We can't know for certain, but I'll trust an eye witness over Shattered Sword's authors.
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We can't know for certain, but I'll trust an eye witness over Shattered Sword's authors.How does the pilot in the front of a B-26 see what's going on behind him? Does the plane missing the superstructure do so in front of him, in which wouldn't it have nearly collided with his own aircraft? Or is the near collision taking place at a different carrier than Akagi?
How does the pilot in the front of a B-26 see what's going on behind him? Does the plane missing the superstructure do so in front of him, in which wouldn't it have nearly collided with his own aircraft? Or is the near collision taking place at a different carrier than Akagi?
Understandable, but eye witnesses only sees what they see and they see, yet may extrapolate and draw conclusions that seem plausible to them, yet are not necessarily true.We can't know for certain, but I'll trust an eye witness over Shattered Sword's authors.
I've been around circle track racing over 30 years, raced over 20 years myself.Understandable, but eye witnesses only sees what they see and they see, yet may extrapolate and draw conclusions that seem plausible to them, yet are not necessarily true.
Great link!From the United States Navy's Naval Heritage and History Command website:
"The third heavily damaged B-26, which may or may not have dropped its torpedo, flew directly at Akagi's bridge and missed hitting Nagumo and his entire staff by a matter of feet before crashing in the water on the opposite side. Whether the B-26 was out of control, or whether the pilot was trying to deliberately hit the bridge with his crippled aircraft remains unknown, but to Nagumo it certainly looked like the latter."
H-006-3 The Sacrifice
H-Gram 006, Attachment 3 Samuel J. Cox, Director NHHC May 2017 **Revised and updated 28 October 2019**www.history.navy.mil
Check out this and please please please don't spoil it for othersI've been around circle track racing over 30 years, raced over 20 years myself.
Early in my experience one of my sponsors was a man who videoed the races and sold them, I got the videos free.
On viewing them I noticed that what actually happened was sometimes different from what I had thought had happened.
Sometimes, under stress, the mind can come up with solutions that have little relation to what really took place.
Damn. I'm gonna' have to watch it again.
Damn. I'm gonna' have to watch it again.
That got me looking at my Dad's logbook as a B-26 Pathfinder to see how deep they went. From fall '44 missions just past the Ardennes to hit staging areas and troop concentrations. A fair number up and down the Saar and east side of the Rhine. But toward the end they got deeper with lighter load outs, 5 hour missions out as far as near Nuremberg and concluding into Czechoslovakia in May 45.The early B-26s were pretty fast on low altitudes. Later models were slower due to the greater drag (bigger wing, wing incidence was increased, engine air intakes grew bigger, many guns were added...), not able to do 300 mph. Despite some engine power increase. B-25 was just a tad slower.
The low sortie/loss ratio for the B-26s was achieved once the Allies established air superiority over NW Europe, with B-26s not venturing too deep - talk to the Ardenes max?
AA gunners never liked a fast target. However, the B-26 was not fast to begin with, so the gunners stood a fair chance to hit it.