Wild_Bill_Kelso
Senior Master Sergeant
- 3,231
- Mar 18, 2022
There are a few famous bomber vs bomber battles, a few with photographs I think everyone knows that account of a B-24 (?) which encountered a mighty H8K 'Emily' flying boat, her crew apparently asleep at the wheel, and shot her down with a few blasts from a turret gun. There is a sequence of photos from it. I have also read of duel between an even more mighty BV-222 and a PB4Y way out in the Bay of Biscay or somewhere, in which the latter was shot down. And I also remember SBD "Dauntless' aircraft being pressed into service as emergency CAP during some of the carrier battles in the Solomon's and tangling with D3A and B5N (and far more perilously, A6Ms, the success of a certain "Swede" notwithstanding). These are all kind of famous and stand out as unusual scenarios... but how unusual were they really?
One thing I noticed when reading the day to day combat histories in the Pacific was that these bomber vs. bomber encounters seemed to be a bit more frequent than I had ever realized. The recently released micro-history "South Pacific Air War - Volume 5" has about a half dozen such encounters just between September and December 1942. Here are a couple of them which I hadn't ever heard of which you might find amusing.
Page 108: B-25s vs G4M
"The daily reconnaissance of the Buna-Lae-Finschhafen -Gamata area was flown by six 90th BS B-25s led by Captain Raymond Peterson. At 1515 these encountered a single Betty which had just departed Lae. Immediately upon sighting the Mitchells it descended to sea-level where a fight commenced with the Mitchels some ten miles east of Finschhafen. The Betty was well defended by it's 20mm tail gunner who damaged Peterson's Mitchell, blowing the liferaft out of it's hatch and shattering one his fins. The Mithcell breifly gyrated to a degree Peterson's wingmen were convinced he was going to crash, however he soon regained control once the flapping raft had been secured. Some 2100 x 0.50 inch rounds were fired from the B-25s and despite many hits to the Betty it stayed airborne."
This was also fairly typical - that both Japanese and American aircraft sustained multiple hits and didn't go down. I'm guessing "armor-piercing-incendiary" ammunition for the .50 wasn't available yet maybe? Or it's just that planes are big and it's not as easy to start a fire as we sometimes assume, even when they don't have self-sealing tanks.
Page 145 D3A + A6M vs B-26
"At 1000 hours the Vals and Zeros tangled with five B-26s from the 2nd and 9th Bombardment Squadrons that were bombing and strafing Gona mission. One B-26 received minor damage, while one Val was damaged and ditched on its flight back to Rabaul - the crew were rescueed. The remainder of the No. 582 Ku aircraft returned to Rabaul at 1230."
Kind of unusual, but not unheard of that the Japanese managed to rescue downed crew.7
Page 188 B-24 vs A6M + G4M
"The [6] Zeros and the first Betty encountered a lone Liberator 82 miles north-northwest of Madang at 1155. The Liberator crew reported being attacked by five Zeros and one Betty, in fact flown by Lieutenant (jg) Kitazawa Kichinosuke. Two and a half hours later, another Liberator battled Zeros and a Betty in a position 86 north-northeast of Madang. This was the B-24 which bombed the convoy unsuccessfully at 1425, as noted above.
During this encounter the B-24 crew claimed a Betty as destroyed. This bomber was flown by FCPO Konnno Harumi which indeed was hit by the Liberator's gunfire and damaged, wounding two crew. Kouno subsequently ditched safely near Cape Lambert, not far from Vunakanau,. The crew came ashore and was collected by vehicle two days later and driven to Rabaul, before being flown back to their base at Kavieng."
Another rescued crew. It is also quite routine that even small numbers of B-17s, B-24s, B-25s, Hudsons and A-20s seemed to be able to fend off numbers of A6Ms, almost on a daily basis by December.
So I find these bomber vs bomber encounters very interesting, I know there are a few more in that book but those are the ones I marked while reading it. If you have any anecdotes of bombers fighting bombers (with or without fighters in the mix) I'd love to read them!
