Let's see your bomber vs. bomber battles

GrauGeist said:

Depends on what time frame you're looking at in the PTO.

Late war, the Japanese were fielding aircraft that were formidible and heavily armed, like the N1K1J, which had four 20mm cannon.
There ws also the KI-100, armed with two 12.7mm MGs and two 20mm cannon, the J2M3 that was armed with four 20mm cannon.
Those are just the single engine fighters, they had twins that were packing a hellova punch, too.

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That's a fair point, although there were never that many of these around

This seems to be written by someone with relative inexperience in the English language, (but certainly better than my Italian) and it covers several actions involving the Cant Z.506 Airone ("Heron") seaplane in Greek / Adriatic zone.


A few excerpts follow:

Dec 20 1940 Z.506 hit a steamship of Preveza, and later attacked 15 "motor sailer" sinking two.

Dec 24 1940 Z.506 bombed a steamship off Corfu (no estimate of damage or sinking given)

Dec 30 1940 two Z.506 were attacked by two Blenheim "IF" from 30 Sqn RAF, one of which downed a Z-506 whose crew was rescued by the Greeks.

Jan 5 1941 one Z.506 was attacked by a Blenheim with neither being heavily damaged or destroyed.

Jan 12 1941, a Cant Z.506 was attacked by a Sunderland at "very low altitude" along the Western Greek coast. Apparently no serious damage.

Feb 2 1941, a Cant Z.506 was attacked by a Sunderland, and the Z-506 was "obliged to land at Benghazi"

Feb 24 1941, a Cant Z.506 was lost for what are only listed as "troubles"

March 22 1941, a Cant Z.506 was attacked by Greek Gladiators, claiming one (but this was unconfirmed by the Greeks)

"on 22 April 1941, two Cant-Z-506 discovered and raided in Paxos harbor about twenty trawlers embarking troops retreating from the Epirus hitting at least two of them. The Greek sources admitted the loss in the Peloponnese's sector of 18 small merchant ship but this total include, a part the torpedo boat Proussa sunk by the Italian Stukas on 4 April 1941, the steamship Susanna (882 tons) dive bombed and sunk on the same 4 April by Ju 87s of the Italian Air Force's 239th Squadriglia."

Maritime targets seem to include trawlers and a lot of "motor sailer" which I think means motorized sailboats, probably of traditional Mediterranean or Adriatic types such as the small Bracera fishing boat or the larger Trabàccolo coaster or the still larger Gulet type schooner. These kinds of vessels, trawlers and other small 'coasters' moved a lot of cargo and personnel in small batches continuously around the coastlines of the Med during the war, as before the war for centuries, and after the war to this day. Further south there were other traditional types such as the small Felucca and the larger Dhow.

This was something which came up in the thread on El Alamein which I'll revisit later. But I thought it was worth pointing out here. Coastal maritime boats and ships weren't as fast as trains but could utilize quite small fishing harbors and didn't need substantial dock facilities, were very cheap and moved at a steady pace... so long as they weren't being bombed or strafed.

So Osprey released a book on PB4Y vs H6K and H8K which I picked up more or less at random from the local hobby shop.


I have just about finished reading it and it's quite interesting. These encounters were a bit more one-sided than you might expect. The author goes from the earliest slightly navalized B-24s to the purpose built PB4Y-2 which didn't show up until 1945.

Both versions really got into a lot of action, including rather large (and to me surprising) numbers of air to air encounters. They were basically like the 1930s style Flash Gordon battleships of the air duking it out - and often aggressively chasing down - enemy aircraft of all types. I wish the book would have included the entirety of their combat histories instead of just B-24 vs flying boat, though it does quote some numbers. I'll post those a bit later.

It'd be interesting to read some anecdotes from those involved.

Thumpalumpacus said:

It'd be interesting to read some anecdotes from those involved.

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Here's a good account of a battle between an H6K and a PB-1, as told by the H6K's pilot:

Thumpalumpacus said:

It'd be interesting to read some anecdotes from those involved.

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He goes into detail - it was quite grim for the IJN. There were about 15 shoot downs of H6K or H8K by B-24 (PB4Y1) or PB4Y2, no losses of PB4Y. The Japanese seemed to have had bad tactics, bad gunnery, and bad situational awareness. They were frequently caught napping and didn't react to the PB4Y until it was right on top of them. On at least one occasion, two H8K were stalking a crippled USN submarine via radar and a PB4Y detected their radar signals, then used it's own radar and intercepted them, ultimately shooting one down. On only one occasion return fire from an H8K significantly damaged a PB4Y (wounding the pilot and some other crew, but it still got shot down), on one other occasion an H8K made pretty effective defensive maneuvers against an attacking PB4Y (but it still got shot down) and on one occasion an H8K managed to outrun a PB4Y which was low on fuel, and it escaped.

Most of the time the PB4Y quickly disabled the defensive guns of the Japanese flying boats, and shot them down within minutes. Most of the time the H6K or H8K took no real defensive actions except to put the nose down and head for home in a strait line (which does not usually seem to have worked). It's unclear to me precisely what the top speeds of the relative aircraft really were, data is contradictory. But the expectation in this Osprey book seems to be that H6K was slower than B-24 at low altitude, H8K was a bit faster but almost never managed to escape (only once).

Those PB4Y were badass. They claimed ~300 something victories in air to air combat from 1943-1945 and got into action about twice a month.

A lot of this may be due to the time period of the combats - late 1943 on out.