Naval Night Bombing?

[comiso90]

Naval Night Bombing in WW2...

all i could find wa this:

In this action the first night bombing attack in the history of U.S. carrier aviation was carried out by VT-10 from the Enterprise with 12 radar equipped TBF-1C's. The attack, delivered at low level, scored several direct hits on ships in the harbor. In a brief enemy air attack on the same night, Intrepid was hit by an aerial torpedo. For the campaign, night fighter detachments of VF(N)-76 and VF(N)-101 (assigned F6F-3's and F4U-2's equipped with AIA radar) were assigned to five carriers and, while not widely used, were on occasion vectored against enemy night raiders.

U.S. Naval Air Operations, WWII

Was night dive bombing on ships ever attempted?
Sure the ships would be difficult to find but the attacking aircraft would be even tougher to hit...

how about kamikaze attacks?

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[Marshall_Stack]

I would hate to try and dive bomb in the night.

PBYs (The "Black Cats") carried out torpedo attacks at night against shipping and dropped bombs on enemy troops at night.

Kamikazies attacked the US ships off of the Philippines at night. McArthur wasn't happy about the P-61s performance against the intruders and enlisted USN Night fighting Hellcats.

 

[davebender]

I suspect they attacked visually using aerial flares as the RN did at Taranto. WWII ASV radar was good enough to find a target but not suitable for guiding WWII era aerial weapons.

 

[vikingBerserker]

SBD's made 133 night attacks, but I would really have a hard time thinking they were dive bombing.

Apparently rocket attacks were popular night-time actions which those I could see.

 

[Wildcat]

RAAF Beauforts flew mast height bombing and torpedo strikes against Japanese shipping at Rabaul in late 43- early 44. Our hudsons also flew mast height attacks earlier on in the PTO.

 

[davebender]

All WWII era torpedo bombing and skip bombing was done from very low altitude.

 

[Wildcat]

Yes, but done in pitch blackness only adds to the danger.

 

[davebender]

Bear in mind that combat pilots were very young during WW2. 19 year old pilots were not uncommon. Some probably thought that bombing at night made the thrill of flying cutting edge aircraft even more fun.

 

[vikingBerserker]

Yea, but dive bombing at night?

 

[davebender]

Teenagers go bungee jumping at night. Just another form of thrill-seeking.

 

[comiso90]

On a full-moon night with a healthy bio-luminescence bloom it seems a large target would be pretty easy to target from above as long as you can find it.

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