What if the U.S. and the USAAF had paid attention?

The reason high altitude bombing by B-17s didn't work was when the ship's spotters saw the bombs leave the bomb bay, the maneuvering began. In the minutes it took for the bombs to fall, the ship wasn't there. Something like a thousand plane raid in close formation was needed to hit a ship maneuvering at speed.

wlewisiii said:

He would have still screwed it up because he was an incompetent who should have been court martialed and jailed for life after losing the PI.

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That may be the most absurd comment I have read in this forum. Who, in your infinite wisdom, would have prevailed against the Japanese in the battle for the PI?

Using the power of your intellect, could you nominate a replacement, insert him or her in place as replacement in early 1940. Walk us through how the battle would be won, and PI remain free from Japanese domination - with zero replacements, zero import of POL, zero spare parts, zero control of shipping lanes.

This should be entertaining.

special ed said:

The reason high altitude bombing by B-17s didn't work was when the ship's spotters saw the bombs leave the bomb bay, the maneuvering began. In the minutes it took for the bombs to fall, the ship wasn't there. Something like a thousand plane raid in close formation was needed to hit a ship maneuvering at speed.

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Oh I know. I'm saying the US should have tested the B17 against real maneuvering ships in real life so they could have seen the obvious. The Japanese did level bombing against maneuvering ships at sea and had success, but they bombed in a formation from a lower altitude. I assume they had tested this in real life, they hit Prince of Wales with twin engine level bombers when they sunk her although the torpedos obviously did the real damage

swampyankee said:

Arguably, the A6M was armed more heavily than any US fighter in service in 1942.

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The P-47B/C, The P-38f/G, the Mustang (P-51-NA w/4x20mm) come to mind for argument's sake. The P-400 was close. The P-40E/F w 6x50cal. Perhaps the better question is 'what US Fighter was deployed to compete w/A6M in squadron size units"?

For my personal preference I would rather have the P-38 battery than any other US fighter in the war (until F4U-1C and F7F) but would concede F4U-1C was in limited numbers in late 1942.

pinsog said:

Oh I know. I'm saying the US should have tested the B17 against real maneuvering ships in real life so they could have seen the obvious. The Japanese did level bombing against maneuvering ships at sea and had success, but they bombed in a formation from a lower altitude. I assume they had tested this in real life, they hit Prince of Wales with twin engine level bombers when they sunk her although the torpedos obviously did the real damage

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The B-17 was not a failure at attacking maritime targets.if they got away from bombing at altitude.
When the 5th Air Force used the B-17 for low-level skip bombing, the results were a resounding success.

Case in point: during the Battle of Bismark Sea, they raped Japanese surface elements.

GrauGeist said:

The B-17 was not a failure at attacking maritime targets.if they got away from bombing at altitude.
When the 5th Air Force used the B-17 for low-level skip bombing, the results were a resounding success.

Case in point: during the Battle of Bismark Sea, they raped Japanese surface elements.

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I actually didn't know the B17 was used for skip bombing. I knew they used B25's and A20's.

Did a quick search and found the following Lt. Stephen Jurika, assistant U.S. Naval Attache in Japan, June 1939-August 1941. Gathered and transmitted information on the A6M after being allowed to sit in cockpit of this aircraft at the Haneda Airshow of 1940. The A6M on display had placards in both Japanese and English providing weights, dimensions and performance data. On receipt of this information Naval Intelligence dismissed it as 'Impossible'. Jurika was on the USS Hornet April 18, 1942, providing targeting Intel for Doolittle Raiders and affixed the medals he had received from Japan to bombs.
Claire Chennault filed report on A6M with General George Marshall December 1940. This report sent to General Short at Oahu. July 1941 Chennault gave three hour lecture to USAAC pilots on A6M capabilities.

pinsog said:

I actually didn't know the B17 was used for skip bombing. I knew they used B25's and A20's.

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B-17s and A-20s were all they had at first, then they started getting B-25s.

Matter of fact, it was Pappy Gunn who started turning A-20s into gunships by scrounging up salvaged .50MGs and stuffing them into the A-20's nose and using them to hose Japanese shipping.
The idea was well received and B-25s coming into the 5th AF were also modified.
North American caught wind of this and based their production gunships on the 5th AF's mods.

It helps that General Kenney gave Gunn the latitude to think outside the box and this in turn allowed them to put the Japanese on the defensive during a difficult time early in the war.

pinsog said:

They might have gotten the P51 quicker if they hadn't left it sitting on an airfield for several months after that one test pilot said it was junk. Not sure if P38 could have been speeded up or not.

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Again, would it had made a difference? Talking more the PTO

FLYBOYJ said:

Again, would it had made a difference? Talking more the PTO

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A superior fighter in any theater would have helped. A squadron of Mustangs at Midway? Guadalcanal? Defending Australia? It would shoot down the enemy while saving allied pilots lives.

what if Mustangs at Midway instead of Buffalos? What if they shot down the 2 torpedo bomber pilots that each put a torpedo into Yorktown and Yorktown survived the battle? (Too many what if's I don't want to go down this rabbit hole, just making a point)

How experienced would those hypothetical P-51 pilots be?

And owing to the timeline, were these P-51s, P-51As or A-36s?

Keep in mind that the early P-51 was comparable to the P-40.

And again, where would the pilots of any USAAF, USN or USMC pilot have gotten extensive combat experience against Japanese tactics before December 1941?

pinsog said:

A superior fighter in any theater would have helped. A squadron of Mustangs at Midway? Guadalcanal? Defending Australia? It would shoot down the enemy while saving allied pilots lives.

what if Mustangs at Midway instead of Buffalos? What if they shot down the 2 torpedo bomber pilots that each put a torpedo into Yorktown and Yorktown survived the battle? (Too many what if's I don't want to go down this rabbit hole, just making a point)

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If JC and a gaggle of archangels came out of the heavens a squadron of Mustangs would have never been available at Midway, Guadalcanal, Australia or Disneyland!!! This scenario is the epidemy of "If the queen had balls she's be the king"

GrauGeist said:

Keep in mind that the early P-51 was comparable to the P-40.

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Well, sort of. Its altitude performance wasn't much better, but it was significantly faster and longer ranged. Trouble is USAAF didn't want it. NIH.

GrauGeist said:

B-17s and A-20s were all they had at first, then they started getting B-25s.

Matter of fact, it was Pappy Gunn who started turning A-20s into gunships by scrounging up salvaged .50MGs and stuffing them into the A-20's nose and using them to hose Japanese shipping.
The idea was well received and B-25s coming into the 5th AF were also modified.
North American caught wind of this and based their production gunships on the 5th AF's mods.

It helps that General Kenney gave Gunn the latitude to think outside the box and this in turn allowed them to put the Japanese on the defensive during a difficult time early in the war.

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Ummm.
19th BG had B-17s from the start of the war, retreated from PI through Java. Joined by 7th BG with B-17s and LB-30s. 7th BG later departed for CBI with LB-30s, leaving surviving B-17s with 19th.
22nd BG with B-26s arrived Australia in March '42.
3rd BG arrived in Australia about the same time without aircraft, were equipped with one squadron A-24s of ill fated 27th BG (Light) and 2 squadrons repossessed B-25s from Dutch Air Force.
3rd BG and 22nd BG began combat operations in early April 1942.
First skip bombing missions were flown in October '42 by B-17s of 63rd BS, 43rd BG, at night.
A-20s of 3rd BG (one squadron) didn't see action until late August. Later a second squadron was converted from A-24s to A-20s
B-25s began being converted to strafers shortly afterward, but it wasn't until the Battle of the Bismark Sea ( Feb 1943) that they were used against shipping.
Until that time the B-25s and B-26s conducted standard level bombing against land targets and shipping at medium to low altitude.

According to Dan Ford, even the vaunted Flying Tigers, when first encountering the Japanese, ignored Chennault's instructions and reacted according to their previous service training.

Greg Boeser said:

Ummm.
19th BG had B-17s from the start of the war, retreated from PI through Java. Joined by 7th BG with B-17s and LB-30s. 7th BG later departed for CBI with LB-30s, leaving surviving B-17s with 19th.
22nd BG with B-26s arrived Australia in March '42.
3rd BG arrived in Australia about the same time without aircraft, were equipped with one squadron A-24s of ill fated 27th BG (Light) and 2 squadrons repossessed B-25s from Dutch Air Force.
3rd BG and 22nd BG began combat operations in early April 1942.
First skip bombing missions were flown in October '42 by B-17s of 63rd BS, 43rd BG, at night.
A-20s of 3rd BG (one squadron) didn't see action until late August. Later a second squadron was converted from A-24s to A-20s
B-25s began being converted to strafers shortly afterward, but it wasn't until the Battle of the Bismark Sea ( Feb 1943) that they were used against shipping.
Until that time the B-25s and B-26s conducted standard level bombing against land targets and shipping at medium to low altitude.

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Ummmm...your point?

Perhaps in the future, I should write 1,000 word dissertations rather than a condensed version of events?

GrauGeist said:

B-17s and A-20s were all they had at first, then they started getting B-25s.

Matter of fact, it was Pappy Gunn who started turning A-20s into gunships by scrounging up salvaged .50MGs and stuffing them into the A-20's nose and using them to hose Japanese shipping.
The idea was well received and B-25s coming into the 5th AF were also modified.
North American caught wind of this and based their production gunships on the 5th AF's mods.

It helps that General Kenney gave Gunn the latitude to think outside the box and this in turn allowed them to put the Japanese on the defensive during a difficult time early in the war.

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Hi
It may be thinking outside the box locally but not unprecedented for the A-20. The British had fitted a solid nose for its Havoc I night fighters during the winter of 1940-1941 fitted with 8 x .303s plus radar, extra armour plate was also fitted. The Havoc II was also introduced during 1941 with 12 x .303s and radar. A different role maybe but the USAAF and Douglas were fully aware of this development and the solid armed nose could easily be introduced in production for later aircraft, after all the original British modification had been undertaken at the Burtonwood Aircraft Repair Depot near Liverpool. That is not to detract from Gunn's idea but just to put it in context.

Mike

I'm getting tired of hearing about the impossibility of B-17s to hit ships. Going back to 1937 there was good reason for the USAAC to believe the B-17 could be a formidable ship killer. If only tactics and weapons development had followed through. Courtesy of Wiki:

Joint Air Exercise No. 4[edit]

A Boeing YB-17. By the time of the interception, the bombers were redesignated B-17s.


On 4 March 1937, the 2nd Bombardment Group, now commanded by Lt. Col. Robert Olds, received the first of the newly developed B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers,[21]​ with 12 delivered during the spring and summer of 1937.[22]​ Designated the YB-17 because of its prototype status, the Flying Fortress was the first multi-engine long-range bomber acquired by the Air Corps, despite resistance from the Army General Staff over its necessity, and the centerpiece of the General Headquarters Air Force (GHQ Air Force).[23]​[24]​

The B-17s made their first significant operational contribution during Joint Air Exercise No. 4, an Army–Navy summer maneuver conducted at sea west of San Francisco, California.[25]​ Authorized by a directive of President Roosevelt issued 10 July 1937, the exercise used the target ship Utah to represent a hostile fleet of two battleships, an aircraft carrier, and nine destroyers. A patrol wing of 30 Navy planes commanded by Rear Admiral Ernest J. King was assigned to locate the fleet, after which a force of 41 Air Corps bombers (including seven B-17s operating from March Field) would attack it. War Department orders limited the Air Corps aircraft to operating no more than 300 nautical miles (560 km) offshore, even though the directive had specified an exercise area out to 500 nautical miles (930 km).[26]​

The exercise began at noon on 12 August 1937 and was scheduled to end in 24 hours. After several hours of searching through a foggy undercast that extended 200 nautical miles (370 km) offshore, Navy planes found the Utah 275 nautical miles (510 km) from the coast and tracked it heading northwest. Air Corps bombers were sent to attack the ship but searched well into the evening without locating it. Admiral King then found an error in the Navy's position reports, which he later attributed to "clerical error".[27]​[n 3]​ The Utah had actually been 50 nautical miles (93 km) west of the search area provided to the Air Corps. Worse, the ship disappeared into the extensive low fog during the night, breaking the contact by the Navy's scout planes. The poor weather also prevented an early morning search for the Utah.[27]​

Brig. Gen. Delos Emmons, commander of the GHQ Air Force's 1st Wing, dispatched bombers at 0900 on 13 August to search an area of 30,000 square miles (78,000 km2​) entirely covered by low clouds.[28]​ Olds surmised that the Utah had feinted towards San Francisco, then reversed course to attack the industrial Los Angeles area. Accompanied by Maj. Gen. Frank Andrews (commanding the GHQ Air Force), he flew in the lead B-17 above the clouds, patrolling an area 200 nautical miles (370 km) offshore. A Navy patrol aircraft located the Utah at 11:00 steaming southeast 285 nautical miles (530 km) off the coast. The 2nd BG bombers responded to the position report and located the Utah shortly before the noon termination of the exercise. From an altitude of 400 feet they attacked the former battleship with Navy-supplied water bombs.[29]​

When the Navy protested the low-altitude attack, claiming that evasive action could have avoided the attack, both B-17s and B-18s repeated the mission the next day. They found the Utah and bombed it, with the B-17s bombing from 18,000 feet.[30]​[31]​ The Air Corps produced photographs and bombing data that showed it achieved a higher percentage of hits and near-misses than earlier Navy tests,[32]​ and the Navy subsequently had the exercise classified "Secret".[31]​[33]​ The joint report sent to the president by the secretaries of the Navy and War omitted the information showing the success both in navigation and bombing.[34]​ Despite the secrecy restriction, the success of the B-17s was leaked to radio commentator Boake Carter, who disclosed it to the public.[35]​

In an attempt to overcome this compartmentalization, Andrews bypassed the chain of command on 8 January 1938,[36]​ in a memorandum of his own regarding a minor joint air exercise held in November 1937 off the Virginia Capes. There four B-17s had found and successfully bombed Navy target vessels. Andrews sent a memo directly to Roosevelt's military aide, Col. Edwin M. Watson, that included confidential Navy memoranda confirming the accuracy of the Army's bombing.[37]​

And then there was the interception of the Rex in 1938. Maybe 20K or 30K was asking too much, but heavy bombers could and did sink ships in WW2. Some who have read the notes of Japanese naval personnel postwar may remember their fear of high level bombers whenever B-17s were spotted .​

I've posted on this before but here it is again, something that's usually overlooked when discussing B-17's attacking moving ships. The U.S.A.A.F. doctrine was to have at minimum 9 and possibly 12 B-17's in 3 or 4 vics spread out much like the finger four formation that fighters use. They were supposed to fly down the bearing of the target and drop together so that no matter when or which way the target turned he'd be hammered, the Forts simply gave the ship no room to maneuver out of harms way.

At Midway, Col. Sweeney had the appropriate amount of forts to absolutely nail one of the carriers but he divided up his force into three and six ship flights to attack more targets. Not saying he made a mistake, he was there and I was not and he was going for maximum damage I'm sure.

The other issue was that the AAF didn't train enough on this tactic pre-war and even in June of '42 it wasn't something the guys were proficient at. If anyone doubts it, I suggest you look closely at the famous photo of Akagi barely dodging AAF bombs about an hour before tee time. Had there been six or even three more Forts in the bombing formation it would most likely have been lights our for Akagi at about 9:00 am.

Akuma said:

Lets assume for the moment that the U.S. military saw the emergence of the A6M in September 1940 and through the following months as a sort of advance in design on the Ki-27. (This of course also assumes that the relevant authorities saw the Nakajima as a reasonably good aircraft even if not as good as the P-40, P-35, etc.) It would seem reasonable that they should look at their aircraft under development, especially those that might be operational in the Pacific and at least try to tweak the performance of those machines. In August 1939 Larry Bell proposed that the Turbocharger be removed from the P-39, leaving only the engines 1st stage supercharger. Is it so unreasonable that given the realization of needed improved performance the USAAC/F could have directed Bell to take steps in redesign in order to reinstall the Turbo? Also the first test flight of the XF5F was April of 1940 and it's development might have been given a little push.

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In September 1940 only the P-40A, YP-39 (without turbo), YP38, F4F-3 were in production, or in near production. Additionally the X73 (prototype Mustang I) was poised for first flight, XP-47B, XF4U were making, or about to make first flights. Start of design for P-63 was six months in future.

The XP-46 was proving a failure and Curtiss was slowly losing ground as a Pursuit name. Army ordered more P-40s and feedback from Britain and France were pointing out serious deficiencies of export P-40/P-39 as combat aircraft for ETO. RAF engaged early to ensure that NA-73 would install such features for Mustang I.

Allison still locked in to single stage/single speed engine - and Army still wedded to in-line/turbo supercharger systems for high altitude performance but about to test R-2800 w/Turbo in XP-47B.

Short answer. In September 1940, the US was scrambling to mobilize from small core of Officer/NCO/Enlisted man (ALL Services) to a massive Citizen Soldier Army/Navy. From making razor blades and automobiles to Liberty ships/CVA/BB, 6x6/Jeeps, obsolete aircraft to hold the line, 1903 Springfield to Garand, High School QB to fighter pilot - and still had Pearl Harbor and PI and Kasserine Pass in the future.

We were long on base assets but woefully short as warriors prepared for mechanized warfare in three dimensions. On that scale the A6M was a minor annoyance.