Originally posted by mamba2
I think that he's talking about the 617 *dam buster* squad(lancasters)
They had a special bomb that could skip on the water if dropped at the right angle. Also, there was the 22000 bomb*forgot name....* that would be dropped for presision bombing.
Actually he is referring to the bombing tactic used in the pacific against the japanese. And they didnt always use B-25s they also used B-17s. It was develop by Maj. Gen. George C. Kenney's Fifth Air Force
http://www.afa.org/magazine/valor/0594valor.aspSkip bombing was a major airpower development in the Pacific war, and 2d Lt. Jim Murphy was one of its principal architects.
Its primary mission was interdicting Japanese shipping from the great enemy base at Rabaul, New Britain. General Kenney had but a handful of B-17s, his only bombers with the range to reach Rabaul from New Guinea. The results of high-altitude bombing had been negligible. A better way had to be found. Maj. Bill Benn, commander of the 63d Squadron, convinced General Kenney that low-altitude skip bombing was the answer. Jim Murphy was one of several volunteers to perfect that technique, along with Capt. Kenneth McCullar.
Experiments showed that accurate delivery was best achieved at an altitude of 200 feet, flying at 200 to 230 miles an hour with bomb release about 300 yards from the target. The bombs then would skip across the water into the side of the target ship. This required precise flying. In his remarkable book, Skip Bombing, Murphy says the number of bomb hits increased from one percent in high-altitude attack to 72 percent by skip bombing. It was a major airpower development of the Pacific war.
More than 60 percent of Lieutenant Murphy's combat missions involved skip bombing. On the night of Nov. 13, 1942, he went against enemy shipping off the island of Bougainville. Murphy broke out of the most ferocious front he had encountered just as he approached the target area. As he descended for the bomb run, his number four engine was knocked out by flak, but his crew scored a direct hit on a cargo ship.
As the B-17 circled for a second run, a large section of its nose was blown out by ground fire. With a hurricane blasting through the open nose, Lieutenant Murphy destroyed another ship and fought off several Zeros. Now the challenge became fighting their way home through the front with one engine out, another running at half power, and torrents of rain pouring in through the shattered nose. Updrafts and downdrafts threw the B-17 from a near-stall to a 300-mile-an-hour dive before they finally made it through the front and landed at Port Moresby.
