Originally posted by mos
Low-level bombing in a B-17 is a historical fact? I'm sorry, you're going to have to cite a source or two on that one before I believe you.
Ya, I'm Rutilant, here a few paragraphs, not 17s but point made:
On Aug. 1, 1943, Army Air Corps B-24 bombers took off from bases in Libya and headed toward the heavily defended target in Romania, more than a thousand miles away. Their target: the Ploesti oil fields that supplied 60 percent of Germany's crude oil.
To achieve surprise, said Whalen, the bombers flew at treetop height, but clouds broke up the formations and German radar detected them and alerted ground defenses. In the confusion of battle, some crews made bombing runs through heavy smoke over targets that already had been attacked. The second wave of planes were caught in bursts of delayed action bombs that had been dropped previously
Here's another from the dam-busting raids on the Ruhr:
The idea eventually won the approval of the British high command, who, after all, would not be the ones charged with flying through a wall of flak to deliver 10,000-pound bombs at a precise distance from a dam while flying at a precise, slow speed at an altitude of exactly 60 feet.
and one more from the Pacific:
Although the airplane was originally intended for level bombing from medium altitudes, it was used extensively in the Pacific area for bombing Japanese airfields from treetop level and for strafing and skip bombing enemy shipping. More than 9,800 B-25s were built during WW II.
Dolittle raid was low level also if I'm not mistaken.
