DOWN —with a Dive Bomber

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 3, 4 January 1941, Page 2 (Supplement)

DOWN —with a Dive Bomber

nated dive bombing. And it was American naval aviators who took the risks that proved dive bombing possible—and did it in old Curtiss Hawks, which quivered and groaned at the punishing treatment for which they were never constructed. Sometimes they actually fell apart. We have been perfecting our technique ever since, and there are no better dive bombers anywhere in the world to-day than in the United States Navy. Some eay that the idea was an outgrowth of power dives made by the speed flyers of the early '20's, who hit upon the notion of putting gravity to work for them in fcheir efforts to break each other'e speed records. Anyway, in the Bureau of Aeronautics of the Navy the idea took hold. . Obviously, the enthusiasts eaid, if you aimed the nose of your plane at a ship and dived at her letting your bomb go only when you were right on top of her, you were much more like-ly to score a hit than if yiim dropped the bomb from the clouds. Sceptics, of course, said* the whole idea was ridiculous. Birth of a Bomber About 1924, Admiral William A. Moffet, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, (later to die in the crash of the dirigible Akron,) decided to find out. He authorised Lieutenant-Com-mander Bruce G. Leighton, on duty in tfho Bureau and one of the men who had been arguing for the new method of attack, to conduct some teets. And down in the Naval Air Station at Hampton Roads, Virjrinia, a young naval pilot, Lieutenant W. S. Dillon (now a commander), began diviiig. Dillon's results convinced most of the sceptics; and more pilots—at Hampton Roads, San Diego and other stations— climbed to the clouds, pushed over and raced their screaming planes earthward. There was no fanfare or hullabaloo about ' it. The general public heard nothing of it, knew nothing of it. T\> the average layman, in those peaceful days, it probably would have seemed just a daredevil stunt. I have seen a young pilot, one whom I had known since hie boyhood, fail to pull out at the- bottom of his dive because his plane wouldn't stand the strain. Literally, it fell apart, and buried itself—and its pilot deep in the solid earth. I have eeen others suffer crackfc ups nearly a* horrible. To-day thanks yj|to men of their stamp, a fatal acci--s::.vdent during dive-bombing practice is oxtremely rare: perhaps there are one 4 or two a year. We have planes built

American-built warplanes are now pouring into Britain in an ever-increasing stream. Rumour has it that the famed bomb-sight —most closely guarded of U.S. military secrets—is to be released to Britain. Dive bombers are daily in the news. There is more than usual interest therefore in this article (condensed from "This Week" magazine) by the Commanding Officer of the U.S. Naval Reserve Air Base, Floyd Bennett Field.

By Lieut-Commander D. F. Smith, U.S.N.

for the job, and men trained for it. Those factors remove most of the danger. Yet it is no job for weaklings. Imagine yourself flying at IS,OOO feet. Your target, from that distance, ie just a small, shimmering spot in the water. You check your instruments and push over into your dive, picking up the target through your telescopic sight. To the top speed of your high-powered motor is added the tremendous pull of gravity. You are heading straight down for the ocean at 400 miles an hour. As You Scream Down You pile through cloud and wind levels which shake your plane unmercifully, and the ship bounces and bumps, trying to sihake you loose— but you are strapped in tight. You keep swallowing to neutralise the accelerating pressure changes. Your ears crackle and pop. The propeller and motor raise a howling din that tears at your eardrums until your head seeme about to burst. In a matter of seconds you are only 2500 feet above your target—and stiil diving. You snatch a hasty glance at your altimeter, align your point of aim in the hairlines of the telescopic sight, release your bomb. Then, at eome where around a thousand feet, you start your pull-out. Your physical reaction to thie abrupt breaking of the dive ie like nothing else in human experience. Blood drains from your, head, and it eeems as if all the forces of nature were squeezing you. For a micnnent you go into a "blackout," and day turns to night. You are weak and exhausted as your vision returns—but then you look down and see the wake of your bomb's splash in the centre of th* target, and you ewap grins of congratulation with your rear-seat gunner. A perfect hit;

That is dive bombing, as the pilot knows it, in a modern plane designed and constructed for the job. It was about 1930 that we got the first of these dirties "Hell Divers." Bugged, twoplace biplanes, highly manoeuvrable, rigged to carry their bombing cargoes under the 'tiselage, they were the pride of every pilot lucky enough to be assigned to one, and the progenitors of all the current dive-bombing planes. The first ones were assigned to the aircraft carriers Lexington and Saratoga, and the development of divebombing technique since then has been largely carried out by aircraft-carrier unite. Training Dive Bombers There is only one way to make a good dive bomber. Give him practice and more practice. That is the way we have been making them in the Navy for years. During official practice seesions I have often taken pilots out to bomb every day for a month. Of course start the young pilots with comparatively gentle, shallow dives, and work up to the real thing. But from the time they start they are all aiming at eventually earning the right to have painted on their planes the big "E" and smaller "B," which mean that the pilot is an ace bomber. They do their first bombing with little baby bombs that contain nothing more devastating than a so-called "signal," which looks like a slightly overgrown shotgun shell and releases a puff of white smoke when it hits the surface arid explodes. Later on they work up to 1001b water-filled dummy bombs and eventually to the real thing, huge 500 or 1000-pounders. For dive bombing at sea we usually use an aluminium slick as a target. We drop a paper bag filled with aluminium paint and oil from a plane, and when it hits the water it burets, and the mixture spreads out in a shiny circle large enough to aim at. Most of us get more kick, however, out of bombing one of the small, armour-clid motor boats that the Navy maintains as special targets. There is no hir-ian crew; J he boats are radiocontrolled from the air by the squadron com rep. rider. The biggest thrill of all, and the moet realistic practice, comes when you get a chance to bomb a real battleship. The Utah—also equipped with radio control—serv3s as the go -t when the Navy wants to •'—> ite pilots this advanced training. Operated from shore, she