New Zealand Fighter Pilots Bombing Targets

[Dave Homewood]

I came across this article in the Press newspaper dated 20th of March 1944. I knew that the role of the New Zealand Fighter Wing's Warhawks changed in March 1944 from fighter patrols and fighter escort to dive bombing Japanese targets. But I find John Oldfield's comments interesting.

AIR ASSAULT ON RABAUL

JAPANESE BASE SMASHED

NEW ZEALAND PILOTS’ "BOMB PRACTICE"

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, March 19

Although they had little or no prior training, their first practice bombs being dropped on Rabaul, the recent quick change in the role of New Zealand Warhawks and their pilots from fighters to fighter-bombers was an unqualified success, said Squadron Leader J. A. Oldfield, D.F.C., a former Wellington solicitor, who, after leading the Royal New Zealand Air Force Warhawk Squadron against Rabaul for the last six weeks, has just returned to New Zealand for a period of leave. As recently as March 12, Squadron Leader Oldfield was dropping 500lb bombs on the erstwhile Japanese stronghold.

The decision to operate New Zealand Warhawks against Rabaul as fighter-bombers came when the Japanese could no longer provide air opposition to fighters, and it was resolved to send “everything over Rabaul that could carry bombs.” The Warhawk was well suited to the new role, having proved itself in the eastern theatre, where it had carried a 1000lb bomb under its centre section and two smaller bombs under the wings.

Squadron Leader Oldfield, in explaining that New Zealand fighter pilots had little or no preliminary training in fighter-bomber technique, said it was just a matter of getting together, “working out our tactics on the ground and then having a first practice on Rabaul.” New Zealand Warhawks’ fighter-bomber technique was similar to that employed in divebombing, the aircraft itself being aimed at the target.

"Generally speaking, I can say our first experience of fighter-bombing was a complete success," said Squadron Leader Oldfield, “and although we are primarily fighter pilots we entered thoroughly into the spirit of bombing, seeing that every Allied aircraft that was at all suited for bomb-carrying was taking a share in the knock-outs being delivered to Rabaul.”

I thought that RNZAF fighter pilots all learned the techniques of bombing and dive-bombing both at No. 2 Service Flying Training School's Advanced Training Squadron (or the equivalent in Canada) on the range at Lake Grassmere. And then again in the Fighter Operational Training Schools in the P-40's. That is what I'd thought. Was this not the actual case till after the squadrons became bombers, and that training was only introduced in or after March 1944? Or did he just mean it was their first actual combat experience?

[davidd]

So far as I know Dave, the "live bombing" practiced in New Zealand at SFTS's (and at Canadian ones from about mid-1944 I think, when the training was slowed down due to excess of aircrew building up in the UK) were mainly level bombing only with practice bombs, as well as "Camera Obscura" and AML Bombing Teacher training. Also when some of the EFTS Tiger Moths were equipped with LSBC's in about mid-1942 under the FAFAI scheme (Forces Available For Anti-Invasion), the pilots assigned to the FAFAI squadrons (manned of course by volunteers from among the EFTS instructors) also had to practice dive bombing, although this would have been using practice bombs, with the 25 pounder light bombs being reserved for the real thing (Japanese troop ships off the beaches!) The amount of armament training at RNZAF SFTS's was variable and I would not like to quote too much on things I have only a hazy understanding of myself, but my (mistaken?) belief is that the Multi-Engine pilots (flying Oxfords) normal did level bombing, while Single-Engine pilots (in Vincents, Gordons, Hinds, and later in Harvards) normally practiced only aerial gunnery, but there may well have been a swing to bombing in, say, 1944, at Woodbourne. Log books (and photographs!) would give the best information I reckon. Doubt that bombing training was given in P-40s (or Corsairs) at OTU's in NZ, although not impossible. I seem to recall that when new fighter pilots got into Corsair squadrons at Ardmore from July 1944 onwards, at some point they were introduced to bombing training (called dive bombing, but really a type of glide bombing I think), which of course would have been on recommendation of fighter squadron commanders and others in the forward area, reacting to the changes in "operational requirements"!
David D

[Dave Homewood]

Thanks David. I'll have to have a study of logbooks but sadly at the schools the students usually only wrote in an exercise code like "Ex. 5" to show what they'd done rather than what the exercise duty actually was. I need to find a Key to those codes.

[davidd]

Dave, just recalled something else. Trainee Multi-Engine airmen pilots trained in New Zealand up until about June 1942 not only trained with practice bombs during their ATS course, but also as flexible air gunners (in the Armstrong Whitworth turret) as well! This first came to my notice when I looked into the double-fatal accident which befell one Oxford at the little Banks Peninsular township of Akaroa in June 1940. The details of the court of inquiry were subsequently published in NZ newspapers. There were two pilots on the exercise, flexible gunnery (cannot recall whether it was against an airborne drogue, or a ground target at Lake Ellesmere, but probably former), but at some point they had to land at the Lake airstrip (Birdlings Flat) and change places so the other trainee pilot could now man the turret for his gunnery training. However this gunnery training was later dropped from the armament syllabus as being unnecessary. Also fairly certain that some trainee pilots filled in complete details of their training exercises in their log books, giving both exercise number, and brief description. However I do have both the ITS and ATS Syllabus for Oxford trainee pilots, at Wigram, with latter including all the Armament as well as Navigator and Observer exercises too, and the exercise number. Of course these syllabi were amended from time to time, and each school seemed to print their own versions as well.
David D

[Dave Homewood]

That is really interesting about the pilots learning turret gunnery, I'd never heard that before.

[Dave Homewood]

I have just checked through all the exercises in the Fighter Operational Training Units' syllabus, which i copied some while back from the National Archives and should really have looked at before i posted this thread. The copy in question is dated June 1944, and there is not a single mention of bombing at all. It's all formation, fighter tactics, instrument flying, night flying, cine gunnery, etc. So even after the fighter squadrons had become bomber squadrons, the schools were still teaching them only to be fighter pilots.

I have talked with a few Corsair pilots about the bombing techniques they employed. It seems from what I was told it was down to the squadron commander as to whether the Corsairs should lower their main gear and use them as dive brakes. Some squadrons did, some didn't. Maybe the bombing was all pretty ad hoc and only ever gotten to at squadron level.

[pepe]

The following comments, which may be of interest, are from my great uncle's memoir's during his service with No. 15 Squadron on Bougainville from late May 1945:

"We had two types of attack. If the target was not too heavily defended we used a 35 degree dive from about 5000ft with a pull out at 1500ft, lifting the nose using the gunsight and releasing as the sight gave the correct aim. I think this was 115 mijs up from center of sight. On heavily defended targets we used a 60 degree dive from 12,000ft using dive brakes to keep the speed to about 300kts. We used two 360lbs depth charges (when we could get them) as they could almost be always be relied upon to explode. The other preferred weapon was 1000lb GP bomb with a wooden pole attached to the nose.
From the 8th June we flew close support on Hari Ridge. This meant we were dropping close to Australian troops and targets were marked by Boomerangs from Piva South. Most of the flying was done in the morning to avoid afternoon thunderstorms. A strike meant starting the dive a lot lower and having less time to line up on target. This meant bomb release was also below safety altitude.
I remember one strike where we started our dive from 1500ft and had the gunsight on target below 500ft. When they went off it was a real kick in the backside, but being depth charges there was no real damage to the aircraft."

[Dave Homewood]

Thanks for that Pepe, that is a great quoted passage.

[classicman]

Dec 18, 2020 19:24:07 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

That is really interesting about the pilots learning turret gunnery, I'd never heard that before.

Grandfather’s logbook shows:

4 x sorties “camera gun air to air”;
10 x sorties “gun air to air”; (he was captain for 7 of them, leaving 3 sorties where he was gunner trainee);
3 x sorties “low level bombing”;
2 x sorties “high level bombing” and
1 x sortie “gun splash grouping”

All on Oxfords out of Birdlings Flat while at 1FTS Wigram in 1942.

His logbook shows assessments as Bomb Aimer and Gunner (as well as Pilot , Pilot Navigator and Observer Navigator). So it seems multi-engine pilots were being trained using the turret in March 1942.

[Dave Homewood]

Very interesting, thanks for that.

[tbf2504]

If the uncle was flying with 15 Squadron, in May 1945 the aircraft would have been the Corsair which was not fitted with "dive brakes". However, the US Marines adopted a procedure in the steep diving angles of lowering the wheels to act as dive brake. There is good footage of this technique in some movie shots of them attacking Iwo Jima

[pepe]

Dec 19, 2020 7:22:08 GMT 12 tbf2504 said:

If the uncle was flying with 15 Squadron, in May 1945 the aircraft would have been the Corsair which was not fitted with "dive brakes". However, the US Marines adopted a procedure in the steep diving angles of lowering the wheels to act as dive brake. There is good footage of this technique in some movie shots of them attacking Iwo Jima

Yes, he was indeed flying the Corsair. Unfortunately he does not expand on what the "dive brakes" actually were. As you have described, the US Marine technique is probably one that was used.

[davidd]

The "dive brakes" used by Corsairs were of course the main undercarriage system as a whole, which was (as you would guess, especially on a naval aircraft stressed for carrier landings) of very rugged construction. And, whether coincidental or not, there was the forward-facing part of the undercarriage covering door "family" (which actually covered part of the u/c main leg) that also provided a good amount of "flatplate" drag too, and was built strong enough to resist the air pressure at fairly high speeds without damage. The pilot's undercarriage actuating lever on the Corsair (probably all models?) had a special indent for the "dive bombing" configuration, which when engaged, operated the undercarriage in the normal manner, excepting that it blocked off the hydraulic piping to the tailwheel system, for the very good reason that the long and rather lightly built retracting doors which closed over the entire tailwheel assembly were not designed to endure the aerodynamic forces of high speed flying. So simple and effective. Not certain when this "dive bombing" capability was introduced into the Corsair manufacturing line, may have been present from the very first production aircraft in mid-1942.
David D

[Dave Homewood]

The Corsair did have "dive brakes" of sorts, the gear doors on front of the oleos acted as dive brakes. They dropped the main undercarriage (not the tailwheel) to deploy them when dive bombing. It's not well known for some reason, because they were not employed by every squadron.

The brakes were the bits seen here with 19 on them.

[Dave Homewood]

Ah, David beat me to it.

[Dave Homewood]

That is what I said earlier, some NZ squadrons used the wheels down technique and some didn't.

[davidd]

Perhaps coincidental, but Grumman's F6F Hellcat had very similar forward facing doors located at top of the u/c legs - perhaps these were for same purpose? Does anybody have pilot's notes for this aircraft? And do not forget, the DH 80 Puss Moth (in about 1930) introduced airbrakes mounted on its undercarriage legs! They were apparently very effective too, just the job to kill that airspeed as you were coming in to land, activated by a lever in cockpit.
David D

[aircraftclocks]

From the PIVA war diary, 15 June - 31 August 1944, the following last paragraph of the report sums up the situation at PIVA at the time:

Two of the three F4U squadrons were equipped with bomb racks but few of the pilots had any bombing training prior to their tour of duty at Piva. Many strikes were flown by the fighter-bombers and the pilots gained valuable experience in dive, glide and low level bombing tactics and technique. Several missions with SBD's and fighter-bombers making a coordinated attack on a single target were successfully accomplished.
At the end of the period, one SBD squadron, three F4U squadrons, and one New Zealand PV squadron were attached to Com Air Piva.

So we were not alone.

[Dave Homewood]

So that refers to US Corsair and SBD squadrons?

[Dave Homewood]

There is a description here of one of the early dive bombing attacks made by the RNZAF P-40's:

WARHAWKS IN ACTION

JAPANESE CAMP BOMBED

ATTACK FRUSTRATED

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, May 29.

How a formation of Warhawks blasted a Japanese camp and frustrated a projected enemy attack on their own gun emplacements was described by Wing Commander C. W. K. Nicholls, Royal Air Force, of Auckland, in an interview on his return to New Zealand from a Royal New Zealand Air Force base in the Pacific. Wing Commander Nicholls has commanded a New Zealand fighter wing in the Pacific since last February.

Early in March, he said, when the Allies had many guns on Bougainville, the Japanese moved in to make an attack on a ridge just beyond the gun positions. They camped before making the attack on the ridge, and 12 New Zealand Warhawks in a surprise attack dropped 1000lb bombs from a height of 2000 feet.

The Warhawks were backed up by an equal number of American P39’s. The Japanese had no chance to reply and simply “folded up.”

Wing Commander Nicholls said the fighting on the perimeter was severe for a time, but when the Allies consolidated their positions they soon had the upper hand. The enemy air opposition decreased until by the end of February the New Zealanders could go on missions without sighting a single enemy fighter. .

Ack-ack, he said, was invariably severe and the light guns were remarkably accurate. The New Zealanders countered this by approaching the target at 17,000 feet and then dived in at 450 miles an hour. “The Japanese were shrewd, though, ’ he said. “They would watch the spot where our aircraft came out of the dive and concentrate their fire there. We had one or two Warhawks damaged, but that was all.”

Wing Commander Nicholls said that Japanese had lost a lot of aircraft, both in the air and on the ground, and apparently they did not have replacements. The Japanese, although they did not put up a force against attack, were always prepared to go after stragglers.

The New Zealanders had made the Japanese miserable by bombing and strafing wherever targets offered. Warhawks were not only sturdy fighters, but could also be used for dive-bombing and had been of advantage in attacks against Japanese air strips.

PRESS, 30 MAY 1944