[ARC5] Another Nav Story from the Med

[Robert Eleazer]

I recall reading that in the Pacific after they got the 75MM equipped B-25's they managed to score 3 hits on a Japanese destroyer during multiple passes.  Did not faze the destroyer, which after, all is designed to take multiple 3 inch naval gunfire hits and not blow up.  

The B-25 pilot was disgusted; he had such high hopes for the 75MM but it appeared to be worthless.  But the way home they encountered a Japanese transport aircraft and managed to hit it in the cockpit with the 75MM.  It worked well on that occasion.

I think on many of the B-25's they yanked out the 75MM gun and stuck a couple more .50 guns there.

Wayne        
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Dennis Monticelli 
  To: Robert Eleazer 
  Cc: ARC-5 Maillist 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2014 12:19 PM
  Subject: Re: [ARC5] Another Nav Story from the Med


  Robert,


  That 75mm in the nose was a worthy experiment that didn't work well in practice because of the reasons you stated.  The crew didn't like it and wished for a nose full of 50's instead.  One story I read was of a B-25 that made a pass at a small German frigate in the ET and scored a bulls eye that set the ship to sinking.  The astonished pilot broke the stunned silence by saying to the loader and co-pilot: "Nothing happened here.  I won't say anything if you don't."


  Dennis AE6C


  On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 8:14 AM, Robert Eleazer <releazer at earthlink.net> wrote:

    In the Med in WWII they received some B-25G's that were equipped with a 75MM cannon.  The cannon was fired by the pilot but manually loaded.  Since that version of the B-25 had no Nav/Bomb position, the Navigator position was relocated to behind the pilots, which is where the 75MM gun breech was located.  Since the Navigator supposedly did not have much to do they also put him in charge of loading the gun (the most useless things in the USAAF were said to be the altitude above you, the runway behind you, the gas still down in the fuel truck on the ground and a Navigator).

    On the first missions using the 75MM gun they quickly found that it did not fire fast enough to be able to hit much of anything.  Following one mission in which they fired away at a target without effect, the pilot having worked the poor Nav nearly to death loading the gun as fast as he could, the highly irritated pilot decided to give up and asked the Nav for a course for home.

    The exhausted Navigator, stripped to the waist, sweating profusely in the low altitude Med heat, replied, "Fly West Pilot, fly West."

    The pilot replied that "Fly West" was not a proper response and demanded a specific course.  The Nav went back to his plotting table, consulted his maps and replied, "Don't fly West, Pilot.  Fly 270 degrees."

    I think the later B-25H model introduced a 75MM gun with automatic loading.  They pretty much still could not hit anything with it, but I'll bet they got lost less often.

    Wayne


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