[ARC5] PBY Radios

[Robert Eleazer]

At Midway the USN found out that every Japanese aircraft they encountered was a threat to PBYs.  Some of the most dangerous encounters were not with Zeros but with Betty bombers flying out of Wake Island.

But meanwhile the USAAF had no problem flying over the whole Japanese fleet at 25,000 ft with B-17's.  The B-17's could not hit anything at that altitude as far as bombing but they were so much more suitable for recon that the Navy took to putting its officers aboard the B-17's as observers - no doubt this was partly because they actually could identify ships accurately.  This experience led to the PB4Y-1 Liberator version of the B-24 to be used by the USN and eventually the PB4Y-2 version to be produced.

And excellent book about US torpedoes in WWII is "Hellions of the Deep."  Basically the USN finally gave up on the government torpedo factory and went with an academia/Industry team to develop first the air launched acoustic homing torpedo and then to redesign the existing torpedoes to fix them and to develop new torpedoes, such as electric ones.

Wayne
WB5WSV    
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