[Milsurplus] Re: GB> I Beg Your Pardon. The Japanese DID have the Proximity Fuze.

[Hue Miller]

Chris, you should post the B-29 photos. Some of us out here crave
those kinds of  WW2 electronics photos.

Now i'll wade into the fray on the rest:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom NØJMY - AAR7FV" <tfarl at mchsi.com>
Subject: GB> I Beg Your Pardon. The Japanese DID have the Proximity Fuze.


> I won't go through the whole rigmarole, but sometime within the last
> couple years I posted a message to this list regarding a friend of mine
> who was a B-24 navigator in WWII.  He told me that he personally saw the
> destruction of two Liberators by a single *proximity-fuzed* Japanese AA
> shell, three days before the cessation of hostilities.  The only shell
> fired at them that day.  Obviously, I can't verify that.

I am wondering how the crew of an airplane engaged fully in flying a
bombing run, could tell whether a projectile was proximity or conventional
time fuzed.

> Now, there were several of you guys who assured me of the impossibility
> of such an occurrence.  Japan just didn't have anywhere near the
> technology required to develop "The Deadly Fuze".

I don't know enuff that i will opine on the technology, but i will say:
Altho i have read someone else saying Japan did have the 1.5 volt
miniature tubes in WW2, like our 1L4 series, i have never seen one, or
seen any gear that used one, and i am familiar with maybe 20-30 Japanese
radios. As i recall, the writer stated that Japan had
at least one tube, something like the 1S4. I will also say that the Japanese
weather balloons still used an octal sized tube, albeit with no base, just wires
coming out. You would maybe think if they had smaller tubes, they would maybe
prefer to use one in a weather balloon. As for Japan having submini tubes for
the proximity fuze, i think you can by now estimate my opinion of that liklihood.
"Maybe" possible but apparently no examples have yet been reported?
>
> So today I stopped down to Cedar Rapids and saw old George, (he's
> battling Melanoma, but at 85 he's still working 10 hours every day at
> his truck line, with golf breaks) and he reiterated the story very
> emphatically.  He said it would have been a bloodbath for the AAF if the
> war had continued, and thanked the Lord for the atomic bomb.

No- not a bloodbath for the USAAF. ( "Army Air Force" ). EVEN IF Japan
developed the proximity fuze, couldn't chaff be used against it?  1/2 wave
strips of aluminum foil?  Of course, once the US dropped that, the secret
might be out, before all eyes: it would be obvious everyone had the proximity
fuze. By the late stage of the war, well into 1945, it wouldn't make a difference
anyway, in Japan's favor, would it? ( It would have been a bloodbath for Allied
POW's, because they were all subject to the Japanese military's  late 1945
"Kill All Order", in the event of an Allied invasion of Japan. )

> Knowing that he had a genius IQ before the war, and knowing he's more
> clear and lucid at 85 than I am at 50, I decided to do a little further
> research, just in case.
>
> Well, imagine my surprise when I tracked this down on the Web:
>
> "The Japanese were also introducing their own proximity fuzes in bombs
> and rockets (a more stable platform than cannons). In June, 1944, the
> Japanese bombed an airbase on recently captured Saipan, with a
> single1700 pound proximity bomb, which exploded 35 feet above the
> airfield, destroying or damaging scores of parked B-29s, (the most
> advanced bomber of the time), which were to be used to begin bombing
> raids on Japan."

This does not say Japan had a proximity fuze small enuff to fit an AA shell,
which i believe would not be smaller than 90mm gun anyway.  The proximity
bomb allegedly used against Saipan: US bomber aircraft did the exact same
thing, to great effect, via parachute delivered bombs, and frequently.  One
occasional 1700 lb. blockbuster bomb, even destroying scores of B-29s, does
not turn the tide against massive industrial production. The proximity fuze's real
power was in artillery, both anti-aircraft and ground use, as an antipersonnel
weapon. I also have to wonder how well the Japanese 2-engine bomber loaded
with this bomb, performed against a screen of US fighter planes.  Also, Japan
did not have the dense flak screen that Germany did, and notoriously lacked in
artillery weapons, that could have put to use the proximity fuze to the extent the
US did.
>
> Well, that's interesting.  They *did* have a proximity fuse!  In 1944
> yet.  In bombs and rockets.  But what of George's Japanese AA shell with
> "The Fuze"?  Let's see...what else does it say...

"Proximity fuzes were scheduled to be used by Japan in a fleet of kamikaze
bombers to be launched from submarines at US cities on the west coast and
the Panama Canal just a month after the atom bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. "

You neglected to quote the above from  the article, so i have included it.
This unqualified statement is so BIZARRE that it makes me wonder about the
reliability of the author's other narrative of Japan's progress.
By mid-1945, how much was left of Japan's submarine fleet?
How many submarines left with aircraft carrying capability?
And how many bombs could be delivered by  the small observation planes carried
on SOME FEW Japanese submarines? A couple hundred pounds of bombs from
an occasional raider airplane, and a very slow airplane at that.
That's less than a mosquito bite against the enemy empire.

On the other hand, maybe this citation IS correct, and just another example of the
Japanese military's unrealistic magical thinking, faith in a miracle that would save them.

>
> "As the Pacific war ended, Japan had perfected and *produced over 12,000
> proximity fuzes* for use in AA artillery. Fortunately there was not an
> opportunity to use them."
>
> W-e-l-l-l-l-l-l-l, I don't know about that. They might have fired *one*.
>
> That info, and a whole lot more can be found at:
> http://www.enginesofinnovation.com/html/proximity_fuse_case_study.HTM .
> Tom

12,000 anti aircraft shells, in the progress of a war, is nothing - NOTHING !!
I see the US production ( 1945 only ?? ) is 22 MILLIONS.
-Hue ( forwarded to milsurplus qth list also, for general interest. )