Evening star., 1943-09-21
BISMARCK SEA VICTORY
Forts locote Enemy; Eight More Ships
Join Convoy; Origin Of Skip Bombing

Skip-bonbing sank most OF the
% ships the japanese lost in the
Bismarck Sea. There Uas no
diDe-bombing. While the Navy
had marked success iDith dipe-
bombing at MidtDay and of the
Solomor1s, Army airnen think
they hare something better, dis
covered in the area north of
Australia
Skip bombing shares With
aerial torpedoins an advantage
oper high-altftude and dipe
bombing. A bomb skipped against
a ship, like torpedo, opens the
hull to the ,Doter instead of OPEN
ing the deck to the air. -
BY CAPT. EDWARD CHUDOBA.
As told to George Kennedy, Star Stan
CORRESPONDENT.
CHAPTER III.
The Fortresses took of from their
strips about Port Moresby, New
Guinea, on Tuesday, March 2, 1943,
and few through rain. haze and
thick clouds to intercept the jap
anese fleet of IA ships that had
been located at Cape Gloucester
north of New Britain, still far beyond
our range.
The pilots of our squadron of
A-20s (Havocs) hung around the
operations hut looking for news of
the weather, the Japanese convoy
and the Fortresses on the teletype.
Soon the word came through that
they had located the convoy again.
Then came the report that the Japs
had hit two Forts.
Damn everybody said. That's
some shooting"
If they could hit Forts 4 miles up
In the air what would be our chances
using our newly developed skip
bombing techniques from mast
head height? 1t turned out later
that the report was in error. The
Fortresses were jumped by zeros and
one pilot was killed. They all came
back. But this later information
was no help as we sweated that
one out.
Bombed Old Wreck.
There was barnacled wreck
beached in the bay at Port Morespy.
We were told it had been there for
20 years. That hulk got enough
bombing to sink a hundred ships.
There are several stories in the
Southwest Pacific about low the
Army Air Forces invented skip
bombing. The one I first heard was
that a newly arrived Fortress and
crew encountered a lone Japanese
ship at sea with very little anti
aircraft defense. The pilot made
his bomb run at 10000 feet. The
bombardier released his first bomb.
The helmsman of the vessel changed
her course sharply-and the bomb
missed. The pilot of the Fortress
kept passing over that ship and the
bombardier kept releasing bombs,
but every time the ship succeeded
in dodging.
The pilot of the Fortress got mad
when he got to his last bomb with
out ship to report for the seven he
had expended. In violation of all
the tactical rules for heavy bombers
he came down to about 500 feet and
went right at the ship, his bomba-
dier releasing the last bomb as they
approached.
He had no guide for his timing at
that height and the bomb fell far
short. But to their surprise the ship
blew up q few seconds after they
passed over. Only one thing could
have happened. That bomb must
have skipped along the water.
All Started Practice.
However, 1t started something, all
the medium bomber crews began
practicing skip-bombing. We had to
make q change in the fuses to keep
the bombs from blowing our tails of.
It took delayed action fuse.
We kept socking bombs, some
filled with sand and some live ones,
at that old wreck every day we were
on duty We finally got the pitch
Of it, One thing We had to guard
against was the bombs skipping
right over the ship. They would
bounce 100 feet in the air at times.
We all wrote a lot of memoranda