Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1943-10-08
Skip Bombing
By Henry F. Pringle
(WNU Festure-Through special arrangement
with Golfers WeekIy.)


(WNU Festure-Through special arrangement
with Golfers Weekiy.)
American fliers used new, secret
and devastating method Of aerial at
tack in the Battle of the Bismarck
Sea, in which % Jap ships were
sunk, $4,000 soldiers and an I'M
known number of sailors killed.
Soon afterward it sank German
and italian vessels in the Medi-
terranean. On land, the new tech
nique speeded the Axis rout in North
Africa, although the details of this
later triumph must still remain a
secret.
The Japanese never knew what hit
them in the Bismarck sea; in any
event all were dead, and dead men
send in no intelligence reports-not
even to the sun-god in Tokyo. They
certainly did not know that the de-
bacle was the result of experiments
at an army air forces proving
ground in Florida, of painstaking
research by experts of the ordnance
branch of the army service forces
and of combat testing in the Aleu-
tians and the South Pacific.
All that they knew was that planes
both bombers and fighters-roared
in for kill at insanely low attitudes.
They twisted and turned as they
came in on the target. They dropped
no torpedoes, so they we're not tor
pedo planes. Yet they dropped
something with amazing precision,
and it was powerful enough to send
transports and warships to the bot
tom.
What the American fliers did, it
may now be told, was to use the
technique which has been called skip
bombing. The correct name for it
is minimum altitude bombing.
Usually Missed Target.
Considerable inaccurate informa-
ton has been circulated about skip
bombing, since details of the Bis
marck sea battle began to leak out.
Bombs dropped by an airplane fly
ing fast at very low attitudes have
always skipped-just like stones
thrown across the millponds of our
youth. Bombs from higher attitudes
pointed downward, naturally, and
were guided to the target by their
fins. Nearer to the ground there
was no time for this. The bombs
maintained the line of flight. They
skipped across the ground or water
and back into the air. They usually
missed the target.
About a year ago it dawned on
some officers at the Florida proving
ground that this disadvantage might
be turned into an asset. The fliers
were not thinking about sinking Axis
ships. What they wanted to do was
to work out some bombing method
which would stop tanks.
A tank is almost invisible from
thousands of feet in the air and is
virtually impossible to hit. But to-
days fast fighter planes are projec-
tiles in themselves. 1t occurred to
Brig Gen. Grandson Gardner, prov
ing ground commandant, that a
plane might come in just above the
ground at very high speed, point
itself at the tank and then drop a
bomb. The bomb would continue
to plunge forward and would, so
General Gardner reasoned, hit the
tank.
There were bugs in the notion, as
he was due to learn. One of the
bugs was that the bomb sometimes
skipped clean over the tank. Later,
when the idea was expanded to at
lacking ships, the bomb not in
frequently hit the water and bounced
over the ship. 1t would be neces-
sary, General Gardner knew, to stop
this skipping or to guide it. A de-
layed fuse would also have to be
developed, SO that the explosion
would not wreck the attacking plane
when real, instead of dummy bombs
were used.
Perfecting delayed fuse for the
bombs was easy enough, but keep
ing the bombs from skipping over
the target-when dropped at 10, Is,
or so feet at 300 miles per hour
was far more difficult. So was work.
ing out the method of sighting.
The details of this, too, cannot yet
be disclosed. This much may be
said: 1t is so simple that a pilot in
a single-seater can hit a tank,
moving train or a ship and can cor
rect his aim at the last second. Be-
hind the method lay interminable
calculations and experiments. About
a year after work had started, the
new method of bombing had proved
its worth beyond question.
No special bombs are required.
Size can vary from $50 to 500-pound
bombs for tanks; 500 to 1000 pounds
for unarmored merchant vessels;
and up to 1000 and 1000 Founders
for battlcships. Moreover, almost
any type Of plane will do except
those that are heavy and slow.
Mortality, thus far, has been ex-
tremely low because the attacking
plane can shift its course at will
until three seconds before releasing
the bomb. Moreover, the pilot is