HISTORY

3rd AG commander of his plan. Pappy will

remain with the group for another two

weeks to finish his job and then he will

lower altitudes were too dangerous for

the bombers since the Japanese continuously boosted their ships’ AA defense.

The General could see a group of shirtless sweaty men commanded

by a tall, slim, blue eyed man in T-shirt wearing a mechanic’s cap with

pinned Major’s insignia.

report to the Army Headquarters where he will be assigned as an Officer for

the Special Projects. And he will take

with him his “Friday Man”, Sgt. Evans.

Col. Davies opposed but to no avail. And

when on August 21 the General returned

to the Army Headquarters Pappy already waited in his office. And he received

his first assignment right away. At that

time the USAAF was suffering from the

lack of the fighters. There were approximately 170 non-airworthy ones gathered

at Eagle Farm airbase, mostly P-40s

suffering from various defects and damages. Pappy’s task was to make airworthy as many as possible in the shortest time possible. Any workshops in

Australia able to manufacture the necessary spare parts were at his disposal,

as well as the required number of mechanics. Pappy, shadowed by Evans, left

the office smiling and in relatively short

time reported that a hundred of fighters

are ready for the combat deployment.

Against the ships

Photo: worldwarphotos

The attacks against the surface vessels

showed that the conventional bombing

of these slim and maneuverable targets was difficult. Dropping the bombs

from the high altitudes was inefficient,

The new tactics was developed, so-called

skip-bombing i.e., bombs released at

a very low altitude above the sea surface

utilizing the effect of the bombs bouncing

off the surface and hitting the ship’s hull.

Initially B-17s were considered for these

missions but they lacked the forward-firing force to silence the enemy’s AA fire.

General McKenney decided to try B-25 for

this mission and of course commissioned

Pappy to execute the task. The goal was to

fit into the nose, a bombardier’s position,

as many 12.7 mm machine guns as possible with minimum 500 rounds per barrel.

The General also requested, based on the

Gunn’s A-20 modification, to install the

additional machine guns on the fuselage

sides or even on its bottom. At that time

Pappy had one whole hanger in Brisbane

at his disposal. It was in fact the prototype workshop. The installation of four

machine guns into the B-25’s glass nose

was created here, and the plan was to add

a pair of guns on each side of the fuselage

and another three on the bottom of it. Problem with feeding the ammunition belts

at the end prevented the bottom weapons installation and it looked that eight

forward firing machine guns was a maximum number feasible, the fact neither

Kenney nor Gunn considered sufficient.

But in the meantime, they had other

problems to solve. In the beginning the

aircraft was nose heavy which Gunn

resolved by moving the waist guns to

the rear and by installing the auxiliary

two hundred gallons fuel tank into the

fuselage behind the wing’s trailing edge.

This eliminated the installation of the

ballast in the rear fuselage and in addition increased the aircraft range. Another problem was popping up the rivets

from the skin due to the side weapons’

recoil which Pappy ultimately resolved

by installing the rubber inserts between

the aircraft skin and the weapons. Such

modified aircraft received, as an answer

to all critics, the inscription “Pappy’s

Folly” under the cockpit supplemented

by a cartoon of a cowboy with two drawn revolvers yelling” “And that’s plain

English!”

In the middle of December, Pappy, with

Evans in the co-pilot’s seat, flew his new

“toy” to his good old 3rd AG to show the

modification to his old comrades and

let them try it as well. On the following

day after his arrival in Charters Towers

“Pappy’s Folly” and five more B-25s

took off so as the pilots could see the

effect of Pappy’s simulated attack.

The concentrated fire of eight weapons

left an impression on them and it was

decided: 3rd AG Mitchells will become

skip-bombers! The first victim of such

modified B-25 though became a cow

which walked into the target area at the

moment Pappy squeezed the triggers

during the simulated attack …

The schematic of the machine guns

installation in the B-25 nose and

on the fuselage sides.

To be continued

Pic.: author´s archive

A dramatic picture of an A-20 at the moment of explosion of the “skipping bombs” on the ships’ hull.

November 2022

INFO Eduard

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