Revolution at 200 Ft.

A revolution in U.S. air tactics is taking place in the Pacific. Flying Fortresses have begun to drop their bombs from low altitudes--even as low as 200 ft.

Since the war began, the Boeing B-17 had been flying at 20,000 to 35,000 ft. While the pilot set himself for the rigidly exacting task of the bombing run, the bombardier adjusted his instrument to height, wind drift and speed, then caught the target in the bombsight's magic eye. The bomb bay's doors opened. When the bombsight said the time had come, the bombs fell toward the target.

More often than not they missed.

They missed because their likeliest targets in the Pacific are ships. Ships are good targets, but they can maneuver swiftly enough to dodge in the 27 1/2 seconds while the bombs are falling from 20,000 ft. Pictures of the Coral Sea battle taken from Flying Fortresses show Jap aircraft carriers leaving a 360DEG wake, destroyers weaving a figure-eight pattern, other ships snaking far to either side, so that bombs dropped harmlessly in the water. Fortresses got some hits on the invasion fleets off Luzon and off Java, but oftener they missed.

Navy v. Army. The Navy has been "laying them on the deck" with dive bombers; torpedo-bomber squadrons have been flying in--with terrible losses--but sending some torpedoes home. Navy flyers began to sneer at Army flyers who rode in safety at 30,000 ft. without causing much damage. Navy resentment against the Army method was typified when Lieut. Commander John Thach declared at a Navy Department press conference that "not one major ship in this war has been sunk by horizontal bombing. Long-range bombers are practically useless in battle."

Last week there was evidence that the Navy would have less reason to complain henceforth. Off Guadalcanal and Espiritu Santo, Major General Millard Harmon was sending his bombers down almost to water level to pick off Jap ships. Day after day General MacArthur's communiques reported that Flying Fortresses had bombed Japanese ship concentrations in the Northern Solomons "from low altitudes" or "at mast-high levels." Twenty-four days out of 32, MacArthur's bombers hit in support of Guadalcanal. Just before dawn one morning, Fortresses went into Rabaul and came out claiming ten ships severely damaged or sunk. Claims made from 200 ft. or 5,000 ft. seemed easier to verify than claims from 30,000 ft.

Significance. That the Fortresses were flying low did not mean the abandonment of high-level precision bombing--which has been notably successful in daylight raids over Europe (TIME, Oct. 26). It did mean that the long-range Fortress has been adapted, also successfully, to still another mission in the South Pacific, where the Jap has no land targets worth mentioning. It meant that Fortresses can also operate on night missions where a superaccurate bombsight is just a little extra weight. And it probably meant that the Army & Navy were getting closer together in their ideas about bombing.

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