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Got these from a friend via email. Jap Kawanishi H8K Seaplane Down Off of Kwajalein  German Panzerkampfwagen VI E Tiger Tank  Junker 88 Bomber (Floatplane!) Loading Torpedo - Look at the Size of that Thing - on Pontoons!  Saving the Pilot by Climbing on a Fuel Tank in a Fire aboard an Aircraft Carrier (He did it!)  HARVs on the Way in Shot from a P-47  Italian 303 Bombers over North Africa  Italian Macchi 202v Fighter  Snow on Deck of USS Phillipine Sea in North Pacific, 1945  V1 Rocket  These are photos of something I had never before seen or heard tell of.  It's a Spitfire "tipping-off" a V1 rocket. Insane tactic . . . . This tipping was done at 450 mph at 4,000 feet above the ground. At first, the Spitfires shot down the V1s by gunfire. But the ranges were inside 200 yards. This was marginal for survival. At such high speed and low altitude, the pursuit plane had to fly through the explosion debris. Many planes were damaged and many pilots killed. With the high risk of being blown up, some of the best pilots started tipping one of the V1's wings. Not every pilot did this. At night this was not possible, as the flame from the V1 blinded the pilot to everything else. Just amazing. US Munitions Ship Hit During Invasion of Sicily  Squad of Rufes at Bougainville  Marines Disembarking LST at Tinian Island  The Battle of the Bulge, Outside Bastogne  German K5 280mm, Firing  In Action at Bougainville  Grit on Guam  Mike Wilderness is my cathedral, and hunting is my prayer. | ||
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Great photos- and that Macchi up there reminds me that the Italians have always built beautiful machinery. I have a link somewhere for Italian torpedo boats, I'll try and dig it up. | |||
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Great photo of the King tiger with the Henschel turret. That photo really shows the length of that 88 barrel & the reason it had such a high velocity. | |||
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I'll find my Dads photo album. Pretty intense stuff. 1942,,1945 Pacific. | |||
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American aviators nicknamed Kawanishi flying boats "flying porcupines" because they were so heavily armed. Both the earlier H6K "Mavis" as well as the H8K "Emily." But especially the H8K because in addition to 5 7.7mm machine guns it had 5 20mm cannons. Interesting aircraft, these. Most people don't know it, but Japanese flying boats made raids on Oahu months after the Pearl Harbor attack. Flying boats were the only 4 engined bombers the Japanese had, thus the only aircraft with the range and payload capacity to carry it off. They'd refuel from submarines in the sheltered waters of an atoll north of the US territory of Hawaii in the Hawaiian island chain. They were spectacular failures in that they never found their targets due to weather. In fact, at the time both the USN and and USAAF were accused of recklessly jettisoning bombs in the pineapple fields. Until they recovered and analyzed the bomb fragments and realized they were Japanese. It's hard to look at that big flying boat and think "fighter." But these flying boats did engage in air to air combat with USN patrol bombers like this PB4Y-2 Privateer (a purpose-built navalized variant of the B-24 liberator).  Occasionally while conducting anti-submarine patrols over the vast wastes of the Pacific, they'd encounter an Emily doing the same thing. Then the fight was on.
The name of the Landing Signals Officer (LSO) who's climbing onto that Hellcat escapes me at the moment. But rest assured he was just the first one to get to the plane. I've seen video of this incident and within seconds that plane is swarmed with medical and firefighting personnel. They had the pilot off to sickbay and the fire out in short order. People sometimes accuse the Navy of being the weak sister of the armed forces. It's true naval warfare is largely impersonal and conducted at long range. But it takes balls to fight a fire on a floating mountain of avgas and high explosives. The F6F Hellcat usually doesn't make most people's list of greatest fighters of all time, or even of WWII. Which is understandable considering that at the time it entered the fleet no one was arguing it was the best USN fighter. That was the F4U Corsair, which had become operational earlier but was not authorized to conduct carrier operations until much later. Only land based Marine and USN squadrons like the Jolly Rogers of Fighting 17 used them. The Hellcat was a BIG plane. It was the second largest fighter in the US OOB after the P-47 "jug." Everyone conceded it looked like the wrapper the F4U came in, and the F4U was a better fighter. But the F6F was a better fighter than the zero, and that's what it needed to be. It didn't need to be a better fighter than the Corsair. Other advantages included the fact it was cheaper; the USN could buy 3 Hellcats for the same price as 2 Corsairs. It's biggest advantage was its easy handling around the carrier. The F4U earned the nickname "Ensign eliminator" because it was as lethal to an inexperienced pilot as it was lethal to the enemy in the hands of a skilled aviator. We had a lot of inexperienced aviators in the fleet '42 to '45. 90 day wonders with less than 200 hours of flight time were going into combat. The Hellcat would give them the advantage they needed over the zeros and bring them home. The Corsair would kill them (until they worked the bugs out). The Hellcat was the ace maker of WWII. In fact, that was one of its nicknames. Over 300 men made ace in a Hellcat. More than in Mustangs, Thunderbolts, Lightnings, what have you. Here's an artist's rendition of a Hellcat in a more dignified light. David McCampbell, the USN's leading ace with 34 kills (all in hellcats) departs the carrier enroute the battle of the Philippinne sea in a painting titled "Off to the turkey shoot." 
Il gobbo maledetto. The damned hunchback. Officially named the Sparviero, the "sparrow hawk." Italians acquired a somewhat unfair reputation, in my opinion, of cowardice in WWII. The guys flying these Savoia Marchetti SM-79 three engined bombers do not deserve to be treated that way. There would good Italian units, and bad Italian units. Some that fought well, some that gave up at their first opportunity. Their performance overall was spotty. But the fact remains that Italian torpedo bomber squadrons were aggressive. Carlo Buscaglia wasn't invited to leave an allied prison camp and join the co-belligerent air force for nothing.
I find it ironic that the same names (when translated) are use by the belligerents involved in various disputes worldwide. MC-202 Folgore. Translation: Thunderbolt, the same name as the USAAAF P-47. Macchi was forced to use german inline liquid cooled engines becaue of the design preferences of the party in power.
A very common tactic, especially among the Hawker Typhoons and Tempests that succeeded the Hurricane,  | |||
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I look at this picture and wonder which one of these Marines are my grandfather. If not him which were his buddies. | |||
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Just for the purists.. that isn't a JU 88... that is a Heinkel HE 115 float plane..designed strictly as a float plane.. the allies actually had 3 of them.. 2 from Norway, that they had bought from Germany before the war.. and one they had captured.. they kept them in German markings and used them for clandestine operations until they were finally lost due to lack of spares... on one mission they picked up agents right in the middle of the day, right in front of German forces.. as they were carrying German Markings.. on the V 1, the tipping of the wing tip to throw the gyro off in the V 1 was a common thing... as they were a small target and when hit up close took out some A/C when they exploded.. the main British fighters used to do that job were the Hawker Tempest since it was faster than the Spitfire.. except the very last versions used during the war with the Griffon engines, instead of the Merlin.. the USA also sent over a "Hot Rod" P 47 M which went to the 56th FG for the job...but they had problems with the engines dealing with British Dampness.. the same engines were used in the P 47 N, which they made about 1800 of those for duty in the Pacific.. and cancelled another 5,000 ordered when the war ended.. | |||
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This was about the best that came out of Italy during WW 2... it was still not up to standards of the P 51 or the ME 109F and Gs in performance.. most of Italian Military equipment was Junk... a really hilarious and interesting read is how Italy declared war on England and during the Battle of Britain sent a fighter wing of Italian CR 42s to France to attack Britain along with the Germans.. also with the Sparrow Hawk bomber shown above.. on their first mission to bomb Britain, they were picked up on radar over the English Channel.. a couple of Squadrons of the RAF were Scrambled to intercept... when they get there, they see all of these Bi Planes with markings none of the British pilots could identify.. they were looking for Germans.. not Italians.. they radioed back what they saw and asked for instructions.. with Bi Planes they didn't think it was some sort of War effort or attack.. however after a few CR 42s opened fired on the Spits and Hurricanes, they were given orders to engage.. which they promptly shot down ALL the Italian Bi Plane Fighters. with no loss to themselves.. and then also badly mauled the Bombers they were escorting.. none of which dropped any bombs on British soil... so ended Italy's participation in the Battle of Britain.. | |||
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Dude, what are you smoking these days? The Macchi M.C.202 Folgore (Thunderbolt) was a good fighter. It was a bit underarmed when it came to shooting down US heavy bombers. Which is why the same basic design was provided with two additional 20mm cannons along with an uprated engine as the M.C. 205 Veltro (Greyhound). As far as the Fiat C.R. 42 goes, it had its virtues. A fight wasn't nearly as one-sided as you suggest:
Also, considering the fact that Britain was fighting Italy in East Africa during the summer of 1940, I doubt their pilots were completely at a loss when confronted with aircraft with Italian insignia over the Channel. I'm fairly certain they knew what they were looking at. | |||
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Boy ChinaFS... you must be part Italian! Italian aircraft were a virtual joke during their VERY Brief participation in the Battle of Britain.. any success they MIGHT of had was probably against one of the many young recruits that had less than 10 to 12 hours flying time in a Spit or Hurricane.. anything the Limeys had in East Africa in 1940 would have been Audets, and a host of other biplanes developed and entering service in the early 30s...believe me their front line stuff would not have been in East Africa..anything that was a junkyard refugee would have been more like it.. even the 'Thunderbolt' and 'Greyhound' might have been the best thing produced by the Italians during WW 2.. their biggest enemy wasn't Allied Fighters.. their biggest enemy was Italian Craftmanship.. their serviceability rate was pitiful at best... more were evidently destroyed on the ground than in the air...because most were constantly grounded in bad need of maintenance and repair.. read how 'well' the Italian aircraft Finland ended up with in the Winter War of 39-40. they felt apart in Scandanavia's cold weather.. Italian Aircraft weren't even up to the standards of French, Soviet or Polish AC... which were POSs at best also.. Italian troops did well in combat with German leadership... however their equipment.. there leadership... was a joke.. any kid that grew up in post WW 2 eras, grew up knowing a million jokes passed down from dads and uncles who fought in WW 2...about Italians and Italian equipment.. eg: 1. Who had the fastest tanks in WW 2? Italy...they had 6 speed transmissions.. 1 forward gear and 5 reverse... 2. Who put the 2 shots in Mussolini's head? 110 Italian Marksmen 3. What are the two shortest books ever written? Italian War Heroes and Who's Who in Puerto Rico.. its kind of laughable that in 1938 Hitler was intent on kissing Mussolini's ass, as he was afraid that Italy might see the Nazis as a threat and invade Germany...  and NO, I haven't been smoking anything.. I don't smoke, or do drugs... JD Randall I am not.. ( PS.. and I was just messing with you a little here...but italian victories against the British was usually when the Brits were using obsolete stuff in theatres far from the home Island..) | |||
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Dude, I'm not trying to paint the Italians as if they were some sort of great combat machine in WWII. I'm just giving credit where credit's due. They had some good units. Units so good the Germans tried to copy them, as did the British. Such as the Flotiglia Decima MAS; the 10th Light Flotilla. The Italians fathered Naval SPECWAR, and after a few hiccups became very good at it. So good the Germans requested their help on the Russian front, and for them to train German frogmen. Imitation being the highest form of flattery, after Italian raids on Gibralter and Alexandria the British formed naval special warfare units to counter them. British trainees put up pictures of Italian frogmen in their baracks for inspiration. Then there were the Italian parachute units, which were second only to the Germans in size and lethality. Chief among them was the Parachute Brigade Folgore. At the second battle of El Alamein it repelled British and Free French attacks several times its numbers. After the Germans commandeered their transport and withdrew, the Folgore fought until they were out of ammo, then fixed bayonets. They were only induced to surrender when the British commander conceded that they wouldn't have to wave a white flag or even raise their hands. He said he had never encountered soldiers as good as those Italians. The regular Italian navy actually did a pretty decent job of keeping Rommel's Afrika Corps supplied. Units like the Alpini and Bersaglieri fought very well. Here's what Rommel had to say about the Italians of the Brescia, Trieste, and Trento divisions after the first battle of El Alamein:
In addition to being able to put together some good units, they were also able to put together some good equipment. Admiral Raeder specifically requested Italian naval support in the Black Sea due to:
Among this gear were aircraft that just weren't that bad. The MC 202 being one of them. It surprised a lot of Commonwealth pilots. The Fiat, Macchi, and Reggiane fighters of the 5 series were as good as anything the allies had. Here's what British test pilot Eric Brown had to say about the Veltro:
I realize the Italians had their QC issues. But then, so did we. It's painful to read about the trials maintainers had to go through trying to get and keep P-38s in the air. For instance, a bunch were uncrated in Australia and MacArthur's air force figured they were now going to give the Japanese hell. Until they tried to assemble them and none of the parts would go together. They eventually had to contract with Australian machine shops to manufacture parts to replace the defective parts US industry supplied them with. There were a lot of units that surrendered given the first opportunity. And a lot of Italian equipment was crap. But to be fair, I doubt any of it exceeded the Chauchat we saddled our troops with in WWI. But not all their units and equipment were crappy. Some fought and worked well. They still do. The Italians didn't cut and run from Iraq in 2003 after the car bombing killed 14 of their troops in Nassiriya in 2003. And the US Army was so impressed with the Carabinieri that it's seriously considering copying that force. It isn't like patriotism is a big deal in Italy. I went to college with a guy from Milan, and he said he had never even seen an Italian flag until Italy won the World Cup in 1980. I figure most Italians are more concerned with living La Vita Dolce than joining the military. So other than a few crack units, most of the military is probably going to be subpar. But those units that are "special" are nothing to sneeze at. And if Italian equipment was crappy, not as many navies around the world would use it. | |||
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I'm not anti Italian... and granted after WW 2 and after they got rid of Il Duece their military forces were night and day.. their leadership was a joke.. and so was most if not all of their equipment.. but as I said.. when under good leadership they gave a good account of themselves in combat.. another interesting read is about the Spanish Blue Division that fought along side the Germans on the Russian front during part of the war..who gave very good accounting of themselves.. of course soviet leadership was a joke under Stalin's dictates..but that is another story.. | |||
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My Dad at Bougainville. Center in back.  | |||
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He looks remarkably healthy for someone fighting in the Solomons. Congrats.
I'll go along with the first statement wholeheartedly. But it needs to be said that it was precisely because their leadership was incompetent that a lot of their equipment was a joke. Take their aircraft. The Italian air force high command drew high command drew all the wrong lessons from the Spansih Civil War. The FIAT CR 32 did pretty well in that conflict. The result was the CR 42. It was a good biplane; but if they had widened their view to take in developments around the world and not just boresighted on their own limited experience in Spain they would have come to the obvious conclusion the biplane fighter had had its day. They weren't capable of doing that, however. In some ways it reminds me of the Japanese. The inventer of the Yagi antenna, a critical component of radar, was Japanese. His development attacted widespread interest abroad. But the Japanese chose to build better versions of what they had always had, rather than innovate. Consequently the Japanese surface fleet entered the war with what was perhaps the best optical range finding system ever made. But given the development of radar, going into the war with the best optical range finding system was kind of like going into the war with, well, the best biplane figher. You're already obsolete on the day you leave the factory or shipyard. Then the Italian air force also insisted on radial engines in all its aircraft. Which weren't overly powerfull, but did produce a lot of drag. So the Italian aircraft industry didn't develop inline engines. The Italian aircraft industry could have built better planes, but was hamstrung by the requirements it was saddled with by the air forces. Some Italians did on their own volition acquire German inline engines and built planes around them. They were much better aircraft. The fact is by 1942/43 the Italian industry was turning out well designed planes. The praise CAPT Eric Brown, the test pilot for the Royal Navy, gave the Veltro was no small praise. He flew just about everything in the allied and axis inventories. I see some parallels to the US situation. The vast majority of our front-line fighters were outclassed, too. In large part because of USAAF specifications. The Allison was a decent engine. But the Army had decreed that US aircraft would be equipped with turbochargers, and we couldn't make enough fast enough to equip all the aircraft we were capable of manufacturing. Because of Army requirements US industry never developed a supercharging system that that could match what the Europeans had developed, which would have been much easier to manufacture. Fighters like the P-39 were woefully underpowered at altitude. It was an innovatave, advanced design and an outstanding performer as a prototype. But given the Army's restrictions and what aircraft would get the turbo, the production version was a dog in actual service. P-38s could perform well, but early in the war they were still working the bugs out of those. So, in order to build enough aircraft that could match the opposition we also had to borrow an engine from our ally. That's why we ended up mass producing the Rolls Royce Merlin at Packard. It wasn't so much the Merlin was a better engine, but it had a much more advanced supercharging system that was easier to manufacture in volume than the Allison's turbocharging system. I think it was Hara Tameichi who put it best in his book, "Japanese Destroyer Captain." All wars are a series of blunders. The side that outblunders the other, loses. The Italian military leadership blundered into the war with a doctrine based upon huge operational misconceptions. They didn't have the leadership that could learn quickly enough to turn it around, or the industrial capacity to be able to do much about it in a timely fashion. Even though their engineers could have provided the military with better equipment, if only the military had wanted it. | |||
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There is a quite hilarious telling of this action in RS Tuck's memiour 'Fly for your life'. One of his Huri flying squadron mates had exhausted his ammo in a duel with one of the biplanes though only managed to damage it. The battle against the more manueverable foe had so annoyed him that, out of ammo and enraged, he bore in and sawed off the tail of the BP and flew back to base missing 9" or so of each of his prop blades.
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He looks remarkably healthy for someone fighting in the Solomons. Congrats. [QUOTE] He was at Gaum, Fiji, Ulithi. He Came home w/ stuff that stayed w/ him till he died. | |||
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IIRC the Macchi at least approached P-51 performance. | |||
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The MC 205 Veltro was equal to just about any allied fighter. Of course, less than 100 were built before Italy switched sides. So it wasn't too significant. Regarding the other Macchis, this is what another Brit pilot, Squadron Leader D.H. Clarke, D.F.C, A.F.C, who both fought against and then flew captured Axis aircraft had to say in his book "What Were They Like to Fly?":
I just don't see how anyone can say that Mario Castoldi designed bad aircraft for the Reggia Aeronatica. I don't believe the MC 200 Saetta was the plane he wanted to build; it was the plane the Italian air force asked for. But the nearly contemporary MC 202 (as well as the Reggiane Re. 2001) shows that the Italian aircraft industry could have done better during just about the same timeframe the Reggia Aeronatica was telling them to build the Fiat G.50 or the equivalent. But the blame for that lies in faulty Italian military doctrine. Not due to the fact that Italian designers and engineers weren't as capable as their American or British counterparts. Everything I've read written by Allied pilots who had a chance to fly them tells me that Italian aircraft were in many ways superior to German aircraft. Their main flaws being that they were underpowered and undergunned. But as CAPT Brown, RN, noted, if you put a German engine in an Italian fuselage you wound up with a Thoroughbred. I can't see any technical reason Italian industry couldn't have built in-line engines as powerful and reliable as the Germans. Car companies like Alfa Romeo demonstrated in the '20s and '30s that they could build race-winning engines. And when Alfa Romeo started building Daimler Benz engines under license, they built good solid engines. They had nothing like the issues the Japanese had when trying to do same thing when designing the Kawasaki Ki-60 Hien (nicknamed Tony, short for Antonio, because when the allies encountered it over New Guinea in 1943 they thought this nasty little surprise was a Macchi C202 knock-off). When it worked it worked well but they never could solve their tuning issues. And frankly, it's good for us that the inferior Italian high command dumbed down Italian industry, and required them to build far less capable equipment than they could have built if they didn't live in a dictatorship. That certainly saved a lot of allied lives. Italian lives, too. | |||
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He looks remarkably healthy for someone fighting in the Solomons. Congrats.
I was at Guam and Fiji, as well as a bunch more of the marianas islands and Soloman Islands, fifty years after your father was. They weren't very nice places in the 1990's, I can't imagine what it was like during the 1940's. You can't imagine the conditions of some of those places.  ----------------------------------------------------- Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him. Proverbs 26-4 National Rifle Association Life Member | |||
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