On Wed, 1 Jun 2005 19:09:55 -0700, "Matt Barrow"
wrote:

And IIRC, the B-26 drew mostly low level attack missions which drew all
sorts of fire, most of it more accurate than the high level bombing!?!?

The B-26 crews that were going to Europe initially trained for
extremely low level missions. At the time, the only information
available was from the Pacific Theater and low level missions there
were relatively successful with acceptable casualties.

But the Japanese did not have the concentration, training or accuracy
of the German AA crews. In the initial sortie from England against a
Netherlands target, every single bomber was shot down by AA fire. It
wasn't a huge flight, I think 6 or 7 took off, but the only surviver
was one bomber that turned back over the Channel due to some technical
problem, or he probably would have been shot down too.

This catastrophy caused the B-26 group to halt all operations and
rethink the mission. They spent several months retraining at medium
height, which required the bombardiers actually learn how to use
bombsights, and returned to combat flying above the level of accuracy
of the small caliber AA guns.

Corky Scott