In article , zxcv
writes
I was watching "Empire of the Sun" the other night and near the end some
P-51's attack the Japanese base. What struck me was that the P-51's were
flying in just a few feet above the ground and dropping their bombs. Would
this really have been done? How did the planes keep from blowing themselves
up?


I understand that the way in which bombs are dropped from low level is a
combination of delay fuze (as already mentioned by another respondent)
and the attack profile. If you bomb from enough height to be able to
depart to a safe distance before the bomb goes off then that's okay,
even with impact fuzes. If you are going to be still close to the bomb
when the fuze is impact triggered then it should be a delay fuze, so you
can depart to said safe distance. That's the obvious basic principle.

But I guess that many complications can set in. For instance, (question
to you bods who have actually done this kind of thing) low level skip
bombing will probably give good accuracy, but I assume one must know a
bit about the nature of the target. If the target is sufficiently
massive (e.g. building/ship) so as to be able to bring the bomb to a
halt, then a short delay fuze should be fine - the aircraft will be a
long way the other side by the time the bomb goes off. But if the
target is less robust, the bomb could go straight through the target
(impact triggering the delay fuze as it does so) and accompany the
aircraft for some distance beyond; not nice, and suggests that an attack
from height would have been better.

That leads me to assume that somewhere in the mission planning process,
(following the target description) choice of fuze and attack profile
will be defined, and the safety parameters stated. I assume that even
on general roving tactical bombing missions in WWII, pilots would choose
which targets were safe to attack in a particular mode; given the fuzing
of the bombs they carried.

Re. the film 'Empire of the Sun', am I right to remember that one of the
bombs dropped by a P-51 actually flew off to one side rather than going
straight ahead? I thought at the time it must have been a low-density
repro to do that - rather than a real cast steel jobby.

Cheers,

Dave

--
Dave Eadsforth