The prisoners of Rabaul (Was: P-39's, zeros, etc.)

In article ,
Cub Driver writes:

as it goes. i was interested to learn how the japs had had to pull air
resources out of southeast Asia to smash bataan, evening bringing in the big
Sally army bombers. I was even more interested to know how badly hurt they had
been by AAA from the Bataan defenders. But when I wondered what unit with what
weaponry were doing this damage, the text was silent. I also wondered what

Well, the Japanese wouldn't have known that! As always, what an
individual writes about his own side is generally fairly close to the
mark. It's when he's writing or yarning about the other side (how many
planes went down, what kind of planes they were) that he goes astray.

altitude the Sallys were bombing from, and if the Jap experience with US Army
AAA at Bataan influenced them to fly at 22,000 feet over port moresby, greatly
reducing their effectiveness, that being ironic because there was no AAA at
Moresby.

According to Stanton's "World War Two Order of Battle", Galahad Books,
NY, 1991, There were two Coast Artillery Regiments (Anti Aircraft) in
the Philippines. These were the 60th Coast Artillery
Regiment(Antiaircraft)(Semimobile), Originally headquartered at Ft
Mills, and the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment
(Antiaircraft)(Semimobile) Headquartered at Clark Field. The 200th
was a New Mexico National Guard unit that had arrived in Manila on 20
Nov 41.
A Coast Artillery Antiaircraft Regiment consisted of 3 Battalions,
with a total of 3 batteries of AAA Guns (3 inch M1 or M2,in the Philippines,
the 90mm gun wasn't yet available), 3 Automatic Weapons Batteries with
37mm M1 AA guns, and 3 searchlight batteries. The Horizontal range of
the 3" is given as 14,780 yds, and the effective ceiling is 27,900'.
The 37mm hat a Horizontal Range of 8,875 yds, and an effective ceiling
of 10.500', with a rate of fire of 120 rds/min. It was a little lower
in performance than a Bofers 40mm.

All of the guns could be controlled by either the Control Equipment
Set M1, or the Kerrison Predictor (M5), and were capable of remote
power control. The remote power control, BTW, is a Big Deal. It means
that the guns are trained, elevated, and, in the case of the larger
guns, the fuzes are set by the predictor, (Which were auto-following
systems. Once a good track was established, the predictor adjusted
the sight, and the guns, to follow the arget's motion. The operators
made small adjustments to improve the tracking. This eliminated most
of the human error that came from the transmitted order or "follow the
pointer" type systems that other combatants, most notably the Germans,
were never quite able to figure out. The U.S was able to build
effective remote power control systems on scales ranging from a B-29s
or A-26's .50 cal turrets, to an Iowa Class Battleship's 16" guns.
This made integrating bettter sensors, like radar, much easier in
U.S. systems.


--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster