Gordon's Pics : the B-24 wreckage bullet holes

I got these pics from Gordon last night, with the following explanation.

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Cheers

Dave Kearton




One thing that really got me is that the one wreck was absolutely _riddled_
with large MG and small cannon shell holes. We brainstormed about it as we
worked, running through the possibilities. Hunters - maybe some of the
holes came from Johnny Elkhunter, but certainly not of the size that we were
seeing. Finally, we got around to the recovered Zeke from the Aleutians and
the fallout from that recovery - following our snatch&grab of that A6M, any
Allied aircraft that came down in territory where it could not be recovered
was ordered to be destroyed either by fire (usually done by the salvage
crews), bombed, or strafed. This one was shot to ribbons by a P-38 or two.
Granted, that's an assumption, but all the shots came from a high angle and
there are plenty of .50s that cleaved through everything, and 20mm shells
made hash of what was left.

This was done after a lot of the aircraft fittings were stripped by a
salvage crew - strange that they didn't burn the wreck and instead called in
an airstrike on it.

G