I shall take this opportunity to tell the full disconcerting tale about our front guns. Whether they were really as unreliable as generally believed, I do not know, for no one tried to fire them for long (and most people didn't try at all). There was a reason for this. The gun fixings in the wings were apt to work loose with the vibration of firing. The first indication that this was taking place was the unwelcome appearance of the alloy "blast tubes", slowly sliding forward out of the leading edge of the wing, as the rounds deviated sufficently to "clip" the sides of the tube on their way out.
If you carried on firing, things grew worse, with the rounds popping out all over the leading edge. Nobody wanted a sort of runaway buzz-saw chewing away inside the wing. So after several episodes of this (on test and on attempts to harmonise the things), and efforts at curing it proving unsuccessful, it was generally agreed that the guns were more trouble than they were worth, and best left alone. The armourers heartily approved of this, for it was a devil of a job to clean them, buried as they were well back in the wing structure. Accordingly, the first belts we had painfully put together at Chaara stayed untouched,
AFAIK, for the life of the aircraft !
I must emphasise that this may only have affected the .300 guns I would hope that the .50s in the Mk.IVs were better anchored down. For now the 4-degree incidence the MkIVs had would have made strafing easier, as they could see where they were going and what they were aiming at, and that always helps. (It helped even more that the Mk. IVs never fired at anything, to my knowledge - possibly in Aus?).
Conclusion.
Looking back, with a lifetime's hindsight, it has always seemed to me that the heart of the Air Ministry (and by extension, that of ACSEA and AHQ Delhi) was never in this Vultee Vengeance business. I think they had been panicked into the original order by a sort of "Stuka effect", and now regretted it when they saw the thing in the metal and realised how useless it would be to them in Europe. "Sweep it under the carpet" - and we were the carpet.
Having said that, '42 and early '43 were desperate days out there and we had no excuse for not wringing every ounce of use out of what little we had to work with. Two months' really intensive bombing and formation practice, and I'm sure that all four RAF squadrons could have moved up to Assam or the Arakan in March '43, and done ten week's useful work before the onset of that monsoon, instead of just the 2-3 they actually did.
The next year was better, as we'd all got into our stride, but why discard the Vengeance at the end of the season? (particularly as it was now demonstrating its full potential). Even our early comers had not come out until mid - '42, they were not due for repat until mid - '45. The aircraft were there, we knew how to use them, we had the people. So why not keep going for one more ('44 - '45) season ? (It would be the last as well, but we didn't know that then).
Yes, the Mossies were coming out (not without problems) in mid - '44. So? Form four new Squadrons with them and leave us alone! I'm sure there was plenty of work (and room) for everyone, The Arakan was honeycombed with two years' worth of 'kutcha' strips which would now have dried out and be ready for use again.
It was not to be - the axe came down in summer '44 - all water under the bridge now, of course.
Next time we'll start on Defence,
Cheers,
Danny42C.
All good things come to an end !