NigG,
Further working through "Vengeance", there is little relevant to 84 Squadron in particular, as Peter C. Smith intermingles official reports with many personal anecdotes from all the Squadrons in order to weave a coherent story.
But there are some repeated statements that I find it difficult to reconcile with my own remembered experience. For example, there many reports of (say) "xx Squadron and yy Squadron attacked enemy positions at zzzzzz with 12 aircraft from each Squadron". I flew 52 sorties with 110 RAF and 8 Squadrons and on only one (the very first), we put up 12 aircraft. But that was only done by combining a 'box-of-six' from 110 Squadron (a Flight) with another Flight from 82 (who were with us at Chittagong in May '43). All the rest of my 'ops' were flown in a single box-of-six.
I suppose you could say that the leader of 82 'led' 12 aircraft, in the sense that he navigated to the target, but the 110 'box' flew a mile behind, and its No.1 would plan his own approach to it, and signal (we kept R/T silence) separately the moves into echelon starboard and open bomb doors.
The reason is that the box-of-six is the largest unit which would have any chance of defending itself against fighter attack (and that would be a slim chance indeed). A box-of-four would be better. A "Balbo" of 12 would have no hope at all.
IMHO (and in the opinion of many others), the best tactic if we came under fighter attack would be to break, scatter, dive for the deck and bolt for home, Not very gallant - but then a live survivor is more use than a dead hero ! (He who fights and runs away.....). It was a good thing that we were never intercepted (and to this day nobody really knows why not).
More later, Danny.
PS: The above was still in draft last night, and I'm very interested in what you tell me in your #64. I'm a bit doubtful about the "triangulation" idea. On our 'ASC' sorties ("Army Support, Close", in the back-to-front nomenclature of the Services), we found that one mortar smoke bomb on target was enough, and of course we countered the "tit-for-tat" Jap tactic with coloured smoke, as you say. And it would be a third of the extra load that the Chindits had to carry. And it would give the formation leader a fixed point to aim at, rather than having to "guesstimate" the centre of a triangle.
On every strike, the accuracy of the leader is vital - for after the first bombs the target marker has vanished in a growing cloud of dust and smoke, all the following pilots can do is to line up on the centre of the cloud. I was last man down on the 12-ship sortie I mentioned, and the cloud I had to aim at was huge.
D.
Last edited by Danny42C; 16th May 2016 at 08:52.
Reason: ADDN.