NigG (#391),
The pic is also in Peter C Smith's "Vengeance!" (p.111), captioned as : "over Mount Lavinia hotel and railway station in Northen Ceylon". Looks a nice place for a weekend ! - but sounds pricey. (Google/TravelBag has all the details, says it is overlooking Columbo).
Again many references in the log to 'low-level attacks'. Never did any myself, and have made plain here my opinion of the idea. what the VV did best was what it was built for: high level, ideally vertical dives from 10-12,000 ft. That way you got the famed VV accuracy.
The standard practice (11½ lb) rack carried 4 smoke practice bombs; as it only took some 15 mins to climb up after each dive, the exercise fitted neatly into an hour on range. No sense in just carrying only one. How big was this Gongala rock, anyway ?
...Naval ships zig-zagging and how pointless that would be. In truth, that was my speculation that they did this!...
They did, in fact, putting the helm hard over as soon as the bomber started its attack. But as you put your yellow line on the ship (I would imagine) and kept it there during the dive, the ship would still only have a few seconds to move from your aiming point (has anyone done the math, far too hard for me ?) The Jap carriers at Midway would certainly have been turning as fast as they could, but that did not save them.
...This isn't really so is it? All the Vengeance squadrons had been scheduled to re-equip with the Mosquito, which presumably, when the decision was made, was thought to be more effective than the Vengeance...
It was "horses for courses". And this misses the point that the Mosquitoes which came out in the spring of '44 all brought their own fully trained crews with them. The old Vengeance crews had a better claim to the squadron names and numbers (they still included members of the 'old guard', who'd flown the Blenheims in 4 Group in '42) than these parvenues.
Why not form four new squadrons for the newcomers, but let the VVs and their crews (who still had a year of their 'tours' to serve) carry on as they were for that last dry season ? The 14th Army had the Japs on the run in Burma, ideal conditions for a bunker-buster, and we could have done more good work to help the Army. But for some reason it was not to be......We were pulled out at the onset of the '44 monsoon, aircraft and crews frittered away on odd jobs.
Danny.