The 14 Gun Monster That Made Japanese Ships Vanish in Seconds
Untold WW2 Stories
327,369 views
In October Nineteen Forty-Three, Lieutenant Colonel Clinton True led a formation of B-25 Mitchells unescorted through a storm front directly into Rabaul, the most heavily defended Japanese stronghold in the Southwest Pacific. But the aircraft he was flying was no longer the medium-altitude bomber the factory had designed. Field engineers had bolted fourteen forward-firing .50 caliber machine guns to the airframe, transforming it into a 30,000-pound strafer designed to fly at mast-height and unleash absolute hell.
✅ In this video:
-Why the legendary Norden bombsight was completely useless against Japanese shipping
-The brutal arithmetic of delivering 748 armor-piercing rounds in a 4-second attack window
-How "Pappy" Gunn’s field modifications turned the B-25 into a low-level monster
-The terrifying reality for the radio-gunners trapped in the back of the aircraft
-How skip-bombing at 50 feet allowed the Air Apaches to sink 260 Japanese ships
📚 Sources and further reading:
345th Bomb Group Association — Official unit history
https://www.345thbombgroup.org/history/
Air Apaches: The True Story of the 345th Bomb Group by Jay A. Stout
🔔 Subscribe to @WW2Stories40 for deeply researched stories the history books buried.
20 Comments
104 missions like that for some of them. The video does a good job showing how much of this was just men deciding to keep getting back in the plane and doing it again, day after day.
The 14 Gun Monster That Made Japanese Ships Vanish in Seconds
Untold WW2 Stories
327,369 views
In October Nineteen Forty-Three, Lieutenant Colonel Clinton True led a formation of B-25 Mitchells unescorted through a storm front directly into Rabaul, the most heavily defended Japanese stronghold in the Southwest Pacific. But the aircraft he was flying was no longer the medium-altitude bomber the factory had designed. Field engineers had bolted fourteen forward-firing .50 caliber machine guns to the airframe, transforming it into a 30,000-pound strafer designed to fly at mast-height and unleash absolute hell.
✅ In this video:
-Why the legendary Norden bombsight was completely useless against Japanese shipping
-The brutal arithmetic of delivering 748 armor-piercing rounds in a 4-second attack window
-How "Pappy" Gunn’s field modifications turned the B-25 into a low-level monster
-The terrifying reality for the radio-gunners trapped in the back of the aircraft
-How skip-bombing at 50 feet allowed the Air Apaches to sink 260 Japanese ships
📚 Sources and further reading:
345th Bomb Group Association — Official unit history
https://www.345thbombgroup.org/history/
Air Apaches: The True Story of the 345th Bomb Group by Jay A. Stout
🔔 Subscribe to @WW2Stories40 for deeply researched stories the history books buried.
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