"Joining the War at Sea 1939-1945"
The Second Edition of Joining the War at Sea 1939-1945 is pictured above. There are just four copies remaining. The new Third Edition of "Joining the War at Sea 1939-1945" is now available. Use the link above the picture for information on pricing.
"The Triumph of Instrument Flight: A Retrospective in the Century of U.S. Aviation"
In series, top to bottom, the Mediterranean regained in WW II. The first link is the index page for this series:
Aircraft of World War II-"friendlies"
Ships and Aircraft of World War II
U.S. Aircraft That Fought in the Mediterranean War
Copyright 2005
The World War II aircraft pictured here were welcome sights to shipboard sailors in the Mediterranean Theatre during the progression of assault landings that began at Casablanca in 1942 and ended at Southern France in 1944. These were all "friendlies." We look at some of them taken from Navy recognition slides.
The seaplane above is the OS2U, manufactured by Vought Aircraft for observation use off U.S. cruisers and battleships in World War II. Although the SOC aircraft manufactured by Curtiss was the scout plane of choice for U.S. cruisers, shown in an earlier page of this series, an OS2U was spotted on the catapault at the stern of the USS Philadelphia, CL-41, in the Navy's WW II recognition slide series.
Above, the famed B-17 Flying Fortress built by Boeing. Occasionally seen by shipboard sailors as it was flying in formation heading north to a European target from a North African airfield, this aircraft was more prominently based in the UK for the preponderance of its WW II missions.
Often seen in the Mediterranean sky was the Liberator, built by Consolidated. Large formations of these headed north to such targets as the Ploesti oil fields in Rumania. As the Allies moved up the Italian Peninsula, these aircraft, with their superchargers lifting them to high altitudes, were the backbone of the heavy bombing campaign from this theatre against German assets. Eventually the Italian airfield at Foggia near Naples was captured and Allied aircraft could range further north.
Above is the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. In Mediterranean skies in WW II, this aircraft was used mostly as a fighter-bomber. One day a flight of three swept majestically west out of the Italian shoreline headed right for my ship off shore. Then, gracefully, the plane on the near quarter of the flight leader, flew right into the sea. My destroyer moved rapidly over to the point of impact and found a light green oily surface and nothing else. The pilot had undoubtedly been badly hit by AA fire during a low level bombing attack on shore, lost consciousness and relaxed his hand on the yoke as his aircraft described a graceful arc right into the water.
The aircrat above is the British Beaufighter, which our Mediterranean warships usually only saw at twilight, when this type aircraft would begin or end its patrol as a nightfighter. If the practice known to U.S. carrier pilots as CAP, for Combat Air Patrol, ever came to the Mediterranean, it came after I left in October 1944. The British had established, for operations over the cities its searchlights defended, a ZI for Zone of the Interior. In geometric terms it was an inverted cone with its apex at the ground center of the defined ZI, an airspace that "friendlies" should avoid since the anti-aircraft batteries would shoot at anything in the Zone. By 1944, most U.S. surface warships had been in an east coast Navy Yard long enough to get a Combat Information Center (CIC) installed, a space often converted from prior use. ZIs and CICs were early attempts to add the third dimension, air, to the weapon system control picture. Even with the CIC that my ship, the destroyer Edison had by the time of the invasion of Southern France, the effective meshing of target selection for main battery five inch, 40mm and 20mm guns, with lookout information, electronic aircraft Identificiaton Friend or Foe ( IFF), search radar and sonar information, and the flow of information arriving over the TBS and from the radio shack, all this was a long , long way from coordination.
The Beaufighters gave Allied ships confidence that somebody in the sky was on their side, though I am sure that Beaufighter pilots kept their distance from all surface armament, friend or foe.