All these factors had been weighed, and a new tactic devised, No further attempt to destroy the pens through the roofs was going to be made. The bombs would be sent through the front door, so to speak.
What that meant, Douglass quickly–if with a certain amount of incredulity-. _ came to understand, was that bombs would be thrown into the pen entrances from low-flying aircraft. And the low-flying aircraft picked for this task were the P-38Es of the 311th Fighter Group, USA AC, Major Peter Douglass, Jr. , commanding.
Fohowing the law of physics that a body in motion tends to remain in motion until acted upon by outside forces, a 500-pound bomb dropped from the wing of a P-38 would continue for a time to move through the air at the same speed as the aircraft. Wind resistance would slow it down, of course, and gravity would pull it toward the earth, but for a certain brief period of time, it would proceed parallel to the ground.
The idea was that it would be released at the precise moment when its trajectory would carry it into the mouths of the sub pens.
This new tactic, the bomber pilot turned strategy expert announced, would have several other desirable characteristics. The Germans, like the English, had a new radio device that bounced radio signals off objects in the sky. These signals returned to clever devices that could then determine the range of the object in the sky.
The devices were not very effective, however, against objects that were just off the surface of the water.
So, as the P-38Es approached the sub pens a hundred feet off the water, the altitude necessary to Kthrow” their bombs into the pens, they would arrive undetected. German ack-ack and fighters would not be waiting for them. And as soon as the P-38s dropped their bombs, they would, aerodynamically speaking, be clean fighter aircraft again and could very likely start making strafing runs on the German fighter bases before the Germans could get airborne.
During the final briefing, Douglass could agree with only one thing that the light bird said, There was truly no need for extensive training for this operation. This was so because the fighter group had already trained in the States in low-level bombing attacks.
The training, in fact, had been for the support of ground troops, but Doug knew the result was almost the same, His men knew how bombs behaved when they were dropped at low altitude.
Further practice in England would almost certainly have alerted the Luftwaffe to what they were up to.
They would leave Atcham, the briefing officer concluded, one hour before sunset. That would permit them to land at Ibsley, the closest P38 base to Saint-Lazare, by nightfall. During the night the aircraft would be fueled and the bombs loaded onto the wing racks. At first light they would take off.
They could expect to be back in England before nine in the morning.
Except for his professional officer’s understanding that planners are not happy unless they can make the simple as complicated as possible, Douglass could see no reason for the overnight stop at Ibsley. But he also understood his was not to reason why. Into the valley of the sub pens would fly the 311th Fighter Group.
He took twenty-nine P-38Es to Ibsley on the evening of December 19 and lost the first of them the next morning ten minutes into the mission, The pilot lost control on his takeoff roll, went off the runway, tipped up on one wing, and rolled over and over. The bombs didn’t go off, but the avgas did, and there was an explosion.
There were Messerschmidt ME109S waiting for them twenty-five miles from Saint-Lazare. If the German Radar hadn’t worked, then something else had tipped them off about what was coming off.
KTHIS is Dropsy Leader,” Douglass said to his microphone.
“Firewall it and follow me.” The twenty-eight remaining P-38 pilots advanced their throttles to FULL EMERGENCY MILITARY POWER, which was both hell on the engines and caused fuel consumption to increase incredibly. But festooned with bombs the way they were, their only defense against the ME109ES was to get to the target and dump the bombs as quickly as they could. At about six miles a minute, it would take them about four minutes to reach the drop point, the engines would probably not collapse before then.