The A-20 did not reappear in Britain until early in 1944, when the 409th, 410th and 416th Bombardment Groups joined the 9th Air Force in preparation for the invasion of Europe. Worryingly two aircraft were lost to ground fire, but only two more missions were flow before the squadron moved to North Africa to join the 12th Air Force. The 15th flew the first mission in its own right on 4 July 1942, when six aircraft attacked German airfields in Holland. On 29 June 1942 one RAF Boston was flown by a crew from the 15th Bomb Squadron during a raid on a railway marshalling yard in France. The A-20 made a brief combat debut in Europe in the summer of 1942. They then began to convert to the A-26 Invader, but the war ended before they could take the new aircraft into combat. Only the 417th BG kept it’s A-20s to the end of the war. By that point the 3rd Bombardment Group had converted to the A-26, while the 312th was in the process of converting to the Consolidated B-32, a massive four engined bomber. In August 1945 the A-20 groups moved to Okinawa, from where they took part in the first attack on the Japanese home islands on 9 August 1945. From there they attacked Japanese factories and butane plants on Formosa. On 7 January 1945 they took part in a long range attack on Clark Field, before moving on bases on Luzon. Late in 1944 they moved onto Leyte, from where they took part in the campaign against the defenders of Luzon. The three groups operated together in the final stages of the campaign in New Guinea and on the way to the Philippines. At its peak in September 1944 the 5th Air Force had a total of 370 A-20s. Only then did the group completely equip with the A-20, while the 312th Bombardment Group began to convert from the P-40, while the 417th Bombardment Group became the last group to get the A-20. The 3rd Bombardment Group remained the only A-20 unit in the Pacific until the start of 1944. These small bombs were very effective against Japanese bases and against flat bottomed barges. The 3rd BG also pioneered the use of “parafrags” – small fragmentation bombs with time delay fuses dropped by parachute.
Havoc battle group boston series#
This was the first of a long series of low level strafing attacks on the Japanese that would become the specialty of the A-20 in the Pacific, and would lead to the development of the solid nosed A-20G. In August 1942 the modified aircraft went into combat, attacking the Japanese airbase at Lae. 50in machine guns in the nose of the A-20As, which at best had four. These aircraft arrived without guns or bomb racks, and so Major Paul “Pappy” Gunn, who installed four. In the summer of 1942 it received enough A-20s to equip the 89th Bombardment Squadron and part of the 8th Bombardment Squadron.
As the conflict extended into 1862, the North and South readied their armies for a longer fight.The first unit to take the A-20 into combat in the Pacific was the 3rd Bombardment Group. Most Americans assumed the war would be over by Christmas, but the bloody battle at Manassas, Virginia, and the Union naval blockade of the Confederate coastline suggested otherwise. Anticipating a day when their services would be accepted, African American men in the North formed military training companies, while women on both sides labored on the home front after their men left for war.
The Civil War had begun.Īs the spring and summer of 1861 wore on, hundreds of thousands of white men, most of them ill-trained and unprepared for war, poured into the armed forces of both sides. garrison in Southern territory, Confederates began shelling the fort in the pre-dawn hours of April 12, 1861, and Union guns responded. Lincoln decided to send provisions but no additional troops or ordnance to the fort unless resistance was met. Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, continued to fly the United States flag, even as Confederate forces surrounded it.
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