Quote:
Originally Posted by RodM
Hi,
Anyone who talked to the Army about their needs was a traitor. Beaverbrook oredered the Vengeances, and the RAF ensured they were never used - except in the East where they became a raging success such that the RAF had to suppress the information and quickly scrap them before their embarrassment became public.
...prove it!
Rod
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Oh dear Rod, that's very easy as it's all on public record!
With the operational use of Vengeances in Burma AHQ India sent in several glowing reports to London of it's success compared to both fighter-bombers and medium bombers. The Air Ministry's response??
Here's one - AIR 20/4249 dated 8 April 1943:
"You will of course appreciate that we are employing the Vengeance dive-bomber in India with no little success and we shall therefore have to be careful in our references to it not to amplify it's success given our view of the ineffectiveness of the dive bomber and it's alleged obsolence."
Another response by the Air Ministry to AHQ India (Sec.X.49 dated 15 June 1943) stated:
"Regarding public policy aspect you will remember dive-bombing has been teh cause of acute and misguided controversy here and when release is first made it will be most important to frame publicity so as not to cause renewal of misapprehensions and controvsery here.
We therefore think that the best line to this end is to point out the flexibility of the Vengeance as a light bomber capable of the different methods of attack and concentrate on the successful achievements of the Vengeance rather than on the success of the dive bomber technique as contrasted with other methods."
Not surprisingly AHQ India was not happy with this 'suggestion', and replied on 30 June (AOC 561):
"Existing Vengeance as dive bomber widely known here and use. Suspicion can do more harm than good if our release of information pretended that it was anything else. Moreover after months of hard work maintenance and aircrews have overcome several technical difficulties and perfected Tactical technique. They would be quite unable to understand any belittling results of their efforts."
The Air Ministry remained unmoved and in the secret memo 'Note on Tactical Qualities Of The Dive Bomber', dated 9 September 1943 stated:
"It is considered that the employment of the dive bomber of the Vengeance type would be most uneconomical if used against targets in Europe. The conversion of existing units to the specialised dive bomber of the Vengeance variety against targets such as enemy transport or troop concentrations is not justified given the time and effort recently placed in the development of the fighter bomber. Especially so given that the fighter is more easily converted into a fighter bomber with only little training required of pilots, and that fighters are in infinitely more plentiful supply. The dive bomber qualities of greater accuracy and range are of lesser account than the readily available numbers of fighters and fighter bombers in current operational squadrons."