Actually Tonybones it was Pappy Gunn who made the B-25 into a gunship while in combat and not Kenney.He started with more machine guns than added the cannon.He also came up with the Skipbombing.Later the B-25's were made to carry what Gunn had already done.
Talon
Talon, friends often contend over WW2 history due to the fact that WW2 was, among many things, the most well-documented war in all history. The documents still have not been sorted out. History is hasty sometimes, as with the Yamamoto shoot-down,which was in essence, an assassination. It's now recognized that Rex Barber shot down the Admiral. I've spoken to many rank and file history buffs over the years, to them, Pappy Gunn was in command of the 5th AF and Kenney was merely a figurehead. Pappy was as much a soldier as Kenney was, the issue of who originated what may be cloudy. I hold the position of the USAF, the USAF Museum, and many historians past and present that Gen. George Kenney originated the "commerce destroyer" aircraft, the armament, and skip bombing. If history shows Gunn originated them they would have stayed locked in his brain, only Kenney could order them to be carried out.
Sam McGowan, writing for History.net states:
"Another of Kenney's requests was for 3,000 parafrag bombs to be sent to Australia, where he thought they might come in handy against the Japanese. While en route to Australia with his aide, Major William Benn, in July 1942, the two discussed low-altitude bombing. During a layover at Nandi in the Fijis, Kenney and Benn requisitioned a Martin B-26 Marauder bomber and went out to test a theory--that a bomb could be made to skip along the water like a stone. Their theory proved to be correct and the technique of skip bombing was born."
Kenney had a nose for talent:
"
In the Pacific, Kenney found himself in a forgotten theater of war. Europe had priority for new aircraft and personnel. MacArthur's forces were expected to fight a holding action to protect Australia from the advancing Japanese. Kenney quickly organized his new command so that every available asset could be put to good use. He went through his command with a fine-tooth comb, weeding out officers who were not "operators" and sending them home to be replaced by men who were. He reassigned Benn to work as a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress squadron commander, and Benn began teaching his pilots the new skip-bombing techniques he and Kenney had worked out during the trip over from the States. While visiting the newly arrived 3rd Attack Group, General Kenney discovered a former Navy enlisted pilot by the name of Paul I. Gunn--"Pappy" to the younger men around him."
Kenney, Gunn, and the pilots and ground crew under them quickly drew blood:
"While the B-25 was proving successful as a skip bomber in attacks upon Japanese shipping, Kenney reasoned that the technique really needed a heavily armed "commerce destroyer" equipped with a firepower package that could devastate the enemy's defenses during a high-speed, low-level attack. He put Pappy Gunn to work packing as many .50-caliber machine guns as possible into the nose of a B-25. Gunn modified an entire squadron of 12 bombers as "commerce destroyers." The 12 planes were placed under the command of Major Ed Larner in late February 1943, just in time for the Battle of the Bismarck Sea.
On March 1, 1943, a reconnaissance B-24 spotted a convoy of eight Japanese transports escorted by six destroyers 150 miles west of the Japanese base at Rabaul. The next morning the convoy was again located and attacked by B-24s and B-17s. One transport was sunk and another damaged. Over the next 24 hours, the convoy was under constant attack. The commerce destroyers got 17 direct hits, while 12 skip-bombing A-20s put another 11 bombs into the sides of the Japanese ships. Within 20 minutes every single transport was sunk or sinking, along with one destroyer sunk and three others badly damaged. The Battle of the Bismarck Sea was the first in a long series of successes for Kenney's "kids," as he called the young pilots and crewmen. MacArthur duly noted these successes and dubbed Kenney "the Buccaneer."
I met one of Kenny's "kids" the year he died in 1977. They more than revered him, they worshipped the ground he walked on.Bruce was a gunner on board one of these B-25s, he said when they strafed, all the guns going off was like "...standing in the doorway to hell." He also showed me some rather grisly pictures of the aftermath of the Battle Of The Bismark Sea that never made the history books. He told me also of a somewhat lively debate that took place among the pilots of his squadron regarding the strafing of survivors in the water. Given the times and memory of Pearl Harbor, it's not unusual that it would be lively. What brought WW2 to life for me was knowing so many people who were there and lived those times, several from my own family.
Bones
ne of the reasons they like my missions is because of the research.I look at all sides of things.It takes longer for my research than to make the missions.
