Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

The track record for the B-17 hitting moving ships in WW I is apparently one for a whole lot.  Some Japanese destroyer was hit with a bomb from a B-17.  You can't hit a ship from altitude that is at sea except by chance.  Dive bombing was of course far more accurate and the Japanese had a tremendous torpedo that did most of their damage to ships, air or ship/boat delivered.  My Dad was a radar operator on a B-24 in the SW Pacific and he told me they would line up and drop on night shipping at low altitude and the radar would "time" the bomb release.  The Japanese couldn't see them.  They went down in the ocean - reports vary about where - and 3 were later rescued, so I have his Purple Heart now.

They carried guns and gunners who never did anything and once they talked the pilot into attacking a Japanese air strip to strafe.  They did that once.

I used to spend idle time waiting for my Dad's flight home in the Billy Mitchell gallery of flight at Mitchell Intl Airport in MKE.  He, and his father, have a lot of things with the Mitchell name.

Incidentally, the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio is the most expansive and complete I've ever seen anywhere.

The radar could "see" clouds, according to my Dad.  He said they could tune in a frequency to show where clouds were heaviest.  I imagine they had a radar altimeter at the time.  It would be an easy technology relatively speaking.  They had a mission to Truk he told me about with the "daylight boys".  They took along a "Snooper" to fly them around the worst of the clouds as the distance was at extreme range (I think they were based on New Georgia at the time, but they changed bases over the months.)  The radar plane he said never came home after those raids, he was waiting their turn fatalistically.  Now, some of what my Dad told me is probably somewhat distorted of course.

I know the B-24 had an advanced autopilot which made it preferred in the Pacific, perhaps it was slaved to the radar altimeter?  Maybe I misrecall 500 feet, also possible.

It wasn't a field mod.  My Dad's compartment was down near the front of the bombay, he said it was a tough crawl to get there.  He had to roll down the radar dome which replaced the belly turret by hand crank, and it took some time, and was done after they were at altitude because of the drag.  He said the dome was very heavy, and his guess is when the plane hit the water the dome tore the fuselage in half and he floated out.  He was largely unconscious through the night and the flight lieutenant kept him and the copilot afloat until they were rescued by a US destroyer.  He really admired the Flight Lieutenant who he mentioned often, an Isadore Lamica from NY state.  He was later killed in the war.

The radar was a separate compartment and slaved to the bomb "sight".  It sounds to me like a pretty significant mod, probably done at Langley.  My Dad's first missions were against German U Boats using B-18s equipped with radar.  He flew B-25s a few times there in Virginia, and he commented about how they were like fighters compared with heavy bombers.

I met the copilot once when I was a kid, his forehead sloped back very oddly because he went through the wind shield and apparently Lamica who was not badly hurt followed him on impact.  Those three were the only survivors in the crew.  They were in the ocean all night in effect, my Dad drifting in and out of consciousness.  The official records claim the plane went down shortly after takeoff, but my Dad contends they were aloft because he had rolled the dome down into position and that would have been at least 30 minutes out.

My Dad had been a radioman and had been selected for OCS when he was diverted to something they wouldn't tell him about, radar school.  The crew was supposed to shoot him if they were about to be captured by the Japanese, though my Dad said he really didn't know much of anything that would benefit the Japanese.