[Guest]

I've noticed that there are several strange American weapons from the war that haven't made it into the game. I know you guys are pretty strict about weapon mods here so I thought that maybe someone could make these and add them to new planes or something. My references are at the bottom. Here they are:

Napalm





I know that B-17's were equipped with up to four 108 gal. paper tanks from P-51's filled with napalm for bombing raids on German bunkers. I also know that P-38 drop tanks were filled with napalm for strikes in both Europe and the Pacific. The P-47N also used napalm in 165 gallon tanks from the P-38.

Pumpkin Bombs



These were used in Silverplate bombers for firebombing runs before the nuclear attacks. They were developed as a high powered incedinary bomb in the Manhattan project and used the same casing as the Fatman nuclear bomb. As a side note, on the Silverplate score boards, you see black and red symbols. The black ones are pumpkin bomb raids participated in and the red are nuclear attacks participated in.

JB-2 Loon



This was basically a V-1 flying bomb. It was tested on the B-17 and the B-29 and was planned for use in the Invasion of Japan.

Azon



The Azon was one of the world's first guided bombs. It had the explosive power of a 1,000lbs bomb. It was used by a few B-24 squadrons.

http://www.thepinklady.fr/post/2006/09/1...ion:-Royan
http://home.att.net/~historyzone/Seversk...blic8.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin_bomb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic-Ford_JB-2
http://tanks45.tripod.com/Jets45/Histori...n/Loon.htm
http://tanks45.tripod.com/Jets45/Histories/B17/B17.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZON

I finally got this to work... For some reason, I think that it didn't like the part against the Bat bomb because once I got rid of that, it worked fine.

[P/O W. 'Moggy' Cattermole]

you can get napalm, try the corsairs, but i don't ythink we've the others..

[Guest]

I knew about the F4U napalm. I was hoping someone would want to make the other versions for the other planes. A couple of the other ones were talked about but were never made.

[shakthamac]

Yeah, it would definitely be cool to have the B.A.T. Though its onboard radar was a bit clunky, it was pretty much the ultimate air launched weapon from WW2.

Bat was a radar-guided glide bomb developed by the United States Navy during World War II. Similar to the German Fritz X, Bat lacked any form of propulsion. However, because of its guidance system, Bat was not a gravity bomb and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum designates it a missile.

In January 1941 RCA proposed a new TV-guided anti-shipping weapon called Dragon. As with Operation Aphrodite's radio-controlled drones, an operator would use the TV image sent from the nose of the weapon and operate aerodynamic controls to put it on target. The National Bureau of Standards (NBS) would provide the airframe for use with a standard bomb. Work on the system progressed, but by the time it was ready for testing, the threat was now seen to be the German U-boat fleet. [4] The design was therefore modified in June 1942 to drop depth charges instead, and the guidance changed to an all-weather semi-active radar homing. This new design was named Pelican.

By mid-1943, the U-boat threat was dwindling, so the plans were changed again to use a new active radar homing system from Western Electric with a 2,000 lb general-purpose (GP) bomb. This form of the Pelican entered testing in Summer 1944, and in tests flown from Naval Air Station New York, it hit its target ship two out of four drops.

Production versions (Bat) combined the original NBS airframe with a 1,000 lb GP bomb and the Pelican active radar system. [4] The guidance system was gyrostabilized with an autopilot supplied by Bendix Aviation, and the steerable tail elevator was powered by small wind-driven generators. Development of this version was supervised by the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance [4] in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with the NBS in charge of the overall development. Flight tests were conducted at the Naval Air Ordnance Test Station at Chincoteague Island, Virginia.

The antiship variant of the Bat (SWOD Mark 9 Model 0) eventually saw combat service beginning in April 1945 off Borneo, dropped by PB4Y Privateers [4] (one bomb mounted under each wing) at altitudes of 15,000 to 25,000 feet (4,600-7,600 m) at airspeeds of 140 to 210 knots (260-390 km/h). Several Japanese ships were sunk, including a destroyer at a range of 20 nmi (37 km). Several Bats were also fitted with modified radar systems (SWOD Mark 9 Model 1) and dropped on Japanese-held bridges in Burma and other land-based targets.

The overall wartime record of the Bat was somewhat disappointing, as the guidance system was easily confused by radar land clutter, an important factor when attacking enemy ships close to shore, especially in the Philippine and Indonesian archipelagos.

The Privateer was the primary launch platform for the Bat, but other aircraft were also modified to launch the weapon, including the F4U Corsair, SB2C Helldiver, and TBF Avenger. The primary post-WWII aircraft to carry the weapon was the P-2 Neptune.

Hugh Dryden won the Presidential Certificate of Merit for the development of the Bat.