During the mission of 15th October 1944, Little Miss Mischief was seriously damaged by flak on approach to the target, tearing open a large hole in the left waist and almost cutting the aircraft in two.



Following return to Bassingbourn the relatively undamaged front of the aircraft was joined with the rear portion of "Wallaroo Mark II" (42-31405, a B-17G of 303BG), which had crash landed on a non-combat flight on 7th August and been declared salvage. Parts of 13 other aircraft were also used in the repair.


This had a silver front and olive drab rear and flew another 29 missions before crashing landing on 4 April 1945. Repair work began, but the war ended in the following month.

Wednesdays photo.
A nice shot of a General Motors FM-2 Wildcat fighter on board USS Gambier Bay CVE-73 1 August 1944

This one is certainly a master piece of this great collection !

Thanks Pat.
This weekends photo's.
A couple of nice shots of Bell P-39Q's of the 82nd Recon Sqd, New Guinea 28 May 44.

This midweeks photo.
A Lockheed PV-1 Ventura being loaded with bombs,taken on the Aleutians, circa summer 1943.

This weekends photo.
A Japanese Navy Kawanishi H8K2 "Emily" patrol seaplane, flies close to the ocean while trying to escape from a VPB-117 PB4Y-1 patrol bomber, East of the Ryukyu is, (25 20'N, 130 30'E) on 31 October 1944. The PB4Y, flown by Lieutenant H.G. Box, shot this "Emily" down.

Weekend extra.
HMS Malcolm receiving the surrender of German submarine U-541 in the South Atlantic, west of Cape St. Vincent, Spain (position 36-20N, 11-30W) on 11 May 1945. Photographed from a PBY-5A Catalina of Patrol Bombing Squadron 63 (VPB-63), piloted by Lieutenant W.D. Ray, from Naval Air Station Port Lyautey, Morocco. Note the retrobomb anti-submarine rockets under the plane's wing, mounted to fire backwards.

By 1942, the U.S. Navy had developed working MAD (Magnetic Anomaly Detection) sets for use aboard anti-submarine aircraft. However, MAD had a very short range, and could effectively detect a submerged submarine only when the aircraft was flying more or less directly over it. But when a conventional depth charge would be dropped at that moment, the aircraft's forward motion would put it way ahead of the target. Therefore the so-called Retrorocket (a.k.a. "Retrobomb" or VAR - Vertical Antisubmarine Rocket) was developed by the NDRC's group at the California Institute of Technology as a derivative of the Mousetrap ASW rocket. The Retrorocket was a depth charge with a rocket motor pointing in the direction of flight. After the drop from the ASW aircraft, the motor rapidly decelerated the Retrorocket to zero forward airspeed so that it fell essentially straight down. The first air-drop of a Retrorocket from a PBY-5A Catalina occurred on 3 July 1942, making it the first ever launch of a rocket from an American combat aircraft.

Operational aircraft equipped for Retrorocket were fitted with multi-rail launchers, from which the rockets could be fired in groups to lay a rectangular pattern of depth charges into the water. Actual service tests began in December 1942, and in January, three new motors optimized for three different firing speeds were designed. The 7V6 for 330 km/h (205 mph), the 7V7 for 320 km/h (200 mph) and the 7V8 for 640 km/h (400 mph). In the designations, the first digit was the diameter in inches, the "V" stood for "Vertical", and the last digit was the modification number. Later, the TNT explosive was replaced by the more powerful "Torpex", creating the 7V11 through 7V13 rockets. This series became the standard Retrorockets in May 1943.

In Summer 1943, several U-boats were destroyed in the Atlantic by the MAD/Retrorocket combination. However, the system was only effective if the launching aircraft was flying relatively low (< 90 m (300 ft)), and when German U-boats began to fight attacking aircraft with guns on the surface, that tactic became increasingly dangerous. Therefore Retrorockets were gradually abandoned in the final months of the war.

This midweeks photo and a very detailed shot of PBY's at Naval Air Station NAS Corpus Christi Texas 12 March 1941.

This weekends photo.
P-51D 44-14647 5Q-A Pedunk of the 339th Fighter Group 504th Fighter Squadron sitting at Bassingbourn in early 1945

Great photos as always mate, especially the colour ones.