| I had to look back to see what the question was about Adrian. I thought it was seafood.
The aircraft were modified by:
Removal of the lower gun turret
Installation of de-icers and anti-icers
Steel blast plates mounted on the fuselage around the upper turret
Removal of the liaison radio set
Installation of three additional fuel tanks and support mounts in the bomb bay, crawl way and lower turret area to increase fuel capacity from 646 to 1,141 U.S. gallons (2445 to 4319 litres)
Mock gun barrels installed in the tail cone, and
Replacement of their Norden bombsight with a makeshift aiming sight.
Two bombers also had cameras mounted to record the results of bombing.
On 1 April, the 16 modified bombers, their five-man crews and Army maintenance personnel were loaded onto the USS Hornet at Alameda. Each aircraft carried four specially-constructed 500-pound (225 kg) bombs. Three of these were high-explosive munitions, while the other was a bundle of incendiaries. The incendiaries were long tubes, wrapped together in order to be carried in the bomb bay, but designed to separate and scatter over a wide area after release. To decrease weight (and thus increase range), the bombers' armament was reduced. Each bomber launched with two .50-calibre (12.7 mm) machine guns in an upper turret and a .30-caliber (7.6 mm) machine gun in the nose. Two wooden, simulated gun barrels mounted in the tail cones were intended to discourage Japanese air attacks from that direction, and were cited afterward by Doolittle as being particularly effective.
In the picture below, Navy Capt. Marc A. Mitscher, skipper of the USS Hornet chats with Lt. Col. James Doolittle and the boys before takeoff. |