Twitter
Facebook
In the 1930s, as German rearmament moved into high gear, Western European countries, especially France, turned their eyes toward America to supplement their indigenous military aircraft.
One of the most popular types was the fast, twin engine, light bomber/attack plane, which was one of the few types of military aircraft where the U.S. was equal to the rest of the world.
In the autumn of 1937, the U.S. Army Air Corps had issued a requirement for a new twin engine bomber/attack aircraft, and four companies produced designs.
The Douglas Aircraft design team offered the Model 7, which was a sleek light bomber with a slender fuselage and only one pilot, had tricycle landing gear (a first for an American military aircraft) and a high-mounted wing. It was powered by a pair of 450 horsepower mounted engines.
When reports from the Spanish Civil War made it clear the Model 7 would be seriously underpowered, Douglas re-engined it with two 1,100 horsepower engines.
The new B-7 caught the eye of the French Purchasing Commission, and French pilots began test flying the aircraft in late 1938 with the approval of President Roosevelt. The tests were kept secret since the U.S. did not want to appear to be taking sides against the Germans, but in late January 1939 a B-7 with a French pilot on board crashed while practicing single engine maneuvers.
Despite the embarrassment, the French ordered 100 of the now named DB (Douglas Bomber)-7, then increased the order to 270 when the war began in September 1939.
The DB-7 carried a crew of two (pilot and gunner) and featured a solid nose with four French supplied machine guns and a single rear gun. A few also had a Plexiglas nose that carried a bombardier as a third crew member. The bomb load was about 1,400 pounds.
Sixty-four had arrived in France when the Germans invaded in May 1940, but in a few weeks they suffered a loss rate of more than 10 percent to German defenses before the survivors evacuated to North Africa.
The British Royal Air Force took over the rest of the French order, but the question was what to do with them? The DB-7 — renamed “Boston” by the RAF — was very easy to fly and had excellent performance, but by this time the RAF had stopped daylight bombing raids on Germany because of heavy losses, and the Boston, with its light defensive armament and short range (characteristics that were to haunt the Boston throughout its career), was clearly not the answer.
Given that, the RAF decided to use it as a night intruder. Bostons, renamed the “Havoc I,” went to six fighter command squadrons where they were painted black and fitted with flame-damper exhausts. Armed with four British .303-caliber nose guns and a load of small bombs, the Havocs orbited German night bomber bases and attacked the bombers as they took off and returned.
Some of the Havocs were equipped with primitive air-to-air radar and used as night fighters, and the glowing reports from the combat zone led the U.S. Army Air Corps to order two types of the Douglas aircraft. Designated the A-20 “Havoc,” one model was ordered with supercharged engines for high altitude bombing and one with normal engines for low level attack. They entered service in spring 1941 and, after initial tests, the USAAC was so impressed it ordered 999 more.
When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, the U.S. began to send the Russians A-20s in late 1941. But after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S. stopped deliveries and Soviet (and British) A-20s were given to American units, including, briefly, to the 86th Bomb Group (Light), the ancestor of the 86th Airlift Wing.
The A-20 came into its own in the Pacific theater for very low level ground and shipping attack, where the relatively light Japanese defenses meant handling, agility and heavy forward firing armament were the most important characteristics. It made a major contribution to the victory in the Battle Bismarck Sea and in a variety of other campaigns before it was replaced by the B-25.
In Europe, the RAF used the A-20 for short range, medium altitude daylight bombing with heavy fighter escort, and the U.S. 9th Air Force used them for the same type of missions. Still, despite its excellent flying characteristics, the A-20’s short range and light defensive armament led to its replacement by the B-25 Mitchell and the B-26 Marauder as they became available. Some A-20s were converted to radar-equipped P-70 night fighters, but the heavy radar made it too slow to catch modern German bombers.
Most of the late versions were sent to the Soviet Union, where the Soviets made major increases in its defensive armament and used if throughout the war. But many were also used by the Free French Air Force, which had ordered them originally, thus completing the circle.
Today, the A-20 is fondly remembered by RAF, Russian and French aviation historians, but almost forgotten in the U.S.
(For questions or comments, contact Dr. Michel at marshall.michel@ramstein.af.mil.)
