In an online discussion about aircraft bombloads in WW II, Brooks Rowlett sent: ...Lundstrom (The First Team), if I read him aright, says the 1000 lb bombs used by SBDs on ship attack missions were SAP. I don't know about the 500 lb normally carried on scout missions. The Japanese bomb allocation turns out to be quite interesting. B5Ns in ship attack role against maneuvering ships generally preferred torpedoes, of course. But for longer range (i.e. they couldn't fly the distance with a 1760 lb torpedo , but could carry one or two 250 kg bombs), or against moored targets they might employ 10,000 ft altitude drops of those bombs. It is clear from The Pearl Harbor Papers that not only did the larger land-based twin engine bombers (G3M [Nell], G4M [Betty]) practice formation drops on the moving target ship Settsu, but so did the smaller Kates. But John Lundstrom makes clear that in fact the Japanese had a preferred attack loadout: One third (nine a/c) of dive bomber group of 27 D3A's would carry 250 kg "land attack"/"ordinary" general (GP) fuzed instantaneously, or with a very short delay, while the other 18 aircraft would carry 250 kg SAP. The GP bombs were intended to suppress AA given hits or near misses (fragments flying across open AA mounts). The standard 1942 IJN D3A ship attack loadout seems to have been 1/3 GP, 2/3 SAP. And I am pretty sure that the USN ship attack loadout was 1000 lb SAP. You might see if there is anything in Stafford's The Big E on this, I remember he particularly mentions "the long 1000 lb ship-killers" in discussing Santa Cruz and the attack on Zuiho... BT Back to The Naval Sitrep #17 Table of Contents Back to Naval Sitrep List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Larry Bond and Clash of Arms. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com