Extract
Scratch Hyuga!
Listening to the briefer's terse warning that the carrier/battleship Hyuga's flak batteries had recently been augmented by additional AA guns, Lt. (jg) H. Paul Brehm, (USNR) was relieved that at least the mission did not require a pre-dawn launch. Flying from a blacked-out carrier's deck at night in wartime without any visual references was the 23-yr-old pilot's idea of flying into an inkwell - the worst facet of carrier flying dread by every pilot.
As it was, taking out the mammoth 38,873-ton Japanese hybrid battleship/carrier Hyuga was in itself a daunting task. Brehm, a veteran of 56 combat missions, didn't need the additional hazard of a pre-dawn takeoff, especially when his 8-ton over-burdened SB2C-3 Helldiver, not so affectionately known as the "Beast," was further encumbered by asymmetrical wing loading thanks to a 630-lb auxiliary fuel tank under the right wing and a 250-lb fragmentation bomb under the left. With a 1000-lb armor-piercing bomb in the Beast's cavernous bomb bay, Brehm would have his hands full getting the unstable dive bomber into the air in the super-heated tropical humidity even at 0730 hours, the s...See the full content of this document
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