Скачать или смотреть Why Gunners Started Aiming 3 Seconds Ahead—Proximity Fuses Destroyed Planes Pilots Never Saw Coming.

January fifth, nineteen forty-three, Lieutenant Commander Red Cochran stood on the aft deck of the USS Helena, watching a Japanese Aichi D3A dive bomber climb away from his ship after dropping its payload into the waters of Ironbottom Sound. The aircraft was already three thousand feet away and gaining altitude fast, its engine screaming as the pilot pushed for the safety of the cloud cover above Guadalcanal.

Cochran had maybe ten seconds to make a decision that would change naval warfare forever. His five-inch gun crews were already tracking the departing aircraft, but with conventional time-fused ammunition, hitting a fast-moving target at that range and altitude was nearly impossible. The bomber would be gone before his shells could reach the calculated detonation altitude, and even if the timing was perfect, the aircraft might be hundreds of feet away from the explosion.

But sitting in the magazine below Cochran's battery were crates of shells marked with red bands and stamped with the designation VT, meaning variable time. These were proximity-fused rounds, equipped with miniature radar sets that could sense when they passed near an aircraft and detonate automatically. The technology was so secret that using it required specific authorization, and duds that fell on land could compromise the entire program if Japanese engineers recovered them.
Cochran gave the order anyway. Three salvos, proximity-fused, fire for effect.

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