around your flanks, the reserves will be able to counter.
Their early missions included numerous mechanical turnbacks ("aborts") which hampered development of effective schemes. The flank bodyguard blocks and heads-off potential threats from the sides of the protective formation. The combat box was a tactical formation used by heavy (strategic) bombers of the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. This resulted in a 21-plane wedge-shaped configuration that was adopted by all groups on January 13, 1943, and remained standard through September 1943.
As missions grew larger in size, deeper in penetration, and faced increasingly effective defenders, the AAF recognized that more compact formations were needed and returned to the three-aircraft vee formation that had been standard before the war. The rule in the box formation is to provide the client with 360 degrees of protection at all times. In a tight formation, such as typically seen at an air show, aircraft may fly less than three feet (one meter) apart and must move in complete harmony, as if they are joined together.
and tactics that were organized by formations. Its defensive purpose was in massing the firepower of the bombers' guns, while offensively it concentrated the release of bombs on a target.
The radio operator’s equipment included a telegraph key to send Morse code messages over long distance.
[21] As with the six-box formation, the trailing elements were stacked downward from the high leader, and the Tail-end Charlie of the fourth box (Dog Ten) was still often referred to as "the Purple Heart position". With Box, you get a single place to manage, secure, share and govern all of the content for your internal and external collaboration and processes. Quick response time essential to the safety of the client. A third element of three bombers was added to the 18-plane box, placed in the most exposed squadron for additional support. [5], The practice of referring to a concentrated formation as a "box" was the result of diagramming formations in plan, profile and front elevation views, positioning each individual bomber in an invisible boxlike area. The B-24’s heating system was no better. The 96th Combat Bomb Wing further refined the formation during its bomb runs by shifting the lead squadron into the highest position, the second squadron overlapping it in trail and 150 ft (46 m) lower, and the third squadron in file behind the second and another 150 feet lower. CALL: Alerted crewman within the aircraft to switch to INTER.
It proved cumbersome to maneuver, as did a 36-plane alternative,[6] and left many bomber gunners with restricted fields of fire. Responsibilities & Position Categories.
[19], The evolution of Eighth Air Force formations, People of the American Civil War by state, Articles incorporating text from Wikipedia, http://books.google.com/books?id=LNCcrP6ANi8C&pg=PA144, https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Combat_box?oldid=4200893. DAYTON, Ohio -- Crippling the Nazi War Machine: USAAF Strategic Bombing in Europe exhibit in the WWII Gallery at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. The 54-plane wing combat box used by the Eighth's B-17s required both practice and discipline to maintain formation. It’s easy to see where the “tortoise” formation got its name.