Douglas A 20 Aircraft - “A-20 Havoc” does justice to an important yet largely forgotten warplane that became a masterpiece of aeronautical versatility. Lavishly illustrated with photos and detailed drawings, it covers the A-20's development from its inception until the delivery of the final production aircraft in September 1944. A curious but glaring omission, however, is any mention of the innumerable modifications made by the British and
Russians to adapt the A-20 to suit their own specialized operational requirements. The story from the Soviet Union alone could fill its own book. Nevertheless, this new volume provides a highly detailed examination of one of the most effective aircraft of WWII.
Douglas A 20 Aircraft
The A-20A was the first major production version for the USAAC. They were powered by 1,600 hp Wright R-2600-11 engines and were not turbocharged. Turbochargers were not included because of cooling difficulties and since the Havoc was intended to perform low and medium altitude missions, turbocharging was not required.
A-Havoc History
Weight was increased to 3,750 lbs (1,700 kg), self-sealing fuel tanks were installed and fuel capacity was 394 US gallons (1,500 liters). The planned armament consisted of four 0.30 caliber machine guns in side-mounted fuselage blisters instead of in the nose, twin 30s in an open dorsal position, and one 0.30 in the ventral position.
Provisions were made to mount aft-firing 30s in the engine nacelles triggered by a foot pedal by the pilot, but these were rarely installed.9 En 1937, l'Aviation Légère de l'armée de Terre américaine (United States Army Air Corps) souhaite se doter d'une puissance de feu accrue, à la fois en matière de bombardement au sol et d'appui.
Elle recherche également un appareil capable d'évoluer à haute altitude. Malgré les propositions de plusieurs entreprises et en particulier de la part de la Douglas Aircraft Company, dirigée à l'époque par Heinemann, who proposed a prototype named Model 7B.
Visibility for the Havoc was good from the cockpit and stall characteristics were considered docile and it handled very well during low flying operations. During evaluations, it was found that the Spitfire V could only keep up with it for only a few minutes before overheating, but the Bristol Beaufighter was said to be slightly faster.
Production ended on September 20, 1944 with a total of 7,098 Havocs built by Douglas and an additional 380 built by Boeing. By the time of V-E Day, all USAAF A-20 Havocs were replaced with A-26 Invaders and the British Bostons were replaced with de Havilland Mosquitoes.
The No. 22 Squadron of the Royal Australian Air Force operated 69 DB-7s and A-20s against Japan. They had a variety of different versions of the Havoc from the SAAF and the Netherlands, but to the Australians, they were all known as Bostons.
Operations began from Ward's Strip in Port Moresby on November 5, 1942. The squadron was reequipped with Bristol Beaufighters after suffering their worst loss of 13 Bostons on the ground after a Japanese raid at Morotai on November 23, 1944.
Flown in combat from Spain to China, the I-16 came to acquire a host of different nicknames. To Spanish Nationalists it was the Mosca (“Fly”) while their Fascist opponents called it the Rata (“Rat”). The Japanese who faced it in China and Mongolia dubbed it Abu ("Gadfly").
However, to Soviet pilots it was affectionately known as Ishak ("Little Donkey"). More than 10,000 were produced and although it was obsolete when Germany invaded Russia in June 1941, it was still in frontline service. Design work began in 1936 by Donald Douglas, Jack Northrop and Ed Heinemann as the Model 7A attack-bomber with a crew of two, a top speed of 250 mph, and a gross weight of 9,500 lbs.
It was powered by two 450 hp Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp Junior engines, but conditions were changing rapidly in 1937, due to events in the Chinese and Spanish wars. Looking to replace their Curtiss A-12s and Northrop A-17s, the US Army Air Corps (USAAC) issued the following requirements:3
All DB-7 versions were known to the British as the Boston. The British later converted their Bostons to radar equipped night-fighters and these were collectively known as Havoc Is. The USAAF referred to the plane as the A-20 Havoc, and the reconnaissance version as the F-3.
Il est engagé sur tous les théâtres d'opération de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, aussi bien dans le Pacifique qu'en Europe. Pendant la bataille de Normandie, il accueille nomentamente les équipages des forces françaises de l'escadrille 342 "Lorraine" qui dispersent un rideau de fumée entre les îles de Saint-Marcouf et la Pointe de Barfleur visant à masquer les navires alliés se dirigeant vers Utah
Beach. It was also known as the DB-7 (Douglas Bomber 7) and as the Boston or Ranger to the British. It was said to be easy to fly with good handling characteristics during takeoff and landing.
It represented an advance in flight control systems with light handling during high-speed flight, with no overbalance on small control inputs. The tricycle landing gear made takeoff, landing and ground handling very simple and pilots were able to fly it with a minimum of instructions.
It also provided a stable gun platform for night-fighter missions. Handling with one engine out was also said to be very satisfactory, although the prototype crashed while simulating an engine-out procedure.2 It was very durable and was able to withstand extreme battle damage and found a role in every combat theater of the war.
It was a "pilot's airplane". There is no shortage of books about airplanes. We review a lot of them in the pages of Aviation History, but here are a few more you may find of interest, with subject matter that ranges all over the world.
More than 3,600 havoc were sent to Russia under lend-lease, which was almost twice that sent to the British, and substantially more than the 1,962 aircraft delivered to the USAAF. The majority of the aircraft delivered to the Soviets were A-20s, but records indicate that 20 aircraft were DB-7Bs.
The 7A would have been obsolete upon delivery and it was revised. The new design would have a three man crew and power was increased with two 1,100 hp Pratt & Whitney R-1830C Twin Wasp engines.
The observer's compartment was eliminated and the bomb bay enlarged. The fuselage was narrowed and allowed no physical contact between the crew members. The aircraft was unique in that it could be built with two different nose configurations as an attack or bomber version.
The attack version had a solid nose designed to carry six 0.30 caliber machine guns with two 0.50 caliber machine guns in the nose. The bomber version nose was glazed and allowed space for a bombardier and bomb site which replaced the machine guns.
The new design was given the Douglas designation Model 7B.4 (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); La France se montre discrètement intéréssée et effectue ses propres essais avant de commander 100 unités, puis 270 après la déclaration de guerre contre l’Allemagne (seuls 64 appareils sont finalement livrés jusqu’à la capitulation en 1940).
L'armée française nomme cet appareil "DB-7" : il apparait rapidement comme un bombardier d'attacke maniable, fiable et très rapide, dont le pilotage s'apparente presque à celui d'un chasseur. Polyvalent, il permet de remplir différentes missions comme des bombardements de nuit ou des actions de chasse de jour : son baptême du feu se dévelo pendant la campagne de France en 1940.
Although there are no air-to-air beauty shots here, this compilation offers some close-up images of low-level fly-bys. When not depicting the historic military planes in flight, the book shows them in museum galleries or in pastoral scenes parked on emerald fields and under the orange glow of a rising sun.
The horizontally formatted paperback is a kind of visual catalog of Britain's surviving relics from a special period in aviation history, with a grateful acknowledgment to the preservationists and pilots who keep the machines presentable and, in some cases, flyable.
In the Western Desert and the Mediterranean, Bostons were flown by RAF Squadrons Nos. 13, 18, 55 and 114 and the Nos. 12 and 24 Squadrons of the South African Air Force (SAAF). They engaged in raids dubbed ``Boston Tea Parties'' and flew missions in Tunisia, Sicily and Italy.
Bostons were replaced with de Havilland Mosquitoes in 1946. When the Polikarpov I-16 first appeared in combat during the Spanish Civil War in 1936, many American authorities dismissed it as a copy of their Boeing P-26.
They could not have been more wrong. In fact, the I-16 was the first fighter to incorporate all the features that would define fighter design during World War II. It was a low-wing, cantilever monoplane with retractable landing gear, an enclosed cockpit and multiple machine guns.
In fact, when first flown in 1933, the I-16 was the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world. The Boston III (DB-7B) was the first batch to be ordered directly for the RAF. It was a pleasant surprise to the British crews who had been operating Bristol Blenheims.8 It was twice as powerful and carried twice the load and was a very strong reliable aircraft—it was also 80 mph faster.
If an engine was lost on takeoff, control was considered outstanding with one-engine performance, unlike the Lockheed P-38 Lightning and Martin B-26 Marauder which took much experience to maintain control on one engine. The final foreign recipient of the Havoc was the Fora Area Brasileira, which received 30 SAAF A20G to A-20K Havocs in 1944-45.
They saw very little service and one A-20K is on display at the Museu Aerospespacial in Brazil. At the end of the war, most Havocs were scrapped and by the early 1960s, only six complete airframes were known to be in existence.
Recently, more Havocs have been discovered at crash sites in Russia and the jungles of New Guinea and are undergoing restoration. Since the beginning of air warfare, no sustained aerial fight has elicited more historical commentary than the Battle of Britain, the pivotal clash between the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force that occurred in the summer and early fall of 1940. The interest is understandable.
The stakes were high, not just for the British homeland but also for Western democracy. In addition, like in a Hollywood script, repelling the intruders hinged on a relatively handful of daring pilots whom Winston Churchill famously labeled the “Few.”
The Douglas DB-7/A-20 Havoc was the most-produced attack bomber during World War II. A total of 7,478 DB-7/A-20s were built, most at Douglas, although 380 were built at the Boeing plant in Seattle, Wash. The Havoc was a mid-wing, twin-engine, three-place medium bomber that earned a reputation for getting its crews home, even when both crew and aircraft suffered crippling blows.
It was called the "Boston" when in service with England's Royal Air Force. Every time someone produces another book on the iconic air battle, the first question is: What more can you say? Photographer and vintage plane enthusiast Lee Chapman answers with his photos of the battle's aircraft types as they are displayed today in Britain.
He devotes chapters to each of the principal RAF fighters, the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane, while he also has chapters about trainers like the de Havilland Tiger Moth, 1930s biplanes like the Gloster Gladiator, liaison aircraft like the Westland Lysander and other fighters like the
Defiant Paul Boulton. Highly informative captions accompany the photos. The DB-7 is finally adopted by the American army and by the Angleterre (which recovers the aircraft devant être livre à la France; these exemplars are called “Boston” Mk I and Mk II).
Les Etats-Unis le surnomment “A-20” Havoc (ce qui signifie “dévastation” en anglais) et la firme Boeing, en plus de Douglas, entreprend également la production de ce bombardier et ce jusqu’en septembre 1944. After the United States entered the war, plans were made to produce an aircraft specifically as a night-fighter.
The Northrop P-61 would eventually fulfill this role, but until then, something else was needed to fill the gap. The Americans followed the British lead and designated the night-fighter version of the Havoc as the P-70, making it perhaps the only bomber to be converted to a fighter.6 The P-70 was equipped with the British AI Mk.IV radar and
four 20 mm canons mounted in a bathtub located in the bomb bay. Training was conducted in Orlando, Florida and crews used to perform mock low-altitude attacks on nearby Panama City and drop dummy bombs on trains.
The next morning, train crews would be puzzled to find fluorescent dye splattered atop the cars. 7 The first Havocs to perform bombing missions in the Pacific were operated by the 3rd and 89th Bombardment Group and began operations on August 3, 1942 from Port Moresby, New Guinea.
They were later joined by the 312th and 417th Bombardment Groups and by September 1944, the Fifth Air Force had a peak inventory of 370 Havocs. By the war's end, all three groups were operating with A-20Gs.
The majority of aircraft were used in low-level missions and some aircraft were equipped with three-cluster bazooka tubes under each wing. The first planes to go into service with the RAF were Havoc Is with the No.
23 Squadron during the winter of 1940-41 in night fighter roles. They were later joined with the No. 418 Squadron (RCAF) and the No. 605 Squadron with Boston IIIs. Other squadrons included the No. 25, No.
85 and No. 93. Turbinlite versions of the Havoc I, Havoc II and Boston III were operated by the Nos. 530 to 539 Squadrons. Any discussion of the most effective, versatile and widely used American combat aircraft of World War II would probably not include the Douglas A-20 Havoc.
That would be an unfortunate oversight because, while lacking the glamor of single-engine fighters or big multiengine bombers, the A-20 did, indeed, tick all the boxes. The Havoc was already in production before the war began in 1939 and was still in front-line service when it ended.
The U.S. Army Air Forces used it extensively and so did most of the other Allied air arms. Nearly half the Havocs produced went to the Soviet Union. Operated successfully from the Arctic to the equator, the Havoc was adapted to fulfill a multitude of roles, including bombing, ground attack, ground strafing, torpedo-dropping, photoreconnaissance, night interception and night intruder.
Researched from Russian sources, this authoritative new book concentrates mainly upon the innumerable versions of the ubiquitous I-16. However, it also describes the numerous other monoplanes created by Polikarpov prior to his death in 1944. This volume will undoubtedly become the primary source of information on both the legendary I-16 and its creator.
As a light-bomber, it was operated by the No. 88 Squadron in conjunction with Bristol Blenheim IVs. The Nos. 88 and 226 Squadrons were involved in the attempt to stop the "Channel Dash" by the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
The German ships made the passage safely because they were able to jam British radar delaying offensive movement by British aircraft.10 The A-20B was powered the same as the A model and had a modified Plexiglas nose.
Bomb racks were changed from a vertical to horizontal configuration and the bomb bay could house a 200 gallon (750 liters) fuel tank for ferrying purposes. Two 0.50 caliber machine guns were mounted in the forward fuselage, one 0.50 was placed in the open dorsal position and one 0.30 was mounted in the ventral position.
A field modification replaced the plastic nose with a solid nose, which housed four to six 0.50 caliber machine guns. 999 A-20Bs were built at the Douglas plant in Long Beach, California. Six A-20Bs were transferred to the US Navy and designated BD-2s.
Not being perfect, there were some complaints. The takeoff speed was 100 mph, so the airplane required a lot of runway, and the flaps operated too slowly and were not very effective making it difficult to land on grass airfields, leading to accidents caused by skidding.
Dual controls were located in the aft gunner's compartment, but were said to be of little use. The dual controls were eliminated on the A-20G. It entered production when, despite official neutrality in 1938, there was little doubt in the United States that the country should support its allies, Britain and France.
The French saw the secret bomber project at the Douglas Santa Monica, Calif., facility and ordered the first 107 DB-7s; they were to be delivered to the French Purchasing Commission at Santa Monica starting in October, with deliveries made by ship to Casablanca.
The French then ordered another 270 DB-7s. Before the fall of France in June 1940, half had been accepted, but many were still en route. Sixteen had been diverted to Belgium's Aviation Militaire. Jack Northrop and Ed Heinemann of Douglas Aircraft initiated the design of the A-20 in 1936. In 1937, the U.S.
The Army Air Corps issued a specification for a new twin-engine “attack” plane and Heinemann adapted the design to meet those new requirements. First flown on Oct. 26, 1938, the aircraft caught the attention of the Army Air Corps as well as the rapidly expanding French air force, which ordered it in February 1939, three months before the USAAC.
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