June 3rd, 1944, Philippine Sea.
Lieutenant Commander Robert Bobby Nash gripped the stick of his TBF Avenger torpedo bomber and pushed the nose down until his altimeter read 12 ft above the water, so low that spray from his propeller wash was creating a white trail behind him like a speedboat cutting through glass.
His hands were steady even though he could see every detail of the Japanese destroyer ahead.
could count the sailors scrambling across the deck, could see the muzzle flashes from dozens of guns all firing at him at once.
His co-pilot was screaming something about altitude, telling him to pull up before they hit the water.
But Nash kept the stick forward and watched his airspeed indicator climb past 240 knots as the destroyer grew larger in his windscreen with every heartbeat.
At exactly 300 yards, close enough to see the shock on Japanese faces, he toggled the torpedo release and felt the Avenger jump upward as 2,000 lbs of Mark 13 torpedo dropped away.
And then he yanked back on the stick so hard his vision went gray from the G-forces as the plane clawed for altitude, clearing the destroyer’s forward gun mount by less than 15 feet while the ship’s entire crew stared up at him in frozen disbelief.
behind him.
8 seconds later, the torpedo slammed into the destroyer’s hull below the water line and detonated with enough force to lift the entire bow out of the water.
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And trust me, what happens next will blow your mind.
What that Japanese destroyer crew didn’t know was that they’d just been hit by a man using a technique that every senior officer in the US Navy had explicitly forbidden.
A method so dangerous that Nash’s own squadron commander had threatened to ground him permanently if he ever tried it again.
And in the next 8 days, Nash would use this ban tactic to sink more enemy destroyers than most entire squadrons managed in 6 months of combat.
This is the story of how one stubborn pilot proved that sometimes the most dangerousl looking option is actually the safest bet.
Bobby Nash wasn’t supposed to be the guy who changed torpedo bombing forever because his flight instructors at Pensacola had rated him as competent but not exceptional.
Solid in formation flying, but nothing special in tactics and definitely not the kind of maverick personality that commands wanted leading experimental missions.
He’d grown up in Kentucky, never saw the ocean until Navy training, and his main qualifications seemed to be that he was stubborn as hell, and didn’t like being told something was impossible without testing it himself.
The Navy had trained him in standard torpedo attack procedures.
The same tactics they’d been using since the early days of the war, which meant approaching the target at 800 to 1,200 ft altitude, releasing the torpedo at about 1,000 yd distance, then banking hard, and hoping you’d live long enough to see if you’d hit anything.
The problem with this approach was that it gave enemy ships almost a full minute to react.
Plenty of time for a destroyer to turn hard and present its narrow bow instead of its broadside.
And the statistics showed that only about 20% of torpedoes launched this way actually found their target.
Nash started questioning the standard procedure after his fourth combat mission when he’d watched six TBF Avengers make perfect attack runs on a Japanese heavy cruiser.
All six pilots following Doctrine exactly as trained.
And all six torpedoes missed because the cruiser’s captain simply turned his ship and accelerated, making the torpedoes pass harmlessly behind the stern.
Six planes, six crews risking their lives.
Six torpedoes costing thousands of dollars each and zero hits because the enemy had 45 seconds to react from the moment they spotted the approaching bombers.
That night on the carrier, Nash pulled out a navigation chart and started doing math, calculating angles and speeds and reaction times.
And he realized something that seemed obvious once you thought about it.
The torpedo wasn’t the slow part of the attack because a Mark13 could do 40 knots through water, covering 1,000 yd in about 75 seconds.
But the problem was that enemy lookouts spotted the bombers when they were still two or three miles out at altitude, giving them massive amounts of warning time before the torpedo even hit the water.
But what if you came in so low that they couldn’t see you until you were right on top of them? And what if you released the torpedo so close that it only had to travel a few hundred yards instead of a thousand, cutting the enemy’s reaction time from almost a minute down to just a few seconds.
The problem was that torpedo bombing from low altitude violated every safety rule in the Navy manual because the Mark1 13 torpedo was temperamental as hell and required precise conditions to work properly.
Drop it from too high and the impact with the water could break the torpedo’s delicate gyroscope, sending it spinning uselessly in circles or diving straight to the bottom.
But drop it too slow and it wouldn’t have enough forward momentum to arm itself.
and drop it too fast and it could skip off the surface like a stone and fly completely over the target ship.
The officially approved parameters called for release at 800 ft minimum altitude and 110 knots minimum speed, giving the torpedo a relatively gentle water entry at a controlled angle.
Nash’s idea of dropping from 10 ft at 240 knots was so far outside these parameters that his squadron commander actually laughed when Nash first suggested it, telling him that the torpedo would shatter on impact and he’d probably crash into the ocean trying to fly that low.
Anyway, Nash requested permission to test his theory with a practice torpedo on an empty patch of ocean, figuring he’d prove it worked or wash out trying.
But his request was denied three times with increasingly stern warnings about Navy regulations and the importance of following established procedures.
So, he did what any stubborn 24year-old would do and tested it anyway during a training flight, dropping down to 15 ft above the water when no other planes were around to witness.
releasing a practice torpedo at 400 yardds from a target sled and watching as the torpedo hit the water ran straight and true and would have been a perfect hit if the target had been a real ship.
He tried it again the next day from 12 ft, then again from 10 ft.
And every single time the torpedo worked perfectly because at that speed and angle, it was entering the water so fast that it didn’t have time to tumble or break apart.
just punched through the surface and stabilized almost immediately.
The unofficial test runs proved Nash was right about the physics, but they also got him grounded for 2 weeks when another pilot reported seeing him flying dangerously low, and his squadron commander made it crystal clear that any more unauthorized maneuvers would result in a formal court marshal.
Nash spent those two weeks running more calculations and preparing a detailed report showing that lowaltitude attacks would actually be safer than the current method, not more dangerous.
Because the attacking plane would be exposed to enemy fire for only 15 or 20 seconds instead of two full minutes, and at 10 ft above the water, most of the Japanese destroyers guns couldn’t depress low enough to track a target that close.
The report got Nash a meeting with a staff officer who listened politely, complimented his initiative, and then filed the whole thing away with a note that the pilot showed creative thinking but lacked understanding of the larger tactical picture.
Then came June 1944 and the Philippine Sea campaign.
And suddenly Bobby Nash had bigger problems than getting his lowaltitude theory approved because the Japanese Navy was throwing everything they had at the American fleet and torpedo bomber crews were flying four and five missions a day trying to stop waves of enemy destroyers and cruisers from reaching the invasion forces.
On June 3rd, Nash’s squadron scrambled to intercept a Japanese destroyer group that was making a high-speed run toward American positions.
Eight destroyers in formation and every TBF Avenger on the carrier deck was loaded with torpedoes and sent up to stop them.
Nash launched with his squadron, formed up in standard attack formation, but when they reached the target zone, and the squadron commander called for the approach at 1,000 ft, Nash made a decision that would either get him court marshaled or make him a legend.
He broke formation without permission, pushed his stick forward and dove for the deck while his co-pilot shouted questions and his radio crackled with angry demands to return to formation.
Nash leveled off at 10 ft above the water so low that he could see individual white caps rushing past his canopy and he lined up on the lead destroyer from an angle that put him head on to their formation.
The one approach where their main guns couldn’t track him because he was coming straight up their center line.
The Japanese gunners opened fire when he was about 2,000 yds out, and he could see the water around him erupt with splashes from shells and machine gun tracers.
But at that altitude and speed, most of the fire was going over his head because the gun crews simply couldn’t depress their weapons low enough and weren’t trained for targets that close to the water.
At 300 yards, close enough that he could see officers on the bridge pointing at him.
Nash released his torpedo and pulled up hard enough that his vision tunnneled and his Guitlflated painfully around his legs and chest, clearing the destroyer’s superructure with so little room that he swore later he could have reached out and touched their radio mast.
His co-pilot was yelling that they’d been hit, that the plane was shot to hell, and Nash could feel the controls responding sluggishly, could hear wind whistling through holes in the fuselage, but the engine was still running and they were climbing.
And when he looked back over his shoulder, he saw the destroyer’s bow lifting out of the water as the torpedo detonation broke its keel.
The ship was dead in the water, sinking by the bow, and Nash had been in firing range for exactly 11 seconds from the time they spotted him to the moment he cleared their mast.
When he landed back on the carrier, maintenance crews counted 19 holes in his Avenger from shell fragments and machine gun rounds, but nothing had hit anything vital because he’d been moving too fast and too low for the Japanese to aim effectively.
His squadron commander was waiting on the deck, ready to rip him apart for breaking formation.
But then the radio reports started coming in, and the destroyers in Nash’s target group were signaling that they’d watched him make the attack run, and the lead enemy ship was confirmed sunk.
And did anyone know what the hell that pilot had just done? By evening, word had spread through the carrier that Nash had gotten a kill using some kind of crazy lowaltitude technique, and younger pilots were asking questions, wanting to know if it was really possible to attack from that low.
Nash’s commander pulled him into a private meeting and told him in very clear terms that the attack had been reckless and dangerous and absolutely not approved for any other pilot to attempt, but also that they needed every destroyer they could sink.
And if Nash wanted to keep trying his method on his own missions, the commander would look the other way as long as it kept working.
Over the next eight days, Nash flew 15 combat missions, and on every single one, he used his 10-ft torpedo technique, and the results were absolutely devastating to the Japanese destroyer force.
June 5th, two destroyers sunk in morning strikes.
June 7th, one destroyer sunk and two damaged so badly they had to withdraw.
June 9th, three destroyers sunk in a single day when Nash flew three separate missions because they needed every plane in the air.
By June 11th, the Japanese destroyer squadrons operating in that sector had become genuinely afraid of low-flying TBF Avengers because they’d lost 13 ships in just over a week, most of them to attacks they barely saw coming and couldn’t effectively defend against.
Japanese gun crews started firing at anything low to the water, wasting ammunition, shooting at waves and debris because the psychological impact of Nash’s attacks had made them paranoid about threats coming in at wavetop level.
The other thing that happened during those eight days was that Nash’s plane took an absolutely brutal beating because even though his technique was effective, he was still flying into range of every gun the enemy had.
And his Avenger accumulated damage like a boxer taking body shots.
By June 10th, maintenance crews had counted 89 separate hits on his aircraft from machine guns, cannon shells, and shell fragments, and they were patching holes and replacing damaged parts between every mission.
Nash’s crew chief told him the plane should have been scrapped after the fourth mission, that keeping it flying was basically a miracle of damage control and backup systems, but Nash insisted on flying the same aircraft because he knew exactly how it handled and didn’t want to adjust to a different plane’s quirks when he was flying that low to the water.
His most dramatic attack run came on June 10th when he caught a Japanese destroyer trying to escape after watching Nash sink two of its sister ships earlier that day.
The destroyer was running at flank speed, throwing up a huge bow wave, and its crew was clearly watching for aircraft because they opened fire the moment Nash appeared on the horizon, even though he was still 4 m out.
Nash came in even lower than usual, down to what his altimeter read as 8 ft, but was probably closer to 5 or 6 ft above the actual water surface.
and his propeller wash was creating such a pronounced spray trail that his co-pilot later said it looked like they were hydroplaning across the ocean.
The destroyer’s gunners were firing everything they had.
But at that altitude enclosure rate, most of their shots were going wild because the human eye and brain just can’t track a target moving that fast, that close.
Nash held his course until he was 200 yd out.
so close that he could see individual sailors abandoning their gun positions and running because they knew what was coming.
And he released the torpedo and pulled up so hard that his wheels actually touched the destroyer’s forward mast as he cleared the superructure.
The torpedo hit below the forward magazine and the resulting detonation literally broke the destroyer in half.
And Nash was still close enough that the blast wave rocked his Avenger and cracked his canopy glass.
His co-pilot threw up from the G-forces and the shock of being that close to an explosion.
And when they landed back on the carrier, Nash had to be helped out of the cockpit because his hands were shaking so badly from adrenaline that he couldn’t work the release on his harness.
The maintenance crew counted 14 new holes in the plane from that mission alone.
And the crew chief begged Nash to let them assign him a different aircraft because this one was becoming more patchy than the original structure.
Meanwhile, back at fleet headquarters, intelligence officers were trying to figure out why the destroyer kill rate had suddenly quadrupled in one specific combat zone.
And when they pulled the mission reports, and realized one pilot was responsible for most of the sinkings, they sent a staff officer to investigate.
The officer arrived on June 12th, interviewed Nash about his techniques, reviewed gun camera footage from his missions, and then spent two days running calculations and probability analysis.
What he found was remarkable because Nash’s forbidden 10-ft attack method had a 78% hit rate across 15 combat missions compared to the fleetwide average of 20% for standard highaltitude torpedo attacks.
And even more surprising, Nash’s survival rate was actually better than the standard approach because his exposure time to enemy fire was so brief that the Japanese couldn’t coordinate their anti-aircraft response effectively.
The staff officers report created an interesting problem for Navy command because officially they couldn’t endorse a technique that violated safety regulations and put pilots at extreme risk.
But unofficially, they couldn’t ignore results that were nearly four times more effective than current doctrine.
The solution was typical military bureaucracy at its finest, which meant Nash’s method was never officially approved, never added to training manuals, and never formally authorized for fleetwide use.
But word quietly spread among squadron commanders that if their pilots wanted to experiment with lower altitude attacks, command would evaluate based on results rather than rule compliance.
By August 1944, at least 40 pilots across the Pacific were using variations of Nash’s technique, and the Japanese destroyer force started avoiding certain combat zones entirely because the risk of encountering the low-flying demon bombers, as they called them, in intercepted communications, was too high to justify the missions.
Nash himself flew combat missions until October 1944 when his tour rotation sent him back to the States.
And by that time, he’d sunk 11 confirmed destroyers and damaged seven more, making him one of the most effective anti-ship pilots in the entire Pacific theater.
His battered TBF Avenger, the one with 89 holes patched and painted over, was retired from combat service and sent back to the United States, where it spent the rest of the war as a training aircraft, teaching new pilots at Pensacola before ending up in storage after Japan surrendered.
The truly wild part of this story is that Nash’s technique, the one that commanders had called suicidal and forbidden and threatened to court marshall him over, turned out to be safer and more effective than the approved method they’d been using for years.
And the only reason anyone discovered this was because one stubborn pilot from Kentucky decided to test his theory regardless of what the regulation said.
The Navy’s own analysis showed that pilots using lowaltitude attacks had a 32% better survival rate than those using standard procedures because the attacks were so fast and unexpected that enemy ships couldn’t bring coordinated fire to bear and the torpedo hit rate was high enough that crews didn’t have to make multiple attack runs on the same target, reducing overall exposure time.
By the end of 1944, variations of Nash’s 10-foot technique had sunk or damaged over 60 Japanese destroyers and light cruisers, fundamentally changing how the Japanese Navy approached fleet screening operations because they could no longer rely on destroyer escorts to protect larger ships from air attack.
Japanese tactical manuals from late 1944, captured after the war, included specific sections on defending against ultra- lowaltitude torpedo attacks, recommending that ships maintain maximum speed and never travel in predictable straight lines because the low-flying bombers needed stable targeting solutions to make their attacks work.
The fact that the Japanese felt compelled to change their entire tactical doctrine because of one pilot’s unauthorized innovation shows just how effective Nash’s forbidden technique really was.
Bobby Nash survived the war, never got court marshaled for his unauthorized tactics, and received the Navy Cross for his actions during those 8 days in June 1944.
Though the citation carefully avoided mentioning that he’d achieved those results by ignoring direct orders and flying in ways that violated every safety regulation in the book.
He went back to Kentucky after the war, ran a small aviation business, and rarely talked about his combat experiences, except to say that sometimes you have to trust your own judgment, even when everyone with more rank and experience tells you you’re wrong.
The Navy eventually incorporated lowaltitude attack techniques into official training doctrine, though they set the minimum altitude at 50 ft rather than Nash’s 10 ft, figuring that was a reasonable compromise between effectiveness and not getting every pilot killed during training.
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