Any one interested in the activities of a Lancaster rear gunner could do a lot worse than to get hold of a copy of Wallace McIntosh's book "Gunning for the Enemy" published by Grub Street. Apart from being a bloody good read, it is also highly informative. I like to think of myself as being reasonably well informed on this subject, but even didn't know that air gunners were not only expected to correctly identify aircraft silhouettes, but also parts of them, too, such as wingtips, tailplanes etc. His descriptions of aerial combats with "streams of sparkling tracer passing through the ME-109's body and cascading earthwards", for example, have an almost lyrical quality about them. BG
seems odd ...why would they pass through , then cascade eathward ...in all the gun cam footage tracers seem to srtike and knock bits of metal off which flies back in the slipstream ...or when strikeing a tank or pillbox ,tracers cascade upward or outward in all directions ..they should punch straight through a 109 ...no?
Either because they lost so much velocity during the impact or they weren't tracers - just hot bits of metal coming off the impact. Or "cascading Earthward" could be poetic licence ...
I think it highly likely that event was by no means unusual, but was merely made more obvious by the particular circumstances. First of all there can be no doubt that tracers when fired at night are many times more visible than when fired in daylight. Secondly, the fire from the rear turret of a Lanc. would have been quite significant, inasmuch as we are talking of four .303' Brownings here. Add to that the fact that the gunner in question was one of the RAF's top air gunners,so thus it follows that he hit rate on enemy a/c would have been higher. Lastly, if one takes into account that many parts of most aircracft are only lightly skinned with thin aluminium or even fabric in some cases, then streams of m.g. fire would have on 1000's of occassions passed right through and the "cascaded to earth". Sure, if the bullet stream hits an engine block or some other solid part of the a/c, then the results would be different, but just how much of the make-up of an a/c is as solid as that ? - very little ! Cheers, BG
I know two people right off the bat who would love a copy (aside from me) My grandfather and my greatgrandfather whose brother was a tail gunner. Ironically (I guess anyways) when he was shot down, it was a German medic who did what he could to ease that pain before he died....and not only that but sent a letter to the family describing what had happened.
MY DADS UNCLE KIRK WAS A us army medic in france ,,a pow german medic somehow was corraled or voluteered to help kirk for several weeks ...he and the german medic became pals and kept in touch after the war ..kirk sending food parcels to the hungry germans family in the hard late 40s of post war europe ..the slim german sent kirk his heer army belt and buckle which read got mit unus with swastika ...i inherited it as a boy i was last able to wear it when i was about 14 years old ..the german boy must have had a 26 inch waist...a slime ball carpenter working on my house stole it out of my garage about 8 years ago....it still pisses me off to me off to no end...i do still have a huge nazi flag taken from hitlers mountain retreat by my moms uncle joe ..a four star aac general ,west point class with ike and brad ...but what can you do with a red swastika flag the size of bed sheet ...my wife wont let me hang it on the liveing room wall ..silly woman thinks its in poor taste...
...good idea ricky ...i wonder if they would donate $ 5000 to stay in the HITLER bedroom ..it worked for slick willy when he resided in d. c.
