Don't know if this topic and link has been covered before but it has some interesting info on comparative effectiveness of aircraft guns. http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/WW2guneffect.htm
That was a little over my head. Which would be more effective, a .50 cal from a Browning M-2, of a 20mm round from, say, a ME-209? A side note. When you see trcers, there is 5x as much ammo flying around as tracer because they put 1 tracer per 5 rounds. Scary. Also. The range of a .50 cal firing from bomber at fighter would be important, but wouldn't it be equally/almost as important to consider that if you attack a B-17 from above and behind you would have 29 guns from a six bomber formation firing at you (and maybe an escort fighter or 2). I would have great difficulty flying into that much .50 cal to attack, especially if I knew planes and good pilots were in short supply as was the case for the Germans and Jappanese in the second half of the war. Thoughts?
ME-209? Never saw action....in any case it isn't the plane that matters, it's the gun and ammo. And a good 20mm like the Mauser MG 151/20 was approximately three times as effective as the .50. Attacking bomber formations was certainly nerve-wracking for the German fighter pilots, there was so much lead in the air that hits were bound to be scored (in fact, in the heat of the moment the bombers quite frequently shot each other up as well...). However, the record shows that while the fighters were frequently hit, they were much less frequently shot down. Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum
Although the USAAF bombers did claim around 10,000 German fighters shot down. Simply becasue whenever a German fighter looked to be shot down, all the gunners who had shot at it put in a claim!
Isn't the 10,000 figure supposed to be for the Liberator alone? As Ricky mentions in his post though, these are claims, not confirmed kills and certainly not actual losses. It is also worth mentioning that one tactic of German fighters was to approach the formation head on, launch rockets or fire cannon, then dive steeply away to escape the defensive gun fire. In these circumstances the gunner in the nose of a B-17 would probably have fired on the German fighter and seeing it break and dive steeply away may well assume that he'd hit and fatally damaged it, as might every other nose gunner in the 9 plane squadron, so that's potentially 9 claims for a fighter that may well not even have been hit by a single round! Now I'm not saying of course that every bomber gunner would file claims for every German fighter that broke off from an attack run, but that does just help illustrate why bomber claims tended to be exaggerated. I posted on a bomber thread a while back that actual losses were around 1% of claims. I've been able to go back over the source I read this in since (Although frustratingly I can't find it now!!!), and this was apparently far from the general rule. Post war checks of Luftwaffe records showed that for some missions the bomber's gunners did overclaim by this much, however this was only on a few missions , actual losses of Luftwaffe fighters to bomber gunners was usually between the 10-20% mark though. if you attack a B-17 from above and behind you would have 29 guns from a six bomber formation firing at you Only if every gunner that had you in their fire-arc concentrated on downing you alone, paranoid much? :lol: Don't forget that of those 29 guns 12 of them (Mid Upper Turret) also had the main responsibility for "all around-high" defence so may well be pointing the wrong way and a further 5 (Waist guns) were responsible for general beam defence and again may be engaging a different target (or just pointing a different way), so that's realistically up to 29 guns, but probably only around 12, and that's if you're attacking without your wingman, or any other fighters. The better option (To minimise defensive fire) was of course to attack head on, pre-war this was thought impossible due to the high closing speeds, however it was the preferred option of Luftwaffe fighters once one particular Geschwader proved it could work (JG1 I think, but that's entirely trusting my own faulty memory!).
Some extracts from 'Flying Guns – World War 2: Development of Aircraft Guns, Ammunition and Installations 1933-45' by Emmanuel Gustin and myself - details on my website :smok: "A second miscalculation was that the effectiveness of gunners manning defensive guns had been overestimated. On paper it had been tempting to assume that moving defensive guns (either manually operated flexible guns or guns mounted in turrets) were as accurate as fixed guns, if not more accurate, because they could be aimed at a target independent of the motion of the aircraft. In practice the gunners had to aim at small, rapidly moving targets with the assistance of often very primitive sights. The bombers rocked in the turbulence of a large formation, and the pilot often added to the instability of the gun platform by wiggling the controls, hoping to evade fire. The gunners spent half a day or more in a cold, draughty and incredibly noisy aircraft, wearing bulky and uncomfortable flying clothes in a cramped space. In many stations their field of view was limited, and the battle was extremely confusing. The operation of powered turrets frequently was unsatisfactory, while manually aimed guns were very inaccurate and of dubious value altogether. That in a large air battle as that of Schweinfurt most German fighters suffered some damage, but relatively few were shot down, indicates that the .50" guns lacked the destructive power to efficiently convert the few hits that could be expected, in the destruction of an enemy aircraft." and: "On combat operations, the American bombers in the ETO expended 26.3 million rounds of .50" ammunition in 1943, and 36.2 million in 1944; the wartime total was 72.3 million rounds. (In October 1943, the ammunition consumption reached a peak of 632,773 rounds per operational day.) That corresponds to nearly 12,000 rounds for every enemy aircraft claimed shot down by the bombers. Because, as we have seen above, these claims were often far higher than the actual German losses, a more realistic average would probably exceed 40,000 rounds for every destroyed German fighter." and: "In comparison, the American fighters expended 26.6 million .50" rounds and 262,189 20 mm rounds, and claimed the destruction of 5222 enemy aircraft in the air and 4250 on the ground. That corresponds to 2810 rounds per enemy aircraft claimed as destroyed. Because the fighter claims were usually much closer to reality, a very rough but reasonable estimate would be that a fighter was ten times more efficient as a gunnery platform than a bomber." Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum
that seems very true but what i whant to know is the bomber to enemy fighter losses ratio :bang: :evil:
Before or after the introduction of escort fighters for the bombers? Before, the bombers generally lost - very badly. Once the P-47s or P-51s were along it was the attacking fighters which took the hammering, but it was the escorts who were shooting them down, not the bombers. Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum
I don't know - I've just read that it was quite common, which you would expect when you have bombers in tight formation, all bristling with MGs which were all firing frantically at any fighter that appeared. TW
