Recent content by Airbone Bunny

very interesting indeed

:salute:

During the first part of WWII it is true. Hard to shoot something down with just two 12.7 gun machines :cry: However, that changed with the last italian fighters. All the 5 series planes carried a very decent punch. My impression is that by 1943 italians fighters had reached (in the design...

I agree. Thanks a lot Flakhappy for so much valuable information :p

Hi Gruad and welcome; Another thing to consider is how well designed USAAF and RAF bomber were regarding crew safety and evacuation in the case of being shot down. I can't remember where (this same forum?) but I read somewhere that RAF bombers were awfully designed regarding crew evacuation...

For me, there are too many options available, so I will go for countries: Right now those are the cases in my mind: Poland. Getting the PZL 50 Jaztrab available in 1939. Even if the PZL50 was not the best in its category, my impression is that having a fast, well-armed, closed cockpit...

Whoever went to war in that plane was very, very brave or stupid... it looks like something just out from WWI :shock: What kind of bizarre universe the Armee de L'air was living in, that the Farman was still considered a first-line bomber in 1939? :x

No offense intended, but I am afraid this discussion lost focus. :| The original question was a specific "what if" on air war. A discussion on who would win the overall war in the long term simply seems confusing. Too many variables too consider. And with the "what if" mentality it is...

I understand that intially Schräge Musik attacks could be attributed to normal horizontal attacks. However, soon or later some information on Schräge Musik should start leaking: pictures from recon planes, testimony from surviving crews, reports from spies, analysis of enemy night fighters...

I don't know if those points have been mentioned before, but: 1) The Soviet Union had zero/almost zero strategic bombing capacity. USA had not just the B17 and B24, they had the B29 and better bombers soon coming. My impression is that an hyphotetical B29 campaign on Russia would have been...

I just realized something: you don't even need Schräge Musik in your fighter to attack a bomber from below. You can just make a normal attack from below using frontal fire :oops: That means that even without Schräge Musik, british bombers were already awfully vulnerable to attacks from...

My impression is that the B17 was tougher than the B24... however I also admit that I don't know how well statistics can back that claim up. Perhaps I am wrong but my understanding is that the ratio of losses/sorties is based on quantity of sorties, but says nothing about "quality" of...

Regarding British night bombing there is something that has always nagged me: why they reacted so poorly, or didn’t react at all, to the introduction of Schräge Musik cannons by German night fighters?. That puzzles me because from 1943-44 those Schräge Musik applications were widely used; you...

Interesting. That could be explained by any number of reasons, but one hypothesis could be that in the case of the P38 it was a bigger target than the smaller P51. And in the case of the P47 another hypothesis could be than the radial engine was a bigger frontal target and more vulnerable...

Thanks for the greetings :) In any case, what I understand is that the Zero was great at the beginning of the war. But from 43 on, its vulnerability to enemy fire was evident. Later versions of the Zero tried to address those deficiencies incorporating armour, self sealed tanks, etc.