Recent content by Frank Stewart

Standard American practice was to Zero .50 Caliber guns at 400 yards, not 500, but 500 would still give enough hits to down most single engine fighter planes. Do a google search for fighter gun zero pattern images, or something like that to find copies out of training manuals. The actual average...

Wing mounted guns were "Harmonized", or "Synchronized" such that each gun was pointed to put it's bullets under the Pipper at some very specific range! The Brits who fought the BoB with eight Rifle Caliber Machine Guns chose 200 yards for the most part, although there were other schemes, they...

The gun camera and ground films show the Navy planes strafing Jap Positions to fire all four guns in synchronized manner! It seems that the interval between shots at only 600 R/M is so small that the muzzle blasts seem to be synchronized for the entire burst. IIRC, there were four American...

It also had a raised cockpit like the Bearcat and that made it much better as a fighter although I do not know the exact performance details of the SeaFury, it is one of my favorite single radial engined planes just because of it's looks. I also like the P-51H because all things considered, it...

I also like the Mitsubishi J2M Raiden in good looking single engine planes. They also had a very nice twin or two, but my heart is always on the singles for the best looks in foreign planes! The P1Y2-S Shisei Kyokkō was easily the best looking of the Jap twins. Just my opinion.

The failure to recognize that there are two types of War, moral and immoral is beyond comprehension! A moral war is where you fight to defend and not for gain. An immoral war is an offensive one you start for the purpose of financial, or other gain. The two types are not equivalent and never...

It was also with the prevailing wind, IIRC! What a great bunch of arguments of the two plane's merits using just these two missions?

Yes! Absolutely true! Anything substantialy over ~8,000 pounds of bombs was an overload for the B-17! ( At that time, all bombs exceeded their "Nominal" listed weight.) But some missions did exceed that weight and by a very large margin! The most numerous in number of missions, of said "over...

Yes, larger loads were traded off for range, but all of this depends on the model and sub type. Most later B-17s had 34 stations on the internal racks, all of which could be used for smaller diameter bombs, like the 440 pound incendiary cluster. For instance, the 1,600 pound AP bomb was small...

New tid-bit. Some of the bombs were probably dropped in clusters of three. Those clusters of three will spread in the horizontal plane as we look at them much more than in the vertical plane. At this stage of the trajectory, the force of gravity is much more powerful than the air pressure...

The bombs are actually dropped in a "Salvo" by an intervalometer (sp?) I have seen a chart that states smaller bombs, like 100 pounders, 30 could be loaded. Measure the plane and bombs in the picture and you can tell they are 100 Lbs each. The spacing could be as little as 0.05 seconds between...

Hi again; The pic of the plane is 352 mm long on my monitor and the bomb is 19.6 and when you divide those two numbers and the length of the plane, the bombs are about 3.6' long and thus are 100 pounders. The picture only shows 27 bombs and thus there are still three inside. But if you really...

The best turn times and degrees per second figures will all be had at the slowest speed that the plane will pull the maximum G load the Pilot can stand! At that point in time few pilots could pull much more that four Gs for more than 5 seconds. The 1%ers could pull 6 or more Gs for as long as...

The P-51 could out roll the P-38 but the P-38 could out turn the smaller plane once established in the turn. This trick was a compliment6 of the maneuvering flaps, and, or the twin engines blowing over most of the wing at very low speeds WO prop torque causing the plane to stall. The later...

I started on a Kwacker 500 triple while I was stationed in Ethiopia and it was fast for the time. It would do an honest 125 according to the timer's stop watch. I did not know that it handled like crap until much later when I was stationed in Heidelberg FRG. I lived in Dias Bach and worked in...