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8 rifle caliber guns, pointed in 8 different directions was not the way to bring down any enemy aircraft. You have to put enough lead into the aircraft to actually cause damage and bring it down. When using rifle caliber machine guns, they need to be as concentrated as possible ... Even with heavy machine guns or cannon, you need to concentrate your fire into a relatively small area so you can cause enough damage to bring an aircraft down.
A stray bullet or 2 is not going to bring down a DO17, He111 or JU88.
The crank and rods are there, very robust pieces of metal, some of it forged steel, when you consider just a few inches above,( or below in the DB's ) is a cast aluminum block that just about no bullet would have any trouble punching a hole thru, to get at those same rods and crankshaft. I see no benefit in armoring a oil pan.yep, nothing important inside the crankcase
Unless somebody claims they are faked, in it are several pattern diagrams for the early Spitfires and I would imagine that similar diagrams exited for a variety of aircraft. One diagram shows the 75% and and 100% zones for each gun superimposed over a Heinkel 111 from the rear at 100, 200, 300 and 400yds range while using a 350 yd harmonization point.
split s is the faster way to get out of there... no?Early in the war the ME wouldn't have to even take the time to do a split-S, they could just slam the stick and throttle forward, and dive, the Spitfire or Hurricane couldn't follow without the engine cutting out.
the was still shivery in WWII, and yes, even from the Germans.All this talk of punching holes in engines seems to be missing out the fact that the squidgy bag of water wearing a flight suit sitting in the cockpit is the best thing to hit in a plane. A plane can escape with a hole in the radiator or engine it cant with a leaking pilot.
Of course the RAF soon deleted half of the .303 guns and substitued two 20mm Hispanos.
Question is, why? And why keep 4 of the .303s?
All this talk of punching holes in engines seems to be missing out the fact that the squidgy bag of water wearing a flight suit sitting in the cockpit is the best thing to hit in a plane. A plane can escape with a hole in the radiator or engine it cant with a leaking pilot.
With all the twisting and turning relative to each other, most pilots were probably satisfied with just getting the sights on anything enemy. Where the bullets hit , they hit.split s is the faster way to get out of there... no?
The best way to escape is do a manuever the opponent can't do or do as well, the Spitfire could do a roll and dive just as well
as the Me, it couldn't do a simple push over with out the engine cutting out , the Me 109 with fuel injection could.
the was still shivery in WWII, and yes, even from the Germans.
Because cannon shells go bang, and are liable to blow your enemy apart, but, once you've run out of them, it pays to have even some of the pea-sized .303" bullets as back-up. There was also nothing that could replace the outer .303", either; the .5" barrel was 18" longer than that of the .303", so would have stuck out in front of the leading edge, causing immense drag. And, no, you couldn't just slide them backwards, since 1) there wasn't room, and 2) the ammunition feeds must lie on the CofG, as near as possible, otherwise, as the ammunition is used up, the CofG can move out of limits, and make the aircraft unflyable.Of course the RAF soon deleted half of the .303 guns and substitued two 20mm Hispanos.
Question is, why? And why keep 4 of the .303s?
the was still shivery in WWII, and yes, even from the Germans.
He said that He'll close to within 150 yards, pull lead on the e/a nose and pull the trigger and run down the aircraft. bullets could hit the engine, cockpit, wingroot, etc. He also said that he wasn't a very good shot.I take it you mean chivalry. I doubt there was any chivalry in air warfare because if you go round trying not to kill people they will turn round and kill you. Hartmann the most succesful pilot talked about his technique as "put the nose of your plane in his cockpit and press the firing button". I doubt he was deliberately trying to go round killing people but he knew the best way to knock down a well armoured plane was to knock out the pilot.
Chivalry was a myth anyway even at its peak it never stopped chivalric knights going round killing, raping and pillaging they just sang flowery songs about it