lesofprimus
Brigadier General
Nice pics Micdrow....
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Thanks, it`s a very good and detailed link. I`d like to see something like that about Steinbock, giving a more complete picture, but to my knowledge it has been never seriously researched (ie. accurate sortie / loss / loss cause figures, bombs dropped, damage done). Not that if Steinbock on the whole would tell you a great lot about the He 177, which formed something like 10% of the varying force Peltz has commanded.
The RAF Bomber Command operations does not strike me as very different - apart from scale, far larger formations were used/were available - from Steinbock, don`t you agree? Some raids, like 3 December, wouldn`t even find the target, others a few days later would and hit it hard. Sometimes formations got aways with very low losses, at other times they were cought pants down by Flak and Fighters, like during the daylight Cologne raid which 'went very badly', being caught by the Doras of JG 26 IIRC.
Nice pics Micdrow....
At nighttime, the Lancs defensive guns were adequate.
After all, why do you need long range MG's when you couldn't even see your target.
But it did have a massive blindspot under the belly. Couldn't have used schrage musik on a B-17 (or 177 for that matter)
So add in a tunnel gun setup.
Heh Kurfürst
on the table in Appendix 2 in the Griel's and Dressel's book the specs to different protos and production machines
for all three He 177A-3 versions (/R1, /R2 and /R3) max speed is given as 480km/h, Cruising speed as 410km/h, that for A-5/R2 was 440 max and 380 cruising and A-5/R-7 as 520 and 440km/h but A-5/R-7 had much reduced armament. And in Eric Brown's Wings of the Luftwaffe He 177A-5 specs are given as following Max speed at max loaded weight 440km/h at 5700m, how it happened to be the same as that for A-5/R2 in Griel's and Dressel's book with same armament than given in Brown's book.
Browm gives also the speed at 80% max loaded weight as 487km/h at 5700m.
Griel's and Dressel's book gives 510km/h max speed for V9 and V14 ie for a couple prototypes.
And explanation for 565 km/h. From A. Price He 177 Profile.
After turning towards London at 17.000ft halfway between Wash and London...crews dropped bombs over London at 15500ft and after that continued their descent at appr. 600ft per min and by such means we able to keep up speeds of over 350mph during their withdrawal phase…The bombers crossed the French coast at Boulogne at an altitude of 2500ft.
So 565 km/h is a speed attained during A LONG SHALLOW DIVE. One can find the same also from Griel's and Dressel's book.
Those speed 600-650km/h were attained in a bit steeper dive, one can look that for ex. Price's Luftwaffe Handbook. I wonder why to post max speeds attained in dive without clearly stating that they were speed attained in dive.
If you sometimes bothered to read on subject on question, 4 t was a load for average service pilots,
"I will have to ignore you on this board from now on."
Oh, nice to hear that, much appraised!
And not surprising, I'm not mind
Between 1 Jan and 31 May '44 the Luftwaffe launched about 4,426 bomber sorties and lost 243 of these (to enemy action). In addition, 227 Jabo sorties were launched (10 losses) while the RAF put up at least 4,400 night fighter sorties to counter these operations during the five months.
As to whether it was worth it or not - depends entirely upon which side you a referencing for an answer. For the Luftwaffe it killed civilians and military personal alike (satisfying Hitler's call for vengence), it disrupted to a degree the British production base and diverted a/c otherwise useful in offensive operations away from such operations. For England it was a minor inconvenience that did well to sap the already over-taxed kampfwaffe in the build up for Overlord and at the same time diverting units away from the Russian and southern theatre of operations.