B-29 Losses

GregP said:

The B-29 regualrly cruised at 30,000 feet and could get to 33,600 feet with maximum bomb load. At these altitudes it cruised at 320 - 340 mph.

Most Japanese fighters of 1944 - 1945 had difficulty getting to 30,000+ feet and, if they got there, would have to accel;erate for quite awhile to get to 340 mph, aty which speed they could not even catch a B-29. I did an analysis of the lieky intercepts several years ago and concluded taht if a Japanese fighter were to make one head-on pass at a B-29 going 340 mph, and if the fighter could reach 380 mph, it would take over 35 minutes to turn around and catch the B-29, assuming it could even FIND the B-29 after the turn, and assuming it could maintain effective speed during the 180° turn to ctach the B-29.



That makes a running fight VERY improbable unless the Japanese fighter had the luxury of converging from the rear quarter, with only a 40 mph speed advantage. If so, the B-29's radar-aimed remote guns were very good at defence and any evasive action by the fighter would make for a long chase during which the fighter was more vulnerable to fire from the B-29as the B-29 was to fire from the fighter. With a 40 mph speed advantage, the approach to attack is very slow and predictable to the B-29 gunners, and the fighter appeared to be just hanging there making a great target.

While the Japnese did have a few fighter in the 400 mph+ category, they had the problem of getting to 30,000+ feet in time to make the intercept. Once they got to altitude, the engines were very hot from the extended climb and they didn't have a lot of fuel to make concerted attacks since they needed full ammunition if they were to be effectuive. The only way to lighten the aircraft for fighting at high altitude was to offload fuel, making most of the interceptors short-range aircraft.

Since we DID suffer some B-29 losses, it is apparent that while the Japanese were not completely ineffective. They were not overly effective either. One tactic, as noted above, was to send relatively few bombers from several directions, making attack a chancey operation since the bombers were not massed together.

By way of example, on the Hiroshima raid, there were only seven B-29;s in the entire raid. Three flew ahead as weather spotters. One flew to a staging area to stand by as needed. Two were photographic only and escorted the Enola Gay on the mission. So, in reality, the raid was a 3-plane raid with one or two other planes not in immediate contact with the raid aircraft around the area. They would have been difficult to stop and it would have been difficult to picik the dangerous aircraft out from the rest.

On conventional raids, a 4-plane or 6-plane raid with incendiary bombs would also have been difficult to find and stop, especially if the B-29's broke formation and scattered at 340 mph only to reform and continue some miles later. Another tactic was to fly as though intending to attack one target and turn 90° before the bomb run and attack a target that was not seemingly threatened by any radar track.

So perhaps the low losses of the B-29 Japanese raids were understandable. In Europe, much of the combat happened at 25,000 30,000 feet and the German fighters had another 40 - 50 mph on their Japanese counterparts, but the B-29's were 100 mph faster than the regular B-17 / B-24 / Lancaster attackers, so they would have been much harder targets for Luftwaffe fighters than the bomber employed were. Not saying the losses would have been comparably as low as over Japan, but they would have been much lower than happened in the real war to the real attackers.

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The B-29 regualrly cruised at 30,000 feet and could get to 33,600 feet with maximum bomb load. At these altitudes it cruised at 320 - 340 mph.

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GregP said:

Milosh, they flew at whatever load was required for the fueal and altitude they wanted to fly.

The procedure was not to go for max load, but to plan the mission for the altitude, speed, load, and range you wanted to fly to minimize the probability of an intercept.

A B-17 could haul about 20,000 pounds aloft, but could not get to Berlin and back with that load. So, they put in the ammunition, fuel and range numbers ... and came up with a 4,000 pound bomb load. The B-29 did no different. They flew high as often as possible because that minimized the Japanese reaction to the raid.

I don't need to read the link again, but thanks anyway. It is what it is and you are certainly entitled to your opinions, as am I. The pilots I have spoken with describe missions to Japan at anywhere from 22,000 to 32,000 feet depending on expected cloud cover and mission requirements. They cruised to the target area at about 220 mph and acceperated to a planned attack speed when in range of Japanese fighters. They stayed fast until they were out of Japanese fighter range and then slowed down and descended a bit to fly home.

Any speculation about the B-29 in the ETO is simply that, speculation ... except for the fact that they existed and were real assets thath could have been redpeloyed if desired. I am quite unfond of "what ifs," but I daresay it would have made an impact in the ETO, being capable of attacking about 100 mph faster than the actual heavy bombers used in the ETO. A 1000-plane raid with 20,000 pound bomb loads would have eliminated an area as a viable place to live.

At least, that is my opinion. Yours, like EPA mileage for a car, may vary and very probably does.

I KNEW someone would beg to differ on my chosen speeds by a little and it makes no difference to the outcome. The Fw 190 would have had a hard time with the B-29 regardless of slight differences in speed and that was the point ... not the exact time of intercept. Fw 190 performance fell off rapdily above 20,000 feet in the radial-powered versions and I doubt an Fw 190A could have caught a B-29 at all myself unless he was in exactly the right place at exatly the right time ... and he might very well have flown into a bullet stream from the B-29 with his slow closing speed.

The point is the situation would have different from that with the B-17's / B-24's/ Lancasters normally intercepted, and it would have been, regardless of assertions of slight speed differences. Reaction times would have been much shorter, and intercept from behind would have been hazardous due to relatively low closing speeds. if the Fw 190's had flown straight and level in trying to ntercept, don't you think they would have attracted the attention of the B-29's escorts?

Perhaps all the above is not quite true for the jets, but certainly from the pistons of all varities. And the jets never sortied very many at the same time. Don't even bring up Ta-152's. There were never enough to sortie more than about 25 at any time in history, and those were never all at the same place for any single mission ever, so thety would make no difference at all in the relative scheme of things. The B-29's, while a "what-if" in the ETO, actually existed and COULD have been sent to the ETO. The Ta-152's never existed in numbers and are a "what-if" without any possibility of being so except for the few operational planes.

In point of fact, the what-ifs are simply fiction. The reality is that the B-29 was difficult for a Japanese fighter to attack at high altitude with any degree of effectivity, and the real-life low loss rate shows it. All the ETO stuff is so much supposition and I will refrain from speculation any further on it unless there is realistic discussion without science fiction overtones.

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Siegfried said:

In the event of B-29's the Germans respond in some way. I would say they get the required technology into the air relatively quickly though at the expense in overall production as machine tools and skilled personel are reallocated.

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