Bailing out or Ditching at Sea: Which was Safer?

Conslaw said:

Are any of you aware of any statistics or analysis about whether it was safer to bail out or ditch at sea during WWII? I imagine that it might have varied with the aircraft and location. For example, the B-24 was known to have some especially bad characteristics when ditched, but still, is there a general rule with exceptions? How did the various services approach the issue? How common were flotation chambers in WWII aircraft?

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The Zero had a good flotation chamber system as shown in this design analysis from Aviation Magazine

EDIT Sorry will not attach but it is on site at Zeke 32, Design Analysis article

fubar57 said:

B-26B-1 & -26C

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I always think ditching in the trough of swells is a great idea . Living near the North Sea its very, very strange advice. If it is a 30 ft swell do you dive in it? lol

We were trained to land parallel to the swells. The water is very "hard".

B-29 ditching.

Wow! I wonder if that is considered a good ditching?

Cheers,
Biff

Considering the rough seas, it's a miracle anyone survived!

The B-29 has a crew of eleven...I did not see that many crewmen rescued

GrauGeist said:

Considering the rough seas, it's a miracle anyone survived!

The B-29 has a crew of eleven...I did not see that many crewmen rescued

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I wonder if some had bailed already. Agreed the sea was rough but it looked like it dropped onto the surface a bit as well (understand it was his first time, IE it was not a trained event).

GrauGeist said:

Considering the rough seas, it's a miracle anyone survived! The B-29 has a crew of eleven...I did not see that many crewmen rescued

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Considering that the nose is all "glass" that would almost certainly shatter or tear out of the frame when hitting the water at 100+mph and allow a solid wall of water into the forward crew compartment I would be amazed if anyone in there survived. As soon as the first panel let go the water would be coming in like a gigantic fire hose.

I did see that they were transporting an injured Captain over to the Army transport at the end of the film, which means he could have been in one of three positions:
Pilot, Co-pilot or Navigator.
The Bombardier was usually a 1Lt. or 2Lt., the rest of the crew was enlisted except for the Radarman, who could be either a Lt. or enlisted.

Going from ~100mph to 0 in a couple seconds, wow

pinehilljoe said:

Going from ~100mph to 0 in a couple seconds, wow

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Resp:
I couple of years ago I talked to a Marine aviator (he is still with us) who had to ditch an FM2 Wildcat in the Pacific (out of gas). He said the waves were fairly choppy, but he just a got as close to the water, pulled his nose up at the last moment, throttled back and set the Wildcat gently on a wave. He was surprised at how fast it sank (waves filled the cockpit), taking him with it. He managed to come to the surface fairly quickly via his inflatable life vest, but his raft attachment held him under the surface for an instant before the raft broke lose from the plane . . . forcing him to the surface seconds later.
It was almost two hours before a Navy PT boat picked him up. On his second tour in Jan 1945, he flew F4U-1D/FG-1Ds, where he shot down 2 kamikazies.

A-26 Ditching Tests using a 1/12 model (from a johnbr post)

Training Film "How To Ditch a B-24.''

fubar57 said:

From Spitfire XIV & XIX Pilots Notes...

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This bugged me in the movie Dunkirk, where the Spitfire pilot upon deciding he is going to ditch, closes his canopy, and nearly drowns when it jams! I know, it's a movie, but dammit, jettison that canopy like the book tells you to.

Admiral Beez said:

This bugged me in the movie Dunkirk, where the Spitfire pilot upon deciding he is going to ditch, closes his canopy, and nearly drowns when it jams! I know, it's a movie, but dammit, jettison that canopy like the book tells you to.

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Resp:
It bugged me too. If he wasn't going to ditch, he would have needed the canopy open to bail out. The other thing that bugged me is their inability to fire by leading (fire where the enemy would be).

Navalwarrior said:

The other thing that bugged me is their inability to fire by leading (fire where the enemy would be).

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Yes. That's the entire point of the Spitfire's Gyro gunsight. Gyro gunsight - Wikipedia

EDIT - they're using the earlier reflector gunsight, not a gyro site. Perhaps leading is more challenging at this early point of the war.

Admiral Beez said:

Yes. That's the entire point of the Spitfire's Gyro gunsight. Gyro gunsight - Wikipedia

EDIT - they're using the earlier reflector gunsight, not a gyro site. Perhaps leading is more challenging at this early point of the war.

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Resp:
I guess they didn't bird hunt as a kid. You can't hit a flying target w/o leading it.

Admiral Beez said:

This bugged me in the movie Dunkirk, where the Spitfire pilot upon deciding he is going to ditch, closes his canopy, and nearly drowns when it jams! I know, it's a movie, but dammit, jettison that canopy like the book tells you to.

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What really bugged me was his lack of grave concern when the Bf-109 was on his tail. He should have been guns jinking vice sort of watching during the lead poisoning event.

When it "appears" you are about to be gunned, move your aircraft out of plane with the adversary. Lose sight lose the fight. Go up blow up. All lessons written in blood...

Cheers,
Biff

Navalwarrior said:

Resp:
I guess they didn't bird hunt as a kid. You can't hit a flying target w/o leading it.

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Here's what the actual Spitfire pilot does with his reflector sight.

Yes, there was a lot of disappointment, on my part, with that movie.

BTW, the earlier Spitfires did not have a jettisonable canopy - the oval 'knock out' panel on the port side of the (then) flat sided canopy was intended to relieve the outside air pressure, so that the canopy could be slid back in flight. After the BoB, the crow bar was introduced (seen on the open cockpit door), to be used to force open the canopy if air pressure, or damage, prevented it from opening, a lesson hard learned due to losses of pilots, and even then, rather a late addition.
The jettison system eventually fitted, from the MkV onwards , was designed by Sqn. Ldr Martin (ret'd), who's company, later to become Martin Baker, was then involved with emergency equipment design, and at first, his proposal was almost dismissed.
It consisted of a cable, anchored through a rubber ball about the size of a golf ball, and mounted in the top arc of the canopy frame, next to the locking lever. The cable ran down either side of the front frame of the canopy and was fitted with pins at each end, which passed through holes in two retaining pins on a rod on each lower frame of the canopy, with the rods retaining the canopy in the runner rails,
By pulling smartly on the rubber ball, the pins were pulled free from the rods, thus freeing the canopy from the rails. If air pressure didn't blow away the canopy, a quick shove, and it would fly off. Th system was not unlike the rip cord on a parachute.

The reflector gunsight used at the period of the movie was the Barr and Stroud GM2, a basic, non-gyro sight, which was really just an illuminated improvement on the old 'ring and bead' ironsight. The first Gyro gunsight, developed at Farnborough, did see limited trial use during the BoB, but proved difficult to use, mainly due to it's very small viewing eyepiece, and it wasn't until mid to late 1943 that the Mk2 version, built by Ferranti in Edinburgh, entered service with the RAF and, after the design details were passed to America, it entered service with the USAAF, as the K-14, almost a year later.The basis of the design was still in use up until the 1960's., and is still used in some second line and COIN type aircraft today.
Before the introduction of the gyro sight, air to air gunnery was difficult, and the results quite poor, for the average fighter pilot, even after training in the complexities of 'aiming off' or 'leading' the target, especially as, at the ranges involved, to get a good 'line' on the target, it meant that the nose of one's own aircraft totally obscured the target aircraft.