Battle of Britain

[claidemore]

Colin1,
Frantisek is actually tied for 4th and 5th place for successes during BoB, with an Australian, Hughes. Urbanowicz would be in 11 to 15th spot. The two leading scorers for the RAF during the Battle were Eric Lock and Ginger Lacey.

Of course Urbanowicz and Frantisek had training in their countries of origin, but there is no way to determine if that was an asset or a hindrance. Given the limited success Poland had against the Luftwaffe (both Urbanowicz and the Czech born Frantisek flew with the Poles), I'd tend to think it didn't help much.

The .303 was not the wrong weapon, it was simply not the best weapon. 2000 downed German planes indicate that it was adequate to the task. Note that the Luftwaffe also changed weapons after the battle, going from 2 wing mounted MG-FF cannon to a single nose mounted one and eventually from 7.92 mgs to 13mm. Did they also have the wrong weapons? No, they just adapted as they learned lessons from combat experience. Ditto for the RAF.

You do realize that not every one of those 500 replacement pilots had only 10 hours on the type they were to fly? (Nobody ever got into the fight with only 10 hours solo) There were trained pilots in reserve, pilots in training, OTU instructors, and pilots transferred from FAA and Bomber Command as well. There were about 1100 trained fighter pilots on hand at the start of the battle, there were 550 to 650 Spitfires/Hurricanes ready for operations on any given day and they were turning out about 200 pilots a week. Here's a quote:

Although flying training was cut as the Battle progressed, it still took around nine months for a pilot to be trained and no-one would have been sent into battle without a minimum of over a hundred hours, and most much more than that. Joe Leigh, a young sergeant pilot who was posted to 64 Squadron in September 1940 is a case in point. Having joined the RAFVR in June 1939, he was called up at the outbreak of war and began his training in January, and was not posted to an Operational Training Unit until 31 August 1940. After two weeks' conversion onto Spitfires he joined 64 Squadron. It was only in this latter part of training – at the OTU – that training was cut significantly, and it is true that some pilots were entering the battle with as little as ten hours on Spitfires or Hurricanes. These were few, however. In practice, however, few squadron leaders sent new pilots into battle without raising those hours a bit more. Jimmy Corbin, for example, joined 66 Squadron on 28 August 1940, (having had 27 hours on Spitfires), but was not allowed to become an operational fighter pilot and after a week or so, was temporarily posted to 610 Squadron in north-east England. There, where the battle was quieter, he was given the chance to gather some all-important experience before rejoining 66 Squadron once more.

It's a good idea to read the stories of some of the pilots who actually took part in the Battle and read their accounts of the training they recieved. Relying on the interpretations of other researchers tends to compound their errors.

 

[Colin1]

I think it's a little unfair to conclude that because Poland fell, it can be deduced that their pilots' flight training 'didn't help much'; Poland has a land border with Germany and were as much destroyed by the advancing army as the Ju87s that knocked out her air force, mostly on the ground.
Two air forces separated by a natural phenomenon (the RAF, the Luftwaffe and the English Channel) would be seen to provide a more balanced look at the relative merits of the participants.

Polish pilots arriving in Britain prior to the battle were treated with derision by the Air Ministry, they generally felt that (all) the pilots coming in from the occupied nations would be unfamiliar with and unable to handle an advanced design like the Spitfire and Hurricane. The truth is that the Polish fighter school at Deblin was one of the most demanding flight training academies in the world at the time. Polish, Czech or French pilots didn't need 'RAF training', they just needed familiarisation as most were already the products of their own country's very capable systems.
On that point, they were coming to Britain looking for familiarisation on their second or even third type, unlike the novice British pilots who were still mastering their first and that's got to count for something.
Most of them couldn't understand how RAF fighters could fly almost wingtip to wingtip and still keep their eyes on the skies for German fighters - sounds like the reasoning of experience to me.

I beg to differ on the point of weapon selection; the Air Ministry rejected the .50 cal out of hand, describing it as 'neither fish nor fowl' - put simply, they could have endured the .50 cal whilst waiting for the Hispano to come good, instead of enduring the .303 cal whilst waiting for the same.

The nose-mounted cannon was deployed DURING the battle, not after it. It was prone to jamming, overheating and vibration in the E-3 and most were removed in the field or just not used. I don't believe the nose-mounted cannon saw another Bf109 model until the G-1 and even then it was still prone to vibration and overheating in the desert (G-1/Trop).

That's another way of looking at the available pilot pool but the fact is that Fighter Command went shopping around the Fleet Air Arm, Coastal Command, Army Cooperation Command etc precisely because they were short of properly trained and experienced pilots.

By reading the accounts of the actual pilots, presumably you mean

Lacey, Tuck, Bader, Hillary, Johnson, Golley, Scott, Dundas, Duncan-Smith and the odd foreign pilot eg Clostermann - I read them too and you're right, there's nothing like first-hand accounts but I put alot of store in the accounts of some researchers as well, most of whom have nothing to gain by twisting the truth.

 

[pinsog]

Colin1,
I would have to say that the RAF calling the 50 neither "fish nor fowl" would constitute a huge screwup on their part, just like the US arming the Sherman with a small gun. I believe both decisions cost lives.

Werner Molder, Germany's top scoring ace at the time, was shot up by a Spit over England. He was "badly hit in the radiator and fuel tank", and he was wounded in the leg but not " badly enough to cause serious blood loss". He was still able to make it back across the channel, wasn't hurt that badly and lived to shoot down many more British planes.

Don't you think a few 50's through the fuel tank or radiator would probably have destroyed his aircraft? A 50 through the leg would probably have killed him, or at least put him out of action for a while.

6 50's on US fighters was deemed VERY good firepower throughout the war whether it was shooting down fighters and bombers or strafing destroyers in the Pacific. Sure the 20mm is a great weapon, but the 50 was there, didn't jam like the early 20mm did and I believe would have caused more German losses, fewer RAF losses and shortened the battle.

 

[claidemore]

Hi Colin,

The Bf109F models had nose mounted cannon, MG151's, initially 15mm then 20mm.
Some Bf109D's had an engine mounted MG-FF but would not have seen use in the Battle. (I believe some were still being flown during the France campain)
AFAIK none of the Emils sported a Motorkanone, some people mistakenly assume the MGFF/M was motor mounted in late Emils, but I believe it was used only in wing installations until the 109 F-1.
If I'm wrong I'm sure Soren or Kurfurst will correct me.

Another reason for the RAF chosing to use the .303 was availability. They had immense stores of .303 ammo and good supplies of the guns that fired it, as well as the industry to manufacture more. Switching to the .50 would have required stockpiling ammo and importing guns or retooling to manufacture them, taking resources from other areas of the war effort.

Once again I suspect the popular IL2 flight sim has shaded many peoples opinion of the .303 Brownings. It's been a while since I flew that sim, but I remember being frustrated flying 8 or 12 gun Hurricanes against 109E4's and spraying entire ammo loads into them for little or no effect. This is due to the damage modelling of that game, and does not represent what could and did happen in real life.

I find it interesting that people percieve the .303 to be 'much' slower and lower powered than the 30-06. (not referring to Colin here, just people in general on this forum). Ironically, the 7.62 Nato round and the .303 British are quite close in performance, but the 7.62 (308 Win) is always touted as being "ballistically nearly the same" as the 30-06, while the venerable .303 is percieved as being anemic.

 

[pinsog]

Claidemore,
The 308 Winchester(7.62 NATO) is 100 feet per second slower than a 3006. The 303 is 300 feet per second slower, all shooting the same weight bullet. I have read of pilots in the BoB saying it took several hundred rounds to bring down a 109 and sometimes took several thousand to bring down either an Me110, He111 or Do17. The 303 was a weak cartridge. I wouldn't shoot an elk with it at 200 yards. The 8mm German round was basically identical to the 3006.

I agree that they mounted the 303 because they had a zillion rounds in inventory, the manufacturing was already setup and it was cheap, but that doesn't make it a good choice. If it was strictly a monetary decision, then the bean counters once again cost lives. In the US, they were too cheap to put a supercharger on the P39 or P40, and they were too cheap to test or defective torpedoes before WW2. Wonder how many lives that cost?

 

[Colin1]

Werner Molders, Germany's top scoring ace at the time, was shot up by a Spit over England. He was "badly hit in the radiator and fuel tank", and he was wounded in the leg but not " badly enough to cause serious blood loss". He was still able to make it back across the channel, wasn't hurt that badly and lived to shoot down many more British planes.

Don't you think a few 50's through the fuel tank or radiator would probably have destroyed his aircraft? A 50 through the leg would probably have killed him, or at least put him out of action for a while

Indeed he was
by Adolph Malan, the redoubtable South African, an experienced tactician and very capable fighter pilot

I see your point but still agree only cautiously
I can't seem to allow myself to think that any more than x2 .50 cals per wing would work; I don't think the Spitfire wing would accommodate a x3 or x4 gun installation and whereas the Hurricane could accommodate the same significantly better, I just don't think it could afford the performance penalty.

 

[Colin1]

Once again I suspect the popular IL2 flight sim has shaded many peoples opinion of the .303 Brownings. It's been a while since I flew that sim, but I remember being frustrated flying 8 or 12 gun Hurricanes against 109E4's and spraying entire ammo loads into them for little or no effect. This is due to the damage modelling of that game, and does not represent what could and did happen in real life

I need to get up to speed with some of these newer games.
I'm still living in the realm of Jane's World War II Fighters, a game whose good flight modelling characteristics are matched, unfortunately, by some pretty woeful ones eg chasing down a P38 in an Me262 - and watching it pull away from you. Also, no matter what plane you're in, if you're looking for height you always get caught, no matter by who or what.
Still, it's pretty entertaining for an old dog...

 

[renrich]

My suspicion is that the reason the Hurris and Spits fought the early part of the war with 303 British MGs was that both fighters were developed from 1935 on which was not that far removed from 1918 and WW1 when a fighter with 2-30cal MGs was considered heavily armed. Given the quantum leap in performance from the bi plane to the mono plane and the choice to put eight guns in the wings the British probably thought they were more than adequately armed. Actual combat experience proved them wrong but their decision was not much different than all the other countries that were building modern fighters. A lot of the mono plane fighters that fought WW2 started out in the 1930s armed with only two 30 cal nose mounted MGs.

 

[Captain Dunsel]

I wonder how much money the Brits had tied up in .303 guns and ammo. The bean counters may have been a significant factor, especially in those pre-war days when money was really short, but the comparative efficiencies of the different weapons wasn't yet known.

CD

 

[Colin1]

I wonder how much money the Brits had tied up in .303 guns and ammo. The bean counters may have been a significant factor, especially in those pre-war days when money was really short, but the comparative efficiencies of the different weapons wasn't yet known

It's a compelling argument and could well have been a factor in Air Ministry thinking when planning re-arming for the approaching new decade (the 40s). I do think Renrich made a good point about the leap from two machine guns mounted somewhere near the pilot to 8-gun fighter; the Air Ministry were likely convinced that in the Hurricane and Spitfire, they were looking at two heavily-armed war-winners.

I wouldn't say that money was really short pre-war, especially for the RAF; they had money lavished on equipment with the Chain Home Low network and the two new, monoplane, 8-gun fighters that were coming on strength.

The Air Ministry were only too aware of the relative merits of the .303, the .50 and the 20mm. The .50 was dismissed out of hand and if they were considering the 20mm at all (at that stage) then they'd still be figuring out a way of getting it to work in the wing of an aeroplane.

 

[parsifal]

Hi guys

Have not read all of this thread, but I did pick up on the use of rifle calibre weapons in British fighters.

I believe that Britain lagged behind other nations in the development of an effective and reliable 20mm calibre weapon in the vital 1930's. Experiements were not seriously undertaken until 1938 or so, and the early attempts produced guns that were prone to jam and otherwise unrelianble.

It was only after the adoption of the near standard 4 x 20mm Hispano Cannon configuration, built under licence, and based largely on French Air Force expererience, that the british developed an effective armament configuration. And it is significant that this happened pretty soon after the conclusion of the battle.

 

[Waynos]

I do believe that the Air Ministry appreciated that the higher speeds of the new warplanes appearing in the late 1930's meant shorter firing times for defending fighters, however they felt that this could be addressed by multiplying the number of guns, firstly to 4 in F.7/30 and ultimately to 12 in F.18/37 rather than increasing the calibre. However this penny DID drop well before the war started as later in the same year of 1937, all but one of the F.18/37 designs were requested to be redesigned with their battery of 12 .0303's replaced by a battery of 4 20mm Hispano's, I belive this was the first time an Air Ministry spec called for cannon armament.

Remember also that the spec for the Gloster Meteor (F.9/40) was issued in April 1940, even before the fall of France and that called for a 4 cannon Jet fighter so the idea of a myopic Air Ministry dragging its feet doesn't really carry any weight.

 

[renrich]

As mentioned earlier, the E wing of the Mark IX Spit, which may have been the most numerous mark of the Spit carried two 20mms and two 50 BMGs. That sounds like a very effective armament to me. Fairly early in the Corsair production 200 F4U1Cs with 4- 20mms were built but for some reason, when the F4U1D came out they reverted to the six 50 BMGs. Just reread my copy of "Duel of Eagles" by Peter Townsend and it is a good read but an interesting question arises. Townsend states that there were no serious shortages of fighter aircraft during the battle but replacements for the numerous experienced pilots killed and wounded became a serious problem. Pilots from Bomber Command, FAA and Army Cooperation and foreign pilots with language problems were pressed into service. Pilots fresh out of training were also thrown into the fight. However he relates on 28 August, a squadron of Defiants attacked He111s and were decimated by 109s. This was well into the crisis of the battle and I wonder why experienced pilots in Defiants were wasted instead of going into Hurricane or Spitfire squadrons. Another interesting part of the book explains his attack formation(he commanded a Hurri squadron) There were four sections of three AC each. His section of three, in line astern, was in the middle with two other sections one to his right and one to his left, all in line astern and the tail end charley section was behind the center section, in line astern. When they went in to attack they spread out into echelon right or left. Sounds like it would take a heck of a lot of training to be effective and it seems he usually lost his wingmen when things got mixed up. Another point is that the 50 gallon gasoline tank in front of the pilot had no armor to protect it and it appears to have not been self sealing. Many pilots were terribly burned.

 

[Glider]

We touched on this topic (0.303 to 20mm) and the problem had nothing to do with the decision process, what let everyone down was how long it took to make the 20mm reliable.

 

[Maximowitz]

Somewhere on my PC I've got some gun camera footage of a Spitfire engaging a Bf 110 during the BOB. I can assure you that the 303 armament was highly effective, it looks like someone got a cheese grater and shredded the Bf 110 into strips of aluminium.

So the answer is it wouldn't have changed a thing.

Here's the final score:

RAF 1

Luftwaffe 0

Now over to Bill for the weather...

 

[Colin1]

Somewhere on my PC I've got some gun camera footage of a Spitfire engaging a Bf 110 during the BOB.

I can assure you that the 303 armament was highly effective, it looks like someone got a cheese grater and shredded the Bf 110 into strips of aluminium

Can you get it up on the forum?

How long was he firing at the Bf110 for?

 

[Maximowitz]

Just a couple of bursts Colin. I'll see if I can find it, it's a very brief clip.

 

[Colin1]

...the E wing of the Mark IX Spit, which may have been the most numerous mark of the Spit carried two 20mms and two 50 BMGs. That sounds like a very effective armament to me...

The most numerous version of the Spitfire was the Mk V of which the most numerous version was the 'b' wing.

It was a very effective armament but I'm not sure what you're implying. The 'e' wing would have been strengthened (ie weight penalty on top of that of the heavier weapons) in order to get the new weapons combination on board and especially to get those .50s so far outboard; it would not be a simple matter to transfer a Mk IXe weapons payload into a Mk Ia airframe/powerplant, just because they're both Spitfires.

 

[fly boy]

i agree it wouldn't help much but that would be cool

 

[slaterat]

I believe the results of the BoB demonstrate that the armament of 8 x .303 was adequate for 1940, it was a huge step up from the previous RAF standard of 2 x .303 . RAF testing lead to the conclusion that for the equivelant weight of batteries , one based on a larger number of .303 guns would do more damage to an aluminum airframe than a battery of .50s. However the implementation of light armour and self sealing tanks from 1940 and onward reduced the effectivness of rifle calibre ammo in air warfare.

On a side note the .50 mgs on e wing Spitfires were carried inboard of the 20mm cannons.

Slaterat