Best Allied medium bomber 1942-1943 besides the Mosquito

[Schweik]

Sometimes prejudice will trump actual testing (and if testing is not done?)
Please note on the P-39 that the ammo for the under wing guns was held in the wing, pretty much where the .30 cal ammo went. Trying add an under wing pod to a P-40 or P-51 is going to be a lot harder or need a much bigger pod.

I don't think we were talking about adding gun pods to P40s or P51s, they already have multiple wing guns.

Russians tried under wing gun pods on the Mig-3 but the change in performance meant that the planes with pods often could not keep formation with the planes without pods. The Mig 3 had one synchronized 12.7mm machine gun (not through the hub) and two 7.62mm machine guns so if any modern (post I-16)

True but the MiG 3 was already being phased out as a front-line fighter (relegated increasingly to PVO and the Far East) by 1942. By 1943 almost the entire Soviet arsenal (of Russian made planes) was armed with 20mm nose cannon (LaGG -3, La 5, Yak 1b, Yak 7, Yak 9). The P-39 of course had either 20mm or 37mm.

as far as ace's comments go, I once had a rifle coach I knew well make this comment about Gary Anderson who used to tilt/cant his rifle to one side when shooting

People in many sports or endeavours will copy the equipment or style of most successful without fully understanding the effects of the equipment or the reason for the style.

Interesting philosophical observation but I think you are probably aware in saying that nose guns aren't more accurate than wing guns you are taking an outlier position. Not only most pilots, but most Air Force staff seemed to recognize this was the case, particularly for widely spread (as opposed to closely grouped) guns. It's not just a matter of the convergence point (and therefore estimating range etc.) but it's just the fact that each gun shoots bullets outward in a cone, and those cones diverge more and more.

I think for an outlier position you should do a little more to support your claim.

I would concede though, certainly in part this also has to do with the culture and training of the pilots. And that is a complex can of worms.

EDIT Also... gyrostabilized gunsight (I think available in 1944?) clearly made a big difference.

S

 

[Dimlee]

From Wiki......" Early testing demonstrated that, when fired from 500 m (1,640 ft), a mere 1.1% of 186 fired RS-82 hit a single tank and 3.7% hit a column of tanks. RS-132 accuracy was even worse, with no hits scored in 134 firings during one test. Combat accuracy was even worse, since the rockets were typically fired from even greater distances." To get eight hits you need to fire 727 rockets or about 90 planes worth. Somehow I am not impressed. Putting bigger warheads on the same motor gets you a bigger bang on target (or in the target area) but a bigger warhead means a slower terminal speed and more arched trajectory making it even harder to hit point targets at long ranges.
target effect, should they actually hit a tank, was poor in the case of the RS-82.

I am sceptic about RS effectiveness as well, especially against armour.
By the way this Wiki article, neither English nor Russian version, doesn't mention the aircraft. As far as I remember those tests were done with Il-2s flown by test pilots. We can assume that accuracy in combat conditions with less experienced pilots and (especially) fighters was worse.

 

[Schweik]

I am sceptic about RS effectiveness as well, especially against armour.
By the way this Wiki article, neither English nor Russian version, doesn't mention the aircraft. As far as I remember those tests were done with Il-2s flown by test pilots. We can assume that accuracy in combat conditions with less experienced pilots and (especially) fighters was worse.

I found this old post on the Ubisoft forum, which gives a bit more detail on the data from the wikis:

RS-82 (High Explosive Rocket)

The RS-82 was Russia's best early rocket and could be found on many of her aircraft, such as the LaGG-3 pictured above. It was available for use by aircraft in 1937, and it was first used in combat against the Japanese on August 20, 1939, by an experimental fighter group engaged over Nomonhan. With five I-16 "Ratas" carrying 4 rockets each, the Russians claimed the rockets destroyed 2 Japanese aircraft, although this has been widely discredited. While the air-to-air effectiveness of the RS-82 was questionable, the psychological impact was not: Japanese intelligence concluded the Russians were equipping their aircraft with 76mm guns, which had many Japanese aircraft designers scratching their heads.

Unlike the Katyusha, the RS-82 was not used during the Great Patriotic War until late 1941. This was because most of the Soviet air force was smashed during the German invasion, and because rockets were not sent to front line aviation units out of fear that the rockets would be captured. It wasn't until the German advance was slowed that major Russian rocket use began. The RS-82 had a high-explosive warhead and was good for destroying un-armored vehicles and small fortifications. Another variant with a shaped charge armor piercing warhead was also developed, named the BRS-82, and could penetrate 65mm of armor - but it had to impact at or near a 90 degree angle. The stats and weights of the two rockets are identical.

In a Russian study of rocket effectiveness vs. enemy armor, 182 rockets of the type RS-82 were fired at a stationary tank 500 meters away with only 7 hits, none of which caused any damage. The next test moved the firing distance forward to 300 meters and the target was a vehicle column. Accuracy improved slightly, up to 3.7%, but the only damage observed were direct hits on light tanks and half-tracks. Near misses of 1 meter or more did no damage to any armored or semi-armored vehicles.

RS-132 (High Explosive Rocket)
While the RS-82 was Russia's premier rocket early in the war, its power wasn't strong enough to knock out heavy fortifications and tanks. In 1942 the 132mm RS-132 rocket appeared, although it had been in existance since 1932 for experimental purposes, it wasn't available for regular use until after the war began. It was too heavy to be carried by many of the smaller fighter aircraft that could mount the RS-82, so this 132mm rocket was mostly carried by the IL-2 "Shturmovik" and other attack / bomber aircraft.

The RS-132 came in three varieties: the standard high explosive (RS), high explosive fragmentation (ROFS), and a shaped charge armor piercing version (BRS). The BRS-132 could penetrate 110mm - 160mm of armor, but had the same problems as other HEAT weapons, with a narrow impact angle needed to work properly.

In the same Russian study mentioned above, 182 of the type RS-132 rockets were launched against a similar stationary target at 500 meters range. No rockets hit the target. Again the launch range was decreased and the target became a column of vehicles. Against this column, at 200 meters range and with 134 launches, only 2 rockets found targets, both of which were medium tanks and both of which were deemed out of action. The results of these tests proved to the Soviet high command that rockets were useless in attacks against tanks, and it encouraged the development of PTAB bomblet cases - which proved much more effective.

Source: "Shturmovaiya aviaciya Krasnoy Armii". Petrov, Rastrenin.

So here is my take-away from this, assuming it's correct (maybe Russian speakers on the forum can check the source:

• 65mm penetration HEAT warhead penetration could kill most light and quite a few medium tanks in 1942 and most of 1943 (i.e. with side hits).
• 110-160mm penetration HEAT warhead from the RS 132 could kill I think any tank in 1942 or 1943, and probably until the end of the war with side or rear hits.
• Obviously rate of successful hits would be pretty low but with dozens or hundreds of sorties per day it would certainly add up.
• Also not sure if RS 132 was carried by fighters, maybe just Il2s
• The initial test at 500 meters range had poor results, but the 300 meter test was more successful. Anecdotally, Soviet fighter pilots, particularly I-153 pilots would shoot rockets from much closer than that.
  
• Maybe that is why they used I-153 so much for ground attack

S

 

[Shortround6]

I would be a bit more sympathetic to the fuselage gun theory if the main practitioners didn't immediately compromise the whole thing by using ammo of widely different ballistic properties out of the same guns let alone grouping guns of different calibers/ballistic properties in the nose and then claiming better accuracy.

Which is more accurate, a pair of .50 cal guns 10 ft apart but set to cross at 300yds or one .50 cal and one .30cal one foot apart and trying to hit a target 300yds away? target is moving 440fps. Bullets don't arrive at the same time.

The famous German quote is when they changed from a pair of guns in the wings with 55-60 rounds firing at about 530rpm (or less) to a gun through the prop with 200 rounds firing at 700rpm. The other change was the wing guns fired shells at 585m/s (normal shells but include tracer) to 700m/s (mine shell) while the through the prop gun fired shells with a 960m/s velocity (HE), making it much easier to hit with.
Germans then changed to a gun firing heaver shells but at almost the same rate of fire, with lower velocity. Then they stuck a similar cannon under each wing to go bomber busting. Please note than a number of the 5 gun 109s wound up in North Africa and Russia and were not reserved for use against the 8th AIr Force only.

Russians have almost the same problem. While at close range the 20mm is 70-100m/s slower than the 12.7mm the further from the muzzle you get the longer it takes for the 20mm shell to get there due to it's short, stubby shape compared to the 12,7mm projectiles.

Machine guns do fire in cones but the cone can be much smaller than many people realize if the gun is properly set up and properly mounted. Please remember the earlier example. 1 degree is roughly 5 ft at 100yds (it isn't but this keeps the math simple) and 10 feet at 200yds. A good shooting gun rigidly mounted in a wing is going to have to have the wing flex/twist by one full degree to miss by 15 ft at 300 yds. I could be way wrong, but at what point (how much twist) do you have to have to get into aileron reversal? Forces from Aleron twist wing enough to wind up having the opposite effect? and please note that guns are not at the tips but are at pretty much mid span (Spitfire and few other excepted?).

Some countries deliberately set up their guns to shoot "loose" or large cones to increase dispersion but this was, again, to try to make up for poor marksmanship.
Deliberately setting guns up to shoot shoot big cones and then pointing the cones in different directions and then blaming the results on "wing mounting" seems a bit disingenuous to me.

 

[Schweik]

Some countries deliberately set up their guns to shoot "loose" or large cones to increase dispersion but this was, again, to try to make up for poor marksmanship.
Deliberately setting guns up to shoot shoot big cones and then pointing the cones in different directions and then blaming the results on "wing mounting" seems a bit disingenuous to me.

Yeah I guess but who are you debating with? Armorers from 1942? You would need a time machine for that showdown.

If you are arguing that wing guns could have been more accurate than nose guns if they had done A,B,C etc., then my answer is "maybe?"

I do think that all things being equal, wings without guns perform a bit better than wings with guns. I can tell you that based on Shores MAW III, Bf 109G-6 took more losses in the Med than G-2 or F-4

S

 

[Dimlee]

I have no idea of the total production numbers. but only 240 of the Sh-37 gun were supposed to have been built including the ones on IL-2s.
.

I think we can forget about Soviet 37mm cannon of any type as a "tank killer".
Sh-37(ShFK-37): 10 IL-2s, 75 flights. Pilots claimed as destroyed: 2 tanks, 4 aircraft on airfields, about 50 trucks, 1 ammo depot, 2 flak batteries (type unknown).
Ш-37 (ШФК-37) 37-мм авиационная пушка
NS-37 was better. But accuracy against ground targets during the tests was just 2.98%. Not much better then RS rockets discussed earlier. And no hits at all achieved in 57% of test flights. Production of NS-37 equipped IL-2s lasted for just several months with around 1,000 a/c produced.
НС-37, Н-37 37-мм авиационная пушка

 

[Shortround6]

So here is my take-away from this, assuming it's correct (maybe Russian speakers on the forum can check the source:

• 65mm penetration HEAT warhead penetration could kill most light and quite a few medium tanks in 1942 and most of 1943 (i.e. with side hits).
• 110-160mm penetration HEAT warhead from the RS 132 could kill I think any tank in 1942 or 1943, and probably until the end of the war with side or rear hits.
• Obviously rate of successful hits would be pretty low but with dozens or hundreds of sorties per day it would certainly add up.
• Also not sure if RS 132 was carried by fighters, maybe just Il2s
• The initial test at 500 meters range had poor results, but the 300 meter test was more successful. Anecdotally, Soviet fighter pilots, particularly I-153 pilots would shoot rockets from much closer than that.
  
• Maybe that is why they used I-153 so much for ground attack

Thank you for that.

Now as far as killing a tank goes. Just making a hole in the armor doesn't kill the tank. While extra, unexpected ventilation is always a bit disconcerting to the crew shaped charges always needed a bit of "overkill" in order to knock out the tank or kill, wound the crew.
AN AP projectile that penetrates an amour plate not only has itself but a large amount of the metal from the hole flying around inside the tank. even a projectile that gets stuck in the hole may cause some damage as illustrated by the desk top toy.

Shaped charges work a bit like a very high speed cutting torch, and the hole commonly gets smaller the deeper it goes. You may make a hole 65mm deep but the hole may only be a few millimeters across and the amount of hot metal and flame that penetrates the tank might not do significant damage. Against 30-40mm plate you get a lot more metal and hot gases blown into the tank and the chances of damage and casualties goes way up.

You also have to have the right rockets on the plane. Shaped charge rockets make a nice bang but they usually have crappy fragmentation for taking out personal in the open or in concealment. So you load up with what you hope is the right rocket for the target that will be there when you arrive.

Normal fighter installation was 6 rockets, not 8.

Anecdotes are usually going to be from successful operations. People don't usually record "Ivan and Igor fired from 800 meters while dodging lots of tracer from ground guns but missed."

 

[Shortround6]

I do think that all things being equal, wings without guns perform a bit better than wings with guns. I can tell you that based on Shores MAW III, Bf 109G-6 took more losses in the Med than G-2 or F-4

The 109 did perform better without the wingguns. But then a pair of 20mm guns with 135 rpg was a heavy load to hang on a 109, 215 kg

I Believe the under guns started on the F-4s and not all G-6s had them either?

 

[Dimlee]

Soviets, apart from a handful of 4-cannon Hurricanes and 8-HMG P-47s received, never have had opportunity to fly a real performer with 4 cannons, or with 6-8 HMGs. So it is a thing of what one has more experience with, and that is a 'central battery'. I doubt that armament of two cannons, even if those were wing-mounted, was a thing that disqualified the Spitfires in Soviet eyes. The same Spitfires that Stalin was clamoring for.

Was 4 cannon Hurricane a performer?
My opinion is the same: experience did matter and Soviet pilots had too little of it outside of their domestic production. Memoirs of aviation designers and politicians mentioned many "central vs wing" debates at various levels up to Stalin's office. But they were theoretical and were based sometimes on little better than anecdotal evidence as newspaper articles about BoB.

By the way, P-47-D-10 was proclaimed by Soviet test pilot (experienced one and iconic figure, kind of Winkle Brown) Mark Gallay as: "...not a fighter. Steady, good cockpit, comfortable but - not a fighter". Different experience, different doctrine, tactics, etc.

 

[Schweik]

Thank you for that.

Now as far as killing a tank goes. Just making a hole in the armor doesn't kill the tank. While extra, unexpected ventilation is always a bit disconcerting to the crew shaped charges always needed a bit of "overkill" in order to knock out the tank or kill, wound the crew.
AN AP projectile that penetrates an amour plate not only has itself but a large amount of the metal from the hole flying around inside the tank. (snip)
Shaped charges work a bit like a very high speed cutting torch, and the hole commonly gets smaller the deeper it goes. You may make a hole 65mm deep but the hole may only be a few millimeters across and the amount of hot metal and flame that penetrates the tank might not do significant damage. Against 30-40mm plate you get a lot more metal and hot gases blown into the tank and the chances of damage and casualties goes way up.

Yes I'm aware of all that. Unfortunately for the tank crew, tanks were full of fuel, main gun ammo, machine gun ammo, various other flammable fluids and so on, which could often fairly easily be ignited or cooked off. Penetration certainly didn't guarantee a K/O (in my numerically flawed analysis I assumed 20% of hits might disable or destroy, though that is just a guess) but being hit by salvoes of rockets with 65mm penetration, or whatever the regular AP warhead could do, was bad news for a halftrack or truck, or even (I would suggest) a Pz II or Pz III, Marder etc. Most German armored vehicles in other words.

You also have to have the right rockets on the plane. Shaped charge rockets make a nice bang but they usually have crappy fragmentation for taking out personal in the open or in concealment. So you load up with what you hope is the right rocket for the target that will be there when you arrive.

They were often sent out specifically to destroy tanks.

Normal fighter installation was 6 rockets, not 8.

I am not sure that is the case - do you have some kind of source? It's hard to find much about standard practices in the VVS but you can find images of both 6 or 8 rockets on various fighter aircraft. I suspect it varied by squadron.

Anecdotes are usually going to be from successful operations. People don't usually record "Ivan and Igor fired from 800 meters while dodging lots of tracer from ground guns but missed."

There are however day to day logs of actions, which are now increasingly compared to records from both sides such as in Black Cross / Red Star series and others. So we don't have to just speculate. We know in spite of how some people seem to think they never lost a battle, the Germans in fact did lose a very large number of armored vehicles in Russia.

S

 

[Dimlee]

• 65mm penetration HEAT warhead penetration could kill most light and quite a few medium tanks in 1942 and most of 1943 (i.e. with side hits).
• 110-160mm penetration HEAT warhead from the RS 132 could kill I think any tank in 1942 or 1943, and probably until the end of the war with side or rear hits.
• Obviously rate of successful hits would be pretty low but with dozens or hundreds of sorties per day it would certainly add up.
• Also not sure if RS 132 was carried by fighters, maybe just Il2s
• The initial test at 500 meters range had poor results, but the 300 meter test was more successful. Anecdotally, Soviet fighter pilots, particularly I-153 pilots would shoot rockets from much closer than that.
  
• Maybe that is why they used I-153 so much for ground attack

S

I tend to agree with everything but just to add to this:
"110-160mm penetration HEAT warhead from the RS 132 could kill I think any tank in 1942 or 1943, and probably until the end of the war with side or rear hits."
under the most favourable conditions as proper distance and angle of attack and very high qualification of the IL-2 pilot with nerves of steel.

 

[Schweik]

Well, like an "old man veteran" of 22 years old who had survived say 3 months on the battlefield probably pretty good by then

S

 

[Schweik]

By the way, this is off topic but in some other thread we had been debating if it would have made sense for the Germans to switch to '5 Series' Italian fighters, which was dismissed on the basis that they were slower than Fw 190 and not as good. Just read this on the G.55 wiki:

"The Fiat G.56 was basically a Fiat G.55 with a larger German Daimler-Benz DB 603 engine. Two prototypes were built, flight tests starting in March 1944.[12] On 30 March, Commander Valentino Cus reached speeds of 690/700 km/h (430/440 mph).[19] Official maximum speed was 685 km/h (426 mph) and the aircraft was armed with three 20 mm MG 151/20 cannon, one firing through the propeller hub, the other two installed in the wings.[20] Performance was excellent, the aircraft proving superior to both the Bf 109K and Bf 109G and Fw 190A, outmaneuvering [3] all types in testing. Production, however, was not allowed by the German authorities.[12]"

The main reason they didn't do it apparently was it took 3 times as much production time as a Bf 109G whatever, and weren't sure if they could streamline the production line. Then I guess they got distracted by the collapse of their entire universe...

But I think it's a inch the G.55/56 could have helped them. Not as revolutionary as an Me 262 but it was at least a significant incremental improvement over what they had.

S

 

[Greg Boeser]

This thread got hijacked way back.
We're supposed to be discussing MEDIUM BOMBERS!!!

 

[J.A.W.]

Yeah I guess but who are you debating with? Armorers from 1942? You would need a time machine for that showdown.

If you are arguing that wing guns could have been more accurate than nose guns if they had done A,B,C etc., then my answer is "maybe?"

I do think that all things being equal, wings without guns perform a bit better than wings with guns. I can tell you that based on Shores MAW III, Bf 109G-6 took more losses in the Med than G-2 or F-4

S

Wings without guns would help the Bf109 "perform better" - survive in combat - against aggressive enemy fighters,
- but not in attacking bombers or other larger, slower moving targets requiring more shooting time to destroy,
while the 109 is itself, a target of defensive fire - for a longer period.

Also, having multiple wing guns allows for some gun stoppages, yet keeping a fair firing capability,
- if your sole main cannon jams, then the pilot of that 109 - is in a 'jam', too..

 

[Schweik]

Wings without guns would help the Bf109 "perform better" - survive in combat - against aggressive enemy fighters,
- but not in attacking bombers or other larger, slower moving targets requiring more shooting time to destroy,
while the 109 is itself, a target of defensive fire - for a longer period.

Both very good points. I definitely agree multiple guns make a lot of sense when attacking heavy bombers, because more guns can more quickly silence defensive gunners. And on say, a B-24 or a B-17, there are a lot of those! Or alternatively a fusilade of four cannons can tear off a wing or blow up an engine or something in a flash and then you can dive away.

And hell, if you can 'afford' it in terms of the weight and the drag, more guns is almost always better.

Multiple guns also makes sense for a 'strafer' like those A-20 and B-25 strafers which were intended to silence AAA, -but the more concentrated the better so put them in the nose.

But if you can't afford it, and you are dealing with enemy fighters a lot, it poses some problems too. The Germans had to escort their bomber killers with more lightly kitted-out fighter-killers.

I don't think you need multiple wing guns to shoot down a Stuka or a Ju 88 or even a B-25 (bringing it back to medium bombers).

Also, having multiple wing guns allows for some gun stoppages, yet keeping a fair firing capability,
- if your sole main cannon jams, then the pilot of that 109 - is in a 'jam', too..

This is also true though one advantage of nose guns (as distinct from guns in the prop spinner) is that you can put the charging handles inside the cockpit to make it easier to manually recharge guns with stoppages. This was appreciated by Ki-43, P-40B, MC 200 and 202 etc. pilots (in spite of the overall low firepower of those types).

Early 4 and 6 gun American fighters had problems with wing-guns experiencing stoppages especially while shooting in the midst of high-G maneuvers. They had some kind of hydraulic or electric system for recharging the guns in the event of a stoppage but it didn't always work.

Eventually this was mostly corrected by improved ammo storage / feed systems.

S

 

[Schweik]

This thread got hijacked way back.
We're supposed to be discussing MEDIUM BOMBERS!!!

My bad! The Peshka is one. And it could have been great in the Med! I can't believe it only got one vote in my poll.

S

 

[J.A.W.]

IMO, the unexpected appearance of the Mosquito - kind of flummoxed the British, medium bombers-wise.

They'd entered the war with a pretty motley collection of differing medium bomber modes, from the
'flighty' H-P Hampden, which was supposed to be quick & agile enough - not to need much gun defence,
the Wellington, which with its vaunted power-turrets - was expected to be a British 'Flying-Fortress',
& the stolid Whitley, with no pretentions as either.. & they were all, to be fair.. mediocre..

On the way - were ultra modern 'light-heavyweight' twins to be powered by big 2,000hp mills, the Manchester,
& Warwick ( a Wellington 'on steroids'), both of which fell over, due to lack of enough, reliable hi-power mills ..

So the Brits settled on the serendipitous Mosquito as their indigenous 'medium' ( among its multiroles)
& picked up the multitudes of US machines on offer - for 'regular' medium bomber duties..

A missed opportunity, ( again due to British politico-industrial failure in producing enough high hp,
- over 2,000hp engines) were the proposals for a Super-Mosquito ( those 'steroids', again)
& the Hawker all-metal equivalent.

 

[Shortround6]

My bad! The Peshka is one. And it could have been great in the Med! I can't believe it only got one vote in my poll.

S

Great in the Med, gives a lot of employment to the air/sea rescue boys

It just didn't have the range wanted. The A-20 went from 400 gallons to 540 gallons to 725 gallons. The B-25 went from 670 gallons on early C & D to 974 gallons in later C &D and all later aircraft in the wings, various ferry tank/combat tanks fitted later. B-26s started with 962 gallons in the wings with different arrangements of ferry tanks in the aft bomb bay.
Early B-26s were rated as carrying 3000lbs 1000 miles at 265mph. I don't know if they could do it in practice.
Granted many missions did not call for these kinds of ranges but when you are sending planes thousands of miles from home and sending hundreds/thousands of ground crew you want planes that give the most flexibility.

And as we have found out, it wasn't a Mosquito lite. It didn't really have the speed to keep it out of trouble.

Bombers are essentially bomb trucks, how much tonnage over what distance.
If you can't reach the target it is useless. IF it requires 3 trips to do the same damage as another plane can with one it doesn't look good either.
Other missions (recon, strafing, transport interceptor, etc) are icing on the cake.
Being difficult to fly isn't in the plus column.

 

[vikingBerserker]

Since the Italians switched to the Allied side, how about the Savoia-Machetti SM.79?