Best armed fighter

Soren said:

The Beaufighter lacks the destructive armament of other fighters though.

The Me-262 has the heaviest fighter armament featuring 4x 30mm cannons, while the Fw-190A-8/A-9 comes in as a close 2nd with 2x 13mm, 2x 20mm 2x 30mm cannons.

Click to expand...

Just an idea, what about salvoing the rockets at a bomber box, that might well cause a problem or two and there can be little doubt what would happen if one hit.

Glider,

While you're certainly right that a salvo of rockets is a deadly weapon against a bomber formation, the beaufighter didn't have available any air to air rockets. The Me-262 Fw-190 on the other hand both did, the R4M's, which were very effective in the role. (Esp. considering the high MV resulting in a close match in ballistics between the rockets Mk108 projectiles)

And as to what happens if a rocket hits home, you're right there as-well, it generally only took a single hit with a R4M to blow a bomber out of the sky, it was almost guaranteed.

I was just having an idle moment and thought about the GA rockets. Might be worth a try, certainly heard of dafter ideas.

Hi Claidemore,

>Just wanted to point out that each set of 4 guns on a P47 are arranged in close proximity to each other (as in the P38 ). When they are not sighted for a 'box' harmonization, they will also give a good concentration of firepower, albeit with two 4-gun streams of projectiles with the attendant 'problems' of harmonization. At the harmonization range, there will be a double concentration of fire.

Hm, at harmonization range OK, but only there. If you look at my firepower comparison chart (which lists only the 12.7 mm machine guns for the P-38), you'll see that the P-47 when sighted for 250 m harmonization has an advantage only between 210 m and 280 m, despite having 8 guns instead of four! If you add the P-38's Hispano cannon, the two would be about equal even at the P-47's best range, with the P-38 being superior at all other ranges.

(I'll have to re-calculate that diagram since it uses the trajectories from the boresighting charts for the types, which don't match the specific data I have for the ammunition types. I guess the P-47 diagram is only meant for illustrative purposes as there is no bullet drop data provided, but the P-38 diagram has actual bullet drop data, which leaves me a bit puzzled. The result of the re-calculation will be a decrease of hit power at long ranges due to the more steeply curved trajectories.)

>I just believe that in deflection shooting against a target that is moving on various planes, the box harmonized wing guns will have a greater chance of scoring a hit, and a hit of any kind is better than a complete miss with an overwhelming concentration of fire from nose mounted guns.

Hm, actually the Luftwaffe war experience was that it was of little worth to merely damage an enemy aircraft as it would carry its pilot home and often could be repaired. That's why they came up with mine ammunition - it was designed to deal catastrophic damage the aircraft structure to make the target go down immediately.

With regard to probabilities, what counts is only the product of the probability of a hit and the hit's probability of a kill. This is often misunderstood - by moving the bullets' impact point away from the centre of the pattern, the probability of a hit for each bullet drops, while its destructiveness remains the same. The end result of a larger pattern is a decreased probability for a kill.

I guess one reason this is so often misunderstood is that the idea "a larger pattern will give at least some hits where a smaller pattern would have missed entirely" is correct. However, it's not complete in that it only covers the case where a larger pattern is beneficial, without taking into account that there is a larger number of cases where a smaller pattern is better.

These arguments also address the "shotgun" concept, which is basically the same and often comes up during air gunnery discussions. The Luftwaffe's gunnery instruction manual "Die Schießfibel" is quite clear on that: "Don't rely on weapon dispersion - it won't help you if your aim is wrong! You can see here clearly [2 sighting examples] how *accurately* you have to know and hold the lead if you don't want to score a complete miss. But if you think all you have to do is to adjust your machine guns to increase the pattern so that you're able to hit more reliably, this unfortunately is a mistake. You will end up like the wild huntsman in the picture on the right." [Cartoon, captioned: "What good are all the blunderbusses if every one of them just misses?")

>Of course it wouldn't make sense to box harmonize nose mounted guns on a P38, it would negate a tangible advantage, concentrated firepower, and the choice between hit probability and concentrated firepower is clear for that fighter.

Hm, you have lost me there. Wouldn't the choice be the same for any type of fighter, provided that you actually have the choice (like with a nose-gun fighter)?

>On a wing mounted gun fighter the choice is not so clear. Concentrated firepower is less tangible, existing only at harmonization range, so a box harmonization does make sense, trading a less tangible concentration of firepower for hit probability.

The boresighting chart for the P-47 does not envision box harmonization. I have prepared another animated GIF to show the P-47's pattern resulting from the standard boresighting procedure, choosing 300 m harmonization range so that there is one frame in the animation that shows perfect concentration. (The standard boresighting distances given are alternatively 229 m and 320 m, so that's close to the longer standard distance.)

>Anyways, I still vote for the Beaufighter. It's got the best of both worlds, awesome firepower from centrally located 20mms, and six brownings spread out on the wings to spread destruction (sic) over a wide area.

Hm, I think the Luftwaffe manual already pointed out that a large pattern doesn't help in air combat. However, the Beaufighter's wing guns might be highly useful for ground strafing. The total battery of the Beaufighter is not really that close to the top, though:

Me 262: 20,1 MW
Fw 190A-8/R2: 13 MW
Ta 152H: 7,6 MW
Fw 190A-8: 5,5 MW
Me 109K-4: 5,5 MW
Beaufighter Mk 21: 5,3 MW

(I'm assuming Hispano II cannon for the Beaufighter - it would be slightly better with Hispano V cannon instead.)

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

Hi again,

>The Luftwaffe's gunnery instruction manual "Die Schießfibel" is quite clear on that: "Don't rely on weapon dispersion - it won't help you if your aim is wrong! You can see here clearly [2 sighting examples] how *accurately* you have to know and hold the lead if you don't want to score a complete miss. But if you think all you have to do is to adjust your machine guns to increase the pattern so that you're able to hit more reliably, this unfortunately is a mistake. You will end up like the wild huntsman in the picture on the right." [Cartoon, captioned: "What good are all the blunderbusses if every one of them just misses?"]

Here is the page with the sighting examples ...

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

The Beaufighter might not have had air to air rockets, but it did have air to surface ones. Since we are not comparing just air to air ability, but total firepower, if you add up the 4 Hispanos, 6 Brownings and eight 60 lb rockets on the Beau, I'm not sure any other WWII fighter could match it.

AFAIK the FW190A8/A9 could not carry both the 30mm guns and the 2 rockets, so it was an either or situation.

Me262 shouldn't count, at least for this discussion, as the thread was originally for piston engined fighters, though nobody doubts the destructive capability of the 4x30mms.

claidemore said:

The Beaufighter might not have had air to air rockets, but it did have air to surface ones. Since we are not comparing just air to air ability, but total firepower, if you add up the 4 Hispanos, 6 Brownings and eight 60 lb rockets on the Beau, I'm not sure any other WWII fighter could match it.

AFAIK the FW190A8/A9 could not carry both the 30mm guns and the 2 rockets, so it was an either or situation.

Click to expand...

You are incorrect claidemore, the Fw-190A-8/A-9 featured 2x 30mm Mk108 inside the outer wings instead of the 2x 20mm MG151/20's of the A-5/6 7, so there was plenty of room for rockets, which is also quite evident since there are plenty of pictures of A-8's carrying rockets.

And an armament of 2x 13mm, 2x 20mm 2x 30mm cannons easily beats 6x 12.7mm 4x 20mm any day. Plus the Fw-190 could use air to air rockets, the R4M's, as-well as the most powerful air to surface missiles available.

So if the Me-262 isn't mentioned then it has to be the Fw-190 A-8/9.

Hi Claidemore,

>Since we are not comparing just air to air ability, but total firepower, if you add up the 4 Hispanos, 6 Brownings and eight 60 lb rockets on the Beau, I'm not sure any other WWII fighter could match it.

Hm, we already have almost 300 posts in this thread dealing with air-to-air capabilities of barrel armament, so while I see your point, I'd still like to suggest opening a separate thread for air-to-ground armament and rockets ... I'm sure it will be just as popular is this one here

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

Hi Claidemore,

>Just wanted to point out that each set of 4 guns on a P47 are arranged in close proximity to each other (as in the P38 ). When they are not sighted for a 'box' harmonization, they will also give a good concentration of firepower, albeit with two 4-gun streams of projectiles with the attendant 'problems' of harmonization.

For the sake of completeness, here the P-47 guns with "box" harmonization, with the pairs converging at 220 m, 253 m, 287 m and 320 m.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

Thats very talented Hohun. It does look very inefficient. The box harmonization I have read about refers to a small vertical/ horizontal spacing at the same set range for all of the guns.

Slaterat

Hi Slaterat,

>It does look very inefficient. The box harmonization I have read about refers to a small vertical/ horizontal spacing at the same set range for all of the guns.

Ah, I see. I agree that the purely convergence-range based "box" (if it can be called so) harmonization is quite inefficient - however, that's the setup which the graph on Emmanuel Gustin's site suggested.

Here is another animation for a vertical spacing of the guns, all set to 300 m convergence range. If one would use two different convergence ranges here, one would not have the "vertical stack" effect that is evident at 300 m here, but I thought I'd do one change at a time

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

HoHun said:

Hi Slaterat,

>It does look very inefficient. The box harmonization I have read about refers to a small vertical/ horizontal spacing at the same set range for all of the guns.

Ah, I see. I agree that the purely convergence-range based "box" (if it can be called so) harmonization is quite inefficient - however, that's the setup which the graph on Emmanuel Gustin's site suggested.

Here is another animation for a vertical spacing of the guns, all set to 300 m convergence range. If one would use two different convergence ranges here, one would not have the "vertical stack" effect that is evident at 300 m here, but I thought I'd do one change at a time

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

Click to expand...

The convergence on the P-47 was 500 yards, according to several pilots I've heard interviewed on the subject.

Hi Clay,

>The convergence on the P-47 was 500 yards, according to several pilots I've heard interviewed on the subject.

Hm, this seems a rather long range ... here is the boresighting chart for the type, suggesting 250 or 350 yards.

Of course, tactical experience could lead to deviation from this standard, but my impression was really that this deviation was more towards shorter than towards longer ranges.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

Thats great work Hohun. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Slaterat

Hi Slaterat,

>Thats great work Hohun. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Thanks I would actually like to improve on that presentation, for example by showing the destructiveness of the fire by replacing the circles with transparent disks that are coloured more intensively where the killing power is greater. Problem is, I have no idea how to do that without increasing the manual labour necessary to render the animations by a factor of one-hundred or something

(Currently, a big pattern looks "good" because you can see that it makes it easy to it. However, since the bullet density decreases with the square of the range within the same circle, this is not the whole story ...)

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

Hi Juha,

>>Pilots saw 4*.5 HMG as adequate armament against Japanese a/c and saw also that after you had run out ammo your chances to help the defence of your flat-top or your charges was minimal.

Amsel has just posted an interesting and highly relevant quote over here: http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/what-wrong-f4f-wildcat-16142.html

"Here is the text of a despatch from Admiral Nimitz to
Admiral King sent on 20 June 1942:

ALL AIR COMBAT REPORTS BATTLE OF MIDWAY EMPHASIZE EXTREME
AND APPARENTLY INCREASED SUPERIORITY PERFORMANCE OF 0 FIGHTERS
X ALTHOUGH THESE PLANES ARE MORE VULNERABLE THAN OURS THE
PRIMARY SOURCE OF ANY COMBAT SUCCESSES TO DATE BY NAVY FIGHTING
PLANES HAS BEEN OWN EXPERT TACTICS OPPOSED TO FAULTY ENEMY
TACTICS X OVERALL RESULTS HAVE BEEN BAD AND WILL BE SERIOUS
AND POTENTIALLY DECISIVE WITH IMPROVEMENT THAT MUST BE EXPECTED
IN ENEMY TACTICS X

CONSIDER ACTION ALL OF FOLLOWING LINES TO BE OF HIGHEST IMPORTANCE
X PROVIDE P-40F PLANES OR COMPARABLE TYPE FOR ALL MARINE FIGHTING
SQUADRONS ASSIGNED TO OUTLYING BASES X IF P-40F OR COMPARABLE TYPE
CAN BE MODIFIED FOR AIRCRAFT CARRIER OPERATIONS PROVIDE THESE
PLANES FOR CARRIER FIGHTING SQUADRONS X TAKE ANY POSSIBLE STEPS
TO LIGHTEN F4F4 AND INCREASE AMMUNITION CAPACITY EVEN AT COST OF
REDUCTION IN NUMBER OF GUNS X GIVE ABSOLUTE PRIORITY TO
PRODUCTION AND DELIVERY NEW F4U FIGHTERS"

It re-enforces your point that the ammunition supply was seen as critically insufficient. There is no direct comparison made to the F4F-3, though of course the hint at a possible reduction of the number of guns is clear.

>If you check the actual ammunition supply, the 4x 12.7 mm battery had 1720 rounds of ammunition while the 6x 12.7 mm battery had only 1440 rounds. What the pilot bemoaned was that the new aircraft had less ammunition, not that the extra guns fired off the same the number of rounds more quickly.

As Ivan just pointed out in another thread, my weight for the 12.7 mm Browning ammunition was too low: http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/weapons-systems-tech/ww2-aircraft-gun-specifications-16005.html

So the comparison with the hypothetical Hispano armament would be yet more unfavourable for the Browning:

4x ,50 Browning M2 - 430 rpg, 33 s duration - 350 kg - 1,1 MW firepower - 37.5 MJ total supply
6x ,50 Browning M2 - 240 rpg, 18 s duration - 370 kg - 1,7 MW firepower -31.4 MJ total supply

Here the Hispano battery with equal firing duration, but superior firepower at lower weight:

2x Hispano II - 325 rpg, 33 s duration - 260 kg - 2,1 MW firepower - 69 MJ total supply

So it would be possible to have the original duration of fire of the original F4F-3 Browning armament at about twice the firepower while saving 90 kg of weight.

(Note that Nimitz' telegraph also strongly suggests that weight savings are necessary for the F4F.)

My error regarding the weight of 12.7 mm ammunition of course affects most comparisons I have made in this thread, but I thought this was the most interesting example, so I'd point it out here and leave the rest uncorrected for now.

(Thanks for bringing up the Wildcat example, I have to admit that I was fixated on the European Theatre before that

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

Soren said:

You are incorrect claidemore, the Fw-190A-8/A-9 featured 2x 30mm Mk108 inside the outer wings instead of the 2x 20mm MG151/20's of the A-5/6 7, so there was plenty of room for rockets, which is also quite evident since there are plenty of pictures of A-8's carrying rockets.

And an armament of 2x 13mm, 2x 20mm 2x 30mm cannons easily beats 6x 12.7mm 4x 20mm any day. Plus the Fw-190 could use air to air rockets, the R4M's, as-well as the most powerful air to surface missiles available.

So if the Me-262 isn't mentioned then it has to be the Fw-190 A-8/9.

Click to expand...

My mistake, you are correct that the R2 and R8's had the Mk108 'in' the wing.

i'd go with the .50cals just because it takes almost anything down in a few rounds , has good RPM and has good range.

fly boy said:

i'd go with the .50cals just because it takes almost anything down in a few rounds , has good RPM and has good range.

Click to expand...

You're just trying to make Hohun angry.

1. Excellent stable gun platform, no engine torque or rudder trim issues
2. Tightly grouped/focused battery of 5 guns
3. fairly high velocity ammo yielding minimal flight time increasing hit probability
4. A jammed gun/cannon doesn't cause yaw issues as with wing mounted guns
5. A one second or less burst of all 5 guns would down any Axis fighter almost regardless of hit placement due to the "buzz saw effect" of the armament.

Even in the hands of lesser experienced pilots, it was fairly easy to score hits with the P-38 due to the stable aircraft and the single tight projectile stream of the four .50s and the 20mm. Due to the concentrated fire a single burst did serious damage regardless of hit placement. No matter where the stream hit, serious structural damage was a result. Engine, wingroot, outer wing panel, cockpit, rear fuselage, tail--it didn't really matter. Bulkheads and spars were shredded and cut in half by the concentration of rounds in close proximity.

While the Whirlwind may have possessed many of the above attributes that made the P-38 such an excellent gun platform, only 112 Whirlwinds were built, and in service they continually had problems with the Peregrine engines. Whirlwinds saw such limited service it is impossible to judge their performance against the Luftwaffe. Therefore, I respectfully suggest that the Whirlwind is not worthy of consideration in this discussion.

If the F7F had the maneuverability of the P-38, and if it had actually seen combat, I may have considered it. However it came too late in the war to see real service.

I'm assuming the original poster was concerned with singe seat day fighters, so we can exclude the Black Widow. The Mosquito wasn't a fighter as much as an intruder, and didn't have near the maneuverability to tangle with the Bf 109 and FW 190, so it should be excluded.

I don't have hard numbers on any other aircraft, but IIRC there were a half dozen or more "aces in a day" flying the P-38. I don't know if this was common in other Allied or Axis aircraft, and obviously other factors come in to play than aircraft type. However, if it is the case that there were more "aces in a day" in P-38s, that says something about the firepower prowess of this aircraft vs others. That fact that both of America's top two WWII aces achieved all their kills whilst flying the P-38 is testimony to its firepower and fighter prowess.

I have read that there were experimental P-38 field installations of 8 .50s in the nose with the Hispano removed. If the additional 4 guns also had 500 rds each that would be a total of 4000 rds of .50 cal per sortie. This also would have yielded a cyclic battery rate of about 106 rounds/sec (assuming 800 rds/min per gun) firing in a spread of about 2 ft x 3 ft. The article I read didn't go into detail, but I'm guessing that, sadly, these 'gunship' P-38s were likely used mostly for ground attack in the Pacific theater. Oh, but what an awesome air-air gun battery this would have been. The firepower of a P-47 all packed tightly into the nose. If the weight of those extra 4 Brownings and the additional ammo didn't completely unbalance the aircraft, and it could still dogfight, my oh my what a predator this 8 gun P-38 would have been.