Best Bomber Killing Aircraft......

Glider said:

Small point, but Mosquito's with the bulged bomb bay could carry 6 x 500lb internally and hang a couple more on the wings but these were normally replaced with wing tanks.

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That would be using the AVRO carrier. Afaik this was not used and finding info on this carrier is next to impossible, so far.

This link, 303rd Bomb Group (H) - Molesworth, England, gives the missions flown by the 303BG which includes the bomb loads carried.

for example:

303rd BG(H) Combat Mission No. 1
17 November 1942
Target: U-Boat Submarine Pens, St. Nazaire, France
Crews Dispatched: 16
Length of Mission: 4 hours, 45 minutes
Bomb Load: 10 x 500 lbs General Purpose
Bombing Altitude: 20,000 ft

Thank you. It does appear that from Dec 1943/Jan 1944 the MK XVI Mosquito could carry 6 X 500lb inside.
As I have said, many bombers had a space problem as opposed to a weight problem. Especially as engines got more powerful and allowed more weight to be carried by existing airframes.
The British 4 engine bombers with their large bomb bays had the room to carry heavy loads of widely different sized bombs and not need strange or near useless combinations to hit "max load".
I am thinking of the American B-25/B-26 here where the max load is given as 5200lbs made up of two 1600 AP bombs and a 2000lb torpedo which must be dropped before the bombs. Torpedo had to be dropped low and slow and the AP bombs had to be dropped from 7,000-8,000ft to get up to good penetration speed. 1600lb AP bomb carried much less explosive than a 1000lb GP bomb.

I believe that comparisons should be made on real capabilities and not max "book" numbers or carefully selected scenarios.

Milosh said:

That would be using the AVRO carrier. Afaik this was not used and finding info on this carrier is next to impossible, so far.

This link, 303rd Bomb Group (H) - Molesworth, England, gives the missions flown by the 303BG which includes the bomb loads carried.

for example:

303rd BG(H) Combat Mission No. 1
17 November 1942
Target: U-Boat Submarine Pens, St. Nazaire, France
Crews Dispatched: 16
Length of Mission: 4 hours, 45 minutes
Bomb Load: 10 x 500 lbs General Purpose
Bombing Altitude: 20,000 ft

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Thanks for the site. I admit I don't find 5000lb to the coast of France very impressive at all. Might as well use Wellingtons with the fighter cover that could be arranged.

Glider - that just represents SOP. For such short ranges the Fort could carry at least 12,000 pounds with external racks had the need surfaced.

Glider said:

Thanks for the site. I admit I don't find 5000lb to the coast of France very impressive at all. Might as well use Wellingtons with the fighter cover that could be arranged.

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Later missions involved bombing from altitudes above 20,000ft to avoid AA fire and Mission 67 says that the same load (5,000lbs, 10 X 500lb bombs) was carried to Stuttgart and the bombing altitude was 25,100 ft which is pushing the capabilities a Wellington just a little bit

Or Mission 155 to Berlin:
"Bomb Load: Group A - 10 x 500 lb G.P.; Group B - 42 x 65 lb
M47A1 Incendiary bomb"
Now the 42 x 65 lb M47A1 Incendiary bomb load works out to 2730lbs for an average of 3865lbs for equal numbers of planes with each load but I think we can see that the 42X65lb load load may have had storage/rack limits rather than weight limits.

Or Mission 172 to Caen on D-day.----Bomb Load: 12 x 500 lb G.P. 2 x 1,000 G.P. bomb

Some raids used eight 500lb M17 incendiary cluster bombs which may have had stowage/rack problems vs weight problems, if they were bigger in diameter than standard 500lb bombs they may have needed to be spaced further apart.

I would like to thank Milosh for this site, it does point out different capabilities of the B-17 and perhaps some of it's limits as well.

drgondog said:

Glider - that just represents SOP. For such short ranges the Fort could carry at least 12,000 pounds with external racks had the need surfaced.

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At the end of the day, it was a real operation to the French Coast and they only carried 5,000lb. Clearly they could carry more and did carry more later but I have never seen them carry 12,000 lb anywhere, at any time, on any mission, ever. At first glance the majority were in the 5-6,000lb bracket.

Someone will now find examples all over the place and in perparation for this eventuality I have seasoned my hat with some salt and have a marinade on standby.

PS I am not saying the Wellngton was as good as the B17, just making an observation that on that day for that mission, they may as well have done.

The Wellington would have done very well with escort in the France Holland area. The a/c probably would have needed the new daylight computing bombsight and some training.

Which is effectively what they used the Sterling for when they entered service, but only in very small numbers, often only three aircraft. The logic was that as each Sterling carried 14,000lb of bombs one bomber was equal to a squadron of Blenhiem's. I know that the Luftwaffe considered them difficult to shoot down with the Me109F, it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if they had used 50 or so at one time.

For obvious reasons the Fw 190 would have found them a lot easier to combat.

The first RAF bombing attack of the war was made by Wellingtons of No. 9 and No. 149 Squadrons, along with Bristol Blenheims, on German shipping at Brunsbüttel on 4 September 1939. During this raid, the two Wellingtons became the first aircraft shot down on the Western Front. Numbers 9, 37 and 149 Squadrons saw action on 18 December 1939 on a mission against German shipping on the Schillig Roads and Wilhelmshaven. Luftwaffe fighters destroyed 12 of the bombers and badly damaged three others; thus highlighting the aircraft's vulnerability to attacking fighters, having neither self sealing fuel tanks nor sufficient defensive armament. In particular, while the aircraft's nose and tail turrets protected against attacks from the front and rear, the Wellington had no defences against attacks from the beam and above, as it had not been believed that such attacks were possible owing to the high speed of aircraft involved.As a consequence, Wellingtons were switched to night operations and participated in the first night raid on Berlin on 25 August 1940. In the first 1,000-aircraft raid on Cologne, on 30 May 1942, 599 out of 1,046 aircraft were Wellingtons (101 of them were flown by Polish aircrew).
With Bomber Command, Wellingtons flew 47,409 operations, dropped 41,823 tons (37,941 tonnes) of bombs and lost 1,332 aircraft in action.

A proud history.
Cheers
John

That is a very interesting site. Thanks for posting it. While browsing through it, I noticed a couple of incidents where a crewman who was very badly injured and captured was repatriated by the Germans. I never knew they did that. Also noticed on a raid late in the war a B17 was shot down and the crew was captured. The co pilot was named John (Tex) Cornyn. He undoubtedly was from Texas and very likely is the father of the US Senator, John Cornyn.

Repatriation was normally due to severe injuries where there wasn't sufficient medical facilities or in mental injury where keeping them in a POW camp would only cause tensions in the camp between POW's or between the POW and the guards.

Some people tried feigning this to get repatriated, but in at least one camp this was banned after people who attempted it when sent home, did need secure care.

I must emphasise here that I am not being negative about anyone who suffered this fate, its a serious and very sad fact that the strain these people were under is something that I would not want to even think about. The casualties were just as real as a bullet wound.

As you look through the J reports attached to MACR's you note that is was almost common to repatriate severly wounded/disabled POWs. Without being cynical I imagine a.) cost of care, b.) not likely to return for duty were two factors that were important.

Glad you found the 303BG site interesting guys.

Makes sense to repatriate if a guy won't be able to fight against you again. You don't have to feed him and you put the medical costs back on his home country.

WW2 - The Second World War: Died after Repatriation from a POW Camp

I think this link says a lot about repatriated POWS.

Germany was not the most er, compassionate nation in WW2 but at least the Red Cross could arrange repatriation. I cannot image that the Imperial Japanese forces would have.

Cheers
John

Heres the deal. The most bombers shot down were English. The most successfull bomber killers were the three twin engine fighters with rada and guns pointed near vertical and pointed slightly forward.

If day fighters then it would be the 190.

fibus said:

The most bombers shot down were English.

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Do you have statistics on that?

Bomber Command crews also suffered an extremely high casualty rate: 55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew (a 44.4% death rate), a further 8,403 were wounded in action and 9,838 became prisoners of war. This covered all Bomber Command operations including tactical support for ground operations and mining of sea lanes. A Bomber Command crew member had a worse chance of survival than an infantry soldier in World War I.
By comparison, the US Eighth Air Force, which flew daylight raids over Europe, had 350,000 aircrew during the war, and suffered 26,000 killed and 23,000 POWs.
Of the RAF Bomber Command personnel killed during the war, 72% were British, 18% were Canadian, 7% were Australian and 3% were New Zealanders.
Taking an example of 100 airmen
55 killed on operations or died as result of wounds
three injured (in varying levels of severity) on operations or active service
12 taken prisoner of war (some injured)
two shot down and evaded capture
27 survived a tour of operations
In total 364,514 operational sorties were flown, 1,030,500 tons of bombs were dropped and 8,325 aircraft lost in action.



The 8 USAAF has arrived into the Britain in the end of 1942 but was involved into the bombing compain just in mid of the 1943.
In fact 8th AF begun air operations in Europe in August 1942.
The decision of "round the clock bombing" was made in Casablanca in January 1943, what allowed to start so-called The Combined Bomber Offensive officially six months later.
But it doesn't mean that 8th was staying on the ground all winter and spring. Bombing raids were conducted before that.

For much of the war both the Bomber Comand and the 8th AF ran a casualty rate in excess of 50 percent of crew force. In the 8th AF, the pioneers of 1942-43 paid the heaviest cost. Only one in five of these fliers completed their tour of duty. Of the 110,000 aircrew in Bomber Command, 56,000 were kiled, a los rate of 51 percent, the highest casualty rate of any of the Commonwealth's armed forces in the war.
8th AF's total casualty rate was between 26,000 and 28,000 fatalities (12.3 percent) of the 210,000 crewmen who flew in combat.

Hideous casualty rates on both the British American sides.
The comment that a WW1 soldier had more chance of survival makes the point I think.

Cheers
John

Not sure what I am thinking about here, but I thought it was higher numbers for both the USAAF and the RAF.