Best Bomber of WW2 (continued)

[cheddar cheese]

I think that a Ju-88 style ventral turret, ie right near the front would have worked.

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

extra weight, an extra man to train, an extra man to loose, and the ventral turret was not seen as a major defensive position, only really as a back up..............

 

[cheddar cheese]

How about a retractable ball turret? Surely this would solve 50% of the problems you listed?

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Well as was stated, many fell victom to night fighters because of a lack of it.

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

CC a retractible turret would be even heavier, the only problem it would solve would be the air resistance, and if we did use the turret, bang goes a few thousand pounds off the payload and H2S.........

 

[cheddar cheese]

Ok then...cut a hole in the floor and dangle a guy on a rope out of it holding a browning

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Some how I dont think that would go over to well with the guy with the browning.

 

[16KJV11]

What about the goose steppers? Were they so locked into the tactical aspect of bombing that they used so few powered turrets or had such weak defensive armament. It seems that every bomber they used lacked real defensive fire power save maybe the HE 177. Check out the belly of this bird. The gunners lacked a 360 degree field of fire which again, was so typical of every German bomber. However, as I see an early German attempt (JU 86) at a belly gunner, maybe they couldn't get anyone stupid enough to be a belly gunner on future bombers!

 

[DaveB.inVa]

That method was sortof employed on a lot of B-24's. Some field modified and some production models did away with the ball turret and used a "tunnel" gunner firing a single browning downward and to the rear. The B-24's ball turret when so equipped was retractable too. This wasn't to decrease drag or anything though. Since the B-24 had a tricycle landing gear the ball would scrape when the aircraft rotated on takeoff if it wasn't retractable. This is why the B-17's ball didn't need to be retracted as the tail dragger suspended the ball far enough off the ground.

 

[Glider]

I think I am right in saying that a number of Halifax III had a ventral gun and had less loss's than those that didn't.
If the worry was the weight I would ditch the nose turret as Halifax III and even the dorsal turret to put one underneath. Nightfighters tended to come from underneath for a number of reasons
1 we didn't have ventral guns (pretty obvious)
2 the bomber would be against the sky which was often lighter
3 as pilots had less visibility front and down due to the nose getting in the way

It might have looked odd but turrets rear and below would proabably have served the RAF better.

 

[mosquitoman]

H2S wouldn't have been that much of a loss, Lanc. German nightfighters could home in on it's signals so only Pathfinder aircraft used it- mainly Mossies as they were fast enough to escape detection normally

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

What about the goose steppers? Were they so locked into the tactical aspect of bombing that they used so few powered turrets or had such weak defensive armament. It seems that every bomber they used lacked real defensive fire power save maybe the HE 177. Check out the belly of this bird. The gunners lacked a 360 degree field of fire which again, was so typical of every German bomber. However, as I see an early German attempt (JU 86) at a belly gunner, maybe they couldn't get anyone stupid enough to be a belly gunner on future bombers!

Well basically the Germans just never got into the Heavy Bomber concept that required such. The Luftwaffe tactics at the beginning of the war were to have fast medium bombers that swept in dropped there bombs and got out. Obviously these bombers were outclassed very early in the war and the whole fast Blitzkrieg thing ended. There Germans tacticly used more dive bombers such as the Stukas. This idea for the medium bombers worked at first but once the mainland was taken over and they turned there attention to the British they need heavy bombers which they did not have. They had some great designs however they were too late to do anything and nothing really left the table.

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

If the worry was the weight I would ditch the nose turret as Halifax III and even the dorsal turret to put one underneath. Nightfighters tended to come from underneath for a number of reasons
1 we didn't have ventral guns (pretty obvious)
2 the bomber would be against the sky which was often lighter
3 as pilots had less visibility front and down due to the nose getting in the way

It might have looked odd but turrets rear and below would proabably have served the RAF better.

dude think about it, you say ditch the dorsal turret and put in a ventral as fighters normally attacked from underneath, if there's no dorsal turret wouldn't they just attack from above??

i agree a heavier all round defensive armourment would have been useful, but how can you stay angry at such a beauty with such a huge payload...........

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

The dorsal turret was one of the most important turrets, I would think. Most fighters would come in from high and above.

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

yes the dorsal turret was seen as the second most important turret after the tail...........

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Those two spots is where the most attacks came from.

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

exactily........

 

[cheddar cheese]

I was just reading about a version of the Komet with I think it was 5 vertically firing 50mm cannons. The plane would fly under a formation and a light sensor would detect the shadow of the bombers and fire off the guns. As far as I know only one plane was shot down with this system.

 

[plan_D]

Great discussion, you two. I feel like I've learnt nothing at all...

 

[cheddar cheese]

Hopefully you learned something from my post then