Best Bomber of WW2 (continued)

oh god he thinks the B-17's a good bomber..........

It was a great bomber, not the best but a great bomber. Sorry man just because it is not built by England or not a Lancaster does not make it a bad bomber.

yes i'll agree she was a great bomber in the sence that i think of great, but my definition of great isn't the same as how good it was..........

well how good was it then.

well it's no lancaster...........

It would still take more of a beating and bring its crew home better then a Lancaster, that says alot and you know what I would rather have survivability over speed and bomb load.

Great pics, Evan and Adler !... I really like the B-24, and I thoroughly endorse the signatures idea, so much goes into restoring and maintaining these fine old warbirds......

I too am a staunch fan of the Lancaster, as mentioned I guess, through ALL the posts on this topic....I don't see anything gained by disparaging comments of aircraft, a case of ''mud thrown is ground lost''....We all defend our 'favourites', and rightly so, but one thing that comes up in this instance of 'B-17 vs Lancaster', is it's hard for some to understand why these two aircraft that served at the same time, same place, one at night, one in day, can be so different.....

It was the strategy involved.....

- Those of British ancestry that flew the Lancaster at night, had to follow this course because numerically it was suicidal to fly in daylight .... The Luftwaffe then, held Air Supremacy over Europe, and as they had found-out by bombing England in daylight during the BoB, it was a devastating exercise against a determined RAF Fighter Command.... So the Luftwaffe switched to the 'Blitz' night-bombing.... In reply, the British copied them by bombing at night....

Then the US 8th Air Force arrived in Britain, convinced that with a numerical advantage of heavily-armed and crewed bombers, they could fight their way into Europe to accurately bomb enemy targets....it didn't quite work out, did it ?...the bombers needed fighter escorts, long-range escorts in fact, and the P-38 started in this role, that eventually the P-51 excelled in.....

Meanwhile, RAF Bomber Command with it's lighter-armed, 7 crewed bombers continued night-bombing, always developing and often succeeding in thwarting Luftwaffe Air Defences with radar and radio counter-measures, ever improving it's bombing technique and accuracy...having less crew and guns, they could carry a greater bombload......

It was a battle of two fronts, one by day, one by night...Britain HAD to win, it could not allow Germany to bomb them to defeat and invade, and retaliated by ever increasing destruction via bombing....
To the US, it was a challenge, to try and knock-out the Air Superiority of the Luftwaffe with 10 crewed, multi-gunned bombers while daylight offered 'accurate bombing conditions' in which to hammer German industry.....

Thankfully, both Britain the US won......but the cost was great; - For the 8th AF, escort fighters should perhaps have been a part of their original plan from the beginning....and some see that as a sole reason for the huge losses the 8th AF suffered.... For Britain, while the attrition rate was high, it was usually within a reasonable margin, and Bomber Command used this as a means to judge whether their tactics were working or not...
One thing's for sure, both the Lancaster B-17 aquitted themselves well in terms of absorbable damage, and are both legends in their own right for the destruction they gave and received....
For Britain, it was always about 'economy'....For the US, it's industrial might mean't they could eventually overwhelm the enemy by sheer volume and numbers, as was seen in both the ETO and the PTO..........

The shame is that the USA did not devote itself to the idea of fast bombers, rather than heavily armed bombers, before the war started. Had they done so, by the start of 1944 there is no reason they could not have had a 375+ mph cruise (while over contested airspace) @ 30,000 foot bomber capable of carrying a 6,000 lbs bombload. Such a bomber would then decend a little and sprint through its bomb run at speeds in excess of 400 mph. For guns, remote dorsal and belly turrets and a manned 4 gun tail turret would have been sufficient. Fast figthter escorts would of course also have been desirable, but I think a truely fast bomber would have done better than the gunship concept.

you aint gonna get all them gun turrets on the type of bomber you're talking about, you wouldn't need them either............

Yeah, that's a really good point RG, and the first that springs to mind would be the A-26....There is also the F7F we were talking about, and even the P-38, since it has a good bomb capacity....All these aircrafts' inception and early designs occurred in the late 1930's - 1940, but there was no urgency then, I guess, as the US wasn't involved directly in Europe, and the age of the Long-range heavy bomber was upon the strategic stage....only Germany and Japan figured they wouldn't need them, each anticipating a quick War....

For Britain, there was great urgency, and aircraft like the A-20 Havoc and B-25 certainly helped, what with the Lend-Lease program....Delving through old Aviation books, it's amazing what was going on in US designers' offices....

The advent of the Mosquito was very important, as it heralded the birth of a fast twin-engined bomber to evenly match, if not better the Luftwaffe's Ju-88, an aircraft they never really improved enough on, in Germany, despite the Ju-188, 288, 388 etc...and including the Dorniers and Heinkels.
The Mossie went on to eventually form the LNSF, which was an elite force that not only matched some heavy bombers in capacity, but demonstrated a bombing and attack versatility that was hard to match.

Aircraft like the B-25 did great work and it needed more support earlier than it got with the B-26 Marauder and definately the A-26. Even the US's first jet bomber could have seen service well before WWII finished, but I guess this is where the British and American systems of Aviation development differ...Both the Lancaster and Mosquito came on stream fairly quickly once decisions were made to have them, the UK's need was definately greater than the US at that stage, but I would have thought that with Japan gobbling-up the whole NW Pacific and eyeballing the rest, would've accelerated the B-29 program more, faced with the need for a VLR Bomber to tackle Japan....
It's fascinating to study in hindsight, I guess, it all worked-out in the end, but there were many great designs that could have been developed earlier nonetheless, and that's abit of a shame....In many ways I think we were all quite lucky really, it's one thing if Germany had really got into the 'heavy-bomber', and another if Japan had, but imagine if Russia HAD !!!!

the lancaster kicks ass said:

you aint gonna get all them gun turrets on the type of bomber you're talking about, you wouldn't need them either............

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Why not? Two small remote turrets would not make much drag. They could even be designed only to fire toward the rear. The tail turret would not make much drag at all.

But in all truth, only the tail turret would be needed. It would be very hard to stage any other kind of attack on such a plane.

=S=

Lunatic

Why didn't the USAAF just have a reverse lend-lease on Mossies and use them as fast bombers, that would've worked a treat

Not really big enough. Also, it was not accurate enough to execute high altitude bombing.

The Mossies worked great but only within the context of their usage. Had masses of them been the only opponent, the Luftwaffe could have adapted to them easily, shooting them down when they gave up altitude to bomb their targets.

However, something along the lines of a larger scale Mossie, probably using radial engines, made of metal, is exactly what I was suggesting.

=S=

Lunatic.

it's not just drag with a turret, it's the extra weight involved......

the lancaster kicks ass said:

it's not just drag with a turret, it's the extra weight involved......

Click to expand...

Remote turrets were not that heavy, about 500 lbs including two .50's and ammo. Manned turrets were much heavier.

If the tail turret were designed to have good very good coverage, the turrets could be dispensed with. But you don't want high angle diving attacks or especially belly attacks to be able to easily avoid the zone of fire.

=S=

Lunatic

yes that's the turrets plus gunners though........

the lancaster kicks ass said:

yes that's the turrets plus gunners though........

Click to expand...

Yes but two gunners can include the navigator and bombadier. With remote turrets, one gunner can operate two guns if the sighting stations are setup right. Even possibly the tail gunner could have control of the turrets except for when he cannot see the enemy because they are too far forward.

=S=

Lunatic

i still say he's not gonna get two remote turrets, a tail turret, ammo and gunners in a attack bomber and cruise at 375mph+.............

Then the remote turrets would have to go. The tail turret is a must however, and it must have a traverse of at least +/- 80 degrees in all directions.

If the tail turret were in a rotating ball on rotating fork of some kind, and the gunner able to sight from at least two stations (hi and low, maybe two gunners with the ability to flip who controls the turret), it could easily have very large traversal.

=S=

Lunatic

it's still unlikely to happen............