Bf 109 K-4 Kills? Anything Exceptional?

[Kurfürst]

I am not sure wheter this MK 108 jam problem has not been overexaggrevated a bit. It would appear that plenty of fighters fell to the thing - one oral account from Tobak főhadnagy describes a turning fight with a Yakovlev-(9?), in which the Yak' entered a very steep turn. Tobak had to pull such an amount of G to get a deflection on it, tried a 13mm test-burst first, then let the 108 loose. The Yak got ripped to pieces.

From what I have read, MK 108 jam problems were attributed to faulty aligned guns (sloppy assembly) resulting in feed problems. This could fixed in the field by re-aligning the guns.

 

[Kurfürst]

Have you source on that Soviet satisfaction. And anyway, according to JoeB those according to you flimsy armed F-86s shoot down appr 9 times more those properly armed MiG-15s than they lost to MiG-15s. So after all the armament of F-86 wasn't altogether hopeless even if many other things have effect on kill ratio.

Juha

Against your rhetorics, it is a simple fact that the USAF was disappointed with the performance of .50 caliber guns in Korea. Like in the BoB, the matter was not how many were successfully shot down with them, but how many times it happened that MiGs just got away riddled with .50s. In response 20mm installations were tried, but IIRC again it happened that the US 20mm were just unreliable.

 

[Glider]

I think its also worth remembering that the Mig 15 had to attack heavy bombers for which its heavy cannon were ideal. If the F86 had to go against B29/50 type bombers, I wonder how long it would have taken the USAF to switch to cannons?

As for the Mk108 I have never heard of a particular problem with jamming.

 

[HoHun]

Hi Juha,

>>Quote:" Besides, I don't believe that every 20 mm hit will cause enough damage to make a pilot break off combat."

>As I wrote I'm speaking on 2-3 20mm hits.

Obviously, if not every hit is effective, any number of hits can be ineffecive. The average number of 20 mm hits requried for a fighter kill was 6 according to Luftwaffe experience, which mean that there was quite a lot of room to the 2 to 3 hits you are quoting.

>Have you source on that Soviet satisfaction. And anyway, according to JoeB those according to you flimsy armed F-86s shoot down appr 9 times more those properly armed MiG-15s than they lost to MiG-15s. So after all the armament of F-86 wasn't altogether hopeless even if many other things have effect on kill ratio .

Wilfried Kopenhagen, "Flugzeuge und Hubschrauber der NVA". And since so many other things have an effect on kill ratio that it doesn't tell us anything about weapon quality, it strikes me as pointless posturing on your part to quote the final score here as if it proved anything.

>>"Really no sense in arguing with armament of supersonic jet fighter to make a point about a WW2 propeller fighter."

>And as I wrote there is not much relevance in your .5 M2/M3 HMG vs Soviet N-37 and NR-23 argument in Hispano Mk V vs MK 108 conversation or much relevance either if I claimed that because JAAF was much more satisfied with Ho-103 than with Ho-301(the extreme low velocity HE gun) low velocity gun with effective HE shell was a failure.

Sounds like you're trying to troll me here. Not only does the final USAF 9:1 kill ratio (if it was that good) say nothing about the qualities about the aircraft guns used by the warring sides, but the Ho-301 is in fact a 40 mm cannon with a subsonic muzzle velocity of roughly 250 m/s, less than half of that of the MK 108, and in no way a similar weapon.

>Now the cannon in supersonic fighter was/is for subsonic combat.

As have I pointed out above, you have to consider typical target speeds to classify an aircraft gun as "low" or "high" velocity. If a MiG-21 met an F-4 in air combat, they would dogfight at much higher speeds than the Me 109 meeting a P-47. If the F-4 was flying at twice the speed of the P-47, a cannon with twice the absolute muzzle velocity would still have to be classified as a low-velocity cannon because it would impose the same tactical restrains in jet combat as the low-velocity WW2 cannon in propeller-fighter combat.

>>Quote:" that it had excellent qualities as a dogfighting weapon in the air combat environment of WW2"

>I simply disagree and if we cannot bring new facts in this conversation it's better agree that we disagree in this subject.

Well, the excellent qualities of the MK 108 as a dogfighting weapon are facts that are not open to disagreement. These were: Extremely high firepower, low dispersion, low weight, suitability for centreline mounting. In fact, the firepower of one MK 108 was that of four Hispano V cannon if ammunition of equal total energy was carried:

1x MK 108 - 87 rpg - 111 kg - 221% firepower
4x Hispano V - 106 rpg - 272 kg - 217% firepower
8x ,50 Browning M2 - 250 rpg - 452 kg - 100% firepower

Note that the weight Hispano V battery weighs more than twice as much as the MK 108 battery.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[drgondog]

Against your rhetorics, it is a simple fact that the USAF was disappointed with the performance of .50 caliber guns in Korea. Like in the BoB, the matter was not how many were successfully shot down with them, but how many times it happened that MiGs just got away riddled with .50s. In response 20mm installations were tried, but IIRC again it happened that the US 20mm were just unreliable.

It was just too late. The USMC FJ-4 was so equipped but not deployed and all subsequent designs with a gun for (post 1953) USAF fighters had the 20mm and the F-105 was the first with the M-61 Vulcan internally.

The primary reason was lack of destructive power at high altitude engagements where fire was not an immediate issue to a heavy concentration of hits.

The six centrally mounted 50's were much better than the wing mounted guns of the 51 and 47 - a/c weren't buring at 35,000 feet.

The USAF experimented with 15mm (60 cal) HE and HEI at Eglin in 1951 but decided the cost to benefit was less than the 20MM Colt.

 

[Juha]

Hello Kurfürst
Quote: " It would appear that plenty of fighters fell to the thing - one oral account from Tobak főhadnagy describes a turning fight with a Yakovlev-(9?), in which the Yak' entered a very steep turn. Tobak had to pull such an amount of G to get a deflection on it, tried a 13mm test-burst first, then let the 108 loose. The Yak got ripped to pieces."

As I wrote it had tendency to jam not that it jammed when fired under G loads much different from 1. Latest I read on that was from Düttmann's memoirs. And he shot down quite a few Soviet planes with MK108 IIRC but he developed his own tactic to circumvent the need to fire under G.

Quote:" but how many times it happened that MiGs just got away riddled with .50s"

Have you any numbers?

HoHun
Quote" Obviously, if not every hit is effective, any number of hits can be ineffecive. The average number of 20 mm hits requried for a fighter kill was 6 according to Luftwaffe experience, which mean that there was quite a lot of room to the 2 to 3 hits you are quoting."

Now hit a wingtip, was it 7,7mm. 12.7mm. 20mm or 30mm was not usually fatal, depending to some extent how the aileron was placed. And ANY number of hits can be ineffective? Have you ever heard Bf 109 which flew after 100 20mm hits? What is you problem, we are talking on damaged plane not a destroyed plane and have you some statics how many % of say Bf 109Gs continued a fight after 2-3 20mm hits? Bf 109G could well survive 2-3 20mm hits but what I have read from combat reports after those hits pilots disengaged and nursed they planes home if the hits were not in vulnerable areas.

Quote:" nothing about the qualities about the aircraft guns used by the warring sides."

Now do you claim if F-86s would have been armed by 6 .3 mgs the results would have been same? So IMHO the results say something but not everything.

Quote:"the Ho-301 is in fact a 40 mm cannon with a subsonic muzzle velocity of roughly 250 m/s, less than half of that of the MK 108, and in no way a similar weapon."

Probably Ho-301 wasn't much more different (if we leave out that its ammo was caseless) from MK 108 than .5 M3 was from Hispano Mk V. (one was HMG and the other cannon, one shot bullets the other shells and shots and the bullet of .5 weighted only 1/3 of the weight of the shell of Hispano)


Quote:" the excellent qualities of the MK 108 as a dogfighting weapon are facts that are not open to disagreement."

You say so, so what. Even this thread show that there is disagreement. And there is more than one way to calculate firepower, you can think that yours is the only right one but its your opinion.

Juha

 

[HoHun]

Hi Juha,

>Now do you claim if F-86s would have been armed by 6 .3 mgs the results would have been same?

Try to draw a rational conclusion from the 9:1 kill ratio allegedly achieved by the F-86 over the MiG-15, and I perhaps I will consider that worth a reply.

>Probably Ho-301 wasn't much more different (if we leave out that its ammo was caseless) from MK 108 than .5 M3 was from Hispano Mk V.

Try to draw a rational conclusion from the technical parameters of the quoted weapons, and perhaps I will consider it worth a reply.

>>" the excellent qualities of the MK 108 as a dogfighting weapon are facts that are not open to disagreement."

>You say so, so what.

If you'd have read on, you'd find that I listed the specific qualities right below that. With which of these do you mean to disagree? I'm getting tired of your attitude posts.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[Juha]

Hello HoHun

Quote:" And since so many other things have an effect on kill ratio that it doesn't tell us anything about weapon quality, it strikes me as pointless posturing on your part to quote the final score here as if it proved anything."

Quote:"Not only does the final USAF 9:1 kill ratio (if it was that good) say nothing about the qualities about the aircraft guns used by the warring sides"

So if kill ratio tells nothing about weapon quality so weapon quality has no effect on kill ratio, so why to discuss on what was the best gun because weapon quality is irrelevant to kill ratio and so logically also to ability to achieve kills? Maybe you make an exception on German guns but as I wrote earlier "I simply disagree and if we cannot bring new facts in this conversation it's better agree that we disagree in this subject."

Juha

 

[HoHun]

Hi Juha,

>>Try to draw a rational conclusion from the 9:1 kill ratio allegedly achieved by the F-86 over the MiG-15, and I perhaps I will consider that worth a reply.

>So if kill ratio tells nothing about weapon quality so weapon quality has no effect on kill ratio, so why to discuss on what was the best gun because weapon quality is irrelevant to kill ratio and so logically also to ability to achieve kills?

That is not a rational conclusion, that is a rethorical question. To help you a bit: You could make a rational conclusion about the combined quality of the personnel, tactical doctrines and weapons systems in general from the kill ratio achieved in the Korean War, but not one regarding one specific factor because "many other things have effect on kill ratio". That were your own words on the topic, I'd have put a "too" in front of them to make the meaning even clearer.

It is especially futile to try and use the general kill ratio in support of a hypothesis which is contradicted by much more specific information we have: both the American and the Soviet level of satisfaction with their guns.

Even then, neglecting to take into account the development of target speeds from WW2 to Korea when comparing the muzzle velocities of the guns used in the different conflicts would give bogus results.

>Maybe you make an exception on German guns but as I wrote earlier "I simply disagree and if we cannot bring new facts in this conversation it's better agree that we disagree in this subject."

You wrote this after quoting a specific statement listing facts about the MK 108 that are not a matter of opinion. Fuzzy disagreement is not good enough - either show my source data to be wrong, or explain why the listed qualities (extremely high firepower, low dispersion, low weight, suitability for centreline mounting) are not excellent qualities for a dogfighting weapon.

So far, you've only managed to convey considerable emotional distress at the thought of the MK 108 being an excellent dogfighting weapon, but I don't see that you have actually managed to disagree with anything I wrote specifically.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[KrazyKraut]

And how many Me 262 kills there are against single engined fighters? At least 8th FC didn't lost many P-51s to Me 262s according to Drgondog.

Bär had 2 P-51s and 3 P-47s to his credit.

Rademacher had 5 single engined fighters, most of them P-51s and one Spitfire or Tempest.

Schall claims 4 P-51s while flying for Kdo Nowotny and further 6 while flying for 10./JG 7. He scored more single engine fighter kills in the Me 262 than he scored bomber kills.

Eder: 6 single engined fighters +1 probable and one P-38 while flying Me 262s.

With these four roughly 1/3 of their jet kills were single engined fighters.

 

[Kurfürst]

So far, you've only managed to convey considerable emotional distress at the thought of the MK 108 being an excellent dogfighting weapon, but I don't see that you have actually managed to disagree with anything I wrote specifically.

Brilliant assertion of the situation IMHO. 8)

 

[Juha]

KrazyKraut
You are talking claims, now according to Drgondog on 17th July 2008 on this board "390 8th AF FC fighters were lost to all causes (air, flak, Ops, accident, unknown) from Jan1 1945 through the end of the war. more than 240 were lost to flak.

I'm still cross checking but it seems that of the 390 lost in the last 4 months, 36 were air to air and 6 more 'Unknown - last seen..". Of the 36 "known air", 5 were Me 262s, 16 were Me 109s and 15 were Fw 190s.


HoHun
disadvantages of MK 108
1) low muzzle velocity made hitting harder because it means longer flight time and so made the estimation of correct lead more difficult. It also means that correct range estimation is more important. And the estimation of correct lead and range are very difficult in air-to-air combat. Also longer flight time meant that the target has time to move farther from initial point. It doesn't matter how effective your ammo is if you miss the target. Plane flying 550km/h will move 75m in ½ sec.

2) Low muzzle velocity means it was very preferable to open fire at short distance but the very effective ammo was itself problem here because it greatly increased risks of the shooter being hit by debris from target. That problem is mentioned in all memories of pilots flying Bf 109s equipped with MK 108 I can recall. That was also the reason why Major Jabs didn't like MK 108 as can be seen in the RLM report on its use in Bf 110 published on 16 Jun 44. So low muzzle velocity made it preferable to open fire from close range and behind but effective ammo made just that kind of tactic dangerous.

3) Memories of at least a few aces mentioned the tendency of MK 108 jam if fired under G-forces much different from 1. And in dogfight those forces were common. And jammed gun isn't very good thing even with super ammo.

Now we can state our points as many times you want but without new info this argument would go nowhere, we simply disagree in how good MK 108 was in dogfight situation. To me the key to success in air combat is hitting with effective ammo.

Juha

 

[HoHun]

Hi Juha,

>Now we can state our points as many times you want [...]

Oh, I'd say we didn't really disagree about the factual points we both posted. (I accept the list of disadvantages you listed, and I take it that by posting that list instead of disagreeing with the advantages I listed, you accept my points too.) It's only in the conclusion we disagreed - I consider the MK 108 an excellent dogfighting weapon, and you (as I interpreted it don't.

>1) low muzzle velocity made hitting harder because it means longer flight time and so made the estimation of correct lead more difficult.

At short range, with a centre-line mounted low-dispersion weapon, this is not that much of a problem. The technique is to aim ahead of the fuselage without attempting to track perfectly, and fire a burst of just a few rounds. The spread of the burst has a good chance of overlapping the length of the fuselage if you do this correctly.

This is only a worthwhile tactic because of the high firepower of the weapon, meaning that you only need one or two hits to bring down the target. With a lower-firepower weapon, it would take multiple hits, and you can only get in a few hits per pass this way.

(It's a highly attractive tactic due to the out-of-plane, high-energy, non-tracking fighting style implications I mentioned above. Due to the preference of intersecting vectors over pursuit curves, it also decreases the average firing ranges, which is a desired effect.)

>2) Low muzzle velocity means it was very preferable to open fire at short distance but the very effective ammo was itself problem here because it greatly increased risks of the shooter being hit by debris from target.

Oh, but how many Luftwaffe aircraft were actually lost to that? I don't think it was much of an operational concern and paled in comparison to the advantages of the high firepower the MK 108 offered. With regard to Major Jabs, I haven't read the report you mention (but of course would be interested to, if you have a link), but I think he was flying as a night fighter in 1944, so I guess he wasn't actually dogfighting enemy fighters, but rather blowing up bomb-loaden Viermots at point-blank range.

Additionally, using the snapshot tactics I mentioned means that you are not usually flying in the wake of your target where the debris would strike you. A disintegrating aircraft isn't equivalent to a fragmentation warhead, but the parts coming off are decelerated by the increased drag (and lack of propulsion) of the debris compared to the attacking aircraft, becoming sort of a stationary obstacle a pursuing attacking flies into. If you're not pursuing, there is not much danger.

>3) Memories of at least a few aces mentioned the tendency of MK 108 jam if fired under G-forces much different from 1.

Again, how often did this happen? All weapons suffered from a certain jam rate, with G forces playing a role for pretty much any weapon ... and anecdotal evidence is not very good for determining the actual operational impact of anything.

(By the way, the snapshot tactic I described actually tends to minimize the G rates pulled while firing because it's not necessary - or desired - to actually track the target. Some Gs might still be pulled, though.)

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[KrazyKraut]

KrazyKraut
You are talking claims, now according to Drgondog on 17th July 2008 on this board "390 8th AF FC fighters were lost to all causes (air, flak, Ops, accident, unknown) from Jan1 1945 through the end of the war. more than 240 were lost to flak.

I'm still cross checking but it seems that of the 390 lost in the last 4 months, 36 were air to air and 6 more 'Unknown - last seen..". Of the 36 "known air", 5 were Me 262s, 16 were Me 109s and 15 were Fw 190s.

So what? First of all 8th air force weren't the only allied force flying over germany. Second: The way the Me 262 engaged it is very well possible they were not identified as such or seen at all and their victims were simply written off as "unknown" or "lost to flak". Third: Me 262s were very well fighting prior to new year's eve 1945: Of Schall's fighter kills, 5 were with Kdo Nowotny in November of '44. And finally: It doesn't matter if I am "talking claims". Everyone knows the awarded kill numbers are distorted, but, unless you assume a direct manipulation towards fighter kills, they still draw a very clear picture: that about 1/4 to 1/3 of all Me 262 kills were fighters.

 

[Maximowitz]

Is it just me or is this thread becoming an increasingly tangential argument about the relative merits of armament?

 

[Juha]

Maximowitz
Quote:" Is it just me or is this thread becoming an increasingly tangential argument about the relative merits of armament?"

Sorry on that, this will be my last message on that subject, hopefully!

HoHun
Quote:" At short range, with a centre-line mounted low-dispersion weapon, this is not that much of a problem. The technique is to aim ahead of the fuselage without attempting to track perfectly, and fire a burst of just a few rounds. The spread of the burst has a good chance of overlapping the length of the fuselage if you do this correctly."

True, but the point is if one could do that correctly. High angle deflection shooting was a skill that only few mastered and trying that with a low mv weapon made that just more difficult. Because the great difficulty of high angle deflection shooting using a reflector gun sight was well known fact a/c were unprotected against flanking fire so IMHO if the shooter was one of those few who could do that or one with exceptional luck and his aim was perfect IMHO it doesn't matter if the target fighter was hit by 2-3 MK 108 Minen shells, 4-6 20mm HE or 20-30 .5 API from nose to cockpit. Only difference in average case would have been that the deed was more difficult to make with MK 108 because its lower mv.
If the shooter had allowed a bit too little lead and hits were against rear fuselage, then there might have difference because 2-3 MK 108 hits would be surely enough but in case they were duds, if the hits were 20mm HE IMHO odds are that the plane was goner but that wasn't sure. I don't have opinion on effects of .5 API hits. But with same lead error high mv weapons hits would be more forward and it's entire possible that first high mv hits were in cockpit when first low mv hits were in tail.
If the shooter had made a bit bigger mistake in lead high mv hits would be at least partly in tail and MK 108 shells would miss behind.
And in most common scenario it doesn't matter what guns were in use because shooter would miss behind because of too little lead.
So don't agree with your theory, it worked only for those rare pilots who mastered high angle deflection shooting and those could kill a single engine fighter with any reasonable effective gun. IIRC that skill was properly teached only in a few air forces.

Quote:" I don't think it was much of an operational concern"

Anyway for some reason aces seems to mention that in their memoirs.

Quote:" With regard to Major Jabs, I haven't read the report you mention (but of course would be interested to, if you have a link), but I think he was flying as a night fighter in 1944, so I guess he wasn't actually dogfighting enemy fighters, but rather blowing up bomb-loaden Viermots at point-blank range."

Doubt that it is in net. Have read only short references from Mankau's and Petrick's Messerschmitt Bf 110/Me210/Me410. Yes Jabs flew in NJG 1 but he wasn't blowing up Viermots, he was shooting them down while being careful not to blow them up into his face and I doubt that when MK 108 came in service there were many so dim LW night fighter pilots that tried to hit bomb bay of a Viermot and Jabs:"Kills using the MK108 nearly always results damage to the attacking a/c, which is struck by pieces from the stricken a/c, even with one hit"
Now behind and under happened to be a good position to attack enemy fighter because then the attacker is in blind spot.

Quote:" weapons suffered from a certain jam rate, with G forces playing a role for pretty much any weapon ..."

True but it is mentioned as something different than how MG 151/20 behaved and Düttmann had technical background and his memoirs gives impression that he really was interesting in technical matters.

Juha

 

[Soundbreaker Welch?]

At short range, with a centre-line mounted low-dispersion weapon, this is not that much of a problem. The technique is to aim ahead of the fuselage without attempting to track perfectly, and fire a burst of just a few rounds. The spread of the burst has a good chance of overlapping the length of the fuselage if you do this correctly.

Sounds tricky, but a good pilot could do it I guess.

 

[HoHun]

Hi Juha,

>True, but the point is if one could do that correctly. High angle deflection shooting was a skill that only few mastered and trying that with a low mv weapon made that just more difficult.

The difficult skill actually is sustained continuous tracking for deflection shooting. Just aiming somewhere in front of the target and letting the target fly though that is way easier. Of course, with low-firepower shots, this is not going to give great kill chances per attack ... but the MK 108 was a high-firepower weapon.

>IMHO it doesn't matter if the target fighter was hit by 2-3 MK 108 Minen shells, 4-6 20mm HE or 20-30 .5 API from nose to cockpit.

Hm, the comparison should actually be 1 MK 108 round vs. 5 Hispano rounds vs. 23 12.7 mm API rounds:

MK 108 mine shell: 503 kJ total energy
Hispano V high explosive round: 103 kJ total energy
Browning 12.7 mm armour-piercing incendiary round: 21.8 kJ total energy

In a half-second burst, you get 5 MK 108 rounds (single-barrel as in Me 109), 10 Hispano rounds (twin-barrel as in Spitfire) or 39 Browning rounds (six-barrel as in P-51) into the air.

Assuming a hit rate of 20%, that would give the one MK 108 hit required to down a fighter, or 2 20 mm hits (with on the average 6 being required for a fighter kill), or 8 12.7 mm hits (for which I have no lethality data, but of which 30 are required to match the energy of 6 20 mm MG 151/20 rounds).

>And in most common scenario it doesn't matter what guns were in use because shooter would miss behind because of too little lead.

Oh, well, I don't buy into the "inexperienced killer" concept. Mike Spick in "The Ace Factor" points out that across all air forces, 5% of the pilots achieved 40% of the kills, and even in the 8th Air Force were the experienced aces got rotated out after a while while the new guys received excellent training, the top 20% of the fighter pilots achieved 50% of the kills.

So it actually makes sense to pick a weapon that is tailored for experienced pilots and not for newbies because it always are the experienced pilots that do the killing, not the newbies who don't usually score anyway.

>So don't agree with your theory, it worked only for those rare pilots who mastered high angle deflection shooting and those could kill a single engine fighter with any reasonable effective gun. IIRC that skill was properly teached only in a few air forces.

Well, as pointed out above, there is a big difference between continuous tracking and setting up snapshots. The latter is quite a bit easier, but only suitable for high-firepower weapons (and greatly facilitated by centreline guns).

With regard to skills required ... in any air force it were the experienced pilots who were the effective killers. Thus, if a weapon is powerful in skilled hands, it's a good choice for an air force.

>>" I don't think it was much of an operational concern"

>Anyway for some reason aces seems to mention that in their memoirs.

Oh well, memoirs are not statistics. Alone that the Me 109 had only one main gun will have concentrated the mind of the pilot on the question of jamming, regardless of the real probability. It's like the psychological stress admitted by pilots flying single-engined aircraft over water - no matter how the chances really are, the moment the coast is out of sight, the engine seems to run uneven and rough, only to purr smoothly again once the aircraft re-gains terra firma.

>Now behind and under happened to be a good position to attack enemy fighter because then the attacker is in blind spot.

Yes, but how often does that happen during a dogfight, and how big are the chances of actually getting a crippling hit from debris when it happens? We're talking about infinitesimal chances here.

>True but it is mentioned as something different than how MG 151/20 behaved and Düttmann had technical background and his memoirs gives impression that he really was interesting in technical matters.

The MG 151/20 certainly was a mature weapon, and the MK 108 might not have been as mature yet. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that the MK 108 had an unacceptable jam rate. If the jam rate had been unacceptable, we'd have seen a strong reaction from the Luftwaffe, not just some mentions in fighter pilot memoirs. The Luftwaffe had all the data, and neither did they revert to the MG 151/20 nor am I aware of any emergency trouble-shooting measures to fix the MK 108's reliability they left on the historical record. If they didn't try to fix it, it probably wasn't broken ...

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[Juha]

Hello HoHun
My last message on this subject
You seem not to understand the difficulties of aerial gunnery, Not many of us can shot swallows with pistol even if it is one hit kill weapon in that role and even ducks were hunted with shot gun not with rifle.
When I got my short training on shooting aerial targets the lesson was first track a second then move fast the gun in the amount of estimated lead along the projected track of the target and shoot. The teaching wasn't, aim somewhere front of the target and take a snap shot. And I trust more on my army instructors than you in this subject.

In real word good high angle deflection shooters like Rall and Marseille showed that one MG 151 was enough to shoot down fighters, with a little help by two MG 17s. To expert one rather high mv cannon was OK. MK 108 on the other hand made Il-2 much easier one would almost say easy target.

If you bother you can calculate how many hits into side of DB605 or Merlin disabled it or how many hits into cockpit disabled the pilot or how big contact fuzed shell was needed to destroy a fighter if the shell missed the target by 75cm.

Quote:" and how big are the chances of actually getting a crippling hit from debris when it happens? We're talking about infinitesimal chances here."

Read again what Jabs wrote.

The field is all yours, I'll not continue this conversation
Juha

 

[HoHun]

Hi Juha,

>You seem not to understand the difficulties of aerial gunnery

Snapshots are standard operating procedure ... just look up Shaw's "Fighter Combat", page 20, to see I'm well in agreement with the author of "the fighter pilot's bible".

Shaw distinguishes between "snapshots" (the technique to use with the MK 108 at short range) and "tracking shots" (what the army taught you). As your army training was for tracking shots, you didn't learn about snapshots. However, the priorities in anti-aircraft fire are different from air-to-air fire, so it's not an oversight by your instructors - it's just that regarding our topic, you can't draw any valid conclusions from your army training.

>>Quote:" and how big are the chances of actually getting a crippling hit from debris when it happens? We're talking about infinitesimal chances here."

>Read again what Jabs wrote.

My quote actually started (emphasis added): "Yes, but how often does that happen during a DOGFIGHT, ...", as we're discussing fighter-vs.-fighter combat here.

I also asked for the chances of a CRIPPLING debris hit. If the target goes down at the price of some scratched paint on your Me 109, that's not much a problem even if it happens every time you kill an enemy fighter.

>The field is all yours, I'll not continue this conversation

Hm, that's slightly disappointing as I thought it was an interesting topic ... feel free to add more information if you come across relevant stuff in the future.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)