john brewer
Banned
- 52
- Aug 3, 2010
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Just as a matter of interest AFAIK - and I could be well wrong in this! - the 109 didn't have washout at all, as it had leading edge slats to perform the same function instead.
The SPECIFIC washout for the P-51A-K was 1 degree, for the P-51H it was one degree 18 minutes....the washout for the Fw 190 was 1 1/2 degrees for ~ the external 25% span, while the Mustang was continuous. I would have to take the time to look up the P-47 and the Me 109 specifics - but, candidly I don't care.
With well designed tooling it is no harder to make than for a wing with no washout...
On the other hand a wing with no washout is less stable in roll at low speeds and/or high angles of attack.
You don't listen John, nor do you absorb what you have already been told on this forum. I mentioned yesterday that all of them were in the 1 1/2 degree 'range'... and that ALL had washout as a design feature. Therfore I am wondering what you are waiting for. Look it up!
Washout tends to reduce induced drag for a non-eliptical wing as well as improve aileron control at the low speed of the airplane's performance threshold. The eliptical wing represents the lowest possible induced drag plan form, but a well designed trapezoidal wing with a goog tip/chord ratio and wing twist will approximately 1-1 1/2 degrees of twist will close the gap significantly.
You didn't have to be there, first-hand experience is not a premise for comprehension of events. The military were split, some WANTED to fight on. Hirohito had to intervene by casting his own vote (that's right, it came down to a show of hands) to sway the decision in favour of surrender.However for the Japanese many preferred suicide to surrender
How many? Do we have a percentage? A ratio of soldiers vs civilians? How many wanted to, how many felt they ought to and how many were too terrified of the military to say otherwise? Or is this another ballpark statement?
and for the Americans and Allies to invade Japan would have cost millions of lives on both sides.
interesting and true but lacks coherence/relevance with the rest of your argument
Losing control of the front in the air lead to Japans surrender but that doesnt make the enola gay a front as it didnt win control, it was able to drop the bomb unhindered because of the fact though.
The Japanese still had the capacity to 'hinder'; what spared Enola Gay any unwelcome attention was the Japanese policy of neither sounding air raid alarms nor putting anything up for single aircraft incursions.
The people who died after the surrender did not have any effect on the decision to surrender
Impeccable logic but then, they wouldn't do, would they? Nobody suggested that they did, we were arguing the point over the relative long-term lethality of conventional vs nuclear
I said the military and the emperor didnt I? I wasn't there when the military discussed the situation with Hirohito, the Japanese are different to others, the military had to fight on, it was what honour demanded in their code. Whether they believed they had any chance or even wanted to was immaterial, the Emperor was a God on earth
Parsifal
I regard you as one of the read-up, well-informed members of the forum and I don't want to get into the wrong sort of argument with you for any reason, but:
Why?
How?
This individual walked a ragged line of rapid-fire glib statements and unsubstantiated half-truths, his response to questions on those submissions was to fire off another, unrelated volley. He still hasn't substantiated the statement he made about 10% of BoB kills going to friendly fire. What were we going to learn from him?
Several posters, most eminently more qualified than I tried to correct or substantiate on his behalf some of the mostly incoherent babble that he was coming out with, he either ignored it or failed to understand it. What was he going to learn from us?
The last straw was aiming defamatory remarks at said eminently qualified posters. At what point did you think dialog with JB was salvageable?
I wouldn't condone my own behaviour for a second but I'm finding it difficult to come up with an apology, he behaved like an ass.
The 10% figure isn't a ball park figure, its a guess, a wild guess, a wild guess based on nothing, if fact its a wild guress based on absolutely nothing. A ball park figure is an estimate based on some research or information.
The implication seems to be that because Bader was shot down by a Spitfire 10% of all losses of all airforces were Blue on Blue. A pretty amazing leap of logic that left me way behind.
Suggest you pick a unit, track its losses and than come up with a figure.
From what I read the eliptical wing has the lowest drag but will stall without warning therefore the wing was designed with washout so the inner wing stalls before the outer wing giving the pilot some feel or control. The washout on the mustang was to reduce drag (as you say) I dont know how the same twist on one wing increases drag (eliptical) and on another reduces it but thats what the article Ive just read says without describing any difference in the washout they had the same design feature for different reasons.
All planes will stall eventually I just read and heard that a mustang gave little or no warning......i will try to find the articles
You didn't have to be there, first-hand experience is not a premise for comprehension of events. The military were split, some WANTED to fight on. Hirohito had to intervene by casting his own vote (that's right, it came down to a show of hands) to sway the decision in favour of surrender.
The thread will not be closed, but if people can not debate in a mature manner, they will take a vacation to the beach. That goes for everyone involved. Especially if I am ignored one more time when I tell people to quit with the BS.
I used Bader as an example, in one action he misidentified some 109s and joined them he them got shot down and misidentified the spitfire as german (despite being in a spitfire himself) while the spitfire pilot shot down another spitfire (the same as he was flying) thinking it was a german. That is three cases in one action by very experienced pilots which until recently was claimed as 1 lost me 109 and 1 lost spitfire it was only because only one other me 109 was lost that day and accounted for that this was found out. Since the above records involving britains most celebrated fighter pilot were completely wrong which records do you want me to research then? and what would be the point such investigations only lead to pilots like Casson being deducted 1 kill and told they shot down a comrade when he was doing his best but made a mistake.
what I am saying is that for (for example) both sides claimed approximately 2 times the kills they actually made so they wernt sure of what they hit or missed. In the case of hitting a target the pilot automatically claims a kill even though it was FF (this happened with Sailor Malan) Sim ilarly all evidence now points to Bader being shot down by a spitfire, the spitfire claimed a 109 and Bader himself said he was shot down by a German. Similarly two planes attacking a bomber and colliding would be claimed as two kills by the bomber
There is no consistency in the extent of overclaiming, it varied wildly. There is a thread I have been involved with, concerning the Zero versus the Spitfire in the pacific. In that thread we discussed the heavy Spitfire losses over Darwin. The Allied claims for Zeroes shot down over a three month period was something like 28.....they actuallly shot down four. Conversely, the british victory claims over France in 1941 were only about 60% over actual losses. And many of those battles were fought at night, or over enemy territory. There just isnt any trend in the way that losses are exaggerated.
With regard to FF, I can see what you are saying, but this is a long way fom proving the point. As I said, I have the details of every action stretching from February to July 1941 looking at the returns for each unit involved, drawn up by the daily loss sheets from both sides. This has to be THE way to check for loss by cause. As Glider says, you would need to look at the loss records for a unit to find a pattern of error in the contemporary records. It would be, in my opinion, impossible to prove that losses to FF incidents are five times those that are actually recorded. I cannot claim that FF incidents across the board are a uniform 2%, but then you cannot claim it was 10%, or even near it, based on the research you have done. You have taken a couple of isolated incidents, (which are recorded incidentally), and then extrapolated that by some obscure means to arrive at a figure you consider to be reasonable. No-one else, here, or anywhere, shares that view of reasonableness. You either must abandon the claim, put up with these endless demolitions of the position, or undertake more research.
At the time of the battle people were only interested in kills and losses friendly fire wasnt much talked about unless it was chronic like ack ack batteries shooting at everything. In the melee of a battle pilots crossed others paths and got hit missidentified friend and foe it was chaos. Malan was cleared at the court martial, he probably wouldnt have been cleared if he reported that he shot down a hurricane, no one would ever admit to a friendly fire kill even iff they knew they had done it.
What are your sources for claiming it was not much talked about,, in the squadron loss sheets, at least for the allies, where an FF was known to occur, it was recorded, and investigated. Hiding an FF incident was an offense punishable by courts martial, admitting it would only get a pilot into trouble if he was found to have done it deliberately, and that happens almost never. In the absence of any well documented figures, I cannot see how this figure of 10% can be maintained, when what records we do have show a far lower figure.
My experience is post war, but all the pilots I have ever worked with were always very concerned about IFF, whether such identification was by electronic means or by simply eyeballing the target. Shooting down a colleague is not something any pilot wants to do, and the psychological imperative to establish whether the target is a friendly or not was always very strong ihn my experience. Cowboy style attacks were certainly not tolerated in my experience, and I am willing to bet they werent tolerated under wartime conditions either. I am sure FF happened, but not nearly as often as you think they do.
The figure of 10% is a ball park, no one knows for sure or will ever know, it has more to do with the psychology of pilots under battle conditions. The main factor in identification seems to have been not what a plane looks like but where it is coming from or going too. A twin engined plane heading from france was seen as enemy when it could be RAF, a single seat fighter climbing towards a bomber formation was seen as a friend when it could be a 109. It was only at very close quarters that actual visual recognition played a part.
See my comments above. I have some actual experience with witnessing pilot psychology, although not wartime , and I think your theorisations are incorrect. I think most pilots, other than sheer rookies, are very careful to minimise the risks of FF. Not all interceptions , especially those at night during the war were visual, the latter part of the war, aircraft caried IFF devices, and the whole concept of the "bomber stream" was implemented to avoid FF incidents at night
Just after Bader's section of four aircraft crossed the coast, 12 Bf 109s were spotted flying in formation approximately 2–3,000 feet below them travelling in the same direction. Bader dived on them too fast and too steeply to be able to aim and fire his guns, and barely avoided colliding with one of them while continuing his dive. He levelled out at 24,000 ft, pulled himself together, and on taking a look around discovered he was now alone in the sky. Separated from his section, he was considering whether to return home when he noticed three pairs of Bf 109s a couple of miles in front of him. Bader dropped down below them and closed up before dispatching one of them with a short burst of fire from close range. He was just opening fire on a second Bf 109 when he noticed the two on his left turning towards him. At this point he decided it would be better to return home and made the fatal mistake of banking away from them, and towards the two on his right that were continuing straight ahead. In the following moments Bader lost the tail of his Spitfire, and was forced to bail out over Le Touquet in German-occupied France where he was taken prisoner.
Bader had no trouble IDing the 109s.
First fronts and now theatresThe Typhoon was mistakenly involved in FF so often they painted stripes on the wings, during D Day all planes had D Day stripes due to experience in other theatres like Dieppe and Anzio you say 2% I say I read 10% and believe it.....lets leave it at that
You didn't have to be there, first-hand experience is not a premise for comprehension of events. The military were split, some WANTED to fight on. Hirohito had to intervene by casting his own vote (that's right, it came down to a show of hands) to sway the decision in favour of surrender.
First fronts and now theatres
So Dieppe was in a different theatre to the D Day landings?
You can leave it where you like but I doubt you'll get any concensus on the 10% figure just because you read it somewhere and believe it. We'd like to see a conscientious attempt to validate your figures with a breakdown of unit losses.
Novelty had nothing to do with it, the impact of a deployed nuclear weapon had everything to do with itOf course losing a few million is irrelevant and incoherant.......are you kidding me?
You have consistently demonstrated that you are not clever enough to be this slippery, we were not debating the imminent invasion of the Japanese mainland by US ground forces
The nuclear bomb didnt bring about surrender because of the number of people killed
Oh, I think you'll find that played a BIG part in it
The nuclear bombs brought about surrender because it was a new type of weapon
Once again read the thread and make a mental note of all the incredulous posts regarding most of your claims, that's the 'we' I'm referring to. This 'crowd' you allude to, who do you think they're here to see - me or you?Dieppe may be close to Normandy but it is...
...in the same theatre of operations
I wouldn't say Normandy and Dieppe were the same theatre at all ....just close on a map
Just close on a map? Do the letters E-T-O mean anything to you?
....I didnt realise I was running for election and had to get any concensus at all. Who is the royal "we" you refer to. you are patronising and facetious and quite clearly playing to a crowd as adler said please stop it I have tried to.
The strategic bombing campaign had a major effect on the war in my opinion but not quite in the way the planners imagined. It was possible to flatten major cities without the enemy being demoralised, it wasnt possible to easily hit idustrial targets by day or night, massive bomb loads were required and industries managed to re locate hide and re start production. The surprise to me is that anyone was surprised at Germany they were only doing what the British did.....we spread aircraft production evacuated cities etc.
Churchill and the government were anxious that bombing may wreck moral and the will to fight it had the opposite effect in Britain so i will never understand why they thought it would work on Germany, bombing at night time especially was so innacurate that the raids on berlin frequently moved rubble from on place to another.
It was unlikley that flattening a city would cause a collapse inmorale, though there are a number of occasions, both allied and axis where it came close to achieving just that. I can think of occasions where it actually worked.... Rotterdam and warsaw are two examples. The French concerns about German retaliation if the Britsh used French bases to bomb the Ruhr are another. The bombing of the Italian controlled Island of Pantelleria, and at Amba Alagi, to name the more well known. The US Heavy bomber attacks at St Lo and the tactical strikes at Falaise esstially shattered the defenders, and very often caused the individual surrender of the german defenders (a tactical strike admittedly in this case) On several occasion in the BoB the british populationshowed signs of cracking under pressure, though this is not apparent in the post war accounts.
But even in the context of what bombing really can do, this discussion about how the British were concerned about only breaking enemy morale is taken do out of context. Read Harris' actual reports to the government, and a different picture of what actually was being said emerges. BC was not saying we will break morale. It was more the case they were saying"we will bomb them until either their morale cracks, or we level each and every city in Germany". They essentially made good on the threat. The Germans did not crack, so BC levelled over a hundred major cities and towns in occupied europe. The actual impacts of setting fire to cities over HE on industrial targets has never been fully analysed, except by the USSBS, which as I said estimates the effect on production outputs as 40%. Thats consistent with what the germans thought they could produce, and what they actually produced. Then ther are all those other effects that I spoke of previously
Hamburg was a special case for bombing...being a coastal target it was easily identified by radar from the coast outline and was easily approached over the sea so ground defence wasnt possible. I have worked in the Ruhr area (Dusseldorf/ Mulheim/Essen) they were flattened during the war but night time bombing only was capable of hitting a city Germany still managed to produce steel tanks and planes until very late in the war.
When you are referring to Hamburg being easily identified by radar, thats true, but radar, in the form of H2S was only one navigation aid, and in fact the least accurate of the electronic means, of finding a target at night. Far more accurate, more accurate than the US visual bombsights was the GCI based "OBOE" systems and their derivatives. The problem with OBOE, until mid 1944, was its range, and therein lies Harris' mistake. By targetting Berlin, he was not only attacking into the teeth of the toughest defences in Germany, he was also operating beyond the range of OBOE, and thereby significantly decreasing the accuracy of the bombers.
Hamburg was a special case because it was the most effective raid, and also because the Reich defences werere defeated by the use of window for the first time. However, it was emulated across western germany and europe in many cities. To try and argue that city after city was not levelled as a result of BC bombing is simply untrue. Cologne for example after being attacked in 1942 was essentially out of action as a production centre for three months after the first 1000 bomber raid. Its true that Night bombing was only capable of hitting the city, but the british got around that by setting fire to the city, and using massive concentrations of bombers to overpower the defences. The British became extremely adept at mixing their bombloads....a mix of delayed action fuses, incendiary cookies, very heavy HE bombs, and antipersonnel bombs. By far the greates majority of the 1 million civilian casualties suffered by Germany in my opinion were at the hands of this instrument. It would often take days or weeks to render the rubble safe, and get the terrified populace out of their bomb shelters, and then weeks or months to get the city back on its feet again. Whilst production might get under way again, bombing did have an effect on output rates. Just how much, I cannot say, but I am willing to stake my reputation that it was a significant impact
I agree that harris made a blunder in going for berlin, it was inexplicable to me because he was repeating
hitler/the luftwaffes blunder with london. maybe he thought more bombers with bigger payloads would achieve the desired effect of a surrender through strategic bombing. History showed it wasnt achieved.
I dont know what "evidence" you require Speer was wrong because the allies went on to kill many more in berlin dresden and many other cities without any of these raids bringing about a surrender......they did have a major impact though. speer didnt know that the terrain radar used on Hamburg didnt work nearly so well inland.
See my comments above, but agin whilst surrender was the ultimate prize, it was not the only prize, or indeed the realistic objective of that campaign. Berlin was targetted for a number of reasons, including the unhinging of the Nazi seat of government and to force the attrition of Nazi Night fighters (Nazi losses were grossly over-estimated) . My view is that it was a mistake, because it was an attack into the teeth of the toughest opposition in Germany at the time, with a multiplying effect that each bomber committed was achieving proportionately less than if the focal point had remained around the rhine