Big Guns aloft in WW2

[A.G. Williams]

I'd be interested to see what people make of the article The Myth of The Tank Buster

Seems to be generally OK, with a couple of comments:

the Hawker Hurricane Mark IID, armed with two Vickers S 40mm cannons firing tungsten-tipped rounds.

Nope - steel AP shot only.

Subsequent investigation of the battlefield by operational research teams, however, showed that of the 43 tanks and three self-propelled guns not removed by German recovery teams

In the fighting in NW Europe, the German forces were generally in retreat so had little opportunity to recover anything from the battlefield.

 

[SplitRz]

Seems to be generally OK, with a couple of comments:

the Hawker Hurricane Mark IID, armed with two Vickers S 40mm cannons firing tungsten-tipped rounds.

Nope - steel AP shot only.

Subsequent investigation of the battlefield by operational research teams, however, showed that of the 43 tanks and three self-propelled guns not removed by German recovery teams

In the fighting in NW Europe, the German forces were generally in retreat so had little opportunity to recover anything from the battlefield.

Yes - that would tally logically- the volume shot and shell produced for the Vickers S must have been tiny, and so development of more penetrating rounds after it was virtually abandoned in '43 would have been pointless - especially as even HE rounds used by the Hurricane iv in the far east were more than capable of wrecking thinly armoured Japanese tanks anyway (as well as being more versatile against other targets)

And as for the Germans inability to recover vehicles, it actually flatters the numbers found on the battlefield, versus the wild overclaiming by the pilots, doesn't it? An abandoned but essentially intact vehicle has not been destroyed or necessarily knocked out, even if it is 'hors de combat'

PS - I am interested in buying some of your books - though the price on Amazon had me swallowing hard! Can you recommend any stockists?

 

[fastmongrel]

I wonder about the effect of ground attack on the many Draft Horses the Axis used. Apparently you can train horses to ignore the background noise of a battlefield rear echelon but I imagine an IL2, Typhoon or P47 roaring low overhead dropping munitions might be more than the horse could handle.

 

[A.G. Williams]

PS - I am interested in buying some of your books - though the price on Amazon had me swallowing hard! Can you recommend any stockists?

The publishers are The Crowood Press. They have a couple of them at reduced price: The Crowood Press

 

[SplitRz]

I wonder about the effect of ground attack on the many Draft Horses the Axis used. Apparently you can train horses to ignore the background noise of a battlefield rear echelon but I imagine an IL2, Typhoon or P47 roaring low overhead dropping munitions might be more than the horse could handle.

Yeah, I'm sure that would have been an appreciable factor - but artillery reached way back behind the front line - would ground attack aircraft have been any more terrifying to them than a 105mm shell ?

That said, although I've yet to read any accounts of pilots deliberately targeting horses and horse drawn transport, it would be an entirely logical thing to do. (Though its equally possible that many pilots - especially Brits and Americans with their associated sentimentality for things equine - may have specifically tried to avoid doing it).

 

[33k in the air]

That said, although I've yet to read any accounts of pilots deliberately targeting horses and horse drawn transport, it would be an entirely logical thing to do. (Though its equally possible that many pilots - especially Brits and Americans with their associated sentimentality for things equine - may have specifically tried to avoid doing it).

Just a week or two ago I saw a gun camera footage compilation on YouTube which showed what appeared to be a horse-drawn cart being strafed by an Allied fighter. The pilot aimed at the cart, which took most of the hits, but naturally the horses didn't fare too well regardless.

 

[SplitRz]

Just a week or two ago I saw a gun camera footage compilation on YouTube which showed what appeared to be a horse-drawn cart being strafed by an Allied fighter. The pilot aimed at the cart, which took most of the hits, but naturally the horses didn't fare too well regardless.

I used to be a film archivist many years ago. I worked for a company who used to make documentaries for The History Channel and Discovery called Wingspan - until one dark day, I was informed that the largest customer had decided that the manager was getting too big for his boots, and basically demanded he sold them the archive and rights to the documentaries we'd produced to date. The way I heard it, he was told that it was a case of accepting the cash, or they'd never buy another one of his documentaries again. The carefully crafted documentaries which paid very close attention to historical, technical and first hand accounts were instead handed over to non aviation nuts and experts - and instead chopped up, re-edited, rescripted and turned into the error strewn fodder you get on your screens today. Real shame.

ANYWAY, during my tenure there, hidden away in my bunker like room, watching hours and hours of footage, I ended up going through many rolls of Polish RAF gun camera film. Much of it was of strafing attacks pre and post Normandy over occupied France. I don't think the brutality of war was ever brought home to me as firmly as then. Trucks, cars, trains - literally ANYTHING on the road got strafed. And I couldn't help wondering how on earth the pilots could even begin to distinguish civilians from combatants. In one surreal and disturbing section of footage, gun camera film showed a single cyclist making their way down a poplar tree lined avenue. The aircraft behind the gun camera made at least three separate passes, hosing the road and the hapless cyclist until they ended up in a ditch at the side of the road. Based on that, I'm quite sure horse drawn vehicles would have been absolutely fair game. Maybe not to some of the officer class - but for those from occupied countries, or those aircrew who'd seen their families houses bombed flat, and families killed, I suspect there would have been no squeamishness. Anyone who would make multiple passes to vaporise a single cyclist with 2 x 20mm and 4 x 303s would definitely see horses as a legitimate target.

 

[pbehn]

Just a week or two ago I saw a gun camera footage compilation on YouTube which showed what appeared to be a horse-drawn cart being strafed by an Allied fighter. The pilot aimed at the cart, which took most of the hits, but naturally the horses didn't fare too well regardless.

It was shown in "The World at War" the BBC series narrated by L. Olivier.

 

[SplitRz]

It was shown in "The World at War" the BBC series narrated by L. Olivier.

Brilliant, brilliant series.

 

[Terry37]

my father put in some hours flying the B-25 G and H models. Said when they fired the 75 MM that the plane all but sopped for a second. His bombardier said the plane filled with smoke when fired.

Terry

 

[pbehn]

ANYWAY, during my tenure there, hidden away in my bunker like room, watching hours and hours of footage, I ended up going through many rolls of Polish RAF gun camera film. Much of it was of strafing attacks pre and post Normandy over occupied France. I don't think the brutality of war was ever brought home to me as firmly as then. Trucks, cars, trains - literally ANYTHING on the road got strafed. And I couldn't help wondering how on earth the pilots could even begin to distinguish civilians from combatants. In one surreal and disturbing section of footage, gun camera film showed a single cyclist making their way down a poplar tree lined avenue. The aircraft behind the gun camera made at least three separate passes, hosing the road and the hapless cyclist until they ended up in a ditch at the side of the road. Based on that, I'm quite sure horse drawn vehicles would have been absolutely fair game. Maybe not to some of the officer class - but for those from occupied countries, or those aircrew who'd seen their families houses bombed flat, and families killed, I suspect there would have been no squeamishness. Anyone who would make multiple passes to vaporise a single cyclist with 2 x 20mm and 4 x 303s would definitely see horses as a legitimate target.

That is what was on "The World at War" if I remember it correctly, discussing the preparations for D-Day he went through the targets hit from the air, after a long list with some clips ended with "and a horse and cart" showing that terrified horse, he was a great orator.

 

[33k in the air]

I used to be a film archivist many years ago. I worked for a company who used to make documentaries for The History Channel and Discovery called Wingspan - until one dark day, I was informed that the largest customer had decided that the manager was getting too big for his boots, and basically demanded he sold them the archive and rights to the documentaries we'd produced to date. The way I heard it, he was told that it was a case of accepting the cash, or they'd never buy another one of his documentaries again. The carefully crafted documentaries which paid very close attention to historical, technical and first hand accounts were instead handed over to non aviation nuts and experts - and instead chopped up, re-edited, rescripted and turned into the error strewn fodder you get on your screens today. Real shame.

I'll grant you there's a lot of dreck on YouTube in that regard, but there are some good channels. There's a couple, for example, the have the full wartime military training films shown to pilots for their aircraft type.

 

[33k in the air]

ANYWAY, during my tenure there, hidden away in my bunker like room, watching hours and hours of footage, I ended up going through many rolls of Polish RAF gun camera film. Much of it was of strafing attacks pre and post Normandy over occupied France. I don't think the brutality of war was ever brought home to me as firmly as then. Trucks, cars, trains - literally ANYTHING on the road got strafed. And I couldn't help wondering how on earth the pilots could even begin to distinguish civilians from combatants. In one surreal and disturbing section of footage, gun camera film showed a single cyclist making their way down a poplar tree lined avenue. The aircraft behind the gun camera made at least three separate passes, hosing the road and the hapless cyclist until they ended up in a ditch at the side of the road. Based on that, I'm quite sure horse drawn vehicles would have been absolutely fair game. Maybe not to some of the officer class - but for those from occupied countries, or those aircrew who'd seen their families houses bombed flat, and families killed, I suspect there would have been no squeamishness. Anyone who would make multiple passes to vaporise a single cyclist with 2 x 20mm and 4 x 303s would definitely see horses as a legitimate target.

Chuck Yeager, in the old combat flight sim Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, talked about being given missions to patrol a 50 mile x 50 mile area and shoot up everything that moved on the ground in that area. He and his fellow pilots weren't happy about the orders, but it was war, and they carried them out.

 

[Koopernic]

Yes - that would tally logically- the volume shot and shell produced for the Vickers S must have been tiny, and so development of more penetrating rounds after it was virtually abandoned in '43 would have been pointless - especially as even HE rounds used by the Hurricane iv in the far east were more than capable of wrecking thinly armoured Japanese tanks anyway (as well as being more versatile against other targets)

And as for the Germans inability to recover vehicles, it actually flatters the numbers found on the battlefield, versus the wild overclaiming by the pilots, doesn't it? An abandoned but essentially intact vehicle has not been destroyed or necessarily knocked out, even if it is 'hors de combat'

PS - I am interested in buying some of your books - though the price on Amazon had me swallowing hard! Can you recommend any stockists?

I don't want to dismiss the effect of airpower on German Army logistics at Normandy but there are several other factors probably more significant:
1 Abandoned armour is a characteristic of retreat. You can't recover a mobility kill of a vehicle over run.
2 The German Army in General had an enormous problem getting munitions and supplies from rail to the battle zone and near the allied beach head. There were not enough trucks, there was inadaquet fuel to begin with.
3 Understandably the Germans estimated the timing of the allied invasion and began their buildup about 2 weeks too late to achieve full strength and were at a small fraction.
Im just recalling Swedish historian Nikolas Zetterlings book "Normandy"

 

[Milosh]

Even if the Germans had had enough trucks, they still would have had problems from railhead to the front.

 

[Koopernic]

Even if the Germans had had enough trucks, they still would have had problems from railhead to the front.

No doubt but the studies show that it was not the rail that was the bottleneck at Normandy.

 

[33k in the air]

Just a week or two ago I saw a gun camera footage compilation on YouTube which showed what appeared to be a horse-drawn cart being strafed by an Allied fighter. The pilot aimed at the cart, which took most of the hits, but naturally the horses didn't fare too well regardless.

I found the video referenced above. According to the video description, it shows gun camera footage filmed during a P-47 attack on a German airfield in April 1945. The horse-drawn cart incident is shown (briefly) starting at 1:23.

WWII P-47 "Thunderbolt" Pilot Strafing German Aerodrome(4/13/1945)

 

[Koopernic]

I found the video referenced above. According to the video description, it shows gun camera footage filmed during a P-47 attack on a German airfield in April 1945. The horse-drawn cart incident is shown (briefly) starting at 1:23.

WWII P-47 "Thunderbolt" Pilot Strafing German Aerodrome(4/13/1945)

Travelling by horse drawn cart was the most common way for a German (or European) to get about. The cart would transport goods such as bread, meat and such provisions from a railway station or whatever had been ordered and back again to the house or local bakery or shop a few kilometres away. A girl, woman or whomever was responsible for shopping and collecting rations might hitch a ride to the village and back on this for items out of the usual staples. There would have been a bus maybe 2-4 times per day. I worked in Germany for a year in the 1990s and was able to speak to people who had lived through the war or their family. I recall one woman telling me her mother, who lived in a small village of about 800, had been hit in the leg by a strafing aircraft when she hitched a ride to the neighbouring village in one of those carts that travelled between railway to village but when I inquired further she said it was a rear gunner. I do know that rear gunners did fire at targets on returning from a mission. They remarked ironically at how the stocking had been more or less intact despite their reputation for tearing. Of course a German squad used a cart to carry its supplies but certainly civilians used flat carts to move about. Cars were rare or commandeered. Stark also was the descriptions of the ground noticeably dimming as a high altitude formation flew overhead. The woman, Rosemarie, who experienced this dimming from aircraft shadows were left in awe.

 

[Milosh]

No doubt but the studies show that it was not the rail that was the bottleneck at Normandy.

Railhead is where the train was unloaded.

 

[Admiral Beez]

It got me pondering the relative benefits and disadvantages of large bore weaponry (20mm and above) in aircraft - and how they served in contrast and compared to rocket projectiles (which had largely replaced anything above 30mm by the end of the war.)

The big guns seem to be mostly CAS, anti armour and anti ship. But what of large air combat guns? The Me 262 had four 30mm cannons. One was tried with a 50mm cannon, intended to hit bombers outside the range of their defensive armament. Did any other aircraft carry a heavier air to air gun?

The IJAF had a 40mm air 2 air cannon in the works, the Ho-301 cannon, but it had short range and slow ROF. It saw limited use in the Ki-44.

One of the earliest heavy air 2 air cannon would be the 37mm in the P-39.