Bombers defensive armament: a misconceived idea?

[Cheap Labour]

and speed means nothing in a Bomber-fighter encounter............

Incorrect. Has everyone forgotten about the Mosquito? The RAF's very own wooden wonder? It is by all right a bomber and re-proved beyond a doubt that speed was the most potent weapon in air combat.

However, you can't attack with purely super-light, super-fast aircraft because the enemy will make an even faster aircraft (see Me-262) to shoot yours out of the sky.

Also keep in mind that the ENTIRE point of the USAAF bomber offensive was to cripple the Luftwaffe to make invasion a possibility. Time and time again, post-mission recce flights over bombed targets showed that the facilities hit by USAAF heavies were back to nearly 100% operating capacity within a week.

The job of the combat box was to destroy German fighters and kill the highly experienced pilots inside them. It took a long time, and a lot of folks got killed but the job was done. Thats the nature of war.

 

[cheddar cheese]

Good points 8)

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

i think the Blitzkrieg tactics were amazing, everyone expected it to be like WWI, no one expected them to move that quickly..............

Except the Germans of course...

actually even the germans didn't expect it, that's why hitler stopped his tanks short of Dunquirke, if he'd had let them go on insted of stopping them for a few days it wouldn't have been the miracle it was...........

 

[cheddar cheese]

Dunquirke

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

Incorrect. Has everyone forgotten about the Mosquito? The RAF's very own wooden wonder? It is by all right a bomber and re-proved beyond a doubt that speed was the most potent weapon in air combat.

sorry i wasn't thinking about the mossie but i was refering to an encounter between a 4 engined heavy and a twin engined night figter...........

 

[cheddar cheese]

The speed of bombers isnt really worth mentioning unless its incredibly slow or incredibly fast...

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

actually there was another defensive move used by Bomber command that did involve speed. If an attacking fighter was coming in for a pass the tial gunner could call "drop" if he did the flight engineer would drop the throttles (the pilot didn't controll the throttles) and the bomber, ,let's assume it's a lanc, would rapidly loose speed, this caused the gap between fighter and bomber to drop allot quicker than the fighter pilot would have planned, as such he wouldn't be able to get any shots in and the tail gunner would have a few shots, upon hearing the command "easy" from the tail gunner, the flight engineer would increse the throttles, this whole process would be over in a matter of seconds..............

 

[cheddar cheese]

Werent certain engines known to catch fire during rapid power changes though?

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

yes but i've never heard of an instance where that happened on a lanc, proberly because the merlin was such an amazing engine.............

 

[cheddar cheese]

What about the MkII weith Hercules engines...

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

the Mk.II was a wee bit heavyer so i don't know if it would've worked as well, i don't know much about the Hurcules..........

 

[cheddar cheese]

The MkII lanc is my favourite....

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

it did look good...............

 

[cheddar cheese]

Not really...

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

yes it did...............

 

[cheddar cheese]

Of the 3 its the best looking, but its still downright hideous.

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

3, how dare you.................

 

[cheddar cheese]

Well theres the MkI, II and II isnt there?

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

there's the Mk.I,II,III,IV,V,VI,VII,X, ASR.Mk.III and GR.Mk.III, plus numerous other conversions.....................

 

[cheddar cheese]

Ah...I though there was just the 3.