Bombers defensive armament: a misconceived idea?

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yes many canadian Mk.X mid upper turrets were fitted with twin .50cals, but not the tail................
 

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Being seated in such tail gun position, as shown here in that photo, would be the last place on earth where I would like to be during combat missions.

It seems as vulnerable as a jello under the Sahara desert sun. It seems pretty overexposed.

A Bf110 or a Ju88 with their noses packed with cannons, homing in for the kill, in a full moon night, would perhaps be an utterly nightmarish vision. The German NJG´s could certainly reduce the tail gunner to a bloody fleshy pulp.


I exchanged emails with a veteran of the USSAF a few days ago: he told me that in his opinion, for each German fighter shot down by the "heavies" no less than 4 USAAF heavies were shot down by the German interceptors. A 4 to 1 exchange ratio.

A while ago, when I told him of sources affirming the exchange ratio was 2 bombers for each fighter, he bursted in laughter telling me that if such ratio had had any approach to reality, the long range P-51´s and P-47´s would have never been necessary, at all.

And after further asking and reading I agree with him.

Do we have an agreement here?
The USSAF boxes of heavy bombers are losers to fighters?
 
I agree with the premis that unescorted bombers were not able to defed themselves.

One of the interesting things to come out of this is that when the P-38s started to escort the bombers in late October '43 the losses dropped from an average of 9/10% to 4/5%.
With the public and congress started asking why escort fighters were not used prior to that date the AAF answered that they didn't have a fighter that could do the job prior to the P-51. The P-38 did have some severe problems with the early models in Europe (not fully solved until the L model, but still got the job done against odds as high as 20-1) the AAF answer to this was to discredit the P-38 including quoting all performance figures (L model in particular) in METO power, in comparison to WEP power used in all other aircraft.
P-38s were succesfuly escorting bombers in the med on trips from Africka to Italy months earlier '43 after bases in North Africka were secured. It was criminal to send the bombers to places like Regensberg and Swinfurt (sorry about the spelling) without escort - when it was availabe and proven effective.
The P-51s never bettered the 4/5% loss rate, even with 10 times the aircraft than the P-38s had.
 
Udet said:
Do we have an agreement here?
The USSAF boxes of heavy bombers are losers to fighters?
Click to expand...

Not quite. With escorting fighters forcing the Luftwaffe pilots to make hasty attacks, the defensive gunners became significant. Yes the bomber boxes by themselves were very vulnerable to enemy fighters, but along with escorts, the bomber boxes and their firepower became somewhat effective.

=S=

Lunatic
 
RG_Lunatic, hi:

Not quite?

I am referring to the unescorted boxes of heavy bombers of course.

Unescorted the heavy bombers lose. That is the point.

As I put here, and we know it, once escorted by the long range fighters the situation did improve for them heavies.

Still, when the escort fighters had arrived and got deployed in important numbers to protect the boxes, there were specific episodes when escorted boxes of heavy bombers where virtually obliterated by the Luftwaffe, especially at the hands of the "sturm" gruppen of JG3, JG4 and JG300 during 1944, equipped with the Fw190A8/R8 "sturmböck".
 
The problem with flying a box at night was holding it together withou nav lights...as lighting the formation up like a Christmas tree would rather defeat the object I believe this was why Bomber Command opted for the freeform bomber stream. It also minimised the odds of nightfighter plughing into bombers as they completed a pass.
 
U have to remember also that those Fw-190A-8 Bomber Destroyers had a fighter cover, usually -109's to keep the Bomber Escorts busy while they, being heavy with armor and armament, would slide in and decimate those B-17 formations with 6X 20mm cannons...

Not the thing u wanna see as a tail gunner.......
 
I reckon at night those tactics would be pretty good.
Click to expand...

it wouldn't have worked for the RAF at night, assuming you were talking about the RAF adopting the tactics..............


it's important to remember a attacking figher pilot wouldn't go for the fusilage, if you wanna bring a bomber down you go for the engines/fuel tanks, you'd have to be a good shot to take out the tail gunner, but it did happen allot...............
 
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