the lancaster kicks ass said:
Cheddar Cheeze said:
The German night fighters could attack from 1000 yards away, the Gunner had to wait until they were within 400 yards before he could get some effective shots in...in this case the think the .50cal was better...
I'm not saying NFs never shot as far away as 1000yards, for me to claim they didn't would be stupid, however they quite often got to within 400 yards, given the need to seek out and identify the target, it was quite common...............
Well I'll say it - they didn't, at least not for effect. The only German aircraft guns that had that kind of range were the MG151/15 15mm, Mk103 30mm, and the BK50 50mm. As far as I know the MG151/15 was not used on night fighters, nor was the BK50. The MK103 might have been.
However, the idea of firing from such a limited ammo supply weapon at a target more than half a mile away in the dark is just silly. The chances of hitting it would be almost nil. The standoff weapons concept was tried for day combat, and even here the range was too much and it was unsucessful.
The most used German cannon, the MG151/20 20mm, did not have much (if any) better range than the .303, it flies almost exactly like the MG131 13mm, going sub-sonic before 300 meters! The .303 had about the same sectional density, and superior ballistic shape - it probably had better range than the MG151/20 (which has horrible ballistic shape).
And the next most used weapon, the MK108 30mm had terrible range - it's sub-sonic right out of the barrel!
At night a fighter had to get close to kill its prey with any degree of effectiveness.
the lancaster kicks ass said:
RG_Lunatic said:
Your figures are off by more than ten fold m8!
sorry, they weren't my figures, i got that figure from a very reliable source................
Well, you should have a talk with him then, he needs to revise his figures.
the lancaster kicks ass said:
If you wanted to shoot down a fighter, the .50cal was far and away the better choice.
that is, for the most part, true, however it wasn't the role of the bomber's defensive armorment to shoot down an attacking fighter, merely to "discourage" it from an attack, a job for the .303......................
I disagree. German night fighters were armored well enough to endure a few frontal hits from .303 class guns. They might rudder a bit and try to get out of the gunners view before comming back in for the attack, but seeing that the rounds were .303's, they would be much more willing to press home an attack than seeing .50's comming at them. The tracers are very noticably different.
the lancaster kicks ass said:
In general, fighters, especially night fighters, were not scared off by the defensive fire from gunners
that's a big fat pile off bull's excriment, in a 4 second burst the 4x.303 could throw out over 300 rounds, any percentage of which could be tracer, 9 times out of 10, if a attacking fighter even knew he'd been spotted he'd go find another target, no pilot would press home an attack whilst being fired on................
Sure they would. Especially if the bomber had not yet dropped its load. German pilots were not cowards, they were brave men. They knew that a British night bomber was going to bomb a city, not a factory, and that civilian lives were probably going to be lost if it reached its target.
The .303 could not even penetrate their armor-glass windscreen. The odds of taking more than a handful of hits was minimal. In 4 seconds 2 x .50's would put out over 100 rounds, and any hit could likely seriously hurt the target. The armor and especially the armor-glass windscreen was not likely to stop a .50 API round (which could penetrate over 10 mm of armor at 400 meters), especially at typical night fighter engagment ranges of 100 meters or less. And there is no reaon the rear turret of the lanc could not have sported 4 x .50s.
A night fighter would be much more likely to break off his attack upon seeing .50 tracers than on seeing .303 tracers, because he would know he could not sustain hits. With the .303's, he might well figure he could.
the lancaster kicks ass said:
.303 ammo would be relatively ineffective on an Me110 or Ju88 night fighter
as was stated before, it was not the job of the defensive armourment to shoot down an attacking fighter..................
No, but the defensive guns have to pose a serious threat. The .303's posed a minimal threat. The attacking night fighter pilot could ignore them and press home his attack and would probably survive it and quite likely shoot down the bomber. Against the .50 this was much less likely, the pilot would know just a few hits could kill or cripple his plane.
the lancaster kicks ass said:
especially in the relatively few hits you'd be likely to score.
you have a much better chance of scoring a hit with the .303 than with the .50cal..................
You'd have a little better chance. The .50's fire much truer than the .303's, making them easier to score with. The 1150 rpm max. RoF of the .303 is not really that much higher than the 850 rpm. max RoF of the .50. And, the .50's RoF could be boosted to 950-1050 rpm by replacing the buffer pad (a round fiberous washer) with a nickle as was done frequently on P-51B's. This would be more doable in a bomber, since the gunner could clear jams much easier and loss of a turret gun would not be nearly as significant as loss of a wing gun (which unbalances a fighter).
Again, I tend to think the gunners were generally not very effective, their primary function was to provide some (false) reassurance to the rest of the crew and their families.
=S=
Lunatic