British .303 vs 50 Cal M2

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Hits were more like 2% for average pilots.

There is evidence of studies done by ground observers and gun camera film of British pilots in training opening fire on towed target sleeves at distances 3 to 4 times the range they were instructed to open fire at. 900-1200 yds instead of 300yds. Obviously any hits at those ranges were total accidents. The British had not spent a lot of time/effort on air to air gunnery training before the war and indeed there were several schemes and an awful of money spent on ways to get around training pilots in air to air shooting. The schemes for zero aim off shooting and the turret fighter craze. Also the 1939/early 40 spread patterns for the wing guns. Higher ups simply thought that you couldn't train pilots to deal with the closing speeds and brief firing opportunities of high speed flight.
Some pilots and squadron commanders may have thought this was rubbish and done what they could to plan around it but with that attitude being the official stance for the end of the 30s actual gunnery (air to air) firing was a tiny fraction of the pilots training.
Other air forces may have had different priorities and it depends on which squadrons and commanders you are talking about.
For the USN commander Thach had spent a number of his 10-12 years of service as an airman as a gunnery instructor and when posted to a squadron as a commander he spent as much time as possible instructing his squadron in air to air gunnery, other squadron commanders might not have been as diligent or had the experience to train their squadrons as well.
Just about every nation did a poor job of training replacement pilots. Both German and British replacements in the BoB not haveing spent enough time in operational fighters let alone spent any real time in gunnery training (it is not learned in an afternoon.)

British gunnery and bombing training during the 30s was often at annual (or at best semi annual) "camps" where the squadron/s left their home base/s and went to a base near the gunnery ranges for 1-2 weeks. They often went a year without firing guns.

Please note this is no reflection on the pilots involved. If you are not given the training or opportunity to practice then the development of skills needed are only going to show up in a tiny percentage of the pilots who have, for some reason, an innate ability of understanding of the problem/s involved.

The indictment is of the system/administrators rather than the pilots themselves. Given adequate training there is no reason to believe the British pilots were any worse than any other pilots.
 
There is one factor I haven't seen mentioned, although I haven't read the entire thread. It seems this discussion is focused on which is better: .303 vs .50 cal vs 20 mm. Some have mentioned how earlier in the war when there was less armament that the .303 worked better and later on the 20 mms were added. Each caliber has distinct advantages and disadvantages. Six .303 guns would be spewing a larger quantity of projectiles and so have a greater chance of hitting the target than .50 cal and even more than the 20 mm, but less impact per hit. If a pilot was a good shot, or as some practiced, waiting until they were close behind the enemy before pulling the trigger, then a few 20s might be better. The 50 seems to be a compromise between the two. Kind of like comparing #8 shot with #4 and buckshot. Other factors would be pilot skill and preference, the types of targets (air vs ground), speed etc. Why argue which one was best? Each platform was better at something than the other. Brits and Americans should not be arguing with each other over who was the greatest. We should be discussing why the Spitfire and Mustangs were better than the ME and FW, and why the ALLIES won the war over the AXIS powers. After all, the war of 1776 settled which country had the best military
 
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Fine so far, more or less.

Brits and Americans should not be arguing with each other over who was the greatest.

Now where is fun if that is taken out from us children?

We should be discussing why the Spitfire and Mustangs were better than the ME and FW, and why the ALLIES won the war over the AXIS powers.

We have had plenty of threads dealing with Spit vs. 109 or Pony vs. 190, at least my conclusion is that things are not that cut & dry, especially when comparison is made for different years/eras of ww2.
We also have had discussions on comparing Allies vs. Axis logistics, war-making capability, money available etc.

After all, the war of 1776 settled which country had the best military

French?
 
I think you'll find that on the British side that there was a general reluctance to fight kith and kin with some high level resignations at the beginning so I don't think you were fighting our 'A' Team. After 7 years of war employing mainly German mercenaries and Indian allies, our parliament wasn't willing to spend any more money on it. Us Brits tend to call an end to most wars after about 7 years and negotiate. On a more serious note, I believe that in 1939 through to 1941 the 0.303 Browning was the best and most reliable weapon even though you needed a lot of them. After that, I'd say, 20 mm Hispano cannon are essential for taking down bombers and 0.5 in Browning's for fighter vs fighter combat. For the Brits that means we must have cannon rather than HMGs. At war's end, our continued use of 0.303's appears to me to be criminally negligent.
 
20mm Hispano was superior in fighter vs fighter engagements as well. By wars end, the .303 was almost completely relegated to secondary duties. The RAF standardized on 4 20mm Hispano as the primary fighter armament by 1941. Spitfires continued to carry 4 .303's in addition to the 2 20mm strictly because the thin Spitfire wing struggled with the extra 2 cannons when fitted. Although some did, like the Mk.VC
 
You're both wrong, Ireland has the best military. Fought its way to independence after 700 years of occupation. Tiny little nation. With the help of the EU beat the Brits in the BREXIT negotiations.
I have recently watched "The Siege of Jadotville". Interesting moment in Irish history.
The movie was good, whether or not it was accurate historically
 
In his book Carrier Fighters, David Brown discusses the harmonization pattern used on the Fulmar (and maybe Sea Hurricane?). IIRC, he states that initially they used an RAF pattern but later switched to an Admiralty Standard Pattern; there was no difference in the resulting kill rate but the ASP resulted in far fewer damaged and/or lost Fulmars from Bomber Defensive fire. IIRC, the ASP tried to created a bullet stream rather than a converging cone, with the result that bomber gunners were disabled at a much higher rate.

I don't have the book at hand, and it'll be a few days before I can read it again.
 
I've only seen the Admiralty pattern diagrams for the Martlet and they are pretty similar to the 'Spread' patterns that the RAF finally adopted mid 1942 (after their proponents had been fighting for their adoption since 1938).
 

Things get confused because the gun is not the entire weapon. The Projectiles are part of the weapon and the gun is part of the delivery system.
Over the course of the war the projectiles for the .303 changed and the proportions of the projectiles used changed. The four .303s in a 1943 Spitfire were firing as many incendiary bullets per second as the eight guns of a BoB Spitfire.

The US .50 also changed quite a bit from as has been mentioned earlier in the thread.

The 20mm Hispano also used different projectiles as the war went on. Changing it's effectiveness even if the rate of fire stayed the same. Early HE ammo had fuses that were too sensitive and they went off on the skin of the aircraft. Impressive hole in the sheet metal but the really important stuff several feet inside was often undamaged. Latere fuses allowed the projectiles to get several feet inside before detonating.
In the early part of the war, to get around the fuse problem, a portion of the 20mm ammo was fired without HE filler and with a steel plug instead of a fuse.Not quite an armor piercing projectile but it would go through a lot of structure. Later on they put incendiary material inside this projectile and hardened the nose cap. If the shell broke open inside the aircraft there was quite a bit of incendiary material being scattered about (about 10 times as much as the incendiary material in the US .50 cal M8 API bullet).
A 20mm in the last few years of the war was a more effect weapon than a 20mm in the first year of use even with the same firing rate and muzzle velocity because the projectiles were more effective.
 
At war's end, our continued use of 0.303's appears to me to be criminally negligent.
There is a continual insistence that rifle-caliber machineguns were just deadweight, that using them against fighters like the FW190 was akin to tickling them with a feather duster. I say this because there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Consider for starters that - except for two confirmed Hurricane victories - all the RAF victories in the Battle of Britain were won with the .303 Browning. And that was with the relatively-ineffective loadings forced on the RAF in 1940 by a shortage of armor-piercing and semi-armor-piercing-incendiary (Dixon) ammunition.
RAF eight-gun fighters were still shooting down Luftwaffe fighters and bombers - even models with better armor - well into 1941. An example is Douglas Bader, who thought that eight reliable Brownings was superior to even four Hispanos, and scored his last victories in 1941 in an eight-gun Spitfire Va serial W3185.
Later in the War, Spitfires armed with two Hispano cannon and four Brownings had their Brownings loaded with just AP and SAPI, and they were still being effective against Luftwaffe aircraft in 1945. As an example, when 317 Squadron's Spitfire IXs met the latest Bf109Ks and FW190Ds on January 1st 1945 (during the Bodenplatte raid), examination of the wrecks of two of their victories showed they had been achieved after the attacking pilots had run out of cannon ammunition, and all the damage was from .303 hits.
An even more illuminating example is the loss of two FW190As in Russia, shot down in a case of mistaken identity by a pair of Finnish I-153 biplanes! The Fins had a number of captured I-153s, all of which were re-armed with four Browning .303s to ease ammunition supply issues. They did not have the RAF's Dixon SAPI round, using the much less effective de Wilde ammunition, yet they still shot down both FWs in a single pass. This wasn't the only modern and well-armored fighter the Finnish I-153s scored, they also shot down at least one Russian Airacobra.
Six Commonwealth air gunners reached ace status using only the .303 Browning to defend their bombers. Air gunner Wallace McIntosh, an upper gunner in a Lancaster, scored eight victories against heavily-armored night-fighters with just two .303 Brownings.
Yes, the .50 Browning was better, and the 20mm Hispano was better still (if you could score a hit), but to say the .303 Browning was worthless or "criminally negligent" is obviously false.
 
I agree. It may have been true that the RAF had trouble bringing down bombers with rifle calibre guns it is also true that a huge number of planes and crew made it back from the BoB but never flew again. Anything containing a human and lots of technical equipment is vulnerable to 8 machine guns, as I understand it the biggest problem was marksmanship and the distance pilots were firing from. Pilots who got in close didn't seem to have a problem.
 
I've always shaken my head when I hear people say the .303's were not effective, if that's true what brought down all the Luftwaffe planes in the BoB, lets also not forget that 40% of all the Me109's involved in the battle were armed with only four 8x57 mausers. A 2 second burst of AP incendiary from four .303's into any engine/cockpit is not going to end well for the receiver.
 

When you think that young RAF pilots found themselves doing 300 mph at 20,000ft trying to shoot down young Luftwaffe pilots also doing 300 mph at 20,000ft with a great number having never left the family farm or worked outside their village it's amazing they managed hit anything.
 
I've never been a fan of rifle caliber machine-guns. That being said, there are 2 major things controlling the effectiveness of fighter weapons in combat
1. shooting ability of the pilot
2. tight bullet density or pattern on the target

Both of these have to be correct or the weapon will not be effective.

For instance: There is a huge difference in the effectiveness of 8 303 machine-guns spread out across the wing of a Spitfire with the ridiculous spread out pattern used during the Battle of Britain and the 8 303 machine-guns of a Hurricane in 2 tight banks of 4 all focused at say 250 yards. I don't care if your Jimmy Thach in the Spitfire, if you aim your guns perfectly and only 1 will hit a Zero or Me109 at 100 yards then they are not going to be effective. Just the same, if you have 12 303's stuffed into the nose of a Whirlwind and you've never even shot a rifle or shotgun, don't know about lead, and all you have ever been taught is how to look pretty while flying formation then you are also going to be worthless.

But if you have both of those things right, say Jimmy Thach in a Whirlwind at Midway with 8 303's in the nose, then the outcome would probably have been the same as it was historically.
As much as I dislike 30 caliber machine-guns for ww2 fighters, I have always felt like there Whirlwind was badly armed do to the 60 round drums magazines its 20mm cannon were stuck with. Most of the reports I read on Whirlwind consisted of "pulled up behind JU88 and opened fire, got a few hits, ran out of ammo, target damaged". I think 8 303's all packed into that tiny little nose with a reasonable amount of ammo per gun would have been like using a mini-gun. At ranges under 300 yards you either miss it completely or you obliterate it.
 
Any evidence this story? I have not read or heard of such a thing and I didn't think that the Finns i-153 would have shot down Airacobra...
Also, Finns used the same caliber 7,62 as the Russians, why would they have changed the guns?
 

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