Deflection Shooting

The good shooter could hit at any range and at any deflection angle. It's as simple as that. It is almost a thing that can't be described. It's more something that needs to be experienced. Tracers were in ammo belts to assist in ranging activities. Angles were adjusted for automatically as the shooters commenced firing.

Great shooter could make kills without seeing the enemy if you can believe that. Here's some comments from aces I've talked to about it.

"There was a tremendous urge to drop your nose and eyeball the guy but instinct takes over and you shoot him without seeing him." That's what Jack Thornell said about firing in a turn when the nose of your plane is leading the enemy and actually blocks him from view.

Thornell flew the P-51B for most of his 17.25 victories even when the six gunned "D" became available. He didn't mind that the "B" had only four .50 calibers. He had a shooter's eye that compensated for the firepower. He was good enough to make triples on two occasions with the 1,260 rounds his Mustang carried.

I finally got a question answered that I'd pondered over a long time. How accurate to reality was the above scenario? It was right on the mark! You get into the flow and feel it. I always felt that occurrence was tantamount to Yoda and Luke Skywalker discussing "the force."

Jack Bradley, 15 victory ace who scored kills from "all distances," when asked the same question replied, "You can drop your nose and look if you're far enough away since you can easily point in the lead to compensate again. 30 to 45 degrees was a comfortable angle to fire at another aircraft whether on the horizontal axis or the vertical one." 30-45 degrees above or below and from 30-45 degrees to the side was an ideal angle I'm told. But pilots preferred to attack from six o'clock even though the target is smaller.

Pilots found the 30-45 degree angle to be superb for kills. They were more deadly from the six o'clock level position and from six low or high of course.

Small point to take into account is that the Tracer bullets/shells sometimes had very different trajectories compared to the 'HE, AP etc' shells. So to rely on them for ranging could be misleading.

There is no question that some fighter pilots were brilliant shots. The one regarded as the best was the German, Hans-Joachim Marseilles, who was credited with 158 victories, and he specialised in high-deflection shooting. On June 6 1942, while flying alone, he attacked a formation of 16 P-40s and shot down six of them (five in six minutes). On September 1 he shot down 17 aircraft, eight of them in ten minutes.

However, such abilities were extremely rare. Most fighter pilots never managed to shoot anything down in combat, and it is generally estimated that about 10% of the pilots scored 90% of the kills.

The Luftwaffe looked into the question of deflection shooting, as reported in Flying Guns – World War 2: Development of Aircraft Guns, Ammunition and Installations 1933-45:

"German research in the early 1940s indicated that most successful attacks took place at zero deflection and the maximum angle of attack for effective shooting without a gyro sight was 15º. Many successful fighter pilots preferred to open fire at point-blank range in order to avoid the deflection problem altogether."

These included the most successful fighter pilot of all, Erich Hartmann, with a claimed 352 victories. He preferred to close to around 50m, right behind his target, before he opened fire.

Another quote from FG:WW2 about deflection shooting:

"Gyro sights were first developed in the UK in the late 1930s, after combat tests using camera guns revealed the difficulties in estimating the amount of lead. The first model was tested in combat in 1941 in both fighters and bombers, but had many problems which were not resolved until 1943, when the sights were perfected as the GGS (gyro gunsight) Mk IIC (for turrets) and Mk IID (for fighters). These went into quantity production early in 1944 and, after demonstrations revealed the dramatic improvement in average shooting accuracy which resulted from their use, the USA adopted the sight as the Mk 18 (USN) and K-14 (USAAF). There can be little doubt that these sights contributed significantly to the excellent kill ratios achieved by Allied fighter pilots in the last year of the War."

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

Reflector Vs gyro gunsight tests in WW2

As one of Bong's wingmen, Ralph Wandrey described them tracers "had a trajectory like a sloppily thrown football but gave you some idea of where your ordnance was going. Yes, Dickk used them." (Somebody has got to fix that damned censorship of the name of America's top ace Richard Bong since you can't write the name he was known by Dickk without mispelling it so it will appear.)

Tony, what you neglected to mention or may not have known is that it was an even sixty rounds per plane times six. That's all it took for Hans-Joachim Marseille to down six Tomahawks of the British Desert Air Force (DAF). What's more amazing is that the 20-millimeter nose cannon had jammed after only ten rounds were fired. The Star of Africa finished them with the pair of 7.9mm MG 17s above the cowl! He was so far and above the rest he shouldn't be included in comparisons due to his legendary trigger skills.

And, well, as fighter pilots were fond of saying back then, "When you think you're close, get closer!" There were many instances of guys kicking rudder to skid and bring the guns of one wing only to bear on the enemy they were so close.