Effectiveness of Heavy Bomber defensive fires vs LW Fighters

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B-47 also had an abundance of power compared to ANY piston powered plane.

I also wonder how much the defensive guns on the Me 410 weighed and what was the cost in wing area, fuselage volume, etc. Would they have kept the rear seater for a radio operator if the rear guns were not there?
 
you would have to have more than just a tail gun...or give it more of an arc of fire to cover the sides. with the existing range of motion that it had without the side gunners there would be no deterent from someone parking off to one side or the other and picking the bomber apart.


b17 fields of fire.jpg
 
I would have strongly considered keeping only the chin, top, ball and tail guns on the B-17G. The combined crew, 4x 50 (radio hatch, waist, waist and nose) plus ammo means another 1000 pound bomb or 150 gallons of fuel plus less drag. It would have improved stability also as the late 17G's were a little butt heavy aft of the CG.
 
drgondog said:
I would have strongly considered keeping only the chin, top, ball and tail guns on the B-17G. The combined crew, 4x 50 (radio hatch, waist, waist and nose) plus ammo means another 1000 pound bomb or 150 gallons of fuel plus less drag. It would have improved stability also as the late 17G's were a little butt heavy aft of the CG.
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+1

Juha
 
the turrets would give you better fields of fire..above and below in addition to the sides. my question is how much more accruate were they in comparison to the side gunners...or visa versa?
 
Njaco said:
I think it might be obvious that those penalties are null when compared to what the Allies were trying to achieve. Its more like quantity of bombers and amount of ordinance placed on target. Whats more effective: a bomber going 350mph on a target with a light load or one that goes 150mph with a larger load? If the latter is the answer then you need many of them for mutual protection and firepower along with destruction of target.
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Hey, I know! What about a 370mph bomber with the same load and no guns? You could make it out of balsa and ply to keep the weight down...
 
They may be a lot more accurate than the "side" gunners. Would they be as accurate as "normal" (manned) turrets? AND you are back to the weight and drag of the turrets/sighting positions.

All gunners had other duties. Chin guns aimed by bombardier-navigator. Dorsal turret and engine nacelle barbettes aimed by radio operator. Ventral turret/barbette aimed by flight engineer.
 
FLYBOYJ said:
It did........along with the RAF Area Bombing at night! :toothy3:
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Well, kinda... From what I can gather the attacks on infrstructure and energy production did a lot more harm than direct attacks on factories. And the whole precision v area bombing thing was really just a matter of semantics. Obviously what daylight bombing did do was to put the LW in a place where it could be knocked out of the fight, which night bombing was never going to achieve.
Re the actual damage on the ground, how did the night bombing and day bombing compare?
 
Lot a lot of things in WW II, it varied with time. Both Day and Night bombing got better with time so comparing "effects" or results from 1942/43 to 1944/45 shows a difference with in each type of bombing.
Americans (day bombing) spent a lot of missions in the beginning dropping bombs that were both too small (HE) and too big (incendiary), later mission used bigger HE bombs and small (but more of them) incendiaries. British went though a similar change in weapons, let alone both forces improving navigation, using radar, changing bomb patterns and so on.

There may have been differences in effect, but lets please compare at similar times at least rather than "A" was better at the end of 1944 than "B" was in the beginning of 1943" :)
 
Depends on the size of the target. 1500-2000ft wide factory? How big is a railroad marshaling yard?

Yes, the US made a lot of over claims about 'precision'. Few, if any, other air forces were doing any better on a air force wide basis. Certain units (or missions) are always an exception.
 
CobberKane said:
Or the myth that USAAF 'precision' bombing 'crippled' German industry?
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and what would the state of german industry have been with out any bombing at all? are you suggesting there was not change and that it was a complete waste of time, energy, and tens of thousands of airmen? or are you suggesting this was primarily only for the purpose as a pinning action to keep LW units over germany and way from the front?
 
The RAF precision bombed area targets. The USAAF area bombed precision targets.

If they were bombing a range in sunny Arizona the USAAF could probably have backed up its precision claims. In smoggy cloudy and in winter gloomy Europe bombing on the order of a master bomber who could be anything up to half a mile away from you I doubt they hit there targets with much precision.
 
Hardly a surprise. European weather has been that way for 2,000 years.

Did RAF and U.S. Army Air Corps bomber barons give weather any thought before claiming pickle barrel precision for their expensive new toys?
 
I think we are drifting off subject. :)

The effectiveness of the defensive guns of the American bombers was high enough to get the Luftwaffe to investigate (and use) things like 21cm bombardment rockets and 50mm cannon let alone lesser guns or multiples of them.

It was not effective enough to enable the bombers to under take long range missions without escorts without prohibitive losses.
 
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