Effectiveness of rear-seat gunners

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My uncle had a farm in Wisconsin and I used to go there every chance/vacation I had. Got to do NEAT things like drive tractors, trucks. shoot guns, no mother, ect. a young boys (well me anyway) dream. Every fall Unk would have at least one cow shot, a tractor shot, a truck shot, and several times had bullets pass through the barn while he was working there. In general it was city-type folk on their once-a-year country hunt shooting at a moving bush or movement out of the corner of their eye. Just plain carelessness figuring that in the wide-open country spaces there was nothing to hit. Same clowns that shoot in the air on the 4th and New Years.
 
I remember reading about Blackburn Skuas being attacked by 110s and 109s during the Norway campaign. The best method of defense for the 225mph a/c against 350 mph a/c was not the rear MG but flying at sea level and the gunner/observer telling the pilot when the attacker was getting close enough to fire and the pilot dropping the dive brakes. The rather startled German pilot then found his windscreen suddenly full of dive bomber seemingly reversing at him at high speed and broke off the attack, probably with brown underpants.
 

Usually the city slickers aren't shooting up in the air. They'd expect to be arrested for firing a gun within 500 ft of a residence.

I'm not arguing about any other part of your story. My father stopped hunting -- he was never a big fan in any case -- when he decided he was in more danger from other hunters than he had been in Borneo in 1944.
 
I think as the fighters moved to heavier guns like the .50 and cannons, the ability to manually handle a larger gun to counter in a back of a plane was not practical. You could add a turret of some type but that meant a lot more weight.

I can understand why they disappeared in the smaller aircraft.
 

I think that's one factor. Other related factors include the increasing speed of fighter aircraft, which made it much harder for a human-aimed defensive weapon to track those fighters, and the removal of "light bomber" as an aircraft classification because the more powerful single-seat fighters could also assume the role of light bombers.
 
I think range played a part. If the fight is at 50-100m, a rifle caliber LMG is as good as anything at hitting an assailant. however if the attacking fighter is engaging at 400m, an LMG being fired in a buffeting aircraft over open sights basically has little chance of doing anything, even if it scores the odd hit or two
 
from a firepower stand point, many of the early WWII strike aircraft were designed at a time (late 30s) when attacking enemy planes were likely to have 2-8 rifle caliber machine guns (the 8 being the British and rather exceptional) or a single slow firing 20mm cannon and 2-4 machineguns. Within a few years the Americans were sticking six 50 cal machine guns into practically anything that would fly. When you are looking at attack/strike aircraft that started the design process in 1942/43 be aware that the fighters that started design at that time (well after the P-51, Tempest and FW 190D) were projected to have eight of more .50s or 4 fast firing 20mm guns or some other heavy armament that single rearward firing weapons stations could not hope to match.
 
swampyankee said:
Presumably this happened with modern IFF technology. HMS Sheffield almost got torpedoed by the Swordfish sent after the Bismarck.
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As I read it HMS Sheffield was attacked by mistake, it dodged three torpedoes and others exploded in the wake, as a result they returned to and re armed with contact fuses.
 
Shortround6 said:
A very interesting question.

I would note that by midway through the war the Americans and British, when planning for future strike aircraft might have been planning on a large number of escorting fighters to accompany the strike group/s.
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That's one thing that improved the survivability of the Vultee Vengeance: The fact that they realized they'd do a lot better with fighter cover

pbehn said:
From other threads recently the (for example) Me110 rear gunner was also a radio operator/observer who would have been there anyway, the rear gun was just additional defence.
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Why would you need a specialized radioman for a fighter? It sounds like a great way to make a plane considerably heavier and larger for the same range (and possibly a little slower), plus the Me-109, Fw-190 (as well as the RAF's Hurricane, Spitfire, et. al) all had one pilot flying the plane and operating the radio...

mikewint said:
Going to be tough to determine. As for "kill to death ratios," those don't exist in real life.
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I guess it matters more that the plane goes down in flames and stops posing a threat...

Glider said:
I suspect that the main purpose of the rear gunner is to put off the attacking fighter not to shoot anyone down.
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I figured it was a bit of both.

fubar57 said:
My dad was shot at while wearing a blaze orange jacket
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That's almost certainly a war-crime (shooting up shipwreck survivors).

Of course the reason for the jacket is it's one of the easiest colors to pick up with the eyes: My vision's around 20/40 to 20/80 without glasses (up close, I can see fine, at longer distances it gets blurrier), but I remember seeing this woman wearing an orange bathing suit (it was a bikini, so it has very little surface area), and from a distance, I couldn't make out any major detail (i.e. facial) except basic bodyframe, coloring (she had blonde hair and was fairly light), and the bathing suit.
 
The Bf 110, in it's role as a long range fighter, needed a long range radio. It was fitted, rightly or wrongly, with the same radio as the He 111.

Please remember (or look up) that radios changed considerably from the late 30s through WW II. Some 109s in the Battle of France and BoB had radios with a single channel (frequency). Some British fighters had radios with four pre-selected channels (frequencies) which could be selected by a switch.

Using a "key" could give roughly 3 times the range of voice radio. Pilots trying to use code keys

was probably not a good idea in combat

radios that needed somebody to turn dials to "tune" the radio to a specific frequency were very common, especially for long range work.


Is that a code key on the right side of cockpit coaming?
 
How would you like to be in the rear seat, just there as a observer, or radio man, and not armed ?

I think they might have armed him more as a pacifier, than how effective he was at shooting down aircraft.

If you've got to have someone in the rear seat, just how much additional weight does it add to have a seat that can be swiveled around, and then arm him with a .30 cal and a few hundred rounds ?

Some of the later Dauntless, Stuka, and some other aircraft had twin fast firing .30 cals, some had a combined rate of fire of 2400 rpm, that's 40 bullets a second. That's going to be a little more than just a nuisance to anyone hostile approaching from the rear.
 
There is an analysis of how many RAF fighters were shot down by Luftwaffe bombers versus fighters in the BoB somewhere. It's not much, maybe 2%.

That would give you an idea for the effectiveness of the rear gunner versus fighters. I sat next to a kid at school who's fathers Hurricane had been shot down by the dorsal gunner of a He 111. He said the gunners were fast.

This doesn't mean the Luftwaffe armament didn't work at reducing Luftwaffe losses. I expect that Luftwaffe gunners put a lot of rifle caliber rounds into Spitfires and Hurricanes, just not enough to shoot them down.

In addition the bullet proof wind shield subtracted about 10 mph in speed I believe.


Given the IL-2 Sturmovik introduction of a rear gunner who because of the belated design modification didn't have Armour suffered 7 times the casualty rate of the pilot there must have been value in it.

I suspect nothing less than 20mm Defensive guns, power drive and a computing gun sight would do. You would need the lethal punch of a 20mm gun.
 
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I've been in a chopper when it was hit by ground fire, you may not know where you've been hit, but you hear/feel each hit.

I doubt that a aircraft would be very different, except for hits in fabric covered areas,and extremities of the aircraft. When they got hits in the fuselage, they'd know they were getting hit.

That, and the muzzle flash, tracers of the gunner's fire has to have some influence on the attacking pilot's concentration .
 
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the USN aviation statistics released in 45 shows number of e/a credited to various aircraft types but no breakout as to gunners in two-seat aircraft. That info can be derived from vast scrutiny of Frank Olynyk's encyclopedic survey of USN victory credits (no longer available.) The top SBD gunner(s) had 4 credited.

Ref. the Eagles v. Black Hawks: got some insight via some Red Flag operators. The F-15 community was considered notorious for going score-happy even on escort. Some Prowler bubbas were notched by F-5 adversaries when the Eagles went prowling. In the debrief the BG running the show asked WTF? The Eagle guys said, well yeah, we lost the Prowler and some strikers BUT LOOK AT THE KILL BOARD. I am not saying that happened routinely but it was often enough for USN and NATO participants to take note. In the Iraq event, the lead shooter had bagged one of Saddam's helos and seemed primed to repeat. Reportedly the fighter community tried to blame the AWACS but Ron Fogelman put an end to that when he investigated and found the fighters had made two VID passes and still shot...
 
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