Effectiveness of rear-seat gunners

Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules

fubar57 said:
The FAA had a position called
telegraphist air gunner
Click to expand...
Indeed. Their principal task was the telegraphist one. They got a gun as they were there anyway. By the time of the Fulmar Fairey had worked out that the aerodynamic benefit of a smooth rear fuselage was worth more than giving the TAG a weighty gun. They were well aware of the trouble Fairey Battle gunners had trying to manually move the gun in a 200mph+ slipstream. When the Swordfish carried the in rear cockpit extra range fuel tank, for tasks like mining off the Netherlands from East Anglia, they dropped the TAG and kept the navigator.
 
The highest scoring fighter pilot to be KIA was shot down by the rear gunner of an IL-2 using a 12.7mm handheld Beresin. Otto Kittel.
 
we cant get a complete dataset but Id be interested if anyone can come up with a way of achieving an indicative random sample of engagements as to the level of success enjoyed.

to make the sample as unadulterated as possible, you would probably need to specify engagements where there were no fighter escorts to unbalance the results. I can think of several instances like this on the eastern front and one instance during the BoB. There were also one or two episodes in the Pacific. I'm unsure though if these could a a "random sample" or just me remembering some spectacular episode.
 
 
billrunnels said:
One of the values taught throughout training was " a dead shoulder was of no value". In other words do nothing foolish.
Click to expand...

I think Patton said, to his soldiers, something to the effect of "your job isn't to die for your country; it's to make the other guy die for his."

In a large conflict, casualties can be crippling to a military, but in a small one they can be used by the most cynical of politicians to keep the conflict going.
 
Last edited:
WWII was to end all wars and bring a lasting peace. It didn't happen. I am of the opinion that lasting peace can not be achieved through conflict. Rather, it must be the will and desire of leaders of our great Countries supported by the people they represent. Will it ever happen? I sure hope so!
 

I had always been told that was World War I.

Politicians, in general, use the "sunk cost" fallacy very often in small wars, e.g., colonial or colonial-like conflicts, especially, it seems when those costs are human lives (just not human lives they care about; at least the pre-19th Century crowned heads would expect their sons to be out with the army in the field, not at home boffing the servants): "we can't leave Lower Elbonia because so many of our boys have died fighting the menace of big-enders."

I've become more and more of the opinion that national governments need wars to justify their existence, so they'll fabricate them as needed.
 
Last edited:

These "war to end all wars" are based on the premise that the German people or Nazis or some unique behaviour of them were the fundamental cause of these conflicts and that defeating them would end future ward. They weren't. There are other fundamental forces at play both in the broader sense (in regards to human nature, ecology) and the narrow sense (the behaviour of France, Britain, Russia). World war 1 was a mouse trap ready to go off but it was no accident.

Several nations or elements within wanted war. No one was trying harder to avoid war than Kaiser Wilhelm in the final days. The Tsar and Kaiser had signed a peace treaty, something undermined by their staffs several, years prior to ww1.

Germany usually gets the blame because it invaded neutral Belgium in an attempt to shorten the conflict (something Germanys chancellor, who opposed it, declared was wrong and they would redress) however Britain would have entered the war anyway because of the Entente Cordial of 1904 and it's strengthening in 1912 that brought Britain's Navy in on the Side of France automatically. (it must be said the British cabinet were not given this information outside of Churchill who knew and I suspect must have have been relieved he didn't need to use the 1912 Anglo French Naval treaty to get Britain into the war)

Belgium merely gave the elements of the British Government that wanted a war an moral excuse they could use to evade responsibility for their key part in the carnage they were equally responsible for. These treaties were not allegiances about national security, they were fundamentally driven by malevolence, hubris and greed and they created insecurity not sevurity.

France was specifically asked by the German government if it would stay neutral in event of a German war with Russia. They said no, hence a German war with Russia meant a France would get involved against Germany. A French war with Germany meant Britain would join with France. The US entered WW1 just as everyone was running out of money and blood and would need to make peace.

The US entry into, WW1, was for moral reasons and essentially the result of a very successful and prolific British Governmnt propaganda and smear campaign.. (fabrications of German soldiers bayoneting babies, raping nuns)

The Germans had to be blamed for it soley because if they weren't then who else was to blame? That's why the allies, quite extraordinary it was, wrote German guilt into the treaty of Versailles. They were guilty of invading Belgium, but something that voluntiered before the war. They were however not responsible for WW1 alone. The Austrian Government was particularly culpable in that it lied to the German Government about its list of demands to Serbia after Archduke Ferdinand's assassination. The Germans would have moderated these but they lied and told the Germans they were still being drafted when they had in fact already been delivered.

This is the war that started the end of our civilisation not the war to end all wars.

WW2 was Germans trying to protect and recover populations as well as territory and create trade options and markets denied to them after WW1.. It's quite likely that war would have happened without Hitler in my view.

A big part of avoiding war is to hold the media accountable.
 
Last edited:
During the Battle of Britain if I was in the rear seat of a Bf 110 without a gun and was being attacked from the rear I would probably jump into a Kent hop field instead of just boosting the pilots protection.
 
I think we should tend to avoid the sort of revisionism that tries to absolve the German governments of any responsibility for either WW1 or WW2. I also think we should get thread back on topic, which is not some pseudo-debate about who and why WW1 and WW2 started in Europe, which is really not particularly relevant to whether the gunners in the rear seats of attack and catapult aircraft were effective.
 
Last edited:
Different services had different expectations of their rear-seaters.
In US service, the rear-seater was an enlisted radio operator/gunner.
In Japanese service he may well be the aircraft commander.
Germany was a mixed bag like Great Britain with enlisted w/o-gunners in some cases and senior crew in others. Recon often had enlisted pilots and officer observers.
My guess is the rear-seater provided as much or more protection just by being a dedicated pair of eyes looking for threats. Any kills by defensive gunnery were just icing on the cake.
From what I've read, the kill claims of rear gunners are highly suspect. Case in point, in the first nine months of operations, April 1942 to January 1943, the 22nd BG put in claims for 94 defensive gunnery kills. Luca Ruffato, in his book Eagles of the Southern Skies, which covers the Tainan Air Group from April to November 1942, can only identify one Tainan loss to the 22nd, and that was a collision.
 

Sure we can continue the discussion on topic but maybe you can read my post again and prarphrase it and represent me accurately.

I did not absolve the German government.

I'm rating the so called allied governments equally responsible. These guys got of scott free despite their incompetence and dishonesty and continued their behaviour. Wars start with malevolent intent and setting up a threatening situation.

In regards to "revisionism" Now that the 100 year limits on release of state secrets are up are we not allowed to revise 1914-18 as the documents trickle out?.

In another example. The so called "von Schliefen plan", often used as proof of the Germans to wage a two front war of world conquest, was thought lost when a US bombing raid in 1945 hit German Army archives. However in 1984 with the fall of the Berlin Wall a copy that the Russians had found was returned to the East German Government was recovered.

It turns out that von Schleifens plan was not an plan but an 1904 academic study only and considered the scenario for a war with France only.

So how did the von Schliefan plan get "invented". Simply because as Moeltke hurriedly got his plan together as war loomed he referenced parts of von Schleifens study. Sloppy or agenda driven historians invented the rest citing each other to the point they worked in an echo chamber of unreality.

See Terrence Zubehors book "The real German War Plan"

Zubehor utilized these documents, along with several of Schlieffen's war games in the Bavarian army archive in Munich to produce a fundamental reappraisal of Schlieffen's planning in 'The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered' in War in History,-5 and in Inventing the Schlieffen Plan: German War planning 1871 -1914 in 2002.9

He pointed out that the Schlieffen plan was for a one-front war against France only, which was unlikely in 1906 and impossible in 1914. Even in this one-front war, the plan required twenty-four divisions that existed neither in 1906 nor in 1914. Schlieffen's purpose was not to write a war plan using 'ghost divisions' but as one more proposal to realize full conscription. He wanted to show that even a one-front war against France, and even with twenty-four non-existent 'ghost divisions', the German army was going to have its hands full.

Incongruously, in August 1914 the original text of the "great plan" was the property of Schlieffen's daughters and was being stored with the family photos! None of Schlieffen's surviving war games tested the Schlieffen plan. Infact, Schlieff'en's actual war plans and war games were based on using Germany's interior position and rail mobility to counter-attack against the expected French and Russian offensives, and was not a desperate attempt to invade France.

His conclusion, that there never was a Schlieffen plan met with considerable hostility. The existence of a Schlieffen plan had become dogma. An enormous body of historical explanation, including German war guilt, was based on the Schlieffen plan. Many in the historical establishment were on the record confirming the importance of the Schlieffen plan and were outraged that their sacred cow had been slaughtered.


It reminds me of my one and only jury duty. The man on trial had gotten involved in one of those stupid road rage incidents where whomever cuts off whomever and ended up being followed by the other car. He turned down a street to get away but it ended up being a one way street. They all got out of their cars; he alone the other 4 guys. He struck the first blow and hospitalized 2 of them.

We found him not guilty.

I've had my say. You can have yours I'll stay on topic now.
 
The problem is much fold.
1 gunner can not point weapons under heavy manoeuvring (power assist needed)
2 gunner can not reload due to heavy manoeuvring
3 gunner needs computing bombsight to achieve accuracy
4 in a turning fight the attacking fighter ends up below and the gunner can not aim at the attacking fighter.
5 firepower of the rear gun is typically 1/10th that of attacking fighters.

Consider the scenario of the Me 410 setup below. It had a computing sight.

The 13.2mm MG 131, probably the equal of two 303 brownings with a relatively heavy explosive projectile.

Imagine a Tempest V (4 x 20mm Hispano) or a P47 (8 x 0.5 inch browning) attacking.

The defending gunner may only get 4 seconds of shooting before the powerful guns of the fighter are upon him.

Scenario 1: a 4 second burst shoots 16 rounds/sec ie 64 total of 0.5 inch MG and gets 5% hits. The attacking fighter is hit by 3.2 rounds.

Scenario 2: a 4 second burst shoots 12 rounds/sec ie 48 of 20mm cannon shells total and gets 5% hits. The attacking fighter is hit by 2.4 rounds.

In scenario 1 the attacking fighter is hardly disturbed unless the win shield armour glass is cracked. It's only shot down in a hit on the oil cooler.

In scenario 2 the 2 or 3 20mm rounds can penetrate the armour glass, blow of a prop blade, severe the main spar, blow of a cylinder head.

If the below guns were 20mm this would be a credible defence. The gun sight had computing capability.



It typically required 4 x 20mm hits to bring down a fighter.
 
Koopernic said:
4 in a turning fight the attacking fighter ends up below and the gunner can not aim at the attacking fighter.
Click to expand...

I think the most common position for an attacking fighter in this case would be in the gunner's arc of fire. If anything too 'high', if he's allowing a lot of deflection.

Lag pursuits to sneak in under the gunner's field of fire are always a possibility, but I think the most intuitive attack would be the standard 'turn inside him and let him have it'.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)

Similar threads

Effectiveness of the P-38
6 7 8
Replies
145
Views
12K
Thumpalumpacus
A
Worst liquid-cooled, V12-powered, single-engine, single-seat, monoplane, retractable undercarriage fighters of WW2?
2 3
Replies
56
Views
5K
yulzari
A
Heaviest armed Japanese single seat, single engine fighter?
2 3
Replies
41
Views
4K
MIflyer
M
Single seat F-82?
Replies
2
Views
925
Admiral Beez
A
C
Training USAAF Gunners
Replies
1
Views
594
Barrett
B
Menu
Log in
Register