Greatest aviation myth this site “de-bunked”. (1 Viewer)

[33k in the air]

After I finish Shattered Sword (I've yet to start it, but it's on deck as I'm about finished with my current reading), I'll check TSoB out. I certainly appreciate the recco, and have bookmarked your post for later reference. Thanks!

The Science of Bombing has a good amount of preview pages available on Google Books (or at least it does in my area) so you should be able to get a good idea of its content and style.

Sooner or later I'm getting my old computer back and running. I've got way too many important files on there! I miss be able to directly cite stuff --- going by (sometimes uncertain) memory is nowhere near as good

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

The Science of Bombing has a good amount of preview pages available on Google Books (or at least it does in my area) so you should be able to get a good idea of its content and style.

Sooner or later I'm getting my old computer back and running. I've got way too many important files on there! I miss be able to directly cite stuff --- going by (sometimes uncertain) memory is nowhere near as good

I couldn't find a preview, but I've ordered it based on your word-of-mouth. It better be good, dammit! It's coming from England, but free shipping sees it here in about a month. That should give me time to read SS too.

 

[33k in the air]

I couldn't find a preview, but I've ordered it based on your word-of-mouth. It better be good, dammit! It's coming from England, but free shipping sees it here in about a month. That should give me time to read SS too.

Google Books has changed the way they show things compared to a few months ago, and perhaps it varies by browser. This link works for me; click the "preview" button to get a preview. (It's easier to use the old presentation in my opinion; click the "classic Google Books" link at the top of the page.)

The Science of Bombing

It's coming from England? Seems a bit odd, the book was originally published by University of Toronto press.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Google Books has changed the way they show things compared to a few months ago, and perhaps it varies by browser. This link works for me; click the "preview" button to get a preview. (It's easier to use the old presentation in my opinion; click the "classic Google Books" link at the top of the page.)

The Science of Bombing

It's coming from England? Seems a bit odd, the book was originally published by University of Toronto press.

I just ordered the cheapest offer with free shipping, which was about $26. I'm looking forward to reading it.

 

[buffnut453]

Which is some rather dismal reading. I may not agree with some peoples assessment of changes to the Battle (I doubt very much it could have been turned into the IL-2 of the west) but the Battle could not perform the strategic mission before the Germans attacked from British bases. Or rather it could but would have violated Dutch or Belgian air space to do so.
SO the only way to use as a strategic bomber was to base it in France. BTW the range thing should have been known before the attack on Poland. Once the Wellingtons got shot up attacking the German anchorages the idea of flying either Battles or Blenheims over land in daylight on deep penetration raids should have been trashed quickly.

Now somehow the BC idea that escort fighters weren't needed (or were technically impossible) for long distance raids was transferred to short range tactical raids.
The idea that planes with a single fixed Browning out the front and flexible (or turret mounted) Vickers K gun out the back could take care of themselves with mass firepower from "formations" (of 12 planes at the most) when the Wellingtons couldn't take care of themselves with twin Brownings front and back in power mounts defies belief.
There was quite a bit of arguing about using them for 'support' of the BEF which had only Lysanders as close support aircraft.

Unfortunately in use the Battles were NOT used to bomb the leading elements of a column or the first enemy they saw ,thus limiting their exposure to both ground fire and fighters but were sent almost to the German border to try to interrupt "supply". The list of mistakes is rather long.

At the time the RAFs idea of "escort" was that a squadron of Hurricanes would be assigned to "sweep" the sky in the area the bombers were headed to at around the same time. The Bombers never saw the "escorting" fighters.

Now the damning part is that this was NOT the way the RAF had conducted trench strafing or interdiction missions in 1917-18. Escorts were provided, attacks were done either at the front or shortly behind. (granted the WW I planes had shorter range). The Sopwith Salamander trench strafer was built (but not in time) with a 605lb armored box as part of the forward fuselage in the hope of reducing losses. The Battles for some reason were at the bottom of the list to even get self sealing fuel tank material. With initial high losses some in the RAF high command used this as justification to say that tactical bombing did not work and was a waste of resources.

Hmm, wonder why they said that???? to justify their plan of strategic bombing in which the RAF would win the war without the aid of either the Navy or the Army?

The RAF had a small selection of suitable bombs for ground attack (sound familiar?) and the Battle needed to be modified to carry the 40lb bombs. When bombing from low level the 250lb bombs had to be fitted with 11 second delay fuses to allow the bombers to get safely out of the blast area.

The RAF was not going to save France (except in the most extraordinary circumstances) but more effective attacks might have slowed the Germans down a few days.
Better tactics and doctrine about how to do ground attack/close support might have been worked out much sooner making a difference in North Africa.



It is not all or nothing. With over 1/2 of coastal command flying Ansons they didn't need to take a large number of bombers and squadrons away from BC. 6-8 squadrons of Blenheim's might have made a significant difference to CC while hardly affecting BC operations except in the number of bombers they could tell the newspapers they were sending to Germany.

BC was vehemently opposed to any use of aircraft except the long range strategic bombing role. It seems they would rather have lost the war than share any credit with the other services or RAF commands.

BC should have been working on bombing aids (both navigation and bomb aiming) back in the late 30s. A number of their exercises were not really successful.
There was no real need for Whitley's or Wellingtons in CC in 1939 or much of 1940. The Germans didn't have that many U-boats and many of the ones they had were the small type IIs. Let BC keep big twins and figure out what they were doing wrong (practically everything) in their night bombing missions.

Close air support requires different thinking. It at least requires planes on short standby on air fields waiting for recon reports or calls for support. In France many of the planes were on two hour standby ( few on 30 minute) and recon reports sometimes took several hours to get passed to the bomber squadrons. By the time the planes reached the target area 4-6 hours could have elapsed.

I entirely agree that there was some rather muddled, or overly-wishful, thinking when it came to employment of the AASF. However, the problem goes much further than just how to use the Battles or Blenheims. The French and British prepared for a war that didn't happen. They expected a repeat of 1914-1917 with relatively static front-lines. What they got was more a repeat of 1918, which was far more maneouvrist in nature. A 4-6 hour delay in tasking is fine if you have a static front line but it's useless if the front line is moving rapidly. I sense that the defensive posture of the French (which effectively prevented the use of AASF against targets in Germany) relied entirely on a static battle. Unfortunately, it was entirely undone by the type of warfare Germany executed with such success.

As to BC-vs-CC, your comment about "it's not all or nothing" cuts both ways. The first u-boat sunk solely by an aircraft in WW2 was on 11 March 1940 when an 82 Sqn Blenheim sank U-31, and 82 Sqn was part of BC not CC. A large proportion of BC"s tasking in the middle of 1940 was directly targeting port facilities in Germany and occupied Europe. Thus BC could, with some justification, claim that they were affecting the maritime fight by hurting Germany's ability to resupply and repair vessels. The bang-per-buck in flying hours-vs-effects delivered was probably better than pushing Blenheims to CC to join in the needle-in-a-haystack hunt for u-boats when the best sensor available was a pair of binoculars (yes, ASV MkI was available but it had a rather long minimum range, so targets were lost at the critical point of attack initiation).

 

[SaparotRob]

This myth was recently de-bunked. The Brewster Buffalo wasn't the worst of the "FirstGen" WW 2 fighters. It was outclassed but perhaps not hopelessly. It was further damned by obsolete tactics, inexperienced crews and poor build quality, as well has not having any technological edge. It never would have been a dominant force. Perhaps, as "what-iffed" by The Admiral, it had been able to intercept the bombers attacking Force Z? It might have had a better legacy.
I wonder what the breakdown of its score against Western Allied fighters is? I'm most interested in the results against the P-36, P-39 and Hurricane. These were other Allied planes at the "starting gate" not known for stellar performance.

 

[nuuumannn]

For all our bluster about pickle-barrel bombing, we too had a hard time hitting a bull in the ass with a bass-fiddle.

"Precision Daylight Bombing" = "Area Bombing"

 

[GrauGeist]

Conversely, after the Battle of Midway, the IJN mandated all Hinomarus (the rising sun insignia) be removed from all aircraft carriers, because the SBDs were using that as an aim-point and were either hitting it dead-in or missing by a few feet - the Hinomaru painted on the carrier's decks were just shy of 40 feet across...

 

[drgondog]

I think thats a particualry serious problem in academia (as it is these days anway), for a start nobody has time to do proper research as they`re all busy trying to get grants or publishing their quota of papers so they dont get sacked, so they just copy-paste stuff from the other "big names" each all hoping the others did their job properly (when none of them did).

Also history profs cant really say anything too contentious as they`ll now be deplatformed from twitter.

(disclaimer, I do rate Prof David Edgerton at Kings College London, he writes pretty good stuff like "Britains War Machine")

Absolutely correct. Having a treasure trove of source NAA documents and access to NARA/USFAHR enabled Lowell and me to state from a direct source rather than cut and paste from well known authors on our book. That said, when our sources on a particular Mustang 'fact' there were very, very few mistakes made by Bob Gruenhagen. My research on P-51B Mustang: NAA's Bastard Stepchild that saved 8th AF started a long time ago and one by one many facts extracted from Ethell, Freeman, etc. were simply 'cut and paste' from previous works and not footnoted- and incorrect.

Many authors that we hold in esteem do not footnote sources that are presented as fact in their works - and many errors of 'opinions based on facts' become whole irrefutable facts in the minds of those authors.

That said we are all cursed with lens that have a film of 'point of view', including me. I, despite my charm, awesome intellect and grasp of several technical disciplines have made Many mistakes. Who knew?

 

[glennasher]

If a person doesn't make a mistake now and then, then he's not doing anything at all.

 

[gruad]

One myth is that Bomber Command losses dropped dramatically in 1944 from about 10% to 1% as a result of the Americans destroying the Luftwaffe in the day.

This certainly was a contributing factor, but the main reason was that the RAF cottoned on that the Luftwaffe was tracking bombers from their emissions, Monica, IFF and H2S.

 

[33k in the air]

One myth is that Bomber Command losses dropped dramatically in 1944 from about 10% to 1% as a result of the Americans destroying the Luftwaffe in the day.

That myth doesn't even make sense. What would suppressing the Luftwaffe's daytime fighter force have to do with its night-fighter force? They're two different forces with two very different ways of fighting. (On occasion night-fighters were sent up to help intercept particularly heavy daytime USAAF raids, with the result usually being the night-fighters suffering heavy losses.)

 

[Shortround6]

That myth doesn't even make sense. What would suppressing the Luftwaffe's daytime fighter force have to do with its night-fighter force? They're two different forces with two very different ways of fighting. (On occasion night-fighters were sent up to help intercept particularly heavy daytime USAAF raids, with the result usually being the night-fighters suffering heavy losses.)

Never let facts or logic get in the way of a good myth/legend

 

[pbehn]

One myth is that Bomber Command losses dropped dramatically in 1944 from about 10% to 1% as a result of the Americans destroying the Luftwaffe in the day.

This certainly was a contributing factor, but the main reason was that the RAF cottoned on that the Luftwaffe was tracking bombers from their emissions, Monica, IFF and H2S.

I think bomber command suffering sustained losses of 10% in 1944 is a myth.

 

[Greyman]

Harris stated the notable improvement in 1944 was mainly due to the allied ground forces overruning the German early warning lines in Belgium and France.

Fidget, Mandrel, Jostle IV, new Window (MB), new radar/signals procedures, as well as Monica restriction all certainly contributed -- but the gains of all these are hard to quantify scientifically since they were thrown into the mix at about the same time.

The invasion forces robbing the Germans their setup in the west was a massive benefit to Bomber Command.

 

[Reluctant Poster]

Harris stated the notable improvement in 1944 was mainly due to the allied ground forces overruning the German early warning lines in Belgium and France.

Fidget, Mandrel, Jostle IV, new Window (MB), new radar/signals procedures, as well as Monica restriction all certainly contributed -- but the gains of all these are hard to quantify scientifically since they were thrown into the mix at about the same time.

The invasion forces robbing the Germans their setup in the west was a massive benefit to Bomber CommanSpaatz said the same thing regarding USAAF losses

Harris stated the notable improvement in 1944 was mainly due to the allied ground forces overruning the German early warning lines in Belgium and France.

Fidget, Mandrel, Jostle IV, new Window (MB), new radar/signals procedures, as well as Monica restriction all certainly contributed -- but the gains of all these are hard to quantify scientifically since they were thrown into the mix at about the same time.

The invasion forces robbing the Germans their setup in the west was a massive benefit to Bomber Command.

Harris stated the notable improvement in 1944 was mainly due to the allied ground forces overruning the German early warning lines in Belgium and France.

Fidget, Mandrel, Jostle IV, new Window (MB), new radar/signals procedures, as well as Monica restriction all certainly contributed -- but the gains of all these are hard to quantify scientifically since they were thrown into the mix at about the same time.

The invasion forces robbing the Germans their setup in the west was a massive benefit to Bomber Command.

Spaatz made the point that USAAF bomber losses drooped after the invasion. This was during a meeting about the invasion of Japan.

 

[gruad]

I think bomber command suffering sustained losses of 10% in 1944 is a myth.

Ok stand corrected

Nov 1943 to Mar 1944 was average of 5% with 12% the highest according to Wikipedia.

RAF Bomber Command - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[pbehn]

Ok stand corrected

Nov 1943 to Mar 1944 was average of 5% with 12% the highest according to Wikipedia.

RAF Bomber Command - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Percentages and chosen dates can deceive, the 12% loss was March 30 1944 against Nuremburg, 95 planes lost from 795.

 

[33k in the air]

Percentages and chosen dates can deceive, the 12% loss was March 30 1944 against Frankfurt, 95 planes lost from 795.

I think you meant Nuremberg.

 

[pbehn]

I think you meant Nuremberg.

lol I do, how can a person read an article on the raid to get the numbers right and then put Frankfurt instead of Nuremburg?