Groundhog Thread Part Deux - P-39 Fantasy and Fetish - The Never Ending Story (Mods take no responsibility for head against wall injuries sustained)

[GrauGeist]

"Teacher, leave those kids alone!"
- P. Floyd, 1980

 

[pbehn]

You can force me to school but you can't make me think.

There is real comedy in referring to a British bombing survey to argue that people who were bombed in London should relax, because the bomb wasnt actually aimed at their house. Like telling someone attacked by a hippo that they are herbivores.

 

[33k in the air]

Throughout the war British area bombing and AAF pinpoint bombing never exceeded 50% of bombs landing within a THREE MILE radius of the target (Wiki).

The general benchmark for accuracy for Bomber Command was percentage of bombs within three miles of the aiming point. The percentage achieved varied considerably during the war as it was dependent on many factors. The overall value improved as the war went on.

In 1942 and through April 1943, the six-month average was about 25%. The introduction of H2S, Oboe, and Master Bombers raised the figure to about 55% from June through the rest of 1943. Starting in June 1944, the figure showed a steady upward trend, with rate topping 90% in 1945.

See the graph "Accuracy of Night Bombing of German Cities (Excluding Berlin)" on page 659 of The Crucible of War 1939-1945 by Brereton Greenhous, Stephen J. Harris, William C. Johnston, and William G.P. Rawling.

 

[buffnut453]

"Teacher, leave those kids alone!"
- P. Floyd, 1980

That's precisely why I wear a tinfoil hat...because we don't need no thought control!

 

[pbehn]

The general benchmark for accuracy for Bomber Command was percentage of bombs within three miles of the aiming point. The percentage achieved varied considerably during the war as it was dependent on many factors. The overall value improved as the war went on.

In 1942 and through April 1943, the six-month average was about 25%. The introduction of H2S, Oboe, and Master Bombers raised the figure to about 55% from June through the rest of 1943. Starting in June 1944, the figure showed a steady upward trend, with rate topping 90% in 1945.

See the graph "Accuracy of Night Bombing of German Cities (Excluding Berlin)" on page 659 of The Crucible of War 1939-1945 by Brereton Greenhous, Stephen J. Harris, William C. Johnston, and William G.P. Rawling.

Almost all the factors needed to increase bombing accuracy London had. It is close, near the coast, has a very distinctive river and by day many unique large buildings, it is an ideal target by day or night.

 

[33k in the air]

Throughout the war British area bombing and AAF pinpoint bombing never exceeded 50% of bombs landing within a THREE MILE radius of the target (Wiki).

Additional point on accuracy from The Crucible of War 1939-1945 by Brereton Greenhous, Stephen J. Harris, William C. Johnston, and William G.P. Rawling, page 794.

From April 1 [1944] on, however, although area raids would continue to be mounted, High Wycombe's effort would increasingly be in support of Operation Overlord. In this respect there could be little doubt that, with bombing errors generally running less than seven hundred yards, the nine March raids on French railway targets had been outstandingly successful --- demonstrating, at times, 'an accuracy and concentration . . . far exceeding that . . . achieved by the American heavies by day.'*

* After the war, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey estimated that, bombing visually by day in clear weather, the Eighth Air Force was able to get half its bombs within one-third of a mile of the aiming point; bombing non-visually by day, in heavy cloud, it got only one-half its bombs within 3.9 miles of the aiming point.

 

[P-39 Expert]

So you're taking an average across all daylight and night-time bombing efforts? Yeah, not the most relevant of statistics. However, let's use your 3-mile figure just for grins to show the irrelevance of your statement.

Per the Wiki page on the Blitz (The Blitz - Wikipedia), the size of London in 1940 was about 750 square miles (it held about one-fifth of the population of Britain). Treating that area as a circle, just to keep things simple, gives us a radius of about 15.4 miles from the centre of London to its edge. If the aim point for the Jabo raids is the centre of the city then, per your statistic, 50% of all the bombs would fall within 3 miles....but that still leaves 12.4 miles of London's radius for the remainder to fall in. Thus, for a large area target like London, the vast majority of the Jabo bombs would hit "something"...not farmland, not lakes, but people, property, industry, businesses, government etc. Again, why would Fighter Command ignore that threat? Still awaiting an answer on that.

But wait...there's more. The Jabo raids didn't only bomb from 20,000 ft. Per this site (Jabo over England I), high-altitude attacks were only used against large area targets like cities. Even then, the Me109 fighter-bombers would dive to improve weapon aiming, a tactic that was mentioned earlier in this thread. Attacks against point targets employed low-level bombing at 1000-1500ft were employed which would greatly increase the precision and accuracy of those attacks....but just because you bomb at low-level does NOT mean the entire sortie was flown at low level. Hi-lo-hi is a very common ground attack flight profile against which FC had to respond.

So...back at you again. Please explain why FC was wrong to intercept these raids.

Bombing doesn't target a city, it targets a specific factory, power plant, refinery, etc.

If the jabos get any lower than 20000' they will be easy to intercept since they will be a lot slower due to the attached 550lb bomb.

 

[fubar57]

Hamburg....Coventry

 

[SaparotRob]

So area bombing wasn't a thing?

 

[buffnut453]

Bombing doesn't target a city, it targets a specific factory, power plant, refinery, etc.

If the jabos get any lower than 20000' they will be easy to intercept since they will be a lot slower due to the attached 550lb bomb.

"Bombing doesn't target a city, it targets a specific factory, power plant, refinery, etc." Really? So what do you make of the UK's "Area Bombing Directive" by which Bomber Command was tasked to attack cities rather than targeting specific facilities? The link I included about Jabos specifically differentiates between "area targets" and "point targets" where the area target is a city. Bombing and targeting are not synonyms.

"If the jabos get any lower than 20000' they will be easy to intercept since they will be a lot slower due to the attached 550lb bomb." Really? So the Jabo dives, gaining speed, releases the bomb, and then continues to dive, at higher speed, to get away....that makes them MORE vulnerable? Certainly the fighter bomber will be less manoeuvrable while carrying the bomb but speed, particularly in a dive, won't be impacted that much. To say they would be "easy to intercept" also ignores the fact that the Jabos were escorted...you keep ignoring this fact.

 

[P-39 Expert]

Honestly, this is getting increasingly silly, to use a good old British word including, if not synonymous with, groundhuggery.

Firstly, if the best source you can come up with is wiki, it can either means that somebody wrote something wrong or out of context on wiki, or that you are too lazy to find something better. It cannot be the final word. After weeks of debating this, you really ought to be able to come up with something more definite. Even as it stands ,half the bombs landing within three miles of an aiming point in the middle of London will worry civilians and authorities, and the purpose of bombing London was not only pin pricking munition factories and docks, but also to strike terror into the population.

Secondly and a pro pos words. Never is is a very big word, did wiki qualify what it meant? Over any three month period of bombing? The whole war as an average? On any single mission? Did it even specify from which height the bombing in its 'sample' took place? As it stands, by implication by 'British area bombing' we are not only talking about high level bombing any more, surely you don't wish to argue that no interception is worth the effort? So second and a halfly, this reference to wiki is neither here nor there.

Thirdly, did those in charge in the bob know what we know? Can we use our hindsight to trump what the decision makers at the time knew or thought they knew? They percieved a threat and wished to be able to counter it. And they could not know at what heights future combat would take place, but the trend seemed to be rising. Neither could they know for certain what numbers or what kind of planes Germany would produce in the years to come, if memory serves the Fw 190 came as a complete surprize. Hell, two weeks ago I didn't realize I needed a word like groundhuggery.

fourthly, the threat from high flying aircraft was not only bombing. Italy is the only major combatant of which I have no positive knowledge of any actual development of at least prototypes of high attitude fighters. The Ju- 86 may have had the ability to carry a few bombs, but the real significance of the plane was its ability to gather intelligence. a concept not to be dismissed. While we can only speculate it is fair to assume that could Germany have photographed the build up to Overlord, the operation may have proved far more costly. I know about those things called clouds, but before you quote some Englishman that it always rains over all of England (hint, you can find him on this very forum), I will only budge if presented with hard metereological data that this was in fact the case from some point in 1943 to mid 1944.

This has had us all cringing for quite a while now. I'm not advocating this thread be closed, nobody is forced to watch a train wreck. But I think we're learning something about human psychology as well, as we watch ourselves typing into this black hole. There is also a warning in the title, that said we may consider adding: "may contain nuts."

I know I'm not the one here who thinks least about the P-39, but I don't think that you're doing it any favours right now either. It becomes increasingly difficult to discern between the plane and its advocate. This is a strange fight to pick, though by no means all, some of your previous contributions have had far more value than this.

This is just ridiculous.

As you have yourself pointed out you're always respectful in the way you write your posts, though sometimes the repetition of certain them and failing to reply to certain posts implies disrespect. Even then you don't spell it out in the same way as some of your opponents here, though I must admit that sometimes I understand their exasperation. As humans we're all fallible and we all make mistakes from time to time, and we can all be affected by tunnel vision. I'm not saying that you are silly in general, but your recent posting in this thread surely has been.

Wiki's information is from the Strategic Bombing Survey.

BoB has nothing to do with the P-39. Most all the information I quote on here is from wwiiaircraftperformance.org.

All if have said is that 109E fighter bombers couldn't get above 25000' so by definition they couldn't have fought at 30000'.

And I don't think there was a significant amount of combat at 30000'. Just my opinion based on capabilities of the planes involved.

 

[buffnut453]

Wiki's information is from the Strategic Bombing Survey.

BoB has nothing to do with the P-39. Most all the information I quote on here is from wwiiaircraftperformance.org.

All if have said is that 109E fighter bombers couldn't get above 25000' so by definition they couldn't have fought at 30000'.

And I don't think there was a significant amount of combat at 30000'. Just my opinion based on capabilities of the planes involved.

All if have said is that 109E fighter bombers couldn't get above 25000' so by definition they couldn't have fought at 30000'. But the escorting Bf109s could get to 30,000ft and did fight there.

BoB has nothing to do with the P-39. But the whole reason we disappeared down this rabbit-hole is because you claimed that air combat over Western Europe was the same as air combat over Eastern Europe. You were then presented with plenty of evidence that the former took place at higher altitudes than the latter...but you keep ignoring the evidence and returning to your opinion-centric statements.

 

[pbehn]

P-39 Expert you have already been told what interviewed Jabo pilots procedure was so why are you changing it. How do you target a refinery? I have lived near many most of my life and worked on them in the middle east, they are bigger than some cities. Your ideas on bombing are your ideas and feelings to suit your agenda they are not facts. Please preface your ideas and feelings as what they are.

 

[pbehn]

Wiki's information is from the Strategic Bombing Survey.

BoB has nothing to do with the P-39. Most all the information I quote on here is from wwiiaircraftperformance.org.

All if have said is that 109E fighter bombers couldn't get above 25000' so by definition they couldn't have fought at 30000'.

And I don't think there was a significant amount of combat at 30000'. Just my opinion based on capabilities of the planes involved.

It is only you that made this your game winning argument, you originally claimed no BoB aircraft could get to that height, inn fact they all could, it was just a matter of time. What you think about levels of combat doesn't matter, bearing in mind what Dowding said. Why do you thing your feelings and thoughts are more important than facts?

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Bombing doesn't target a city, it targets a specific factory, power plant, refinery, etc.

Boy. for all the armchair aviation and military training you have, you seem to be unaware (or choose to ignore) that some nuisance raids were undertaken just to piss off the population, keep people up at night, expend emergency services, stretch defenses and finally diminish the will of the people to continue to fight (at least that's the ultimate goal). If you lob a few bombs over the CITY of London, you're going to achieve most of this objective, it doesn't matter what you hit. A poster quoted several pilots who flew these raids along with sources. Please, this is going from silliness to stupidity.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

P-39 Expert you have already been told what interviewed Jabo pilots procedure was so why are you changing it. How do you target a refinery? I have lived near many most of my life and worked on them in the middle east, they are bigger than some cities. Your ideas on bombing are your ideas and feelings to suit your agenda they are not facts. Please preface your ideas and feelings as what they are.

But were any of those Jabo pilots by any chance Chuck Jaeger?

 

[GrauGeist]

Just my opinion

Which means squat in the face of actual facts that have been provided in multitude.

And by multitude, I means hundreds of posts...

 

[pbehn]

So area bombing wasn't a thing?

If you look at this map which shows all the bomb hits in London, n places you can see 8 hits in a line. A Heinkel He111 releasing 8 bombs pointy end upwards was going to hit a long line not a point. Only special aircraft with special bombs and crews could target an individual point. Even dive bombers frequently missed, but by less than others. Bomb Sight - Mapping the London Blitz

 

[pbehn]

But were any of those Jabo pilots by any chance Chuck Jaeger?

Obviously not, London as we know it would not exist, all its landmarks would have been flattened.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

But were any of those Jabo pilots by any chance Chuck Jaeger?

In case anyone is wondering, the misspelling was on purpose.