The Basket
Senior Master Sergeant
- 3,712
- Jun 27, 2007
Pareto Principle. 20% of pilots do 80% of the work.
Impact of fully adopted and reliable 20mm in BoB
- Thread starter Admiral Beez
- Start date
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Top 5 BoB aces (I'm not doing 17!)
Eric Lock - 21 victories, joined RAF in 1939 and trained before the war.
James Lacey - 18 victories, joined RAF in 1937.
Archie McKellar - 17.5 victories, joined RAF in 1936
Josef Frantisek - 17 victories, joined Czech air force in 1934.
Colin Gray - 15.5 victories, made two attempts to join RAF, first in 1937, before finally succeeding in 1939, completed training just as the war began.
See a pattern? All of these men were trained in the pre-war era, some only just, and several were experienced pilots before the war began.
There were three types of fighter pilots in WW2.
The first group were the very good who accounted for the vast majority of enemy aircraft shot down. In Fighter Command, in 1940, almost all these men had trained and learned to fly before the war, some had considerable experience in other air forces.
The second were those who were good enough to survive for long enough that they became difficult to shoot down and on occasion might score a victory for themselves.
The third and largest group comprised those who provided targets for the first group while endeavouring to survive for long enough to make it to the second or even first group. Obviously if we drew a Venn diagram of these three there would be some overlap, but it remains broadly true of all combatant air forces.
See a pattern? Erie resemblance to the IJNAF/IJAAF? How about the LW? The Soviet AF? And to a lesser extent, USAAF/USN? The isolationist US didn't get into large scale flight training until too late for the majority of those nuggets to gain much prewar experience. And they were taught inappropriate tactics and equipped with less competitive aircraft.
Chuck Yeager said it best: "In a fight between equivalent aircraft, the pilot with the most experience will win."
Cheers,
Wes
fastmongrel
1st Sergeant
The LW only had a few dozen Diesel engined aircraft and for some reason they were very prone to engine fires. Flashpoint of Avgas is -40 centigrade, flashpoint of diesel is +60 centigrade, self ignition point of Magnesium is +473 centigrade.
For those people from primitive countries that still use Ye Olde British Goat measurements you will have to use google to convert Centigrade to Fairyheights.
Of course. The point is that had these few expert pilots been flying cannon armed aircraft in 1940 they may well have shot down more aircraft. How many we will never know.
The eight machine gun armament used historically was specifically adopted so that the average pilot would have a chance of hitting something vital in the target aircraft. As early as 1931 Dowding was arguing,
'The multi gun type of fixed gun single-seater fighter is more likely than is the two gun single-seat fighter, to produce the density of fire necessary to ensure a hit on a vital part of a target aircraft, in a time which approaches the actual average time during which aerial targets present themselves in air fighting.'
By 1934 Ralph Sorley was recommending at least 6, rather 8, guns to the DCAS. For the Fury replacement (F.5/34) he was arguing.
'I do not think anything less than six guns should be considered. We shall be able to reduce the number of guns carried in war if it is found necessary to increase performance, or if good results are being obtained with a fewer number of guns than 8, but if we call for less we cannot increase them at will.'
We should not ignore that a battery of eight rifle calibre machine guns was exceptionally heavy armament in the mid 1930s, when both the Supermarine and Hawker fighters were adapted to it. It was double the armament of the contemporary Bf 109.
fastmongrel
1st Sergeant
Bet that still works nowadays even though the pilot is just there to switch it off and on again if the plane has a software glitch.
We call that 'recycling the mains' in my business. It sounds soooo much better.
The Basket
Senior Master Sergeant
- 3,712
- Jun 27, 2007
Making assumptions here....
But the RAF had some very green pilots who hadn't flown 10 hours in a Spitfire and were using questionable tactics. So how 20mm gonna help them I am sure I don't know.
So it would not be odd that them greenhorns would be passengers and more elite pilot took the lions share of the kills.
No idea how that would transition into today's air combat. I would say any western pilot who flies a modern jet would have to have a certain level of competence. So the difference between the best and worst will be much narrower.
Anyhoo....one aspect that hasn't been mentioned is 4 .303s in a powered turret! That would make a formidable fighter and make the Spitfire and Hurricane look like left over ww1 trash.
But the RAF had some very green pilots who hadn't flown 10 hours in a Spitfire and were using questionable tactics. So how 20mm gonna help them I am sure I don't know.
So it would not be odd that them greenhorns would be passengers and more elite pilot took the lions share of the kills.
No idea how that would transition into today's air combat. I would say any western pilot who flies a modern jet would have to have a certain level of competence. So the difference between the best and worst will be much narrower.
Anyhoo....one aspect that hasn't been mentioned is 4 .303s in a powered turret! That would make a formidable fighter and make the Spitfire and Hurricane look like left over ww1 trash.
No change in the outcome except maybe they give up sooner, the Luftwaffe were never going to win the BoB.
Hell yes, just fly up along side and let them have it, lucky the Germans were so accommodating.
The aircraft flown also played a part, a Spitfire was marginally better at keeping its pilots alive for all sorts of reasons. Over the course of time this had an effect.
Hmmm.... The cannon-armed RAF fighters flown by pilots with more experience of shooting would possibly shoot down more bombers, but the majority of RAF pilots had very poor aerial gunnery training, and would have missed just as much with cannon as they did with Browning .303s. I see some estimates of RAF aerial gunnery during the BoB as having as low as an average 2.5% hit rate against the Luftwaffe's bombers (and lower when dogfighting 109s!), and that includes the aces who were getting more shots on target. On the flip side, cannon are heavier, which would make the Hurricane I in particular slower in climb and level speed, and less manouverable, so you might see less interceptions and more Hurricanes getting caught by 109s and shot down.
As regards effectiveness, the combination of eight Browning .303s and the Hurricane was more than capable of shooting down the Heinkel 111s, Dornier 17s Junker 87s and Junker 88s of the BoB. Surprising sidenote - the BoB Ju88 had the highest loss rate of the four because the early A versions were a handful to fly, especially damaged, and was considered unflyable on one engine. Four-gun Gloster Gladiators scored kills against all four types over Norway, Greece and Malta, which suggests that proper aerial gunnery training would have been of much bigger benefit than 20mm cannon to the RAF in the BoB.
Hawker built at least two Hurricanes with Oerlikon cannons, one (serial L1750) having one cannon under each wing in gondolas and the other (V7360) having two Oerlikons in each wing as the later IIC version did with Hispanos. Both were tested by 151 Squadron and flown during the BoB, with V7360 also being flown by 46 Squadron. During the Battle, Flt Lt Smith of 151 Squadron was credited with one confirmed Do17 with L1750, and 46 Squadron's Flt Lt Rabagliati is credited with a Bf 109E kill in V7360.
The Oerlikon was not a popular option with the RAF as the shells needed to be greased to ensure they extracted properly, and grease attracts moisture which can lead to your ammo getting frozen at altitude. However. it was found the real problem was the RAF was obsessed with safety, and insisted the guns had to be uncocked for take off, and then cocked in flight. This meant that the Oerlikons had a hastily designed and very unreliable pneumatic cocking system fitted, which was actually the cause of most failures, and led to the RAF rejecting the Oerlikon-armed Hurricane option. The pneumatic system was improved for the Hispano II and actually worked quite well, but was discarded for the Hispano V as the Hispano V was considered safer and more reliable by that point of the War.
I think the issue starts with bombers in the BoB taking an extraordinary number of hits to take them down. I have read of the being riddled everywhere with many passing through prop blades where a cannon shell would have blown the blade off. Many bombers landed in France and never took off again. In the later raids on London there were many bombers with no escort over London that made it home, whether cannons on RAF fighters would have changed it is a possibility.
This is another one of those myths that should go into that thread ... Oerlikons were never put into British fighters -- always the Hispano.
MiTasol
1st Lieutenant
It is nice to see a resident of England who does not use inFerial measurements.
The Basket
Senior Master Sergeant
- 3,712
- Jun 27, 2007
Go big or go home so 37mm for me.
I am more inclined to be conservative so I sincerely doubt 20mm would gain any more kills than 303 in real terms.
Although I believe any attempt at an invasion by the Germans would have been a guaranteed fail. Even in peace time on sunny days, the Germans were in a bad way.
Some nutcase is hellbent in putting 20mm cannon in the wings of the Hurricane and Spitfire after reading comments on an internet forum. This completely throws off production and the 20mm turns out to be unreliable but that's fine because we have the Defiant to save the day.
You fools! You should have listened to me and stuck with 303!!!!
Thank the maker time travel is only a theory
I am more inclined to be conservative so I sincerely doubt 20mm would gain any more kills than 303 in real terms.
Although I believe any attempt at an invasion by the Germans would have been a guaranteed fail. Even in peace time on sunny days, the Germans were in a bad way.
Some nutcase is hellbent in putting 20mm cannon in the wings of the Hurricane and Spitfire after reading comments on an internet forum. This completely throws off production and the 20mm turns out to be unreliable but that's fine because we have the Defiant to save the day.
You fools! You should have listened to me and stuck with 303!!!!
Thank the maker time travel is only a theory
Shortround6
Major General
One does wonder when the British should have started sorting out the Hispano.
The Land for the first factory was transferred in June of 1938, building erected, machinery purchased and installed and the first prototype cannon were produced in Dec 1938 with one fired by the the Duke of Gloucester at the official opening of the factory in Jan 1939.
A Captain Adams made a trip to Paris after the German invasion of France to obtain plans and details of the French belt feed system.
The Land for the first factory was transferred in June of 1938, building erected, machinery purchased and installed and the first prototype cannon were produced in Dec 1938 with one fired by the the Duke of Gloucester at the official opening of the factory in Jan 1939.
A Captain Adams made a trip to Paris after the German invasion of France to obtain plans and details of the French belt feed system.
Actually, the original drum magazine for the MG-FF and FFM was not a very reliable feeder, and though the spec says 60 round capacity, the usual Luftwaffe BoB loading was 56-58 rounds per drum, and some problematic guns it was only 50 rounds to improve reliability. The MG-FF was always a horrible compromise forced on the Luftwaffe because the Bf109s wings were too small to mount a proper cannon. If you have a look at the wing machinegun mounting in the 109E, the butt of the weapon actually sticks out the back of the wing into the aileron space, there really is so little room! The other two guns had to be stashed under the engine cowling, slowed to fire through the propeller arc. Compare that to the Hurricane's wing, which has the space for four guns in a block all fully-enclosed inside the wing, or even the Spitfire, which still manages to fully-enclose all four guns even if Supermarine did have to space them out along the wing. Both the Spitfire and Hurricane could and did later carry four full-size, high-velocity Hispano cannon.
The MG-FF wasn't some amazing bit of precognizance from the Luftwaffe, it was their desperate answer to the 8-gun RAF standard because the Messerschmitt's frame was too small to mount more than four MG17s. They had originally wanted the ME to carry the high-velocity C/20 cannon in the engine mount, but when that failed they had to go to the MG-FF. The MG-FFM was already past its prime when replaced by the MG151, but the Bf109F was still stuck with only one cannon in comparison to the Hurricane IIC's four Hispanos. To put more firepower on the ME you had to go to MG151s in draggy underwing gondolas, as in the Bf109G, or the heavy and low-velocity 30mm MK108. The problem for the Luftwaffe was the 109's targets began to be more and more tough, four-engined American bombers, whereas for the Allies the target was more and more just single-engined fighters. You need lots of cannon to shoot down the bombers, but adding those gondolas made the 109 easy meat for P-51Bs to shoot down the 109 with just four .50 M2s.
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