Leading Edge Slats

[stona]

Hard to see out the front without looking through the sight

Things never got better, maybe worse for the last in the line

Cheers

Steve

 

[Kryten]

Frontal visibility from a 109 was terrible, they had to offset the gunsight for that reason!

Do you play computer games Shooter?

 

[GrauGeist]

Frontal visibility from a 109 was terrible, they had to offset the gunsight for that reason!

Do you play computer games Shooter?

He probably does...one of two modes, most likely.

Either "chase view" or "no cockpit" with or without reticle.

 

[pbehn]

Hard to see out the front without looking through the sight
View attachment 347190
Things never got better, maybe worse for the last in the line

The point of my post was that the 109 did not have the downward view to make these deflection shots.

 

[Peter Gunn]

*SNIP*

The entire idea is that during the early part of the BoB, the Germans used a tactic called Frei Jagdt, ( Sp?) where the escorts were free to hunt the RAF at will. The 109s sat on the "Perch" above the bombers and waited for the RAF to come up and play. Then they zoomed down, killed their single target and used the speed gained to zoom climb back up to the perch to look for a second victim. The dicta involved four or five steps; Look for the right target, look for impediments to killing that target, look for your escape route, then zoom down and ambush the hapless target and leave before his Wingman, or fiends could do anything about it. Because the RAF was required to attack the bombers, the 109s could use positional advantage to kill them at will and RAF losses were very heavy, for little return.
The the German bomber crew, who were being taken to the cleaners complained that they were not getting good escort services and the 109s were required to stay close to the bombers and they lost their advantage. That caused the K/L Ratio to flip and the RAF started doing much better. But the 109s were not killing as many RAF as before and the BoB was lost, or won depending on which side you were on.
One Strategy gave you the long term victory and the other gave the Bomber crews instant gratification.

Are we talking about the same BoB that happened over Europe in 1940? Admittedly, my knowledge is not up to snuff the way I want it to be on the subject, but at what point were the hapless Spitfires and Hurricanes being blown from the sky and not returning in kind? Um, even wikipedia isn't that... flawed.

 

[pbehn]

Are we talking about the same BoB that happened over Europe in 1940? Admittedly, my knowledge is not up to snuff the way I want it to be on the subject, but at what point were the hapless Spitfires and Hurricanes being blown from the sky and not returning in kind? Um, even wikipedia isn't that... flawed.

To summarise, the LW shot down more SE fighters than the RAF, the RAF shot down more German aircraft in total, thats why it ended.

The LW fighters on their perch saw the last 50 fighters come and go then another last 50 and then another, finally over London another 50 appeared and the game was up.

 

[stona]

Shooter * also doesn't know what 'freijagd' entailed. It did not involve sitting above the bombers waiting for the RAF to come up and play, that would have been an escort. A 'freijagd' was a fighter sweep in our terms, just over half of all Bf 109 sorties throughout the BoB period were 'freijagd'.
The British simply tried to ignore them, they couldn't do any real damage. Late in the battle, to avoid scrambling fighters to intercept fighter sweeps, indistinguishable on radar from any other raid, Fighter Command flew patrols over the Channel to report the compositon of incoming raids, enabling the filter room/controllers to simply ignore a formation of Bf 109s on a 'freijagd'.

My grand mother recalled waving brightly at what she thought was a low flying British aircraft only to see it open fire on a local railway station, probably a Bf 109 on a 'freijagd'. The station would have been one near Canterbury, but she was never sure which one.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Airframes]

Some of the stuff posted here by our shooter-expert-on-all things BoB is very like a fairy tale - bl**dy Grimm !
I've seen some ill-informed b*ll*cks spouted before, but this one takes first prize - it's straight out of the offices of Marvel Comics, composed and edited by Mr. W. Mitty !!!

 

[Shortround6]

I believe there is a song that may be familiar to our Australian members that describes him.

The Man from Humpty-Doo by Ted Egan.

 

[stona]

I should mention that my dear old grandma always said that the station strafing incident took place during the BoB period. I remember asking if it might have been later, because a little known series of raids by solitary fighters did take place later, in 1942. These were known as 'Stacheldraht' (barbed wire) operations and did specifically seek targets of opportunity, like a railway station. My grandmother was still in the Canterbury area at this time and human memory is, as we all know, fallible.
Cheers
Steve

 

[Glider]

You have seen the light! If you take the top 100 to 150 Me-109 Ace pilots who scored over 100 kills, and add up their scores, they shot down more planes than the Entire RAF, ALL of the USAAF Fighter commands, the Russians, or any other single Air Force. Maybe the second and third scoring AFs above combined?

If you exclude the fighting in Russia here the Luftwaffe aircraft and training were so superior to the Russian airforce whose aircraft were slaughtered the whole argument falls apart.
I would be interested to see what scores the Luftwaffe pilots achieved against the Spitfire. An aircraft most similar to the Me109/Fw190 during the war from beginning to the end.

 

[BLine22]

You have seen the light! If you take the top 100 to 150 Me-109 Ace pilots who scored over 100 kills, and add up their scores, they shot down more planes than the Entire RAF, ALL of the USAAF Fighter commands, the Russians, or any other single Air Force. Maybe the second and third scoring AFs above combined?
As to the second point about the bit in Yellow above, you are terribly uninformed. Why would you shoot at a plane you can not see? The simple fact is that the inverted engine gave the 109 pilot's a better view over the nose than a Mustang, or Spit. But that is not even remotely relevant!
When the Ace pulls the extra Gs to make the shot, he still has a clear LoS to the target.
Make the diagram I explained before and the see how far ahead the target has to be to still fall under the 109's guns which are pointed some 7 Degrees above the lowest possible Line of Sight.

Of the 103 German Aces with 100 kills, all but six achieved the majority of their success against Russian opponents on the Eastern or Arctic fronts.

 

[Greyman]

The simple fact is that the inverted engine gave the 109 pilot's a better view over the nose than a Mustang, or Spit.

This goes against data I have - do you have any figures available?

 

[stona]

The origin of the inverted V adopted by the Germans goes back to 1928 and a sort of 'think tank' meeting on the future of aero engines. There were very many features deemed desirable. Tender documents were sent to Daimler-Benz, Junkers and B.M.W., all of which eventually produced a V-12 engine model in response although none was able to incorporate all of the required features immediately.
In 1980 Wolfram Eisenlohr, present at that meeting, was interviewed about the 1928 requirement for inverted V-12s and he cited three reasons for the decision, none of which were included in the tenders and none of which are technical specifications pertaining to the engine. These were
- more compact installation,
- better pilot view for single engined aircraft,
- less exhaust flame dazzle during night flying.
Whether the pilot view from a Bf 109 is in fact any better I doubt very much. Engines were a lot bigger and consequently the length in front of the pilot longer, but in 1928 it was a consideration.
Eisenlohr was a brilliant man, but his background was in naval aviation and in the 1920s this meant air ships.
Cheers
Steve

 

[Shortround6]

Better view for landing or better view through gunsight????
Two very different things.
Sticking DB engine in an airframe designed for Jumo 210 (or BMW 116?) is going to screw up the planed sight lines anyway.

 

[Milosh]

One could take a drawing of the 109 and Spit put in some line of sight lines > one straight ahead and one over the cowling.

 

[Ascent]

I don't suppose there are photos looking out of the cockpit for any of these aircraft?

 

[GrauGeist]

I'll post some "3-view" layouts that may help give an idea of the line of sight forward of the cockpit on the various types.

The Spitfire's later types have a broader cowling that's difficult to see in the line drawings, that reduces the view "ahead and to the side" over the earlier types.

Click on the image to see the full resolution.

 

[BLine22]

The Hurricane appears to have a better over the nose sight line than the Spitfire or 109. The cowl mounted machine guns offset any advantage of the inverted V.

 

[Shortround6]

I don't suppose there are photos looking out of the cockpit for any of these aircraft?

Most cockpit photos are of the instrument panel and so give a somewhat distorted view through the windscreen. Camera often being behind and above where the pilots eyes would be and aimed downward to capture the lower part of the panels/stick and perhaps rudder pedals. There may be photos take through the gun sight but they seem to be rare and that is the important view. View through windscreen side/corner panels and down the side of the engine being rather useless for aiming the guns.