Let's see your bomber vs. bomber battles

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

B-24 vs two F 200

The War’s Oddest Dogfight

Over the Atlantic in 1943, it was a battle of the bombers.

www.smithsonianmag.com

I think there are threads in this forum about such battles.

From that one:

"n a 1989 interview with the Imperial War Museum in London, the Highlander's captain, Colin William McMullen, described the dogfight as "really like a sort of Jules Verne scene, with these two enormous aircraft weaving about, shooting at one another." After rescuing the Liberator crew, "who were extremely angry at being shot down," McMullen said the ship "dashed off and found where the Focke-Wulf had gone into the sea. And there were three Germans swimming for Portugal, which was rather a long way away, and we picked up the Focke-Wulf crew. And as they came on the upper deck up the ladder, [they] came face to face with the American crew. And it was only by great tact that we managed to prevent them continuing the engagement on our upper deck."

Love it hahahahah

 

[Dimlee]

From that one:

"n a 1989 interview with the Imperial War Museum in London, the Highlander's captain, Colin William McMullen, described the dogfight as "really like a sort of Jules Verne scene, with these two enormous aircraft weaving about, shooting at one another." After rescuing the Liberator crew, "who were extremely angry at being shot down," McMullen said the ship "dashed off and found where the Focke-Wulf had gone into the sea. And there were three Germans swimming for Portugal, which was rather a long way away, and we picked up the Focke-Wulf crew. And as they came on the upper deck up the ladder, [they] came face to face with the American crew. And it was only by great tact that we managed to prevent them continuing the engagement on our upper deck."

Love it hahahahah

And we have video proof of the incident

 

[MIflyer]

I read of a TBM Avenger that salvoed its 5 in HVAR rockets into a Japanese aircraft one night over Okinawa. And here is an account of another Avenger shooting down a Betty bomber.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

And we have video proof of the incident

Lol they seem to catch fire in those games a lot easier than they do in the various wartime accounts, and the guns never seem to jam!

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Lol they seem to catch fire in those games a lot easier than they do in the various wartime accounts, and the guns never seem to jam!

And never overheat or run out of ammunition.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

And never overheat or run out of ammunition.

They did run out of ammunition, all too quickly, in IL-2 but they didn't seem to jam or overheat (as they so often did in real life). That said, I haven't played the more recent version of that game, which I gather was a bit more realistic.

 

[JDCAVE]

I'm pretty sure that most of the "Bomber versus Bomber" battles at night involving Bomber Command aircraft were a result of a friendly fire. On the night 23rd February, 1945, dad recalled having to take evasive action against a Lancaster that itself was being attacked by a German fighter. Evidently he had to do a corkscrew maneuver to get away from it.

On another occasion S/L Clifford Black of 419 squadron sometime in December 1944, was attacked by what they identified as a B-17 (Flying Fortress). They were shot at and bullets struck the aircraft. This incident is written up in David Bashow's book "No Prouder Place". At the time of Bashow writing the book, it was considered that this was a Flying Fortress And captured by the Germans and used infiltrate the bomber stream. However subsequent research that a colleague and I have done revealed that this aircraft was actually a 100-Group Flying Fortress that itself felt that it was being attacked and the gunner fired upon Black's Lancaster.

i'm in the middle of a move right now, and all my research materials are not available to me. I'll see if I can dig out a little bit more about the Clifford Black incident because it's quite interesting.

jim

 

[JDCAVE]

Ok, so I found the Combat Report for Black's encounter and also the combat report for F/O Norman Rix of 214 Squadron. Both the waist gunner and the rear gunner shot off 40 rounds each at an U/I aircraft.

The op in question was to Ludwigshafen, 15-December,1945. Black's Bomb Aimer was shot in the foot and they landed at the emergency 'drome at Woodbridge.

The Combat report for Black's crew..

The Combat report for Rix's crew…

 

[Capt. Vick]

Didn't they employ Whitley bombers to drop bombs on Luftwaffe bombers during the BOB?

 

[Glider]

Quite interesting! That one really diserves to be run down and verified if possible, if it's real it's absolutely epic. On the flip side there is an account in MAW of a unit of Ju-88 (probably C type / heavy fighters) ambushing some P-38s over the Med while on a long flight from England and shooting several of them down. IIRC the P-38s only had 50 rounds of ammunition and were of course heavily laden with fuel and extra tanks, and weren't expecting to be attacked. I think one of them landed in Portugal and got interned? I'll have to go see if I can find it.

The battle took place on the 23rd December 1942. 51 P38's were going to Gibraltar with a A20B as the Navigator Leader. They were bounced by 4 (yes four) Ju88c fighter. The A20 was shot down. One P38 (Lt Green) was shot down One P38 (Lt Broadhead) had to return with damage to Cornwall. One P38 (Capt Strozier) force landed in Portugal. One P38 (Lt Miller) crash landed in Spain. The cost to the Germans was two Ju88 which made emergency landings in France due to low fuel and one additional Ju88 (a fifth) that was lost when it tried to join the combat

 

[Admiral Beez]

Lol they seem to catch fire in those games a lot easier than they do in the various wartime accounts, and the guns never seem to jam!

Indeed. In real life the bombers take a crapload of punishment and mostly keep on flying.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

Those are being hit with multiple cannon strikes...

 

[Admiral Beez]

Those are being hit with multiple cannon strikes...

I know, and in many cases they just keep on flying, no sustained conflagration. The German fighter pilots must have wondered what American bombers were made of.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

Those are big planes, but I think most of them in that video were pretty well wrecked

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Those are big planes, but I think most of them in that video were pretty well wrecked

Many of those B-17s we see in famous damage photos never flew again, bring written off and cannibalized for parts. IIRC, on the infamous Black Thursday raid, 60 B-17s were shot down, and another 17 or so were written off after the mission never to fly again, for instance. That definitely changes the mission's loss-rate.

Having said that, I bet the crews on those damaged -17s were happy to get home all the same, relatively speaking.

 

[Wild_Bill_Kelso]

Yes we should also remember that on the Schweinfurt raid and many others, the Germans weren't just attacking with their (already quite formidable and heavily armed) front line fighters but also with heavy fighters, sometimes with multiple 20mm and also 30mm and even 50mm guns, as well as rockets and all kinds of other stuff. And up-gunned Fw 190s and 109s with extra cannon.

In the Pacific by contrast, it was more often some Zeros with a couple of 20mm with only 60 rounds each (plus light machine guns), or Ki-43s with just machine guns... or bombers shooting at each other with their machine guns or defensive 20mm. Or on the Allied side, .50 cal machine guns which we love and know were hard core, but apparently not always hard core enough to down a 'Betty', a 'Sally' or a 'Helen' even with multiple hits.

Definitely if I had to fly a B-17 or B-24 in combat I'd rather it was in the Pacific than 8th AF.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yes we should also remember that on the Schweinfurt raid and many others, the Germans weren't just attacking with their (already quite formidable and heavily armed) front line fighters but also with heavy fighters, sometimes with multiple 20mm and also 30mm and even 50mm guns, as well as rockets and all kinds of other stuff. And up-gunned Fw 190s and 109s with extra cannon.

In the Pacific by contrast, it was more often some Zeros with a couple of 20mm with only 60 rounds each (plus light machine guns), or Ki-43s with just machine guns... or bombers shooting at each other with their machine guns or defensive 20mm. Or on the Allied side, .50 cal machine guns which we love and know were hard core, but apparently not always hard core enough to down a 'Betty', a 'Sally' or a 'Helen' even with multiple hits.

Definitely if I had to fly a B-17 or B-24 in combat I'd rather it was in the Pacific than 8th AF.

Right, but my point was agreeing with you ("but I think most of them in that video were pretty well wrecked"), that the photos of landed bombers show incredible battle-damage, but that many never took off again, meaning that even though not shot down they were battle-losses all the same.

Of course the Pacific was an easier milieux for the heavy bombers; much lighter flak, fighter bases far more dispersed, fighter waves much less dense and more lightly armed. It wasn't Europe, which was a much more demanding regime for multi-engined bomber, I think we can agree: radar everywhere, fighter bases alongside most routes, flak much more prevalent, and escorts more necessary. It's apples and oranges.

 

[GrauGeist]

Definitely if I had to fly a B-17 or B-24 in combat I'd rather it was in the Pacific than 8th AF.

Depends on what time frame you're looking at in the PTO.

Late war, the Japanese were fielding aircraft that were formidible and heavily armed, like the N1K1J, which had four 20mm cannon.
There ws also the KI-100, armed with two 12.7mm MGs and two 20mm cannon, the J2M3 that was armed with four 20mm cannon.
Those are just the single engine fighters, they had twins that were packing a hellova punch, too.

 

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

17 August 1943, 60 B-17 missing, another 4 written off
14 October 1943, 61 B-17 missing, another 8 written off

The list I have says 4,151 B-17 lost on combat missions, 3,157 of these missing, the other 994 made it to allied territory.

The Germans were largely using their standard day single engine day fighters against the 8th Air Force supplemented by twin engined night fighters until around September/October 1943, when more twin engined day fighter units began to be deployed, the use of night fighters phased out and the firepower of the single engined fighters upgraded. The use of rockets began in July 1943, the 50mm cannon was a 1944 trial, the 30mm cannon the 1944 answer. As long as no fire was started the Germans calculated it took around 20x20mm hits or 2-3x30mm hits on average to bring down a heavy bomber.

When it came to the B-29 the Japanese used ramming tactics.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Definitely if I had to fly a B-17 or B-24 in combat I'd rather it was in the Pacific than 8th AF.

It's too bad the B-17s at Manila weren't sent to strike Taiwan instead of MacArthur leaving them on the ground to be destroyed.