Nose turrets on night bombers

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K

kitplane01

Airman 1st Class
135
32
Apr 23, 2020
I assume that over europe during night night bomber runs, the night fighter did not attack head on. Closing speeds greater than 500 mph at night seem an unlikely strategy. If this is true, did night bombers carry nose gunners, nose guns, and ammo. Assuming it didn't greatly effect center-of-gravity, this reduces weight and reduces casualties if the bomber is lost.

The B-24, for example, had a nose gunner who was not also the bombardier.
 
I recently read a book that covered a lot of missions by RAF night bombers. I was struck by the fact that the nose gunner did not seem to see any action. Even on the few occasions when they sighted an enemy fighter from the nose gun position they usually let it go by without firing. But then there was a case where an RAF bomber crew noticed a Ju-88 come up in front of them and line up on a bombers in front of them. The nose gunner opened fire, the Ju-88 dove away, and they claimed it as a kill. But the nose gunner had other tasks to perform, so even when on some of the bombers they eliminated the nose turret they would have kept the crewman that would have manned the turret.
 
Shortround6 said:
The later Halifax's got a pointed plexiglass nose with a single gun instead of a turret.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this is because the early Merlin engined Halifaxes were draggy overweight things that were underpowered and the turret removal as an attempt at weight and drag reduction.

All the RAF heavy night bombers during the war, with the exception of the Halifaxes with the glazed nose and Handley Page Hampdens with a similar layout had front gun turrets; the Whitley, Wellington, Stirling, Manchester and Lancaster and in pretty much all of these the bomb aimer was also the gunner. It's also worth mentioning though, that although these aircraft largely saw action at night and they wore night time camouflage, some of their sorties were daylight operations.
 
I understand that a big factor in the Halifax and Lancaster nose turret removal was that the darn things were not only used very little but were very leaky, allowing cold air to sweep through the fuselage.

In contrast, take a look at a really tight nose turret, one that just happened to be made by the same people who built my airplane a very few years later.

Although I have to admit that my Ercoupe leaks air like a sieve.
 
Interesting view of a Navy PB4Y-2 Privateer
 
RAF 100 group used Liberators at night for ECM. They locked the nose turret in place, removed the guns and covered it. The USAAF also flew B-24s at night, but they did a proper job and replaced the turret with a plexiglass enclosure. It was different in appearance to the B-24D nose.
 
Shortround6 said:
The later Halifax's got a pointed plexiglass nose with a single gun instead of a turret. Lighter, more streamlined. Kept a bit of defensive capability, perhaps as much for morale sake as actual defense.
Click to expand...
Also useful in the costal command version for keeping submarine flak crews busy. Some in fact used a .50 Browning.
 

Hey, you are right! I did not recall that. See attached.

Interesting that RAF used B-17's and B-24's for ECM. Their two-stage supercharged engines gave them better altitude performance than the RAF bombers, enabling better coverage. And flying mainly alone and trying to be as irritating as possible the performance advantage helped them evade the German nightfighters, most of which pretty much ran out of steam quickly above 20,000 ft.

 

I'm curious what other task there was, that was worth the weight and the risk of loss-of-life.

I know many bombers had the bombardier as the nose gunner, and that make sense, but what other tasks?
 
I'm trying to gather what's been posted.

Is this true: Some bombers dedicated to night missions eliminated the nose gunner and turret, but most did not. When the nose gunner was on board during night missions, he had little chance to shoot down enemy aircraft.
 
The person at the front was looking for any other aircraft, the bomber stream packed a lot of bombers into a small box at night they did occasionally run into each other.
 
The nose gunner on Lancs was the bomb aimer. In the case of the Ju-88, the pilot saw the fighter up ahead and called the bomb aimer, who then manned the turret and opened up on the fighter. I've never before read of a RAF night bomber gunner opening up on a fighter that was not after his own aircraft, but of course there were few instances indeed where that was even an option. If they saw a fighter going by that did not seem to be after them they usually left it alone so to prevent attracting attention. The B-29's on the night raids over Japan did the same thing.
 
For pretty much every RAF bomber (Lancaster/Manchester, Halifax, Wellington, Whitley), the nose gunner was not a dedicated position but a task that the bombardier performed when not on the actual bombing run. It was an efficient use of personnel because the bombardier was only needed during the run over the target when, for the most part, the biggest threat was from flak rather than night fighters. For the rest of the mission, he'd just be deadweight so giving him the nose gunner job actually reduced the number of personnel required to man the bomber fleet.

Outside of the bombing run, having an extra pair of eyes in the forward hemisphere was a valuable addition to enhance situational awareness for the pilot. As others have noted, this function often had more to do with avoiding collision with other aircraft in the friendly bomber stream than it did to defend against enemy night fighters.

The removal of front turrets later in the war was largely to reduce weight and drag to improve speed. It did not result in smaller crews, however, because there was still a need for the bombardier.
 
I think the dambuster raids had a front gunner and a bomb aimer they needed the guns at the front to suppress flak.
 
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