buffnut453
Captain
One can only hope. That would be AWESOME! Then we can all pile on with corrections to contradict ourselves. My, how the long winter evenings will just FLYYYYYY by!
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As one of our Forum Elders once mentioned, snippets of the NOT TO BE NAMED thread might be quoted as fact in Wiki.
Also I take umbrage invoking Flyboy into this. One of his many talents which we all miss, was his belief that personal attacks should be left out of the forum, and people should be allowed to debate and explain their views and reasons for their views
Totally agreeAnd that has not changed.
Attack the post, not the poster. If you cannot get your point across without doing so, the don't post at all.
Debating does not require personal attacks.
Because you have more tracers going out, twice the number of guns firing twice as fast. There's no ''best'' defensive guns .303's or .50's when the Luftwaffe are shooting 20-30mm cannons at you.
Yeah, but no one ever called the .303 "Ma".
The cannon wasn't mounted to the engine but to the forward bulkhead and the weight of the engine plus the cannon combined with it's recoil caused the bulkhead to crack and fail, as part of the F series redesign was a stronger reinforced cockpit tub to take the forces placed on it, the E-3 with the motorkannone never went into production.though the motorkannone was often removed by the crews.
What assertions?, I'm asking what are you going to replace tracers with before gyro gunsights appear?, the .50 BMG wasn't a reliable gun until late 1942-43 and neither was it's ammunition, the Americans reversed engineered .303 De Wilde incendiaries for the .50 to try and get something that worked, all the information is on this very site because it has been discussed numerous times.Again provide sources that back up your assertions. You are painting yourself as an expert. Do tell.
That's "Mum".Because the Brits don't have Mummy issues????
Because the Brits don't have Mummy issues????
I agree it was necessary to fire immediately on a night fighter when sited For precisely the reasons you stated. However Harris stated specifically Bomber Command was concerned that gunners were not using their sights but were simply hosepiping fire around the sky and using tracer to guide thei aim. It was a highly ineffective method.A personal view I admit. Harris was the chief of Bomber Command and was in a position to get what he wanted. Yes it was important that he had the .50 not the .303 but there were priorities. Improved Navigation was probably the first priority and a vast amount of resources was poured into getting that sorted, which it was. Improving the performance of the bombers was probably second, it not an equal priority. Again vast resources was spent on this. The Manchester became the Lancaster, the Halifax I and II became the III, The Sterling was developed and then dropped for good reason. If the 0.5 had been a top priority it would have been sorted earlier, but it wasn't, it was further down the priority list.
There are very few things that Harris wanted, that he didn't get.
Harris was far from perfect, no but who is? His insistence on attacking cities when at times there were other priorities to progress the war is often debated and his single minded determination whilst often a huge advantage could be an equally sized hurdle. Interestingly, I do not put that as negative comment on him, but the people who lacked the backbone to control him when he needed controlling.
Re my comment about fighter pilots continuing to attack after they have started taking hits I believe to be a statement of fact. You have access to the same night fighter books as I do. It doesn't matter if you are looking at German or British night fighter crews, almost invariably once they take hits they tended to pull away.
Also I take umbrage invoking Flyboy into this. One of his many talents which we all miss, was his belief that personal attacks should be left out of the forum, and people should be allowed to debate and explain their views and reasons for their views
What people forget is why the Luftwaffe attacked from underneath, it had nothing to do with there not being a belly turret but instead it was the best way to see the target. Night fighters found the easiest way to see a bomber was to fly below them silhouetting it against the stars and then attacking by pulling up and shooting as they passed the nose, someone obviously knew about the RAF having upward firing guns to destroy balloons in WW1 and reinvented the wheel.As I read once in a discussion about the (occasional) ventral turret on the Lancaster, its value was probably gretest as a chanse of spotting an attacker and calling for an immidiate corkscrew.
The E-2 which first tested the MG/FF and had only two cowl MG17s. it was produced in limited numbers and the MG/FF was problematic.The cannon wasn't mounted to the engine but to the forward bulkhead and the weight of the engine plus the cannon combined with it's recoil caused the bulkhead to crack and fail, as part of the F series redesign was a stronger reinforced cockpit tub to take the forces placed on it, the E-3 with the motorkannone never went into production.