P-38 or Mosquito?
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Anonymous
Guest
Casualities yes. But for fatalities, in WWII over 50% of those hit by a machine gun were killed, for artillery it was something under 20%, and Nerbelwerfers (thanks Plan_D) were even less likely to kill someone. So when it came to what was more frightening when faced, they should have been more afraid of the machineguns than the Nerbelwerfers. However, in general, the lounder it was the more fearful it was.
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Lunatic
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Lunatic
Lightning Guy
Master Sergeant
- 2,511
- Apr 29, 2004
Doubling the fighters would produce more kills but this is still an inaccurate comparison. Fighters could attack over a period of hours, while the flak guns could only fire for a period of minutes. A better comparison would be something like, bombers lost per minute.
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Anonymous
Guest
Lightning Guy said:
That's silly. There are two reasonable evaluations. The first is which item kills more bombers per bomber sortie. It does not matter that the Flak only can fire for a couple of minutes, but the fighters can attack over a longer period of time. You seek to contrive a measurement that is meaningless, short contact time is a inherant weakness of Flak vs. Fighters which you want to exclude. That'd be like excludeing enemy escort fighters from the effectiveness equation for the intercepting fighters... which would also be silly.
The other reasonable method is to consider the cost of each system. I'm not sure how much a Flak gun, crew, ammo, radar, etc.. costs w.r.t. the cost of maintaining an interceptor, but I would guess the Flak gun would be a little bit less expensive (perhaps 66%?).
In any case, my point is if you doubled the number of intercepting fighters, the results would have been far more substantial than doubling the number of flak guns. Amoung other advantages of fighters is they can cover multiple targets, flak guns cannnot.
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Lunatic
GermansRGeniuses
Tech Sergeant
RG_Lunatic said:
You've gotta keep in mind...
Machine-guns are close-up, in your face.
Arty is like Mortars, surprise the crap out of the enemy from afar and do as much damage with what I call, "controllable blind aiming," or just, "controlled blindness."
evangilder
"Shooter"
I have to differ about that GRG. If there is not a spotter, then I will agree with you. But if you have a spotter/FAC, your chances of scoring a hit are VERY good. We had a guy that I travelled with that was an arty spotter/FAC, and I can tell you, that guy could spot like nobody's business. But he said he was average at it. He may have been average, but I watched several vehicles vaporize before my eyes because of his spotting. Machine guns are obviously closer, but a well placed ambush will also achieve surprise also.
When artillery has your positioned zeroed in, then you're screwed as well. The only reason artillery isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread is because the enemy has it too! Counter-battery fire can wreck a whole artillery battery that hasn't been dug in effectively.
evangilder
"Shooter"
True. The best bet is to get the first shot.
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Anonymous
Guest
evangilder said:
In WWII? Yes spotters could be effective, but it was rare to have one. Comm's equipment in WWII was nothing like today, or even like what they had in Vietnam (the North). Artillery and mortar fire is also far more accurate post-WWII than during WWII.
During WWII, most casualties came during assaults and invasions. Most deaths came from machinegun fire, though artillery and mortars may have wounded more soldiers.
This topic was covered in some detail on "the color of war" (THC), which I think I watched last sat. night.
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evangilder
"Shooter"
I wasn't speaking of WWII, but in general today. If you have a spotter, it can be deadly accurate. There were arty spotters in WWII, but I don't have a number of how many.
wmaxt
Staff Sergeant
In the ETO the escort fighters brought the average loss rate from missions into germany from 9/10% per mission to 4/5% per mission Wheather it was Two F/Gs of P-38s or 17 P-51/7 P-47 F/Gs (Planes and pilots of WWII" website) apx 4% of the bomber losses were ground fire and cannot be reduced directly by fighter escort. This is one reason why the escort was changed from "Close Escort" to the later tactics of "Roaming Escort" followed by "Attack at will return flights". The large number of F/Gs available allowed escort change offs and optimum ammo/fuel for the return attack roll.
There are Two documented cases of a single P-38 covering a group of B-25s succesfuly from fighter attack (probably more to the suspicion of more P-38 who just wern't there on these mossions).
There are Two documented cases of a single P-38 covering a group of B-25s succesfuly from fighter attack (probably more to the suspicion of more P-38 who just wern't there on these mossions).
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Anonymous
Guest
evangilder said:
Spotters today have GPS and laser range finders. By giving your GPS position, and an angle and distance via the laser spotting tool, you can give a very precise fire solution to artillery.
In WWII, at the best spotting consisted of a man with binoculars using a radio or wired line. He'd call in artillery to his best guess of the target on a map grid location, they'd fire spotting rounds, and he'd then adjust fire by saying "left 50, up 100", they'd fire again and he'd say "down 30, fire for effect" and then they'd blanket that area with shells.
Also, todays artillery is much more effective than in WWII. Until very late in WWII, all artillery and mortar fire was ground burst. Starting with the Battle of the Bulge, US artillery started using proximity fuses for airbusts, allowing the rounds to burst about 15-30 feet above the ground, making for a much larger area of effect. For the most part, when we talk about WWII artillery and mortar fire, we mean ground burst.
Things have changed considerably since WWII in terms of how large ordinance is delivered. It is many many times more effective today than it was then.
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evangilder
"Shooter"
The spotters I worked with (cold war, not recent) were not using laser range finders, occasionally GPS, depending on where we were. The artillery may be better, but the spotter that can work his magic can make a BIG difference. Saved our butts multiple times.
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Anonymous
Guest
evangilder said:
Any time past 1960 is hugely different than WWII. For one thing, satalites and other technologies give extremely accurate maps. In WWII, maps were often quite poor.
My point is simply that you really cannot compare WWII era atillery with that of the cold-war era, or especially with modern stuff. Fire control is far superior today.
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Lunatic
wmaxt
Staff Sergeant
RG_Lunatic said:
Overall there is no question.
I saw a History Channel documentary recently pitting the Civil war field pieces ie. Cannon, Amo, Tactics to modern equivalents. The results in some cases favored the older wepons in areas like efectivness and accuracy and quantity of effective fire. Remember were talking line of sight field pieces and no mortars but suprising even so.
evangilder
"Shooter"
Once again, I wasn't speaking of WWII, but in general today.
trackend
Chief Master Sergeant
hi guys
a few thoughts My old man came under fire from 88,s using airburst in October 1944 when he was taking his LCA ashore in the Walcheran islands campaign.
As for comparisons with modern weapons/fire control I agree that things have moved on somewhat but even in WWII computer controlled gunner was common place on navel vessel.
Regarding weapons the French QF 75mm of the 1914-18 war could exceed 20 rounds a minute with a good crew which is some going for a field piece (mind you I bet they got knackered doing it). I believe the modern Gattling/Phlanx ect gun was the result of tests carried out using a museum piece fitted with an electric motor in place of the crank handle.
As for deaths caused by machine guns/rifles ect I didnt know they carried out millions of autopsies to determine what the cause of death was.
a few thoughts My old man came under fire from 88,s using airburst in October 1944 when he was taking his LCA ashore in the Walcheran islands campaign.
As for comparisons with modern weapons/fire control I agree that things have moved on somewhat but even in WWII computer controlled gunner was common place on navel vessel.
Regarding weapons the French QF 75mm of the 1914-18 war could exceed 20 rounds a minute with a good crew which is some going for a field piece (mind you I bet they got knackered doing it). I believe the modern Gattling/Phlanx ect gun was the result of tests carried out using a museum piece fitted with an electric motor in place of the crank handle.
As for deaths caused by machine guns/rifles ect I didnt know they carried out millions of autopsies to determine what the cause of death was.
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Anonymous
Guest
trackend said:
How did they achieve an airburst with the 88? There are only two fusing options; timed which is nearly useless against ground targets, and contact.
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Lunatic
