Protecting the Long-Range Bombers

[MIflyer]

I remember a similar story but it involved A-26s

I read of an incident in the Korean war where an Douglas B-26C was on daylight mission over North Korea. That airplane had the glass nose but still had the six wing guns. They spotted about 30 Yak-9's in a big formation out over the water and to the dismay of the bombardier the pilot decided he would bag some of them. They crept up behind the Yak formation, closer, closer and then the Yaks spotted the B-26 and scattered.

I do not believe I have ever heard of another case where a bomber pilot decided to go tackle 30 fighters. If they saw one enemy aircraft USN PB4Y-2's would go after it, since it usually was a bomber, seaplane, or a recon aircraft, but I doubt they would have tried to attack a pack of fighters.

That same B-26 crew was coming back from a night raid when they got a radio call for any aircraft that had any ordnance to intercept a PO-2 that had just bombed Kimpo Airfield. They found the PO-2, which dove into a riverbed, and followed it as the bombardier in the nose provided aiming instructions for the pilot, which could not see the target. They resorted to firing the guns while walking the nose around in an "X" pattern in hopes of hitting the PO-2, which apparently escaped.

 

[GrauGeist]

Anyone have info on what sights the twin-engine strafers utilized? I found a reference that the B-26B-45-MA received ring and bead sights for the package guns, but nothing for the A-20, B-25, and a passing reference to a reflector sight for the A-26… it seems like you'd want an upgraded sight if you started earning the Sacajaweas flying low and strafing … Although, I was told by an OG Huey pilot who plied his trade in Nam that his first rocket and gun sights were grease pencil marks on the glass which sorta worked as long as he held his head the same way as when they bore-sighted the barrels and tubes….

The pilot typically had a "ring and bead" gunsight fixed on the dashboard. Some had a basic reflector gunsight that was similar to the B-24's nose turret sight?

There may be some pics in the "B-25 weapons" thread or hit Google and search for the Mid Atlantic Air Museum's B-25J cockpit, which has an authentic cockpit, complete with gunsight.

 

[BlackSheep]

I read of an incident in the Korean war where an Douglas B-26C was on daylight mission over North Korea. That airplane had the glass nose but still had the six wing guns. They spotted about 30 Yak-9's in a big formation out over the water and to the dismay of the bombardier the pilot decided he would bag some of them. They crept up behind the Yak formation, closer, closer and then the Yaks spotted the B-26 and scattered.

I do not believe I have ever heard of another case where a bomber pilot decided to go tackle 30 fighters. If they saw one enemy aircraft USN PB4Y-2's would go after it, since it usually was a bomber, seaplane, or a recon aircraft, but I doubt they would have tried to attack a pack of fighters.

That same B-26 crew was coming back from a night raid when they got a radio call for any aircraft that had any ordnance to intercept a PO-2 that had just bombed Kimpo Airfield. They found the PO-2, which dove into a riverbed, and followed it as the bombardier in the nose provided aiming instructions for the pilot, which could not see the target. They resorted to firing the guns while walking the nose around in an "X" pattern in hopes of hitting the PO-2, which apparently escaped.

From what I've read, the PO-2s were a real pain in Korea flying too slow for American night fighters. I wonder if a war weary Wildcat suitable only for service on an escort carrier would have been able to solve the issue. jk

 

[Snautzer01]

From what I've read, the PO-2s were a real pain in Korea flying too slow for American night fighters. I wonder if a war weary Wildcat suitable only for service on an escort carrier would have been able to solve the issue. jk

One would need this to tackle that.

Snoopy 1 where are you??
Boogies on momma, come in...

 

[GrauGeist]

A Skyraider managed to smoke a Po-2 during the war.

The Po-2 was known as the U-2 during WWII and the Germans had the same problem trying to intercept it, as the Fw190 and Bf109 were too fast for it.

 

[BlackSheep]

A Skyraider managed to smoke a Po-2 during the war.

The Po-2 was known as the U-2 during WWII and the Germans had the same problem trying to intercept it, as the Fw190 and Bf109 were too fast for it.

iirc, didn't a CIA Huey with a door gunner sporting an AK down one?

Edit: my mistake, it was an AN-2.

 

[BlackSheep]

A Skyraider managed to smoke a Po-2 during the war.

The Po-2 was known as the U-2 during WWII and the Germans had the same problem trying to intercept it, as the Fw190 and Bf109 were too fast for it.

Remember, the Night Witches? Female Russian PO-2 pilots who flew at night, sometimes with engines off on approach, listening for targets and throwing off German AA guns.

 

[MIflyer]

An F-94 managed to kill a Po-2 as well - by flying through it. Scratch one Po-2 and one F-94. Another F-94 slowed up enough to shoot down a Po-2, stalled and crashed. Scratch one PO-2 and scratch one F-94. The USAF decided this was a poor kill ratio. The answer was the night fighter F7F and the F4U-5N. The P-61 would have been great for Korea, not just as a night fighter but things in general, but they were all gone by then. I don't know if an F-82 night fighter ever managed to kill a Po-2, but they did manage to score the first kils,of the war, what apparently was an Yak-7 or a Yak -11. A radar equipped TBM like the one that got Butch O'Hare might have worked. An F3F would have been perfect!

 

[BlackSheep]

An F-94 managed to kill a Po-2 as well - by flying through it. Scratch one Po-2 and one F-94. Another F-94 slowed up enough to shoot down a Po-2, stalled and crashed. Scratch one PO-2 and scratch one F-94. The USAF decided this was a poor kill ratio. The answer was the night fighter F7F and the F4U-5N. The P-61 would have been great for Korea, not just as a night fighter but things in general, but they were all gone by then. I don't know if an F-82 night fighter ever managed to kill a Po-2, but they did manage to score the first kils,of the war, what apparently was an Yak-7 or a Yak -11. A radar equipped TBM like the one that got Butch O'Hare might have worked. An F3F would have been perfect!



View attachment 704131View attachment 704132View attachment 704133View attachment 704134View attachment 704135

Didn't a F7F tigercat scratch one?

 

[BlackSheep]

An F-94 managed to kill a Po-2 as well - by flying through it. Scratch one Po-2 and one F-94. Another F-94 slowed up enough to shoot down a Po-2, stalled and crashed. Scratch one PO-2 and scratch one F-94. The USAF decided this was a poor kill ratio. The answer was the night fighter F7F and the F4U-5N. The P-61 would have been great for Korea, not just as a night fighter but things in general, but they were all gone by then. I don't know if an F-82 night fighter ever managed to kill a Po-2, but they did manage to score the first kils,of the war, what apparently was an Yak-7 or a Yak -11. A radar equipped TBM like the one that got Butch O'Hare might have worked. An F3F would have been perfect!



View attachment 704131View attachment 704132View attachment 704133View attachment 704134View attachment 704135

Not gonna lie, that Corsair looks badass in the black and red..The second pic is a perfect representation of how large the Corsair props were

 

[GrauGeist]

Just a quick note regarding the Po-2:

The U-2 was Polikarpov's pre-WWII design used during WWII by the VVS for training, recon and night harassment.

The Po-2 is the postwar version.

 

[MIflyer]

Didn't a F7F tigercat scratch one?

According to the cover of the Squadron book, yes. I met an older gentleman who had flown F7F in Korea. He was tickled to see that. But I wonder how slow an F7F could fly safely. A lot slower than an F-94, for sure.

 

[GrauGeist]

According to the cover of the Squadron book, yes. I met an older gentleman who had flown F7F in Korea. He was tickled to see that. But I wonder how slow an F7F could fly safely. A lot slower than an F-94, for sure.
View attachment 704145

The F7F was designed to land in a carrier, so it had a fairly low stall speed.

 

[SaparotRob]

So, we're discussing the difficulty shooting down Russian aircraft. Not the Su-34, Su-35, MiG-29, MiG-31 or MiG-57. The Po-2. The most difficult Russian plane to down.
Great job, General Shoigu.

 

[MIflyer]

Actually, one of the concerns raised relative to military base security is that ultralights cannot be effectively intercepted by any current US fighter aircraft. You could say the same thing about even commercial off the shelf drones. I suppose armed attack helicopters would be the answer to that threat, able to fly slow enough to inspect and identify slow flying aircraft and armed well enough to be able to shoot them down - but the neither the USN nor the USAF has any. Maybe some of those COIN Air Tractors the USAF is buying would be a solution.

One day I was up flying and ended up having to call ATC after I landed. They had tracked a very low altitude aircraft - as in 100 AGL ft or so - over Cape Canaveral, and since mine was the only airplane up at the time in the local area they thought it was me. When they realized that Ercoupes could not hover, they decided it was someone else. Meanwhile, the Sheriff Dept had followed the path of the intruder and while they never sighted it, found it had dropped off the radar right over a building with a sign on it: SpaceX. Clearly someone at SpaceX had decided they would run a drone through the restricted area up to their launch pad and back, and since it was about 0700 no one would notice, so why ask for permission? I do not know if someone had a little chat with them about that, but I would assume so.

I guess that armed drones are the lowest cost answer to this intruder problem, both for intruding drones and slower aircraft.

 

[BlackSheep]

So, we're discussing the difficulty shooting down Russian aircraft. Not the Su-34, Su-35, MiG-29, MiG-31 or MiG-57. The Po-2. The most difficult Russian plane to down.
Great job, General Shoigu.

There is an element of humor, but, remember if operation Downfall had gone ahead, the Japanese had thousands of trainers, including biplanes like the K5Y, which flew so low and slow as to avoid American radar. They'd already burnt a few picket destroyers, imagine waves of hundreds coming in…..

 

[Capt. Vick]

iirc, didn't a CIA Huey with a door gunner sporting an AK down one?

Edit: my mistake, it was an AN-2.

It was 2 or more AN-2's after they attacked a "hill" top radar site in Laos. IIRC

 

[BlackSheep]

It was 2 or more AN-2's after they attacked a "hill" top radar site in Laos. IIRC

4, one crashed and one was shot down by the guy who didn't pay for his own beer for weeks lol

 

[BlackSheep]

I read of an incident in the Korean war where an Douglas B-26C was on daylight mission over North Korea. That airplane had the glass nose but still had the six wing guns. They spotted about 30 Yak-9's in a big formation out over the water and to the dismay of the bombardier the pilot decided he would bag some of them. They crept up behind the Yak formation, closer, closer and then the Yaks spotted the B-26 and scattered.

I do not believe I have ever heard of another case where a bomber pilot decided to go tackle 30 fighters. If they saw one enemy aircraft USN PB4Y-2's would go after it, since it usually was a bomber, seaplane, or a recon aircraft, but I doubt they would have tried to attack a pack of fighters.

That same B-26 crew was coming back from a night raid when they got a radio call for any aircraft that had any ordnance to intercept a PO-2 that had just bombed Kimpo Airfield. They found the PO-2, which dove into a riverbed, and followed it as the bombardier in the nose provided aiming instructions for the pilot, which could not see the target. They resorted to firing the guns while walking the nose around in an "X" pattern in hopes of hitting the PO-2, which apparently escaped.

Riding in the nose, chasing a PO-2 down low at night sounds scary AF!

 

[Zipper730]

Initially, the "heavy fighter" was intended to be an escort.

Generally that's the case. I'm not sure if the Beaufighter was intended for this, though they might have thought of doing it.

Types like the Bf110 and KI-45 filled this role, but they simply weren't effective in that capacity when challenging single engine fighters.

Actually the Bf110 was probably effective in that capability if they were untethered to the bombers in close escort.

Generally there were several ways to effectively protect bomber formations, but the most popular one was to fly alongside the bombers in one form or another. It generally appealed to the bomber guys the most since they could see their protectors. The problem was that they'd have to either fly very slow to do this (possibly below the optimum cruise speed) where they'd be sitting ducks, or fly at a tactically usable speed. The latter required S-weaving to stay with the bombers, and the curved flight-path reduced the effective escort range.

The fighter guys usually preferred some variation of doing a series of long-range fighter sweeps in the general area of the bomber-formation: Fighters usually cruised faster naturally than bombers and there was also a tactically-usable speed. They could cruise in at a tactically usable speed, and with the formation being in waves, they could overtake the bomber formation and engage fighters up ahead. The fact that the fighters could be launched in waves could potentially ensure a certain amount of fighters would be near enough to the bomber formation to provide protection as needed.

The Bf.110 was capable of being used in this way, and they had superchargers that tended to be better suited to higher altitudes than the Bf.109. Their speeds seemed overall good and similar enough to RAF day fighters to be effective (particularly when combined with their formidable firepower).

There is an alternative which has not been put forward:

Hit every target you can that is within escort range. Hit everything you can that is important that is covered by friendly fighters. Then work to gradually extend escort range to make more targets susceptible to attack.

Definitely a common sense move, but the strategic bombing guys were operating under the premise that bombers would allow them to hit the enemy from the inside out.

This of course does imply that you could get past their defenses to inflict said damage with sustainable losses and, the problem was that they couldn't do this. Even though it seemed the bulk of the time, losses weren't total, and often below 50%, it was concluded that loss rates had to be below 5% for protracted operations and below 10% for short-term operations.

You build a long range escort fighter. I build a short range interceptor using the same level of technology./

• My interceptor is smaller and lighter.
• I have substantially better acceleration, climb and manoeuvrability, and I am somewhat faster.
• My interceptor is better armed.
• Your escort is faster in a dive.

My interceptors shoot down your escorts, then they rip into your bombers.

You lose.

In addition to the issues you mentioned, the US and UK seemed to spend more effort developing cooling systems that could operate at higher pressures and temperatures than the Germans. This meant that we could keep cooling drag fairly low in comparison, so we could often generate greater speed for an airplane of the same weight (or heavier).