USAAF philopshy of the heavies being able to defend themselfs

[Rosco P. Coltraine]

To be fair;

The doctrine (probably mostly the responsibility of Billy Mitchell) dated from the mid-to-early 1930's when fighters were much slower and easier for gunners to target and damage.

What can be faulted is the USAAC/USAAF's adherence to the doctrine long after it was clearly obsolete.

 

[wuzak]

If dumping the guns, turrets and ammo gives you enough better performance it may be worth it. Usually to get both enough higher and faster required a smaller airframe and a smaller bomb load too. Existing designs could not be made to fly high enough or fast enough simply by leaving stuff out.

The high/fast idea was tried for a number of years in the late 40s and 50s but it didn't sink in for a while that an unmanned missile would always be able to fly a bit higher and faster than a manned bomber.

Tis could be done with smaller aircraft such as the Mosquito but if you want a large payload you need a large aircraft and it becomes impractical. Unarmed recce aircraft worked on the same principle

Well, ok, if you dump the guns and ammo you may not fly muchhigher or faster - but the savings on a B-29 must be measured in tons? Which could be used to allow greater bomb loads, or just make taking off easier and less knife edge.

 

[wuzak]

To be fair;

The doctrine (probably mostly the responsibility of Billy Mitchell) dated from the mid-to-early 1930's when fighters were much slower and easier for gunners to target and damage.

What can be faulted is the USAAC/USAAF's adherence to the doctrine long after it was clearly obsolete.

What I have read suggests that Mitchell's bomber ideas revolved around gaining air superiority - which required fighters to destory the opposition.

 

[kettbo]

Unescorted bombers seemed viable in the Pacific, not so good an idea over Germany....daylight bombing over Germany a close-run battle until the long range escorts were available.

Wondering if this was worth all the trouble in the ETO
Largely bad weather, clouds and Toggling on the lead bomber (makes ya wonder if the Bombadier was needed), low percentage of hits
large crew requirements
cost of the show with aircraft, FUEL, related resources...add all the shipping requirements for fuel, bombs, parts, crewmen, food
could this have been better applied elsewhere to win the war?

 

[wmaxt]

The escort issue was defined very much by the availability of fighters being able to fly far enough to accompany the bombers. Speed of fighter was another issue that reinforced the range problem in that the fighter couldn't keep up with some of the advanced bombers,

The speed issue was also looked at from the point of the attacker. Bombers were getting fast enough that fighters got one quick pass then were not able to get into attack position before their fuel ran low.

It wasn't until the P-38 that an aircraft had both the speed and range to escort bombers to long distance targets - and that was an accident brought about by the need to carry enough fuel to overtake bombers after the first pass (Original specification - to fly 1 hour at full throttle) and the need to get the P-38s to Europe by flying them instead of by ship (Operation Bolero). Before operation Bolero external fuel tanks were forbidden on AAF fighters.

Once the key to long range fighters was known and perfected other fighters, P-47s and P-51s were designed or modified to do the job.

In the Pacific the escort issue was the availability of aircraft for 1943 the were an average of ~250 P-38s available in the whole theater!That increased in 1944 to about ~550 which was hardly enough to do all that was being asked of them. After the P-51 arrived in numbers in Europe freeing the P-38s to go to the Pacific it helped very much. Finaly P-51s and P-47s could be allocated to the PTO. Also b 1945 the Japanese were getting fewer and fewer making escort less important except for strong points and the Island of Japan

 

[model299]

<snip>(makes ya wonder if the Bombadier was needed) <snip>

Toward the end of the European daylight bomber campaign, it was comman practice to have only two to three bombardiers in each group. A lead, with a replacement or two in case lead was lost. All of the other planes released their bombs on lead's signal. This cut down on manpower requirments a bit and also the need for every plane to have a bombsight to fall into enemy hands. (Although I'm quite certain that by this time, the Germans had plenty of captured examples of the Norden on hand.) They would also place the "lead" at various places in the formation. Defensive fighters couldn't just assume the lead bombardier was in the first aircraft.

 

[Milosh]

The German Lofte 7 bomb sight that was based on the Norden bomb sight. The plans were obtained by the Germans pre war.

Lotfernrohr 7 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[pbfoot]

Toward the end of the European daylight bomber campaign, it was comman practice to have only two to three bombardiers in each group. A lead, with a replacement or two in case lead was lost. All of the other planes released their bombs on lead's signal. This cut down on manpower requirments a bit and also the need for every plane to have a bombsight to fall into enemy hands. (Although I'm quite certain that by this time, the Germans had plenty of captured examples of the Norden on hand.) They would also place the "lead" at various places in the formation. Defensive fighters couldn't just assume the lead bombardier was in the first aircraft.

There goes the thought of precision bombing , it was area bombing with a fancy name like pre enjoyed automobile instead of used car

 

[fastmongrel]

The RAF precison bombed area targets. The USAAF area bombed precision targets.

 

[drgondog]

Toward the end of the European daylight bomber campaign, it was comman practice to have only two to three bombardiers in each group. A lead, with a replacement or two in case lead was lost. All of the other planes released their bombs on lead's signal. This cut down on manpower requirments a bit and also the need for every plane to have a bombsight to fall into enemy hands. (Although I'm quite certain that by this time, the Germans had plenty of captured examples of the Norden on hand.) They would also place the "lead" at various places in the formation. Defensive fighters couldn't just assume the lead bombardier was in the first aircraft.

Every squadron had lead crews after LeMay formalized the concept. Usually four squadrons per Bomb Group - each squadron bombing on Their lead ship. They couldn't 'scatter' the lead crews because noboby can look behind them very well to 'bomb' on the Trailing crew or placed somewhere else in the squadron formation... or have to guess where they might be when squadron closed up after losses.

If a squadron lost all designated 'lead' bombardiers they toggled on the formation ahead of them

 

[drgondog]

There goes the thought of precision bombing , it was area bombing with a fancy name like pre enjoyed automobile instead of used car

Not really. Some guys are better than others for specific tasks. The lead crew concept was adopted because some navigators didn't get lost and some bombardiers got very good results. When you consider that factory and assembly and refining complex's were about the size of several squadrons in close formation, then bombing on your best crew made sense - if the objective was as precise as a Catalytic cracker within a refinery as your prime AP, then the lead crew was tasked to use that as their aiming point.

Pretty impossible at night with hundreds of a/c weaving into a target essentially on their own but doable in tight formation with good visibility and a navigator bomardier who could get you to the target, find the aiming point and control That B-17/B-24 all the way to that target.

 

[pbfoot]

Not really. Some guys are better than others for specific tasks. The lead crew concept was adopted because some navigators didn't get lost and some bombardiers got very good results. When you consider that factory and assembly and refining complex's were about the size of several squadrons in close formation, then bombing on your best crew made sense - if the objective was as precise as a Catalytic cracker within a refinery as your prime AP, then the lead crew was tasked to use that as their aiming point.

Pretty impossible at night with hundreds of a/c weaving into a target essentially on their own but doable in tight formation with good visibility and a navigator bomardier who could get you to the target, find the aiming point and control That B-17/B-24 all the way to that target.

call it whatever you want but its like IMHO of putting lipstick on a pig it area bombing in everything but name

 

[Siegfried]

Tis could be done with smaller aircraft such as the Mosquito but if you want a large payload you need a large aircraft and it becomes impractical. Unarmed recce aircraft worked on the same principle

Large aircraft can be made fast: those purchasing aircraft simply failed to specify such aircraft: the Mosquito was a private venture and more or less or fluke.

 

[buffnut453]

Why was the Mossie a fluke? Because it entered service at all or because it performed as well as it did? Just wondering....

 

[tomo pauk]

What is a 'fluke'?

 

[Edgar Brooks]

Large aircraft can be made fast: .

Not if you weigh them down with defensive armament and crew.

the Mosquito was a private venture and more or less or fluke

That old myth, again; the Mosquito was not a private venture, though de Havilland had to fight tooth-and-nail to get it accepted. Sir Wilfrid Freeman, Air Council Member for Research Development, backed it, and the Air Ministry issued Specification B.1/40 specifically for it.
And a fluke? Now come on, the Mosquito was de Havilland's 98th design, most of the preceding being made predominately of wood, they'd won the England-Australia race with a wooden monocoque-fuselaged twin-engined aircraft, and had built probably the most elegant pre-war 4-engined airliner, also monocoque-fuselaged, and built from wood.

 

[wuzak]

Not really. Some guys are better than others for specific tasks. The lead crew concept was adopted because some navigators didn't get lost and some bombardiers got very good results. When you consider that factory and assembly and refining complex's were about the size of several squadrons in close formation, then bombing on your best crew made sense - if the objective was as precise as a Catalytic cracker within a refinery as your prime AP, then the lead crew was tasked to use that as their aiming point.

Pretty impossible at night with hundreds of a/c weaving into a target essentially on their own but doable in tight formation with good visibility and a navigator bomardier who could get you to the target, find the aiming point and control That B-17/B-24 all the way to that target.

Wasn't the concept of bombing on the lead less about getting the best to do the jon and more about minimising the time the bombers spent over target? After all, with the Norden a long straight flight path to target was required, and if each crew bombed individually they were extremely vulnerable to flak or fighter attack, not to mention the extra time required to do it this way (only the early raids with relatively small formations bombed individually - can't imagine how long it woul dhave taken if they still did it with the 1000 bomber raids of 1944 onwards). The advantage of bombing in formation was that the defensive formations remained in their mutual defensive fire positions.

Some factories may have been sprawling complexes larger than the size of an 8th AF "close" bomber formation. Others were not. Some that were spread out had large amounts of space between sectiosn - like oil refineries.

 

[Glider]

What is a 'fluke'?

A lucky break, something totally unexpected, against all the odds

 

[drgondog]

Wasn't the concept of bombing on the lead less about getting the best to do the jon and more about minimising the time the bombers spent over target? After all, with the Norden a long straight flight path to target was required, and if each crew bombed individually they were extremely vulnerable to flak or fighter attack, not to mention the extra time required to do it this way (only the early raids with relatively small formations bombed individually - can't imagine how long it woul dhave taken if they still did it with the 1000 bomber raids of 1944 onwards). The advantage of bombing in formation was that the defensive formations remained in their mutual defensive fire positions.

Wuzak - flying formation on lead, and bombing on lead certainly had an advantige of maintaining squadron formation integrity - but the whole objective was to destroy the targets. Period. When the Lead Crew methods were introduced, the Automatic Flight Control Equipment was also introduced and the Bomabdier essentially flew the airplane - taking the ability of the pilot to make evasive manuevers (inckluding deviating from the bomb run out of the pilot's hands.

Some factories may have been sprawling complexes larger than the size of an 8th AF "close" bomber formation. Others were not. Some that were spread out had large amounts of space between sectiosn - like oil refineries.

All True. Havind agreed that, there were two approaches. One was to designate a single Aiming Point in the center of that 'sprawling complex', the other was to separate and allocates discreet targets within the complex for one specific Bomb Group.

The latter references were used statistically to judge individual bomb Group bombing accuracy via post bombing recon/BDA. There is a feeling I get from many of the comments, particularly Neil's that 8th AF bombing was of the first type. Not so - If you look at a particular day's mission you will note the multitude of individual sites attacked on any one particular day - too many people have a notion that the 8th went after one general area rather than 20 different plants or marshalling yards or chemical/petro complex's.

In fact, there might be four general areas - each usuall (but not always) far apart - and each (say Leipzig area with Bernberg, Halle, Halberstadt, Lutzkendorf and Aschersleben - west, northwest and south west of Leipiz, for the 2nd BD on July 7, 1944) hit by One bomb wing comprised of two to four Bomb Groups. On that day, at a different time and a separate course, the other Bomb Divisions would be striking different target regions and targets within those regions.

The 1st, 2nd and 3rd Task Force was assembled over England and stayed together to a point west of Brunswick, where the 1st TF/2nd BD headed southeast, the 1st and 3rd continued toward Berlin then headed south-southeast before they reached Berlin and then headed for Magdeburg, Leipzig, Merseburg, etc, etc - timed to be in the area where the 2nd BD was also headed but 30 and 50 minutes later.

In each of those target areas were multiple single and separate targets which had singular aiming point within that specific plant/complex for one bomb group (out of 33 for that day)

Net - the lead crew tactics evolved because it started as 'every bomb crew bomb on the briefed target, pilots could take evasive action during the bomb run, formations scattered, targets were not found, etc - leading to dismal 'area bombing' equivancy - even when visibity was excellent. Pretty much describes Aug-Dec 1942.

 

[pbfoot]

I understand the principle but can't see how it works . Thats a noble thought to try and hope your lead Nav , or Bombadier find and hit the target but I just don't buy it , at least every bomber in BC attempted to hit target