What do you guys think of the Big Wing formation?

BiffF15 said:

Swampyankee,
There is a difference between someone trained in multi-tasking and someone who isn't. It's all about risk management, or doing what task when in what type of environment. You don't scan your instruments (except fuel gauge) in a fight unless something yellow or red illuminates on the panel or Betty starts whining. You also don't text on your smart phone when walking in or near roads / intersections. However, we talk, run the radar, dispense countermeasures, shoot missiles and or gun, all while fighting / flying in a 3D battle space. Not super humans, just well trained ones. Situational Awareness (SA) breathes in and out in a fight, while driving, or while waking and texting. The key is to realize it and adopt the safest business / life practices you can. That is one thing that is not taught in drivers ed, or in my opine by the parents of these drivers as SA draining smart phones are a new threat.
Cheers,
Biff

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The modern cockpit has a few advantages over the old ones. German 109s had a red warning light for low fuel, most other Fighters did not.
The only "Betty" might have been a warning horn for low speed with landing gear still up. Unless flying nearly straight and level it might not have given adequate warning of being near stall?
I am not sure how much of advantage the HUD is, perhaps less than claimed but I believe they are set up so that the pilots eyes don't have to change focus?

On the flip side not all people can even become pilots, some cannot cope with trying to everything flying a Cessna entails. And of the pilots that make it through military pilot training, many did not become fighter pilots, Bomber and transport pilots were not fully interchangeable with fighter pilots.
The modern jets are much faster and things happen quicker but the more open formations might mean the pilot has a fraction of second longer to re-act or needs to pay a smaller fraction of time keeping formation compared to the old much closer formations.
Just some ideas from a non-pilot.

Shortround6 said:

The modern jets are much faster and things happen quicker but the more open formations might mean the pilot has a fraction of second longer to re-act or needs to pay a smaller fraction of time keeping formation compared to the old much closer formations.
Just some ideas from a non-pilot.

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A looser formation does mean more reaction time, and is generally less stressful and tiring. This is why en-route formation work is typically a spacing of 1 nm or so, while close formation work is usually in the order of a few metres.

Not to mention the neck strain of having to look at one spot for an extended length of time, and not being able to move your head around...

swampyankee said:

There have been neuroscientists doing studies on the topic. Their conclusion (I can hunt up the journal articles if you want; I'm just working from news articles from Science and Nature) is that people cannot perform two actions requiring conscious behavior at once; they task switch. There are a couple of other issues that start showing up in the thirties, such as how fast eyes can refocus from close (reading instruments) to distant focus, and I've seen some reports that the speed at which people can task switch drops with age and stress.


If people could parallel process -- perform two acts requiring conscious thought simultaneously -- they could talk on a cell phone and drive with no loss of performance; they can't.

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Swampyankee,

You are correct in that people can only do one thing at a time. You are also correct that people slow down as they age. From what I have seen in fighters is that in the 45+ range it starts to be noticeable, more for some and less for others. I will also point out the difference between Usain Bolt slowing down and a guy who doesn't work out, who works in a cubicle all day, watches tv at night and gets little exercise will be quite different. Both decline but start at totally different levels.

In fighters there is also the variable of experience. The more you have, the better off you are. There is a large difference between a 300 hour guy who hasn't flown a 4 v 4 at night in two months and a very experienced guy who hasn't flown one in 4 months. Put your money on the experienced guy even if he is much older.

Were any of the papers you read on people who do a very task saturating job and over many years? The USAF has spent some serious time and effort on collecting data on fighter guys and on occasion shares some. It, the USAF, has no problem with older guys flying fighters. If you look at the safety records, once beyond 500 hours the odds of having an accident drop tremendously, and it doesn't go back up based on age.

I have been very lucky to have flown with some of the most talented people one could imagine. Highly motivated, intelligent (up to 180+ IQs), methodical, competitive beyond belief, funny practical jokers who would give you the shirt off their back or hand you 5k if you asked (to be paid back of course). Those characteristics make for a good fighter pilot or are the traits of those whom I respected the most. They were also awesome instructors, who would kick your arse and then spend as much time as you wanted teaching you what they did and why (the group is only as strong as the weakest link). Now roll all that up into a person who is approaching a task with all the focus and methods of a scientist, and doing it or some version of it over and over squeezing out learning and skill to the literal Nth degree. Please don't think that people without training are going to be similar to someone trained in a task to the level of an Olympic athlete.

Cheers,
Biff

I think the use of mobile phones is a poor example of multi tasking. Many of the people who use them while walking have adjusted priorities.
1. The use of a mobile phone is a right that can never be denied.
2. Anything on the screen takes priority over all other information.

I drive between a University and technical college every day and could have run over half a dozen in the last year. This in itself is a need for training.

A.C. Deere, by now an Air Commodore, wrote a piece about the Big Wing titled "Tactics in Dispute" which was published in 1970 in the 'RAF Souvenir Book'. It gives a view of the tactical debate from someone who was there. It is more polite about Bader and Leigh Mallory than some later historians (who presumably did not have the same relationship with either man that Deere would have had) but still comes down firmly on the side of Park and Dowding.
If you can find a copy, and it's only five or six pages, it is well worth a read.
Cheers
Steve

How could the tactical implications of the huge jump in individual firepower and performance from the two-gun biplanes of the pre-Hurricane era to the eight-gun fighters of BoB escape the notice of the likes of Leigh-Mallory? Sounds to me like your basic inflexible ultraconservative stuck in outdated doctrine. Why did they put up with him? What made anybody think he deserved "polite" treatment?
Cheers,
Wes

XBe02Drvr said:

How could the tactical implications of the huge jump in individual firepower and performance from the two-gun
biplanes of the pre-Hurricane era to the eight-gun fighters of BoB escape the notice of the likes of Leigh-Mallory? Sounds to me like your basic inflexible ultraconservative stuck in outdated doctrine. Why did they put up with him? What made anybody think he deserved "polite" treatment?
Cheers,
Wes

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1 The increase in armament from four to eight guns only compensated for the increase in armour and speed of new bombers. The last RAF Bi Planes had four guns. Later improvements in munitions both armour piercing and incendiary improved the effectiveness.

2 What was not really appreciated at the time was that the number of claims in a fight is proportional to the number of eyes as much as the number of downed planes. Some suspected the claims of the Big Wing were spurious but they were great for wartime propaganda. The situation continued in France where the RAF were being beaten but because of the claims made were unaware they were being beaten. Leigh Mallory sounded "war like" while Dowding sounded like a shrinking violet when strategy was discussed. The fact that LM may well have lost the Battle of Britain in a few days and the claims of the Big Wing were fantasy came out later.

air tactics and effects of increased firepower were total unknowns or in a rather confused muddle in mid to late 1930s.

Aircraft armor, in general, did not appear until 1939/early 1940. Many German aircraft in Poland not having any.

For the British the increase in firepower came in several steps. The F.7/30 requirement of 1930 called for 4 guns, it also called for the steam cooled Goshawk engine which doomed the whole generation of fighters.
Please note that at the time of the requirement the standard RAF gun was the .303 Vickers and that all four guns fired through the prop (synchronized) so the rate of fire was not all that high, but double the rate of fire of a WW II aircraft with two guns.

By the time the Goshawk is reveled to be a turkey (dud of exceptional proportions) the requirement for a monoplane fighter is in the works but operational aircraft are estimated to be 3 years away. Gloster, as a private venture, comes up with the Gladiator to fill the gap. That is to fill the F.7/30 requirement but using a radial engine to do so. It can be put into production and service much quicker than the monoplanes and fill the gap.
By this time the adoption of the Browning machine gun is in the works. It fires faster than the Vickers. Gloster schemes two in the fuselage and one under each wing. Very early Gladiators sometimes having a pair of Vickers guns in the fuselage and a pair of Lewis guns under the wings. A Gladiator with four Brownings as at least 3 times the fire power of a pair of Vickers guns due to the increased rates of fire.
The eight gun monoplanes have over 6 times the firepower per second and perhaps over 7 times the older biplanes with two Vickers guns.

I have no idea why this increase in firepower didn't play a part in different tactics or doctrine aside from turret fighters and such.

Shortround6 said:

I have no idea why this increase in firepower didn't play a part in different tactics or doctrine aside from turret fighters and such.

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This is where the inflexibility in ADGB/Fighter Command was demonstrated. The old air fighting tactics were retained long after there was a necessity for them. Eventually change was enforced from the bottom (meaning senior men who were actually flying and fighting) up.
It still seems incredible that inexperienced squadrons were rotated into 11 Group, still using the old tactics and formations, even after more experienced units had dispensed with them, but it happened and got a lot of young men killed.
The tactics dated back to at least 1933 when two methods for destroying bomber formations were supposed effective.
1. Sporadic close-in attack
2. Sustained lie-off attack
The first would be carried out typically by single seat interceptors and led to the fighting tactics I posted earlier. These tactics were described in 1933 as 'fire shock action' whatever that was supposed to mean.
The second led to the idea of turret fighters similar multi seat 'no allowance' style fighters and even a single seat fighter with 'extra heavy fore armament'. This was a dead end, but who could have known it in 1933? In a completely different form it is pretty much standard today.

I would just point out that the notion that fighters would need much heavier armament, numbers of machine guns or even cannon, had been around for some time. The 1 1/2 pounder (37mm) COW gun (Coventry Ordnance Works) was specified in the late 1920s for several aircraft projects, Westlands had installed one in an aircraft in 1927.
The entry of Wing Commander Thomson of the Armaments Branch was shortlisted in the Novel Fighter Competition of 1932 and had eight machine guns, though a twin engine pusher biplane. Thomson's argument was that one fighter with many guns was as effective as several with fewer was perceptive.
It was an argument accepted in essence by senior officers most responsible for the procurement of fighters in the late twenties and early thirties (Trenchard, Newall, Higgins) and it is why by the late thirties the eight gun fighter had become standard. Others deserve some credit, but not always as much as they later claimed (Sorley and even Dowding for example).

Cheers

Steve