WW2 Aviation Mythbusters

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I have a Garand. The distinctive sound is from the clip being ejected, not from the clip falling on the ground.
 
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gjs238 said:
I have a Grand. The distinctive sound is from the clip being ejected, not from the clip falling on the ground.
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Got an M1 Garand also. True. The sound is from the enbloc being ejected. And I doubt that anyone could hear the "ping" of the clip in the heat of battle anyway.

TO
 
I'm with TO on that point...during a gunfight, you're not going to hear much with all that noise going on and on top of that, your ears will be ringing like mad (and everyone else's, for that matter) so any high-pitched "plink" sound will be seriously muffled
 
I've not a gun collection or anything but I've been in a few knife fights and things like that in my youth, and you'd be surprised what you hear and notice, even your vision does strange things. Your brain is'n't functioning in any way to which civilised people are normally accustomed, which is good and bad. For things like hearing a pin drop in the middle of a thunderstorm, surprisingly good. Things like knowing who the real enemy is, not so good.
 
The Pearl Harbor attack myth.... goes like this......Roosevelt knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl but the government needed a "Lusitania" incident to get us into the war. The isolationists had a strong following and an 'event' was needed to wake up America. My father who served in the US Army and secured the PI related this to me that this 'conspiracy theory' was talked about during the war. It was during a time in my youth when he introduced me to his friend that was a survivor of the "Bataan Death March" but at the time I didn't understand why he was mum on his experiences but very vocal about his captors! He too related this suspicion about Pearl Harbor.

What about the story of Coventry and the Enigma device?
 
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Keep in mind here some things I'm paraphrasing, recalling from memory or speculating, I may have some errors in details, ie. I'm not trying to start a political debate and anything political can immediately become a debate, it is inherently argumentative and very much depends on perspective.

I find it hard to wrap my head around geopolitical conspiracy theories, I think they're the myth. It's a logical fallacy that they be anything more than opportunism explained retrospectively, but that human sociology has patterns among complex evolutionary diversity principle.

After Pearl everything was simple. We grew up in that so we don't know without researching, if it was ever different. It was, Japan wasn't the all round bad guy, just the one the old Colonials didn't like because it lobbied from 1931 the european withdrawl of treaty ports from the chinese mainland. When it attacked china, it attacked these european treaty ports. Look them up, other than the Yellow River Valley action against the Chinese Communists, and a border skirmish with the Kuomintang, every chinese city attacked or bombed or "warcrimed" was a european or US treaty port: sovereign territory like an embassy, and essentially a western-legal way to rape asian natural resources at low cost for profitable long distance cargo, the entire economy of India and the subcontinent was utterly destroyed within thirty years this way, it almost never recovered but was a leading power in the region prior to then, an example of the western impact in Asia by the mid-thirties.

Basically the west was convening in their own western courtrooms deciding what was legal and illegal to do to asia, and then called themselves righteous basically doing whatever they wanted: making money mostly. Who doesn't want to be rich, right? British Marines Colonels became lords renting out their services to the treaty holders, they were actually used as mercinaries by private companies which was what started the whole Boxer revolution and sparked off the Kuomintang. Even they hated us, they stole an estimated 85% of all US wartime funding for the personal wealth of corrupt officials, hundreds of millions, tens of billions in current US dollars (ref. Boyne). The entire US war effort in China amounted to making a bunch of criminals that were once part of those corrupt treaty ports and made them possible in the first place, then you made them billionaires.

The Japanese were retro to the point of barbaric in some senses under military leadership at this time, however they weren't just crazy. They were genuinely and rationally angry with Europe, the US and all foreign colonial interests in the Asia Pacific. They wanted you out. Most of Asia did. So, war.
I'm not saying they're right or wrong, it's not a moral issue in that sense, I'm just saying they weren't exactly the bad guys until the propaganda departments got involved. They were just, kinda thugs and we were all sick of thugs governing nations. But politically speaking, at the time it wasn't a matter of black hats and white hats, it really depended on which country you were standing to define who were the bad guys and who were the good guys. The Thai considered the Japanese the good guys. The Philippine Prime Minister formally asked US military forces to leave the island six months before the war. You refused.

In mid 41 McArthur threatened the Japanese in international media completely out of turn. It's in his record, he was written up for it. He said, If the Japanese attack the Philippines I will bomb Tokyo the next day with my Fortresses. If they try to invade...I'll stop them dead in their tracks on the beaches." (paraphrasing, one of you probably has the article on disk, I'm stretching my memory on much more than general themes)
It got printed and unfortunately the Japanese believed him and claimed he spoke for Washington. The US ambassador naturally assured them he didn't but the damage was done and US DoD knew the Japanese had assessed the capabilities of the B-17 and that it could indeed reach Japanese islands at light loads.

It was imho a single incident which most greatly influenced the war, Mc Arthur had been sent out there because he was annoying and he became an even bigger liability. He was pompous, arrogant and offensive, putting him in the Philippines was as far as Japan was concerned another slap in the face. They felt they were being treated like a joke, it was going to cost them impoverishment.


Oh I'd say Washington knew war was coming. They did everything to make sure it did certainly. But any particular official would as gladly have turned in a corrupt brother and made his fortune that way, than he would kill some Japanese for a dollar, I mean say if you could make it legal or even heroic. Kind of goes with the territory in bureacracies, ask the Romans.
Japanese knew that.

US authorities didn't know it was going to be Pearl, there's no paper trail and yet declassified Naval Intelligence reports to the contrary. Burden of proof here. But they did suspect the Philippines was going to be attacked and a battlefront would exist across the central/north Pacific. This is demonstrable by the actions being taken, reinforcement of atoll bases and supply dumps at the time of Pearl.
Also the security at Pearl was customised against sabotage, not a battlefront. At a battlefront you don't pen your ships of the line, or aircraft for that matter in rows and clusters. But you definitely do this for a rear staging area.
The clear and present inferrence is an attack on the Philippines was expected.
 
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listen, let me lighten up the American role here, plus the fact McAthur wasn't necessarily such a bad pill for the Japanese to swallow. See, the extremely important game changer here to remember is that Tojo's influence right from the start was such that he was in a position to use the military as a whimsical political tool. Everyone was scared of him, and the emperor relied on others to be his eyes and ears, those others were too scared to say much.
It's a game changer. And hey, they killed a lot of people rampantly, you can't go around doing that.
 

Agreed, I believe its just an Urban Legend and people pull coincidences to prove their point (It does raise you eyebrows though) but the US formally got into the war and the rest is history which of course is written by the victor.
 

I believe the Me 110 did well against the Polish Airforce, even besting the Me 109 and I suspect it performed acceptably during the Battle of France. This was at a time the aircraft must have been muich faster than opponenents.

However during the BoB it came up against aircraft of equivalent speeds and better manouverabillity.

What is important to consider is WHAT a "zerstoerer" actually was conceived to be. It was not meant to be an escort fighter or air superiority fighter.

The original specification called for a 3 man aircraft. The Zerstoerer was meant to penetrate at high speed into enemy airspace then shoot up airfields using its powerfull forward firing gun armament supplimented by bombs. With the airfield immobilised level bombers would follow shortly thereafter. It was also meant to be an instrumented "bad weather fighter" able to keep fighting in poor conditions or at night. Using its powerfull forward firing guns it was also intended to rapidly destroy enemy bombers. Fighting single engined fighters in contested airspace was never part of the spec. The Designers ( I think Lusser and Voigt and Messerschmitt) realised a 3 man aircraft would be overly heavy and sluggish and so they submitted a non conforming lighter 2 man version and won the contract.

In terms of power to weight ratio, acceleration, wing loading the Me 110 was too far behined its single engined opponents because of the enlargment of the airframe to meet other requirments (such as having 2 crew) even if it matched them in speed.

The rear gunner did help but generally in a turnining fight the enemy fighter ends up somewhat behined and BELOW so the rear gunner can not get his guns through the target, nor can he aim with the high g-loads or reload his clips. This is the reason for the remote control rear cheek guns on the Me 210/410 and the Ar 240/440.

The simple solution for the Luftwaffe would have been to get the drop tanks issue sorted. They had been using drop tanks since the spanish civil war on Heinkel fighters.

An attempt to produce a twing engined longer range fighter with power to weight, wing loadings equal to single engined fighters was the FW 187 but the Luftwaffe didn't get the concept and was driven by fear of shotages of DB600 series engines in anycase so the Me 110 ended up being misused. The tendancy to make aircraft 'multi role aircraft' and thereby ruin them for any specific role was evident even then.
 
I would argue that the attack by Bettys and Nells on PoW, Repulse and her destroyer escorts (force Z) was divided over time: about 3 waves divided over two ships meant that never more than 9 aircraft had to be dealt with simultaneously, the same as Bismarcks situation.

The speed advantage of the Nell vs Swordwish was was marginal, torpedo release limits dictated attack speed and while the Japanese torps were best in this area they still restricted the aircraft. The swordfish's manouverabillity may even have outweighed its slowness and the Nells physical size made it a bigger target to hit. In anycase the attack profile involved a dive that tended to trow of FLAK. AFAIKT PoW hit its attacker AFTER they had released their weapons and were crossing the bow or egressing the target area.

Bismarcks three radars were out of action, PoW Air defense radars bar one was out of action. Bismarcks radar failed due to shell shock after engaging Norfolk just like PoW died from shell shock after engaging Bismarck. A few issues hadn't been resolved yet on both sides. Had Bismarks radars been working her defense may have been better against the swordfish.

The FuMO 23 radar had a beam width of about 6 degrees but by carefully maximizing returns an opperator could get a bearing to within 1 degree. He could also get range to 70m and pass this on to the predictors via telemetry. Obviously this is not really excellent but it is better than optical ranging. So I think

Latter Seetaks added a type of lobe switching that greatly increased accuracy and some versions added height finding. Bismarks radar/FLAK integration was already there but somewhat crude.
 

More or less agree with Vincenzo and Siegfried on 110, it did well in Poland and against Wellingtons around Helgoland in 1939, also in France in May-June 40 it didn't perform poorly, in fact it had positive exchange rate against Hurricanes in France IIRC. Only when forced to act as close escort during the BoB losses became heavy, 110 wasn't good turner and its acceleration wasn't too good.

Juha
 

Hello Siegfried
IIRC the situation was that according to the Soviet-Germany treaty Germany had to show the two rear Flak director towers to Soviet specialists. Not willing to show their latest technology to the Soviets Germans installed the older model directors to the two rear positions. That might also be reason for the older 105mm mountigs, but I have not positive recollection on that.

Juha
 

I doubt that would work, the forward directors were very distinguishable from the rear ones and anyone, including the notoriously suspicious soviets, would've noticed. In fact Bismark almost had to surrender her A and B main turret range finders to the Soviet Trade agreement however Zeiss delivery schedule managed to keep the deadlines anyway.


The main problem was that the after port and starboard batteries were controlled primarily by the two after directors which in the case of Bismarck, were unstabilized, twin axis directors installed as a stopgap measure until the proper ones could be manufactured and fitted. The German government, in keeping to its obligations under the Soviet-German trade agreement, had provided the Russians with four of their most modern FlaK directors--the two after ones from Bismarck, and the two foreward ones from Prinz Eugen. Thus Bismarck and Prinz Eugen each went to sea with a pair of inferior directors which were not fully integrated into the FlaK fire control system. Prinz Eugen later received two fully stabilized triaxis directors to replace those sent to the USSR, while Tirpitz was completed with hers.

In the Tirpitz this deficiency of the rear directors and the rear gun bugs was corrected and all eight 10.5cm double mounts were of the same L/37 type and the radar is improved with lobe switching and better integraion with FLAK as well as the more powerfull FLAK vierling C/38 mounts and guns replacing the twin C/30, quadrouples fire power.

On 09 March 1942: Shortly after 0900, while en route to Trondheim, the Tirpitz is attacked by 12 Albacore torpedo planes of the 817th and 832th Squadrons from carrier Victorious. The battleship successfully avoided all torpedoes and shoots down two Albacores. Others were hit too.
 
I have a real weird thing about the BF-110. There was a point where I really tried to climb inside the head of Göring on the zerstörer concept. Willy Messerschmitt has some comments about it on the public record. He said, Göring's new concept was unrealistic in fighter design terms and would result in an aircraft type that could perform no role very well, because it compromised upon each of them. Willy cited the French experience in the interwar arms race with Britain. This had been their result of defence budget cutbacks yet still trying to compete as a major power. The Amiot is point in fact, shot down almost to the very last plane within its combat debut.

Okay so the postwar appraisal of the BF-110 IMHO is in serious misapprehension to begin with. Göring never intended this plane as a fighter, no way. It was an attack plane, more closely related to a Blenheim than it is to a P-38.

Here is Göring's zerstörer requirement: to follow the bombers in close escort, to raise crew morale, to accelerate ahead of the bomber stream above enemy territory and to dive upon the enemy intercept force, either shooting them on the ground with heavy cannon or as they climb to stage for intercept with banks of machine guns.

It wasn't a fighter. And the role that best fits its original specification is the same one it had the most success with as a day fighter: the fast attack force on the eastern Front 41-42. They did very well there and were such a tremendous airframe for it the lead squadrons (stab staffeln) of stuka geschwader frequently transitioned to them in preference over the Ju-87, it almost guaranteed their survival on close support missions in those conditions and era, it was very well suited to it. Look them up, almost all switched in 41.

The problem with the BF-110 over england was being used how it wasn't intended, not how it was. It was being used as a long range bomber escort. This was not its job. It manoeuvred well, but like all twin engines its stability is its biggest issue in fighter combat, it cannot be tossed around like a piece of paper and fighters need to. The P-38 had this problem but not as pronounced because it was so overpowered for its weight. Same with the Mosquito. They were exceptions, not like other twin engine heavy fighters.
They are attack planes, Göring was stoned a lot, but still had a galactic IQ. The heavy fighter/attack plane had never really been conceived of so neatly before this.
 
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Legends, myths and Warbirds- spitfirepilots.com

Some more legends to read about on this link.

And these...

"RAF Battle of Britain fighter pilots were mostly upper-class former public schoolboys."

In fact, of the 2900 fighter pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain, ("The Few"), only 200 went to public (i.e. private) school. The bulk came from humble or grammar school backgrounds and 20 per cent were of foreign nationality - including Czechs, Poles, Americans and Canadians.
[The origins of this myth go back to the early days of the RAF. In the 1920s and 1930s it was widely believed that only public schoolboys provided the right material for military officers and the RAF recruited accordingly. When the Auxiliary Air Force was established in 1924 for reservist pilots, the only people who could afford to join where wealthy young men who didn't need to spend six days every week at work. Thus the Aux AF became a social club for a certain class of people. With the rapid expansion of the RAF in the 1930s, the formation of the Volunteer Reserve introduced a new social class of pilots - the non-commissioned officer, (NCO). The VR strongly attracted young working men who wanted to learn how to fly - for free. With the coming of war, the initial strength of the RAF was built around a core of experienced regular officers, supplemented by the members of the Auxiliary Air Force and large numbers of Volunteer Reserve 'Seargent Pilots'. The popular British wartime propaganda film 'The First of the Few', about the origins of the Spitfire and its role in the Battle of Britain, made with the help of Auxiliary and Regular Air Force pilots, was one of the first vehicles for the public schoolboy heroes myth.]

"The Battle of Britain was virtually unwinable for the Luftwaffe."

Recently is has become fashionable for revisionist historians to say that the RAF couldn't have lost the Battle of Britain, or that the Luftwaffe had almost no chance of winning. They argue that, overall, the Luftwaffe had fewer fighters than the RAF in the Battle, and therefore the RAF wasn't really outnumbered. Since Operation 'Sealion' (the German invasion of Britain) depended on the defeat of the RAF to succeed, they argue that the invasion threat was never serious. In fact, as RAF pilots were only too aware, the Luftwaffe could easily achieve local air superiority over their targets in southern England, and the RAF shortage was in pilots not aircraft. Had the Luftwaffe used better offensive tactics - as demanded by the aircrews themselves - such as allowing the escort fighters to roam more freely from the bombers, then German losses could have been lower and attacks more effective. Knocking out British RDF (radar) stations and systematically destroying RAF fighter bases would have severely limited RAF Fighter Command's ability to effectively defend Southern and Eastern England. If the sudden change in Luftwaffe tactics to area bombing of cities hadn't been made, (in reprisal for small scale RAF raids on Berlin), the RAF would have been forced to progressively retreat north and west, with an increasingly serious pilot shortage. In this case, peace talks with Germany would be highly likely, and Churchill wouldn't have remained Prime Minister for very long.

"Since the Luftwaffe didn't consider that a distinct 'Battle of Britain' took place, the battle had no effect on the overall course of the war - other than to give the Americans an unsinkable aircraft carrier."

"If Britain had given up the struggle in...1940, at least half of the German [army] divisions in the west, plus the crack Afrika Korps, (10 per cent of German Panzer strength), plus nearly all of the aircraft based in western Europe and the Mediterranean would have been used against Russia [in the summer of 1941]. To these should be added the German airborne forces which would not have been decimated in Crete in May 1941. The result would have been a crushing German victory in 1941 or 1942 and a Nazi dominated Europe..." - Christopher Dorne, BBC History Magazine, July 2000.

John
 
Possibly but what make up was the senior staff
 
I like the myth that night fighter pilots ate a lot of carrots and it improved night vision. This was perpetuated to cover up radar and how effective it was in night fighting. The best bit of propaganda ever; we still believe it today.
 

IMHO that would have worked. Of course the Soviets would have noticed the difference but one should only show the treaty and notice that we will show all which was agreed on but no extras, sorry. On the directors, one important point was that the older type was open topped and that had influence on work performance in the Northern Atlantic.

Juha
 
"Douglas Bader, after being shot down, and having lost his 2 artificial legs in the fight, had 2 new parachuted by a british bomber allowed by Goering to fly over Germany."

Bader actually got 2 new artificial legs parachuted by a british bomber, but it was during a bombing.

A french "legend" said the french air force shot about 1000 planes during the battle of France.

Recent studies show that the number of french victories was around 350...
 
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