WW2 Aviation Mythbusters (3 Viewers)

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

flying over naples in april '45 it's no the way for find enemy

Not the point. It is still a combat air patrol. The continent was still a combat zone.

Its not but if hostilities were still in effect and naples was considered part of a "theater of operations" (which it was) that was a combat mission...

Ditto, I bet those pilots were still logging combat time.

 

[Juha]

Sorry, but I can't see the relevance of that; standard operating height, for fighter sweeps, was 20,000'+, and no European mountain comes within 4,000' of that, so all fighters found the need to climb at some stage (just after crossing the enemy coast, in 1941-4, in the RAF's case.) No fighter Squadron is going to go in at low level, unless they're on a strafing/bombing run, and they would expect to have high top cover, somewhere above.

On the Eastern Front, which was very important to Germany, much of the air fighting happened lower level than in the West

Juha

 

[Hop]

BTW the second document shows the Spits having both shorter range and less endurance than the Bf 109G. Even with a larger drop tank they have less range.

If you do the maths you'll see the Spitfires in that document are cruising at higher speeds, in some cases much higher.

 

[Edgar Brooks]

On the Eastern Front, which was very important to Germany, much of the air fighting happened lower level than in the West

"Northwest Europe, the channel Front and low countries," were what the poster quoted; as far as I'm aware, they were not on the Eastern Front.

 

[vanir]

Sorry, but I can't see the relevance of that; standard operating height, for fighter sweeps, was 20,000'+, and no European mountain comes within 4,000' of that, so all fighters found the need to climb at some stage (just after crossing the enemy coast, in 1941-4, in the RAF's case.) No fighter Squadron is going to go in at low level, unless they're on a strafing/bombing run, and they would expect to have high top cover, somewhere above.

And yet when you take off at München, Bavaria and fly any direction other than north, you'll have to make 12000 in about 12000 from the airfield. Mountains kind of go up sharply. Airfields among them. It's like that from Bavaria to the Black Sea. Know why they called Poland's Pripet Marshes unpassable? Because south is all mountain, swamps in the middle, you have to go north along the Baltic.
England isn't Europe mate, it's off in the north sea somewhere. I told you that you guys only see the low countries when you look at europe. Think Czechsolovakia, Hungary, North Italy. Remember those interwar Swiss Alp races? The whole point of them is that they thoroughly tested an airplane's mettle for militaries, rather than the popular pole racing which is at 100 feet. And lots of planes failed, the 109 Udet flew in that race broke its engine over those mountains.

At several airfields you do literally have to orbit in a climb before you go anywhere. It burns fuel. You'll find yank fighter group reports in north Italy in 45 talking about having to climb near the airfield before going anywhere, I know that without even looking it up, test me on it. The relevance is that it burns fuel. You have to do this in the Balkans, you have to do this around southern Romania, you have to do this in Bavaria, in northwest Czechsolovakia, in southern Poland, in Hungary, etc.

And remember we're talking about planes which have much closer performance to a modern civvy job than they do a modern jet fighter. They don't exactly climb spritely, takes like half an hour for combat height from brakes off as opposed to 2-3min.

Do you know why combat on the Eastern Front was at such low alt? Aside from the guts of the battlefronts being across all the swamps and fields, it was the proximity of the airfields to each other. They just plain didn't have the space to climb very high before meeting the enemy, and staging over the airfield for climb and formation meant your troops were being attacked with IL2s while you were scared of russian fighters, and vice versa. It went with the territory, and was a similar air war in some respects to North Africa.
And you're using this as an example of Messers not having to worry about altitude in assessing general service ranges. Right. Only the USSR wasn't the sovereign territory they should ultimately defend.

 

[bobbysocks]

all these "range" finding are what they would be "in a perfect world"... flying in a vaccum, as you will, type of environment. when you set up a flight plan you have to take into consideration of a minor thing like "winds aloft". then you will pick the altitude that afford you the best flight. if you have a 20 to 50 mph (A) head wind or (B) cross wind you will be either (A) flying that much slower and really burning fuel or (B) making a course correction that in effect will make you fly 10-15-20% or more further. conversely if you have a tail wind...you can really kick @$$. i do not know what the prevailing winds aloft are over the channel....i did actually look but and all i could find was current data and that all suggested almost a direct cross wind over the british isles....in short you would probably stand a better chance from norway than you would from northern france if these wind streams are typical.

plus i am going to say these ac are all "sterile"...no ammo or bombs, no extra weight at all. stripped to determine a baseline for specs. like prototypes of fighters that didnt have the armor or armament and exceeded speeds of their war versions.

so essentually withthe right winds in a stripped down ac you can get there...but then what? give someone the finger and fly back home??

Free Weather Data from Meteorologica weather superstore (meteorologica.co.uk)

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Do you know why combat on the Eastern Front was at such low alt? Aside from the guts of the battlefronts being across all the swamps and fields, it was the proximity of the airfields to each other. They just plain didn't have the space to climb very high before meeting the enemy, and staging over the airfield for climb and formation meant your troops were being attacked with IL2s while you were scared of russian fighters, and vice versa. It went with the territory, and was a similar air war in some respects to North Africa.

I'd also bet dollars to donuts that a good percentage of the time there was a layer of cloud cover that actually limited or even prohibited combat at higher altitudes. Even during heated battles, you have to be pretty careful about punching into a cloud bank unless you know exactly where you are and the height of the terrain around you.

 

[parsifal]

Were the aircraft involved in the Stalingrad airlift ever provided with fighter escort. If so, where were those fighters based and how far were they flying in those missions?

I have a book at home that gives some details on this. I suspect, but cannot confirm right at this minute that escort for the transports was seldom provided. I wonder why not. From memory, after the encirclement, operations were mostly conducted from a minor airfield about 150 miles distant from the sw of the city. Most fighters were based further away than that I think about 250 miles or so.

I do know that the VVS chewed into unescorted transports mercilessly. If escort was available, it should have been there. I suspect it was too far for them to undertake that mission.

I will try and confirm this stuff tonite.

 

[Siegfried]

Hello Siegfried
On 17pdr APDS ammo
Penetration ability against sloped plate, in this case 17pdr against the 80mm thick glacis plate of a Panther: From US 12th Army report on the tests at Isigny
...
Juha

I am trying to desist from making to many OT posts. I don't start them, I just respond. The point I am making is that the 17 pounder and APDS are both myths in terms of performance. They could be resisted with ordinary armour. Even if the APDS round was well made it still had significantly higher dispersion and was prone to shattering or deflecting from sloped armour and often failed. So you had a round whose higher velocity and lower fall off advantages were completely wiped out by the rounds very high dispersion: it thus had lower accuracy at range than an ordinary round. The US HVAP was much better in practical use; it didn't shatter, didn't disperse and the sticky high friction nose cap swung the round around to penetrate sloped armour. The Germans had no use real practical use for a weapon such as the 17 pounder: it was so heavy at several tons it needed a tractor to place so one may as well go the whole hog and use an 88mm gun which offered reliable penetration and accuracy at range. The 75mm gun of the Panther 7.5 cm KwK 42 was of the same performance and class but few were mounted on trailers. The 17 pounder and APDS were powerfull, but they were also exaggerated.

 

[Edgar Brooks]

And yet when you take off at München, Bavaria and fly any direction other than north, you'll have to make 12000 in about 12000 from the airfield. Mountains kind of go up sharply. Airfields among them. It's like that from Bavaria to the Black Sea. Know why they called Poland's Pripet Marshes unpassable? Because south is all mountain, swamps in the middle, you have to go north along the Baltic..

And when you'r crossing the enemy coast you have to make 20-30,000' immediately or get shot down by the light flak

England isn't Europe mate, it's off in the north sea somewhere.

I suggest you speak to European politicians about that, mate, and "somewhere" is 26 miles, which an athlete can cover in 90 minutes, a Spitfire in 6.

I told you that you guys only see the low countries when you look at europe.

Don't tell me what I see. Some of us have had a fairly comprehensive education, in fact we no longer think that Australia is peopled only by convicts.

Think Czechsolovakia, Hungary, North Italy. Remember those interwar Swiss Alp races? The whole point of them is that they thoroughly tested an airplane's mettle for militaries, rather than the popular pole racing which is at 100 feet. And lots of planes failed, the 109 Udet flew in that race broke its engine over those mountains.

Relevance? The Spitfire never indulged in pole racing.

You'll find yank fighter group reports in north Italy in 45 talking about having to climb near the airfield before going anywhere, I know that without even looking it up, test me on it. The relevance is that it burns fuel. You have to do this in the Balkans, you have to do this around southern Romania, you have to do this in Bavaria, in northwest Czechsolovakia, in southern Poland, in Hungary, etc.

And, as I said, when crossing the Channel

And remember we're talking about planes which have much closer performance to a modern civvy job than they do a modern jet fighter. They don't exactly climb spritely, takes like half an hour for combat height from brakes off as opposed to 2-3min.

Twaddle; the Spitfire climbed at over 4000'/minute at full throttle, so could reach 20,000' in less than 10 minutes

Do you know why combat on the Eastern Front was at such low alt? Aside from the guts of the battlefronts being across all the swamps and fields, it was the proximity of the airfields to each other. They just plain didn't have the space to climb very high before meeting the enemy, and staging over the airfield for climb and formation meant your troops were being attacked with IL2s while you were scared of russian fighters, and vice versa. It went with the territory, and was a similar air war in some respects to North Africa.

I have no interest in the Eastern Front; the discussion concerns (or it did, until you started shifting the emphasis) the petrol consumption over Northern Europe. My contention is that, since the participating aircraft had to reach (at least) 20,000', the land topography has no bearing on the conversation.

And you're using this as an example of Messers not having to worry about altitude in assessing general service ranges.

I'm doing no such thing; you're the one twisting my words. What I said was that Spitfires had to climb to the same height as the German fighters, at the same rate, so saying that their petrol consumption was less critical is a complete fabrication.

 

[bobbysocks]

Were the aircraft involved in the Stalingrad airlift ever provided with fighter escort...... I do know that the VVS chewed into unescorted transports mercilessly.

This in my understanding this is where the LW lost the biggest wealth of its seasoned pilots. Herman the horrible, because of the LWs success at supplying the troops at Demyansk by air promised he could do the same at Stalingrad. the magnatude of this operation was much larger and so more pilots were needed. its easier to put a less experienced pilot in a single seat fighter by himself than in a multi engine ac loaded to the max. many veteran pilots were shifted from units or as instructors to supply stalingrad and then to air lift out. but in Demyansk the VVS wasnt as strong as it was in Stalingrad and the LW took some heavy punishment. in the few theings i have read i dont recall there being any escorts available.

 

[Denniss]

If you do the maths you'll see the Spitfires in that document are cruising at higher speeds, in some cases much higher.

May be but they still have less range than the most often as "short-ranged" claimed Bf 109.

 

[Njaco]

Were the aircraft involved in the Stalingrad airlift ever provided with fighter escort. If so, where were those fighters based and how far were they flying in those missions?

I will try and confirm this stuff tonite.

JG 3, I believe were mostly involved. Parsifal, if you check the thread "This Day In Europe...." during that time, I tried to post air operations over Stalingrad.

 

[pbfoot]

May be but they still have less range than the most often as "short-ranged" claimed Bf 109.

They both have very little range, but its very common knowledge that the brakes on the 109 were better but the Spitfire was more comfortable , however the the defogger on the Spit was inferior to the 109 but that being said the landing light was better on the 109 but the Spit had a far superior nav lights . Then we move to fit and finish the Dzus fasteners on the Spit were better but that may be because they were made in the States . However the Spit had more legroom but that may be because it had to fit North Americans and Australians rather then just the dwarfish Europeans

 

[parsifal]

Thanks, i will have a look later. Any idea of what the round trip for the fighters might have been....they would have needed to fly to the re-supply airfield, pick up their charges and then escort them some or all the way to Stalingrad, before returning.

If we can do that we can get a snapshot of the operational range of the fighters involved, under those conditions.

I can tell you this much.....if the fighters are 109s, it wont be 700 clicks

 

[parsifal]

In relation to the "no tiger was destroyed in combat" claim, Juha might remember better than I (because if i remember correctly, he was witness to that debate as well), but if memory serves me, it was a claim made for both Tiger Is and Tiger IIs. The debate even claimed no losses (from combat) as late as the ardenne offensive as I recall.

I could be wrong, I am working from memory. I raised the issue as a bit of fun really, it was a heavy duty debate at the time which in the finish got out of hand. I laughed because it looked intially that not much has changed in 3 years.

 

[bobbysocks]

at the time which in the finish got out of hand.

yeah, you got to keep those Fins on a short leash or they will get all carried away.

 

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

Thats the one I was talking about! A Captain Rossi!!!

If I'm not mistaken, I believe I remember reading that story in Martin Caiden's book Flying Forts. So he may be the one who started that rumor.

 

[Shortround6]

May be but they still have less range than the most often as "short-ranged" claimed Bf 109.

This has been gone over before, comparing a 109F-4 to a Spitfire V the the 109 does get better "mileage" most of the time, it varies with speed and altitude, occasionally the Spitfire is better. Most of the time the difference is well under 10%, barely enough for bragging rights and of no real difference for operations.

 

[GrauGeist]

Yep, that story was pure fiction although there was a captured P-38 the Italians had, but they ruined the engines with thier llow quality fuel