I honestly don't see how 50cals on a Lanc would make a difference. Not too many gunners spotted the night fighters coming at them, especially once they developed their vertical firing cannon. To my knowledge the gunners on Lancs and other night bombers were mostly along for the ride. May be wrong, but in all the books I have read I can honestly say I have never read one where the gunners shot down a night fighter.
Weasel Wrote:I honestly don't see how 50cals on a Lanc would make a difference. Not too many gunners spotted the night fighters coming at them, especially once they developed their vertical firing cannon. To my knowledge the gunners on Lancs and other night bombers were mostly along for the ride. May be wrong, but in all the books I have read I can honestly say I have never read one where the gunners shot down a night fighter.
You may be right. Then again, with just 3 gunners, the Lancaster had lots of blind spots. Stuff more armed Mk 1 eyeballs in the plane and its spotting improves. Better yet, add an early warning rader.
Problem is, that all offsets bombload. The math was simple; the British decided that 1 bombing run depending on stealth was safer than 2 bombing runs making a serious effort at self defense should the stealth fail. They probably made the right call. I'm just saying it's not certain that they did.
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The other factor to take into account is that the Lancasters typically carried three times the weight of bombs that a B17 did, so its also a ruthless tradeoff of bomb tonnage vs losses.
Losses may be partially explained by the fact that bomber command was at it longer than the USAAF, but for sure it was a torrid battle up there in the night skies. Have read some interesting books from Brit pilots flying night-fighters....the dominant factor is that the victim never sees its killer. When you think about how many day aircraft never saw the executor getting onto their tail, it makes sense. So I'm not at all sure that extra gunners would have made much diff.
What might have been useful was one of the radar detectors that the Germans developed....set off an alarm when the plane was being painted by radar from behind. I'm not sure if the Allies ever developed anything like that.
They had it for the mosquito, so if it could fit in that wonder weapon then why not a Lanc. Of course the problem would be where to mount the antenna too wouldn't it.
The Lanc is my favorite Allied bomber of the war, just a beautiful aircraft. I got to climb around in one in Trenton, pretty sweet. And yes, the bomb bay on these things is HUGE, basically a bomb with props eh.
seabolt Wrote:Oddly enough, the UK lost more bombers in night bombing then the US did in day. Kind of makes you wonder if night bombing really was any safer huh.
UK policy depended on the cover of night for self defense. The Germans did a pretty good job of developing their interceptor program.
Had the UK halved their bomb loads to cram in more gunners and belts of .50-caliber, as in the US day policy, things might have been very different. During daylight, the German fighters enjoyed a significant advantage in hammering their prey with 20mm fire before the .50s could return the favor.* At night, fuggedabout it. It would be a carronade matchup of sheer weight of fire. The .50s would have been sorely felt, had the UK borrowed a few hundred of them ...
*This amounts to sacrilege among worshippers of the "strap a .50 on anything" U.S. policy, but I was convinced on the topic years ago by a German researcher.
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Sorry, can't agree witht this at all. Before the USAAF was able to deploy long -range fighters the losses were disasterous - look at the Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission.
Also RAF missions were in 1943/44 typically much longer than USAAF ones reaching further into Germany. As McIvan says the weight of bombs on RAF raids were much more than carried by B17/24's.
As for 0.5" HMGs, they might have made a slight difference in terms of hitting power but range wasn't a factor at night. Indeed once the Germans started to use Schrage-musik upward firing cannon most defensive fire was not able to cover this area, and most Lanc/Halifax crews unfortunately never realised they were under attack until too late. Interesting that the few RCAF Halifaxes with ventral turrets had better survival rates.
Alex
brm_3k Wrote:Sorry, can't agree witht this at all.
Actually, you and I make just about the same case. ;)
If you'll favor my post with a second pass, I effectively state that the .50s and gunners didn't do the USAAF all that much good on day missions. I suggest (though by no means assert) that the short-range defensive .50s might have done more good on the night bombers.
If every Lancaster had had a belly gunner---and two waist gunners who might notice a night fighter slipping back and forth trying to get a visual because their radar readout was really primitive---their odds would have improved on any given mission, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect higher German casualties. (Whether defensive fire would have competed with bad weather in killing night fighters certainly is a valid argument.) OTOH, they would have had to flown 2 missions for every 1 they flew historically. At a minimum, the Germans wouldn't have been so eager to jump Lancasters ...
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Hi
Partly. There were unofficial use of 50 cals, and some officially mounted in rear turrets, and the RCAF use as I mentioned.
Don't forget that Lancs/Halifaxes were optimised for taking max. bomb load to Central Europe at night. Waist gunners/guns/ammo etc would have been a waste of weight 99.9% of the time.
Ventral turret might have been of use, but would have involved other compromises, and by the time the RAF was using H2S there was nowhere for a turret. The main reason though was the lack of perception of potential threat from below.
Large numbers of aircraft and crews lost to Shrage-musik before the RAF had any inkling of this form of attack. Majority of attacks were fatal to the aircraft, and even if crew escaped they were usually PoWs, and those that made it home often had no idea what had happened. Other crews couldn't see what was happening either - reports were simply of other planes exploding or the wingtanks being set on fire by flak.
Interesting to read the histories and look at the stats for German Nachtjagd, relatively few numbers of the pilots accounted for vast majority of kills. Skill level and determination must have been very high for these few crews, whereas the majority achieved little but managed to survive due to lack of fighter opposition - until an accident took it's toll.
Radar in WW2 was only able to give opportunity to acquire a visual, no-way could it be used to control fire
Regards
Alex
brm_3k Wrote:Radar in WW2 was only able to give opportunity to acquire a visual, no-way could it be used to control fire
Of course you mean aircraft-mounted radar. Naval radar sets could target naval and air units fairly early in the war depending on nationality.
IIRC, the German units searched about a 70-degree cone, displaying the contact as a fuzzy blip on two rather small screens, one for altitude and one for bearing. Things improved over the course of the war, of course, but most of the advancement had to do with frequency hopping to avoid Allied countermeasures ... just like police radar guns and civilian radar detectors nowadays.
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I never thought of that but you are correct, the heavy night bombers were flying much further into German territory then the USAAF were in the middle years weren't they. I remember reading the missions for Memphis Belle and most of them were coastal or France targets. And even then they took pretty good losses until the Mustang showed up. I think Bremen was MB longest target.