B-17 nose job

[John1]

9 hours ago, Juggernut said:

 

Is that your opinion or based on something written somewhere?  If it's based on a writing or account, please provide a reference because from everything I've ever read and seen, the guns weren't useless.  Several waist gunners, including S/Sgt. Tony Nastal (R waist gunner on the Memphis Belle), had more than one kill using these "side mounted weapons".  There are photos with the cheek gun positions faired over but that occurred very late in the war and was (after the Luftwaffe had been pretty much reduced to a residual level of effectiveness), to the best of my knowledge, done at field level and was not a force wide implementation.

That post smacks of disrespect for all those brave young men who manned those weapons through unimaginable conditions; risked life and limb to help defeat totalitarian aggression.  

Lol, I’ve fired .50’s.   You can’t hit a thing with them.   Outside of a hundred meters they are an area suppression weapon.  Now try to imagine hitting a fast moving target that’s in range for a split second from inside a bouncing aircraft that’s moving in a different direction.  As far as those “confirmed” kills by bomber gunners, they were vastly over reported.  Don’t put any faith in those numbers, they aren’t based in reality.   Handheld MG’s did little / nothing to protect those bombers.  If they actually did hit something (assuming it wasn’t another ship in their formation), it was nothing more than pure luck. Lastly - how many attacks came in from the sides?   Luftwaffe doctrine was to attack head on or from the rear.  Both modes are completely outside of the waists gun’s field of fire. All they did was put 2 additional kids into harm’s way for little or no return. 

[Juggernut]

Whatever...

 

Edited February 11 by Juggernut

[Juggernut]

So tell me about B-17 tail gunners; were they self-loading baggage too?

[John1]

51 minutes ago, Juggernut said:

So tell me about B-17 tail gunners; were they self-loading baggage too?

You can’t let it go can you?  Give my post above a more thorough read and you’ll (hopefully) understand why tail gunners were needed.  

[Juggernut]

I'm reacting to YOUR words....

 

Quote

....Handheld MG’s did little / nothing to protect those bombers.

 

News flash:  Tail gunner 50's in B-17s were hand-held guns.  Maybe you should know your subject before spouting nonsense. You cannot make unsubstantiated comments and not expect someone to call you on it.

 

Quote

You can’t let it go can you?

 You insinuate that I have no idea what I'm talking about despite spending over 45 years reading after action reports, studying everything possible about the B-17, her crews and their lives and expect ME to let it go?  Do I know everything about B-17 operations?  Hell no, I'll be the very first to admit that but I'm not about to let someone who refuses to post any substantive information supporting their conclusions, expect me to accept opinions (because that's ALL they are) at face value?  Oh no.....

 

I know all about exaggerated claims by bomber gunners and know that the ones that remain have been verified and are as accurate as can be possible. 

 

Here's just one person you might want to get familiar with:  Benjamin Warmer, S/Sgt.

Edited February 11 by Juggernut

[Out2gtcha]

Guys, let's try not fill someone else's post up with personal snipe's back and forth.

[Oldbaldguy]

4 hours ago, Out2gtcha said:

Guys, let's try not fill someone else's post up with personal snipe's back and forth.

Indeed.  On a similar but different subject, I have begun watching the, so far, woeful Masters of the Air.  It reeks of Hollywood and a lack of working knowledge of the subject.  I’ll bet that none of the actors in this production ever built a model of anything.

[D.B. Andrus]

Re. cheek guns:

 

Better to have them and not need them rather than need them and not have them.

[vince14]

It's an interesting debate. Taking the emotion out of it, I think that overall the use of waist gunners was acceptable in 1943, debatable in 1944, and completely unnecessary in 1945. When 'The bomber would always get through' concept failed in the early war years the emphasis shifted to adding more guns in an attempt to defend better - hence why waist gunners were added into US designs. As the USAAF moved to Europe to begin the daylight bombing campaign the Luftwaffe tried a number of solutions to attacking the bombers, which included beam attacks that could be countered by waist gunners.

 

However, by 1944 the Luftwaffe knew that the most effective form of attack against a four engined bomber in daylight was a head-on attack (hence the beefing up of the nose armament in the B-17). This gave a German pilot a 3-4 second attack run against a single B-17 (and, correspondingly, a 1-2 second defence window for the nose gunner, as he was aiming at a significantly smaller target). However, the waist gunner effectively had to contend with a target zipping past him at over 300mph. On top of that, frontal attacks meant that waist gunners could not actually defend their own aircraft, instead only really having the opportunity to shoot at fighters who were attacking adjacent aircraft.

 

Add in the time-sink required for a waist gunner's eyes to spot a fighter going past them, have the brain process that thought and send signals to the arms and hands to act, then have the muscles react and counteract the weight of the gun - which is a few microseconds, but a significant chunk of time when the gunner has less than a second to act - then I would say that the overwhelming probablility is that all waist gunners were shooting behind the attacking fighter for the vast majority of the time. That's not to say these men were not brave, or that some waist gunners did actually manage to shoot down an attacking fighter, it's just that the form of attack used by the enemy rendered their defence largely ineffective.

 

When you add in the fact that flak was more dangerous to the crew of a B-17 than a fighter, especially by 1945, then the validity of sending along two men for no other purpose than to act as an ineffective defence against one form of attack, whilst still leaving them exposed to another, becomes questionable.

Edited February 13 by vince14

[Oldbaldguy]

Bow-on closing speeds probably exceeded 500 mph most of the time.  Imagine trying to acquire, line up and fire on a target with a frontal cross section smaller than your average Cessna moving at those speeds.  The tail gunner probably had it easiest since most of his targets would have a relative speed of only a couple of hundred miles per hour if approaching from the rear and a limited cone of approach.  I noted while watching Masters of the Air last night that Tom Hanks and Hollywood had the turrets traversing fast enough to track and shoot down the fighters as they blew through the formations.  Seems like that would have been a tall order for the turret motors and gears.

[John1]

6 hours ago, vince14 said:

It's an interesting debate. Taking the emotion out of it, I think that overall the use of waist gunners was acceptable in 1943, debatable in 1944, and completely unnecessary in 1945. When 'The bomber would always get through' concept failed in the early war years the emphasis shifted to adding more guns in an attempt to defend better - hence why waist gunners were added into US designs. As the USAAF moved to Europe to begin the daylight bombing campaign the Luftwaffe tried a number of solutions to attacking the bombers, which included beam attacks that could be countered by waist gunners.

 

However, by 1944 the Luftwaffe knew that the most effective form of attack against a four engined bomber in daylight was a head-on attack (hence the beefing up of the nose armament in the B-17). This gave a German pilot a 3-4 second attack run against a single B-17 (and, correspondingly, a 1-2 second defence window for the nose gunner, as he was aiming at a significantly smaller target). However, the waist gunner effectively had to contend with a target zipping past him at over 300mph. On top of that, frontal attacks meant that waist gunners could not actually defend their own aircraft, instead only really having the opportunity to shoot at fighters who were attacking adjacent aircraft.

 

Add in the time-sink required for a waist gunner's eyes to spot a fighter going past them, have the brain process that thought and send signals to the arms and hands to act, then have the muscles react and counteract the weight of the gun - which is a few microseconds, but a significant chunk of time when the gunner has less than a second to act - then I would say that the overwhelming probablility is that all waist gunners were shooting behind the attacking fighter for the vast majority of the time. That's not to say these men were not brave, or that some waist gunners did actually manage to shoot down an attacking fighter, it's just that the form of attack used by the enemy rendered their defence largely ineffective.

 

When you add in the fact that flak was more dangerous to the crew of a B-17 than a fighter, especially by 1945, then the validity of sending along two men for no other purpose than to act as an ineffective defence against one form of attack, whilst still leaving them exposed to another, becomes questionable.

Spot on.   Could have saved a lot of 18-year-old kids lives if the brass took the time to evaluate that.    I believe in some units, towards the end of the war, they started to leave behind one of the waist gunners and the ball turret gunner, for those very reasons.  Just should have done it a few years sooner but hindsight is always 20-20. 

Edited February 13 by John1

[D.B. Andrus]

1 hour ago, John1 said:

..... hindsight is always 20-20. 

Especially for the tail gunner.  

[Juggernut]

Wee Willie is an example of a late war crew compliment.  She went down over Stendahl, Germany on 8 April, 1945 with nine onboard (8 KIA, 1 POW*) (Haavelar, 217).  She only had one waist gunner on board that day (Bowden, Appendicies, 23).  Image taken from the web.

 

 

* Bowden indicates all nine were KIA.

 

REFERENCES:

Bowden, R. (1993), Plane names and fancy noses, the 91st bomb group (heavy) united states army air force, Design Oracle Partnership, England. (Appendices, p. 23)

Haavelar, M. (1995), The ragged irregulars of bassingbourn, the 91st bombardment group in world war ii, Schiffer Publishing Ltd, PA. (p. 217).

[patricksparks]

Some of the 8th Air Force units in the late part of the war actually removed ball turrets and chin turrets, I've also seen photos of in flight formation with cheek guns removed from the mounts.

Pat

[MSgt Slim]

On 2/10/2024 at 9:02 PM, John1 said:

Lol, I’ve fired .50’s.   You can’t hit a thing with them.   Outside of a hundred meters they are an area suppression weapon.  

I fired the .50 cal professionally for 27 years.  Your point about the Ma Duce being an area suppression weapon is valid, but I can assure you I've hit many a "thing" with it at ranges up to 500 meters.

It's certainly not a precision instrument and was never designed to be, however, as big ass hammers go, it's a beautiful thing.