B-17 nose job

[John1]

6 hours ago, MSgt Slim said:

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.

I love the .50 as well.   It's a blast to fire (pun intended).   You probably fired it in the same mode as me, from a tripod, maybe with T&E gear?   If so, then yes, 500 meters is  doable.  However, I was referring more to it's use in a hand-held pintle mount (not even factoring in that mount being installed in an open window of a bomber getting bounced all over the place).  In that scenario, you'd be lucky if you could hit the earth, let alone a high closure rate, fighter-sized target with an engagement window of a second or two.  

[Oldbaldguy]

All the heavy machine gun envy aside, I think I am right in saying that, of the ten men on a B-17, four were officers and six were enlisted men.  In MoA, the pilots are depicted as little  more than bus drivers who simply sit there and fiddle with things to make the airplane go, while the navigator is the only guy around who knows where they were going and how to get there.  Perhaps the skills and education required to navigate (not all can do it, BTW) justified a commissioned officer, but why did either or both drivers have to be officers?  Officers rank did not necessarily mean they were good at flying a big airplane which did not require a college education back then.  Next question:  Does anyone know the typical make-up of, say, a Lancaster crew during the same time frame?  I wonder how many lord-leftenants the RAF usually crammed into one bomber?  It doesn’t make a dot of difference if you are commissioned or enlisted when you are being shot at, but one costs a government more in pay and training than the other.  Perhaps the US had a large pool of candidates who were qualified for a commission by US standards and who wanted to fight so we had to find jobs for them all - I don’t know.  I do know that my dad, who grew up on a farm in very rural Kentucky, was a sailor, a petty officer, when WW2 started and a crew member on a PBY.  He was, among other things, the bombardier and used a Norden bombsight, so it wasn’t like it was Harvard rocket science.   As far as I know, for whatever reason, AF bombardiers were trained for one job and were officers.

[D.B. Andrus]

My understanding is that in the USAAF it had a lot to do with better treatment when captured by enemy forces, as there was a higher probability of capture for air crews. Officers were accorded better treatment than Staff NCOs, and in turn, Staff NCOs were treated better than lower NCOs and non-NCO personnel. Enlisted aircrew were always Staff NCOs for that reason. At least that's what I've read.

 

Cheers,

Damian

[Shoggz]

10 hours ago, D.B. Andrus said:

My understanding is that in the USAAF it had a lot to do with better treatment when captured by enemy forces, as there was a higher probability of capture for air crews. Officers were accorded better treatment than Staff NCOs, and in turn, Staff NCOs were treated better than lower NCOs and non-NCO personnel. Enlisted aircrew were always Staff NCOs for that reason. At least that's what I've read.

 

Cheers,

Damian

 

That’s what I understood too.