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I thought this too, but then realized the humans doing the shooting are also illogical. For instance, I could see how hitting the wings might feel effective and
by robg 16y ago
I thought this too, but then realized the humans doing the shooting are also illogical. For instance, I could see how hitting the wings might feel effective and easy, but it's not a great strategy because the bullet holes don't really impact the flight capability.
- pg 16y agoWW II fighter pilots were very rational about what they aimed at. (I happen to have read a lot about this.)
- petenixey 16y agoWas this because of their incredibly short ammunition reserves? I heard something recently about spitfires having only having about 20s worth of machine gun fire.
- pg 16y agoYes. They always seem to have fired in short bursts.
- stan_rogers 16y agoPartly, and in the case of Spitfires and Hurricanes (never forget the Hurricanes -- they weren't nearly as pretty, but they were every bit as effective) partly because of the limited structural damage that the .303 round could do. Later variants were more heavily armed, but the Battle of Britain was fought primarily with Brownings chambered for the .303 British. That pretty much left pilots, the cylinders of radial engines and pressurized fuel and oil systems as the vulnerable points. (Those with .50 Brownings and 20mm auto cannon could afford to shoot at other things, but a fuselage hit still rarely did more than add ventilation.)
- anonymous236 16y agoWhat about anti-aircraft ground fire?
- werftgh 16y agoFor bombers thats the main cause of aircraft losses, fighters of WWII were pretty ineffective, especially at night. It's difficult to believe a WWII era fighter diving into a stream of bombers, at night, while the multiple gun turrets on 100s of bombers were returning fire - were making precise tactical decision about which part of the airframe to target. The nice thing (statistically) about AA fire is that it's rather uniformly random.
- pg 16y agoWW II fighters shot down a large number of aircraft. Erich Hartmann alone claimed 352. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_air_aces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_air_aces
- werftgh 16y agoMostly against primitive fighters particularly on the Russian front. Assuming similar exaggeration of successes by each sides publicity offices you can probably divide the figures by 2 or 4. Even if all these had been against night heavy bombers it's a tiny part of the losses
- JshWright 16y agoThe RAF didn't fly in formation during night bombing attacks, rather they flew in "streams" often hundreds of miles long. So there wouldn't have been hundreds of turrets to bring to bear on a single fighter. I think you're also overestimating how easy it would be to spot a blacked out fighter at night. A popular german night fighter tactic was often to sneak up beneath a bomber and then pitch the nose of the fighter up sharply while firing, racking the bomber's belly with cannon fire. Many fighters were equipped with guns mounted in a vertical configuration called Schräge Musik. The guns would fire automatically when a magnetometer detected an enemy bomber was overhead.
- kjhgbhjkl 16y agoI think that was the result of Dyson's study - a gunner never saw a fighter so they could just as effectively be removed or repalced with fixed guns. And in Wald's research a night fighter still had some difficulty finding and approaching abomber even with ground radar - so they fired at it (using proximty fuses or upward firing guns) essentially at random points - there was no statsistical bias of the fighter pilot targetting specific systems
- silentbicycle 16y agoAny primary documents you recommend? (Curious history nerd.)
- pg 16y agoI particularly recommend Johnnie Johnson, Jeffrey Quill, Pierre Clostermann, and Hugh Dundas.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- cperciva 16y agoHow many WW2 fighter pilots were actually good enough shots that they could aim at part of a plane? I always figured that the difference between a good gunner and a bad gunner was whether they hit the plane at all.
- pg 16y agoIn every instance I've read about they aimed at specific parts. Presumably the difference between the good ones and the bad ones was whether they were able to hit what they were aiming at, but they all appear to have at least tried.
- robg 16y agoI was thinking specifically about ground-to-air fire. Other flyers should know where to aim. Any evidence of this knowledge gap in the literature?