Could be of some interest.

[Spookytooth]

I had this sent to me by a friend out in the States.

 

 

It makes you think!!!

 

Simon.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

9 hours ago, Spookytooth said:

It makes you think!!!

Yes it does

[dnl42]

Survivorship bias is actually quite pervasive. The common refrain "they don't make them like they used to" is an example. 

[Giorgio N]

It is an interesting story and worth checking for those who do not know the concept of survivor bias.

 

Now, if you don't want a good story ruined by some boring facts, please do not read... 😁

 

At the same time this is a urban legend, or better it's based on some true facts but the true story is quite different...

Wald was indeed part of a research team within IIRC Columbia University and they were tasked with researching various statistics on aircraft survivability. One of the problem of their research was that it was not possible to derive data from aircraft that did not return to base and to sort this Wald elaborated a statistical process that allowed to predict such data. A very interesting and quite important achievement, but nothing like what's mentioned here

Wald was never asked to determine where armour was best placed and any enthusiast knows that the various air forces around the world already knew well where armour was supposed to be best placed, that is exactly where we see it on our models: around the cockpit to protect the crew first of all ! Then if possible around those equipment that if damaged would have led to the loss of the aircraft.

[warhawk]

2 hours ago, Giorgio N said:

Now, if you don't want a good story ruined by some boring facts, please do not read... 😁

 

I see this picture and text pop up on various forums and Facebook now and then.

Although an interesting story, the very fact that no one else thought of arming the 'obvious places' (i.e. the cockpit and the engines / cooling system) makes me question the information shown.

Either that or Mr Wald was the only expert among the entire military of bumbling idiots...

[AltcarBoB]

The pilot of a damaged aircraft always makes it back therefore he is immortal and needs no protection. This was official policy of all Airforces who until some pencil pusher in a US university told them what to do.

 

Only problem with this urban myth in WW1 as soon as engines were powerful enough to lift it protection was added to protect the pilot, engine and fuel system, Airforces arent so dumb as we like to think.

[Spookytooth]

I was reading up on the B 17. More planes were lost due to engine fires than catastrophic damage.

In their wisdom, the U.S. decided to remove any armour or fire suppressant kit from the engines to allow for more weapons.

 

Simon.

[AltcarBoB]

I wonder how effective the fire extinguishers were if they were removed. 

[JohnT]

One thing always puzzled me about WW2 RAF heavy bomber defensive armaments. The .303 machine guns were known to have limited effectiveness but were not replaced with heavier .50 cal guns. I gather the main concern was interruption to production. 

I wonder though if heavier longer ranged more penetrating .50 cals might have resulted in fewer aircraft losses which in turn means more aircraft in service to compensate in the short term for lower production rates in the change over. 

 

Assuming the answer is no however because any fighter at night needs to get close in for visual identification and targeting and range is not a big problem though penetration issues remain, might it not have been better statistically to consider removing the weight of three turrets, ammunition and crew to get a faster higher flying night bomber?

 

I hear a small voice say and why not lose two engines, make it of light weight material and reduce the crew to 2. Sounds strangely familiar.........

[FinnAndersen]

1 minute ago, JohnT said:

...

Assuming the answer is no however because any fighter at night needs to get close in for visual identification and targeting and range is not a big problem though penetration issues remain, might it not have been better statistically to consider removing the weight of three turrets, ammunition and crew to get a faster higher flying night bomber?

 

I hear a small voice say and why not lose two engines, make it of light weight material and reduce the crew to 2. Sounds strangely familiar.........

The Mosquito squadrons of the light night striking force had loss rates almost nil. And they could haul 2 blockbusters a night into Germany.

 

/Finn

[JohnT]

1 minute ago, FinnAndersen said:

The Mosquito squadrons of the light night striking force had loss rates almost nil. And they could haul 2 blockbusters a night into Germany.

 

/Finn

Exactly but the “heavies” probably still carried a bigger tonnage overall I suspect. There is still the argument that a fleet of Mossies would have caused the Luftwaffe bigger problems than the Heavies for less cost in casualty rates. 
 

Still the reasons for not upgunning the Heavies always seemed a little odd to me. You would think that the tail turret could have been made a plug in replacement with a set kit but then what was airframe life expectancy I suppose ?

[Giorgio N]

Larger guns mean heavier guns and heavier ammo, hence a reduction in bomb load or in performance or both. 

Every design is a compromise, the relative importance of each single element depends on the operational "philosophy" of the end user. 

[dogsbody]

20 minutes ago, FinnAndersen said:

The Mosquito squadrons of the light night striking force had loss rates almost nil. And they could haul 2 blockbusters a night into Germany.

 

/Finn

 

A Mosquito, when fitted with the bulged bomb bay doors could only carry a single 4000lb. Cookie bomb. They were mostly used as nuisance bombers, attacking German cities singly, to keep the citizens and defences awake all night.

 

 

Chris

[FinnAndersen]

7 minutes ago, dogsbody said:

 

A Mosquito, when fitted with the bulged bomb bay doors could only carry a single 4000lb. Cookie bomb. They were mostly used as nuisance bombers, attacking German cities singly, to keep the citizens and defences awake all night.

 

 

Chris

What was I thinking of? A cookie is not a blockbuster. 

 

I stand corrected.

 

/Finn

[AltcarBoB]

2 minutes ago, FinnAndersen said:

What was I thinking of? A cookie is not a blockbuster. 

 

I stand corrected.

 

/Finn

It is a Blockbuster they were simple cannister shaped thin walled bombs. About 85% of the weight was explosive designed to blow roofs off and windows and doors out so that incendiaries could burn the buildings.

 

A special modified Mossie could carry 1 4,000lb Cookie. In winter with the long nights Mossies could do 2 round trips dropping a Cookie each time.

[Troy Smith]

1 hour ago, JohnT said:

You would think that the tail turret could have been made a plug in replacement with a set kit but then what was airframe life expectancy I suppose ?

There was, the Rose rice tail turret

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_turret

the wiki entry look better than many.

 

 

made in limited numbers.  Image is a still from the Nightbombers film BTW.

 

AFAIK, the reason the guns were upgraded was they didn't make much difference, as at night the main function of the gunners were lookouts, good gunner didn't fire if possible.  (the wiki link says there were efforts though)

 

there was a serious proposal to do away with all the turrets,  as statically it was shown that the faster bomber with a bigger payload would achieve the intended aim faster, trying to remember the source, R.V. Jones?  I'll edit in if I remember.

 

Re the Mosquito, easy in hindsight, remember in the end there were just not enough Mosquito's being built to keep up with demand,   and there was already a massive heavy bomber fleet. 

 

[Graham Boak]

There were other designs with 0.5s, perhaps beginning with the Boulton Paul Type T, but these were generally large and heavy, with significant effects on payload and hence effectiveness.  These studies ended with the increasing introduction of the twin 0.5 turrets from Boulton Paul and Frazer Nash - plus of course the Martin dorsal turret carried on later Lancasters and the hand-held ventral position on Halifaxes.  There was however far from complete agreement that two bigger guns were superior than four rapid-firing smaller ones, something that carried on postwar to the letter pages of the RAF gunners' magazine.  For the early part of the war there was residual hopes for the 20mm cannon, which did eventually appear in turrets postwar.  For the middle part of the war the US was desperate for all the 0.5s that it could get.  It took some time for even the US factories to build up production and the demand was ramping up even faster.  Remember that the mass production of turrets for British bombers in 1944 would have to be agreed in 1943, and there was no chance of a complete change over to the bigger guns at that time.  By 1944 there were guns aplenty, and the turrets began appearing in the winter of 1944/45.

 

The other point about Mosquitos is that they would require more pilots and navigators, the highly-trained (expensive, difficult to find) part of the aircrew, to carry similar numbers of bombs.  Further, just two Mosquitos (normal bombload 2000lb) used as many of the expensive engines as a single heavy.

[FinnAndersen]

This thread is drifting away from the original subject, not that the new one is not interesting. 

 

Grahams points out topics I'm sure was first discussed in '43 and we now know what came out of it.

 

I'm of the opinion that airforces generally ARE the professionals, those who know what's the best action here and now. Sitting here 75 years later, trying to be clever, aren't going to change much.  😉

 

/Finn 

[Giorgio N]

12 hours ago, FinnAndersen said:

This thread is drifting away from the original subject, not that the new one is not interesting. 

 

Grahams points out topics I'm sure was first discussed in '43 and we now know what came out of it.

 

I'm of the opinion that airforces generally ARE the professionals, those who know what's the best action here and now. Sitting here 75 years later, trying to be clever, aren't going to change much.  😉

 

/Finn 

 

Air forces make mistakes too and there are many examples. Of course we must always keep in mind that we have the advantage of hindsight and who knows what kind of solution we armchair experts would have proposed in those same years. Based on the various comments in threads dealing with use of airpower today, I strongly believe that many of us would have made even worse mistakes...

Afterall the 20th Century saw a lot of technological progress and finding the best way to use the weapons resulting from such progress was not easy for anyone. Some concepts proved right, some proved wrong, others started badly and then progressed positively. What is rarely aknowledged is that most times the various armed forces recognised their mistakes and reacted accordingly. There were situations when such reaction could not be fast enough to change the outcome but in general the idea that the military top brass are a bunch of idiots who never learn from their mistakes is good for satire but is not really a proper description of the truth.

 

Even more important in a discussion like this however is that air forces always had to consider in their decisions a lot of aspects that we enthusiasts very rarely remember. Things like production capabilities, logistics, availability and use of resources (both human and material), training, and plenty other apparently mundane stuff.

We often tend to think along the lines of "give our boys the very best aircraft/gun/ship" or get carried away in ideas like "let's build this thing by the thousands to ovewhelm the enemy" but all weapons must be built, distributed to the users and then their use must be taught. It's all good to say this aircraft/gun/tank would have been better than another,  but what were the implications on the manufacturing process ? If we want to give the boys the very best, how many can we build ? How long does it take to build this stuff ? Do we have raw materials ? Will we be able to give every airman or soldier the best stuff or do we risk not having enough weapons ?

And on the opposite side, if I build 60,000 new fighters, does it make sense if we don't have the pilots for them ? Should we shorten the training process to get more men into combat with these new fighters ? And so on and so on...

Every time something is adopted all these aspects have played a part, often a part that is even more important than the performances of the weapon. The British Army adopted the Sten SMG in 1941, one of the crudest guns to ever enter service in an armed force. It was not a great weapon, not particularly reliable and could even be unsafe. But it was easy to produce quickly without using too many resources, so that it was possibile to make 4 milions of the thing. The alternative would have been to make less guns of a better design. Good for those soldiers who would have been issued one but not good for those who would have not had anything to be issued with. It was the right choice in that situation. The same choice in different situations would have not been the right one,

 

To conclude, yes, they are the professionals! We may criticise them today but I bet that put in the same situation with the same limitations and having to consider all the same aspects, none of us enthusiasts would have been able to do any better

 

Edited February 20, 2020 by Giorgio N