A calculation Flak vs. B-17

[John B (Sc)]

I recall my father and uncles commenting about the use of firepower; that most of the ammunition expended was used to keep the enemy's heads down or put them off their aim. Since they were mostly doing the same, most was just wasted. Only 1% or less actually properly aimed.

 

War is absurdly wasteful in lives, money and machines.  

[Giorgio N]

3 minutes ago, John B (Sc) said:

I recall my father and uncles commenting about the use of firepower; that most of the ammunition expended was used to keep the enemy's heads down or put them off their aim. Since they were mostly doing the same, most was just wasted. Only 1% or less actually properly aimed.

 

War is absurdly wasteful in lives, money and machines.  

 

That and then there's the fact that "targets" in combat tend to be not particularly cooperative: they try to stay as hidden as possible, they tend to move, they very rarely stand at fixed known distance and very often they shoot back. The result is that even when a personal weapon is used to engage enemy soldiers it is very rare to be in a position to take a well aimed shot for the reasons above and then the stress of being under fire or just fatigued heavily affect the shooter accuracy. We may say that  problems similar to those faced by the flak against bombers apply to individual weapons: there are so many factors affecting hit probability that the simplest way to increase this is by increasing the volume of fire.

I'm often amused by how many target shooters comment on military rifles discussing things like 3-rounds group size and the like, all things that sure make sense on the range but are totally irrelevant when the same rifle is used for its intended primary use...

 

 

[noelh]

Indeed Giorgio, I remember during my time as an infantryman being instructed that sometimes a weight of fire was directed to a point in order to keep the enemy from using that point. Yes we were taught to shoot to marksman standard. But weight of fire was much more important. A friend of mine who fought in the Balkan wars of the nineties told me a lot of fire was unaimed assuming you could convince soldiers to use their weapons. He said they simply remained in cover and aimed towards the enemy by holding their AKs over their heads pointing in the vague direction of the enemy. He saw officers threaten to shoot their own men who wouldn't fire.

He told me that in one 45 minute firefight in a confused forest situation a lot of rounds were expended but only one man was slightly wounded. He knew this because it turned out to be a blue on blue situation.

 

The waste of war. 

 

I find this thread very interesting. It's a subject I'm interested in. The logistics of war. I remember a story, possibly apocryphal, of a captured '88 anti tank commander who knocked out a number of Shermans who stopped firing and surrendered. When asked why he explained that he ran out of ammunition before the allies ran out of Shermans. 

 

Fundamentally the Germans never factored in the ability of the Americans to supply themselves on two or three fronts and the British, and the Soviets. In 1941 they had no idea either. But it was done. 

 

Logistics wins wars sometimes. Post WW2 maybe not so much. 

 

But the wastage is enormous. Look at Syria now, ten years in. What a mess. 

 

Also Geoffrey just as an aside. What are your credentials. Not questioning them just curious. Clearly you are knowledgeable on the topic. 

 

Just another reason this is the last forum I frequent. Sensible knowledgeable discussion. 

 

 

[Giorgio N]

Noel, the story of the 88 crew reminds me of a similar, possibly apocriphal, story circulated during the Falkland War, when someone in Whitehall was quoted as saying that at the then current loss rates the Fuerza Aerea Argentina would have run out of aircraft before the task force would have run out of ships... that seen from the perspective of the families of the casualties is a terrible thing, but seen from the perspective of those who run the war makes sense.

Of course a lot could be said about the capability of a country to accept losses, that again would bring into the equation many more aspects.

 

10 hours ago, noelh said:

Fundamentally the Germans never factored in the ability of the Americans to supply themselves on two or three fronts and the British, and the Soviets. In 1941 they had no idea either. But it was done. 

 

 

 

I wold not be so sure about this, I believe that the German commands were on the contrary fully aware of their inferiority in terms of natural, industrial and human resources. Hitler himself had rightly seen in the lack of resources one of the reasons of the German defeat in WW1 and his insistence on the concept of "lebensraum" as vital to the greatness of the country was an answer to this problem.

Many of Germany's decision during the war were consistent with the understanding of having to fight enemies with superior resources and the same is true for the Japanese. Both were mainly hoping to achieve the kind of victory capable of bringing the enemy to a peace table before the war started to turn into a grinder needing more and more resources.

 

[Jochen Barett]

11 hours ago, noelh said:

+++Fundamentally the Germans never factored in the ability of the Americans to supply themselves on two or three fronts and the British, and the Soviets. In 1941 they had no idea either. But it was done. 

 

Logistics wins wars sometimes. Post WW2 maybe not so much. 

 

But the wastage is enormous. Look at Syria now, ten years in. What a mess.  +++

 

Probably Hitler didn't believe France and Britain would really wage war "just to keep the promise they gave Poland" and so things (a big gamble) kinda got out of hand a tiny bit (who would have thought Mussolini would declare war on France a few minutes before everything is done?).

 

Post WW II? Logistics in Vietnam?

 

Syria? Had Obama promised Putin "You may keep your naval base in Tartus, promised, but Assad has to go!" (and had Putin agreed, but he felt insulted by Obama before), it could have been "solved" with one single .22 shot in the head or a hit with a hammer or a stab with a knife (or maybe even in a diplomatic way).

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

On 14/03/2021 at 05:51, John B (Sc) said:

The lack of patrol aircraft and the use of obsolescent types in Coastal for far too long was astonishing. Releasing a few squadrons of Lancasters to Coastal would have made a huge difference, much greater than losing them over Germany.  Just the equivalent of  a few nights losses...

 

Agreed Coastal Command could and should have been reinforced earlier.  Whether that should have been Lancasters is another matter given where the U-boats were for most of 1942.

15 hours ago, Jochen Barett said:

In the Atlantic it was the number of U boats against the number of liberty ships (the U boats trying to strangle supply to Britain).

And it was the brains (Enigma, radar, combined effort of ...) that led to sinking Type IVX tankers that led to smaller numbers of VIIc boats at sea followed by hunting the VIIcs - but buiding more liberty ships than the U boats could sink helped on the other side too.

The sinking of the U tankers was mostly in 1942/43 and the number of operational U-boats went steadily up in 1942/43, the U tankers were useful but it was the defences that forced the U-boats out of American Coastal Waters.  And building more merchant ships than was sunk ignores, in economic terms, the opportunity losses from voyages sunk ships cannot do and the reality the allies were short of shipping all war.

 

The shipping war, Battle of the Atlantic, went on all war which means plenty of shifts to one side or another.  While there are the known "classic" wolf pack versus convoy battles, for around the first half of the war most allied merchant ships were sailing independently or out of convoy when sunk.  Also remember the Germans were reading the allied Merchant Ship code for much of the first 3 or more years of the war.

To end May 1940 the U-boat fleet lost 24 and gained 18 and most shipping losses were close to Britain.  
Then came the June 1940 to June 1941 first happy time, major allied losses for 22 U-boats lost, to March most losses in the Atlantic south of Iceland.
April to December 1941 losses shifted further from shore, to south of Greenland, and further off Africa. This is when long range aircraft became more important.
July to November 1941 a combination of increased escorts, U-boat diversion to the Mediterranean and Arctic, upping the minimum speed for independent sailings and code breaking enabling evasive routing halved the loss rate while more than doubling the U-boat loss rate per merchant ship tonnage lost.

 

The RN entered the war with around 218 anti submarine vessels (destroyers or smaller), to 318 end December 1940, to 462 end November 1941.  However most of the destroyers were needed for fleet work, given the RN destroyer fleet was 107 modern and 79 older ships in September 1941 and was down to 86+69 end November 1941.  Taking them out you end up with 32 escorts in September 1939 and 307 in November 1941.  Coastal Command had around 250 aircraft in September 1939, 200 of which were short range, basically Ansons.  At the end of 1941 it had around 400 aircraft, only 18 of which were considered short range, so not rising at anything like the same rate as the surface escorts, but the individual aircraft becoming more effective.

 

Then came the shift to American waters, and the way allied merchant ship losses to submarines in 1942, around 6,080,000 GRT, was nearly 1,500,000 more GRT than had been sunk to the end of 1941.  For the most part short and medium range anti submarine aircraft were needed until around the final quarter of 1942, when the U-boats returned to the central Atlantic and major convoy versus wolfpack battles well offshore until April/May 1943.

 

Thanks to Hitler attacking places like Norway, Greece and The Netherlands the available allied merchant ship tonnage went up to the end of 1941.  Doenitz made the point the earlier any loss the more effect it had, all those cargo carrying voyages that could not happen during the war.  The major merchant ship losses in 1942 hurt the allies for the rest of the war, they never had enough ships, it also caused the US to cancel amphibious shipping orders in favour of escorts in 1942, then cancel the escort orders in favour of amphibious shipping in 1943, with resulting loss of potential production.  The lack of amphibious shipping were a break on allied operations until the final quarter of 1944 when Overlord moved to mostly standard shipping for supplies.

 

"British" tanker losses to end November 1941 were around 2.1 million tons, balanced by under 3.1 million tons of gains, mostly the tanker fleets of countries the Germans had invaded. (850,000 tons was new construction.).  So the fleet was around 4.2 million tons.  The US non great lakes tanker fleet was 2.76 million tons in 1939, plus there was another 470,000 tons under the Panamanian flag.  In the December 1941 to May 1942 period the allies lost 1.85 million tons of tankers, and another 750,000 June to August mainly off the US coast and in the Caribbean.  Allied tanker tonnage went backwards to at least December 1942 and it took until the end of 1943 to get back to the end of 1941 position.  After that the gains were more than a million tons per quarter more than the losses.  Even so to help ease the shortage tankers were allowed out of convoy when crossing the Atlantic in 1944.

15 hours ago, Jochen Barett said:

When it came to killing civilians in cities the benefit for the allied war effort seems "doubtful". It was probably OK for allied morale or something like that (or neccessary in order to engage the Luftwaffe in a war of attrition before D-day) but cutting off the axis powers' fuel supply was much more efficient. And even before that, the benefit of the Luftwaffe bombing Coventry and London seems "doubtful".

Pforzheim lost 82.4% of its built up area and around 21% of the population were killed in the one raid.  Arthur Harris in his Official Despatch on War Operations has what I call the acreage table.  Officially it is the "Progress of the Bomber Offensive Against German Industrial Towns Schedule, by Towns, of Attacks and Devastation Resulting".  70 locations are listed, 50,327 acres are listed as destroyed, or about 49% of the urban area.  Using a pre war Atlas the population in these locations would come to around 22.8 million people.  They were wrecking the place, which resulted in killing people, not killing people which resulted in the place being wrecked.

Essentially Area Bombing required a lot of damage on the ground to make it worthwhile for the attacker.  It worked effectively on an economy wide scale when either major damage was done, basically the Hamburg firestorm event, or when the repair system was stretched so that production stopping damage took a long time to be fixed, the second half of 1944 onwards.

 

The reality is the oil campaign lasted around 11 months and used about the same tonnage of bombs as Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force dropped in 1943 and to stop even the relatively small oil production part of the German war economy required
1) a significant shift in the air situation, the defences weakened to allow the bombers to become more predictable, hitting the same targets regularly.
2) all the radio aid developments etc. of the previous years.  One reason Harris objected to the oil campaign was the belief they targets could not be hit well and often enough in Autumn and Winter.

14 hours ago, WrathofAtlantis said:

 This weakness of air to air firepower had a major effect on air tactics; It meant the pre-war assumption that dogfighting was dead, to be replaced by high speed high angle approaches (the going assumption ever since monoplanes were introduced in the 1930s) was wrong, and an entire class of fast twin engine day fighters, which were to rely on hit and run from higher altitudes, were in fact useless, as the lethality of even a twin`s firepower was not enough at high approach angles: You had to follow in a turn to "pepper" for a while... All this due to the low hit rate... Of all the early war day fighter twins, only the P-38 barely managed to remain relevant in its intended day fighter role.

My understanding was the twin engined WWII fighters were mostly planned to be there as bomber destroyers, able to carry heavier armament than the single engined types, with greater range, remembering plenty of self defending bombers were supposed to be around.  Certainly one of the Bf110 missions was long range escort.

Also the Luftwaffe tried to stay in the vertical given their engines having fuel injection and generally larger turning circles than the opposition.

 

The P-38 had a low limiting mach number, good acceleration and climb and the Luftwaffe learnt to be more worried about P-38 below than above.  One table I have seen, limiting mach numbers as measured in WWII, hit that that speed and it was time to fly for your life.
Spitfire MK XIV: 0.89
Me-262A : 0.86
Me-163A: 0.845
Me-163B: 0.84
P-51B: 0.84
Gloster Meteor: 0.83
Hawker Tempest: 0.83
P-47N: 0.83
Bf-109G 0.78
Yak-3 0.76
Fw-190 0.75
F4U: 0.73
P-47C: 0.69
P-38: 0.65

 

The P-51D recommended limit was mach 0.8, though this appears to have been with fabric covered elevators, metal ones were introduced in September 1944.  Test dives to mach 0.84 produced structural damage.

[dov]

I would like to sketch an example here as the unseen consequence of war damage caused by the area bombing:

 

In the city of St. Veit an der Glan in Carinthia, Austria, a former British occupation zone 1945 to 1955, in the late 1950s, the following happened:

A German company in the automotive industry wanted to set up a production plant here. There was a storm of indignation. For fear of the following wars and area bombings, the construction of the factory was refused by citizen protests. There were similar patterns in other areas in Austria too. An aversion to industry that should not be underestimated. Long before today's debates on environmental protection.

 

Another pattern in society happened also as a result of the bomber war. Each town was equipped with an alarm siren. For bomber raids. All this sirens were used after the war for civil fire alarms. As a child I broke to tears and fear, when this sirens were on. Todays jargon you may say: We were traumatized. This is reality unwritten and unknown.

 

Even at this days when propeller aircrafts were flying only, each engine noise made us fear. I was born after the war, but the tales of the older generation caused such a fear, sometimes I lay awake during the whole night.

 

War is a bad thing. But we also should always pay attention to the not visible damage. Here, I want to mention the modern archeology from airfield buildings in Great Britain. Once in Duxford I saw a book about it. When cross reading the book, I saw graffiti’s from airman US and GB nationality, who wrote about their fear and hope. The same you may find in late war fuselages inside from forced labors written on the metal sheet.

 

In all ways thank you for the comments. Astonishing, exciting. Congratulation you all.

 

Happy modelling

[Denford]

8 hours ago, Jochen Barett said:

Syria? Had Obama promised Putin "You may keep your naval base in Tartus, promised, but Assad has to go!" (and had Putin agreed, but he felt insulted by Obama before), it could have been "solved" with one single .22 shot in the head or a hit with a hammer or a stab with a knife (or maybe even in a diplomatic way).

Or Novichek

[WrathofAtlantis]

13 hours ago, Geoffrey Sinclair said:

Agreed Coastal Command could and should have been reinforced earlier.  Whether that should have been Lancasters is another matter given where the U-boats were for most of 1942.

The sinking of the U tankers was mostly in 1942/43 and the number of operational U-boats went steadily up in 1942/43, the U tankers were useful but it was the defences that forced the U-boats out of American Coastal Waters.  And building more merchant ships than was sunk ignores, in economic terms, the opportunity losses from voyages sunk ships cannot do and the reality the allies were short of shipping all war.

 

The shipping war, Battle of the Atlantic, went on all war which means plenty of shifts to one side or another.  While there are the known "classic" wolf pack versus convoy battles, for around the first half of the war most allied merchant ships were sailing independently or out of convoy when sunk.  Also remember the Germans were reading the allied Merchant Ship code for much of the first 3 or more years of the war.

To end May 1940 the U-boat fleet lost 24 and gained 18 and most shipping losses were close to Britain.  
Then came the June 1940 to June 1941 first happy time, major allied losses for 22 U-boats lost, to March most losses in the Atlantic south of Iceland.
April to December 1941 losses shifted further from shore, to south of Greenland, and further off Africa. This is when long range aircraft became more important.
July to November 1941 a combination of increased escorts, U-boat diversion to the Mediterranean and Arctic, upping the minimum speed for independent sailings and code breaking enabling evasive routing halved the loss rate while more than doubling the U-boat loss rate per merchant ship tonnage lost.

 

The RN entered the war with around 218 anti submarine vessels (destroyers or smaller), to 318 end December 1940, to 462 end November 1941.  However most of the destroyers were needed for fleet work, given the RN destroyer fleet was 107 modern and 79 older ships in September 1941 and was down to 86+69 end November 1941.  Taking them out you end up with 32 escorts in September 1939 and 307 in November 1941.  Coastal Command had around 250 aircraft in September 1939, 200 of which were short range, basically Ansons.  At the end of 1941 it had around 400 aircraft, only 18 of which were considered short range, so not rising at anything like the same rate as the surface escorts, but the individual aircraft becoming more effective.

 

Then came the shift to American waters, and the way allied merchant ship losses to submarines in 1942, around 6,080,000 GRT, was nearly 1,500,000 more GRT than had been sunk to the end of 1941.  For the most part short and medium range anti submarine aircraft were needed until around the final quarter of 1942, when the U-boats returned to the central Atlantic and major convoy versus wolfpack battles well offshore until April/May 1943.

 

Thanks to Hitler attacking places like Norway, Greece and The Netherlands the available allied merchant ship tonnage went up to the end of 1941.  Doenitz made the point the earlier any loss the more effect it had, all those cargo carrying voyages that could not happen during the war.  The major merchant ship losses in 1942 hurt the allies for the rest of the war, they never had enough ships, it also caused the US to cancel amphibious shipping orders in favour of escorts in 1942, then cancel the escort orders in favour of amphibious shipping in 1943, with resulting loss of potential production.  The lack of amphibious shipping were a break on allied operations until the final quarter of 1944 when Overlord moved to mostly standard shipping for supplies.

 

"British" tanker losses to end November 1941 were around 2.1 million tons, balanced by under 3.1 million tons of gains, mostly the tanker fleets of countries the Germans had invaded. (850,000 tons was new construction.).  So the fleet was around 4.2 million tons.  The US non great lakes tanker fleet was 2.76 million tons in 1939, plus there was another 470,000 tons under the Panamanian flag.  In the December 1941 to May 1942 period the allies lost 1.85 million tons of tankers, and another 750,000 June to August mainly off the US coast and in the Caribbean.  Allied tanker tonnage went backwards to at least December 1942 and it took until the end of 1943 to get back to the end of 1941 position.  After that the gains were more than a million tons per quarter more than the losses.  Even so to help ease the shortage tankers were allowed out of convoy when crossing the Atlantic in 1944.

Pforzheim lost 82.4% of its built up area and around 21% of the population were killed in the one raid.  Arthur Harris in his Official Despatch on War Operations has what I call the acreage table.  Officially it is the "Progress of the Bomber Offensive Against German Industrial Towns Schedule, by Towns, of Attacks and Devastation Resulting".  70 locations are listed, 50,327 acres are listed as destroyed, or about 49% of the urban area.  Using a pre war Atlas the population in these locations would come to around 22.8 million people.  They were wrecking the place, which resulted in killing people, not killing people which resulted in the place being wrecked.

Essentially Area Bombing required a lot of damage on the ground to make it worthwhile for the attacker.  It worked effectively on an economy wide scale when either major damage was done, basically the Hamburg firestorm event, or when the repair system was stretched so that production stopping damage took a long time to be fixed, the second half of 1944 onwards.

 

The reality is the oil campaign lasted around 11 months and used about the same tonnage of bombs as Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force dropped in 1943 and to stop even the relatively small oil production part of the German war economy required
1) a significant shift in the air situation, the defences weakened to allow the bombers to become more predictable, hitting the same targets regularly.
2) all the radio aid developments etc. of the previous years.  One reason Harris objected to the oil campaign was the belief they targets could not be hit well and often enough in Autumn and Winter.

My understanding was the twin engined WWII fighters were mostly planned to be there as bomber destroyers, able to carry heavier armament than the single engined types, with greater range, remembering plenty of self defending bombers were supposed to be around.  Certainly one of the Bf110 missions was long range escort.

Also the Luftwaffe tried to stay in the vertical given their engines having fuel injection and generally larger turning circles than the opposition.

 

The P-38 had a low limiting mach number, good acceleration and climb and the Luftwaffe learnt to be more worried about P-38 below than above.  One table I have seen, limiting mach numbers as measured in WWII, hit that that speed and it was time to fly for your life.
Spitfire MK XIV: 0.89
Me-262A : 0.86
Me-163A: 0.845
Me-163B: 0.84
P-51B: 0.84
Gloster Meteor: 0.83
Hawker Tempest: 0.83
P-47N: 0.83
Bf-109G 0.78
Yak-3 0.76
Fw-190 0.75
F4U: 0.73
P-47C: 0.69
P-38: 0.65

 

The P-51D recommended limit was mach 0.8, though this appears to have been with fabric covered elevators, metal ones were introduced in September 1944.  Test dives to mach 0.84 produced structural damage.

 

The Mach number only had a real “bite” above 20 000 feet, because Mach speed was lower there: Below 20.000 the main limitation was airframe buffeting, individual to each design.

 

 As far as I know, the FW-190A had a higher Mach number than the Me-109G, and was around 0.84, similar to US fighters. Despite this , it was rarely used in true prolonged vertical fighting, because it had among the worst high speed elevator handling of WWII... Namely sinking behaviour with massive tail down deceleration.

 

  The FW-190A was almost exclusively used for low speed turn fighting, where it excelled any other Western Front fighter, especially the Spitfire, which had good high speed handling but no real low speed turn fighting ability, having no mid position flap. (As Russians found out to their dismay) A slow speed turning fight between a Spitfire and a Fw-190A was not a contest: In the words of Johnny Johnson, top Spitfire ace, the Spit was rapidly reversed. The Spit could however stall with 3 axis control and briefly shoot across into the smaller FW-190A turning circle, which sometimes muddled the issue. 

 

  The dreadful FW-190 high speed handling really forced German tactics into turn fighting, which gradually became the dominant WWII form anyway. The Russian 1943 Red Fleet article has the Me-109G and FW-190A interacting as such: “The Me-109 performs hit and run attacks from above, while the FW-190 commits to prolonged low speed turn fights.” This pattern was seen throughout the war, including in Boddenplatte. 

 

  Only when hastily trained, in 1944, to intercept Western Front bombers (at high altitudes where its handling was bad) do Luftwaffe pilots appear unable to use the FW-190A in turns. 

 

  Orekov: “The FW-190 is never used in vertical fighting” 

 

  The P-47 also was an obsessive low speed turn fighter, judging from combat accounts, in Razorback form able to reverse a Me-109G in four 360s (but much less so as a Bubbletop) and was a near match to the FW-190: It was also rarely used in hit and run attacks, given it’s terrible climb rate, only marginally improved by the paddle-blade prop. 

 

  Even the Merlin P-51 was often forced to perform as a turn fighter, using flaps and reduced throttle, which befuddled lower time Luftwaffe pilots who tended (wrongly) to keep power high, given their lower time experience. Because of an issue with its gun feed (3X the failure rate of P-47s), prolonged P-51 turn fights very often ended with just one inner turn gun working(!), this far worse in Bs but all the way to late Ds.

 

  In general the US won the air war with superior pilot turn fighting knowledge, and this included Hellcat and Wildcat use against the Japanese (the Hellcat could extend its flaps horizontally, Japanese butterfly-style, but lowering angle was automatically spring controlled and very conservative,  so there was no pilot chosen angle setting: A unique set up...)

 

   There is even some evidence the FM-2 Wildcat our-turned Model 52 Zeroes, so really the only Japanese types that could reliably out-turn US Navy types were Oscars and Ki-100s... Not the story one typically hears.

 

  There does seem to be an additional unknown issue, beyond hit rates, that made reduced power slow speed turn fighting so dominant in WWII, and the rare top aces that could use high speed high angle approaches really muddled the picture of what actually went on, because they tended to get the preponderance of historian attention. Slogging through thousands of obscure combat reports, written by obscure pilots, really does reveal a surprisingly different picture...

 

[Graham Boak]

A couple of points: on its introduction the FW.190 certainly did indulge in diving from altitude for its attacks, classic Luftwaffe style/high energy tactics.  Where it gained on the Spitfire was less its turn rate per se but its agility.  Because of its excellent ailerons. it could rapidly roll over 90 degrees and dive away from the Spitfire whilst the Spitfire was still rolling into position, gaining a safe lead that the Mk,V could not close.  Less true of the Mk.IX, or even of the Mk.V with clipped wings.

 

Use of the Bf.109 for higher altitude work on the Eastern Front (and on the Western too) was driven by the superior performance at altitude of the DB engine as opposed to the BMW.  Horses for courses.  Similarly Spitfire vs Typhoon.

 

Having been involved in the aerodynamics of aerial combat, or at least paying professional attention to those who have, I would point out that what you are saying is that the most successful pilots use high energy tactics, whereas less successful but surviving ones obtained success in turning fights, which always result in a descending spiral to lower altitudes and speeds.  However the losers didn't come home to add their accounts.  More fighters were lost in turning fights than from the attacking units using "hit and run" tactics.

 

Success will depend upon the comparative performance of the types.  In the early stages of the war in the desert, Gladiators fought CR.42s in classic dogfights and came off bruised.  The arrival of the Hurricane allowed high energy tactics and brought greater success.  Which was completely reversed with the arrival of the Bf.109E.    A similar, if slightly more involved story, can be made on the Indian Frontier, where the Oscar would regularly out-turn the Hurricane.  There underlying problem here was that the Hurricane had a superior performance at altitude,  but the lack of reliable early warning because of the terrain meant that they were rarely able to reach suitable heights before battle was joined.  The belated arrival of the Spitfires with their superior climb rates and accelerations meant that the RAF could reach suitable altitudes before the arrival of the Japanese, and so employ high energy tactics.  The Hurricanes only achieved this rarely.  (This particular point was made in a lecture I attended on comparative performance made by AVM Sir Neil Cameron, once just such a Hurricane pilot.)

 

If you are brought up believing in dogfighting, and that you have the best dogfighting aircraft, then you will lose heavily when opposed either by opponents who had learnt superior tactics the hard way (the  Germans) or had a more manoeuvrable opponent - whether marginally like the CR.42 or considerably like the Japanese.

 

Post war similar lessons were shown over Korea. and over Vietnam following the initial successes of the NVAF MiG 17s.  Considerable investment was made in the theoretical and practical studies of air combat, particularly dissimilar air combat, leading to the creation of the syllabi for Top Gun and its equivalents worldwide.  Unsurprisingly, the lessons there can be shown to apply to earlier wars, back to the beginning over the trenches in 1915.

[WrathofAtlantis]

The FW-190A out-turned the Spitfire at low speeds, and that was the main tactic that it used against it. An experienced pilot never used it in vertical hit and run type combat:

 

RCAF John Weir: “The Hurricane was much more maneuverable than the Spit. The Spit was a higher wingloading. We could turn tighter than a Messerschmitt, but the Focke Wulf could turn the same as we could, and they kept on catching up.”

 

  Johnny Johnson (top Spitfire ace): “I asked the Spitfire for all she had in the turn, but the 190 hung behind like a leech: It was only a question of time and he would have me in his sights”

 

Sq Leader Alan Deere: “Never had I seen the Hun stay and fight it out as these Focke-Wulf pilots were doing... In Me-109s the Hun tactic had always followed the same pattern- a quick pass and away. Not so these 190 pilots. We lost 8 to their one that day.”

 

Osprey Duel #39: p.69: “Enemy FW-190A pilots never fight on the vertical plane.”

 

p.65: “An experienced FW-190A pilot practically never fights on the vertical plane.”

 

Red Fleet, #37, a summary of one whole year of combats with both German types: “The FW-190 will inevitably offer turning combat at a minimum speed.”

 

The FW-190A was never widely used in hit and run tactics, and this here is six correlation from six sources across two theatres, including five separate global statements, not anecdotes.

 

  The only WWII source for the FW-190A being used on the vertical plane, in combat, is Eric Brown, who was mostly a test pilot, and had two Wildcat kills on four engine types.

 

  Post war jet tactics did find hit and run energy fighting useful, but the picture that emerges from new research is quite the opposite for WWII: Attempts at hit and run were easily foiled by turning continuously, and early Zero tactics that avoided turn fighting were considered poor by opposing pilots: “If they only chopped throttle and turned, they could sit on our tails.”

 

Capt Virgil K Meroney (9 kills, all on P-47): “If you are bounced from above you cannot out dive the enemy. Having learned that, I always chopped my throttle and turned into them.”

 

  The “superiority” of hit and run is in large part a post war reconstruction. The reality of aces who used it successfully was often that they waited outside the furbal, and latched on to damaged stragglers exiting the combat area. They acted as sweepers in effect.

 

Hit and run was not as low risk as assumed, since it was very easily foiled by cutting power and turning, and it was definitely low reward except for pilots with exceptional eyesight. Even then, hit and run proponent Eric Hartmann was shot down 17 times, while chop-throttle turn fighting proponent Karhila was never hit in combat. Hartmann survived so many times because of the excellent protection of the Me-109, and it’s uniquely good crash landing characteristics, a unique 109 feature being that it never caught fire on crash landing. To give a comparison, in a P-51 taking to the parachute was mandatory because of the belly scoop, which meant he would have bailed 17 times...

[Graham Boak]

The threat from the early Fw190s was to Spitfire Mk.Vs tied to escorting bombers, and they always began at a higher altitude so that they had an advantage.  The ruling goes back to the first world war "He who controls the height controls that battle."  Similarly for Bf.109s in the Battle of Britain, the Western Desert, the Eastern Front.  Fast slashing attacks were the norm.  This does of course require the ability to start above the enemy, and indeed free space to dive away.  If either of these are not available then you fight where you can and the Fw.190 could not match the altitude performance of later types such as the Spitfire Mk.IX, and P-51, or the turbocharged P-38 and P-47.

 

If the defending fighter chops its throttle and turns - it has no counter to the dive and run away , followed by zoom and dive again.  What he also does is leave himself totally vulnerable to the attacker's team mates.   Reducing power in combat is a no-no, except in very specific circumstances.  Forcing an overshoot if the enemy is flying immediately behind you, perhaps, although this is fraught and those who get it wrong don't write the memoirs.  Victories are written by the winners.

 

The most successful aces were not those who picked off stragglers, useful though such might be.  They were those who led the formations down and got first shot at an often  unexpecting/slower target.  As many pilots have said, if you get into a turning fight the usual result is nothing.  But these don't get written up in any detail.

 

As for the Hurricane being more manoeuvrable than a Spitfire, only a Hurricane pilot would believe that.

 

You certainly wouldn't want to ditch a P-51 because of its scoop, but there are plenty of photos showing them resting safely on their bellies after crash landings.

 

However, have we not moved too far from the topic?

[dov]

Actually, we moved a little away from the topic Graham Boak, but your post is fascinating. In dogfighting are sooo many opinions, but just a few flew them by themselves. For anybody of you, who has practiced acrobatic flying, or know about it fundamentally, can get a clue what flying under such circumstances is. I heard by personal conversations many ex-fighter pilots telling me their active flying. Germans and British. Each tale is a point, all tales differ a lot from the next.

 

But to make a turn in the discussion to our prime topic, I will give you an interesting hint. The Allies in WW2 did one miracle wonderful thing. This is today called operation research. That means to recalculate by mathematic all efforts in battle from the maintenance, take off, flight, battle and return under maintenance getting ready for the next ops. In all fields. Air Force, Navy, Army.

 

This operation research dismantled each doing by thousands of statistics and was beside mass production and intelligence the backbone of success. Maybe you heard about this matter, maybe not. Some surprising dismantling of squadrons were the consequence out of it. Some shifts in the theater of operation also the consequence of effectiveness or waste of material or personal.

 

As a matter of fact, the famous Red Tail squadron was so prone on maintenance, this was the very edge of getting dismantled. Faraway of racism. Just one picturesque example.

 

Each bomb raid was analyzed to the very detail in statistic of weapon, material like a/c and personal.

 

This network of research was a backbone, like today in every economical enterprise.

 

Another fact:

The decisions made by the Allies were already based on what is today called game theory. I do not know if you have the slightest clue what it is? Neumann based on this the advice to drop the 2nd atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Game theory is also deadly. This theory is todays backbone for nearly all decisions in economy, stock exchange, military and politic. I will refer about it, if you like.

 

Maybe a fellow has more details about it. Thank you to all who contribute their knowledge. Interesting global communication about such a topic.

 

Happy modelling

[JohnT]

All very interesting contributions.  My own knowledge is inadequate to contribute however I can from many observations of interviews and reading memoirs say the following:-

 

Me 109 pilots rate the Me109 as superior to the Spitfire and Hurricane.

Spitfire pilots rate the Spitfire superior to the Me 109

Tempest pilots rate the Tempest superior to the FW190 and the Me 109

Hurricane pilots rated the Hurricane superior to the Spitfire until posted to Spitfires when the Spitfire was superior to the Hurricane

USAAF pilots rate the P-51 superior to everything

 

In summary every [pilot who survived rated this aircraft superior to the other guys

[WrathofAtlantis]

5 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

A- The threat from the early Fw190s was to Spitfire Mk.Vs tied to escorting bombers.

 

B-If the defending fighter chops its throttle and turns - it has no counter to the dive and run away , followed by zoom and dive again.  What he also does is leave himself totally vulnerable to the attacker's team mates.   Reducing power in combat is a no-no, except in very specific circumstances.  

 

C-As for the Hurricane being more manoeuvrable than a Spitfire, only a Hurricane pilot would believe that.

 

D-You certainly wouldn't want to ditch a P-51 because of its scoop, but there are plenty of photos showing them resting safely on their bellies after crash landings.

 

 

A-Spitfires escorting bombers, with their short ranges, seems to be a rare thing. As far as 190 encounters are concerned, I cannot recall a case. Any examples of Spifires out turning FW-190As at sustained low speeds? In 25 years of researching this very topic for my book, I found none. The Spitfire did make reasonably fast turn times at high speeds in a broad turn, but with no mid-position flaps it could not slow down. A broad turn, even if fast, will usually not give a lead on a smaller radius. One pilot described turn fighting as “a race where the slowest won.”: It gives perspective...

 

 B-I can only say this: Chopping the throttle, and keeping the throttle down, was a key part of success in WWII turn fighting, to the point the throttle was sometimes cut even before the merge. FW-190A and D pilot Eric Brunotte mentions never using maximum continuous power in combat, and even less stepping beyond the notch to use War Emergency Power!! This is why MW-50 was usually disabled in late War Luftwaffe fighters: It was not useful... And turn fighting itself, cut throttle or not, was an even more massive part of WWII tactics, it’s dominance increasing as experience was gained in later war years. I know Shaw pretended otherwise in his research, using the P-47 (of all things) as an example (because of its appearance I assume), but historical assumptions always need to be revised, and this one is over fifty years old... Appearances can be deceptive. There are physical differences between jets and props that explain this discrepancy.

 

C-The Hurricane our-turning the Spitfire is widely known. Minimum radius on a Hurricane I was in the 800 feet range while it was over 1000 feet on the Spitfire I. This is not turn times, but it is evocative...

 

D-You are correct, bailing in a P-51 is only mandatory over water.

 

PS: Very interesting stuff Dov!

Edited March 17, 2021 by WrathofAtlantis

[Denford]

4 hours ago, dov said:

The decisions made by the Allies were already based on what is today called game theory. I do not know if you have the slightest clue what it is? Neumann based on this the advice to drop the 2nd atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Game theory is also deadly. This theory is todays backbone for nearly all decisions in economy, stock exchange, military and politic. I will refer about it, if you like.

Please do (Game Theory explanation)

[alt-92]

44 minutes ago, WrathofAtlantis said:

A-Spitfires escorting bombers, with their short ranges, seems to be a rare thing. As far as 190 encounters are concerned, I cannot recall a case.

Ramrod 16 is a good example.

[dov]

Hallo

 

I will start to give you a short but understandable information what game theory is, and why it is so extremely powerful. In application in many fields.

 

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

 

Basic is mathematic. Wider logic in mathematic and formulations of logic which were summed up by B. Russel.

 

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

 

In his book Principia Mathematica he made the logic foundation.

 

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

 

Game theory can be used for games, but it was designed to create precise decisions based on settings available. With settings available to find out the best solution by mathematic rules. So, that it can be easily understood, overseen. Today’s game theory also can find dynamic solution in a very complex dynamic field too. This is not to explain here.

The basic example is the prisoner's dilemma.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma

 

In short terms:

Two people are playing a game. Each player wants to win. By all means. Each game has some rules. Each possible outcome can be described. If there are two possible results, you get a matrix of 2 x 2.

You may have that two players oppose each other (military, card game), have common interests, or other settings which I will not refer too.

In February 1943 General Kenney, Commander of the Allied Air Forces in southern pacific had a problem: The Japanese Forces wanted to strengthen their army in New-Guinean. They had two possible paths. Northern of New Britannia with rainy weather or southern of New Britannia with normal weather conditions. In each case the path would take three days.

General Kenney had to decide, where to station his reconnaissance a/c. The Japanese forces wanted to get less exhibited to allied bombs. Kenney wanted the opposite. The Matrix shows you the number of days, where the allies had the chance to bomb the Japanese forces.

 

 

                                                   Japanese Forces

                                                    Northern path     Southern path

              Allies     Northern path        2  days                 2 days

                            Southern path        1  day                   3 days

 

In this case, both players have to decide without information about the opposite. No player knows the strategy the other player chooses. The analyses of this setting is quite simple, but just to give you a glimpse what is on. Take the Japanese side of view: No matter how the allies will decide, it minimizes the chance to be bombed by the allies. After getting this into account, it is easy to understand that the northern path will be most likely to be taken into account.

 

Exert from the book: Game Theory for not mathematician by Morton D. Davis.

 

Maybe I could give you a slight glimpse how mathematic decides a war. Generals must be fit in this field. Germans were not. Absolutely not. This was a game changer beside the stuff you see. The background is it.

 

Happy thinking, maybe I could trigger some interest beside modelling and history books.

 

Enjoy it

 

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

On 17/03/2021 at 13:38, WrathofAtlantis said:

The Mach number only had a real “bite” above 20 000 feet, because Mach speed was lower there: Below 20.000 the main limitation was airframe buffeting, individual to each design.

As far as I know, the FW-190A had a higher Mach number than the Me-109G, and was around 0.84, similar to US fighters. Despite this , it was rarely used in true prolonged vertical fighting, because it had among the worst high speed elevator handling of WWII... Namely sinking behaviour with massive tail down deceleration.

My point of posting the mach numbers was to show the problems the P-38 had resulting in the Luftwaffe being more worried about P-38 below them, dive flaps did not really improve dive speed.  it also did not help the P-38G had the best initial dive acceleration of the main US types, it also had the best level flight acceleration. The P-38's significantly lower critical Mach Number, which meant that dives at 25,000 feet or so would get into severe Mach Tuck with no problem, Mach 0.65 is abut 450 MPH TAS at 25,000 feet.  It didn't take much to get a P-38 stuck.  The P-38 and P-47 required dive recovery flaps to allow pullouts from high speed dives to be made at any time the flaps raised the effective dive speed by around 20 mph but made recovery safer.  Mach tuck began at about mach 0.74

 

Diving, limit of speed at 10,000 feet, 1G, IAS, P-47D and P-51D 500 mph, P-38J/L 440 mph. (Joint Fighter Conference, Naval Air Station Patuxent River Maryland, 16 to 20 October 1944.)  This conference rated the various characteristics of USAAF and USN fighters.  When it comes to turning the conference data used index number instead of turn radius, FM-2 is 12, P-63A-9 14.9, P-61B-1 (Black Widow) 16, F6F-5 16.5, P-51D-15 21.5, P-38L 24.6, P-47D-30 24.7, F4U-1D 25.4.  3G turn, clean, no flaps, adequate power.

 

It would be useful if you can post mach numbers, and what they represent, whether tactical, the limit after which combat stops, or limiting, after which flying could easily stop.

 

The sort of Fw190 behaviour being described would indicate a low limiting mach number.

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/fw190/fw190-0022-dive.html

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/

On 17/03/2021 at 13:38, WrathofAtlantis said:

 The FW-190A was almost exclusively used for low speed turn fighting, where it excelled any other Western Front fighter, especially the Spitfire, which had good high speed handling but no real low speed turn fighting ability, having no mid position flap. (As Russians found out to their dismay) A slow speed turning fight between a Spitfire and a Fw-190A was not a contest: In the words of Johnny Johnson, top Spitfire ace, the Spit was rapidly reversed. The Spit could however stall with 3 axis control and briefly shoot across into the smaller FW-190A turning circle, which sometimes muddled the issue. 

 

The dreadful FW-190 high speed handling really forced German tactics into turn fighting, which gradually became the dominant WWII form anyway. The Russian 1943 Red Fleet article has the Me-109G and FW-190A interacting as such: “The Me-109 performs hit and run attacks from above, while the FW-190 commits to prolonged low speed turn fights.” This pattern was seen throughout the war, including in Boddenplatte. 

 

 Only when hastily trained, in 1944, to intercept Western Front bombers (at high altitudes where its handling was bad) do Luftwaffe pilots appear unable to use the FW-190A in turns.

Where are the speeds being quoted from and whether they are Indicated or True air speeds?  What is prolonged, dreadful and high speed when it comes to the Fw190, such handling tends to mean low limiting mach numbers.  Or it is to do with the fall off of roll rate with speed?  No one went to maximum dive speed in a bounce, the preference was to be fast enough disengagement was easy, the bigger the speed difference the harder the shot.

 

It would also be useful to post definitions of low speed, and high speed.  Humans can take up to about 6G sustained, individuals vary, often lower.  Then comes what a pilot thinks they can handle.  You appear to be saying the Fw190 pilots deployed flaps in combat, upping lift and drag.  It is known this was an IJAAF tactic, few to no reports of it as a Luftwaffe one.  The Fw190 stall came with little warning and the port wing dropping so much the aircraft almost inverted itself.  The Spitfire stall was usually well signalled.  That meant the Spitfire could be safely used closer to its stall.

Looking through the allied air combat evaluations of the Fw190 versus the Spitfire and P-51 the Spitfire XIV could still out turn the Fw190A, the earlier types did better.  The P-51 could also out turn the Fw190A.  The Fw 190 had excellent ailerons which were important in initiating a turn, however below about 215 mph IAS, the clipped Spitfire out-rolled it, and the P-51B and D out rolled it above 360 mph IAS. The 190's roll performance was very peaky, maxing out at about 255 IAS. Note that 266 IAS would be a normal
combat speed at 25,000'. (About 375 mph TAS)

 

Excess power at the given altitude enables sustained turns, otherwise you can expect to rapidly lose speed and altitude.  When it comes to combat aircraft enter it at a range of speeds, a slower aircraft usually has a turn advantage but more limited ability to set up a shot.  The Fw190A was a western front fighter from August 1941 to around September 1942 when it appeared in the east, it arrived in Tunisia in early 1943.  The combat in the west was far from exclusively low speed and turn fighting.  Spitfires were told to stay around maximum cruise, making it hard for the Luftwaffe to bounce them.  The RAF tried to saturate an area to give it the numbers.  Given the Luftwaffe usually had no reason to engage before the end of 1942, it looked for a good tactical opportunity or simply ignored the RAF.

 

Bodenplatte was the 1 January 1945 attack on allied airfields, everyone was at low level, not much chance of diving away.

 

The Red Air Force had problems supplying working radios to its aircraft, making it much safer to engage rather than hit, reform, hit again.

 

It is known the Fw190A engine was rapidly losing power at 20,000 feet, what is meant by bad handling and what is high altitudes?

 

On 17/03/2021 at 13:38, WrathofAtlantis said:

The P-47 also was an obsessive low speed turn fighter, judging from combat accounts, in Razorback form able to reverse a Me-109G in four 360s (but much less so as a Bubbletop) and was a near match to the FW-190: It was also rarely used in hit and run attacks, given it’s terrible climb rate, only marginally improved by the paddle-blade prop. 

 

Even the Merlin P-51 was often forced to perform as a turn fighter, using flaps and reduced throttle, which befuddled lower time Luftwaffe pilots who tended (wrongly) to keep power high, given their lower time experience. Because of an issue with its gun feed (3X the failure rate of P-47s), prolonged P-51 turn fights very often ended with just one inner turn gun working(!), this far worse in Bs but all the way to late Ds.

The reports I have seen on the P-47 note the superiority of performance above 20,000 feet and the general ability to catch up to diving German fighters.  What exactly caused a major decrease in turn radius when the bubbletop canopy was fitted.  It is known the change could cause rudder problems, a fin fillet kit was supplied in the second half of 1944.  Using quotes as evidence, Robert Johnson, P-47 pilot, paddle blade report the P-47 "stood on her tail and howled her way into the sky.  Never again did an Fw190 or Bf109 out climb me in a Thunderbolt."  The next combat report was how an Fw190 tried to out turn the P-47, it did not work.

 

Roger Freeman reports "in some instances" P-51B returned from combat with only one working gun and in early March 1944 the 34th Group had overcome the problem by fitting an electric ammunition booster from a B-26.

 

On 17/03/2021 at 13:38, WrathofAtlantis said:

 In general the US won the air war with superior pilot turn fighting knowledge, and this included Hellcat and Wildcat use against the Japanese (the Hellcat could extend its flaps horizontally, Japanese butterfly-style, but lowering angle was automatically spring controlled and very conservative,  so there was no pilot chosen angle setting: A unique set up...)

 

There is even some evidence the FM-2 Wildcat our-turned Model 52 Zeroes, so really the only Japanese types that could reliably out-turn US Navy types were Oscars and Ki-100s... Not the story one typically hears.

There is little evidence it was US turn based tactics used.  The Oscar was the Ki-43, the 1945 Ki-100 was the Ki-61 with radial engine, so does the Ki-61 have the turning ability?  The A6M5 was introduced to increase the A6M's diving speed as allied aircraft were evading by diving away.  The A6M was noted as rolling better to the left and major fall off in roll performance with speed. It had been optimised, like a lot of the pre war fighters, for fighting at speeds under 300 mph.  Allied pilots were advised to keep speeds high and avoid turning.

 

There are plenty of reports of Fw190 being used in the vertical in the west.

On 18/03/2021 at 02:11, WrathofAtlantis said:

The FW-190A was never widely used in hit and run tactics, and this here is six correlation from six sources across two theatres, including five separate global statements, not anecdotes.  The only WWII source for the FW-190A being used on the vertical plane, in combat, is Eric Brown, who was mostly a test pilot, and had two Wildcat kills on four engine types.

Hit and run is not the same as vertical.  The reports from the RAF pilots of being bounced from above are real enough, it is clear the Fw190 pilots felt more confident staying versus the Bf109 pilots whose aircraft were not as manoeuvreable, if the situation looked good enough.

On 18/03/2021 at 02:11, WrathofAtlantis said:

Capt Virgil K Meroney (9 kills, all on P-47): “If you are bounced from above you cannot out dive the enemy. Having learned that, I always chopped my throttle and turned into them.”

 

The “superiority” of hit and run is in large part a post war reconstruction. The reality of aces who used it successfully was often that they waited outside the furbal, and latched on to damaged stragglers exiting the combat area. They acted as sweepers in effect.

 

Hit and run was not as low risk as assumed, since it was very easily foiled by cutting power and turning, and it was definitely low reward except for pilots with exceptional eyesight. Even then, hit and run proponent Eric Hartmann was shot down 17 times, while chop-throttle turn fighting proponent Karhila was never hit in combat. Hartmann survived so many times because of the excellent protection of the Me-109, and it’s uniquely good crash landing characteristics, a unique 109 feature being that it never caught fire on crash landing. To give a comparison, in a P-51 taking to the parachute was mandatory because of the belly scoop, which meant he would have bailed 17 times...

Is the idea the pilot stayed with throttle reduced and turning, or did they then increase power?  Turning into an attack is a good tactic, it increases the closing rate and deflection angle, making it hard to obtain an accurate shot, it is a bad move to then stay slow.  Where is the evidence enough successful fighter pilots adopted staying out tactics, so much as to really skew analysis of air combat?  The classic bounce it usually the most deadly, once combat begins the trouble is the risk of not noticing an enemy.

 

Karhila, the Finnish pilot is credited with 32 kills, under a tenth that of Hartman, who is well known for closing to point blank range, hard to do when diving at a greater speed than the target.  Next is that the majority, to the claimed all, or Hartmann's shoot downs were as the result of hitting debris, given how close he attacked from.  Also it is known pre war the Finns taught deflection shooting, along with the USN, which helps turning tactics.  What exactly is the feature of the Bf109 so that it *never* caught fire in a crash landing, what is defined as a crash landing?

19 hours ago, WrathofAtlantis said:

A-Spitfires escorting bombers, with their short ranges, seems to be a rare thing. As far as 190 encounters are concerned, I cannot recall a case. Any examples of Spifires out turning FW-190As at sustained low speeds? In 25 years of researching this very topic for my book, I found none. The Spitfire did make reasonably fast turn times at high speeds in a broad turn, but with no mid-position flaps it could not slow down. A broad turn, even if fast, will usually not give a lead on a smaller radius. One pilot described turn fighting as “a race where the slowest won.”: It gives perspective...

Spitfire bomber escorts fought Fw190 on tens to pushing hundreds of times.  As an example 24 April to 10 May 1942, Bomber Command sent 244 day sorties, 166 attacked primary targets, another 13 other targets.  The Fighter Command War Diaries note how many were escorted and the Spitfire and Fw190 engagements that occurred.  Spitfires escorted the 17 August 1942 first USAAF heavy bomber mission as another example.  US spitfires escorted the 20 August mission.

 

The Spitfires were notable in their tactics in Europe were turning.  Again is the idea plenty of fighter pilots deployed their flaps in combat, and those flaps were able to deploy at speeds well above those at landing?  It is well known the IJAAF made the flaps strong enough to be used in combat situations.  Agreed turn fighting tends to go to the slower, provided no one else is around. 

 

What is the name of the book?

 

19 hours ago, WrathofAtlantis said:

B-I can only say this: Chopping the throttle, and keeping the throttle down, was a key part of success in WWII turn fighting, to the point the throttle was sometimes cut even before the merge. FW-190A and D pilot Eric Brunotte mentions never using maximum continuous power in combat, and even less stepping beyond the notch to use War Emergency Power!! This is why MW-50 was usually disabled in late War Luftwaffe fighters:

Erich Brunotte apparently did not become a fighter pilot until August 1944, before that it was units like KG172 and short range reconnaissance units.  Like many Luftwaffe pilots he was pushed into the fighter force late in the war.  And also late in the war the quality of German engines was declining, not good to push them hard.  It was also the case the Luftwaffe fighters generally tried to avoid allied fighters by that stage, rather than accept combat.  There were so many bombers to shoot down.

19 hours ago, WrathofAtlantis said:

And turn fighting itself, cut throttle or not, was an even more massive part of WWII tactics, it’s dominance increasing as experience was gained in later war years. I know Shaw pretended otherwise in his research, using the P-47 (of all things) as an example (because of its appearance I assume), but historical assumptions always need to be revised, and this one is over fifty years old... Appearances can be deceptive. There are physical differences between jets and props that explain this discrepancy.

Who is Shaw?  Essentially the claim is 50 years of research is incorrect, but when I run down reports I am finding they do not support the claim.

 

Jets do not accelerate or decellerate like propeller driven types.  Something that really hampered the Me262 night fighters.

Edited March 18, 2021 by Geoffrey Sinclair
correcting Ki43, 61 and 100 sentence

[EwenS]

The Japanese aircraft types being discussed here are in danger of becoming confused.

 

The Oscar was the radial engined Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakajima_Ki-43

 

The Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien, reporting name Tony, had an in-line engine. That aircraft when modified with a radial engine became the Ki-100 in 1945 but was never given an Allied reporting name.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawasaki_Ki-61

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawasaki_Ki-100

 

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

6 minutes ago, EwenS said:

The Japanese aircraft types being discussed here are in danger of becoming confused.

The Oscar was the radial engined Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa.

Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien, reporting name Tony, had an in-line engine. That aircraft when modified with a radial engine became the Ki-100 in 1945 but was never given an Allied reporting name

Yes, my apology, sentence now corrected, given this web site editor timeouts I now create messages locally then copy and occasionally mangle, point form notes when copying.

[dov]

Quote

Where are the speeds being quoted from and whether they are Indicated or True air speeds?  What is prolonged, dreadful and high speed when it comes to the Fw190, such handling tends to mean low limiting mach numbers.  Or it is to do with the fall off of roll rate with speed?  No one went to maximum dive speed in a bounce, the preference was to be fast enough disengagement was easy, the bigger the speed difference the harder the shot.

Speed of sound is defined by √κ*R*T that means that the speed of sound is variable by Temperature.

The true air speed divided by actual speed of sound is the Mach number, you look for.

So: The IAS or TAS may vary each day, that the same critical Mach number is noticed!

Got it?

[WrathofAtlantis]

6 hours ago, Geoffrey Sinclair said:

A-What is prolonged, dreadful and high speed when it comes to the Fw190, such handling tends to mean low limiting mach numbers.  Or it is to do with the fall off of roll rate with speed?  

 

B-It would also be useful to post definitions of low speed, and high speed.  Humans can take up to about 6G sustained, individuals vary, often lower.  Then comes what a pilot thinks they can handle.  

 

C-You appear to be saying the Fw190 pilots deployed flaps in combat, upping lift and drag.  It is known this was an IJAAF tactic, few to no reports of it as a Luftwaffe one.  The Fw190 stall came with little warning and the port wing dropping so much the aircraft almost inverted itself.  The Spitfire stall was usually well signalled.  That meant the Spitfire could be safely used closer to its stall.

D-Looking through the allied air combat evaluations of the Fw190 versus the Spitfire and P-51 the Spitfire XIV could...

 

E-Excess power at the given altitude enables sustained turns, otherwise you can expect to rapidly lose speed and altitude.  

 

F-The Red Air Force had problems supplying working radios to its aircraft.

 

 

 

G-Robert Johnson, P-47 pilot, paddle blade report the P-47 "stood on her tail and howled her way into the sky.  Never again did an Fw190 or Bf109 out climb me in a Thunderbolt."  The next combat report was how an Fw190 tried to out turn the P-47, it did not work.

 

H-Roger Freeman reports "in some instances" P-51B returned from combat with only one working gun and in early March 1944 the 34th Group had overcome the problem by fitting an electric ammunition booster from a B-26.

 

I-There is little evidence it was US turn based tactics used. Allied pilots were advised to keep speeds high and avoid turning.

 

J-There are plenty of reports of Fw190 being used in the vertical in the west.

Hit and run is not the same as vertical.  The reports from the RAF pilots of being bounced from above are real enough, it is clear the Fw190 pilots felt more confident staying versus the Bf109 pilots whose aircraft were not as manoeuvreable. 

 

K-Is the idea the pilot stayed with throttle reduced and turning, or did they then increase power?  Turning into an attack is a good tactic, it increases the closing rate and deflection angle, making it hard to obtain an accurate shot, it is a bad move to then stay slow. 

 

 

L-Where is the evidence enough successful fighter pilots adopted staying out tactics, so much as to really skew analysis of air combat?

 

M-

Karhila, the Finnish pilot is credited with 32 kills, under a tenth that of Hartman, who is well known for closing to point blank range.

 

N-

What is the name of the book?

 

O-

Who is Shaw? Essentially the claim is 50 years of research is incorrect, but when I run down reports I am finding they do not support the claim.

 

 

 

A-Bad FW-190A high speed handling: Red Fleet November 1943 article: “When diving at 40 degrees for 1500 m of height, the FW-190A will fall an extra 220 m after pulling up past nose level”

 

  That’s extraordinarily bad behaviour: It not only makes vertical maneuvers wide at all speeds above 250 mph, it also crushes the pilot with cross-wind deceleration, hence US reports saying “tendency to black out the pilot” ... This while not really maneuvering! This is a fundamental Anton characteristic, noted by Eric Brown as “tendency to kill speed by sinking”, yet E. Brown still said; Should be used vertically at high speeds in dive and zoom attacks!!!

 

B-Low speed is anything near 200 mph. The fact Karhila recommends 160 mph as the “optimal” turning speed for a Me-109G (with gondolas!!), this at severely reduced power, that alone shows there is a fundamental problem with our understanding of the basic physics of these types of aircraft. The problem is simply that prop power in these things is resisting the turn, through asymmetrical loading. Why? I don’t know, but for the book I will investigate real life prop load distribution in Germany, with a company I’ve been pointed to by a pilot.

 

C-Closterman mentions the FW-190A using flaps in the end notes of “Great Circus”. A FW-190A pilot mentionned in detail the use of flaps and the choice of 3 different chord of ailerons (visible in photos but never mentioned) which he supplemented by spacer hinges to stick them out a little: This allowed him to “catch” the wing drop and to turn with deflected ailerons “holding” the turn... He only used the FW-190A in turns at reduced power, and countered diving attacks head to head.

 

D-Air combat evaluations are almost always contradicted by actual combat reports. Everything from test pilots of the era must be viewed with suspicion, and contradicts itself. Front line pilot combat accounts are infinitely more consistent, and that is most of what I have looked at for 25 years.

 

E-No. See B.

 

F-Russian radios were deliberately one way from the flight leader down: Rall: “It was like fighting an apparatus: You shot the tip of the V and the rest milled about in confusion” This remained Soviet Tank doctrine to the 1980s!

 

G- Robert Johnson claimed 72” performance in an aircraft he last flew in March 1944: He himself first tested 150 octane fuel in June, and that fuel was nowhere near frontlines until August... In his very own June testing, climbs were still limited to 65”, this even WITH 150 fuel, and that limitation remained to the end of the War. He thus could not have been confused: It was demonstrably a lie from a painfully obvious blowhard, whose knowledge of the P-47’s turning ability was mediocre at best. He’s the only pilot I’ve seen claim a FW-190D over FOUR months before they appeared (April `44)... I wish this pathological liar was not brought up every time the name P-47 appears anywhere... There are OTHER sources...

 

H-Overall P-51D rates of mrbf (mean rounds between failures) remained half P-47 values (1200 to 2900) all the way to May 1945. I have the 8th AF study. Failures were tied to turning, (guns slowed when Gs were increased) and at least some partial jamming of some kind concerns 30-40% of all P-51 turning dogfights, conservatively.  I have a collection of 30 combat reports with them, most 1945...

 

I-That’s what they were told but that’s not what they did. Read Lundstrom’s The First Team and you will find US pilots severely criticizing Zero pilots for using hit and run and avoiding turns: “If they only chopped their throttle and turned with us, they could sit on our tail.” The Japanese were wasting the Zero’s potential by not turning, in US pilot’s eyes... This has been since confirmed by other historians: Zero doctrine early in the war was to NEVER turn, and the first hand evidence of this is overwhelming... The Japanese Army, which the Flying Tigers fought, remained with turn fighting, but the early Oscar Ki-43-I they faced had terrible structural issues that forced the use of springs in the control cables... It had, for that version, just ONE 7.7mm machinegun and ONE 12.7 mm gun that tended to explode or jam!: Wings weakened or broke off regularly... Hardly what I would call a formidable adversary...

 

K- In 25 years of research, I have not found a single case of fighter pilot testimonial claiming increased power improved the turn rate during a dogfight. The only exception was in the Boddenplatte “Dogfights” episode, and they actually VOICE OVER the old pilot’s face, precisely at the right moment to make him say he added power to his P-47, to out-turn a Me-109G on the deck... Then right back to his voice afterwards... Yes the P-47D Razorback did out-turn the Me-109G, the Luftwaffe`s own KG 200 tested it and admits so. But adding water-injection power improving the turn rate? Let’s just say, despite the neat voice-over trick, that I remain skeptical... (Check out that particular sleight of hand moment on youtube)

 

L-Hartmann describes stalking damaged aircrafts leaving the merge. It was his stock in trade. It reminded me of “loafing” by the net in hockey...

 

M-Hartman kill numbers are doubted by Russian researchers. Some go as low as 80, but I won’t go there. I don’t think comparing kills says anything, quite the contrary, extremes may be less representative. However test pilot Eric Brown having only 2 FW-200 kills is fair game, especially given his enormous influence.

 

N-It is years away, but a tentative title would be: “The most radically confused domain of human knowledge: WWII fighters and their tactics”

 

  Key to its content will be how the observations of WWII test pilots are so radically at odds with the observations of front line combat pilots, and how the arrival of jets stopped all serious prop fighter research. (We still rely on 1940s research) In 1989 the SETP did a test, with “modern” test pilots, of the four main US WWII fighters (F4U, P-51D, F6F, P-47D), using “modern” methods: They found they could barely reach 6 Gs for a split second in a true horizontal turn, this at maximum level METO speed, or near 300 mph if not more, 240-250 is claimed in the manual, probably because the manual values were arrived at by dive pull-outs, which unloads the prop... Of course, if you assume the prop load does not hurt the actual horizontal turn, and that doing dive pull-outs is the exact same thing (as is the current science), well then test pilots of the future will keep being surprised. To really prove something is wrong, a truly horizontal turn test with prop load distribution sensors will likely be needed. Until then, all we have is WWII pilots obsessively cutting their throttle in turns, and NEVER throttling back up. What picture does that suggest?

Edited March 18, 2021 by WrathofAtlantis
Typos

[dov]

Hallo

 

Here I want to draw a little more detail in your picture. The influence of the propeller in dynamics only:

 

The torque moment of such a strong engine with such a huge propeller causes because of the high ω Omega (rad/sec)

or in numbers (rotations per minute/π) and the high mass moment of inertia Θ (Deta) a very huge gyroscopic moment.

In all flight situations and all flight levels. In dynamic flight configurations you also must calculate the Coriolis torque.

 

a_c = 2* ω * v

 

ω = rate of turning in (rad/sec)

V= speed in (m/sec)

 

Only one force can change the current speed of a body in terms of magnitude or direction, because out of itself it "wants" to always move in a straight line. If you now want to go to the center on a painted straight line on a turntable, the movement only appears straight when viewed from the turntable, but curved from the solid ground outside the turntable. This second assessment by a stationary observer is crucial here. So in order to walk straight on the disc anyway, you need the force from the side that is necessary for every curved movement. If you are prepared for it, you can apply that force, much like bracing yourself against a strong crosswind. It seems to the walker that he has to use this force against something that would distract him. This something is called the Coriolis Force.

The missing knowledge of dynamic forces and torques is the evil.

 

Read: Aerobatics by Neil Williams and practice it.

 

The missing knowledge of flight dynamics is until present day the source of endless contradictory tails.

It is absolute in vain to discuss about it. All test pilots, also Eric Brown were prone to this knowledge!

All reports and testimony from fighter pilots are strong influenced by propaganda

and their own little world where they were engaged and risked or gave their life.

This knowledge is also absent on most holder of a private license too.

Only practice in aerobatics can give you a solid base of understanding.

 

The influence of the propeller in aerodynamics is much more complex. This is the big difference of behavior of any a/c with prop vs. jet engine.

 

Happy modelling

[ChocolateCrisps]

16 hours ago, WrathofAtlantis said:

D-Air combat evaluations are almost always contradicted by actual combat reports. Everything from test pilots of the era must be viewed with suspicion, and contradicts itself. Front line pilot combat accounts are infinitely more consistent, and that is most of what I have looked at for 25 years.

Could you expand a little more on this please? I've tended to find test reports far more useful than combat ones, so I was just wondering where the problems lie, and what the cause is? Thanks!