B-52 attrition rates?

Andrew Chaplin wrote:

BUFDRVR wrote:

ArtKramr wrote:

Knowing nothing about the weapons in use then,what did they throw up at you
at
300' Were they shoulder fired?

I'd imagine there were some MANPADs, however the only visable damage from the
low level sorties were holes from AAA.

GRAIL, the first effective Soviet ManPADS, did not reach the field
until about '73 as U.S. forces were clearing out of Viet Nam.

SA-7s were used in 1972 during the Easter offensive, and drove the slow FACs, Spads
and gunships to altitudes that made them much less effective.

I guess you were too fast and too low for 88's
or similiar artillery.

Once again, it depends. Usually those higher calibre AAA pieces can only be
fired from a minimum elevation and if your low enough it simply becomes a
problem of being able to lower the muzzle enough.

ADA of heavy calibre such as the FlAK 88 was passé by the time the NVA
was pinging away at the B-52. The radar/fuze/gun combinations like
Skysweeper, the Soviet 100mm and the German 88 just hadn't kept up
with a gunnery problem that was jet- rather than prop-driven.

Whil AAA guns firing on a BUFF at high altitude had an extremely low pK, they
(almost certainly 100 or 130mm; the 85mm would be way out of its envelope at the
heights the Buffs were flying, above 30,000 feet) still managed to cause damage to
at least one BUFF during LB II.

Missiles
could provide the required single-engagement probability of a kill.
The comparative precision of B-52 strikes and the selectivity of their
direction meant that area missile systems like GUIDELINE and GOA were
required -- the bombers were just too likely to be flying in airspace
that guns could not cover or were not covering.

CAS and BAI were different. The point nature of the defended assets
meant that they could be defended effectively with proximity-fuzed
guns such as S-60 and ZSU 57-2, and contact-fuzed or API-T-firing guns
like the ZSU, ZPU and ZU guns.

Despite numerous accounts by Vietnam aircrew who thought they were being targetted
by prox. fused shells (or time shells on the 57mm), there wasn't any prox. fused
ammo for the Soviet guns then, and unless some other country is making them for
that ammo there still isn't. I suspect it was well beyond Soviet electronics
production capacity to turn out the number of fuses (hundreds of thousands if not
millions) required of the necessary quality, just to throw it away after a single
use. A big SAM is a different matter, essentially a silver bullet, and a prox.
fuse is well worth the cost and is subject to a much more benign environment as
well.

Besides, at the time it may well have been beyond their capability to make one that
small; at the end of WW2 the smallest prox. fuse round was for the US 3"/50. In
the '50s or maybe early '60s I think Bofors had made one for _their_ 57mm. By the
early 1970s or so Bofors had managed to make one for the 40mm/L70, that was small
enough that it provided a useful increase in lethality (along with improvements to
the shell itself - the rounds were pre-fragmented, improving the fragment pattern
density and size).

Aside from reliability, the lethality issue is key -- 57mm guns like the S-60 and
the ZSU-57-2 used contact fused shells with a self-destruct fuse, because it made
no sense to use time fuses on them. Using a time fuse would have slowed down the
rate of fire (owing to the time required to set the fuse) and decreased the
explosive load (because the fuse would take up more space, in the shell, displacing
explosive) resulting in a _decrease _ rather than increase in lethality. Indeed
most manpads like the SA-7 only have point detonating and graze fuses, because
their warheads are so small that prox. fuses aren't considered worth the extra cost
and complexity. As the predicted pH of the missile rises, it's tempting to forego
prox. fuses; after all, if you can theoretically guarantee a direct hit, why use a
prox. fuse with a bigger warhead when you can use a smaller warhead inside (or in
direct contact with) the target, and put the weight saved to use improving the
missile performance or the guidance, or else make the whole thing smaller and
lighter? This is the idea behind the design of "hittiles" such as Rapier.
Unfortunately, Rapier like most missiles of its generation, proved to be much more
of a "_miss_ile" than a "_hit_tile", but missile capabilities have improved
considerably since then.

To a certain extent the same holds true with prox. fuses. Until electronic
miniaturization can make the fuse small enough, it makes no sense to use a prox.
fuse that will displace explosive/fragments, especially if the lethal volume of the
shell is small in size in the first place. That's why small caliber weapons (small
referenced to a particular era) don't use prox. fuses; it just isn't worth it. I
think they may have Prox. fuses for the 35mm Oerlikon now but don't remember for
sure, and FAIK 30mm rounds like Goalkeeper could use them as well. But AFAIK it's
still not cost-effective to do so, at least given the intended target set.

Guy