Boeing Niner Zero Niner AwwwYEAH!

wrote in message

Please, no one called the bombing a complete failure.

Not on this group. Sorry if I made it sound like you suggested that. In
other forums, the air campaign has been likened to genocide against the
Germans/Japanese and called a complete failure.

The air campaign did not, as you say, cause the Germans to give up, but it
surely seemed like a good idea at the time (even though the British survived
the Battle of Britain.)

What also was a failure was the fanciful idea that bombers could
protect themselves against intercepters.

Well, they did a pretty good job. The ability to knock an interceptor out
of its pursuit curve saved countless airmen. For an interceptor to strike
it had to fly a predictable path and if a gunner made the guy flinch, or
pull out, or the gunner's bullets occupied the same space in the curve as
the intercepter, the plane was effectively defended. It forced the Luftwaffe
to use head-on attacks which made them equally vulnerable and reduced the
time with which they could fire. 'Course, that created a whole host of
problems such as incoming bullets tearing the the length of the fuselage,
etc.

Anecdote: My grandfather's crew came in over Sampigny, France struggling to
hold altitude with three engines knocked out by flak over Schweinfurt. At
about 250' AGL they flew over a Luftwaffe airfield that wasn't on their map,
and, as the pilot wrote, Jerry was sending up every odd plane and hanger
queen that had for an easy kill. Fortunately, the Germans were apparently
so eager to get them that the fighters didn't get up their combat energy and
attacked low and slow, and the bomber crew knocked down an unusual number of
varied aircraft. The tailgunner was credited with a Ju88, my grandfather a
109 and the pilot wrote that they had about half a dozen 110s circling for
them, and, according to the bombardier, and bullets from a FW-190 on a
head-on with its cowl and a piston head shot away tore through them like a
bull in a china cabinet before he passed underneath inverted. The
tailgunner saw that one exit and none of them could figure out how that
pilot didn't auger, being inverted at maybe 150 feet AGL. (After they
crashed and exited the plane, Bye wrote, the 190 came around and rather than
strafing as they expected, executed a precise eight-point roll over them.)

According to pilot Ray Bye, they pulled up to avoid some power lines and the
bomber stalled out and crashed into a ditch, on fire but with no loss of
life. A cannon round from a 109 exploded in front of my grandfather's
temple, but he was in luck that day because a gunner from the crew of Wabbit
Twacks, having competed their 25th mission, gave him an armored RAF crew
helmet that morning when the crews loaded up for Schweinfurt. He was
banging away at the 109 when a "house, and then a barn, flew between them,
and the airplanes crashed within a couple hundred yards of each other." The
interesting thing about that is that the 109 had finished firing and was
merely flying alongside. My grandfather could see his tracers bouncing off
the fuselage below the cockpit, and the canopy had been shot away because he
could see a stocking tied around the pilot's neck trailing him. I believe
the German thought that the B-17 was surrendering when he was hit. He ended
up in a hospital in France next to another 96th crewman who reported later
that the guy survived a .50 round through his lung! (Ray, the pilot, heard
through a French farmer in 1990 or so that one of the Luftwaffe pilots had
visisted the crash site and wanted to contact the American pilot, but before
they could meet in France, Ray died.)

Hell of a war story, huh? I've heard it from my grandfather, the pilot, the
tailgunner and the bombardier and they all have equally dramatic
perspectives.

In any case, had it not been for the guns in the bomber, they'd have been
dead before they hit the ground.

-c

wrote:

What also was a failure was the fanciful idea that bombers could
protect themselves against intercepters.

While not denying your point about the heavy losses suffered by bombers,
I have heard it asserted on various History Channel and Discovery Wings
documentaries that B-17 gunners actually shot down more Luftwaffe
fighters than escort fighters did.

"TTA Cherokee Driver" wrote in message

I have heard it asserted on various History Channel and Discovery Wings
documentaries that B-17 gunners actually shot down more Luftwaffe
fighters than escort fighters did.

This has been debated since the war. My grandfather said that the biggest
problem was, whenever an interceptor came through a formation and went down
in flames, there were might have been ten guys shooting at it and all of
them claimed it as their kill when they debriefed after a mission. By
contrast, when a fighter pilot won a dogfight it was obvious who had scored
the victory.

My grandfather's tailgunner told me "your pappy got two," and I had never
heard him claim a single plane. When I was old enough, I guess, he told me
that everybody had been shooting at the first, but that he was the only one
shooting at the second so he "guessed" it must have been his, but it was one
thing he didn't talk much about other than describing his tracers bouncing
off the armor of the enemy airplane right below the pilot, who had pulled
his fighter alongside the bomber as if in formation.

-c