Warbird Information Exchange

If the premise of removing turrets was true, then the B-17D would have been a far greater success in combat than it was.

When Boeing engineers went from the B-17D to the E model, they added power turrets, a larger fuselage and tail, yet the top speed remained the same: 318 mph.

I remember watching a color documentary on a Lancaster mission where that particular squadron up-gunned the the tail turret from the stock .303 to the Browning .50 for the increased hitting power.

For a night bomber, operating in loose formation in a game of stealth with German night fighters, the trade off may have been worth it, but for daylight bombers, protection was paramount.

IIRC, some Fortresses by 1945 were only carrying one waist gunner to save weight.

Regarding B-29's in Korea, it's hardly a fare argument to compare a fire control system designed in early 1942 (and who's lineage stretches all the way back to WW1) to an aircraft like the Mig-15 who's capabilities could hardly be imagined when the Superfort was born.

While the GE turrets and fire control system were the BEST of it's day and far superior to any other system out there, they were hardly infallible. You have to keep in mind that the computers were not instantaneous (the manuals actually say they take "a second or so" to compute the proper deflection), and there is also a human error factor involved as well as the system required a constant input from the gunner (direction, range and rate). When you take into account the kind of closure speeds our guys were facing with the Migs, you'll find yourself in situations were the computers (and/or gunners) literally couldn't react fast enough, or the computer's limitations were simply exceeded.

But that is not to say the system was ineffective, because it was when pitted against the aircraft of it's day (WWII.) The most poignant example of this that always sticks out in my mind was the final mission of Maj Tom Krause's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" from the 498th BG. Below is a portion from "Saga of the Superfortess" by Steve Birdsall:

"Leading the third element of a tight formation of nine planes on the run from Mount Fuji to Tokyo, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was singled out. A minute before bombs away a fighter raced in, head on and slightly high, with it's gun winking. His fire blew the top blister away, probably killing the CFC gunner. The fighter kept coming, and it's wing tore the B-29 open like a knife from the nose to the leading edge of the wing, killing or wounding the pilot, engineer, and radio operator. The three foot wide gash spewed a great sheet of brilliant flame, and parts and equipment were flying out of the stricken B-29. For thirty seconds she held formation before dropping out, losing speed and altitude so quickly that the other B-29's could not slow down enough.

Lt Philip Webster in "Pocahontas" left the formation, turning back to intercept the fighters and cover the crippled bomber. The fighters came from every direction. About a minute after the first mortal attack, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was reportedly rammed again from the right, which smashed away a engine and part of the wing. The B-29 was at twenty-eight thousand feet and going down quickly when another reported ramming occurred. The Superfort still refused to die - it went into a spin, recovered, and took up a parallel course below the rest of the squadron, but thirty fighters were still after her. Finally, about seven minutes after the first attack, she went out of control and plummeted straight down. There were no chutes, and minutes later a column of smoke rose from the ground a few miles northwest of Tokyo Bay. Other planes confirmed that at least nine fighters were shot down by Krause's crew."
(note: other sources claim three crewmen did bail out and survive the crash)

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~Trevor McIntyre
http://www.TrevorMcIntyre.com

The point remains that the reality was that the B-29s in Korea were defended by an essentially outclassed system; while I'm not impugning the design or quality of the turret and fire control system, it wasn't, as you agree, up to the job of preventing the MiGs getting through to the B-29s. There wasn't a better turret or bomber self-defence system coming to replace it either - fighter defence and withdrawal were the options.

The other references made in this thread to post-war turrets relate to theoretical or wargame scenarios for the most part, a highly unreliable source of data on efficacy. It's one thing to point out what had what kind of gear; it's another to see if it was effective at the job, and another again to see what the real alternatives might be.

Not sure what SaxMan's point re- the B17D is - engine power and growth tended to be countered by military load growth throughout aviation. Relevent here is the development and use of armour glass, aircraft armour and self-sealing fuel tanks, all developments learned the hard way in the early days of W.W.II; the passive defence counterpart of the active defence of turrets (or speed). And it all had weight / drag penalties.

The Lancaster and other RAF heavies were being 'up-gunned' officially as the war progressed, once the move from the British 'standard' .303 ammunition became viable. The Rose turret with twin .50s and radar gun laying for cloud and at night were being introduced very late in the war - but by then the best Luftwaffe crews and fighters were gone. The Canadian-built Lancasters were fitted with Martin mid-uppers (lower profile- see the CWH example) as standard, as well.

More interesting was the unofficial fitting of a single .50 in the ventral position 'hole' by some Canadian Lancaster and Halifax crews. (Rather like the ventral position in Ol 927 recreated by our own Gary A.) An alert crewman in that position offerd virtually no drag, little weight penalty and the best observation point for anti-nightfighter lookout. Sadly they were removed to put in H2S radar, increasing the losses by an unknown amount.

Those addicted to the box formations of heavies might like to recall the Mosquito was used for long-range daylight bombing, mainly tactical, rather than strategic, but that was due to numbers available. As Ryan's spotted, the issue wasn't that the Mozzie wasn't good enough (or better than the complex, expensive heavies) but that producing more wasn't possible - likewise the success of mass-producing the B-24 - the most produced W.W.II US type - meant you had a lot of B-24s to use, whether they were the best option or not. (Note I'm not suggesting the Mozzie was a perfect alternative - but it was as perfect an alternative as the RAF and USAAF's heavies.)

Which neatly brings us back to the B-29s in Korea. You fight the battles you have with the weapons you've got. Sometimes they're fit for the job, sometimes they aren't. Performance shortfalls are made good by blood, or you lose the battle.

Just some thoughts.

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

One more thing about the Korean war B-29s, the cyclic rate for the .50s was increased from around 500 rpm to 800 rpm to compensate for the jets, which caused problems for the armorers.

A very nice resource for the development and demise of aircraft turrets, lots of pics and diagrams is found bellow. I like Pictures!!! Including pic of 20mm experimental in a Lanc, I had never seen that one before.

http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com ... nners.html

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Aviation Illustration Website
http://shepartstudio.com/illustration/

Very cool site.

Thanks!!

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S.

I especially liked some of the training rigs shown. The machine gun BB range looked pretty cool, wonder what kind of targets they shot at? That would be fun to have off in the back corner at an airshow. Plunk down your $$'s and blast away at aerial targets just like a waist gunner!

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Aviation Illustration Website
http://shepartstudio.com/illustration/

Sorry JDK, I guess what I was trying to explain was that if the premise of the thread was correct in that being able to fly higher and carry more bombs was more important than defensive armament, then the USAAF would have never progressed beyond the B-17D model. Clearly this was a faulty premise, at least for daylight raiding, as the Ds suffered in combat from lack of defensive armament.

The part about the B-17E was that you could add guns and defensive armament without affecting performance if you had a good design...and the 17 would certainly qualify as a good design.

It was a very pivotal point in aircraft development. The B-17 WAS designed at a time when many of the world's frontline fighters were still biplanes. But it was quite naive to think that fighters wouldn't catch up with speed and altitude. Being a six year old design when we entered the war, many things had changed dramatically in fighter capability. Just to fly higher and faster did make the fighters work harder, but it made the bomber crews work a lot harder too, with the altitude making the bombing less and less effective. German flak was rather effective at medium altitudes, and low altitude strikes with 4-engined aircraft, as shown at Ploesti, could be rather costly, devastating, but costly. The Mosquito hit a crack in the defenses, but if more emphasis had been thrown in that direction, I'm sure that the defense net would have come up with a stouter defense to blunt that attack as well.

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Aviation Illustration Website
http://shepartstudio.com/illustration/

I think I get it now.

Certainly the B-17 Flying Fortress was a sound design, and named in advance of its real armament, as we know! However the RAF decided it wasn't good enough for European continental ops even using height, and felt it was under- armed and armoured - which, at that stage, it was. What the 8th AF later brought was a tougher aircraft. You raise a good point that altitude was considered, pre-war a defensive asset, and on occasion in wartime, mainly for solo aircraft. But it wasn't normally as good a defence as speed.

http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/we ... rvice.html


Note that the B-17C had no turrets (or their weight) but single flexibly mounted machine guns. Had the 8th AF deployed C models over Europe, in, say, 42, their gun-defences would've been inadequate even with larger box formations against 109Fs. So one can conclude the turret was an asset if you were using a four engine heavy, such as the B-17.

As it should, the discussion highlights that every enhanced asset has a trade off of other assets in a design. Speed, or height, or armour or armament, or load - all affect the others.

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

Good point, but there was a belief, 'proven' late in 1918 and core to Air Force doctrine (Billy Mitchell and Trenchard) that the Bomber was paramount - and that 'the bomber would always get through'. Wargames were 'fixed' to 'prove' that on both sides of the Atlantic, pre-war but the reality was different.

Maybe; like most of this discussion, it's hard to 'prove' any hypothetical alternative scenario/s. However we do know that the Germans found the Mosquito interdictions an issue, and right up to Hitler and Goering efforts were made to come up with counters to it. But it's reasonable to suggest that effort would've been greater had that threat been greater.

Good discussion!

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com