What was the total confirm kills for the 8th Air force gunners in WW2
Thx

there is no total confirmed......maybe I should rephrase and say am not sure if a total tally has come to light. Often many bomber crews were shooting at the same LW a/c and yet still each given a kill.

suppose I could spend the next 3 months searching every 8th and 15th AF bomber unit...........

COOL!!! Thanks for the offer, Erich..... let us know how it turns out!


-whatever

-Lou

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sure......in about 25 years

What iam trying to get at is was having all the machine guns worth it

a big yes to that, the LW had to fly through it from one direction or the other and from the sides. Lets just say the Lw vets I have met had much respect for the long range .50

Would you think it would be a high score

I can say for 1943 yes for certain, several of the August through winter-December 43 aerial battles for gunners claimed upwards of 135-200 LW a/c on some engagements

this article say 300 pilots a month (more Planes, but that was not a problem)
http://freepages.military.rootsweb.c...erspective.htm
link doesn't want to work, look up German fighter losses to allied bombers on google, about 3-4 down from top.

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Hey Erich, while you are doing all the research I would be curious how many B-17/ B-24 gunners shot each other down. A bunch of kids with machine guns firing away at a small LW aircraft had to have hit alot of bombers in the really large formations. I know they dropped bombs on each other.

Oh by the way I don't have 25 years, how about next week ?

They did try those B-17's and B-24's with extra turrets and ammo but they were failures. I don't recall their B numbers though.

Anouther thought was the B-29 had lots of guns but I read LeMay had them all stripped except for the tail gunner. After the war most bombers only had tail armament in them.

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American bombers seemed to (eventually) be fitted out exclusively with .50 cal machine guns, while the British bombers, according to the limited infomation I have at hand, seemed to stick with the .303. What were the relative strengths/weaknesses of the different armaments?

We appreciate your input, Erich - this is interesting stuff.

-whatever

-Lou

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5 out of 4 people have difficulty with fractions.

Late in the war some British heavy bombers had .50 cal in the tail position.
I believe I read that in the late 1930's the British did a study on the merits of a .303 round vs a .50 round and they liked the .303. Of course aircraft of the 1930's were usually wood and fabric. I think the range of the .303 was longer too. Anouther thing to keep in mind is that on the Halifax the tail gun and mid upper turret had four .303 machine guns and the Lancaster had four .303 guns in back so in therory it is twice as much lead going out to the enemy aircraft as two .50 machine guns in American heavy bombers.

The Germans and Japanese tended to use cannons in their heavy aircraft.
The Emily Flying boat was a dangerous plane to attack.

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I was trying to find more information about this and found some good stories about RAF bomber gunners at this site.

Also the bombers I was thinking of were the YB-40 and the YB-41

Anouther thought on the subject would be that if the war continued the B-36 had eight turrets with twin 20mm cannon so the Americans thought the extra guns were worth it.

NLS - Air Gunner Stories

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The problem with the .303 Browning machine gun it did not have the hitting power , as the RAF found out in the Battle of Britain
That why they went over to the 20mm cannon
From what i read about the RAF bomber command the the problem was that the German cannon night fighters could attack the bombers out side the killing zone of .0303 machine guns

remember too that the LW first used the mg 15 and 17 before they upscaled to a .50 look a like in the mg 131 and of course the Mg 151 later MG 151/20 as a standard fit from the bomber turrets a little much though being hand held. the LW of course found out the 2cm very effective in hitting bombers, a little wary for hitting a nimble fighter but still very very effective.

LW knew full well about those 4 .303's bagpipes as the Schräge Musik installation was to later fill the bill for effective under the belly devastation.

I still find it hard to understand that even during the latter part of the war, Allied 4-engine bomber crews still could not figure what was hitting them from underneath though it was the same for crewmen who witnessed first hand this attack on their black B-24's of the US 2461st bg in late 44-45