Just how many attacking aircraft did bomber crews actually shoot down ?

I approach this question knowing there is going to be so much opinion based on each one of us having some bias of not being in the mix of what it takes to do these jobs our flyers have done. I would say there are going to be many who make their claims based on honesty....the honesty one gets by realizing they are flying up there by the grace of God, and knowing if they are dishonest in their reports they have to return to the same dangers the next day to repeat their job. How many of us want to approach those conditions with less than honesty as your tool of survival. It disrespects at least a large number of them to automatically assume they are exaggerating a great deal every time as the original premise expresses. We cannot make a realistic blanket statement of opinion that so shames the service and numbers that a person or group of person may express. It is better if you do enough study of the issue to get past opinion and into the arena of understanding what they went through and how estimates of such things are arrived at. This is a more desirable solution to this question. In other words the original poster needs to study a great deal and come to a conclusion of his own.

 

if anyones interested in BC vs LW night fighter force may I recommend the two volumes by Dr. Theo Boiten and Rod McKenzie Nachtjagd War Diaries, the most authoratative volumes yet written and a complete re-do including LW vs the Soviets on the almnost unknown Ost front operations included in form by 2015 hopefully.

 

Were most of the kills achieved with computer assisted aim from turrets?... Were all turret guns computer assisted?...What was involved when a turret fired- did gunner have to input info into computer or was there a HUD or some kind of display to help gunner?...Were waist gunners as successful as the turret guns?...Not sure if this is a highjack or relevant to thread. Please move if a problem.

 

I'm virtually certain they were not. Computer assited aim is I believe a late war development at best. Indeed I think I've seen the claim that it was first installed on B-29's. See:
Central Station Fire Control or Remote Control Turret System as used in the B-29, A-26 and the B-50
b-29 turret computer - Google Search

I do have vague memories of reading something about a German computer controlled bomber gun sight though.

No.

The pictures and info in the links above may help some. HUD's are about 30 years out from the end of WWII though I think.

I suspect not. As one site mentioned the waiste gunners are exposed to very cold air flows. They also usually had only a single gun. Turret gunners on the otherhand had the turet to protect them (at least somewhat) from the cold. They also had less obscuring their vission and usually almost a whole hemisphere they could shoot into. They also often had twin guns as well.

 

With respect (utmost), I have a question thats been bugging me for a long time and I am happy to be 'shot down' if my entire premise is wrong... but I will set this 'idea' out as simply as I can........ I do not claim any expertise at all!
Here it is; given the range of the WW II bombers and the very real need to provide cover against enemy fighters, given the payload available to (for example) a Lancaster bomber 21,000 lbs; would it not have been possible to convert , say, one in twenty heavy bombers into flying 'flak platforms'...ie armour the hell out of them and arm them with a 'shed-load' of .50 cal, 20mm and 37mm cannons.......... to fly with the group but to batter the hell out of any flying threat...... to be a deterrent merely by their presence........ I can anticipate some of the replies and I welcome them, but I still think this idea had operational possabilities and merit.
Qurious

 

if interested in the US/Luftwaffe night fighters may I suggest re-reading through the old archived link in aircraft on this site that Ulrich started and I have replied with multiple findings from the US 422nd and 425th nfs in the ETO. Research over the last 10 years reveals just how bad overclaiming has been for the Us as well as the Luftwaffe's night time airborne units.

as to the above the BC and the US heavy bombers and crews did do conversion trials with heavier mg/cannon fittings though the turning/radius works did not succeed in the estimations given, can you imagine a hand held 2cm weapon trying to find and locate a Me 262 plowing through a US or British heavy bomber formation ? it just did not work effectively......in reality. And due to this fact earlier in thew ar - 1943 BC and US bomber formations closed ranks for obvious reasons to let fly with their .303's and .50 cals at the LW, it worked the German machines were not armored that well to withstand the power of the Allied mg's at such a clsoe range not even the heavier laden Fw 190A-8/R2's of the three LW Sturmgruppen....

 

The AAF actually tried that idea with the YB-40 and YB-41. The problem was that the armoured and heavily gunned YB-40 was at a severe weight disadvantage once the normal bombers had dropped their loads and could not keep up with the formation after the target. The YB-40 program was dropped as a failure after mission testing and the YB-41 was cancelled.

 

all alone and no protection interesting as well in some LW after mission reports that some inexperienced fighter pilots claimed in late 43, the US set up heavy bomber ambushes with flight's of all YB 40's

 

Most turrets used the Mk 9 reflector sight or the K-4 Computing sight. The K-4 was used in the Sperry ball turret. The word 'computing' is a relative term and not of the context that one would think of today. The gunner had a foot pedal to bracket the target and thus set the range. The sight had a gyro that would predict lead based on the range input and turret movement tracking the target. A very rudimentary "computing" sight.

The waist guns had the disadvantage of a single gun instead of the twin guns in the turrets. However, it was probably easier to track a target with the flexible waist gun than with a turret. Turret movement had one control for rotation and another control for azimuth (elevation). Ever try to draw on an Etch-A-Sketch?

The attached document is a 2nd Air Division request to remove the ball turrets from B-24s. The tables in the document on number of enemy aircraft encounters and claims by gun position had the waist guns basically on par with the nose and top turrets, while the tail gun position was clearly the most effective and the ball turret lagged far behind.

View attachment 26992

 

and the tail position the most dangerous due to Luftwaffe fighter attacks from the rear as normality in July of 1944 till wars end .......

 

Ok, Ok, I know, I know... a bit of a sideways jaunt - but fun to watch!

Don't Kill Your Friends (1943 WW2 Documentary Film)
(Good descriptor at its proper Youtube site.)

[video=youtube;0ikDd1gTuoE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ikDd1gTuoE[/video]

 

Back on task: http://www.swapey.com/index.aspx

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress Computing Gunsight K-13

[video=youtube;IZ13rNe1yGQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ13rNe1yGQ[/video]

 

Amazing reply!. thank you soo much, I had no idea of YB 40 or YB 41 programme existed....though it still occurs that the ,heavy, aircraft could have shot at least a tonne of arnaments into the general target areas..........thereby being lighter for the retirn trip............did they need to be slower?> besides the payload being exchanged for armour/firepower, the entire bomb bay could be stripped, I believe that flying dominance could have been altered with some forward thinking.....of course I recognise that hindsight is specious at best. I wasnt there, and even if I was, I would have been .,theres not to reason why... and probably very very scared

 

The fighter threat did not end at the target, so they YB-40 couldn't dump ordnance. The formation was subject to fighter attack until they cleared the occupied countries. The YB-40 carried a chin turret and and additional dorsal turret, neither of which the B-17Fs they were accompaning had. The weight and drag of the additional turrets was unchangable. The chin turret was retained on the B-17G which was a positive outcome of the YB-40 project.

 

Galland thought they (Flying Fortresses with extra guns) were ineffective.

Edited 15 Sept

I found Galland`s quote on the YB40 (page 183 of his Autobiography : First and Last), "Their successes were insignificant".

 

Whilst rereading First & Last (to find the quote for the above post) I found this paragraph on page 179 concerning the first Schweinfurt Regensburg raid by B17s of the Eighth AAF :

......315 (B17s) reached the target area, 60 Flying Fortresses were shot down and over 100 damaged. For the first time the losses were 16 percent of the airborne force and 19 percent of the actual raiding force..........About 300 fighter aircraft took part (in the battle)........The success cost us 25 aircraft, not the 228 fighters as claimed by the American communique.

Of interest here is the claim at the time that 228 fighters had been shot down, most, one assumes, by the bombers defensive armament because for the most part this raid was unescorted, yet the actual number shot down was 25. In fact Wikipedia says that the escorting fighters claimed 22 fighters and the bomber crews 288. Whatever the actual claims at the time overclaiming was huge, up to 1000% in fact.
Now 25 fighters shot down is still a significant number but this was for one of the longest unescorted raids of the war so the number of attacking fighters shot down by the bombers should theoretically be higher than for nearly all other raids ? One assumes that the number of night fighters shot down by the RAF`s night bombers would have been far lower, if I find any more information on this I will post it.

 

actually the numvber was closer to 290 LW fighters claimed by no matter with deep penetrations by US bombers and only P-47's escort part of the way it was perfect taktics to allow the Jugs to turn away back to england and then attack at will for this August operation by the October 43 operations were no better from the 10th onward from Münster to Schweinfurt again with claims of 186 Lw fighters downed and in reality 38 were lost not all by return fire of heavy US bombers.

knowing the insanity of being escorted alone ( no US fighters on escort ) and having German fighters hit you from all angles one easily sees why US bomber gunners made the claims they did

 

"One of our King Tigers could take five of your Shermans, but you always had six of them."

Off topic I know, but not if they were Firefly Shermans !