another question if I may : any particular reason the D-day striping was still kept on the Tempest in the fall of 44 and not removed/painted over ??

E ~ and for your guys eyes only as I have not printed this anywhere else as of yet ............... :

Hi Erich...I have my trusty log-book in front of me and here are the contacts that I personally had with the 262

Oct 1st. '44...our squadron had just moved from outside Antwerp to a grass field at Grave Landing Strip...in the bend of the Maas river in Holland. The field was shelled that day by long range guns....during the afternoon a 262 dropped anti-personnel bombs on the field....we nicknamed them 'Squirts'...one of our pilots was hit in the calf by a piece of shrapnel....he was standing with me and we both dived under a truck, but he was a little slow....P/O Freddy Mossing RCAF...he recovered in a couple of weeks , nothing serious.

Oct 4th. '44...we were patrolling Nijmegen-Arnhem area and I fired at a 262...no hits, the 262 broke off and did not drop any bombs on the bridge at Nijmegen. By the way....I was flying Tempest JJ-W, a mark V Tempest.

Oct 7th. '44...squadron moved to Voekel Airdrome, 122Wing.

Oct 29th. '44....I saw a 262 on a scramble to Osnabruck area, was unable to make contact

Nov.2nd. '44...while on patrol at 12,000ft we intercepted two Me 262's....I was unable to get off a shot, too fast....however, our squadron damaged three 262's and one was claimed shot down by our squadron leader.

That's the extent of my contacts with this a/c. and on Nov 28th my tour of duty ended and I eventually went back to England and then was returned to Canada by sea on Feb 8, 1945.

This any use Erich?

'fraid this is the best quality I could get without too much photoshopping.
hope I've got the right clip

Cheers,
Adam.

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It's only the Internet.

many thanks Adam, yes tried to enlarge and it is a bit fuzzy but this is great, appreciate your efforts on this. more odd ball questions now gents/ladies.

Does the codes seem to be in yellow besides the prop ? and the narrow tailband in yellow or ??

E ~

Tikial

I'll give the Jug more guns, but when did 12,7mm become bigger than 20mm??

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'We march. The enemy is retreating in transport. We follow on foot.' Lt.Neil McCallum 5/7 Gordons 19th November 1942

The U.S. policy was to use as many .50 cal guns as they could fit in. It fit with their way of doing things. Find a good design and ramp up production to get as many as possible available. The British and others that used a light rifle round in their earlier models, had to make a leap forward. Effective 20mm cannon were not perfected until the last few years of the war. The .50 cal was still effective at the end, even though it was not the best weapon. They did adopt the 20mm, but not in any numbers. Had the war lasted, I am sure that U.S. aircraft would have been replaced with models that did have cannon.

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Lord, let me be the person my dog thinks I am.

Yea, see the B-25 and A-26.




Don't forget the 6 x .50s in the wings.

Or the B-25H for that matter

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don't think the .50 needed replacing it did quite well on the T-bolt and Stang especially on the deadly ground attack missions. have a friend who flew Jugs and he had the outboard .50's removed to give him a better edge in flight with the LW and he still ripped up the ground targets big time.

if you have ever seen (and most of you have) the 1945 gun cams- spring of German A/F's getting raked you know what I am talking about, and as we were not having to hunt down heavy LW bombers the heavier cannon could be kept of our crafts.

E ~

If you look at the timeline, it was less than a year after the war that the development contract was let for the AGU-61 which is the basis for the 20mm and other cannon used today. If the war was not winding down, it is likely that development would have started earlier and greatly accelerated to production. Very few of the WWII guns are still in use, but the M2 .50 cal is still an effective wepaon in many applications. I can remember in 1972, pulling the cosmoline from a batch of M2s from WWII that my unit was replacing its M60s with. I had to go a long ways to attend an armorer class on how to work on them.

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Lord, let me be the person my dog thinks I am.

Erich

Late-'44/early '45 RAF fighter colours were generally Sky Blue codes and fuselage band......

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

It took a long time to develop new machine guns to the point when they were ready for production, and I don't think that this could have been accelerated much. The USA had spent so little on developing MGs and cannon before the war that they had no experts available after the death of John Browning: their attempts to develop new aircraft guns during WW2 all ended in failure.

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Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website

Martin :

thanks, wouldn't the prop of the Tempest V be the same color as the fuselage band....a cream colour possibly ?... film sequence of JJ-W

E ~

Hi Erich,
Yes the Prop boss is the same colour as the Sky band on the fuselage.
a very light green.

Matt

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light green you say ? more of a dirty cream or am I even close ? can you show a light green colour here as I have more questions to ask of the RCAF veteran that flew JJ-W. He was amazed to see the film of his craft landing............

E ~

Hi Erich,
Its a very pale green skyband,
Heres the BBMFs examplefighters0607.jpg

spitfirevbab9102007.gif

1st feb (19).jpgs.

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yes think this is it for certain and you are very correct, incredibly pale in color.