Flak vs. Fighters

Hey, if you flew inverted your problem would be solved </font>[/QUOTE]Heh heh heh....

 

Anouther problem with the ABB would be attacking on a cloudy day or in rain. In the above picture the aircraft only have a limited amount of visibility due to clouds.

Also Defiants could not keep up with a bomber even early in the war.

 

Well, what about proximity fuses for the heavy AA.

 

Well, the Germans would have to invent not only the fuze, but the tube technology to go with it. VT fuzes requried very small tubes compared to what was the norm for the time. These tubes also had to survive the shock of firing and the rotational force of the spinning shell. This alone is a fairly tall order.
Also, the Allies actually expected the Germans to develop and use this weapon so they had already (in early 44) conducted tests at Wright Army Air Field in Ohio on how to successfully jam them.
The testing was interesting in that it involved a B-17 with a 6 man crew operating the plane and jamming gear while a 90mm AA battery fired live rounds at them! The tests were successful, no doubt thankfully for the crew!

 

Jeez. talk about a suicide mission!

T.A., I think you are getting old, this thread has developed in a very questionable way in technical terms and I'm surprised we haven't seen one of your withering fire and brimstone broadsides with more technical objections than one can shake a stick at! Or maybe it's the Christmas spirit (or the eggnog )

 

Yep. If the allied bombers were just beneath the clouds, the ABB's would be greatly hampered making intercepts. Defiants were mentioned only because they had quad turrets, lol.

Picture the P38, but with twin (tandem) engines (like the Do335's), slap a quad 30mm turret on the belly. 4 engine, 4 30mm cannons. While your stealing the key to the US patent office, why stop there? Why not build a scaled down B17 wing/tail?

Do me a favor, guys. Revisit the "German tonnage war strategy" thread.

 

You heard his answer on pilots vs sheep, do you really want an answer for pilots vs flak ?

The poor man lives out in the desert and has had alittle too much peyote.

 

Hmmm. Can you give me a link to the operational ceilings of the B17 and B29? Because wikipedia.org has the B17 @ 36,000 and the B29 @ less than this!? </font>[/QUOTE]While the B-17 may have had a ceiling of 35,000, I believe that it mostly operated around 25-30,000 ft. The limits were on the crews at the higher altitudes. The B-29s may have been listed with a ceiling of 31-32,000 ft, but they were routinely operating at 36,000 on the runs over Japan. And the B-29 set a ceiling record of over 47,000 ft that still stands today. I do not know the reasons why the B-29 was posted at the lowere limit, but stranger things are common. The B-24 had a lot lower ceiling than either of the Boeings, but it was more suited for the pacific and Meteranian action than the B-17 due to the added range with a decent bomb load.