Subject: Night bombers interception....
From: Presidente Alcazar
Date: 7/20/2004 1:20 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 13:24:16 +0100, "Keith Willshaw"
wrote:

Trouble is a fight between an aircraft armed with 30mm cannon and
one armed with a single 0.5 will mostly favour the fighter.
The most successful defensive tactic was to perform an
immediate evasion by flying a violent corkscrew manoeuvre

Indeed, and I'm skeptical of the utility of a hand-mounted machine-gun
in a ventral window with restricted vision, manned by a frozen
air-gunner who has to endure hour after hour of vigilance on multimple
missions before facing the slit-second reactions required to deal with
a real assailant. Plenty of bombers were lost to stern attacks, and
even attacks from beneath passed through the visible arc of the rear
turret before they closed to engage, which should indicate the real
problems encountered relying on unassistated visual observation alone
for bomber defence.

Gavin Bailey



True. The fighter had the advantage. But we got a lot of those little *******s
anyway. When you fight a war you take your losses and keep fighting no matter
what..


Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer