Subject: Instructors: is no combat better?
From: "Joe Osman"
Date: 3/11/04 10:55 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:


"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...
In conjunction with your comment about the gunner's remarks to you; if
simple aerodynamics wasn't a part of every gunner's training during the
war,
it most surely should have been. What this gunner was telling you might
have
been from his training knowledge base or simply as the observed result of
his personal experience. The end result would be the same for recognizing
what the fighter was about to do, but the big difference would have been
the
advantage to gunners having this knowledge up front going into combat as
opposed to finding it out through operational experience.
Every gunner out there should have had at least some basic knowledge of
positive and negative g as that knowledge relates to a firing pass by a
fighter. Those who didn't had to learn the hard way. Gunners being taught
a
few simple facts about g and vectors would have saved many lives........
and
as this knowledge relates to a firing pass, could have been taught in
just a
few minutes during training.
The simple truth of it is that if the fighter rolled inverted during the
pass, in order to pass over you he would have to bunt the airplane into
negative g, and the odds of this happening vs going the positive g route
under you would have all but been a sure bet that he would go positive
under
you; hence the lead would become predictable based on the odds.
I should add that there were a few German fighter pilots who routinely
would
go negative, but never offensively, only defensively.
Erich Hartmann was one of them, and he was not in the theatre.
I've always wanted to ask a gunner from the period if simple aerodynamics
was indeed taught in gunnery training to help with prediction lead
solution,
but somehow I've always forgotten to ask
:-) If there are any gunners out there who can answer this, perhaps they
will post.
Dudley



I think the answer would be no. When I went through gunnery training on
the
way to bomb school they didn't even teach us about that. And the first
time I
heard it, it is was totally new to me. I had to really see it to believe
it.
And when I saw it I thought, "why the hell is he coming in on his back?
Crazy
Krauts"


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


Art:

Did you guys use the Waller Gunnery Trainer? See:

http://www.cineramaadventure.com/trainer.htm

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/waller01.htm

Waller was an interesting guy. He invented water skies and Cinerama, among
other things.
Simpler WWII gunnery trainers were still be used in arcades in San Diego in
the early 1970s.

Joe



Nope. Nothing that fancy But plenty of shoooting at targets towed by another
B-26.


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