P-47/51 deflection shots into the belly of the German tanks,reality

From: mjmarron

What would be more effective for strafing -- An F-51 with it's six
50-calibers or an A-1 with its four 20 mm cannon?

-Mike (my money's on the A-1) Marron

Whatever makes the bigger hole. twentymikemike presumably. But the .50 was
adequate, when used correctly and with sufficient volume, to deal with most of
the tanks of WW2/korea era.


Chris Mark

In message ,
writes
What would be more effective for strafing -- An F-51 with it's six
50-calibers or an A-1 with its four 20 mm cannon?

20mm, definitely.

The .50 was a fine anti-fighter weapon for most of the war, blessed with
a good rate of fire, excellent ballistics, and reasonable lethality.
Against bombers it would have struggled, but the US rarely faced large,
armoured bombers. The RAF started with .303, rapidly found it wanting
and moved to the Hispano; the USAF had the .50 which was a good
all-rounder, even if with hindsight a change to 20mm for many roles
would have been better.

The USN switched to 20mm. the USAF didn't. Difference between Pacific
and Europe, perhaps?

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

I was looking for confirmation of the F4U--PT boat encounter mentioned earlier
(confirmed it did happen, the boat was PT-124) when I stumbled across this
comment from the PT boat skipper about a debriefing: "My account of seeing the
stern of a barge blown apart by my port .50 cal. guns openly produced skeptical
grunts, then the conversation turned to installing heavier armament...." So
even during the war, there was dispute about the killing power of the .50; I
doubt that decades after the event the issue can be satisfactorily resolved.


Chris Mark

I got a response from the director of THE COLOR OF WAR series which claimed
that .50 bullets were "bounced" off the ground to penetrate the bellies of
Tiger Tanks. This is what he had to say:

"Nick
The German Tiger tanks used so much fuel they used to tow their own extra fuel
supply behind them and the pilots told me they went for the fuel trailer first
then the tank where they would bounce up the .50 cal from the road because they
could not get through the armorplate. Ken Bullock talks about this in the film,
we was a captain and won the DFC and a lot of the combat footage in the film is
from Ken's guncamera. He died a year ago, his son now works at NASA in
Washington. Other pilots in the 362nd FG told me they did it too. I was
surprised since I didn't know that either."

I'm still working on ripping the gun camera footage for this group.

bject: P-47/51 deflection shots into the belly of the German
tanks,reality
From: "Gord Beaman" )
Date: 9/2/03 8:39 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Doesn't seem reasonable though does it Art?

Surely you can see that?.

--

-Gord.

"Reasonable" is not fact. Or evidence. Or anything. Especially in light of
eyewitnesses who say otherwise.


Arthur Kramer

Au Contraire sir. As I understand it from all the reading that
I've done, a hell of a lot of it aircraft accident reports, that
eye witness reports aren't of much use at all.

Apparently most of them are discounted out of hand unless they
can be backed up by other means.

So it's my considered opinion that "Reasonable" is actually more
valuable than an "Eye witness" report.

So Art, let's not let your shorts get all in a knot and accuse me
of 'Not being there' and other nonsensical stuff when I have some
small bit of experience in firing machine guns from aircraft in
flight. Perhaps I could ask you the same question (but I'm too
polite to do that)
--

-Gord.


I never accused you of anything and my shorts are not in a knot. And whether
you were there or not is a matter of indifference to me. And of no relevence
to the subject at hand.


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

On 03 Sep 2003 03:52:43 GMT, (ArtKramr) wrote:

bject: P-47/51 deflection shots into the belly of the German
tanks,reality
From: "Gord Beaman" )
Date: 9/2/03 8:39 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Doesn't seem reasonable though does it Art?

Surely you can see that?.

--

-Gord.

"Reasonable" is not fact. Or evidence. Or anything. Especially in light of
eyewitnesses who say otherwise.


Arthur Kramer

Au Contraire sir. As I understand it from all the reading that
I've done, a hell of a lot of it aircraft accident reports, that
eye witness reports aren't of much use at all.

Apparently most of them are discounted out of hand unless they
can be backed up by other means.

So it's my considered opinion that "Reasonable" is actually more
valuable than an "Eye witness" report.

So Art, let's not let your shorts get all in a knot and accuse me
of 'Not being there' and other nonsensical stuff when I have some
small bit of experience in firing machine guns from aircraft in
flight. Perhaps I could ask you the same question (but I'm too
polite to do that)
--

-Gord.


I never accused you of anything and my shorts are not in a knot.

Hey. Those are my shorts. Give them back right now! And why did you
tie them in a knot?

:P

ArtKramr wrote:





And whether you were there or not is a matter of indifference to me.
And of no relevence to the subject at hand.

Arthur Kramer


Now there is a first!

Dave