#1 Piston Fighter was British

Subject: #1 Piston Fighter was British
From: "Gord Beaman" )
Date: 7/2/03 7:44 PM Pacific Daylight Time


..Gord you don't understand. He said there is no point reaiding my writing.
This means that he won't read my writing and I will never hear froim him
again,
I don't want to do or say anything that will change that decision on his
part.

Arthur Kramer

Oh...I assumed that you wrote hoping that readers would read your
output. ... ??...hummm...no, there must be some error that I'm
making here...perhaps you could help me out a little?...you write
because...??.

Damn...I must be declining faster than I thought...
--

-Gord.


I do want readers. My website has more than 33,000 hits so far with a dozen or
so emails a week for the last two years..All quite positive and complimentary.
But while all readers are equal, some are more equal than others.




Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

"Gord Beaman" wrote in message
...

Oh...I assumed that you wrote hoping that readers would read your
output. ... ??...hummm...no, there must be some error that I'm
making here...perhaps you could help me out a little?...you write
because...??.


The error you made was in thinking that Art might retract a statement.

Anybody else getting tired of this thread?

Jack
"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote in message
thlink.net...

"Ed Majden" wrote in message
a...

The P51 wasn't a high performance fighter until the Brits installed
the RR Merlin in it. This increased speed and performance making
the Mustang a top long range fighter.


All P-51s were high-performance fighters, the Merlin made it a
high-altitude
fighter as well. It was the high performance of the Mustang I that
prompted
the installation of the Merlin.

Incidentally, while the British were the first to fly a Merlin Mustang,
they
didn't win the race by a great deal. Rolls-Royce flew the first Merlin
Mustang, a Mustang I with a Merlin 65, on October 13, 1942. North
American
flew the XP-51B, a P-51 with a V-1650-3, on November 30, 1942. Before the
first flight of a Merlin Mustang on either side of the Atlantic the USAAF
had 1750 P-51B/Cs on order with NAA.

(ArtKramr) wrote in message ...
Subject: #1 Piston Fighter was British
From: nt (Gordon)
Date: 6/29/03 8:32 AM Pacific Daylight Time

the Ju 88 was arguably the best bomber in
service in Europe in 1940.

You have just pinpointed Germany's problem in WW II. One of many.
Arguably? Very arguably.


Then which European bomber do you think outclassed the Ju 88 in 1940? Not
looking for an argument, Art, just your opinion. RAF pilots sure make it
sound
like the Ju 88 was more of a problem than, say, a 111. In contrast to the
Hampden Is and other RAF mediums in 1940, was the Ju 88 really all that
awful?

v/r
Gordon



No no no. It was a good bomber. A very good bomber. But it has taken on a halo
since the war it doesn't deserve.. It couldn't outrun fighters. It couldn't
withstand heavy attacks like a B-26 could.. And the sad part is, that if it was
the best bomber Germany had, it wasn't good enough. because they may have
invaded England if they had long range heavies to destroy the RAF bases on
the ground. None of the German bombers could do the long range job Germany
needed done..German thinking about bombing basics was just wrong. The Americans
and the Brits had it right from the get-go.

Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

By the end of 1942 Ju88 production shifted from mainly being a bomber
to that of night fighter or long range fighter to try and give a
little protection for the u-boats from air attack. Only 1000 Ju88
bombers were built in 1943 while about 4000 fighters were.

When the 1100hp Jumo 211 was replaced with a BMW801 radial or the Jumo
213 of about 1750hp the speed went up to 388mph for the streamlined
1944 Ju88S bomber and 360mph for the Ju88G-7 nightfighter with
microwave radar (it also had a ventral gun pack) or 340mph with the
draggy lichtenstein radar antena.

The Germans had intended to replace their bombers with 'Bomber B'.
The Ju288 was the winning proposal and would begining in 1942 have
carried 4 tons of bombs up to 408mph up to 2300 miles.

Clearly a powerfull weapon.

It was armed with 6 pairs of remote control guns in the tail, ventral
postion and dorsal postition. The tail guns were the Mk151/15 which
was the 15mm version of the Mk151/20 20mm cannon firing a narrower
bullet with the same cartridege to over power and outrange even the US
50 caliber Browning.

Bomber B failed becuase of technical difficulties on the Jumo 222 in
line star engine. I don't know why, as the engine doesn't look that
challenging. They apparently did get it in to production in 1944 for
a very short time.

The result was that some of the ideas of the Ju288 were taken and the
Ju88 was modified to become the Ju188 in the interim. It was only a
little faster at 320mph but was better armed yet clearly incapable of
penetraing enemy airspace alone on either the basis of speed or
armament.

It is invalid I think to directly to compare the Ju88 to the B26
Marauder. The German equaivalent was the Do 217. An aircraft more
lightly armed but faster (320mph with BMW801s or 340mph with DD603
engines).

Even if the Germans had beaut planes like Marauders I think they would
have been shot down in daylight raids. Without long range escorts all
bombers except the Mosquito would accumulate intollerable losses.

The Ju88 however was an accurate dive and slant bomber that with its
computing stuvi bombsight and automatic pullup could deliver big
1000kg bombs within 10 meters without dropping below 2000 meters
altitude. It was also considered manoeverable and could be thrown
fairly briskly around the sky. Another advantge was that it could
work on rough muddy fields; those big wheels rotated into the engine
pods. All things a B26 couldn't do. The B26 was considered less
suitable than the B25 in the pacific because it needed a pretty solid
runway.

The Ju88 also formed the basis of the Ju388. This was supposed to
become a high altitude night figher (to interecept B29s), high
altitude bomber and high altitude reconaisance machine. It had remote
controlled tail armament. Only Some 300 of the Ju388 reconaisance
version were built. They used a turbo supercharged version of the
BMW801 the BMW801TJ with a 5 piece intercooler behined the big radial.
Speed was something like 390mph at 40,000 feet.

Incidently the Ju88 was designed, in the detail by a Brit and an
American. Germany was short of sufficient engineers so Junkers hired
some on contract.

On 2 Jul 2003 14:17:27 -0700, (Kevin Brooks)
wrote:

Art's typical approach of denigrating the efforts and contributions of
others in order to somehow make his own seem more valiant or valuable
is unfortunate.

It's weird, and it raises some personal questions about his motivation
for posting. Why is this approach neccessary? Does he only want to
elicit vacuous sycophancy and uneccessary antagonisms? Is he really
unable to recognise the offensiveness of dismissing the contributions
of millions of other people, or hypocrisy of denigrating learning from
other personal experiences but making his own written accounts
available? The fact that he cuts these elements from his followups
indicates he's entirely aware of what he's doing. He clearly doesn't
want to tolerate any mmiddle-ground.

In any case the defensiveness and personal antagonisms are neccessary.
Who exactly runs this "Wannabe plot" to run veterans off r.a.m. or is
this just a fictious assumption on his part?

He could be a good source for information specific to
his experiences, but his continual belittling of anything and
everything that does not involve B-26 operations in whatever group he
was in in the ETO merely makes him sound rather shrill and casts
doubts regarding his veracity on anything of value that he may
actually have to offer. Kind of sad, really.

Indeed. The motivation for perpetuating this thread and continuing to
talk about this point on my side came on a personal level, as I heard
an old next-door neighbour of mine died yesterday. I never really saw
a lot of him, but he did encourage me, when I was much younger, to
learn about history and the war in particular. He never spoke about
his own service in Bomber Command, other than to show me a model of
his Lancaster, and maintained this silence even when he was approached
to record them a few weeks before his death, when he was in obviously
ailing health. Now his experiences have been lost for good. Still, I
never heard him denigrate Marauder aircrew or anybody else to
establish his own credentials. He was a broad enough character of a
man not to need those kind of childish games.

He was a good man, and a good neighbour. RIP John. Thanks.

Gavin Bailey

--

"...this level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be
avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance."
- 'Poll shows errors in beliefs on Iraq, 9/11'
The Charlotte Observer, 20th June 2003

On 02 Jul 2003 20:41:50 GMT, (ArtKramr) wrote:

..Gord you don't understand. He said there is no point reaiding my writing.

No, he question why you write about your experiences when you
apparently consider the end result of such activity (i.e. people
gaining some understanding of the experiences you went through) to be
valueless.

It's called hypocrisy, although I'm sure there's a reasonable
explanation, although any chance of coming across this becomes
increasingly unlikely as you distort the meaning of their statements.

This means that he won't read my writing and I will never hear froim him again,
I don't want to do or say anything that will change that decision on his part.

By all means continue to restrict the constituency of views you read
and respond to until it is sufficiently narrow for you.

Gavin Bailey

--

"...this level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be
avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance."
- 'Poll shows errors in beliefs on Iraq, 9/11'
The Charlotte Observer, 20th June 2003

On 3 Jul 2003 07:52:33 -0700, (Kevin Brooks)
wrote:

I recall watching an interview of a US fighter pilot who served in the
ETO. He remarked as to how he had once returned from a mission in a
rather surly mood and sanpped at his eager crewchief that the aircraft
was not even clean. I watched this old vet crying outloud as he then
recounted going out the next morning and finding his crewchief
standing beside a spotless and completely rubbed down P-51 (IIRC), and
seeing the man's hands chapped and bleeding from his efforts over the
course of that apparently winter night. He said he decided then that
he had been a fool and to never again belittle the efforts of those
guys who supported him. Too bad that Art never learned that lesson.

Thanks for those examples. Most of the veterans I have spoken to or
interviewed seemed well in touch with the greater human issues
involved in war, and it's rare to find ones with such axes to grind on
then-unborn generations sixty years on. It probably doesn't merit
such attention, but it is fascinating to see how Art returns to the
same hobby horses, five years on. Only now the "wannabes" have
expanded from civilian warbird restorers to become anybody who
disagrees with his arrogant and egotistical dismissals of everybody
else who fought before him or elsewhere in the same war effort.

I've been reading and posting to this group intermittantly over the
same period, and I've seen him do it before, but it seems his
reflexive hostility is getting worse. He has previously (albeit
infrequently) made qualifications between his experience and that of
others. I'm fairly certain he avoids publically recognising when his
reaction has been appropriate or inaccurate, which takes me back to
the troll position.

Beside that, his impugning my motives for posting evidence of my
relative's experiences in the war which contradicted his assertions,
and his hypocrisy over the use of written records, are simply petty.

Mind you, on that level, if you look hard enough, you can find some
really special contradictions:

"What you read may be more accurate." - Art Kramer, 30 April 1998.

Almost worth a new signature file, I think. But enough of the
playground games for now.

Gavin Bailey


--

"...this level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be
avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance."
- 'Poll shows errors in beliefs on Iraq, 9/11'
The Charlotte Observer, 20th June 2003

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised wrote:
snip
Mind you, on that level, if you look hard enough, you can find some
really special contradictions:

"What you read may be more accurate." - Art Kramer, 30 April 1998.

Almost worth a new signature file, I think. But enough of the
playground games for now.

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." ;^)
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)

(Kevin Brooks) wrote:


His own strawman. He once left the group with much fanfare--sort of
reminded me of Nixon's old "you won't have me to kick around anymore"
speech.

He did that (at one time at least) to punish me for taking him to
task when he indicated that the enlisted people in his crew
weren't intelligent enough to understand the workings of the then
new Nav system 'Gee' while the commissioned people grasped it
right away. I came down on him pretty hard...that kinda stuff
really ****es me off.

I'm certain that he thought that people would blame me for
'chasing a valuable asset' off. Some did indeed, and we got some
snarly posts aimed at me but I got a few posts and emails from
those who saw through his little trick too.

A few posts ago he made a big snarl about refusing to be driven
off 'never in a million years' or some-such...I had to bite my
tongue to avoid snarling back...

Unfortunately, he came back, still spouting off his vitriolic
rants. He has at one time or another claimed that groundcrews and
support personnel did not serve with the same distinction as the
aircrews, that those who followed their orders and did not see direct
combat were somehow less deserving of being considered veterans, that
enlisted personnel were somhow less intelligent than officers, etc.
Each such claim has resulted in his own diminished reputation.


Exactly, and it's a God Damned shame...He's one of the few here
who've been there and DT. If he were a little less self-centered
and didn't **** people off so much then he'd be a great learning
tool for us who weren't called on back then.

Make no mistake, I admire and am thankful for what he did, but no
more than I admire any other member of the armed forces members
during those times.

I certainly do not admire him for his present personality, I find
him just short of being a jerk with his constant "Were you
there?".


--

-Gord.

"M. J. Powell" wrote:

In message , "Gord
writes
Cub Driver wrote:


As an aside on the aside, one of the 386th BG crewmen I talked to told
me with great feeling how he looked down from 1,000 feet or so to see
the water at Utah beach choked with bodies of American infantry. As
previously noted, only 12 men were killed in the initial assault on
the beach. What he was remembering was what he'd heard about the
carnage at Omaha, and he'd melded it into his own memory. That's the
problem with eyewitness testimony--it sometimes is actually a memory
of a photograph you've seen or a thought you later had.

It takes both The Witness and a lot of cross-checking to sort out
events. You need both, and even then you don't have the truth but only
your best approximation.


all the best -- Dan Ford (email: info AT danford.net)


This is extremely on target, especially during a traumatic event.

It's why accident investigators take with a very large grain of
salt testimony from eye witnesses at an air accident. I read a
lot of NTSB and AIB reports and you'd be amazed at what some
people firmly believe actually happened. An aircraft fully
enveloped with fire crashing straight down when it was a rather
benign 'crash-landing' with no hint of fire. One woman (with a
good imagination?) described the 'Avianca' (?) crash at Chicago
(?) where she 'saw' the pilot 'standing' at one of the cockpit
windows 'waving a little red flag'...oookkk...

As you say, people subconsciously substitute events in their
memory for other events, readings, impressions. The mind is a
wonderous instrument but you must be aware of it's limitations
and various quirks.

Absolutely. I distinctly remember flying in an Anson 50 years ago and
having to wriggle past the guns in the upper turret. 5 years ago a
friend gave me a photograph of the same Anson at the same airfield taken
at about the same time. No guns. No turret.

Mike

I know!...I've had the same type of experiences (in nearly 70
years one has a LOT of experiences!)...isn't it shocking?, those
guns were so real to you that you could likely smell the oil and
gun-powder...and they existed only in your mind. Amazing indeed.
--

-Gord.