Me-410 vs Mosquito combat

[Chris Goss]

Paul
I would have thought that such barbettes were more effective as a warning as opposed to actually shooting a jinking target down.
I do not have such figures-don't forget II/KG 51 as well
Chris

[Paul Thompson]

Originally Posted by Chris Goss

Paul
I would have thought that such barbettes were more effective as a warning as opposed to actually shooting a jinking target down.
I do not have such figures-don't forget II/KG 51 as well
Chris

Chris,

Thank you for your reply. The ineffectiveness of the barbettes throws an interesting light on the persistent Luftwaffe interest in such equipment. Perhaps they should have stayed away from this technical innovation altogether.

ArtieBob's recently published part 2 of the Ju 88 book has statistics on II./KG 51 losses in Steinbock - 17 combat and 4 non-combat. I think other data will be harder to find, so I'll keep looking!

Regards,

Paul

[Nick Beale]

The ineffectiveness of the barbettes throws an interesting light on the persistent Luftwaffe interest in such equipment. Perhaps they should have stayed away from this technical innovation altogether.

Was any bomber defensive armament — any type, any nation — all that effective, aircraft by aircraft? Or did it only come into its own in big formations?

[Juha]

Originally Posted by Nick Beale

Was any bomber defensive armament — any type, any nation — all that effective, aircraft by aircraft? Or did it only come into its own in big formations?

Of course much depends how one define effective but IIRC Do 217s of KG 2 shot down or crippled several night fighters.

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Juha

Of course much depends how one define effective but IIRC Do 217s of KG 2 shot down or crippled several night fighters.

Sure, there were successes but I have wondered whether the gunners in a night bomber (e.g. a Lancaster) were more useful as look-outs, triggering evasive action, than as armed defenders.

[Rainer]

The gunners were certainly not very effective in destroying enemy fighters in high numbers, but they forced the attackers to develope other tactics or weapons to evade the field of fire of the gunners. The German night fighters for example developed the "Schräge Musik" armament that enabled them to fire at the bombers without being shot at by the tail gunner. Interesting is that the Allied night fighters did not use this tactic, probably because they never encountered bombers as heavily armed as the Lancaster or Halifax?

Compared to "Schräge Musik" that initially was a field modification which found its way to the industrial production, the barbettes of the Me 410 are in my opinion typical for the German "overengineering" of certain technical aspects.

[Juha]

Originally Posted by Nick Beale

Sure, there were successes but I have wondered whether the gunners in a night bomber (e.g. a Lancaster) were more useful as look-outs, triggering evasive action, than as armed defenders.

IIRC RAF thought after WW2 that if there was any reasonable benefit (when compared to the weight penalty and the cost of a rear turret) of the rear turret it was mostly from the gunners acting as look-outs and because of the appearence of rear-warning radars they dumped the rear turret. On the other hand USAF kept them, maybe at least partly because of their daytime experiences. The only post-WW2 aircombat fought in the Finnish airspace was between an US RB-47 and two Soviet MiG-17s.

[John Beaman]

Of course, in considering the effectiveness of gunners in bombers, one must also consider the claims the gunners made versus the real damage they did. For example, on the first USAAF 8th AF raid on Lille in 1942, gunners were credited with 102 Germans shot down. The real answer was 2. But the USAAF and the RAF considered it important to give these credits even though, via ULTRA, the Commanders knew them not to be true. So, was it important for the bomber crews, and the public at large, to feel gunners were being effective? Likely so, and no bomber commander would have considered removing the guns!

Positive propaganda and illusions of success are more important in wartime than the truth.

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Juha

On the other hand USAF kept them...

As did the Soviets, come to think of it.

And, in reply to John, I read a book by Bill Gunston where he suggested that as more RAF bombers were lost by engine damage than injury to the pilot, statistical logic would have suggested removing the crew's armour and protecting the engines instead. The problem was that the crew had strong feelings about the matter and the engines didn't.

[Paul Thompson]

Hello Nick,

I am glad to have sparked a discussion! I am firmly of the view that defensive armament was quite effective, but only if it was sufficiently powerful and accurate, hence my focus on the specific effectiveness of barbettes. The MG 131 machine guns in the barbettes were much more powerful than the MG 81s used on previous German bombers, but it appears that the barbettes could not be controlled by the gunner with sufficient precision.

The most obvious counter-example, of bombers with powerful and accurate defensive armament, is the American heavy bomber force. There are several examples from the Pacific theatre of Japanese fighters suffering significant losses at the hands of small formations of B-24s. Similarly, Liberators and Fortresses held their own against the lower-performance Italian fighters in the Mediterranean. I’ll dig out some relevant figures when I have the time to consult books.

Even the British heavy bombers, with just one effective turret armed with 4 rifle calibre machine guns, inflicted significant losses on German night fighters. In fact, I think Theo Boiten might have some statistics that illustrate this point!

To briefly comment on the later experiences of the USAF and the Soviets, I think that the key point, especially in the case of the Soviets, is that their bombers had cannon armament. The Soviet AM-23 cannon was a very different weapon from a .303 Browning! For a while, the AM-23 and its predecessors enjoyed something of a range advantage over contemporary fighter guns, so they retained their utility.

Regards,

Paul