Masters of the Air

[Stuart Galbraith]

10 hours ago, LT Ducky said:

I’ve only watched the clips shown in this thread but I have to add some comments from a pilot’s perspective as well as one who has participated in air-to-ground and aircraft intercom communications.

Obviously I’ve never flown a B-17 but with the exception of the ‘exotic’ computer interface aircraft (F-117 and B-2 for example) they are all subject to the basic laws of aerodynamics. The B-17 shown on the ‘crabbed’ approach to Greenland shows the rudder fully deflected to the left - in reality it would have been in the neutral position. The touchdown would have been left wing down (almost dragging on the ground) with full right rudder, landing on the left wheel. The CGI shows a basically wings level at touchdown which would have resulted in a rapid departure from the runway into the wind. 
 

During this approach the pilot is shown adding power to the left engines; with properly applied right rudder he would have quickly slewed right.

I’ve already commented on the engine rotations in the crash scene.

I’ve never been in combat  during aircrew and radio communications but have been involved in some interesting conversations that were adrenaline-enhanced and one thing was always present - discipline. Pilots and aircrew pride themselves on maintaining commo discipline, sometimes right up to the moment of impact….. (the last transmission is usually ‘Oh Shit’)

This is just the rambling observations of an old man who delights in pointing out my perceived flaws in the entertainment industry.

Ive heard recordings of a gunship strike on an NVA column in vietnam, and yes, that is exactly how its done.

If you remember back to the original Memphis Belle documentary, the main thing I remember from the pilot Morgan is,

 

[rmgill]

Having actually used an intercom that uses tubes to operate, (Our WS19 in Vandal is functional) it over modulates and distorts. It's not unreadable, and is more painful as the amplitude seems to match the input volume. 

[rmgill]

 

[Markus Becker]

They did get the aerial view the Münster right in episode 5. Just put the town a few hundred km too close to the coast of the English Channel. 

[sunday]

Just saw episode 5. That was intense, epic, and heartbreaking.

[rmgill]

I already understood, but its illustrated in this episode. 
 

An ex girlfriend’s grandfather was a ground crewman on a B-17 airbase in Bedford. He came back such an angry drunk that he’d be cruel and abusive to his granddaughter. Nothing sexual as far as I was aware but cruel to her as a child. She called him a monster. 

He never saw a lick of combat  

I deduced that he’d seen far too many friends come back dead and mutilated from missions and he had to clean up and repair aircraft and gunners stations that friends had died in with parts of their remains to clean up in those aircraft. 
 

He was a very angry man. Romantic and kind enough to bring back an English war bride, a lovely lady I later met. But he was broken inside in ways. 

[Angrybk]

First couple of episodes were a bit parody-worthy (the music is especially corny) but I'm warming up to it in the sense that I'll keep watching it.

The major problem is that it's just not the right subject for an epic mini-series (they bomb stuff, omg the fighters are here, some of them die horrible deaths, lather rinse repeat). 

If I understand correctly it was meant to be the final leg in the Tom Hanks-proposed trilogy of WW2 stuff, after Band of Brothers and The Pacific, but I just don't think it was the right subject for that. The final series should have been a Navy thing, either focusing on a destroyer in the Atlantic a la Greyhound or the Enterprise.

Edited February 18 by Angrybk

[rmgill]

I don’t know. Each have their merits. There was a critical drinker plus others chat this afternoon and a point made was that the Allied high command was willing to spend air crews in bit pushes like we saw with episode 5 to mitigate the longer term effects when it came to allied landings and a land war. If that meant periods of high optempo and high casualties, so be it. 
 

Why else than missions like Munster where there was a big casualty count?

[Markus Becker]

On 2/19/2024 at 1:21 AM, rmgill said:

Why else than missions like Munster where there was a big casualty count?

That's actually a strange target for such high losses. Even early P-47 could escort bombers to the German border and Münster is just 40 miles away from it. Given the listed cruise speed that's just 15 minutes flight time.

An incredible case and place for bad luck.

[sunday]

There is this bit, that could be relevant or not, 1:10 onwards, about how a 100th Group bomber behaved in not the best of ways.

 

[rmgill]

41 minutes ago, Markus Becker said:

That's actually a strange target for such high losses. Even early P-47 could escort bombers to the German border and Münster is just 40 miles away from it. Given the listed cruise speed that's just 15 minutes flight time.

An incredible case and place for bad luck.

Apparently the Luftwaffe fighters had their largest showing of the war with 350 intercepting the bomber force. 
 

The optempo and moving aircraft around and crews not having any down time would also affect casualties. Fatigued crews would not fight their best. 

[Der Zeitgeist]

I quite enjoyed the Münster episode. With the two annoying main characters out of the picture, the apparent quality of the acting has improved quite a bit. ☺️

[NickM]

7 hours ago, Markus Becker said:

That's actually a strange target for such high losses. Even early P-47 could escort bombers to the German border and Münster is just 40 miles away from it. Given the listed cruise speed that's just 15 minutes flight time.

An incredible case and place for bad luck.

IF my memory served correctly, the brass in the Eighth didn't resupply the fighter force with adequate numbers and sizes of auxiliary fuel tanks, explaining the shorter range; that being said, the 56th and 352 Fighter Groups arrived just in time for the Bomber Forces return flight, and saved them from the attentions of the Jagdwaffe's 'second wave'.

Along with that, navigational screw ups reduced the time the escorts could cover the bomber stream and a diversionary raid by B24s was recalled, and THEIR escort went back with them, thinning things out even more.

[NickM]

6 hours ago, rmgill said:

Apparently the Luftwaffe fighters had their largest showing of the war with 350 intercepting the bomber force. 
 

The optempo and moving aircraft around and crews not having any down time would also affect casualties. Fatigued crews would not fight their best. 

Witness a later series of missions during 'Big Week': the raids against Berlin; the Bomber force flew to "Big B" every day for a week, in spite of heavy (but decreasing) losses. By the end of that series of attacks, the Jagdwaffe simply stayed on the ground, pleading bad weather and low serviceability==end result being a bomber stream, just as strong as the first one paraded over Berlin without being contested by anything but flak.

[rmgill]

War of attrition. I have seen it asserted that when the Tactically employed fighters were free to roam on return flights and hit Luftwaffe bases or returning fighters that helped with the attrition game. 

[NickM]

3 hours ago, rmgill said:

War of attrition. I have seen it asserted that when the Tactically employed fighters were free to roam on return flights and hit Luftwaffe bases or returning fighters that helped with the attrition game. 

Yes, starting after James Doolittle took command of the Eighth with orders to hunt down and destroy German fighters. From the time they took off to the time they landed the Jadgwaffe had to look over it's shoulder. Lots of times, large attacks were broken up (or shot to hell as they tried to take off and form up) by Allied fighters sweeping ahead or around the flanks of the bomber streams looking for targets of opportunity. Of course, that meant some bomber groups were left 'unescorted', which didn't endear the fighters or Doolittle to the bomber boys.

[futon]

1 hour ago, NickM said:

Yes, starting after James Doolittle took command of the Eighth with orders to hunt down and destroy German fighters. From the time they took off to the time they landed the Jadgwaffe had to look over it's shoulder. Lots of times, large attacks were broken up (or shot to hell as they tried to take off and form up) by Allied fighters sweeping ahead or around the flanks of the bomber streams looking for targets of opportunity. Of course, that meant some bomber groups were left 'unescorted', which didn't endear the fighters or Doolittle to the bomber boys.

Was the Eighth using just P-51s for that or did P-47s or any other fighter model also have a part in it?

[Stuart Galbraith]

4 hours ago, futon said:

Was the Eighth using just P-51s for that or did P-47s or any other fighter model also have a part in it?

They were using a mix, P51's, P47's and P38's. The P38 in Europe was largely a dud because the turbochargers were never really sorted out for European conditions, but it was very useful as a recce aircraft. The P47 took the load till late 1943 when the first Mustangs started showing up. The mustang took an awful lot of the credit for the work the P47 did, when it turned up just in time for the Luftwaffe to start imploding. That isnt to say it wasnt any good, just that it gets plaudits that the P47 should get as a fighter that wrecked the luftwaffe.

 

[futon]

2 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

They were using a mix, P51's, P47's and P38's. The P38 in Europe was largely a dud because the turbochargers were never really sorted out for European conditions, but it was very useful as a recce aircraft. The P47 took the load till late 1943 when the first Mustangs started showing up. The mustang took an awful lot of the credit for the work the P47 did, when it turned up just in time for the Luftwaffe to start imploding. That isnt to say it wasnt any good, just that it gets plaudits that the P47 should get as a fighter that wrecked the luftwaffe.

 

Yeah, that's what I recall reading from the back, along with P-38's situation. Did Doolittle have any preference between the two aircraft, for the purpose of his operation? Was one seen more favorable for flying ahead of the bomber groups to intercept German fighters in the high skies? Or was there a preference between the two for camping over an airfield to catch take off/landing fighters? Or did it not really matter at all in his mind?

[Stuart Galbraith]

Doolittle was a bomber guy, I dont think he minded what fighter was under his command, unless it couldnt carry bombs.

I get the impression the P47 was well regarded in a dive. It could dive faster than any other Eighth airforce aircraft, so it would make sense to use them in top cover. OTOH, the p51 could climb considerably better, so presumably that goes some way to explain why they used them ranging ahead. Thats a guess on my part, but having tried them both in DCS, you can start to see why they complimented each other. The P47 is a winged brick, that descends on any poor bugger underneath it like the wrath of God.

TBH, I get the impresison Doolittle left much of this up to the fighter guys. I remember in James Hollands book on Big Week (which is well worth a read IMHO), that when Doolittle took over, he took down a sign saying 'The role of the fighter to support the bombers' and replaced it with 'The role of the fighters is to destroy the enemy airforce' Or something like that. Whether its true or not doesnt matter, because it accurately represented his mindset, the bombers were really there to bring up the fighters so they could be destroyed. He was repeating the concept of the Brtish ramrods, but this time sending enough bombers to make the Luftwaffe have to respond, and putting enough fighters in the air to make sure they got stomped. Rinse and repeat.And to be fair, it worked.

I think I read that Bomber losses actually increased in the short term, but the losses of the Luftwaffe skyrocketed. It was only ever going to end one way.

[NickM]

10 hours ago, futon said:

Yeah, that's what I recall reading from the back, along with P-38's situation. Did Doolittle have any preference between the two aircraft, for the purpose of his operation? Was one seen more favorable for flying ahead of the bomber groups to intercept German fighters in the high skies? Or was there a preference between the two for camping over an airfield to catch take off/landing fighters? Or did it not really matter at all in his mind?

 

Didn't matter; as long as the Allies got air superiority, that's all that mattered.

[NickM]

7 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Doolittle was a bomber guy, I dont think he minded what fighter was under his command, unless it couldnt carry bombs.

I get the impression the P47 was well regarded in a dive. It could dive faster than any other Eighth airforce aircraft, so it would make sense to use them in top cover. OTOH, the p51 could climb considerably better, so presumably that goes some way to explain why they used them ranging ahead. Thats a guess on my part, but having tried them both in DCS, you can start to see why they complimented each other. The P47 is a winged brick, that descends on any poor bugger underneath it like the wrath of God.

TBH, I get the impresison Doolittle left much of this up to the fighter guys. I remember in James Hollands book on Big Week (which is well worth a read IMHO), that when Doolittle took over, he took down a sign saying 'The role of the fighter to support the bombers' and replaced it with 'The role of the fighters is to destroy the enemy airforce' Or something like that. Whether its true or not doesnt matter, because it accurately represented his mindset, the bombers were really there to bring up the fighters so they could be destroyed. He was repeating the concept of the Brtish ramrods, but this time sending enough bombers to make the Luftwaffe have to respond, and putting enough fighters in the air to make sure they got stomped. Rinse and repeat.And to be fair, it worked.

I think I read that Bomber losses actually increased in the short term, but the losses of the Luftwaffe skyrocketed. It was only ever going to end one way.

To paraphrase Don Caldwell's books Doolittle was a reservist and he had no loyalty to the idea of 'winning the war thru strategic daylight bombing(tm)'; he had his team from North Africa and the Med (which, it must be said, included a lot of British and Commonwealth commanders who learned to keep the Luftwaffe off the backs of the Eighth Army ) and he was given the task to gain air superiority by Ike. That meant sending fighters to guard an area of sky and then, sweep home after the tour is done, to look for targets of opportunity. If sometimes the bombers got left unescorted, well, too bad, The Eighth could take the losses, numerically and the leadership could stomach them, politically.

Edited February 21 by NickM

[rmgill]

14 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

 The mustang took an awful lot of the credit for the work the P47 did, when it turned up just in time for the Luftwaffe to start imploding. That isnt to say it wasnt any good, just that it gets plaudits that the P47 should get as a fighter that wrecked the luftwaffe.

 

There's also that the Jugs would come back with bits of trees (or crops) in them because the pilots were getting THAT low. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

9 hours ago, NickM said:

To paraphrase Don Caldwell's books Doolittle was a reservist and he had no loyalty to the idea of 'winning the war thru strategic daylight bombing(tm)'; he had his team from North Africa and the Med (which, it must be said, included a lot of British and Commonwealth commanders who learned to keep the Luftwaffe off the backs of the Eighth Army ) and he was given the task to gain air superiority by Ike. That meant sending fighters to guard an area of sky and then, sweep home after the tour is done, to look for targets of opportunity. If sometimes the bombers got left unescorted, well, too bad, The Eighth could take the losses, numerically and the leadership could stomach them, politically.

Its an interesting thing that Reservist officers often tended to be some of those less inclined to accept doctrine and to think outside the box. Ive noticed something similar with RAF officers in the same period.

Anyway, as you say, you cant argue with results. It worked, and undoubtedly saved more lives in the longer term.

8 hours ago, rmgill said:

There's also that the Jugs would come back with bits of trees (or crops) in them because the pilots were getting THAT low. 

It could also carry 8 .50 machine guns, which was ridiculous. And it was surprisingly  manoeuvrable too. I was reading in Robert Shaws book on dogfighting, an account of a pilot dogfighting with a spitfire, whom was able to use its vertical speed against the spitfire and get on a firing position. Which assuredly was not the way to use a P47, but with a good pilot in them (and they had spent something like 3 or 4 years training just doing dogfight practice, so many were), it clearly was an excellent combat aircraft.

There was a video, I think it was this one, that discussed the P51 and whether it was indeed the saviour of the Eighth airforce. The conclusion was the P47 had nearly the same range in some circumstances, it rather depended on what kind of throttle position it was at, the altitude and the tanks. The main downside was it drank avgas like Amy Whitehouse consumed alcohol.

Doesnt mean the P51 was over hyped, but I suspect the main difference between it and the p47 is that it was a lot cheaper and quicker to build. It just accelerated a process the P47 had already started.

[Ssnake]

1 hour ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Its an interesting thing that Reservist officers often tended to be some of those less inclined to accept doctrine and to think outside the box.

Australian WW1 General Monash might serve as another prime example.