At least one German night fighter ace stated that if the rear gunner on a Lanc or Halifax spotted him and opened fire, he would simply break away and look for another less watchful victim rather than be sprayed with .303. So it was of some deterrent, at least at night.
The professional Luftwaffe fighter pilots would break off and hunt easier and safer quarry to attack. A number of night fighter pilots report encountering accurate gunfire from over 1000m from the 303 guns at night. These night fighters were by nature not conducting fast slashing attacks so would have been exposed for long periods to the guns.
@@richardvernon317 Village Inn would have matured. As far as I know all Village Inn turrets used Two 0.5 BMG which was the equal of eight 303 MG so better in daylight and night. More useful would have been the "Fishpond" modification to the 3 cm H2S ground mapping radar which provided a second display optimized to detect approaching night fighters.
Mk VII and Mk 10s were equipped with .60 calibre guns in the mid upper turret and late model Lancasters with the FN82 tail turret had .50 calibre guns in their tail turret. Arguably, from what I have read the main advantage of the gunners was to identify enemy fighters enabling the pilot to take evasive action.
You think so? Read the well known book Interrogator by Hans Scarf, the German who was after the war living in the USA and training the USAF, and became a close friend of many of his previous ‘prisoners!’
The bomb load was more contingent upon the distance to target. For many long range targets the bombers would sacrifice bomb load in favor of fuel. Within a normal range, the bomb loads of the Lancaster and B-24 were comparable at 8,000-9,000 lbs.
My grandfather was a Lancaster rear air gunner. On the night his plane was shot down, for reasons that are unclear, he was manning the mid air gunner position instead. The man occupying the rear air gunner position that night was killed. This fact haunted my grandfather long after the war ended.
Had a friend in London whose old man was a rear gunner on a Lancaster. A pretty shattered man, needless to say he wasn't the life and soul of any party
It could have been that your grandfather was a better gunner than the man who was killed and if the roles had been the other way around ad usual, the situation might have been different. But who knows, and I’m sure your grandfather couldn’t look at it that way, much like anyone who had been through a situation like that. I always think - “you never know what worse luck your own bad luck has saved you from”.
The RAF shifted from daylight raids early in the war, and already had a basic understanding that they did not want vulnerable large or medium heavies exposed to fighters in daylight. The .303 was also under gunned in terms of night fighting as well as day fighting and the arguments will rage forever in terms of up-gunning. The US had a direct approach once they got long range escorts and that approach was directly to tangle with the Luftwaffe. If you zoom out from the argument on planes and gun calibres, the B17 had heavier guns pointing out of everywhere, boxes and formations, and when attacked in force by Luftwaffe forces - the loss rates were staggering. Very brave men went on missions with very low survival rates. Its not a good argument to take this raid and make the gun argument alone. In both RAF and USAAF raids, gunners were under a lot of pressure to conserve ammunition. What's the actual lesson? The lesson is that you have to sweep the defending fighters prior to the bombers and if they get through hunt them, attack their aerodromes, degrade their numbers and on the far side, degrade the supply chains. In essence, the USAAF reached a point where they broke the Luftwaffe in the air, and broke their manufacture, spares, fuel supply chain. Did large calibre guns and tight formation boxes help - yes, but they are not the reason for the very large statistical change over the latter months. Air superiority became a reality. In tribute to the men of the 8th, 9th and RAF bomber command - ruclips.net/video/SLpzpS4LQE8/видео.html ruclips.net/video/am-RUdbCLfA/видео.html ruclips.net/video/qkYOHPwFD-o/видео.html
@@primmakinsofis614 I never said they didn't. But like the USAAF - risks dropped when the Luftwaffe was being degraded and could no longer fight as it did in 42, 43. And in 44, 45 - there was vastly larger numbers of escorts, and much more in terms of degrading the German abilities.
"RAF shifted from daylight raids early in the war" Actually August 1942 for heavies, mediums and lights continued to operate in daylight as well as dark. Search Augsburg raid 1942
Lancaster Mk.X's were eventually equipped with Martin upper turrets containing 2 x .50 mgs. The tail turret was replaced in some Lancs with a turret containing 2 x .50s as well. Later rear turrets also had a radar equipped system to aim the weapons. It was code-named Village Inn. RAF night bombing was quite effective once accurate target-marking system were in place although losses were always high. It is no surprise that the RAF crews were not as proficient as the USAAF counterparts at day-bombing. In any case Germany was reduced to rubble by the combined offensive.
-In defense of the Lancaster on this mission is that had B-26, B-24 or B-17 would also have suffered losses in these circumstances of the escorts not being in the vicinity. Just less and maybe the Germans more. -They were somewhat lucky to be only attacked by 109 instead of the far more powerfully armed and armored Fw 190. -I imagine the Lancaster's were at about 16,000ft since they couldn't operate much higher. There single stage two speed superchargers (Merlin 24) lost power rapidly above this. The Merlin 66 with a two stage two speed inter cooled engine could have been fitted. This raises the operational ceiling to about 21000ft. Other problems were -No copilot to assist in the heavy workload required for formation flying. -More armor needed as 16000ft is optimal for 88 FLAK. -The Me 109G14AS shown in the illustration entered its first combat in July 1944 and was a modification of the Me 109G6 as follows 1/ The 1420hp DB601A engine was replaced by the 1700hp DB601AS engine which used water injection. This engine also featured an enlarged supercharger that greatly increased service ceiling and speed due to the thinner air. Latter versions had more advanced engines with as much as 1850hp. Speed was probably 422-432mph depending on engine. At the altitude in question they would have had good chances against the Mustang. Any higher the Mustangs better engine wings out and any lower the mustangs better aerodynamics wins out. Some G14AS had a tall tail that increased dive speed competitive with the P-51D bubble canopy. It was an interim type since Me 109K4 entered service in October 1944. -The 13.2mm MG131 fired a lighter round at lower velocity than the M2 050 Browning though it rate of fire was more. I think Gunston and Willams counted the MG131 as equal to 2.5 rifle caliber machine guns. The M2 BMG I imagine would be about 3.5 or 4 and with longer range but the MG131 fitted in rifle caliber positions. -The underwing gondola guns were liked because of the reduction ion performance. Latter Messerschmitt figured out how to fit the MK108 guns in the win spars for the Me 109K6.
@@williamzk9083 the Lancaster could theoretically operate, with full load, up to 22,000 (from memory - I'm too lazy to pull my books off the shelf as I'm having a cup of tea). Plenty of raids went in at 20,000 ft which is how they found out that the Lancaster II with its Hercules was a comparative did - it struggled at 20,000ft. Earlier in the war the issue was mixed raids with the Stirling, with the Halifax in the middle. Raids did tend to be stratified, but they didn't want the Stirling to be entirely sacrificial.
So bombing at night was an easy job going by that silly statement. Try driving at night with no headlights or tail lights on in your car in the pitch black without any street, town, house, factory lights on.
I visited the main Steelworks in Dortmund for my work as Inspector in the 1970's, (they were producing steel plate for building the Ekofisk in the north sea), speaking with the workers and management was interesting, I learned the steelworks was called, The 'Herman Goering works', it functioned at 100% all through the war, despite many raids both daylight and at night, not one single bomb hit the important parts of the works, the workers houses in the vicinity of the works were however mostly destroyed, there was no problem parking my car either, the number of bombsites in and around the Ruhr in the 1970's was massive. One bombsite I used in Duesseldorf was eventually cordoned off for a block of flats to be built but during excavations an unexploded 500 pounder was discovered, the police erected a massive cordon while it was defused.
@@williamzk9083 The late era, and K models were great on paper, but they really suffered badly from production, quality, parts being of suitable standards. Most K models did not reach the performance figures and had serious in service issues...
Something frequently missed in these discussions of .50 vs .303 is the engagement distance at night. While radar-equipped night fighters were guided onto the night bomber, the pilot still had to visually identify the target in the pitch black, the silhouette of the bomber confirmed at very close range within the firing envelope of the .303 brownings. At very close distances it was a matter of who sees whom first, with the concentrated weight of fire of the quad .303s in the tail of a Lancaster or Halifax being more than effective at those ranges. Except in the most favourable conditions, German night fighters did not have the advantage of the stand-off range of their 20 and 30mm cannons at night. Even using upward firing cannon, they had to pull in dangerously close to hit. To their advantage the dust-bin belly turrets were abandoned early in the design of the Halifax and Lancaster.
When it comes to the Dustbin turret, most of them were removed by the crews mostly due to them finding the addition pointless. Mind you this allowed them to get the H2S Radar placed on with little issues. Allowing them to find their targets a lot easier than say a B-17 could.
Bomber Command flew plenty of daylight missions from mid-1944 through to the end of the war.. Roughly one-third of the bombing missions flown in that period were daytime operations.
@@kenneth9874 The elimination of the Luftwaffe was most definitely a team effort and most definitely NOT only done by the US. Try not to get your history lessons from Hollywood. As an extra detail, the US would never have been able to even enter the European war if the RAF hadn't single headedly stopped the Luftwaffe from gaining air superiority over England.
@davidkavanagh189 hmmm, there weren't many British fighters over continental Europe until after the landings....so yes the brunt of the luftwaffe's destruction in western Europe was by Americans .
@davidkavanagh189 you do realize that P47's destroyed as many enemy aircraft in 2 years as the vaunted spitfire did in 6....and with far fewer aircraft and over enemy territory.
My historic anecdotal evidence as a nephew of a spitfire mechanic working at the Southampton Supermarine factory. Everyone knew the ineffectiveness of .303 armament. It’s just that there was a huge installed base of British .303 guns and ammo makers. And .50 was actually comparatively rare in the early years before US involvement. Thus out of necessity and convenience, they persisted long after .50 cal became plentiful from 1943 onwards which was at first sourced directly from the US and eventually made domestically.
The British were also moving towards the 20mm but had reliability issues. Even from the Battle of Britain they were experimenting with 20mm cannons but were having issues with jamming and not being able to carry much ammo in the spitfire wings. Once the 20mm Hispano was improved and being installed in fighters in late 1940, it was an effective weapon, but didn't make it on to bombers.
Yes, you deserve a good pat on the back for that presentation. For too long I've had to live with jingoistic nonsense from the Brits about what a succesful bomber the Lancaster was. It may have been a competent aircraft but the strategies employed when bombing just sent men uselessly to their deaths. Didn't the Brits talk to the Yanks or did they still Montgomery-like think the Lancaster was better than the B-17?
I think it is like the Schweinfurt-Regensburg raid, then B-17 did suffer heavy losses because of lack of fighter escorts. The Lancaster did have a strong fighter escort, but for some reason, they did not engage until after the German fighter had attacked the Lancaster, hence the bombers did de facto have no fighter escort. Something must have gone very bad, if 90 Mustangs cant overcome (or tie up/distract) 20 Me-109, even if the Mustangs need to be divided into three groups I do not believe that heavy defensive armament and heavy armor on a heavy bomber make a huge different agents a determent fighter attack. However, I believe that two pilots make a huge difference compare to only one pilot, in a heavy bomber.
the 50cal has a farther reach and punch, so the germans had to open fire at longer distances, in a game of inches, that helps a lot. look at this channels video about bullet dispersions vs distance.
The 303 and lancaster defences tactics which the video focuses on are almost irrelevant. The RAF only did this raid because they thought the German airforce was weak, which was correct, and the mustangs in the fighter escort would deal with any German fighters that did turn up which they did not. The real focus of the topic should be why the mustangs did not do their job.
@@kenneth9874 No bomber could defend itself against fighter attack on either side. It wasn't until the P-51 long range fighter came onto the scene that the Eighth Air Force's losses went down. Depending solely on its own armament was disastrous for American, British, Soviet, and German bombers. While the day light fighters could see the enemy, it was a lot more difficult for Allied night fighters and bomber gunners to see the enemy fighters. There, the large boxes made more sense. In tight boxes they would be shooting at their own bombers that they couldn't see. It is easy to point fingers at tactics80 years later. However, the Allies went to war with what they had, not what they wanted. And yes, mistakes were made.
@alanmcentee9457 Lol, don't you know anything besides regurgitating fallacies? You do realize that it was after d day that Mustangs became the most numerous escort...in other words air superiority had been already won in the landing area. It cost the enemy to take out a US heavy versus the cakewalk to take out the lancasters...I pity the brave men in those things.
"Against Bomber Command by night the Luftwaffe, by means of improved airborne radar devices, was beginning to make of darkness a tattered cloak. After a period of trial and error extending over the years 1941 and 1942 its pilots had been equipped with two standard night fighters, the Messerschmitt 110 and the Junkers 88. The first was easy to maneuver, possessed a high rate of climb and, owing to mass production was available in quantity. Its main disadvantage was its short tactical endurance, which prevented prolonged pursuit. For these reasons it was gradually superseded by the Junkers 88,which though slower and more difficult to handle, had an endurance of five hours. It was constantly modified and for a time was disliked by pilots. Gradually, however they came to see that its advantages outweighed its defects and in their skilled hands it became a formidable weapon." page 2 Royal Air Force 1939-1945 vol III
The POW stating that rifle calibre guns would be able to shoot down anything clearly did not take part in the Battle of Britain. The point of defensive guns on a bomber is not to enable them to shoot down fighters, though they clearly were capable, even light bombers managed kills with even lighter armament, it was to "discourage" them. No fighter pilot wants to be shot at, and a rifle bullet (bear in mind that they are being fired very rapidly and in large numbers) will still ruin your day if it hits anything of importance.
Excellent video, the RAF knew the .303 round was inadequate in 1940! Amazing it was still in use in bombers in 1944 - 45. Also know was the Lancaster's vulnerablity to attack from underneath, thus the German "schragemusik" upward firing guns.
The British didn't realize the use of Schragemusic until later. None of the British night fighters (Beaufighters/Mosquitos) used it, they risked a more dangerous rear attack. The radiators on the Mosquito were vulnerable to rifle calibre rounds coming back.
I've never understood why the RAF selected what was essentially a deer hunting cartridge by WW2 as an aircraft gun, at the onset of the war it was both in the wings of their fighters and used as the defensive guns of their bombers, I've just never been able to figure out why people smart enough to design some of the aircraft they had would make such a huge miscalculation like that, it may have made an effective aircraft gun in WW1 but by WW2 it was certainly obsolete as one, and it's not so much the construction of aircraft being all metal by WW2 that made it obsolete it was speed, speed dictates the ranges you'll be engaging aircraft at. I've had people chime back before talking about the number of .303's in the wings of RAF fighters at the onset of WW2 but that only shows how they just don't get it either, increasing the number of guns doesn't increase the effective range of the cartridge, you can put as many guns as you want in the wing of a fighter but its range is still limited to the cartridge.
@@dukecraig2402 The people of the time were not stupid. Never make that mistake. The philosophy was different. The thinking at the time was that a large number of smaller calibre rounds was more effective than a smaller number of larger calibre rounds. Consider the distances and speeds that were envisioned. It was not thought that most pilots would be able to get hits at long distance with fewer rounds. Consider it the difference between a normal soldier being given a .50 sniper rifle or an assault rifle and told to take the position over the hill. What is going to be most useful to him/her? As for the .303, the UK had looked at changing to a different cartridge before the war but couldn't afford to do so in the time it had. It already had the production capability to make sh*tloads of .303 and it had massive stocks of the round. The UK knew it was not the best but it was better than nothing. When they were able and experience proved it was possible, new aircraft were built with larger calibre weapons (20mm cannons most often). The bombers were supposed to be used at night where dog fights were less common. You are not trying to shoot down everything coming at you. You are trying to stop the other guy from shooting you. You are not trying to make sure no bomber ever is lost. You are trying to make sure the losses are within acceptable limits. Lancasters were optimised to carry larger bomb loads for long distances (At one point Lancasters were looked at for carrying the first A Bombs) over everything else. The crews were trained to fly at night, thus the looser formations. During the day they relied on the fighter escort. Then you have the other factor. Design and production leads. How long does it take to design, build, test a new turret with new larger calibre weapons? How long does it take to retool production lines and retrain workers? How long does it take to change the supply chain, retrain and certify everyone who is going to come into contact with the new systems? Meanwhile, you can stick to the weapons you have, knowing they are not the best, but they are *good enough* for what you need while you work on something better. So, never think they were stupid or blind. They did the best they could with the information, technology and situation they had.
@@philiphumphrey1548 actually, the radiator of any plane was vulnerable to rifle calibre rounds - so you at least partly have an answer why they still were in use until war's end. Another one is the simple fact, that its way easier said than done to replace your principle calibre in use during a total war. Both France and Britain realised the weak spots of the 8mm Lebel and the .303 pretty early on - in some respect even pre WWI actually - yet they managed to miss the train every time due to other factors like a great war being declared, post war budget cuts, economical crisis and so on so they both stumbled into two world wars with equipment they had already intended to replace a while ago. As this video says: it was obvious in 1940 already that rifle calibre machine guns weren't sufficient anymore for aerial warfare. They still could be effective to some degree though (at close distance, against unarmoured, yet vulnerable parts like radiators, wiring, pipelines, ammunition belts, steering cables) or japanese airplanes but overall, the tactical disadvantage was too great compared to heavy calibres like .50 browning or 2cm cannons. Thats why the RAF tried to shift to those calibres too btw, as can be clearly seen in the development of the Spitfire wing types A, B, C, D and E which went from 8 x .303's in the A to 2 x .50 + 2 x 2cm in the E wing. But as I said: you can't just swap your standard calibre with all the production, distribution and training involved just like that in the middle of a conflict.
@@dukecraig2402the RAF selected the 20mm cannon as the standard armament in 1938. Unfortunately the Hispano took until 1941 to be effectively sorted out as a wing mounted weapon. Instead the RAF went to war in 1939 with fighters armed with 8x .303 machine guns, at a time when US fighters were armed with 2x .30 cal machine guns. The real questions is why the US stuck with a heavy machine gun for so long, when the rest of the world transitioned to 20 and 30mm cannons. It is important to keep the time line in perspective
Umm, why were the escort mustangs late to the defence of the bombers? "They arrived when the attack was over." The escorts should have been above the bombers waiting for the 109's to show up.
The report claims the combat boxes were too far apart. It advises for sweeping patrols for escort fighters. When you see an attack on your formation it takes quite some time to actually get there. Enough for an attack of 20 Bf's to unfold and disperse.
When first used in combat daylight lancs were too vulnerable the 303 a big weakness short range 20mm in me109 outranged them nettletons augsburg mission was a painful lesson learnt
Imagine the Lancaster pilots dismay to be ordered into daylight raids with their night raid tactics. It's no wonder they had such huge attrition rate compared to USAAF.
Luftwaffe was a shadow of it's former self, & hardly seen during daylight. Goring was also husbanding his fighters for the 'Operation Bodenplatte' fiasco coming up soon as well.
by this point in the war the luftwaffe was not effectively intercepting raids, so comparing the lost rate on one raid with the average of a number of raids that were mostly not intercepted is not a valid comparison.
@@johnculver2519 That's exactly what I tell people who do nothing but harp on about the Black Thursday Schweinfurt mission as if it was representative of the average losses on 8th Air Force missions, for every Black Thursday type of mission nobody ever talks about the other 20 missions that only lost a few bombers and their targets got absolutely plastered, it's always nothing but "Schweinfurt Schweinfurt Schweinfurt". If every mission was like Schweinfurt the bombing campaign would have been called off long before D-Day.
@@dukecraig2402 Hust go to the figures of tons of bombs dropped planes flown and planes shot down during the whole war and you have the answer, and we know who won the war !!!!
@@dukecraig2402 the problem with this is that for several months before operation argument the USAAF was avoiding germany (excepting Emden). Their mission logs show that they were operating over the low countries, france etc. By the time of operation argument the Luftwaffe has been ground down, presumably in the med, and it is then practical for escorted B17's to operatie over germany.
There's a good interview with Harris on RAF channel. He says one of his first concerns was to upgrade to .50s on bombers but could never get it done. Although at night I wonder if it would have made any difference
Very true. There is an argument that no guns and relevant crew on night raids would have reduced casulaties. Obviously less crew per plane shot down. Improved speed without guns. Improved payload without guns/crew so less bombers required.
There is a rich and often amusing archive of correspondence between Harris and the Air Ministry over this, among other complaints about aircrfat design and manufacture. The RAF eventually developed the twin-50 Rice-Rose turret itself, leaving Harris disgusted that his own workships could do what manufacturers making staggering amounts of money could not. Unfortunately, Churchill and many in the RAF high command were upper class men, never men to apply a blowtorch to the wealthy captains of British industry.
@markgordon2260 id say absolutely. I believe some RCAF 6 Group crews later put a hand aimed MG ( and presumably a spotter) back in ventral spot once they found out about the oblique attacks.
As a Brit i think it was criminal not adopting the .50 cal for the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters, and of course for bomber Defence. Don't no how we won the Battle of Britain with .303
The RAF tested Vickers and Browning 50 cals in the Thirties , both were considered unreliable and slow firing , the Browning was improved after the decision to persist with .303 was made.
1) German planes weren't as heavily armoured at that time. 2) RAF doctrine was still to fire from further away, so you need quicker firing & more guns to spread hits, the .303 x 8 did that. 3) There's not a lot of spare space on a Me 109, you hit it, & chances are it'll hit something vital. 4) The .303 round was standard, so always plentiful. the ,50 cal wasn't, so would have to be imported. A 20mm round would have been easier to obtain. 5) .50 cal was dropped in favour of the 20mm cannon by most air forces, including the USA anyway. RAF also adopted it in the B.O.Britain (or just after).
The Mk1 Spitfies and Hurricanes had 8 0.303 guns. Sufficient at close range in the Battle of Britain. Later options included 2x20mm cannon plus 2x0.5 machine gun. Much lower rate of fire but similiar weight of fire. Swings and roundabouts?
@@eric-wb7gj US didn't widely adopt the 20mm until after Korea. 6x 50cal is equivalent to 4x 20mm, and the 50cal was far better at starting fires, such as against the japanese in PTO.
Probably someone who was absolutely positive that they had better crews, better aircraft, and better tactics than the ‘Yanks (who were just doing it wrong.) Seems to be the running theme even to this day when Lancaster survivability comes up vs. us bombers.
RAF was doing daylight raids at this time because by then, the Luftwaffe largely been decimated, with the night fighter arm remaining active till the very end.
@@Pilotmario The main threat to the night bombing RAF missions wasn't night fighters, it was flak. Contrary to what people think the German flak guns were just as effective at night as in daytime because they were radar laid, people see pictures of German flak guns and will see a German looking through optics into the sky or pointing skyward and they immediately believe they were visually guided, they weren't, they were radar guided and very effective even at night. Another factor is the Merlin engines used in the Lancaster, they weren't the same Merlin engine used in Spitfire's and P51's with high altitude 2 stage superchargers, instead they had single stage superchargers only really good for medium altitude performance, because of this they flew lower with the same amount of weight in bombs than B17's did with their supercharger/turbo configuration, given that every 5,000 ft decrease in altitude doubled your chances of getting hit by AA fire that made the Lancasters more vulnerable to German AA guns. The Luftwaffe's fighters may have been a greatly reduced threat after D-Day but their AA batteries weren't, the 8th Air Force and Bomber Command both lost many more bombers to AA than they did to fighters after D-Day, fighter escorts couldn't really do anything about those AA guns, all you could really do was what the 8th Air Force came up with, since it was about a 45 second flight for AA shells to get to the altitude the bombers flew at if they changed course and altitude slightly every 45 seconds that reduced the number of bombers hit, I don't know if RAF bombers adopted the same defense as I've never read about them doing it but I don't have any reason to believe they wouldn't have as both the 8th and Bomber Command shared information about what worked and what didn't.
@@EstorilEm Bomber Losses, Germany and Northern Europe HC Deb 13 October 1943 vol 392 cc863-4 §28. Mr. Stokes asked the Secretary of State for Air how many British bombers were lost over Germany and Northern Europe during the month of September; the total for the nine months ended 30th September; and whether he has any information as to the figures for American bombers over the same periods? §Sir A. Sinclair 193 British and 92 American bomber aircraft operating from this country were reported lost over Germany and Northern Europe during September. The totals for the nine months ended 30th September are 1,844 British and 539 American.
That happened over 80 years ago, out come all the armchair experts re - hashing their grand fathers war. Same old same old arguments they read in a book some where or heard their grand fathers talking about. And of course the American equipment was the best that's why the U.S.A won WW2 and of course WW1. No one and especial the Americans seems to understand for the whole of WW2 the British Isles was under continual bombardment. There was a shortage of every thing from food to the raw materials required to build the aircraft, tanks, artillery, ships, the list is endless. The people lived under those conditions, they built their aircraft, ships and in fact every thing they needed to stay on top under those conditions. If a bomber like the Lancaster worked they used it, there was the luxury of time to design and build B17 bombers, They used 303 ammunition because it worked and that's just about all the country had at that time. Armchair experts arguing that 50 cal is better than 303 and that 80 years plus after the event, Blah, Blah, Blah --- just go back to your arm chair's and do some thing constructive.
“Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! ... How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care ... We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end ... Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.” ― Winston S. Churchill "As he pointed out, the entire British war effort, including all her overseas military commitments, had only been made possible by American subsidies under the Lend-Lease programme. If the Americans stopped Lend-Lease, Britain would face a 'financial Dunkirk' - his words - unless Washington could be touched for a loan of $5 billion." Keynes
@@RustyH43 This is a forum to discuss WW2 stuff, RAF etc. and thats what we are doing mainly from our armchairs. So if you don't like it, don't read it.
31,000 Packard Merlins (fitted to Lanc's III and X), 30,000 aircraft including over 2,000 B24's and 27,000 tanks Lend Leased to Britain. In 1945 the US wrote off over 20 billion USD of Britain's Lend Lease debt. Churchill “Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! ... How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care ... We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end ... Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.”
A very interesting video! Perhaps the Lancaster's daytime bombing loss rate would have fallen with additional daytime missions, giving their crews more experience and perhaps more time to learn from their B-17 counterparts. However, their .303 armament would still have been a disadvantage. Perhaps the escort P-51 pilots had maintained their standard escort distance from the Lancasters, expecting them to concentrate their defensive fire as B-17s would, but inadvertently giving the Me 109s too much room close to the bomber formations? Furthermore the Lancaster gunners, not being familiar with escort fighter operations, perhaps delayed firing at fighters so they could identify them first, where the B-17 gunners would have shot at anything in range that looked like a fighter? I'm sure you can't draw too many conclusions in a comparison between the Lancaster and the B-17 with just one daytime mission, but the insights are very intriguing.
Undoubtedly their loss rates would have dropped from learning what worked and what didn't, learning to tighten up their formations and not have them spaced so far apart would have changed things quite a bit for them.
Great synopsis as usual . Yours are consistently some of the best on RUclips. However, the unrelenting speed of the narration and the brief flashes of visuals is unhelpful in examining the depth of the information presented. The viewing would be so much more enjoyable if the presentation was slowed down and extended by 50%.
I’m curious about the Lancaster’s lack of a ventral turret affecting the formation layout. At the least I would think the lower elements of the boxes would be much more vulnerable than the USAAF formations.
The RAF were flying AT NIGHT. Close box formations at night are a STUPID idea. Far too high a risk of mid air collision. This was before all the modern navigational and sensor aids that make close formation night flying possible (though still dangerous) today. RAF bomber night formations were much looser, more a gaggle than a box. Each aircraft was essentially on their own.
The Lancaster's absence of a ventral turret was a weakness, even at night. Some German night fighters (Me-110, for instance) mounted two or more 20MM cannons to fire upwards at an angle - they called them "Schrage Musik". They would attack from below and slightly behind, where they could neither be seen nor attacked.
Thanks for another fine video. I know some Lanc's had the quad tail .303s replaced by a twin .50cal turret. Do you know what percentage this was? Also did the Brits consider upgunning Lancs? I feel that the system of the British bombers concentrating on night attack and the Americans focusing on Day attacks was leaning into the strengths of each force and it would have been counterproductive to try to change the British bombers to be optimized for day attack, but it is an interesting thought excercise.
Brits did try to upgrade to 0.50 cals but recoil in first tests killed the gunner firing it. There were other issues to. You'll have to look at the later Lancaster, the Lincoln, to see it was armed with 0.50cal & 20mm cannons, to see what they came up with towards the end of WW2. Night fighting tends to be closer, so the Germans 'should' have had to come within .303 range, making it less outdated. As you say, both the USAAF & RAF had specialised to a high degree to their strengths, & there were good reasons for it. If you mess with that formula, you can be asking for trouble.
@@eric-wb7gjI think it’s far more likely that the mounts and other supporting structures were damaged, or that the field of view was limited with the larger guns as well. Most think it’s a simple mod, but it really needs to go into the original aircraft design most often. I’ve managed to climb into our TBM Avengers turret a few times and it’s got a single .50 Browning literally 4” from the side of your head. With a helmet on, you’d likely be touching it. Obviously the recoil goes through the turret system, but proximity apparently wasn’t an issue. The view is incredible while flying, but you can’t help but feel like a giant exposed target as well. I just don’t know how those guys did it - it’s also the most difficult position to get out of (even more so for most bomber turrets.)
The rear turret mod was called the Rose-Rice turret. Its biggest advantages was the use of heavier twin .50 cal guns, and that the guns could be aimed a little past the vertical straight down. This would give needed protection against attacks from below from the upward firing Schräge Musik equipped night fighters whose tactics took the RAF forever to figure out (understandably since the attacks were in the dark and the targeted bomber rarely made it back). Only about 180 Lancasters were fitted with the turret.
Fascinating account. As dangerous as daylight bombing was, I would take the B17 over the Lanc any day. The bravery of Bomber Command air crews cannot be underestimated, but in terms of combat effectiveness of BC, one can only wonder.
one doesn't have to wonder. for extended periods, while the USAAF was limiting itself to non german targets (apart from emden) bomber command was regularly targeting manufacturing areas in germany.
No less effective than the American bombers. Oh I know Americans claim they were conducting a 'precise' bombing campaign, but that is so much garbage, and they knew it. The Norden bombsight for all its hype was no more effective in the skies above Northern Europe as the bombsight used by anyone else. In fact the Germans had the design for the Norden as early as 1933, and certainly by 1936, and did not try to copy this so called 'revolutionary' piece of equipment. Worse all USAAF bombing theory were based on the nice calm, cloudless skies above their bombing ranges in the US desert. They completely fell apart in the turbulent, cloud wreathed skies of North Western Europe. I hate to say this but if you are dropping your bombs on targets obscured by cloud cover, you are no more accurate than people dropping their bombs at night, because either way you cant see the target..... Later innovations helped, like ground scanning radar fitted to both US and British bombers, so accuracy did increase for both the USAAF and RAF as the war progressed, but the USAAF never, ever attained the kind of bombing accuracy they claimed to the public. Generally it was in fact not much better than the RAF crews dropping their loads at night..... Better, but not much. Which is why when you look at the bomb loads of the USAAF bombers attacking Dresden (yes, USAAF Bombers took part in that as well, the RAF attacked at night, the USAAF attacked during the day), they carried a particular mixture of High explosive and incendiary. It was not a bomb load for hitting industrial targets. That's a bomb load for hitting residential targets.... Which is WHY when the B-29's started hitting Japan they abandoned the tactics 8th Airforce was using in Europe and used relatively low level, night mass bombing, just as the RAF had been doing for years.... EDIT: Sounds like I am bashing the USAAF here, and to a certain extent I am. However it does need to be kept in mind that the real reason for the lack of accuracy by both the USAAF and RAF is that the technology for the kind of precision bombing the USAAF wanted to achieve simply did not exist in WWII. In fact t did not exist until several decades after the war. So its not entirely their fault. I put a great deal of blame on the hype, and frankly fraudulent claims of the Norden company with its bombsight, when Sperry was making a superior, simpler and far, far cheaper bombsight.....
The .303 gave the equivalent firepower of a WW1 fighter where it would be adequate and effective against those biplanes, but continuing it's use in WW2 was a joke. The Brits should have started with the Browning heavy machine gun (as well as the 20 mm auto cannon) from the start. There are pictures of the RAF fitting the 50 cal. in the latter part of the war.
Lets not forget doctrine here, the British usually flew at night with a massive bomb capacity and light defences, the Americans usually flew during the day with a much smaller bomb capacity and excellent defences. Take them out of their designated roles and you're going to run in to problems.
The brits and Canadian governments should be held accountable for forcing men to fly in these junk death traps. Victorian age .303 round outdated for infantry use, being used for defense of aircraft? You have too be daft too even allow this. My great uncle went down in one of these coffins, he was a tail gunner I read his last letter which was written a month before his murder he stated that he was terrified of going up in the flying coffin for the very reason his 303 was useless with its Victorian machine gun round just pathetic and why the English and Canadian Lancaster's bombed civilians at night which is shameful.
Wallace McIntosh was considered the most successful air gunner in Bomber Command. He flew 55 bombing missions and was credited with eight enemy aircraft. I'd heard rear gunner had highest mortality as fighter cannon outranged the .303 and specially targetted them.
Dude, when are you going to let us buy you a coffee? This is one of my favorite RUclips channels. I don't want to give you a lot of money but I'd chip in $5 once in a while (probably a long while) to show my thanks.
The narrator makes some odd points. He compares the attrition rate of Lancasters throughout the war, with the attrition rate of US bombers in the final years of the war, after the Luftwaffe was essentially beaten, for example.
BBC Fact File : Berlin Air Offensive 18 November 1943 to 24 March 1944 'By March 1944, it became clear that the area offensive had fallen short of its goals and that Bomber Command was facing destruction by night fighters just as earlier it had faced destruction by day fighters.' - Noble Frankland, historian and Bomber Command veteran "Redrafted by the Air Ministry, the (Pointblank) directive tasked the 8th US Army Air Force with attacking the aviation industry; RAF Bomber Command would work towards 'the general disorganisation of German industry', as before." "Losses were running at the unsustainable rate of 6-7 per cent per raid, with no prospect of a German surrender. With Germany reasserting command of the air and the Normandy landings in prospect, Arthur Harris's dream of defeating Germany through bombing was slipping away."
Interesting topic and debate. My thoughts are that the Lancaster was purely a bomber. It either relied on darkness to deter the enemy fighters or to have its own fighter escort to see of the fighters. During the early years of bombing, they were going deep into occupied territory and facing a Luftwaffe controlled sky and were often beyond the range of their escorts. Over time the allies took control of the air and the Luftwaffe numbers dwindled and so the RAF could venture out in daylight. By contrast the USAF used B17 bombers which had half the bomb load but more range and defence capability. That said, the B17s were not great at defending themselves and the losses were often high, far higher than the RAF could have withstood. The US had a stream of new bombers and crew coming in so could withstand the losses, which were balanced against the far more effective bombing in daylight. The UK was only 20% the population of the US and with a tiny fraction of the resources, but they managed to make enough planes and to drop almost an identical number of bombs on Germany as the US.
I do have some confusion as to why an enemy pilot would give information valuable to his foe. Is it well-led psychological questioning that breaks a person's will, or an egoism that lets one boast about their success?
I was also impressed by the prisoner's willingness to divulge information that had the potential to assist the enemy in even a small way. I speculate a couple of possibilities: 1. Aircrew were not trained in interrogation resistance techniques the way they are today. Interrogators on both sides were very successful in using soft interrogation techniques where they developed a respectful rapport with the prisoner. Prisoners tended to succumb to respectful treatment when they could easily imagine harsher alternatives. 2. By this time many in leadership positions knew their war was ultimately lost. Many of the officers were not hard-core Nazis; they did their immediate duty but did not believe in the 1000-year Reich.
@davidg3944 It is the same technique as works now. A skilled interrogator gets the subject to relax and forms a kind of 'friendship' with him. I wanted to join the RAF when I was young and was close to doing to when I had a friendly chat with an RAF Flight Sergeant. He was good at his job and got me so relaxed I admitted to smoking a few joints years earlier. Unfortunately that was enough to stop me joining the RAF.
Early in WWII most fighter/intercepters were armed with rifle calibre machine guns meaning that a fighter would have to close within the firing range of the bombers defending machine guns. Early in the war .303 machine guns were adequate. The Manchester was designed to manage that threat. .50cal machine guns have a similar range to a 20mm cannon shell, though with less lethality. The RAF chose to up arm fighters with canon rather than .50 cal machine guns, leaving bombers still with only .303 guns. Interestingly later Lancaster’s were up armed with two .50cal machine guns in the rear turret. One issue with a full .50cal defensive loadout is the additional weight reducing the bombers performance and payload. Lancaster’s were also designed with a belly turret, again its utility in combat was not considered valuable enough to compensate for the loss of payload and performance. I’ve often wondered if the correct solution would have been to have heavy machine gun/cannon equipped Lancaster gunships mixed in with bomber steam to give cannon equipped fighters course to stay out of range of defensive boxes?
that idea of gunship bombers have been tried and tested before by ofcourse the americans and it came with poor results, b-17 gunships variants were made to try and solve the lack of escort fighters and high lossrates of the time, they essentially threw out all the bombing capability and chucked as much 50cals as they could, but this made it slower and more heavier and it struggled to keep up with the normal bombers once they dropped their payloads and became lighter, making them a straggler and dooming the crews. and even with a hundred 50cals, you simply cant focus all that firepower effectively in a bomber, as all those gunners only have a limited coverage of defense, which was why the idea wasnt widely adopted and probably contributed to ending any similar ideas for lancs.
Most unusual for Lancasters to fly in daylight as the RAF abandoned daylight raids in 1940 when the very first raids were made. The RAF bombers didn’t go in for tight box formations. Browning 303s were used by Spitfires and Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain, being supplemented by 20 mm cannon in 1941.
So ahhh, I'm only seeing one raid used to say that the losses of Lancs in day time raids were three times worse than the B17's. That's a really small sample size. Now I'm not saying you are wrong, but it's better to posit things from a larges sample size. Unless I'm mistaken of course. You also show a graph of the trend of US bomber losses over a much longer period, the number of bombers lost going down over time, right when long range fighters became more effective as a thing, as well as large fighter sweeps in German territory. The Lanc was a great aircraft in many ways. The thing wanted to fly, it had a very sound design thatg could lift more and fly higher and faster that any other british bomber until the later model Halifax's caught up. It could take a decent amount of punishment as well, and it really was the mainstay of bomber command. It was inadequately armed though I think the rear turrets were changed to two 20mm canons later in the war. A raid going poorly in daylight, with what seems to be no fighter escort is no surprise. That's why the RAF shifted to night bombing. I have doubts the Lanc force mentioned had much experience or training of daytime raids/operations.
"I'm only seeing one raid used to say that the losses of Lancs in day time raids were three times worse than the B17's. That's a really small sample size...". Indeed. Losses for Lancasters on similar daylight attacks in December 1944 before this raid indicate the problem with this analysis. 93 Lancasters of 3 Group attacked Dortmund on 2 December 1944 for no losses; 183 Lancasters 1 and 8 Group attacked Heimback on 3 December for no losses; 160 Lancasters from 3 Group attacked Oberhausen on 4 December for 1 lost while 27 Lancasters attacked the Urft Dam on the same day for no losses; 94 Lancasters from 3 Group attacked Hamm and another 56 attacked the Schwammenauel Dam on 5 December for no aircraft lost; on 8 December 205 Lancasters of 5 Group attacked the Urft Dam for 1 lost, while 163 Lancasters of 3 Group attacked Osterfeld for 1 lost. The 8 Lancasters lost out of 140 from the 3 Group attack on Witten on 12 December represent 72% of the total Lancaster losses in daylight attacks in December at that point, while the losses in previous raids amounted to something like 3 out of 981 daylight Lancaster sorties, or about 0.3% losses. The relative ineffectiveness of the .303 was well understood long before 1944, as the video points out, but this was offset by the closer ranges in night engagements, and - above all - the importance placed on evasive action as the primary defence for the bombers involved. The looser formations were in part designed to facilitate this; trying to corkscrew in close formation would be potentially disasterous in terms of collision risk.
Don't get triggered by a witless "God Bless America" clickbait piece. They can't even manage to get a proper narrator. Nasal mid Atlantic AI drawl...vile!
@@JaneWilson-bv9zb The usual Anglophobic trolling in statements by commentators like @kenneth9874 doesn't merit a response but @Pablo668 identified the key problem with the video commentary which the creator and commentators influenced by their presentation should be made aware of. I believe posting some supporting data was appropriate. Ultimately, the video claims that the US heavy bomber loss rate to daylight attack in December 1944 was 0.17% while using an unrepresentative sample like the 12 December Witten attack indicates that the RAF suffered 5.7% heavy bomber losses to daylight fighter attack. Based on a quick count in Middlebrook and Everitt, in fact the RAF lost 28 heavy bombers in 2,985 daylight sorties that month, or 0.94% losses to all causes, including flak and collision as well as fighter attack. Performing a similarly selective approach to quantifying US losses would lead to considering the experience of 491st Bomb Group, who lost 16 B-24's to fighter attack in 15 minutes on 26 November 1944 for similar reasons (formations being separated and lacking immediate fighter cover according to Boiten and Bowman), as indicative of the problems that US bombers and the .50 calibre MG faced on daylight raids. Presumably a clone of @kenneth9874 will appear at that point to tell us all how useless the the USAAF and by extension the US itself was in WW2 on the basis of such selective evidence. Speaking of selective representation of unrepresentative data, I presume the intelligence debriefing cited in the document was that of Hauptman Hans-Heinz Dudeck of IV. JG 27 who was shot down and captured on 1 January 1945 (probably not by a .303 MG although that would be perfect irony). Whoever it was, they omit to acknowledge the fact that I. JG 3 also participated in the interception of the Witten raid and claimed 13 Lancasters for the loss of four Bf 109s and their pilots in addition to IV. JG 27's claims for 8 Lancasters and 1 Mustang (according to Caldwell and Muller). If JG 3's losses in that combat are correct, there is some evidence that the escorts which certain commentators are so quick to criticise were trying to do their job on the day. If so, it only goes to show how considering a broader range of historical evidence could be useful to avoid unnecessary and unjust denigrations of the military performance of close allies.
Yes, I enjoyed this vid, have wondered about Brits continuing on with the .30 when the .50 became available. May I make a couple of suggestions? You might do a vid on the Cheyanne tail gunner position on the B-17. Also, what would be interesting would be the "readyness" numbers for the 17, 24 and Lancaster aircraft. Well, maybe one more. What did it take to be taken off "ops"? Read that in the RAF you were accused of lacking fortitude but the implication was cowardice.
Lack of Moral Fibre or LMF was a punitive designation used by the Royal Air Force during the Second World War to stigmatize aircrew who refused to fly operations.
Many of my teachers served in the RAF WW2. After listening to them you could tell that there was never much love lost between the Brits and the Americans during the war the most common complaint was the American airforce cared more about the safety of the crew than damaging the enemy.
Stuff about London The American Memorial Chapel, St Paul’s Towards the end of the war the US Army Air Force (USAAF) had approached Lord Trenchard (Marshal of the RAF and Chairman of the Anglo-American Commission) to help them find a site for a memorial to the Americans based in Britain who had died during the conflict, but Trenchard had replied “it is not for you but for us to erect that memorial”.
@@unclestuka8543 He probably meant that it was more appropriate for Britain to remember the help given. Misinterpretation of cultural difference here. You should get out more.
My dad is English, and at 96 years old, was a kid during WW2. He can't admit that the Yanks basically won the war. Without American help, they were sunk. 100%.
The American heavy bombers were heavily armed defensively, but had a fraction of the bomb load of a Lancaster. They stood a better chance of getting to a target in daylight, but had a less damaging effect on the target. A quid pro quo situation.
Surprising that after captured the German aviator shared so much information. I wonder if he was either tortured OR disenfranchised and knew the war was over, possibly both.
The Luftwaffe bomber had 20,000 bullet holes? Really? So somewhere around 100 Spitfire Mk.Is put nearly every single round they carried into that one bomber. I’m thinking the script for this video may have accidentally had an extra zero added to that number. But that’s just my guess. 😄
Interesting that the predominant narrative in RUclips comments sections is that the USAAF refused to take the sage advice of the RAF regarding strategic bombing tactics and suffered for it. This report indicates that the RAF was just as reluctant to adopt USAAF tactics. Edited: Also, where are the vehement charges of treachery and callous waste of bomber crews like cannon fodder by RAF leaders who knew the .303 was ineffective but continued to send men into battle with it? We get such charges against USAAF for not developing long range escort fighters soon enough to escort bombers all the way to deep targets. (I'm not criticizing the RAF, I'm criticizing the RUclips audience for piling on to a misplaced narrative about the USAAF.)
"Also, where are the vehement charges of treachery and callous waste of bomber crews like cannon fodder by RAF leaders who knew the .303 was ineffective but continued to send men into battle with it? (I'm not criticizing the RAF, I'm criticizing the RUclips audience.)" how is it the youtube commenter's fault the RAF stupidly stuck with the .303?
@@daddust B-29 was so successful the P-47N only escorted it once. B-29 had an 11:1 kill ratio, higher than nearly every fighter plane of WW2. the Lancaster is an overrated bomber.
@@SoloRenegade Charging stupidity is not the same thing as charging treacherous intentional sacrifice of bomber crews on the altar of doctrine and politics, which is a popular charge leveled against the USAAF by RUclipsrs.
"Stragglers, even at 100 yds, do not have a chance." Is written in one of the reports shown. Kinda explains how experienced crews survived and completed their number of missions. How would you like to be a new crew given an older repaired aircraft with perhaps less efficient aerodynamics and engines a little worn, underperforming, or with glitches. It doesn't bear thinking about. 😢
The RAF went straight from the 0.303 to the 20mm in 1942. They considered the 0.5 but decided that the 20mm was available and a far better weapons than the 0.5 so went straight up. The Americans also realised the value of the 20mm but their commitment to the 0.5 meant that They did not selext it till the 1950s
I saw a video about a raid from takeoff to landing and the mid upper gunner was mentioned as having scored 5 enemy fighters in the previous 15 missions. He was either a very good shot or incredibly lucky but at least it proves the Germans didn't have it all there own way
daylight bombing was tried early in the war and it was suicidal.. remember by the time the Americans arrived - late as usual - the Luftwaffe and Germany generally had lost an awful lost of skilled experienced personnel and equipment.. in the early years 1939-42 it was simply madness to fly bombers with out escorts over Germany. even in 1943 when the Germans were starting to lose the war - especially after loss of north Africa, Sicily and defeat at Stalingrad and Kursk - they were formidable. the early American raid were extremely costly and not worth the losses for the damage incurring . game changer was the Rolls-Royce engined Mustang with drop tanks being able to escort bombers to Berlin and back.
The Luftwaffe was considered nearly ineffective at the time and the bombers were being escorted by Mustangs. Presumable it was a case of, there are no American bombers available and the risks are considered acceptable. Yes, the Lancasters were not set up for daylight bombing and the crews were not trained for it but it must have been considered worth the risk. Just another example of brave men doing their duty.
A lot of this was due to air forces slavish adherence to one doctrine after another. The first being “the bomber will always get through”. Almost as meaningless as “Brexit means Brexit.” When any sober sssessment of the inadequacies of bomber policy was offered, it was met by the mantra. The RAF had abandoned day bombing and switched to night bombing before the Butt report which laid out in the starkest terms that wishful thinking was of no use in modern warfare. There was a lot of retrospective justification extolling the benefits of attacking dockyards, factory complexes, railway marshalling yards, or just area bombing cities because the air forces were incapable of any greater accuracy. But this transitioned into another orthodoxy that the answer was area bombing now what is the problem? This meant resistance to the improvements such as the Pathfinder system and the improvements in radar navigation.
This shows above all else that training tells, the Luftwaffe had been fighting the 8th air force for 2 years and the 8th had honed their defensive tactics during the day, and had good co-ordination with their fighters. The RAF were night trained and were using evasion as at night. The gun difference is right, the .303 was much less effective than the guns on the Fortress.
Both were superb aircraft crewed by very brave and courageous men from america Britain and coomnwealth and sadly many paid the price killed or mutilated
.303 was always a sub par aircraft weapon. The problem was of course retooling for .50 at a time when failing to meet demand could seriously impact war efforts. Its the same dilemma they had with the Merlin engines and the various other models out there. The availability of engines could literally result in the cancelation of a fine plane. The Whirlwind being a good example of this. Of course, in hindsight just building loads of Mosquitoes may have saved thousands of lives. Avoid the need to devend yourself completely
It is very clear the RAF were counting on nno opposition, and the Mustangs to do their job. The Bomber Command men were trained for a certain job, it wasn't up to the Lancasters to know day bombing tactics. It was up to the planners to protect them from interception. It is worth noting there were many RAF daylight raids in the last part of the war and usually they went very well.
My father was a gunner in bomber command from 1942 until the end of the war being one of the lucky ones to survive. He served with 464 (RAAF), 83 and 635 (eighth pathfinder group) squadrons. 464 squadron operated twin engined bombers (Lockeed Ventura's), which were used in daylight raids on the near continent, such as the bombing raid on the Philips factories in the Nederland's, and coastal shipping etc. the only reference in his service log book to German fighter losses where that they were observed to be shot down by the fighter escorts. He did not wish to talk about his war time experiences, but occasionally related the odd story. He did have a photo of his Ventura after an encounter with a FW190, how the aircraft stayed in the air long enough to get back to England I will never know, dad said he had a great pilot. Part of the gunner's job was to warn the pilot of enemy fighters. He also took part in daylight raids with 635 squadron which, along with 83 squadron, were equipped with Lancasters.
@@KevinRudd-w8s Glad to meet you, my own father did 40 ops with 576 Squadron from September 1944, also as a tail gunner. Many people (hello Americans!) fail to grasp that the tail gunner was more a sentry and the guns were just a sort of desperate last resort. My father's entire crew survived the war, albeit their usual aircraft was shot down in March 1945, when they had leave. He did several operations in ED888, one of the handful of 100+ operation Lancasters. He was also involved in one of the 'Grand Slam' raids, and on a late war raid that was intercepted by Me262s ("They made one pass, then about half-a-thousand Mustangs came down...). He spoke little of his wartime experiences but toward the end of his life, he opened up a little. Thanks for your reply.
They flew the night style formations - long strung out formations - in daytime? Is that what I understand? If so, that was criminally stupid and is the real problem here. Even with what should have been sufficient escort they had too long of a bomber stream to protect and that kept them from keeping the Luftwaffe away.
They probably did that because that’s what they knew how to do and were most practiced in. Better to do what you know than what you don’t? A poorly considered but unfortunately rational decision.
@@wlewisiii I'm sure it takes a lot of practice and training to fly tight formations for 6-8 hours and allied air superiority was total by the time the lancs were going on day raids
At that time we fighter bases in France,Belguim and holland.Even American bomber crews need fighter protection,even Spits would have the range.Seams like it was a sad day for the P51's ,something went wrong in planing ,for a daylight raid the target must have been ultra important,4 days before the attack on the Ardennes
I wonder how many lives would have been saved if the RAF had switched their defensive armament to 0.50" calibre machine guns much earlier in the war and applied it comprehensively rather than the piecemeal swap outs from 1944/5. The Battle of Britain may well have ended up very one sided (or at least shot down the Luftwaffe bomber forces at a far faster rate) if the Spitfire and Hurricane had been armed witn 6 × 0.5 rather than 8 x 0.303 guns, though I haven't seen an analysis of the weight impact of that an consequent difference in performance.
The RAF were eager to equip their fighters with 20mm cannons but were delayed by two problems. The weapons tended to jam if fired under high G, and the wings were pre-war designs only intended to house the smaller/lighter 303's. The problems were solved, but too late for the Battle of Britain. The RAF's bombers' main defence was darkness, so armour and firepower were sacrificed for heavier bombloads. Darkness also protected German night fighters and the first indication of a fighter's presence was normally a storm of 2cm cannon fire at close range. If a fighter's approach was noticed, either visibly or electronically, the best defence was a series of violent turning dives and climbs to escape from the fighter's radar. More, or heavier, defensive guns would very seldom make a difference, although a single gun firing though a panel in the floor was introduced in response to German "schragemusik".
Very interesting as always! There's multiple memorials to crashed bombers in my hometown. The one closest to my parents was for a Lancaster. I'm curious what the specific mission was. I can check the date of crash, but what resource can be used to find out the specific mission?
In one of the earlier videos (b17 armor?) he mentions they were counting and mesuring bullet holes on returning planes. Acording to statistics number of 0.50 cal friendly fire holes was negligible.
Unless you realize the stupidity of senior air staff in the RAF sending thousands of brave men to their deaths it is inconceivable why they never upgraded bomber defence armament from the .303 popguns.
Which may well have happened if British and American politicians saw the writing was on the wall in the 1930s and had decided to cooperate in preparation. Of course, that didn't happen. There were still significant elements of the US political class calling to remain in splendid isolation even during the Battle of Britain. If Hitler hadn't done Europe the favour of declaring war on the US following the attack on Pearl Harbour, he might have ended up with his free hand.
Never can I understand why Brits chose to send their RAF bombers into battle with .30 cal MGs against 20mm and 12.7mm armed Bf 109s & Fw 190 fighters. The .30 Cals don't have the effective range, energy or destructive ability. AND, no belly ventral turret ot tunnel gun.
5:27 If the escort needed to arrive that suggests they were in the wrong place. There are plenty of comments already that the RAF were stupid for not having 147 .50 cal guns. Somebody in the OR department worked out that defensive guns are mostly useless on night bombers, and the weight savings could mean flying a little higher & faster or carrying more bombs hence not having to go back as often. And if you lose a plane, you lose fewer chaps. The suggestion was not taken up, but the lowest loss rate of RAF bombers was the unarmed Mosquito. Finally, since this was a complete deviation from their prior training & experience you'd expect them to be a bit suboptimal. Had they been daft enough to continue they'd have probably improved.
Mustang escorts learned to keep clear of their own bombers as much as possible & to 'sweep' areas in front & to the sides a few miles away [the forward sweep might be 50 miles ahead of the bombers] - they are probably even more wary when escorting bombers whose gunners are used to night fighting. They will not necessarily know the bombers are under fighter attack because of Northern European December visibility is poor with cloud layers etc [for that week it was 10/10 cloud over the targets right down to the ground]. The Lancasters heavily relied on the green Verey cartridge flare warnings of attack, but the fighter escorts often never saw them.
Knew by then the war was over, hated Hitler, and wanted good treatment. Besides,the info he was giving up couldn’t have been implemented for a very long time.
Awesome, as always! 😃 A bit of criticism aimed at improvement: maybe you could speak a bit slower for us non-native English speakers? Maybe I'm just a bit slow in the head, but I have to skip back sections quite frequently because I didn't compute the information in time. 🙃
Thank you for that report. I think its obvious that RAF bomber units would be at a disatvantage compared to USAAF bomber units in day bombing at that point in time. Neither was the Lancaster optimised for this type of action with its comperatively weak defensive armament nor were the crews propperly trained as it has been indicated in the report (the gunners not mutually covering other bombers in the formation and such). It also seems that they haphazardly adopted USAAF standards without adjusting them to their specifics (which probably would have required them to shorten the distance to their respective boxes due to the decreased effective range of their defensive weaponry). Compared to that, the USAAF had gone through all its necessary lessons by that time and was naturally much more effective at that specific game. What went missing in this video though was why the 90 Mustangs failed to intercept those 20 german messerschmitts in time. Was there a problem regarding communication between the bombers and their escort? Were they RAF Mustangs or USAAF Mustangs?
The Brits stuck with the 303 for the same reason the USA stuck with the 50 caliber, they HAD them in large quantities and the supply chain was set up to deliver guns and ammo, any change would interupt the supply, why USA stayed with 50 cal over switching to the 20MM....😁
Plenty of British excuses for that failure all of which ignore the USSR's ability to rapidly introduce new and better weapons while fighting for their lives at the same time.
At least one German night fighter ace stated that if the rear gunner on a Lanc or Halifax spotted him and opened fire, he would simply break away and look for another less watchful victim rather than be sprayed with .303. So it was of some deterrent, at least at night.
Late war those tail guns were radar guided
@@scrubsrc4084 The Village Inn radar gun aiming system was fitted to very few aircraft quite late in the war and the equipment was very unreliable.
The professional Luftwaffe fighter pilots would break off and hunt easier and safer quarry to attack. A number of night fighter pilots report encountering accurate gunfire from over 1000m from the 303 guns at night. These night fighters were by nature not conducting fast slashing attacks so would have been exposed for long periods to the guns.
@@richardvernon317 Village Inn would have matured. As far as I know all Village Inn turrets used Two 0.5 BMG which was the equal of eight 303 MG so better in daylight and night. More useful would have been the "Fishpond" modification to the 3 cm H2S ground mapping radar which provided a second display optimized to detect approaching night fighters.
Mk VII and Mk 10s were equipped with .60 calibre guns in the mid upper turret and late model Lancasters with the FN82 tail turret had .50 calibre guns in their tail turret. Arguably, from what I have read the main advantage of the gunners was to identify enemy fighters enabling the pilot to take evasive action.
This German POW was certainly talkative. And so generous with his suggestions!
Aldo the Apache
Most German pow interviews I’ve seen show they were arrogant, or at least supremely confident in their superiority.
@@joeqmix A bit fishy was my thought.
You think so? Read the well known book Interrogator by Hans Scarf, the German who was after the war living in the USA and training the USAF, and became a close friend of many of his previous ‘prisoners!’
Most likely he was liberally "encouraged" by his captors.
Yes, the US bombers were more heavily armed and armoured than the Lancaster, but their maximum bombload was a fraction of that of the Lancaster..
@@rodbowes5309 bullshit, check the stats
More to the point was the physical size of individual bombs. Lancaster bombs were much much larger.
@rodbowes5309 I believe somewhere around two thirds of all bombs dropped on Germany during the war were dropped by the RAF.
@womble321 they had trouble hitting a city much less a factory for much of the war....
The bomb load was more contingent upon the distance to target. For many long range targets the bombers would sacrifice bomb load in favor of fuel. Within a normal range, the bomb loads of the Lancaster and B-24 were comparable at 8,000-9,000 lbs.
My grandfather was a Lancaster rear air gunner. On the night his plane was shot down, for reasons that are unclear, he was manning the mid air gunner position instead. The man occupying the rear air gunner position that night was killed. This fact haunted my grandfather long after the war ended.
Had a friend in London whose old man was a rear gunner on a Lancaster. A pretty shattered man, needless to say he wasn't the life and soul of any party
It could have been that your grandfather was a better gunner than the man who was killed and if the roles had been the other way around ad usual, the situation might have been different. But who knows, and I’m sure your grandfather couldn’t look at it that way, much like anyone who had been through a situation like that. I always think - “you never know what worse luck your own bad luck has saved you from”.
@ That’s an interesting perspective. I’d not thought about things in that way before.
The RAF shifted from daylight raids early in the war, and already had a basic understanding that they did not want vulnerable large or medium heavies exposed to fighters in daylight. The .303 was also under gunned in terms of night fighting as well as day fighting and the arguments will rage forever in terms of up-gunning.
The US had a direct approach once they got long range escorts and that approach was directly to tangle with the Luftwaffe. If you zoom out from the argument on planes and gun calibres, the B17 had heavier guns pointing out of everywhere, boxes and formations, and when attacked in force by Luftwaffe forces - the loss rates were staggering. Very brave men went on missions with very low survival rates. Its not a good argument to take this raid and make the gun argument alone. In both RAF and USAAF raids, gunners were under a lot of pressure to conserve ammunition.
What's the actual lesson? The lesson is that you have to sweep the defending fighters prior to the bombers and if they get through hunt them, attack their aerodromes, degrade their numbers and on the far side, degrade the supply chains. In essence, the USAAF reached a point where they broke the Luftwaffe in the air, and broke their manufacture, spares, fuel supply chain. Did large calibre guns and tight formation boxes help - yes, but they are not the reason for the very large statistical change over the latter months. Air superiority became a reality.
In tribute to the men of the 8th, 9th and RAF bomber command -
ruclips.net/video/SLpzpS4LQE8/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/am-RUdbCLfA/видео.html
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Bomber Command flew plenty of daylight missions in 1944--45, roughly one-third of the total missions flown.
@@primmakinsofis614 I never said they didn't. But like the USAAF - risks dropped when the Luftwaffe was being degraded and could no longer fight as it did in 42, 43.
And in 44, 45 - there was vastly larger numbers of escorts, and much more in terms of degrading the German abilities.
@@primmakinsofis614 After the USAAF cleared the sky per Pointblank directive.
"RAF shifted from daylight raids early in the war" Actually August 1942 for heavies, mediums and lights continued to operate in daylight as well as dark.
Search Augsburg raid 1942
It's a physical constraint that you can always fit more firepower in fixed mounts than in a rotating turret. Planes or tanks.
Lancaster Mk.X's were eventually equipped with Martin upper turrets containing 2 x .50 mgs. The tail turret was replaced in some Lancs with a turret containing 2 x .50s as well. Later rear turrets also had a radar equipped system to aim the weapons. It was code-named Village Inn. RAF night bombing was quite effective once accurate target-marking system were in place although losses were always high. It is no surprise that the RAF crews were not as proficient as the USAAF counterparts at day-bombing. In any case Germany was reduced to rubble by the combined offensive.
-In defense of the Lancaster on this mission is that had B-26, B-24 or B-17 would also have suffered losses in these circumstances of the escorts not being in the vicinity. Just less and maybe the Germans more.
-They were somewhat lucky to be only attacked by 109 instead of the far more powerfully armed and armored Fw 190.
-I imagine the Lancaster's were at about 16,000ft since they couldn't operate much higher. There single stage two speed superchargers (Merlin 24) lost power rapidly above this. The Merlin 66 with a two stage two speed inter cooled engine could have been fitted. This raises the operational ceiling to about 21000ft.
Other problems were
-No copilot to assist in the heavy workload required for formation flying.
-More armor needed as 16000ft is optimal for 88 FLAK.
-The Me 109G14AS shown in the illustration entered its first combat in July 1944 and was a modification of the Me 109G6 as follows
1/ The 1420hp DB601A engine was replaced by the 1700hp DB601AS engine which used water injection. This engine also featured an enlarged supercharger that greatly increased service ceiling and speed due to the thinner air. Latter versions had more advanced engines with as much as 1850hp. Speed was probably 422-432mph depending on engine.
At the altitude in question they would have had good chances against the Mustang. Any higher the Mustangs better engine wings out and any lower the mustangs better aerodynamics wins out. Some G14AS had a tall tail that increased dive speed competitive with the P-51D bubble canopy. It was an interim type since Me 109K4 entered service in October 1944.
-The 13.2mm MG131 fired a lighter round at lower velocity than the M2 050 Browning though it rate of fire was more. I think Gunston and Willams counted the MG131 as equal to 2.5 rifle caliber machine guns. The M2 BMG I imagine would be about 3.5 or 4 and with longer range but the MG131 fitted in rifle caliber positions.
-The underwing gondola guns were liked because of the reduction ion performance. Latter Messerschmitt figured out how to fit the MK108 guns in the win spars for the Me 109K6.
@@williamzk9083 the Lancaster could theoretically operate, with full load, up to 22,000 (from memory - I'm too lazy to pull my books off the shelf as I'm having a cup of tea). Plenty of raids went in at 20,000 ft which is how they found out that the Lancaster II with its Hercules was a comparative did - it struggled at 20,000ft. Earlier in the war the issue was mixed raids with the Stirling, with the Halifax in the middle. Raids did tend to be stratified, but they didn't want the Stirling to be entirely sacrificial.
So bombing at night was an easy job going by that silly statement. Try driving at night with no headlights or tail lights on in your car in the pitch black without any street, town, house, factory lights on.
I visited the main Steelworks in Dortmund for my work as Inspector in the 1970's, (they were producing steel plate for building the Ekofisk in the north sea), speaking with the workers and management was interesting, I learned the steelworks was called, The 'Herman Goering works', it functioned at 100% all through the war, despite many raids both daylight and at night, not one single bomb hit the important parts of the works, the workers houses in the vicinity of the works were however mostly destroyed, there was no problem parking my car either, the number of bombsites in and around the Ruhr in the 1970's was massive. One bombsite I used in Duesseldorf was eventually cordoned off for a block of flats to be built but during excavations an unexploded 500 pounder was discovered, the police erected a massive cordon while it was defused.
@@williamzk9083 The late era, and K models were great on paper, but they really suffered badly from production, quality, parts being of suitable standards. Most K models did not reach the performance figures and had serious in service issues...
Something frequently missed in these discussions of .50 vs .303 is the engagement distance at night. While radar-equipped night fighters were guided onto the night bomber, the pilot still had to visually identify the target in the pitch black, the silhouette of the bomber confirmed at very close range within the firing envelope of the .303 brownings. At very close distances it was a matter of who sees whom first, with the concentrated weight of fire of the quad .303s in the tail of a Lancaster or Halifax being more than effective at those ranges. Except in the most favourable conditions, German night fighters did not have the advantage of the stand-off range of their 20 and 30mm cannons at night. Even using upward firing cannon, they had to pull in dangerously close to hit. To their advantage the dust-bin belly turrets were abandoned early in the design of the Halifax and Lancaster.
When it comes to the Dustbin turret, most of them were removed by the crews mostly due to them finding the addition pointless.
Mind you this allowed them to get the H2S Radar placed on with little issues. Allowing them to find their targets a lot easier than say a B-17 could.
As usual, a wonderful presentation. Truly enjoy the documentation - easy to hit the pause button and then read the entire page displayed. Thank you!
Bomber Command flew plenty of daylight missions from mid-1944 through to the end of the war.. Roughly one-third of the bombing missions flown in that period were daytime operations.
@@primmakinsofis614 yes, after the US won air superiority...
@@kenneth9874 Yes the US bombers shot down many times more Geman fighters then Germany had manufactured.
@@kenneth9874 The elimination of the Luftwaffe was most definitely a team effort and most definitely NOT only done by the US. Try not to get your history lessons from Hollywood. As an extra detail, the US would never have been able to even enter the European war if the RAF hadn't single headedly stopped the Luftwaffe from gaining air superiority over England.
@davidkavanagh189 hmmm, there weren't many British fighters over continental Europe until after the landings....so yes the brunt of the luftwaffe's destruction in western Europe was by Americans .
@davidkavanagh189 you do realize that P47's destroyed as many enemy aircraft in 2 years as the vaunted spitfire did in 6....and with far fewer aircraft and over enemy territory.
My historic anecdotal evidence as a nephew of a spitfire mechanic working at the Southampton Supermarine factory. Everyone knew the ineffectiveness of .303 armament. It’s just that there was a huge installed base of British .303 guns and ammo makers. And .50 was actually comparatively rare in the early years before US involvement. Thus out of necessity and convenience, they persisted long after .50 cal became plentiful from 1943 onwards which was at first sourced directly from the US and eventually made domestically.
The British were also moving towards the 20mm but had reliability issues. Even from the Battle of Britain they were experimenting with 20mm cannons but were having issues with jamming and not being able to carry much ammo in the spitfire wings. Once the 20mm Hispano was improved and being installed in fighters in late 1940, it was an effective weapon, but didn't make it on to bombers.
I never realized how thick that glass was on the 109.
I'd like to see more of your research skills on Bomber Command.
This.
Nicely done video! It must take quite a while to dig through all the documents needed for such a presentation. Thank you!
Yes, you deserve a good pat on the back for that presentation. For too long I've had to live with jingoistic nonsense from the Brits about what a succesful bomber the Lancaster was. It may have been a competent aircraft but the strategies employed when bombing just sent men uselessly to their deaths. Didn't the Brits talk to the Yanks or did they still Montgomery-like think the Lancaster was better than the B-17?
Thanks!
Thanks for the channel $ donation. It is much appreciated.
I think it is like the Schweinfurt-Regensburg raid, then B-17 did suffer heavy losses because of lack of fighter escorts. The Lancaster did have a strong fighter escort, but for some reason, they did not engage until after the German fighter had attacked the Lancaster, hence the bombers did de facto have no fighter escort.
Something must have gone very bad, if 90 Mustangs cant overcome (or tie up/distract) 20 Me-109, even if the Mustangs need to be divided into three groups
I do not believe that heavy defensive armament and heavy armor on a heavy bomber make a huge different agents a determent fighter attack. However, I believe that two pilots make a huge difference compare to only one pilot, in a heavy bomber.
the Mustangs were clearly protecting more than just the RAF bombers, against more than just the 20 fighters attacking teh RAF bombers.
The POW says the bombers were too spread out for 90 escorts to be effective. They can't be everywhere at once.
the 50cal has a farther reach and punch, so the germans had to open fire at longer distances, in a game of inches, that helps a lot. look at this channels video about bullet dispersions vs distance.
Heavy armor and armaments do make a difference combined with great tactics it would make a determined attacker think twice
@ I might have forgot, but do the video say that, or you do a conjunction.
The 303 and lancaster defences tactics which the video focuses on are almost irrelevant. The RAF only did this raid because they thought the German airforce was weak, which was correct, and the mustangs in the fighter escort would deal with any German fighters that did turn up which they did not. The real focus of the topic should be why the mustangs did not do their job.
@@Twirlyhead they're totally relevant to the fact that lancasters performed poorly and couldn't defend themselves.
@@kenneth9874
No bomber could defend itself against fighter attack on either side. It wasn't until the P-51 long range fighter came onto the scene that the Eighth Air Force's losses went down. Depending solely on its own armament was disastrous for American, British, Soviet, and German bombers.
While the day light fighters could see the enemy, it was a lot more difficult for Allied night fighters and bomber gunners to see the enemy fighters. There, the large boxes made more sense. In tight boxes they would be shooting at their own bombers that they couldn't see.
It is easy to point fingers at tactics80 years later. However, the Allies went to war with what they had, not what they wanted. And yes, mistakes were made.
@alanmcentee9457 Lol, don't you know anything besides regurgitating fallacies? You do realize that it was after d day that Mustangs became the most numerous escort...in other words air superiority had been already won in the landing area. It cost the enemy to take out a US heavy versus the cakewalk to take out the lancasters...I pity the brave men in those things.
@@kenneth9874 Performed poorly???????????? I doubt the Germans subject to bombing raids by Lancasters shared that opinion.
@whiteheatherclub yes, they performed abysmally.....lots of dirt was bombed by the poor crews in those death traps!
"Against Bomber Command by night the Luftwaffe, by means of improved airborne radar devices, was beginning to make of darkness a tattered cloak. After a period of trial and error extending over the years 1941 and 1942 its pilots had been equipped with two standard night fighters, the Messerschmitt 110 and the Junkers 88. The first was easy to maneuver, possessed a high rate of climb and, owing to mass production was available in quantity. Its main disadvantage was its short tactical endurance, which prevented prolonged pursuit. For these reasons it was gradually superseded by the Junkers 88,which though slower and more difficult to handle, had an endurance of five hours. It was constantly modified and for a time was disliked by pilots. Gradually, however they came to see that its advantages outweighed its defects and in their skilled hands it became a formidable weapon."
page 2
Royal Air Force 1939-1945 vol III
The POW stating that rifle calibre guns would be able to shoot down anything clearly did not take part in the Battle of Britain. The point of defensive guns on a bomber is not to enable them to shoot down fighters, though they clearly were capable, even light bombers managed kills with even lighter armament, it was to "discourage" them. No fighter pilot wants to be shot at, and a rifle bullet (bear in mind that they are being fired very rapidly and in large numbers) will still ruin your day if it hits anything of importance.
Excellent video, the RAF knew the .303 round was inadequate in 1940! Amazing it was still in use in bombers in 1944 - 45. Also know was the Lancaster's vulnerablity to attack from underneath, thus the German "schragemusik" upward firing guns.
The British didn't realize the use of Schragemusic until later. None of the British night fighters (Beaufighters/Mosquitos) used it, they risked a more dangerous rear attack. The radiators on the Mosquito were vulnerable to rifle calibre rounds coming back.
I've never understood why the RAF selected what was essentially a deer hunting cartridge by WW2 as an aircraft gun, at the onset of the war it was both in the wings of their fighters and used as the defensive guns of their bombers, I've just never been able to figure out why people smart enough to design some of the aircraft they had would make such a huge miscalculation like that, it may have made an effective aircraft gun in WW1 but by WW2 it was certainly obsolete as one, and it's not so much the construction of aircraft being all metal by WW2 that made it obsolete it was speed, speed dictates the ranges you'll be engaging aircraft at.
I've had people chime back before talking about the number of .303's in the wings of RAF fighters at the onset of WW2 but that only shows how they just don't get it either, increasing the number of guns doesn't increase the effective range of the cartridge, you can put as many guns as you want in the wing of a fighter but its range is still limited to the cartridge.
@@dukecraig2402 The people of the time were not stupid. Never make that mistake. The philosophy was different. The thinking at the time was that a large number of smaller calibre rounds was more effective than a smaller number of larger calibre rounds. Consider the distances and speeds that were envisioned. It was not thought that most pilots would be able to get hits at long distance with fewer rounds.
Consider it the difference between a normal soldier being given a .50 sniper rifle or an assault rifle and told to take the position over the hill. What is going to be most useful to him/her?
As for the .303, the UK had looked at changing to a different cartridge before the war but couldn't afford to do so in the time it had. It already had the production capability to make sh*tloads of .303 and it had massive stocks of the round. The UK knew it was not the best but it was better than nothing.
When they were able and experience proved it was possible, new aircraft were built with larger calibre weapons (20mm cannons most often).
The bombers were supposed to be used at night where dog fights were less common. You are not trying to shoot down everything coming at you. You are trying to stop the other guy from shooting you. You are not trying to make sure no bomber ever is lost. You are trying to make sure the losses are within acceptable limits.
Lancasters were optimised to carry larger bomb loads for long distances (At one point Lancasters were looked at for carrying the first A Bombs) over everything else. The crews were trained to fly at night, thus the looser formations.
During the day they relied on the fighter escort.
Then you have the other factor. Design and production leads. How long does it take to design, build, test a new turret with new larger calibre weapons? How long does it take to retool production lines and retrain workers?
How long does it take to change the supply chain, retrain and certify everyone who is going to come into contact with the new systems?
Meanwhile, you can stick to the weapons you have, knowing they are not the best, but they are *good enough* for what you need while you work on something better.
So, never think they were stupid or blind. They did the best they could with the information, technology and situation they had.
@@philiphumphrey1548 actually, the radiator of any plane was vulnerable to rifle calibre rounds - so you at least partly have an answer why they still were in use until war's end.
Another one is the simple fact, that its way easier said than done to replace your principle calibre in use during a total war. Both France and Britain realised the weak spots of the 8mm Lebel and the .303 pretty early on - in some respect even pre WWI actually - yet they managed to miss the train every time due to other factors like a great war being declared, post war budget cuts, economical crisis and so on so they both stumbled into two world wars with equipment they had already intended to replace a while ago. As this video says: it was obvious in 1940 already that rifle calibre machine guns weren't sufficient anymore for aerial warfare. They still could be effective to some degree though (at close distance, against unarmoured, yet vulnerable parts like radiators, wiring, pipelines, ammunition belts, steering cables) or japanese airplanes but overall, the tactical disadvantage was too great compared to heavy calibres like .50 browning or 2cm cannons. Thats why the RAF tried to shift to those calibres too btw, as can be clearly seen in the development of the Spitfire wing types A, B, C, D and E which went from 8 x .303's in the A to 2 x .50 + 2 x 2cm in the E wing. But as I said: you can't just swap your standard calibre with all the production, distribution and training involved just like that in the middle of a conflict.
@@dukecraig2402the RAF selected the 20mm cannon as the standard armament in 1938. Unfortunately the Hispano took until 1941 to be effectively sorted out as a wing mounted weapon. Instead the RAF went to war in 1939 with fighters armed with 8x .303 machine guns, at a time when US fighters were armed with 2x .30 cal machine guns. The real questions is why the US stuck with a heavy machine gun for so long, when the rest of the world transitioned to 20 and 30mm cannons. It is important to keep the time line in perspective
Umm, why were the escort mustangs late to the defence of the bombers? "They arrived when the attack was over." The escorts should have been above the bombers waiting for the 109's to show up.
The report claims the combat boxes were too far apart. It advises for sweeping patrols for escort fighters. When you see an attack on your formation it takes quite some time to actually get there. Enough for an attack of 20 Bf's to unfold and disperse.
When first used in combat daylight lancs were too vulnerable the 303 a big weakness short range 20mm in me109 outranged them nettletons augsburg mission was a painful lesson learnt
Imagine the Lancaster pilots dismay to be ordered into daylight raids with their night raid tactics. It's no wonder they had such huge attrition rate compared to USAAF.
Luftwaffe was a shadow of it's former self, & hardly seen during daylight. Goring was also husbanding his fighters for the 'Operation Bodenplatte' fiasco coming up soon as well.
by this point in the war the luftwaffe was not effectively intercepting raids, so comparing the lost rate on one raid with the average of a number of raids that were mostly not intercepted is not a valid comparison.
@@johnculver2519
That's exactly what I tell people who do nothing but harp on about the Black Thursday Schweinfurt mission as if it was representative of the average losses on 8th Air Force missions, for every Black Thursday type of mission nobody ever talks about the other 20 missions that only lost a few bombers and their targets got absolutely plastered, it's always nothing but "Schweinfurt Schweinfurt Schweinfurt".
If every mission was like Schweinfurt the bombing campaign would have been called off long before D-Day.
@@dukecraig2402 Hust go to the figures of tons of bombs dropped planes flown and planes shot down during the whole war and you have the answer, and we know who won the war !!!!
@@dukecraig2402 the problem with this is that for several months before operation argument the USAAF was avoiding germany (excepting Emden). Their mission logs show that they were operating over the low countries, france etc. By the time of operation argument the Luftwaffe has been ground down, presumably in the med, and it is then practical for escorted B17's to operatie over germany.
There's a good interview with Harris on RAF channel. He says one of his first concerns was to upgrade to .50s on bombers but could never get it done. Although at night I wonder if it would have made any difference
The 60% fail rate of the new 50cal turrets didn't help.
Very true. There is an argument that no guns and relevant crew on night raids would have reduced casulaties. Obviously less crew per plane shot down. Improved speed without guns. Improved payload without guns/crew so less bombers required.
Would the lack of ventral turrets on RAF bombers be a factor - Shragemusik looked like it was developed due to this.
There is a rich and often amusing archive of correspondence between Harris and the Air Ministry over this, among other complaints about aircrfat design and manufacture.
The RAF eventually developed the twin-50 Rice-Rose turret itself, leaving Harris disgusted that his own workships could do what manufacturers making staggering amounts of money could not.
Unfortunately, Churchill and many in the RAF high command were upper class men, never men to apply a blowtorch to the wealthy captains of British industry.
@markgordon2260 id say absolutely. I believe some RCAF 6 Group crews later put a hand aimed MG ( and presumably a spotter) back in ventral spot once they found out about the oblique attacks.
As a Brit i think it was criminal not adopting the .50 cal for the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters, and of course for bomber Defence. Don't no how we won the Battle of Britain with .303
The RAF tested Vickers and Browning 50 cals in the Thirties , both were considered unreliable and slow firing , the Browning was improved after the decision to persist with .303 was made.
1) German planes weren't as heavily armoured at that time.
2) RAF doctrine was still to fire from further away, so you need quicker firing & more guns to spread hits, the .303 x 8 did that.
3) There's not a lot of spare space on a Me 109, you hit it, & chances are it'll hit something vital.
4) The .303 round was standard, so always plentiful. the ,50 cal wasn't, so would have to be imported. A 20mm round would have been easier to obtain.
5) .50 cal was dropped in favour of the 20mm cannon by most air forces, including the USA anyway. RAF also adopted it in the B.O.Britain (or just after).
The Mk1 Spitfies and Hurricanes had 8 0.303 guns. Sufficient at close range in the Battle of Britain. Later options included 2x20mm cannon plus 2x0.5 machine gun. Much lower rate of fire but similiar weight of fire. Swings and roundabouts?
@@eric-wb7gj US didn't widely adopt the 20mm until after Korea. 6x 50cal is equivalent to 4x 20mm, and the 50cal was far better at starting fires, such as against the japanese in PTO.
@@SoloRenegade Agreed, but the US did still adopt the 20mm.
That was refreshingly concise.
I'd love to see the name of the "genius" that sent night-bombers on a daylight raid.
Probably someone who was absolutely positive that they had better crews, better aircraft, and better tactics than the ‘Yanks (who were just doing it wrong.)
Seems to be the running theme even to this day when Lancaster survivability comes up vs. us bombers.
RAF was doing daylight raids at this time because by then, the Luftwaffe largely been decimated, with the night fighter arm remaining active till the very end.
@@Pilotmario
The main threat to the night bombing RAF missions wasn't night fighters, it was flak.
Contrary to what people think the German flak guns were just as effective at night as in daytime because they were radar laid, people see pictures of German flak guns and will see a German looking through optics into the sky or pointing skyward and they immediately believe they were visually guided, they weren't, they were radar guided and very effective even at night.
Another factor is the Merlin engines used in the Lancaster, they weren't the same Merlin engine used in Spitfire's and P51's with high altitude 2 stage superchargers, instead they had single stage superchargers only really good for medium altitude performance, because of this they flew lower with the same amount of weight in bombs than B17's did with their supercharger/turbo configuration, given that every 5,000 ft decrease in altitude doubled your chances of getting hit by AA fire that made the Lancasters more vulnerable to German AA guns.
The Luftwaffe's fighters may have been a greatly reduced threat after D-Day but their AA batteries weren't, the 8th Air Force and Bomber Command both lost many more bombers to AA than they did to fighters after D-Day, fighter escorts couldn't really do anything about those AA guns, all you could really do was what the 8th Air Force came up with, since it was about a 45 second flight for AA shells to get to the altitude the bombers flew at if they changed course and altitude slightly every 45 seconds that reduced the number of bombers hit, I don't know if RAF bombers adopted the same defense as I've never read about them doing it but I don't have any reason to believe they wouldn't have as both the 8th and Bomber Command shared information about what worked and what didn't.
@@EstorilEm Bomber Losses, Germany and Northern Europe
HC Deb 13 October 1943 vol 392 cc863-4
§28. Mr. Stokes asked the Secretary of State for Air how many British bombers were lost over Germany and Northern Europe during the month of September; the total for the nine months ended 30th September; and whether he has any information as to the figures for American bombers over the same periods?
§Sir A. Sinclair 193 British and 92 American bomber aircraft operating from this country were reported lost over Germany and Northern Europe during September. The totals for the nine months ended 30th September are 1,844 British and 539 American.
Freeman Dyson - Problems in bombing policy and aircraft design
ruclips.net/video/kLBBI8Wnrfk/видео.html
That happened over 80 years ago, out come all the armchair experts re - hashing their grand fathers war. Same old same old arguments they read in a book some where or heard their grand fathers talking about. And of course the American equipment was the best that's why the U.S.A won WW2 and of course WW1. No one and especial the Americans seems to understand for the whole of WW2 the British Isles was under continual bombardment. There was a shortage of every thing from food to the raw materials required to build the aircraft, tanks, artillery, ships, the list is endless. The people lived under those conditions, they built their aircraft, ships and in fact every thing they needed to stay on top under those conditions. If a bomber like the Lancaster worked they used it, there was the luxury of time to design and build B17 bombers, They used 303 ammunition because it worked and that's just about all the country had at that time. Armchair experts arguing that 50 cal is better than 303 and that 80 years plus after the event, Blah, Blah, Blah --- just go back to your arm chair's and do some thing constructive.
“Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! ... How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care ... We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end ... Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.”
― Winston S. Churchill
"As he pointed out, the entire British war effort, including all her overseas military commitments, had only been made possible by American subsidies under the Lend-Lease programme. If the Americans stopped Lend-Lease, Britain would face a 'financial Dunkirk' - his words - unless Washington could be touched for a loan of $5 billion." Keynes
@@RustyH43 This is a forum to discuss WW2 stuff, RAF etc. and thats what we are doing mainly from our armchairs. So if you don't like it, don't read it.
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31,000 Packard Merlins (fitted to Lanc's III and X), 30,000 aircraft including over 2,000 B24's and 27,000 tanks Lend Leased to Britain.
In 1945 the US wrote off over 20 billion USD of Britain's Lend Lease debt.
Churchill “Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! ... How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care ... We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end ... Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.”
A very interesting video! Perhaps the Lancaster's daytime bombing loss rate would have fallen with additional daytime missions, giving their crews more experience and perhaps more time to learn from their B-17 counterparts. However, their .303 armament would still have been a disadvantage.
Perhaps the escort P-51 pilots had maintained their standard escort distance from the Lancasters, expecting them to concentrate their defensive fire as B-17s would, but inadvertently giving the Me 109s too much room close to the bomber formations?
Furthermore the Lancaster gunners, not being familiar with escort fighter operations, perhaps delayed firing at fighters so they could identify them first, where the B-17 gunners would have shot at anything in range that looked like a fighter?
I'm sure you can't draw too many conclusions in a comparison between the Lancaster and the B-17 with just one daytime mission, but the insights are very intriguing.
Undoubtedly their loss rates would have dropped from learning what worked and what didn't, learning to tighten up their formations and not have them spaced so far apart would have changed things quite a bit for them.
thank-you for your efforts.
SOME Lancasters were fitted with the Rose turret at the rear , which substituted the 4 , 303's for 2 .5 cals
Great synopsis as usual . Yours are consistently some of the best on RUclips. However, the unrelenting speed of the narration and the brief flashes of visuals is unhelpful in examining the depth of the information presented. The viewing would be so much more enjoyable if the presentation was slowed down and extended by 50%.
Videos have a playback speed setting. Use it.
@Fordnan thanks, but that would be even more annoying to watch than the original format.
@@andrewhefner289 You could pause on the interesting information. Long slow videos can be boring.
I’m curious about the Lancaster’s lack of a ventral turret affecting the formation layout. At the least I would think the lower elements of the boxes would be much more vulnerable than the USAAF formations.
They didnt fly in boxes.
The RAF were flying AT NIGHT. Close box formations at night are a STUPID idea. Far too high a risk of mid air collision. This was before all the modern navigational and sensor aids that make close formation night flying possible (though still dangerous) today.
RAF bomber night formations were much looser, more a gaggle than a box. Each aircraft was essentially on their own.
The Lancaster's absence of a ventral turret was a weakness, even at night. Some German night fighters (Me-110, for instance) mounted two or more 20MM cannons to fire upwards at an angle - they called them "Schrage Musik". They would attack from below and slightly behind, where they could neither be seen nor attacked.
@@MrStick-oc7yocopy pasta. 😂
Avro did try fitting one to test the idea but it was abandoned as a project.
Every bullet hits the ground somewhere. With all of the machinegun/cannon fire in the air, is there any record of casualties on the ground?
Listening to this was like as if it was like happening yesterday and we need to know the information to defeat the enemy. Good video
Thanks for another fine video. I know some Lanc's had the quad tail .303s replaced by a twin .50cal turret. Do you know what percentage this was? Also did the Brits consider upgunning Lancs?
I feel that the system of the British bombers concentrating on night attack and the Americans focusing on Day attacks was leaning into the strengths of each force and it would have been counterproductive to try to change the British bombers to be optimized for day attack, but it is an interesting thought excercise.
Brits did try to upgrade to 0.50 cals but recoil in first tests killed the gunner firing it. There were other issues to. You'll have to look at the later Lancaster, the Lincoln, to see it was armed with 0.50cal & 20mm cannons, to see what they came up with towards the end of WW2.
Night fighting tends to be closer, so the Germans 'should' have had to come within .303 range, making it less outdated.
As you say, both the USAAF & RAF had specialised to a high degree to their strengths, & there were good reasons for it. If you mess with that formula, you can be asking for trouble.
@@eric-wb7gjI think it’s far more likely that the mounts and other supporting structures were damaged, or that the field of view was limited with the larger guns as well. Most think it’s a simple mod, but it really needs to go into the original aircraft design most often.
I’ve managed to climb into our TBM Avengers turret a few times and it’s got a single .50 Browning literally 4” from the side of your head. With a helmet on, you’d likely be touching it. Obviously the recoil goes through the turret system, but proximity apparently wasn’t an issue.
The view is incredible while flying, but you can’t help but feel like a giant exposed target as well. I just don’t know how those guys did it - it’s also the most difficult position to get out of (even more so for most bomber turrets.)
@@eric-wb7gj Excellent information. Thank you.
The rear turret mod was called the Rose-Rice turret. Its biggest advantages was the use of heavier twin .50 cal guns, and that the guns could be aimed a little past the vertical straight down. This would give needed protection against attacks from below from the upward firing Schräge Musik equipped night fighters whose tactics took the RAF forever to figure out (understandably since the attacks were in the dark and the targeted bomber rarely made it back). Only about 180 Lancasters were fitted with the turret.
@ Thanks very much, I was not aware the Rose-Rice turret could depress that far.
Fascinating account. As dangerous as daylight bombing was, I would take the B17 over the Lanc any day. The bravery of Bomber Command air crews cannot be underestimated, but in terms of combat effectiveness of BC, one can only wonder.
one doesn't have to wonder. for extended periods, while the USAAF was limiting itself to non german targets (apart from emden) bomber command was regularly targeting manufacturing areas in germany.
Fly into German airspace during day to get shot at by flak and better fighters. Great.
And the statistics do not lie and back your belief !!!! The B17's delivered more bombs with waaaay less loss ratio !!!!
No less effective than the American bombers. Oh I know Americans claim they were conducting a 'precise' bombing campaign, but that is so much garbage, and they knew it.
The Norden bombsight for all its hype was no more effective in the skies above Northern Europe as the bombsight used by anyone else. In fact the Germans had the design for the Norden as early as 1933, and certainly by 1936, and did not try to copy this so called 'revolutionary' piece of equipment.
Worse all USAAF bombing theory were based on the nice calm, cloudless skies above their bombing ranges in the US desert. They completely fell apart in the turbulent, cloud wreathed skies of North Western Europe.
I hate to say this but if you are dropping your bombs on targets obscured by cloud cover, you are no more accurate than people dropping their bombs at night, because either way you cant see the target.....
Later innovations helped, like ground scanning radar fitted to both US and British bombers, so accuracy did increase for both the USAAF and RAF as the war progressed, but the USAAF never, ever attained the kind of bombing accuracy they claimed to the public. Generally it was in fact not much better than the RAF crews dropping their loads at night.....
Better, but not much. Which is why when you look at the bomb loads of the USAAF bombers attacking Dresden (yes, USAAF Bombers took part in that as well, the RAF attacked at night, the USAAF attacked during the day), they carried a particular mixture of High explosive and incendiary. It was not a bomb load for hitting industrial targets. That's a bomb load for hitting residential targets....
Which is WHY when the B-29's started hitting Japan they abandoned the tactics 8th Airforce was using in Europe and used relatively low level, night mass bombing, just as the RAF had been doing for years....
EDIT: Sounds like I am bashing the USAAF here, and to a certain extent I am. However it does need to be kept in mind that the real reason for the lack of accuracy by both the USAAF and RAF is that the technology for the kind of precision bombing the USAAF wanted to achieve simply did not exist in WWII. In fact t did not exist until several decades after the war. So its not entirely their fault. I put a great deal of blame on the hype, and frankly fraudulent claims of the Norden company with its bombsight, when Sperry was making a superior, simpler and far, far cheaper bombsight.....
@@daddustworked out fine
The .303 gave the equivalent firepower of a WW1 fighter where it would be adequate and effective against those biplanes, but continuing it's use in WW2 was a joke. The Brits should have started with the Browning heavy machine gun (as well as the 20 mm auto cannon) from the start. There are pictures of the RAF fitting the 50 cal. in the latter part of the war.
This is a good example of the Crocodile Dundee movie line, "Never take a knife to a gunfight."
Lets not forget doctrine here, the British usually flew at night with a massive bomb capacity and light defences, the Americans usually flew during the day with a much smaller bomb capacity and excellent defences. Take them out of their designated roles and you're going to run in to problems.
Sorry." The Untouchables "
@ Opps. I'm always getting my movies mixed up.
I did find it engaging, so I subbed. Looking forward to looking back, as it were, at your catalogue. Cheers from Canberra. 🇦🇺
The brits and Canadian governments should be held accountable for forcing men to fly in these junk death traps. Victorian age .303 round outdated for infantry use, being used for defense of aircraft? You have too be daft too even allow this. My great uncle went down in one of these coffins, he was a tail gunner I read his last letter which was written a month before his murder he stated that he was terrified of going up in the flying coffin for the very reason his 303 was useless with its Victorian machine gun round just pathetic and why the English and Canadian Lancaster's bombed civilians at night which is shameful.
Fascinating and informative. Thanks for posting.
Wallace McIntosh was considered the most successful air gunner in Bomber Command. He flew 55 bombing missions and was credited with eight enemy aircraft. I'd heard rear gunner had highest mortality as fighter cannon outranged the .303 and specially targetted them.
Dude, when are you going to let us buy you a coffee?
This is one of my favorite RUclips channels. I don't want to give you a lot of money but I'd chip in $5 once in a while (probably a long while) to show my thanks.
The 50 cal M2 was actually originally designed as a ground anti-aircraft weapon. What better gun could be used in the air-to-air mission?
This video gives me more real life explanation on the Steam video game "Bomber Crew." Thanks!
The narrator makes some odd points. He compares the attrition rate of Lancasters throughout the war, with the attrition rate of US bombers in the final years of the war, after the Luftwaffe was essentially beaten, for example.
BBC Fact File : Berlin Air Offensive 18 November 1943 to 24 March 1944
'By March 1944, it became clear that the area offensive had fallen short of its goals and that Bomber Command was facing destruction by night fighters just as earlier it had faced destruction by day fighters.' - Noble Frankland, historian and Bomber Command veteran
"Redrafted by the Air Ministry, the (Pointblank) directive tasked the 8th US Army Air Force with attacking the aviation industry; RAF Bomber Command would work towards 'the general disorganisation of German industry', as before."
"Losses were running at the unsustainable rate of 6-7 per cent per raid, with no prospect of a German surrender. With Germany reasserting command of the air and the Normandy landings in prospect, Arthur Harris's dream of defeating Germany through bombing was slipping away."
Interesting topic and debate.
My thoughts are that the Lancaster was purely a bomber. It either relied on darkness to deter the enemy fighters or to have its own fighter escort to see of the fighters.
During the early years of bombing, they were going deep into occupied territory and facing a Luftwaffe controlled sky and were often beyond the range of their escorts.
Over time the allies took control of the air and the Luftwaffe numbers dwindled and so the RAF could venture out in daylight.
By contrast the USAF used B17 bombers which had half the bomb load but more range and defence capability.
That said, the B17s were not great at defending themselves and the losses were often high, far higher than the RAF could have withstood. The US had a stream of new bombers and crew coming in so could withstand the losses, which were balanced against the far more effective bombing in daylight.
The UK was only 20% the population of the US and with a tiny fraction of the resources, but they managed to make enough planes and to drop almost an identical number of bombs on Germany as the US.
I do have some confusion as to why an enemy pilot would give information valuable to his foe. Is it well-led psychological questioning that breaks a person's will, or an egoism that lets one boast about their success?
I was also impressed by the prisoner's willingness to divulge information that had the potential to assist the enemy in even a small way. I speculate a couple of possibilities:
1. Aircrew were not trained in interrogation resistance techniques the way they are today. Interrogators on both sides were very successful in using soft interrogation techniques where they developed a respectful rapport with the prisoner. Prisoners tended to succumb to respectful treatment when they could easily imagine harsher alternatives.
2. By this time many in leadership positions knew their war was ultimately lost. Many of the officers were not hard-core Nazis; they did their immediate duty but did not believe in the 1000-year Reich.
@davidg3944 It is the same technique as works now. A skilled interrogator gets the subject to relax and forms a kind of 'friendship' with him. I wanted to join the RAF when I was young and was close to doing to when I had a friendly chat with an RAF Flight Sergeant. He was good at his job and got me so relaxed I admitted to smoking a few joints years earlier. Unfortunately that was enough to stop me joining the RAF.
Appreciate your research and time, good vid. .
Early in WWII most fighter/intercepters were armed with rifle calibre machine guns meaning that a fighter would have to close within the firing range of the bombers defending machine guns. Early in the war .303 machine guns were adequate. The Manchester was designed to manage that threat. .50cal machine guns have a similar range to a 20mm cannon shell, though with less lethality. The RAF chose to up arm fighters with canon rather than .50 cal machine guns, leaving bombers still with only .303 guns. Interestingly later Lancaster’s were up armed with two .50cal machine guns in the rear turret. One issue with a full .50cal defensive loadout is the additional weight reducing the bombers performance and payload. Lancaster’s were also designed with a belly turret, again its utility in combat was not considered valuable enough to compensate for the loss of payload and performance. I’ve often wondered if the correct solution would have been to have heavy machine gun/cannon equipped Lancaster gunships mixed in with bomber steam to give cannon equipped fighters course to stay out of range of defensive boxes?
that idea of gunship bombers have been tried and tested before by ofcourse the americans and it came with poor results, b-17 gunships variants were made to try and solve the lack of escort fighters and high lossrates of the time, they essentially threw out all the bombing capability and chucked as much 50cals as they could, but this made it slower and more heavier and it struggled to keep up with the normal bombers once they dropped their payloads and became lighter, making them a straggler and dooming the crews. and even with a hundred 50cals, you simply cant focus all that firepower effectively in a bomber, as all those gunners only have a limited coverage of defense, which was why the idea wasnt widely adopted and probably contributed to ending any similar ideas for lancs.
wow ! excellent video ! 👍
thanks for sharing !
Most unusual for Lancasters to fly in daylight as the RAF abandoned daylight raids in 1940 when the very first raids were made. The RAF bombers didn’t go in for tight box formations. Browning 303s were used by Spitfires and Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain, being supplemented by 20 mm cannon in 1941.
So ahhh, I'm only seeing one raid used to say that the losses of Lancs in day time raids were three times worse than the B17's. That's a really small sample size. Now I'm not saying you are wrong, but it's better to posit things from a larges sample size. Unless I'm mistaken of course.
You also show a graph of the trend of US bomber losses over a much longer period, the number of bombers lost going down over time, right when long range fighters became more effective as a thing, as well as large fighter sweeps in German territory.
The Lanc was a great aircraft in many ways. The thing wanted to fly, it had a very sound design thatg could lift more and fly higher and faster that any other british bomber until the later model Halifax's caught up. It could take a decent amount of punishment as well, and it really was the mainstay of bomber command.
It was inadequately armed though I think the rear turrets were changed to two 20mm canons later in the war.
A raid going poorly in daylight, with what seems to be no fighter escort is no surprise. That's why the RAF shifted to night bombing. I have doubts the Lanc force mentioned had much experience or training of daytime raids/operations.
20mm Cannons didn’t appear till the Lincoln and Shackleton..far too late for the war.
@@csh5414 Though late Lancasters got twin .50 caliber instead of the 4 .303 browning in the tail.
"I'm only seeing one raid used to say that the losses of Lancs in day time raids were three times worse than the B17's. That's a really small sample size...". Indeed. Losses for Lancasters on similar daylight attacks in December 1944 before this raid indicate the problem with this analysis. 93 Lancasters of 3 Group attacked Dortmund on 2 December 1944 for no losses; 183 Lancasters 1 and 8 Group attacked Heimback on 3 December for no losses; 160 Lancasters from 3 Group attacked Oberhausen on 4 December for 1 lost while 27 Lancasters attacked the Urft Dam on the same day for no losses; 94 Lancasters from 3 Group attacked Hamm and another 56 attacked the Schwammenauel Dam on 5 December for no aircraft lost; on 8 December 205 Lancasters of 5 Group attacked the Urft Dam for 1 lost, while 163 Lancasters of 3 Group attacked Osterfeld for 1 lost. The 8 Lancasters lost out of 140 from the 3 Group attack on Witten on 12 December represent 72% of the total Lancaster losses in daylight attacks in December at that point, while the losses in previous raids amounted to something like 3 out of 981 daylight Lancaster sorties, or about 0.3% losses. The relative ineffectiveness of the .303 was well understood long before 1944, as the video points out, but this was offset by the closer ranges in night engagements, and - above all - the importance placed on evasive action as the primary defence for the bombers involved. The looser formations were in part designed to facilitate this; trying to corkscrew in close formation would be potentially disasterous in terms of collision risk.
Don't get triggered by a witless "God Bless America" clickbait piece. They can't even manage to get a proper narrator. Nasal mid Atlantic AI drawl...vile!
@@JaneWilson-bv9zb The usual Anglophobic trolling in statements by commentators like @kenneth9874 doesn't merit a response but @Pablo668 identified the key problem with the video commentary which the creator and commentators influenced by their presentation should be made aware of. I believe posting some supporting data was appropriate. Ultimately, the video claims that the US heavy bomber loss rate to daylight attack in December 1944 was 0.17% while using an unrepresentative sample like the 12 December Witten attack indicates that the RAF suffered 5.7% heavy bomber losses to daylight fighter attack. Based on a quick count in Middlebrook and Everitt, in fact the RAF lost 28 heavy bombers in 2,985 daylight sorties that month, or 0.94% losses to all causes, including flak and collision as well as fighter attack. Performing a similarly selective approach to quantifying US losses would lead to considering the experience of 491st Bomb Group, who lost 16 B-24's to fighter attack in 15 minutes on 26 November 1944 for similar reasons (formations being separated and lacking immediate fighter cover according to Boiten and Bowman), as indicative of the problems that US bombers and the .50 calibre MG faced on daylight raids. Presumably a clone of @kenneth9874 will appear at that point to tell us all how useless the the USAAF and by extension the US itself was in WW2 on the basis of such selective evidence. Speaking of selective representation of unrepresentative data, I presume the intelligence debriefing cited in the document was that of Hauptman Hans-Heinz Dudeck of IV. JG 27 who was shot down and captured on 1 January 1945 (probably not by a .303 MG although that would be perfect irony). Whoever it was, they omit to acknowledge the fact that I. JG 3 also participated in the interception of the Witten raid and claimed 13 Lancasters for the loss of four Bf 109s and their pilots in addition to IV. JG 27's claims for 8 Lancasters and 1 Mustang (according to Caldwell and Muller). If JG 3's losses in that combat are correct, there is some evidence that the escorts which certain commentators are so quick to criticise were trying to do their job on the day. If so, it only goes to show how considering a broader range of historical evidence could be useful to avoid unnecessary and unjust denigrations of the military performance of close allies.
Appreciate ya. Thanks for sharing.
That document you showed is in error regarding the size of a Schwarm. A Schwarm is a four plane element.
As always, thank you!
I understand that many Lancasters were upgraded to 2X.5 in the tail turret later in the war!
Yes, I enjoyed this vid, have wondered about Brits continuing on with the .30 when the .50 became available.
May I make a couple of suggestions?
You might do a vid on the Cheyanne tail gunner position on the B-17.
Also, what would be interesting would be the "readyness" numbers for the 17, 24 and Lancaster aircraft.
Well, maybe one more. What did it take to be taken off "ops"? Read that in the RAF you were accused of lacking fortitude but the implication was cowardice.
Lack of Moral Fibre or LMF was a punitive designation used by the Royal Air Force during the Second World War to stigmatize aircrew who refused to fly operations.
Many of my teachers served in the RAF WW2. After listening to them you could tell that there was never much love lost between the Brits and the Americans during the war the most common complaint was the American airforce cared more about the safety of the crew than damaging the enemy.
Stuff about London The American Memorial Chapel, St Paul’s
Towards the end of the war the US Army Air Force (USAAF) had approached Lord Trenchard (Marshal of the RAF and Chairman of the Anglo-American Commission) to help them find a site for a memorial to the Americans based in Britain who had died during the conflict, but Trenchard had replied “it is not for you but for us to erect that memorial”.
Typical arrogant ungrateful comment from a GB leader.
@@unclestuka8543 He probably meant that it was more appropriate for Britain to remember the help given. Misinterpretation of cultural difference here. You should get out more.
My dad is English, and at 96 years old, was a kid during WW2.
He can't admit that the Yanks basically won the war.
Without American help, they were sunk. 100%.
Without U.S. Military power, GB would not have survived. Like today without U.S. backing them up, GB couldn't handle the Russians.
It'd be cool to see a comparison of the effectiveness of the 4x.303 vs the 2x.50 cal, and the 20mm tail guns in different bomber vs stern attacks.
The American heavy bombers were heavily armed defensively, but had a fraction of the bomb load of a Lancaster. They stood a better chance of getting to a target in daylight, but had a less damaging effect on the target. A quid pro quo situation.
Surprising that after captured the German aviator shared so much information. I wonder if he was either tortured OR disenfranchised and knew the war was over, possibly both.
Good stuff as always!!!
The Luftwaffe bomber had 20,000 bullet holes? Really? So somewhere around 100 Spitfire Mk.Is put nearly every single round they carried into that one bomber.
I’m thinking the script for this video may have accidentally had an extra zero added to that number. But that’s just my guess. 😄
Thank you so much for doing a video on the RAF!
Just a small note: at 00:20 that is a Short Sterling, and 00:21 is a Handley Page Halifax.
Stirling NOT "Sterling"
@buckfaststradler4629 Thanks!
`No. 11 March and .303 CALIBRE guns.
Interesting that the predominant narrative in RUclips comments sections is that the USAAF refused to take the sage advice of the RAF regarding strategic bombing tactics and suffered for it. This report indicates that the RAF was just as reluctant to adopt USAAF tactics.
Edited: Also, where are the vehement charges of treachery and callous waste of bomber crews like cannon fodder by RAF leaders who knew the .303 was ineffective but continued to send men into battle with it? We get such charges against USAAF for not developing long range escort fighters soon enough to escort bombers all the way to deep targets. (I'm not criticizing the RAF, I'm criticizing the RUclips audience for piling on to a misplaced narrative about the USAAF.)
I just made a comment similar to your point in your second paragraph.
"Also, where are the vehement charges of treachery and callous waste of bomber crews like cannon fodder by RAF leaders who knew the .303 was ineffective but continued to send men into battle with it? (I'm not criticizing the RAF, I'm criticizing the RUclips audience.)"
how is it the youtube commenter's fault the RAF stupidly stuck with the .303?
The Lancaster wasn’t meant to fight, the whole idea of the self defending bomber was a failure, up to an including the B29.
@@daddust B-29 was so successful the P-47N only escorted it once. B-29 had an 11:1 kill ratio, higher than nearly every fighter plane of WW2.
the Lancaster is an overrated bomber.
@@SoloRenegade Charging stupidity is not the same thing as charging treacherous intentional sacrifice of bomber crews on the altar of doctrine and politics, which is a popular charge leveled against the USAAF by RUclipsrs.
"Stragglers, even at 100 yds, do not have a chance." Is written in one of the reports shown.
Kinda explains how experienced crews survived and completed their number of missions.
How would you like to be a new crew given an older repaired aircraft with perhaps less efficient aerodynamics and engines a little worn, underperforming, or with glitches.
It doesn't bear thinking about. 😢
Rookie aircrews had a much high mortality rate
The RAF went straight from the 0.303 to the 20mm in 1942. They considered the 0.5 but decided that the 20mm was available and a far better weapons than the 0.5 so went straight up. The Americans also realised the value of the 20mm but their commitment to the 0.5 meant that They did not selext it till the 1950s
I saw a video about a raid from takeoff to landing and the mid upper gunner was mentioned as having scored 5 enemy fighters in the previous 15 missions. He was either a very good shot or incredibly lucky but at least it proves the Germans didn't have it all there own way
RAF Bomber Command didn't have the armament, training and tactics to effect large scale day light raids
daylight bombing was tried early in the war and it was suicidal.. remember by the time the Americans arrived - late as usual - the Luftwaffe and Germany generally had lost an awful lost of skilled experienced personnel and equipment.. in the early years 1939-42 it was simply madness to fly bombers with out escorts over Germany. even in 1943 when the Germans were starting to lose the war - especially after loss of north Africa, Sicily and defeat at Stalingrad and Kursk - they were formidable. the early American raid were extremely costly and not worth the losses for the damage incurring . game changer was the Rolls-Royce engined Mustang with drop tanks being able to escort bombers to Berlin and back.
The Luftwaffe was considered nearly ineffective at the time and the bombers were being escorted by Mustangs. Presumable it was a case of, there are no American bombers available and the risks are considered acceptable.
Yes, the Lancasters were not set up for daylight bombing and the crews were not trained for it but it must have been considered worth the risk.
Just another example of brave men doing their duty.
A lot of this was due to air forces slavish adherence to one doctrine after another. The first being “the bomber will always get through”. Almost as meaningless as “Brexit means Brexit.” When any sober sssessment of the inadequacies of bomber policy was offered, it was met by the mantra. The RAF had abandoned day bombing and switched to night bombing before the Butt report which laid out in the starkest terms that wishful thinking was of no use in modern warfare. There was a lot of retrospective justification extolling the benefits of attacking dockyards, factory complexes, railway marshalling yards, or just area bombing cities because the air forces were incapable of any greater accuracy. But this transitioned into another orthodoxy that the answer was area bombing now what is the problem? This meant resistance to the improvements such as the Pathfinder system and the improvements in radar navigation.
It was still daft to fly them on daylight raids in December 44.
Good planes but not suited to that even in in a box formation.
This shows above all else that training tells, the Luftwaffe had been fighting the 8th air force for 2 years and the 8th had honed their defensive tactics during the day, and had good co-ordination with their fighters. The RAF were night trained and were using evasion as at night. The gun difference is right, the .303 was much less effective than the guns on the Fortress.
Isn't it surprising how much POWs give without duress?
Both were superb aircraft crewed by very brave and courageous men from america Britain and coomnwealth and sadly many paid the price killed or mutilated
Good stuff, I’d find it easier to follow if you spoke just a bit slowly when reading off facts and figures. Subscribed
I always wondered if they could have put miniguns or Gast guns on the turrets
I've had several conversations with American bomber crews.
They all praised the lan😊caster.
.303 was always a sub par aircraft weapon. The problem was of course retooling for .50 at a time when failing to meet demand could seriously impact war efforts. Its the same dilemma they had with the Merlin engines and the various other models out there. The availability of engines could literally result in the cancelation of a fine plane. The Whirlwind being a good example of this.
Of course, in hindsight just building loads of Mosquitoes may have saved thousands of lives. Avoid the need to devend yourself completely
What a data dump! Thanks for all the pure data from original sources. Its worth a mint.
It is very clear the RAF were counting on nno opposition, and the Mustangs to do their job. The Bomber Command men were trained for a certain job, it wasn't up to the Lancasters to know day bombing tactics. It was up to the planners to protect them from interception.
It is worth noting there were many RAF daylight raids in the last part of the war and usually they went very well.
My father was a gunner in bomber command from 1942 until the end of the war being one of the lucky ones to survive. He served with 464 (RAAF), 83 and 635 (eighth pathfinder group) squadrons. 464 squadron operated twin engined bombers (Lockeed Ventura's), which were used in daylight raids on the near continent, such as the bombing raid on the Philips factories in the Nederland's, and coastal shipping etc. the only reference in his service log book to German fighter losses where that they were observed to be shot down by the fighter escorts. He did not wish to talk about his war time experiences, but occasionally related the odd story. He did have a photo of his Ventura after an encounter with a FW190, how the aircraft stayed in the air long enough to get back to England I will never know, dad said he had a great pilot. Part of the gunner's job was to warn the pilot of enemy fighters. He also took part in daylight raids with 635 squadron which, along with 83 squadron, were equipped with Lancasters.
@@KevinRudd-w8s Glad to meet you, my own father did 40 ops with 576 Squadron from September 1944, also as a tail gunner.
Many people (hello Americans!) fail to grasp that the tail gunner was more a sentry and the guns were just a sort of desperate last resort.
My father's entire crew survived the war, albeit their usual aircraft was shot down in March 1945, when they had leave. He did several operations in ED888, one of the handful of 100+ operation Lancasters. He was also involved in one of the 'Grand Slam' raids, and on a late war raid that was intercepted by Me262s ("They made one pass, then about half-a-thousand Mustangs came down...).
He spoke little of his wartime experiences but toward the end of his life, he opened up a little.
Thanks for your reply.
They flew the night style formations - long strung out formations - in daytime? Is that what I understand? If so, that was criminally stupid and is the real problem here. Even with what should have been sufficient escort they had too long of a bomber stream to protect and that kept them from keeping the Luftwaffe away.
They probably did that because that’s what they knew how to do and were most practiced in. Better to do what you know than what you don’t?
A poorly considered but unfortunately rational decision.
@@Pilotmario Night missions require more spacing to avoid collisions due to darkness but day time better vision and tighten up the boxes !!!
@@wlewisiii I'm sure it takes a lot of practice and training to fly tight formations for 6-8 hours and allied air superiority was total by the time the lancs were going on day raids
@@Pilotmario Surely a night time spacing system could have been designed.
The arrogance of some Americans still blows my mind.
Interesting video...👍
At that time we fighter bases in France,Belguim and holland.Even American bomber crews need fighter protection,even Spits would have the range.Seams like it was a sad day for the P51's ,something went wrong in planing ,for a daylight raid the target must have been ultra important,4 days before the attack on the Ardennes
I wonder how many lives would have been saved if the RAF had switched their defensive armament to 0.50" calibre machine guns much earlier in the war and applied it comprehensively rather than the piecemeal swap outs from 1944/5.
The Battle of Britain may well have ended up very one sided (or at least shot down the Luftwaffe bomber forces at a far faster rate) if the Spitfire and Hurricane had been armed witn 6 × 0.5 rather than 8 x 0.303 guns, though I haven't seen an analysis of the weight impact of that an consequent difference in performance.
The RAF were eager to equip their fighters with 20mm cannons but were delayed by two problems. The weapons tended to jam if fired under high G, and the wings were pre-war designs only intended to house the smaller/lighter 303's. The problems were solved, but too late for the Battle of Britain.
The RAF's bombers' main defence was darkness, so armour and firepower were sacrificed for heavier bombloads. Darkness also protected German night fighters and the first indication of a fighter's presence was normally a storm of 2cm cannon fire at close range. If a fighter's approach was noticed, either visibly or electronically, the best defence was a series of violent turning dives and climbs to escape from the fighter's radar. More, or heavier, defensive guns would very seldom make a difference, although a single gun firing though a panel in the floor was introduced in response to German "schragemusik".
WOW! Do you have book with all this exiting info ?
What Trenchard meant and what He actually said are slightly at odds.
Very interesting as always!
There's multiple memorials to crashed bombers in my hometown. The one closest to my parents was for a Lancaster. I'm curious what the specific mission was. I can check the date of crash, but what resource can be used to find out the specific mission?
Is there many accounts of _friendly fire_ bomber on bomber ?
In one of the earlier videos (b17 armor?) he mentions they were counting and mesuring bullet holes on returning planes. Acording to statistics number of 0.50 cal friendly fire holes was negligible.
Fantastic, and thanks.
Unless you realize the stupidity of senior air staff in the RAF sending thousands of brave men to their deaths it is inconceivable why they never upgraded bomber defence armament from the .303 popguns.
Would have simplified logistics if .50 cal was adopted by all allied air forces .
Which may well have happened if British and American politicians saw the writing was on the wall in the 1930s and had decided to cooperate in preparation. Of course, that didn't happen. There were still significant elements of the US political class calling to remain in splendid isolation even during the Battle of Britain. If Hitler hadn't done Europe the favour of declaring war on the US following the attack on Pearl Harbour, he might have ended up with his free hand.
The Lancaster shown at 7:14 is obviously a late war aircraft evidenced by the 50 cal dorsal and tail turrets.
Very interesting.
Never can I understand why Brits chose to send their RAF bombers into battle with .30 cal MGs against 20mm and 12.7mm armed Bf 109s & Fw 190 fighters. The .30 Cals don't have the effective range, energy or destructive ability. AND, no belly ventral turret ot tunnel gun.
5:27 If the escort needed to arrive that suggests they were in the wrong place.
There are plenty of comments already that the RAF were stupid for not having 147 .50 cal guns. Somebody in the OR department worked out that defensive guns are mostly useless on night bombers, and the weight savings could mean flying a little higher & faster or carrying more bombs hence not having to go back as often. And if you lose a plane, you lose fewer chaps.
The suggestion was not taken up, but the lowest loss rate of RAF bombers was the unarmed Mosquito.
Finally, since this was a complete deviation from their prior training & experience you'd expect them to be a bit suboptimal. Had they been daft enough to continue they'd have probably improved.
Mustang escorts learned to keep clear of their own bombers as much as possible & to 'sweep' areas in front & to the sides a few miles away [the forward sweep might be 50 miles ahead of the bombers] - they are probably even more wary when escorting bombers whose gunners are used to night fighting. They will not necessarily know the bombers are under fighter attack because of Northern European December visibility is poor with cloud layers etc [for that week it was 10/10 cloud over the targets right down to the ground]. The Lancasters heavily relied on the green Verey cartridge flare warnings of attack, but the fighter escorts often never saw them.
Why would a German fighter pilot POW offer constructive criticism for the benefit of the Allies?
Knew by then the war was over, hated Hitler, and wanted good treatment. Besides,the info he was giving up couldn’t have been implemented for a very long time.
Awesome, as always! 😃
A bit of criticism aimed at improvement: maybe you could speak a bit slower for us non-native English speakers? Maybe I'm just a bit slow in the head, but I have to skip back sections quite frequently because I didn't compute the information in time. 🙃
Thank you for that report. I think its obvious that RAF bomber units would be at a disatvantage compared to USAAF bomber units in day bombing at that point in time. Neither was the Lancaster optimised for this type of action with its comperatively weak defensive armament nor were the crews propperly trained as it has been indicated in the report (the gunners not mutually covering other bombers in the formation and such). It also seems that they haphazardly adopted USAAF standards without adjusting them to their specifics (which probably would have required them to shorten the distance to their respective boxes due to the decreased effective range of their defensive weaponry). Compared to that, the USAAF had gone through all its necessary lessons by that time and was naturally much more effective at that specific game. What went missing in this video though was why the 90 Mustangs failed to intercept those 20 german messerschmitts in time. Was there a problem regarding communication between the bombers and their escort? Were they RAF Mustangs or USAAF Mustangs?
Someone said RAF Mustangs.
The pilot might be protected against bullets by the engine, but he’s not protected from the ground when a bullet puts the engine out of action.
It would be interesting to have an episode on WHY the Brits stuck with their .303 machine guns.
Because the tooling was there and you can’t always get what you want. There were many more demands on the .50 inch.
You had to deal with it. The RAF always has to do with the shyte equipment!!
The Brits stuck with the 303 for the same reason the USA stuck with the 50 caliber, they HAD them in large quantities and the supply chain was set up to deliver guns and ammo, any change would interupt the supply, why USA stayed with 50 cal over switching to the 20MM....😁
Plenty of British excuses for that failure all of which ignore the USSR's ability to rapidly introduce new and better weapons while fighting for their lives at the same time.
@@FairladyS130there’s not much value there