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Subject: First critical element of WW-II fighter plane effectivness?
45-Shooter    1/18/2013 9:22:46 PM
Given that the "typical" WW-II Single engine fighter could be spotted at 1-2 miles, depending on aspect, about half the time, I propose that the smaller the plane, the more effective it will be! Sort of a semi-stealth solution to the "Spotting" problem?
 
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45-Shooter       1/24/2013 5:26:34 PM

Argue all you want. It's USERS report exactly what I told you. That is the history of the plane.
"Not to be used in the presence of enemy jet-fighters."  Korean War. An example.  
Operationally it was done as a bomber in 1952. Kaput.
B.
That must be why the RAF used it until it was replaced by the Canbarra in 1960?
 
 

 

 

I think if you read it all, and some other works along those lines, or actually VISIT the USAF Museum in Daton Ohio, you might learn some other things. Like the B-29 that shot down FIVE Migs and is the only Jet fighter ace with a prop in history.

 
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45-Shooter       1/24/2013 5:35:34 PM


I KNOW you from the Delphi boards, Shooter.  BANNED weren't you? 
YES! Absolutely AND Unfairly! It has been my experiance that liberal progressive people are less likely to sustain an argument with you based on ideas they do not like, regardless of the merrit of them.
 
You are almost as misinformed as Mustang, Aus and Kuroc on aviation matters and know less than almost anyone I've ever seen; who's posted complete NONSENSE about guns, military affairs, aviation, and general TECHNOLOGY.Really? Whe I have asked for specific examples, both here and on other boards, no-one seems to reply with those quotes, or they dredge up the few mistakes I have made in the past, over and over and over again. How about you? Care to list some mistakes from this thread, and this thread only.
Do we understand each other NOW?
B.
I understand you completely, but I do not think you understand me at all?
I on the other hand will argue with anyone in an effort to win them over to my side. Are you willing to do the same?

 
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JFKY    I AM "objective"   1/24/2013 7:18:35 PM
the B-29 destroyed Japan's ability to wage war, doing something no other Allied bomber could have done, in the same time frame.  As to Korea, tell me what was the loss rate /sortie as compared to WWII or Line Backer II?  And the little article didn't make the 'plane out to be unsuccessful...
The B-29 flight crew learned what the Lancaster crews learned over Germany, the defensive gunners REAL job was spotting the fighters, not shooting back!
 
You seem wed to labeling every major bomber program, in the US, from 1935 as "botched" and then proceed from there, all whilst ignoring any evidence of what was actually accomplished...  
 
I'm afraid you're the one with a poor grasp of history, not me. 
 
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Reactive       1/24/2013 8:01:25 PM
Everyone thinks they're objective - very few people recognise their own bias - that is not aimed at you specifically - I'm just pointing out that our brains are generally convinced they are operating impartially. 
 
I think the key thing here is really what you measure as success - take your earlier post about area bombing being successful as a result of keeping the lion's share of 88's and their crews off the front line as an example and you have (what is in my view) a convoluted argument. Firstly, you can't demonstrate any direct proportionality between deployed AAA and area bombing, Berlin, for example, would have been defended by enormous numbers of guns irrespective of nightly raids merely because its strategic impact was too important to risk doing otherwise.
 
In other words, you view the campaign as a success based on it achieving an objective (AAA production & deployment) that bomber command did not even anticipate being significant but omit the crucial factors of cost/efficiency - take it to extremes, say the same area bombing campaign resulted in the deaths of a million aircrew and ten million civilians - was it still a success by your definition? What if you could have done it with half the casualties, a quarter? You don't have to have the intellectual pedigree of Freeman Dyson (Have you watched those interview vids of him that I posted) to see that the effort expended on Area Bombing could have been better spent from the outset, that to view the campaign as a success based on the fact that though it failed in its main objectives, it (may have) had a meaningful effect on German resource allocation versus "precision bombing" or simply LESS bombing and allocating your own resources more effectively. 
 
Similarly, with the B-29, you make no allowances for cost, if its operation resulted in the deaths of the majority of its aircrew but it achieved the objective of being long-ranged enough to burn Japan to cinders, was it still a success? The question is where you set your thresholds, in the "absolute" terms that "anything is a success so long as the eventual goals are achieved irrespective of your own losses" (which B actually alluded to) versus "the objective is to achieve the best outcome possible and must be measured against what was possible at the time" - in which case the engine issues of the B-29 can correctly be viewed as severely compromising the success of the aircraft itself - at least in the earlier stages of deployment. 
 
I'm not trying to be rude in any sense of the word, just pointing out that the thresholds for what you define as successful or otherwise are key - I don't have a particular view on the B-29 but I think area bombing over Germany could scarcely have been a bigger failure. 
 
 
 
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JFKY    Reactive   1/24/2013 9:24:16 PM
IF that was directed at me, I'd respond with.  First in regards to the TOTAL bombing campaign against Germany, not just the Area/Dehousing Campaign, that you couldn't be more wrong, about the diversion of resources.  Until the Allied Bombing campaign got going Germany was fairly defenseless.  They weren't thousands of Flak Kanone around Berlin, PRIOR to the campaign.
 
I do agree with you that it's success is hard to measure, again "it" is the TOTAL (US and RAF) bombing campaign.  But it did divert thousands of guns, thousands of tons of steel and concrete, thousands of hours of development work on Air Defense that could have been devoted to  other pursuits and thousands of aircraft, day and night fighter.  It tied up 600,000 personnel, the equivalent of 30 Wehrmacht divisions AND it destroyed thousands of panzers, bombers, and fighters, either directly on the production lines or thru lost production...Speer and others like to crow about how German production peaked at the height of the bombing, just imagine how much more would have been produced had there been NO bombing.
 
So the idea that had we not bombed Germany, day and night, but instead focused on CAS and better tanks, runs into this...it MIGHT be true, but then you also have to contend with 24 extra Wehrmacht divisions at Kursk, or at Mortain, or at D-Day.  You have to imagine thousands more Panthers and Pzkw IV's, supported by thousands more artillery pieces and thousands more aircraft. 
 
Bottom-Line: again the fact that Aircraft Leading Gunner Biggles might not have died over Happy Valley or Berlin doesn't mean that Trooper Biggles didn't die in his Cromwell near Caen.  But overall, I tend to think that the total campaign was a useful attritional tool, better than focusing on the FEBA and 200 kilometres behind it.
 
As to Japan and the B-29....it won the air war over Japan.  Again no other aircraft could strike the Home Islands, in 1944.  It would not have been until the conclusion of the Okinawa Campaign that a strategic campaign could otherwise have begun. In reality, by the end of the Okinawa Campaign Japanese war production and food production had been CRUSHED, in large part due to efforts of the B-29's, in fire bombing and mining.  The utter devastation of Japan's ability to wage war limited overall Allied casualties, civilian (Indonesian/Chinese) and military.  And helped, in a small way, convince the Japanese Government that continued resistance was futile.
 
Bottom-Line: it is INDISPUTABLE that the B-29 made the end of the war sooner and less bloody, and was well worth the cost of development and operational costs and losses. That is what any OBJECTIVE study of the B-29 and it's campaigns would show.  What Belisarius fails to do is show a viable alternative to the B-29, because there was none.  The only aircraft with the legs to reach the Home Islands was the B-29, the B-17/29 Lancaster could not.  It was not until the capture of Okinawa that the 8th Air Force and RAF Bomber Command contemplated shifting any strategic aircraft to the Pacific, which were NOT B-29's.  Again, by May/June 1945 Japan's war economy was non-existent, due to the fire bombings of all major Japanese urban concentrations.  This could not have been otherwise accomplished.
 
 
 
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45-Shooter       1/24/2013 10:33:11 PM


IF that was directed at me, I'd respond with.

I do agree with you that it's success is hard to measure, again "it" is the TOTAL (US and RAF) bombing campaign.  But it did divert thousands of guns, thousands of tons of steel and concrete, thousands of hours of development work on Air Defense that could have been devoted to  other pursuits and thousands of aircraft, day and night fighter.  But you see "IT" only tied up those resources because the daylight bombing did do immeasurable damage to German industry. It tied up 600,000 personnel, the equivalent of 30  ~50 Wehrmacht divisions AND it destroyed thousands of panzers, bombers, and fighters, either directly You are right about this part. on the production lines or thru lost production.Very little of this, at least according to the Germans again...Speer and others like to crow about how German production peaked at the height of the bombing, just imagine how much more would have been produced had there been NO bombing.

 

So the idea that had we not bombed Germany, day and night, Daylight bombing yes, city bombing at night no. but instead focused on CAS and better tanks, runs into this...it MIGHT be true, Do not worry it is not true. but then you also have to contend with 24Again with the average Whermacht Division having a little over 11,000 men, those 600,000 troops equal about 50 extra Wehrmacht divisions at Kursk, or at Mortain, or at D-Day.  You have to imagine thousands more Panthers and Pzkw IV's, supported by thousands more artillery pieces and thousands more aircraftThis is the part that requires strategic Daylight bombing.

 
 

 

 

Only the points highlighter answered.

 
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Belisarius1234       1/25/2013 12:17:09 AM

  
The B-29 flight crew learned what the Lancaster crews learned over Germany, the defensive gunners REAL job was spotting the fighters, not shooting back!

You seem wed to labeling every major bomber program, in the US, from 1935 as "botched" and then proceed from there, all whilst ignoring any evidence of what was actually accomplished...  

I'm afraid you're the one with a poor grasp of history, not me. 
1. The Japanese were done. Blockade was about to starve them to death. B-29s were unnecessary.
2. You don't need six additional pairs of eyes to watch for fighters AT NIGHT. Only TWO.
3. NONE of America strategic bombers was used the way they were originally designed. Not even the B-2, the B-52, or the B-1 which are highly successful. The only post WW II "strategic" bomber that remotely approached in service use as intended was the F-111. And at that, it was a strike interdictor that had teething problems in Vietnam.        
 
So no, I don't regard the US bomber programs "as intended" as successful. Most of them had to be reconfigured, adapted and reworked to fit that little world I call REALITY.
 
P.s. for Shooter:
 
That B-29 at Dayton, Shooter? It is NOT Command Decision. That plane, which claimed the five Mig kills was DESTROYED in a transportation accident when a helicopter dropped it during a transfer from the Air Force Museum to another museum as a loaner quite a while back. What you claimed you saw is a REPRODUCTION of the NOSE ART on another B-29 nose section taken from another B-29 to replace the destroyed exhibit piece. 
 
But if you'd been to Dayton, or simply asked the Museum, you'd have KNOWN THAT.
 
 
 
 
 
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JFKY       1/25/2013 9:27:25 AM
1. The Japanese were done. Blockade was about to starve them to death. B-29s were unnecessary.
Funny that they were still producing aircraft and weapons and ammunition, but that mostly ceased aster the destruction of their cities.
 
2. You don't need six additional pairs of eyes to watch for fighters AT NIGHT. Only TWO.
3. NONE of America strategic bombers was used the way they were originally designed. Not even the B-2, the B-52, or the B-1 which are highly successful. The only post WW II "strategic" bomber that remotely approached in service use as intended was the F-111. And at that, it was a strike interdictor that had teething problems in Vietnam.       
So no, I don't regard the US bomber programs "as intended" as successful. Most of them had to be reconfigured, adapted and reworked to fit that little world I call REALITY.
 
And I don't understand how this means ANYTHING.  I'd say that this was a testament to US aricraft design and production, that they were quite capable of uses OTHER THAN their design mission.
 
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JFKY    45-Shooter   1/25/2013 9:32:56 AM
The "Dehousing Campaign" was a failure, in that it did not lead to a collapse of the German populace's support for the war or a collapse in morale and production.
 
HOWEVER, it was still a valuable attritional tool.  I'm sorry when Hamburg burned in 1943, the reduced German war production...first from the resources diverted to deal with the catastrophe and secondly from the impact of the bombing....simply put production ceased for weeks in Hamburg.
 
So every time Germans lost houses, lost family members, suffered destruction, it took and resources away from the production of weapons or changed the production matrix of weapons.
 
So, even though it did NOT produce the catastrophic collapse of  German Will to Fight it was hoped, the RAF's Night CAmpaign was a useful adjunct to the US' Daylight Campaign...which was no great shakes when it came to accuracy, either.
 
Lastly minor point, 600,000 troops equals about 30 divisions, considering the Wehrmacht "division slice".
 
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oldbutnotwise       1/25/2013 10:45:15 AM
Shooter is a liar, he claimed that the B29 at Dayton was the one they used to carry 2x tallboys on ops during WW2 when it was pointed out that that plane dint leave the factory until a week before they dropped the first A Bomb he changed his tune, now he claims it is a famous Mig killer! what next? did it carry the first men to the moon? bombed Bagdad and Killed Sadam?
 
by the way Shooter has been banned from many more than just the Delphi site, yet its never his fault its allways people being jealous of his brilliance
 
thire is a whole webpage dedicated to his rubbish I will have to look it up but its something like stardestroyers.net/stuart davis
 
he was recently banned from another site under the name neoconshooter for posting rubbish and refusing to provide evidence to back his claims (and for ignoring evidence against them)
 
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