Re: Top Ten Fighters of All Time
- From: jgd@xxxxxxxxx (John Dallman)
- Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 19:27 +0100 (BST)
In article <e66i2e$3qbn$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, azb@xxxxxxxxxx (Andrew
Robert Breen) wrote:
The Airacuda looks like something that Dr-Ing Richard Vogt would have
thought up in 1943. Bell were quite creative at the time, but that plane
has to be classed as /weird/.
Because - and this is where the Airacuda discussion came in - in the
late 1930s no-one was sure that it was the best method. Bombers
were getting much faster, cutting down on the likely time available
for a fighter pass (this was the driver for the RAF moving from
2x0.303" to a interim measure of 8x0.303", with the intention of
going to 4x20mm ASAP). In addition, bombers were expected to arrive
in tight defensive formations, often with guns in powered turrets.
There were fears that these would be difficult to attack in the
conventional manner, but there were hopes that formation-flights
of turret-gun fighters could engage from blind or weakly-defended
quarters - the requirement was guns which could fire ahead and up.
There were also ideas of accurate fire from stabilised guns, as
witness the various Vickers proposals which eventually turned into
the (conventionally-armed) 432.
The Bolton Paul Defiant was the aircraft that actually got into service
along these lines. For those who don't know of it, think of a Hurricane,
with a 4x303 powered turret with a gunner in it behind the pilot. The
extra weight and drag meant the performance was terrible; they got
slaughtered in daylight by Bf109s, especially since there were no
forward-firing guns.
But apparently they did have one day of success, over Dunkirk. No
Defiants had gone to France, and the Luftwaffe had never seen one
before. Form a distance, it looked remarkably like a Hurricane, the
curve of the nose underside being distinctive and very similar on the
two aircraft. Apparently the Bf109s kept on seeing Hurricanes flying
along rather slowly, dived onto their tails - and found they were eating
a lot of machine-gun fire. The word got around pretty fast, and a
Defiant was easy meat from below.
They had a brief period as night-fighters, without much success, and
then became target tugs, without the turret.
None of these ideas worked out well in day fighting, but as late as
1942 the RAF reckoned that the ideal night-fighter would combine
forward-firing cannon with MGs in a turret to engage bombers
from below - and of course when the US finally got their own
night-fighter into service in 1944-odd it had exactly that
configuration.
Interestingly, it took a long while for the RAF to figure out the German
upwards-firing guns. Perhaps, knowing the Germans had no night fighters
with turrets, they regarded that as evidence that they couldn't be using
upward-firing guns?
Of course, fixed angled guns and a simple sight for them used by the
pilot worked just fine when the target was unaware of you.
---
John Dallman, jgd@xxxxxxxxx, HTML mail is treated as probable spam.
.
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- From: Andrew Robert Breen
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