Q: B-17 Aerial Victories?

Very High! As one writer commented, a Messerschmitt 109 makes a pass at a bomber formation and gets hit, every gunner shooting at him makes a claim. The U.S.A.A.F. brass gave everyone a kill credit. They were trying to "sugar the pill" for the American public of the huge losses they were taking in the unescorted bombing raids over Germany. This was a big source of contention between the U.S. Army and the allied forces in the planning for the D-Day invasion. The British were not about to accept the U.S.A.A.F.'s inflated kill claims as a basis for estimating Luftwaffe strength to be faced on D-Day. Fortunately, along came the Mustang...

Bill Shuey

Of all the thousands of gunners in B17s in the war, only one ever made ace status. He got a total of 9 kills,

7 on one mission. He was a waist gunner. The B17 among the bombers shot down the most per raid of all the types of bombers, and I think the P51 had the best kill vs loss ratio. I like the P38 myself. My 2 cents worth. Paul

Milton,

Somebody compared the claims versus losses with German records and it was the German records that indicated most of the fighters lost were lost to bombers and not their escorts.

They did note in the survey that there were days the 8th Air Force would claim a high number of kills and the real number was only a tiny fraction of that number. On other days, they claimed only a few and the actual losses were quite high -- up to 50 or 60.

Check with the Maxwell site as I think some of the studies were posted there.

Cookie Sewell AMPS

I'd love to see how that person came to that conclusion. Hell, by mid '44 the Luftwaffe usually couldn't get anywhere near the bombers.

I don't know where I've ever heard of guners underclaiming or actually shooting down that many enemy AC.

~Michael

William H. Shuey wrote

I read somewhere else that there were a lot of mistaken claims resulting from the fuel the Germans were having to use; German fighters would flip over to dive away after an attack pass (there's probably a technical term for that), and the low-grade fuel would somehow produce a cloud of very visible exhaust smoke. The USAAF gunners, who had been shooting in the general direction of the fighter up to the point he broke off, would quite naturally assume the smoke and dive indicated a kill. And they weren't in a position to see that the fighter wasn't out of control at all, because they weren't about to follow it down to finish it off.

Could it be that during the melee, any number of fighters could be lost to "other causes" such as friendly fire, collisions with other aircraft (either side), etc.?

-- John ___ __[xxx]__ (o - ) --------o00o--(_)--o00o-------

The history of things that didn't happen has never been written - Henry Kissinger

I belive the Mustang had the best ratio in Europe, but the Hellcat probably beat it if tha Pacific counts.

snipped-for-privacy@aol.comspamless (The Old Timer) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m24.aol.com:

I'll say this. I have been reading quite a bit lately about German fighter pilots. Particularly material written in thier own words. They did not like attacking the Boeings, with or without Allied fighter escort being present. Several wrote of the great fear they felt when making thier runs into bomber formations. Especially nearer the end of the war as pilot training was reduced further and further I've read descriptions of 10-12 fighters, maybe two experienced pilots and the rest FNG msking runs on formations and losing half the formation on each pass. In one case that come to mind of the 12-14 who started out inly one aircraft landed on it's own. While several of the other pilots were recovered thier aircraft were writeoffs.

One experienced pilot wrote shortly before he was kiiled of the feeling of his life passing before his eys as he curved in on the Boeings.

Frank

in article snipped-for-privacy@rcn.com, Ron at snipped-for-privacy@rcn.com wrote on

1/30/04 5:17 PM:

Victories per airframe, that's true. Buffalos were the most successful of the war. But that's not total victories.

mb

in article Xns9480AEE999300Wereofftoseethewizrd@216.196.97.136, Gray Ghost at snipped-for-privacy@yahooo.com wrote on 1/30/04 4:01 PM:

That reminds me of a conversation I had with a veteran Luftwaffe fighter pilot. He spent most of the war flying light bombers although he was qualified to fly SE fighters. He finally got his chance to fly a Fw 190 against a bomber stream. He and his partners got their altitude advantage and when the time came they dove into the formation. He said he had never been so scared in his life and expected to die at any moment. He came through but his plane was so badly shot up he had to land. This one "pass" earned him over 200 holes in his aircraft. He never flew an intercept mission again. Somehow, I believe him.

MB

I am not sure I buy this. Granted, the Finns did TREMENDOUS with their Buffaloes but, if you are counting an aircraft alone and not its users, then you have to factor in the HIDEOUS US Navy and Marine as well as Dutch and other results with that bird. I do not wish to deny the Finns their rightful pride but many more Buffaloes were lost in the Pacific than the Finns ever had. That really knocks down the bragging rights that Brewster may have earned with Finnish success.

I disagree. I think it only heightens what the Finns achieved with the Buffalo. BTW, this is the same US Navy that felt the Corsair was unsuited for carrier service until the RN and the USMC proved otherwise. ;-)

WmB

To reply, get the HECK out of there snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net

Damn! I wish my memory wasn't beginning to slip so much! Some years ago a member of the American Aviation Historical Society published a research paper on the Buffalo in one of their magazines. I can't remember his name for the life of me. He made the point that the majority of the British pilots who flew the Buffalo in the Far East were "rejects" from the R.A.F. at home, and the majority of the Australians were the proverbial "Green Kids" who had little or no experience. He also stated that the U.S. Marine fighter squadron at Midway had just undergone a major personnel change and that the majority of the pilots who climbed out of Midway on the morning of June 4, 1942 had less than 50 hours on fighters. The Japanese Zero pilots coming in against them had over 300 hours on the Zero and many were combat veterans of China and the Indian Ocean incursion and had many more than that. The Finns only got 48 Buffaloes, but they gave them to picked aircrew. What's that expression they use out at the fighter school at Nellis? "Spam, no matter what kind of can they put it in, is still SPAM!"

Bill Shuey

Keep in mind what else the Finns flew--P-36, Fiat G.50, M.S.406, Fokker D.XXI, Gladiator, Hurricane I. Really mediocre equipment, especially from 1941 on, until they finally got some 109s, yet the Finns tended to be successful with this melange. This was all about the Finnish pilots, and hardly anything at all about the Buffalo. Their ex-F2A-1s were very light, and thus very agile, and they were clearly more skilled than their Soviet opposition, but imagine what sort of success they'd have had with the same number of Spitfires.

Mark Schynert

Well the Hurricane was the majority of RAF planes in the air in the Battle of Britain. It scored a higher kill ratio than the Spitfire. So please don't put the Hurricane down too much.

I really included the Hurricane for the sake of completeness, but the Finns only had 12, IIRC, and as Mark I's, they were not state of the art by the time they reached combat in 1941. Now, during the Battle of Britain, it's an entirely different story. Melding those few Hurricanes into the total Finnish order of battle, the net result is still mediocrity. Perhaps what is most amusing about the Finns is that they worked wonders with everyone else's leftovers, but their only indigenous fighter to reach service, the Myrsky, was awful.

Mark Schynert