KiwiBiggles
Senior Airman
Given the frequently remarked-upon fragility of the Spitfire, presumably this was a single hit from a rifle-calibre round?
Battle Damaged Aircraft of WW2
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johnbr
2nd Lieutenant
gone
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buffnut453
Captain
This is what happens when you get caught by a N1K-J's 4 20mm cannons.
View attachment 506287 This US Navy F-4U pilot saw a Miracle this day.....
No it isn't. That photo's been posted before and is generally accepted to be the result of a collision on the ground while taxying.
Johnny .45
Airman
No, that's a Spitfire that was hit with a cannon shell while parked on an airfield. It certainly never flew home in that condition!
Johnny .45
Airman
Wrong. It's a Mitsubishi G4M1. Engines are mounted under the wings. Shot down and found floating by the USN several hours later. I want to say at the Coral Sea, but that's just a vague idea.
Johnny .45
Airman
Me too. Even if it was possible to fly it that way...basically no elevators or stabilizers, no vertical stabilizer or rudder at all, in a plane notoriously hard to fly. Making a deck landing in that condition, without any sign of a deployed arresting hook? I really doubt it. It'd be a miracle. I think another plane ran into it with prop spinning. Could be battle damage sustained on deck, but I think that's less likely.
Johnny .45
Airman
Hmm. You'd think that a shell the size of an 88mm would have created a lot more fragmentation than that, even if the blast wasn't powerful enough to literally rip the plane into pieces (it ought to be). Ignoring the massive blast and saying that it diffused out the side of the aircraft, without doing any obvious damage to the radios or other adjacent equipment, how do you explain the almost complete lack of fragmentation damage? Fragmentation may not be perfectly universal, but it's going to scatter in almost every direction. We're talking a LOT of small pieces of "shrapnel" and/or several larger pieces easily large enough to tear completely through an aircraft. Where did it all go? I see barely over a dozen small fragment holes, while these shells are designed to detonate in the air and send sufficient fragmentation out in all directions to damage or destroy aircraft 100 yards away. Yet a shell detonating inside the plane does only that damage? I'm not a ballistics engineer, but it looks to me more like a large (medium) caliber mine-shell. Maybe a 30mm, or a 57mm (don't recall if 37mm were used in A2A roles). A largish shell like a 57mm would explain the blast damage (yet would explain why it's relatively mild for an 88mm), and the thin-walled shell case could explain the lack of serious fragmentation damage. A rocket could do it also, but that's less likely.
Johnny .45
Airman
No-one with any brains suggests that the .303 is incapable of shooting down an aircraft. Any plane that ever flew could be shot down with a .303/.30/7.62mm gun, provided you brought enough ammo (or were a very good shot who knew just where to aim). The problem lays with putting enough rounds on target to hit something vital. To riddle a plane like that, the attacking fighter had to get behind it, take very good, steady aim, and get a full second's burst into the target (assuming we're talking about a British 8-gun fighter). That can only be done when the target is defenseless, basically. Aerial gunnery is difficult, and bursts disperse rapidly. You can loose a 320-round burst (8 guns x 40 rpg) at a barely maneuvering target and find you didn't hit him at all. A lot harder in real life than in games. Which is not to say that the RAF didn't manage to shoot down a lot of German planes with their RCMGs, but it was more difficult than it needed to be, and pilot armor and protected fuel tanks, etc, just made the job even more difficult to do.
That said, I'm inclined to agree with the person who says they read this was an He 111 shot down by Swiss 109s, since some of those holes look much too large to be .303 holes. Although on second thought, were Swiss 109s armed with 20mm cannon, or were they 4 x MG17 aircraft, being earlier models for the most part? I suppose a logical compromise would be to suggest that it was shot down by a Spitfire Vb, using both .303 MGs and 20mm cannon; I notice that the larger holes seem to large to be .303 rounds, but not as large as you'd expect from an exploding cannon shell...that would be easily explained by the fact that for quite some time after adopting the 20mm Hispano, the British failed to provide anything but AP shot for them, so they were basically just big machine guns firing non-explosive rounds (from 60rd drums...not a very effective setup, really). That would explain the larger holes, unless they were from flak fragments.
Johnny .45
Airman
I'd like to go through here and make a statistical analysis about the number of each aircraft type represented here. It seems so far I've seen an amazingly high percentage of B-17s, Wellingtons and P-47s, with a few other types scattered about. I wonder what that says about the aircraft involved...that those three types were likely to make it home when others would end up crashed?
Johnny .45
Airman
"C-35s"? I assume you mean "C-53s"? The XC-32 was an experimental twin based on the Lockheed Electra, used for experiments with cabin pressurization.
KiwiBiggles
Senior Airman
Do you know that for a fact, or are you just following the myth?
Glider
Captain
I disagree. In a number of areas the metal is pealed up indicating that the shells hit from below which obviously couldn't happen if it had been on the ground.
johnbr
2nd Lieutenant
When the B-17 was hit by flak the tail gunner, S/Sgt. Roy Urich, was blown out of the plane. The rest of the crew learned later that he survived. Years later, other crews reported seeing him flying through the formation still sitting on the TG's bicycle seat and holding the handles to his twin .50's. According to Urich himself, just before the blast he bent over to talk on his radio. This was the exact time that the blast hit the plane. He was knocked unconscious and fell from the plane. He managed to gain consciousness as he was falling and deploy his parachute. Upon landing on the ground he was captured and taken to a POW camp. He had a gash to the top of his head, which required medical attention.
johnbr
2nd Lieutenant
B-25 which landed without its tail
johnbr
2nd Lieutenant
Handley Page Halifax. Three crew (navigator, bomb aimer/gunner and radio operator) would have been in the nose.
Are you sure that is not ground damage. If you look at the pic closely you will see damage to the right wing as well.
I can see landing without your rudder (A B-52 did it as well), but not without your rudder and elevators.
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johnbr
2nd Lieutenant
That is what the site said?
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some...f-battle-damage-and-yet-were-still-functional
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some...f-battle-damage-and-yet-were-still-functional
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Impressive. I'm certainly not saying impossible. I just find it an absolutely amazing feat if true, without any rudder and elevator controls. Had to use those engine power settings to maneuver that aircraft, and a hell of a lot of luck.
