Top Heavy Bomber

[syscom3]

The B29's engines were reliable enough for combat operations, once the ground crews and airmen figured out how to keep them operating.

B29's were faster
B29's carried a heavier payload
B29's had the best combination of radar and navagation aids
B29's had the best defensive armorment and fire controls
B29's had nuclear capability
B29's were reliable enough to be able to be available for regular operations.
B29's were used for precision and area bombing, and mining missions.

Now in what catagory was the Lanc superior in?

[pbfoot]

I don't really see what is so special about one man doing a touch and go in a Lanc as it didn't have a copilot . The Merlin was far from the most univerially engine of WW2 . It was used great deal but The PW 1830 would certainly take the honour for the most used , B17,24 Sunderland wildcat C47 ad infinitum

[JDCAVE]

Lets not just debate this on paper. Let's look at the performance of the aircraft for its intended purpose during WW II only.

Please provide the evidence of superior Nav aids to OBOE during WW II. Also, if these were available, they would certainly be transferable to other aircraft such as the lanc, so I think the point may be moot. But if they were available, why didn't the US make them available to the British, as the Brits did with radar earlier in its development.

Precisions targets during WW II? Please state raids and efficacy of these raids?

Area raids? No doubt the Superfort was effective.

Fire controls! Hell! with those engines, you'd be dead without them!!!

I just don't think the Superfort performed up to it's intended design specifications. I think the lanc did indeed perform up to its intended design. The B-29 entered the war too late for them to completly rectify the engine issues and other design flaws. Lemay had to have these aircraft operate at much lower altitudes as the losses at high altitude as a result of engine failure were catostrophic and unsustainable. It would be interesting to try and find information on the loss of super forts due to design problems. In the last months of the war in Europe, lancaster losses were as low or less than 1%, even on deep penetrations in Germany. This is evidence that the aircraft was very reliable. While I don't have the figures handy, I don't think the losses of super forts were anywhere near that low.

The results of the low level, all incendiary raids were certainly amazing, but such results are much easier to achieve because of the different nature of the targets over Japan, as compared to Germany. Also targets were much more concentrated in an island nation as compared to Europe. It would be interesting to compare the loss rates on Superforts (after the Japanese fighters were no longer around) with those sustained by lancasters late the war.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Originally Posted by JDCAVE

I just don't think the Superfort performed up to it's intended design specifications.

How did it not?

Didn't the B-29 carry a heavier payload over a farther distance and accuratly drop that payload?

That is what it was designed for...

If the B-29 had been used in the ETO it would have completely rendered all heavy bombers there obsolete.

You also talk about poor engine reliability. That was later fixed. All aircraft have issues at first. Didn't the Lanc not evolve from a less successful aircraft called the Avro Manchester. What was the Manchesters weakness? Its underpowered and unreliable engines.

[pbfoot]

The Lancaster was a fluke plane and simple it was the afterbirth from the abortion of a Manchester . Not to mock the lanc it was a good aircraft served long and well after the war but was not even in the same league as the B29. In any way shape or form . Lanc losses were not all that light look at Nuremburg 101 lost , thats closer to 10% . Of the 7,377 Lancasters built, 3,249 were lost in action thats no 1%.

[Graeme]

Originally Posted by JDCAVE

This problem would not be fully cured until the aircraft was re-engined with the more powerful Pratt & Whitney R-4360 "Wasp Major" in the B-29D/B-50 program

How successful/trouble free was the Pratt & Whitney R-4360? According to Ernest K. Gann, they had endless trouble with it on the Stratocruiser...

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Originally Posted by pbfoot

The Lancaster was a fluke plane and simple it was the afterbirth from the abortion of a Manchester . Not to mock the lanc it was a good aircraft served long and well after the war but was not even in the same league as the B29. In any way shape or form . Lanc losses were not all that light look at Nuremburg 101 lost , thats closer to 10% . Of the 7,377 Lancasters built, 3,249 were lost in action thats no 1%.

Agreed. The Lanc was a great aircraft and bomber but to say it was a better bomber than the B-29 is quite naive.

[renrich]

It is incorrect to say that the B29 carried only incendiaries in low level area bombing. The B29 was designed for high altitude daylight precision bombing just as the B17 was. That was the reason the AC was so heavily armed. In the first raids against Japan that is exactly the role carried out. It was discovered because of the jet streams encountered at high altitudes that that type of bombing was not very efficient(that was not due to any shortcomings in the B29) and that was when night bombing at low altitudes was ushered in. Of course incendiaries were used where the mission was to burn down cities. There were still missions where conventional gravity bombs were used.

[syscom3]

Originally Posted by JDCAVE

Please provide the evidence of superior Nav aids to OBOE during WW II. Also, if these were available, they would certainly be transferable to other aircraft such as the lanc, so I think the point may be moot. But if they were available, why didn't the US make them available to the British, as the Brits did with radar earlier in its development.

LORAN and the eagle radar was fitted as it became available.

Precisions targets during WW II? Please state raids and efficacy of these raids?

Nice bombing results from mid and high raids in Thailand and Burma were observed prior to the movement of all B29's to the Mariana's. The precision bombing in Japan was never effective due to the jet steams scattering the bombs over a very wide area. The jet steams in Europe were not a factor, and were unanticipated over the the Japanese islands.

Fire controls! Hell! with those engines, you'd be dead without them

centralized fire control for the guns.

I just don't think the Superfort performed up to it's intended design specifications.

Several thousand were built indicating that it did measure up to specs.

B-29 entered the war too late for them to completly rectify the engine issues and other design flaws.

The B29's began their missions in earnest in summer of 1944. And if the engine was so unreliable, how come the 20th AF could stage raids involving several hundreds of them, on a consistant basis?

Lemay had to have these aircraft operate at much lower altitudes as the losses at high altitude as a result of engine failure were catostrophic and unsustainable.

Totally incorrect. Lemay changed tactics because the "precision" bombing results was dismal. And he and the JCS were aware of the flamability aspects of the Japanese cities, and the complete lack of Japanese night defenses.

It would be interesting to try and find information on the loss of super forts due to design problems. In the last months of the war in Europe, lancaster losses were as low or less than 1%, even on deep penetrations in Germany. This is evidence that the aircraft was very reliable. While I don't have the figures handy, I don't think the losses of super forts were anywhere near that low.

Do you think the Lancs loss's would go up if a damaged plane had to fly 1600 miles, or 800 miles back to base?

[JDCAVE]

PBFOOT: I am well aware of the serious loss of aircraft on the Nuremberg raid, and the lost rate was 11.1% (64 lancasters of 572, see for example Middlebrook, Nuremberg) and these were combat losses against and advanced night fighter system. You missed my point, however. I wanted you to focus on the rate of loss when defences were very low, in order to establish the reliability of the aircraft. Baseline losses over Europe were 0-1%

Deralderistgelandet: "Didn't the B-29 carry a heavier payload over a farther distance and accuratly drop that payload" No it did not. Not during conflict in WWII. Remember the B-29 was refined after the war. Focus on what occured during the war.
"You also talk about poor engine reliability. That was later fixed." Yes, after the war.
"Didn't the Lanc not evolve from a less successful aircraft called the Avro Manchester." The last time I looked the Lancaster was an entirely different aircraft with different rudders, tail plane and had 4 engines.

Renich: "It is incorrect to say that the B29 carried only incendiaries in low level area bombing." I never said that. I said that the B29 never (to my knowledge) dropped a purpose-built bomb from height to target a specific structure with great accuracy during WW II. If it did please provide the reference. And no. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not examples of precision bombing.
"The B29 was designed for high altitude daylight precision bombing just as the B17 was. That was the reason the AC was so heavily armed." Given fighter coverage, the defensive armament was irrelevant and was in fact removed on Lemay's orders. Part of the reason for Lemay ordering the attacks to occurr at low level was (agreed) to improve accuracy, but also to reduce the wear on engines that were found to be unreliable for the most part. (See my first post)

JDC

[pbfoot]

On the Nuremburg raid aircraft lost over the continent might have been 64 but aircraft written of or crashed on landing moved it up a whack

[AL Schlageter]

You might find this link of interest pbfoot.
bc-stats

[Glider]

Very interesting site.

[renrich]

The reason many of the MGs and their crews were left behind for the low level night attacks was because they were trying to save weight for a bigger bomb load, the MGs were superfluous because the Japanese did not have a effective night fighter force. The early raids on the Japanese were flown unescorted. As stated above there were early daylight precision raids with good results in Thailand and Burma. To postulate that the B29 could not perform in high altitude bombing with conventional bombs seems ridiculous to me. If the Lancaster had faced determined fighter opposition with it's vulnerable liquid cooled engines it's losses would have been prohibitive.

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by JDCAVE

Fire controls! Hell! with those engines, you'd be dead without them!!!

Evidently you don't know the B-29 as well as you think you do...

Central Station Fire Control or Remote Control Turret System as used in the B-29, A-26 and the B-50

A firecontrol system is not used to put out engine fires!

Although there were issues with the engines they were rectified by the war's end - the effectiveness of the aircraft is more than evident as it was the first mainstay in the Strategic Air Command and was used during the Korean War, something you keep ignoring - the Lancaster, while a well serving platform was an obsolete weapons system when compared to the B-29 in almost every category.

Even after the Lincoln made the scene the RAF saw fit to deploy the B-29 in the 1950s. If that's not evidence of the aircraft's superiority I don't know what is!!!