Unbelievable Statistic - Page 3 - Aircraft of World War II

Soren · 06-10-2009, 10:39 AM

The bombers probably shot down 1/20th of the fighters shot down in the ETO, the rest was the work of the escorts.

By far the majority of the German fighters in the ETO were shot down by the Allied escorts whilst concentrating on the bombers, so the bombers no doubt helped, although not much physically but a lot in terms of being a high source of distraction.

And like Bill pointed out, German pilots found it a dreadful experience attacking the bombers from any angle knowing the sheer amount of lead that was poured into the air in the attempt to shoot them down. Like Bill said, for every tracer they saw (Which was MANY!) there'd be 5 to 10 API projectiles flying around! No surprise that German pilots often found .50 cal holes in their a/c after they landed.

boeing299 · 06-10-2009, 02:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pbfoot

but still wrong

Is that based on statistical knowledge or just your opinion?

drgondog · 06-10-2009, 07:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boeing299

Is that based on statistical knowledge or just your opinion?

There is np way to get closure on bomber claims versus actual. Simply stated the LW actual losses frequently were under 10% of bomber claims until the escorts were going all the way. Then the LW actual losses approached 80-90% of the Fighter claims - some of which were surely due to bomber gunners

Conclusion - the fighter claims were probably in the 70-80% of actual destroyed w/o consideration for heavily damaged but maybe salvaged.

This is speculation based on a lot of cross comparion of 8th AF awards to LW records.

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06-10-2009, 10:39 AM	#31
Soren Banned Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 6,625	The bombers probably shot down 1/20th of the fighters shot down in the ETO, the rest was the work of the escorts. By far the majority of the German fighters in the ETO were shot down by the Allied escorts whilst concentrating on the bombers, so the bombers no doubt helped, although not much physically but a lot in terms of being a high source of distraction. And like Bill pointed out, German pilots found it a dreadful experience attacking the bombers from any angle knowing the sheer amount of lead that was poured into the air in the attempt to shoot them down. Like Bill said, for every tracer they saw (Which was MANY!) there'd be 5 to 10 API projectiles flying around! No surprise that German pilots often found .50 cal holes in their a/c after they landed.