Weird World War 2 Facts

[Robert T]

packed 2 20mm cannon and came into service in late 1940. I assume that their protest pre-dated that, but the design had been in process for 2 years so this was probably a pre-emptive manoeuver on their part. Besides, since Japan's primary ally Germany pioneered the use of cannon in aircraft, what were they thinking of?

Robert T.

[flakhappy]

Originally Posted by Colin1

I think this one would take some proving, half a dozen bombers in a defensive box could tag a fighter, each one convinced they were the one who shot it down so for one kill read six kills

In real life, it was one job of the interrogator after every bomber mission, to avoid this business of multiple credits for every plane shot down. His job was difficult, but a good interrogator could sort out the shoot-down claims and arrive at a fairly accurate estimate of enemy losses.

[trackend]

I've heard it all now, a ship that is sitting on the bottom and is incapable of floating is not sunk because you can see the top

[Lucky13]

Originally Posted by trackend

I've heard it all now, a ship that is sitting on the bottom and is incapable of floating is not sunk because you can see the top

Come again?

[drgondog]

Originally Posted by Smokey

According to this site
World War 2

Here are a few of them.....


* Generally speaking, there was no such thing as an average fighter pilot. You were either an ace or a target. For instance, Japanese ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa shot down over 80 planes. He died while a passenger on a cargo plane.

This one is silly. There are a lot of 8th AF pilots that had 4 or 5 awards. One is an ace the is not. What would one pose relative to relative skills versus opportinity?

Additionally, the usual lesser skilled pilot or inexperienced fighter pilot flew as a wingman. The integral unit of lead and wing was essential to combat effectivess. Many aces did not become targest because his non ace wingman protected his butt.

There are many examples of one ace getting all his scores in one tour and none in the second. Did he lose his skill or his opportunities.

Jabby Jabara had 1.5 air awards in WWII. He 15 MiGs in Korea. Same guy... but do you suppose he was a target?

* It was a common practice on fighter planes to load every 5th found with a tracer round to aid in aiming. That was a mistake. The tracers had different ballistics so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target, 80% of your rounds were missing. Worse yet, the tracers instantly told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction. Worst of all was the practice of loading a string of tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of ammo. That was definitely not something you wanted to tell the enemy. Units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rate go down.

It wasn't much of a factor, ballistically speaking, inside 300 hundred yards, and until the K-14 was still useful in correcting fire. Most fighter pilots might question the tracer frequency one way or the other but 8th AF doctrine was to deliver all 50 cal ammo pre-packaged and linked and it was a huge labor addition to de-link and replace with API. The 8th did discontinue the practice of a 10 or 20 round tracer string at the end of the belt for the reasons mentioned.

World War 2

The tracer sequence and frequency varied, There is no metric that I am aware of that could ever prove the thesis that 'units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rates go down"