"Dogfights: Reality v. the movies" Topic

I don't know all that much about WWII air combat, but after watching a few things something occurred to me.
We all love to watch the fighters fly by with "guns a blazing" as it looks so cool on film.

But if a Spitfire only had enough ammo for about 15 seconds, it seems to me that it would be precious, so wouldn't there be a lot more flying and jockeying for position and a lot less shooting in dogfights?

If you used up all your ammo you could fly back home. I'm thinking some of those movie clips might be accurate!

If you're closing on each other at ~600mph, I would guess you only had a second or so to shoot. I think you're probably right, there was a lot of jockeying.

One or two second bursts usually for your average WWII fighter. Hell, all fighters for that matter. Playing a good flight sim like IL2 will give you a feel for it, especially the "where did everyone go" feeling after you flew around, turning/diving/evading, etc., after the fight. In my case that often included my opponent, lol!

Closing speeds would be very high. Which is why you want to get on the tail of the other guy. If he is a fighter jinking about you might well fire several short bursts and run though your ammo. And a bomber (while a bigger, slower, less maneuverable target) could absorb a lot of 303 ammunition on occasion.
The shortage of ammunition for the Spitfire and Hurricane was a significant downside to the aircraft.

It all depends on the training of the pilot. Short Controlled Bursts are the way to go, but in the heat of battle you may just hold the trigger and spray and pray you can hit a dodging target.

I don't know how accurate the Dogfights History Channel show is, but they do show a lot of spray and pray.

An important factor to take into consideration in fighter vs fighter combat is that something like 10pct of fighter pilots accounted for about 90pct of aerial kills.

It has been a long time since I was involved in study of this, but many of the action reports of USAAF 8AF fighter pilot victories in NWE are on the web (including rounds expended). Ace pilot victories typically would involve an expenditure of perhaps 150-300 rounds per kill – maybe 2-4 seconds of fire. Pedestrian pilots might, by comparison, expend their entire ammunition load to make a single kill.

I would argue that the success of ace pilots is traced to three factors:
> superb vision to see one's opponent first.
> tactical acumen to set up a successful attack scheme.
> excellent marksmanship.

It has been said that 85pct of victim pilots were never even aware of the presence of the opponent who shot them down.

FWIW

Happy Holidays to All.

B

Blutarski,
From my readings, another reason was that the best pilots were in front of the formation. When they jumped an enemy formation by surprise, they'd get the first shot and kill and it would normally be the enemy FNG flying tail-end-charlie.

Excellent marksmanship helped. However, Dick Bong said he was not a very good shot. His tactic in a P-38 was to challenge a Jap to a head-on attack which the P-38 armament was perfect for because there was no need to harmonize wing guns. All 5 guns concentrated their rounds into the Jap engine and cockpit area.

Wolfhag

Hi Wolfhag,
In their very good book "Fighters over the Desert" authors Shore and Ring wrote that Luftwaffe practice was for the "aces" to do the shooting with everyone else tasked to protect them from interference.

On the subject of marksmanship, I should clarify one point. My remark was not meant to imply that the successful aces were opening fire at long distances (say 300+ yards). They tended to get close first and kill with the initial bursts – you can see this trend in the 8AF action reports).

Hartmann is an interesting example; he was a good natural shooter in the air, but did not achieve much success until he learned from the "old hares" in his squadron to get close before firing. As the story goes, once Hartmann got religion, he was shooting down armored IL2's by shooting out their oil coolers from beneath at VERY close range.

This short range combat is mirrored by the experience of 8AF fighter pilots in the ETO – many of the best scoring pilots had their guns point converged at ranges as low as 150 yards (while the official 8AF dictum was for pattern harmonization at 300 yards or so. AIUI, this was more or less true with the RAF as well. There were a few late war very long range ETO kills (700 yds claimed!), but these appear to have involved unaware victims brought down by pilots using the new lead computing gyro gun-sight. The P38, Bf109, Me262 and Soviet fighters, all with basically nose-mounted armament, did not have to worry about convergence issues.

BTW, Bong had another big advantage over his Japanese fighter opponents – he had TWO engines ….. ;-)

B

Blutarski,
I agree about being close, that's what really counts.

I've been fortunate over the years to attend quite a few symposiums where WWII fighter pilots and aces talked about their experiences, tactics, and aircraft they flew and brought my 10-year-old son along.

I've met Gabby Gabreski, Bud Anderson, Alex Vraciu, Jim Swett, Jeff DeBlanc, Bud Mahurin, Besby Holmes (on Yamotto Raid), and many others. We had Adolf Gallahad come to visit but I missed him. My wife got me a large print of a 109G tulip nose signed by Hartman hanging in my office.

One time a group of aces was asked which plane was the best. After a short conversation between them, they agreed it's the pilot that matters, not the plane.

I knew a B-17 pilot Bill Getz that flew missions as a P-51 Pathfinder for his bomb group. The first and only time he fired his guns was at a Me-262. He described while in a dive at about 450mph how he lined it up in his K-14 gunsight and gave it a long burst from wingtip to wingtip shooting it down. He said it probably never saw him.

I was also fortunate to attend the 60th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain in Santa Monica, CA. They had German, British, and a Rumanian pilot from the Puma squadron. On the flight line, they had a Spitfire, Bf-109E (MB engine), and a Storch. I went out on the flight line early and got a close-up look. The 109 is so small that standing next to the cockpit I could look through the canopy and see the rudder pedals. The wing slats are spring-loaded and you can easily deploy them with your hand. The weather held up and they were all able to do a demo flight.

Looks like I got carried away reminiscing again.

If games of air combat faithfully portrayed real WWII combat it would most likely be a very boring game.

Wolfhag

Wolfhag wrote – "If games of air combat faithfully portrayed real WWII combat it would most likely be a very boring game."
I suspect that you are probably correct. However interesting and exciting, extended duels appear to have been relatively uncommon. Short and tragic seems to have been more the rule.

The only noteworthy connection I can claim to WW2 aviation is a relative in my mother's family, George Evans. He was an American who went to Canada and joined the RAF before Pearl Harbor. He helped to pioneer the "great circle route" from North America to the UK via Greenland and ended up in RAF Transport Command as a PB4Y pilot flying Churchill and other British VIPs around the world (from UK to India on one occasion) during the war. He disappeared over the Atlantic not long after the end of the war while flying the UK delegation home from the ceremonies founding the UN.

- – -

BTW – if you are a WW2 aviation techno-geek, may I recommend that you check out the "Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles" channel on YouTube. A very good and informative site.

B

I'm already subscribed to Greg's channel. That guy is awesome.

Wolfhag

great discussion
thanks
Joe