Two Beautiful Gals............

[John Sukey (Deceased)]

[QUOTE=jon_norstog;48363]Louis,

The B-25 optionally carried a 75mm gun in the nose. At least one Japanes destroyer was sunk by B-25s using cannon.It may have been the Ariake in July '43.

Funny story bout that When they first used that 75mm, each time they fired it they were recieving heavy flak.

Turned out it wasn't from their target. The airforce types knew NOTHING about fuze setting, so they thought you screwed it all the way round to make it work. This resulted in ZERO time delay and the round was going off as soon as it left the muzzle!

[jon_norstog]

Oops!!

[PhillipM]

First use of the 75mm on a B-25 as reported by George C. Kenny. The whole book is a very good read, and is free.

http://books.google.com/books?id=tWdbngbCc84C&pg=PR13&dq="george+c.+kenney"&lr=&as_brr=1&ei=f2QRSr62AoSSzQT3_bS3Cw#PPA272,M1

[DRB]

I always liked the looks of the B-17 but since I work for Boeing I am a bit biased. I had the honor of working with several B-17 crew members when I first started at Boeing. There were a few people who had helped build them still working there at the time. The plane that was known to come home on a wing and a prayer. It could lose an engine and maintain altitude while a B-24 could not. My Brother in Laws Father in Law was 15th AF B-17 pilot. Flew missions from Italy to Germany and once came back on 3 engines losing one over Germany.

[Louis of PA]

[Louis of PA]

[Louis of PA]

On my ride aboard that B-17 at the Reading Air Show, my position was in the radio compartment. You can see what happened to that position on these aircraft.

[Louis of PA]

[Louis of PA]

That writer also mentioned not being able to see the ground through the flak.

Round trip to Berlin could be nine to ten-hours plus. Strong headwinds could result in a groundspeed of only 2 mph. That made easier targeting for the Ack Ack gunners on the ground. And their radar control was excellent.

By the middle of the air war, combat losses averaged five-percent per mission; an entire air crew could expect to be wiped out in twenty missions.

Dick Johnson, copilot in the 303rd Bomb Group, said that, to hear flak over the engine noises, it had to be within 50 feet; to feel its jolt, it had to be within 25 feet, though it was considered deadly for up to 200 yards.

On one mission, his plane returned with 263 flak holes, “yet no one was hit and the airplane flew as if nothing had happened to it.”

From “B-17 Combat Missions” by Martin Bowman:

“Between January and June, 1944, of the 2,051 crew who started a tour of twenty-five missions, 1,105 of them could expect to be killed in action.”

In another book, one man describes seeing his young commander standing atop the control tower, counting only a few of his squadron’s planes as they returned from a tough mission. As he realized that no more would be coming back, he broke down and bawled his eyes out.

He was only twenty-four; the men he’d send out were mostly younger.

[DRB]

A co worker who was a bombadier told of a mission towards the end of the war where a ME262 flew through thier formation and shot down 3 B-17s in one pass. He was scared to death it was the first jet he had ever seen and he did not know what it was. As he said that was 30 good men gone in seconds. During debrief he was asked if it was an aricraft that had shot them down and he said no it was not since it did not have a prop. At the peak of production Boeing was making 16 B-17s a day in Seattle and Vega was turning out around 5 or 10. There were many days more were lost in combat then were made. I have heard that we lost 35,000 aircraft in europe alone in combat. Yet we won that is what matters.