Invincible Planes in GWX???

Part of the problem with the B-24 was with its thin Davis wing and deep bomb bays. The former meant that at high altitudes the Liberator was closer to stall than the Fortress and the wing itself was not as strong structurally. The latter meant that it was more difficult to escape from a crippled plane. The B-17's innate toughness, due to the nature of its construction tended to give more time to the crews.

For details see William H. Cook, The Road to the 707 where he, a Boeing engineer, goes into some detail on the design features that made the B-17 so damage resistant. There's probably some internet links out there somewhere as well.

As for armour, the RAF used a one pilot system, there was usually no co-pilot even on the long Coastal Command patrols. Aircrew took a very dim view of anything that might prevent the pilot from bringing them home. Until several years ago there was a ex RCAF Canso (PBY-5A Catalina to all the Americans out there) water bomber parked at Nanaimo Airport and I got a walk through tour one day. There was still armour plate behind the pilots seat and since the aircraft was a WW2 vet, it is unlikely that it was installed after the war.

Most bombers did have some protection for the flight deck so the blanket statement that Allied bombers had no armour is inaccurate. Dad told me that the First Pilot on Lancaster's and Whitley's had armour protection, he did 13-trips over Germany in Lancaster's an half dozen Coastal Command patrols in Whitley's as a navigator. I would get his testimony but he passed away in '99.

And lastly there is the biggest piece of empirical evidence that the 20mm was lacking. If it had been really effective there would have been no requirement to introduce the 37mm! First hand account repeatedly tell of RAF "Tired Bees" shrugging off gunfire and Liberators hit time and again only to come round for additional attacks. Weapons are only replaced when they cease to do their job, if the 20mm worked it would not have been supplemented by the Bofor's.

Last SH3 patrol an air attack developed while leaving Flensburg and my boat shot down four Liberators using "Engage Closest Target". This in GWX3 so if anything, aircraft are too easy to kill. But that's just my opinion.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Randomizer

Part of the problem with the B-24 was with its thin Davis wing and deep bomb bays. The former meant that at high altitudes the Liberator was closer to stall than the Fortress and the wing itself was not as strong structurally. The latter meant that it was more difficult to escape from a crippled plane. The B-17's innate toughness, due to the nature of its construction tended to give more time to the crews.

But talk is cheap, and it amazed me to discover that the loss rate of the B-24 was actually far better than that of the B-17.

Most bombers did have some protection for the flight deck so the blanket statement that Allied bombers had no armour is inaccurate. Dad told me that the First Pilot on Lancaster's and Whitley's had armour protection, he did 13-trips over Germany in Lancaster's an half dozen Coastal Command patrols in Whitley's as a navigator. I would get his testimony but he passed away in '99.

I don't argue that for a moment. US helicopters in Vietnam had armored seats for the pilot. It doesn't meant the chopper itself was "armored" or protected against gunfire. Most combat aircraft have some pilot protection. This doesn't make them "armored" either. There is little or nothing to protect the aircraft itself.

And lastly there is the biggest piece of empirical evidence that the 20mm was lacking. If it had been really effective there would have been no requirement to introduce the 37mm! First hand account repeatedly tell of RAF "Tired Bees" shrugging off gunfire and Liberators hit time and again only to come round for additional attacks. Weapons are only replaced when they cease to do their job, if the 20mm worked it would not have been supplemented by the Bofor's.

Again I agree. Planes, like ships, have a lot of empty space where a hit does no effective damage. I was only talking about literal armor, and now I'm not sure why I was doing that.

The bottom line is still the same: staying on the surface to fight airplanes was a bad idea, and it should be in the game.

Last SH3 patrol an air attack developed while leaving Flensburg and my boat shot down four Liberators using "Engage Closest Target". This in GWX3 so if anything, aircraft are too easy to kill. But that's just my opinion.

I wouldn't know. I've never stuck around to fight them, even in the stock game.

But talk is cheap, and it amazed me to discover that the loss rate of the B-24 was actually far better than that of the B-17.

It shouldn't. The Liberator benefited from some four-years of improvements in aerodynamics, engine and fuel technology between the 1935 Army Air Corps requirements that led to the Boeing 299/Y1B-17 and the 1939 contract that became the B-24.

That same Davis wing that helped make the Liberator relatively fragile compared to the Fortress also facilitated greater speed, payload and range, things you wanted in a strategic bomber.

All technology is about trade-offs and compromises, that's why these popular but silly "Best Of" lists are generally rubbish.

As for the Flensburg thing, I didn't want to fight it out either but not much one can do in a Type IX and 11-metres of water...

[Sailor Steve]

It amazed me because I bought into the myth of the "indestructible fortress". It's just like the "flaming coffins" nickname given to the DH-4 in World War 1. The plane was no more flammable than any other Great War aircraft, which of course isn't saying much.

[vanjast]

Originally Posted by Rconch

Imo, you stand almost no chance if it isn't a swordfish.
Seek the deep.

In reality the Swordfish was harder to down than the then modern bombers because of one simple fact.... it was made of fabric and the AAA shells passed right through it without exploding. The Bismark had this horrible experience.. and was torpedoed.

Of course if the shell hit something solid, that would possibly down any aircraft.

[RConch]

[QUOTE=vanjast;1838059]In reality the Swordfish was harder to down than the then modern bombers because of one simple fact.... it was made of fabric and the AAA shells passed right through it without exploding. The Bismark had this horrible experience.. and was torpedoed.

Of course it the shell hit something solid that would possibly down any aircraft.
[/QUOTE

I agree in real life-however my experience in the game has been they are the easist to shoot down.
I had real bad encounter with a Kingfisher, anything like it or bigger is an instant crash dive.

[Gargamel]

Because the game runs on a hp system, a Swordfish would naturally have fewer.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by vanjast

In reality the Swordfish was harder to down than the then modern bombers because of one simple fact.... it was made of fabric and the AAA shells passed right through it without exploding. The Bismark had this horrible experience.. and was torpedoed.

Do you have a single citation for that? I meant the part about shells passing through the fabric? According to every source I've seen, Bismarck's AA fire was innefective due to rangefinders being calibrated for faster aircraft. The Swordfish were save because they were too slow for the tracking equipment, and being made of fabric had nothing to do with it. When a Swordfish squadron attacked Prinz Eugen, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, all six aircraft were shot down, so those bullets apparently didn't pass through the fabric.

When hundreds of bullets are in the air, which part of an aircraft is hit becomes a statistical probablility. Some might pass through without causing damage, but that is true of metal as well as cloth. There is always a chance of control or engine damage, or the pilot being hit, and those chances don't change no mattere what the plane is made of.

[Hinrich Schwab]

Originally Posted by teapot156

Yeah I get the whole realism thing and i know planes are a sub's worst nightmare when riding on the surface. In reality though a 20 mm gun would tear the hell out of any plane from that era.

This is true if you can hit him enough. The suck-tacular ROF of the flak gun and the low magazine capacity and its comparatively long reload time should be more than enough convincing to order Alarmtauchen the second you confirm his presence. Like everyone else has said, if it is too late to go deep, all you can do is maneuver like mad. As nasty as planes are, they are just as vulnerable to missing with its payload as a sub when faced by abrupt zig-zagging and speed changes. Not as effective as when a merchant does it to a sub, but it is a lot better than trying to duke it out with a pea shooter.

[vanjast]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Do you have a single citation for that?

It's in a book related to the Bismark hunt.. if I remember correctly. It also mentions what you say about the slow aircraft foiling the AA sytems.
The fabric construction is explicitly mentioned in enabling the Swordfish to get much closer (and drop torps) than normal metal aircraft.... I'll have to dig through my library.

And there's also a chance of a shell hitting a metal surface and exploding, damaging vital pieces, whereas hitting a fabric surface, the shell would just carry on (also possibly hitting control wires)..... same argument from the other side

[Gargamel]

Steve, I've read in a number of places ( no sources sorry) the same thing about older cloth aircraft having great durability in WWII.

Originally Posted by vanjast

It's in a book related to the Bismark hunt.. if I remember correctly. It also mentions what you say about the slow aircraft foiling the AA sytems.

This is one of the great frauds in the Bismarck legend. Anybody who has ever trained in All-Arms Air Defence and every duck and wild bird hunter knows from experience that slow targets are dead targets. The crew of Bismarck were lousy shots and her AAA was poorly arranged and badly controlled.

They even had to add phony Swordfish losses in the movie Sink the Bismarck (and a bogus scene with an RN destroyer getting blown up) because the producers feared that the historical lack of battle losses, other than Hood, would make for poor drama.

See comments from the Bismarck chapter in The Worlds Worst Warships by Anthony Preston.

As for the rest every time Swordfish met effective opposition they were slaughtered. That said, they were very strong airframes and many brought their crews home after being shot to pieces or got then to the ground alive.

CDR Charles Lamb in his excellent To War in a Stringbag waxes lyrical in praise of the Swordfish but had no illusions as to its vulnerability in action.

[Raptor]

Fabric coated airframes are a lot less susceptible to AA fire. When struck by a shell, fabric doesn't fragment into multiple sharp pieces like steel or aluminum will. Those fragments flying about act like mini-AA shells and can do considerable damage to surrounding areas and personnel missed by the actual shell.

Any shell that strikes the solid airframe, be it metal or wood, can do a lot of damage, irregardless of the type of material used to cover it.

The aircrew is likewise susceptible.

[Sailor Steve]

So, a Hurricane is safer than a Spitfire? I'll bet those Wellington pilots were glad they weren't flying Lancasters. The fact is that what knocks airplanes down are critical hits. Many metal aircraft came home full of holes. A fabric-covered plane is just as susceptible to engine hits, control hits and pilot hits as any other plane, and that's what brings them down, not holes in the fuselage or wing surfaces.

My initial point was that it wasn't the fabric that saved the Swordfish against Bismarck, it was the fact that they weren't hit.

[teapot156]

I don't know guys, I'm reading this thread here and looking up some of these designs and I'm not sure if GWX models planes well.

Don't get me wrong, it's great and I love the hell out of it. It doesn't bother me that I can't kick the crap out of squadron after squadron of enemy bombers while watching the explosions and chomping on my cigar.

What really bothers me is the knowledge that when I fire a 20 mm gun at VERY close range and SEE the bullets hitting the cockpit, I'm not doing any damage. A 20 mm round is not going to be stopped by a piece of 8mm steel the size of a lunch box under the pilots butt or whatever. The 20 mm should end the party for the dumb pilot that is nose diving my position more than he needs to in order to take out the sub. It's more likely that the 37 mm was installed to complement the 20 mm because of the larger effective range and great destructive power of using flak shells.

Thats why im guessing there might be something wrong with the mods im using and maybe not GWX at all, it just seems too weird. Reread my first post, I shot this one bomber with everything I had. No not "shot at", I mean actually hit. Hit without effect.

And on the subject of armor, the most I can really find on planes being armored is these models having protection from 14mm or .50 cal ammunition which has a significant difference from 20 or even 37. A lot of these armored positions where critical areas where a stray round could destroy the entire plane or kill a crew member. They weren't made to actually TAKE fire.