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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 4, 2019 14:09:28 GMT -8
In the spirit of July 4th and celebrating our history, I have decided to post a number of photos of the US planes which helped win WWII.
Here is the B-25, a plane which was used extensively in the Pacific Theater. One of my uncles was a tail-gunner in one of these birds, and my high school European History teacher flew one of these in the war. Like every soldier I ever asked "what was it like the first time you were in battle?", he said his first thought was, "These guys are trying to kill me." It's one thing to know the enemy wants to kill you, but something altogether different to have him try to kill you.
Here is a photo of the plane we all know from "Twelve O'Clock High." The B-17 Flying Fortress. An old friend was a bomber/navigator on one of these.
The Eighth Air Force Suffered terrible loses at the beginning of their campaign as the B-17 could not protect itself well enough, despite the many .50 caliber machine guns it carried. Here is the American fighter that could finally escort the B-17 all the way to Berlin and back. Many consider this the best fighter of WWII. P-51 Mustang.
This is the plane which flattened the Japan Homeland. B-29 Superfortress.
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Post by timothylane on Jul 4, 2019 15:03:53 GMT -8
I've seen some of these planes (the types, at least) at the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. They include the B-29 Bockscar, which took off August 9, 1945 to hit Kokura (the city was socked in, so they diverted to the secondary target, Nagasaki). On one of our visits, they had survivors of the Doolittle Raid, which used modified B-25s to hit Tokyo. (The attack was one of the inducements for the Japanese attack on Midway that turned the tide in the Pacific.)
The P-51 may not have been quite up to the jet fighters late in the war (the American P-80, the British Meteor V, and the German Me-262), though it could outmaneuver and outrange them. Some German fighters late in the war matched it in performance, but they were badly outranged by it. The arrival of the P-51 powered by the RAF's Rolls Royce Merlin engine in early 1944 enabled the Allied bombers (led by Jimmy Doolittle) to win a smashing victory in what became known as the Big Week in February 1944.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 4, 2019 15:25:38 GMT -8
The P-80 did not take part in actual air combat so I don't believe it counts. The Meteor was not used very much, as I recall. The Me 262 was by far, the most deadly jet of the war. It was fast and had 30 mm cannons. But I think it should be seen more as a bomber interceptor. Apparently, its great weakness was landing and take off, which was when most were shot down. Something to do with the handling of the jet while landing and taking off. And the Me 262 was superior to either jet produced by the USA or UK.
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Post by timothylane on Jul 4, 2019 15:43:35 GMT -8
I notice that the B-25 had a large array of forward-facing guns, probably .50-caliber machine guns though some may have been 20 mm. This firepower was very useful during the skip bombing they started doing in early 1943 in the destruction of a major Japanese troop convoy in the Bismarck Sea.
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zerek
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Post by zerek on Jul 4, 2019 23:09:22 GMT -8
Lockheed P-38 Lightning  Voight F4U Corsair  Republic P-47 Thunderbolt  Douglas SBD Dauntless  |
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Post by timothylane on Jul 5, 2019 6:52:58 GMT -8
Ah, the "fork-tail devil". The P-38 was very effective at lower levels. It was a flight of P-38s that shot down Admiral Yamamoto. They could also be used as bombers, though an attempt to use them that way against Ploesti in 1944 led to heavy losses.
The Dauntless was replaced as the main American navy dive-bomber after 1942, but I'm not sure that was a good idea. Morison in The Two-Ocean War (his one-volume abridgement of his Navy official history) certainly seemed to think te Dauntless was better.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 5, 2019 7:06:21 GMT -8
zerek, Those are some nice planes. I knew a man who piloted the P-38 in the Mediterranean Theater (I blv he was in North Africa but he may have been in Italy) and he loved the plane. He claimed that the generals of the Eighth Air Force could have had their long-range fighter escort with this plane, a year of two before the P-51 came into general use in the strategic bombing campaign. I think he said they didn't use it because it eat up so much gas. I guess gas was more valuable than bombers and their crews.
Charles Lindbergh, who FDR refused to allow to enter the air force, in fact flew some missions in the Pacific in the P-38 and showed the pilots how to extend the range of the plane and life of the engines.
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Post by timothylane on Jul 5, 2019 8:54:22 GMT -8
The P-38 was unsuccessful at high altitudes, which is where the heavy bombers usually flew. As a matter of fact, the FW-190 had similar problems due to its radial engine. (Later versions with an in-line engine were more successful at high altitudes. I assume this was also the problem with the P-38.)
Martin Caidin, in an appearance at an SF con decades ago (don't ask me which, but it was probably one or another worldcon), said that there was some little fix that could have solved the problem. They sent over a transport with a supply of the part needed for this -- but forgot to make sure it was well protected, and it got shot down. He also wrote a history of the plane (Fork-Tailed Devil, allegedly a German nickname for the plane), though I don't recall his mentioning it there. Maybe he learned about it after the book came out.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 5, 2019 9:55:29 GMT -8
This is not technically an aircraft from WWII, but it does have to do with Independence Day. It's where we spend a lot of time.  |
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 5, 2019 9:59:55 GMT -8
But it does rise in the air.
Very nice. Did you roast any hot dogs or marshmallows?
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 5, 2019 10:06:25 GMT -8
We were very dog-centric yesterday. These things at my older brother’s house are not necessarily well-planned events. You don’t know who is going to show up or with what. But Ron had a good supply of hot dogs. A fellow also brought some oysters right off his beach. That was a treat, I can tell you. One person found a small pearl. It wasn’t round but it was pretty all the same — and smooth like a pearl. We spent some time trucking the kids around on my brother’s riding mower. Eventually he put some kind of a wagon on the back of it and we were giving rides to entire loads at one time. No one drove into the pond so it could be considered a success. The day started overcast but it cleared by 1:00 although the wind stayed up for a bit. This morning it feels as if I smoked two packs of bonfire last night. We watched the fireworks all around us, including a few that were shot there. You could see in the distance (from the hilltop view) the show in Seattle and the one in Tacoma. |
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Post by timothylane on Jul 5, 2019 10:46:59 GMT -8
Well, if you were going to show a July 4 fire, maybe some fireworks would have been nice. Particularly with rockets (as in a typical fireworks show), that would have been very appropriate for the topic.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 5, 2019 16:07:44 GMT -8
This is another fast model. A dive-bomber, I believe, And definitely patriotic.  |
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 5, 2019 16:10:47 GMT -8
The B-25 was another effective airplane:  |
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 5, 2019 19:23:34 GMT -8
I'll have one of each please.
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Post by timothylane on Jul 5, 2019 19:27:18 GMT -8
The women or the planes? (This sounds a bit like Man's Favorite Sport?, which we discussed fairly recently, I think on the ST forum. But it was a fun trope then, and I suspect appropriate now.)
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Post by kungfuzu on Jul 5, 2019 19:34:57 GMT -8
From the looks of it, each would ruinous to maintain.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 5, 2019 20:48:11 GMT -8
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Post by timothylane on Jul 5, 2019 21:03:28 GMT -8
I suspect similar art may have appeared elsewhere. I read about an American AA gun that put images of the planes they shot down on the gun -- including a few American planes. They were advised that those should be removed. I wonder what images Enola Gay and Bockscar featured. For that matter, did any warships use images representing their names? Did any tanks do anything like that? I'm sure some did.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 5, 2019 21:06:23 GMT -8
That's easy enough to Google:   |
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