Face your Nemesis - fight your fear

[Olham]

Found these at the great picture website

 

www.earlyaviator.com

 

Enjoy!

[saltysplash]

Found these at the great picture website

 

www.earlyaviator.com

 

Enjoy!

 

 

It does make me wonder why some folk think Archie was an ineffective weapon.

 

Read up on any true account of baloon busting and the concentration of weapons was scary.

 

Even if it didnt come close, it was an effective nerve crunching weapon against pilots sitting in a wooden seat surrounded by cloth

[Olham]

Yup! But a WW2 Liberator only LOOKS more solid - in fact the most was rather thin alloy.

And a Flak burst near the fuselage could have badly hit everyone in the craft.

(Ever seen "Catch 22" - the scene in the Mitchell bomber?)

[saltysplash]

Yup! But a WW2 Liberator only LOOKS more solid - in fact the most was rather thin alloy.

And a Flak burst near the fuselage could have badly hit everyone in the craft.

(Ever seen "Catch 22" - the scene in the Mitchell bomber?)

 

 

And german flak during WW2 was a weapon to fear. They almost had it down to perfection

[Duce Lewis]

Yup! But a WW2 Liberator only LOOKS more solid - in fact the most was rather thin alloy.

And a Flak burst near the fuselage could have badly hit everyone in the craft.

So true, I toured the internals of a B17 at a local flyin

I was very surprized how thin everything appeared

Felt like I was inside a soda-pop can

MG Rounds let alone Cannon Shells would pass right through it

[Hellshade]

They all look serious about their business to me. I would especially hate to have been in a slower 2 seater trying to fly steady and bomb while they went about their business. Seriously, I can't imagine the fear, seeing your friends get blown to bits and then of course watching them fall burning from 10,000 or more feet if they survived the initial hit, knowing you could be next at any instant. And if you survived today, you had to go back and do it again tomorrow and again until your luck finally ran out.

 

Hellshade

[Bullethead]

They all look serious about their business to me. I would especially hate to have been in a slower 2 seater trying to fly steady and bomb while they went about their business. Seriously, I can't imagine the fear, seeing your friends get blown to bits and then of course watching them fall burning from 10,000 or more feet if they survived the initial hit, knowing you could be next at any instant. And if you survived today, you had to go back and do it again tomorrow and again until your luck finally ran out.

 

You should read Independent Force, by Keith Rennles. It's about the daylight DH-4 and DH-9 squadrons of Trenchard's IAF, trying to do deep strategic bombing in single-engine machines of doubtful reliability (especially the DH-9s). They'd go many dozens of miles into Hunland in the 2nd half of 1918, so they'd be Archied most of the way in and out, for several hours total. They often described the flak as "heavy and accurate", but amazingly few planes died of it. Most of those were due to engine hits or wounded crewmen needing urgent medical attention--very few were destroyed outright. However, many times, every plane would be hit by shrapnel to a greater or lesser extent, quite a few making it home to be written off and many times squadrons being out of action for a couple days repairing damage. What really killed them was being intercepted in strength by front-line Jastas as opposed to scattered small Kest units. Each squadron got practically wiped out about once a month by fighters.