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[Typhoon Ib]

Exactly what my Gut and stomach tells me.
Well put, man.

[SAS~Storebror]

Fine, so let's forget about the alleged "2%", in the initial statement they were used to support the statement of the "close up" weapon, something we all agree about.
What else?
Hey look there's something shiny over there!

[Typhoon Ib]

i am NOT that blue fish from finding nemo!
You wanna piss me off?!
You wanna get in trouble?!!!

oh. Nice Mustang...

[SAS~Skylla]

someone asked for shiny mustangs?

[Alien]

[Typhoon Ib]

[Marjak]

During the analysis of the films taken during the fighting, Luftwaffe experts remarked that an average pilot could hit a bomber with only 2% of rounds fired.

That's understood and the source book was given, but shouldn't there be the "remarks" of the "Luftwaffe experts" somewhere but under Mr. Price's pillow?
At the risk of repeating myself, I doubt that this is anything but an attempt to spoof an assumption for a fact: We all know what guncam films look like. I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how you would want to count hits from a 6-gun/cannon fighter using just these crumbly movie cuts?

Best regards - Mike

I know, discussion is over and I absolutely agree that 2% hit chance is just a chiffre for "they hit almost nothing" but at least it`s possible to make a statistic like that (I don`t claim that the LW came up with something like this in the war, but I`m German myself, so why not?)

A Bf 109 G-6 has 200 bullets of 20mm ammo with it, a typical Fw 190 A-8 750 bullets. So let`s say the LW on one particular day brought up 50 fighters in the air against the bombers (25 Bf 109 and 25 Fw 190 and all depleted their whole 20mm ammo) the 109 fired 5.000 bullets and the Fw 190 18.750, alltogether 23.750 bullets.
(Of course you can ask your ammo attendant to count the bullets exactly, so no problem to come up with a number when the German generall staff really wanted to).

Of course you can count the crashed bombers all over Europe, and on our particular day it was 20. The LW also knew that it took 20 hits of 20mm to bring down a bomber statistically, so the fighters achieved 400 hits out of 23.750 which is 1,6842%.
Of course there had been bombers that were damaged also, so they had statistically been hit by less than 20 bullets (1-19).

So when you add another 20 damaged bomber that were hit by 10 bullets as an average value, you have a hit percentage of 600 out of 23.750 which is 2,5263%.

This is meant more of a joke. All I wanted to say is that the LW did exactly know how many of their own fighters engaged on a particular day, and they also knew how many 20mm bullets they fired. They also could count the crashed bombers and the rest is a matter of statistic. And even if you accept a certain tolerance in my numbers, you always get to a number that low.

Cheers  

[SAS~Storebror]

May I point out a few mistakes in your assumption Marjak?

You say the Luftwaffe knew exactly how many fighters they had in the air? Not true for 1944+ at least.
You say the Luftwaffe knew how many enemy aircraft they downed? Not true at all.
You say the fighters depleted their whole ammo altogether? Not true at all. Many get shot before they even have the possibility to fire a single bullet, many see no combat action at all, many do a single pass, fire let's say 1/4 of their bullets and have to rtb damaged... the fewest will ever get the chance to shoot all their bullets.
You assume that the number of damaged bombers is the same like the number of downed bombers? Usually not true.

Take all of this together and the assumption of

even if you accept a certain tolerance in my numbers, you always get to a number that low.

can easily be completely wrong.

Best regards - Mike

[LuseKofte]

The idea of making the 110 was simply to provide a fast aircraft with a lot of ammo and let it hoover over the bomber formation and unlatch its deadly armory . And before the P-51 came along they basically did. The problem was they could not do this simple task because the bombers shot at them, and moved . Turbulence , moving targets and deadly return fire made them not appear as a easy target going steady at their 6 o´clock . So there is no doubt a lot of bullet was waisted in a attack. Many bombers that fell was hit by a dozen fighters, loosing altitude and speed they where attacked over and over again.

This was original a topic about the velocity of a MK 108, then someone came along and said 50 cal x 6 was equal to a MK 108 and then it was rephrased .
In a topic with hard facts, you need to provide hard facts. And if you cannot find what you say documented. Do not say it. Not in topics like this. Because it simply do nothing else than confusing others

We can also see how the Staff was thinking and how things was organized .
Look at US in total.
50 cal used by infantry, tanks ,ships, vehicles and airplanes. Easy peasy They put bombs and 50 calls as forward mounted mg and throw in some rockets if the ac could manage and let their pilots learn by along the way.
RAF they equipped Rockets and only that to pilots witch was trained for rockets. Torpedoes for pilot trained for that. This discussion deviated towards so called documented facts based on totally other stuff than ballistics . It is all based on how the administration believed they could win a war with the resources available.

[Typhoon Ib]

i would also argue that no - they did not know any of the following things with last digit precision:
how many planes were up and on intercept mission.
how many had found the Enemy
how many had engaged the Enemy
how many had actually shot at the Enemy
how many bullets were fired at Escorts
how many bullets were fired at Bombers
how many had landed and taken off again for s a second run?


=================
It starts on the ground: did a squad send 10 or 12 planes? that is the easiest of all answers and still not always clear.

how many formed up? did someone get lost?

how many found the bombers? are we talking about the same bombers, or are there different raids going on?

how many got engaged before the bombers were reached? (P-38, 47, 51...)

how many did a second sortie? after attacking and landing at a different air base, how many did a second run, and  how was that counted?

how many , after the second sortie returned to the original air base? maybe he went to the base where he refueled and stayed there for the night (damage, wounds,weather, time)

and now the planes are all mixed up for the next day...

==============================
I do not want to be anal about this, and simply push questions that seem hard to answer.
I do not want to boycot the search.

But, by God, it must have been confusing to only know where the planes were at the end of the day.
and then get some order in this, to properly organize the next day. Telephone communications helped, for sure.
The fabled German effort of "Ordnung" and precision in administrative matters was key in tracking the situation.

I simply think it is a vain effort to condense the info into numbers of how many Bullets were fired at Bombers (not at mustangs!), how many hit, and ultimately the big question how much was needed to bring a fat sucker down.

I also understand our desire to know, to figure out, to understand ourselves - but the involved people lacked precise information, and so do we today.
and with a lack of info, it is somewhat arrogant to try and try to squeeze a "hits %" out of the info we do have.

However!
as Le0ne pointed out, the MK 108 was a small machine, and it was tested before it was mounted into planes.
and even in planes it was tested.

Looking at the small machines and the tests done seems to be a smart move - not looking at the entirety of the Luftwaffe action.
So let's start with the machine, the ammunition and the speeds involved.
that alone is a big challenge.

[Typhoon Ib]

The idea of making the 110 was simply to provide a fast aircraft with a lot of ammo and let it hoover over the bomber formation and unlatch its deadly armory . And before the P-51 came along they basically did.

i agreed with you untill you said Mustang.
had you said Spitfire and Hurricane, i would have agreed completely.
think BoB, my friend, and how the emils had to escort the 110s who were supposed to escort the heinkels.

Not the Mustangs are guilty of destroying my beloved hundertzehn. The Spitfires are!
The SPITFIRES are the evil here!
(or the MS406 and D.520 in france...?)

and i always hated that loadout... like WTF! you go blind and the nose shakes like hell so even with no tracers for the 108 nightfighter you basically use a shotgun
and it's deafening loud too... BlamBlamBlam...

[Marjak]

May I point out a few mistakes in your assumption Marjak?

You say the Luftwaffe knew exactly how many fighters they had in the air? Not true for 1944+ at least.
You say the Luftwaffe knew how many enemy aircraft they downed? Not true at all.
You say the fighters depleted their whole ammo altogether? Not true at all. Many get shot before they even have the possibility to fire a single bullet, many see no combat action at all, many do a single pass, fire let's say 1/4 of their bullets and have to rtb damaged... the fewest will ever get the chance to shoot all their bullets.
You assume that the number of damaged bombers is the same like the number of downed bombers? Usually not true.

Of course you can, Mike. No problem.

You don`t have to know exactly how many fighters you have in the air. You`re right, the only important value is the numbers of 20mm bullets fired on that day, and I`m pretty sure that the weapon attendance could come up with this when asked before.
As for the number of downed bombers, at least they officially presented numbers every time. I`m aware of the fact of exaggeration but anyway LW officials could count the wrecks on one particular day, so it`s possible to operate with a minimal value for statistical purpose.
As for the damaged bombers. I don`t assume that it was the same number. I only wanted to include into the statistic the fact that damaged bombers were possibly hit by 20mm bullets as well.

Anyway, this was just an experiment. I never said that the LW did calculate such things on a daily basis. I even doubt that they actually did, but at least it`s possible to come up with a statistic like this. And who knows, maybe an angry Göring bashing his fighter pilots for incompetence and cowardice once asked in a rhetorically manner "WTF they are hitting out there?". And so a pencil pusher tried to come up with a number.

But maybe a guy who knows about statistic can help us.
We have two known parameters (number of 20mm bullets fired and number of bombers that were downed for sure (the wrecks that can be counted - the minmal value)
We know that it took 20 hits of 20mm to down a bomber (at least this was an official LW test trial)

We have two unknown parameter (the number of damaged bombers and the number of hits those damaged bombers received).
And we don`t know how many bullets were fired on fighters.

Is it possible to create a reliable statistic according to this when the latter parameter do have a huge variance? (but also for the damaged bombers you have a minimal and a maximal value, the same for hits on these bombers, statistically less then 20, so 1-19).
Also, let`s do not forget that my assumptions for this statistic are based upon the numbers of one particular day. But of course it`s possible to use the numbers from a long-run analysis as well. I guess that when you have to counter allied bombers on an almost daily basis, you have some statistical material to operate with.

Cheers