Tail guns on jet bombers --- why?

[Lust4Life]

@Der Trihs

Psychological for morale, like always, I expect. As I understand it, even back in WW II guns were not only useless, but were known to decrease the bomber’s survivability by slowing it down; they were kept there in order to make the bomber crew feel better. They weren’t told that of course.

The guns weren’t useless at all,their primary purpose was to make it difficult for attack aircraft to approach easily and “Get their shot”.

Without defensive armament attacking fighters could have ambled up from any direction ,attitude and altitude and attacked the bombers at their leisure.

Also in the early days,heat seeking missiles went for the aeroplanes exhausts(When they worked at all)which meant that they went for the target from the rear,so rear mounted guns had the best chance of taking out the missile.

[tomndebb]

@RickJay

We’re also vastly underestimating the fundamental conservatism of militaries. Air forces honestly believed in 1939 that heavily armed bombers could defend themselves and the simple truth is they continued arming bombers, for the most part, because they refused to believe it wasn’t true. The military has ALWAYS resisted the truth whenever a prevailing doctrine is proven false. Navies adamantly refused to believe that planes could attain maritime supremacy. Armies were skeptical of the value of tanks and obsessed with holding on to cavalry well into the 20th century. Hell, noblemen for generations refused to accept that mounted knights were obsolete by about 1400.

In this particular discussion, that is not exactly true. When LeMay brought Bomber Harris’s tactics to the Pacific, he started sending B-29s out as night mission fire bombers–then stripped out much of the defensive armament to give them greater range and speed, based on the (mostly correct) notion that the Japanese had no really effective night fighter squadrons.