B-17’s were credited with shooting down roughly 5,000 German fighters over Europe – that is, credited by the Allies. In reality it impossible to say because 10 or 20 gunners might be firing at a plane as it flew though a formation, and if someone got it they might all claim it.
But IMO, no, the Allies couldn’t have “won” a war of attrition going fighter against bomber, because bombers and crews were so much more expensive. The Americans had to suspend their bombing campaigns for periods of time because losses were so severe.
Once the p-51 were available, the bombers were essentially bait, to draw up the fighter defense so it could be destroyed by the Mustangs. Yes, they could do lots of damage, and even more once the fighter defenses were knocked back,but destroying German air power was the key to making the invasion of Europe possible.
Gunners could be very effective. Ben Warmer was the waist gunner in a B-17 and credited with shooting down 7 Me 109 fighters on a single mission. He shot down two more on other missions, and AFAIK was to only gunner on the Allied side to achieve the status of “ace”. He was also the only enlisted man to achieve that status, though he was later promoted an officer.
But it wasn’t a level playing field. The Allies had a lot more planes and crews than the Axis had. So by a ruthless standard, they were winning even if they were taking greater losses. You didn’t lose by taking more losses; you lost by running out of replacements first.
The attack, whilst successful had a number of other effects which are more important. The damage to German production was marked, but the bouncing bomb turns out not to have been the best weapon to obtain the result, however development of the weapon that would have been suited would likely not gone ahead but for this raid.
The ‘Tallboy’ and ‘grand slam’ bombs were the proper tools for the job, but by the time these were ready the defences of all dams had been substantially increased, with around 10000 Germans being used to protect them along with all the AA barrage balloons etc. so further attacks on dams were deemed too risky
The precision bombing techniques needed to use these bombs were developed by the dam buster group and the weapons by the same person. Without that mission these weapons and techniques would not have been available.
One raid using these huge bombs on the Samar viaduct prevented a full German armoured division from getting to the Normandy beach head.
read this, become informed
What makes you think that you would know better than the Air Force generals and weapons engineers and other highly paid people who think about, design, build and use this sort of military equipment for a living?
The fact is that modern air combat is almost all missile oriented. Fighters still have internal guns, but they’re along the same lines as an infantryman’s bayonet; in dire circumstances, it’s nice to have one last weapon, but it’s not something that they ever want to actually use. Far better to pop that bomber with an AMRAAM from 15 miles out, than to close and shoot at it with the 20mm.
B-52s in particular had a pretty extensive (for their time) suite of electronic warfare equipment, able to jam most Soviet radars and communications and an crew member to run it. I’m curious if the B-2 or B-1 bombers have anything similar.
FWIW there is the USSR Backfire supersonic bomber which had variants entering service in the 80’s still equipped with a 23mm cannon turret in the tail.
But it supposedly was intended to fire flares and chaff rounds rather than shoot down fighters as such.
B-1s got a lot of bad press a while back because the Air Force was supposedly too scared to use them. The story was that the fancy ECM stuff just didn’t work properly, and without it the bombers would be too vulnerable to use on penetration missions. That was maybe 15 years ago, and I don’t know for sure if it was true then, and even if it was I dunno if it’s been fixed since.
At a guess, the B-2 has similar gear, but I’m also guessing they wouldn’t use it except under dire circumstances. To jam radaars they would have to transmit, which would kind of defeat the whole sealth thing. Then again, maybe they have some other secret tricks we havene’t heard of, like little deployable decoy/jammer drones which could do the job from well away from the aircraft.
I seem to remember from the days when I was fascinated with military aircraft (that is, junior high), that one reason, if not the main reason SR-71s and U-2s weren’t armed is because if you get caught flying recon over the USSR (or whatever country doesn’t really want you nosing around) in an armed aircraft, it is a much bigger deal politically–like it’s akin to an act of war–than it is if you are unarmed. Notice also that U-2s were run by the civilian CIA, not a branch of the military. (I don’t know what to say about SR-71s on this account; they were, I think, undeniably military aircraft.)
The argument was it meant they could direct them towards the attacker.
Sounds odd to me too, but that was the claim and the alternative is they seriously expected to shoot down fighters with it, which isnt a whole lot better.
While it’s far too inefficient a tradeoff to equip a B-2 with cannon(s) for the remote possibility they might be used in some contrived situation, it’s much more reasonable to assume they might carry a few AMRAAM AIM-120 missiles concealed in their weapons bay.
The AMRAAMs have a (known) range of up to 130 miles, depending on model (and in the case of a $2-billion-dollar airplane of which the US has only 20, I’d be carrying the latest AMRAAM available, wouldn’t you?). Even more usefully, the AMRAAM carries its own targeting radar, so the B-2 won’t need to have one or turn it on to give away its position, and the AMRAAM can be programmed to travel a variable distance before turning its onboard radar on.
So, in theory, another faraway aircraft with a powerful radar like an AWACs could feed targeting data via satellite to the stealthy B-2, which could open its weapon bay briefly (at the cost of temporarily degrading its low observability) and let fly an AMRAAM. The AMRAAM would then travel far away from the bomber’s position before lighting off its radar and alerting the entire enemy air defense. Ideally it would get fairly close to the target’s predicted position before doing so, thus giving very little time for countermeasures.
This strategy will be less useful against any hypothetical 5th-generation (stealthy) fighters the enemy might be employing, since the AWACS will have trouble detecting them and producing targeting data, but otherwise it’s theoretically useful enough that I’d be surprised if the Air Force hasn’t already used it when the threat profile warrants.
AMRAAM is dependent upon the aircraft for initial tracking and targeting before launch. It’s not just something where you let it go and it finds a plane on its own.
Yes, also even if the radar in the nose of the missile could be used for that, it couldn’t be while recessed in a weapons bay. So the shooting aircraft has to use a radar of its own to fire an AAM.
Except, I seem to recall some stories about missiles (maybe Russians) that could be fired from one aircraft and use the signal from an AWACS plane with some specialized targeting radar. I can see that being very useful for defense – the defensive fighters could fire without revealing their positions. But it couldn’t be done by bombers on missions well behind enemy lines because an AWACS plane couldn’t go with it and survive.
I’ve been explicitly told there is a mode where it is not.
That may well be wrong, but that’s what I was told. If it is wrong, then I stand corrected, but the information I have (or had, before your correction) indicates the scenario I outlined is entirely plausible.
Some one might be thinking of the Home on Jam mode, its radar is looking for an airplane, more like its looking for the source of energy that the jammer puts out.
Wouldn’t the missile itself paint a pretty trail back to the bomber though? I’m presuming that we’re talking about a plane operating far into enemy territory, since it’s not being covered by a friendly CAP to do the air-to-air combat for it, and hence being lit up by ground radars.
And they were essentially right, discounting two factors:
The early Falcon and Sidewinder missiles were terribly unreliable, requiring multiple launches to ensure a kill. A miss could allow hostile fighters to close the range and get in close, where the F-105s and early F-4s were at a disadvantage. This is no longer the case.
The rules of engagement required visual confirmation. Today identity can be confirmed through more sophisticated radars and IFF.
I’d imagine that opening the bay doors pretty much blows away any stealth ability the plane may have; I imagine that the idea is that enemy air defenses go something like this: