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Avro Lancaster

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B-17 in Seattle.

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B-17 nose guns & turret gun.

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sparksdjs wrote in post #19399488
B-17 in Seattle.

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forum: Transportation

Bombardiers view from flight I was on.

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forum: Transportation

Nice pics! I saw and toured Aluminum Overcast in Manassas, Virginia a couple of years ago.

Did you actually fly in it?

mcoren wrote in post #19399602
Nice pics! I saw and toured Aluminum Overcast in Manassas, Virginia a couple of years ago.

Did you actually fly in it?

Yes, I went on a flight around the Puget Sound area, where I got the bombardier picture. Great experience - I was an engineer at Boeing for 30 years.

sparksdjs wrote in post #19399489
B-17 nose guns & turret gun.

One statistic on the plane caught me by surprise. The B-17 carried thirteen Browning M-2 .50 caliber machine guns, with a fire rate of approximately 13 rounds per second. A flight load-out was approx. 10,000 rounds of ammo. Generally, no gun on a B-17 carried more than approx. one minute’s supply of ammunition. The gunners fired in short, judicious bursts. (My father-in-law was a gunner on a B-24 Liberator and was shot down over the Med the day after D-Day. He was the sole survivor and was rescued by a French boat. He was betrayed while in hiding and was captured and spent the remainder of the war in a stalag)

sparksdjs wrote in post #19399731
One statistic on the plane caught me by surprise. The B-17 carried thirteen Browning M-2 .50 caliber machine guns, with a fire rate of approximately 13 rounds per second. A flight load-out was approx. 10,000 rounds of ammo. Generally, no gun on a B-17 carried more than approx. one minute’s supply of ammunition. The gunners fired in short, judicious bursts. (My father-in-law was a gunner on a B-24 Liberator and was shot down over the Med the day after D-Day. He was the sole survivor and was rescued by a French boat. He was betrayed while in hiding and was captured and spent the remainder of the war in a stalag)

That’s a great story! Thanks for sharing it!

I suppose they needed to conserve space and weight for fuel and bombs. The doctrine of the time was to use their “combat box” formation to concentrate the defensive firepower.

mcoren wrote in post #19399783
That’s a great story! Thanks for sharing it!

I suppose they needed to conserve space and weight for fuel and bombs. The doctrine of the time was to use their “combat box” formation to concentrate the defensive firepower.

Exactly - bomb loads had priority. But it was a surprise to me, having grown up watching Twelve O'Clock High and it seemed that they had nearly unlimited ammo.

Other interesting info (from book "Dirty Little Secrets of World War II"):

In the course of operations against targets in Europe the Eighth Air Force (bombers and fighter escorts), which flew out of Great Britain, expended 76.9 million rounds of .50-caliber machine-gun ammunition plus nearly 0.7 million rounds of .30-caliber ammo, to account for 6,098 enemy aircraft, a ratio of about 12,700 rounds per kill. The Fifteenth Air Force, flying from Italy, expended about 30 million rounds of .50-caliber ammunition, downing 2,110 enemy aircraft, or about one for every 14,200 rounds fired.

This may seem like a tremendous waste of ammunition, but the German anti-aircraft gunners opposing the bombers were getting only about one kill for every 12,000 rounds fired, and that quite often with the vaunted 88mm anti-aircraft gun.

sparksdjs wrote in post #19399731
One statistic on the plane caught me by surprise. The B-17 carried thirteen Browning M-2 .50 caliber machine guns, with a fire rate of approximately 13 rounds per second. A flight load-out was approx. 10,000 rounds of ammo. Generally, no gun on a B-17 carried more than approx. one minute’s supply of ammunition. The gunners fired in short, judicious bursts. (My father-in-law was a gunner on a B-24 Liberator and was shot down over the Med the day after D-Day. He was the sole survivor and was rescued by a French boat. He was betrayed while in hiding and was captured and spent the remainder of the war in a stalag)

Given that 100 rounds was about 35 pounds, that comes to about 3,500 pounds for ammunition for 13 guns, about 1588 kg. That's not an insignificant weight. At 700 rounds a minute per gun, each gun had 245 pounds (111 kg) of ammunition for a minute.

The P-51 had less firing time, their inboard guns carried 400 rounds and some guns only 270 rounds.
https://www.stallion51​.com …0rounds%20each%​20outboard.

That is a fascinating lot of stats. £ for £ it seems that the .5s were cheaper her kill than the 88s. I can never remember whether the 88 started out as an anti tank weapon and converted to anti aircraft or the other way around?

Something that has always surprised me is that the B17 just carried a 4000lb bomb load. The Mosquito carried that as long as it didn't have to go too far, but they were both exceptional aircraft.

Jonzjob wrote in post #19399947
Something that has always surprised me is that the B17 just carried a 4000lb bomb load. The Mosquito carried that as long as it didn't have to go too far, but they were both exceptional aircraft.

Do you know what the Avro Lancaster's bomb load was? I don't, but I heard that it was quite a bit more than the B17.

griffljg wrote in post #19399950
Do you know what the Avro Lancaster's bomb load was? I don't, but I heard that it was quite a bit more than the B17.

Standard Lancaster max bomb load was 14,000 lbs. Late war modifications saw the Lancaster able to carry a single Tallboy bomb (12,000 lbs) and a further modification enabled the carriage of a single Grand Slam bomb (22,000 lbs).

Edit: Did the original Tallboy and Grand Slam weights from memory, now corrected

Supermarine Seafire F.Mk.XVII at Shuttleworth “Fly Navy” Airshow

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gort wrote in post #19400031
Standard Lancaster max bomb load was 14,000 lbs. Late war modifications saw the Lancaster able to carry a single Tallboy bomb (18,000 lbs) and a further modification enabled the carriage of a single Grand Slam bomb (24,000 lbs).

The defence was 8 Browning .303 machine guns. 2 in the nose, 2 in the upper turret and 4 in the tail with the 'tail end Chariy' gunner. It was so tight getting in the tail turret the gunner had to leave his parachute in the fuselage.

Crew of 7. One driver, nav, radio operator, flt engineer, bomb aimer/nose gunner, mid upper gunner gunner and tail gunner.

The 10 ton Grand slam bomb was designed to drop from as high as possible. A delayed fuse allowed it to penetrate the ground and explode causing a minor earth quake and shake the target to bits. It wasn't intended to hit the target and it could destroy the huge submarine pens literally by shaking them to bits. Nic-name, the earthquake bomb.

Edit : - Just a quick one on the Grand slam. https://www.militaryhi​stories.co.uk/viaduct/​grand_slam

All taken at the Rose City Airfest in Tyler, TX

Capt. Haden "Gator" Fullam in his A-10

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