henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (08/31/90)
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) >From: attcan!ron@uunet.UU.NET (Ron Joma) >... mention of this technique being used by the Luftwaffe night fighters, >the so called schragge musik, literally jazz music, where the gun was pointed >up about 20 degrees, being mounted behind the pilot on ME 110's. The idea >was to fly close and underneath an intruder and then fire away. Dangerous >but effective when a target was aquired. Actually, often not so dangerous, as a number of major bombers, notably the Lancaster, had poor or no defensive coverage against attacks from below. According to Freeman Dyson, who was in operations analysis for the RAF at the time, the change to belly attacks was very visible in loss statistics, and he and others spent quite a bit of effort trying to convince Bomber Command that (a) this was happening, and (b) it would be better to delete the ineffectual defensive armament of the bombers in favor of lighter weight and higher speed. (An even uglier story of his is how one of his colleagues spent many months trying to convince Bomber Command that the escape hatch on the Lancaster was too small. British aircrew losses were significantly higher than American losses as a result.) Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry