It always comes down to this (as someone else said, and which I've copied ad lib), "We each had to fight the war we were given". There was no choice.
No two pilots (or anyone else) had the same war. Some thought they were going to have a soft war, but got a hard war - or vice versa. A hard war could turn soft, or a hot one hard. It was in the lap of the Gods.
It is interesting to compare the mathematical chances of survival, but at the time we were always confident of who was going to get the 'chop' - the other bloke! Not me !
I'm interested in the idea that you could pick and choose where your shots might land - unless your enemy were straight and level, and sound asleep. They should have told me about this on my Spitfire OTU in '42 ! Most ordinary chaps were delighted if they hit him at all !
I grant you, Shräge Musik was a special case. where the guns were angled so that the night fighter could come up under an unwary Lanc, which had a blind spot underneath (so they tell me). As the obvious thing for the Ju88 (or whatever) to do was to "formate" direct line astern under his victim, and the closer he tucked in, the harder he was for the rear-gunner (so they tell me) to spot, or to depress his guns if he did. He was then well placed for the cannon shells to go straight up into the wings where the engines and fuel lived.
I'd imagine that survival rates were about 0% after that.
Last edited by Danny42C; 26th Aug 2013 at 21:56.
Reason: Add umlaut.