The FN64 was useless for night ops,as the gunner did not have direct vision,as I said in an earlier post some crews did have a ventral scare gun (esp the canadians).
Unfortunately the H2S installation precluded refitting a turret in that posn,so a scare gun was the only real option.
The feeling I get from reading Bomber crew autobios is that the majority of the RAF main force crews had no knowledge of upward firing nightfighters,the canadians seeming much more concerned about the obvious vulnerability of underbelly attacks.

rgds LR

the FN64 was a pretty good turret, probably the third best belly turret after the Sperry and B29 GE remote controlled units, however all these proved to be pretty useless at night, it wasnt the guns it was the positioning, being under the bomber meant that was pretty impossible to see an attacking fighter, those bombers fitted with the belly gun show no better survival rates than those without.

I think the decision was made to delete them from production was based on feedback from crews as to thier usability.

As to mainforce using upper turrets, I dont believe that mainforce had any such restrictions, it was purely how they were delivered.

A point about fared over turrets, I did forget one role in which they were used without turrets, all the PR1 photo recon birds were fited without nose and upper (not sure about rear) maybe he means these birds (would explain why they were carrying bombloads similar to b17s flares were quite light compaired to HE

The great majority of mainforce lancs did have a top turret,I have never seen a photo of a main force lanc without one.
What bullshooter 45 was posting was that the majority of lancs were field modified to remove turrets because of load carrying/performance shortfalls...which is patently nonsense !but then he kept trying to use wiki as a primary source anywayl LOL.
As I posted previously - the photo he posted of a lanc without a top turret was PA474 taken over lincoln in the 1970's

rgds lr

I agree that most Mainforce lancs had a upper turret, in fact most all lancs had them, the point I was making was that most of those that did fly without them were not anything special but were just supply shortages and were treated eaxactly like anyother lanc.

I have NEVER found anything that implied that the turrets were removed, all those without were either specials or supply shortages and all had the turret mods done at the factory.

I was a a talk once given by ex staff at the AVRO factory at Yeadon and this point about turrets came up, they do not remember any Lancs leaving yeadon without a full set. (although they also never fitted belly turrets)

an intertersting story from that talk was of a lanc pilot who told a tail of landing after a Berlin raid to be told that he had flown all the way home withing spitting distance of another Lanc and had never seen anything.

ps shooter has only ever hit a true fact by complete accident, and the fact that the B17 needed to replace half its bomb looad with additional fuel tanks to reach ranges the lancs were doing with 10000+ lbs is upto his usual standard.


pps

Someone mentioned the Mossie and berlin raids, seemingly the mossie had a 2 hour flight time to berlin with a 4000lbs cookie (note that note all the bombs that the mossie carried that looked like the 4000lbs cookie were, a proportion were actually incendaries that used the same case)

I am only supprised that the pic is of a Lanc, with his record I would have been expecting a manchester or a stirling, even a Condor would have not supprised me

It seems unbelievable that the High Command knew nothing at all about the deadly Schrage Muzik ( there is a Me 110 tail fin in the Canberra War Memorial whose pilot shot down 7 four engined bombers in 17 mins! ).

I can well understand the crews not being aware of it, but wonder if this information was known, but deliberately kept from them. There wasn't much the people supposedly running the war didn't know.

I think the shooter has finally given up with his bullshooting.

Good article here on schrage muzik

207 Sqn RAF Association - The Wesseling Raid 21/22 June 1944 - Schrage Musik

A piece of a poem by Noel Coward.

"Lie in the dark and listen
City magnates and steel contractors,
Factory workers and politicians
Soft hysterical little actors Ballet dancers,
'reserved' musicians,
Safe in your warm civilian beds
Count your profits and count your sheep
Life is flying above your heads
Just turn over and try to sleep.
Lie in the dark and let them go
Theirs is a world you'll never know
Lie in the dark and listen."

I don't think the debt will ever be paid for the sacrifices those incredibly brave boys made, night after night.

Schrage Musik
 

I think it took a very long time for the effects of schrage musik to filter through, because it was so effective. The crews that encountered it simply didn't come back to tell the tale. The few that might would have not seen their attacker - which would not have been unusual and which would not have aroused suspicion that a new weapon was being used.

Schrage Musik was around earlier than some records suggest. A few nightfighters were unofficially modified before the official policy came into effect. A relative of mine was killed in a Wellington in Jan 1942; one of three shot down in a period of forty minutes by the same Me110 of NJG2 from Leuwaarden. There is evidnce to suggest they were bought down with Schrage Music, but with a twin MG42 installation and not cannon.

Could the Me-210/410 fire their fuselage cannons upwards, Schrage Musik style?

http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/5792/img638l.jpg

No, acording to the RAE report I've seen they could only elevate and depress 35 degress from the horizontal and swing laterally about 45 degrees.

Link from another thread of someone recalling their service in operational research for bomber command where he describes their organisation including "ORS2c, studying damage to returning bombers"' The author worked in another section but it would be useful to see ORS2c's records or hear from someone who worked there to see what was known of shcrage musik within the RAF.

A Failure of Intelligence - Technology Review

Thanks. :)

Brewsters second link gives this interesting paragraph,I could never understand why this was never even trialled on a small scale with Lancs and Stirlings...

The extra speed would have made Lancs much more difficult to intercept as most enemy night fighters were fitted with draggy radar aerials and performance suffered accordingly

It's an interesting debate...how many nightfighters were shot down during the bomber offensive (day & night)?

Apart from crippling Nazi cities, industry, communications, fuel...the loss of trained & good pilots must have massively reduced the capacity of the Luftwaffe to effectively wage war.

Part of his operational research showed that it more dangerous to fly outside the bomber stream but the crews were more worried about collisions within it.
Perhaps removing the turrets would have reduced morale of the crews as they would have had no means of fighting back. Also once the night fighters found out the bombers had no defences wouldn't they have been more aggressive and maybe would not have needed schrage musik??

Perhaps Brewster but as I posted earlier - if (say) a Lanc was indeed 50mph faster then it would have been more difficult to intercept...many of the german nightfighters were relatively slow through aerial drag and a 50mph faster Lanc might have been difficult to overtake.

or do you not think, if the airplane was lighter without the turrets, Bomber Command may have more likely to have increased the bomb load and so the speed advantage would be lost.

the problem, as i see it, was that handheld guns were pretty useless only a powered turret had any real chance of tracking a fighter,

so replacing the front turret on the halifax went on to try and get the halifax upto lanc performance and then you do it to the Lanc so dropping the halifax back again, plus it would have meant a delay in lanc production something harris would have fought (halifax and stirling he would consider but nothing should delay lancs)

harris wanted shorts and handley Page to crease production and retool for lanc

given the loss rates on the these two compaired to the lanc and you can see his point

My father flew in Halifax,s with 6 Group and his comment on Lancaster and Mosquito and B17 are quite intresting talking to crews in Germay after they had been shot down.

Mosquito
Fantastic aircraft but he was told by a crew who had flown them that they were tricky too fly as has been said earlier, and also IF caught 20mm cannon shells made short work of them. The "IF" comment is the important one as he only talked to 4nr Mosquito pilots during his time behind the wire.

Lancaster
Very good aircraft but survival rate for crew was poor in comparison with Halifax due inpart to the wing spar position. The vast majority of bomber command crews he was inside with were Lancaster men due in part to the numbers flying. The aircraft performance was better than the Halifax and all other RAF heavy bomber types as is well documented. The comments of the crews, bearing in mind what had recently happened to them was more how difficult it was to get out of the thing after being hit rather than its flying ability or bomb load.

B17
Bomb loads were small in comparrison but missions were at high altitude and in daylight as we are all aware. B17 crew always said their aircraft were tough and well built. There was much talk about diffrent tactics ie night / day with one B17 pilot saying to my father "I do not know how you guys fly at night, I like to see where I am going, even if its down !!". Also the moral boost you used to get as a "Kreigie" he said when you looked up to view an 8th Air Force mission on a sunny day was quite somthing.

There has been comments about German nightfighters on this thread and my father met a few as he was taken to a nightfighter base after being shot down. His comment was they were just "like us in age and manerisams" and he met no hostilaty during his time there or indeed during his time inside. Indeed in 2003 with the help of German crash investigators I took him back to the village where he was shot down, and he was introduced to a then young boy who had held his hand back in 1943 to stop him walking back into his burning aircraft as he was blinded by shock for 24hrs after the crash.


In closing I think the planes are not as important as the men who flew them as no matter what side you are on in the Lanc/ Fortress debate the courage required to face a determined and resolute foe can only be admired.

Returning to Schrage Musik - Eyes of the Night is a book describing the air defence of NW England 1940-43 which consisting in the main of non-radar equipped Defiants. These normally operated on moonlit nights detecting enemy aircraft by sight.

The book records 23 combats with Ju88s and He111s resulting in 12 being destroyed. These bombers had ventral gun positions and the Defiants usually attacked from below at distances between 25 to 150 yards. But only on two definite occasions did the bomber fire back and in both cases the Defiant was making a repeat attack. So one is tempted to think that even if the Lancaster had a ventral turret it might have made little difference.

From memory Leonard Cheshire had them taken off at 617 along with anything else he could think of to save weight. Paul Brickhill interviewed him about it form memory, details were in Brickhills "Dam Buster" book.

Mossies.
 

Belatedly, in reply to the suggestion that producing Mosquitoes was more problematic than all-metal a/c, the answer is an emphatic 'no'. Different, yes, but not more difficult. The facts are all there. Production was well - dispersed, and Mosquitoes were also built in Australia & Canada with no big problem.
It's also well-worth pointing-out that most German night-fighteres couldn't even CATCH a Mosquito, much-less shoot it down. That's not saying it didn't happen of course.
There was a surprising amount of agreement that switching to a mainly Mosquito force would be logical, but there were a lot of (in)-vested interests too.......
I think the argument was pretty unasailable. That's not to say that the four-engined heavies didn't have a place for some roles of course.

BTW;- A chap I knew did several tours on Lanc's, and he said they were well aware of the Schragemuzik.

am I mistaken or did the lancaster only have ONE pilot?

looking at bombload is not the only way to appreciate a bomber. nor speed for a fighter. everyone says the spit was a great dogfighter...but its range was limited.

the zero was a great dogfighter but if you sneezed at it hard enough it would fall apart.

the P47 had air conditioning!

And my DC9 had three beautiful flight attendants!

and JIMMY doolittle , that brilliant man, who along with the wrights,and lindbergh woud be on my aviation Mt Rushmore, figured out that the P38 lightning could carry almost the same bombload to Germany as the B17, and once the bombs were gone could battle the german fighters on the way back...indeed some P38's had a bombardier's glass nose and the rest of the P38's would just pickle on the lead.

Lancasters (all heavies I think) had one pilot. I think iirc early in the war Harris / the RAF took the decision to have one pilot simply because two pilots should be flying two 'planes not one.
Obviously for training reasons etc sometimes a second pilot flew in t'other seat (flight engineers seat I guess). I understand from reading several books it was not uncommon for the flight engineer to receive some flying training so in the event of the pilot being incapacitated there was a chance the FE could get the 'plane back. I'm not sure at all how common this was nor how 'successful'.

Lancaster: Bomber or Fighter?
 

As an air cadet I was on a coach trip to RAF Hendon in the mid 70's and sat next to an ex-Lancaster crewman. We chatted and he told me that that one day they hosted an American Squadron's personnel.

He was just climbing out of a Lancaster with a party of Americans when he heard the rising tones of four Merlins at full throttle, and looking up saw a Lancaster diving earthwards. It was one of the squadron aircraft with several American guests on board. All stopped to watch as the nose slowly rose and the aircraft soared up and over in a loop.

In the stunned silence that followed one of the Americans turned to him and said, "Is that a bomber or a fighter?"

Lancaster
 

Yes, the lancaster was a much better load carrier then the B-17. There is one at the Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Ontario Canada that is in flying condition. Recently, a B-17-Sentimental Journey paid a visit to the museum, and I compared the bomb bays. The lancaster was three times bigger than the B-17 and could easily fit the cookie bomb.

Mosquito v B-17
 

The first daytime raid on Berlin was carried out by Mosquitos on 30 Jan 1943.

"A prelude to the 1943 raids came from the De Havilland Mosquito, which hit the capital on 30 January 1943. That same day, both Göring and Goebbels were known to be giving big speeches that were to be broadcast live by radio. At precisely 11.00 am, Mosquitoes of No. 105 Squadron arrived over Berlin exactly on time to disrupt Göring’s speech. Later that day, No. 139 Squadron repeated the trick for Goebbels."
Naturally Hitler's birthday merited the same treatment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombin...n_World_War_II
The "pregnant" version of the Mosquito with an enlarged bomb bay was used to carry the 4000lb SC cookie, a completely unaerodynamic bomb designed purely as a blast and structural destruction bomb. That was the same bomb load as the B-17 to Berlin. Mosquitos were sufficiently fast that they suffered far less losses than the B-17 on average.
Imagine a 1000 plane raid made up only of Mosquitos. Losses there would have been but not as many as either the Lancs by night or the B-17 by day.
The only trouble would be keeping up the number of pilots, but switching everyone into Mosquitos would have completely overwhelmed the Luftwaffe. Quite a number of Lancaster pilots wangled postings to Mosquito squadrons. The other part of the story is that Night fighter Mosquitos could have been mixed in and severely damaged the Night Fighter force of the Luftwaffe.
Then send the day raiders accompanied by Mustangs once they reached sufficient numbers, (later 1943).
Can you say Nightmare Alley. Oh if it had only happened.

It's an old message, but this has haunted me for ages. It must have been horrible for the families, not knowing for thirty years what happened to the pilots, especially given that they disappeared over the UK.

In a situation like that how would the families be notified of the recovery of the crew? A telephone call or letter seems impersonal but the thought of an officer appearing at the door in 1975 is odd.

If a body was discovered it would probably take some time to ID it - maybe they'd ask the family for a DNA Sample

In general this sort of thing is handled by the Police in the first instance

The crew were from Eastern Europe - Polish or Czech, I don't recall which. The pilot's family (a noble family) were contacted. The Nav's, there was no trace of IIRC. This was in the mid 70s when the country was still the other side of the iron Curtain.

No DNA sampling in those days. But they had their dog tags on them - which is their function. I don't recall if the Police were involved, I suspect they were. But the aircraft still had live ordinance which was the pressing issue.

The aircraft was listed as missing in action and therefore it was not known where it came down.

They recently found a Messerschmitt in Denmark with the pilots remains still in the aircraft. There was no living relatives to announce it to, but it sounds like they would have done it from this article.
I am not sure I would categorize it as odd sending an officer, even though it is 30 or 70 years after the fact.
https://www.thelocal.de/20170324/pil...aft-identified

From a search on the web, Dan.

From

ASN Aircraft accident 23-NOV-1944 de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito NF Mk II DD736

See following links for further details and input from the then Engineering Director of the East Anglian Aviation Society.

Mosquito DD736 Kings Lynn 23/11/44

Pilot Officer Charles Preece