​​​​​​As nutty points out above, 8mm Mauser (actually 7.92mm) was the standard German full bore rifle/mg round for the war (as well as a considerable amount of time beforehand!).

Can only pass that my buddy stated it was an 8mm round which ended up in dad's helmet. Was it a 7.92 round or shrapnel? Just relating the story. He flew 32 missions. I routinely shoot my mauser and other milsurp rifles. Amazed at the mess of a round after hitting a half inch armor plate target. Very informative video here.

Buddy just informed me the round did not stop so was not recovered. His father believed it was 8mm.

My apologies ................. I failed to allow for rounding of rounds!

Plus I am old school Imperial measure forced into metric and easily confused.

Memo to self: WIND NECK IN.

Having watched the trailer, I’m not sure about accuracy. It seems they are showing red-tailed P-51s which indicates the 332nd Fighter Group aka the Tuskegee Airmen. The 332nd served in Italy, not England.

I thought Band of Brothers was a great watch, Pacific less so. I just hope that this eagerly awaited series is worthwhile and not spoilt by too much CGI and actors who simply do not look the part.

The movie aircrews have superhuman powers in that they don't require oxygen masks at 18000 feet and more where the B-17s usually operated, and they don't need intercom as they can hear one another despite engines which bellow even louder than actors in American war movies. Fond memories of many hours in Hastings/Halifax include shouting directly into the ear until intercom was plugged in, the noise of big pistons is incredible.

CGI etc cannot approach William Wyler's original Memphis Belle of 1943 with its action sequences shot during real life raids.

Costly on cast, crew and props though!

Ah, yes - the predilection for casting pretty boy protagonists in action movies. The 1990 Memphis Belle remake is a good example of unauthenticity and shallow characters in my opinion. That was a one-off watch for me. Likewise The Flight of the Phoenix remake. Appalling ... the list goes on.

I saw the trailer and it looks utterly unwatchable.
Hype and over dramatised to a painful degree.
It would be so much more powerful if the program was not trying to squeeze drama and emotion out of every second - might even allow a bit of accuracy to sneak in too.
I certainly won't be watching it

I recommend the book, though, not dramatized, but all too real, even painful to consider completely what these young airmen experienced. Proud of that they accomplished what they did.

So, you will have no idea at all what it is like will you?

This is not a documentary, it is a creative piece of fiction based around real events. It is designed to entertain people with next to no knowledge or real interest in WW2 aircraft, around the world in 2023.

From my perspective, trailers only show the 'high' spots of film or serial. They are made to attract viewers who probably didn't know the main course was even coming. Like life, many productions are lng periods of routine, spiced with the odd exciting bit.

On another tack, has anyone seen the trailer for series 2 of Vigil? After their stunning success with series one (alleged life on a nuclear submarine) seeing how they portray life on what looks like a UPAS unit might raise a smile or two. However, since the mistress of misery (Surranne Jones) is a main character, don't get your hopes up.

Well, if that’s the intent, then it is completely out of tune with the book, and even with the Band of Brothers mini series. To appreciate the effort, the suffering and sacrifice, the uncertainties and disappointments, yet the courage and sometimes the exhilaration of success, but at great cost, is what I would hope for. Perhaps the series is much better than the trailer would lead us to believe. If not, it will be a black mark on Spielberg’s otherwise stellar portfolio.

War is not a football game. It is sometimes necessary, fraught with fog, errors, tedium, human faults, and yet the demonstration by many of duty, honor, country in both conspicuous and inconspicuous ways. You take casualties and still press on, even when outcome is uncertain, because the ultimate costs of defeat are unacceptable. It is possible for a work of fiction to help us see that, even better than a documentary newsreel.

Given a bet between a) a trailer being hyped up to attract the maximum audience possible and b) Spielberg + hanks doing anything other than treating the subject with the respect it deserves, I genuinely am amazed that anyone thinks b) is remotely likely given their track record.

For those of us who cannot access AppleTV (neither on a NOW TV stick, nor a Panasonic not-so-smart TV), is this series likely to be released on DVD?

What’s a DVD?

You may be able to to enrol with AppleTV for one month free which will enable you to watch the programme. Just unsubscribe after the month.

I've just changed my mobile 'phone contract and have an offer for same for three months.

Only advice on that (assuming they're releasing weekly) is clearly to wait until the whole thing is available!

Didn't the Me109 have 7.62 machine guns? (as well as cannon et al).

DTR2,`WIKI` has the answers....

It was a rhetorical answer to post #10 but whatever.

Sorry, but DVD/BluRay release is unlikely (at least not for a long time) - for whatever reason (and unlike other providers like HBO), Apple doesn't routinely release their content for DVD/BluRay release.
I picked up a copy of 'Greyhound' a while back off ebay, although I'm reasonably sure it was bootleg. 'Greyhound' did finally show up on DVD from Amazon, but it took several years...

Seems bizarrely hard to find a 'credible' reference but Britannica (and fwiw Wikipedia) have the machine gun armament as MG17 in 8mm (7.92mm) Mauser seemingly upgraded later (not 100% clear but probably BF109G) to 12.7mm (50cal), both alongside 20mm canon.

Well, without prejudging, I think Spielberg and Hanks have a gtreat track record and as a veteran and son of one appreciate the respect with which they treat the subject.

Early E and F models did have 7.92mm MG17 machine guns fitted, as did very early version of the Fw190, but by the time the USAAF started its missions in earnest in 1943, the Bf109 and Fw190 in service were all fitted with various combinations of the 13mm MG131 heavy mg, and MG151 20mm cannons.

Yes I know this.

And your point is?

The 13mm was reportedly adopted as a counter to the large US bombers. They replaced the 7.92mm in the Bf109 from spring 1943, and those in the Fw190 models in November 1943. Until those new models were available in numbers, then the older 7.92mm were still around. The 338th was first in action in May 1943, so plenty of 7.92mm around for some time still, to have hit those goggles.

There's also the rear mounted gun on the Me110 among others.

Just watched the first 2 episodes & there was an emphasis on the night time RAF area bombing vs USAAF precision daylight bombing. The take away being that the USAAF were more careful... 🤔 Now, I'm clearly no expert & happy to learn something new, but I always thought that it was a skill issue more than anything. I have no basis or evidence of that, merely hearsay but could someone with a better grasp of the different tactics be able to 'educate me' here please?

As a TV show, it was okay. A bit slow, a bit surreal when compared to BoB & TP but I'll continue watching.

Well, the presents it as sort of a debate between biased crewmembers, from their personal point of view, not a scientific analysis. The Brits, disrespectfully claiming that daylight bombing is suicide, the Yanks, just as disrespectfully, saying that hazardous as it is, it’s better to aim at a military target and hit it. The crews seemed to see it as a trade off between accuracy and survival. In truth, I suppose accuracy in any case was not very high, and by the end of the war both air forces bombed rather indiscriminately.

Having read the book, and other works as well, I think the show did capture the extreme dangers, fog of war, unfortunate circumstances, youth of the crews, bearing the loss of friends and the courage it takes to climb on board the next flight.

USAAF ‘precision bombing’ was a myth. The Norden bomb sight was not all it was cracked up to be, especially in cloudy Northern Europe where, no matter how good the sight, you still needed to see the target. So, only the lead bombers were given the sight and the rest dropped when they dropped. Given that a formation of a few hundred bombers could be strung out over a sizeable chunk of airspace, then bombs were not dropped in the pickle barrel as they claimed. Because they could not do pinpoint bombing, the USAAF followed our lead and introduced pathfinders to mark the target. They also bombed through cloud using H2S/H2X which was a very rudimentary radar, therefore again bombs went far and wide. USAAF crews were banned from calling it ‘blind bombing’, which is exactly what it was. The USAAF carried out area bombing just as the RAF did - the only difference is that we admitted it.

I watched both episodes last night. Cheesy and cliched, with the usual Spielberg/Hanks mocking of the British. The RAF personnel in the pub were classic stereotypes.

IMHO there was no difference as although the US had the Norden bombsight which worked very well in testing in the USA, it did not work as well in the very different ETO.
Later as I understand it the US adopted bombing on a leaders signal. Given that the formations could be many miles long it is not conducive to precision bombing.
Perhaps the Dams raid was one of the first precision bombing raids of the war.
Pic is of a B17 we visited at Palm Springs Museum. My wife was appalled at how narrow it was inside and very emotional thinking of all those brave men risking their lives.
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....1d69778cac.jpg
.

"The Brits precision-bombed area targets by night, the Yanks area-bombed precision targets by day." The nett results were exactly the same; that's all the technology allowed in those days. Mind you: Sorpe dam after being visited by IX Sqn in 1944 using TALLBOYs and the Mk XIV bombsight:
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....f187d6f061.jpg

The RAF attack on Dresden was followed up by a USAAF attack. Even in daylight with target still smoking some 200 aircraft managed to bomb Prague. This is not a slur on the Americans, the RAF managed to miss one city by 95 miles, but more an indication of the infancy of technology and the inevitable fog of war.

One of the best books on the subject is Combat Crew by John Comer. Their B-17s were stacked in threes to concentrate defensive fire in formations about a mile long. In front was the leader, with deputies positioned to take over if he was hit. When the lead bombardier opened his bomb doors, the others followed suit, watching for his bombs to fall, when they too pressed the button, the target receiving a simultaneous rain of bombs half a mile wide and one mile long. So it wasn't carpet bombing?

Did any air force match the precision of RAF attacks on the Mohne Dam, Tirpitz, vast submarine factories with 30ft of reinforced concrete, V2 and V3 weapons sites, Bielefeld viaduct which had withstood two years of conventional attacks?

As to the new movie itself, the CGI formations looked like the youngsters' video games on Tiktok. Though in fairness nobody can match William Wyler's original Memphis Belle.of 1944. This has been well restored at

​​​​​​​Whats a V3? Did you mean V1 & V2?

V3 was the long-range gun battery aligned on London which could deliver steady rain of 210lb shells per minute across the Channel. Here it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_of_Mimoyecques