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Haha, the gunners are so shit in that game. The people flying the bombers don't often do any better either when they take over, unless you tit right on their tail. I have to say tho, I've been pilot sniped a few times by ai gunners.
Imagine the pain in the ass it must have been to explain angles and rads to guys who not only were civilians five weeks before, but never even graduated from high school
One day, 10 years from now; you're taking the garbage out at night for pickup in the morning. You can make out the faint sound of a propeller type plane in the distance 🎵I can feel it coming in the air tonight, Oh Lord🎵And I've been waiting for this moment, for all my life, Oh Lord🎵
I was on a foot route. I walked up to the houses and put the paper inside the door - between the storm door and the main house door. One day one home owner's cat was outside ( probably all night ) and wanted to get in the house. It obviously thought I was going to open the inner door too. it moved forward into the space between the storm door and the house door. I tossed the newspaper in and closed the storm door. The cat and the paper were lodged in between both doors. Quite a surprise for the home owner that morning I would say.
Zoie Sulank, Of course it made sense. Even if you never did paper delivery, you must surly have thrown a Frisbee. The curvature that you get your Frisbee to perform is from the angle of release and the pop/rotation from your wrist. The force from your arm coupled with the snap of your wrist is that same movement that a bullet experiences from the spin as the rifling (spiral grooves that grab the lead) as the explosion from the cartridge expands extremely rapidly pushing the spinning bullet out of the barrel.! Even if you are standing still and you are shooting at a long distance the drop off the bullet from gravity requires the aim to be high above the target. If it is also windy, you will have to adjust for drift and aim high and in the direction of the wind. Accurate long distance shooting as a highly accurate sniper usually has a second man/women (that is as far as my pronoun accountability works in this situation) as a spotter who tells the shooter the settings for elevation (range tick marks vertical above or below the center of the sight) and adjustment for wind (lateral - ticks from center left or right). Get someone to take you to learn to shoot skeet (clay targets) that are thrown into the air at different speeds and flight patterns. You will learn to lead the target and to start with an open angle when you begin to aim and as your shots become to the opposite side of the throw, your angle closes from the front towards the target until your shots are directly from behind like the fighter pilot.! Just put that in your brain and think about it occasionally and when you get to shoot skeet, it’s going to become a reflex and you will actually see where you shots are and where they need to be. Then you increase or decrease your lead before you fire. The old professor Live free or die! Death to all tyrants! The truth will stand when the world falls! No Shit. Put down your phone and go out and experience life in reality! Virtually is a great learning tool, but not a way of life. Don’t be electronically addicted!
This is an impressive example of explaining a complicated topic in understandable terms. The animation is very well done, illustrating movement in 3 dimensions which is not easy to do by hand! Kudos to whoever made this.
@@charlesballiet7074 considering what those bombers were used for, and what was taught in other instructional videos of the time, I don't think this is a part of our history that we should be proud of.
@@charlesballiet7074 let me reiterate; Dropping napalm and carpet bombing entire civilian cities that were known to have no military occupation is not something to be proud of. /We/ didn't even do any of that. All of those people are dead. If you're going to be proud of this country, pick a reason that doesn't include genocide.
@@rogerramiussergeialexander5541 war is genocide anytime any army invades territory they occupy and harm the locals and that at the best of times. Thing is though its exactly because america had a war to win that we mobilised everyone everything. that in order to have the advantage great amounts of investments were made to educate and prepair our population. Now that america is an occupyer and there is no big war to win the government does not need an educated populice and so abandons us to wallow in ignorance and misery
Well it’s late in the war. You’re basically teaching country boys who have never graduated high school trigonometry. It’s easier to say “you don’t need to understand how this works, just do what we say”
@@tetraxis3011 Hell, doesn’t matter if you’re a genius mathematician. If you’ve got a couple of seconds to blow this guy out of the sky while he’s trying to return the favour, you don’t have time. Full stop. “It’s three rads, take our word for it.”
@@odonovan Not really, the difference in muzzle velocity between tracer rounds and other round types is marginal unless you use an anomalous projectile type (like the German Minengeschoss.) Having wildly different trajectories for tracers and other round types would defeat the purpose of the tracer to begin with. Anyway, tracers were used for the majority of defensive armament (until the advent of radar-controlled turrets).
@@JustinianPrvni Ehh... I can only say from playing War Thunder, which is on a flat screen with no depth perception, but I think I'd have a hard time figuring out when the tracer whizzes past the enemy fighter plane exactly. I see the tracer flying away from me... Perhaps I could see the enemy interceptor occluding the traced light?
@@roadent217 In WT you're lacking depth perception. It's much easier to judge in the real world when you've got your two eyes seeing *ever-so-slightly* different pictures, which your brain has trained for your entire life to identify and use to judge distance.
Exactly Trigonometry, it's more realized when you go 'Oh! It's like a Triangle, gotta go for the center of the Sine'...You don't need the full equation, you just gotta know the measurment, in this case in Rads (Radiuses) and adjust for angle.
@@paulallen8109 You make a fair point, but where I'm from (maybe I was just unlucky idk) teachers teach you some of THE MOST boring parts of a subject and force you to learn that and ONLY that until it gets to a point you don't even want to learn about it anymore. They DISCOURAGED independent learning. Its kinda why I flunked Civil War History back in Elementary. It still goes on to this day. But eventually through switching schools and getting a Teacher that actually taught right, (and playing a bit of Battlefield 1...) I gave independent learning a try through computer based research and picking through some of the books that the school had in the backroom, and eventually visiting the library on occasion. I bounced back with my grades when going through the History of the Great War through this, learning of the major battles, troop deployments, tactics enemy and allied, vehicles and evolution of technology & weaponry. I enjoyed every bit of it.
I love the amount of simplification this brings for such complicated physics... for example, the "only attack if it's attacking" is not because they are defensive... but because the 3~0.5 rad approximation only work for a certain range and they didn't want to overdo with the info
@@kicocol there might be other things in account like friend fire, or they didn't want to say "you will just miss it if they are too far" but I don't think ammo was a worry
The reason you only attack if they're attacking is, that's when you can predict their movement and it's when they're moving the slowest in your sights. If you fire at other times, you'll waste time, ammo, and opportunities to hit other fighters that might attack. Plus you'll be sweeping your gun so fast that you might hit your friends, I'd imagine.
They flew in formations of the hundreds if a fighter wasn't attacking you that means it was attacking someone else and therefore wasn't your problem. By ignoring fighters that aren't attacking you you can focus all of your attention to the ones that are and therefore be much better at accurately hitting them (because you know their trajectory) and protecting your crew. If you hit your targets and the other gunners on the other bombers hit theirs then the problem is taken care of for everybody. And yes ammo was a big concern as each gunner only had roughly 500 rounds which would last about a minute of continuous fire, hence the emphasis on the 2 second bursts
My father was a tail gunner on a B-17...he had three confirmed kills...one shared.'''Trained for several months on the ground and in the air before going overseas...spent 18 months as a POW after his plane went down over Germany.
My father was a top turret gunner on bombers in WWII. As a young man in order to help the family get through the depression he hunted ducks. He said it really helped knowing how to lead planes when shooting at them when he went into battle later in the war.
My Uncle was a waist gunner for the B-24 Queen of Peace. I wish I had the opportunity to ask him how he was able to understand this film, let alone shoot in the air.
they didn't have to understand it: just shoot in generaly proper direction and when there is 100 bombers in a combat box, at least one gunner will hit target randomly. their strength was in numbers and concentration of firepower not in precision
My grandpa and his twin brother were also B-24 waist gunners for the Silver Haired Daddy, Down De Hatch, and Sabrina III. They were 8th AAF 44th BG. They told me that to practice they would fire at targets from a moving train.
@@davidhoffman6980 They flew out of Wendling Norfork England until the plane crashed landed, safely in neutral territory with no major injuries. They were in The 392 Bomb group. I wish I could have found a group photo but at least I saw this online. www.forcedlandingcollection.se/USAAFe/USAAF011-440104-queenofpeace.html
Excellent straightforward explanation of the principle of deflection shooting. Interesting how when the chips are down in wartime, education has to be de-bullshitted and made to work.
The clever use of simple graphics to teach a complex art is interesting. Not viewed at all favorably these days it seems. Math texts in particular (where they still even use them) have reverted to page upon page jammed with hieroglyphs.
@russellbrown7028 this isn't mathematics. This is how to shoot. Learning mathematics involves rigor and proof. Not just do this then do that. You have to learn how to think.
I kid you not, I did s single click at a bomber with my c202 EC and his tail exploded lol A single shot made of 2 20 mm rounds and 2 Italian .50 rounds
For those who are here from war thunder= Watching this video actually helps in aiming . I watched this video...And in my first try i brought down an ME 410 and a BF 109 G-6. While my B-24 was quite damaged, i was still able to bomb one enemy facility. Ofcourse its still a game. And IRL the range both enemies opened fire was 300m instead of my 700. I notice a increase in kills vs fighters with these simple tricks
Every Country boy saw this and was like "So it's like I'm throwing a bottle at a speed limit sign on a back road in a curve half drunk....and if I dont hit it I could die...got it"
The US was genius for using cartoons to present information and visuals that would have been very expensive and nearly impossible to replicate on film.
Absolutely fascinating, it must have been terrifying being a waist gunner facing an fw190 bearing down on you, even with the knowledge of deflection shooting
Imagine being the bombardier or the pilot or copilot when the head-on attack came in which was the standard opening play. And that head on attack would be organized with a wave of fighter coming at you not these individual fighters in melee. Also, pretty much the same experience for the kraut.
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This is honestly impressive. Sure there is a lot of estimation behind the scenes, but any more precision couldn't be put to use. Deflection shooting is hard
and they lay out all the key assumptions pretty clearly, like the biggest one IMO is that this estimate only works when you're "flying straight at 225 KTAS". The other big assumption is very valid, namely that the attacking plane will follow the "approach curve" because that's the only way for them to get their guns on you.
gotta give credit to the production team who made this, its very informative and accessible to the layman’s understanding. i feel like i could have a chance at hitting something after seeing this
I appreciate how the task is broken down into easy to understand chunks, explained in detail, then related to actual experience. Too many training courses I've taken give you the theory but not practical application.
When I was a kid, there was an arcade in Crestline, CA. that had WWII training machines. These machines were used to train gunners on bombers, there were tiny aircraft coming toward you and by using the controls, you could shoot them down, or not. They were loads of fun, wish I could find one now, obsolete and outdated without a doubt, but they were fun at the time. Was hoping this video would show one of them.
@@sergeig685 no they aren't. CGI is a 3D referenced scene, each object in the scene has vertices which are 3D referenced with X,y,z coordinates. The director has a virtual camera whereby the scene is visualised for a 2D screen. This is made by drawing and taking pictures of the drawings.
Thanks, I'm aware of how CGI works, I did some OpenGL work myself. I'm saying they are the same in a way that one creates a motion picture by taking successive frames of a scene. With the only difference being one drawn and perspective calculated manually vs computer generated.
My Dad was a Ball turret gunner first on Liberators out of North Africa and later B17s out of England. I remember one story he used to tell me when we were bird hunting. He said they taught the new gunner - trainees pre-war how to lead a target by loading them up in moving trucks and cars with the tops cut out and having them shoot skeet from the moving vehicles driving across uneven ground, up and down hills and around curves with 12 gauges. Not sure HOW that worked, but he survived the war, wounded several times, but not disabled.
My grandfather took down an ME 110 heavy fighter in the war, as a ball turret gunners in WW2, can't imagine how complicated and wild that would be to do all that in the fetal position in a tiny clear ball with the entire world visible right below you. Just insane
@@godlycookie901 yeah, it was called "Paper Boy" it was out on the original Nintendo too. "Hop on your bike for a free-wheeling ride up the avenues of not-so-typical suburbia. Get the paper to your subscribers and break the windows of the non-subscribers, avoiding the many obstacles that get in your way, including kids on tricycles, dogs, traffic, and pedestrians. Earn bonus points by hitting targets along the obstacle course at the end of your route. Get the news to your customers on time with Paperboy."
Considering the overall state of animation during those years, 3-dimensional animation in this video, is an equivalent to a high grade CGI with ray-tracing today
Incredible how the gunners shot anything down given the conditions they had to work in? Old film, but really helpful in explaining how to lead the target.
@@colinfinnie5074 As far as bailing out,yes.As far as likelihood of getting shot by enemy fighters,waist gunner was in the most dangerous spot ironically.
omg, this is extremly hard, never know it was so hard to shoot down an fighter from a bomber, imagine all this in a real situation where you live is on the menu
most turrets weren't able to aim at the tail,due to how they were placed,maybe the roof one could damage the rudders yes i know that i'm responding to a very old comment
I haven't seen one personally, but there were probably metal guards that bounced the guns at a predetermined maximum angle to allow the gunners to swing their guns as fast as they needed to to keep the enemies in their sights without fear of overswinging into their own tails.
My dad flue in a bomber during ww2 I'm guessing he saw this video back then. He said the tail gunner kept getting killed so they stopped using the tail gun. Thanks for the history lesson
All joking aside - this was life and death for young bomber crews. So many died from a lack of appreciation of the complex physics of shooting a moving target FROM a moving target!
I look at my lazy coworkers and can only imagine the absolute dread I'd feel if any of them were my gunners. I'd be dead after first mission, no doubt.
Thank you for showing me a film my father more than likely watched in gunnery school before he stood in that same spot trigger joe was in 1944 over Germany in a B-24J Liberator.
I'm going to guess this training was forgotten the moment the young waist gunner is engaged by a real target, 2 second squeeze, no double it and double it again and then a little more
my grandfather was a gunner/W/O on coastal command B24s, fascinated by this as he probably watched it all those years ago, mind you he was RAF and 1943 so possibly not
now I'm using this to get better aim at war thunder. being a B-17 bomber and having no insight on training is bad for start. plus learning something new and something i can use in a game.
Father was WWII RAF AG/Sigs 1939 - '46 He obviously preferred his signals office, and in later years RADAR was a huge part of his job; so less chance of being in a gun turret. A tail turret, most in fact, were too small to wear a parachute, it was outside, if ordered to bail, you had to get out, put it on, get back in, turn the turret around so the door was outside... and basically fall out! A friend, some years ago, told me it took a brave man to climb in a turret, and it took a braver man to climb in a second time!
Really interesting to hear the theory side of combat. Usually when I see history documentaries they always talk about how instinctual the soldier was or how much a veteran the gunner was. Which despite being ok for the purpose of the documentary, never bothers to educate these sort of fundamentals soldiers train themselves on TO become those high skilled fighters. Understanding just a hint of how aiming works is thrilling. I kind of wish there was one for tanks too because I found out about stritches after hearing Girls und Panzer mention it once, so I looked into it’s applications and how to interpret them. Different designers nowadays but still in use. Kudos to the mathematicians working out all this.
This is a great explanation. I am curious to know how much training these crews got because this seems like something you needed a lot of practice to master and I know a lot of bomber crews were killed.
I saw a documentary where a gunner said in training they rode in the back of a pickup truck with a shotgun to re-enforce this lesson. They were shooting skeet on the move. "It was nothing but fun," he said.
this is why gunners were taught trap and skeet shooting in gunnery school. best primary practice for hitting a moving target. what they don't say is the very limited time you have to apply the proper lead and fire the gun. at most you have only a second or two to do this, and most men were way behind the curve! you had to be extremely quick!
I would have thought that would be roughly accounted for in the gun sight set up: for a gun envelope up to 1600ft (500m) and a muzzle velocity of ~3,000ft/s (900m/s) the bullet drop (ignoring air resistance) would be 5ft or 1.5m. So the sight could be easily set up to be 2.5ft below at long range and 2.5ft above at minimal range. (using Sy=V0y*t +1/2 *a*t^2 for t=V0x/Sx) This wouldn't be an issue for two reasons: the size of the target is more than 3ft in diameter, so correctly aimed shots would still hit, and the spread of fire is such that it covers a significant area, overlapping the target. This also links to the point that the recommended deflection is only correct for a TAS of 250kts. So a deviation in that, which is likely, could affect the required deflection much more.
@@odonovan I believe you're correct. Unlikely they'd hit anything beyond a couple of hundred meters, especially given the high rate of closure & the relatively brief window of opportunity where the fighter could be seen.
they do specify to identify if a target is in range and attack. If you're going after someone whos close enough to strafe you, bullet drop isn't a major concern.
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I like how when he explains the math of the 3 rads he's pretty much just saying "you don't need to know how it works you just need to know it does."
That's what I learned about math in school, you don't need to know how the equation works, it just does so remember it and you're golden
@@ptan9441 only goes so far, until you get to higher education institutes.
@@denrimi We dont need to know as a worker how the engineer got that result, we just need to be abel to use the same tools
@@rambo8863 dont worry as an engineer we don't know why they are like that too
@@deadlygaming781 not sure if I should be concerned or not
Gonna show this to my buddies in War Thunder...
same now i got true aimbot
Fucking same
I was thinking the same thing
Agreed
Haha, the gunners are so shit in that game. The people flying the bombers don't often do any better either when they take over, unless you tit right on their tail. I have to say tho, I've been pilot sniped a few times by ai gunners.
Imagine the pain in the ass it must have been to explain angles and rads to guys who not only were civilians five weeks before, but never even graduated from high school
that's why they are making it difficult to understand when he asks for the maths behind the aim to take
imagine doing all this in combat getting shot back at too in the air, my grandpa did this - must have been scary as hell - they got it done though ☝
That's why films like this were made.
@@EdR640 My grandfather was top turret gunner on B17.
200th like
What a polite fighter to wait that long
Lmao
@@daveyboi3684 no?
The german pilot was probably drinking beer before takeoff
Quite the gentleman
@@domino-86 I must agree
now if i ever find myself as a waist gunner in a ww2 era bomber plane i'll know exactly what to do
AIRPLANE INCOMIN-- * No combat capable turrets *
One day, 10 years from now; you're taking the garbage out at night for pickup in the morning. You can make out the faint sound of a propeller type plane in the distance 🎵I can feel it coming in the air tonight, Oh Lord🎵And I've been waiting for this moment, for all my life, Oh Lord🎵
@@zathary564 *Tail Cut Lose*
Rewarded for kill: comecruseder69420
this applies to all gunnery positions on all bombers flying at the specified speed so not just waist gunner
Now this may sound crazy, but...
That paper boy analogy was honestly the best most simplified way they could explain it to your average dude back then
modern day also
Remember when you weren’t a paper boy
That was actually my first job XD
I was on a foot route. I walked up to the houses and put the paper inside the door - between the storm door and the main house door. One day one home owner's cat was outside ( probably all night ) and wanted to get in the house. It obviously thought I was going to open the inner door too. it moved forward into the space between the storm door and the house door. I tossed the newspaper in and closed the storm door. The cat and the paper were lodged in between both doors. Quite a surprise for the home owner that morning I would say.
or, all the farm boys that hunted birds, or all the kids that played baseball. they probably settled on the paperboy analogy due to all the city kids.
"Remember when you were a paper boy?"
Ah yes, my nonexistent memories of being a paper boy
Yep, a bruh moment
I was a paper boy! I’m 43 now. This was in the late 80’s early 90’s
I member!
That part really made sense but at the same time it didn't
Zoie Sulank,
Of course it made sense. Even if you never did paper delivery, you must surly have thrown a Frisbee. The curvature that you get your Frisbee to perform is from the angle of release and the pop/rotation from your wrist. The force from your arm coupled with the snap of your wrist is that same movement that a bullet experiences from the spin as the rifling (spiral grooves that grab the lead) as the explosion from the cartridge expands extremely rapidly pushing the spinning bullet out of the barrel.!
Even if you are standing still and you are shooting at a long distance the drop off the bullet from gravity requires the aim to be high above the target. If it is also windy, you will have to adjust for drift and aim high and in the direction of the wind. Accurate long distance shooting as a highly accurate sniper usually has a second man/women (that is as far as my pronoun accountability works in this situation) as a spotter who tells the shooter the settings for elevation (range tick marks vertical above or below the center of the sight) and adjustment for wind (lateral - ticks from center left or right).
Get someone to take you to learn to shoot skeet (clay targets) that are thrown into the air at different speeds and flight patterns. You will learn to lead the target and to start with an open angle when you begin to aim and as your shots become to the opposite side of the throw, your angle closes from the front towards the target until your shots are directly from behind like the fighter pilot.!
Just put that in your brain and think about it occasionally and when you get to shoot skeet, it’s going to become a reflex and you will actually see where you shots are and where they need to be. Then you increase or decrease your lead before you fire.
The old professor
Live free or die!
Death to all tyrants!
The truth will stand when the world falls!
No Shit.
Put down your phone and go out and experience life in reality! Virtually is a great learning tool, but not a way of life.
Don’t be electronically addicted!
This is an impressive example of explaining a complicated topic in understandable terms. The animation is very well done, illustrating movement in 3 dimensions which is not easy to do by hand! Kudos to whoever made this.
back when america cared to educate its citizens
@@charlesballiet7074 considering what those bombers were used for, and what was taught in other instructional videos of the time, I don't think this is a part of our history that we should be proud of.
@@rogerramiussergeialexander5541 your right we defeated the wrong enemy
@@charlesballiet7074 let me reiterate; Dropping napalm and carpet bombing entire civilian cities that were known to have no military occupation is not something to be proud of. /We/ didn't even do any of that. All of those people are dead. If you're going to be proud of this country, pick a reason that doesn't include genocide.
@@rogerramiussergeialexander5541 war is genocide anytime any army invades territory they occupy and harm the locals and that at the best of times. Thing is though its exactly because america had a war to win that we mobilised everyone everything. that in order to have the advantage great amounts of investments were made to educate and prepair our population. Now that america is an occupyer and there is no big war to win the government does not need an educated populice and so abandons us to wallow in ignorance and misery
Need to show this to my ai gunners
Lol
XD
*Gaijin has joined the chat*
@@f16fightingfalcon15 Brain has left the chat
@Joshua Park stinky redditor
No one's gonna mention how good these animations are? like it's not just some simple cartoon but cartoon with science. plus in 3D style
Same animators who brought you Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. Sounds like Mel Blanc's voice as the waist gunner.
It's really impressive, for example at 5:14, that gun movement is just exquisitely animated.
@@KevinBFG the ammo belt flex alone.
@@KevinBFG dude I thought the exact same thing. Looks beautiful
Can't believe they really put that much effort into training programs for the military
Meanwhile in paperboy training, they used the badass plane gunner as their physics example.
Give the man the likes he deserves
Hell, I was a bomber when hocking a loogey in a ditch.
"Now, remember when you were a tail gunner..."
Deserves to be top comment
Those poor German imigrants waiting for their newspaper.
The animation becomes absurdly complex at 6:38 WOW
I gave up trying to understand after they twisted the plane tail at 10:47
@@rvian4 the tail of ya bomber isn’t up in the air so don’t just aim 3rads behind also aim a little down
@@thelukesternater at 90°, short bursts start at 3 rads and then 2 and then 1.
Closes video and picks another to watch in recommended.
@@rvian4 It essentially means that you take into account the plane's slight descent from altitude.
Rodrigo Viana he meant the ANIMATION quality ....
A certain Australian brought me here, I had no idea that this was how Gunners where trained. Its absurdly informative.
Griphon212 yea I too love that Australian
the old rim rim
Український Уpод who else would it be
eh was it Rimmy M8?
Darek Baird Ding Ding we have a winner
I love how the US government said "You dont need math, dude, its 3 Rads just take my word for it."
I love the “ i’ll be a sad sack of...rads.” And if you don’t know what he was going to say, then you are a young individual.
Well it’s late in the war. You’re basically teaching country boys who have never graduated high school trigonometry. It’s easier to say “you don’t need to understand how this works, just do what we say”
@@RainbowManification Even if you are a high school graduate, in battle you DONT have time for such complex calculations.
@@tetraxis3011 Hell, doesn’t matter if you’re a genius mathematician. If you’ve got a couple of seconds to blow this guy out of the sky while he’s trying to return the favour, you don’t have time. Full stop.
“It’s three rads, take our word for it.”
@@RealBelisariusCawl Yep.
Tracers would really help too.
@@odonovan Not really, the difference in muzzle velocity between tracer rounds and other round types is marginal unless you use an anomalous projectile type (like the German Minengeschoss.) Having wildly different trajectories for tracers and other round types would defeat the purpose of the tracer to begin with. Anyway, tracers were used for the majority of defensive armament (until the advent of radar-controlled turrets).
@@JustinianPrvni
Ehh... I can only say from playing War Thunder, which is on a flat screen with no depth perception, but I think I'd have a hard time figuring out when the tracer whizzes past the enemy fighter plane exactly. I see the tracer flying away from me... Perhaps I could see the enemy interceptor occluding the traced light?
@@roadent217 In WT you're lacking depth perception. It's much easier to judge in the real world when you've got your two eyes seeing *ever-so-slightly* different pictures, which your brain has trained for your entire life to identify and use to judge distance.
@@djbiscuit1818 VR mode is fun as hell and op at close range
@@JustinianPrvni actchually
It's happening, the situation my teacher told me about. The time when Trigonometry will save your life.
Exactly Trigonometry, it's more realized when you go 'Oh! It's like a Triangle, gotta go for the center of the Sine'...You don't need the full equation, you just gotta know the measurment, in this case in Rads (Radiuses) and adjust for angle.
Lmao!!!
“Imagine a flying gun”
Sir that is called an A-10
Warthog
Thunderbolt II
B - 11
"BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT."
@@InsanoBinLooney phew glad I heard it.
When an old 1900s film teaches you more than your six teachers:
Teachers are there to guide you and provide you with the basics. It's up to *you* to learn something by doing the rest.
@@paulallen8109 You make a fair point, but where I'm from (maybe I was just unlucky idk) teachers teach you some of THE MOST boring parts of a subject and force you to learn that and ONLY that until it gets to a point you don't even want to learn about it anymore. They DISCOURAGED independent learning. Its kinda why I flunked Civil War History back in Elementary. It still goes on to this day. But eventually through switching schools and getting a Teacher that actually taught right, (and playing a bit of Battlefield 1...) I gave independent learning a try through computer based research and picking through some of the books that the school had in the backroom, and eventually visiting the library on occasion. I bounced back with my grades when going through the History of the Great War through this, learning of the major battles, troop deployments, tactics enemy and allied, vehicles and evolution of technology & weaponry. I enjoyed every bit of it.
1900s? so are we bunching together 1910s, 1940s with 1980s and 90s? That seems dumb
@@Phenom98
you just say that because you where born in the late 1900s ; )
@@Ismalith agree
I love the amount of simplification this brings for such complicated physics... for example, the "only attack if it's attacking" is not because they are defensive... but because the 3~0.5 rad approximation only work for a certain range and they didn't want to overdo with the info
I thought it was for saving ammo
@@kicocol there might be other things in account like friend fire, or they didn't want to say "you will just miss it if they are too far" but I don't think ammo was a worry
The reason you only attack if they're attacking is, that's when you can predict their movement and it's when they're moving the slowest in your sights. If you fire at other times, you'll waste time, ammo, and opportunities to hit other fighters that might attack. Plus you'll be sweeping your gun so fast that you might hit your friends, I'd imagine.
@@keithklassen5320 especially since they flew in packs of dozens to hundreds of bombers in fairly tight formations at varying altitudes as well.
They flew in formations of the hundreds if a fighter wasn't attacking you that means it was attacking someone else and therefore wasn't your problem. By ignoring fighters that aren't attacking you you can focus all of your attention to the ones that are and therefore be much better at accurately hitting them (because you know their trajectory) and protecting your crew. If you hit your targets and the other gunners on the other bombers hit theirs then the problem is taken care of for everybody. And yes ammo was a big concern as each gunner only had roughly 500 rounds which would last about a minute of continuous fire, hence the emphasis on the 2 second bursts
Having worked as a CAD engineer for the last 15 years the animators sense of 3 dimensions and movement dynamics is really impressive
6:39 That is some badass animating right there. Real art
No s#it, right? That was 3D way before 3D
Now I know exactly how to deliver paper to a house that’s in its pursuit curve
Underated comment
He's a little confused, but hes got the spirit.
this is unbelievably funny
damn mobile homes
My father was a tail gunner on a B-17...he had three confirmed kills...one shared.'''Trained for several months on the ground and in the air before going overseas...spent 18 months as a POW after his plane went down over Germany.
Thats cool
Its funny to remember that this genuine cartoon made difference between life and death for thoursands of people.
It's crazy to think this is how it was done and now we have realistic simulators to show them in real time.
My father was a top turret gunner on bombers in WWII. As a young man in order to help the family get through the depression he hunted ducks. He said it really helped knowing how to lead planes when shooting at them when he went into battle later in the war.
🦆
I bet he was more deadly than the average gunner
top turret gunner
@@IHamson Thanks
Very smart of the army to also make the animation fun with the gunner to help grab attention and make soldiers focused
My Uncle was a waist gunner for the B-24 Queen of Peace. I wish I had the opportunity to ask him how he was able to understand this film, let alone shoot in the air.
they didn't have to understand it: just shoot in generaly proper direction and when there is 100 bombers in a combat box, at least one gunner will hit target randomly. their strength was in numbers and concentration of firepower not in precision
My grandpa and his twin brother were also B-24 waist gunners for the Silver Haired Daddy, Down De Hatch, and Sabrina III. They were 8th AAF 44th BG. They told me that to practice they would fire at targets from a moving train.
@@OklahomaAdam I'm glad you said, I was wondering about that
@Jarne C where did the Queen of Piece fly?
@@davidhoffman6980 They flew out of Wendling Norfork England until the plane crashed landed, safely in neutral territory with no major injuries. They were in The 392 Bomb group. I wish I could have found a group photo but at least I saw this online. www.forcedlandingcollection.se/USAAFe/USAAF011-440104-queenofpeace.html
Excellent straightforward explanation of the principle of deflection shooting. Interesting how when the chips are down in wartime, education has to be de-bullshitted and made to work.
Education, back then, was "de-bullshitted" already.
The clever use of simple graphics to teach a complex art is interesting. Not viewed at all favorably these days it seems.
Math texts in particular (where they still even use them) have reverted to page upon page jammed with hieroglyphs.
@russellbrown7028 this isn't mathematics. This is how to shoot. Learning mathematics involves rigor and proof. Not just do this then do that. You have to learn how to think.
Maths teaches theory, but in a warzone you need a more hands on approach
@@paulsd9255 agreed. But the original commetor is talking about education in general.
I tried this in war thunder; Entire tail fell off as soon as he looked at me.
I kid you not, I did s single click at a bomber with my c202 EC and his tail exploded lol
A single shot made of 2 20 mm rounds and 2 Italian .50 rounds
@@p_filippouz 20m cant even kill a person on a whirbelwind
@@elpl1293 yet the tail fell off, again, with only a single tap
yeah, sounds about right
And here I am emptying all of my hispanos and only getting a fuel leak on an ai il-2 even though every shot is connecting
For those who are here from war thunder= Watching this video actually helps in aiming . I watched this video...And in my first try i brought down an ME 410 and a BF 109 G-6. While my B-24 was quite damaged, i was still able to bomb one enemy facility.
Ofcourse its still a game. And IRL the range both enemies opened fire was 300m instead of my 700. I notice a increase in kills vs fighters with these simple tricks
Thi could be very well used in Simulator battle where fighter actually fire at much closer range
Ill start playing soon, it really helped
Thank you
Jesus Christ loves you! 😊
"the crew feels confedennt knowing crystle ball is the gunner"
*misses all of his shots*
@@channelmoved2014 very much
@@announcerspeakerboxbfdi4966 me too
Crystal Ball was never a very good shot anyway.
I think what they were implying is that no one is safe.
"They shot his ball. He was lucky".
He has another one...
Every Country boy saw this and was like "So it's like I'm throwing a bottle at a speed limit sign on a back road in a curve half drunk....and if I dont hit it I could die...got it"
I love you dude! That was perfect!
This needs more likes.
Nailed it! No, really! Sign was never the same again.
Did they even have speed limits back in the '40s?
@@wanyelewis9667 Yeah - "Victory Speed" or 35 mph. That's why '35' MPH is the default setting for city streets today.
The US was genius for using cartoons to present information and visuals that would have been very expensive and nearly impossible to replicate on film.
Physics and trig in a cartoon... Outstanding.
Absolutely fascinating, it must have been terrifying being a waist gunner facing an fw190 bearing down on you, even with the knowledge of deflection shooting
Imagine being the bombardier or the pilot or copilot when the head-on attack came in which was the standard opening play. And that head on attack would be organized with a wave of fighter coming at you not these individual fighters in melee. Also, pretty much the same experience for the kraut.
@@JoeOvercoatThey had massive balls
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This is honestly impressive. Sure there is a lot of estimation behind the scenes, but any more precision couldn't be put to use. Deflection shooting is hard
and they lay out all the key assumptions pretty clearly, like the biggest one IMO is that this estimate only works when you're "flying straight at 225 KTAS". The other big assumption is very valid, namely that the attacking plane will follow the "approach curve" because that's the only way for them to get their guns on you.
gotta give credit to the production team who made this, its very informative and accessible to the layman’s understanding. i feel like i could have a chance at hitting something after seeing this
Was actually pretty happy to see Joe hit his shots at the end
No chute for Jerry.
I appreciate how the task is broken down into easy to understand chunks, explained in detail, then related to actual experience. Too many training courses I've taken give you the theory but not practical application.
When I was a kid, there was an arcade in Crestline, CA. that had WWII training machines. These machines were used to train gunners on bombers, there were tiny aircraft coming toward you and by using the controls, you could shoot them down, or not. They were loads of fun, wish I could find one now, obsolete and outdated without a doubt, but they were fun at the time. Was hoping this video would show one of them.
@10:58 "Wait a minute...wait a minute! No fighter is going to sit still for you like that."
Someone needs to tell martial arts teachers that.
Fake teachers you mean. A good teacher will make you practice with other students, who defintately will not stand still.
I always liked this stereotypical American teaching films
Amazing how they got those moving perspective visuals we would use CGI now
CGI and cartoons are the same thing, one is just more labor intensive
@@sergeig685 CGI stands for computer generated images, there was no computers in the 40’s....
@@sergeig685 no they aren't. CGI is a 3D referenced scene, each object in the scene has vertices which are 3D referenced with X,y,z coordinates. The director has a virtual camera whereby the scene is visualised for a 2D screen. This is made by drawing and taking pictures of the drawings.
Thanks, I'm aware of how CGI works, I did some OpenGL work myself. I'm saying they are the same in a way that one creates a motion picture by taking successive frames of a scene. With the only difference being one drawn and perspective calculated manually vs computer generated.
@@sergeig685 so they're the same in the sense that they are video, and not real life. Insightful.
My Dad was a Ball turret gunner first on Liberators out of North Africa and later B17s out of England.
I remember one story he used to tell me when we were bird hunting. He said they taught the new gunner - trainees pre-war how to lead a target by loading them up in moving trucks and cars with the tops cut out and having them shoot skeet from the moving vehicles driving across uneven ground, up and down hills and around curves with 12 gauges. Not sure HOW that worked, but he survived the war, wounded several times, but not disabled.
Congrats to him and thanks. Ball Turret = most dangerous position in bomber command
My grandfather took down an ME 110 heavy fighter in the war, as a ball turret gunners in WW2, can't imagine how complicated and wild that would be to do all that in the fetal position in a tiny clear ball with the entire world visible right below you. Just insane
The mathmeticians and artists who put this together did a great job.
“Remember when you were a paperboy”?
I remember playing the computer game
'Would you like to sign my petition?'
Lol yeah
Yeah, already on C64.
Computer games of being a paperboy?
@@godlycookie901 yeah, it was called "Paper Boy" it was out on the original Nintendo too. "Hop on your bike for a free-wheeling ride up the avenues of not-so-typical suburbia. Get the paper to your subscribers and break the windows of the non-subscribers, avoiding the many obstacles that get in your way, including kids on tricycles, dogs, traffic, and pedestrians. Earn bonus points by hitting targets along the obstacle course at the end of your route. Get the news to your customers on time with Paperboy."
It's crazy to think that my great grandfather probably watched this video, then actually applied what he learned.
Sergeant: Remember when you were a paper boy?
Gunner: Yeah why?
Sergeant: Same thing but this time you killing Germans.
Gunner:.......
Teacher at the start of class: 1:57
Teacher when I look behind me for 0.0001 seconds: 7:24
You just gonna ignore the fact that you turned your head faster than the speed of sound?
@@NTNinja we all have Powers we aint Aware of
@@NTNinja that shockwave is why she asked if we were listening
Considering the overall state of animation during those years, 3-dimensional animation in this video, is an equivalent to a high grade CGI with ray-tracing today
ngl the animations were incredibly well made. Especially the transition from the birds-eye view to fps!
Incredible how the gunners shot anything down given the conditions they had to work in? Old film, but really helpful in explaining how to lead the target.
They actually had some kind of target tracking
Tracers
Waist gunner was one of the worst position in the bombers you could be.
@@kaletovhangar I thought it was tail gunner?
@@colinfinnie5074 As far as bailing out,yes.As far as likelihood of getting shot by enemy fighters,waist gunner was in the most dangerous spot ironically.
This is so well made. Add the fact that it was produced some 80 years ago blows my mind. Thank you for sharing this!
omg, this is extremly hard, never know it was so hard to shoot down an fighter from a bomber, imagine all this in a real situation where you live is on the menu
I need to throw this to my He-111 gunners. Dudes using Crystal Balls and 8 Balls to make the decision.
This is probably a dumb question, but what was there to stop a gunner from shooting off the tail of his own plane?
pure luck
@@zebadiahbanshee5951 and caution
@@sleak9783 And hopefully not being a complete dumbass (Indiana Jones 3..."They got us")
most turrets weren't able to aim at the tail,due to how they were placed,maybe the roof one could damage the rudders
yes i know that i'm responding to a very old comment
I haven't seen one personally, but there were probably metal guards that bounced the guns at a predetermined maximum angle to allow the gunners to swing their guns as fast as they needed to to keep the enemies in their sights without fear of overswinging into their own tails.
My dad flue in a bomber during ww2 I'm guessing he saw this video back then. He said the tail gunner kept getting killed so they stopped using the tail gun. Thanks for the history lesson
6:35 the war will have ended by the time he has finished the drawing
13:43 Eminem’s been really quiet since this dropped.
We found him, the real slim shady was a WW2 Bomber waist gunner this whole time.
Bro, grade A comment
I'm surprised no body has mentioned how trigger Joe is voiced by Mel Blanc. The voice of Bugs, Daffy, and the Looney Tunes
Somewhere else in these comments there’s at least one mention of that, but yes.
This thing taught me how to make good educational content
I love how they go through the mistakes you might make and correct them before you make them.
I love the way cartoons are used for this video. Somehow it simplifies everything.
All joking aside - this was life and death for young bomber crews. So many died from a lack of appreciation of the complex physics of shooting a moving target FROM a moving target!
I look at my lazy coworkers and can only imagine the absolute dread I'd feel if any of them were my gunners. I'd be dead after first mission, no doubt.
Thank you for showing me a film my father more than likely watched in gunnery school before he stood in that same spot trigger joe was in 1944 over Germany in a B-24J Liberator.
When kids say 'where are we going to use trigonometry or algebra in our lives?'
Your maths teacher is going to get a chuckle when WW3 starts
Cyber Hitler is apparently coming back for round 3 in 2037
Thank you for not cropping. Much appreciated.
I'm going to guess this training was forgotten the moment the young waist gunner is engaged by a real target, 2 second squeeze, no double it and double it again and then a little more
Yeah it takes experience in order to perfect it all
my grandfather was a gunner/W/O on coastal command B24s, fascinated by this as he probably watched it all those years ago, mind you he was RAF and 1943 so possibly not
Training films during WW2 were just on another level. They are entertaining and put modern training films to shame
now I'm using this to get better aim at war thunder.
being a B-17 bomber and having no insight on training is bad for start.
plus learning something new and something i can use in a game.
Father was WWII RAF AG/Sigs 1939 - '46 He obviously preferred his signals office, and in later years RADAR was a huge part of his job; so less chance of being in a gun turret. A tail turret, most in fact, were too small to wear a parachute, it was outside, if ordered to bail, you had to get out, put it on, get back in, turn the turret around so the door was outside... and basically fall out!
A friend, some years ago, told me it took a brave man to climb in a turret, and it took a braver man to climb in a second time!
It's absurdly so funny for a war movie :D
It's a training film
Funny things are easier to remember. It's a general memory trick in life. Your mind will tend to forget boring things.
I started to use the techniques in this video when I play War Thunder and it actually made me a better belly gunner in my B-17
My Grandpa used to teach this when he was in the Army Air Corps in WWII
Honestly this was really informative, after only 5 mins i felt ready to be a waist gunner!
this is a shockingly good video for explaining what it's trying to explain in a very practical and actionable way
Really interesting to hear the theory side of combat. Usually when I see history documentaries they always talk about how instinctual the soldier was or how much a veteran the gunner was. Which despite being ok for the purpose of the documentary, never bothers to educate these sort of fundamentals soldiers train themselves on TO become those high skilled fighters.
Understanding just a hint of how aiming works is thrilling. I kind of wish there was one for tanks too because I found out about stritches after hearing Girls und Panzer mention it once, so I looked into it’s applications and how to interpret them. Different designers nowadays but still in use.
Kudos to the mathematicians working out all this.
I don't know if the cartoon mention it but the cartridge the USA used in the waist gun was the 50 BMG.
It wasn't just the waist gun.
Yeah that was fairly standard in most of the planes at the time that the US fielded, whether they be mounted as Bomber turrets, or fighter guns.
Never knew I needed an instructional film about position firing.
Very good documentary, now add 100-200 more bombers and 100 or so fighters, good luck...
And fighters go at proper 500-600 km/h, and fly by in few seconds.
I feel a lot more confident now, knowing what to do if I'd find myself at the gunner's seat in a WW 2 air combat situation. Thank you UA-cam!
It's incredible how well explained this is even if it doesn't get deeper into the physics behind these phenomena it's really clear and practical.
how amazing is that point of view change.
Mel Blanc voiced the gunner. Epic.
I'm amazed at how well done they made the topic easy to understand and made it look 3d!
This is a great explanation. I am curious to know how much training these crews got because this seems like something you needed a lot of practice to master and I know a lot of bomber crews were killed.
Yeah, Bombing missions had terrible losses.
I saw a documentary where a gunner said in training they rode in the back of a pickup truck with a shotgun to re-enforce this lesson. They were shooting skeet on the move. "It was nothing but fun," he said.
This is a fucking masterpiece. Im operating upper gun in BF1942, now I don't need to use crystal ball.
this is why gunners were taught trap and skeet shooting in gunnery school. best primary practice for hitting a moving target. what they don't say is the very limited time you have to apply the proper lead and fire the gun. at most you have only a second or two to do this, and most men were way behind the curve! you had to be extremely quick!
I feel ready for Those realistic battles now...
So, how was it?
@@thedepression950 he crashed on takeoff
Warthunder simulation mode with VR. Good luck comrade.
I can't be the only one who was really happy/proud for the guy at the end when he finally hit the plane.
I'm surprised they didn't talk about bullet drop
I would have thought that would be roughly accounted for in the gun sight set up: for a gun envelope up to 1600ft (500m) and a muzzle velocity of ~3,000ft/s (900m/s) the bullet drop (ignoring air resistance) would be 5ft or 1.5m. So the sight could be easily set up to be 2.5ft below at long range and 2.5ft above at minimal range. (using Sy=V0y*t +1/2 *a*t^2 for t=V0x/Sx)
This wouldn't be an issue for two reasons: the size of the target is more than 3ft in diameter, so correctly aimed shots would still hit, and the spread of fire is such that it covers a significant area, overlapping the target.
This also links to the point that the recommended deflection is only correct for a TAS of 250kts. So a deviation in that, which is likely, could affect the required deflection much more.
@@odonovan I believe you're correct. Unlikely they'd hit anything beyond a couple of hundred meters, especially given the high rate of closure & the relatively brief window of opportunity where the fighter could be seen.
they do specify to identify if a target is in range and attack. If you're going after someone whos close enough to strafe you, bullet drop isn't a major concern.
@@alexanderm9446 We get it. You know math.
@@ihavenoname3014 shut up he was explaining it, quite well indeed, just cause ur too dumb to understand doesn't mean others are
I love this and vary informative. Imagine teaching this to fresh privates who may haven't even graduated highschool
Meanwhile in war thunder, a fighter so much as sees you and you explode.
20mils BABY!
@@wushlc soviet 37mm master race
When the enemy fighter plane is 0.8 meters away from you its already too late for you
@@mrmacedon isn't 0,8 kilometers?
@@higorss yep, my mistake
I used this video to make my aiming with my bomber in warthunder better, and I REALY good at it
This will surely come in handy next time I find myself in a WW2 bomber!