B-29 Bomber Gunner's Compartment Detailed Walkthrough
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- Опубліковано 23 гру 2022
- The intent of this video is to conduct a detailed walk through of the WWII B29 bomber gunner’s compartment. The various gun system components will be discussed. The combat effectiveness of the side blister and top central fire control gun station will also be discussed.
- Наука та технологія
The fire control computers were an incredible achievement for there time. I worked on the restoration of the B-29 at the New England Air Museum.
I visited the NEAM last Spring. A few minutes before closing time, one of the volunteers asked us if we wanted an up-close look at the B-29 and let us into the bomb bay to see the open cockpit, etc. Much appreciated! Wonderful museum.
This aspect of the b-29 has always been a mystery to me. Thank you!
With the AN/M2 .50 cal firing rate of 800 rounds per minute a quad mount gun turret was putting about 6½ lbs of lead every second in the face of a Japanese fighter that was attacking, coupled with the accuracy of the B29's defensive guns analog computer fire control system it made for a very unpleasant experience for them.
In regards to the B29's 11.7 to 1 kill ratio against enemy fighter's, I've had people argue that it was because the B29 entered service against the Japanese later in the war when most of their experienced fighter pilots had already been shot down and that score was compiled against inexperienced fighter pilots, I'll argue all day long that it doesn't make any difference, it wasn't a matter of two aircraft battling against each other using aerial maneuvers, the bomber was flying a straight and level course and wasn't performing defensive and offensive maneuvers against the attacking Japanese fighter as if it was also a fighter, from the point of the attacking Japanese fighter's all the experience in the world didn't make any difference, 10 days or 10 months of experience didn't matter because it was a matter of sitting through brutal, accurate .50 cal fire until you were within the effective range of you own weapons and could fire on it.
Similarly in Europe against the defensive firepower of a B17, which may not have had the computer augmented defensive gun system of the B29 but still had Sperry lead computing gun sights in it's gun mounts, those German fighter pilots dreaded flying into a B17 box, because all the experience in the world didn't do anything to help them.
This is from a letter written from a German fighter pilot to a friend of his back in the east who'd flown there with him flying against the Russian's and was transferred to the west to fight the 8th Air Force bombers;
"When we would dogfight against the Russian's it was kind of fun, sometimes you'd shoot them down and sometimes they'd shoot you down, but the first time I turned into a B17 box every sin I committed in my life flashed right before my eyes", imagine what it would have been like for a Japanese fighter pilot attacking a B29 formation with the defensive gun system it had, it couldn't have been a pleasant experience.
@@dukecraig2402 you are right, it must be a very terrifying experience to operate against a tight box formation, especially if you are used to a wider field of opportunities in airfight. an attack on a formation of bombers could be and had to be planned an executed according to the plan. a differend mindset is therefore needed. but experience will help, because despite all the planning you had only a window of 2-3 second to shot and you have to calculate the angle and lead perfectly. the chance of damage to your plane is high and after your attack you will be low and behind the B17s and so mostly there will be no second attackrun. maybe on their way home
Wish my dad was still alive to see this video and also inform us kids about his experience on his 22 missions over Japan as blister gunner on a B-29 in the pacific. Thanks. Will share with my other brothers and sisters.
WIll never not be amazed at the B29 defensive system. Read a Russian MiG-15 pilot saying that they had to be very careful when attacking 'em. The migs had the range advantage but any mistake would have meant getting chewed up by the .50's. I know you're the "WWII bomber channel", but videos about the B29 in Korea would suuuper interesting if you have access to similar historical sources.
I love the Ford ashtray next to the oxygen.
Congratulations on a job well done. Lots of great technology for 80 years ago!
An ashtray!
You are answering some questions on the B-29 that I have thought about for a while. Seeing the actual equipment being demonstrated is brilliant.
Really demonstrates the astonishing technological progress during WW2, progress that would soon render the B29 obsolete...
What a great video. This helps me immensely is describing how this system works when talking to visitors at Duxford.
Glad it was helpful!
You deleted the PDF!!!@@WWIIUSBombers
I am glad you confirmed the interlock preventing firing into the bomber's structure. Good job, as always, pulling together the research. Thank you.
l am a former fighter pilot in my 80's and i really liked this excellent video....Thanks very much......
Shoe🇺🇸
Extremely thorough and detailed article on the subject of aerial gunnery!
Ex-U.S. Navy combat aircrewman here on P-3C Orion's. Thank you for making this video. It's absolutely amazing the technology we were able to develop back then. I'm pretty sure I was in my 40's before I knew that the turrets were remotely controlled. Very facinating, cheers!
Excellent video! I often wondered what my friend did as a blister gunner and occasional tail gunner on the 29’s and this video gives great insight to the equipment he used so long ago. I also was amazed at how NEW this aircraft looks…
How cool it is to watch your videos. Without you, I don’t think any of us with no as much as you do.
An excellent presentation, I have reference books, with some plans and photos, However you present it in fine detail and include a walk through, which brings the subject alive.
This is one of my favorite UA-cam channels! WWII American bombers have always fascinated me. Thanks for the great info, and have a Merry Christmas.
An excellent video! One of your best yet! Appreciate the combination live walkthrough, historical documentation and vintage films.
When this was posted I went oooh oooh! Another Christmas present!! Very well done. Totally unique content. Have a gr8 Christmas!!
Fun fact: the circle of dots in the gun sight used for ranging is made by two plates with S shaped radial slots. Where the slots cross over each other, there is a diamond shaped hole the light shines through. Moving the plates in opposite directions relative to each other makes the diamond shaped holes at the intersection of each slot pair move closer or farther from the center due to the curvature of the slots.
Good description, makes sense.
I was a Vulcan air defense gunner in the Army, the more I see of the gun sights used on the defensive guns of the US bombers in the war and even the gun sights in the fighter's like the K14 sight the more similarities I see between them and the sight we had on our guns.
The biggest difference is that our system had a ranging radar that eliminated our having to range the target, that part was automatic, but the rest like the sight automatically leading the target and compensating for bullet drop worked out the same, at the end of the day you simply put the target right in the cross hairs (so to speak) instead of having to lead and elevate like a hunter with a scope on his rifle shooting at a running deer far enough away that the amount of leading and elevating is something he has to figure out himself in that split second.
I guess the gun sights on the early fighter's in the war didn't have any kind of automatic lead and elevation and is why the fighter pilots who'd grown up shooting game bird to put meat on the table did better than the city boys did, they already had that instinct in them for shooting something that was flying, it probably also helped the waist gunners on the bombers that didn't have lead computing gun sights like the turret gunners had.
@@dukecraig2402 With the fixed sights were were specific procedures for using the reticle graduations as a range/lead estimator. The K-14 gyro sight was a licensed built Ferranti sight developed by the British. Pilots had to be encouraged to use it as many resisted and just used the fixed reticle you saw with your right eye. In WW gun cam footage you can see some films with tracer and some without. Those without, you know they are using the K-14/Ferranti Mk II which allowed tracer to be deleted and was a big tactical advantage, not warning your target you were shooting at him. The first radar ranging sight was for the F-86, the APG-30. The black upper lip of the airplane's intake is the radome. It was a top secret weapon. When an F-86 was forced down in China, the Russians got it and developed a radar warning receiver as a countermeasure.
@@JK-rv9tp
Yea I'm familiar with how the fixed sights worked, as I said there's a lot of similarities between the sights from back then and the one's we had, that includes having to manually sight our targets in the event of the system failing or suffering battle damage or not being able to use our radar in the event enemy aircraft in our area were using anti radiation type missile's, they were hunting us as much as we were hunting them, a formation of aircraft on a strike mission going after assets we were task with protecting would have more than just aircraft in their package armed with munitions for taking out those targets, the first one's in would actually be armed with munitions like anti radiation missile's designed to take us out first, we actually learned through our training to keep our radars turned off and let them sweep through the area first giving them the impression that there were no air defense assets in the area, then when their strike aircraft would come in we'd have a crewmember outside of the gun pull a cord that would cause two radar scattering nets we were hiding under to unzip up the middle and fall away to each side exposing the gun so we could take a shot, the whole idea was to lead him with a generous amount and have your burst go across his nose instead of behind him, every one of our 3,000 rounds per minute was a tracer and we wanted him to know he was being shot at, this would accomplish 2 things, the first is out of the interest of self preservation he'd drop his weapon short of his target, mission accomplished, we just protected the asset we were task with defending, the second would be to drive him to altitude so that one of the Stinger missile crews who ran around in Jeeps that we worked with in what we called hunter killer team's could get the kill shot on him, if he was busy jinking turning and diving while dropping flares trying to evade the missile he'd probably forget about the gun and and come back around our way and we'd get another shot at him, immediately afterwards the driver of the gun would drop it into gear and take off for another location while dragging the camouflage radar scattering net behind with everything from M16's, field phones and probably the squad leader who was the guy that pulled the cord wrapped up inside of them.
In the event we couldn't use our radar because of the scenario just described or the system was broken they had a "manual mode" they could be switched to and then instead of just putting the "pipper" dot on the target there was another part of the reticle that we'd use as a reference for estimating lead and drop, and the reticle wasn't caged or fixed when using manual mode, it would lag behind the gun when traversing it forcing you to lead it but not to an exact amount for what was required, training and the experience from shooting at drones on the range is how you'd learn how much was needed.
When the fighter gun sights started using radar like on the F86 for ranging that was pretty much the same way our systems and sights worked when we used our radar, I'd imagine they also had a back up manual mode they could be switched to in the event that the radar was broken or for some other reason couldn't be used, and like us they were probably trained on how to use it which basically amounted to Kentucky windage.
The early fighter pilots that thrived in aerial combat because they grew up hunting were the guys who didn't want to use the K14 gunsight because they already had their way of doing things that was working for them, given what was at stake I don't blame them, if you were successful using what you were using would you want someone to come along with some new fangled way of doing things where you had to learn a system of ranging using that knob that varied the size of the sight while at the same time you had to compensate the wingspan for different angles, or would you rather just keep doing something that you'd developed into a reflex that you could do in an instant?
But you can bet that the new pilots that were trained from day one with the K14 were overall better shots than the 1 in 100 that had a knack for something because of him growing up shooting game, take that same guy and train him from day one with the K14 gun sight and he's gonna be even better.
Brilliant
summarization WWII US Bombers...
Thanks for this.
All this mid 1940's technology but the electric door locks on my much newer F-150 pickup don't work properly. The ash tray for the crew was interesting especially when there was extra oxygen available. .
Amazing video, keep making these!
Wonderful informative work here!
Very in-depth and well-filmed video!
Man what a Christmas eve! New video from WWii , Gregs Airplanes and Ed Nash! its a Christmas miracle! GREAT VIDEO AS ALWAYS! THANKS AND MERRY CHRISTMAS
This was the inspiration for the Star Wars Millennium Falcon, upper and lower remote laser canons when Luke and Han sat in those remote controlled movable seats linked by wire to the guns, the twin guns configuration , on B29 are carried over to the Falcon . The front cockpit ,canopy glass of B-29 is just like the Falcon's flight deck and is very similar.
and as depicted in the Star Wars movies Humanity will have completely lost the ability of hitting a barn door
Wonderful video.....very well done, Merry Christmas.....
Fantastic video. Thank you.
The Zero had a performance issue with turning to the right - if they chose a sweeping approach from the rear, they'd favor the right hand side of the bomber. I learned this recently, pretty sure it was in a video about the development of the Hellcat, and there was mention of the analysis of captured, operational Zeros. I stick to top quality channels like this one, Military History Visualized, Mark Felton, etc, but I forget precisely which one had the Hellcat video.
That was great! I learn all sorts of cool stuff in your videos 🙂
Merry Xmas WW2USB!
Fascinating video. I'm always learning something new about the Superfortress with these videos. Maybe I'll work up the nerve to start tackling this 1/48th B-29 now !
Thanks for this. One of your most fascinating videos!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Very informative. Thank you.
In Saburo Sakai’s book “Samurai”, he often speaks of being trained to turn left evasively. A right-handed person with a right hand on the stick can make sharper turns to the left. Perhaps that goes some way to explain to paucity of attacks from the left. Thoughts?
Single engine fighters sufferred from gyroscopic effects of the spinning propeller mass. It meant they could turn better in one direction compared to the other. So, it was safer to attack on the side where you could turn and get away better.
@@keithammleter3824 Rognt! Engine torque, of course, thank you.
@@keithammleter3824 That's what I assumed to be the cause of the disparity between left and right. This video is the first tome I've heard about the difference.
@@reigels : I thought about this again since my previous post. There is another factor. If I was a Japanese fighter pilot, I would attack the B-29 from its left front corner, even if I could turn just as well in either direction. The B-29 pilot-commander and the navigator sat on the left. That gives me maximum probability of hitting the commander, who is presumably the most capable and more likely to continue his mission in spite of damage to his aircraft. It also maximises the probability of hitting the navigator, and without him they probably won't make it to target and/or back to their base. The navigator actually wasn't that critical to getting home, as US crews were cross-trained, and could get radio guidance. But the Japanese might not have known that. One of the reasons why they had little chance of winning the war against the US is that they did not cross-train crews at all.
No wonder the B-29 cost more to develop than the A Bomb! It is quite complex!
I've always heard that and thinking about it after looking at the development of aircraft throughout that era I think it's an unfair assessment.
The cost of developing the engine's, defensive guns fire control system and some other things are all costs that get added into the cost of developing the B29, but I don't think that's correct because with other aircraft, like whichever one that it was that first used on, the cost of developing the Pratt&Whitney R2800 engine doesn't get added into that aircraft's development cost, and contrary to what most people believe the Wright R3350 engine wasn't developed specifically for the B29, it was simply the next engine that Wright was developing after the previous one they'd developed, they all would develop an engine then move on to developing the next bigger and more powerful engine, just because the timing works out that they were developing that engine parallel to Boeing developing the B29 doesn't mean the cost of that engine's development program should necessarily go on the B29's books, they may not have been in WW2 but there was plenty of other aircraft that used that engine including the A1 Skyraider that was actually flying before the war was over but just didn't enter service before it was.
There's a likewise argument for the defensive guns fire control system, no matter what the first VHB (Very Heavy Bomber) the Army chose was going to be that system was going to have to be developed by General Electric for it, matter of fact I wouldn't be surprised if you look into it that was something that was already in the design pipeline before the first raw sketch of a B29 was even drawn on the back of a napkin.
I don't believe that all the "firsts" that were part of the B29 should be attributed to it's cost, they were going to have been needed anyways, some things like the time and effort put into developing the pressurized fuselage for the B29 should be included in it's price tag because although future bombers would need it that particular design is specific to the B29, the main components aren't interchangeable with another bomber from another company because they're specific to the B29 being the fuselage itself, but the engine's and the defensive guns fire control system are both something that with slight adaptations can and were used on other aircraft, especially the engine's, more than anything else the cost of developing them should be subtracted from the cost of developing the B29.
Not sure it did but both were out of the axis's potential
@@Eric-kn4yn
It did, but as I explained in the post above your's I don't think that's a fair assessment, the cost of developing the engine's shouldn't be added onto the books of the B29 because they were being developed anyways, it's just that because of the timeline they were being developed at the same time the B29 was.
There's other things on the B29 that like the engine's also shouldn't be included in it's price tag and for that same reason, subtract just the cost of the engine and the defensive guns fire control system development and then see what the price of developing the B29 looks like, I'll bet it was less than developing the bomb if you do that.
@@dukecraig2402 of course, the costs of developing the a-bomb "firsts" went on to be used on many (MANY) latter bomb designs too
Just realized in video games I attack from the right almost always given the choice vs. left. I think it has to do with being right handed and you'll be leading your target to the right also. More comfortable than leading right I guess.
thanks for posting 🙂
Boy,it`s a big plane .I have a model kit of it in 1:48 and it`s huge! Thanks for the great information.Greetings from Norway.
Another great informative presentation on WW2 bomber operation. I am always astounded at the detail of your presentation. Also the B-29 fire control was quite an advanced system for its time. Your research is outstanding. How do you find all this information?
Impressive video on the aiming system of the B-29! I always knew how complicated this system was but I was very surprised that it was quite effective even against the P-51 claims by knocking down Japanese fighters as I always thought that the precision was so so against them. A very good job you did as always 👍👍👍👍🍾🎅🎅☃️
Excellent channel is excellent
Great information.
Very well narated. Good info.
Excellent analysis! I wonder about the effectiveness of the A-26 Invader gunner. He sat on a similar barber chair and controlled both upper and lower remote turrets by means of a monocular gunsight periscope. Most surprising is the fact that there is no B-29 type computer to make the aiming calculations.
Great video
Pre LeMay version.
I enjoyed this, well done, thank you.
fascinating stuff.
Love the ashtray.
excellent
WELL DONE.
There are many reasons why they call this the Greatest Generation, this is one of them.
Your videos are excellent 👍🇭🇲
The astonishing technology of the B-29 was a prodigy of American design, craftsmanship, production engineering, and the ingenious integration of sub-assemblies.
Wonderful
the technology in these planes is incredibly impressive
merry xmas great site
Shout out to the Museum of Flight (Tukwila, WA) for letting you use "T-Square 54".
I remember sledding on a clear plastic half bubble in the snow.
The girl's dad told me it had been from a B-29!
Not sure if it was true, but a good story.
Did the left right bias in Japanese attacks have anything to do with the location of the sun?
Now that's a good idea! B-29s mostly flew north to their targets, and if they left around dawn, that would put them over targets around noon, so sun position might not have mattered as much. But maybe they left earlier, putting the sun on the right side inbound when it was more important to shoot them down and they were slower and lower.
Or maybe it related to geography. B-29s crossed the south east coast, and defenders coming from the islands would attack from the left, maybe not have time to cross and turn around to attack out of the sun.
Attack bias maybe to do with the handedness of the pilot? A bit out there I know.
I suspect it had to do with the torque of the Japanese planes engines. If the propeller turns to the left that would make the plane roll faster to left and slower to the right. So once the completed their attack they would turn to leave.. faster roll, faster turn, less exposure.
@@deafsmith1006 ...rather, the opposite. When a propeller is left-turning, gyroscopic result does help the plane to roll faster to right.
@@francescofissore161 Well I wonder which way the Japanese planes props turned!
The apparent wingspan of the approaching aircraft will be different depending on the angle of approach. Can the system adjust for aspect?
at 0:38, please what is that strange object - almost a shorter 'fifth gun' (of course it wasn't) being centered, and beneath the four guns? Always seen it on a four-gun turret (the two-gun ones didn't have it) and never found any explaination.
Thanx!!!
Good stuff. My Dad was an FE, with 17 missions over Japan, and another 10 or so over Korea (they were withdrawn). My Dad also mentioned that the fire control system was the most troublesome electrical system on the aircraft; right after the engines....
His missions were at night, where there was little fighter opposition. In fact so little the turrets were removed, and tactics changed to low altitude. I bring this up because "kill ratios" can be misleading: was this kill ratio across the ENTIRE span of B-29 ops i.e. from China to the end? Or just up until tactics changed?
A bomber approaching Japan from the South in the AM would have the sun on its Right side. Japanese pilots may have preferred to try and strike from out of the Sun.
The orientation of the side blister gunner's seat relative to his site looks awkward. Seat faces forward and site is 90 degrees off that axis. Does the seat rotate? Great video, BTW.
Well done. It's not possible to know, but it would have been very interesting to have seen how the higher B-29 speed, fire control system, and larger number of guns, would have affected the best Japanese pilots (early in the war), and especially the superb German fighter pilots in the European theater in 1943, in the absence of P-51's . . . .
How reliable were the gun systems if they went off line was there a backup system manually operation of any kind
It's quite possible that the Japanese only preferred attacking from the right because of flight characteristics of their fighters. Most were limited in turn to one way or the other because of the torque of the engine. That made it easier to turn one way but harder the other, plus not having hydraulic enhanced controls. Maybe it was better for them to come from that direction and fire and peel away faster? It's just a theory. We did recover an A6M2 from the alutean islands and learned the flight characteristics of that model. So maybe.
The Central Fire Control system was manned by an enlisted gunner, not an officer.
Yeah i like your channel
Great video. Even with gun cameras, I take the 11:1 claim of the P-51, if it supposed to be air to air, with a big grain of salt, regardless if against the Japanese or Germans. Witness confirmation was considered enough... The Corsair was supposed to be 11:1 against the Japanese, yet a detailed study of Japanese Zero losses conducted on an air to air, encounter per encounter basis show a typical 1:1 ratio for the entire first year of the Corsair's service. Which is astonishing. This despite what I consider to be the Zero's abyssmal wing mounted Type 99-I, which got even slower firing in the later high velocity models... P-51 ground kills were counted, P-47 kills were added to the P-51 when some groups changed over, so there are a lot of issues with these ratios. Japan had 1% of US fuel output, Germany 2.5%, so if ground kills are included that would explain a lot...
Great technology for that time.
I would love to see this in action. I'm thinking the coordination between the three gunners not withstanding the bombadier had to have been precise.
Amazing video. Love watching these videos (even though I’m not smart enough to understand most of the charts, haha). After watching this, is it at all possible for you to make a video on what the chances of the turrets on a B-29 getting destroyed due either to getting directly hit from enemy fire and/or having their electronics such as cables and the computers themselves are?
I couldn’t imagine it would be too difficult to make a turret inoperable with just some 20mm rounds directly into an electric cable
I was an air defense gunner in the Army back in the 80's, with the exception of our gun sights having a ranging radar that eliminated us having to manually range the target so the computer can know how far away it is to compensate for bullet drop and lead these systems are remarkably similar to ours, like ours you can bet that in the event of battle damage or just plain system failure the gunners could switch to "manual mode" and use good old fashioned Kentucky windage when firing on their target.
Also given that the B29 had a kill to loss ratio of over 11.7 to 1 against the Japanese fighter's you can bet that one of them getting close enough to damage a B29 in one of those specific areas wasn't a common occurrence, when it did happen it was just pot luck.
In regards to his charts, I screen shot them so I can go back and look at them later to figure them out in relationship to the material he's presenting, like me you're probably smart enough to use them but just not in the short amount of time he has them up on the screen.
@@dukecraig2402 tHANKS FOR YOUR SERVICE! as far as reading his charts, i usually watch these videos at 90%speed slows it down just enough that you can actually read the charts while hes talking about a specific detail. if i need to i pause it. i dont want to miss them, he puts a lot of time pulling all this $hit lol! great content here and greg's airplanes. they are both very knowledgeable in this genre.
@@TRUMP_WAS_RIGHT_ABOUT_EVRYTHNG
I appreciate the sentiment but no thanks are necessary, it was honor and a privilege to wear the uniform of my country and those who came before me.
Just enjoy your freedoms and don't trample on other people's freedoms and that's thanks enough for me.
Yes, this channel and Greg's are both excellent, they both dispell a lot of WW2 aviation myths and that's because they both use credible sources for their information like official USAAF and NACA reports and records for their source material, unlike all those other channels that just use other videos as their source material that at the end of the day are just repeating the same old myths and misinformation that was started by hack aviation historians years ago, because they didn't do the proper research into matters or misinterpreted the information they found resulting in these myths that have become established facts over the years as far as most people are concerned.
Greg is excellent for taking those NACA reports and turning them into what us non pilots can understand, but most importantly is the fact that being an airline pilot he's educated in aviation to a level that when he looks at those NACA reports he doesn't misinterpret the information in them like a non pilot, or worse yet someone that has a pilots license but only flies Cessna's on the weekends, might misinterpret it.
Even though I'm not a pilot I've seen errors in information in online articles written by weekend pilots about things like the supercharger systems on some WW2 aircraft, one guy wrote that the reason that the Merlin engine worked better than the Allison engine in the P51 is because when the Allison was put in the P51 it didn't have a supercharger but the Merlin had a turbo (I swear to God that's what the guy said, I didn't mistakingley quote him and you didn't misread that), so that's why when they put the Merlin in the P51 it was so much better, even though the guy is only a weekend Cessna pilot can you believe he actually said that in an online article? And because he is an actual pilot and he wrote that in an online article people who read it and don't know any better are going to walk around thinking it's true because they heard it from a pilot, wow, that's amazing, absolutely amazing.
Another great example is all the claims that've been thrown around over the years that the Norden bombsight was inaccurate, that's a classic example of hack historians claiming that because of them not doing the proper research or just repeating each other, all they do is take the overall results of bombs dropped and attributed every one that didn't hit a target to the Norden bombsight, they never subtract the results from bombs dropped using the ground scanning radar from their math, and a very high percentage of the bombs dropped used that instead of optically sighting with the Norden bombsight especially during the winter months when visibility was bad, and they don't subtract the results of bombs that didn't hit the target because an entire formation was flown to the wrong target and bombed it because the lead navigator made an error and flew them there, that counts as zero bombs on target and blamed on the Norden bombsight.
This channel has shown, using the credible sources it does, that when the Norden bombsight was used and a formation wasn't bombing the wrong target due to things like navigation errors that it was incredibly accurate.
@@dukecraig2402 hahah i think i have seen a video on YT about that merlin P51 comment! I had no idea i was interested in airplanes until one late late night i woke up to one of gregs videos playing and ive been hooked! any other channels you recommend? thanks! Merry Christmas
@@TRUMP_WAS_RIGHT_ABOUT_EVRYTHNG
When it comes to WW2 aviation this channel and Greg's are the only two I recommend to people because they're really the only two I know of that are credible because they present all the sources for their information, all the other one's just repeat what they hear on other videos, you ever notice how they don't list their references and sources on other channels? That's because they're references and sources aren't credible that's why, they just sit around all day watching other nonsense videos and then repeat what they saw and heard.
The P51/Merlin SNAFU that I was talking about wasn't from a video or the comments in one it was from an online article I read that was actually written by a pilot, he only flies Cessna's and has never flown an aircraft with a supercharged engine but still, you'd think he'd know what he was talking about, and anyone who doesn't know any better that read that nonsense is going to be going around in life arguing with people feeling like he's 100% right because he learned it from an actual pilot, "he must know what he's talking about he's a pilot", yea, some poor guy's gonna be going around arguing with people saying "No, Allison's didn't have any kind of supercharger and Merlin's had a turbo, I know I'm right, I learned it from a pilot, he'd know", when in fact there's absolutely nothing that's correct about that, it's wrong in every possible way, we're talking light years beyond a typo, that poor guy's in for a rude awakening one day.
This channel has dispelled one of the greatest WW2 myths and he did it with actual records and reports, and that's the myth that the Norden bombsight was inaccurate, all of the reasons why that myth got started years ago are too long to list in a post, but the single biggest reason is the fact that all the supposed authorities on the subject came to the determination that it was inaccurate based on looking at the total number of bombs dropped by US bombers and then taking all of them that missed their target and blaming it all on the Norden bombsight, when in fact the majority of bombs dropped by US bombers weren't aimed using the Norden bombsight, instead they were aimed using the H2X ground scanning radar to aim them especially during the winter months when visibility hardly ever gave them the chance to optically sight the targets, subtract the results from missions that didn't use the Norden along with the results from the missions where the lead navigator flew the entire formation to the wrong target and it getting bombed resulting in a zero bombs on target score and you'll see that the Norden bombsight was incredibly accurate, when they had clear skies and could actually use it and they weren't bombing the wrong target due to navigational errors they plastered the targets.
It's hysterical that all those other supposed experts on US bombers never even mention the H2X system in their videos and that's because despite being "experts" on the matter they've never even heard of it, much less know to subtract the results from when it was used when evaluating the Norden bombsight.
There actually is one other channel I'll pay attention to concerning WW2 aviation and that's a channel called "The Warbird Mistress", she also does actual research on things instead of learning from other videos.
Should do the B36 that had a similar system
The left/right attack bias may be because the propeller torque reaction of Japanese fighter aircraft
7:50 if hes not there?
Do you mean if hes been vaporized by a 20mm flying through the glass window?
man the story he told his grandkids about the time he was dangling from a b29 at 20000 feet😂
6:45👍
B-2 or b-21 has one?
How did they see out of the bottom?
1 belt "equates to" 500 rounds. At 14 rounds per second, this "equates to" 36/7 seconds of firing before you run out of ammunition. What did the gunner do when the ammunition ran out?
The difference between left and right is not very much, 15% vs. 20%. However, if a pilot is sweeping in to attack it is more comfortable and intuitive for a pilot to want look out the left side of the cockpit because of the location of the throttle, he is leaning toward the throttle rather than away from it. Again, the difference is slight.
Charlie "Mister Majestic" Bronson was a B-29 nose-gunner.
Well, jolly good.
6:44 it even comes with an ashtray.. like can you imagine a bunch of bored and sometimes mortally stressed dudes puffing away for hours in a space like that.
The cots were in there so they could sleep... 10-12 or more hr flights.
Did the guns have some sort of safety system to avoid shooting their own plane? Did B-17s and B-24s have a similar system?
Some warships had metal bars around them to keep barrels from aiming at own ship. I bet WW II turrets had something similar.
Yes. Electrical interrupters that stopped them from pointing it at such as the tail fin. You could swing the guns past the tail but they would not fire as it came to point at the tail.
@@deafsmith1006 i was always blown away that they had the machine guns and cannons able to fire through the friggin propellors
! when i learned how they accomplished it i was even more amazed. freaking nuts.
You weren't listening
@@TRUMP_WAS_RIGHT_ABOUT_EVRYTHNGww1 1914 had fire through propellers interruptiours
Why didn’t the gunners use tracers? My Grandfather (ball turret/b-17G “American Beauty” 486th BG 834th BS) told me tracers were a big part of their air gunnery use.
Curious to know what about the oxygen equipment enhanced their night vision.
Possibly the body shuts down blood flow to what evolution has deemed the less important parts when deprived of oxygen, sort of like hypothermia shuts down peripheral blood flow. It might even be the same mechanism.
I thought it was carrots 🥕
@@grizwoldphantasia5005
Careful, you are making evolution sound like intelligent design, lol...
@@neighbor-j-4737 Not at all. Evolution itself is just another form of spontaneous organization, like markets. Read "I, Pencil" for another example. Or as they might have said, "the result of natural action but not natural design."
@@grizwoldphantasia5005
Dear Lord, evolution doesn't "deem" anything, son...
Perhaps we are just simply created to function better with oxygenated blood at high altitudes.
In the final frame: that’s a Tony.
if one ever has the Privilege to hear was 50's Air service tuned twins fire together? they sound rather like an MG? just a BURRRR that ocellates as each has rhythm's slightly different, and if they are dumping tracers at night? WOW! kinda like watching a Mini dump! like a "Fire Hose"!!
One of the KOOLEST things I ever witnessed. and to ad to my Awwwed Slack Jawed look, about half the rounds where ROFUS! with reactive targets!
I "Will Never Forget" !!
Thanks for this presious information, yours soviet spy
The thumbnail of this video looks like a 'space-shuttle door gunner' meme 😅
It baffles my mind how these airplanes had such advanced technology 80 years ago. Calling a compuer, well, a computer! They had computing power, and yes it's indeed a second brain.
Api is fire in bahasa Malaysia.
I thought everyone knew you can only attack a b-29 from the left
casual ash tray next to all the oxygen 😂
The 11.7/1 Kill ratio is far off, if you count civilians, it's about 5,000/1. A record never broken, not even by the notorious B-767, with an also troubling, 1,500/1 ratio
Cool.
I heard somewhere in YT - _Curious Droid,_ I believe, and he is by no means some retard - that these turrets worked so horribly that the manufacturer gave up improving them and they ended up all removed! Only the tail guns remained, but these were conventional design. Interestingly, I own a 1945 Portuguese Language issue of the Readers Digest magazine with an article that highly commends the B-29 and her remotely controlled turrets! The frequent engine fires and issues with the turrets were a well kept secret. An article made for Japanese reading mostly, I guess... 😀
First~meh