How accurate can U.S. fighter-bombers be?

[TRDG]

Thanks PD, nice post there from you, is there any report anywhere that a US plane actually did something like this in a town at all?

Cheers

Tom

[Aussie Dave]

Originally Posted by Pirate-Drakk

Fighters were very inaccurate when dropping bombs in WWII.

Even with a level bomber and a Norden bomb site it was hard to hit anything reliably. This is why tactical planes that were designed to drop bombs for close air support or on ships were generally DIVE BOMBERS. A dive bomber was pretty accurate because the bomb trajectory was nearly a straight line from the plane to the ground. The less arc in the bomb trajectory, the more accurate the attacks could be made.

Fighter planes lacked dive brakes and mechanical computers so they couldn't do level bombing very well and they couldn't do dive bombing very well either. I suspect the rocket attacks were actually more accurate in general because the rocket trajectory was more predictable even though they were unguided like the bombs.

Strafing was far more effective for a fighter, and if you look at the B-25 Mitchell, and the A-20 medium bombers they gave up on bombs for precision attacks and switched over to massive numbers of .50 cal MGs later in the war to great effect. The P-47 fighter was famed for it's 8 .50s but you never hear what a great bomb dropper it was...

Hitting a small target such as a tank with a fighter dropping a bomb is certainly possible, but difficult at best, even for the best of fighter pilots.

I have to agree with this entirely.

WWII Fighter A/C like the P-51 were designed solely for an air combat role. and were fitted with GUN sights NOT BOMB sights.
With any dumb bombs a fighter dropped, the release point would have to done soley on pilot intuition and guess work.

While it isn't impossible that a fighter could destroy a stationary tank in a town with an aerial 'dumb' bomb, it is however extremely unlikely it would have been as accurate and actually hit its target.

More Hollywood Movie BS I'm afraid.


Cheers,
Dave

[TRDG]

Remember it was actually moving towards the bridge at the time as well LOL.

I bet somewhere, someone was good enough to do this at some point for all the pilots in the war, but a rare bird I bet.

Cheers, thanks for the comments guys, keep em' coming.

Tom

[Aussie Dave]

Originally Posted by TRDG

Remember it was actually moving towards the bridge at the time as well LOL.

I bet somewhere, someone was good enough to do this at some point for all the pilots in the war, but a rare bird I bet.

Cheers, thanks for the comments guys, keep em' coming.

Tom

Sorry Tom, my mistake.
Its been a long time since I last watched SPR and I forgot the tank was moving in the film.
(My SPR DVD has been awol for years now and I haven't replaced it.)

Cheers,
Dave

[Pirate-Drakk]

Originally Posted by McCoy

The main reason for that was that they were used for accurate skipbombin' in the PTO, they litteraly hosed the target with lead on the inflight. It was an effective tactic against Japanese ships in PTO.

Skip bombing was a partial solution to the difficulties of hitting a moving ship with even a low altitude level bombing attack. Even with multiple bombs and a BOMB SITE it was extremely difficult to put the bombs on the target and hit rates were very low before skip bombing.

Bear in mind that ships are MUCH larger then tanks, skip bombing doesn't work on land, and fighters tended to only have a few (or only one) bombs to drop so the difficulties were compounded for a fighter.

[TRDG]

No prob Dave, I do that myself more than once in a while here...LOL

Just speculating here, but I bet it was a "natural skill" rather than a trained one, some pilots may have just had the feel of it, dropping their bombs on target be they moving or stationary. I really hope someone finds something, be it a book or site that supports something along the lines of tanks being hit accuratly by fighter/bombers as such. I can't beleave nothing is documented on this subject at all, at least that I know of, strange....unless it never really happened and it was always a "lucky" hit.

Cheers

Tom

[TSPhillips]

Actually, there is a military channel documentary that showcased Jug pilots, who routinely carried two five hundred pounders and rockets. They interspersed interviews of surviving pilots with combat footage, mostly stock. One of the stories involved a jug pilot in communication with infantry who had managed to get themselves cornered in a town, with what they said was a Tiger tank advancing on them. They called for the pilot to bomb the tank, and he replied that the tank was too close to them. They replied that if he missed and killed them, it wouldn't make a difference because the tank had them dead to rights. So, this jug pilot rolls in and pickles a bomb on this tank, destroying it and saving the ground pounders. The pilot said it was the best shot he'd ever made under difficult circumstances. So difficult, yes. Impossible, no. There are several good books that chronicle the low level duties the jug was famous for. The fighter-bomber boys is one of them.

[Pirate-Drakk]

I suspect that Wittman's 007 Tiger was destroyed by a bomb from a plane. If you look at the pictures the entire turret was blown off, but there's no indication that the ammo exploded or the tank burned. How else do you blow off a turret like that? The fact that various ground pounders argue about who shot Wittman is further evidence that NONE of them did. Wittman was also very experienced at avoiding other tanks in battle. However, from inside a tank, an airplane can sneak up on you very fast and I don't think the sky view was very good (if it even existed) from a buttoned up Tiger.

This is purely my own biased opinion, but it is based on the evidence I have seen/read.

[TRDG]

I still go for the Firefly theory myself, if we had a pic of the top of the Tiger, maybe we could see things a bit different. Maybe some of the ammo went off, but was put out after the tank round caused the explosion and the turret flew off. One other thing is that there are no bomb craters that I can see near the wreck either, so just 1 bomb........??

Thanks TS, I'll see if I can locate that book, any other recomends here besides that one?

Cheers

Tom

[Pirate-Drakk]

Originally Posted by TRDG

I still go for the Firefly theory myself, if we had a pic of the top of the Tiger, maybe we could see things a bit different. Maybe some of the ammo went off, but was put out after the tank round caused the explosion and the turret flew off. One other thing is that there are no bomb craters that I can see near the wreck either, so just 1 bomb........??

Thanks TS, I'll see if I can locate that book, any other recomends here besides that one?

Cheers

Tom

One thing I didn't mention was that BOTH tracks are blown off the tank near where the turret lies. That is a unlikely event and almost requires that the Firefly round penetrate both sides of the Tiger hull. It's not impossible but unlikely. The truth will probably never be known for certain.

More pics from more angles would be helpful. If there was an obvious hull in the side of the tank it would make it easier to figure out.