B-17 vs Lancaster Payloads and Armor, the Truth!

[steven197106]

 

[BMA_FlyingShark]

Thanks, very interesting.

 

Have a nice day.

 

[Avimimus]

I really would need to see citations for the bombing accuracy claims.

 

My understanding has been that the Commonwealth practice  was that individual aircraft or small groups picking a course over the target and individually. When a single bombardier market target with flares it was a pathfinder flying at low altitudes. This means that for the Commonwealth (1) bombadier errors would tend to average out and (2) "bomb trains" would tend to criss-cross the target.  This meant that night bombing groups were often able to hit pinpoint targets as well (or better) than daylight bombers were.

In contrast, American daylight formations had to maintain their formations and drop their bombs simultaneously and usually relied on the lead aircraft to signal when to release the bombs from high altitude. American bombing was simply dependent on fewer bombardiers at higher altitudes (so errors wouldn't tend to follow a normal distribution), and the bombs were released while in formation (leading to a 'grid' of parallel rows of impacts). Essentially, the greater ease of interception meant that daylight bombing led a looser pattern of bomb impacts.

 

In any case, your claim that a 'bomb on target' was any bomb hitting within the city limits is simply erroneous: Even when targetting cities, the cities were broken up into multiple areas and each section of RAF bombers was given its own area to hit with its own aimpoints for reference.

 

P.S. Maneuverability also matters - especially for night combat where RAF bombers often relied on maneuverability to get out of the gunsights of attacking night-fighters. This is one area where the Lancaster was much more suitable as a bomber than the B-17 was... perhaps one of the reasons why RAF B-17s were quickly transfered to Coastal Command.

[unreasonable]

8 hours ago, Avimimus said:

I really would need to see citations for the bombing accuracy claims.

 

 

I agree. Apples and oranges. The problem for BC especially, was not so much bombing accuracy, as navigating accuracy.  Just finding targets at night, with cloud and ground smog, dummy fires, unknown wind speeds etc was a major undertaking.  Even USAAF formations bombing by day occasionally bombed completely the wrong city!

 

Once BC got better at finding their targets at night, their accuracy in hitting them could be very good.  If you want a fair comparison you would have to compare results for the late war raids on point targets (oil, marshalling yards etc), including the RAF daylight raids.   

 

Greg's overall point is well made, however: the carrying capacity of the two was very similar, but the trade-off of what to carry was different for tactical/doctrinal/practical reasons. 

 

 

[JtD]

The 1941 Butt report paints a drastic picture of low BC bombing accuracy, early war. Average of one in five "successful" attacks got within five miles of the target. So hit an area of 200km² around the target.

 

OTOH, by the end of the war, the BC was apparently capable of reliably hitting within a 25m radius around the target, from their usual bombing altitudes, owing to better equipment, training and procedures. They still went on and attacked mostly cities, so this accuracy was a bit wasted in many cases and might escape notice.

 

The 8th AF, which started operation nearly four years after the BC, certainly started with a higher accuracy than the early BC. The USAAF probably also was, for the most part, more accurate, in that it targeted and hit, unlike the BC, specific targets like factories and marshalling yards. It is, however, extremely difficult if not impossible to match 25m accuracy with unguided bombs from 8km up. In the end it imho boils down to how you define accurate - your capabilities or your practice.

[unreasonable]

BC also targeted and hit specific targets on occasion. During the build up to Overlord it carried out daylight raids on transport targets. It also hit oil targets by night, sometimes with the USAAF attacking the same target the previous or next day.  Of course most BC raids were targeting whole cities: as did 8th AF on occasion, eg Dresden.  

 

I recall reading somewhere that by the end of the war the joke was that BC carried out precision area bombing, while the 8th AF carried out area precision bombing.  

[Cybermat47]

24 minutes ago, unreasonable said:

I recall reading somewhere that by the end of the war the joke was that BC carried out precision area bombing, while the 8th AF carried out area precision bombing.  

 

It's interesting that RAFBC is considered to be the master of area bombing after the raids on Hamburg and Dresden killed around 67,600 people combined, when the USAAF XXI BC killed 100,000 people in a single night of bombing Tokyo. Though other factors, such as Japanese architecture and defenses, should be considered.

 

Regardless, Allied area bombing successes really highlight how out of their depth Germany and Japan were in WWII in terms of industry. With their inability to produce heavy bombers in large numbers, Germany's deadliest raid on London only killed 1,436 people, while it took the Japanese 268 raids on Chongqing to kill 10,000 people.

[Avimimus]

11 hours ago, unreasonable said:

I recall reading somewhere that by the end of the war the joke was that BC carried out precision area bombing, while the 8th AF carried out area precision bombing.  

 

Well, that is certainly a pithier and shorter way of making my point! ...and yes, I was thinking about 1944 onwards...

 

I suspect RAF daylight raids would've been less accurate (same necessity of flying in formations and keep to a higher altitude) except that they were operating in smaller groups... and of course, we're all assuming a moonlit night (or day for the might 8th) with no cloud cover in these comparisons...

 

I'll also note that effective area bombing does require placing bombs on flammable targets which haven't already been hit, and I suspect there is also something about having enough spacing between the areas hit in order to encourage firestorms (rather than putting out the fires you've started)... but it has been a long time since I read up on this.