Historical practice when engaged during recon missions?

[Voyager]

So I know for fighter sweeps, if you hit enemy fighters, you keep on the sweep unless you're low on fuel/ bullets, and on bombing runs, your goal is to get through the fighter cover to drop your bombs on the other side, but what did recon planes usually do after being engaged by enemy air? 

 

Was to typical doctrine to press on and try and finish all the recon points, or were they generally supposed to break off and return after being engaged, on the assumption that half a film roll was better than none? 

[Charon]

Run, typically. Recon planes (and this is a *very* broad category, but we'll consider a converted fighter like a P-38/F-5, or a fast bomber like a Mosquito) needed to avoid interception and return home. Unlike bombers, there's no point in hitting the target if they die in doing so. And they had very few defenses other than speed and altitude.

 

Even friendly planes could cause an abort:

 

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Fighter pilots were often told to leave friendly recon planes alone, but many long-range missions were aborted when an overeager fighter pilot swung in for a closer look and the recce pilot dropped his external tanks to make a run for it. From a distance, Thunderbolts might look like Fw 190s, and Mustangs could be taken for Bf 109s, but nothing else at 30,000ft looked like an F-5 and once those fuel tanks were gone, the long range mission was over. Mosquitos were equally distinctive, so the loss of intelligence from friendly fighter intercepts was inexcusable when it was so unnecessary.

Late war conditions over Europe had clouds of US fighters over Germany and a few awesomely deadly Me 262 jets to contend for the interest of recon pilots. This resulted in a lot of aborted Allied recon missions, and friendly fighters as escort became the only solution, even for the fleet Mosquito.

Stanley, WWII Photo Intelligence, p218

This forum thread is I think informative; it's about bombers, but the flight plans used by the lone, high-flying Ju 86Ps were very similar to what the 86R recon planes would have flown

 

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Climbing away at full throttle, the Spitfire went up like a lift but there was a long way to go – 40,000ft is about 7.5 miles up. I climbed in a wide spiral over Northolt to 15,000ft then the ground controller informed me that the incoming aircraft was over mid-Channel and heading towards the Portsmouth area, I was ordered onto a south-westerly heading to cut him off. After several course corrections I finally caught sight of the enemy aircraft as it was flying up the Solent, I was at about 40,000ft and he was slightly higher and out to starboard. I continued my climb and headed after him, closing in until I could make out the outline of a Junkers 86, By then, I was about half a mile from him and we were both at 42,000ft to the north of Southampton.

The German crew had obviously seen me, because I saw the bomb jettison, the aircraft nose go up to gain altitude and turn for home. My Spitfire had plenty of performance in hand, however. I jettisoned my 30-gal slipper tank and had little difficulty in following him in the climb and getting about 200ft above the bomber. At this stage I kept reminding myself “Take it easy, conserve your strength, keep icy calm”. The grey-blue Junkers seemed enormous and it trailed a long, curling condensation trail. It reminded me of a film I had once seen of an aerial view of an ocean liner ploughing through a calm sea and leaving a wake.

Edited May 18, 2022 by Charon

[EAF19_Marsh]

Climb like hell seems to have been the rule of thumb.

[Robli]

19 hours ago, Voyager said:

So I know for fighter sweeps, if you hit enemy fighters, you keep on the sweep unless you're low on fuel/ bullets

 

I guess ROE could vary in various situations, but often the main point of fighter sweeps was engaging enemy fighters and that way wearing down enemy's air power. Generally the side with less fighters (RAF during BoB and Luftwaffe during later Channel battles) tried to avoid fighter-vs-fighter engagements and largely tried to ignore these sweeps and sent out own fighters only when there was also a bomber threat involved.

 

What comes to recon missions, then I guess the ROE could vary there, too, depending on the importance of the mission, but I would guess that most often the crews that came under attack just tried to do what they could to save their asses in any way they could, instead of just pressing on and accepting high probability of being shot down.

[357th_KW]

Written by Clyde B East, a F-6 pilot with the 15th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, 9th Air Force

 

“By the time the smoke cleared, I had raised my score to twelve victories, but was a little disheartened at the reception I received back at my base. For whatever reason, both Lee and I ruffled a lot of feathers on that mission. Maj. Gen. Otto Weyland, commander of Ninth Air Force Tactical, was enraged with us. He made his point quite clear: “Recce people need to forget about shooting down airplanes and concentrate on being recce pilots. We have fighter outfits that should be doing that—you people need to worry about taking photos and gathering intelligence! Your primary role is to gather info, collect it, and bring it home, not mixing it up with other airplanes and chancing getting shot down! You will not attack any more airplanes unless you are attacked first—that’s an order!” With all due respect to the general, we were the ones on the front lines. As recce pilots, we knew our job better than anyone else, and we certainly knew it was our business to shoot down enemy airplanes. I suspect the complaints came from some other fighter groups that were jealous, because as recces we were free roamers with more opportunities to mix it up with the Luftwaffe. I may have been young, but I was far from stupid. I made a vow that if I got into another combat, all I would say was, “He came out of the sun, guns-a-blazing!”

[Juri_JS]

On 5/17/2022 at 4:20 PM, Voyager said:

Was to typical doctrine to press on and try and finish all the recon points, or were they generally supposed to break off and return after being engaged, on the assumption that half a film roll was better than none? 

For Luftwaffe recon units flying the Bf-109 I think there was no clear rule. But from reading mission reports it's noticeable, that recon pilots on the western front were much more cautious and mission were usually broken off when engaged or when radar operators reported approaching enemy fighters.

Recon pilots on the eastern front were apparently less risk-averse, maybe because they didn't had to fear being tracked by enemy radar and therefore the risk of being intercepted was much lower.

 

The Luftwaffe did not generally discourage their recon pilots from attacking targets of opportunity and some achieved surprisingly high numbers of aerial victories.

[Voyager]

Interesting. Been flying a campaign in Flying Circus that has a lot of photorecon missions in it, and realized most of the time I run into enemy planes, it's on the return flight. 

 

These are usually flown in 2-seaters so running away is not necessarily all that viable. I kind of figure if he's vectored in on me, I usually figure one of us isn't going home.