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Originally Posted by horseback
In the USN/USMC during WWII, the vast majority of fighters' guns were sighted in at 1000 ft, period. BuAer was pretty strict about it. The main exception was for night fighters, which were generally boresighted at about 200 yards.
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Good info.
Quote:
Originally Posted by horseback
When you compare the accuracy of a turret mount in a B-17 to a scarff ring mount in a G4M, that is comparing apples to watermelons.
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On a related note, operational histories for the B-29 indicate that the long 20 mm cannon in the tail was removed from later models since it actually caused the tail of the plane to yaw when it was turned, due to slipstream effects. I have to wonder if there was something like that on the G4M, at least for certain models. In any case, it shows that even putting a "stinger" in the tail of a plane, where you'd expect that slipstream effects would be minimal wasn't always the case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by horseback
Clearly, you've never been in a ballpark any more than you've ever fired a real machine gun.
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Hey, play nice! You don't know where he's coming from.
Quote:
Originally Posted by horseback
Unless you found a way to set a formation of 8 aircraft, you had two formations of 4 aircraft, generally separated by about 700-1000m apart, too far away to lend mutual support except in rare instances where you wandered in between them.
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Additionally, the tail gun for the G4M1 only carried a limited number of rounds of ammunition and each drum of ammunition had to be manually changed (5 drums - one mounted, four stored, I forget if they were 20 or 50 rounds).
Quote:
Originally Posted by horseback
I used the standard high deflection attacks that were standard USN doctrine at the outset of the war (and were spectacularly effective when applied). I begin with an altitude advantage of 1000m or more, steeply diving from at least a five o'clock position, and usually more like 3:30-4 o'clock, which generally puts me past my target's tail at speeds around 320 knots, or over 360 mph/580 kph, and puts my target between me and his wingmen.
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This is the "pursuit curve" I mentioned in an earlier post. And, it wasn't just used by the USN.