Statistically speaking, the ball gunner and the tail gunner position were the safest positions on the airplane. The waist gunners were the most dangerous.
Warrior delenda est.
Statistically speaking, the ball gunner and the tail gunner position were the safest positions on the airplane.
Statistically speaking kys
I'm not sure how we are supposed to formulate a discussion around a statement of fact. so umm
ya..
I was surprised at the difference in statistic to perception. Most people think the ball gunner and the taint gunner were the most dangerous positions.
ok.
Turns out all that armor the tailgunner gets actually does something.
OP thank you for killing a Ukraine thread
>had friends do a dice roll to see what they'd get in our b17
>I got a 2 for tailgunner right away
gory gory what a hell of a way to die...
Also my dumb ass just numbered them based on the wounds category since it was first, you could number them in order of the plane in which case tail is 1, not 2.
did the tail gunners seriously have to sit on their knees like that? holy frick that looks like even worse than the ball turret
Could be worse.
>ich laufe auf Sonnenschein
>Combat fatigue
>Radio operator
How?
Ergonomics really weren't a thing until the later half of the 20th century, or never a thing if you were on the wrong side of the iron curtain. Pic related is the driver seat of a shilka; the perspective makes it hard to see, but the seat leans back and you can't be at rest without having the back of your head/shoulders on that bundle of wires.
Consider spending your sorties in the bowels of the aircraft, able to parse radio reports of other squadrons' losses, not able to see much outside except for brief interludes during which your aircraft is specifically under attack by fighters. Your overall knowledge of the situation is relatively high, your ability to influence to directly is exceedingly low.
I get it.
>Combat fatigue
>Radio operator
probably has something to do with the fact that there isn't enough oxygen at altitude and everybody was tethered to a life support system. the radio operator was probably the first to disconnect from it and conduct first aid and take someone else's gun position if needed. that "walk around" bottle only had 8 minutes of oxygen according to the video.
>Combat fatigue
>Radio operator
>How?
The prime factor in forming PTSD is being exposed to potential danger without any way of acting or retaliating. If you tell someone to sit still, you WILL be attacked, you won't know when and theres nothing you can do about it is the golden recipe for fricking someone's limbic system up.
There's a reason that counter-insurgency produces such high PTSD rates, and why those rates are especially bad amongst non-combat roles.
PTSD isn't real. Western manchildren who have never endured suffering in their pathetic lives should just man up and take it.
>PTSD isn't real.
Okay.
so the guy you wanted to be if you wanted to live was the flight engineer
>succeptable
>succepatable
succandfucc
>Combat fatigue
>Radio operator
>How?
literally survivorship bias
when it's the safest position in the aircraft, bullet wise, combat fatigue becomes the biggest problem
>bailout
Did the ball turret gunner get parachutes atleast? Still sucks to get shot out of the plane
Always wondered this: is there a safeguard so the upper turret can't accidently shoot off the tail?
most planes with rear gunners would have a lock in place that prevents the gun from firing at certain positions specifically to prevent this from happening
this would actually be simpler to implement on a powered turret, the trigger can literally just disconnect when the turret is pointing backwards
thanks
Motherfricking copilot
Where Sadam?
It's actually the radio position that's mostly likely to get hit
I miss that guy like you wouldnt believe
why the frick did it take them so long to realize you could just put some drop tanks on a fighter and have them escort the bombers through the most dangerous part of the missions?
I mean realistically, couldn't they have just put some drop tanks on P-47s, have them run off the drop tanks until they encountered the first enemy fighter force, engage them and then turn back with a full tank of fuel in the plane?
>drop tanks
Installing pumps on the plane, makes the plane heavier.
Installing pumps in the drop tanks means one pump per tank.
Electrical power / controls for pumps and tank jettison had to be designed and figured out.
Time spent doodling means the fighter would not be in production to be meat shields / weapon carriers for the conflict.
TL;DR - time
<- smart guy
lol no
https://www.quora.com/Why-were-P-38-fighters-not-used-more-as-heavy-bomber-escorts-in-Europe-early-in-WW2-given-their-2-200-mile-range-and-40-000-feet-ceiling/answer/Trent-Telenko?__filter__=&__nsrc__=2&__snid3__=5139187351
tl;dr Hap Arnold and the Bomber Generals specifically did not want fighters with drop tanks, because they thought that would take money and power away from their precious bomber programs.
Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles also shows this.
So you're saying it was tragically common for the waist gunner to
GET WAISTED?
Armor works. Now slap more of that shit onto the engines so they don't become stragglers.
But if the aircraft is shot down, they're shit out of luck. Can't fit parachutes in the turrets.
It's my understanding almost none of the crew had enough space to wear their parachutes at their station and had to put it on before jumping.
Tail gunners literally had the highest mortality rate moron
Begone, Fudd.
>Due to all missiles
>1117
That is both misspelled and a tiny sample size.
>That is both misspelled
It is not, and it refers to everything from flak shrapnel to rockets to MG/cannon fire.
>and a tiny sample size.
110+ aircraft is sufficient for statistical analysis.
It's less than 5% of the total casualties. Get the frick out of here.
https://achh.army.mil/history/book-wwii-woundblstcs-chapter9/#
They used a period of 3 months. 40 bomb groups, and almost 70k sorties overall.
You don't know statistics, don't you?
thats surprising. i was under the impression ball gunners were by far the worst spot. i wonder where i got that from
Probably because ball gunner feels the most exposed when you look at it, with nothing but the glass between him and the ground. But he's surrounded by bullet proof glass and steel armor.
some homosexual poet
if you think about it, this makes plenty of sense
intercepting fighters would go for centre of mass, so to speak, and that's where the flight crew and waist gunners are
>It's less than 5% of the total casualties
statistics 101, dude
obviously a sample that makes up a larger % of the population is more precise (aka less likely to be wrong), however the gain in precision diminishes rapidly past certain levels
in this case, 100+ aircraft (and therefore 100+ samples of each crew position) is perfectly adequate for most social studies
holy frick, imagine being a total in the B-17, you're literally guaranteed to get hit
Well son, where do you think the phrase "totalled" comes from when we're talkin' about cars bein' wrecked? Yep, it comes from the old World War 2. Now the Total was the gunner position who controlled all the other positions, see, but it was also the most dangerous because the german planes, see, they were armed with both Schmeisser and Spandau machine guns and they both fired about 10,000 rounds per minutes straight through any known armor.
Because the Total was so vulnerable and because the germans were all crack ace shots, unlike our own boys, just look how many planes their aces shot down they could shoot out the Total immediately and leave the plane defenseless as the rest of the gunners now had to shoot without direction.
Isn't this "fact" used as a cautionary tale about survivor bias in statistics? You can only get this data from planes that survive a mission.
thats the bullet hole problem, where they needed to know where to put the armor on a plane because they cant just go around armoring the whole thing
and their conclusion was that the places that got hit were the places that could afford to take a hit and still make it back home, and so they put a bit of steel around the engines and strengthened the tail assembly
though most accounts make it sound like the statistician in question just looked at the picture of the bombers and pointed to the conspicuously bullet-free areas of the plane where the fuel tanks would be
it was actually the product of several days of analysis
If a plane doesn't survive the mission, then *everybody* is a casualty. Thus, survivorship bias only weakly applies (a loss varies the ratios a little by adding "+1" to every column). A total loss doesn't tell you which positions were safer or more dangerous in relation to each other.
>unprotected fuel tanks are vulnerable
>shoot down hundreds of planes by igniting the fuel tanks
>"whole plane is a total loss, there was nothing we could do"
idiot
Honestly being curled up in the ball seems pretty comfy and you're able to shoot at the most stuff. Probably feels like you're protecting your friends and you can make a difference.
Inspired by the Queen of the Skies anon I got my hands on a brand new unopened Target for Today, which cranks the autism up a few notches to the point where you can simulate your entire fricking bomber group. I can attest that waist gunners take a lot of heat but so far it’s more like anyone in the tailend Charlie positions is just going to get fricking annihilated (playing a late war campaign so German jets absolutely rape my crews when/if they show up)
Make a thread and let us all play already.
QotS/RtW anon here, I'm still around. Unfortunately my entire department is being laid off in a merger, so I've been far too busy to continue running the threads for now
>Unfortunately my entire department is being laid off in a merger
I'm sorry to hear your job is lost, a lot of it about right now.
Ah geez, that sucks man. Good luck, stay alive my guy
Damn, keep your head up son, take care of yourself
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
BY RANDALL JARRELL
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
The courage of these guys is incredible, you can hear them master the terror and stay professional and calm
8:43-8:58 when the gunner shoots the fighter down
Hard to take them seriously with their accents, but I really liked the bit where they all cheered the gunner for downing the fighter.
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
Pic Paddy Finucane,Wing Commander Brendan Eamonn Fergus Finucane, DSO, DFC & Two Bars, known as Paddy Finucane amongst his colleagues, was an Irish Second World War Royal Air Force fighter pilot and flying ace.On 15 July 1942, Finucane took off with his flight for a mission over France. His Spitfire was damaged by ground-fire. Finucane attempted to fly back to England across the English Channel but was forced to ditch into the sea and subsequently vanished. He was 21
>I know that I shall meet my fate
>Somewhere among the clouds above
based
I just realized something — pressurized cabins were a luxury in ww2 weren’t they?
The B-29 was the first American bomber to have a pressurized cabin.
I dont think it made them feel any better about being stuffed into their cope ball for hours.
Lemme out of here, Anon! Don't leave meeee!
they could have just loosened some bolts and he'd have been fine.
Statistically speaking, I will never be a fighter / bomber pilot