BOC: Me.262s (Was - Re: Buck Benefit / BOC fanatic chec

[Ted Jackson jr. EL84]

> From:          Jon Jarrett <jaj20 at HERMES.CAM.AC.UK>
         Only problem with that interp. is it's hard to see why the bombers
> would be "eager to feed" compared to the other possibility, Von Ondine's
> bullets. But you're right, US bombers flew naked, basically because you
> could see their vapour trails for 200 miles anyway... But of course these
> are Englishmen, who didn't fly Fortresses and at this point one has got
> to stop taking it that seriously...
>
But not at that stage of the war.  By then, the AAF had begun
outfitting P52s and P47s with external fuel tanks, enabling them to
escort the forts all the way into Deutschland and back...



> > As far as the statement about the "great/gray silver slugs in my snout" as
> previously pointed out,
> > the 262 had anywhere from two to six 20mm (MK 108) cannon in the nose, while
> most of the Luftwaffe fighters

I could've sworn they used 30MM cannon [which would've fired even
slower]...

> > used 7.9 mm machine guns (the 20mm's had a slow rate-of-fire compared to the
> 7.9's. Fine when
> >  you are busting bombers, but not so hot in a dogfight). There was a variant
> that had two 20MM and four 30MM

oops, sorry!

> > (don't think this version ever went into production). There was even a
> version that had a 50MM cannon
> > (two foot long projectile!) that was used for busting tanks.
>
>         Way I read it, that one was a bomber-destroyer, and couldn't be
> used because the muzzle flash blinded the pilot - bad when flying straight
> into a bomber formation...
>
Remember that Wolf was convinced the best way to utilize the 262 [at
first, anyway] was as a fighter bomber.  The 262 was operational at
the end of '42, I believe, but not employed as a bomber destroyer
until the war was essentially over for the Blitzkriek boys...
theo