How The Luftwaffe Wanted to Defeat the B-17

today's episode is sponsored by the free-to-play game war thunder which i will use to give you visual examples of how german pilots engaged b-17 heavy bombers during world war ii if you are like me and into planes or perhaps you prefer tanks or ships war thunder's wide selection of vehicles has got you covered get started with warfunder by using the link in the description below to sign up for free and receive a sign up bonus more information on warfunder and your bonus later on in the video hi everyone it's chris for military aviation history and today i want to talk to you about how the germans tried to defeat the b-17 heavy bomber you might have read about how german pilots supposedly always went for sort of a head-on attack against b17s and how only that ensured that the bomber went down every single time well sometimes it is good to go back to original documents and actually check what the actual experience reports of the time from pilots and fighter squadrons say and compare that to what we see and read nowadays today's document then comes from july 1943 and it is a collection of reports from different german yakishwada fighter squadrons of course about their real combat experience against heavy bombers primarily the b-17 and i found this report in one of my visits to the german military archive this document right here was distributed at a very high level so we have the furious adjutant office of the wehrmacht we have the general staff of the rice marshall herrmann gerhard and then of course the various offices in the luftwaffe as well that are sort of in relation to this sort of problem uh the different fighter squadrons and then of course some of the academies as well the luftwaffe academies like the one for example at berlin gato in any case uh the document here is a collection of reports from yachty it's why you're getting if you're getting sexy monsters that i collect in this video as a sort of executive summary before i do that however i'm going to pull out three quotes here from the introduction of this document from the general the jacques flieger that was adolf garland at the time although of course it's not sure that he's actually the one that wrote it it's most likely an orderly that did he just sign it it starts out with addressing a reported problem in various experience reports the lack of a large caliber weapon enabling long engagement ranges as well as the numerical inferiority and the lack of high altitude fighters to bind enemy escorts was especially emphasized recognizing that these elements are problematic the introduction nonetheless continues by saying under no circumstance may these deficiencies be a reason for limited success the majority of the units were able to overcome these difficulties or are on the way to do so the road to success starts with a hard and ruthless leadership look that is looking for a fight it ends with a unit in which all pilots see within the others a ruthless gung-ho daredevil this goal is not reached by bragging or indulgence but only for tough leadership the motto is complete annihilation of the enemy and not personal glory if you yourself have looked at these sort of original german documents of the time you will have run into this sort of language a lot it crops up time and time again in in manuals in regulation and also in official memos as you can see it almost demands a reckless uncompromising self-sacrificing as predecor and it is very very easy nowadays when we read these documents to be sort of suckered into the suit of language and think oh you know these these men they must have gone all the way to the end when in actual fact you know this this almost jabber about sacrifice there's more propaganda than anything else uh german military historian doctor zunken knightsall actually talked about this and something very similar in his interview with military history visualized very recently in the official language of the nazi regime of course the sacrifice was very important and you might and of course there were numbers of speeches from hitler saying you you have to sacrifice yourself you have to fight to the last bullet and you have to die on the battlefield blah blah blah more or less interestingly if you look at at um the night cross and the night cross holders it's interesting that only seven percent of the night crosses were awarded post whom so 93 of those soldiers who won the night cross did survive at least the awards they did survive the award so there were not these people of fanatic soldiers who tried to blow themselves up with an enemy tank or so this is not the view the german view of what a soldier should do so and you could see this with with the with the knight crosses so the night cross was a currency of success of tactical success they should be successful on the battlefield and just blowing yourself up with a tank is is on a larger scale not a success big thank you at this point also to military history visualize and of course dr zunkernitzel for allowing me to use that clip let's have a look at what the yakishwata said there is some disagreement between them which i will highlight but this should give us a good opportunity to see whether the conventional wisdoms of our time holds up with what the pilots say in this document first of all the document makes a distinction between an attack made by a group of planes or alone so for group attacks frontal yakishwara spy attack from front and below favorable as the first attack very effective and yields the least losses especially when the attack is flown in a closed formation by the way anything you see on the lined was highlighted as such in the original file jackie schwarzenspanzer against four engine bombers the attack from the front flown in a grouper promises the most success the first flight was attacked simultaneously the schweiamer arranged roughly in a line to split the defensive fire yakishwara elf during the last attack on wilhelm's hearthen the effectiveness of a frontal attack by a well-trained and led gropper was demonstrated this seems to hold up with the conventional wisdom what is interesting though is that nowadays i see a lot of people saying that during this frontal attack the german pilots would aim for the cockpit this document barely mentions this tactic there is only one mention for individual attacks by yakishwara saxon swansea attack from the front at an angle of 10 to 15 degrees with slight altitude advantage especially favorable in individual attacks because either engine or cabin hits are made the degree of precision required to hit the cockpit on purpose with the respective closing speeds that we're talking about here let's just say that for the average pilot a cockpit hit is more luck than skill and this statement also suggests this sort of randomness there is out there this sort of romanticized image about expert german pilots but in the majority in a vast majority of cases uh it's more about you know pointing the aircraft in the right direction pressing that trigger and hoping for the best what we have read so far suggests a couple of things first of all yes the attacks from the front are effective and are deemed to be among the best ways of engaging the bombers however and this is important we need to place that into the operational context and this is something i often see missing in a lot of these discussions that happen around this topic generally speaking you only get one pass from the front as you attack your first attacking pass and after that you take what you get the first attack is to be flown from the front preferably conducted by closed schwarm formations following in rapid succession the following attacks of the copper focus on one and the same flight whereby attacks are made from all sides in rotten and schwermann the reason why this is done is that it takes a long time to reset a frontal attack and because it is far more effective to hammer individual or small groups of b17 again and again from different directions rather than attacking a new group per attacking german flight it is more effective to shoot down a small number of bombers than run the risk of damaging a larger number of enemy bombers but not actually shooting them down so much so to frontal attacks let's talk about some different directions of attack there might be some surprises here an additional promising attack direction within the copper is the attack from behind from higher altitude it is also flown in a swamp so that close to the rear most formation the nose is pushed down with speed to then attack the higher flying flight from below and behind at an angle of roughly 30 degrees jakishwaratswai agrees with a caveat the attack from behind and below promises success but can only be done by old and experienced pilots however they do suggest that attack from below very favorable attacks in staffing or gopen after the enemy formation was overtaken with speed 1000 meters below so that the enemy aircraft appear about 20 to 30 degrees from the vertical axis then pull up vertical into the same direction of flight each swarm in intervals of two to three seconds after the other by the way the footage and the examples that you see here were filmed in war thunder today sponsored so if you like what you see i will have more information on how you can play it for free at the end of the video what they're saying here is that if you attack in a group you're coming from behind diving down and then engaging in a climb or you know from straight below even your attack can be very effective there is a sort of widespread agreement however that attacks from straight behind or behind and above or and from the side are relatively ineffective in comparison however there is a caveat and that is for inexperienced pilots attacking a bomber that left the formation and this is no longer as protected and then we can actually have an approach from behind against single spaced out or battered flights it presents the young pilots with the most chances of success the attack from behind has yielded multiple victories doing this the pilot must alternate his altitude constantly and level the plane briefly to fire there are of course reasons why an attack in a group is more effective than alone for example you've got more guns on the same targets and you split enemy defensive fire at the same time we should not forget the human element about why these group attacks are more effective in all sorties it was observed that individually attacking pilots did not even come close to the distance from the enemy that would be required to ensure a successful attack the schwerman attack staggered upwards to the rear thereby a less gung-ho inclined pilot is forced into an attack at a close distance the offensive spirit of the pilot is raised significantly through flying in close formation and the example set by the flight leader whereby the effect of getting pulled into a d attack in a closed formation gains a special importance on the topic of pilots that don't join the attacks for technical reasons jackie schwarzenman suggests the following pilots that break off from the formation and land prematurely due to engine problems will have the truthfulness of their statement checked with a flight of their aircraft by the staffordshire or technician of its crn r if necessary to be punished there are a good number of such statements that suggest that individual attacks are way less effective because the pilots are less likely for example to press home their attack more reasons you know to take this sort of language of individual sacrifice that we heard in the beginning an introduction with a good chunk of salt however the document suggests that this hesitance can be overcome by flying in a group where you are sort of you almost pulled into the attack right your survival instincts become perhaps a bit muted you are following an experienced leader that you perhaps trust and you don't want to be that one guy who breaks off and then you know you you just follow your fellow pilots into the attack wrapping this up we can see that the frontal attack was indeed preferred against b17s but it is more complex than that overall from the document we can take the following as advantages of frontal attack in a group attack limited defensive firepower pilots press home their attack disadvantages limited time to fire loss of time in re-engaging enemy disengaging after the attack generally only works once per sorority i want to specifically highlight the last part of that because often nowadays we have this idea of very clean clinical scenarios that simply do not correspond to the actual reality when german pilots had to face these bombers they oftentimes ran into them depending on how they were vectored to the attacking formation so of course the ideal scenario would be to open up the attack with a frontal assault but oftentimes you simply had to take what you got which means that in certain flights you never got a chance to actually pull off that ideal attack run and you were forced to come from a direction that might not be ideal but that was your only way of attacking the enemy bomber formation without losing a lot of time and thus of course also run into the risk of not being able to hit these bombers or being driven off by escort fighters in the later stages of the war so as always we need to be aware of that clinical textbook example that we are given and the actual reality that these pilots faced at least jackie schwarzeemann swansea suggests the effectiveness of the attack is actually affected more so by the manner it is conducted rather than the direction it comes from the most effective are simultaneous attacks from behind or behind and above front or front at an angle behind or behind at an angle after various run-ins with the enemy the attack patterns are to be sorted in terms of attack directions based on the talents of the shuffle fiora i find these documents really quite interesting it's always great to go back to some of these original primary sources that were written at that time of course as the name implies and see what is actually said back then again lots of things to talk about here so why don't you let me know what you think about all of this you know does this square up with what you knew uh are there any sort of surprises in here does this make sense let me know below also consider checking out war thunder a game that features more than 1 700 aircraft helicopters tanks and ships and allows you to take part in virtual battles one of the things i really like about warfare is their mixed battle experience where i can drive tanks or fly a plane and provide some satisfying good old-fashioned ground support warfunder recently also had a massive update overhauling the game engine to make the game look even prettier adding battleships and some really cool aircraft like the harrier retail jet the mig-21 bis the zaab sk60b or my current favorite in the game the italian kansa fc 20 bis featuring a devastating 47 millimeter cannon the game features four cross-platform integrations so sign up for free on pc playstation or xbox by following the link in the description below and receive a special bonus of three days of premium and an exclusive signup bonus vehicle of your choice so if you enjoy these videos made with primary sources please let me know and more of course coming up so stay tuned i also want to thank dr sunken neitzel and military history visualized for allowing me the use of the aforementioned clip the full interview is in description down below as well and as always i hope all of you have a great day and see you in the sky

Channel: Military Aviation History

Views: 264,229

Rating: 4.9139166 out of 5

Keywords: B-17, Luftwaffe, Flying Fortress, Fw 190, Bf 109, Boeing, heavy bomber, bomber, USAAF

Id: KO4B4-DvS-o

Length: 17min 39sec (1059 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 17 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Hokkaido_Milk]

Very interesting video! I really enjoyed it