Name of this pilot?

This guy dedicated his talents and ability to serve for the most brutal regime German soil ever saw. There is no way to ever atone for it. Have a good one from Germany.

​@@fawnlliebowitz1772an utterly asinine comment. It doesn't matter who started the war, targeting civilians (including women, elderly, children) is not only a war crime, it's subhuman unethical behavior. Countless children suffered tremendously painful deaths and unrecoverable injuries as a result of the firebombs. It is only reasonable for a pilot to want to avenge this even if that pilot himself is guilty of many immoral acts, fighting for Nazi Germany ranking at the top of that list.

One reaps what they sow. Who bombed London FIRST, I'm certain the victims of Warsaw would disagree with you. Learn some history.@@ufukpolat3480

I was a Vulcan gunner in the Army back in the 80's and I can assure you they had any issues worked out by then, you're using the first generation attempt at something as a measuring standard, the GE M61 cannon is a vastly superior system to those multiple gun systems it replaced, lighter weight and a higher rate of fire in a smaller package than a 4 gun system. Those things functioned flawlessly every time we used them, stoppages were extremely rare, the vast majority of the time when we were at the range with 4 guns online firing all day it went without a single hitch or hiccup, in the 3 years I did it I can only account I single time that we had to use our reserve gun we brought along to replace one of the 4 guns initially put online at the beginning of the day.

F104 star fighter?

🇺🇲 Just a simple note to say thank you for your service Sir ! Your service is definitely not taken for granted ! I am grateful our freedom every single day ! Even though we seem far to willing to let it slip away without so much as a fight these days ! How extremely heartbreaking 😢 ! 🇺🇲

Probably a good thing, the F-105 was not a very good aircraft as designed. The Thunderbirds used them for a half dozen shows, hated them then went back to the F-100. Terrible maintenance issues and in-flight failures crippled its original mission. As conventional bombers they were pretty much sitting ducks which a better gun would not have helped - and the fleet was pretty much expended in Vietnam with total losses approaching 50%. The aircrews who flew them were very brave men, but a better gun would have made little difference.

@@ww748 The F105 was an excellent aircraft as designed, in Vietnam it was being used outside of it's primary role which was to deliver nuclear weapons deep in the Soviet Union, and like every other F designated US aircraft used in Vietnam they all suffered from the rules of engagement that stated an enemy aircraft couldn't be fired on until visual recognition was confirmed, none of the US aircraft were designed to be anywhere nearly as close to enemy fighter's as the F105's, F4's and others were forced to because of that rule, by their original design they'd have dealt with enemy fighter's "over the horizon" before they got as close as they typically were during engagements in Vietnam, that's why before a new variant of the F4 with a gun could be fielded the existing F4's already seeing action over there had that hastily designed windmill powered gun pod put on them, it suffered from accuracy problems at any speeds over the slowest one's due to aerodynamic forces causing the pod to torque around and throw it's bursts everywhere except for where it was being aimed.

WOW!

Nothing like WW2 stories to make you feel weak and shameful of your comparatively easy life. No? Just me?

​@@johnarmstrong5591WOW

I hope you read Donald Miller's "Masters of the Air" In April of '44 they greatly increased the number of missions that were being flown in preperation for D-Day. It started causing mental problems for the crews. However it took a lot less time for a crew to complete their 25 missions.

​@Legitpenguins99 people in some 3rd world countries have mass genocide, rape and torture, child soldiers 😢 for decades including yesterday ect.... Plenty of horror and misery humanity brings upon itself in 2024.

Same,this is really nice and refreshing to find.I subbed just on the content presentation….

now ppl complain when the flight attendant doesn't bring a diet coke fast enough

The cartridges are a nice souvenir. But I'd be freaked out about the unexploded round. Explosives don't read the calendar, and they don't choose friend or foe. Better get rid of it. If you're not sure whether it's a live round or not, better treat it like a live round. Have someone pick it up, don't move it around yourself.

There ought to be a camera reel of 30mm Minengeschoss test firing around here somewhere....

I also had never seen those Spitfire or Bi7 cockpit strike pictures. Looking at the Spitfire, when he said the hole was as big as the pilots head I kind of gasped because a foot to the left the pilots head would not be there. I think that British pilot might have been saved from bad injury by his seat back. Vicious rounds.

Very interesting film, the Germans had even bigger weapons than this , 30mm in calibre, which was said, took only 3 rounds to take down a “heavy” Thr destructive power of the minengeschoss rounds were known well before thr 8th arrived in the UK, The RAF had met them in the Battle of Britain.

@@bobmalack481 do it better yourself zzz This thing is supposed to be informative, not a kids tv show to entertain your toddlers with.

@@bobmalack481 i mean. Ok. Fair enough. I cant really dispute that.

It had low muzzle velocity, which brought E/A within the range of the bombers defensive fire.

The lower velocity / looping ballistics was a problem. However, no doubt, if 30mm round impacted it caused a lot more damage.

@@richardjames1812 I wonder if some pilots tried to stay at some distance and "lob" the 30mm shells on the bombers. I know, extremely difficult, but you have the tracers to follow. Would have required a lot of rounds, but then just 2 or 3 could down a bomber.

It has slow rate of fire, and terrible shell velocity for air combat. The trajectory of the projectile was more like a mortar than a cannon. Plus, the huge recoil did not allow accurate fire.

Against bomber, lower velocity isn't a big problem. Against fighter it is.

Also ironically on 20DEC43, that was when the B-17 from the 379th Bomb Group named “ Ye Olde Pub” on its return flight from a mission over Bremen as well, was met up with a ME109 flow by Franz Stigler, who ended up giving the B-17 safe passage out of Germany to over the North Sea. The book published about the two pilots encounter is titled “ A Higher Call” and tells the stories of the B-17 pilot Charlie Brown & BF-109 Pilot Franz Stigler, who ended up being able to meet up years later in 1990. As many know there are videos about their encounter on You-Tube, a couple are great & others are not as accurate. Either way the book is well worth reading for anyone interested in this type of history.

Awesome story

Good detail / follow up. Thank you.

Yep, that was Tinker Toy

Wow. Imagine being wounded and having to fly a bomber through combat with a headless guy (probably a good friend) right next to you.

No wonder he is smiling, he used up 1 of his 9 lives.

The first Spitfire, MK IX, was that of my late friend Art Sager. The damage was the result of being hit by AA fire on a rhubarb over Holland on 13 November 1943. He spoke of it in his book Line Shoot.

In that case it was not a MG151/20 that hit him but a MG FF or MG FF/M

@@honestabe8930 and probably not a mine shell either.

... its* guns (it's = it is) ...

Good thing the brits where using .303s, LOL

@@ZacLowing - significant trade off from using 20mm rounds was the increased weight and less rounds. Only some parts of an aircraft were armoured so .303 rounds were still quite effective

No wonder the fw190 was called the butcher bird. It's quite something.

@@velocitymg mg 151 had basically the same weight as an M2. Furthermore the two inboard mg 151 of fw 190 had 250 rounds each. Mustangs had 350 rounds per gun. Giving the effect on target, the overall weight for firepower is much better on the German aircraft. Fw 190 cockpit is one of the best protected cockpits of wwII, especially on the F and G Fighter Bomber models and U kits for bomber destruction. Only P47 and Hellcats come close to this kind ov level.

One thing that i never understood very well,was the brittish idiotic idea of having their aircraft,even Heavy Bombers armed with the 0.303 round. Its realy hard to understand why they kept using that almost useless round in Air Warfare until the end of the war.

My Uncle Zig Wendt was an armorer with the 15th AAF in Italy in WWII. He broke his thumb, jumping out of his bomb laden truck during an air raid.

Yep, and as per standard operating procedure the auto pilot would be engaged so the crew, especially the pilot, could bail out. That accounts for a lot of the stories about "ghost" bombers that didn't have crews in them continuing to fly.

Agreed, the landing gear of this B-17 is not down. The main gear tires of a B-17 protrude somewhat when fully retracted.

Yes and it's rather disappointing to suggest the German pilot chose to ignore this supposed signal of 'surrender' . It was not a formal thing, and not even happening anyway- the wheels could be partly out of their fairings, but aren't moving, therefore are not 'being' lowered. More likely some kind of hydraulic or mechanical failure letting them drop a bit or something. I've read a lot of Luftwaffe fighter pilot personal histories and not once have I read of US bomber signalling surrender by lowering their wheels.

@@mattl3729 because you haven't read it doesn't make it untrue. Landing gear on this aircraft is retracted,b17 undercart isn't fully enclosed when retracted. I don't think the narrator was eluding to the last aircraft but the one preceding when he talked of surrender the signal. In the last sequence the belly gunner and tail gunner are probably dead at this point, the fighter coming in astern will target the guns that are firing on him.

I think the ball turret gunner was probably killed. There was quite a few cannon rounds slamming into it

Great luck on that.

Well it wasn't a formal thing, and the film doesn't show it- the main wheels are partly exposed, but not moving so it's more like a hydraulic or mechanical failure that caused them to be released. Even if the pilot did mean to lower them to indicate surrender, there's no reason to believe the German pilot understood.

I am sure it was not the usual procedure. I never read of any enemy or friendly aircraft surrendering like that.

Thanks for the kind words. Welcome to the channel. Much appreciated.

Back then it was called shell shock. And you can see why.

My father flew 56 missions over Europe in WW2 as a waist gunner, then went on to two tours in Korea as a grunt. The Man saw some awful stuff.

@@nohphd What did that do to him mentally? I can't believe he served as a grunt in Korea after being in the riskiest assignment in WW2 statistically speaking.

Hell's Angels completed 25 missions before Memphis Belle. The powers that be didn't like the name, so the Memphis Belle was chosen to go on the war bond tour. The Hell's Angels went on to successfully complete 48 missions, and was sadly scrapped at the end of the war.

​@@straybullitt Yes, I had read that later on. Memphis Belle deserves credit for fulfilling 25 missions, but Hells Angels should have had it first. Public relations even during war.

@@straybullitt Just like the USS Nevada in atomic testing 😥

I wonder who the lucky guy was on the ground crew that got to remove it, you'd definitely need a tranquilizer to get to sleep that night.

What’s the interview called

Wonder if that was one of those dud shells made on purpose by German pows. Either way lucky.

@BurtSampson : Muchas tripulaciones de B-17, Lancasters, Hallyfaxs y cazabombarderos P-52 tuvieron la suerte de volver y sobrevivir pese a ser tocados por los proyectiles explosivos alemanes gracias a que estos habían sido boycoteados por prisioneros en las fábricas del sistema KZL "nazis" .... esta es una de las razones porque de vez en cuando se fusilaban cuadrillas completas de prisioneros y cautivos en retribución, porque entre ellos estaba oculto el boycoteador ...

I've heard the same thing. However, each time you increase the caliber of the projectile you get fewer of them to fire per minute and per sortie.

@@jimmiller5600 Also the ballistics start to get worse with the larger surface area as the size increases on the projectile/shell.

In general, larger caliber shells have better ballistics due to improving volume vs surface ratio. In the particular example of the German Mk108, it had low muzzle velocity and resulting poor ballistics in order to fit on a WWII fighter.

@@jbepsilon Yes, but when referring to the Mk108 in a Me262 people forget the added velocity of aircraft. A Me262 on an attack run from behind on a B17 adds almost 400fps to the muzzle velocity related to the difference in speed between the aircrafts. Remember, the Me262 lauches the 30mm round at 850 - 900km/h. The muzzle velocity of a 30mm Mk108 is actually app 2500fps when fired from a Me262.

Not "ineffective", just that a 30mm would do the job better... and I disagree. By then the LW was using 190s with 4xMG151 20mm plus 2xMG131, plenty enough to deal with any bomber... BUT, the 109 could only fit ONE MG151 OR one MK108, so the choice was obvious in favour of the 30mm since you just need a couple hits to blow them to pieces.

What effect did the Mg151 have on armor? I am somewhat aware of the kanonenvogel application as it was used in the Stuka.

@@tjf5148 yes, and FW 190, and ME 110, and HE 162, and HE 217, and JU 88, and AR234

Again, one outcome was the DEFA.

idk if you have seen the video yet but he made a 30mm vid kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mseZfZiS19S0nKs.html

And yet, even in April '45, they managed to shoot down 125 Allied bombers. What experienced pilots they had left, were usually given the most advanced planes. Me 109k-4's, FW-TA152's, Me 262's.

Wow! Never heard of a P 38 being fitted with 20mm cannons. I thought they all got the Browning 50 cal. It would have been a fearsome fighter with cannons fitted, just like the RAF Mosquito was.

@@johnmclean6498 P-38 armament was four .50s and one 20mm Hispano cannon, all in the nose. The Hispanos had problems with jamming and that meant that any wing mounted Hispanos that jammed in flight, couldn't be cleared until they landed on the ground, which was a major reliability issue for the US military. Since the P-38's guns were all in the nose, a manual unjamming mechanism was installed in the cockpit so the pilot could clear the jam in air. If the Hispanos didn't have the jamming issues, you may have seen more Mustangs, Hellcats, and Corsairs armed with 20mm cannons in the wings during WWII.

@@goldleader6074 Good info thanks. The Brits called the Hispano gun failures "Stoppages". They bypassed hot air from an engine to the guns in the Mossie, vital in winter/high altitude.

I saw the video you are talking about. I realized how much damage the aircraft was getting after the demonstration. Badass

@@goldleader6074 What’s interesting, we went against the British advice of not modifying the gun, but we went ahead anyway and did it

I appreciate that!

Greg's channel is top tier... I wish his detailed analysis existed 20+ years ago when I was heavily into aviation history.

@@erickent3557 Well said sir.

Glad you enjoyed it!