You wouldnt see a nightfighter only a quick glimpse maybe as they like to surprise attack from below aiming for that right engine fuel tank. Lancasters had a bad name for flaming torches.
True story - My Grandad Beric James Callingham was flight a sergeant in a Lancaster bomber and a rear gunner. He and his crew was coming back from a bombing run in Germany, they approached to land and crash landed, the tail of the plane snapped off with my Grandad in, in which he survived, the rest of his crew died. He met my Nan while based up in Scotland who was an usherette at a cinema.
IMO and with the benefit of hindsight British armaments were obsolete, they actually had Gatling guns but military command wouldn't fit these to warplanes because they thought the gunners may waste too much ammunition. And if you've ever sat on the strap seat in a ball turret of a Lancaster you will understand they were made for extremely small people and you had 2 noisey guns with hot breaches right beside you, they were not designed for human Comfort or safety, often the poor old tailgunner was hosed out of the turret because one hit from a large Calibre Shell basically you exploded with hydrostatic shock. It was not untill latter on in the war, after losing very battle for 3 years against the better equiped German wehrmacht and Luftwaffe and entry of Commonwealth ANZACs & American forces that the English up sized their calibres in their Spitfires and Hurricanes and Bombers to 50 cals and bigger, they also started to improve their armoured tanks, that came far too late to be effective. Most the time the airman & poor old foot soldier was given a WW1 Lee Enfield 303. You could say that they were very unlucky being in a war but others may say that War was Darwin's theory for survival.
you may want to open the gate just a bit more,,running the auger fairly empty by the look and sound of it. Also you may want to check the flighting, bad shake in it by the look of that hopper.
Theweescot because the tractor is better for filling a silo. They can pull different tools and trailers and see much more of what is going on. The truck is just to carry the grain over. It's used to bring load after load and do what was done in the video numerous times. It is more efficient to fill a bigger container than to drive all the way to the unloading area and then back to the field... so the tractor can make runs to unload a full load of wheat while more is being harvested.
Theweescot a couple other things to add, the tractor has a PTO and that is used to power the auger. That's why the guy increased the throttle (in a way. Using the PTO draws more power from the engine). That is really the only way to put it in the silo. The truck doesn't have a place for an auger, so they leave the tractor there to fill each load into the silo.
The Lancaster's rear gun turret was a remarkable piece of machinery - fast and extraordinarily manoeuvrable. Unfortunately, however, the .303 calibre machine guns were wholly inadequate against the heavily armed German night fighters; the Lanc's defences would have been improved vastly if the turret had been equipped with 2 x .5" guns instead of 4 x .303
Stephan Bodini I don't think so. Given the short window and range of potential engagement, the rate and volume of fire that could be brought to bear on an enemy night fighter was more important than the calibre or penetrating power of the rounds fired if we are talking about the difference between .303s and .50s (if we are comparing with 20 mm cannon which could take down even a bomber with relatively few rounds expended it may be a different story) both of which fired only armor piercing and incendiary ammunition (no HE). The gunners at night had to essentially employ a "spray and pray" policy and obviously this 4 gun .303 turret could put a hell of a lot more lead into the air per second than any .50 calibre mount. Needless to say, if the tail gunner didn't see a night fighter in time to allow the pilot to begin evasive action, the armament of the bomber's turrets would hardly matter. There was essentially no defense against a night fighter that got underneath a bomber (to bring Schrage Musik to bear) undetected. Even a belly turret would be largely useless in countering the latter as you just couldn't see anything directly under you at night unless it was illuminated by search lights or fires on the ground.
Johnny Burton I think it was more common to replace the two .303s in the mid upper turret with .50s. Larger calibre guns in the tail turret were only employed when paired with an advanced gun-laying radar which became available (though not common) in the last year of the war. The radar allowed detection and engagement of night fighters at greater range than that possible visually wherein the 12.7 mm guns would be more effective if aimed precisely. Without radar the 4 .303s were a better defense.
They definitely fitted twin 50's to some Lancasters during ww2 due to the 303's not having enough power. Link here:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_turret From what I've read if they opened up too early it would give away the position of the plane. So would make sense to use a larger calibre oppose to a smaller 303 round with a higher rate of fire if this is true. Had no idea some also had them fitted to the mid-upper turret.
ThamMalaysia - The rear gunner's job was primarily that of a lookout. It was his job to warn the skipper of an approaching fighter so that evasive action could be taken. Later on in the war, the Rose Company developed a rear turret for the Lancaster that was equipped with .50 calibre Brownings but, even then, shooting it out with a German fighter equipped with 20mm cannons was a bit of an uneven match.
Those crews were extremely brave . To go out night after night , knowing their chances of coming back were getting slimier and slimier . I'm told there was not room to wear a parachute in the tall gun position . So it would have to be left in the fuselage. To get out of the turret, if the aircraft was going down . With electric power failed the turret would have to be hand cranked so the hatch would line up , which with high G loads would next to impossible .
I worked on the BBMF Lancaster, and was very interested in the turrets as my father was an air gunner on Wellingtons. I sat in the turret in only my overalls you had to put your arms behind you and pull one door, the other closed with it. it was cramped, your parachute was outside the turret on your left hand side. If the turret lost its hydraulics you had than crank it round, with a small handle between your legs. Imagine doing that in a heavy bulky flying suit, with the aircraft on fire and diving towards the ground, in the dark, possibly with someone still firing at you
Moving and powerful short film about a Lancaster bomber crew's daring final air raid mission, filmed aboard 'Just Jane', a surviving Lancaster based in Lincolnshire: www.vimeo.com/85084688
Harris was a single minded and callous sort. Allies almost had to pull his arm off it's socket to obtain D-Day support. His analysis of civilian bombing was also flawed, it didn't break German morale, just added to the list of casualties.
In the preface, the author gave a whole list of "Riddles of the Night Sky", one of which were that the Lancasters and Halifaxes could easliy have outpaced them by running the engines in lean burn, full throttle. Another was Harris's stupidity in refusing to believe that Monica was actually a beacon for the night fighters to home on. One can only guess at the number of deaths due to Harris's idiocy.
Tham, 55,000 dead aircrew of Bomber Command deserve some respect, Gunners were as much eyes as they were guns. A commanded corkscrew manouevre could either evade or bring the fighter into the sights of the tail and upper gunner, a wise fighter pilot would avoid an observant and aggressive crew and would look for a duck. Have a read of 'Gunning for the Enemy' by wallace Mackintosh or have a read of 'Schnaufer, Ace of Diamonds' by Peter Hinchcliffe. The highest scoring air gunner and Night fighter
A group of some 40 night fighter Bf110s, caught in the open on a daylight flight by Mustangs, were virtually massacred, with some 26 aircraft shot down.
I remember in one book, the author wrote that the night fighters - Bf110s, Ju88s and some Do217s, were slow, cumbersome aircraft, with performance badly degraded by the heavy radar and 20/30 mm cannon/ammo in Schrage Muzik and fixed positions, and that the Lancasters/Halifaxes could have easily outpaced them with engines running in lean burn.
That tail gunner obviously displayed very good skill. However, I think most of the 100-yard range engagements probably involved the Bf110 and Ju88 night fighters firing Schrage Muzik. In "I Flew For The Fuhrer", Heinz Knoke wrote about how he killed a tail gunner by walking his rounds backwards along the fuselage of the bomber to the tail turret, his shells outranging the gunner's rounds, with the gunner firing continuously at him.
Yes, I know there were some with twin .50 caliber tail turrets, though there were relatively few. None of the Allied bomber designers made any effort to match the superb defensive armament of the Kawanishi H8K flying boat with five 20 mm Type 99-1 cannon (Japanese versions of the Oerlikon FF) in bow, dorsal, tail and waist blisters.
Frankly, a single 20 mm Hispano, or even Oerlikon FF with perhaps an extended barrel for greater range, rather than four .303 pea shooters, would have been far more lethal. And they could have added in a slab of bullet proof glass just behind the perspex, to give him some chance of surviving those German shells.
Actually a lot of gunners removed the central Perspex completely for a better view. At night the ability to see an incoming fighter meant that ranges were pretty short and thus the higher rate of fire of 4x.303 was seen as the best option.
I knew a tail gunner a few years ago, and asked his opinion. He said that at the time (1943) most NF engagements occurred at > 100 yards. 6,000RPM (4 x .303) vs 1500RPM (2 x .50cals) at that range meant that the 4 x .303 had the edge in a short burst directed at the enemy cockpit. He had a point as he had 2 x confirmed twin engine NF kills and survived his requisite 2 x tours without being shot down, good effort for that stage of the war during the Battle of Berlin for RAF bomber crews.
I knew a tail gunner a few years ago, and asked his opinion. He said that at the time (1943) most NF engagements occurred at > 100 yards. 6,000RPM (4 x .303) vs 1500RPM (2 x .50cals) at that range meant that the 4 x .303 had the edge in a short burst directed at the enemy cockpit. He had a point as he had 2 x confirmed twin engine NF kills and survived his requisite 2 x tours without being shot down, good effort for that stage of the war during the Battle of Berlin for RAF bomber crews.
I knew a tail gunner a few years ago, and asked his opinion. He said that at the time (1943) most NF engagements occurred at > 100 yards. 6,000RPM (4 x .303) vs 1500RPM (2 x .50cals) at that range meant that the 4 x .303 had the edge in a short burst directed at the enemy cockpit. He had a point as he had 2 x confirmed twin engine NF kills and survived his requisite 2 x tours without being shot down, good effort for that stage of the war during the Battle of Berlin for RAF bomber crews.
I think, if you get out of the shock paralysis, you just don't think anymore...in such a situation, all you do is "SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT" and hope your plane doesn't get torn apart :)
