Going on a longe range bombing mission in one of these things was far more dangerous and nerve-wracking than anything an infantryman, sailor, or tanker went through during the war. Especially before long-range fighter escorts were a thing.
I dare anyone on this board to prove me wrong.
fighting over a house in Stalingrad was pretty nerve-wracking, lower chances of survival and rather than having your plane damaged, go down and end up in a prisoner of war camp with a bunch of pipe smoking moustachio'd british chaps you could be shot shattering your femur, bayoneted in the stomach, burned, blasted by a grenade and so on and if captured you're fucked
Anon what do you think happens happens you get shot down in a flying plane?
Your tube depressurizes and if you're unlucky you get sucked out to fall to your death.
WW2 era planes had pressurized crew compartments?
Have you ever opened a window on a skyscraper anon?
Papers and anything light get sucked out the window.
Now imagine that window has been violently ripped open by a fucking flak shell and you aren't hooked to anything and you are at a greater height than the top of a skyscraper.
That assumes of course that your plane isn't blasted out of the sky and goes tumbling to the ground as it crumbles to pieces at terminal velocity.
A soldier in Stalingrad in a house can theoretically grenade or shoot or club the guy who is trying to murder him. A gunner in these planes can shoot down an interceptor.
You can't do shit about flak. You have to grit your teeth and pray.
Then the plane lands, gets repaired, and you hop on another plane and do it again. Over and over and over and over. Every day. For months on end.
>You can't do shit about flak. You have to grit your teeth and pray.
Like soldiers do with artillery.
Soldiers aren't shelled EVERY single time they go to their objective.
Bomber crews were.
>Papers and anything light get sucked out the window
No they don't.
What's your point anyway? neither of us said that planes don't blow up when they get hit by flak, they obviously do, what are you on about?
>no they don't
Yeah they do.
What floor were you on when you did it?
I guess not that high, but I've lived on a 26th floor and seen windows opened on higher floors and it's not like anything is flying out, certainly nothing heavier than a piece of paper and then only for a moment till the pressure is equalized
Maybe it's because I was in the Windy City at the time but we had pencils and desk ornaments being sucked out for like a solid minute and a half before someone pulled the window shut with great effort and started screaming at the office for disabling the locks.
You can't even open the windows on the higher floors these days because the builders don't even build the option in.
i ask you again, did WW2 era planes have pressurized crew compartments?
do you not understand my question?
Anon, what height did bombers fly at?
Answer the question, please.
Ok, my mistake, I mistyped if you really must nitpick, Mr. Pedant. You can't depressurize if you aren't in a pressurized cabin.
It just sucks you out in a very similar manner to being depressurized.
how does it suck you out when the pressure inside the cabin is the same as outside the cabin?
Wind. That's why you gotta hold on to the rails.
when you open the window of a fast moving car, do you feel as if you're being sucked out of the vehicle?
Not me but my cigarette cherry gets ripped off and papers go flying and my sun hat bounces around. If open more windows it gets worse.
Now imagine I opened a four foot hole in the side while I was going 120 mph or so.
Fucking retard.
the b-17 had a top speed of 200 mph
this is a picture of the side gunner position
Cool
>ignoring the fact that this whole sucking out thing only happened when a fucking shell tore the fuselage open
Why are semantic retards on LULZ so afraid of admitting they were wrong and zero in on everything except for the important parts of the thing they are arguing against?
>afraid of admitting they were wrong
Indeed, you should just concede and admit that you do not know how physics work.
The turbulence created by the wind rushing past the hole in the fuselage is obviously far from strong enough to "suck" the airman out of the plane. If the force had been as strong as you imagine it, then B-17 bombers would not have been able to have open side gunner positions.
And all this is besides the fact that if a shell tears a huge hole in the fuselage near the crew compartment, odds are the pilot didn't survive the blast itself.
I don’t know much about physics, but didn’t the bomb doors literally open with the crew inside? Wouldn’t that suck everyone out if things were pressurized?
They did and it would.
planes in WW2 didn't have pressurized cabins aside from the b29
you're not going to get sucked out of a plane unless it breaks in half and at that point your fucked anyway
Those bombers got home with huge holes in them sometimes.
Those dudes weren't that close to the hole when it was made.
My grandpappy was a tail gunner on a bomber and told me horror stories of multiple times that he had crewmates sucked out after shell bursts.
I guess but there's a difference between the high intensity, yet short term, stress of a bomber mission and the prolonged "dripping" stress of being an infantryman.
Remember that bomber crews were all volunteer, the perks of being based in friendly territory, sleeping in a bed everynight and have hot food everyday was well worth the dangerous job to many guys over sleeping in foxholes in the snow getting shot at by snipers 24/7
I would do it. Roll the dice, I can understand all the parameters of a bombing mission, everyone has a clear job and the outcomes and my options are certain.
I would take that over having to face GETTING bombed, the artillery and close combat the ground war.
>high intensity, yet short term, stress of a bomber mission and the prolonged "dripping" stress of being an infantryman.
Infantrymen also dealt with worse short term stress, i.e. being in the first wave of a contested naval landing.
ya but they don't get to go home after taking those beaches
>During the whole war, 51% of aircrew were killed on operations, 12% were killed or wounded in non-operational accidents and 13% became prisoners of war or evaders. Only 24% survived the war unscathed.
that's a bit high, and I think is only counting RAF crews before the joint American operations and things stabilizing later in the war
overall survival rate was around 40-45% with corresponding loss rate of around 4-5% per mission
still a majority casualty rate though
Bomber Crew by john sweetman
also the bomber mafia by gladwell though it deals more with the pacific, but a great in depth look at the science and statistics behind bombing
Air battles were so kino back then. Kinda similar to naval battles but more fast paced and in the sky. Must have felt like something out of a fantasy novel for people back then.
It’s so sovlless today. You can literally get shot out of the sky by a missile in 1 second. Fuck that gay shit.
Biplane battles were peak kino. Those guys were like airborne cavalry men in their demeanor.
Nope. The toughest thing was being a shepherd in Ireland at the time. Imagine being Irish in the 1940s, and being a shepherd as well.
All them sheep, just presenting themselves. How did they stomach not succumbing to their base needs to mate with the sheep? The sheer will and self control is astounding.
And sheep are notoriously sluttish - TSHOTs
>all the fags ITT who never read Catch 22
TAKE A RIDE RIDE RIDE RIDE
ON HEAVY METAL
IT'STHE ONLY WAY THAT YOU CAN TRAVEL DOWN THAT ROAD
Being in a submarine sounds worse tbh.
>You will NEVER re-enter the Earth's atmosphere in a corvette
Poor bastards had no idea. Fuck Churchill, fuck FDR, fuck israelite and fuck jannies.
Any good books on the bomber command, crews and the western air war?
but it's all worth it so we can have ten year old drag queens