Pyro - re: your new news

[FTJR]

Saburo Sakai said that the way to take B-17s out was to hit them in the bomb bay. I don't know if he was right, but that was the Japanese take on it in 1942.

That may have been more about hitting the area of greatest structural stress rather than igniting the bombs, but I may be mistaken.

I was just rereading the book the other day. From the way its written it seems to me that they were aiming for the bombs

Regards

[Dux]

Ahh, cool. Thanks!

[Cobra412]

From what I've read the alot of the instant big fireballs were due to hitting the oxygen containers in the airframe.  I'll have to find it again but I think it was a 109 or 190 that was notorious for this because of where the tank was mounted.

[Widewing]

Setting external tanks ablaze is spectacular, but generally harmless if the pilot pickles off the tank before the heat does any substantial damage. It's the leaking fuel that's burning.

Detonation of bombs from MG rounds or even 20mm cannon fire was extremely rare. The explosives were not generally sensitive to kinetic energy projectiles. Explosive 20mm cannon rounds could not penetrate the casing.

My regards,

Widewing

[DaddyAck]

Still, how cool would it be to watch it blow, especially to watch the pilot start to freak out  Also it would be useful if that pilot's stratagy was to bring a 109 with 50% fuel and a drop tank so he can use the tank to WEP climb to 15k.

[dedalos]

I rember picking up some pieces from a german exploded bombs.  It was a long time ago but they looked like 1" thinck cast iron.  Now, given that they were round, I don;t see how anything would penetrate them except a perfect shot.  However, even if penetrated, I dont think they would detonate anyway.