F4U-1C vs GV's

[splitatom]

Originally posted by lyric1
Impressive Lusche as always in regards to your research & data. Mr Celauro may be wrong I can't say for sure it did or didn't happen I can only repeat what he said. That aside for a moment use that depth of knowledge you have & find out if a destroyer could be sunk with 50cal's only, call it a challenge if you will.

they have a dogfights episode night fighters 2 f-6 sunk or cripled a  jap destroyer they straffed it sides then they shot down the smoke stacks and the boilers exploaded inside the ship

[E25280]

Originally posted by lyric1
It did happen & there is gun camera footage of it. Two p47's attack it & they were pilots from the Tuskegee airmen.  Can't find the gun camera footage at the moment so here is a link to stat's of the Tuskegee airmen http://www.tuskegeeairmen.org/uploads/stats.pdf

Strafing a ship with unprotected / improperly protected ammunition or fuel on deck, causing said ammunition or fuel to catch fire and explode, is a far different thing than strafing a fully enclosed tank.  

For sake of argument, even if the tank is carrying an external jerry can of gasoline that catches fire, that fire is going to be small enough that the tank needs only drive out of the fire.  On a ship, fires are much harder to "avoid."

This is soooo apples and oranges as to be useless to the discussion.

[lyric1]

Originally posted by E25280
Strafing a ship with unprotected / improperly protected ammunition or fuel on deck, causing said ammunition or fuel to catch fire and explode, is a far different thing than strafing a fully enclosed tank.  

For sake of argument, even if the tank is carrying an external jerry can of gasoline that catches fire, that fire is going to be small enough that the tank needs only drive out of the fire.  On a ship, fires are much harder to "avoid."

This is soooo apples and oranges as to be useless to the discussion.

Well I would say no to apples & oranges & yes to unprotected ord. The man who said you could take out tigers with 50cal's I am not going to second guess. He was there & maybe he did do that him self or that he new others that did? I don't know the answer to that as of yet. I do understand that 50's have almost no penetration on tank armour, so if he is right there must have been a way it was done. As I said I don't know yet how, but I did remember that a destroyer was sunk from reading a book about the Tuskegee air men from many years ago.  So how did they sink that ship? it turn's out a hatch was not secured on board & when the planes attacked one or more shells came through the hatch & struck a ord magazine & that was that ship sunk. So maybe the pilots got lucky & attacked a tank that was vunerable in a similar fashion being serviced with the engine bay exposed or got a stray shell inside through a open hatch hitting the tanks ord. My point in comparing the ship to a tank was that it would be more unlikely if not impossible to take out a ship in this manner but it happened. So could it be plausible to have a tank go out in a similar fashion? I would say anything is possible. In one of Lusche's post's about research on battle damage it mentions that  bullets could not damage tanks except occasionally by chance.