Kill Ratio

Lets see.....If I was a German squad Co what would I do. How bait and trap techniques. Let the allied Spads and Se5a's fly in thinking that they have been unnoticed....Have the flak gunners use them as target ducks....probably with almost no success. Then set up a trap after all they have to fly home sometime, wait till the allies head home have a defensive wall waiting for them and then hit them. If they get through oh well but they probably will take some damage, but if they decide to stick it out oh boy we are going to have some fun ... so long as any competant Camel pilot doesn't come to rescue.

Now so why didn't the allies have mixed squad types ie Camels with Sea5s/Spads...then people wonder why there is an advantage to flying in squads with mixed plane types. The strengths of one aircraft cover for the weeknesses of the other and visa versa.

hannes: Better training? Probably, but I was not in all places at all times to be absolutely sure I agree with you.

Better tactics? Who knows? Defensive and reactionary activities allowed for tactical advantage, but the British strategy maximized benefits for the land forces. As you know, land forces would define winner and loser.

Some of us seem to forget that there was more to the air war than the great Aces.

[stephen]

John, the Brits in particular did develop multi-fighter patrols, though not quite in the same sense as the mixed flights to which you refer. For all the (admittedly justified) bashing that British air tactics take on this board, they had some well designed fighter sweeps that had SE's on top at around 15,000 ft, Camels or Bristols in the middle at 8 or 9,000, and DH 5's or Pups (the junk) at around 5,000 or less. Any attack on a lower formation would result in a counter-attack from a large formation of even better quality planes with the advantages of altitude and speed. For the limited time that such patrols could be operated, they truly did establish absolute air superiority.

So for all the things they did wrong, they were actually very effective with their multi-level offensive sweeps. The Germans countered by doing the only sensible thing that an outnumbered foe could do... hiding.

So why have the Sea's at the top level......camels should sit at the top, Sea's in the middle. Oh if the Germans were so good at hiding then I guess all allied loses should have resulted in flak and AA fire. Something seems to be inconsistent.

[stephen]

>>>>So why have the Sea's at the top level......camels should sit at the top, Sea's in the middle.

Actually, the Camel (especially Clerget powered) started sputtering out above 12,000 feet, while the inline-powered SE's maintained greater speed even in thin air. It made sense to keep the faster planes higher up.

>>>Oh if the Germans were so good at hiding then I guess all allied loses should have resulted in flak and AA fire.

Huh? Oh, for pete's sake. No one is demeaning Germans. As I clearly said, they often did the only rational thing an outnumbered foe could do... avoid contact entirely, but the Allies found that material consumption limited the number of large offensive sweeps they could muster. Why on earth am I repeating myself?

[Billy_Bishop]

I don't wonder why the Germans mixed types, I know why. It wasn't because of any "advantage". It was because they did what they could with what they had. If that meant having mixed types in one squadron, they did it.

VBR,

Al Lowe

[rammjaeger]

To "The Observer": Yes, the Allied aviators contributed a lot to support the victory of their land force but I have still the opinion they could have had the same success with lower losses.

Stephen,
the colourful painting of many German aircraft confirms their evil and malicious "hiding"-strategy.

Frohe Ostern!

<Al> S! Your right the Germans had mixed plane types because that had to make do with what was available. However I think the Germans stumbled onto something by using mixed plane type squads by mere accident. However I do believe that by utilizing mixed plane squads does help the squad out in that one types strength helps covers anothers weekness and visa versa. ie a Fokker DrI`s excellant manovrability and climb compliments a P12's dive ability and speed. The same could be said about (SE5A/Spad) and (Camels/Snipes), a reality deadly combo and a real oportunity for the allies to wreak havok onto the German flyers but the allies seemed to have missed the boat on this one.

Maybe the German flyers were too...oooo busy painting/camo their planes...thus explaining the mistery of history as to where the German airforce really was.....or maybe the flying circus was in Berlin performing aerodynamic acrobatics at the circus for the Kaiser.
(LOLPOF).

Pend,
>I can understand Camel pilots getting killed in combat,
>but for a se5a or spad to get shot down, they had to get
>surprised me thinks.

The SE5a and Spad both had inlines so they wouldnt have been run at maximum revs all the time. Their cruising speed would have been about 75% of their max? For the SE5a that places it at around ( assuming the 139 mph is correct ) a cruising speed of about 100 mph. Even the speed challenged DrI in a dive would be able to catch and hit an SE5a at those speeds. A DVII could probably dive at over 180 mph without problems like the SE5a, which wouldnt give much time for the SE5a to pick up speed, revs or energy if they were dived upon while at cruise speed. Copp apparently said that when the lower wing of the SE5a gets three creases in it during a dive, that is 200 mph.


John writes;
>Now so why didn't the allies have mixed squad types ie Camels with Sea5s/Spads

They did, 80 Wing RAF operated sweeps with stacked formations. The standard structure was Camels below SE5a's and often Bristol Fighters above the SE5a's.

F2b
-->SE5a
-->Camel

There is an oft used diagram, Cutlack seems to be the first to have used it describing 80 Wings formations. The latest is Franks's Aicraft vs Aircraft. The problem 2 Sqn AFC found with the stacked structure as Stephen mentioned was the German Jasta's in lull times didnt want to take on a stacked formation of aircraft unless they had similar or superior numbers. 80 Wing actually stopped the practise of sweeps going out at the same time for the reason to reduce their numbers in the air so they could pick fights. When there were offensives on and the Germans moved more aerial assets into the area it wasnt a problem as the opposing numbers were more equal. When 4 AFC took on Snipes, they often flew above the SE5a's of 2 AFC.

Snipe
--> F2b
--> Se5a
--> Camels


Stephen writes;
>and DH 5's or Pups (the junk) at around 5,000 or less

The DH5's had performance problems above 10,000 ft but the Pups were still manouvreable and handled well at altitude, I thought I recalled reading that in mid-1917 when those type sweeps were done, the Pups were above the Camels.



cam
Australian Flying Corps - http://members.nbci.com/pointcook/

Gents: I recently had the good fortune of picking up "Letters From A Flying Officer" by R.S. Wortley. Although the book is fiction, it is fiction couched in fact. The main character is Lt. Col. John Enderby. He witnesses the air war first from the ground--he is hobbled by age, 30something, then as a squadron commander of Bristol Fighters. Wortley, by the way, flew with 22 squadron--Bristols--and received the Military Cross. Anyway, he addresses some of the points mentioned here. The first has to do with new British pilots. He laments how little training they get (In a diary entry for Dec. 1917, he talks about 25 hours). For an entry date Sept. 1917, he talks about G.H.Q. dissipating RFC squadrons by sending them over the lines as that-squadrons. "All the Circus had to do was to hang about in some central location and wait until our small formations put in an appearance alone and unsupported, and then go for each of them in turn." He recounts that his own Bristol Squadron, 56 squadron with SE5s, and two Camel squadrons took matters into their own hands to combine four flights over Ypres and cross the lines together. The Camels led down low, followed above and slightly behind by SE5s and, above and behind the SE5s would be the Bristols. This scheme, he says, worked, although they kept it away from official ears until it could be proved. Very interesting book.
DD