B-29 self-shoot down story

[b29flteng]

One of our CAF B-29 members was a gunner in Korea on B-29s. He was on a night mission and was attacked by Migs and survived the attacks, the gunners expending a lot of .50 ammo. On the way home the engineer stated that the oil temp was rising on one of the engines, so the gunner shined a light on the wing trailing edge and noted a stream of oil flowing from the fore mentioned engine. They shut the engine down and landed at an alternate field. The next morning they went out to examine the engine and found a .50 round went through the oil cooler. The B-29 gun system had a system to prevent a round from the guns from hitting the aircraft. They figured out that with all the firing of the guns that a round cooked off in one of the guns while the gunner was traversing the turret and it happend to hit the oil cooler, thus shooting himself down!

[Steve Nelson]

I heard of a similar case, involving an F11F Tiger. The plane's gun muzzles are right on the intake lip. Apparently, during a gunnery exercise a Tiger was loaded with some faulty ammunition..the rounds tumbled and decelerated after being fired, and were ingested by the aircraft, FODding the engine. The pilot ejected safely, but the plane was lost.

I've often wondered, with all those .50 cal slugs being thrown around in those big formations of B-17s and -24s, just how many were actually lost to "freindly fire."


SN

[Tulio]

There have been documented instances -Randy Haskins posting brought these to mind- about aircraft shooting themselves down when due to the speed, in one or two instances they overtook the shells they had fired, and these impacted the aircraft. The time frame IIRC was the 1950s.

Saludos,


Tulio

[mustangdriver]

I talked to a P-40 pilot that did that by shooting at barges. Some of the ammo bounced back and hit his engine.

[P51Mstg]

A couple of things here "ammo doesn't bounce back" and you are not going to overtake your bullets (unless you were in an SR-71). Shootign yourself down while straffing works like this:

Think of the bullets path as following a "V". You dive on a target at a 60 degree angle down left side of the V. You fire and pull out flying across the V. Your bullets strike the target at the bottom of the V and riccochet up the right side of the V. The airplane has covered the shorter distance (and was going slower than the projectiles) and gets hit as it flys through its own riccochets.

Kind of like dogfighting, where you are trying to normally trying to longer path to get behind the enemy, here the bullets take the longer path and get behind you and are still going faster than you. Thus shooting yourself down.

Mark H

[mustangdriver]

Riccochet is what I menat by bounced back. I am not gun person mind you.

[Former Member]

I've often wondered, with all those .50 cal slugs being thrown around in those big formations of B-17s and -24s, just how many were actually lost to "freindly fire."

I've heard that it was not uncommon for B-17 & B-24 bombers to return back to base with several .50 cal holes from other bombers. Given the tight formations and the number of guns firing it's inevitable that bombers would be hit by friendly fire. However, I've not seen any documented account of a bomber being shot down by friendly fire from other bombers.

John

[Connery]

On a twist to the friendly fire, I was looking through one of my Squadron Signal publications on the B-24 last night. It showd a B-24 that had rolled over and most of the port wing outboard of the engines was missing. The caption stated that it wasn't shot down, but that a crewman from another plane that had been hit was falling and had hit the wing tip breaking the outer portion of the wing off.

A very unfortunate accident indeed.

[tom d. friedman]

when i flew in the air classics magazine b-25 i was in the upper turret position. i remember wondering how that gun position avoided not hitting other parts of the plane. i look at the perspective every time i look at the pics in my office. when the action was fast & furious even the most crack shot gunners must have poured some lead into their own flying arses!!!!

[Ztex]

The hazards of combat in close formation are many.

My Uncle was a witness to this...


When this airplane blew up, IIRC, six of the crew survived, Pilot Lt. Col Jack Lokker, was killed, as were the guys in the turrets.

My point is...
One of the main gear legs hit a trailing aircraft in the nose. This aircraft survived being hit by a burning landing gear and tire, they landed at a Russian airbase.

All kinds of funky thing can happen.

Last edited by Ztex on Wed Feb 21, 2007 11:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

[Former Member]

when i flew in the air classics magazine b-25 i was in the upper turret position. i remember wondering how that gun position avoided not hitting other parts of the plane. i look at the perspective every time i look at the pics in my office. when the action was fast & furious even the most crack shot gunners must have poured some lead into their own flying arses!!!!

Most of the powered turrets had fire cut-off cams or interupter gears which prevented the turret from shooting off vital parts of their own aircraft. The upper turrets on B-24's, B-17's, and B-25's all had interupter gears to prevent the gunner from shooting off the vertical stabilizers. The lower ball turret on the B-17 & B-24 had a fire cut-off cam which prevented shooting into the propeller archs. The cams were shaped differently for the B-17 and the B-24 since they had different shapes. As far as I know the flexible guns like the radio operator's gun, waist guns, and cheek guns on the B-17 had no such fire cut-off mechanisms.

John

[bugazon]

I read that the B-29 Raz'n Hel!, the Composite at Castle, Has the destinction of shooting out one of its engines when it had a problem with one of its disrupters.

[Tulio]

A couple of things here "ammo doesn't bounce back" and you are not going to overtake your bullets (unless you were in an SR-71).
Mark H

Don't know by own experience if this was the case or not. What my comment covered was something that I had read in either a Smithsonian Magazine, or Aviation History magazine a long time ago.

What I recall was that the pilot was at a high rate of speed when he fired his cannon, and then accelerated faster than mach 1 or 2, and maneouvered in such a way (IIRC an "S" shaped weave) and was hit by his own ammo.

Now I will have to go and dig for either the article, or for some sort of confirmation on this.

Saludos,


Tulio

[sdennison]

Riccochet is what I menat by bounced back. I am not gun person mind you.

I remember seeing a 6" long jagged piece of shrapnel from a 500 pound bomb that my Dad dropped on a mission in Burma that he said caught in his landing gear quadrant preventing it from ventilating Dad. It was from his own bomb dropped on a ground support run!

I guarantee that had that not lodged in the aircraft gear, he would have been cut in half! Probably happened more than we know.

[SaxMan]

One of the SBD gunners at Midway thought that his dual .30 mount was wide enough to shoot straight back and clear the vertical tail. He was wrong and his pilot was a bit annoyed to find many 30 caliber holes in the tail.

(Source: "Incredible Victory" by Walter Lord, 1967).