Every now and then I'll watch some gun camera footage from WW2 fighters on YouTube. Without thinking about it too much, I guess I've always wondered what the purpose was for taking the footage. The Wikipedia article I consulted said that it was to record kills, which makes sense. However what I've usually seen are strafing runs to take out weapons, ammunition, planes, etc. on the ground, following the defeat of the Luftwaffe. I always thought a "kill" was the downing of an enemy plane in flight. Maybe I'm mistaken.

I'm wondering if there was training value in the videos or something of that nature, maybe to alert the pilot of shooting errors so he could make corrections for the next go-around.

Anyway I thought I would let you fellows address the issue. Thanks for participating.

Regards,
Andy

Not a sky warrior, but kill confirmation would be a bonus, IMHO. ID'ing aircraft, noting changes in air frames, ground intelligence and yes, training would all be practical uses.

At least in my way of thinking.

__________________
James L. "Jim" Rhiner

I am only half qualified as I am a AF vet but not an expert. The purpose of the gun camera film was multi-fold. Confirm a kill, help solve issues with the gun, technique, etc.

When i was in Vietnam I was a qualified photo interpretation officer. Half of our fighter bombers (F100s) carried a panoramic camera on the bottom of the air frame. It took a photo which showed the entire bottom of the aircraft from nose to tail. It would activate when the bombs were released from the aircraft especially what we called high drag bombs and because it was panoramic you could see well behind the aircraft and following the bomb to the ground and see when and where it detonated. We would then measure the distance from where the bomb hit to the intended aimpoint on the ground. These were bombs that had a modified tail; fins that opened with four vanes which slowed the fall of the bombs and increased the angle of attack when the bombs hit the ground. With the high drag bombs our pilots could get lower to the ground and become more accurate with the placement of their bombs; our wing routinely dropped their bombs within 50 feet of their aimpoint (not bad when you are flying at over 300 kts and releasing above 500 feet AGL.

This worked fine unless the fins did not deploy upon weapon release. When the happened the bomb went "slick" and hit the ground very rapidly and when it exploded it often damaged the aircraft dropping the bomb (which is very bad). We would interpret that imagery and it helped us determine what the problem was so the maintenance guys could fix it and keep the aircrew from blowing themselves up.

Analysis of gun camera film would serve the same sort of purpose; make the aircraft more efficient at killing.

__________________
Mike
S&WCA #3065

I'm not Air Force.
I think the gun camera's also served as training films for new pilots.
Real POV 1940's technology.
We won WW2 because our fighter pilots were rotated back to the states to be instructors teaching air combat skills and tactics that can only be taught by men who shot down the enemy.

My grandma was a young teenage girl somewhere in 1945 Germany when her horse drawn cart was strafed with high explosive 50 caliber anti tank rounds by some bored hot shot cool guy Army Air Corps pilots hot rod flying machine... She barely made it out alive on that one so I wonder how many German/Romanian/Austrian ect.
civilians were killed on those strafing runs?? The world may never know I guess but maybe some of those gun cameras you speak of might know...

Unfortunately civilians get killed in wars.

Let's look at the facts: Germany had committed itself to TOTAL WAR. That includes civilians. By 1945, german transportation infrastructure destroyed and fuel was so scare that everything, including the military, was using horse drawn carriages to move around. Also, with total Allied air dominance over Germany, nothing was going to move on those roads without being strafed. Anything and everything on the road was a target of opportunity. Everything.

Let's ask the question: Given those facts, how is a pilot flying a few hundred miles per hour looking for targets going to know that a horse drawn cart is civilian and not military?

__________________
Thread Killer.

Yea.... Allied bomber command carpet bombing civilian targets.... hmmm... No side was a Saint in that war...

If you've read Chuck Yeager's autobiography, you might remember that he also questioned some of the things the Allies did during WWII too. He said something on the order of "If we do these things you damn sure better be sure your side wins".

And in the flier's defense, they were told to strafe anything that moved a lot of times. Because the Germans were pretty good at camouflaging things and that cart could very well have been hauling war materials. And when they came down to strafe they generally had the engine firewalled because they were very vulnerable to ground fire. So they came in hot and got out of Dodge as fast as they could, which doesn't lend itself to fine discrimination of targets during the strafing run.

As to the gun camera, it was primarily there to verify what was being shot at or shot down, for proof of a kill. In WWI, the pilots had to have either another pilot flying in another machine verify the kill or have physical proof the plane crashed since they didn't have gun cameras. So if a pilot shot down an aircraft, he might go driving to get proof of his kill. I seem to remember reading that Billy Bishop did that one time; I think it was among his first kills. If you don't know who he is, he was the third ranking ace with 72 kills in WWI IIRC.

My grandfather was on a US Army anti tank crew somewhere in France running away from Tiger tanks and 88s when his whole tank crew was strafed by a ground attack fighter plane. His whole crew was blown to bits off his tank with only him remaining alive. He said by some snot nosed super cool guy " i didnt mean taaa do it George" fly boy flying a plane with a star on it and Allied Normandy invasion stripes on the wings..

where was it written civilians don’t die in wars ? War is hell

Battle damage assessment and intelligence.

Given the nature of the war, and the transport of the German army, all horses were military targets, whether dragging a 105mm arty piece or a wagon full of veggies going to market. If half the horses in Europe dropped dead in the middle of 1944, the German army would have collapsed.

One more story on gun camera film.

We were sitting in Spanish class in 1964 or 1965 and our instructor comes in (he was an Air Force captain) pushing a film projector and holding two cans of film. Big smile on his face and said we were going to watch a couple of movies instead of talking Spanish.

Seems that in the early 1950's he was an F86 pilot flying over what he thought was Korea when he broke out of the clouds and there were two MiG-15s landing on a runway. He shot both of them down. When he returned to base he was met by the Wing Commander who told him his film would be confiscated and he was not to talk about the incident.

He got a little lost in the weather and in fact was north of the Yalu River and it wasn't clear if those were North Korean MiGs. Some 12 years later the film was sent to him and the episode was declassified. He received credit for two MiGs.

Happiest AF captain I've ever seen and the best Spanish class I ever had.

__________________
Mike
S&WCA #3065

He was doing his duty!
Enemy transportation is a valued target.
The Enemy Pilot - A US Citizen Risking his life fighting for his country-
Was doing a Road Sweep, taking out and shutting all movement on that road.

__________________
NRA LIFE MEMBER

My dad saw the same in the war. The Allied flyers would shoot at anything on the roads. Clogs up the roads for the Germans heading towards the front lines.

__________________
LIVE FROM THE DAWGHOUSE

IMHO some of the air to air footage was to record which enemy fighter and bomber units were encountered where along with changes in enemy aircraft configuration.

Air to ground footage was useful for damage assessment.

__________________
On the whistle draw and fire 6

Think of it as an early dash cam.

Also, I don't think the .50cal M2 had an explosive shell in use in WW2 aircraft. I think it was mostly ball, AP, and some incendiary (tracers). The US P-38 was the only US fighter that was deployed in the ETO with a 20mm cannon, which would have had an explosive in it's magazine mix (along with AP--incendiaries?).

It's called "fog of war". Fratricide. It happens.

My buddy was a Marine tanker and was strafed because they were so far advanced, no American forces were supposed to be in the area.

Lets look at the facts of your story. Your grandfather's tank was running away from German forces and TOWARD American lines. To the pilot, the tank was advancing toward American lines and was a threat. Given the Comms of the day, what could be done?

__________________
Thread Killer.

The M8 armor piercing incendiary was introduced in 1943. That is an explosive round.

__________________
Thread Killer.

Absolutely correct. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that they were originally designed and installed as gun cameras, but they were on a LOT of planes, whereas in the Navy, only a few aircraft had real recon cameras. BDA was probably the major use of gun camera footage in the Navy. I also remember running some gun camera footage for the Admiral aboard which identified whether the pilots were attacking appropriate targets (as in foes vice friends). In a single case of my knowledge, one pilot apparently wasn't.

__________________
Formerly Model520Fan

nobody ever "wins" a war...but humans find them popular.....

__________________
There's nowt so queer as folk

General Curtis LeMay stated if we’d lost the war he’d have been a war criminal.

I don't think it is. It's an incendiary, but not explosive. I think the M211 has an explosive component, but I don't think it was used in WW2, at least not on a/c machine guns.

If the flashes that are seen when API hits a target aren't from API rounds exploding, then what are the flashes from?

If those rounds hitting the target aren't explosive then I don't know what is.

__________________
Thread Killer.

We use cameras all the time at Edwards for testing, training and just general recording of anything.

__________________
Freedom isn't free.

I met a combat photographer a long time ago. He said that gun cams were used to record the events so it could be used as training films, to study enemy tactics, record the kill and what type of plane it was.

__________________
Life Is A Gift. Defend it!

My best advice: stay out of minefields.

I do not believe any cameras used to record any WWII action could record sound at the same time. Interviews with individuals had the sound/audio laid down on it before being shown.

__________________
No baby we aint

Thanks for the answers, friends. I have an inquisitive mind and enjoy learning, even if what I learn isn't all that important.(Now I'm wondering what it would take to learn to aim an entire aircraft so as to hit a target, rather than aiming just a single gun.)

Regards,
Andy

Some Allied fighters had 20mm cannon.

Geneva or Hague, one or the other, prohibited explosive
rounds less than 20mm. The M8 API was/is nonexplosive.
Gargle it up and you can find em for sale in reloading
channels.

It was such a big traumatic life changing experience to see his whole tank crew killed by fighter plane that his command took him off front line "Tommy Cookers" and put him in the rear repairing other tanks.. Probably saved his life doing that and later after the war he became, ironically enough, a pilot..

One year in pilot training, another year in upgrade training to your operational aircraft, lots of training flights, lots of using the left hand to shoot the watch off of your right wrist. Lots of hours flying your airplane.

__________________
Mike
S&WCA #3065

Late in WW2 the US ground forces probably had less to worry about the getting even more rare by the minute German Air Force and should of been way more afraid of the US Army Air Corps dropping bombs on them. I read something on that were a formation of US B17 bombers carpet bombed a large US Army column.... Opps i didn't mean taa do it George... Honest!

I don't know what that means. Is it an attempted non answer?

If you all say those API rounds, are in fact non-explosive, aren't exploding in bright flashes when they hit in the gun camera footage, then what are they doing?


Again, P-51, six .50s. In the footage, if those aren't API rounds, then what are they? If the flashes aren't exploding incendiary rounds, what are they?

__________________
Thread Killer.

When metal bullets strike metal they spark. No explosion. Incendiary bullets may contain a small charge, but the charge is intended to burn, not necessarily explode. The first incendiaries used white phosphorus, but the burn didn't last long enough.

You could ignite an incendiary in your hand and be burned badly, lose your hand. You could explode a 20mm shell in your hand and lose your hand and maybe your life, depending on fragmentation. No one died directly from having an incendiary round strike near them.

This is one of the major reasons the 20mm cannon was the preferred aircraft weapon of the war (and remains today in rotary form). The US got by with the .50cal because they faced few a/c that were as robust as what the Americans flew. There were no German or Japanese B-17s. And, of course, the Japanese planes carried long range fuel tanks and no armor or self sealing, so incendiaries were brutally effective in burning them out of the sky.

Again, the M211 is an explosive .50cal round, but I do not believe it was used in WW2 a/c.

Note, the film title includes the term"Incredible Remastered". When a .50 hits, things fragment, spark, and 'splode.