Reg
Posts: 2787
Joined: 5/26/2000
From: NSW, Australia
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quote:
ORIGINAL: paladin333
Actually this was the common practice of Red Air Army in WW2.
A lot of Russian aces have 2-3 kills made by ramming his blade into enemy aircraft.
They called it "Taran".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramming
quote:
ORIGINAL: niceguy2005
There was an interesting segment on...that History Channel show...is it Warbirds, I can't recall. The show recounted the stories of several German pilots who were sent up to ram B-17s. One of them did exctaly the same. He ran his 109 into the tail of the B-17 and chopped off the stabalizer. Although, he lived, he didn't fly home though.
I had a look at that wikipedia reference and interestingly they only had a single instance involving a Japanese pilot which sounded more like a spur of the moment suicide attack rather than an example of a deliberate ramming doctrine.
In Japanese Army Air Force Fighter Units and their Aces 1931 -1945 by Ikuhiko Hata, Yasuho Izawa and Christopher Shores, Grub Street (Publisher), London, 2002 (phew, what a mouth full), there are numerous references to this tactic when it was realised the Japanese fighters just didn't have the fire power to bring down the big Allied bombers. These weren't intended to be suicide missions as the pilots did bail out after the collision but it certainly was a dangerous occupation and casualties were high.
For instance just prior the first B-29 raid on the Japanese homeland from the Marianas on 24 Nov 44, the 10th Flying Division consisting of the 47th, 53rd, 244th, 18th, 23rd Sentais and the Army Test Center, had each of these units "form a ram attack section equipped with fighters stripped of armor and armament to improve high altitude performance." (p91)
On the 03 Dec 44 raid on Tokyo, the Division claimed 21 bombers plus 6 probables for the loss of six fighters. Four of these were lost in ramming attacks but all four pilots bailed out safely.
This was only one of many references to use of this tactic in the text.
< Message edited by Reg -- 10/19/2007 4:53:01 PM >
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Cheers,
Reg.
(One day I will learn to spell - or check before posting....)
Uh oh, Firefox has a spell checker!! What excuse can I use now!!!
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RE: When reality looks like the cartoons... - 
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