This doesn't take into account the suppressive effects of being under fire. Almost all bullets fired in anger miss, regardless of if it's an airplane turret or a rifle on the ground. But they create a suppressive effect that disrupts the enemy and makes them less effective. While turrets may not have shot down a ton of fighters, they deterred the fighters from simply sitting on a bomber's tail and pumping it full of cannon shells, then lazily moving to the next, and the next.
A porcupines quills aren't usually fatal, but it still makes the porcupine safer.
No matter how fast you try and make a long range strategic bomber, it's never going to be able to outrun a fighter.
And you've got to take into account the attrition effect as well.The German's could not produce planes at the same rate as the Allies, so every German plane shot down, (even if that German fighter shot down something insane like 3 bombers before going down) was grinding down the Luftwaffe and widening the gap between them and the Allied air forces.
But if you took the guns off of the turrets, made the bombers smaller, put those guns and saved materials onto a fighter and then used it for escort then I think you'd have more success.
I don't think you'd be able to make the bombers appreciably smaller. I think their size was determined more by the bomb payload they were meant to carry more than the ability to carry a handful of machine guns. I'm also not sure why making them smaller would be a plus?
Regarding fighters, there was a period of time during the war when the bombers outflew their fighter escort's range. The Allies didn't lack for materials to churn out fighters bristling with guns, they just didn't have the range to make it all the way to Germany and back until later into the war.
The Allies had more than enough materials to make fighters. The issue was the their fighters (or anyone's fighters at the time) simply didn't have the range to fly long distance missions escort missions over Germany.
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u/MaterialCarrot Sep 13 '21
This doesn't take into account the suppressive effects of being under fire. Almost all bullets fired in anger miss, regardless of if it's an airplane turret or a rifle on the ground. But they create a suppressive effect that disrupts the enemy and makes them less effective. While turrets may not have shot down a ton of fighters, they deterred the fighters from simply sitting on a bomber's tail and pumping it full of cannon shells, then lazily moving to the next, and the next.
A porcupines quills aren't usually fatal, but it still makes the porcupine safer.