Spitfire Gunsight adjustment?

[Pist-N-Broke]

Originally Posted by Pist-N-Broke

Does the game use the 'Dowding spread'? Which effectively makes setting the gunsight for different ranges a waste of time (more like spray and pray). Under the 'Dowding spread' each pair of the eight .303's were harmonised for different ranges from somewhere from 200 out to 400 yards. This was done apparently because the RAF pilots demonstated such appalingly bad gunnery skills in range estimation when using early Barr and Stroud reflector gunsights, that the only way to do any damage at all was to spread the concentration of fire over as wider range as possible. It was thought it was better to get some hits, than get none at all.

I also believe that the 'Dowding spread' wasn't a pilot definable option. Some squadrons (#1 Sqn in France harmonised to 250 yards), but for the rest of Fighter Command squadrons in 1940 it wasn't an option.

CONVERGEANCE SETTINGS

A few days later an air marshall from the Air Ministery paid us a visit. He had come, he told us, to find out out why we had shot down every aircraft we had attacked while the Fighter Command squadrons in England were, in the main, only succeeding in "driving the German aircraft off in an easterly direction", as the communiques delicately phrased it.

Since we were no longer under the jurisdiction of Fighter Command we had no hesitation in telling the air marshall the reason.

All single-seat eight-gun squadrons in Fighter Command - both Hurricanes and Spitfires - had very poor practice shooting results before the outbreak of war. We all used the "Dowding Spread" at that time - a method of gun-harmonization laid down in accordance with the conviction of our Commander-in-Cheif, Air Marshall Sir Hugh Dowding, that his fighters would never see, let alone engage, enemy fighters.

In theory the Dowding Spread, which was worked out for shooting at enemy bombers from astern, seemed a good idea. Used against a big target, theoretically it produced a wide enough bullet pattern to compensate for aiming error and left sufficient lethal density to destroy such a target. Furthermore, the range laid down - 400 yards - was outside effective enemy defensive fire.

Now we were not armament experts, but we knew about flying and air firing, and we didn't like the Dowding Spread. We reckoned that, even if the experts were right and that at 400 yards' range the bullet velocity was still high enought to prevent tumble, maintain accuracy and penetrate armour (which seemed unlikely), the spread produced by aiming, shooting and random errors combined would be more than enough to drop lethal density below the minimum required for a kill, especially against a small target like a fighter - which WE were not at ALL convinced we would never meet. As for defensive fire from an enemy bomber, we felt his one or two guns hardly stood a chance against the Hurricane's eight. Curiously, the only thing we were wrong about turned out to be this last point.

Fighter Command had dismissed our theories, so during our month's shooting practice in the spring of 1939 we secretly harmonized all our guns on a spot at 250 yards range. Our shooting results on towed air targets showed we were right - we shot them clean away time and time again. Action in France had now proved this point: we had shot down every enemy aircraft we'd attacked.

To the air marshall, and later on to the Air Staff, the case was conclusive. All sigle-seat fighter squadrons were instucted to adopt our method. It was not a moment too soon...

Not long afterwards we made another contribution that was benefit all our fighter squadrond. While still with Fughter Command, in order to facilitate recognition by our observers on the ground the undersides of our wings were painted black on one side, white on the other. We considered thid to be idiotic, since the German aircraft were duck-egg blue underneath and very difficult to spot from below, whereas we stood out like flying chequerboards. So the Bull gave orders for the undersides of our aircraft to be painted duck-egg blue, and this too was later adopted for all RAF fighters.

.................................................. .................................................. .........................................

"By the time No.1 Squadron withdrew from France on 18th June 1940, they had gained a formidible combat reputation. Miraculously, they had destroyed a total of 155 enemy aircraft with only three of their own pilots having been killed, two wounded and one captured".

Fighter Pilot: a personal record of the campaign in France 1939-1940
by Paul Richey 1941.
1990 edition published by Leo Cooper.
ISBN 1-85089-550-3