Comments by "Mike Armstrong" (@mikearmstrong8483) on "The Bell P-400 “Caribou”; Britain’s Airacobra" video.

  1. The heavy armament actually hindered its ability to conduct ground attack. Soviet tests showed that a 37mm gun, under ideal test range conditions with the best pilots, could hit a large vehicle sized target less than 7% of the time. With 15 rounds to work with, that's 1 single hit for all the ammo expended. A single 37mm hit is not worth flying the sortie. If it didn't have the big gun, and had 2 more heavy MGs in the nose with 200 rounds each, it would have been much better at ground attack. At least a 20mm with 60 rounds was an improvement. Then there is the issue that it had a liquid cooled engine and 1 lucky shot rifle bullet could put an end to plane and pilot. All air forces in the war learned that air cooled radials that could take damage were much more survivable down in the weeds. Sure, many liquid cooled V engined planes were used for ground attack, but they were taking bigger chances and suffered proportionately higher losses.
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  2. The air to ground role is a myth that has been repeated so often that it has come to be accepted as dogma. This stems from the Soviet description of its role, which translates roughly as "low level support of ground forces". Westerners automatically equate that to close air support as we know it, attacking ground targets. But to the Soviets the term meant low level air cover. First, we sent about a 1/2 million rounds for the 37mm gun. All of it HE. Not a single round of AP. And they weren't about to open a factory to produce ammo for a gun that was in fairly limited service for them. Second, the Soviets did extensive testing of large caliber aircraft guns against tanks and found it to be a losing proposition. The best test pilots shooting at static targets achieved about a 7% hit ratio. With 15 rounds carried, that meant 1 hit per loadout, with a round that had a low probability of penetration. In the field, with less experienced pilots shooting at moving targets, it was a waste of a sortie. Planes like the Ju-87 and Hurricane that mounted a 37mm or 40mm under each wing doubled their chance of a hit and were therefore feasible. Third, Soviet archives released in the 90s record that the plane wasn't used in the ground attack role, except on occasions when a pilot might find an ideal target of opportunity, which might be attacked just as any pilot in any plane might. So why even put a 37mm on a plane? So you can shoot at other planes. An aircraft, even a fighter, is substantially larger than a tank, and since you are most likely chasing it, you have a much lower closing velocity and can get much closer, so the chances of getting a hit are much better than hitting a tank. Also, a single 37mm round that is unlikely to do more than scratch the paint on a tank is an almost guaranteed instakill against an aircraft.
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