Posted By Kevin M. Pearson on February 05, 2008 at 06:46:30:
In Reply to: MIA B-17 & 4 MIA Crewmen posted by Willis S. Cole, Jr. Sam on February 04, 2008 at 16:03:16:
Sam: I am not a B-17 pilot, but I have been flying for 35 years with over 7,000 hours. I have flown on three B-17s, too, but was not pilot in command.
True airspeed (TAS) is the speed of an aircraft relative to the airmass through which it flies, i.e. the magnitude of the vector difference of the velocity of the aircraft and the velocity of the air. Under zero wind conditions and in horizontal flight, this is equal to the speed over the ground. Under wind conditions an estimation of the wind is used to make a windspeed vector calculation that computes an estimated ground speed from the true air speed and a wind correction angle to maintain the desired ground track.
Aircraft display an indicated airspeed on an instrument called an airspeed indicator. Indicated airspeed will differ from true airspeed at air densities other than some reference density. Air density is affected by temperature, moisture content, and altitude. Indicated airspeed is used in aircraft operation as the aircraft stalling speed and structural limiting speeds are dependent on indicated airspeed, irrespective of true airspeed. However, proper navigation via dead reckoning (without constant ground reference) requires the use of true airspeed and wind corrections.
Now to complicate things further, if one, two or three engines were damaged, Air Speed would diminish, so you would need to know how many engines were still burning and turning to calculate where a bird might have crashed.
And to further complicate things, a fixed wing aircraft has a specific glide ratio, that is the forward momentum of the aircraft will be X while the downward momentum of the aircraft will be Y given how much thrust the engine(s) are producing or not producing.
And when you complicate matters even more by throwing in battle damage that could increase drag (or decrease drag, say, if the ball turret was ejected),your radius of possible crash sites expand even further.
I have researched one mission of the 91st BG - the 16.8.44 mission to Halle and the only reason I found five of the six a/c shot down from the 324th High Squadron, was because I wrote to the nearest newspaper to the crash sites and had them run a story on my search. The Editor of the Goertinger Tageblatt was most helpful and uncovered 12 people who had actually witnessed the crashes for four of the five I found. The witnesses had been children in the war and vividly remembered exactly what they saw that day. My advice it to write to the newspaper closest to the crash site listed on the MACR.
Also, get on Luftwaffe message boards. You may be able to determine what Luftwaffe pilot shot down your plane if fighters brought her down. Many books have been written in German about the Staffels serving during the war and someone might be able to help you.
All of the five planes I dug up had been attacked by IV.(Sturm)/JG 3 'Udet" a specially equipped hunter killer group of our bombers. They were instructed to ram if necessary and Feldwebel Oskar Bosch is credited with shooting down the plane I was most interested in - 2/Lt. Leonard F. Figie's Lassie Come Home, 42-31673, 322nd BS, 91st BG. He is credited with a B-17 victory at 1002 on that day and the reports filed by other crewmen in the Squadron list Lassie as having crashed at 1002.
All five of the planes I found were attacked from the rear and set ablaze by the 20mm and 30 mm cannons carried on the Sturmstaffel FW-190A-8s. They caught on fire and began going down and three of the five exploded before hitting the ground. One witness, Hartmut Bartrum, was working with his grandfather in the fields when he saw John V. Dunlap's Boston Bombshell, 42-39996, come under attack, it caught five, dove for the ground and exploded before hitting the groud. I am guessing here, but based on my research, I doubt it flew more than five miles after being set ablaze.
There are so many variables that would affect how long a B-17 could stay in the air after being damaged, you need to find out just how damaged the plane was. Get the Daily reports from the Squadron in questions and the Missing Air Crew Reports and see if they can help. If the plane dropped out of formation, it might not.
Good luck on your search and if you have anymore questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
Kevin M. Pearson