Can Small Arms and Rifles Shoot Down Aircraft?
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- čas přidán 7. 09. 2024
- Can a rifle or other small arms shoot down an aircraft? An overview with some historic events and anecdotes.
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Movies/Video Games featured:
My Way 2011
Pearl Harbor 2001
The Fought for Their Country 1975
Stalingrad 1993
Family Guy (Series)
Flight of the Intruder 1991
Hurricane 2018
The Last Crusade 1989
Hart's War 2002
Memphis Belle 1990
Patton 1970
G.I. Joe (Series)
Porco Rosso 1992
Battlefield 4 (Video Game)
Batman 1989
Charlie Wilson's War 2007
The Simpsons (Series)
Dunkirk 2017
Japanese Arisaka Type 99 rifles are one gun where Japan manufactured AA sights into their rifles. Early Type 99's have what are called wings, mounted to the rear sight ladder. The reason for this was that during the early events of the war on China, the Chinese were still using poorly armored and slow biplanes. So the thought being that a squad or more of men with their rifles, would use the sights to shoot down planes. The concept rolled over to the U.S. (Japan thinking we were weak and outdated) until they were confronted with faster and better armored planes. It was only then did Japan stop manufacturing these sights to their guns. I suggest looking into the Type 99, I never knew this until I bought my own one and found out why the rear sight looked like a plane itself.
There's an excellent video by C&Rsenal on those sights called "Anti-Aircraft Sights on the Japanese Type 99 Arisaka.".
Yes.
I've built some,replica of course.
I actually expected Arisaka AA sights to be mention in video... at least am glad its here as one of the most popular comment. Btw. as its mentioned in video... even low flying jets during Vietnam war were in danger against small arms... so i wouldnt say late WWII. planes were impossible to shoot down by small arms.
Back during the late 1990s to early 2000s,cable t.v. station History Channel had a documentary series,Tales of the Gun,with firearm experts talking about that weapon.They aired an episode,"Imperial Japan Guns of W.W.2",back in late 2000 and an expert did mention anti aircraft sights on a Type 99 bolt action rifle and how to take a low flying plane down.
They were also one of the first rifles ever issued with chrome lined barrels. With a little tlc and knowledge they could have been (and alot of people say they already were) the best bolt action rifles ever issued to an army at that point.
Can small arms and rifles shoot down a plane? Yeah, with enough bullets and luck they could shoot them down. And it sure looks really cool too.
Watching the movie Dunkirk, I always wonderd if all the 400.000 would have fired on the stukas, what the damage would have been. But now I know more
@@caden351 The stuka have such a unique profile, like the fixed landing gear, the hump on the wing etc. The allied had nothing that looked closed to it over that area.
...czcams.com/video/qYD0CKML_mc/video.html
@@Lappmogel Those bullets must have to land somewhere so its very much possible that some of the bullets shot upwards by the 400.000 men could have hit a friendly soldier
Believe it or not, a 90s-year old Korean War veteran here on CZcams (some of those fellas do have accounts) described in a comment how his Corsair was actually shot at and struck by small arms fire from the North Korean army. Much to his horror, readings on his gauges started to drop out, and he thought his engine had been hit. Miraculously for him, it turned out that the bullet(s) had struck the gauge line, not his fuel line or other vital components. He was thus able to fly back to safety, and IIRC he said he hopes he never has a scare like that in his life again. It is possible for planes to be brought down by that stuff, and this fellow had a much too close call.
My dad was in the army in the fifties and they were still trained to shoot down an aircraft with the volley fire of a full rifle platoon.
We went thru the basics of it in finnish army back in 2007 when I served. I guess the idea was that the receiving end won't know if it's 20mm or 7.62mm.
There was a US Army manual titled "Small Arms Defense Against Air Attack" that still mentions this as late as the 1970s
I trained that in the 70s, optimistically even with SMGs.
During the first gulf war, french super étendards came back damaged from AK fire, some quite badly, so yeah, even if it's unlikely to shoot a modern jet down like that, it's still very much a threat.
@@mnguy98 We were told about the "golden BB" in '79 and were supposed to respond to aircraft during our 20-miler falling on our backs and blasting straight up.
A British captain in the Falklands had sailors on deck firing small arms as well as more dedicated weapons at Argentinian jets when asked why he said it was good for moral
A a sea harrier was actually shot down by Argentine special forces using small arms fire.
@@stevyjobs8436 and various helicopters using the argentine automatic fn fal
Interesting. During the Korean War, Communist Chinese and North Korean troops did similar stuff, and beyond shooting at UN aircraft they even tried to sink US battleships with coastal artillery. It got to the point American sailors were debating among themselves what was causing these fellas to be so reckless. The conclusion many of them reached was that the Communist propaganda was so powerful that it had driven them beyond high morale to the point it had given them a sense of invincibility (when what they were often doing was in fact suicidal). It was pretty frightening and disturbing for them to witness, to say the least.
A friend I used to work with was in the Royal Navy during the Falklands He said the worst feeling was when there was an Argentine raid coming in when the ship was closed up at action stations He was on a first aid party as his speciality was ASW they wherent required in San Carlos They knew the raid was inbound and hearing and feeling the ship air defense missile system fire then the 4 5 inch gun then GPMG machine guns and finally SLR rifle fire as they knew as they heard each weapons system fire the Argentine Aircraft was still coming towards them as the previous weapons system had missed
On 21st May 1982 two Royal Marines Westland Gazelle helicopters were shot down near Port San Carlos by small arms fire from retreating Argentinian troops and a third one was badly damaged.
I believe during World War 2 a Ju52 was brought down by an Allied solider using a Boys anti tank rifle. I think it was on Crete.
JJ, here's something very few people know about. German submarines had a towable Gyrocopter/Kite that was used as a "Crow's nest". From what I've read, it could be deployed and stowed rather quickly. This might make a good video for you.
Depends on the caliber, range, luck, and how much ammo you have
Only takes a single bullet, just has to hit the right part of the plane.
it only takes 1 bullet to end it all.
Its the golden BB theory, someone somewhere has a bullet meant for you. It is the only bullet that will ever kill you, it is the only bullet that cannot be stopped.
In the past it was used to instill courage in pilots and soldiers and talk them into ignoring incoming fire and fight back recklessly because "the golden bb is the one that's gonna kill you. and you can never avoid the golden bb.
Oh yeah that is really something and also there's a lot of ideas but may want to ask JJ about other ideas since there's a lot of them like MI-24 Hind, Stinger missiles and B-52 bomber are just a few and other helicopters in the Vietnam war like A-1 Cobra and Chinook are just a few others I heard about may want to look up others in that conflict there were very many there.
During the Falklands War, as the British task force sailed down south and particularly after the loss of HMS Sheffield, it was realized that there was a massive deficit in AA guns aboard RN warships at the time. To supplement the limited number of WW2 vintage 20mm Oerlikon's and 40mm Bofors on the ships, as many HMGs as possible were bolted on to compensate for this. There is a photo of one ship I remember literally bristling with retrofitted GPMGs, and one 20mm was salvaged from the wreck of HMS Antelope for HMS Avenger, nicknamed “Antelopes Avenger”.
As for their effectiveness, with the somewhat poor performance of the Seacat missiles and the aforementioned lack of physical AA guns, in the end, the more lead you can get in the sky the better. And I doubt that Argentine pilots felt comfortable with the sky full of machine-gun tracers in San Carlos waters.
Actual 1982 war footage. Watch from 01.45 and 13.02 for a better understanding of the air attacks and AA defence.
czcams.com/video/H-EG0pvi3e4/video.html
Also this from 6.04 shows the extent of the additional machine guns.
czcams.com/video/3Bhr8JrgnlE/video.html
idk it seems pretty smart, planes use air in order to fly, right? if you put lead in the air then it means theres less air to fly around in as a plane, so the more lead in the sky = less air in the sky and therefore less space the plane has to move around in
simply genius military strategy here.
As another thing, if you knew you were flying into a hail of gunfire you'd go full throttle, this would burn through your fuel at a faster rate and remember it's a long trip back over open water and it would make aiming on a target harder.
Otto Carius later became a pharmacist and opened his own pharmacy. He named it the Tiger Apotheke. I bet he also stocked a lot of Tiger Balm.😆
lol I wanted to get more into his story but maybe in another video. Thanks for adding that!
What a nerd 😂
And "Bleu Max" erection pills.
One of the Pearl Harbor shootdowns (pilot crashed just missing buildings). Was listed as "self crashing" by his colleagues. One book I read about the battle stated "The truth was he had been shot down by a sailor to dumb to know what he was doing was impossible". Any lost aircraft over army bases at Pearl were hit by bullets (the AAA guns never got their ammo delivered in time).
too dumb.
During my army days we trained AA with MG and 20mm. Towed target and a flying fox target, it's extremely difficult. Even with a MG with good AA sights and 1200 rpm.
Yeah I can really question the hardships of that task aside from the weight of the weapon.
I have done the same things with the MAG 58 GPMG mounted on the crew commanders hatch of a Leopard tank in the Canadian army. Even with 16 tanks blazing away at target drones all we managed to do was put the odd hole in them.
“This ain’t one of your church picnic flare gun firings. This is the real thing!”
That was the one clip that inspired this whole video...
What is that from?
@@JohnnyJohnsonEsq interesting what inspires a train of thought....that iconic photo of a member of the BEF on the beach at Dunkirk taking aim springs to mind....well done Johnny...
@@Justsomedude_867 Simpsons “Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood” episode
@@FlyWithMe_666 Huh, I don’t remember that 🤔
I’m a HUGE Simpsons fan
The Red Baron was brought down by small arms.
If I recall correctly, how to shoot at aircraft with the Lee Enfield was in the prewar British training manuals.
My grandpa served in WW2 guarding an airfield in southern France for some time. He said they did actually take down low flying enemy aircraft by volley firing their rifles.
North Vietnamese did this against American jets and helicopters.
The fact that when a small arms hit may require hard to get parts and the time to repair is worth the effort to shoot at low flying aircraft. Think electrical and hydraulic systems.
A thing that was touched on briefly is the type of plane. For example in ww1 most planes had basically nothing that would stop a round. This made them easier to down by non-specalized units because you only need the bullet to collide with and damage critical parts. Many planes of that era had just machine guns which fired similar calibers as rifles just way more rounds.
This can be seen very well in 2 games that come to mind.
Battlefield 1 where small arms can damage both the planes health and components, even get a pilot kill if you hit the correct spot. I fired alot of rounds into planes in that game to try and scare them out of an attack run on my position, sometimes it worked, other times it didn't.
War thunder, a game where you have to hit the component to do damage to the vehicle, you can shoot a few hundred mg rounds through a plane and not kill it if you miss everything important or kill the plane with less than 10 rounds if you hit the right spots. Even planes past the biplanes can get shot down if you can hit the correct spot enough times to do something critical.
I remember reading in Filt Whitlock's "The Fighting First: The Untold Story of The Big Red One on D-Day" a corporal who was normally the battalion commander's driver was replaced because he was deemed to drunk to drive the jeep, so he was replaced & put in the back seat. While on convoy the battalion was attacked by Luftwaffe aircraft. The corporal jumped up & manned the .30 cal machinegun. He was able to shoot down one aircraft & damage another while being "Drunk on Duty." Another great video Johnny! Keep em coming.
When I had to train for the army the handbook said that the use if small firearms against airplanes is useful. If it wasn't for the lucky shot it would work as a deterrent to scare the enemy.
I am reading "First into Action", Duncan Falconer. In there he describes one marine (later in the SBS) who was credited with shooting down a Mirage with a GPMG. It was said that he was aiming at the first one, but actually hit the one following. I can't find any other references to this, but I think there was a mention of such an event in the book "Goose Green", Nigel Ely. I seem to recall in that book it was a Pucara though. My memory could be playing tricks.
John Leake won a DSM for shooting down an A4 Skyhawk with a jimpy on HMS Ardent. The one with the SBS guy I had heard was another Skyhawk at San Carlos but he was using a Bren (L4) so not sure about that one, but there's no doubt about the other as it is well documented and he was decorated for it.
@@darrenbrashaw8409 Thanks for the info. I will go back and see if I can find the bit about the Marine/SBS guy.
@@Kefuddle you're welcome, there's a video on here about Leake, he was an ex soldier who got the job of NAAFI manager on Ardent and ended up doing anti-aircraft duty with a jimpy mounted on the ship's railing. I read Falconer's book about 20 years ago as it was one of the very few about the SBS.
Argies lost two aircraft in the Goose Green Battle to ground fire. One was shot down by a Bootneck from 3 Cdo AD Troop with a Blowpipe MANPADS while the Paras got the other one with small arms fire. One was a Pucara and the other was a MB326. Can't remember which weapon killed which aircraft.
I had one hour of AA training with machine guns, not in basic, but on a slow day during normal work. It was interesting, we learned how to use the spider web sights, and we also had some targets flying over the base too! Sadly we only had 7.62 MGs and the planes were a pair of A10s, so we probably would've been able to do bupkis before being vaporized.
"I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne. Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky..."
- Prof. Henry Jones
I think one of the best examples of luck is the one from Tintin where Tintin shoots down a biplane with his pistol which grounds the plane. Great Video
Dang I grew up on Tintin. Wish I would have remembered that.
@@JohnnyJohnsonEsq Well there's also the silly scene at the end of Spectre where James Bond shoots down a helicopter using his freaking .380 ACP PPK pistol while on a rocking speedboat.
@@JohnnyJohnsonEsq it was in claws of the crab and is also in the live action movie
its worth noting that a bullet of any caliber through the radiator of a water-cooled engine eg a Merlin will down single engined aircraft although as you ay it will be miles away from the shooter - it also produced significant fire risk as the glycol used as coolant (unlike gasoline) has a flashpoint lower than it evaporation point
I think Battlefield 1 demonstrates that preety well, despite beeing game focused more on spectacle than realism of combat. You can harm planes with all infantry guns, but most do like 1-2 points of damage per hit, and hiting (especialy multiple times) fast moving aircraft is tricky. But *sometimes*, just sometimes, stars align and you pull this one in milion shot that splaps one last hp of a plane or headshots a pilot :D .
Always good even as infantry in bf1 or bf5 to lob a few rounds at a plane flying at you. It prevented them from repairing and it may open up a window for a friendly plane to swoop in and finish them.
I have my grandpa's war prize Arisaka Type 99 and it has foldout anti-aircraft sights which is neat. It's a nice shooting cock-on-close bolt rifle but the idea of shooting at an airplane with the thing is pretty wild, and I doubt the guy that originally was issued it had the chance.
Can you make an episode on "gun cameras". You mentioned how it was a thing on aircraft, and in the movie Redtails, they highlight gun camera footage like as if every fighter plane had a gun camera. Kinda reminds me of how people just start rolling with a gopro and see what they record.
I will never be late
I’ve really been enjoying these question videos you’ve been putting up recently Johnny, I have always wondered the same things but have been to lazy to do research lol, anyways keep it up man!
I’ve really come to enjoy this channel! It’s a perfect mixture of light heartedness and serious content but always very informative
I did mandatory service in the ROK airforce and during basic training we were doing training for AA fire with our rifles. So there were 150 dudes lying on their backs with their rifles up pretending to shoot at the sky. It was hilarious
There is that one photo of Soviet troops in their anti-Dive-bomber drill that was just "Everyone lie on their backs and fire your PPSH at once!" on the basis that even if they didn't hit anything, the combined muzzle flash and noise would drown out the Stuka’s Jericho sirens and be good for moral.
@3:45 I don’t know if there were cases like this during the Vietnam War but there was one during the Salvadoran Civil War where a rebel with a Dragunov Sniper Rifle shot at an Salvadoran Air Force A-37 Dragonfly and killed the co-pilot which forced the pilot to eject.
Years ago in Colorado a farmer shot down a air force jet with a rifle for repeatedly buzzing his sheep as when the pilots were out training they would intentionally scare his sheep to try and get them to run off where he couldn't find them or their favorite cause them to fall off the short cliffs in the area. Can't find any internet articles about it since it happened before the internet which is a shame due to how interesting the whole thing was.
Fantastic video!!! I was surprised you didn't use that scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when he tried to shoot down an aircraft with his handgun only for the birds to take it out
he did. check again, it's the one where indiana is checking his pistol ammo
If no one commented this but in the 1991 Gulf War a French Jaguar pilot was hit in the head by an AK-47 after it penetrated the plexiglass cockpit canopy the pilot survived and flew is jag back to base. Anyone correct me if I’m wrong.
Here is my comment from your M3 grease gun video about my cousin who supposedly shot down a Nazi aircraft with small arms:
There is a story from WWII in Crete about how one of my cousins shot down a German aircraft using only a M3 grease gun. I've heard 100 different versions of it, but they all have him hiding in the mountains, and the just unloading on a low flying aircraft, then seeing the aircraft go down. I don't think there is any way to know if this true, but i think it is possible at least for a lucky round to hit the pilot. it would have been during the initial stages of the invasion of Crete, or shortly after. There are a lot of crazy stories about the Cretan resistance fighters, and a lot of them are true, but tall tales get mixed in too lol. Either way, Crete was the only place to force the withdrawal of occupying Nazi troops during the war!
Red Barron was shot down by Canadian groundfire I believe
Canadian pilot, groundfire from Australian MG. They don't know who shot the fatal shot
@@jantschierschky3461 clearly one for the Commonwealth...
@@eamonnclabby7067 yes
I remember when I was in the Army in the early 80's this was something we practiced as a rifle company. The only technical thing that we were taught was to lead by 100 meters (the ubiquitous American football field) no matter what the speed or distance was. If you do the basic math, if all of the 120 weapons in the company dumped let's say 30 rounds, that's 3,600 rounds. To practice this we went to the aerial gunnery range where they would launch the same target drone that the ADA guys fired at. It was a red rubber "jet" looking thing maybe 6 feet long, I forget either compressed air or steam powered. Every time it flew into our AO, we hit it anywhere from 3 or 4 hits to well over a dozen. More than enough to at least take a modern jet fighter OOS. I always wondered about the fellas at Dunkirk, had everyone fired their weapon I have little doubt that they would have brought down those aircraft or at least scared them off of doing that type of attack.
Played couple of rounds of WW2 online FPS.Enemy aircraft flew and fired directly on my position several times,literally flying into my gunsight of a Lee Enfield bolt action rifle.No freaking way to even hit Bf-109 flying at 500 kph and see any noticeable results.
It's a fun little thing to do even though you are pretty much helpless against it by yourself,but that's it.That is what HMGs and proper AA guns are designed for.
I was talking to a veteran of the war I'm Afghanistan who flew cobras. He said on his first sortie he got hit by a round from a rifle from the mid to late 1800s (before the first "modern" bolt actions) while flying low over Kabul. Sure enough they eventually found the guy who fired the shot and it was an old man with vission trouble who said he was hunting birds
A report from Pearl Harbour said it could be done. The Army handed out rifles to anyone old enough to hold one. One was given to a younger fellow and he took aim at a Japanese plane as it flew in low straight at him. He shot one or two times and it exploded into a fireball. The kid was traumatized and had to be relieved. They're pretty sure he hit the detonator on the bomb strapped to the belly of the plane.
Every British subscriber to your will surely be familiar with small arms fire against aircraft, as used in the episode "The armoured might of lance corporal Jones". A classic from the BBC's "Dad's Army"
I remember in 1981 they told us in Army basic training not to shoot at aircraft with an M-16 or M-60, it was a waste of time, ammo, and just let's em know where to smoke you.
There's a related video by Military History with some VIP guest. The question was why didn't the Wehrmacht use something like the 50 cal on tanks?
One Veteran replied that they had everything from their MG42 to their 88mm in their Tiger... (meaning that everyone and their mom took potshots at incoming planes).
The MG42 was even designed with this in mind, having a tripod mount available that allowed AA application and it had an insane rate of fire for the era...
However, now comes the quote of the VIP: if you get in range with your 50cal (which has a higher effective range than an MG42, due to using much heavier bullets that fly at similar speeds), then it's already a significant emotional event (meaning that the plane would have already dropped bombs in your direction and his machine cannons would tear up your colleagues while you're waiting to get into range!)
I seem to recall a documentary that looked into the Manfred von Richthofen aka The Red Baron and his crash and death. A Discovery Channel documentary concluded that his was killed by a unknown Australien soldier when looking into record of position and angle of shot. The killing bullet did not match the calibre Roy Brown was firing with from his plane. Could be something to look into.
Also thanks for all the cool videos. I really enjoy them
I have read this as well. I saw the documentary. It was suggested that a single bullet from a ground based Vickers (Maxim) 0.303 gun killed Richtofen although that was the same calibre of bullet fired by Brown's plane.
The G.I Joe / Cobra footage really helped drive the narrative.
The film Lost Battalion has a company of German riflemen shoot and kill a low-flying Entente pilot while he was searching for the Americans. Granted the plane made a successful landing and the pilot died on landing, I think that still counts as a ground-to-air small arms kill.
This is still something that light infantry trains for. It's not one man, but a squad effort.
Your inclusion of Studio Ghibli warms my heart. It’s mainly fantasy, but is still heavily inspired by real stuff.
Imagine shooting a plane with a tank. That's some Rambo shit
With the right caliber and right amount of shots, probably. At Pearl Harbor, Sailors and Marines were shooting Zeros with handguns and rifles.
Absolutely, however the hits must be in the correct places . Most aircraft can absorb lots of small arms fire. However a hit in fuel area causing a fire, the hydraulics, a primary mechanical function or the pilot can get the job done.
My father in WW2 was evecuated from Dunkirk and came out on the "Mole" which was bombed and straffed. He told of how they all fired at one bomber which was hit and it flew over them at lampost height to crash into the sea. The pilot was clearly visible slumped in the cockpit which was riddled with bullets. One airman had managed to parachute out into the sea and swam towards a rowing boat which had two Royal Navy sailors aboard. The soldiers on the Mole were yelling at the sailors to leave him and let him drown. The airman reached the boat to be pulled in but the two sailors grabbed him and pushed him under water drowning him as he flayed about to try and get free of their grasp. Needless to say the soldiers cheered their action.
During my own service I was once on an air defence shoot where we were just using the GMPG machine gun, trialing new gun mountings on the APC's. The plane towed an "air sock" which had sensors in to record any hits and we were pleased to learn that we did get some hits. The trick was to watch the tracer as you aimed in front of the target, this gave the optical illusion that the rounds were curving into the target as you adjusted your aim. We also had great delight in shooting "John Wayne" style firing from the hip. Though we did get some hits it was less effective but made for a fun day.
While it is basically impossible to verify surface-to-air kills with small arms, there are cases that can be verified. The example that comes to mind is the downing of Jesse Brown during the Battle of Chosen Reservoir. Flying a seek and destroy mission for the besieged Marines, Brown was hit and began leaking oil before being forced to crash his plane into a clearing. Brown was trapped in the cockpit and died of his wounds, but not before a heroic rescue attempt by his colleague Thomas Hudner who intentionally crashed his own aircraft. The pilots flying with Brown and Hudner that day did not see any enemy soldiers, let alone AAA positions. One pilot said he saw a rustle in the snow directly before Brown was hit, making it most likely Brown was shot down by a Chinese infantry unit armed exclusively with PPSH submarine guns and Mosin Nagant rifles
I'm surprised you didn't include the scene from Air America in which the Laotian peasant shoots down a cargo plane with what looks to be an Arisaka rifle. Still, this is one of those really interesting topics that doesn't get much attention and the video is much appreciated.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this.
I rewatched Dunkirk a few months ago and I wondered this very same question. There were hundreds of thousands of allied troops on the beaches with their rifles. With such a large number of small arms in such a concentrated area, you'd of thought they would of been able to throw a ton of bullets in the air against German bombers. But it would seem they were largely at the mercy of Stukas and the other light bombers and fighters the Germans used against them.
I believe only four German aircraft were shot down by AA fire during the entire Dunkirk evacuation.
@@colinbarron4 interesting! Thanks for the info. 👍
I had an uncle that was in the air force during the Vietnam war he essentially flew large Cessnas doing low altitude reconnaissance mostly over the jungle and he told me that people would use anything from pistols to bows and arrows trying to shoot them down. He never said they were successful but they definitely tried
Visit our country sometimes, there are museums that have pictures proof and tools of how we actually shot down somes.
What do you mean by LARGE Cessnas? O-1 Bird Dog, O-2 Skymaster and the A-37 employed in Vietnam were the smallest planes in USAF inventory at the time.
A bird dog is essentially a Cessna but they had cameras and their wits.
@@nguyenphuocthanh8056 I plan to one day ... I think it's really cool with the internet that we can have conversations with people in other countries that were once in conflict with each each other... I've talked to some veterans who were in the NVA as well is their families, and when you hear their side of it all it really gets very interesting because it's geopolitics playing right out in front of you.
During the Gulf War I was in an artillery battery, assigned to a M2 Browning mounted on top of a deuce and a half truck. Before deploying they gave me a chart to study, with silhouettes of possible enemy aircraft. That was my entire anti aircraft training 😁
A few Stories.
In the book _Forgotten Soldier_ by Guy Sajer, he was part of a German unit which was trying to march out of a bad situation - and totally exhausted. They had a Russian Aircraft begin to attack them and were to tired to take cover. So ... the Officer gave a command something like _"Air Defense Formation"_ and, as they had been trained in basic training, every man in the unit raised his weapon and aimed it at the Russian aircraft diving on them. At the command to fire - they all fired as one - and shot the damn thing down. They were to numb to cheer the fact that they hadn't just all died, turned and renewed their exhausted march.
My friends father was in the 1st Armored Division during WWII. He was in a Sherman Tank in North Africa when an Me-109 came down the column from behind strafing them. They fired their main gun just as the 109 flew over them and it flew into it.
There were several stories I vaguely recall of a Japanese Pilot who was flying along parallel to it and looking at a cargo plane he was about to attack. Someone stuck a gun out the pilots window and fired on him - and down he went.
In a similar story - a Japanese Pilot attacking an Avenger Torpedo Bomber didn't seem to realize that it had a ventral gun position. He pulled right up under the bomber and behind it - and the crewman at the .30 Cal. weapon unloaded on him. Down he went.
As in the scene depicted from the movie _"Flight of the Intruder"_ the North Vietnamese Peasants were all trained to carry rifles and fire them at any American Aircraft they saw. Every now and then - they'd get lucky.
The Americans lost over a thousand helicopters during that war - at least one - to an arrow.
James Jones - who was in the Army and at Schofield Barracks on Dec. 7, 1941 - writes in his novel _"From Here To Eternity"_ about men getting up on the roof of the barracks with Machine guns and BAR's. In the book - they shoot down one Japanese aircraft and one American one. The movie just shows them getting the Japanese one.
czcams.com/video/-7XxhdIOXo4/video.html
Manfred von Richthofen was in pursuit, at low level over Allied Lines, of an Allied Aircraft - when he was hit and killed. At the time the victory was attributed to Captain Roy Brown who had tried to attack him to defend his fellow pilot Richthofen was pursuing. Later efforts have mentioned the greater likely hood that one of several machine guns firing on him from the ground may have gotten him. As there were any number of riflemen shooting at him - one of them could have gotten him too.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Richthofen#Death
In the movie _"The Bridges at Toko-ri"_ Brubaker's unit has successfully bombed the bridges and goes on to the secondary target. The Brubaker's aircraft takes a hit to a fuel tank that exhausts the aircraft's fuel. It can't make it to the coast, crash lands and it's pilot and the Helicopter crew that come to rescue him are all killed by enemy ground fire. Air cover over the rescue attempt kills a lot of the troops on the ground but they get the airmen.
So ... yeah .... you can get shot down by ground fire and people do all the time. Your chances are worse though the more and the heavier the automatic weapons they have but even a single bullet from a rifle can do it.
.
Possible yes, probable no. Vietnamese did a wall of ak/sks to have the plane fly into. Possible but not as likely as the amount of ammunition needed to make up for the lack of aim.
During the German and Italian bombing campaigns against Malta the command issues rifles to the ground crews and taught them how to concentrate their fire in the hopes of bringing down an enemy plane. More of a morale builder than anything else.
Yes if they hit the right spot... i was told that in wwii here in italy a guy shooting from a church roof at a p47 hit the engine and the plane crushed a 30km away from there. The p47 was on a run strafing an airfield... maybe a combination of lucky events for the rifleman... he was shooting a carcano 91 ...maybe aiming at the pilot...
My dad and i were discussing this topic recently and something he said was during Stalingrad, workers would have stacks of Mosins near the doors of factories in case of air (and i suppose ground) attack. According to him, the workers would scramble to slit trenches and fire volleys at Stukas with some even downing the aircraft.
British troops in WW2 were trained to volley fire by squad at low flying enemy aircraft. I think they gave it up pretty quickly, though..?.
The FAAs excellent Fairey Fulmar did lack a rear gun for its observer/radio operator. They would often take a Lanchester with them to compensate (later they used a Thompson instead). They were also know to hurl toilet roll and use very pistols, too. Some reports said that if they could get a hold of one they’d bring a Bren gun along.
Nice spot! Great little subject, JJ. Very interesting. Not sure if these short ones are helping my ADD or making it worse?
One of the hardest parts of doing it would be properly leading your shots. Typically with handguns and rifles you are only practicing against targets that are generally level with you across relatively short distances. To shoot at a plane you're going to have to aim far higher than anyone trains for, which puts the bullet on a ballistic trajectory that is completely out of the range of anyone's experience. You have to properly anticipate travel time, leading a very fast target, and bullet drop, all to extremes that no one has any practice with.
That last story about a guy shooting one down with a shotgun is honestly the most believable. He'd have experience shooting skeet, and the spread of the shot gives him better odds of hitting something critical. But it is still more luck than anything else.
During a surprise Bf109 strafing attack on Fula-Waterloo in N Africa in 1942 one aircraft was hit in the wing with .45 rounds from a Thompson SMG. The coolant drained and the engine caught fire and it belly flopped about 12 miles away.
I think that more often than not small arms fire led, like the author mentioned, aircraft to "slowly bleed to death", losing coolant, oil, or in cases of planes like the the Zero, gasoline (no self-sealing tanks on that bad boy). If you were lucky, you limped home... if not you were walking and praying you were on your side of the lines. I have read somewhere before that this was one of the reasons that the US preferred the Thunderbolt for strafing over the Mustang; that big air-cooled engine just stood up to small arms fire better than a water cooled one, where even a nick to the radiator could be big trouble on a long mission. (also having 2 more guns helps :D )
During Indo Pak war, an Indian Gurkha Bren Gunner shot down a Pakistani MiG 19. The Pilot was taken a POW. Small arms are still dangerous indeed.
Shooting straight on like the first clip seems plausible, but far more likely with a .50 calibre weapon or anti-tank rifle (PTRD-41) than an infantry rifle. An assault rifle of today might work against a WWII plane, but we're not dealing with time travel. Wires could tangle low flying aircraft (re: yank terrorists that flew into the Cavalese cable car line in 1998), but that would require very low flying and limited area of use. Helicopters would be far more susceptible to ground fire.
In battlefield 5 I made a zero explode after shooting a bazooka at it.. or with a MG42 a corsair was diving and I just aimed right at the cockpit and just held the trigger down.. I have to play that game again one of these days days
This is why there's a -1 to ground units against aircraft in our Axis&Allies house rules, and why dedicated AA units are important even though they can't be used against other ground units.
Your deadpan delivery interspersed with the cartoon clips was a perfect combination!
literally the first game of war thunder i ever played i shot down a plane that was going to ram me while in some sort of first tier french tank. I don't know who was more surprised, me or the pilot. never managed that again since.
My grandfather was friends with a guy who served at Okinawa and shot down a Zero with a Thompson
The fact that the Germans actually Removed AA-MGs from their tanks toward the end of the war, might be an indicator at how effective small arms fire was against aircraft.
But they only started to use them at the end of the war and I think the Bundeswehr also used MG3 as AA MGs and called them as such 🤔
It’s also debatable, if .30cal MGs were really less effective against fighter as defensive guns, since the engine does provide the largest and best target for a defensive gun. The best argument for .50 cal is probably the high velocity and flatter trajectory, potentially making hits at longer range possible.
@@kimjanek646 As far as WW2 German armor goes, early field modified AA-MG mounts were installed on both Pzkpfw-III Ausf.L & M, as well as Pzkpfw-IV Ausf.G as early as 1942. German tank manufacturers started mounting AA-MG & ring mounts in 1943. However, only a year later in 1944, the German army assessed the effectiveness of these weapons and found that they were negligible against Allied aircraft. Additionally, they concluded that exposed crewmembers under aerial attacks proved much more vulnerable to injury or death than if said crewsmembers stayed buttoned up during such attacks. Consequently, manufacturers were ordered to stop installation of AAMGs & their ring mounts in late 1944. Industry was slow to implement changes, yet final series production vehicles all had AA-MG & ring mounts removed by early 1945, these included Pzkpfw-IV Ausf.J, Pzkpfw-V Ausf.G, Pzkpfw-VIb "Tiger-II." In addition, the last produced German tank design series, Pzkpfw-V Ausf.F, were built without AA-MG ring mount as well. So instalation of AA-MG mounts actually began during the mid-war period with elimination of the weapon in the late war.
@@calessel3139 Well, they also replaced MG 34 and 42s with StG 44s for the hull MG. So maybe just not enough MGs available? For the Pz III and IV they just took the hull MG and used it as AA MG but if you don't have a hull MG, you obviously can't use it. It was probably also more likely for the tank to hit the aircraft than the aircraft to hit the tank... so I don't really buy that story about they being removed because they were not effective.
@@kimjanek646 To quote the Panzer und Waffenkommission on the effectiveness of anti-aircraft weapons and the defense of panzer formations:
"Teiffleigern (strafing aircraft) are the main problem, but in addition Schlachtfleigern (fighter-bombers) attack from heights of three [hundred] to four thousand meters. [Tank mounted] MG-42 in a circular (ring) mount have been rejected as having too little effect."
-- Obr. Thomale, May 27th 1943
I remember getting taught all arms air defence with a GPMG on my first Flaklands tour in 84, it was mounted on a pole and we were shown the correct way to engage aircraft. I didn't get a chance to do the range shooting unfortunately
Ooh yes! In the Steven Seagal way just like he did with a Romanian Helicopter in "Shadow Man". His reward was a Big Mac menu from Romania's largest McDonald's store.
Sinatra shot down a plane in 'Von Ryan's Express'. But that was . . . y'know, the Chairman of the Board.
Father in law flying small prop plane was forced down by a
cross bow arrow shot up at the end of a runway that clipped a fuel line.
Most stories I've heard about this was ground troops firing at airplanes just made them feel better.
I once took down a Russian fighter plane with a MP40 in Berlin. Enlisted can be fun like that.
I know I'm late to the game, but you forgot the opening scene of Air America, where the farmer shoots out an engine on a C-123.
Well over a hundred USAF and US Navy/Marine aircraft were lost to small arms during the Vietnam War. As Stephen Coonts pointed out in the book of Flight of the Intruder, every North Vietnamese citizen was issued a rifle and instructed to fire at anything that flew. This caused unknown amount of civilian casualties as the bullets would often come straight back down at inexperienced people, who fired straight up. There was also a MiG pilot who was shot down by a F-105 pilot, then promptly got attacked by civilians, who had been told that all parachutes were American.
As late as the 1970s, the US Army had a manual titled "Small Arms Defense Against Air Attack" that discusses using massed rifle and machine-gun fire to harass helos and low-flying jets
According to the US Army and Marines (I just googled it,) a .50 BMG is considered small arms, and so, yes, a M2 Browning would definitely shoot down an aircraft, depending on the amount of armor, and time period. They were extensively used during WWII on US fighter aircraft, as well as bombers. They're also still mounted on vehicles.
They were also used in quad .50 mounts for AA purposes.
I was in the army 28 years ago. They taught us to shoot about 6 airplane lengths in front of it. Saying, it was usefull to shoot your personal weapon at an aircraft.
I have never been in the occasion to test this.
That German WW2 plane stand-in at 0:45 looks rather like propeller-driven U2 spy plane than a Me-109 or FW-190.
Maybe soldiers should try shouting Dragonrend to take down these metal dragons and engage them in melee combat.
I believe that only the film Perl Harbor shows shooting with small arms in a way that makes sense. The target is lured to an area where MANY small arms fire a volume of fire from a tower which is at the same altitude with the target. The plane is damaged and crashes.
F-111 over North Vietnam, shot down after flying over a concentration of troops at very low level. Suspected small arms. Source is Osprey F-111 Units from the Combat Aircraft Series.
An elderly Iraqi man shot down an American Apache helicopter back in 2003 - I think - with a 7.62 outta an AK ... I’m surprised you don’t remember that Johnny ...
You showed every scene that popped into my head upon seeing the subject of your video.
In enlisted my most beautiful moment was when I shot down a russian yak 7B with a luger when it was turning to resupply and a long range, and when I shot down the Russian hurricane mk11? With my panzer 4...in the campaign Stalingrad..
In 1982, in Malvinas war, argentinian commandos downed 1 or 2 british helicopters with 7.62x51mm FN FAL rifles concentrated fire and also a Harrier aircraft with a mounted.50 cal. machinegun from a sinking boat. Heavier AAA is not mentionable for this video, of course.
Many battlefield 5 players who manage to shoot down any enemy planes from either team have luck and a well caculated precision or what ammunition they use to take down the enemy team plane. But it's true for real life occurance of managing to take out enemy planes with only small caliber rounds or weapons to take down the plane even with luck or precise trajectory.
The film Dunkirk depicted thousands of soldiers on the beach while helpless against strafing runs from German aircraft. I couldn't help but think if all those soldiers aimed rifles at the incoming plane and fired they'd have to put enough lead in the air to do something to it.
Good video I find this and other videos informative and interesting keep it up
That German tiger tank crew must have played a lot of Battlefield to hone that shot 😂
IIRC the brits would lay down and volleyfire their SMLEs against incoming strafing runs to discourage the enemy and throw off their aim.
The most likely aircraft to get shot down are helicopters, most of them have little to no protection, fly slow and low and the cockpit and made out of glass. You dont need an anti air to shoot down a huey or a little bird, a few people with automatic rifles will do especially if it's in the process of landing.