I've noticed in WW2 documentaries that pilots of B17's flew manually when in the "box" formation. Didn't these planes (1943-44) have some sort of auto pilot? If they did, why weren't they used when flying formation?  And how did these waist gunners swinging .50 caliber MG's around avoid shooting off a wing?  Did the guns have governors? Just curious.

You're bang on the money Rom

Quote:

Or any other formation. You won't use an autopilot when flying formation. "George" is great when you are alone in the sky, but he can't react to all the interactions when in formation with other aircraft. The exception to that is that the lead ship is often on autopilot.

When we do aerial refueling, we train with the autopilot on and autopilot off, which is to say that part of the time the tanker is on A/P and other times not. The receiver aircraft is always hand-flown. That's training. In the real world, the tanker is always on A/P, because that makes it a smoother delivery platform. The reciever is still hand-flown.

Tru 'dat!

hyperpep111 wrote on Aug 12^th, 2011 at 10:57am:


Hence the USAAF used their formations by day. The RAF on the other hand used much looser stream formations at night (and lost a lot of aeroplanes doing it). The USAAF generally had the advantage that most of their bombers were dual controlled - so shared the workload between two pairs of hands. The RAF's Lancaster and Halifax, to cite two examples, were single pilot.