Author Topic: Ideal WW2 fighter gun armament (Read 1283 times)

Tony Williams · « **on:** July 09, 2001, 03:59:00 PM »

Something to start a good argument – what would have been the ideal gun armament for WW2 fighters if you could start from scratch? Start reading here:
http://www.delphi.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=autogun&ctx=1&cacheTag=2-41&msg=97.1

Tony Williams
Author: Rapid Fire - The Development of Automatic Cannon, Heavy Machine Guns and their Ammunition for Armies, Navies and Air Forces.
Details on my military gun and ammunition website: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~autogun/

Tac · « **Reply #1 on:** July 09, 2001, 06:09:00 PM »

ooh thats easy! a single gatling firing .303 ammo (with extra long powder casing for increased power).

BRRTRRRTRTRTRTRTRTRTRTR *POW!*

ra · « **Reply #2 on:** July 09, 2001, 10:02:00 PM »

Interesting article.

<<<Furthermore, all the very best-performing fighters had liquid-cooled V-12 engines (which will doubtless brings howls of protests from some quarters, but the evidence is strongly in favour of this).>>>

Howl.

ra

Tony Williams · « **Reply #3 on:** July 10, 2001, 01:36:00 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Tac:
ooh thats easy! a single gatling firing .303 ammo (with extra long powder casing for increased power).

Nope; the 8 x .303 armament of the British fighters in the BoB was capable of a combined 9,600 rpm, but there are plenty of stories of german bombers making it back despite being riddled with holes. That's why the British were so keen on the 20mm...

Tony Williams
Author: "Rapid Fire: The development of automatic cannon, heavy machine guns and their ammunition for armies, navies and air forces"
Details on my military gun and ammunition website: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~autogun/index.htm

Seeker · « **Reply #4 on:** July 10, 2001, 03:47:00 AM »

One subject I'd like to see discussed is gun placement.

If I've understood the books correctly, one of the single biggest advances of WWI was the propellor interruptor gear. This, when introduced by Fokker, made the Eindekker into the most lethal plane of it's admittedly short (3 months?) era simply due to the aiming advantages of the centre line guns.

Then along comes WWII and most every body starts placing guns outboard on the wings and having to mess about with convergence again.

Just how important was/is gun placement?

straffo · « **Reply #5 on:** July 10, 2001, 03:56:00 AM »

what about 4 hispanos in the nose ? (J/K

)

Pepe · « **Reply #6 on:** July 10, 2001, 04:21:00 AM »

I think we could balance the initial question with the complementary: "What would be the ideal gun armament for WW2 fighters, based on your AH experience?". Would be interesting to compare results.

I think straffo pretty much resumed the answer to this late one, tho

Cheers,

Pepe

Tuomio · « **Reply #7 on:** July 10, 2001, 05:36:00 AM »

50 cals are best gun loadout in AH by far. This game doesent model gravity, wind or air pressure for bullets, unstability of wing mounted guns and AP "clean hole to soft target" disadvantage. You know, HE has lots of advantages agains AP when shooting soft spots, like wings, in RL ofcourse.

These lacks makes significant, non RL advantages to high RPM, high velocity, AP bullets, which fly straight no matter if youre in vertical zoom, slow speed, which would be the WORST hitting solution in RL, but is just another scoring place for US pilot in AH.

This is not an issue with any other guns, like hispanos, since they atleast have some sort of dispersion, unlike 50cals. They also make your plane shatter, unlike 8x50cals (not realistic). Id rather fight against tempest than p47-11 or p51B.
Ive tried p47 sometimes and i always make 2-4 kills in those sorties. It turns with everything for a while, which is more than enough. Only thing im worried those times is another p47, since its pilot knows much more about his favourite ride than me.

Tony Williams · « **Reply #8 on:** July 10, 2001, 07:44:00 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Seeker:
Just how important was/is gun placement?

Some of the arguments are in the original posting (see first post). The closer the guns were to the centre of the aircraft, the fewer the probems with harmonisation (i.e. adjusting thenm to hit at a specific range). The roll rate was also better if weights wereconcentrated inboard rather than strung out along the wings.

The main problem with central location in a single-engined fighter was the need to synchronise the guns (except for the engine mounting) which was an added complication and reduced the rate of fire.

However, fighters fought very well with guns in all locations!

Tony Williams
Author: "Rapid Fire: The development of automatic cannon, heavy machine guns and their ammunition for armies, navies and air forces"
Details on my military gun and ammunition website: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~autogun/index.htm

-lynx- · « **Reply #9 on:** July 10, 2001, 07:51:00 AM »

Quote

Nope; the 8 x .303 armament of the British fighters in the BoB was capable of a combined 9,600 rpm, but there are plenty of stories of german bombers making it back despite being riddled with holes. That's why the British were so keen on the 20mm...

Uh-oh - the question would be what happened to those 9,600 rpms when fired from a wingspan of over 20 feet, affected by god knows what vibrations and flexing of wings and as a result creating lots of holes over the whole fuselage/wing (not even touching convergeance issues here

). 6/8 barrel Gatling would simply cut an 88/111 in half when hit. Little .303s might not be good enough to penetrate the armour but they were surely capable to cut largely aluminum planes to pieces... Brits didn't have ready made Gatling nor the single engine fighter is a particularly good platform to mount such a weapon... Had they replaced largely useless 4x.303 turrets with a working miniguns the losses of Lancasters and Halifaxes might not have been so severe.

p.s. not saying that .303 is a good Air-to-Air gun (prefer 23mm 2-6 barrel Gatlings with 1,500-2,000 rpm/barrel) - just commenting on the statement by Mr Williams with all due respect

.

[ 07-10-2001: Message edited by: -lynx- ]

Seeker · « **Reply #10 on:** July 10, 2001, 09:52:00 AM »

I did read the post (v. interesting); but perhaps I phrased my question poorly.

Centre line gun mounting seems to have made a killing machine out of what was by all accounts a rather second rate airoplane (the Fokker Eindekker), simply due to the ease of aiming.

However, the disparity between centre mounted guns and wing mounted guns seems hardly to matter in WWII (i.e. the Hurri verses the Emil); and I don't really understand why this is so. Why was the advantage so great in WWI and not WWII?

straffo · « **Reply #11 on:** July 10, 2001, 10:11:00 AM »

In WWI the combat where at closer range than in WWII (< 100 meters) and gunsight were unprecise if you add parallelims and vibration problem to this you have a horrible gun platform.

Read what Fonck done http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/france/fonck.html
especially this comment :

Quote

"I put my bullets into the target as if I placed them there by hand." René Fonck

[/i]

Truely one of the first experten

(not admired because of that

)

-lynx- · « **Reply #12 on:** July 10, 2001, 10:32:00 AM »

With regards to Eindekker I think the radical thing was that the aircraft itself was ised as a gun - that is, the pilot aimed the aircraft at the enemy, rather than just waiving his pistol, using swivel mounted MGs and other nonsense.

The Eidekker tactics of ait-to-air combat - exposing the minimum area to the enemy under attack etc - were revolutionary for the period and her pilots racked kill after kill untill the opposition came up with similarly armed (but better) planes and tactics.

Strictly speaking, wherever you put the gun is irrelevant if proper account is taken of convergeance issues etc (say, SE5s carried forward firing MG on top of the wing). But at the time everything was new and both sides often copied whatever seemed a succesful design of the opposing side without giving much thought why the particular gadget actually worked.

Also, since there were no specially designed guns, a "normal" MGs were adapted with all their problems - say, the only way to rectify a gunjam was to re-cock it manually, extracting the cartrige. Tough job if it's a wing mounted thing...

Pongo · « **Reply #13 on:** July 10, 2001, 10:41:00 AM »

The fokker was not being compared to planes with wing mounted but forward firing guns. It was being compared to flexible mounts and wierd angle mounts. And to mounts that had deflector plates on the propellers and things like that. Against a 2 mg mount firing out side of the propeller arc but still fixed to fire allong the line of flight of the AC it would not have been so revolutionary. Of course planes of that generation could not wing mount the mgs of that generation...

Pongo · « **Reply #14 on:** July 10, 2001, 10:46:00 AM »

If the p38 had its 50 cals removed and as many hispanos as would fit added(3 total?) then that would be the best armed fighter of ww2 going on how AH models the guns.
AH allows some really long shots with no penalty for the attempt except a depletion of ammo. The hispano rules under those conditions as it has the ability to inflict crippling damage with very small hits. It is also very accurate at long ranges and has the rof for a great snapshot ability.
P38 mount with 3 hispanos and 150 rpg would be pretty hard to beat.