KI-67 Update?

[lyric1]

Been flying the KI-67 a few times recently & I noticed just how limited the front & rear nose guns are when it come to defense.  Specifically the range of motion seems very restricted on these two guns.
I also have been looking at a lot of photos for future skins of these planes & while doing so I noticed that the nose & tail gun seems to share in common the one thing our AHII KI-67 doesn't.
For example our nose gun in the Plexiglas has ribs mounted & fixed in the horizontal & the tail gun has a total clear bubble with no ribs at all.






When you look at photos the ribs in the front turret of the Plexiglas the ribs are mounted in a number of positions in various angles  Why?

Horizontal.


Vertical.



Angle.




The tail gun from the best picture I have just seems to be a cut away slot with no ribs as seen in the picture below & cut at the horizontal.



Vertical.




Angle.



So how is this supposed to work?
Well I think it is a design similar to the HE-111 nose gun like in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBhGp23NS_s

Funny enough our HE-111 has not this ability in the above video & I only just found that out today.
So it looks like the nose & tail gun should have Plexiglas turret on a bearing of some sort. 
I have a few Japanese magazines & I looked into them to see what I could find on the matter & I found a few interesting cut away drawings.
That do seem to support this.

 Front Nose.

Looks to have a bearing design & handles to move the entire turret about like in the HE-111 video.



Tail.

The drawing for the tail shows some metal support mounted around the Plexiglas slot & I think this would make sense if the barrels of the gun might be what moves the turret about in its 360 deg path since there is no handles.

The photos I have don't show this clearly but I think they would be there.



The above info is form a magazine printed in 2003 & I think what HTC used based off of what I have seen on the BBS is form a magazine called The Maru Mechanic #32 that was printed in 1982.

This info here is from that magazine with the gun arcs.



So if & when the KI-67 comes up for an update it looks like some of the information based off the 1982 magazine may be wrong & a thorough search for what is known today maybe needed. I know the allies captured a number of these & tested them so maybe the data exists some place on that.

I think the front gun at least might have had a pivot offset like the HE-111 in the video or the gun could move around in the slot some how like the wooden full size mock up seen in this photo.





Thoughts?

[FLS]

Very interesting. That tail gun is a puzzle.

[lyric1]

Very interesting. That tail gun is a puzzle.

Agreed.
The front to me is even a bigger puzzle.
Also the video of the HE-111 has another one with the ventral gun. 
Our AHII HE-111 has not got the range of movement as the real thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlJlOQcDAhE

[lyric1]

After looking at all the photos I have where I can see the tail gun clearly there appears to be no ribbing at all only the Plexiglas dome & its mounting ring. Those photos that I can see are of 5 different aircraft.
The drawings maybe wrong as well on this?

Also found another drawing I have that I translated.
The bottom left drawing that says 可 動 砲 架 = Movable gun carriage. So it looks like the center ribbing has some method of sliding back & forth for the gun?

The center hole says 機 関 砲 マウント = Cannon mount.




Tried Translating some of this as well. 



全充移動用レール = Movement rails ?
靱性ガラス = Toughness glass. I assume armored glass
    把 手  = Handle
取付ボルト = Mounting bolts
胴体前 部 = Front section
胴体前 端 = Fuselage before end?
回 転 環 = Rotation ring
固 定 環 = Fixed ring
球 軸 受 = Ball bearings

[715]

So the tail gunner has to rotate the Plexiglas to fire up or down?  That looks like a terrible design: center gun, rotate Plexiglas to desired angle, point gun (hoping you got the right angle on the Plexiglas, and repeat every few tenths of seconds as your target is moving around?  Or did the gun barrel rotate the Plexiglas as the gunner aimed the gun?

[Volron]

So the tail gunner has to rotate the Plexiglas to fire up or down?  That looks like a terrible design: center gun, rotate Plexiglas to desired angle, point gun (hoping you got the right angle on the Plexiglas, and repeat every few tenths of seconds as your target is moving around?  Or did the gun barrel rotate the Plexiglas as the gunner aimed the gun?

From what I can see in the pictures, you have to do it.  The tail gun may be an exception though.  But there is a little "play" with the gun before you had to move the ring again, if I am looking at the photo's correctly.  Likely not even given a thought when doing it, they just did it and fired.

[lyric1]

So the tail gunner has to rotate the Plexiglas to fire up or down?  That looks like a terrible design: center gun, rotate Plexiglas to desired angle, point gun (hoping you got the right angle on the Plexiglas, and repeat every few tenths of seconds as your target is moving around?  Or did the gun barrel rotate the Plexiglas as the gunner aimed the gun?

Looks like the barrel rotated the Plexiglas.
You can see in these two drawings the mount was a rather big device with enough ball bearings in the mounting ring I would say it would rotate effortlessly.





Looks like the front had a similar mount unfortunately there is no detail drawings like the rear.
Plus with what drawings I can find it appears to be a lighter & thinner arrangement that seems to match photos that I can find.

[FLS]

Maybe they just set it for air defense or ground attack.

[lyric1]

Maybe they just set it for air defense or ground attack.

Cant rule that out. 

I did find what I was looking for with the translation of the movement rails. It appears the rails were mounted on the outside of the Plexiglas & the gun with its center hole mount slid from from one side of the rail to the other. Interestingly the rails are offset to the center of the bubble so they could slide further one way than the other.

You can see the rail offset with these two images.





Also in the first image looks like there is two Plexiglas insets that slid & kept the wind out when the gun was pivoted.

This image has what I was looking for these are new aircraft before the guns were installed.



When you crop the photo you can see one of these Plexglas insets at its full travel below the nose. Proof positive I would say that the gun slid in these rails.



Question is now are the drawing with the nose gun arcs correct?



Seems a little strange you only get 50 DEG in the vertical & 90 DEG in the horizontal with a turret that was mounted on bearings that looks to pivot 360 DEG.
Plus the front gun to me at least appears to have the same range of motion in the slot regardless of what position it is in when it come to the degrees the turret is set at?

Yet the rear with the similar design except for the rail offset has a full 80 DEG in both directions.

[lyric1]

Tail.

The drawing for the tail shows some metal support mounted around the Plexiglas slot & I think this would make sense if the barrels of the gun might be what moves the turret about in its 360 deg path since there is no handles.

The photos I have don't show this clearly but I think they would be there.

Found a photo showing the metal around the slots of the rear gun turret. It is of one of the prototypes I still have not found this on any other KI-67 that I can see the tail of. Maybe it was done away with at some point after the first few?

[bustr]

Your link is not showing from my browser. You can click on it and go to your source.

[lyric1]

Your link is not showing from my browser. You can click on it and go to your source.

Everything is visible on my end?

[bustr]

Now it shows up after I went to your source to look.

[SirNuke]

I can see them all, interresting read.

I was thinking, could the lengh of the back of the gun and the position of the gunner be limiting  factors? I mean by sliding the bubble downward maybe you could achieve 60 degrees, but in practice was it usable in A2A combat with a single crew in the turret?

[lyric1]

I can see them all, interresting read.

I was thinking, could the lengh of the back of the gun and the position of the gunner be limiting  factors? I mean by sliding the bubble downward maybe you could achieve 60 degrees, but in practice was it usable in A2A combat with a single crew in the turret?

From what I know of the gunners they just sat on a mat you could be right though. The limiting factor I think would be the fixed point of the gun where it pivots in the vertical. You have a bracket that is either side of the gun & depending on where it is fixed & the shape design of that bracket & the gun may be the limiting factors. The front bracket & the rear are clearly not the same & maybe this is why one has a better traverse than the other in the vertical.

No clear images or drawings of the front gun arrangement to know exactly how it is done.