Author Topic: aircraft .50 cloth belts? (Read 207 times)

Tony Williams · « **on:** March 02, 2002, 08:47:50 AM »

Some months ago someone, on this or another forum, posted a picture of a cloth (not metal link) belt of .50 cal ammo being loaded into an aircraft, I think a B-25.

Can anyone point me to this picture?

Thanks for any help,

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.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Military gun and ammunition discussion forum:
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GtoRA2 · « **Reply #1 on:** March 02, 2002, 11:24:26 PM »

Not 100% sure but I think all browning Machine guns can take either metal link or cloth belts?

Tony Williams · « **Reply #2 on:** March 03, 2002, 01:43:34 AM »

Yes, the Brownings could take cloth or steel disintegrating link belts, although the cloth belts were hardly used in WW2.

The signficance of my question is that it is generally believed that aircraft used only the steel link type. There was a steel belt production glitch in 1942/3 which meant that cloth belts were issued, but people who know more about this than I do, say that aircraft had priority for steel belts so never had the cloth ones. That's why I'm interested in that photo of cloth belts...

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.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Military gun and ammunition discussion forum:
http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/

flakbait · « **Reply #3 on:** March 03, 2002, 04:12:21 AM »

My guess is that bombers could take either cloth or metalic belts and fighters were restricted to metalic belts only.

When cloth belts got wet during either WW1 or WW2 they had a tendancy to swell up and jam the feed. Extreme cold with any degree of moisture would freeze them into small bricks. Metalic belts didn't have those problems obviously, or one other little glitch. When you pulled on a cloth belt and fired the gun, it would probably jam up tight thanks to the feel pawl getting caught up in the cloth. Yet if you pulled on a metalic belt and fired, it would almost never jam. The feed pawl had more grip on a metalic link than on a cloth one. Maybe cloth belts were issued to low-level bomber squadrons?

-----------------------
Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"For yay did the sky darken, and split open and spew forth fire, and
through the smoke rode the Four Wurgers of the Apocalypse.
And on their canopies was tattooed the number of the Beast, and the
number was 190." Jedi, Verse Five, Capter Two, The Book of Dweeb

fdiron · « **Reply #4 on:** March 03, 2002, 08:00:26 AM »

I looked through my book on B25s and I found a picture that I think might be of a cloth belt. The picture shows a waist gun on a B25. I am not 100% sure that it is a cloth belt, but its definately not the standard metallic belt. It appears the the bullets are attached to the belt where the projectile and the cartridge are fused. I have a scanner but no place to host this picture.