Originally posted by FUNKED1
I haven't played enough lately to know if it's still true, but my main complaint with the Porkwind was not the gun, but the fact that it could fire its entire ammo load in one continuous burst without pauses for reloading, and that it didn't have to lower the armor to fire or reload, and that the armor seemed to inexplicably protect the crew from above. Even rifle caliber MGs should be able to neutralize the gun from above, but back in the day it was as tough as a Pz IV.
The Ostwind, unlike the Wirbelwind (which had a 20mm Flakvierling 38 firing box magazines) had a flat plate ammo feed. Rounds were slapped onto the tray, from which they were fed into the breech mechanism. Because the tray was open, you could keep slapping down more rounds as the gun fired them; as long as your loader could keep up with the cyclic rate of the weapon, you could keep firing as long as your ammo loadout held up.
The US Navy had a similar mechanism for several of its ship-mounted AA guns; with one of them, fresh rounds were dropped in five-round clips (in the literal sense of the term -- five rounds clipped together for ease of handling) into a feed chute; as soon as enough rounds had been fired to make room, another five-round clip could be dropped in, again allowing the gunner to maintain their ROF.
