"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
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"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message
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"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
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From a purely pragmatic point of view sticking with an established
gun design and logistics chain probably made sense but the reality
is that the 20mm cannon has superior penetration as it simply
has more KE and a larger explosive filling.

I say again, show me where the P-47 was ineffective with its .50 cals.
Or show me where the Typhoon was decidedly better (in which case I
wonder why the RAF was a P-47 user...).


Show me where I claimed it was ineffective ?

Are you defending Paul's assertion that the 20mm was a hands-down
better weapon in the strafe roll or not? I am just claiming rough
parity between the two weapons; if you are gonna claim one was
demonstrably better than the other, bring out the evidence.


The fact that the USAF and USN did in fact both switch from
the .50 cal to the 20mm cannon would seem evidence enough


The point is that the 20mm was MORE effective not that the .50
was useless , it clearly wasnt

Can you prove it was MORE effective? How so? You discount reliability,
rate of fire, ammo load, and velocity and reach that conclusion...how?


Who says I discount those issues , presumably the USN and
USAF also considered them or they wouldnt have switched



than the 20mm (and the USN agreed, as we saw with the armament
that
was affiixed to the Hellcats and Corsairs through the end of the
war,
and in the case of the Corsair through the Korean experience).


In point of fact the Corsair switched to cannon armament in
the F4U-4B and F4U-4C.

"Production included 2050 F4U-4s with six .50 guns, 297 F4U-4Bs or
F4U-4Cs with four 20mm cannon"


As I said

But I believe the .50 cals were still being produced upo to the very
end of the war?


Quite so, mostly for the USAAF


Source: http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevo...other/f4u.html

Come on, 15% of the aircraft manufactured were all that got the 20mm's
out of the -4 series.


The last 15%

Sure of that?



The AU-1 produced specifically for the marines during the Korean war
also had an all cannon armament

An even poorer example; only about 100 were produced during the war.
How many hundreds of older Corsairs were still flying with the .50 cal
during Korea? A photo from Vought's archive shows one with its six
MG's (see http://www.voughtaircraft.com/photos/data/planes8.htm).


The last Corsairs produced

And those poor deficiently armed older Corsairs were still slogging
along as well.


Well they were hardly going to leave them behind when there
was a war on were they ?

snip


Where did I claim this happened during WW2 ?

My words: "The fact is that the USN did not switch to 20mm during
WWII, ahead of the USAAF, as Paul stated with his "difference between
the Pacific and Euro theaters" comment."

Your response:

"Clearly it did since every fighter built after 1946 for the
USN was cannon armed."

That "clearly it did" refers to the "the USN did not switch to 20mm
during WWII...", right?


NO that clearly it did refers to the fact that almost every
USN aircraft manufactured from 1946 onwards used
cannon while the USAF continued building aircraft
armed with machine guns. Thus showing indisputably
that the USN did in fact switch to a strategy of using
cannon armed aircraft before the USAF.

That switch was clearly planned while the war was still
being waged, it does take a while to tool up production
when all is said and done.


My words were 'after 1946' I believe

Show me where the 20mm strafer of WWII was more effective than the .50
cal strafer.


Tony Williams & Emmanuel Gustin have a nice web page that
examines that very issue, they consider energy transferred
to the target , gun weight and rate of fire

http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/WW2guneffect.htm

Keith