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Best dogfight gun?
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December 10th 03, 02:28 PM
Alan Minyard
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On 9 Dec 2003 13:40:45 -0800,
(Tony Williams) wrote:
Alan Minyard wrote in message . ..
On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 00:29:04 +0000, "Paul J. Adam" wrote:
In message , Alan Minyard
writes
Much better to go with an M-61 variant that actually works, is combat proven,
and has a useful rate of fire.
Trouble is, this gets you back where the US was in 1950; the M3 .50" was
a superb gun in terms of reliability, ballistics and rate of fire and
was a thoroughly proven weapon. Trouble is, nobody convinced the MiG-15s
of that fact, so they soaked up a _lot_ of hits where a larger-calibre
weapon would have made the F-86 versus MiG-15 kill ratio even _more_
impressive.
And who out there is going to use significant numbers of unreliable, heavy, slow
cannon to oppose a US Force? The rate of fire of the .50 was not enough to
make up for the somewhat smaller calibre, that is not the case with the M-61.
Possibly, possibly not. The bigger the target is, the more damage you
have to inflict to down it. A MiG-15 weighed under 3,800 kg empty, a
Su-27 around 18,000 kg - nearly five times as much. A 20mm shell
weighs only just over twice as much as a .50 bullet. You can double
its effectiveness in recognition of the HEI content, but even so you
are still left with a pretty even match between the .5/MiG-15 and
20mm/Su-27 in terms of destructive effect compared with target weight.
Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website:
http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Discussion forum at:
http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/
Are you familiar with the concept of guided missiles? If you get into gun range
you have already screwed the pooch. The gun is a last ditch, desperation
weapon in ACM, wasting airframe volume and weight on a honking great,
slow, unreliable gun is not a wise trade off.
Al Minyard
Alan Minyard