RobbelothE wrote:

Check out the Junkers-Larson ground attack prototype made for the
U.S. Army in the 1920s. It was basically an all-metal Junkers
monoplane transport with something like 30 .45 Calibre Thomson
Submachineguns firing at vatious angle through the bottom fuselage.
The idea was that it would fly along trench lines at low altitude,
saturating the trenches with bullets. (The opinions of the Gun
Plumber on board who'd have to change 30 75 round drum magazines after
each pass has not been recorded. Rest assured that it would have been
short, to teh point, disapproving, and contained a lock of words that
rhymed with "Duck".)

In the 1930s, the French built a large gunship with a downward firing
105mm Howitzer. From the 1960s on, the USAF, and several allied
nations, have flown various transports (C-47, C-119, C-130) with
arrays of guns pointing out of the side, aimed by maintaining a pylon
turn around the target. (Well, at first, at least) These guns have
range from 7.62mm machine guns to 105mm Howitzers, backed up by an
extensive sensor suite and ballistic computers. The side-firing bit
allows you to engange targets without flying over them, which is
generally considered a good thing.

--


Acutally, I believe the Germans were first. They developed a class of
Riesenflugzeug (Giant Aircraft) which began appearing in 1915. By 1916, LT
Ernst Neuber began working on his idea of mounting a 130mm cannon vertically in
the belly of an R-plane. Static tests began 25 May 1916 using a Gotha East
Experimental. On 6 October 1916 the gun was installed on the R-plane and the
gun was test fired several time in flight on 19 October. The Germans continued
testing and were working on a 105mm automatic cannon firing 20 rounds/minute
when the war ended. Neuber even patented his invention (#305,039).

There are reports of a side-firing .30 calibre machine gun being used on a DH-4
in 1927.

The French system of 1932 used the fameous French 75 mounted side-ways in the
Bordelaise A.B. 22 aircraft.

The USA tested the side-firing gunship concept duirng the summer of 1964 at
Eglin AFB using a C-131 transport and, IIRC, a single .7.62 mini-gun. The first
American gunship was the "FC-47" which carried 10 .30 cal side-firing machine
guns developed by Major Ronald W. Terry at Eglin AFB.

There was an installation in (I think) the Me-163 Komet which would
trigger an upward-firing weapon when the shadow of an Allied bomber
passed over it. AFAIK was used as well.

John