Stick Shake When Firing Guns

John Kunkel wrote:
Is this Hollywood or did the firing of the guns carry through to the
controls and cause stick shake as the movies depict?

FWIW, Robert S. Johnson (well, Martin Caidin in RSJ's name*)
claimed that on the occasion of his first kill, the noise of all 8 of
the Jug's fifties firing together scared (or at least startled) him to
the point that he let go of the trigger. Up 'til that point, he'd only
fired one at a time, at towed socks.

*note that Johnson left that part of the tale in when he revised
and re-released Thunderbolt!
Jeff

I can't imagine that, while firing all eight of those .50's in a P-47, that the
whole plane wasn't shaking....much less just the stick. Anybody with shooting
experience in that plane care to detail their experience?
Dave

Never flew the P-47 but firing the six guns in the Mustang created a
lot of noise but little if any vibration. Certainly didn't shake the
stick.

Howard Austin

Howard Austin wrote:
John Kunkel wrote:
Is this Hollywood or did the firing of the guns carry through to
the controls and cause stick shake as the movies depict?

FWIW, Robert S. Johnson (well, Martin Caidin in RSJ's name*)
claimed that on the occasion of his first kill, the noise of all 8
of
the Jug's fifties firing together scared (or at least startled) him
to
the point that he let go of the trigger. Up 'til that point, he'd
only
fired one at a time, at towed socks.

*note that Johnson left that part of the tale in when he revised
and re-released Thunderbolt!
Jeff

I can't imagine that, while firing all eight of those .50's in a
P-47, that the whole plane wasn't shaking....much less just the
stick. Anybody with shooting experience in that plane care to detail
their experience?
Dave

Never flew the P-47 but firing the six guns in the Mustang created a
lot of noise but little if any vibration. Certainly didn't shake the
stick.


I suppose it's quite difficult to portray vibration that can only be felt,
without resorting to subtitles.

One piece I read was of a Lancaster pilot who said that on full revs as the
Lanc' lurched forward at the start of its take-off run, the control column
felt like you were holding a hive full of angry bees.

Richard.

Subject: Stick Shake When Firing Guns
From: "Richard Brooks"
Date: 9/28/03 4:41 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Firing the nose gun on a B-26 didn't provide enough vibration to tumble the
Norden gyro. And it takes damn little to tumble a Norden gyro. There was more
noise than anything else. Same for the 4 package guns on the Marauder.



Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

In message , ArtKramr
writes
Subject: Stick Shake When Firing Guns
From: "Richard Brooks"
Date: 9/28/03 4:41 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Firing the nose gun on a B-26 didn't provide enough vibration to tumble the
Norden gyro. And it takes damn little to tumble a Norden gyro. There was more
noise than anything else. Same for the 4 package guns on the Marauder.

I've noticed that on the camera gun film shown on some TV programmes
sometimes the whole picture vibrates and at other times it is quite
steady.

Mike
--
M.J.Powell

M. J. Powell wrote:
I've noticed that on the camera gun film shown on some TV programmes
sometimes the whole picture vibrates and at other times it is quite steady.

Mike

Depends largely on the installation of the gun camera, and its
position relative to the guns. In the P-38, the camera was
initially installed in the nose, pretty much just below the 20mm
cannon. The result was very poor to unusable footage. The camera
was later moved to one of the underwing pylons, and the result was
very steady gun footage, if from a somewhat unusual perspective.

Mike

M. J. Powell wrote:
I've noticed that on the camera gun film shown on some TV programmes
sometimes the whole picture vibrates and at other times it is quite steady.

Mike

Mostly what you are seeing is easily explained. The cameras in many of the
fighters in the ETO had a seperate switch for turning it on and off. You can
sometimes see a little flag in the uper left or right of the frame that
indicates trigger pull. On some the flag means firing and some its absence
means firing! So a single film shot can have firing and nonfiring portions and
sound affects are often added to match the vibrating portion. You also get some
shots of enemy pilots under their chutes. This is done with the camera switch,
uhm, most of the time.

A good example is the famous very long chase at treetop level by Harry Dayhuff
(or someone in the 78th) in a P47 that culminates in his blowing the left wing
off a German plane.

On the P47 the camera is mounted in the wing and you see a lot of vibration,
mostly due to the low shutter speed of about 1/30 sec. Since the P47 was very
heavy and double skinned, the pilots I have talked to never mentioned feeling
much in the way of vibration.

-- Charlie Springer

From: (Howard Austin)


I can't imagine that, while firing all eight of those .50's in a P-47, that
the whole plane wasn't shaking....much less just the stick. Anybody with
shooting experience in that plane care to detail their experience?
Dave

Never flew the P-47 but firing the six guns in the Mustang created a lot of
noise but little if any vibration. Certainly didn't shake the stick.
Howard Austin

Thanks for the details. It just seems soooo counter-intuitive, between the guns
blazing and the huge engine running, that there wasn't enough vibration in the
cockpit of those planes to jiggle the pilot's teeth loose. The dampening
mechanism on those plane's guns must have been more effective at killing
vibration then I supposed, never having flown any of them.
Dave

In the case of the A-10, I would figure that everything
in the immediate vicinity of the cannon would shake when it was
fired.
--
--Matthew Saroff
Shrub stole the election, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt
http://www.pobox.com/~msaroff/liar