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#1
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WWII 20mm cannon in planes
It seems to me that the Germans and Japanese had a lot more cannon in their
planes than the Americans who seemed to rely almost totally on .50 machine guns. Why was that? What was the rate of fire or the 20mm cannons and what type of projectiles did they fire? |
#2
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zxcv wrote: It seems to me that the Germans and Japanese had a lot more cannon in their planes than the Americans who seemed to rely almost totally on .50 machine guns. Why was that? What was the rate of fire or the 20mm cannons and what type of projectiles did they fire? The US .50 BMG was a pretty good gun, reasonable rate of fire, hard hitting round, and good velocity/range. The German 13mm gun was rather weak by comparison and 20mm (and later, 30mm and larger) explosive or incendiary shells were considered good bomber killers, though had somewhat poorer velocity/range. For most applications, .50 fire was more than adequate for most combat, especially as you could put more guns and ammo in the plane compared to 20mm. It wasn't until things like the toughness of MiG15s in the Korean War and the need for good bomber killer rounds for US fighters that the limits of the .50 became more of an issue. On the other hand, the Brits (and the US Navy?) used 20mm during the war. |
#3
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"steve gallacci" wrote in message ... zxcv wrote: It seems to me that the Germans and Japanese had a lot more cannon in their planes than the Americans who seemed to rely almost totally on .50 machine guns. Why was that? What was the rate of fire or the 20mm cannons and what type of projectiles did they fire? The US .50 BMG was a pretty good gun, reasonable rate of fire, hard hitting round, and good velocity/range. The German 13mm gun was rather weak by comparison and 20mm (and later, 30mm and larger) explosive or incendiary shells were considered good bomber killers, though had somewhat poorer velocity/range. For most applications, .50 fire was more than adequate for most combat, especially as you could put more guns and ammo in the plane compared to 20mm. It wasn't until things like the toughness of MiG15s in the Korean War and the need for good bomber killer rounds for US fighters that the limits of the .50 became more of an issue. On the other hand, the Brits (and the US Navy?) used 20mm during the war. The USN started to switch to the 20mm during the latter part of the war, but it also produced .50 cal armed aircraft through the end of the war, too. If the original poster will do a search using google news, he will find that this topic has repeatedly been beat to death in this NG, and likely find some items of interest to him. Brooks |
#4
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"zxcv" wrote in message ... It seems to me that the Germans and Japanese had a lot more cannon in their planes than the Americans who seemed to rely almost totally on .50 machine guns. Why was that? What was the rate of fire or the 20mm cannons and what type of projectiles did they fire? Because most continental powers were using .30 calibre MG's and often only mounted 2 or 4 of them which gave pretty poor firepower 4 or 6 .50's give a much better armament and less incentive to move to cannon. Various calibre cannon were tried with some success and towards the end of WW2 the USN started to adopt it more rapidly. Keith |
#5
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The American fifty-caliber machinegun was a formidable weapon, especially against fighters. This size bullet was rarely used by other nations, who tended to favor rifle-caliber (.30-cal or 7.x mm) machineguns. The A6M2 Zero had two rifle-caliber guns and two 20 mm cannon. The Wildcat with four fifties came out even against the Zero during the first year of the war, despite the fact that the U.S. pilots started out with the disadvantage of no combat experience. And the Wildcat wasn't even considered a first-class American fighter! When Germany and Japan realized they had to up-gun their fighters in order to prevail against heavily defended and armored American bombers, they naturally favored cannon. After the first year of the war, the U.S. didn't have to contend much with enemy bombers; the Americans were on the offensive, and U.S. fighters mostly battled enemy fighters. It seems to me that the Germans and Japanese had a lot more cannon in their planes than the Americans who seemed to rely almost totally on .50 machine guns. Why was that? What was the rate of fire or the 20mm cannons and what type of projectiles did they fire? all the best -- Dan Ford email: (requires authentication) see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com |
#6
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"zxcv" wrote in message ...
It seems to me that the Germans and Japanese had a lot more cannon in their planes than the Americans who seemed to rely almost totally on .50 machine guns. Why was that? What was the rate of fire or the 20mm cannons and what type of projectiles did they fire? Question for the group at large ... .... did it have anything to do with the fact that the Germans were gunning for B-17s and such, and therefore needed a weapon that had a low rate of fire and less accuracy but a heavy punch? Whereas the Americans, whose fighters mostly did escort over europe, needed a weapon with better accuracy and a higher rof? Just curious. Respectfully, Brian P. |
#7
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"zxcv" wrote in message ...
It seems to me that the Germans and Japanese had a lot more cannon in their planes than the Americans who seemed to rely almost totally on .50 machine guns. Why was that? What was the rate of fire or the 20mm cannons and what type of projectiles did they fire? See: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/WW2guneffect.htm for full details of WW2 fighter guns and ammunition, and a comparison of their effectiveness. As other responders have said, the .50 was a good gun which met USAAF needs (although the USN would have preferred to make more use of the 20mm). Other nations preferred to use cannon as they were more destructive, even when (like the USSR) they had a good HMG available. Tony Williams Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk Discussion forum at: http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/ |
#8
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Subject: WWII 20mm cannon in planes
From: (Tony Williams) Date: 3/8/04 9:52 PM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: "zxcv" wrote in message ... It seems to me that the Germans and Japanese had a lot more cannon in their planes than the Americans who seemed to rely almost totally on .50 machine guns. Why was that? What was the rate of fire or the 20mm cannons and what type of projectiles did they fire? See: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/WW2guneffect.htm for full details of WW2 fighter guns and ammunition, and a comparison of their effectiveness. As other responders have said, the .50 was a good gun which met USAAF needs (although the USN would have preferred to make more use of the 20mm). Other nations preferred to use cannon as they were more destructive, even when (like the USSR) they had a good HMG available. Tony Williams Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk Discussion forum at: http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/ Seems lik there was a lot of indecision about our use of canons, When we were told that our Marauders were being replaced by Invaders they also announced that the Invaders would come with a 75mm cannon mounted in the nose. We got the Invaders OK but nary a cannon in sight, We didn't have much to complain about since it had 14 50's firing forward. But I alway s looked forward to using that 75mm cannon and was sorry when they didn't arrive, I think one reason was it had to be hand fed by a guy in the right seat which would have given it a very slow rate of fire.When we flew warhead A-26's I was the guy in the right seat. I only flew in the nose on Norden equipped models.II sure would have loved to have had the 75mm cannon to play with. (sigh) Arthur Kramer 344th BG 494th BS England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany Visit my WW II B-26 website at: http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer |
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"Emmanuel Gustin" wrote in message
... "pendell" wrote in message om... ... did it have anything to do with the fact that the Germans were gunning for B-17s and such, and therefore needed a weapon that had a low rate of fire and less accuracy but a heavy punch? Like most WWII weapons, the 20 mm cannon were developed during peacetime, a considerable time before the first B-17s appeared over Europe. Combat experience did not play a large role in to the decision. (There was of course some experience in Spain and China.) It was more a matter of, as engineering usually is, balancing different factors to find the optimum. The big factors were destructiveness, hit probability (rate of fire and muzzle velocity) and weight. The first favours bigger guns, the second usually favours smaller-calibre weapons, and the third generally favours bigger guns again (although they are heavier, they give more hitting power for the same installation weight; for example, a single .50 is equivalent to about four .30 Brownings.) The wide consensus during WWII was that the optimum was around 20mm. Given the same technology, rate of fire and muzzle velocity were not much lower; the gun was heavier but the ammunition far more effective. Later several heavy machine guns were modified to 20 mm cannon (the Soviet ShVAK and B-20, the German MG 151/20, and the Japanese Ho-5) because they were judged to be more effective in that form. The USAAF did not follow, in part because of a different doctrine, and in part because its gun development budgets between the wars were largely hypothetical in nature. Whereas the Americans, whose fighters mostly did escort over europe, needed a weapon with better accuracy and a higher rof? It was less a matter of what they needed than what they had. But the big advantage of the .50 was that a large stock of ammunition could be carried. A good 20mm cannon would have offered similar rates of fire and accuracy (although with the limitation that only four would have been installed instead of six) and more firepower, but the total available firing time would have been much shorter. For an escort fighter that was a very important consideration. For this reason, for example, the USAF decided against a plan to install four 20mm cannon in the nose of the P-38: The .50s had 500 rounds (40 seconds of fire) but the cannon only 150 (15 seconds). -- Emmanuel Gustin Emmanuel.Gustin -rem@ve- skynet dot be Flying Guns Page: http://users.skynet.be/Emmanuel.Gustin/ What about planes with multiple fixed guns that had different amounts of ammunition/fire time -- did the pilot have a selector to determine which guns would fire or did everything fire when the trigger was pulled and some guns would run out first? |
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