Stick Shake When Firing Guns

Just watched another WWII dogfight movie scene where the control stick
shakes in unison with the firing guns.
Is this Hollywood or did the firing of the guns carry through to the
controls and cause stick shake as the movies depict?
John

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

Hollywood thing. I've asked about this from various Finnish war pilots
and they haven't anything like that. For example Colonel Pokela on the
contrary described, that the Messerschmitt 109 fighter was "steady as a
train" when shooting.

jok

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

Hollywood thing. I've asked about this from various Finnish war pilots
and they haven't anything like that. For example Colonel Pokela on the
contrary described, that the Messerschmitt 109 fighter was "steady as a
train" when shooting.

jok

Take a look at the instruments on the panel when they do that. No matter what
the airplane is doing on the screen the indicators always show zero RPM,
straight and level, field elevation, zero climb/dive....etc.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

Take a look at the instruments on the panel when they do that. No matter what
the airplane is doing on the screen the indicators always show zero RPM,
straight and level, field elevation, zero climb/dive....etc.


Also, based on my SNJ experience 50 years ago, pull + g's and the tracers
apparently droop out of the gun. Go for - gs and they arc gracefully upwards.
Kijk rudder and they apparently slew to omne side or the other -- depending.
Pull hard +gs and the rate of fire sl;ows dramaticaly -- probably due to the
increased "weight" of ammo belt. Pull -gs and the rate of fire picks up
considerably.

Air to air gunnery, as discussed here, is miserably hard to do. Like sitting
on your front porch trying to aim your house. Also fun.

Quent

"QDurham" wrote in message
...
Take a look at the instruments on the panel when they do that. No matter
what
the airplane is doing on the screen the indicators always show zero RPM,
straight and level, field elevation, zero climb/dive....etc.


Also, based on my SNJ experience 50 years ago, pull + g's and the tracers
apparently droop out of the gun. Go for - gs and they arc gracefully
upwards.
Kijk rudder and they apparently slew to omne side or the other --
depending.
Pull hard +gs and the rate of fire sl;ows dramaticaly -- probably due to
the
increased "weight" of ammo belt. Pull -gs and the rate of fire picks up
considerably.

Air to air gunnery, as discussed here, is miserably hard to do. Like
sitting
on your front porch trying to aim your house. Also fun.

Quent

You're right as rain Quent! My experience doesn't go back beyond the A4
sight however, which solved for gravity drop, trajectory shift,and velocity
jump, as well as ranging.....all solved as a prediction solution.
We had it easy though!!! Those guys in the prop fighters during the war had
to be a mixture of Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill, and Wild Bill Hickock!!
It's funny though, even with "modern" sights, the "real good shooters"
through the sixties still took a quick glance at the ball just before
hitting that trigger....out of pure habit!! :-)))
Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship
Commercial Pilot/CFI Retired
For personal e-mail, use dhenriquesATzarthlinkDOTnet
(changeztoe)

We had it easy though!!! Those guys in the prop fighters during the war had
to be a mixture of Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill, and Wild Bill Hickock!!

Yeah, BUT! Once I tried being a little smug with a WWII relative who flew
Stearmans. How easy he had it. How much greater I was! Ta Dah!!!! He then
asked me if I ever had flown an "Inverted Falling Leaf."

"A what?"

Quent

"B2431" wrote in message
...

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

Hollywood thing. I've asked about this from various Finnish war pilots
and they haven't anything like that. For example Colonel Pokela on the
contrary described, that the Messerschmitt 109 fighter was "steady as a
train" when shooting.

jok

Take a look at the instruments on the panel when they do that. No matter
what
the airplane is doing on the screen the indicators always show zero RPM,
straight and level, field elevation, zero climb/dive....etc.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

I remember sitting down with a few of the Doolittle guys at one of their
reunions some years ago. We were watching Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and
having a few beers. Lawson was there. (He wrote the book :-)
He was laughing like hell as Van Johnson skimmed the rice patties with what
was being depicted as Lawson's #7 airplane, the Ruptured Duck. He said,
" Look at how steady I was flying that baby will ya?. That Artificial
Horizon ain't moving an inch is it?" Doolittle smiled back, "You were smooth
all right Ted, but not THAT smooth!!!!" :-)))

Side note; those shots in the movies are done in a mockup as I'm sure you
know :-)
Some of the mockups are damn good, being the real thing like the B25 cockpit
used in "Tokyo". Other films that used a real cockpit mockup for the inside
cockpit shots were "God Is My Co-Pilot", and "The Flying Leathernecks".
There are many others to be sure, but these two come to mind as in both
films, there are scenes looking over the pilot's shoulder at ther panel
during maneuvering flight where the AH and other instruments as well are
absolutely solid.
But Ted Lawson's "return" over the rice patties in Japan is a classic
example for the "extremely hard to please" critics among us :-))))
Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship
Commercial Pilot/CFI Retired
For personal e-mail, use
dhenriquesATzarthlinkDOTnzt
(replacezwithe)

"QDurham" wrote in message
...
We had it easy though!!! Those guys in the prop fighters during the war
had
to be a mixture of Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill, and Wild Bill Hickock!!

Yeah, BUT! Once I tried being a little smug with a WWII relative who flew
Stearmans. How easy he had it. How much greater I was! Ta Dah!!!! He
then
asked me if I ever had flown an "Inverted Falling Leaf."

"A what?"

Quent

I know what you mean. The first time I flew a Stearman, it had a 650 Pratt
and Whitney in it. Breezy SOB!! On take off, everything sucked up off the
belly right into my eyes. (Also happens in the T6 to the guy in front if you
leave the canopy cracked in the back on takeoff :-))))
I damn near lost the Stearman that day!!!!! :-))
The one thing that sticks out in my memory about that airplane was how damn
wide I had to spread my legs on the rudder pedals. After the Mustang, that
cockpit was WIDE!!! Only airplane I can remember with a wider pit was the
Jug (P47N)
That Stearman was really fun to fly. It gave me the same feeling I always
had in the Pitts......VERY strong!! The roll rate was a bit slower than the
Pitts :-)))
but a lot of fun anyway!!
Dudley

John Kunkel wrote:
Just watched another WWII dogfight movie scene where the control stick
shakes in unison with the firing guns.
Is this Hollywood or did the firing of the guns carry through to the
controls and cause stick shake as the movies depict?

Never felt the stick shake, at least in an irreversible-controls
A-4 Skyhawk... but the damn sights sure did! The fixed
pipper (adjustable only in elevation wrt aircraft boresight)
would jitter all over the shop.

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

From: "Jeff Crowell"


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