Recent content by Kocur

Said post doesn't say they did that frequently. In the scale of whole VVS and whole war that was surely infrequent. I mean vast majority of VVS combat was indeed at low altitude, as it was indeed closely related to Il-2s and fighters attacking ground targets (the latter early, often armed with...

First of all, the La-5 and La-7 job units was not Il-2 close escort. That was Yak units job. If Las participated, they did high cover. Apart from that, main Las units job was escorting bombers and fighter sweeps. As to heights at which Las usually operated, let me us words of a VVS vet: It's...

Power you quoted is take-off power, not so relevant to air combat. ASh-82 FN generated 1430 PS at 4,55 km (as per manual). BMW 801 D at 1,65 ata generated ~1660 PS at 4,7 km (as per On big radials ).

Apologies if this isn't the right place. A grandson of a Polish WW2-era railway worker found the latter's diary. It has a story from 1944 or 1945 when a Soviet aviation unit equipped with US-produced airplanes was stationed at nearby airfield. According to the diary, Soviets operated a US...

Found in US Army manual TM 9-2200 from October 1943: LINK, METALLIC BELT, CAL. .30, M1 - 67.2 grains (0.946 lb per 100) LINK, METALLIC BELT, CAL .50, M2 - (Average) 267 grains (3 .8 lb per 100 links) LINK, DISINTEGRATING BELT, 20-M1, M3 - Approx. 2.5 oz.

By default there were means of performing "immediate action", to use small arms term. Sometimes manually in case of nose guns and far more often by devices of electrical, pneumatic or hydraulic nature, pilot could reload his guns. If pulling bolt wasn't enough to clear the malfunction, it would...

Those are .50 M2s. The giveaway is the number of rivets in lower front of receiver.

The weapon in question is Beardmore-Farquhar machine gun.

I don't know if that is AM-23 barrel, but the receiver surely is from AM-23. I imagined that this muzzle brake could be useful for bomber's turrents to prevent fuselage damage by muzzle blast, but I found no picture of Soviet bombers showing it. I'm too ;) If you mean that the barrel may...

This is AM-23 cannon (bunch of Russian links).

I have this book (or rather booklet of 33 pages), where a report by NAS Anacostia to BuAer is quoted. The weights of XF5F-1 given there are 8,107 lbs empty (incl. residual fuel and oil) and 10,132 lbs take off weight in fighter configuraion. I mention this becasue of difference between the chart...

Machine guns, i.e. weapons for 7-8 mm cartridges, had low effectiveness in Europe, because warplanes there got two things over time: armor for the crew and self sealing tanks. The former meant, that central unit could't be damaged form usual firing angles. The latter meant that probability of...

Both Browning guns were very similar and Breda SAFAT was completely different from both.

This is a great thread and all those ordnance stickies are great too! I can offer just one little correction: I'm affraid that isn't so. Breda SAFAT and Browning hmgs look so similar one might think they must be similar internally too, but there the Italian gun was different from US one in...

I happen to have a book in French: Profils Avions 009 - Le Fokker D.21, by Peter de Jong, full 223 pages on D.XXI :) Fokker advertised D.XXI in early 1936 to be able to attain top speed 460 km/h with fixed gear and 475 km/h with retractable. The promise obviously was not fulfilled in case...