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Re the installation of the 20mm in the rear of the B17 I admit to not knowing how on earth they fitted it in. The rear gun position of a B17 is very small and if you look at the arc of fire of even the HMG, it was pretty limited.
A 20mm is massive compared to the .50 and how they managed to get anyone inside to aim let alone reload the thing is beyond me.
You would stand a better chance of getting it in the rear of the B24 if you replaced the rear turret with a manual position
On a side note the B-17 is probably one of my most favorate aircraft. After this weekend maybe I will start a technial thread about the aircraft and some of its different configurations. Currently Im trying to orginize all my data since I seem to have a scatter mess right now.
Re the installation of the 20mm in the rear of the B17 I admit to not knowing how on earth they fitted it in. The rear gun position of a B17 is very small and if you look at the arc of fire of even the HMG, it was pretty limited.
A 20mm is massive compared to the .50 and how they managed to get anyone inside to aim let alone reload the thing is beyond me.
You would stand a better chance of getting it in the rear of the B24 if you replaced the rear turret with a manual position
The MG151/20 fires a higher SD round at 770 m/s, and therefore it should have a comparable trajectory to the .50 BMG.
I admit that my understanding was that the .50 had a MV of around 890m/s and had a better trajectory. The 20mm having far more impact at longer ranges due to the explosive content of the shell, but not due to the trajectory.
Another thing is that a bomber is a larger target to be shooting at, and the fighter is a more stable gun platform than firing from a mount on the bomber.
Soren - how do we know this to be true? A twin 50 mount in the tail of a B-17 is not only 'pretty stable' but also flexible to the extent that the Gunner can compensate for a/c motion.
A second question to be asked, particularly for wing mounts on an Fw 190, is why do we belive that the wings are 'stiffer' under high aero loads, to the point that the convergences are close to ground calibration?
Last, how do we compare the stability of the fighter's approach to the B-17 in flight?