Best aircraft weapon on a plane during WWII

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You gotta admit, these were pretty cool, especially when the troops on the ground came out and started shooting at them thinking they were airborne! These get my vote, especially when filled with razors and shrapnel!
 

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lesofprimus said:
As for any weapon, gotta throw Napalm into the fray.... It could destroy anything on the ground, from troops to aircraft to tanks to structures......
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NO FAIR, NO FAIR - I WANTED TO SAY NAPALM!
 
At the risk of upsetting the Americans, I should point out that if you believe that the M2 was the best air to air weapon, then the russian UB was a much better 12.7
Bullet weight UB 48g M2 43g
Rate of fire UB 17r/s M2 13r/s
Weight of gun UB 25KG M2 29KG
M Velocity UB 840M/S M2 890 M/S

So it weighed less, fired a bigger bullet, at a much faster rate of fire, for a small drop in MV. I should also add that the bullet was a better design as the USA copied it in 1943 for issueing to their own forces.

The M2 was better than the HMG's in the Italian, German and JAAF but well behind the Russians.
I omitted the Jap Navy as they used a copy of the M2 bored out to 13mm but their use of HMG's was minimal.

For my money the 20mm Hispanio V was easily the best air to air weapon. It weighed about 50% more than the M2, had the same rate of fire, fired a shell that was three times the size and had ten times the amount of high explosive in each shell. If you work it out, the Tempest had about twice the firepower of a P47 for the weight of 6 M2's
 
Its not really a matter of weight and whatnot... Its more of a matter of how many rounds can u penetrate with in a given amount of time..... Accuracy comes into this as well..... A bigger round is affected more by gravity/wind/atmosphere/humidity.....

In a 3G turn, partially inverted, with a snapshot of 1.2 seconds, I want those .50's ......
(Although I happen to love the Hispo's and the high explosive)

Air to air is one thing..... Fighter to fighter is another....
 
Just a point of clarification, the P-47 had eight and not six .50's and the M3 .50 had a cyclic rate of 1,200 rpm as opposed to 750 for the M2. Thus, the M2 only had 63% of the firepower of the M3.

Eight M3 .50's at 1,200 rpm could throw out 160 rounds per second! A 1/4 second burst in which only half the guns connected would still yield 20 hits.
 
I agree but the MV was close between the M2 and the Mk V, the penetration would always be on the side of the larger shell with the bigger warhead and greater momentum. This would also help the trajectory.

Lesbo there is always room for differences between the 12.7 and the 20 and in a fighter you wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of either. But wouldn't you rather have 6 or 8 of the UB's in your P51 P47?
 
David
I know the P47 had 8 guns. The point was that the Tempest had twice the firepower of the P47 for the WEIGHT of 6 M2's. In other words it was more effective for less weight.
As for the M3 I don't know when it came into widespread use, can you tell me more on this. The Russian UB was in use almost from the start of the war and was therefore without question the best 12.7 in general use during the war.
Hope this helps
 
Barrel life was the least of everyones worries as statistically the gun was unlikely to last long enough to run out of life. The plane was more likely to crash before the guns wore out. It was cheaper to replace the barrels of the few that lasted that long, then spend the extra effort and money in building them to last.
As for reliability I doubt if there was much in it. Russians were not known for their sophistication, but there equipment was known for being reliable.
 
It didn't come into widespread use. (But it did see service on planes in WWII per the posted question) It entered service on Le Shima just a few months before the war ended in the Pacific and was mounted in P-47N's.

Those poor Japanese pilots in their lightly constructed aircraft never knew what hit them.
 
Les said, "They were more reliable from what ive read, and the barrel life on the M3 was said to last up to 3 times as long......"

This, of course, is counterintuitive as friction is what ruins barrels and thus all things being equal, a cyclic rate of 1,200 rpm as opposed to 750 rpm would be more damaging to a barrel.

Do you know how they achieved up to three times the barrel life? How were they defining barrel life? Ordinarily, it is measured in number of rounds fired.
 
Its gotta be the .50 cal. Think of all the aircraft shot down with .50 cal, all the rail transportation destroyed by .50 cal. Those half inch bullets did more damage combined than anything else. And it was an excellent combination of weight and lethality per round while still having a high rate of fire, and a high velocity as well.

You get to 30mm cannon and there is just too much drop. You go to 20mm cannon and there is a slower velocity plus slower rate of fire. Granted a single hit from a 30mm cannon was often enough to take an aircraft out but you had to land the round home. Plus the weight of cannons and their ammunition is far greater than the .50 cal round.
 
http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/WW2guneffect.htm

P.47 8x0.5"
Ammo power (HE content) ; 15640
Gun power (KE) ; 480
Time to fire 2320 ; 4.8s
Weight ; 613kg

Tempest 4x20mm Mk V
Ammo power ; 16000
Gun power ; 1000
Time to fire 2320 ; 2.3
Weight ; 374 kg

So for 40% less weight the Tempest has an armament twice as powerful. A single 0.5" hit will basically do no damage. A single 20mm hit will severely incapacitate a fighter.
 
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