Clay_Allison
Staff Sergeant
- 1,154
- Dec 24, 2008
Hi Juha,
>Pilots saw 4*.5 HMG as adequate armament against Japanese a/c and saw also that after you had run out ammo your chances to help the defence of your flat-top or your charges was minimal.
If you check the actual ammunition supply, the 4x 12.7 mm battery had 1720 rounds of ammunition while the 6x 12.7 mm battery had only 1440 rounds. What the pilot bemoaned was that the new aircraft had less ammunition, not that the extra guns fired off the same the number of rounds more quickly.
4x ,50 Browning M2 - 430 rpg, 33 s duration - 305 kg - 1,1 MW firepower - 37.5 MJ total supply
6x ,50 Browning M2 - 240 rpg, 18 s duration - 332 kg - 1,7 MW firepower - 31.4 MJ total supply
In fact, the F4F-4 example is great for showing what was wrong with the 12.7 mm Browning guns ... they were extremely heavy.
Here is an alternative battery that would have done a much superior job:
2x Hispano II - 417 rpg, 42 s duration - 305 kg - 2,1 MW firepower - 88.5 MJ total supply
What would these cannon have done for the US navy?
- They would have increased firepower by a factor of almost 2 over the F4F-3 battery (at the same weight).
- They would have increased the total firing duration by a factor of 1.3 over the F4F-3 battery (at the same weight).
- They would have increased the total ammunition supply by a factor of 2.4 over the F4F-3 (at the same weight).
- It would have increased firepower by more than 20% over the six-gun battery of the F4F-4 (at lower weight).
So whatever way you look at it, the 12.7 mm Browning armament was inferior to contemporary cannon, and replacing it with a different type of gun would have had considerable performance and tactical benefits for the US forces.
>Pilots saw 4*.5 HMG as adequate armament against Japanese a/c and saw also that after you had run out ammo your chances to help the defence of your flat-top or your charges was minimal. And without flat-top... Simple as that.
Taking a second look at this statement, I find it to be a very good illustration for the danger of using the term "adequate" ... I know that you meant to describe the firepower of the four-gun battery which against unarmoured Japanese aircraft with unprotected fuel tanks, against which it obviously was lethal, but what you wrote - inadvertently, I guess - actually was "adequate armament".
As the weight and the available ammunition supply have to be judged along with firepower, and weight and ammunition supply were basically "much more than adequate" and "much less than adequate" respectively, the battery as a whole was "far from adequate". As the survival of an entire aircraft carrier depended on the quality of the guns of its fighters, your example is a great illustration that having obsolete and overweight aircraft guns is a problem even for the side that is winning the war.
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
The US Military had a rare bout of idiocy (rare at the time, they are more practiced now) where concerns the 20mm HS Cannon. Someone somewhere never realized that they were making a giant machine gun, not artillery and that tolerances would have to be finer to account for headspacing a cartridge at a high (comparatively) rate of fire. As a result, British guns, made with close tolerances, worked fantastically well. American guns were using greased ammunition to prevent them blowing themselves up when they were used, but mostly they were not used.