Hi Clay,
>But I have to say that I know far more about guns than I do about aircraft, and I know that with a multitude of impacts each successive one is more damaging than the first, especially when hitting in rapid succession and creating a "stacking" effect of energy transfer. How many hits you can make is very important to how destructive any weapon is.
Hm, would you still agree that it is the product of the number of hits and the probability of kill of each hit that counts?
I'm not sure if the stacking effect is really applicable in air combat ... how quickly would have two 12.7 mm hits follow each other (and with which precision) to achieve this? A P-47 with guns converging at 300 m averages about 17 bullet strikes per second per square meter in the 75 % radius of its pattern, so the likelihood of two hits on exactly the same spot in a very shrot period is not that great.
In fact, my impression is that the advantage of high-powered explosive shells is that they concentrate a lot of damage in a localized area, similar to the stacking effect you suggest except that it only requires one hit to induce a lot of energy, which due to their ability to critically damage aircraft structure makes them more destructive than a greater number of hits of the same energy which spread the energy of a larger area.
I'm not aware of any wartime reports on this - the Luftwaffe from their gun camera films of bomber shootdowns concluded that the total amount of explosives counted, regardless of calibre. Though they preferred 30 mm cannon over 20 mm cannon, that was more due to economy of scale making the 30 mm cannon a more weight-efficient weapon ... the greate localization of damage with larger shells did not play a role for them.
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
>But I have to say that I know far more about guns than I do about aircraft, and I know that with a multitude of impacts each successive one is more damaging than the first, especially when hitting in rapid succession and creating a "stacking" effect of energy transfer. How many hits you can make is very important to how destructive any weapon is.
Hm, would you still agree that it is the product of the number of hits and the probability of kill of each hit that counts?
I'm not sure if the stacking effect is really applicable in air combat ... how quickly would have two 12.7 mm hits follow each other (and with which precision) to achieve this? A P-47 with guns converging at 300 m averages about 17 bullet strikes per second per square meter in the 75 % radius of its pattern, so the likelihood of two hits on exactly the same spot in a very shrot period is not that great.
In fact, my impression is that the advantage of high-powered explosive shells is that they concentrate a lot of damage in a localized area, similar to the stacking effect you suggest except that it only requires one hit to induce a lot of energy, which due to their ability to critically damage aircraft structure makes them more destructive than a greater number of hits of the same energy which spread the energy of a larger area.
I'm not aware of any wartime reports on this - the Luftwaffe from their gun camera films of bomber shootdowns concluded that the total amount of explosives counted, regardless of calibre. Though they preferred 30 mm cannon over 20 mm cannon, that was more due to economy of scale making the 30 mm cannon a more weight-efficient weapon ... the greate localization of damage with larger shells did not play a role for them.
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)