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This was provoked by as many as seven pilots making joint claims for one enemy aircraft. There is a sound logic to it. If an aircraft is damaged over London, it still has a long way to fly back and land. Examination of post war records showed a lot of bombers landed but were effectively written off , ditched in the channel or made a crash landing. It was in a way a side effect of the "Big Wing" when you have a wing of 50 aircraft all together in a small area they completely outnumber the attacking bombers even if the total number of bombers was in the hundreds.
The fact that it made it home is extraordinary. The spitfire had a stressed skin construction, so the skin itself was load bearing. The advantage of the explosive shell, is that is kinda DOESN'T matter where it hits. I suspect that aircraft was a hair's breadth away from shedding its entire empennage, or large section of its aft skin. If you can separate an aircraft from its parts, it will go down very quickly.It also proves the point that, like hunting, where you hit them is many times more important than what you hit them with (within reason). If that group had been 12 feet farther forward, that Spitfire wouldn't have made it home.
Or faced formations of heavy bombersIf the US had had smaller or lower powered engines then things might have gotten a bit more iffy.
The fact that it made it home is extraordinary. The spitfire had a stressed skin construction, so the skin itself was load bearing. The advantage of the explosive shell, is that is kinda DOESN'T matter where it hits. I suspect that aircraft was a hair's breadth away from shedding its entire empennage, or large section of its aft skin. If you can separate an aircraft from its parts, it will go down very quickly.
It is a very rough approximation as there are a crap load of variables.
I would note that I Believe that this comparison is for the 20mm Hispano and the .50 cal Browning ONLY, as changing to different 20mm guns.diffrent 12.7-13.2mm machine guns changes a crap load more variables.
I believe the original comparison was for "muzzle horsepower". A somewhat interesting but totally useless metric for comparing guns in the real world.
Muzzle HP is the foot pounds of energy generated per minute (or second) by the weight of the projectiles times their velocity squared and the rest of the kinetic energy formula. Please note this takes no account of the target effects of HE shells, of which the US .50 used NONE.
The big problem with the .50 was more theoretical. It was certainly effective in batteries of 4-8 guns as used in US fighters on the targets US fighters had to deal with.
The problem is one of efficiency. the guns and ammo are heavy for the target effect you get. If you have big enough engines (and airplanes) you can stuff enough .50 cal guns in them to get the job done (at least the job/s the US needed doeing). If the US had had smaller or lower powered engines then things might have gotten a bit more iffy.
a P-47 armed with 4 Hispano's would have probably weighed less, with significantly greater firepower. Although I am assuming on both pointsit would have been interesting to see how well a P47 with 8 50s faired against B17 and B24's.
a P-47 armed with 4 Hispano's would have probably weighed less, with significantly greater firepower. Although I am assuming on both points
I agree the comparison was between 20mm Hispano and Browning 50.
Agree that 'muzzle energy' is a horrible way of comparing firearms.
Agree with last paragraph.
Agree with the post below yours saying heavy bombers might have been a problem, although, it would have been interesting to see how well a P47 with 8 50s faired against B17 and B24's.
In Korea, didn't the USAF intercept a group of Soviet TU-4 bombers (B29 copies) and decimate them? Wouldn't they have all had 50's?
They were removing guns because they were desperate, the Hurricane was inferior to the Japanese opposition
They say "The 20mm is 3 times more effective than the 50"
Question: What does that mean?
1. Does it mean 3 50 bullets do the same damage as 1 20mm?
If so, then a fighter with 4 50's and 450 rpg would have the same amount of killing power as a fighter with 4 20mm and 150 rpg it would just take longer
2. Does it mean it takes 3 times longer for a 50 to bring down an aircraft? (It takes a 2 second burst from 4 20mm to bring down an ME110 so it takes 6 seconds for 4 50's) If so, then rate of fire of each individual weapon would come into play
3. Does it mean by weight of weapons and ammo carried? (800 pounds of 20mm cannon and ammo is 3 times more effective than 800 pounds of 50 BMG machine guns and ammo)
I believe (but welcome correction) that the bottom dial (base) was set to the wingspan (or length ) of the target aircraft and the top dial was set to the desired range of engagement. When the target's wing span touched the sides of the circle the target was at the range set.
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AND they needed to 'track' the target for a short period of time to give correct solution. I believe they could also be rendered unusable (at least for a time) by violent maneuvers or inverted flying? Could very well be wrong on this one.
They did, and that is (I believe) why they worked on gun sights and gyro gun sights because I think they sussed out that in the heat of a dog fight pilots needed aids to help them to do what they actually knew they should do. The gyro gun sight had a great effect on the accuracy of USAAF pilots who had a different scheme of training but in the end had the same problem.I wonder if the RAF ever had films made or posters printed showing the sizes of various aircraft at the correct firing range ie a Heinkel 111 will look this big in the sight at 300 yards and a Dornier 17 wil look this big and so on. You can read time and time again where gun camera films were checked and the inexperienced pliots were opening fire at ranges up to and even sometimes over 1,000yards.