Groundhog Thread Part Deux - P-39 Fantasy and Fetish - The Never Ending Story (Mods take no responsibility for head against wall injuries sustained) (7 Viewers)

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The 37mm is unreliable.
In the book "Druids' Circle" the author describes what occurred when the USAAF told then RAF that the 37MM of the P-39 could do as good a job at tank busting as did the 40MM Vickers guns of the Hurricane IID.

They took a captured German tank and set it up on a firing range. They positioned a P-39 to fire at the tank. And they found out the 37MM gun would jam every time, the shells getting caught on the way out . They called in an experienced armorer and he found that the ejection lever of the 37MM was too long. They sawed it off, and then it worked. And they proved very conclusively that the 37MM could not penetrate the armor of a German tank. The 40MM Vickers could do the job.

The 37MM of the P-39 was meant for air-to-air engagements, not knocking out armored vehicles. The velocity of the round was far too slow to penetrate armored vehicles. The 37MM gun used by the JU-87G was originally a Flak gun and was designed for a much higher muzzle velocity. The claim that he Soviets used the P-39 for tank busting is just as much nonses as the assertion that they deleted the turbo from the P-39 because they chose to focus on ground attack.

Aside from that, you have to wonder what was going on if they were shipping airplanes with a gun that would jam after only 1 round.
 
This is the thread that would not die.

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