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might have had a limited role in the Pacific against banzai type charges or small boats, barges ,etc or harassing small island garrisons
That's what I was thinking. Doubt it would've been very successful in the ETO due to fighters (at least without a decent escort, even in night operations) and heavy AA but someplace like Southeast Asia and areas of the PTO where they'd likely be facing lesser-equipped opposition it might've fared well.
I think the ideal armament would've been 4-5 .50 cal Brownings (the AN/M2 model), maybe even with provision for water jackets as some of the very early or naval M2's had for more continuous fire. They wouldn't have the insane ROF of Miniguns but could compensate with better hitting power and range.
they might have been able to adapt the small 75 MM used in the B-25's also
maybe multiple modified versions of this
M18 recoilless rifle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
with the exhaust gases vented outside the fuselage, very low weight (less than 50 pounds) and virtually no recoil (could be shoulder fired by a single soldier)
Is there any reason a WW2 era AC-47 couldn't be fitted with the Bofors?
The L/60 is the 4 wheeled platform, elevating and traversing system,and sights. All you need for the aircraft is the gun and recoil mechanism, that could be half of that, but still pretty heavy. The L70, a postwar Bofors list a gun weight of 560kg, about 1250 lbs.My guess is that it would be too heavy and stressful on the C-47 airframe. A Bofors weighed 2 tons in L/60 form. An M134 weighs 85 pounds and the USAF version had three. And we're still not taking into account the weight of all the ammo, etc.
A quartet of .50s would be very easily doable (and was done with some foreign variants of AC-47), a pair of 20mm would be as well but anything bigger would probably be pushing it.