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The gatlings we worked on had no belts. The first thing discovered when they started trying to build high ROF guns post WWII was belts couldn't do the job. The ammo drums and feed paths on our Vulcans fed bare cartridges from a spiral drum through a "track", if you will, consisting of castings with sprockets in them that guided the rounds through every change of direction and into the gun. The ammunition was delivered planeside in belts which were delinked as the rounds were fed into the spiral drum by the ordnance people in the loading process. In the case of a jam, sprocket teeth would often puncture cartridge cases, spilling raw powder into the works.a major problem with high rate of fire guns in WW II was feeding them, conventional belts don't work well without some sort of delinking system,
Teach me right where I'm in error, but slap-downs based on twisted data don't help me learn.
Where you get 144Kg, SR? That's the weight (approx) of the 20mm Vulcan. What's the weight of our M3 20mm cannon? About 100lb.
And we used rockets and hollow charges in WWII, OK? So we had all the tech we needed to make RPG-7 in 1940, OK?
Well, it might be possible to install one for through the hub firing in a largish V12 piston fighter, something that would never work for a multi barrel 20MM gatling due to bulk issues. The Vulcan is about as compact as they can reliably be, and I don't think anybody who's seen one up close and personal would think of trying to stuff it into the nose of a single engine piston fighter. Now a 20MM revolver cannon could be made more compact and might have a chance, but it would have barrel life issues. Compare a .36 cal pepperbox pistol to a Colt Navy: the difference is obvious. (Oops, maybe that's a bad example. Pepperboxes in .36 are pretty rare, as most were .32 or smaller: gambler's hideaway pistols.)So where does the Mauser revolver cannon fall into the high ROF weapons in regards to "What would you improve?"
Another example of it's sounds simple in theory but in practice things are a bit different.So where does the Mauser revolver cannon fall into the high ROF weapons in regards to "What would you improve?"
The subject of the OP was relating to ENGINES.
However, having said that, and since I am as susceptible to topic wander as the next person.
As to aircraft armament, I would try to bring back knowledge that would enable the manufacture of better and more compact Lead Computing Gun Sights (of whichever type). Aside from the obvious (greater hit %) it would make the use of gatling type weapons more practical.
One of the main problems with gatling guns (and other extremely high ROF weapons) is the lack of sufficient ammunition. For anti-bomber use, I am sure the Luftwaffe would have loved a 20mm Vulcan equivalent, if they could produce a platform capable of carrying it. As pointed out above the weight of the gun system and ammo is high, probably more than a single engine fighter could carry. It would have to be mounted on or near centerline, which would require synchronization (reducing the ROF enough to render the advantage moot), or fire through the hub. Maybe on twin-engined aircraft like the Me110 or FW187 (center fuselage) early-war, or something like the Do335 (hub?0 late-war. I do not think anything smaller could carry the system effectively.
Then there is the short fire time. This would be a problem due to both weight and volume. There is no way that a 20mm Vulcan system (600 rounds for a maximum fire time of 10 seconds at the normal LOW ROF of 3000 rpm) could be fitted into anything smaller than a Do335 size airframe. An approximate .50 cal//13mm system would obviously fit in a smaller airframe, but the high ROF/low fire time would be the same (or worse if max possible ROF of 8000(?) rpm was used). Again it would have to be centrally located, unless you want to cary 1 in each wing (ammo drums in the fuselage), in which case the airframe would have to be large (ie no Bf109/Spitfire/P-40/P-51/etc).
For bomber defensive installations (particular in the tail) the size/weight would not be to much of a problem (I think) but the low low fire time would be. I ran across a post-WWII US study on aircraft armament, and one of the problems mentioned relative to the B-17 and B-24 was that they would often run out of ammo for the guns, often before they reached the target. Can you imagine the increased chances of that with a 10 second time of fire instead of the normal 45-60 seconds. The major effect of bomber guns vs fighters was found to be the moral factor for the bomber crews and discouragement factor for the attacking fighter pilots. As to the adverse moral effect on the Luftwaffe fighter pilots, the Luftwaffe late-war reports and the post-war US study reported that the addition of the chin turret to the B-17 and nose turret to the B-24 only decreased head-on attacks by about 4% (the head-on percentage was still in the low 40% range, the tail attack in the mid-40% range, with other types accounting for the remainder).
A better Lead Computing Gun Sight would increase the hit chance for normal gun installations (whether in fighters or bombers) and would (maybe) allow the decreased time of fire for gatlings to be effective.
The "motorkannon" was always mounted beneath the engine, as the Daimler-Benz and Jumo engines were inverted "V" types.But for the Luftwaffe I thought (maybe?) a lighter/shorter barrel/lower velocity/minengeschoss version could be mounted above the engine. Since the gun only fires from one barrel position I figure that a blast glove/tube through the hub might be used.
They spent years trying to make the Vulcan lighter and more compact, only to blow up gun after gun on the test range. When one of those things comes unglued you don't want to be cooped up in an airframe with it. The test cells at the range got rebuilt over and over again. When the Vulcans were being tested the noise echoed up and down the valleys of central Vermont and could be heard for miles. My high school biology teacher would pause his lecture, turn toward the direction of the noise and say: "Jupiter, SHAME ON YOU! Excuse yourself when you do that in public!", then hold his nose and fan his other hand in front of his grimacing face.Too heavy and long if nothing else. But for the Luftwaffe I thought (maybe?) a lighter/shorter barrel/lower velocity/minengeschoss version could be mounted above the engine.
While closer to a viable solution, the high ROF revolver cannon has two potential pitfalls:As XBe02Drvr pointed out above, it would certainly be easier to install a revolver cannon in limited space, whether through the hub or in the wings.
Perhaps I should have said "mounted beneath the centerline of the inverted "V" engine"The motor cannon was mounted behind the engine with only the Barrel positioned in a tube.
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Returning to engines: no H-engines. While Napier seemed very enamored of them, the X configuration used in their Cub has the weight advantage of having only one crankshaft. A liquid-cooled radial would also have the potential for being lighter, and has the potential for more cylinders.