Luftwaffe Cannons and Machineguns topic.

Dam, those are GREAT pics!!!!

Thanks, I dont know why but the last HL131V picture looks to me like a sci-fi warship mechanism.

Amazing stuff!

Also surprised they actually designed one for the He 219. That should have been the He 219C which remained a paper project as far as I know. Also amazing how they kept hoping to get the Ju 288 into production one day!


Kris

Indeed, was for teh He-219C wich never put in production.

Other weird tail lafette, this is a Junkers remote controlled for MG 151/20 in Ju-288.

Dear CharlesBronson:

The PIPE Here...been viewing the Luftwaffe Guns thread for quite some time now, and there's a LOT of differing weapons and "mounts" to look at here !!!

Just a few questions, though...

1. On the WEIGHT of a complete BK 7,5 autocannon installation (weapon and magazine "full-of-ammo" together)...you mention that it was about 1,200 kg (2,645 lb) - the weight of the A-10 Warthog's tank-busting GAU-8/A seven barrel Gatling gun with its fully loaded ammunition drum is way up there at 1,830 kg (4,030 lb), and I'd have to figure that the 129's 75 mm autocannon installation was as heavy as an aircraft weapon of ANY sort could get, until the GAU-8/A showed up...the GAU-8/A has to be considered, then, to be the truly heaviest "gun-type weapon" ever fitted, as standard equipment, to a production warplane ever in aviation history.

2. The 1998-published Manfred Griehl/Joachim Dressel book on the entire He 177 series was a SERIOUS eye-opener for me, about that most enigmatic of all WW II Luftwaffe aircraft of any type...and it seems to realistically contradict many of the long-held beliefs about the entire He 177 series! The Griehl/Dressel volume quite firmly shows that there was a real, live,"truly four-engined" He 177B aircraft meant for production, with four prototypes built (V101 to V104, three of which flew), even backed up with a factory drawing in the book, direct from Heinkel, that shows what surely is the He 177 V101 in that general arrangement drawing, clearly labeled as a "B-5" type, and that no such thing as the He 277 ever "existed" under that name, as anything more than plans on paper, with only a few...VERY few...components ever built for it. It also strongly suggests that there was never any Bordkanone-armed He 177As ever "factory" produced, but only field mods made to mount the lighter BK 5 cannon in the undernose Bola gondola on only a very few examples of those "Gruesome Griffins", and that the BK 7,5 was never mounted for real on ANY He 177, at least not outside of an engineering shop.

3. The most-produced "big-gun" (over 30mm calibre armament of any type/number) aircraft of World War II was, of course, the 75mm cannon-armed B-25 Mitchell G and H versions of that famous US and Allied medium bomber, with just over 1,400 produced. Might you know of any of the figures for muzzle velocity, weight, firing rate, etc. of the "M4" cannon the B-25G, and the "T13E1" cannon the B-25H had, as compared to the BK 7,5 cannon that only the Luftwaffe's Ju 88P-1, and Hs 129B-3, mounted in their ventral gun pods ?

It's just that seeing ALL these complex schemes that the Third Reich was trying to come up with, given its limited resources, to TRY to arm its defensive aircraft with effective weapons and ways to mount them, in order to down the massive armadas of Flying Fortresses, Liberators, Lancasters and Halifaxes that were pounding its war industries to piles of scrap metal, just seem to show that they just could not "stick" to something that was most likely to work (and some of their weapons mounts DID work quite effectively...but only on limited scales) and constantly appeared to be suffering from a case of "tinker-itis" in trying to come up with something they COULD rely on for a reliable anti-bomber weapon. Only with the coming of the Me 262 jet, and its standard armament of a quartet of 30mm MK 108 cannon, did the Luftwaffe have SOMETHING that could at least have had a serious chance of reversing the Allied bomber offensive, both in daylight AND at night.

Hope to hear your viewpoints on these three questions...

Yours Sincerely,

The PIPE!

The PIPE said:

3. The most-produced "big-gun" (over 30mm calibre armament of any type/number) aircraft of World War II was, of course, the 75mm cannon-armed B-25 Mitchell G and H versions of that famous US and Allied medium bomber, with just over 1,400 produced. Might you know of any of the figures for muzzle velocity, weight, firing rate, etc. of the "M4" cannon the B-25G, and the "T13E1" cannon the B-25H had, as compared to the BK 7,5 cannon that only the Luftwaffe's Ju 88P-1, and Hs 129B-3, mounted in their ventral gun pods ?

Click to expand...

75mm M4 (modified from the Sherman tank gun): weight 405 kg.
75mm M5 (lightened version - service designation of T13): weight 184 kg.

Both guns manually loaded, could fire up to 4 shots in a typical attack run (after which the plane was slowed by 10-15 mph by the recoil). They were about 3 metres long, with 2.8m barrels.

Ammunition 75x350R (adapted from French "75" of 19th century). Shell weight 6.67 kg, muzzle velocity 600 m/s.

The guns were significantly less powerful than the BK 7,5 or the Japanese 75mm Type 88 (also fitted to aircraft).

1. On the WEIGHT of a complete BK 7,5 autocannon installation (weapon and magazine "full-of-ammo" together)...you mention that it was about 1,200 kg (2,645 lb) - the weight of the A-10 Warthog's tank-busting GAU-8/A seven barrel Gatling gun with its fully loaded ammunition drum is way up there at 1,830 kg (4,030 lb), and I'd have to figure that the 129's 75 mm autocannon installation was as heavy as an aircraft weapon of ANY sort could get, until the GAU-8/A showed up...the GAU-8/A has to be considered, then, to be the truly heaviest "gun-type weapon" ever fitted, as standard equipment, to a production warplane ever in aviation history.

Click to expand...

Probably no, the 30 mm GAU-8 is the heaviest fully automatic"installation" , the italians used in WW2 some Piaggio P-108 bombers with 102 mm nose howitzer, that installation ( gun plus ammo) weights more than 2 tons. Check the "italain Guns" topic in this section.

The 1998-published Manfred Griehl/Joachim Dressel book on the entire He 177 series was a SERIOUS eye-opener for me, about that most enigmatic of all WW II Luftwaffe aircraft of any type...and it seems to realistically contradict many of the long-held beliefs about the entire He 177 series! The Griehl/Dressel volume quite firmly shows that there was a real, live,"truly four-engined" He 177B aircraft meant for production, with four prototypes built (V101 to V104, three of which flew), even backed up with a factory drawing in the book, direct from Heinkel, that shows what surely is the He 177 V101 in that general arrangement drawing, clearly labeled as a "B-5" type, and that no such thing as the He 277 ever "existed" under that name, as anything more than plans on paper, with only a few...VERY few...components ever built for it. It also strongly suggests that there was never any Bordkanone-armed He 177As ever "factory" produced, but only field mods made to mount the lighter BK 5 cannon in the undernose Bola gondola on only a very few examples of those "Gruesome Griffins", and that the BK 7,5 was never mounted for real on ANY He 177, at least not outside of an engineering shop.

Click to expand...

Honestly I cannot answer your question regarding prototipes. In the other hand I ve seen a profile of a 75mm armed He-177 in some old book, but no photographs of it. that does not mean it never existed.

Nevertheless the only confirmed heavy armament of the He-177 is a twin of MK 101 30mm guns in a twin nose emplacement wich had some limited traverse to left righ and below.

3. The most-produced "big-gun" (over 30mm calibre armament of any type/number) aircraft of World War II was, of course, the 75mm cannon-armed B-25 Mitchell G and H versions of that famous US and Allied medium bomber, with just over 1,400 produced. Might you know of any of the figures for muzzle velocity, weight, firing rate, etc. of the "M4" cannon the B-25G, and the "T13E1" cannon the B-25H had, as compared to the BK 7,5 cannon that only the Luftwaffe's Ju 88P-1, and Hs 129B-3, mounted in their ventral gun pods ?

Click to expand...

Well, mister Tony Willams did aswer that, I could add the normal rate of fire for a manually loaded semiautomatic breech gun of that caliber is 12 rpm, compared with the german automatic 30 rpm.

The german gun used an 75x714R cartrigde with armor piercing composite ballistic cap projectile with high explosive in the base and tracer element. Muzzle velocity was 750 mps in the Pak 40 but only 725 mps in the Luftwaffe variant because the shorter barrel. Penetration in rolled homogenous armor some 112 mm @ 450 meters.

You can see the size of the cartrigde here:

It's just that seeing ALL these complex schemes that the Third Reich was trying to come up with, given its limited resources, to TRY to arm its defensive aircraft with effective weapons and ways to mount them, in order to down the massive armadas of Flying Fortresses, Liberators, Lancasters and Halifaxes that were pounding its war industries to piles of scrap metal, just seem to show that they just could not "stick" to something that was most likely to work (and some of their weapons mounts DID work quite effectively...but only on limited scales) and constantly appeared to be suffering from a case of "tinker-itis" in trying to come up with something they COULD rely on for a reliable anti-bomber weapon. Only with the coming of the Me 262 jet, and its standard armament of a quartet of 30mm MK 108 cannon, did the Luftwaffe have SOMETHING that could at least have had a serious chance of reversing the Allied bomber offensive, both in daylight AND at night.

Click to expand...

Hehe, that is a good conclussion, but the Luftwaffe thinkeritis didnt macht the panzer designers one, just check the topic "Rare and crazy panzer projekts " and you ll see.

Hi all.

I'm interested if anyone has a diagram showing the wiring and tubing arrangement for the 4 MG 17's in the nose of the Bf 110. The first page of this thread shows a pretty good diagram of this area from the Bf 110 manual but It's tough to tell where all the wiring and tubing comes from. I've also seen soem good photos of this area but not all the connections are clear to me.

There are 4 air bottles packed into the nose which I understand are part of the weapons system. How are these connected to the guns and to each other? In addition, it appears that there are two other wires or tubes coming off each gun (could be wrong). Where do these connect? What does the compressed air drive? What are the other connections?

Great thread here with lots of good info!

I think you willl find the squematics you need in the book Monogram Close Up 18, I havent any more in my hD.

Thanks fro the reply CB but just got in the mail Vasco and Estanisalau's book on the Bf 110 C,D,E and it has some great pictures of this area. Wish I had it 2 weeks ago.

Yea, that is a better book, the only advantage of the Monogram close up series is that they are cheaper.

Cleaning up the barrel of Me-109`s Mauser MG 151/20,. The knurled section is for easier handling when extracting it, it was a quick change one obviously.

Some great shots of the rear MG 151/20 armed turret of Heinkel He-177 found in the german federal archives.

I love that last pic. It even looks a bit futuristic


Kris

True, kind of starwarish look ( is not like I am a fan of the series)

Here an officer is using some special optical device, I am not sure if is for alignment of the Mauser gun or maybe checking the rifling wear.

Yeah I was also thinking of Star Wars!

That is a strange device. I don't know how he can look inside at the barrel without light going through...

Kris

CharlesBronson said:

...

Here an officer is using some special optical device, I am not sure if is for alignment of the Mauser gun or maybe checking the rifling wear.

Click to expand...

Checking the alignment.
Back in 1990/91 we've used the similar instrument for our Praga 30mm SP AAA pieces.

That is a strange device. I don't know how he can look inside at the barrel without light going through

Click to expand...

Maybe the thing has a tiny light inside like the device used by doctors to check inside a patient ears.

Checking the alignment.
Back in 1990/91 we've used the similar instrument for our Praga 30mm SP AAA pieces.

Click to expand...

Thanks Tomo P. I was 50 % accurate. Nice monster the czech 30x210 guns, you should got some muscle from the days of moving by hand those heavy 50 round magazines.

Filling up 60 round magazines for the Ikaria Werke MG-FF 20mm gun. ( airfield in the France Campaign, 1940)

How about a target/reflector in the breech end. The device on the muzzle end has cross hairs and you look thru the barrel at the target in the breech end. If perfectly centered in the muzzle device's cross hairs, you can verify straightess of the barrel.

Pure conjecture on my part.....

makes perfect sense !

Btw, do you guys know anything about belly guns for single-engined Luftwaffe aircraft? So far I have read about the Bf 109G-4 with the 20mm belly gun which was not adopted due to different priming. Anything else?
Kris

I recall something about a Fw 190 being fitted with a single belly MK 103 for ground attack, but I don't know whether this happened or was just a paper project. I believe it was abandoned because of concerns about the reliability of synchronisation with the big cartridge and the consequences if it failed. Two underwing guns were tried instead, but were also unsuccessful.