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About 174lbs for the ammo/belts.I'm asking this because the extra ammo will almost certainly add weight alone, let alone any possible structural changes.
Same, give me four 20mm Hispano's with 15-18 seconds of ammoI wonder what the fascination was with having almost a full half minute of firing time with .50s?
I wonder what the fascination was with having almost a full half minute of firing time with .50s?
I know that if I was flying a fighter tasked with escorting bombers deep into Germany and back that I would want every round I could stuff in my fighter. After all, there was the strong possibility of needing to engage in fighter-fighter combat multiple times going in, for several minutes over the target, and multiple times on the way out.I wonder what the fascination was with having almost a full half minute of firing time with .50s? I know that the P-38 and P-47 were originally designed as bomber destroyers that ultimately saw mostly fighter vs fighter combat. Same thing ultimately happened with Hellcats and Corsairs. It seems that Shortround is sort of implying that 12-maybe 20 seconds of firing time is optimal for most fighters. And hence (given the reduced ammo that P-38s and P-47s often carried on fighter missions) carrying tons of ammo was overkill, or not really necessary for most missions.
Once a fighter was in contact the tanks were dropped and the engine boosted on full rich mixture, your not going to engage in multiple fights because you don't have the fuel, also by the time your finished the first engagement you would be not only below bur far behind the bomber group you are defending so burning more fuel you don't have trying the catch up is not an option. Having less ammunition for cannons is not that great a disadvantage because no fighter that flew in WW2 would be in a flying let alone fighting condition after a 2 second burst of SAPI HE/I from four Hispano's hits home,I know that if I was flying a fighter tasked with escorting bombers deep into Germany and back that I would want every round I could stuff in my fighter. After all, there was the strong possibility of needing to engage in fighter-fighter combat multiple times going in, for several minutes over the target, and multiple times on the way out.
Bomber interception and fighter sweeps both result in far less combat per flight than did bomber escort potentially did.
That is way lower than anything else I have seen.50-caliber ammunition in a belt weighs 20.3 to 22.3 pounds per 100 rounds