P-82 gun pod projects (?)

[BarnOwlLover]

I'm sure we all (or most of us) know of the variant that had the 8 .50 MGs in it, but I did read both on Wikipedia and Twin Mustang: The North American F-82 At War that there were other projects being looked at for the gun pod, including a 40mm cannon. Is there any truth to this?

 

[GTX]

A single F-82B was converted into a photo-recon RF-82B in the late '40s:

In flight trials:

Pod in construction:

With an without pics:

 

[BarnOwlLover]

I actually was influenced to ask this after reading a post about the large caliber cannon armed Hs-129s and Ju-87s in the Hs-123 thread. Would the F-82 been suited to carrying such a weapon for CAS or as a bomber destroyer? After all, there did seem to studies done on the earlier P-51 variants (including the A-36) to carry even 37mm cannons.

 

[PStickney]

I actually was influenced to ask this after reading a post about the large caliber cannon armed Hs-129s and Ju-87s in the Hs-123 thread. Would the F-82 been suited to carrying such a weapon for CAS or as a bomber destroyer? After all, there did seem to studies done on the earlier P-51 variants (including the A-36) to carry even 37mm cannons.

I'd suggest that the development of reasonably-sized rockets, like the 4.5" and 5" and the later 5" HVAR pretty much made the idea of a large caliber gun irrelevant.
If you want an idea of the weight and bulk of an automatic 75mm Gun, and what it takes to put it in / on an airplane, check out the Beech XA-38 Grizzly - looks like a Beech 18's Iron-Pumping Steroid Shooting Bigger Brother.

 

[Sabrejet]

A single F-82B was converted into a photo-recon RF-82B in the late '40s:

There is no evidence that this aircraft was ever referred to as "RF-82B"' the aircraft was bailed to NAA for testing a pod which might have led to a recce variant but didn't.

 

[BarnOwlLover]

It was suggested that the pod carry a 40mm cannon, though I'm not sure if it was for strafing or bomber destroying. This is from a book on the F-82 called Twin Mustang: The North American F-82 At War. Since I've seen no other real references to that, I'm not even sure it existed beyond a concept.

 

[BarnOwlLover]

I was reading though Twin Mustang: North American's F-82 At War, and one of the P-82Bs converted to test night fighter equipment did test a small pod with an APS-4 or APS-28 radar unit mounted under the wing. It seemed to be no longer (or even shorter) than the gun pod, and a lot smaller in diameter (it seemed similar to the P-38M's radar pod). I'd be interested in how it would've worked, given that the design of the radar pod was to move the scanner far enough forward so it wouldn't scan the prop blades.

Also in that case, I don't know why a radar pod similar to what the Hellcat and Corsair night fighters used mounted on an outboard wing section wouldn't work.

 

[ThomasP]

Possibly due to the aerodynamics and hence practical size of the off-center underwing pod. The central mounted large pod allowed a larger antenna (providing a longer search range) and did not mess with the aerodynamics as much.