Why did the RAF persist with the .303 throughout the war?

Sometimes there are other considerations, from Wiki so take it for what you think it is worth;

"" The ShKAS machine gun had a high rate of fire but it also had 48 ways of jamming. Some of them could be fixed immediately, some could not. And 1,800 rounds a minute was an insanely high rate of fire. If you pulled the trigger too long, the ShKAS would fire all its ammo in one go and that would be it!!"

The last may be more for flexible guns than fixed. and

"The Shkas was a comparatively intricate and well finished gun, the cost of which necessitated that it be kept in operating condition as long as possible by repair and replacement of parts. In contrast to the Shkas, the Beresin was deliberately expendable, that is, the Soviets' plan was to discard the entire gun after a short period of use during which one or another of the principal operating mechanisms became worn or broken."

If the 12.7 mm UB offered even close to the same target effect as a pair of ShKAS and was cheaper to produce (money, man ours, what ever) and posed less of a maintenance burden it would be picked even in not actually "better".

I don't know how much each different consideration counted but many times a weapon was kept in production/use or dropped for other reasons than target effect alone.

The sights......the sights



Steve

Of the Shkas there was even a 3000 RPM version (that really unreliable), the normal Shkas fired at 1800 RPM, and about 1650 when synchronized, so about 50% more than a Browning 303. But, for a comparison of weapons designed in the same years, the MG-81 fired 1600 RPM without being a revolver. As for the ammo load, a Mig-3 had 750 round per weapon, so 27 second of fire, Less than a Bf109f, but much more than a early Spit.
For jamming consideration, it's strange to replace two Mgs with one, especially if, if one of the two Shkas is jammed, the remainant could fire two rounds for every round fired by the UBS (800 RPM).
From wiki also, it seems Soviets were unimpressed by the reliability of the Browning 303: The .303 variant equipped the Hawker Hurricanes delivered to Soviet Air Forces, during the Great Patriotic War. Soviet airmen compared them to Soviet ShKAS in terms of reliability: "But they often failed due to dust," recalled pilot Nikolai G. Golodnikov. "We tackled the problem gluing percale on all the machine-gun holes, and when you opened fire, bullets went right through. The machine guns became reliable then. They were of low efficiency when fired from distances of 150-300m".

Dogwalker said:

From wiki also, it seems Soviets were unimpressed by the reliability of the Browning 303: The .303 variant equipped the Hawker Hurricanes delivered to Soviet Air Forces, during the Great Patriotic War. Soviet airmen compared them to Soviet ShKAS in terms of reliability: "But they often failed due to dust," recalled pilot Nikolai G. Golodnikov. "We tackled the problem gluing percale on all the machine-gun holes, and when you opened fire, bullets went right through. The machine guns became reliable then. They were of low efficiency when fired from distances of 150-300m".

Click to expand...

The Russians never were very good at listening to advice; the RAF had been covering the muzzles of their Brownings, first with metal covers, then doped fabric, since 1939, and that was due to the open breeches freezing at the usual fighting altitudes in the U.K., not dust.