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The smallest air to air or air to ground rocket I have seen reference to is 37mm and I think it was made by Spain and/or Brazil (Avibras SBAT-37 in Brazil) the 70s or 80s?
51-57mm seems to be pretty common.
Perhaps use the Davis gun principle, to save on propellant? Granted, there is still a need for a cannon of sorts to be made (okay, not a biggie), however a host of barrels with rockets inside will impose an even greater drag penalty.Rockets are very different than guns.
They are amazingly cheap in regards to the cost of a single rocket and launcher.
They are amazingly expensive in terms of the cost of the propellent needed to get the payload (warhead) to the target.
Hanging a few dozens of 55mm rockets under the wing, along with their launchers, was probably not a big deal on the Me 262, but it might get the Fw 190s and Bf 109s in the trouble?The rocket itself, was fairly streamlined (it needed to by virtue of it's function), so I don't think it/they imposed a serious drag penalty.
It would be the mounts that would be more suspect. The FFAR and HVAR went through several styles of mounting, the rocket itself being 3.5 inches (83mm) in diameter for the FFAR and 5 inches (127mm) in diameter for the HVAR.
By late war, the Germans were hard-pressed for time, so there wasn't much time to spend on designing a better rack system for the R4M, but I would imagine that a system that partially embedded the rockets or at least didn't present such a large frontal area would have worked on at least the Fw190. The Bf109 would have been limited to such an arrangement due to it's thin wing.anging a few dozens of 55mm rockets under the wing, along with their launchers, was probably not a big deal on the Me 262, but it might get the Fw 190s and Bf 109s in the trouble?
Back in ww2, MK.115.What about some kind of belt-fed recoilless gun? Was something like that ever attempted? If you could keep the belt and belt feed motor inside the wing, and only the barrel protruding underneath, that would reduce drag?
And put a dual impact/time fuse, set the timer to something like 500(?) m, and if you're lucky shrapnel or blast from a near miss might still bring down or at least damage a bomber?
Spar is usually a cantilever item, that has strong high beam and a strong low beam, with connecting members between the two, like it can be discerned on the Spitfire's wing here. The Fw 190 was tested with 6 internal launchers for the sizable rockets (RZ65), in this case the longitudinal stringers probably helped a lot with the integrity of the 190s' wing.It is one thing to make a big hole in the spar's to fit one big barrel/launch tube through.
It may be something else fitting 8-12 large holes in each wing
Will probably need a Y-shaped plumbing, to vent both over and under the wing.rying to arrange the rear of the tube/s to go over the flaps may be hard. You want the tubes angled up a bit.
You do NOT want the tubes in line with ailerons or you may score 'own goals" where the back blast damages or removes the ailerons if the plane is banking.
Likewise you want to try and keep the flaps clear (a lot easier with the underwing set ups.)
Rocket rails/racks/tubes can use a much higher rate of fire than a magazine fed rocket launcher. Each rail/rack/tube is a single shot unit and all you need to do is wire up the electrical firing system to give the firing rate you want.
The magazine fed (or belt or ???) rocket launcher has to be able to move heavy rockets a fair distance to get the following shots into the tube. 5 20mm shells take up the same "room" as 2 50mm rockets and the 50m rockets are much much heavier. And the rocket feed has to stop and start. (so do belt feed machine guns but even a 50mm rocket is heavier than 150 rounds of MG ammo.
MK 115 (recoiless) | MK 112 ('reduced' power) | MK 214A (full power) (Wikipedia) | |
shell weight, kg | 1.48 | 1.48 | 1.52-1.56 |
weight of explosive, g | 420 | 420 | 335 |
propellant weight, g | 500 | 215 | 860 |
MV, m/s | 600 | 600 | 920 |
weight of the gun, kg | 190 | 275 | 718 |
RoF, rd/min | 300 | 300 | 150 |
And as the "Battle of Palmdale" showed unleashing hundreds (or thousands) of rockets over occupied German cities per attack was only slightly less dangerous than letting the bombers drop their bombs
Battle of Palmdale was Aug 1956, rockets were peace time manufacture (quality control?)Germans were using untold quantities of explosive ammo, from 13 to 128mm + different rockets, in Reich defense. They probably knew a thing or two about making sure that the stuff that goes boom really goes boom.
Sometimes it took Allied engineers years to make a product that German engineers made work within conditions of the ww2. That is not to say that all German engineers were cream of the crop and that Allied engineers were dumb, but disproves the notion that if Allied engineers were not managing it, their German counterparts will certainly not do the job.Sorry, while a lot of the German weapons did point the way to future it often took years of work by the US, Britain and France to turn them into workable weapons in the 1940s and 50s.
You could mount rockets of different types on different German Aircraft to try to stop the Allied bombers. Getting them to actually be more effective than guns is a different story.
Doesn't matter that the guns were not doing the job. Yes the Germans needed something more effective than the guns they had. The question is if the rockets could actually do the job.
There are several conditions we do not know that help define "worked".Sometimes it took Allied engineers years to make a product that German engineers made work within conditions of the ww2. That is not to say that all German engineers were cream of the crop and that Allied engineers were dumb, but disproves the notion that if Allied engineers were not managing it, their German counterparts will certainly not do the job.
Same as when we discuss the 1000+ rd/min Belgian HMGs - just because the Americans were not coming with a viable counterpart in the same time (1939/40), it does not automatically means that Belgian guns were somehow suspicious.
The Finnish Air Force was AFAIU(?) the only combat user of the FN machine gun, in .50 BMG caliber (well, a domestic produced pirate copy of the Belgian one). Apparently they were happy enough about them that they did use them to replace AN/M2's on their fighters for increased firepower. Perhaps some of the forum members with better knowledge of FAF ( J Juha3 ?) can chime in with more details?There are several conditions we do not know that help define "worked".
The US wanted a certain number of jams/malfunctions per 1000 rounds in test. They wanted a certain number of broken part/s. per 1000 rounds and they wanted a certain gun life, how many rounds before the receiver could not be rebuilt. Perhaps they wanted too much?
But without knowing the conditions/parameters it is kind of hard to say if some of these weapons "worked" or not.
The US .50s didn't work in combat aircraft in 1940 and that was at 500-600rpm and almost 20 years.
I have no doubt the Belgians fired one or more test guns on the test range at 1000rpm+. What we do not know are all the little 'details'.
We also do not know the conditions of the barrel life of the Belgian 13.2mm machine gun. That comes in after they can get the gun to fire with acceptable reliability.