Your armament?

A nuclear bomb.

LOL Lanc .

In a single engine fighter i would have two nose mounted M2 12.7mm machine guns with 300 rounds per gun. i would have two inner wing mounted Mg-151/20s with 175 rounds per gun, and a hub mounted Mg-151/20 with 100 rounds.

For a twin engine fighter/interceptor/night fighter, i would have three Mg-131 13mm machine guns with 500 rounds per gun, and two Mg-151/20 with 250 rounds per gun. The Mg-131 mounted in belly tray, and the two cannon, one in each side of the nose.

I think I should remind everyone (I forgot muyself ) that a 'hub gun' is impossible for a radial engined aircraft.

Also I wouldn't have any fuselage guns due to the heavy interrupter gear etc, though I would have a hub gun.

Parmigiano:

Hmmm.. the Mk103 was very heavy and 'slow firing', maybe the Mk108 was a better compromise.

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A Mk108 with a Mk103 barrel?

Germans (and Russians) favoured the concentration of weapons in the nose.

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The Russians actually considered this armament silly, unless flown by experienced pilots.

There was a report of Allied 'helper' pilots preffering Soviet aircraft armament, whilst the Soviets preffered the Hurricane's.

the inner MG151 of the Fw190 are so close that can be considered fuselage mounted)

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Yeah, I was wondering that, thanks Parmigiano.

- No horizontal harmonization issues

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Good point!

- Wings are lighter : better roll? I suppose that a heavier wing has a bigger inertia

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They could also be made smaller...

(smaller area and ammo more protected than a wing mounted solution)

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I'm wondering with the ammo being so close to a hot engine...

- slower rate of fire, due to synchronization with propeller arc

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This doesn't matter with 'hub guns'.

- less probability to hit the target with a 'nearly miss'

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I don't understand. Unless you mean spray-and-pray?

- small changes in CG when the ammo are used up

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Wouldn't this happen with wing armament?

Jabberwocky:

I agree with you on the Moquito/Beaufighter. 8)

I prefer the British/Soviet approach of high velocity, flat trajectory cannons with a high AP and moderate HE value. Easier to shoot at small targets than with lighter shells, much better terminal and AP effects than a HMG and similar MV and ROF to a HMG.

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Yes and no for me; I'd prefer a high calibre, high velocity, flat trajectory cannon with a high RoF, firing the German/Soviet APHE round, or Flak ammo.

A pure AP shell is not going to be as damaging as a 20mm HE shell or a .50 API or even plain AP round?

I've often wondered what a HEAT or HESH round would do to a plane?

Or even a tellermine-type warhead?

1st Mk 108 20mm

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Why this over a MG 151/20?

trackend:

Eight 13mm 131's with a total of 7440 rpm

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I wonder if you could fit thAT in the wings of a Spitfire?

Erich said:

8 MG 151/20's 2cm's forward armament as fitted to some ZG 26 Me 410B's in early 1944 ~ aka "Watering Can"

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8)

cheddar cheese said:

Id have 2xMG-151/20's in the wing roots, 4x .50's in the outer wings, and a 37mm firing through the Prop hub...

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Hell yeah! What aircraft?

Lunatic:

Sorry Lunatic, what's a B20?

Gnomey:

Fighter

2 x Hispano MKV in wings
2 x MG151/20 in wings
1 x 37mm 2 MG131 or 2 x MG151/20 and 2 MG131 in nose

Why the MG151/20's mixed with the Hispanos?

2 x MK108 in rear fuselage firing upwards (can't remember the name)

Shrage Muzic or jazz music is easier to remember?

Erich said:

the debris from the 3cm's was so severe that the Uhu's were damaged by it while underneath the RAF heavies.

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Didn't know (or forgot) that. 8)

Sal Monella said:

Six 20mm's on a P-47.

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Oh yeah!

MacArther said:

dont know if exists, but what about a bomber with .50 cal miniguns?

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I think that a similar armament was put on a Chafee tank? 8)

Parmigiano:

For the single engine planes I would standardize with 2x20mm in the cowling + 2x20mm in wing roots FW190 style, all of the same type, no matter if Hispano or MG

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I'm not a fan of that one.

Just add a Mk108 or a Shvak in the propeller hub to take care of the heavies and for ground strike.

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I like that!

Glider wrote:

Some of these planes would be lucky to get off the ground

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Erich replied:

no kidding Glider.............pure fantasy but I think this is what this thread is about

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But some are really truly excellent (and practical) ideas IMHO. 8)

PlanD said:

A nuclear bomb.

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But not for a low-level attacker/fighter?

You could always have the nose cone made into a huge warhead.

Wasn't there a piloted V1 planned actually?

carpenoctem1689 said:

In a single engine fighter i would have two nose mounted M2 12.7mm machine guns with 300 rounds per gun. i would have two inner wing mounted Mg-151/20s with 175 rounds per gun, and a hub mounted Mg-151/20 with 100 rounds.

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Thats great, however why the inner wing mount?

I'm guessing because it's the best of both worlds?

I wonder whether it would be better to move them only just out of the propellors swept area?


For ground attack/ heavy fighter role I'm a fan of a single Ju88-type 75mm slung under the nose, firing Flak ammo.

Maybe combined with some Hispano 20mm's (2 or 4?)

Also, if the plane is heavy, rockets could assist take off. Though it is better not to go that heavy IMHO.

But still, could you imagine the world of hurt that a .50 cal electric gatling would inflict on enemy fighters trying to catch U.S. bombers? You could litterally have one gun per position and still shoot the planes out of the sky with ease.

Hi Macarther,

A Chaffe light tank had one in WW2 IIRC?

I was thinking what an MG-131 13mm married to the roller-delayed blowback action of the MG42 would be like? 8)


What was the RoF for a MG-131 13mm anyway?


For some of these guns, aluminium could be swapped for steel, lightening it.


Also look how the MG34 evolved into the MG42, very interesting; much cheaper, lighter, more reliable and of course doubled RoF. 8)

If the same was done for most cannons...

Yes i would have put my guns on the inner part of the wing nearest the fuesalge because it allowed good ammo carriage, and a more concentrated cone of fire, without having all of the guns mounted right in the nose, which i really dont like, i prefer a balanced distribution to be honest. It also made it so that the aircraft didnt need any blisters on the wings, and it improved roll rate.

Scwhartz said:

A Mk108 with a Mk103 barrel?

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- well, I always wondered why Rheinmetall did not 'stretch' the barrel of the Mk108 ... I have no clue/info

Scwhartz said:

The Russians actually considered this armament silly, unless flown by experienced pilots

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but not their engineers, many russian fighters had weapons concentrated in the nose

Scwhartz said:

I'm wondering with the ammo being so close to a hot engine...

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Good point, although I have not read of special issues except the first installations on the 109E3; apparently after they ironed it out the installations were reliable

Scwhartz said:

I don't understand. Unless you mean spray-and-pray?

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Not exactly. In a horizontal harmonization you have a theoretical point where all bullets converge, after that point the bullets will diverge at the same angle of harmonization. But they don't vanish, they cover a bigger area with a lower density. Hence, if you are harmonized at 300m and you shoot 100 mt left or right at, say, 500mt you have some chance to hit the target even if with fewer bullets.

Scwhartz said:

Wouldn't this happen with wing armament?

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Supposedly the lift force of an aircraft is centered on the wings, so changes in weight centered on the wings should not alter the CG.
On the fuselage, instead, you have the same neutral effect only on the part above the wings. That's why most planes had the main fuselage tank above the wing or very close to that (and also why the Mustang was so tricky with the rear fuselage tank filled)

About the 4x20mm 'nose concentrated', it is just my fixation to standardize the ballistic of weaponry: different weapons have different ranges and vertical dispersion. And 4x12.7 would be enough for a fighter but too light to tackle a medium bomber, hence for me the best compromise is 4x20.

But probably the best configuration was the one with pusher propeller: in this case you have the nose free for weaponry without having to synchronize the prop.
Latest fighter designs (at least the Germans Arado, Messerschmitt-Lippish, Blohm&Voss, Dornier) had a pusher layout, but they were already made obsolete by the jet designs.

The Do-335 i wouldnt consider obsolete even at the very end of the war, even when faced with jet fighters. It was heavy, manouverable compared to jets, and had a good dive and amrament. It could have been a potent fighter/interceptor into 1946, if it were continually upgraded with the times. Not to mention the fact the good prop driven aircraft werent really obsolete in germany, even when the 262, and 162 were flying, because the prop aircraft were by FAR more reliable, and could stay airbrone longer. The german jet engines were not reliable enough to make all prop driven aircraft effectivly obsolete. it was the constant belief in the tide changing "wonder weapon" midset that negated pop driven aircraft to the germans. Had i been in the situation, seeing how the BMW 003, and the Jumo004 jets performed, reliability wise, i would have focused on prop fighters like the Do-335 and the Ta-152H instead, until they could overcome the reliability shortcoming of the turbojets.

I would stick with 4 Hispano V cannons. Its more than enough to knock down any fighter and do serious, possibly terminal damage to any heavy bomber depending on where you hit it.
The extra weight that a number of you are lugging around I would trade for extra ammo.

schwarzpanzer said:

Lunatic:

Sorry Lunatic, what's a B20?

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The B20 was basically a necked up version of the 12.7mm Berezin machine gun. It fired the same ammo as the ShVAK (the "OF" HE-Frag round carried 6.7 grams of HE).

This gun was used on the La7-FNV (approximately 386 deployed durring WWII), commonly refered to as the "3 cannon La-7".

The critical factor of this gun is its very low weight and very high reliability. Jam rates were in the 1:4000 rounds fired catagory and could often be cleared with a recharge (many guns like the Hispano have less than a 50% chance of successfully clearing a jam via gun recharging). The B-20 weighed only 25 kg including mounting hardware. This compares to:

.50 BMG = 30 kg
Hispano II = 50 kg
MG151/20 = 42 kg
MK108 = 44 kg

And none of those weights except the .50 include the mounting hardware, so add about another 20%. And most .50's were mounted in Edgewater recoil mounts and the weights of those are not included (as it is more than just a mount really). The Hispano in particular required a seriously heavy mount as it is not structurally sound on its own.

The B-20 rof was about 800 rpm in the La7 - this was a synchronized installation! Unsynchronized I believe the gun fired at 1150 rpms but I've not found any WWII data to confirm this (post-war it was used in the UBT format in bomber turrets). Muzzel velocity varied from about 770 m/s to about 825 m/s depending on the ammo type, perhaps more in the fixed mounted unsync'd installations. Ammo fit in the same belt links as the 12.7 mm ammo, so belt length was the same, therefore approximately the same number of rounds could be fit in a given gun tray as would fit for a .50 BMG. Eight B-20's could probably be mounted for just a little more cost in weight than six .50's.

So to my thinking, all things considered, the B-20 was the best aircraft gun of WWII. It had enough hitting power to down any target considering its velocity characteristics, RoF, and the number of guns that could be mounted.

As an example, consider an FW190A-8 could have carried 6 of these guns and would have been toting only 75% as much weight as the German armament of 4 x MG151/20's + 2 x MG131's, and it would have had only a little over half as much weight out in the outer guns creating less of an unsprung weight issue (which is bad for roll characteristics and overall manuverability). And the guns would have jammed only about 1/3rd as often as the MG151/20's!

For the weight of 4 Hispano's you could carry at least 10 B-20's! (including the required mounting weight).

=S=

Lunatic

Schwarzpanzer. Dunno why I mixed them both I just like them both.

The B20 sound like a pretty nice gun though Lunatic. Good info.

Id go with 8 MG-151's.

how comes no one's done an armourment for a bomber?? i'm working on one now!

Thats what I was talking about. 6 .50 cal electric gatling guns, and maybe a .55 in coupled with the gun in the tail.

.................... back for a moment on the WW 2 night fighter arrangement. It was found by all A/F that under the belly was the preference due to the muzzle flash of either mg's or cannon in the nose, the crew being blinded. the Bf 110G-4 when it was still used in 1945 had the upper guns usually fitted with flash retarders.

As for the MK 108 fitted through the hub, yes ! look at the Ta 152H, some of the Bf 109G6/AS, G-10 variants all had lengthened inner barrels

I've heard that the .50 was effective, but I have also heard that it was not enough. So, would a .50 minigun on a fighter or bomber be enough of an armament. Lets say a figher with 2 .50 miniguns and a bomber with 4 miniguns.

For what its worth I believe that a 0.50 minigun isn't enough for a fighter but is ideal as a defensive weapon on a bomber. The theory is as follows.

A .50 minigun on a fighter would I suspect not be enough because to knock down a heavy bomber you need more punch. It would however be more than enough to shoot down a fighter at short to medium range. A minigun probably has about the same rof as 6 .50 and you needed more firepower than that to take on a B17 type bomber let alone a B29. Using the 1 to 6 ratio, two miniguns would be roughly equal to 4 20mm Hispano cannons which would suffice but I don't believe would be a major improvement on the firpower of a number of WW2 aircraft.

However I do believe that a .50 would be ideal as a defensive weapon on a bomber. The 0.50 was accurate at long range a fact which I think everyone will agree to. A minigun with its massive rof in a compact package, will be able to hit the incoming fighter at a long range.
Even though at long range it might not have the power to shoot the fighter down, as a defensive weapon on a bomber that was less important. The primary role of a defensive weapon is to stop the defending plane being shot down. No attacking plane taking hits at long range is going to keep coming in, it will take evasive action to get out of the line of fire.

Glider said:

For what its worth I believe that a 0.50 minigun isn't enough for a fighter but is ideal as a defensive weapon on a bomber. The theory is as follows.

A .50 minigun on a fighter would I suspect not be enough because to knock down a heavy bomber you need more punch. It would however be more than enough to shoot down a fighter at short to medium range. A minigun probably has about the same rof as 6 .50 and you needed more firepower than that to take on a B17 type bomber let alone a B29. Using the 1 to 6 ratio, two miniguns would be roughly equal to 4 20mm Hispano cannons which would suffice but I don't believe would be a major improvement on the firpower of a number of WW2 aircraft.

However I do believe that a .50 would be ideal as a defensive weapon on a bomber. The 0.50 was accurate at long range a fact which I think everyone will agree to. A minigun with its massive rof in a compact package, will be able to hit the incoming fighter at a long range.
Even though at long range it might not have the power to shoot the fighter down, as a defensive weapon on a bomber that was less important. The primary role of a defensive weapon is to stop the defending plane being shot down. No attacking plane taking hits at long range is going to keep coming in, it will take evasive action to get out of the line of fire.

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Good points Glider. I agree with you on them all.

A Fw-190D-9 with a 30mm Aden firing through the hub and a 20mm Vulcan in each wing. Is that enough to bring down a B-17?