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Aviation History
1935
1935 - 0174.PDF
88 FLIGHT. JANUARY 24, 1935. AIRCRAFT ARMAMENT ABROAD Modern Practice Reme-zved : The Con tinental Vogue oj the " Canon " : Heavily Armed Fighters : High- powered Engines : Sheltered Gunners By H F. KING AGENERAL increase in the armament of standard fighting aircraft may soon be expected. It is L common knowledge by this time that the single-seater day and night fighters built to specification F.7/30 of the British Air Ministry have four machine guns, or twice as many as are mounted by the machines they are intended to replace. Similar, il not greater, increases in the fire power of single-seaters are indicated on the Continent. There, designers are going a step farther. They are not merely duplicating machine- gun armament, but are fitting small-bore canons, the de velopment of which has been so carefully fostered in France. These amplifications of the attacking power of single- staters have resulted from the realisation that this type of machine has very definite limitations. If an aircraft can fire only in one direction, designers are saying, then fire power must be as heavy as possible compatible with the retention of the fighter's essential qualities of speed and manoeuvrability. So they mount additional and larger guns, and find that their aeroplanes, if they are to compete with more lightly armed machines, must be correspondingly higher-powered. Consequently, this increase in armament is one of the reasons that we find Continental single-seaters with Hispano "Y" type engines or Gnome-Rhone K.i4's of 800 or 900 h.p. Certain schools of military thought maintain that with Excellent fighting view and heavy armament are features of the Polish P.Z.L. P.24. Note, in this view, the " valley " for the machine guns this large rise in weight one might sacrifice some of the forward fixed armament and, in its place, have a rear gunner with all his attendant advantages while maintain ing a performance substantially similar to that of the single-seater. The Mureaux 180 C.2 monoplane exhibited at the Paris Show is an example of a two-seater fighter derived from a single-seater—in this case the 170 C.I. Both types employ an Hispano-Suiza " X " engine of 650 h.p.— that in the two-seater is an Xcrs moteur canon (i.e., it has a gun lying between the cylinder banks and firing through the centre of a geared airscrew shaft)—and the performance of the two-seater is little inferior to that of its predecessor. Perhaps the most formidable-looking single-seater fighter exhibited at the Paris Show, and probably the most power ful in existence in Europe at the time, was the Polish P.Z.L " Super P.24 " with a 900 h.p. Gnome-Rhone K.14 engine, two 20 mm. Oerlikon canons, and two machin guns. The canons are mounted in large fairings at the Two French bicanon single-seaters : The Loire 46C.1 and the Dewoitine D.372, with small-bore quick-firers mounted in their wings.
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