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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 1496.PDF
FLIGHT, May 18, 1939. A flight of Gloster Gladiator four-gun biplane fighters disport themselves in an exhilarating setting. on occasion, be quite latter can, amusing. Armament of the Hurricane and Spitfire takes the form of eight belt-fed Browning machine guns of 0.303m. bore. These are mounted in the wing on each side of the fuselage, and fire clear of the airscrew arc. In this position synchronis ing gear is rendered unnecessary. The guns are heated for high-altitude fight ing, are fired simultaneously by remote control from a button on the pilot's con trol column, and are "toed" inward to form a cone of fire, the streams of bullets verging at a specified distance in front of the aircraft. As the machines will usually fight in formations of at least three, it may be imagined how terrible their onslaught would be with twenty- four guns firing eight at a time at the rate of something like 1,200 rounds a minute each. People who have stood near one of these eight-gun fighters which has been firing its entire armament at the butts on the aerodrome say that the noise is not so much a" '' rat-a-tat'' as a continuous jarring explosion. The guns are aimed with the aid of a reflector sight near the pilot's wind screen . Shell-guns in view of the announcement that shell-firing automatic guns canons) are being constructed in this country under licence from the French Hispano-Suiza concern, it is to be assumed that multiple machine guns will eventually be sup planted, though with their present armament the Hurricane and Spitfire are quite capable of dealing with any enemy bomber which is likely to cross our coast, and of dealing with it more effectively than could any other type of stan dard single-seater fighter now in use. These aircraft are, in fact, more formidable than the average Continental canon fighter. The pros and cons of machine guns and shell-guns have fre quently been set out in articles appear ing in Flight. An installation of multiple high-speed machine guns firing small-bore ball ammunition is very deadly at comparatively short ranges, but the shell-guns now favoured (20-37 mm- bore) enable a fighter to keep out of range of a bomber's guns, assum ing, of course, that the bomber does not sacrifice a very big percentage of its military load to heavy defensive arma ment. It is considered also that small-bore machine-gun ammunition is not sufficiently effective against machines built according to the latest principles of construction. So far, we have made no mention of two successful biplane fighters which have been in use for some years. These are the Gloster Gauntlet and Gladiator, which may be distinguished from each other in that the Gauntlet is The mask worn by this Hurricane pilot embodies a microphone and oxygen feeding device. On the right a dozen Spitfires manoeuvre with uncanny precision at a speed well over 200 m.p.h. ittj HBMMMP
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