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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 2352.PDF
520 FLIGHT NOVEMBER 12TH, 1942 FICHTER ARMAMENT ceptor; one 37 mm. "Cow" (Coventry Ordnance Works) gun was mounted in the starboard side of the fuselage and fired forward and upward, it being intended that the pilot should fly below and astern of his adversary and sight by an indirect optical system. Installations of two wing-mounted 20 mm. guns weir fairly common for some years before the war (the best- known example being the Polish P.Z.L. P24), and the French were experimenting with pairs of wing-mounted 23 mm. weapons. " Moteurs canon " were also built with a 23 mm. gun in place of the usual 20 mm., but the early 37 mm. gun was. ngt" revived in France, although a M. Payen is known to have experimented with a 37 mm. com pressed-air gun. Japan, and possibly other nations, investigated the possi bilities of fixed, rearward firing guns on single-seaters. Such armament was, fortunately, foreign to the British doctrine, which demanded the utmost in.offensive power and depended for defence on speed, climb and manceuvr ability. While experimenting with various sizes of guns and types of installation, Great Britain openly favoured multiple. The Hispano " Moteur Canon,'' type 9, as fitted in the Dewoitine 510. The barrel goes through the engine reduction gear and airscrew hub. wing-mounted, rifle-bore guns. This formula eventually proved supreme until the introduction of armour protection on enemy fighters ; only then di<f the so-called " cannon " (gun of 20 mm. bore or over) come into its own in the R.A.F. As we have seen above, the general pre-war tendency was to obtain greater weight of fire by increasing the number of rifle-bore guns. Despite this increase, and improve ments in the rate of fire of the individual guns, it was generally realised that rifle-bore weapons were far from satisfactory in damaging power and range, and the develop ment of 20 mm. guns was accordingly fostered after a sample Dewoitine D510 with Hispano-Suiza 12Y " moteur canon" (20 mm.) had been purchased from F«rfice. Cannon Evolution Early in the last war, when even the adaptations ot land-service machine guns were very far from perfect for aerial use, guns of 20 mm. bore and over were being in stalled experimentally on aircraft, though not, so far as is known, on single-seater fighters. By January 10, 1915, a French 37 mm. gun, mounted on a Voisin, had claimed its first victim. By 1917, Marc Birkigt, chief engineer to Purchased before the war by the Air Ministry for experi mental purposes, the Dewoitine 510 had a cannon in the nose and two wing guns of rifle calibre. Hispano-Suiza, had brought out a short-barrelled, single - shot gun which was built into a vee-type engine and fired through the hollow airscrew hub. This installation, the first instance of a fixed " cannon " on a single-seater, wan* originally intended for Guynemeyer, but was first used by Fonck. The contemporary German gun was a 20 mm. weapon designed by Becker. This fired a projectile weighing 120 grammes, and was supplied with a twelve-round magazine. Experiments were made with this gun on fighters, but no successful installation appeared in general service, and at the end of the war Becker sold his patents to the Swiss firm of Oerlikon. British 37 mm. guns developed during the last war were never used in fixed installations on fighters. Little or no success was obtained with a contemporary Italian gun oi 25 mm. bore, nor with any American pattern. Without a doubt the most successful large-bore aircraft guns developed between 1918 and 1935 were the Swiss Oerlikons and the Danish Madsens, the latter being notable for their belt feed, which permitted a larger ammuniticm supply than the sixty-round Oerlikon drum. ' Calibres and Velocities The Oerlikon patents were, in turn, acquired by the French Hispano-Suiza concern, who eventually sold the rights for their gun to this country. In Germany the Rheinmetall concern mass-produced the short barrelled Oerlikon FF gun, which was the standard weapon of its calibre in the Luftwaffe until the introduction of the high velocity Mauser MG 151/20, as fitted in the Me 109F and FW190. The Oerlikon gun was thoroughly tried and proved in the Spanish conflict, and at the outbreak of the present war Germany had had wide experience with "cannon " fighters. The widespread adoption of " cannon " has by no means displaced guns of smaller bore, and a bewildering variety of aircraft guns is now in use. These may be classified as follows: (1) Guns of approximately 0.303m. (7.7 mm) bore ("rifle calibre"); (2) guns of approximately 0.5111 bore (12.7 and 13.2 mm.) ; (3) guns of 15 mm.-25 mm.
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