FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1951
1951 - 0008.PDF
FLIGHT, 4 January 1951 Part VI: Gun Design and Installation By- A. R. WEYL, A.F.R.Ae.S. DURING the First World War the conviction was oftenexpressed that the primary purpose of the fighter air-craft was to achieve air superiority by defeating the enemy's fighters. This led to the interesting but strategic-ally useless melees so often experienced in 1917-1918. To- day it is more generally recognized that the front-linefighter's duty is that of strategic defence, and that the chief targets must always be bombers and observation and/orground-attack aircraft; the defeat of enemy fighters comes last, as a sort of spare-time job. Hence the choice of arma-ment has to take into account that the least important poten- tial target will be an enemy fighter. There is no such thing as a " general-purpose" fighter;any attempt to mate the intercepter with a type intended for ground-attack may well produce only a hybrid of littleoperational use. This applies also to the armament. (It is amazing to what lengths a misguided trend to economycan lead: instead of trying to mix fire and water, so to speak, far more money might be saved by making Service trainingaircraft less complicated and less lavishly expensive than they have now become.) For ground-attack, a high muzzle-velocity is imperative, In the first part cf this article (August 24 th) Mr. Weyl reviewedthe history of aircraft armament; in the second (September 21st) he discussed German equipment; in Part III (October 5th) heanalysed the respective claims of guns versus rockets; on November 23rd he dealt with the effectiveness of various typesof shells and fuses; and in Part V (December 7th) he analysed Luftwaffe ccmbat experiences, particularly with the use of theR.4/M air-to-air rocket missile. In the present instalment he deals with some further aspects of gun design, discusses sights,and shows how installation problems indicate the use of rockets rather than guns in the newest interceptors. A final instalmentwill deal with rocket design and summarize conclusions. to give impact penetration at the target and short timesof projectile flight. Since the bomber now nearly equals in performance thesingle-seat intercepter, and because at very high speeds the manoeuvrability of the latter is poor (solely on account ofthe resulting centrifugal accelerations), it might well be argued that large, heavily armed multi-seaters—i.e., "des-troyer " jet bombers with long-range armament in lieu of bombs—could improve upon the.single-seat intercepter. Theidea is intriguing, but the problem of the heavy "battle- plane " versus the single-seat fighter has been found in-soluble as often as it has been raised. At the end of the last war the Germans also had it in their mind, both for thereasons stated and because of the technical difficulties en- countered with the installation of large-calibre, rapid-firingshell-guns. However, a single-seat intercepter retains bettermanoeuvrability at reduced speeds, and there is always advantage in numbers. Four intercepters should always betactically more useful than one four-engined " battle-plane." Besides, a sufficiently large fleet of up-to-date " battle „planes " might be economically prohibitive. | Muzzle Velocity and Rate of Fire.—For air-combat arma- *ment, inter-relation must be considered between muzzle velocity, rate of fire and weight and bulk of the gun, on thebasis of a given calibre, a given shell, and otherwise identical design features. Admittedly, such comparison is somewhatacademic, since a high-velocity gun differs basically from a medium-velocity but quick-firing one: the former typeof weapon would preferably be recoil-operated, the latter gas-operated. Generally, the gas-pressure loader is more sensitive and in these sketches oj ifi Hawker P. 1081 the relo live bulk of the four 20 mm British Hispano guns and their disposition in the fuselage can be seen to advantage.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
