You are shooting holes in it, not blowing it up as a general rule though...
(and that assumes that you are directly behind it rather than slightly above or below, or off axis etc)
Yup if it goes bang in close proximity, then that may well cause you grief (after all that is the modus operandi of most anti aircraft shells!)
Ok..
Sure. However, the nearer you are the more 'directly behind' it you would have to be to keep it in your sights. If you are strafing it (from any direction) you have to hope you hit something important as you pass (not wait till you know you have hit it).
Well, if any of my fighter pilot sims have taught me anything. ;-)
Quite. ;-(
Don't they have some that are 'hoops' that when they blow the expand out radially in many pieces?
Cheers, T i m
I have been looking into this and think there is a certain amount of poetic licence in the claim. No doubt there was a Mr Hill who worked for the Air Ministry, who thought that eight machine guns had to be better than four and who recruited his daughter to do the maths that proved just how much better they would be. However, there does not seem to be any evidence that influenced the design of the Spitfire.
There was *a* Spitfire that had four machine guns, but it was not *the* Spitfire. Supermarine first gave the name to an aircraft, the type 224, that was built to Air Ministry Specification F7/30. Aircraft built to that specification were the Blackburn F.3, Bristol Type 123, Bristol Type 133, Gloster Gladiator, Gloster SS.19, Hawker P.V.3, Supermarine Type 224 and Westland F.7/30.
However, the Type 224 was not a particularly successful aircraft and the company set about designing a better fighter as a private venture, not building to any AM Spec. That was the Type 300, which was also given the name Spitfire and was the prototype of *the* Spitfire. According to all the sources, AM Spec. F37/34 was built around the Spitfire, not the other way around.
Thus it would appear that fitting eight guns to a fighter was a parallel development at both the Air Ministry and at Supermarine.
Such a pity then that it came too late for him (june 42); given he'd been a POW since Aug 41.
michael adams
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In message , michael adams writes
Jonnie Johnson's preference. Sorry if unclear.
Not in the B of B they didn't
No cannon on Hurris until 1941 and the Mk IIC Then 4 20mm cannon
Not with cannon. Hurris became increasingly used in ground attack roles with the introduction of the 4 x 20mm cannon then the 2 x 50mm cannon and bombs.
Me109s also had cannon.
They did.
Apologies. My mistake might have been more obvious had I quoted the whole passage ...
" There are some interesting snippets in Jonnie Johnson's book, Wing Leader. Bader's hatred of the early cannon firing Spitfires, the change to metal airlerons from fabric, variable pitch propellers, improved superchargers and the later versions culminating in his preference for the mark 9."
michael adams
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What about them?
Not particularly.
Yup, I believe so... Its not an aircraft with a large gun built in, its a large gun with wings and an engine added!
VERY unclear.
Sort of true (from Wiki):
"The average recoil force of the GAU-8/A is 10,000 pounds-force (45 kN), wh ich is slightly more than the output of each of the A-10's two TF34 engines of 9,065 lbf (40.3 kN). While this recoil force is significant, in practic e a cannon fire burst slows the aircraft only a few miles per hour in level flight."
Take a look at the attack starting at 1m22.
The pilot opens fire and gives a six-second burst, walking his rounds along the length of the train, He pulls up while still short of the rear of the train.
At 250 mph the aircraft would cover over ~750 yards in that time, suggesting the pilot opened fire at about 800 yards. No walking his rounds to the target here, he hits one end of the train and he then continues to fire the six-second burst. That's excellent shooting.
Unfortunately his rounds do not contain any tracer (the usual ammunition load would have some tracer towards the end of the belt to let the pilot know he was running low), but the pattern of the fall of shot doesn't seem to change as he closes in on his target - there appears to be no one point where the rounds form a concentrated pattern. One possibility is that his guns weren't harmonised for any particular distance, but perhaps were aligned in parallel instead. This arrangement might be one difference in the way fighters and fighter-bombers were set up.
I can count about 250 strikes - some will be hidden by the expanding cloud of steam, but this would tally with four guns firing 600 rpm for six seconds.
Could be called 'poetic license' could also be called 'presenting facts in such a way as to advance a particular cause'(Women were involved in everything and kept stupid men on track) Yes Mr Hill did work for the air ministry but was it more a case of "yes darling help daddy he has to do some very hard sums, now could you add 15 and 21 for me"
Remember she was thirteen and daddy was an air ministry scientist who could probably do all the calculations required .
Who here, with a daughter, has not had her 'hold' a piece of wood you are sawing and said "what a good job you are doing"?
Also determining the (optimum?)gun fit is not 'designing' the aircraft.
The engine thrust is continuous. The recoil force is extremely intermittent.
Test showed that to e.g. break a main spar of an enemy fighter with 303 ammunition needed a LOT of hits.
Also spitfires were not stable gun platforms - the wings would twist under recoil. Hence lots of guns, and eventually lots of guns up closer.
4 x 50 cals would have been better, but they were not reliable. The 20mm cannon was.
Yup, 'crazy'. ;-)
And considering how heavy they must be (gun, munitions, armour) and how small the wingspan looked, it was interesting to see how slowly they could fly when doing their 'touch-and-goes' around us. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
No takers on this "
Thanks, so it *does* slow, just not by any significant amount.
Another 'crazy machine' in a similar vein is the AC-130.
I guess that one moves sideways a bit when it fires the Bofors cannon!
Cheers, T i m
On 14/07/2020 11:49, The Natural Philosopher wrote: ...
Not when first fitted. They tended to jam, hence the four machine guns as well.
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