Recent content by A.G. Williams

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    Bomber launching catapult found.

    And here it was, for real...
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    USAAF 0.60" Cannon

    The sad story of the USA and the HS 404 is told here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220218163857/https://www.quarryhs.co.uk/US404.htm
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    World War II fighter armament: what was too light, what was overkill, what was the Goldilocks zone?

    This is the book you need - highly recommended: Rolls-Royce Armaments: Amazon.co.uk: Birch, David: 9781872922157: Books
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    World War II fighter armament: what was too light, what was overkill, what was the Goldilocks zone?

    This might be of interest: WORLD WAR 2 FIGHTER GUN EFFECTIVENESS or this: IDEAL WW2 FIGHTER ARMAMENT
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    Infantry anti-tank weapons: the good, bad and ugly.

    Anti-tank rifles varied considerably in performance. The best were the Soviet 14.5mm guns , which were twice as powerful as the .55 Boys. See the first two groups here: ANTI
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    About the 3cm Mk108‘s shells........

    It is an essential requirement of Advance Primer Ignition guns, because of the way they work. From my book Autocannon: "A few cases have seen service with rebated rims, i.e. with a rim of smaller diameter than the case. This is essential in API blowback cannon that fire while the cartridge is...
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    Was the Sea Hurricane a superior naval fighter than the F4F?

    To return to the OP for a moment.... I'm not sure to what extent this happened in practice, but in principle the optimum way of meeting a requirement was surely to have the preferred, advanced model under intensive development, backed up by a model with inferior performance but immediate...
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    UK goes all-in on a HMG class gun in the mid-30'ies

    I recall reading that the RAF studied ammo expenditure and concluded that 90 rounds per gun (Hispano) was adequate for the great majority of fighter missions.
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    UK goes all-in on a HMG class gun in the mid-30'ies

    That would be the earlier Becker/Oerlikon family, which used 20 x 70-72 ammo. The MG-FF, developed by Ikaria in Berlin with 20 x 80RB ammo, is generally quoted at 600 m/s.
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    UK goes all-in on a HMG class gun in the mid-30'ies

    It's a bit more complicated than that. The HE-T in the MG-FF weighed 134 g and was fired at 600 m/s. The M-Geschoss weighed 92 g and was fired at 700 m/s, but this did not generate enough recoil to work the MG-FF mechanism, so the gun had to be modified (and was renamed MG FFM), after which the...
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    UK goes all-in on a HMG class gun in the mid-30'ies

    It can be quite tricky comparing weights like this. One point to bear in mind is that while the MG 151 had a built-in belt feed, the MG-FF needed a magazine feed which added 8 kg to the overall weight (or 12 kg for the 90-round drum). Edit to add - I forgot about the MG 151's belt links; 60...
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    UK goes all-in on a HMG class gun in the mid-30'ies

    All I can say as a collector is that 20mm M-Geschoss are very common, in both the 20 x 80RB (MG-FF/M) and 20 x 82 (MG 151/20 cases). Light-alloy fuzes were developed (although speaking from memory I think that they were mainly used with the conventional HE-T shells because M-Geschoss shells were...
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    UK goes all-in on a HMG class gun in the mid-30'ies

    Most cannon shells in smaller calibres like this were made by machining from solid steel bars. The M-Geschoss were different, in that they were "drawn" in the same way as the brass cartridge cases were. This enabled the shell walls to be very thin, reducing the shell weight while increasing the...
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    UK goes all-in on a HMG class gun in the mid-30'ies

    Thanks for the clarification.
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    UK goes all-in on a HMG class gun in the mid-30'ies

    Good points. The crucial question is at what times would the armament choice be made? The Luftwaffe did not start with the MG-FF as their first cannon, they went in a very different direction at first with fitting the very powerful but heavy and slow-firing MG C/30L in 20 x 138B calibre, just...
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