![]() ![]() These unguided weapons explode either when they hit something or when they've flown a certain distance. They are still kept, due to a mixture of nobody wanting to be the one to find out whether or not they are obsolete in aerial combat, and the fact that a 20mm/30mm autocannons will never be obsolete when it comes to ground attack. Thus potentially validating the idea of their obsolescence. note It should be noted though, that with updated rules of engagement and improvements in missile guidance systems, no fighter based gun pod has ever been fired. After they took heavy losses in Vietnam to cannon-equipped MiG-19's and -21's, however (this due in large part to early AIM-7 radar-guided missiles being unreliable, and furthermore having been designed to be used beyond visual range-and indeed its guidance system required several miles of flight to pick up a stable reliable target lock-but in Vietnam the politically mandated rules of engagement required visual identification of every target, making the AIM-7 worse than useless, it was not only useless but also dead weight), they returned to adding Vulcan cannons as a backup weapon bolted on under the wings in "gun pods," and the F-4E variant that entered service in 1968 had the Vulcan cannon built in, with 1100 rounds of 20mm in its feed hoppers. ![]() The Eastern Bloc went mainly with 23mm, then since around 1985, mostly 30mm autocannon of various designs.Īt one point the US military (specifically, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara) deemed guns outdated and built a series of jet interceptors (F-4 Phantoms) armed with only missiles, using AIM-9 Sidewinder and AIM-7 Sparrow guided missiles as their primary air-to-air armament, based largely on promises from the contractors that the then-new radar-guided air-to-air missiles under development would display unprecedented lethality and utility. Most of NATO standardized on the ADEN (UK) or DEFA (French) high-cyclic 30mm autocannon for fighter aircraft, the mechanisms of which were copied from wartime German designs the US went, after the Korean War, with an electrically powered 20mm Gatling gun that fires 100 rounds per second, still their standard today after more than fifty years of continuous use, with the caveat that some 2020s planes no longer have an autocannon. While some ground-attack aircraft used 40mm cannons for firing on tanks, analysis after the war showed that somewhere between 20mm and 30mm seemed to be optimum in this role, especially if they contemplated using them against large bomber aircraft that could take a lot of damage and keep flying. Plus with the rotating barrel approach, the non-firing barrels have time to cool, so they don't melt. This lead to the revival of rotary cannons as the fire rate to damage, or to even hit, an enemy increased dramatically. 303 Vickers K's on the Spitfire and Hurricane. 50 cal or 20mm, or you need a bunch of fast-firing smaller weapons, such as the eight. Then a Gadgeteer Genius from The Engineer corps figured out a timing chain that linked the LMG mechanism to the engine, and fired only between strokes of the propeller.įrom World War II onwards, for guns and cannons to be effective against enemy aircraft, bombers in particular, they needed to be either very large calibre like. ![]() Given that WW I-era planes had big wooden propellers mounted in front of the cockpit, firing through the propeller at first posed an obstacle, because if you fired your light machine gun (LMG), you'd put bulletholes in your propeller. Then some pilots started fitting light machine guns to their planes, and it escalated from there. It started when scout planes, the only type used before the Great War in a combat role, would bring pistols or small rifles in case they met an enemy scout plane. The first form of anti-air combat, along with cans attached to wires (to foul an enemy's propeller), was small arms and then light machine guns. ![]()
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