MARCH 30,

1939

FLIGHT.

323

ARMAMENT
Some Notes on Recent Developments : Large-bore Shell-guns : Installations and Turrets

HE data available on modern aircraft armament relates chiefly to guns, and it is to these weapons that this brief study will be mainly devoted. Bombs, of course, are constantly being improved, though there is a general feeling that they are still unwarrantedly crude. Varieties in use include high-explosive, armour-piercing, fragmentation, anti-submarine, incendiary, thermite, chemical, gas and anti-aircraft. The last-named variety, although strange to this country, have been developed abroad, particularly in America, for attacking large bombers. There have been reports of aerial mine laying and of unorthodox types of bombs for destroying ships. '' Glider '' bombs (with a reasonably long horizontal range) have been suggested and the use of mortars from aircraft visualised, but no references to full-scale experiments have yet been published. Bomb sights and facilities for aiming have been greatly improved of late, and since the introduction of internal stowage there has been more intensive application to problems of stowage and release. Torpedoes are being developed along normal lines.

Quns and

Their

Makers

Aircraft guns range from rifle-calibre weapons (6.58 mm.) produced by the Vickers, Browning (Colt), F.N.Browning, Darne, Chatelleraut, Breda Safat and Madsen factories, to shell-firing guns (canons) made by Madsen, Oerlikon, Hispano Suiza, Hotchkiss, the American Armament Corporation and the Ordnance Corps of the U.S. Army. Typical of the rifle-calibre machine guns is the Madsen. developed from an infantry weapon firing at the rate of 450-500 rounds a minute. A recoil increaser and a special recoil spring brings the rate of fire up to 1,000-1,200 rounds a minute. Cartridges are fed into the gun by_ means of metal links held together by the cartridges themselves. In fixed installations the belt is placed in the cartridge box somewhere near the gun and shaped to suit the space available and the number of rounds required. In turrets On the right are three views showing free-gun installations on American, German and British two-seaters. From top to bottom are the Seversky amphibian fighter, a German observation machine and the Hawker Demon (Turret) two-seater fighter which will remain our standard machine in this class until the introduction of Defiants. Below are armourers installing the R.A.F. model of the Browning gun on a Gloster Gladiator and (bottom right) the installation of a Browning gun in the wing of an American Waco. Hurricanes and Spitfires, for the time being, have eight fixed Brownings apiece.