WW2 Plane with most Firepower?

I would also suggest that weight of metal is a better measurement tool than bore diameter. For example a .50-caliber bullet was almost five time the weight of a .30. Taking rate of fire into account, a .50-caliber MG represented about three times the firepower of a .30.

Rate of fire should be considered for any burst longer than a few tenths of a second.

 

I am currently including turrets and Schrage Musik guns, so not just forward firing, but we are measuring shots (i.e air to air) , so bombs are not applicable.

 

Mass is a lot better than summing up bore diamterer IMO. Even better would be either momentum or KE or both. But if you are looking at terminal effects then whether or not the bullet contains an HE filler is also quite important.

 

what version of the hurricane had 12 .303 caliber guns? i'll go for that for the sheer number of projectiles you're spitting out.

 

Mk IIB

 

http://users.skynet.be/Emmanuel.Gustin/fgun/fgun-ta.html

This link has an excellent table conparing ww2 fighters by kg/sec of weight fired ... The Bristol beau fighter is the top allied plane at above 7 the messerscmitt 262 is the top axis plane with its 4 30mm cannon at 12 kg /sec

 

No one other than Douglas Bader went for this

A heavy installation leaving the Hurricane II even less nimble and with projectiles incapable of penetrating armoured seats and glass. The RAF developed "A" "B" and "C" wings for the Hurricane II but the C variant was the most common and won the popular vote.

 

disgustingly ugly, but powerful, like an antagonistic monster

 

My vote goes to the A-26B-15-DL Invader:

• 6-8 nosed mounted .50 cal machine guns
• up to 8 .50 cals in 4 twin mounted under-wing gun pods or 3 in the outer wing panel
• 10 5" HVAR rockets, five under each wing panel
• 6,000 lbs bomb capacity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_A-26_Invader

 

4-6 .50 cal MGs probably would have given the Mk IIB Hurricane greater firepower than those 12 .303s, though I wonder if it would have saved weight, the M2 Browning was a heavy gun.

 

I think the equation was usually 3 .30 cal were the equivalant of 1 .50 cal and 3 or 4 .50 cals the equivalant of a 20mm that's as far as impact damage goes. Tony's site (which is linked above I'm pretty sure) goes into the details. The kicker of course is that additional rounds have a greater chance of hitting a critical point. There's also the impact of incrimental damage that is hard to account for. Then there's what your targets look like. Early Japanese planes compared to say P-47's may change the equation quite a bit.

 

An F4U with a couple of Tiny Tims would leave a mark

 

Probably, but the British didn't make much use of .50s, or 0.5" as they would call them, in their own aircraft until fairly late in the war, although they had them in Lend-Lease planes of course. They went direct from .303 to 20mm.

When the Fleet Air Arm first ordered F4Fs, they considered the armament of four .50s inadequate and asked to have it increased to six. There was no more space inside the wing, so this had the effect of reducing rounds/gun from IIRC 450 to 240, cutting their firing time roughly in half. Rather than build two different versions, the US standardized on six guns for our F4Fs as well. Apparently this was not very popular with USN/USMC pilots; the later FM-2 Wildcat reverted to four guns.

 

Do you have a link to the site, I'd be interested in checking it out, thanks in advance.

 

True, I'm just giving my thoughts on improving the MKIIBs firepower while(hopefully) saving weight by mounting 4-6 .50 cals instead of 12 .303s, then again 4 20mms probably would've done the trick.

But in actual combat, was 4 Brownings really insufficient against Luftwaffe fighters, the German aircraft were certainly more durable than their Japanese counterparts, but were they enough to warrant an increase in the number of guns?

I've also questioned why they placed the additional guns further from the other 4, did that also contribute to reducing the ammo per gun?

 

It hangs off of:
http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/
lots of good info there.

 

We really need either plans or someone who knows, but here's my guess: I'm sure you've seen photos of wing gun installations, the guns were usually staggered, with the ammo belts/trays extending several feet out into the wing, one in front of another. Perhaps there was not enough fore-to-aft space in the F4F wing for six guns in this arrangement. Envisioning the ammunition trays, the added gun in each wing appears to have been at about the halfway point, cutting the ammo for the inner guns in half, and having only the outer half of the original space for its own ammo.

Four .50s would seem comparable to the armament of most fighters in 1941; for example the Me109F debuted with only one 15 or 20mm cannon and two 7.92s.

I've read that US pilots in the Pacific would often fight with just the inner four .50s and save the last two in case they used up their ammunition; this gave them about the same total firing time they had had in earlier models.

 

Guessing the MkIIb was meant to shoot down bombers, not really to engage fighters. The Hurricane was very stable gun platform.
Having so much weight in the wings would not be condusive to dogfighting, methinks.

 

Thanks lwd!

 

(1) A very good and plausible speculation, Carronade, it helps to explain the possible reasons for the arrangement of the guns.

(2)In a way I would consider a 4 .50 cal armament superior to the Bf-109Fs armament of 1 15-20mm cannon and 2 7.92s, being more numerous than 15-20s and heavier hitting than the 7.92s, in my opinion anyways, and I still find it strange that the British thought 4 .50s were insufficient against the German fighters, you would think that they would've viewed the Browning more effective than the .303

(3)Overall though, I think it still would've been better if Grumman had stuck with 4 guns.