coastal command liberators.

I saw a pilot of a liberator on a documentary recently,and he said he had 30mm?canons ?.I checked wiki etc,but alas found nothing on this topic.can anyone help with the armament on liberators please,cheers.

 

AFAIK, 30 mm. was not a typical caliber for British automatic cannons in WW2 (before ADEN was developed), so it may be a veteran's mistake.

Regards,

 

I haven't heard of a Liberator (or any Allied bomber, for that matter) armed with 30mm cannons. Could the veteran have been referring to being attacked by a 30mm cannon? 30mm MK108 cannons were common armaments for German fighters.

 

it would be pure speculation on my part but used as a testing piece if applied. think on ww2talk.com there is a member who flew Coastal command Libs, may be worth a login and question ?

 

As others have said, this may be a case of mis-remembering. Possibly the confusion has arisen over cal. 50s, which were more impressive in use than the .303s.

20mm Hispanos were fitted to the Avro Lincoln after much development work, but this aircraft didn't enter service until after WWII. As mentioned above, the 30mm ADEN was the first British aerial weapon of that calibre and was produced only after captured German weapons had been examined after WWII.

 

Thankyou very much guys,cheers.

 

I would agree that this is a misremembering of the Lib's armament.

Some Coastal Command Liberators were fitted with a gun pod containing 4*20mm cannon for anti-shipping/anti-submarine work.

You can clearly see the pod on the underside of this B-24
http://images.wikia.com/warbirds/images/7/79/Am923.jpg

 

Thanks for the info, I've never heard of such modification. Was it widely used and did such planes claim any combat successes?

Regards,

 

Coastal command used alot of types of aircraft,Hudson,Wellingtons etc.it would be good to know all the armament of these aircraft,for example,did the aircraft fitted with 'leigh light' use just bombs?,or did they also have canon ?.cheers.

 

The Liberator I - AM serials were fitted with four 20mm cannons in a pod attached to the forward bomb-bay, the bomb bay was locked in the closed position as it housed the firing mechanism for these cannon. I think theses can be seen on my avatar.