first to use cannons

which country was the first one to mount large calibur guns on aircraft?

 

How large calibre? 1918 British tested 37mm COW gun. Before that Germans used 20mm Becker-guns.

 

Renee Fonck used specialy modified Spad with 20mm gun. But all ww1 cannon armed planes were more or less individual planes modified to pilots request or prototypes,

If we are talking large scale series production i would say I-16 type 12, type 17 and type 28.

 

If by large caliber you mean 75mm or larger I think it might be the US. Some B-25s were equipped with 75mm cannons.

 

Some Luftwaffe aircraft had 75mm (BK7.5 PaK40) cannons too (Ju-88, HS-129B3 and even the He-177).

Don't know if there were even bigger guns?

 

This will shed some light to big aircraft guns...

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/ ... un-bi.html



according to that website a Tellier T.7 flying boat served as testbed for the 75mm cannon between 1920 and 1922.
Don't know the aircraft though :roll:

 

Thanks for that info. I wasn't aware of it.
I don't know about WW II era but Vietnam era there were AC-130 Spectre aircraft (still in use as of 2002 in Afgahanistan, probably still today) which mounted a 105mm cannon (as well as 40mm rapid fire)

 

AFAIK Itaians monted the biggest gun on the aircraft. It was mounted on Piaggo P-108A (Artigliere) bomber and had caliber of 102mm.

Big guns on airplanes:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/8217/fgun/fgun-bi.html

 

On my website there's an article called THE CANNON PIONEERS: The early development and use of aircraft cannon

This tells you all about the use of big guns in WW1, which was basically started by the French, who also made the most use of such armament during that war.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

One variant of the Me-262 mounted a 50mm cannon out the nose. Stuck out seven feet.

 

And Yak-9K had 45mm cannon shooting trough prop hub :smok:

 

How the heck did they manage that? (other than 'the way the engineers told them to')

 

The NS-45 in the Yak-9K used the same cartridge case as the NS-37 in the Yak-9T, only "necked out" to take the larger projectiles. The guns were the same, just needing a barrel change (and maybe some stronger recoil springs!). They were very slim for their calibre, unlike the US and German 37mm, which would never have fitted in the space.

The design of the Yak-9 and its engine allowed for a cannon to be fitted to fire through the propeller hub. The barrel ran between the cylinders, the action and magazine were behind the engine. Even so, fitting the NS-37 and NS-45 required the cockpit to be sited further back than usual, to leave enough space for the gun.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum