Airacobra

And why would they? That gun packed a lot of punch, and was often used by PT boat crews to beef up their vessel's firepower, salvaging them from wrecked P-39s. I have long wondered where they got the ammunition for them, though.

 

For aircraft it was less than ideal. If I remember rightly (I'm, sure Tony will correct me) it had a relatively low muzzle velocity and a low rate of fire. Great for PT boats, bad for dogfights.

 

Correct - the muzzle velocity was only about 610 m/s, compared with 900 m/s for the Yak-9T's NS-37.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

Didn't the 20 mm cannon on the Zero also have a low muzzle velocity?

 

In the earlier versions of the plane, yes. It used the Type 99-1, which was the Oerlikon FF, basically the same as the German MG-FF used in the Bf 109E. Later versions of the Zero switched to the more powerful Type 99-2 (Oerlikon FFL), in which the muzzle velocity went up from 600 m/s to 750 m/s.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

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for sure the soviets in 1941 would have taken sopwith biplanes gratefully
but they liked the cobra enought to ask and get more than 2000 of the new model P63 , the king cobra from late 1943
at a time when the yak familly was making great planes and the la-5 and -7 set new standards for low level dogfights ,
it looks like the soviets were fond of it and its big cannon ,
the switch by the british to the excellent 20mm hispano is well documented , there is no indication of the soviets following suite .

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Tony/Jeag:
In that case, I stand corrected. I was under the impression the Russians found the Olds 37mm to be less than satisfactory to their needs and replaced it with their own cannon.
Why then was the 37mm derided by USAAF personnel? Was it the low muzzle-velocity or a reliability issue?

Tim

 

Acctualy Soviet switched to cannon armamment in late 1930's. I-16 types 12, 17 & 28 were armed with 2 20mm ShVAK guns. New generation fighters (LaGG-3, Yak-1) from 1940 were armed with 1 20mm ShVAK gun firing trough the propeller hub. On LaGG 20mm ShVAK was sometimes replaced by 23mm VyA gun (Il-2 main gun) and later even with 37mm NS gun. La-5 series (including La-5, La-5F/FN and La-7) were exclusively cannon armed.
Soviet were not exacly extatic with Hispano and rated ShVAK better (it was smaller and lighter).
As for Aircobra's 37mm Olds gun it was deemed satisfactory as soviet pilots tended to come realy close before firing. I belive that main reason for not reaming them with their gun was more or less complicated ammo feed and ammo magazine and the fact that rearmmament would considerably slow deployment of the fighters on the frontline.

 

Low muzzle velocity, low rate of fire, initial reliability problems and a small ammo capacity (until the belt-fed M-10 was intoduced in later P-63s).

 

IIRC the 37mm Olds cannon had a low muzzle velocity and low rate of fire, against Japanese opponents in the Pacific the extra destructiveness of the cannon was probably not appreciated in the early stages against the poorly protected planes (Little or no armour and no self sealing tanks) the Japanese were using, considering the .50s were plenty good enough against them.

 

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thanks Tiso , that sound right too !
the russians usually would put up with a small inconvenience rather than disrupting the flow of gear to the front .
as for the destructivness of the 0.5 , the thunderbolt had eight !!
nevermind the small caliber , feel the lead rain !!
to be caught in this must have been like going through a meat grinder

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To put it mildly. Imagine what it was like facing the strafer B-25s, with twelve fifties!

 

Or an A-26 with sixteen :bang: :kill:

 

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.........SIXTEEN ........ the plane could stall from the recoil !!!!!


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Must have been impressive, eh?

 

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a new take on shell shock , something like hail shock ,
its must've been like being in the line of a shotgun who goes on and on and on


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To put it mildly! Can you imagine what it must have been like on the receiving end of such a barrage?

 

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the idle idea occured to me some time back that the best way to stop an armored division was to shoot the trucks , or to slow them down to a crawl
those multifiring 0.5 might not have been any good against armor but
geeeezzzz ..........against canvas trucks ....... :kill:


incidentaly the germans were throught the war pretty desperate for trucks ,
it might even have been the single limitating factors on several theaters



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Which is exactly what the Typhoon and P-47 pilots did in Normandy and beyond (especially going after the fuel tankers). That was in fact their major contribution, since they were ineffective in knocking out tanks.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

It certainly was. German industry was never able to meet the demand. Which also helps make clear how important those 400,000+ lend lease trucks were to the Soviets.