Gun Question......

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flyer68211

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Hi all...John here..quick query--I've been thinking about this for a couple of days now...Why would someone mount guns in the nose of an a/c with a prop..i mean just one failure of that interupter would result in a severe prop failure..it just seems far easier to mount them in the leading edges of the wing away from the prop....John
 
erm, there are two main reasons and actually they are the same. Mounting the gun in the nose makes the gun fire directly ahead along the line of sight of the pilot, no angle adjustment of the gun is necessary. If you fit guns in the wing, they must be 'toed-in' to have all guns converge at a specific point several hundred yards in-front of the plane, dependant on pilots preference. This involves adjusting the gun on two planes, x and y, making it more complex, also the payback for this is that your target has to be exactly at the point of convergence to inflict max damage, if it is far enough out, no hits might be scored even though it was directly in the centre of the gunsight.

hope that makes some sense.
Jamie
 
I'm sure that landing gear and fuel tank placement had some impact on where to place the guns too. In the case of aeroplanes with minimum room in the wings, additional guns in the nose could increase weight or fire per burst.

Guns and ammo on or near the center line in the nose probably also increased the roll rate as well as reduced stress on the wings from weight and inertia during high G maneuvers.
 
Not to mention that when guns were first added to airplanes, the planes weren't big or strong enough to carry more than one gun, and when they were able to carry two guns they still weren't sturdy enough to mount them on the wings.

Once planes got strong enough to mount the guns on the wings, the problems mentioned above soon became obvious. Designers still preferred to put the guns in the nose and deal with the hassle of interrupter gear, but then the number of guns increased to where they couldn't all fit in the nose anymore (at least not in a single-engined fighter) so they had to go out in the wings.

One of the advantages of jets was that the guns could go back in the nose.
 
Back at the dawn of fighter planes, it was believed that the wings had to be thin in order for the plane to be able to fly. So, when someone decided to add a machine gun to a biplane and create the first fighter plane..there simply wasn't enough room in the wings to put a gun. So, the guns were mounted at the center of the upper wing..on top of the wing. Later, when the interrupter gear was invented, the gun or guns were moved to the nose of the aircraft..making it easier to bring the stream of lead to bear on the target aircraft.

It was the Germans, I do believe, who discovered that the wing could be made thicker and the plane would still fly...as long as the airfoil shape was maintained. Once airplane wings were made thicker....there was room for guns to be installed in the wings. However...there were still a number of aircraft built after this that had guns in the nose. The Zero, the early P-40s. Heck even one of the early Mustang variants, the A-36 Apache dive bomber, had guns in the nose.

OBIO
 
Before the days of the interrupter gear the French tried armored propellers, which would scatter bullets everywhere including back at the pilot, I guess it was probably better than trying to shoot down your opponent with a revolver or throwing a brick at them.
 
John,........one of the premier fighters of WWII was the P-38 Lightning. It has a cannon and machine guns mounted in the front fuselage pod. Of course it was twin engined.
 
Then there was the F7F... I would imagine in the hands of a crack shot such concentrated power was not available till the mini guns etc of the jet era. Four 50 cal in the nose and four 20 mm canon in the inboard wing root not far off the centerline. The P61 also had pretty significant centerline armament in a similar twin engine configuration. Most WWII fighters did not carry significant fuel in the wings, the wings being a large and vulnerable target area! In the fuselage some armor or other protection was more easly provided.

Cheers: T
 
Imagine the Me-262 with 4 30MM Cannons in the nose. If built and deployed in numbers equal to say the Me-109 or even the P-38 it could have truly been a war winner.

Having done this once, it's no easy job to boresight a M61A1 20MM in an F-16, can,t imagine boresighting 8 50 cal in the wings. One must truly admire individuals such as major Paul I. Gunn or "Pappy Gunn" as he was nicknamed, who started to "field modify" B-25s and A-20s by adding 50 cal in the nose. Designing mounts and boresighting these guns under the conditions/circumstances early in the war in the pacific is the stuff legends are made of.
 
Another reason in the early days was that with the breeches in the cockpit the pilot was able to whack them with a hammer to help clear a stoppage.

4x30mm in the nose of an Me262 might have worked, but I'm sure I read somewhere that 4x20mm in the nose of the Westland Whirlwind sometimes blew the nose in. As if having duff engines wasn't enough!
 
The Me 262 did have 4 x 30 mm in the nose! A fairly low welocity weapon, but it depended on the explosive effect rather than kinetic effect for damage. Quite effective if a hit was otained. Designed as an anti bomber weapon, 4 20 mm or six fifties would have been a better anti fighter ensemble with a higher rate of fire and more ammo.

One must keep in mind the Me 262 was employed as almost an experimental aircraft. Not that the plane wasn't a brilliant design, the primitive axial flow engines were happy to last 10 hours between overhauls. Imagine the logistics and industrial supply nightmare trying to keep the Luftwaffe supplied with a sufficent number of engines to keep a fleet of any size in the air. The other down side of the engines was the lack of any real fuel control, in effect the pilot had a fuel cock instrad of a throttle. Open or close too fast and one would exceed the rich or lean flame limits during acceleration or deceleration and get a flameout. Or.... burn the turbine blades out.

If this had happened the P-80 might have been pushed into operational service sooner. It did fly in Italy during the war as operational testing. Not as aerodynamically advanced as the Messershmit but probably with a more reliable and workable engine... for an early jet.

Cheers: T
 
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