Agreed! And kudos for not saying "First!" 😂

The first man on the bluddy moon...

❤❤❤

“Let’s get this out on a tray “ Nice “

The two best intros for KZfaq videos are; "Greetings this is Greg" And "The intent of this video..."

Also the M2 is open bolt, So there's 150-200kn cooling air flowing through the .50" / 12.7mm bore, around the belted .50cal round and slamming into the breech face cooling the entire Inside of the receiver.

My feelings exactly

If he made a 24 hour video lecture I would gladly sit and listen.

Perhaps there is a difference between an hour-long lecture and an hour-long exploration.

Facts. His videos are always so dense and his use of primary sources from the era always fascinates me

Have you heard of our lord and savior, Perun then, by chance?

some could argue the ballistics but pilots fired at close range anyway

With quite a low ballistics, MK 108 demanded the interceptor to approach to a knife-fight distance of 100m to hope the hit statistics will satisfy your commanders. While itchy-trigger-fingers on buffs started to fill the sky with bullets at 1000m. Therefore, to deliver a push, an MK 108 owner must have a sturdy armour and steel balls. That's why Fw 190 A-8/R8 had heavy frontal armour along with those 30mm cannons. Trying to catch an enemy fighter with low ballistics MK 108 could be even harder than approaching an actively defending bomber. No. MK 108 is just a grenade launcher in the sky.

@@killer.crayon you didn't watch the video, did you? Like Greg clearly states, most aerial engagements took place at ranges of 300 yards or less and thus the low velocity of the 30mm was largely irrelevant in most combat situations.

@@JohnDiabol The low muzzle velocity of the 30mm was most certainly NOT irrelevant and a limiting factor of the design. Even at a range of only 100 yards, a 30mm shell takes, with no air resistance, .1875 seconds to reach the target. At 200 yards, the pilot has to lead their target at least a third of a second in advance. 300 yards is half a second. This isn't even considering bullet drop, which is significant once you get much past 100 yards at such a velocity. The 30mm has the ballistics akin to that of a 12 gauge shotgun slug. Which is why even with the development of radar gunsights, no country chose to use weapons with such a low muzzle velocity. By comparison, the WW2 MG 151 has a muzzle velocity 50% greater and the M2 Browning 300 fps faster than the 20mm. Resulting in less lead and less drop compensation being needed. Post war, the ADEN cannon was developed. It has double the muzzle velocity of the MK108.

@@Crosshair84 I said that it was largely irrelevant in most actual real life combat scenarios at 300 yards or less. An experienced pilot will know the appropriate lead and he only needs to get lucky once in order to swat down a Mustang or a Thunderbolt. Post-war weapons had double the muzzle velocity because aircraft had also almost doubled in speed with the jet age.

Yes, in fact quite a few WW2 aces were believers in shooting at very close range. High scoring aces that fired from longer ranges were the exception not the rule.

@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles IIf I remember correctly Charles MacDonald was known as a deflection shooter. He was with the Aces Loaded 475th out of New Guinea then the Philippines and did a stint as their Commander.. They were frequent escorts for the Third Attack Group's Parafrag Squadrons. My Dad Got into the Pacific relatively late as an A20 and A26 Gunner who claimed he never got to shoot at much, if anything, because those P38s wouldn't let anything near him. He actually thought the world of those guys.

Oerlikon FF derivates; MG FF and Type 99 Mark 1 were pretty much the minimum you'd consider a cannon instead of grenade launcher due to their velocity. Simply weight saving gone too far.

"He described the relatively low velocity 20 mm type 99 canon round in the A6M as "dropping like a stream of piss."" The Type 99-1 had a V0 of 600 m/s. In comparison, the German 30mm mk 108 had a V0 of 540 m/s. And the Type 99-2 had a V0 of 750 m/s. Extremely worth also keeping in mind is the fact that the original Type 99-1 was 5kg lighter than the airforce Browning .50. While the later Type 99-2 weighed roughly 10kg more than the airforce .50. You choose your tradeoffs.

@@icewaterslim7260 - I think that might be the P-38 pilot I mention in my above retelling of a long-range triple shoot-down over PIs

That's exactly correct.

425 rounds per gun with 800rpm (13.33333 Hz) results in 31 seconds of continuous burst. On the other hand, P-51D had 270rds+270rds+400rds+400rds+270rds+270rds for its guns, giving 20 seconds of full 6-gun burst, plus 9 seconds more of 2-guns burst. However, with 113 grams per cartridge, 8*425rpg*113g=384kg of ammo, P-47 pilots often tried to avoid this load. Popular ammo layout for P-47 is 3*200rpg+2*300rpg+3*200rpg. 15 seconds of 8-guns burst, plus extra 7 seconds of 2-guns burst.

In the previous video, Greg said that a cylinder shot off would lead to oil loss immediately, and therefore the motor would SEIZE UP shortly. But I've read and seen videos of many pilot accounts saying that they got their P&W R2800 powered fighters home safely after exactly those types of direct hits on the engine

It probably depends which cylinder gets blown off. Lower cylinders will dump the oil pretty fast. Upper cylinders will cover the windshield in oil. Side pots won’t lose oil as fast as the bottom four and the spray should miss the cockpit.

Thanks Duke, great post.

The Germans used mine shells, with a very thin jacket and maximum explosive load. which minimizes fragmentation effects to maximize shockwave effect. This is the most effective anti-aircraft cannon round when the round uses an impact fuse, like in aircraft guns. Surprisingly no other nation used this idea. The MK108 used the API delayed blowback mechanism where you had to choose between either a high rate of fire or a high muzzle velocity. The Germans went with the higher rate of fire.

@@ChristianMcAngus No, it's not surprising and it's not necessarily the most effective, as I said those rounds work on the principle of overpressurizing the inside of the area they hit blowing apart stringers, ribs and other parts comprising that areas structural integrity but there's a trade off wherein it's far less damaging to any hard machinery it doesn't directly hit, something that throws shrapnel all over the place is far more likely to damage things in an engine compartment, wiring harnesses, external pumps on the engine, a generator and all the fuel, oil and hydraulic lines are more prone to suffer damage from a shrapnel type round, one little hole in an oil, coolant, fuel or hydraulic line and an aircraft's chances of making it back to it's base is greatly diminished. It's just two different ways of doing things and just like anything else from WW2 just because the Germans did something a certain way doesn't mean it's the best, especially when you consider that the Mine rounds weren't really that effective until they get up to the 30mm size, the German pilots complained plenty that the 20mm rounds weren't that effective and that it took too many hits to down or seriously cripple a bomber, 20mm has low enough rounds on hand and short enough firing time, up it to 30mm not only does that get worse but then you start running into size issues and the gun and ammo won't fit in the wing so they have to be put in a pod which increases drag, slows the aircraft, shortens it's range, decreases maneuverability and so on and so forth.

That's exactly right, in combat your concerned about living through the next few minuets, not preserving your equipment for the next war.

Bud Anderson talks about how firing 20 seconds with an air-cooled light barrel M2 burned out the barrel. He had a wingman do this, he could see the bullets spiraling in the air

@@user-xj6rr3yv8q but, how worn was that barrel before that engagement? Perhaps that pilot had a habit of it. Also, he.might have previously been doing ground strafing, longer firing times?

@@davewolfy2906 WWII fighter gun barrels were lighter than say the infantry .50 cals, or the navy 20mm AA guns. Yes, air cooling from the aircrafts movement mitigated some of that, but they did heat up more rapidly, and more importantly they wore out much faster. Don't forget, weight in aircraft is PRECIOUS. The more weight you can save the better. So yes, .50 cals and 20mm cannons developed for aircraft were significantly lighter than Land or Naval based versions, which meant they could suffer cooling issues. This is something that NEEDS to be understood. The guns in an aircraft may be the same calibre as an infantry heavy machinegun, or a navy light anti aircraft gun, but they were built a LOT lighter.... They were not the same. As ground troops found when they pulled .50 cals off damaged aircraft to use for the infantry during the pacific campaigns. The former Air guns had major issues with cooling. Still much better having them than not, but they did have serious issues when used in ground combat roles. Like they overheated, a lot.....

@@user-xj6rr3yv8q I think I'm going to look into that more. I do know during the war they switched to lined barrels for the machine guns. I believe it was inconel but I forget exactly what material. They did it first for .50cals and then did the same for 1919s. They never fully adopted it for 1919s and it was luck of the draw which type of barrel you got even after the war. I do know tracers can do some really weird stuff. The tracer element is much lighter than a bullet and often still today can be dislodged and go places the bullet doesn't. Especially when something makes the bullet spin end over end, the tracer element can go flying off in a direction that the bullet didn't actually go. I'd imagine if in this testing they found the .50 cals doing that they'd have mentioned it. Especially since they were testing on the ground and would have found barrels heating up much faster than in the air. They certainly would have noticed if the bullets were unstable before hitting the target. A tumbling bullet is very obvious when examining the target. Going back to the tracer the tracing compound is much lighter than lead and steel so that tracer bullets tend to be much longer than their regular counterparts. The M-16A2 has a 1 in 7 inch twist because it was needed it to stabilize the longer 62 grain tracers not because it was needed to stabilize the SS109 bullet. So in any gun tracer bullets are more likely to destabilize than the other more normal bullets. It's just a necessary fault to deal with when it comes to tracers. They have to be longer just because tracing compound is so much less dense. I do know during the war in bombers they eliminated the tracers in belts because people were following the tracers and not the sights. When they were removed they found it increased the effectiveness of gunners substantially. They did try training it out of gunners but still found it necessary to just remove the tracers completely. It being one of those things you can tell people until you are blue in the face but they'll never believe it and still trust the tracers instead.

At Lightning speed they would need a good aiming system. Fortunately they didn't have to prove it to an enemy. But you must have learned a lot working on them which the world does not need to know. Thank you for helping us.

Greg wont like this as he's nationalistic.

Lightning was fast, short range and carried a big punch. If it failed to stop a nuke bomber, a second attempt was irrelevant. Due to the distances involved, an issue the USAF never needed to worry about.

It's 1500rpm for the gunpack, NOT 4x 1500rpm. In case anyone was confused.

@@CAL1MBO No, you're mistaken; that's per GUN.

Recoil on some sends some aircraft backwards into a stall - great thinking, isn't it? 707 eight rifles were bad enough on Hurricanes and Spitties.

@@huwzebediahthomas9193 the 303's were a joke, that's one of the main reasons british bombers were relegated to night missions

P-47 with 8 50-cal MGs did fine. F4F, F6F, Corsair, Mustang, and P-40 did fine.

​@@huwzebediahthomas9193which aircraft stalled as a result of firing .50 cals? Any record of this happening?

@@huwzebediahthomas9193 my guy they put tank caliber sized cannons on partially underpowerd airplanes and did fine, i doubt an array of 50 cals can do that to even a slow moving bi plane

They sure got their money out of whoever designed that gun.

That would be the venerable John Moses Browning. He also invented the Colt GM 1911, the BAR, the 0.30 caliber MG, the Winchester M 97 Trench Gun, the Browning A5 shotgun, the Model 17 shotgun that became the Ithica M 37. And the Colt 1903 and Colt 1908 pistols, which were issued to General officers. And the Superposed O/U shotgun, which may have been used recreationally by the military but that is only my supposition. And he started the design of the FN High Power an excellent pistol used by Allies AND the Axis powers. And more besides.

@@kirbyculp3449 John Moses Browning, The GOAT of gun design!

​@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobilesGun Jesus designed the M-2.

No argument it was a disgrace arming british 4 engine bombers with 303

Just because you challenge doesn't mean you win.....

And b36s but that never came about

Mig Alley, thats an old game! Haha. The same effect can now be experienced in War Thunder, Sim mode.

"Der Granatwerfer", but yes. "Mark" in german is a past currency (Deutsche Mark). German engineering doesn't use the "mark" designations at all. We tend to just put more numbers or letters after a name. May be a "Rev" for "Revision" or "V" for "Version"

@@Talon3000 it ain't Mark, it's Maschinen Kanone (M K)

PAINT ID RED SO IT FLY FASTA YA GIT!

@@spookyghost3209 🤣🤣🤣👍🏻 Can you imagine the look on Greg's face as someone tries to explain Speed Freaks to him? Preferably an AI created Margaret Thatcher going full Iron Lady with the descriptions.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

@@sadwingsraging3044 I'RON GOB THATCHER IZ A BOSS WHO KNOWS HOW TA REALLY R'ALLY DA BOYZ

@@spookyghost3209 Avenging Ole 👁 is the greatest respect and honor one Chad can show for another Chad.🎖😌

If an F35 has to go to guns the shit has thoroughly hit the fan.

50 cal, one burst, and you stall. Horrendous recoil

@@huwzebediahthomas9193huh?

@@huwzebediahthomas9193 thats.... just not true at all....

@@huwzebediahthomas9193very action has an equal and opposite reaction. 50cals weigh less, have less gunpowder than 20mil simple maths

@@huwzebediahthomas9193 you can fire 50 cal out of a rifle, its not gonna make an aircraft stall

But did those F8 kills work because the AIM9 was such a darned good missile or because the 'Last of the Gunfighters' knew how to get into good firing position before hosing their opponent? I 'feel' that actually knowing how to 'dogfight' was a gun armed jet was a great advantage over a flying flatiron like the 'Thud' or the Phantom.

I don't know how many of them were actual jams, with the round or belt link stuck in the gun. I think most of the problems that brought the gun down was broken ammo links.

@@baronvonslambert Like the RF- Reconnaisance Models the G Model didnt need a Gun for its Role it was a "Wild Weasel" built/tailored for the SEAD role .

@@cancermcaids7688 yes, those Vulcan cannons came in handy. The lore has it, the gunsights were usually set in air ro ground; the pilots would just fire and guide by tracers. The fun thing was, this and the Six Day War proved the worth of an internal gun in modern fighter jets.

@@nickmitsialis The F-105 shot down more MiGs than the F-8, and all but one of them was with the gun.

Big bullet solves the problem of underkill.

The shells they fired (at least the HE/M) were identical, and as you pointed out the cartridge was significantly longer. But not only that, the 30x90RB of the MK 108 was straight walled, whereas the 30x184B of the MK 103 had a cartridge body diameter of 40mm so it was also significantly thicker.

I believe Greg is saying in the video that the shells themselves were identical, both being loaded in to whichever case for the cannon. (edited because found the part of the video I was looking for)

The thin-walled high-explosive "Minengeschoss" projectile was the same, indeed in an entirely different cartridge. This was the only projectile used for the MK108. For the MK103, with its much higher muzzle velocity, traditional HE and armour-piercing rounds were also available.

Thanks, I appreciate you kind words.

The UK wanted 20mm cannon as the standard for fighters (1937) and bomber defensive armament (1939). But war were declared

The 303 incendiary rounds were very good and under appreciated part of Battle of Britain. You can see them glowing and igniting in the gun camera footage of the time.

Everything helped win the war. Except for USA businesses supporting Germany.

It really does make one uncomfortable with what seems like a disregard for humanity.

Yeah, as an old C-130 flight engineer, that made me wince.

I get the idea that it seems cold, but what choice did the the analysts have? Add another column/row to every (already complex) table for 'other crew injured', which would add nothing to the analysis. Leave off such hits entirely? But then, they are hits, and should be counted. I quite understand the analysts thinking 'we'll just have to add them into one of the other categories'.

* edit...inner brownings

In theory 4 20mm could be carried, and after further wing redesign with the 19 onwards, they were. The V was the first with the 4 20mm option but the outer pair had heating issues. I can't remember what the logic for using the inner 50s in the E wing was. The UK looked at 50s as an interim for bomber guns in the late 1930s but couldn't get a licensed production arrangement soon enough and didn't want to depend on imports, so development was ended in 1939 until 1942 and 1943.

@@wbertie2604COG issues ?

The Belt Feed Mechanism was fitted because of persistent jams of drum fed guns as they found that the springs of the drums would fail to feed under G as they got older and the conclusion was that the rounds needed more forceful feeding to the breech so the BFM was installed and worked very well. They had learned from the French experience with the 20mm Moteur-Cannon in the 406 and D520, which suffered the same fault. It was also why the Germans developed the MG 151 as the Oerlikon was less well suited to aircraft mounting and not suited to engine mounting. One issue that the British found later with the Hispano was a tendency for parts of the breech to crack as guns lasted longer in service and there were issues in Burma with such guns in Hurricanes failing in flight due to cracks.

P47 did have a range problem.

didnt the us refuse to use drop tanks on p47s at first? dont know if it was a problem in 1943 tho

@@sparkling925 yes, in 1943 the P-47 could not reach Berlin.

@@sparkling925 They didn't "refuse", they just weren't available yet in early 1943..

@@gort8203 not true

A big problem with this in an aircraft was rotating the barrel. See my video on the B-32 Dominator to understand the limitations of aircraft electrical systems. Once the jets came along, this wasn't a limitation anymore because those engines could turn much more powerful generators.

Thanks Sheriff.

50 cals are effective beyond 700 meters

what was the name of this landlord of yours?

Side note: I was in a mechanized infantry unit stationed in Germany in the mid 80's. I was in a Company who's primary weapon was the M-901 variant of the M-113, armed with T.O.W. missiles and an M-60 machine gun. I drove one of our M-113's armed with a .50 cal machine gun. One day we went to the range for practice, and through some mix up, they had allotted our Company the same amount of .50 cal ammo as a regular Line Company. I suddenly had 16,000 rounds to play with, as did the other 3 M-113's in my Company. Yes, we shot all of it. Yes....they were heavy barrel ground mount versions of the M-2. However....we all shot every round, with no miss fires, we all had hot barrels....3 of them to be precise, but we also didn't have a 250-450 mph headwind to cool the weapons. They performed flawlessly. Its like a 350 Chevy....over built and understressed. A worldbeater.

Oh, BTW, it was all Armor Piecing Incendiary. Very impressive.

Thanks Edward.

Aircraft armor was typically used only to protect the airmen. The mechanical systems themselves had to take their chances, so really it was a balance between probablility of hits vs. damage per hit. Like the battleship guns.

@@lamwen03 That holds up until about 1950. Once jets were the pointy end of the stick the .50 wasn't big enough. Jets had thicker skin to withstand the greater stresses involved in high speed flight. That's what got the Air Force to switch to cannon for their fighters' guns. They found the .50s of the Sabers were failing to penetrate MiGs' skin at the ranges they were fighting at, at least in a tail chase when the angle of impact tended to be shallow. That mattered when deflection shots were getting harder to get hits with with the increased speeds of combat. Just hitting wasn't good enough any more, you had to hit hard enough to penetrate.

@@Mishn0 the more reasonable answer (and adding to @cancermcaids7688) is simply due to increasing speeds in which dog fights are being fought at, which reduced the "on-target" times that pilots doing dogfights would have faced, a rotary cannon could spit out more than a .50 M2/M3 (variants of the Browning M2 modified for multiple purposes), not only that, the 20mm Munitions utilized in the rotary cannons would have better ballistics due to having more mass (see F-111 Incident), and would take less internal volume than multiple .50 M2/M3 machine guns, or if not less could take equal internal volume for more ammunition stored though this is varied on multiple designs Also, remember that Aircrafts only have armor to protect critical components, most especially the Pilot, they don't have all around armor like that of Ground AFVs, rounds don't bounce around like you would see from Top Gun Maverick (or if not the earlier rendition)

Aircraft started using radar corrected gunsights in the Korean era. F86 used them to great effect against MiGs, which at the time were still on manually corrected gyro reflectors. The history of A2A corrected gunsights starts far earlier than one might expect.

@@paqx3534 Do you know how those radar corrected gun sights worked? Battleships (at least Iowa + Montana, though she was never built) used radar on the turret to calculate actual projectile velocity and compared this against expected values to know if each gun was shooting faster or slower than expected and then watched for fall of shot, so it could compare actual performance with expected performance and adjust each shot angle to account for real-world condition (on top of the typical fire control system, which calculates based on temperature, humidity, coriolis effect, firing vessel and target range, speed, and heading, ship roll, age and expected wear of each barrel, and a few more that don’t come to mind), all done with mechanical computers (that’s the Mark 38 Fire Control System for those keeping track….. and it’s still the best Naval gun system). Anything like that in aircraft? The only modern aircraft I can think of that fire their guns often enough to really benefit are the A-10 and Su-25m (and the AC-130, of course).

Robert S. Johnson never went to gunnery training. Furthermore the terms "burst length", "malfunction", "5 seconds" don't appear anywhere in his book. Could you give me a page number or an exact quote?

Thanks, all that math is far beyond my ability.

@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Oh, lightyears beyond me too! 😆

Got to love a 20mm that shoots down 109s and keeps your ice cream cold too

Banter for the banter god!