WWII aircraft armament machine guns and cannon

[RC20]

Oh, I 100% disagree with that.

They had the single best submachine gun of World War II -- the PPS 43. It was an absolutely masterpiece of functional simplicity.

Agreed a bit of hyperbole.

I am far from a machine gun expert so will take your word for it. I kind of tend to the M3 as the all time winner but?

Lets just say that the Russkies were known for quantity over quality.

I read an assessment a while back about the Soviet artillery in WWII. Yea they had a lot of guns, they had extremly poor fire control systems so they tried to make up for it with numbers.

Part of that was, ok, if you miss the target entirely all those numbers count for nothing because you are hitting nothing.

[RC20]

Granted this is just another yammerhead U Tuber, but me thinks its worth watching. I would like to see an E8 go through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibhxlBGOIXc

This is also his usual good work, it would be roughly equivalent to the Sherman E-8.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTnS0XS2al8

[44 AMP]

After D-Day, I think the casual WWII observer might think the Tiger was more common than not.
Also that it’s armor just shrugged off enemy tank rounds.
Something tells me there’s more to it than that.

Of course there is. One of the reasons there seemed to be a lot of Tigers is that our GIs misidentified German armor very frequently and consistently during the opening months of combat in Europe. They knew the Tiger was bigger than a Sherman, and it had an 88, but not a lot else, and so lots of German armor was misidentified by our mostly green troops.

In the two years the Tiger was in production (August 42 to Aug 44) records indicate the Germans built slightly less than 1400 of them. Records vary a bit but they all say 1380+ but not fully 1400. Compared to the numbers of Allied tanks, there weren't very many Tigers made.

Would it be correct to assume part of the Tigers defensive advantage was because of the better range of its main gun?

When you can hit, and kill enemy armor at over 1,000yds (and the Tiger could) and they can't do that to you reliably at half that distance, it is a significant advantage.

The U Tube shows the Tiger II did have fuel tanks inside the fighting compartment, don't know about Tiger I

Neither the Tiger I nor the Tiger II had fuel tanks inside the fighting compartment. Ammo storage, yes, fuel tanks, no. The fuel tanks were in the engine compartment. IF U tube is telling you there were fuel tanks in the fighting compartment, they are wrong.

As for the gun, that gets into many factors but the German 75 MM guns, be it on the Pzkw IV or the Panther had all the capability you needed.

An 88 MM in a Tiger II was a lot of waste.

Well, one man's "waste" is another's "useful capability". The original heavy tank designs that evolved into the Tiger, called for a hi vel 75mm, until Hitler ordered the new tank design to be equipped with the 88.

And, just as there were two different Tiger tanks, there were two different 88mm tank guns. The 88mm L/56 and the 88mm K/71. The Tiger used the L/56 caliber gun which was a direct tank adaptation of the 88mm flak gun round, which had proven quite effective against tanks. This gun fired its 20lb AP projectile in the 2650fps range. It used a straight case and the main difference between the flak gun ammo and the tank ammo (besides the projectile) is that the flak gun ammo is mechanically fired, and the tank gun ammo was electrically fired.

The 88mm L/71 is a different beast which used a larger bottle necked case, and fired its 22lb AP at 3,600fps. This gun was used by the Nashorn, the Ferdinand/Elefant, the JagdPanther, and the King Tiger (Tiger II)

You might consider a gun with that much performance a waste, but it did certainly work, and had the capability to deal with Allied heavy tanks as well as the standard mediums.

I forget which TD had it but the Germans had one that had a 128 mm cannon. Pretty stupid and more waste

Other than a pair of prototype panzerjaegers in 1943, the TD that used the 128mm gun was the Jagd Tiger. Built on the King Tiger hull with a fixed superstructure and even thicker armor combat weight was about 75tons. They built 48 of them in 1944.

I am far from a machine gun expert so will take your word for it. I kind of tend to the M3 as the all time winner but?

I prefer the M3A1 for the winner, simple, cheap (Uncle Sam paid $17.50 per unit) and effective. I worked on some of them in Europe in the 77-78 timeframe. They were still in use in Armored divisions at the time. The M3A1 is a superior gun over the M3, there's less to go wrong. The M3 uses an odd "grasshopper leg" system to retract the bolt, and it is possible for this mechanism to jam. The M3A1 system is simpler, a "hole" in the bolt you stick your finger into and pull the bolt back that way.

Lets just say that the Russkies were known for quantity over quality.

Yes they were. What is lesser recognized is the fact that the Soviets were capable of making good and even high quality items where they felt they were needed. One report done by the British evaluating the t-34 engine found the castings crude, but the interior parts were finished to a level "comparble to British mid level aero engines".

The soviets were entirely capable of doing good, precision work, where they felt it was necessary. The main difference is they didn't consider it necessary in as many places as we did.

[Mike Irwin]

The original concept for what became the Tiger was as an armored assault/break through vehicle that would be capable of taking on, and neutralized, hardened static obstacles, like the fortifications on the Maginot line. In that sense the Tiger was intended to fulfill the role that the T-28 super-heave "Doom Turtle" was intended to take against the Siegfried Line.

The Germans were, however, shocked to discover that French tanks were both more heavily armed and more heavily armored, which led to increased emphasis on development of the Tiger, with the final design parameters being set after lthe Germans met up with T-34 medium and KV-1 heavy tanks in the early states of the invasion of Russia.

The Tiger was never intended to the primary front-line tank. It was to be the heavy tank in tank units composed mainly of Panzer IV and V tanks, in much the same way that the Sherman Firefly was the specialist in combat groups of 3 standard Shermans and 1 Firefly.

Early production iterations of the Tiger were quite mechanically unreliable because the engine and transmission had both been rushed into production. Once those issues were sorted out reliability improved quite a bit.

[Pumpkin]

Never heard of a Firefly before this discussion, sounds like it was pretty formidable.
Like the Dirty Harry of the Shermans.

[Mike Irwin]

"I am far from a machine gun expert so will take your word for it. I kind of tend to the M3 as the all time winner but?"

The M3 wasn't as reliable as the PPS 43, primarily due to the double column single feed magazine.

The cocking lever was also a very poor design and in a significant number of the early guns suffered cocking lever failures. Troops apparently resorted to cocking the gun by slamming the butt on the ground.

The wire stock was also lacking. Not as bad as the wire stock on Reisings, but not particularly useful as a stock, either, and FAR less useful as a stock than the folding skeleton stock on the PPS 43.

The PPS 43 also use a proper double column double feed magazine, which virtually eliminated the kind of stoppages experience in the M3 magazine and which made magazine loading far easier.


I've handled, fired, and stripped both the M3 and the PPS 43.

Firing is largely a wash. They're submachine guns. Both are controllable.

Handling is subjective. Both handle about the same as they look -- like utilitarian low-cost weapons.

Field stripping, for me at least, goes to the PPS 43. It's simpler by about half.

[Mike Irwin]

"Never heard of a Firefly before this discussion, sounds like it was pretty formidable."

The 17-pound gun in the Firefly gave the Allies, or at least the British, a gun that could stand up to, and defeat on almost equal terms, anything that the Germans were going to roll out.

The early armor piercing ballistic capped rounds and especially the later armored piercing discarding sabot rounds allowed the Firefly to defeat any German tank out to 1,000 meters face on, and past 2,000 meters in side shots.

The American upgrade to the 75mm gun, the 76mm, was intended to give a gun that would equal the 17 pounder's performance.

Unfortunately early armor piercing shell designs were lacking and it was largely a disappointment until high velocity rounds using tungsten carbide penetrators became available.

[44 AMP]

"Never heard of a Firefly before this discussion, sounds like it was pretty formidable."

The gun was, the rest of the tank was a Sherman, usually the M4A4 version.

The QF 17 pounder (aka the 77mm) was the British answer to the Panther's 75mm L/70, being the same bore size (3") and firing the same weight projectile at approximately the same speed. It was used on a towed mount, mounted on top of a Valentine tank hull (at the very front, and fixed pointing to the rear), in the Sherman Firefly, and was the main gun in the first model of the Centurion.

Like the Panther's gun, the 17pounder has a long barrel, a bit over 19 feet. And the ammo is a bottlenecked case larger and longer than the US 75mm Sherman gun ammo.

To make room for ammo storage in the Firefly conversion, the British removed the Sherman bow machinegun, and its gunner. The Firefly is easily visually identified by its long gun, about double the length of the Sherman's standard 75mm barrel. Also had a globular muzzle brake, and a balance counterweight bolted around the barrel just behind the brake.

To counter the fact that the Firefly was easily spotted and targeted, British crews frequently painted the front half of the gun barrel in either a solid light color, or a disruptive pattern making the tank look more like a standard Sherman at a glance. It sort of worked, though not all the Fireflies did it. Because the Firefly was more dangerous, and could be ID'd by the long gun, German tankers made killing them a priority, over killing standard Shermans.

When available, the usual British practice was to have one Firefly per troop (platoon) so 3 regular Shermans and one Firefly.

The German practice with Tigers and Panthers was different. Panthers were "standard" tanks in Panzer divisions, intended to equip the entire Panzer regiments, but due to the limited amount of Panthers available, the usual practice wound up being one company of Panthers and one company of Mk IVs, and later in the war, due to shortages of all tanks, many panzer units wound up being one company of tanks and the other company of assault guns.

Tigers, on the other hand were recognized as special from the beginning and were organized into their own heavy tank battalions, not organic to the Panzer Divisions, but attached to different divisions by higher command. There were a couple of exceptions, but this was the general pattern of use.

During the latter half of 42, because Tiger production was slow, and numbers were low, the first few Tiger companies only had two (2) Tigers per platoon. The rest of the platoon was Panzer III M or (mostly) N models providing anti infantry support. When more Tigers were available this changed to all Tiger platoons.

Not as well covered in "western" histories of the Tiger, but covered in detail in the German histories (usually) is the fact that in addition to the many mechanical issues the Tiger had, there were training issues about operational use that took the German army some time to overcome, and some they never quite did.

One was that the Tiger was the first German tank with a seriously long gun overhanging the hull, and this required some changes to SOP just driving the tank. One company of Tigers was put out of action for a day, after crossing a railroad embankment. This was a training issue, the crews had not been taught the importance of elevating the gun to max and dug the muzzles into the ground when they came down at the bottom of the slope.

Often Tigers were lost during their early use because higher command sent them into totally unsuitable terrain. The very first Tiger deployment was in Russia and the command sent them into swampy wooded terrain. The first time, all 4 tanks came back. The second time, none did, all 4 got stuck, resulting in a couple days of back and forth fighting trying to recover them. They recovered 2, destroyed one, and the Russians got the other one eventually recovering it (damaged and unservicable) but they had it to examine, and evaluate resulting in the next generation of Soviet tanks and AT guns being made to counter the new threat.

In some ways, this was like when we recovered a Zero, essentially intact in the Aleutians. Some claim that we were able to create the Hellcat specifically to kill Zeros because of this, but that's not quite true. The Hellcat was already on the drawing boards, nearly ready for production when we captured the Zero but we were able to use what we learned to change a few things and make some tweeks to make the Hellcat even better than it would have been, otherwise.

Everybody makes mistakes, or has things happen beyond their control, but losing one of your newest / best weapons to the enemy for them to study and learn how to counter is one of the bad ones.

here's another tidbit, according the German records, nearly half of the Tigers lost in combat were destroyed by their own crews, when they got stuck, broke down, or ran out of gas.

[RC20]

The early armor piercing ballistic capped rounds and especially the later armored piercing discarding sabot rounds allowed the Firefly to defeat any German tank out to 1,000 meters face on, and past 2,000 meters in side shots.

I go to how a system is operated. In the case of the 17 lb gun, it was an atrocity of a shoe horn it in. Again NM has done a video on the gunner position on a Firefly. How they even got a shot off seems unlikely. Its a horribly cramped position.

I recall a mixed review on it as the Brit ammo was poor to start with. I don't think you could hit anything past 500 yards with their Sabot.

Brits felt it was a workable war expediency, not going to argue with them, US was more into it needed to work for the crews and far less ad hoc.

Brits had local support and the US had to ship it all overseas.

[RC20]

Tigers, on the other hand were recognized as special from the beginning and were organized into their own heavy tank battalions, not organic to the Panzer Divisions, but attached to different divisions by higher command. There were a couple of exceptions, but this was the general pattern of use.

No disagreement but the huge difference between the Tiger I and Tiger II aka King Tiger is a whole aspect of its own. Totally different machines with the Tiger I really the trial concept.

[44 AMP]

No disagreement but the huge difference between the Tiger I and Tiger II aka King Tiger is a whole aspect of its own. Totally different machines with the Tiger I really the trial concept.

Different machines, yes but exactly the same concepts and usage, King Tigers simply replaced Tigers in the schwere Panzer abteilungs (heavy tank batallions)

[Mike Irwin]

"I recall a mixed review on it as the Brit ammo was poor to start with. I don't think you could hit anything past 500 yards with their Sabot."

Early issues with the sabot being horribly inaccurate were traced to the outlet dimensions on the original version of the muzzle brake. Which is funny, considering that the original version of the gun, the Mk II, didn't have a muzzle brake. The brake was only introduced WITH the introduction of the APDS round and Fireflys already in service were refitted with the brake.

Once the brake was redesigned the APDS ammo became a LOT more accurate, and a specialized maintenance kit was developed that allowed the muzzle brake to be redimensioned in the field.

From what I've heard, it was basically a clamp-over guide for a big bore/chamfering cutter.

The APDS ammo was never quite as accurate as solid rounds because the rifling spin could cause issues with the sabot separating cleanly, but once the brakes were redimensioned it was more than accurate enough to get hits at 1,000+ meters.

And, given its huge increase in performance (2+ inches more penetration at 1,000 meters) over the standard armor piercing ballistic capped rounds, crews were happy for that trade off.

[Mike Irwin]

"Its a horribly cramped position."

Yes, it was. That's why the loader was the thinnest, most wiry person they could find.

Sort of like the how the ball turret gunner was the shortest, thinnest member of the B-17/B-24 crew.

Even with it being a cramped space, it was possible for the crew to fire upwards 10 rounds a minute. Not bad at all, considering the full round weighed somewhere around 25 pounds and, depending on the projectile, was close to 3 feet in length.

[Jim Watson]

That's why the loader was the thinnest, most wiry person they could find.

Makes sense, but does not explain why the BAR gunner was the smallest of the veterans at my agency and plenty of reports of others.

[Mike Irwin]

He volunteered?

He pissed someone off?

He lost a poker game?

[44 AMP]

He volunteered?

He pissed someone off?

He lost a poker game?

He's a smaller target??

Roomy or cramped is an individual judgement call, usually depending on the size of the person looking at it. It makes quite a difference if you're 6'2 and 250lbs or a foot shorter and over a hundred pounds lighter.

one English reviewer described the Tiger tank interior as cramped. An account from a Tiger crewman said it was roomy, thought it was great, there was actually enough room to sleep in it! This guy had been in smaller tanks before and thought the Tiger had lots of room in it, comparatively speaking.

In Green's books on aircraft he describes US WWII fighter cockpits as "roomy" comparing them with executive offices large size. Not everyone felt that way, I'm sure.

Generally speaking you got into an American fighter and flew it. Planes like the BF 109 and the Spitfire, you "wore".

Yes, physical size does play a part in what duties soldiers are selected for. And so does physical ability, which is a separate factor.

[Mike Irwin]

"Roomy or cramped is an individual judgement call, usually depending on the size of the person looking at it."

Well no effing DUH.

Thanks for stating the obvious, Captain Obvious.

[Pumpkin]

Funny that the 2 fighter pplanes named “Thunderbolt” the Mitsubishi J2M Raiden and the P-47 had such roomy cockpits.
Didn’t someone say that a P-47 pilot could run around in the cockpit to avoid enemy bullets?

[Mike Irwin]

"Didn’t someone say that a P-47 pilot could run around in the cockpit to avoid enemy bullets?"

Allegedly the British, when the first saw the Thunderbolt, said that the pilot could run back and forth in the fuselage if he were under attack.

[RC20]

"Its a horribly cramped position."

Yes, it was. That's why the loader was the thinnest, most wiry person they could find.

I was referring to the gunners position. Guy had to be a contortionist.

Loader, ungh. I always am dubious of claimed rates of fire. You read about how rapid the SMLE could be fired, comparable to an M1. Well, a 5 year veteran could shoot that, but most of the men were drafted. So a US draftee could fire better than a 5 years vet with an SMLE (not that it is not impressive gun in that regard - I have handled them and smooth like a Colt Python) but the vet did it under ideal conditions not battle conditions.

The Brits felt the Firefly was worth it, US did not. Statistics say the US was right, what you used most of was HE on machine guns, bunkers, fortified positions, houses etc.

Yes it sucks to be in a Sherman 75 if you come up nose to nose to a Tiger or a Panther (and you want the first shot on a long barrel Pzkw IV. )

[davidsog]

Planes like the BF 109 and the Spitfire, you "wore".

roomy cockpits

There is actually a good operational reason behind the design choices as a general trend. An aircraft designed to subject the pilot to accelerations are made to be as tight as possible. That greatly reduces fatigue when you have to pull levers, flip switches, and push buttons at multiple times your body weight.

That is why aerobatic aircraft and dogfighters have tight cockpits.

On the other hand, if you are going to spend long hours traveling long distances that also causes pilot fatigue. A roomy cockpit helps to reduce that fatigue from long period giving the pilot room to stretch and move.

England and Germany did not have to cover the distances Japan and the United States required. In Japan, its pilots needed to fly the vast distances of the Pacific. That's why the A6M had a very roomy cockpit and a 1900 mile range.

The United States also had long distances to cover to defend itself.

Fatigue greatly reduces the amount of G forces a pilot can withstand. It makes sense to provide a roomy cockpit if you are anticipating a long flight to even reach the combat zone. If you don't require long flights, then a tighter cockpit would be the order of the day.

[bamaranger]

"Gregs Aircraft and Automobiles" has recently (?) run a video on YouTube on this very topic (armament on WWI aircraft, NOT tanks) and features a post war, 1947 US military study in great detail.

The commentator makes a few odd statements here and there, but mostly I enjoy his material and it seems well grounded. Worth a watch to all concerned on the topic I believe.

[Pumpkin]

Cool video, I was thinking it was going to be the F6F.
I have always said, if my wife ever hits the lottery the one airplane I would want to buy would be a Catalina, with the landing gear. How cool would it be to fly down to the Gulf of America and spend the day fishing from the side gun blisters.
One thing though, it would still have to have the front gun turret, don’t care if it had nothing more than a telescope. Might have to equip it with some better to ward off pirates!
I think it destroys the birds looks when they remove the turret.

[44 AMP]

Fatigue greatly reduces the amount of G forces a pilot can withstand. It makes sense to provide a roomy cockpit if you are anticipating a long flight to even reach the combat zone. If you don't require long flights, then a tighter cockpit would be the order of the day.

While this makes sense, I think that, regarding WWII fighter cockpits, that the ergonomic benefits of cockpit size was less by intent than by serendipity.

Look at the major fighters of the major powers, and their design "era". Everyone went into the war flying fighters of pre WWII design, and the best were cutting edge technology for their design era.

In Europe, we have the BF109, the Hawker Hurricane, and the Supermarine Spitfire as the primary combatants through 1940 and all three were mid 1930s designs, entering service 2-3 years later, and, particularly with the Spitfire and the 109, the airframes were intentionally made as small as practical to get the most performance from the power of the engines available at the time.

Inline V liquid cooled engines were the best thing available, and the fuselages were slender to take advantage of that, so cockpits were "small" and narrow.

The Zero, and the F4F Wildcat were designed around radial engines, entered operational service in 1940 and had wider fuselages because of their engines. The Zero looks slender, and for a radial engine aircraft, it really is, but the cockpit section is still a bit wider than the Spitfire, and 109.

As the war progressed, you see larger, heavier, and more powerful engines and aircraft built to handle them from the ground up, along with existing designs modified to their design limits to take the more powerful engines.

The Wildcat, the Hellcat, the Corsair and the Thunderbolt are streamlined, but not slender. The F6F, F4U, and the P-47 had the power to make up for that. The Zero, and the FW 190 are smaller and more slender, for radial engine fighters, but they also had smaller less powerful engines, and needed to be for maximum performance.

Everything that could evolved during the war, to differing degrees, and many of the design philosophies of the pre war aircraft regarded as "holy writ" at the time, proved out classed/outmoded, and some even obsolete, just a few years later.

As did the armament, both offensive and defensive. Every nation's fighters went into combat carrying rifle caliber (approx .30 cal) armament, and in most cases, only rifle caliber machine guns. The fighters that fought in Spain and in China in '37, and in Europe until early '40 were not cannon armed. And the cannon armed fighters that showed up in the middle of 1940 also carried a pair of rifle caliber machine guns. Even the US who's fighters didn't go into combat until Dec 41 only had one cannon armed fighter, the P-39, (which had a cannon and a mix of heavy mgs and rifle caliber mgs) operational when we went to war, the US Navy had settled on the .50 BMG as its fighter armament, and the early P-40s had two .50s and 4 .30cals. Things changed rapidly in 42 and after that.

[Pumpkin]

The Japanese did a masterful job of blending a radial engine onto a Ki-61 airframe originally designed for an inverted V-12.
The resulting Ki-100 was arguably the best Japanese fighter of the war.
If I remember correctly the FW-190 was used as an example for how to accomplish the conversion.