WW2: biggest operational gun in the sky?

"Grindintosecond" (Grindintosecond) 08/13/2016 at 17:48 • Filed to: planelopnik oppositelock

5

9

Many planes evolved to kill ground targets during WW2, but when it came to building a sky tank, there were a few really awesome examples from both Axis and Allied sides.

From small to big, we will start with the 37mm shell.

At 30mm, a well placed single shot could take down a B-17. At 37mm, Bell aircraft had to remove the engine in their P-39 and put it in the back to make room! They thought it would be the best fighter but as it turned out, superchargers worked better in P-51's at altitude so they decided to try it on tanks. It was awesome against tanks.

It held near 40 shots and paired well with flavors of .50 caliber machine gun.

The Stuka dive bomber was no slouch either when it came to guns. It had a pair of 37mm guns but only had 12 shots each of tungsten rounds. A good marksman was very handy with these but only if the nasty handling, slow and heavy plane wasn’t shot down first.

Skipping ahead we can see the value early on in the war that heavy guns had against the tanks, so let’s talk up the Hawker Hurricane and see the same thing with a pair of 40mm’s to kill tanks. We can also mention the experimental Me-262's 50mm BK5 Panzer tank gun but that unbalanced the plane and wasn’t very operational, so we should check out the British and their Mosquito sub-hunter.

What? Isn’t it a fast balsa wood bomber? Well, it was until they discovered the 57mm semi-auto Molins 6-pounder gun.

The 6-pound shell it fired would penetrate a ship’s hull from 1,500 yards away....2 feet under the water line. This gun was standard on all model XVIII mosquitos for their U-boat hunters. Get your Airfix model today.

Why put 1,800 pounds of gun into a plane? Well, the Tiger tank was introduced shortly after this gun was produced and it was impervious to 6 pounder shells. But U-boats don’t really have much armor so that oughta work. Oh, speaking of using larger bombs for ground attack . . . instead of bombing . . .

The B25H.

A bomber is nice. A fast medium bomber that’s great at lower altitudes is better, but let’s put 4x .50 cal machine guns in the nose AND pair that with a 75mm cannon. Now we’re talkin’ bold, meaty flavor. The trick here is manpower. This really was an airborne tank. The navigator had to reload the gun after each shot. It was very nice against tanks. But, it wasn’t the best solution.

Enter a semi-automatic 75mm gun pod on the Heinkel HS-129

The painting at the top of the article gives a good idea of what we’re dealing with. If anyone thought the 57mm Mosquito bomber idea was great and the 75mm Mitchell bomber was better, put semi-auto into the idea and we have a completely mental presentation. War is a bit mental though. Have a demonstration of what this gun did.

(Youtube yo!)

Now, That’s just an anti-tank ground-based piece of artillery. The Germans built this gun with a twelve-round rotating ammo canister and turned it into about the biggest revolver ever made. Imagine that. An airframe bending shot every two seconds? It was so good, that !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! killed 80 tanks in the HS-129. I can’t imagine setting off explosions under my chair to kill a tank in front of me.

That sums up the OPERATIONAL use of giant guns in planes. Were an engineer to travel back in time and build a WW2 version of the A-10, the HS-129 would be about the closest.

HONERABLE MENTIONS:

Experiments brought some fun and failures. Junkers thought that Heinkel couldn’t have all the fun and put the same 75mm gun on their JU-88. But, over a stumbling walk after many bottles of champagne, The CEO of Junkers, Hugo “You-Go” Junkers, thought, “Wait zeminute. JU-88 haz number 88, and Tigertankshave 88mm guntz...” and they thought to match the two. So for a while, they tried to make a tiger tank gun fly but nobody knows if it actually was built.

Oh, Italians love pairing things with other things on the table. So, the Piaggio P.108 bomber wins the award for the most material ever spent to attack a ground target. Before they wised up and built supermodel type planes like the P.180 Avanti, they tried a four-engined bomber plus a man-loadable 102mm gun in the nose firing 30 pound rounds at ships, instead of torpedoes, thinking it would be better that the job.

(warbirdphotographs.com)

At 50-60 rounds aloft, that’s probably 5,000 pounds of ammunition.

Oh, sounds fairly delicious. Like a giant Spaghetti dinner with Mike Tyson donkey-punching you in the nuts for dessert. Yeah, that makes about as much sense. Few were built.

Dusty Ventures > Grindintosecond 08/13/2016 at 17:59

0

Great read! Just for clarification though, are you calling this the biggest gun in the sky during WWII, or the biggest gun in the sky period?

Grindintosecond > Dusty Ventures 08/13/2016 at 18:02

0

Thank you very much, Dusty. I had a good time writing it.

Well, it does start off the title with “WW2:.....” So I would assume ww2 guns in airborne platforms during ww2.

Dusty Ventures > Grindintosecond 08/13/2016 at 18:05

0

I didn't know if you were saying the biggest guns to be put in aircraft all happened during WWII

Grindintosecond > Dusty Ventures 08/13/2016 at 18:07

1

OH! no, this is just during WW2. The 105mm howitzer in the AC-130 is the biggest so far I think, or we could compare the 30mm gatling in the A-10 as far as installed gun + ammo drum size.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > Dusty Ventures 08/13/2016 at 18:45

1

The AC-130H has a 105mm Howitzer sticking out the side

Dusty Ventures > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 08/13/2016 at 18:45

1

Believe me, I’m well aware. My friend flew them in combat

LongbowMkII > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 08/13/2016 at 18:56

0

I don't know how you could shoot something like that and NOT be a maniac. I want to see the trigger on that gun.

Viggen > LongbowMkII 08/13/2016 at 19:25

0

It’s no different from most aircraft flight sticks.

Viggen > Grindintosecond 08/13/2016 at 19:26

0

More than anything else I was glad to see Ian and Forgotten Weapons pop up in this topic.