Airborne cannons
Airborne cannons (aerogun) - Automatic guns, adapted or specially designed for use on aircraft.
For the gun, installed on the aircraft, presented a number of claims; the most important of them:
a) the minimum weight and dimensions,
b) reliability
c) ease of fire control in flight.
Installation aviapushek may be movable and fixed.
The mobile unit may be a turret or tower; it requires amplification of the fuselage, which is installed on the turret, which leads to a significant increase in the weight of the aircraft.
Fixed installations are the following:
- Installation guns on the wing area of the aircraft is, sour cream screw;
- Installation area for the gun, sour cream screw, shooting through the screw with the synchronizer;
- aerogun to install the V-shaped engine of this design to the gearbox and the hub was the central opening of sufficient diameter for the free passage of the projectile. The gun is mounted in the collapse of the cylinders. This scheme is the most profitable in terms of the distribution of power and reduce the impact of drag, though it requires a special design of the motor.
Aerogun enters into service is not only destroyers and cruisers, and heavy bombers.
English heavy bomber "Handley Paige Harrow" is armed with a gun 4.
Characteristics of air guns
The most common are aircraft guns Oerlikon and Madsen caliber 20 23 mm mm.
Fire from guns Aircraft carried:
a) fragmentation projectiles for firing at the planes that do not have a powerful Phony;
b) anti-armor - tanks and armored vehicles;
c) fragmentation-tracer;
d) armor-piercing tracer;
d) incendiary.
The fragmentation projectile has a thin-walled body, inside of which a blasting explosive is placed - TNT or Melinite. In the head part there is a screwed-in sensitive fuse, which provides an explosion of the projectile when it encounters linen or metal skin of the aircraft. “During an explosion, the projectile destroys the target by the actions of explosive gases and splinters that hit the crew, tanks, radiator and water-cooling jackets of the engine cylinders. In the plain or metal lining of the 20 — 37-mm projectile forms an inlet opening greater than the diameter of the projectile 3 —— 4 times. The exit hole has an irregular shape, the diameter of which in the 20-mm projectile explosion in the metal lining is about 200 mm, and in the plain fabric it is about 500 mm \ when the 37 ~ mm projectile explodes, the size of the outlet opening is twice that. Metal parts and fastenings are only significantly damaged by a direct hit or explosion in the immediate vicinity.
Actions high-explosive shells are given.
For the decommissioning of the engine air cooling need two direct hit in 20 mm and one direct hit in 37 45 or mm.
For damage to the engine cooling water is considered sufficient one direct hit of any caliber or rupture 20-mm! projectile distance 1,4 m, a 37-mm - 7 m.
Fragmentation-tracer, except explosive and filled with tracer composition;
to this end, its internal cavity is divided into two parts. Inflammation occurs when the tracer composition of the shot; powder gases ignite it by incendiary composition placed outside the shell. Sensitive fuzes, like shrapnel shells, screwed to the front of the projectile.
Fragmentation tracers prefer to samovzryvayuschimisya (self-destruct) after burn-tracer composition in order to eliminate the defeat of their troops on the ground.
The armor-piercing and armor-piercing tracer have a solid head portion, designed to strike a solid obstacle. In order not to weaken the warhead fuze mounted in the bottom of shell: ". Tracer composition is placed in a holder projecting from the housing.