Hand-held Gun Wind Deflectors?

[sequoiaranger]

I hope I am not too far off base here, but I was thinking (always a dangerous thing)...

Those hand-held defensive machine guns on aircraft have to deal with a powerful wind vector acting on any projection. I would think it would require considerable additional effort to swing the gun into the wind. My thought was how to use the wind itself, properly deflected, to counteract this force to create a "dead air" manuverability for the gunner. Accordingly, he would not have to compensate for the increasing wind resistance as the gun (let's say a rearward-pointing one) swings out to the side.

So... could we put small vanes on the underside of the barrel tip(s) that would swing outward in graduated increments that would help "pull" the barrel into the windstream? That is, at low angles relative to the wind, not much deflection would be necessary, but as the gun barrel swung more toward 90 degrees, more deflection would be necessary.

I know the B-17 and B-24 had waist positions that had side-ways projecting guns that must have been hard to swing into the wind (and EASY to swing WITH the wind), but I never saw any with wind deflectors on them. Maybe it wasn't such a problem and the gunners merely adjusted.

But the reason I brought it up is that my upcoming Me-2262 jet bomber will have a hand-held rear gun position in the aft cockpit, and at the high speed of the jets, maybe SOME clever device such as I described would help the gunner track an enemy fighter.

Thoughts?

[rickshaw]

B-17s and I'd assumed other US bombers in WWII had wind deflectors just in front of the waist windows.  These were small flip out, angled vanes which forced the air sideways, out from the fuselage sides.  They aren't really very evident but I've seen photos of them.  They were created more for crew comfort than anything else.  Otherwise you have the freezing slip-stream coming in through the open waist position.  Some versions had glass windows but often the crew removed them because of vision needs.

You can see it in this picture:

[Weaver]

Related subject: when you see those Italian dorsal turrets with a peculiar V-pattern of tubes sticking out of them, what you're looking at is a gun and a wind deflector. The turrets were manually rotated, and as suggested, they were a pig to turn when in the P or S positions. The solution was an alloy tube the same size as the gun barrel which projected from the turret in the opposite direction and was linked to the elevation mechanism so that it raised or lowered with the gun. The result was pretty good apparently: however much force was acting on the gun barrel, depending on it's azimuth and elevation, there was an equal force acting on the deflector to balance it out.

Excellent pics and diagrams here: http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?8296-The-Italian-aircraft-armament./page2

[NARSES2]

Now I knew the Ialian "extra barrels" were a counterweight but assumed it was simply to counter the weight of the barrel, neber realised that they were to counter the slipstream. Thanks Harold 

[sequoiaranger]

>Related subject: when you see those Italian dorsal turrets with a peculiar V-pattern of tubes sticking out of them, what you're looking at is a gun and a wind deflector.<

Yes, I had thought I had seen some sort of Italian turret with protruding counterweights (which got me thinking of the whole subject), or in this case, counterwind. A much simpler workable idea, especially for a turret that sticks up in the airstream anyway.

In my case, where the guns will be encased in an elongated canopy, that "counterweight" idea won't quite work, so my "deflectors" might have to be employed.

Glad this is whiff-land where any cockamamie idea can be employed as long as the story is good!