Mirage III, Mirage V, Nesher, Dagger, and Kfir

[Mossie]

There's no reason why not, especially for some gorund pounding.  Would look good with a couple of pods & bombed up to the max.

[Maverick]

Whilst external pods 'gun up' a gunless aircraft, they have limited use within the air-air environment due to vibration, etc whilst on the pylon.  USAF experience in Vietnam with a poor showing of gun-pod equipped F-4Ds led directly to the introduction of the F-4E with its internal Vulcan.  As Simon suggested, though, more than adequate for ground attack.

Regards,

Mav

[Mossie]

Even in ground attack, they can be a problem.  IIRC the Harriers ADEN gun pods were not especially accurate & when they transitioned to the 25mm weapon for Harrier II's they never got them to a satisfactory standard & cut their losses (I think although you see the pods on later aircraft they contained some sort of greeblies).  Work reasonably for large targets or concentrations, not too good if you're targeting a single vehicle for instance.

[rickshaw]

I think you'll find that the Hunter's guns were deliberately left "inaccurate" in order to maximise the chance of a hit when attacking a bomber sized aircraft.  This of course didn't lend them to ground strafing where greater accuracy is preferred, particularly when firing in the vicinity of one's own troops.  Interestingly, with the GAU-8 the USAF went the opposite direction, preferring a less accurate weapon when used in the ground strafing role (the GAU-8 is notorious for "throwing" its rounds around a fairly large cone of impacts and actually lost out in a competition held with the 30mm DEFA cannon because of its lower accuracy ).

AIUI, the 25mm ADEN failed more because of problems with the weapon design than necessarily how or where it was mounted.  The few test weapons they did build were notoriously unreliable and perhaps even dangerous due to misalignment problems between the cylinder and the barrel.  Tony Williams suggest that it could well have been because of the insistence on using mechanical percussion ignition, rather than electrical ignition systems.

[Daryl J.]

Danish Kfir for the interceptor role instead of the F-104s.

[Weaver]

I think you'll find that the Hunter's guns were deliberately left "inaccurate" in order to maximise the chance of a hit when attacking a bomber sized aircraft.  This of course didn't lend them to ground strafing where greater accuracy is preferred, particularly when firing in the vicinity of one's own troops.  Interestingly, with the GAU-8 the USAF went the opposite direction, preferring a less accurate weapon when used in the ground strafing role (the GAU-8 is notorious for "throwing" its rounds around a fairly large cone of impacts and actually lost out in a competition held with the 30mm DEFA cannon because of its lower accuracy ).

AIUI, the 25mm ADEN failed more because of problems with the weapon design than necessarily how or where it was mounted.  The few test weapons they did build were notoriously unreliable and perhaps even dangerous due to misalignment problems between the cylinder and the barrel.  Tony Williams suggest that it could well have been because of the insistence on using mechanical percussion ignition, rather than electrical ignition systems.

Another little-known problem with all gatling guns is that the first few rounds always tend to have a wide dispersion. This is because all rounds are being fired from a barrel which is basically "going sideways" at a significant rate, thus giving them a sideways impulse on firing. The zeroing of the weapon has to compensate for this, but it can only do it for a given barrel speed, so the first few rounds, when the barrels are speeding up, go off the other way, because the zeroing compensation is too much for them.

[perttime]

when the barrels are speeding up, go off the other way, because the zeroing compensation is too much for them.

I've sometimes wondered about "acceleration rates" of gatling guns.

Apparently: "about half a second of spin-up time is required until the maximum rate of fire is reached."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver_cannon

Does a gatling gun also have to slow down before it stops firing?

[pyro-manic]

The barrels will keep spinning for a while after firing stops, but I don't know whether they're actually braked or just left to stop on their own (slowed by the resistance of the drive system I would imagine).

One feature I would have thought would be obvious would be a "spin-up" button for the pilot. When expecting to use the cannon, press the button to start the barrels rotating before firing. It would remove the rate of fire (and accuracy) issues, and would be easy to implement I would think. You'd need to engage/disengage the ammunition feed cycle, but it shouldn't be that difficult. Or am I missing something obvious?

[Sauragnmon]

It'd be overly complicating the situation.  Vehicle mounted miniguns have the dual trigger system, but in the aircraft application I think the start-up scatter effect is just considered acceptable since the plane carries several hundred rounds of ammunition.

[Daryl J.]

Graft the extra Kinetic Kfir nose onto an Eduard or HobbyBoss Mirage III.  Why?  Why not. 

[Weaver]

Just read that Denel in South Africa were studying a whole range of improved wings for the Cheetah, including one with wingtip AAM rails:

1 was the in-service Cheetah wing with dogtooth and leading edge extension outside the dogtooth, 2 and 3 were flown. Number 4 was to be the one with the wingtip stations that suffered due to the budget cuts and ending of the programme.

Info from "wilhelm" on this thread: http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?65417-Current-Mirage-III-5-50-Operations/page5 (post #147)

[DarrenP]

did always consider the Kfir C2 along with the Jaguar as a hunter replacement in an alt Rhodesia. Or possibly replacing Lebanonese Mirage III & Hunters in an Alt history

[kerick]

IIRC the GAU-8 was built to have a bit a wobble in the gun barrels to spread the bullets around. With a 75 round burst you only needed a few hits on top of a tank to get the desired effect. I think it was the "A-10 in Action" book I read this in.

[rickshaw]

The RAAF Mirage III story.  Interesting reading...

[AS.12]

The RAAF Mirage III story.  Interesting reading...

Thank you!  Finally found the origin of the IIIO designation from that link.

The answer was that since A was already taken up, and the Australian accent had the country as 'ORSTRIGHLIA', IIIO was the obvious choice.  A further comment was that the choice of IIIZ for the South African aircraft was quite simply Z for Zulus.

Also interesting that the Swiss were interested in the Avon for the III.  However parallel flight testing of the Avon 67 alongside the Atar 9K revealed the latter to be much superior, and additionally the Avon didn't even offer any significant advantage over the baseline Atar 9C.  Unfortunatley the 9K wasn't available by the September 1961 procurement deadline so the Australians went with the 9C.

TARAN and Airpass radar proposals were rejected by the Australian team in favour of Cyrano developments.