Idea for WWII Planes with Guns in Wing Fins

[kitflubber]

I posted this previously in a P47 thread, but wanted more comments:

I had an idea last night for a WWII fighter augmentation (I applied it to a P-47, 'cause they're purdy): stubby vertical fins on the wings house the guns, and the guns have the ability to pivot up (and maybe down?) a few degrees.

The advantage would be in the classic round robin dog fight chase, one could simulate a tighter turning radius by pivoting the guns up, and closing the angle gap.

Thoughts?

[cthulhu77]

Makes sense to me...it would allow for a heavier armed fighter to be able to take on a lighter and more maneuverable plane.

[sequoiaranger]

That's nice if you consider a gun just a gun BARREL, but in reality, a functioning machine gun has to have breeches, ammunition feed from some sort of magazine,  a stable carriage/backstop for recoil, cooling mechanisms, and a way to get rid of expended shells. I don't see that your "fins" are capable of that, much less elevating and depressing (where is the mechanism for THAT?). THREE machine guns tilting upward in unison requires a lot more sophisticated mechanism than for just one. I don't see room for all that.  Also, one would need a three-dimensional ability of the guns to move, because the enemy would not necessarily be on the same geometric plane.

The top of a wing is "sacred" for airflow. That is, the lift comes from the top of the wing. That's why you see lots of add-on guns underneath, but NOT on top of wings. Too much interruption of the airflow on top would cause massive loss of lift. The only "proper" place for such movable guns would be in the nose (obviously not do-able in a single-engined aircraft), or a remote turret in the fuselage.

Not to be such a wet blanket, but in general, "clever ideas" that weren't seen used in the field usually aren't viable, or else they WOULD HAVE BEEN seen in the field.

Perhaps a better option would be some sort of fixed "Schrage Muzik" arrangement behind the pilot, where angled guns could be given a separate gunsight. There would be a certain point in the sky, relative to the firing aircraft, where the guns would be firing. If the pilot can maneuver his plane so that the enemy plane appears in that patch of sky, the pilot could set off the guns.

I had a half-scale B-29 decoy fighter whif (pic below) that had a ball-turret in the very front, that had 3-dimensional capability, for the same reasons you proposed your fins--tighten the "turn" of the guns even if the aircraft cannot, so as to bear on a tighter-turning enemy (or just follow a corkscrewing enemy without having to duplicate the movements).  Once again, however, no aircraft in WWII had such an arrangement, so my logical mind thinks that such a thing wasn't really feasible (no deterrent to ardent whiffers, however!).

[GTX]

Whilst a nice concept, in reality it would be a nightmare.  As sequoiaranger alluded to above, to implement such a system would require some interesting mechanisms.  Moreover, it would be heavily prone to jamming - if you read many pilots reports from WWII this was enough of a problem with standard fixed mounts in high-G combat.

The Germans did play with the idea of trainable gun packs/turrets but as far as I'm aware nothing eventuated.

Regards,

Greg

[John Howling Mouse]

Go for it!  You can incorporate a matching fin-stub directly under the wing as well so you can accommodate the room required at the aft end of the guns when all three tilt.

Don't worry about the aerodynamics atop the wing: if wingwalkers can walk all over a prop airplane's wing whiel Jaguars and Lightnings can carry fueltanks and missiles, you can get away with a single verticle fin-stub on each wing.  The flexibility of the cartridge chutes is not an issue either: plenty of various MG's have this feature.  Belt-fed is belt-fed (think of bomber turret guns and the rotating armament on Viet Nam era Hueys, etc.).

I think you're onto a cool idea.  If nothing else, imagine how it will rattle the limited faculties of the JMNs who will see it!

[Daryl J.]

Didn't the MiG-23/27 and Su-25 have that same idea, just in a pod and depressable to minus 20 degrees or so?

[Weaver]

Blackburn Bittern had guns in elevating side pods on the fuselage (bit like Me-410 waist guns but with no sideways movement).

There was a MiG-15/17 prototype with elevating guns under the standard nose, and another with side intakes and three 23mm in an elevating mounting.

A number of WWII proposals featured such guns. There was a Vickers project for a heavy fighter with a 40mm in a turret in the nose and eleaborate periscope sighting. There was also a single-seat Defiant variant with wing guns that could be depressed by a few degree for straffing.

[sotoolslinger]

Well lets go with both concepts here. As a gun guy with military experience( I have actually fired a Browning .50) but who has learned all his aerodynamics from this site. How about leave a couple of fixed guns in the wing and put 1 flexible upward pivoting gun on the bottom of the wing?  The mechanism would be simplified , the cases would eject downward and if it jams you still got fixed guns Also most of the P-47's I have done already have big ugly bomb pylons molded in so the modeling would be simple

[sagallacci]

Almost everyone considered downward aimable guns/cannons for ground attack during the War and there were a few for upward (to compensate for ballistics, rather than the fixed "Jazz music" installations) systems also kicked around. But remotely controlled flexible gun/s adds weight, complexity, and unreliability factors and would be not worth it. Especially compared to good training, better (and radar assisted) gunsights, and more maneuverable aircraft.

[kitnut617]

In BSP-Fighters & Bombers 1935-1950, there's a chapter on heavy fighters, there were a number of elevating projects mooted which has been described in the book.

[sequoiaranger]

>I doubt that if the engineers weren't so pre-occupied at the moment with trying to win a war, they may have come up with a concept such as a mobile gun battery in each wing. DO YOU GET IT ?<

The trouble is, that engineers on every continent were wracking their brain to come up with war-winning tools. ANYTHING that had some promise wouldn't have been summarily rejected. These people were SMART, and knew their stuff. With few exceptions, I think that THEIR brains could come up with the SAME things that our brains could, and we have no actual stake in the outcome (that is, no one is shooting at us, our family, or trying to starve us out, etc.). My instinct tells me that if such a "simple" and wonderful item as train-able wing guns were actually feasible, that they WOULD HAVE APPEARED on some aircraft, at least as an experiment. The fact that no such guns were even TRIED out by REALLY CONCERNED engineers says something to me---they were NOT anywhere near feasible. Even if such an idea was "before its time" during the WW II era (like the angled flight deck for carriers--WHY DIDN'T THEY THINK OF THAT EARLIER?), then AT SOME TIME they would have appeared. They haven't.

To be honest, I have no problem with stretching reality even beyond breaking points for "whifs". After all, "it's my fecking model" is the byword. What we are discussing here is if such trainable wing guns were anywhere near realm of reality. They weren't. But then again, the topic is weapons, real and IMAGINED.

That being said, there is SOME rationale for having FIXED guns in a downward/upward/sideways configuration, and then maneuvering the parent aircraft so that the space that the guns would be firing into would have the enemy aircraft in them. I used to know a quick-draw trick-shot artist who worked circuses, etc. He would throw all kinds of stuff into the air and shoot them from the hip. He said the trick was that he always drew and aimed into a particular "patch of sky", and his actual skill was being able to THROW the object into that "patch"!!

kitnut617--can you summarize the findings of the "elevating projects" which got them rejected?

[kitnut617]

kitnut617--can you summarize the findings of the "elevating projects" which got them rejected?

There's not quite as much as I thought there was, but there were two Specifications that covered it, F.6/39 and F.22/39.  Vickers came up with their Vickers Type 414 with a movable 40mm in the nose (it was a twin engined fighter as the chapter in question is called Twin Engined Fixed-Gun Fighters) and there's a 3-View drawing of it along with a photo of a model made by our own TsrJoe (Joe Cherrie).  There's also a detailed cutaway drawing of how the gun was connected to a range-finding sight with predictor fire control.  Both specifications seem to have just withered away as new requirements were drawn up because I haven't found anything to say what happened to it but the end result was the De Havilland Hornet much later.

[Weaver]

The Soviet Il-20 project for a Sturmovik successor (the one with the pilot sitting on top of the engine) had 4 x 23mm cannons in the wings which could be depressed to 23 deg. for ground-straffing. Various other fixed oblique gun schemes were considered. Story and photo in Soviet Secret Projects - Bombers since 1945.

The Russians have, of course, developed a whole range of jet-aircraft cannon pods with steerable cannons, including depressible ones that can be fitted facing forwards or backwards and oblique-firing ones controlled by a back-seater.

Boulton-Paul's P.94 turretless-Defiant project featured 12 x .303 wing guns which could be depressed 17 deg for ground attack work. I'm not clear if these were adjustable in flight or only on the ground. BSP Fighters and Bombers 1935-1950.

[jcf]

As originally designed the XP-54 was to have a nose that pivoted up and down,
as Steve pointed out this was to compensate for the ballistic characterisitics of
the heavy cannon armament.

Post-war various 'nose-turret' schemes were tried, including an Emerson turret that
took up the entire nose of an F9F Panther. The turret featured 360 rotation and the guns
were trainable to 20 degrees aft of vertical. The electronics to control the turret took up
an area in the belly "about the size of a kitchen stove with a big oven" -
to quote Tommy (tailspin turtle) Thomason.



Jon

[sequoiaranger]

...that people with greater knowledge than I of aircraft projects (post-WW II, where my expertise tapers off) have come up with some that had trainable front guns. I stand "corrected". Still, they were merely projects that weren't worthy enough to make it into operations or combat.

Exciting whif material, however!