Comment by gorgoiler
1 year ago
My fun Mosquito fact that I like to share: there was a variant adapted with a 57mm artillery piece, the “QF six pounder”:
https://www.combatreform.org/cannonfighter.htm
(Good photos, odd article.)
It carried 24 rounds and the pilot said it felt like the aircraft slowed down every time they fired a round. (Which I can’t believe is true but it’s a worthy bon not from my late grandfather who was an engineer in the war.)
I'm fairly certain the de Havilland Aircraft Museum, located on the northern outskirts of London, used to have one of those cannons. It wasn't mounted, but was on display with the loading mechanism and magazine.
I've checked their website[1] but can't seen any mention of it. The museum looks a bit more neat & tidy than I remember it looking, so perhaps they've reduced what's on display.
[1] https://www.dehavillandmuseum.co.uk/
Yea assuming muzzle velocity 1000m/s and 3kg projectile weight and 6000kg aircraft weight, conservation of momentum would put the slowdown at 0.5m/s, hardly noticable at cruising speed I think. Though the jerk would most likely be noticable.
> The GAU-8 Avenger fires up to sixty one-pound bullets a second. It produces almost five tons of recoil force, which is crazy considering that it’s mounted in a type of plane (the A-10 “Warthog”) whose two engines produce only four tons of thrust each.
From: https://what-if.xkcd.com/21/
I'm not surprised at all that it slowed down. The A-10 slows down when firing as well, the gun produces more thrust than the engine.
Odd is putting it lightly, it's like the author has never heard of air defense systems
Wikipedia has a short, focused section on the 57mm-cannon Mosquito variant, starting 3 paragraphs down here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito#Strike_(...
The canon was an anti-tank gun ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_QF_6_pounder ), the primary intended target was U-boats, and they added quite a bit of armor (to help with AA fire from uncooperative U-boats).
It doesn't sound like the cannon-armed Mosquito was (at the time) seen as successful. OTOH, I'd guess that the Allies having both good radar, and ~350MPH clouds of cannon-armed Mosquitos, would have imposed some pretty miserable operational limitations on the Germans.
Dif you not see the article arguing for two seat manned aircraft with cannons in the modern era? Claiming they could shoot down migs with flechette cannons?
Aircraft with such big guns were perhaps not a success, but aircraft with radar, bombs and depth charges became a deadly menace for u-boats.