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Tyvargasm
shadow boxer
The Finger Painter & Master Ranter
in Zocalo v2.0
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpdE_4dIoNc[/url]
:D
:D
Comments
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtqRkkeiLYs[/url]
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpsJoA_tiBE[/url]
Sure wouldn't want to be in the business en of that.
you end up with diminishing returns on your rounds fired, you end up wasting alot of ammo, that's why the prodigious ROF of the original MG42 was not maintained in its offspring, the M-60 et al. There's also the issue of belt twist and feed jams, when your gun inhales rounds at that sort of rate you need to be scrupulous in controlling the feeding belt. Most modern insanely fast machine guns and cannons have closed belt feeds which guide the rounds into the chamber
The M60 has a lower ROF, not because a high one is undesireabl, but because it had a number of mechanical problems in and of itself because we didn't adapt the MG42's mechanisms to fire then or current standard US ammunition correctly. Additionally, the MG42 was a crew served weapon requiring 2 or 3 people to operate effectively. By cutting down on the ROF, they cut down on the wear and tear on the gun, and in turn, made it from a crew operated weapon to one that could be used by a single soldier.
The GAU-8's ROF was slowed down mainly due to wasted ammo. Not that the ammo wasn't hitting the target, but because it was, literally, overkill.
Believe it or not, high ROF's are actually desireable. There are a number of prototype weapons out there, some in development, some dropped for political/economic reasons, that all have extremely high ROFs. This is for the reasons I mentioned above. The high ROF allows you to put a number of rounds on target before the recoil hits and throws your aim off. The most striking of these was the HK G11. Fired caseless ammunition and later prototypes had a ROF of in the neighborhood of 2000 rounds per minute when fired on 3 round burst mode. (info can be found here [url]http://www.hkpro.com/g11.htm[/url] )
In the case of the A-10 besides the issue of overkill with the ammo, there is recoil. The thrust generated by the GAU-8 equals roughly the output of one of its engines. It affects how the plane handles.
[B] However, for the reasons stated above, it's bark was worse than it's bite, so to speak. [/B][/QUOTE]
Well, I'm not sure I'd go that far. ;) It had some drawbacks but this things bite was still the most vicious in its class.
Also how exactly is the velocity of the gun calculated I don't see references to Joules or whatever it is. A friend has asked me about this and I have no answers.
the engine thrust myth is exactly that, a myth, there is even a deliberate electronic adjustment to engine thrust to compensate for the cannons recoil. Yes the thrust is the same as the recoil, the difference is, the cannon has enough ammo for a few tens of seconds, the engines can keep up thier thrust for many, many hours. Nice romantisism, but not exactly great ballistic science.
Perhaps I should have specified... "Greater rates of ROF have diminishing returns when you're using MG's on RnR (Rock and Roll = full auto)." The only thing that changes that is perhaps the introduction of a fixed pintle mount and tracer ammo... which only makes the barrel burn problem worse..:)
I have read articles about some pistols designed to fire a 3rd burst, in the same space as other pistols cycle one... the idea being, as suggested above, keeping the gun on target before recoil becomes a factor.
[B]uhm.. actually... the A-10 is notorious for splashing rounds, pilots walk rounds over the target, wasting shitloads in the process, the 4500RPM selection was removed for this reason.
the engine thrust myth is exactly that, a myth, there is even a deliberate electronic adjustment to engine thrust to compensate for the cannons recoil. Yes the thrust is the same as the recoil, the difference is, the cannon has enough ammo for a few tens of seconds, the engines can keep up thier thrust for many, many hours. Nice romantisism, but not exactly great ballistic science.
. [/B][/QUOTE]
Actually the rate of fire on the A-10 is 3900 rpm, not 3000. Originally the A-10 had 2 settings. 4200 rpm and 1800 rpm. The 1800 setting was removed because it was deemed innefective at taking out targets in one pass and the 4200rpm setting was toned down slightly to 3900. Fairly insignificant difference is recoil but conserves a little bit off ammo and is just about as effective. The gun recoil myth is that the the gun output equals both engines. It is not a myth that it equals slightly over the full output of one. The gun produces 45kN of recoil. The max output of both engines is 80kN. It does have some effect on handling. During development muzzle brakes and ways to reduce recoil further where considered but it would make things more expensive and it was decided to learn to control it instead. Properly fired it will have little effect since you don't just leave the trigger held down until the gun is out off ammo. If not mistaken the gun will deplete the ammunition supply in 18 continuous seconds.
[B]Don't know if this was mentioned but the MG42 had a tendency to overheat and was constructed using ball bearings so technical repair was difficult.
[/B][/QUOTE]
Yeah there is no doubt with such a rate of fire it can overheat. But that is why they designed it with such a toolless simple barrel swap mechanism. Flip a lever at the back of the barrel and the barrel shroud and barrel flips out to the side. I don't think the operator even has to touch it. It probably slides out if you tilt it down. Slide in new one and close. Takes a couple of seconds.
Don't know exactly about its difficulty of repair but the MG42 was simpler and more reliable than the MG34 is replaced, even though its construction was far less refined and cheaper. Originally the german army found the MG42 appalling. It was cheaply and fairly crudely made of stamped parts resembling more of something the russians would make. The MG34 was a finely made gun. Machined parts and refined design but as a result turned out to be more complicated to maintain and more unreliable in battlefield conditions. Not to mention much more expensive and difficult to produce at mass scale. The MG42 quickly proved to be the superior weapon.
This is actually standard proceedure when strafing a target from an aircraft. The flightpath required to attack in such a manner, isn't streight and as a result makes you much harder to hit with ground fire.
It was also found that, if you fly straight at a target to put alot of rounds on it, then pull up and away, that you'll catch your own ricochet's believe it or not.
As a result, walking your rounds onto target like that's been pretty much standard air to ground attack proceedure since WWII
As for the MG 42, SB raises alot of good points actually. Its rate of fire was just too damn high, and it burned through barrels and ammunition to fast to be constantly in service.
Lets put it this way, a typical german squad with its k98s and MG42, was actually exceeded in volume of fire by an american squad with garands and 2xBARs, and the american squad could typicaly carry more ammo (cause they didnt have to carry extra barrels for the BAR)
Even the MG3 if you take in account ammo changes and the need to swap barrels every 150 rounds (which is insanely low) has only an effective sustained rate of fire of about 250 rounds per minute.
If you look at the other two essentially ubiquetious medium machineguns out there, the FN-MAG and the PKM, the FN-MAG is selectable between around 700 rpm and 950, and the PKM does 650. These lower rates of fire cut down the need for barrel changes as frequently in the MG3, you actually can have a higher sustained ROFs from the MAG and PKM then from the MG3 (let alone the MG42)
Mah Deuce is real hard to argyah with...:)
50 cal beats 7.62..:D