Why did Spitfires change their guns? Ft. Jonathan Ferguson 

Okay

Best regards to you and your friend, butndo you know which variant that was? I only thought the F4U-4 series had cannons, specifically F4U-4B/F4U-4C….I think there was also the F4U-1C, but I dont think that was in service….

God bless Mr Whitney. May he rest in peace.

Interesting as I know the Japanese fighters where quick and turned well. Campared to the German fighters, if I recall the fighters where not as well armoured, and I can see them when being hit, rxplode, not sure the German fighters where as easy to down..of course it depends on which fighter was doing what to the enemy, as well

I believe the Japanese had a wholly different design philosophy when it came to their fighters. Very little weight (meaning very little armor) and at least early on, no self-sealing fuel cells. So you can probably imagine the result of a well-placed 20mm HEI-T round on a Zero.

that guy is famous for who he is he's also obviously done stuff like react to stuff like firearms from games and such

Thank you so much for saying so 😊

He is not esy to listen to, too loud

British presenters are, in general, of the highest caliber. They are educated and articulate. I wish my fellow Americans would follow their examples.

Yes , I had never heard of wing types tailored to the armament they would carry . A Discovery for me .

Why was it called "Ma Deuce" & what does it mean...?

@@user-xq2zn8bu9q It is a slang alternate of the base US army designation for it, which is M2 Browning, granted there are a range of variants which add on specifics of the configuration.

@SnowmanTF2 Thank you Snowman & what a gun. I would love to fire one. Also, have you seen the video 📹 by 'The fat electrician' about the Browning 50 cal...? 😁

It was a slang shortened version of the MOD Deuce or modification 2 which is how the US names different variants of the same weapon. I’m sure the fact that it is an unmatched powerhouse of a weapon that call keep you safe may have contributed to the “Ma” at the same time.

I was never in the armed services and only discharged full bore weapons on a private Section One licence before the UK ban following Dunblane. A mate of mine was in the Irish TA and said that on the range his compatriots were used to 7.62 and 5.56 but when 50 cal was being used everyone present was grinning. A seriously intimidating piece of kit.

Guy Martin did a reconstruction using the GPMG. It's close enough to the .303 round to make an accurate representation of the damage the .303 round was capable of. Worth checking out.

I mean it’s powerful against people, just not that effective against machinery

Please pass the salt! 😉

Um, a .303 is similar to a 30-06 of the era, or .308 NATO 7.62mm. It can penetrate 1/4 inch or 6mm of hardened steel. It will easily go thru an inch or two of solid aluminum (wing spar caps). The BF-109 was build very light, as was the spitfire. Both were susceptible to rifle-caliber fire as long as it was in great enough volume. The 109s 12.7mm machine guns, packed tightly in the nose were reasonably devastating given a well-aimed volley, and sufficient lead and track to land a constant stream of fire into the E/AC. But having 8x machine guns converging at 300-500yd where you are firing them in a wide plane and the E/AC is also a wide plane, having similar bank angle to your own while in pursuit, means absolutely covering the E/AC in a large volume of fire that indiscriminately punctures fuel tanks, hydraulic lines, coolant and oil tanks, lines, or radiators, oxygen tanks, radios, and of course wing spar caps and webs, or anything else that is not armored appropriately. More rounds on target mean more chance or odds that the target will suffer major systems damage.

@@jj4791 Exactly. People also forget how few shells the Me109E carried (just 60 rounds per gun) and low muzzle velocity of the weapon.

Britain had very reliable .303 machine guns and a lot of them at start of WW2, as well as millions upon millions of bullets and the infrastructure to produce a lot more very rapidly. The number of bullets in the air at any one time from 8 .303 guns meant that the largely untrained pilots taking part in battle of Britain could still get a hit, and a hit with a few .303 is better than a miss with a 20mm bullet. many of the aces of WW2, including the Polish who punched well above their weight in RAF would get to within a few hundred feet of the enemy aircraft before hitting the fire button. Cannons were better for ground attacks on trains and vehicles later in the war,.

@@chrissmith2114 Britain had very reliable Browning MG's made under license.

Later in the war, that is all the Americans used.

Probably because Luftwaffe did put armor on most of their aircraft. Depending on the aircraft and mission the armor could be substantial. It was one of the reasons the Luftwaffe was so successful in the beginning of the war. Those .303 rounds just basically ricocheted off the armor.

Funny those are also good in war thunder

I don't know if I believe it was up to him. I mean, feel free to find me some real sources but I'd be hard pressed to believe he didn't just take what the logistics guy gave him, hell he was the pilot, he wasn't loading ammo.

Yeah bit annoying that he didn’t show a 303. Sure 7.62 (is that what it was?) is equivalent but consider your audience eh.

I guess it was a 30.06 not a.7.62 definitely not .303 which are rimmed cartridges not ejector grooved like the one shown. it might have been 7.92 Mauser the german rifle caliber machine gun round, bound to be a few of those knocking about in the war museum @@82726jsjsufhejsjshshdjso

Yes I just spotted that straight away; I think it's a 30-06 rather than a 7.92 x 57

It is definitely a U.S. .30-06 round.

Would be nice to be the correct cartridge, but for the purpose of showing scale it does the job.

Three bmg's per wing on the Hurricane.

lESS EFFECTIVE ?????? Dick Audet 5 enemy in 7 minutes and that was only Cannon

The Hurricane had eight .303 Brownings, the Mk IIB had twelve. The Hurribomber only had six as one had to be removed from each wing due to the fitting of the bomb racks.@@richardalexander5758

I really admire the two previous commenters ability to completely misinterpret your comment in every way possible

People do have strange ideas on this subject, it's true. Rather than go on at length, if anyone is really interested in this subject they should buy, beg, borrow or steal a copy of THE GUNS OF THE ROYAL AIR FORCE 1939-1945 by G.F. WALLACE who was there at the time.

Still .303 is too small.

20mm is 36 times more powerful

Well said

@@Conserpov But much fewer rounds, more bullets are more better i.e. why 38 cal rifles were switched to 22 cal. i.e. more bullets' equal more kill, if that works on the ground why not in the air? Inquiring minds want to know?

@@stevemitz4740 You cannot replace 1 cannon with 36 machineguns. And even if you did, they would still not be equivalent, because cannon round has much larger effective target area. And the correct analogy would be .22 LR, not .223

Think how few years separate the Wright Flyer and the space shuttle

Doubles its power, doubles its weight, ~doubles its range, increases speed by ~33% and by war's end not one single part would fit on original Spitfire... was it still a Spitfire? =-)

@@w8stralGOOD TRY FAIL. Too right it was Same wing from F Mk1A to MkXVI Source Morg and Shack That is how good it was, you had nothing like it.

The Mustang could pull a higher G than the Thunderbolt that's why it was picked as the fighter escort for the bombers. Eric Winkle Brown did the testing.

Actually the P47 was a capable fighter, very much so, if you look at the loss rate, of the overall Thunderbolt loss, only 1 out of 4 was thru air to air, the rest where through flak damage and low level straffing. The P47 where around when Germany still had some of its best pilots,alive and no plane had survivorbility like the Thunderbolt, build around a lead bathtub and undeneath the supercharger had a sheath of steel protecting it..some good stories from actual p47 pilots on here explaining the virtue

The most significant difference between the P-47 and P-51 was the P-51 had a higher controllable terminal velocity. The P-51 could fight the Me109 and Fw190 on even terms and match the speed of the Me262 in a dive. The key number is “critical Mach number” where the airflow over the aircraft exceeds the speed of sound with consequent loss of control. P-51C - 0.84 Mach P-38 - 0.65 Mach P-47C - 0.69 Mach P-47N - 0.83 Mach Spitfire XIV - 0.89 Mach Hawker Tempest - 0.83 Mach Yak 3 - 0.76 Mach Me109F - 0.80 Mach Me109G - 0.78 Mach Me262 - 0.86 Mach calculated but 0.84 demonstrated. Gloster Meteor - 0.83 Mach demonstrated. Bell X-1 - 0.88 demonstrated.

The P-47 was also a very good ground attack aircraft due to its air cooled radial engine. The engine could take more damage than the Merlins in the Spitfires and Mustangs. The P-47 was a good dogfighter at high altitudes to the engine having less of a performance drop off.

@@patttrick Sigh,, The P-47 like the Spitfire evolved over time. The P-47 had better performance in dive, roll, and zoom climb. The Spitfire was better in a turn. Speed went back and forth. The P-47 with the Paddle blade prop and even later with MW injection could outclimb just about anything at altitude. At high altitudes, it was very hard to match. The reason that the P-51 took over the majority of escort missions was simple. Range..The P-51 had a longer range. Escort missions are broken up into segments. Often Spitfires would take the early segment of the mission and protect the strike while it was forming up. The P-47 took over the next leg of escort. They had the advantage that after the P-51 took over the P-47s were free to perform ground attack. This whole better is really just silly. If you are an ME-109 pilot or FW-190 pilot and you have a good pilot Mustang, Thunderbolt, Lightning, or Spitfire on your tail it is going to be a rough day. All of those aircraft were very capable aircraft but each had its advantages and disadvantages.s I would argue that if Merlin engines were the gating factor for production it would have made sense to drop the Spitfire and use them for the Mustang. But they were not the gating factor. Just as if the R-2800 production numbers were the gating factor for aircraft production then it would have made sense to reduce or stop the production of B-26s, P-47s, and F4U and use them to make more F6Fs. Not because it was the best fighter but because it was the best naval fighter for the war in the Pacific. But the US managed to stamp them out like toasters. So any comparison you see in a comment will be dumb. You would have to pick a time in history, the model and production series, and the specific conditions to even start to make a realistic comparison. So just sit back and be happy the P-47, Spitfire, P-51, P-40, Hurricane, and so on managed to beat Germany, Japan, and Italy and we get to see such beautiful aircraft at museums and airshows. P.S. I know I am weird but I actually like the looks of the Hurricane more than the Spitfire. The asymmetrical layout of the rad and oil cooler on the early marks just bugged me. The Hurricane just strikes me as an honest and reliable airplane. Kind of like the P-40 and the F4F do. That nice thick wing and wide landing gear just seem so right to me. But that is just a matter of taste. I happen to love the P-38 and I wish it had gotten the testing early on and had received upgraded paddle blade props. The poor P-38 kept the same prop blade size from the early models making 1,000 HP up to the latter models making 1700 hp. It was more expensive than the P-47 and P-51 and was loved in the Pacific and southern theaters so they didn't want to stop production when the P-51 and P-47 were doing the job. But you have got to love the SR-71s grandfather :)

Well dick Audet did OK Cannon only 5 enemy in 8 minutes

Good comment. It generally comes down to "show me the threat and I'll tell you the weapon I need". Personally, as a long time combat flight simmer, I think the USA is a good compromise. It's VERY hard to hit a fighter, (In any decent flight sim), with a single 30mm, but when you do....... The solution is to "do a Hartmann" and get very, very close. This is, of course, only relevant to computer games. the real world must be quite different.

Ironically the British were most threatened by bombers early in the war, 1940-41. At that time their fighters only had the .303 machine guns. I always wondered why the British didn’t opt for the .50 cal guns from the outset. Surely BSA could have produced the larger caliber Brownings without the need to scale them down. I’m certain it’s similar to why the Americans didn’t use the British 17 pounder in their Sherman tanks. A bit of logistical complication and equal measure short sightedness.

@@Chiller11 I believe the reason for not going with .50s at the start is because they had the 20mm guns by then and they were just trying to get them to work

@@Chiller11 It was said a Panzer was capable of taking out 10 Shermans. The problem was there were always at least 11 Shermans.

@@FelixstoweFoamForge Correct. All down to the threat. Shoot at an armoured bomber with .303s. You'll make lots of holes without killing it. Shoot at a fast-turning fighter with cannon. You'll be shooting far less rounds. Perhaps all of them will miss. Bader favoured .303s. He told his pilots, "Get as close as you can before opening fire. When you think you're much too close, get even closer".

Cannon did Not having jamming issues after Gun heating pipes were fitted from the Mk II on.

Ive only done very accurate simulations but the difference between machine guns and cannons when they actually work is huge. One shot from a cannon can devastate and finish an enemy plane, whereas its not an exaggeration to say when shooting bombers with things like .303 machine guns it can just go on and on and on with no catastrophic damage. The mix of .50 with cannons is perfect. The effect is measured by the weight (in kilos or pounds) of metal fired at the enemy per second, if you look at the difference between .303 and cannons by that measurement it really highlights the difference. Then you have the explosive capabilities of cannon ammunition as well. Things like hurricanes being great gun platforms but relatively delicate planes in their building materials were wasted without cannons. A lot of them were mainly interceptors concentrating on bombers, and the amount of time they would have to be on a bombers tail receiving fire while they used standard .303 was extremely risky. Being able to make passes with cannons made it so much safer for them. The beaufighter was an extremely effective aircraft at what it did (maritime missions and ground attack). Not maneuverable at all, but the amount of cannons it could carry meant a few second burst from it would obliterate the target

Thanks Nick

I think you're right

@@user-vg3yc6gk5f Yes he is. The 303 has flange at the back (there is probably a better name, rim maybe). Unless there was a special air version but given one reason they wanted to use the 303 was commonality of round that wouldn't make sense.

You are correct!

I've spoken to ex RAF pilots who were NCO's during the battle and have corresponded with some, all gone now of course and nearly all said they rarely had any off duty contact with their officers unless they were at dispersal and at readiness. Different messes, different cookhouses and definitely never in the pub together. It was only later on with the attrition of war taking the lives of the public school educated officers that the surviving "lower class" pilots were promoted and treated with some equality. The RAF was definitely the most snobbish of the armed forces.

I'm imagining a bunch of Jacob Rees-Moggs as CO's.

@@garryferrington811Ha Ha Ha. Yeah, they'd fit the picture. I had pictured Monty Python's sketch "Upper class twit of the year" characters.

@@fus149hammer5In the documentary, one of the NCO's described how he and one other had to share a barrack hut with several CO's. One of the CO,s tied a piece of cord across the hut then hung some old blankets over it to partition them. Often, snide derogatory remarks were aimed at them from the other side by these hooray Henrys, never face to face.

NCOs were the backbone. I recall reading that the commissioned Douglas Bader had his armament synchronised much closer than regulation settings for a harder concentration of hits.

I totally agree, “if looks could kill” the Spitfire would not need guns .

The MkIIa Hurricane carried 12 Browning .303s

😅

There was also the A/N-M3 which was used in the early jet fighters (as well as in some later marks of the P-51D). It was developed late in WW2 and had a rate of fire at 1200 rounds per minute, which was greater than its predecessor, the A/N-M2. It's still in service today, it's known as the AN/M3, GAU-21/A, and M3P if I recall correctly. It was/is also mounted in gun pods as well (the XM14/SUU-12/A gun pod).

Why’s your gun sluggish? Did you check the headspace and timing? You’re a NoGo at my station.

@@Nghilifa Correct, but I wanted to restrict my comments to the WW2 era gun as that seemed to be the limits of the discussion

Cool info, but I didn’t know what half of it was. Just don’t tell me

It is obvious that he doesn't know his weapons and ammunition very well.

It's very good. The RAF museum and tank museum are also a short trip from London and great.

Then let me who how you can own a gun in the UK the same as you could in America.

At the time (1934) the 0.50 had a slower rate of fire than it did in WW2 so it was not thought worth the benefit as each gun weighed three times as much as a .303.

@@ericadams3428 is that the Browning or Vickers gun? My source does say which machine guns they looked at.

@@ericadams3428 Not to mention the weight of the ammunition, which was much heavier as you'd imagine after seeing .303 next to .50. Also, the .50 ammunition used much more brass, lead, and powder than the .303. These materials were hardly growing on trees in Bletchley Park at the time.