The first thing we decided to start with was aircraft machine guns. Yes, if we talk about an airplane, then it is a very complex thing and consists of many parts. Engines and armaments will be our focus.
Let's start with weapons and rifle-caliber machine guns. It is understandable, because the machine gun was the main one. And large-caliber machine guns and cannons are already secondary. Although no less interesting.
But at the time of the outbreak of World War II, the bulk of fighters of all countries cheerfully rattled with machine guns of rifle calibers. Yes, those who had guns had guns. But a rifle-caliber machine gun was an indispensable and indispensable attribute of that time. So let's start with them.
On purpose, we will not divide them into best / worst. Let's do it you
So here we go!
1. ShKAS. the USSR
ShKAS is considered by many to be an achievement of the national design weapons school. And not without reason. Yes, over the years that have passed since the creation of the machine gun, the number of legends and tales about ShKAS is simply amazing, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
But we will talk about legends another time, but now we will note that indeed, in some parameters and design solutions, the machine gun was more than outstanding. The incredible rate of fire at that time was provided precisely by the drum cartridge feeding system invented by Shpitalny. The main majority of weapon assemblies were designed by the Tula gunsmith engineer of the pre-revolutionary school Irinarkh Andreevich Komaritsky.
The machine gun of Shpitalny and Komaritsky was seriously different from the classic schemes of that time. The main highlight is that the developers were able to turn the main inconvenience of the outdated domestic cartridge with a flange-rim into an advantage.
It was thanks to the presence of the flange that the cartridge could be rolled along the helical groove of the drum and it was removed from the tape and fed in 10 shots.
ShKAS was a universal machine gun. By 1934, the wing and turret versions were mastered, and from 1938 the synchronous model began to be installed on the aircraft.
The use of a synchronizer somewhat reduced the rate of fire, up to 1650 rounds per minute, the wing and turret versions had a rate of fire of 1800-1850 rounds per minute. But on the synchronous version, to compensate, the barrel was lengthened by 150 mm, which gave better ballistics.
2. Browning 0.30 M2-AN. USA
It is a pity, of course, that John Browning did not live up to the moment when his brainchild began a solemn procession across countries and continents. But Browning died in 1926, and the machine gun got on the wing in 1929.
In general, the fate of the machine gun was not easy. The adoption of the M2 coincided with the onset of the Great Depression in the United States and the ensuing financial crisis. All new military developments were curtailed, and the production of M2 machine guns proceeded at a leisurely pace until the beginning of World War II.
It looks like today, but in a different country, isn't it? But yes, export helped out. And he didn't just help out. The Belgians were the first to buy the license, and FN began producing the FN38 / 39 machine gun with minimal changes.
In 1935, the British joined the Belgians, torturing themselves with the Vickers. The British did a lot of work on the machine gun and made a bunch of changes to the M2, including adjusting the caliber. Browning 0.303. Mk II became the basis of aircraft weapons in Great Britain during the Second World War.
By the beginning of World War II in the United States, the caliber 7.62 mm (0.3 inches) was considered insufficient for arming aircraft. And the M2 began to give way to another machine gun, the.50 Browning AN / M2.
By 1943, the 7, 62-mm Browning M2-AN was finally removed from combat use and was used as a weapon for shooting practice in training pilots.
But nevertheless, he played a very significant role in the war, since ALL American aircraft, without exception, produced before 1941 were armed with this machine gun.
The release of the Browning M2-AN machine gun is estimated at more than half a million pieces, including licensed ones.
3. MAC 1934. France
"I blinded him!" Just blinded, without continuing. The machine gun is very, very peculiar, more than ten years have passed from the moment of the start of work and until it was put into service. But the French needed a machine gun for aviation, and now …
Designers from the state arsenal of Chatellerault decided to create a new weapon for France, using the developments of their company "Berthier" and the American "Browning".
So in 1934, the version of the MAC Mle1931 machine gun entered service with the French aviation practically unchanged under the designation MAC 1934.
The machine gun was intended for installation on all aircraft, but at first it was intended for installation in the wing.
Here the French staged a show that will really remain in the annals of aviation weapons history.
According to the idea of the designers, the MAS 1934A (wing) was supposed to supply ammunition from … stores! For this, hefty drum magazines for 300 or 500 rounds were designed. So far, these monsters confidently hold (they will soon celebrate 100 years) first place among all stores of all times and peoples. No one has surpassed the volume yet.
It is clear that the aircraft designers were just happy to come up with all kinds of fairings for these monsters, since these drums did not fit into any normal wing. Or, alternatively, position the machine guns sideways, which caused ardent love among the gunsmiths. Yes, and the drive for feeding the cartridges was pneumatic, through a gear pair …
A very interesting machine gun …
To use the machine gun as a defensive weapon for bombers, “tiny” magazines for 150 and 100 rounds were invented.
A few years later, fed up with this perversion, the French nevertheless decided that it was necessary to conjure up ribbon feeding. And then fate gave them a gift in the person of the I-15bis with a Spanish pilot who fell into their hands by flight from Spain, where the civil war was ending.
The French carefully studied the ShKAS and … they simply ripped off the cartridge supply system by 101%!
And - lo and behold! - France now has a normal machine gun! Which was put on all French fighters and bombers until the moment France ended in the war. This is the "Chatellerault MAC 1934 Mle39" with a belt feed. Both cloth tape and metal tape were used. The rest is MAS 1934 and ShKAS.
Ballistics was average due to the low muzzle velocity of the bullet, which was partially offset by the length of the barrel, but just partially.
4. MG-131/8. Germany
In terms of machine guns, of course, the large-caliber product of the Rheinmetall concern was more than known. The compact large-caliber aircraft MG.131 machine gun was produced in turret, synchronous and wing versions.
But we are not talking about the MG.131 itself, but about the MG.131 / 8, a transitional model in caliber 7, 92mm. They switched from the MG.15 and MG.17 machine guns, from which they inherited the design of most of the units and the principle of operation.
The history of fine-tuning the machine gun took three whole years (which is generally uncharacteristic for the Germans) and the machine gun entered service only at the end of 1941.
The machine gun can be called the next generation weapon. The device used a capsule electric ignition system, which noticeably affected the rate of fire of the weapon. The recharge was duplicated electro-pneumatic. The machine gun was really two-sided, that is, by rearranging several parts, it was possible to change the direction of movement of the tape. The electro-pneumatic loading mechanism could also be rearranged from one side to the other, which greatly facilitated life when mounting a machine gun in the wings or a synchronous version.
Beginning in 1942, the MG.131 / 8 was confidently registered as a synchronous machine gun under the hood of the Messerschmitt Bf-109 and Focke-Wulf FW-190 fighters. It was produced in confident batches until the end of the war, and if the fighters gradually switched to the large-caliber version, then in bombers on turrets and in tower installations MG-131/8 were installed until the very end of the war.
And even after the end of production in 1944 (more than 60 thousand units were produced in total), machine guns unclaimed in aviation were easily converted into manual guns and transferred to the Wehrmacht. The machine gun's electrical ignition system was changed to a standard trigger mechanism, the machine gun was equipped with a bipod and a shoulder rest or a machine tool.
5. Breda-SAFAT. Italy
The Italian weapons smithy is something. These are "Beretta", "Breda", "Benelli" and so on. This is the design Thought of the highest flight. And, frankly, the implementation is so-so. Perhaps the fault is Italian carelessness. However, judge for yourself.
The firm "Società Italiana Ernesto Breda" is one of the oldest in Italy. It was founded in 1886 in Milan. But she did not produce weapons, but steam locomotives. But here Ernesto Breda decided that the designer was not living alone with a steam locomotive and began to create weapons.
Having trained personnel on the licensed assembly of the "FIAT - Revelli" M1914 machine gun, Breda went further. And he presented to Mussolini himself (Breda financed the Nazi party, so everything is logical here) the project of the machine gun.
Mussolini gave the command not only to start production without waiting for the test results, but also to produce two machine guns at once, with different calibers, 7, 7 and 12, 7 mm. We will consider a large-caliber machine gun in the next article (everything was very sad with it), but the original, 7, 7-mm, turned out to be quite good. The product was named "Breda-SAFAT".
Breda-SAFAT machine guns were installed on almost all types of combat aircraft made in Italy until the debugging of the large-caliber version. That is, until 1942. But what was normal for the 30s (2 synchronous machine guns 7, 7-mm) has become nothing at all since the beginning of the war.
In general, the Italians were not lucky. 7, 7-mm machine guns quickly disappeared from the scene at the beginning of the war, and with further developments in larger calibers they simply did not have time, and the war ended for Italy.
But on the ground, Breda-SAFAT machine guns, oddly enough, served until the 70s of the last century as anti-aircraft guns.
6. Vickers E. UK
A lot of this machine gun was fired. According to various estimates, at least 100 thousand. But war is not only quantity, but also quality. And here we have two ways.
Once upon a time, in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, English weapons were considered the best in the world, but English conservatism ruined a lot, including this. The British gunsmiths were still in many ways the advanced guys, having come up with a loose machine-gun belt, a hydraulic synchronizer and a defensive turret for bombers, the so-called "Scarff Ring". But the machine guns … Yes, there was a reliable and trouble-free Vickers Mk. I, but still it is essentially a modified "Maxim".
At the very beginning of the 20th century, the British corporation Vickers bought the patents of the American engineer Hiram Maxim. Bringing the machine gun to perfection with the thoroughness typical of the British, the British army adopted the Vickers Mk. I.
The life of the machine gun in a series of modifications turned out to be very long. But the paradox, in Britain itself, he did not take root. The British War Department preferred to establish a licensed production of the Browning machine gun.
And "Vickers" was destined for a rather long life in a licensed version. Polish, Czech, Australian and Japanese machine guns fought almost the entire war with a greater or lesser degree of success.
7. Type 89-2. Japan
Japan fell victim to its friendship with Great Britain. The role of the main aircraft machine gun in the pre-war period was firmly occupied by the 7.7 mm Vickers class E, the export version of the Vickers Mk. V.
The naval aviation also adopted Vickers aircraft. It is worth remembering that, unlike many countries in Japan, naval aviation was a separate force. The downside was that in addition to machine guns, the Japanese forces were forced to purchase ammunition for them. Japanese aviation was highly dependent on imports.
From 1929 to 1932, the Vickers E machine gun was produced under the designation Type 89 Model 1. But later it was replaced by a new model "Type 89 model 2", in which it was possible to use both the old cartridge "Type 89" and the new "Type 92".
The Type 89 Model 2 machine gun was produced in large series until the very end of World War II. It is clear that even at the beginning of the war, the machine gun did not meet modern requirements. But the conservatism of the Japanese is quite comparable to the conservatism of the British, so the Type 89 Model 2 fought until the very end of Japan.
The machine gun was used in synchronous installations of Japanese fighters and light bombers of almost all types. Its main feature was that in synchronized performance it almost did not lose in the rate of fire in comparison with the wing version.
The naval aviation used the same machine gun simultaneously with its ground counterparts, but unlike them, they did not bother with licensing agreements at all. Until 1936, Japanese naval pilots used purchased machine guns, and only after that they launched the production of the Type 97 machine gun, which differed little from the Type 89 model 2.
