A2A Spitfire Gun Question

[cflord]

A2A, Where are the wing guns on the Spitfire MKII? I can load ammunition from the load manager; but I have no guns to dog fight with. It's hard to dog fight with red squares painted on the wings!





Keep the shiny side up and the dirty side down!

Ret SMSgt Cliff Lord - C-130 Flight Engineer & Mechanic

[DHenriques_]

A2A, Where are the wing guns on the Spitfire MKII? I can load ammunition from the load manager; but I have no guns to dog fight with. It's hard to dog fight with red squares painted on the wings!





Keep the shiny side up and the dirty side down!

Ret SMSgt Cliff Lord - C-130 Flight Engineer & Mechanic

The red covers on the gun ports are pierced by the opening burst (real) I'm not sure we coded that for the A2A Spit however.
DH

[cflord]

Thanks A2A Chief Pilot. I find that quite interesting. What was the purpose of the red covers? Was the covers there to protect the guns from dirt, dust, and debris?

Keep the shiny side up and the dirty side down!

Ret SMSgt Cliff Lord - C-130 Flight Engineer & Mechanic

[DHenriques_]

Thanks A2A Chief Pilot. I find that quite interesting. What was the purpose of the red covers? Was the covers there to protect the guns from dirt, dust, and debris?

Keep the shiny side up and the dirty side down!

Ret SMSgt Cliff Lord - C-130 Flight Engineer & Mechanic

That was a prime reason. You could pick up a ton of dirt and dust, and muddy water from taxiing. Many of of the airfields were grass. Not sure who exactly came up with the idea for covering the ports; most likely Dowding. (Killratio might know for sure) Dowding was a real stickler for the small details
DH

[FHS]

Thanks A2A Chief Pilot. I find that quite interesting. What was the purpose of the red covers? Was the covers there to protect the guns from dirt, dust, and debris?

Keep the shiny side up and the dirty side down!

Ret SMSgt Cliff Lord - C-130 Flight Engineer & Mechanic

That was a prime reason. You could pick up a ton of dirt and dust, and muddy water from taxiing. Many of of the airfields were grass. Not sure who exactly came up with the idea for covering the ports; most likely Dowding. (Killratio might know for sure) Dowding was a real stickler for the small details
DH

The Browning machineguns were also modified to fire from an open bolt. As the battles were fought at a rappidly increasing altitude, the cold air tended to freeze the guns as the air can travel through the barrel unhindered as the bolt is open. The patches were als a simple and practical solution to adress this issue.
The open bolt was AFAIK deliberately chosen as it cools the gun once you start firing it. But as with any radiator, always open is...

The open bolt also makes it impossible to synchronize the gun to have it fire throgh the propeller arc. The same with the Hispano canons, derived from the Oerlikon, an advanced primer ignition blowback design, meaning it is also fired from an open bolt and can't be synchronized. That's one of the main reasons the gun was always mounted outboard of the propeller arc. The (on the other side of the drink) popular MK108 30 mm is also built after this design principle with the same limitation.

[torejohs]

I also read somewhere that the ground crews used the red tape as indicators when the aircraft came in to land, on wether or not the aircraft had seen combat during that mission. If the tape was gone, they would roll out the ammunition crates and be ready to rearm it before it had even taxied in. Quick turnarounds were very important.

[S.Alva]

Also the guns hatches on the wings sometimes blew off by the wind pressure in the barrel