Talk:AC-47 Spooky
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[edit] Questionable accuracy of area-target saturation claim
It looks to me like there's a few discrepancies in this page. At the top it says that the alternate loadout was with 10 .50 caliber machine guns, but in the specs it says they're .30 caliber. At the top, it also says the guns were controlled by the pilot, but the crew list refers to gunners. 69.40.178.172 18:24, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Note also, that an AC47 equipped with 3 mini guns could not, in a "three second burst," place a bullet in each square foot of a football field. An American football field measures 160'x360'=57,600 square feet. The mini-guns have a staiblized fire rate of about 18,000 rpm (3x6000). Therefore, a three second burst would be 1/20 of minute or 1/20 of 18,000. This yields only 900 rounds. Furthermore, the mini-guns need a short amount of time to "spool up" to their full cyclical rate.
You'd need about 3 minutes of sustained fire to cover the 57,600 square feet of field. The mini-guns would get pleny hot, the gun gases would probably stall the AC47's engines, and could an AC47 get off the ground carrying that much ammo?
Better start over with this one.
Tsaman 21:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Why no such gunships in WWII?
GOOD QUESTION; The main reason, is because the electric firing (rotating) gatling gun was not readily available until Vietnam.
I'm curious about why there were no similar gunships in World War II. It seems to me some applications are obvious in hindsight. For example:
- Anti-shipping. U.S. forces repeatedly attempted high-altitude bombing against enemy ships, and these proved to be ineffective with the dumb bombs of the time. Battle of the Coral Sea#The Battle says: Land-based B-17s attacked the approaching Port Moresby invasion fleet on May 6, with the usual lack of success. Almost another year would pass before the Air Force realized that high-level bombing raids against moving naval targets were pointless.
- A large ship is roughly the size of a football field (or two). It seems to me that a gunship could probably fly a modified pylon turn around a moving ship, and saturate it with gunfire about as easily as hitting a stationary ground target of similar football-field size. A B-17 gunship could probably have mounted a large-caliber side-firing cannon with sufficient range to allow the orbiting gunship to stay out of easy range of the target's anti-aircraft guns, and fire armor-piercing shells into the target at its leisure. A squadron of B-17 gunships could distribute themselves around the orbit circle, and fire at a ship from all directions simultaneously. Merchant ships and transports would have been easy prey; even battleships might be taken on, especially if the orbiting gunships were to concentrate their fire on the superstructure and knock out the ship's command center.
- Support of ground troops. During amphibious landings and other ground engagements.
Was the gunship idea considered and rejected during WWII, or was this just a case of nobody on any side of the conflict coming up with the idea at the time? --Teratornis 18:17, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, certain histories suggest that the medium bomber gunship of the pacific theatre is in fact the forefather of the more modern gunship concept. I don't think there was an airframe at the time that would've provided the stability needed for the type of guns required for anti-shipping duties in the pacific at the time. The A-20, B-25, and B-26 gunships all used massed forward firing armament to suppress anti-aircraft defenses during attack runs, rather than as a method actually doing lethal damage to ships or land targets. Only the Mosquito XVIII and B-25G/H were developed specifically for the anti-shipping requirement (Unlike the majority of the other developments, mainly on the German side for tank busting), with 57mm and 75mm cannon respectively. I'm still not sure a side-firing mount for these weapons and others would've been possible on any of the aircraft of the time. Note that, the AC-47 w/ 10 .30 caliber machine guns is representative of what might've been possible in the WWII timeline, and was quickly deemed totally inferior to the AC-47 with 3 miniguns. For more on the official USAF history I suggest looking online for a pdf copy of "Development and Employment of Fixed-Wing Gunships 1962-1972" by Jack S. Ballard. I know there should be a free copy somewhere, as I have one that I found. I would recommend searching for it through the Virtual Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University here: http://www.virtualarchive.vietnam.ttu.edu/starweb/vva/servlet.starweb?path=vva/vva.web -- Thatguy96 12:33, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
