Martin
Quite amazing. On the Mossie Wiki pages it tells of one crew smashing up a
bomber with the Molins gun.
All sorts of strange things happened in that war . . .
Chris
> On 25 Jul 18, at 17:39, Martin Walters <mwalters1440@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Seems that the .303s were often used to aim the cannon/57mm gun/rockets.
> Apparently, the mg shells also added to the total chaos when all were fired
> together (!). Something here:
> https://www.flightglobal.com/FlightPDFArchive/1945/1945%20-%200273.PDF
> <https://www.flightglobal.com/FlightPDFArchive/1945/1945%20-%200273.PDF> All
> said, couldn't find anything to indicate either/or firing of the two weapon
> types.
>
> The Tsetse installation was really quite ingenious. The Molins Gun, which was
> technically known to the RAF as the "/QF 6 pdr Class M Mark I with Auto
> Loader Mk III/" was based on the long-barreled (50 calibre) gun. The gun
> weighed 487 kg (635 kg with autoloader) and was *fully automatic*, with a
> rate of fire of about *55 rounds-per-minute*. The ammunition supply in the
> autoloader consisted of 21 rounds, held in five racks of unequal length, plus
> two additional rounds in the feedway. The rounds in each rack were fed by a
> combination of gravity and a spring-loaded arm and each rack was moved into
> place in turn by an electric motor. The gun normally used the plain AP shot
> (that is the only one shown in photographs), so had a high muzzle velocity of
> 890 m/sec (2,920 fps). Against U-boat hulls, it was calculated that it would
> be able to penetrate the hull when striking at an angle of 45 degrees or
> more, at a range of about 1400m, *even through 60cm of water*. The
> *gun/aircraft combinati
on was extremely accurate, achieving a hit rate in training of 33% against
tank-sized targets - compared with 5% for rocket projectiles*.
--
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