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About the jacket i would look a bit awkward at the company eh eh. You're rate of uploads is impressive. Interesting discussions about such different but highly performance tail wheeled aircraft.
They were a poor nation. Of only 50-million people. With not the manufacturing resources of the Yanks for example, They needed to standardize the production size of bullets over all their guns. They did not have a plethora of bullet makers when the war started. Did you know that all Brit infantryman carried only ten (!) rounds? Simple as that.
Before WW2, the thinking also was that planes would be engaging at longer distances (due to better/higher engine powers), therefore in the cone/zone of a bullet travelling further, with a gap in between each bullet, a higher rate of fire would give far more chances of a hit against at that time, unarmoured planes. Only with actual battle experience, was it seen that dogfights would be at much closer ranges (& guns synchronised to this) so you were far more likely to hit your target, so cannons made much more sense. A lot of nations still had planes with only 2-4 machine guns, so having 8 was seen as a big advantage. Small calibre MGs & lower weight gave the planes better mobility. During the BoB, the 0.303 was good enough against the opponents of the time. Boulton & Paul Defiants with only 4 x 0.303 mgs proved they could take down a bomber quite easily, it was the gun platform & accuracy that mattered. Having a standardised mg & ammo makes things far easier for all services to resupply, & keeps the penny pinching accountants happy. Britain didn't have much money after WW1, and most of it still went to the Royal Navy. As you stated, there weren't enough 0.5" mg anyway, & Britain's industrial base couldn't cope with more demands. Powered turrets were still quite new, & lighter guns helped their early technology to function. Early RAF tests of 0.5" guns sadly killed an air gunner as the recoil wasn't designed in properly, & the guns went into his chest. The Germans had trouble with their 20mm cannons in their Me110s jamming after hard manoeuvres. All new tech went through teething issues. However, it was agreed that the 0.303s were being outclassed by later plane specifications, RAF pilot/ace Douglas Bader didn't want 20mm cannons originally (probably for the reasons you stated of jamming etc), but then became a complete convert to them. Thank you for your video, well put together & presented, I enjoyed it! 🙏🙏
@@MzLunaCee Yeah but the Bren was a machine gun. BTW, when we went thru our compulsory military training in NZ, in learning to fire the Bren, we were warned that it was only to be fired in short bursts! Otherwise, the barrel curled up at you! LOL
I have a 20mm cannon shell and bullet made by BMARCO at Grantham. The unexploded bullet was retrieved by my grandfather in Leicestershire from a peice of JU88 tailplane after a Spitfire chased a raider over the county. This is dated 1942 not long after they were introduced, and the shell casings were picked up off the road where they fell about a mile away. The JU88 finally succumbed and crashed near Market Deeping and the crew are buried in the churchyard there I heard. Years later, I showed the round to an ex RAF armourer who stated that it had definately been fired from a Hispano Cannon mounted in a Sptitfife as it has a neat line halfway up caused by the ejector mechanism in the cannon which were run on clockwork, which is why the aircraft had those wing-blisters to accomodate the mechanism. The explosive end apparently diddnt explode because it was incorrectly milled and was live until my father did his National Service in the Royal Engineers in the early 50's and recognised that fact and disarmed it! Until then it sat on the mantlepiece above the fire at my grandparents house!
The Mosquito fighter bomber was armed with 303's but also 4 20 mm canons. It could also be fitted with a canon which fired 6lb shell which would sink a modest boat or submarine. It flew 20mph faster than nearly all Spitfires and was made from mostly wood built by furniture makers and out of work musical instrument makers. It also could carry 2 x 500 lb bombs. The moral of this story is dont mess with a carpenter.
The F. II was a hair faster than the contemporary Spitfire, but built in limited numbers, and mostly as the NF.II which was slower. FB. VI Mosquitoes were no faster than contemporary Spitfires when introduced, and slower by war's end as engine upgrades went to the later NFs (no 303s). The NFs could keep up with Spitfires on the whole. It was the bomber versions that were faster than Spitfires. No guns.
I guess this just comes with knowing a thing or two about a given subject; but it always annoys me when people make these generalising summaries lol. "The Mosquito" varied a lot over it's time in service, depending on level of development, and subtype. Also, as far as I can tell the 2x500lb bombs is one of those annoying stats that gets repeated more than it should as it seems to have only applied to early models. Some of the most heavily produced FB versions could carry 4x500lb bombs (two internal, and two wing mounted), or 2x500lb bombs and 8x60lb warhead RP-3's. The dedicated bomber versions were the fastest mosquitos and could carry up 4000lbs of bombs
Even in the optimal conditions an aircraft is an unsteady vibrating gun platform. Add in crosswinds, maneuvers, deflection, and so on - the chance of a hit is quite small. Put out a large number of .303 rounds from six to twelve guns, and well even a 10% hit rate out of 100 is ten chances to poke a hole in something important like a fuel tank, radiator, or pilot. Germany went the opposite direction with cannons - 10% of thirty is only three - but those three will make a huge impact. The M2 Browning made for a decent compromise between the two.
@@UkrainianPaulie But is the M1919 - Which is almost identical and was used by the US Forces? Kind of comparing different calibers and capability. 0.50cal BMG is basically a 12mm Cannon. .303 Browning was basically an M1919 Medium Machine gun. 0.50cal Browning is a pseudo cannon masquerading as a Heavy Machine gun.
IIRC the primary german fighter cannons were MG131s, 14mm machine guns. From what ive read they were very effective guns, lighter and more compact than most other guns of this caliber at the start of the war, and used till the end. Later, when you had planes with >1500 PS monster engines, it was likely much easier to justify taking some 20mm cannons. Even some Hurricanes got upgraded with quad Hispanos, though likely more for ground attack, since the planes werent great dogfighters.
Bullshot. 0.5 is the worst aircraft weapon possible. It shares disadvantages of 0.3" gun (no explosives) and 20 mm (weight of the gun). The only difference is that holes are little (60%) wider - it does mean nothing in practice. With armor and self sealing tanks tailored mostly against 0.3" it could keep its effectiveness little longer, but guncams show that cannons need much less aiming time than 0.5" batteries. Everyone knew this, the USAF planned and manufactured 50,000 20-mm Hispanos in advance, all of which were unfortunately defective. 0.5" Browning was the only option left. The rest is a wartime propaganda - soldiers need to believe that they have the best weapon possible. That propaganda became mythology.
@@termitreter6545 Relative efficiency is always the same. One Hispano was worth at least 3 0.5 Brownings, as long as you have ammo stored in the belt.4 cannons are more effective and lighter than 8 0.3" Brownings. Hurricanes were excellent dogfighters, but they were little too slow.
I once read an account of a RAF pilots experiences during the BoB, he was posted to a non operational unit at the end of 1940 and then back to an operational unit later on after the Spitfire Mk V's introduction to service. He was heavily involved in the Rhubarbs and Rodeos of that time period and found himself behind a 109 for the first time since the previous summer, he pressed the 'tit' and watched his De Wilde rounds dance over his target without apparent effect but then remembered he was in a Mk V and touched the cannon button whereupon the 109 dissolved in a great gout of flame and debris, he was mightily impressed and rued the lack of them during the BoB.
Ultimately the .303 did the job during the Battle of Britain 🇬🇧, and the introduction of the .50 or 20mm was a step forward in technology that could have been hastily introduced, and in doing so caused more problems than was acceptable, but once perfected the switch was an obvious no brainier.
Augsburg raid lancs daylight. 6 out of 12 lost. Me109 figured out lancs had 303 400 m. Effective. Stayed away 500m. And 20mm cannon slaughtered lancs. Very bad policy 303.
Brits had them in the Spitfire 1b, but the early cannons separated the ammo, so we're useless. The Hispano were reworked and became arguably the best 20mm cannon of the war.
@@allandavis8201 Neither the Spitfire nor the Hurricane were new aircraft in 1940 and if the British air ministry had put their minds to it there was no real reason why both types couldn't have been armed with cannon in time for July 1940. The UK had at that time access to some of the best minds in the world and I'm sure they could have introduced a viable cannon armed Spitfire considerably earlier than October 1941 if only they'd paid attention to aerial combat that had already happened between modern fighters elsewhere. Other countries like Russia, Germany, Japan and France had already successfully fielded fighter cannon and I sense a typical stubbornness on the part of RAF High Command that was prevalent throughout WW2. They more or less completely disregarded any potentially valuable lessons learnt from either the Russo/Finnish, Russo/Japanese or the Spanish civil war.
Also, we can’t forget that Britain had to operate on a shoestring budget as Churchill told FDR even before the US was in it that GB was already almost bankrupt hence FDR’s creation of Lend-Lease! Britain literally didn’t have a pot to piss in! So using the 303 was the most economical. Great video.
That is almost completely incorrect. Firstly: The war started in 1939, and Britain was doing well at that time - the economy actually grew slightly during the war, partly because expenditure was dictated by the state to produce goods, rather than the free market, and because only necessary things were produced. The UK was certainly not "almost bankrupt". Lend lease, is not what you think it is. It was not a gift, and it had to be paid back after the war, as did the loans taken out - which *IS* what nearly bankrupted us after the war, as well as the completely exhausted infrastructure, and flattened towns, cities, factories and docks. Secondly: The decision to use the .303 calibre machine guns was built into the specification for the new monoplane fighters in 1936 and 1937 - well before the start of WWII. The contemporary, & brand new BF109A had just 2 ,792 machine guns, only being more heavily armed in response to the new RAF 8 gun design spec in later models. Therefore, 8x.303 Brownings was a perfectly sensible decision. Economy had little to do with it, and the designs were built around the guns (which initially called for just 4xMG - still 2 more than the BF109). On a side note, Russia only paid back a tiny fraction of it's lend lease - to the USA and the UK. As for the .50 - did you listen to the video at all? - it was rejected. The multiple .303 guns had a much higher firing rate, than the .50 MG. & could deliver more lead on target.
@@memkiii If Britain's economy was doing so well in 1939 how did they blow through all their gold and cash reserves by 1940? Why were they begging for a handout the entire time the US was in the war? Oh, that's right the British and the French fought a " Phoney war" (look it up) for the first 8 months. This allowed the Germans to gather enough force to toss the Brits into the sea. A vast majority of the British expeditionary forces weapons were captured by the Germans. What did that do for the British economy? BTW, Lend Lease was mostly written off (look it up). The contract stipulations required the lent materials to be destroyed or returned after the war. Neither of those conditions incurred expenses. Payment was only required for the materials they kept. Britain was loaned about 31 billion dollars they only repaid about 1 billion for materials that they kept after the war. That minor repayment was like pulling teeth. The same goes for the Russians they only paid for the material they kept which was a minor fraction of what they were loaned.
@@memkiii Yes, the 'know nothings' under this stream can have their respective laugh at Britain's expense, but their disregard for facts and circumstances makes both them and their contributions appear sub intellectual. Britain's debts were paid off, the Soviet's were not. Britain had its factories bombed and factory worker's homes bombed for over two years before Germany declared war on the USA and brought a reluctant USA into the European war. That level of destruction has a profound effect on production levels and strategy. The US economy had to all intents and purposes recovered from the great depression on the back of French and British arms orders, and made the average worker pretty prosperous against British arms workers, at a time when British civilians were being bombed in their beds. At this time, the average American must have paid more attention to which new model of car he was going to buy in 1941, than why the economy was doing so well on the back of other people's grief. I don't want to be too hard on our allies, but the amount of Americans who earnestly think WW2 started in 1941, is too many.............
Don't forget that in the case of the spitfire fitting cannons was also impaired by the wing design. The very thin elliptical wing did not really have the room for the Hispano, hence most of the barrel was outside the wing and insulated and the wing had to be fitted with blisters to cover the loading mechanism. The big wing of the Typhon and Tempest could easily manage a pair of Hispano's and some 303's or 50's. Making it an extremely efficient ground attack platform.
It was far easier to fit cannons into the wings of a spitfire than it was to do the same to the Me BF-109 when the Germans attempted to do the same, so your point is only relative. It was not easy for the Spitfire but it WAS possible without having to resort to wing pods as the 109 had to. In fact it was possible to upgun the Spitfire to two 20mm per wing. Ever noticed the letters in Spitfire designations? Mk VB for example? Mk IXC? Those letters denote the wing type on the aircraft, more specifically the armament. The A wing was the 4 .303 machinegun variant (per wing), the B wing was the 1 20mm, 2 303 variant (per wing), the C wing carried the two 20mm per wing armament. Changing the wings on a Spitfire was actually remarkably easy, you simply unbolted them, lifted the aircraft fuselage off the wings, slid them out of the cradle, slid the new wings into the cradle, lowered the fuselage back down, then bolted the wings into place. It was something my Grandfather who was Spitfire Ground Crew during the war described in fairly extensive detail, obviously I have simplified it somewhat, but it was an operation they carried out regularly and could conduct within a couple of hours.
@@daveponder2754 They went one better though, the C wing carried two 20mm Hispano's per wing, and was the most common wing fitted to Spitfires late war. Even prior to that I would prefer the B wing with 2 20mm and 4 .303's over 4 .50's. The eight .303's were only mounted on the early Spitfire marks, mostly the I's and II's, the B wing being adopted soon after the Battle of Britain, despite suffering problems with the Hispano's at that time.
I live on an abandoned WW2 practice bombing range here in Arizona and find 30 and 50 cal rounds all the time. Inert practice bombs used to be common but they have pretty much disappeared because souvenir collectors got them.
Get it in Australia too a lot of the national parks between SA & VIC we’re used as strafing & bombing ranges. Find .303 .50 & 20mm all over the place. Sometimes you get lucky & find the big nasty fragments of a 500 pounder the forces at play to do that to a piece of half inch metal…
Same here, I go out on the Barry Goldwater Range quite often, we find .50 cal casings with a single "4" headstamp date all the time. One cool find was a line of 20mm brass casings with 1953 dates. Shined up real nice with brasso.
Having read plenty personal stories from pilots, it would seem they did like the high rate of fire in dogfights but they complained about the punching power against bombers. The German side complains about their guns having a too low rate of fire in dogfights. So I figure both options had their advantages. As for a mix in armament, I’ve read accounts from pilots stating they would use the low call guns as range finders before using the cannons.
@@Mike23443 America had the advantage of being able to develop all this whilst being safe. Brits just had to pump them out to keep on top of the germans.
One of the reasons why Germans rarely went iínto a dogfight. They usually practiced tactics to surprise the enemy and run away (hit-and-run) for which lardge caliber guns are very effective.
>use the low call guns as range finders before using the cannons I use it like that in War Thunder Spitfires, had no idea it was also used that way in real life. I guess it's just that intuitive
@@Mike23443 Sorry the greatest of all marksmen Cats Eyes Cunningham Night Fighter pilot used only 40 rounds of his cannon to get a Me 410 your best Capt Don Gentle 160 rds for 1 xfw190and then there was RCAF Dick Audet 5 enemy in 7/10 minutes using all his cannon hardly any 50s No the RAF/friends were always the finer shots
Saw this in Flight Journal and thought it was interesting: Squadron Leader Ralph Sorley is widely unappreciated for his contribution to the Spitfire’s armament. The original specification listed four .303-caliber guns, which, considering the nature of combat, would have been woefully inadequate. But Sorley, who had flown with the Royal Navy in WW I, was the right man in the right place at the right time. Working in the operational requirements office, he recommended upgrading the new fighter’s armament to eight machine guns. As it was, eight .30 calibers proved marginal against bombers. In anachronistic terms, the “throw weight” of the British and German fighters’ armament favoured the latter. A three-second burst from eight .303s produced 13 pounds of projectiles downrange while the 109’s combined cannon/MG battery yielded 18 pounds. But undoubtedly far less than 10 percent of all rounds fired connected with a target, which is why so few pilots became aces. In one eye-opening episode, six Spitfires fired 7,000 rounds at a Do 17 without destroying it. Sorley recommended sighting the eight machine guns into a ten-foot circle at 100 yards. That was a reasonable approach for an average pilot, but later Fighter Command adapted a 400-yard convergence that was beyond the abilities of most pilots and dispersed the pattern. In some squadrons, pilots could make their own arrangements, but if they had to fly another aircraft, their familiarity vanished. With 300 rounds per gun, the pilot had perhaps 20 seconds of trigger time. Part way through the Battle, Spitfire IIB models arrived with two 20mms in place of four machine guns. Loading 60 rounds per cannon, the new mark was more lethal against bombers but the Hispano-Suiza design was unreliable, especially under G. Modifications only improved performance after the Battle when the mixed armament became standard for Spitfires. The “bump” on the wing of later models accommodated a motor to enhance feeding. The RAF used a variety of ammunition, seeking an optimum combination to destroy enemy airframes. Ball, armor-piercing and tracer were commonly used in sequence, but incendiary rounds also were developed. In the Great War, Britain produced the Buckingham series, originally intended to ignite Zeppelins. A more effective round came from the Belgium; the De Wilde was modified by the RAF with considerable success. An unavoidable problem came with mixed armament. The .303 and 20mm left the muzzle at different velocities and possessed different ballistic properties. Consequently, they could only be harmonized for a specific range, and the cannon’s trajectory fell off fairly rapidly. As always in air combat, the closer a pilot could get to his target, the better. Taken from FLIGHT JOURNAL website
Yeah I've read RAF doctrine prioritised flying and formation skills over accuracy. As a result the volume of fire of the .303 helped to compensate and reduce the skill required to hit. Not only that but the more ammunition available the longer you can stay in the fight meaning greater force projection for less aircraft which was especially important in the battle of Britain where they Brits were out numbered. The incendiary round had something like 25% or greater fire starting making it potentially more dangerous especially with how many rounds they could fire. I think they made the right decision for the time
Was going to say the same. It was fundamentally important that BOB interception aircraft could engage for the maximum time, they were massively outnumbered. Even if in an armoured aircraft being hailed by smaller caliber bullets is still going to disrupt whatever you are doing to some degree, especially if you don't know it's only low calibre ammunition and at you. The most effective option is a mix. A good loading of low calibre shots and some heavier hitting canon ammo at hand, sighted in at the right range, you could potentially use the smaller caliber shots to lead in the big caliber hits all the while still having the chance of taking out enemies on the lighter ammo.
the Hurricane and Spitfires were designed in the mid thirty's and you are right that the thinking then was to throw as many bullets as possible, but by 1939 I think you will find that the RAF had realised that it needed bigger guns and they were planning to replace the Spitfire with the Whirlwind but unfortunatly that planes engines failed hence the rush to fit a cannon into the Sptfire.
Gen Galland chewed out his crew chief during the Battle for France. He had installed new armor in the BF 109E and Galland banged his head against it. His next mission found a Hurricane on his tail pouring .303 from eight guns. He crash landed and lived only because of the new armor. He rewarded his crew chief with cash and leave. Later in life Galland said being on the receiving end of eight machine guns was like being caught in a rainstorm.
That’s not what Galland said in his book “ the first and the last” he said it was after the BoB and that it was a 20mm round that hit the new piece of armour. He said in the book that if the armour wasn’t there nothing would have been left of that indispensable part of his body. He also said he made it up with the crew chief by giving him money out of his own pocket and some leave.
Not the Battle for France, it was after BoB in July 1941. The fighter on his tail was a Spitfire. Hurricanes were too slow and had poor performance but were used as night intruders at that time.
Forcing your enemy to use a certain type of defence should be used in all modern war game/battle scenarios of today. Many things are learned by happenstance from history. I think the .303 strategy had enough dynamics of it's own for the thinkers of WWII to reliably predict what the enemy would do about .50 cal vs. .303. So I say no, I do not think defensive reaction was considered when deploying a caliber choice back then. But I would love to hear what the experts know about this.
Another thing most people don't realize is that for the first year after adopting the 20mm the RAF only had solid AP shot, which effectively made them big MGs. No HE filling, no incendiary. Just a big, heavy, slow-firing MG with longer range and better penetration if you happened to hit a armor plate or an engine or fuel tank.
I'd rather have hit a German Bomber with 20mm FMJ than with .303 incendiary. Punching through a fuel tank with a 20mm seems almost certain to start a fire from impact, splash, or massive leak.
Thats a good point. Its funny how far ahead german was with its 20mm cannons and compact 14mm guns at the start of war, but how much their bombers sucked. Tbf the 303-storm mightve actually had some effect against the vulnerable He-111s bombers.
@@termitreter6545 The Problem....the bigger the caliber the more "stuff" you could put in it...such as explosives or incendiary. 20mm shells exploded. If I were a Brit flying in the Battle of Britain, I would have screamed for .50s at least...and a pair of 20mm if possible. OR...if stuck with 8 .303s, I would have been like the Poles and got REAL CLOSE and then shredded them.
20mm Ball was pretty effective vs aircraft structures. Analysis of crashed german aircraft showed that hits from the rear would pass through the entire aircraft, fuel tanks, armour, pilot, and finally lodge in the engine rear. A hit to the mainspar would remove the wing. A hit to the engine would critically damage it almost every time. Was properly functioning HE better? Yes. Was 20mm Ball more effective than a bunch of .303? Hell yes. There's a reason that Ball was still being used quite late in the war... it was cheap and it worked. To defend against it required unreasonable amounts of armour. The late war SAP used really was overkill.
In the Pacific, American pilots had a preference for only four .50s, though some aircraft were built with six. There was active resistance to adding more guns because it drastically reduced ammo capacity per weapon. They seemed to feel more ammunition per gun, hence more time on the trigger before running empty, was of greater value than more projectiles per burst. Not exactly the same issue, but another example of how just going bigger isn't always better.
The 50 cal was perfect in the pacific theater because the Japanese had little armor on most of their aircraft so they were easy to destroy once hit with that particular gun
The RAF knew what it was doing and had tested a lot of weapons between the wars, concluding that changing to a .50 gave no significant advantage over .303" and that a 20mm was required. The Hispano was the weapon of choice but was not fully developed and needed a ridged mounting to work reliably. Also the gun initially used a drum feed which limited the number of rounds and complicated the installation, the Spitfire having the gun mounted on it's side which introduced addition issues. A prototype belt feed and drawings were got out of France from under the noses of the invading Germans and developed in Britain. When the problems were eventually resolved the Hispano proved reliable and the Hispano continued in service into the first generation of jet fighters post war, even the American eventually adopting it.
A guy I used to know (he died in 2014) was an RAF pilot in WW2. He started off flying Wellingtons (.303 guns) then flew Liberators (.50 cal) in Egypt. He once talked about the guns on the aircraft and said that against enemy fighter aircraft the .303 was good up to a range of about 350 yards, while the .50 cal guns of the Liberator were good for up too 500yards. He much preffered the range of the .50 cal and so did his crew.
1 - .50 is significantly better than .303 (.303 ballistics wise is basically a low powered 30-06), effective range for AN/M2 .50 is 1500-2000 yards and would easily go through the engine blocks of enemy fighters 2 - we didn't adopt 20mm Hispano, we developed a new round, the m61 (20mm Vulcan) for use in Jet fighters. The Oerlikon 20 mm saw more use in the US than the Hispano (and is still widely used today in Europe
Non sense, the cal 50 is 10xmore powerfull and with twice the range from the 303…The real cause from the modification on the 20mm Hispano is not only the original drum feeding: this canon was made to fit between the cylinders from the Hispano Suisa Y12 engine use on the french fighter Morane Saulnier MS406 and Dewoitine D520, and firing trough the propeller shaft, but on the British fighters was the canon installed in the wings, so in very cold and icing conditions and the feed was modified to belt feed
@@killman369547 Not to fire shots at GB but they were plenty ignorant in that war as far as anything built outside the country or not their idea. I mean 8 303's vs what 2 or 3 .50's would do to a plane? Pitty...
The real head scratcher for me is why within a couple months of each other did the RAF set up production of a .303 cal version of the browning and the Army set up another factory to make 8mm BESA tank machine guns. Both were rush war emergency jobs to get belt fed MGs into the fight as quickly as possible, yet the army decided it would be easier to no bother changing caliber and work around a gas operated gun. Yet the air cooled browning started life specifically as a tank gun. There were British and French tanks in the 20’s with such an armament. Best guess is they just didn’t talk with each other? As to why the RAF went with .303, I think they were just a conservative lot and suspected (correctly) that in action many of the guns would fail. If you have 8 MGs and 2 fail that’s not bad. If you have 4 cannon and 2 fail that’s a big problem. And the cannon armed fighters were notorious for jamming in action until mid way through the war.
Unless supply lines might get confused separate and incompatible supply lines are not a problem. Producing different guns, with different requirements, might avoid bottlenecks in production. Having platoons or companies with mixed weapons can be a problem - but the RAF and Army had entirely separate supply lines that could easily accommodate different and incompatible supplies. In fact .303 ammo for snipers, ordinary rifles and machine guns was different - so even squaddies could deal with mixed ammunition that would fit into and fire in all guns (often very dangerously).
Maybe because they can't optimize the 404 like the American did. AN/M2 is a fairly stable cannon who doesn't immediately jam after 2 second trigger squeeze.
Pretty reliable once the initial kinks were worked out which were due to feed rather than light primer strikes. The US Hispano was still viable in the P-38 as it could be recocked. By war's end it was in use in the P-61 and several naval fighters but I'm not sure what changes were made for that if any.
Also , it is strange that the Army didn't rechambered BESA's to the .303 , the standard caliber for rifles and MG's. At least British tanks could use captured German ammunition.
As for keeping it in .303 because the army and navy used it, bear in mind that the British army also used 8mm Mauser. The Czechoslovak designed BESA machine gun fitted to many British vehicles was 7.92x57mm. Also known as 8mm Mauser.
The Bren was also a Czech design and it’s modification to .303 ammo, resulted in its’ unique shaped magazine, which gave the British Bren its distinctive (and in my opinion) rather beautiful look.
It was desired to replace 303 with 7.92 and 7 mm both considered, much as in 1913. Both times war looked likely so reworking all those SMLEs didn't look viable.
@@wbertie2604 they should have gone with 7mm Mauser (rimless). The commercial versions of the Lee Enfield (including the commercial SMLE) were already available in that calibre, as well as 8x50R Mannlicher (still sold as .315 Ishapore) and .375x2.5" Nitro Express.
@@kieranh2005 the issue was the stock of old rifles, though, and proximity to wars. If the UK had adopted the Pedersen in 7mm in 1932 or something, then that would have worked. But the Pedersen, Czech VZ, gas trap Garand were all found wanting, notably in terms of colonial (dusty) or tench (muddy) conditions. And then it was suddenly 1938 and too late. Or in the 1950s it was NATO and the USA insisting on an over powerful cartridge it then dropped for rifles shortly thereafter. So 7mm was always a nearly option. So 7.92mm looked like a better option as it would have been more compatible (with some but less work) existing guns. But that didn't happen either, except in the sense that 7.62mm NATO was pretty much equivalent.
10:44 - this is interesting. Given that the ‘B’ type Spitfire wing (to take 2 x 20mm Hispano with 60 rounds of drum ammo + 4 x .303 brownings with 350 rounds of ammo) was fully in production in early 1940. Jeffrey Quill - Supermarine’s chief test pilot - notes the disappointment that was he that the cannon wasn’t ready for the BoB in his autobiography. I suspect if the temperature management issues were worked out by April/May all hurricanes and spitfires would have been using the B wing with Hispanos by the height of BoB. Once the shift to 2 x 20mm Hispanos was made as the main armament a rapid move to upgrade the .303s to .5 cals was not thought ‘necessary’. NECESSITY - not the pursuit of perfection - drove the Air Ministry’s requirements for the Spitfire after 1941: hence the reason why it persisted with the ‘interim’ Mk IX (and the closely aligned MkXVI - which really was the same as a late model Mk IX, but with a Packard Merlin 266 Engine) as the main production run right up until the end of the war - preferring large numbers of that plane to the superior Mk VIII and more powerful Griffon engined variants. It also explains why the Air Ministry were not keen on Supermarine diverting resources to develop the redesigned wing and enhanced tailplane to combat aileron reversal and longitudinal stability issues associated with the more powerful engines. It explained why the Air Ministry never commissioned long range spitfire development; why they delayed the introduction of both the Mk21 and Mk XVIII until near to of after the end of the European theatre of the war. As far as the Air Ministry was concerned the Mk IX worked perfectly for the roles that they needed it for and they wanted Supermarine - and all the subcontracting manufacturers - to produce as many of them as possible. This meant that NECESSITY never dictated the replacement of the .303 guns for the Merlin engined spits. In fact there were many uses for this light armament, including: 1. Supplementing the big 20mm in air to air combat: no real difference in overall firepower when compared to having 2 x .5 cal guns, plus better tracer rounds, plus less weight at the wing ends, hence greater rate of roll etc; and 2. Ground attack. Unless attacking armour (and the 20MM canon plus perhaps underwing rockets would be used for that), a light machine gun with a higher rate of fire was more effective against troops. The Mk IX was increasingly used in a ground attack role in the later part of the war.
The RAF had recon Spitfires that could fly all the way to Berlin and back. But plenty of Mustangs were arriving in Britain in 1943 so they used those instead.
@@ToddSauve 1. The spitfires that could fly to Berlin and back from the east coast of England were reconnaissance planes that did not have armament and used the leading edge of the wing for fuel (66 imperial gallons in each wing). They had 228 imperial gallons of fuel carried forward of the plane’s centre of gravity and hence did not need any modification for longitudinal stability or to carry fuel in either the rear of the fuselage or externally. Paul Studdart wrote a detailed article which you can find online for the Royal Society of Aeronautical Engineers that postulated that it was possible to have a series of interconnected fuel tanks on either side the gun barrels along the leading edge of the wings on an armed spitfire (ie. between the 4th and 10th spars and then again from the 12th to 21st spars and connected by steel piping) that would give at least 50 gallons of extra fuel capacity per wing. In a suitably modified Mk VIII that would mean about 200 gallons of combat usable fuel once any rear fuselage fuel (up to 75 gallons could be squeezed in at the back, but this make the plane unstable and hence not suitable for acrobatics and thus war fighting) and external fuel stores were expended. Add in that 75 gallons into the rear and say a further 60 gallons in a paperboard drop tank would get a fully armed spitfire to a target area over central germany. The 200 gallons left unused in the front of the plane and in the wings would be enough to fight for at least 20 minutes (50 gallons expended at max power), then fly home (no more than an expected 100 gallons even with headwinds) plus leave a very handy reserve for contingencies. 2. The truth is that in early to mid 1943 the Brits had already committed to night time strategic bombing and hence didnt need a fighter escort and the Americans were still in the grip of the ‘bomber mafia’ with their doctrine that ‘the bomber will always get through’, hence no attempts were made to use the kit already available to make the P47 go that little bit extra distance from eastern France to Schweinfurt in time for the big July and August 1943 raids: a disaster. using the Mustang thereafter was probably only an arse covering exercise to hide their strategic blunders in mid 1943. In any case, the mustang didn’t turn up in large numbers until right at the end of 1943 and by then the P47 had largely done the job of killing all the Luftwaffe’s experienced fighter pilots on the western front. Ultimately however, there is no dispute that the Mustang was the superior platform for a long range fighter than either the P47 or Spitfire, but in the planning phase for the 1943 strategic bombing raids, both of the later were available to be adapted for that purpose & the Packard-Merlin mustang (with extended range rear fuel tanks) was still spooling up on the production side.
@@andrewmetcalfe9898 A very well put together comment and very informative. I don't recall my Spitfire books mentioning the wing leading edge tanks, nor talk on internal rear fuselage tank. That same tank in the Mustang made handling tricky on take off and until the fuel was used up. Mark from Melbourne Australia
@@andrewmetcalfe9898 to have really long range, the P-51 also gained a rear tank with the same issues. The rear tank was used first. Whilst the strategic bombing force was at night, the RAF still did quite a bit of daylight tactical and operational bombing, including with the heavies, and so did need fighter escort. However, this was generally shorter range si the VIII wasn't seen as that much of a requirement compared to the IX. It was useful to pair the VIII airframe with the big, thirsty Griffon and call it the XIV, though. However, the RAF did employ quite a lot of Mosquito NFs as escorts on night operations. One of the complaints with Village Inn ad that it resulted in Mosquitos (and other Lancasters) being fired on.
Mind you it's not as easy upgrading an aircrafts armament as one might think. Weapons fit, weight, ammunition loading, centre of gravity and blast effects all have to be evaluated....
True, but it was made easier on Spitfires by the wing design. it could be easily removed and replaced. My Grandfather who was Spitfire Ground crew during the war explained it in a fair degree of detail, but essentially it was a matter of disconnecting all the fuel lines, hydraulics and the like, then simply unbolting the wing, lifting the fuselage up, slide the old wing out, slide the new wing into place, then lower fuselage back down. Then you simply bolted the wings on, reconnected everything, checked it, and boom.... new wings. Why is this important? Ever seen the letters after a Spitfires Mark designation? Spitfire Mk VB for example? That referred to the wing. The A wing had the 8 .303's, the B wing had the 2 20mm and 4 .303's, and the C wing had the 4 20mm. The wing designations was down to the armament NOT to whether the wing was clipped or not. It made the logistics of upgunning Spitfires pretty simple, all you did was change the wings, then tinker with the weights and the like to ensure proper stability, and voila, upgunned.
@@alganhar1 yes, a,b and c type etc. Members of my family worked in factories producing components for that aircraft before the war. I'm guessing they carried on through after my father was called up for the RAF. However I was referring more to getting cannons to work reliably and not to the detriment of performance either. I'm no expert, but there must have been knock on effects.
I worked for a WWII Spitfire pilot who flew Spitfires and was an Ace. He said that he got rid of the machine guns and his rearview mirror to lighten the aircraft so he could fly higher and faster. Flying higher and faster meant "life"! The mirror useless anyway because if you saw anyone in it that was not a friendly, it meant you were already dead. The 2 cannons had about 10 seconds of firing time, and he said that if he couldn't hit it in 10 seconds, he was never going to hit it. In his opinion, the 8 machine guns were just dead weight as they lacked "Stopping Power". Another interesting thing was that late in the war, he was on patrol for the V-1 Buzz Bombs and you would not shoot at them because the explosion would/could damge the aircraft. So they would fly up next to one of the wings of the B-1 with the Spitfire's wing just under, and use the air pressure coming off the Spitfire's wing to increase lift of the B-1 and it would then roll and eventually spiral into the ground.
You need to look at an early mark of Spitfire wing to see why they went with the 303. They were lucky to gave fifteen seconds of ammo. The mustang was designed so much later when a lot more had been learned. It also gad a lot bigger wing. Remember, in the mud 30s they were still designing biplanes.
That was a major downside to many of the RAF's fighters during the Battle of Britain. In a one to one comparison early model Spitfire's and Hurricane's had poorer flight performance (marginal in the case of the Spitfire) than the Bf-109E's they encountered, while the 109 was also able to bring the same weight of fire from it's two 7.92mm machine guns and one 20mm cannon as the RAF's fighters but with around 50 seconds worth of ammunition as opposed to fifteen. Had Luftwaffe high command given them more freedom to hunt down RAF fighters the result of the battle may have been very different.
That doesn't explain why the .303 was still the most common gun alongside the 20mm even in later marks of Spitfire, and was always the standard gun on the heavy bombers. We aren't just talking about Spitfires and Hurricanes in 1940.
@@justforever96 my only thought would be that they persisted purely because it was the standard calibre for Commonwealth military weapons and thus readily available. In Australia you can purchase boxes of ex-military stock .303 rounds for cheaper than modern manufactured rounds. You could apply the same rationale for the USAF’s decision to arm early F-86 Sabre’s with the standard 6x .50cal machine guns when that arrangement was less effective than the armaments of similar era aircraft like the MIG-15, Hawker Hunter or de Havilland Venom.
@@julienbarrett9922 Major factor was production and availability, they had to pump as many as possible out whilst actively being at war. America had the advantage of being pretty safe and joining later on. German engineering is just out of this world and was only limited by how mad the R&D teams working on whatever were.
The .303 was a comfortable antique, but production was there and they where de-bugged well enough for there use. The 50 caliber was newer, heavier, but absolutely brutal to the enemy aircraft and is still in use today.
One thing I learned very early on when I was in timed shooting matches, the Second Chance Pin shooting contests, it doesn't matter how many times you miss it still isn't going to "kill" the target. edit: I don't believe the reasoning for the Japanese lack of armor had anything to do with armor not being worthwhile in protecting the pilots. The Bushido mind set was that you didn't need armor if you killed your enemy first. That worked really well at first giving the "Zero" extreme agility and ability to evade fire and turn and attack it's attacker. But when tactics used first by Pierre Chenault's group, flying slower, less agile planes with a slower rate of climb but a really good dive speed, the Japanese planes had very little defense. Then later it was to late to add armor to the Japanese designs when the bigger planes like the P-38 could not only out run them, they could out climb them and even out turn them and with the concentrated fire of the 4 50 cal machine guns all shooting a stream of destruction along with usually a 20 mm cannon the zeros had very little chance as even a short burst through the plane did enough damage that even if the pilot survived the attack the plane was a goner.
My father flew an F4U Corsair in the pacific he loved the .5 browning's, on the day peace was declared he took the top round out of each gun and kept them, he is gone now but I have 3 of the rounds on my mantel piece, empty now of course not sure where the other 3 went. In one is an M1 carbine round from his personal defense rifle and a 38 from his handgun in the other. But he would have done Basic training with 303 Lee Enfield as he was RNZAF.
@@otosere2857 Certainly he is missed but I also doubt there are fewer men like him about, his sons and grandsons have all turned out to be solid citizens (as have his granddaughters and daughters) his greatgrandchildren also. As he said though he was destined to mediocrity until WW2 took over and shaped him otherwise. Most people are pushed by circumstance to do great things some of us are lucky to not have that push or experience what he did including flying out in the morning in a flight of fighter bombers and coming home for lunch with half the seats in the mess hall empty. He said once ""I'll be fine I've already been to hell and it rejected me
It was also much harder to damage/shoot down a ww2 area bomber than ww2 area fighter. The bombers was able to absorb more damage than a "delicate" fighter. That was much why the US kept using the 50 cal in the European theater. As they were mostly up against German fighters. In this case the 50 cal was more than adequate
@@rogersmith7396 its effectiveness is started to going down at the jet era, many reports of MiG still managed to fly back to base with over hundreds bullet hole Because of this they initiate Project GunVal, resulting F-86 Sabre variant F-2 that armed with more advanced 20mm compared to the one used by Navy jet (WW2 era M3 20mm) After that 20mm become primary weapon for many jet that came later, interestingly it was Navy that moved on from 50cal
@@blackmark7165 The Navy had moved on from 50s on ships in 1941, then moved on from 20 mm. At the time of Korea the Sidewinder was under developement. F 102, 106 and maybe 104 did'nt have guns. B 52 had tail 20s. as did B 58 and B 36. With the failures of early sidewinders in Viet Nam the rotary canon was put on planes.
It is often said hindsight is 20/20. The RAF made their decision based on the best available information at the time. Given you uploaded this from Great Britain rather than the German British Isles I would suggest they chose well enough.
Tbf, the economic concerns that were a big factor in the decision became pretty irrelevant when the battle over brittain got going. I suppose the smartest thing wouldve been to develope and set up 12-15mm mg production lines so you got them when you need them. Doing a sharp switch during the war was likely way more expensive than planning further ahead in the past. This actually makes me wonder how the germans got to their 14mm MG131, which apparently was a very effective fighter MG. German economy was way worse off than Brittain. But then again, Germany was limited in many other ways, especially when it came to bombers.
Back in 1968, I fired a .303 round from a Lee-Enfield rifle, at a 30cm x 30cm x 10mm mild-steel plate from 50 metres and it went flying. I then fired a 7.62 round, from a Belgian FN rifle, same conditions, and the steel plate did not move. The .303 round had made a fair dent, where the 7.62 had clipped right through. This was my first infantry, ballistics event. Great video. 😏
@@copee2960 My BSA came into South Africa via the back door during the apartheid era. No model number & no serial number. Bought around 1969 and I have just given it away, looking like new, but requiring a new piston & seals. Take care. 😉
I've shot many 3/8' thick steel plates with both .303 Brit and 7.62 x 51. My experience is that both burned a hole right through the plate from the same distances.
Nice video. I think most people think that it is always best to have the most effective thing, when in reality, you want the most of the thing that is effective enough. It is hard to argue that the Spitfire with its .303 guns was ineffective.
You also have to consider a heck of a lot of pilots going into battle, once the war was in full swing had seen little airtime before being in service. Many were often still teenagers.. they needed more rounds. It's a trade off but yes as is demonstrably proved by the outcome it was a fair choice. Things evolved as necessary. But to start with it did the job well.
I chatted to a pilot on a flying field one day and he said he had flown MK 5 Spits . He said some had been fitted with cannon but had been taken off due to reliability problems .
We (in England had the .303 in abundance, and they were already installed in the early Spits and Hurri's, and pretty much everything else that moved) I am sure economy while Britain was all alone against the Axis. Had a substantial effect on the decision.
Looking back to the early British endeavours or pre WWII, on almost all of their weapons, it looks like they went with what they had and could obtain in quantity. We all know of the "Ministries" that made horrible decisions but this ammo one makes sense. I wonder though how many more of the enemy planes would have been downed with more robust guns. I believe the P-47 had the best set up with eight .50 caliber guns. That was a lot of lead spread out that almost no plane could survive if it flew into it. Great video.
It is "my understanding" the 303 was originally put into some fighters for Aero Dynamic reasons, along with lots of others. If you note old pics of Brit planes you will see a difference in their wings leading edge before and after weapons firing. This was an advantage needed while other were under development.
Are you referring to the red covers for the barrels? IIRC those were installed to avoid the barrels freezing. And shot through on the first engagement.
I saw your Hazel Hill video and her calculations of how many .303 bullets would hit in a two-second burst. The caliber wars were universal. Germany had cannon-armed fighters during the Battle of Britain but they had a head start. The American AN/M2 .50 caliber machine gun was developed with Navy funding during the Great Depression--the US Army Air Force originally didn't want the big .50 and was satisfied with the .30 AN/M2 (confused yet?) plus the USAAF limited its "pursuit aircraft" to 500 pounds of munitions, NO bomb racks and no external drop tanks in an effort to justify their self-defending heavy bomber program. The Navy wanted to protect its ships from heavy bombers, from torpedo boats, from submarines and from other light enemy warships and if they could have, would have gone 20mm. The .50 caliber offered much better performance and so that was perfected, with two nose-mounted caliber 50 machine guns in the Dauntless dive bomber (along with a single or twin .30 firing from the rear gunner position). For that matter, the USAAF developed the Sperry bomb sight and the USN developed the superior Norden--by 1940 the USAAF was putting a pair of .50 nose guns in P-36 and P-40 fighters along with four .30 wing guns, had armed its few B-17's with .50 caliber guns, and was buying as many Norden bomb sights as the USN allowed them to buy (the Navy used Nordens in PBY flying boats and TBD Devastator torpedo bombers for high-altitude level bombing). The P-38 and P-39 fighters were supposed to have a 37mm automatic cannon M4 (a weapon Browning designed and tested--there's one in the Browning Arms Museum in Ogden, Utah) but the gun wasn't finished when John M. Browning died--and there wasn't enough time to make it work right. The P-38 picked up a 20mm cannon as did many P-39's but the M4 was part of the A-26 optional armament package on paper in 1944 and the M4 was appreciated on the American PT (Patrol Torpedo) boats where a crewman could whack a jammed gun with a hammer to make it function. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_autocannon Britain got its 20mm aircraft guns working before the US did--the US had a working .50 caliber and mostly faced fighter aircraft, not the heavy bombers clad in heavy armor. The .303 worked and that was enough to save Britain during the Battle of Britain. I've several books on aircraft armament examining the caliber question. The USN really wanted to have 20mm cannon and the late-war Corsair fighters and SB2C Helldiver dive bombers had 20mm cannon armament--along with the too-late-for-WW2 F8F Bearcat fighter (the first Bearcats had four .50 caliber machine guns until the Navy's edition of the 20mm worked well enough). The USN contribution to aircraft armament is underappreciated today. Imperial Japan's Army Air Force and Navy Air Force hated each other and pretended to live in different world, but the IJN's A6M "Zero" fighter was armed with a pair of 7.7mm cowl guns firing through the propeller arc and a 20mm cannon in each wing firing outside the propeller arc because fighting Chinese defensive aviation proved that a pair of rifle caliber machineguns were inadequate to knock down those pre-war Russian-built planes and the ones from Curtiss of America. It was a case of sailors being better airmen than soldiers were. The Luftwaffe went 20mm because of experience in the Spanish Civil War. The Royal Air Force controlled all aviation in Britain until shortly before the war. Putting all aviation under one command seemed like a good idea at the time, but the RAF ignored the needs of the Royal Navy and the Royal Navy ignored aviation because it wasn't any of the RN's business. Yes, I've oversimplified. The RAF went to war in 1939 with two bombers for every fighter plane. Coastal Command had to be stood up from nothing, and the Fleet Air Arm got funding too late to develop good carrier aviation, thought the British flying boats were very good. It would be nice to see a video focused on the Liberator bombers used by Coastal Command and how the Liberator helped crush the U-Boat menace. There were reasons that the Martlet (Grumman F4F Wildcat) and the Corsair (F4U) wound up in the Fleet Air Arm. By the Korean Conflict the new United States Air Force had an improved AN-M3 caliber 50 machine gun on its jet fighters--the F-80, f-84 and F-86. The Navy fighters carried four 20mm cannon on their carrier operated jet fighters and on the two main propeller-driven attack aircraft, the AU-1 (modified F4U Corsair--some were still designated F4U) and AD Skyraiders (now A-1 Skyraiders). In stratospheric combat the .50 caliber proved less effective on MiG-15 fighters, often damaging the MiGs but at that altitude the .50 incendiaries didn't ignite and the MiGs didn't burn. On the other hand, 20mm cannon fire ripped the MiGs apart. I bring up the Korean Conflict experience because Britain was right to skip a point-five-inch machine gun and go directly to a 20mm even though they had to gamble with the .303 being too feeble. This video pointed out that early cannon-armed Spitfires and Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain were swapped back for .303 machinegun armed fighters because the 20mm didn't work well enough--over the North African desert at lower altitudes, the 20mm did work well enough and the mixed armament of 20mm and .303 machine guns was a compromise between cannon power and machine gun reliability and fire volume. As for .303 caliber defensive guns on British bombers, the primary purpose of defensive machine guns was preventing the bomber from being shot down. Shooting down enemy fighters was a bonus. The .303 reduced Luftwaffe attack effectiveness on British bombers by forcing the Luftwaffe fighters to engage from longer distances (longer than their 7.92mm machine guns could reach because if the fighter could shoot the bomber with 7.92mm fire, the bomber could hit the fighter with .303 machine gun fire and the bomber was bigger, had more armor, had two or four engines and could take more punishment than the fighter). So Germany had to use 20mm cannon, later 30mm cannon, 50mm cannon, and barrages of unguided rockets. They had to fire outside of .303 machine gun range, which made German attacks less accurate. If the Luftwaffe didn't achieve enough hits because they had to fire their 20mm cannon from outside of .303 machine gun range, that meant less accuracy and the slower-firing 20mm were provided with less ammo. That's a "games player" solution but it did have the effect of reducing bomber losses. American .50 caliber machine gun fire--with far more guns per plane coordinated to protect other bombers in a 'combat box' forced the Luftwaffe to stop with the side and tail attacks and attack head-on with cannon fire, but the hand-held .50 calibers without computer gunsights weren't enough to fend off Luftwaffe fighters until coupled with long-range fighter escorts--the P51 Mustang specifically (built for a British contract by North American Aviation). Shooting down enemy fighters was a bonus for bomber crews. The primary purpose of bomber defenses is "don't get shot down."
@@richardrichard5409 It is now. There was a period when all aircraft belonged to the Royal Air Force--but that proved to be a bad idea. I could be wrong--perhaps the RAF only controlled things and didn't own the Fleet Air Arm from 1924 to 1937. Either way, the Fleet Air Arm was as crippled as the air forces belonging to national armies. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_Air_Arm Politics did a number on France's air force. The Red Air Force was actually Red Air Forces with Frontal Aviation, Navy Aviation, Long Range Aviation, and Defensive Aviation--and both Russian and German paratroopers were air force personnel. For that matter, German FLAK (anti-aircraft artillery) were Luftwaffe, just like coastal defense guns were usually naval. There were exceptions. The US Army Coastal Defense Artillery existed alongside some expeditionary Marine Corps Base Defense battalions. POLITICS!
Another point is that F-86 Sabre had M3 fifty calibre guns not M2s. The M3 had double the rate of fire of the M2 and was introduced towards the end of WW2. It was also fitted to the tail turret of early B52s (4 x 0.50 cal) and the final version of the P47, the 'N 'model had 6 x M3 guns instead of 8 x M2 guns. Even the M3 gun was barely adequate in Korea and the USAF was starting to arm its Sabres with 4 x 20mm cannon by the end of that conflict.
Just to throw in a bit of maths - a fighter aircraft is about 10 metres long. Only about half of that is useful target area for a kill. At. 400 metres the angle involved is less than one degree - 0.716 degrees. 200 metres is 1.48 degrees. Easy to see why up close, higher rate of fire increases the chance of a kill, even with inferior calibre.
I'm not surprised about the surplus of 303 ammo, I recall from my cadet days in the mid 1970s being issued loads of ammo during range days because "it needed using up".I guess storage costs were an issue, but I gotta fire off thousands of rounds😁😁😁😁
No allied soldier, sailor or airman need ever apologize for bearing into battle the genius designs of John Moses Browning, whatever the caliber. The full battery of 8 Brownings guaranteed when the pilot needed fire, he would have it. Unstoppable reliability on hand for the RAF in the Battle of Britain . It could move on later to larger bores; in summer 1940 the RAF didn’t have time to trifle with unproven or new designs. The Browning .303 batteries did their job when called on, and could fire virtually all day without fail. That characteristic is what the RAF was looking for in the 1930s when they tested all competitors.
Excellent vid. I never questioned why the Brits stayed with .303. (At least early on in the war.) Simple logistics. As to effectiveness of the .303, he who carries more ammo stays in the fight longer. Pepper a 109 with enough .303 it's going to come down. ;-)
Well that and in 1939 a fighter with _eight_ excellent MGs was considered a powerhouse. Most fighters were just starting to go to 4 MGs. that was what early Bf 109s had. People don't consider that all this change happened over a couple of years. They only needed 8 guns because planes were so fast that it was hard to get a long burst on target now. then you didn't NEED cannon until they started armoring planes to protect them from the heavier MG armament, you needed something that did more damage with a single hit and which could penetrate thin armor plate.
Great video! The .303 makes the self defense argument that "the caliber that you can most accurately shoot, is the best caliber to carry." Being able to put 20 .303 rounds in an enemy plane is better than missing or only putting one or two .50 cal rounds.
@@alpearson9158 Hence why training is important The problem with the 303 use was bad information The claim was thousands of rounds was needed when in reality, it was just accurate targeting
@@verdebusterAP not really. Most critical components of a plane are fragile things like cables and hydraulic lines that you either hit or you don't. More chances to get a "critical hit" is better than 1-2 largely insignificant holes that miss everything but the skin of the plane. Or put another way, 20x .303 rounds has a bigger cross section than 1-2x .50 rounds. More armor penetration power doesn't help against largely unarmored targets. You're just passing more of the little metal you can afford to carry with you through the same hole the tip of the bullet already made. The square-cube law is working against the 50cal in this case. Once you move from machine guns to cannons and can actually get effective explosive rounds this changes, but below that, more rounds headed toward your target is better.
It was my understanding it was because the Hispano 20mm wasn't ready for service by 1939, and wasn't reliable enough to completely replace the .303 for a while after it was introduced.
20mm Hispano cannon were available for RAF service in 1939. In the Spitfire the fitment was the 'B' wing version, but the fitment to aircraft, the Spitfire especially, was falling behind due to problems of ammunition feed during high-G manouevres, and with ducting hot air to prevent the guns from freezing. The Spitfire Mk.1b had 20mm cannon, and went into service with them late in 1940, but were not a great success. The later Spitfire Mk.Vb had 20mm cannon and was built in large numbers, and used in most theatres of WWII.
Nice discussion for which I've never had a satisfactory answer, until now. One thing you didn't mention was the increase in weight of the rounds as the size increased and so the resulting decrease in numbers on rounds that were much more destructive and at a longer range. Thanks!
@@carlwessels2671 I think he generally mentioned the differences in weight -- the .50 is much larger than the .30 and the 20mm. Is a quantum larger than the .50 -- and the same is true of the rounds themselves so there's a difference in size/quantity in addition to weight. I believe the Spitfire had a seperate trigger for the 20mm caccin for selective firing. Why did the Hurricane Mk. II, which was largely used as a nightfighter, swap its 8 X .30 for 4 X 20mm.?
IIRC there is plenty of evidence that Bomber Harris was very angry about the lack of better guns on the bombers. Typical of Harris’ remarks was his statement that: “this turret was the only improvement made to the defensive armament of the RAF’s heavy bombers after 1942, and those responsible for turret design and production have displayed an extraordinary disregard for Bomber Command’s requirements”. The above turret was the Rose .5 turret you mentioned. So lets take it that Harris really was not happy about under armed bombers and crews..
Excellent video - probably the best I've seen on the topic. One other consideration that had to factor into the equation, was the cost of the .50 Browning. They ran about $1000 USD each in 1945. This was a time when the average annual US salary was in the $2500 range for comparison. While it would make sense, I'm not sure that standardization of production played too much of a role in the decision, as if you look at British tanks they really liked using the BESA, which (oddly enough) fired 7.92 Mauser. The game theory approach to .303 was interesting. I've often wondered if that sort of thing factored into the US in modern times keeping the .50 cal mounted on just about everything - so that any potential adversary needs to make their APCs bullet-resistant to .50 AP and not just 7.62 NATO, but I had never considered it in this context.
I think the "de Wilde" round had something to do with it (keeping .303). First, it made .303 more effective against enemy a/c. Secondly, after putting all those resources into secretly developing a new round, you'd want to get the most use out of it.
Also in the late 30s 50 calibre was not readily available in large numbers and American policy of neutrality limited what was available and 303 was . Early 20mil. Cannon were prone to jamming in combat and so they were switched back to 303 till that was sorted out
Was there not an "incendiary" / tracer .303 round in British service in WW1? Originally intended for "balloon-busting"? The Browning aircraft guns were seriously lightened versions of the ground-mount types. The rate of fire of the .303 guns was almost double the M1919 so a LOT of mixed nastiness went down-range in a 2 second burst from eight guns. There were "lightweight" .50 types as well. You do not need a beefy barrel like the M2 series for two reasons. One, the air up there is cool, to say the least and two, "sustained-fire" is NOT an option, primarily, because of the weight and bulk of all that linked ammo.. Even the post-war 20 and 30mm Vulcsn" electric Gatlings carried limited ammo in those big helical magazines. Once rounds were expended, it was just dead weight, so it was time to go home., unless the aircraft was also well-loaded with explosive "stores" under-wing. I've never seen a "live" A-10 run but, long ago observed, from a safe distance, an F-111 tearing up the scenery with a Vulcan. Very impressive. Aircraft armaments tend to get somewhat more TLC than ground mounts. Furthermore, the ammunition is not usually "general service" grade, but aerial use only" grade. The Brits used tried and true "Cordite" in their .303 ammo for aerial gunnery until the outrageous muzzle flash could no longer be ignored. This flash signature not only clearly located a source of gun fire, but the muzzle flash also dazzled the air gunners in bombers doing night operations. So, they changed to filling with granulated Nitrocellulose propellants, which produced very little flash. If you see a .303 cartridge head-stamped Mk Vll Z, it is fueled by NC powder, not Cordite. Ammunition reliability is very important for wing and cowl mounted guns. It is a bit tricky to re-cock such guns in the event of a "stoppage". The 20mm Oerlikon cannons are a monster to cock, mainly because they are essentially a gigantic open-bolt, straight blowback system. Pretty much a two-man job. The Japanese used quite a few as aircraft guns.
They had to go with the best they had at the time, future developments were nice but not usable there and then. Besides I think reliability must have been high on the list, a soldier on the ground can tinker with a stuck gun but up in the air they had to work when needed.
It is always good to read an account by someone actually there when decisions are made. A good place to start is "Duel of Eagles" Peter Townsend's account of the BoB (he really liked his Hurricane). The RAF held all sorts of trials during the interwar years to optimise their armament. They even tried a prototype fighter with a 37mm cannon, obliquely mounted to kill Zeppelins should any show up, but that is another story. During the 1930s, they wanted a reliable and higher rate of fire for their mgs and trialled the Vickers GO or K gun, in competition with the Lewis gun for comparison, the modded Vickers Maxim, the RAF modded Browning (fired from open bolt so the more sensitive cordite filled 303 did not cook off) etc., etc. To cut a long story short the Vickers GO/K was by far the most reliable and had the best RoF (up to 1200 rpm with a chance of more). The wee snag was that it was pan fed, the Gladiator took one in a tray under each wing, that was doable, but try squeezing a battery of those into a Spitfire wing! The compromise solution was the somewhat modified belt fed Browning 303. The Spitfire wing was complicated to build anyway and it was really hard to get 8 x 303s in there, just look at the distribution and compare with the Hurricane's concentrated gun battery. Despite what is sometimes believed the RAF had 20mm in Spitfires in the BoB. The wee snag there was the flexing of the wing (a virtue under other circumstances) jammed the cannon feed. Pilots pleaded for their 303 Spitfires back, guns that work are better than no guns. I won't go in to the Hispano saga in detail again, but once Martin Baker had debugged the Le Chatterellaut (yes it was French) belt feed all was sweetness and light. In fact the Hispano once fixed, was so reliable they deleted the pneumatic cocking system to save weight. What the US subsequently did to it is a sorry tale and to my mind might account for the longevity of the 50 cal. There is a halfway house, if the Hispano 20mm was fuselage mounted it could be drum fed, and the first were. In the case of the Beaufighter NF for example, it was the observer's loathed job to wrestle empty drums off and full ones on. In the pitch dark in combat. Juggling 60 round drums at 60 lbs apiece was an unhappy task, especially in a confined space out of reach of your chute.. Anyway once debugged and belt fed the RAF used 20mm cannon just about everywhere suitable, Beaufighter, Mosquito (also 57mm Tetse fly), Spitfires in all flavours, Hurricanes ( 4 x 20mm, a version with 2 x 37mm was also used), Typhoons, Tempests, Hornets, Fireflies, Meteors etc. Even the prototype Windsor bomber had a couple of remote twin 20mm cannon. A Wellington was trialled with a low profile 40mm turret, I reckon that must have been rather a slow RoF. There were two clear exceptions to a preference for cannon,. When working up a seriously high altitude interceptor serious consideration was given to reverting to 303. They could be counted on to be made to work at the very low temperatures (icing problems) and pressures to be encountered, they would weigh a lot less as would the ammunition (a serious factor in gaining the altitude required), and all they had to do was poke a few holes in the other guy's pressure cabin. The various pressure cabins back then were not pressurised to one atmosphere, the pressure differential would be far too great. The seals and connexions were enough of a problem as it stood. What they did do was help the crew's pressure suit do its job, no pressure cabin, no crew - or at least a rather dead bluey purple one. The other 303 exception, which I always wonder about, is that Hawker used to offer prototypes with a dozen or more 303s in the wings. If you have space for that why not fit something else? The other element in this general theme that makes me curious is that the North American Sabre was rolled out with 6 x 50cal in the nose. I believe that this was used in Korea but stand to be corrected on that. At the same time, the Red Airforce MiG 15 (complete with its rip-off RR Nene engine) mounted a selection of 27mm, 37mm and upwards, cannon. I reckon something hit by those stayed hit, why the difference in choices?
@Walter Sansom Trusting souls who did great things to rebuild Britain post war. They had guarantees from the Soviets that the Nene would only be used for civilian transports. Yes I know, a bit too trusting, but we had been allies in rather dark times. However, that said, they also knew that RR and the Bristol boys and the rest had even better engines just around the corner. For example, Whittle even had an after burning centrifugal engine of humongous thrust ready for the Miles bid to break the sound barrier. Sadly the plug was pulled on that project (the cash wasn't there) and all the technology, including the innovative all flying tail, was gift wrapped and gifted to the US. Winkle Brown was really p****d off, he really fancied a shot in the Miles. This is one of the two men who might have in reality have already exceded Mach 1 when trying to discover what made the DH Swallow a definite pilot killer. Unlike the Bell manned missile, the Miles' effort could take off under its own power and had an under carriage. I've seen the wind tunnel model in the Museum on the site of the old Miles airfield. Sic transit Gloria mundi and all that.
My understanding regarding the Sabre is that they stayed with the .50 because of the combination of rate of fire and muzzle velocity, and because the gun had been demonstrated throughout the second world war to work well. Despite the Sabre's godlike kill-loss ratio in that war, the .50 was found to be somewhat lacking and later Sabres - especially Export versions - went over to 4 x 20mm and even 2 x 30mm (e.g. Australia). By the time the Americans switched to cannons, only one of their gun-armed fighters ever saw combat in US colours - the F-8 Crusader - and even there, the writing was on the wall: I read somewhere that the F-8 pilots had an unofficial competition (unsuccessful as it turned out) to see who would be the last American pilot to become an ace without using missiles. (The F-105 with the internal Vulcan cannon has quite a few gun kills to its credit, but it was overwhelmingly being operated as an attack aircraft with a self-defence capability and not as an air-superiority dogfighter.) Meanwhile, the British designed their jet fighters from the start with a 4 x 20mm armament (e.g. Meteor, Vampire), which may account for why the Australian Meteors (and one or two British Sea Furies) got as many MiG kills in Korea as they did - the opportunities were fleeting, but the armament took advantage of them - and also IIRC why the Skyraider of all things has a tiny handful of MiG kills to its credit in Vietnam (shots of opportunity against MiG pilots who missed and overshot in front of their intended victim).
One issue not mentioned is that tracer & incendiary rounds have different trajectories that ball ammo, so if you're using them as aiming aids you're focusing on hitting with one sixth of all rounds fired. Several US groups reported increased kill rates when they eliminated tracer ammo. They weren't sure, but allied pilots hypothesized that if opponents didn't see tracer rounds, they were less likely to take evasive action.
@@CalibanRising At least one US 8th Air Force fighter group (the 4th) used tracers near the end of the ammunition belt to give pilots a visual indication that they were nearly out of ammunition. This is according to the book "1000 Destroyed: The Life and Times of the 4th Fighter Group" by Grover C. Hall.
Yes, that way they may not notice they are being shot at, until you actually hit them. The US planes may have had counters also but pilots were often too "busy" at the moment to look. Against the Japanese it was found that just four .50 guns with extra armor piercing incendiary ammo worked well.
@@frosty3693 Supposedly. The Mitsubishi Zeros didnt have any armour plating or self sealing fuel tanks to protect their pilots. One could probably say that the 50's alone were probably quite overkill for those targets.
Finally an answer to a question I have wondered about for 60 years or so. As for the last reason (armour verses armament), that was most likely a lucky coincidence. Great video, thanks.
I jumped on the vid when I saw the topic. I’ve been looking for any information about this. The .303 in Second World War aircraft always stood out as questionable. The more I read the more questionable it’s use appears to be. You’ve raised some really interesting things that might add a little credibility to using the .303. That is the incendiary bullet splashing so that it was easier to mark hits. Given the trajectory of the .303 round the pilot would have to see the strikes to have any chance of getting hits at 400 meters. A .303 drops approx. 1 meter at 400m.at 5 hundred meters bullet drops 76” with 700 FPDS energy remaining, which is a pistol round energy and I can’t see how it could do any damage at 300+ meters. Bomber Harris 300 meters comment makes sense with the ballistics of the .303. the bullet drop, and lack of energy past 300. Interesting video, and a subject worth considering.
I never considered Harris' theory regarding the .303s being used on the bombers at night instead of the .50 cal guns. I think he may have been right about that. Significant monetary savings in cost and also in weight. That could have possibly been one factor in the Lancaster's slight speed advantage over the B-17. That, along with only one pilot instead of two. I'm sure there were other factors as well. I enjoyed this video. Well done!
Harris was wrong. A .50 weighs 660 gr a .303 wimps in at 180 max. So a single .50 whacks its target with 3.66 times more WHACK. 10 yards or 300 yards WHACK IS WHACK
@@CalibanRising I am not sure about these comments attributed to Harris, He was on record as saying that he considered the .303 to be a 'popgun.' At one point he tried to set up his own company to manufacture fifty - cal rear turrets. However, in 'Enemy Coast Ahead' Guy Gibson made a remark about fifty cals not being needed at night because you couldn't see far enough.
@@brucewelty7684 My Great Uncle was a Rear Gunner on Lancaster, flew three full tours, ninety missions. Used his guns a whole SIX times. Lancaster crews preferred NOT to use their guns if they could possibly help it because, you know, they were flying AT NIGHT. Seeing streams of tracer kind of tells every night fighter, search light operator and AA gun crew EXACTLY where you are. The only times the British heavies used their guns is if they had no other choice, and even then it was not to shoot down the enemy (though occasionally that did happen), but to distract him while the pilot put the bomber into violent evasive manoeuvres. The true defence of the British bombers on night missions was not to be seen. The guns were literally the last option defensively.... So their calibre literally DID NOT MATTER......
@@alganhar1 very true...they were told not to fire first, as the gunflash only gave the fighter something to aim at, and there was a risk of friendly fire hitting another RAF plane (they didn't fly in a formation as such and hit little idea as to the exact position of their companions, whereas the daylight US bomber formations were set so multiple bombers could safely create cones of fire directed at a single fighter.
You have presented a very well researched subject in an entertaining video. I have often discussed the subject with other WWII Historians and present day Fighter Pilots. Remembrance Day is just over a week away when I meet many military people from all the services so than-you for some new ammunition for discussion. (pun intended) My father won the DFC in the RCAF as an Air Bomber in mostly a Halifax III and lamented the fact they fired the 303 while British Lancasters were getting 50 Cal's. It seems the Colonials always got the latest equipment after British units. He had kept his large clothing and equipment trunk he used in the War which I still have to this day. It is missing a number of objects like the Practise Bomb and a 50 Cal Bullet made into a Cigarette Lighter which always frightened me. When I looked at it's large size and I understood how a man could be killed by just one of these.
There is a line in the Speer No11 reloading manual that goes like this. ""The .303 has killed more game in Africa than any other round. Wounded more also. The.30 cal Browning has about a 260 ft per second advantage over the .303 Browning. 30 cal is not exactly the same as .303
I always figured it was the higher rate of fire as the reason for using .303 machine guns. Much more practical reasons were given. The British were masters at modifying equipment. The British Firefly version of a Sherman tank is just one brilliant adaptation. If Americans, Canadians, and British tankers had at least one Firefly Sherman in each tank squadron, many lives could possibly have been saved.
By 1944, when the P-51D appeared, the typical Spitfire of that time had an E wing with two 20mm Hispano cannon and two .50cal. machine guns. This arrangement delivers much more energy than the P-51's armament, as 20mm shells have a kinetic energy of 65,000J each (three times that of a .50 cal. bullet), and the explosives in the 20mm shell add about 40,000J of detonation energy to each. Accordingly, two 20mm cannon deliver approximately two megajoules per minute to the target, plus another 300,000J from the two .50cal. machine guns. This is well over twice the firepower of the P-51's six .50cal. machine guns, and all for less weight (275kg for the Spitfire vs 389kg for the Mustang, for guns and ammunition). A four 20mm arrangement is the most lethal of all, and so proved by the end of the war.
I read that pilots in the Pacific preferred .50s to cannon for the greater ammo capacity. Japanese planes lacked armor and self sealing tanks so .50s had no problem chewing them up.
@Glicksman1 I think you have to explain further your statement that two Hispano cannon deliver 2 mega joules per minute destructive power plus 300,000 MJ destructive power from two 0.5cal. Browning machine guns! Doesn’t “MJ” mean mega joules? If that’s the case then the Hispano cannon are pretty puny!?!
@@ivatt442 I see the mistake. It was a typo. I meant to write, " ...300,000J"...". Joules, not megajoules (MJ). .50cal. machine guns are powerful, but not THAT powerful. :D Also, please note that for descriptive convenience I wrote "per minute" when describing the power of the guns. No 20mm or .50cal. gun is fired uninterruptedly for an entire minute. To attempt to do so would destroy the gun well-before a minute was reached. A burst of one second or less was more usual which, if accurate, was sufficient to destroy virtually any aircraft. Sorry for any misunderstanding because of the typo.
@@CorePathway Absolutely. Japanese fighters, particularly the Zero-Sen were very lightly built and carried no armour or self-sealing fuel tanks. This made them much lighter than they would have been if they had such, therefore more maneuverable and with a very good rate of climb. This, however, did not serve then well as faster and more rugged American and Commonwealth fighters using hit and extend tactics tore them apart with a burst of less than a second. A P-38's 20mm was even more lethal.
.50 cal Brownings in American fighter aircraft such as the P-40 were notorious for stoppages until design problems with the ammunition feed were corrected later in the war. The combination of the highly reliable .303 Browning and the 20 mm Hispano Suiza cannon in a number of British aircraft such as the Spitfire, Beaufighter and Mosquito was a highly effective one and was probably the best possible compromise on the basis of firepower, reliability, ammunition availability and supply and optimized weight of guns and their ammunition.
Great video, and thanks for putting this research together. I'm a fan of the U.S. Cal .30 M2 (or ANM2 .30) that was modified into the open bolt variation in Britain, culminating in the Mk II .303 model. The basic design was a joint project from U.S. Army Ordnance and Colt's, developed around 1929/1930. This gun was far smaller and lighter than the .30 cal Browning 1918 and 1919 series guns made for aircraft use, but based on the full size receiver from WWI. The ANM2 designation was used also for the .50 cal aircraft guns used on U.S. war planes, so one must distinguish the caliber when discussing these. In U.S. service, the .30 cal M2s were used most prominently on Dive and Torpedo bombers, in the tailgunner's position. The famous Dauntless dive bomber is the best known example. Colt's produced these in .303 for the British, and later Buffalo Arms, before manufacturing was initiated in Britain itself. There are interesting distinctions between the Mk II and the American ANM2, much of which I suppose has to do with mounting and triggering requirements, but the open vs closed bolt operation is the major functional difference. Fortunately, here in the States, it is still possible to experience shooting these amazing, historical arms.
The fantastic Paul Richey autobiography of the period "Fighter Pilot" covered a lot of territory and is well worth a read. Particularly Vis British fighter doctrine going into WW2 and how 1 Squadron abandoned the Dowding Spread and harmonised their .303 hurricanes at 250 yards massively increasing the effectiveness. The Dowding Spread (from a distance) wasn't particularly effective and was "driving the enemy off in an eastward direction" instead of actually shooting anything down.
New sub in the house! I'm a retired navy Senior Chief but I have always enjoyed aviation history - as well as general military history. I've watched a whack of your videos and found them quite good! You keep posting and I'll keep watching, liking, commenting, etc. BZ, mate!
The .303 round was nothing but a joke. It's like going hunting for Grizzly bears with a 22 . SURE you might kill,the bear ,but you injured it , then look out YOU are in Big trouble
IIRC, late 30s and very early 40s US fighters still used .30 caliber or mixed .30 and .50 caliber guns. Wartime creates inertia in production - changeover has to happen when existing designs are at full-time production. The UK was at war over 2 years before the US, i.e. that production inertia became a factor in the UK 2+ years earlier. Making a changeover is a complex weight, rate of fire, ammunition capacity, and damage potential decision.
The game theory is interesting, and yeah, I'd say the RAF were canny enough to think of it... remember the 'Carrot story'? Stories were leaked that RAF pilots were fed carrots due to them helping improve night vision. It was actually a cover story to cover the Chain-Holm radar (and later aircraft mounted radars) - generations of kids have subsequently been told to eat their carrots to help see in the night.
@@CalibanRising Yep, but I believe it pre-dated Cunningham (but only marginally) - to mask Chain Holm (the Germans only really using Radar as a ship borne system - I presume for fire control)
My father was secretary of the RAF modification committee during ww2, he told me we had over production of carrots so used the "cat's eyes" Cunningham story to encourage the young to eat them and avoid waste.
As one of that generation of kids in England who was always told to eat his carrots, I was only thankful that Brussel Sprouts had no effect on eyesight!🤣😂
The key source of information on RAF armament is the book "I hold my aim" (some copies can still be found) which was written by C.H. Keith (see Wikipedia) who was in charge of RAF weapons development in the 1930's.
I remember there was a video on TH-cam that was talking about the first encounters with Spitfires and the Luftwaffe. A German WW2 pilot spoke to his personal experience with being shot by a Spitfire armed with the.303. He said he managed to get back to base and when they checked his aircraft he was surprised to find so many holes in his fuselage and that they were from a relatively small caliber. I have hunted large game with a 303 and I have shot them from the gun shop who sold Lee Enfield rifles. The only thing that I noticed was that penetration was not always the best. While there have been several Wildcat Cartridges made but over the years I have noticed they have pretty much fallen out of favour.
In the Battle of Britain, the 20mm cannon on the BF109 wasn't that great either. Only 60 rounds of ammunition per gun, about 7 seconds of fire after which the pilot had to rely on the two relatively puny rifle calibre machine guns in the nose or fly home to France for a refill. The Japanese A6M Zero had a similar arrangement and exactly the same problem.
I think I read somewhere that some Zero pilots used their smaller armament to range the target before letting fly their cannons. Might have to look that up again.
The fifty - calibre was definitely more effective than the .303 but the latter round could still down planes. The greatest Allied ace. 'Pat' Pattle shot down at least fifty German and Italian aircraft. All his kills were achieved using the 0.303 gun and many in the Gladiator which only had four 0.303 guns.
@@FLMKane When the number of Gladiators on the island of Malta was reduced to three, they were named Faith, Hope and Charity. At least one book was written on the subject.
In the end though, the .303 was a good fit for the Spitfire. The pilots quickly learnt the best way to use them in combat and its lightness and size was perfect for those Spitfire wings. They shot down enough 109s to show it functioned well enough.
Tell that to the hundreds of british fighter pilots who died because of their shitty guns. The brits were very, very lucky their loss of pilots didn't make them lose the air battle.
@@miskatonic6210 What are you talking about? There's zero evidence the .303 had anything to do with the number of British pilots shot down. 109 pilots often had a torrid time getting the Spitfire into its sights due to its superior manoeuvrability, as mentioned by many former German WW2 pilots. All the books I've read, I've literally never come across a single historian that's mentioned the calibre of bullets as nearly costing them the Battle of Britain. I'd recommend doing some reading, there's a lot of historical literature out there.
Thank you for answering a question I never needed to know or would have thought to ask, I actually found your video very interesting. And no I'm not being sarcastic I am being sincere, I even enjoy watching videos from the British guy that talks about every naval war ship that there ever was. Thank you and thumbs up. Have a nice day. I hope I met your three criterias . Remember you did not mention anything about bad grammar , poor punctuation and misspellings.
In 1936 the British had a study the determined the best way to get the most Steel on the target was eight, 303 machine guns this enabled them to have them converging it slightly different distances, and still put Steel on the target. The Americans with their 30 caliber, equivalent to the 303. When they started using it in action started to determine that the 303 did not have the range for the way they had taught their pilots to fight. So they started to put more and more 50 caliber machine guns, starting with a single then a pair then four, six, and ultimately eight in the P-47 Mustang. Most American Aces seem to engage at ranges much farther than the effective range of the 303, and the heavier throw weight per round at longer ranges help them immensely
On top of every one of the latest Abrams A3 tanks coming off of the assembly line, sits the MA Deuce.50 cal machine gun, same as in WWII fighters. John Browning knew what he was doing 🤌👌👍
It's important to remember that the M2 Browning .50 cal MG was scaled up from the Browning .30 cal MG. Most American fighters were slinging six .50 cal MGs during WWII. Compared to an auto cannon, the .50 cal has a flatter trajectory, which makes hip shooting a lot easier.
It's on record that a fighter pilot with poor aim had much more change of scoring a hit with 8x .303 than with 4x 20mm. But early war RAF 'aces' had their armourers aim their 8 brownings to converge at (I think) 400 yards. Most RAF fighters were set to spray the bullets line ahead. So a poor shot would hit, but not kill. The Germans & Japanese kept their ace pilots at the front to kill as many as they could. The Allies took their aces out of combat to train new pilots. 1 ace killing machine is great if you are desperate: but an endless supply of good enough killing machines is what wins wars.
@@glynwelshkarelian3489 - That's all very interesting. But imagine what six .50 cal MGs firing about 500 rpm could have done compared to eight .303s firing just rpm as on the Spitfire Mark I. The .50 bullet is up to four times as heavy as a .303 round, and it has a higher muzzle velocity, thus flatter trajectory. So just two .50s might outperform either .303s. An air-cooled .303 weighs about 30 lbs, and a M2 .50 weighs 84 lbs. So yes, six .50 MGs could probably have been fit into a Spitfire Mark I and spit out 2-3 times more destruction per second. I think that single change could have shortened the daylight phase of the Battle of Britain, putting an end to more ME-109s and the careers of their pilots rather than allowing them to fly back to France. This isn't to criticize the Mark I Spitfire; however, she might have been even more deadly had she been equipped with .50s at the start.
@@pacificostudios The .303 Browning fired at 1,200rpm. With eight guns that's 9,600rpm. Six AN/M-2 Brownings would give you 4,800rpm, which of course is only half as many. And tests on actual aircraft showed that, after penetrating a metal airframe, the .50 round wasn't actually significantly more effective at penetrating armour or breaking things. Cannon armament was clearly the way ahead, everyone knew it, and the RAF didn't see the point in messing around with a much bigger, heavier machinegun when it was obviously a dead end.
Aluminum wing ribs have lightening holes to reduce weight where shear strength is not needed. These holes are designed to pass machine gun belts of a specific caliber. In terms of size, the various calibers were heavier, longer, fatter, and most importantly the bigger rounds had much stiffer belts with a much larger folding radius. In 1963, US NAVY Skyraiders with 8 50 caliber machine guns had to be catapult launched from an aircraft carrier. In 1964, the Skyraiders guns were replaced with 4 20mm guns. It was now light enough to be deck launched. The difference was the ammo. 20mm belts were too stiff to be laid in a second row in the wing boxes and the rounds were too long to pass through the lightening holes in the wing ribs to use the adjacent wing boxes. The net result was 50 caliber guns could use double row loading and adjacent wing boxes. The 20 mm guns had single row folding in the gun box only. The 8 50 caliber guns had 4 minutes of firing time at a much higher rate per gun. The 20mm guns had 20 seconds of firing time, they were slower and half as many but had a longer effective range. * 50 caliber guns had been the NAVY's solution for jungle fighting in the South Pacific in WWII. The 20mm was geared as a makeshift for Soviet armor busting. But these Skyraiders were only used in the Vietnam hot war. A superior solution replaced for an imaginary requirement.
What version of the Skyraider was this with 50 caliber armament? I can find no information on Skyraiders being armed with any guns other than 20mm. I can remember a Skyraider pilot in Korea talking about the effectiveness of the 20mm destroying vehicles.
Considering how much R.J. Mitchell thought that a stabilizing platform was most important always seemed to be of some importance perhaps? Wing design was ingenious. Well done with much information.
It would have cost too much and been too slow to licence production of the 50cal from America with how gouged the prices on Thompsons were so it was easier and cheaper to bulk buy .308 brownings and convert them in Britain, the spitfire did eventually mount 20mms but they were unreliable so the quad. 303s were put back creating the mixed configuration then up to quad layout when reliability had been fixed.
"it was easier and cheaper to bulk buy .308 brownings and convert them in Britain" Yes, but that never happened. For one thing, there WERE no ".308 Brownings" at the time. For another the British .303 Brownings were licence-made in the UK, and were radically modified from the original design.
@@Litterbugtaylor US-made Brownings were chambered for .30-06. The .308 round did not exist, and in any case the British Colt-Browning .303 was pretty much a completely different gun by the time it entered service.
Turned out, the .303 did perfectly well downing Luftwaffe planes during the Battle of Britain. As a buff, and a kid in the 70's, I always wondered why the .303 was the armament of the Hurricanes and Spits. Good video, now I know.
I have been interested in this sort of stuff since I was child. Good TV to me us a good history documentary. That said, I can't tell you how much I learned in this video. Dude, bravo.
Another factor that I didn't hear mentioned was that, for much of the war, the RAF was mostly engaging German fighters. .303 armament that would have been very inadequate for intercepting late-war bombers would have been adequate against lighter fighters.
Remember every American vehicle had a 50 cal mounted on it. As for the Navy 50 cals where widely dispersed all over the ships. Fun fact, on the lowly US Navy LCS today there's 6 50 cal mounts.
@@LV_CRAZY Yea but the Abrams .50 is not used for anti aircraft duties, and the .50 on the PT's was supplemented by 20mm's whenever the skippers could find one. The .50 was a great air to air weapon, but it has its limits. For surface to air, the 20mm is much better.
@@rocketguardian2001 I guess everyone's experience will vary. The 20 mm's aboard our ship, the USS Ajax in the 70s where a real disappointment. On every firing exercise they continually jammed. And couldn't be recovered. Every time. Maybe our Gunners Mates weren't the best. But the 20 mm left a bad impression with me.
@@LV_CRAZY do you know if they were the original mounts or replacements? They would have been decades old by the 70's, so maybe that would explain the poor performance. Cool that you served aboard a WW2 Era ship!
Jeffrey Quill was flying a Mk 2a Spit fitted with 20mm Canons which as you said froze at altitude, my grandfather was involved with machining the 20mm cannon barrels to get the tolerances just right, he said in the end they just taped over the end of the barrel, but later warm air fed from the engine solved the problem. Douglas Bader preferred to have an aircraft fitted with 8 X 303 mg's he had his guns adjusted to provide a concentrated cone of fire at 200yds much closer than the 600yds recommended in the Manuals, in fact, he had his MkVa Spit modified to have 8 X 303's fitted instead of the cannons it was built with. He thought the 303s provided a much higher concentration of destructive firepower. But then he did get shot down a few times! I believe we did adopt 0.5-inch mg's for our fighter aircraft later on.
Think you are being a bit hard on the Brits and the 303, for the planes they started out facing the fast firing 303 could easily damage and could be fitted in significant numbers to the light and nimble British fighters. Yes indeed they might have been better fitting something larger a little later in the war but there are advantages to using the same equipment in an extended manner. Now the US came in with great hulking aeroplanes with huge low-tech radial engines, both fighters and bombers. The heavy 50 cal would blow right through the sort of Armour used on aircraft by the Germans and could rattle from one end to the other of a zero, but just like any gun you needed to carry enough of them. The heavy US fighters could. Both the Japanese and the Germans used mixed gun batteries, the idea being able to handle anything, but the 20mm had only a handful of rounds and then they didn't have enough 303 to make up for it. As the war went on they packed more and more cannons (up to 30mm) to deal with heavily protected bombers. It was what they had to do, and by the end of the war they were really dangerous opponents to the bombers. Course it took them so long that by the time they were able to handle the bombers there were hordes of smiling mustangs they had to deal with first. Like so many things choosing aircraft weapons is not a one-sided deal, you got to figure on your enemy. An enemy with light fast maneuverable aircraft give me lots of light fast firing machine guns. Heavy bombers your problem - cannon, generally a 303 would just piss off a 17. Got plenty of weight, horsepower and wing area? A 50 cal is a good intermediate gun, real good at strafing ground targets too.
probably supply reasons, it's easier to manufacture a lot of ammunition if you only made 1 type especially if you are under siege like the British was in the early parts of WW2
We had .303 in ready production both guns and ammo. The weapon and ammo is smaller and lighter and recoil is less making it easier build a plane around it. .303 and .50bmg have the same drawback, they make holes. Both rounds relied heavily on hitting something important whereas a 20mm shell relies on sending shrapnel out to cause harm. You're better off going for more bullets and more speed if outright explosive effect isn't available.
It was a period of rapid evolution. The specs for these aircraft were designated several years before war broke out. History cannot be judged with hindsight.
Still used the .303 (Bren Gun)in the Rhodesian Security Forces 1980. My BN (3 BN Infantry) was the last Unit in the Forces who were issued with Brens. The SADF (South Africa) used the Bren till the 90ys
I think this is the first video of yours I've seen. I'm impressed by the detail and clarity of presentation; it exceeds my initially naive expectations!
You have to fight with what you have. The 303 was available and reliable. By the time the 50 started to arrive the 20 mm was working. Also self sealing tanks and armor only became available in 1940ish. At the cost of weight and performance. By the way one of the things stopping the zero having armor was Japan did not have an engine powerful enough to keep the performance.
There was a version of the Zero that was fitted with an armor plate to protect the pilot and I think it also had self sealing tanks, but the extra 400 lbs completely destroyed it's performance and as a result only 400 were produced, I think I remember reading that the majority of them were removed from front line service and were used as trainer's. Like the Brewster Buffalo once it was weighed down with extra weight for survivability it couldn't be fitted with a more powerful engine because the airframe couldn't handle it, so much would have been redesigned that they just put the efforts into designing entirely different aircraft. The "Mighty Zero" was a false God, it's entire reputation is based on it's record against Chinese biplanes and it's first month or two against green US pilots who just had to learn how to fight against it and forget their peacetime training which was wrong for dealing with an aircraft like that, but with the right tactics they quickly turned the tables against it to where even the Wildcat was shooting it down at a ratio of 5 to 1. Having no survivability engineered into it for the sake of things like maneuverability and climb rate turned out to be a mistake, one good squirt from the .50 cals of the US fighter's and they came apart usually resulting in them bursting into flames, one of Japan's leading aces who survived the war is in an interview here on TH-cam and he himself says it was Japan's worst fighter of the war citing it's lack of survivability as why.
@@dukecraig2402 That's possibly the worst revisionist claim I've seen in a while. The IJN preferred maneuverability over speed, etc, as a matter of doctrine, not design choices. Hurricanes that were successful in the Battle of Britain tried the same tactics against A6Ms and got chewed up. Basically any attempts to engage in maneuver with a Zero was suicide. Allied air forces became successful when they started employing competitive strategies against the Zero. You also ignore the Zero's insane range compared to its opponents. The P-38 was the only plane that came close.
@@dukecraig2402 True but also the zero only had a 900 hp engine. When it first flew in China it was against biplane type aircraft the best being the Russian I-16. In 1942 it could out range the P 51 of 1944. Also the Japanese AL used was stronger than US AL of the day and a number of US aircraft were armed with .30 not .50's. Good comments.
@@Caseytify And they paid the price for it, and why are you citing the example of Hurricanes using bad tactics against the Zero when I quite clearly stated that after the early engagements against the Japanese using wrong tactics the US pilots adopted the right tactics against the Zero and started shooting them down at 5 to 1 with even just the Wildcat? Don't you get what I was saying there? What does Hurricanes using the same incorrect tactics against the Zero have to do with it? Facts are facts, a 5 to 1 kill ratio of the Wildcat vs the Zero is proof that the Zero was a false God, that 5 to 1 ratio isn't for US fighter's as a whole against the Zero that's the kill ratio for just the Wildcat specifically, what is it with you guy's who believe that maneuverability is the ultimate measuring metric for a fighter and just want to dismiss survivability? This was real life not a video game. And once again, it's one of Japan's surviving top aces who right here on TH-cam even admits it was their worst fighter of the war and cites it's lack of survivability as the reason, seeing as how he flew it and their other fighter's he compares it to I'd say he knows what he's talking about.
Apparently, when the Hispano was being evaluated it was based on some use of this weapon. However because it had been, of necessity at the time, mounted sideways in the aircraft wing this put strain and friction on parts not designed to take them. This led to unreliability which biased the decision not to use them at the time. Douglas Badrr was dead set against the Hispano because of this and insisted on retaining the .303 Browning.
Yes, I remember that preference of Bader's. He was an excellent pilot and (I think) marksman, so he could get in really close on an enemy. Lesser pilots/marksmen probably wouldn't have had as much faith in all-303 armament.
@@britishamerican4321 In a 25th. BoB anniversary, article by a leading magazine of it's day, I read that the Brownings were set in a general spread to ensure a better chance of some hits by less experienced pilots. However, once a pilot had proved his skill at judging distance and deflection, he would have the guns reset to converge at 250 yards causing maximum damage at that point. Apparently, the effect was equivalent to a five ton truck hitting a brick wall at 60mph. - !
@@simongee8928 That's exactly right (re: the convergences, first set to a long range, then to much shorter range, e.g. 250 yards). And yes, the effect was devastating, in the days before more powerful engines (and thus up-armoring) became available.
At a conference after the Battle of Britain, there was a discussion about .303 vs 20mm. Douglas Bader insisted that the .303 was better, you just had to get in close to the target. Robert Stanford Tuck argued that cannon were better, having greater range and hitting power. He said that had he had cannon, there were a few instances where he reckoned that he could have downed an enemy that was out of effective range of his .303's. While it started to be effective with the Mk V Spitfire, it should be noted that Bader, at his insistence, was flying the only 8 x .303 armed Mk V Spitfire in his Wing on the day that he was shot down (possibly by one of his Canadian pilots). As for the de Wilde ammunition, according to Squadron Leader Jim Shedden (486 Squadron), it was not made in Belgium (although initially invented there in 1938) but at the Royal Arsenal Woolwich, and an improved version of the original. Britain had bought the rights to the design. It was called de Wilde at the time to confuse the Germans about the source. My father's squadron (268) had the Mustang 1a, and was unusually armed with 4 x 20mm cannon, but as it was used in the Tactical Reconnaisance role, and was fitted with the Allison engine, never reached an altitude where heating was required. This was in 1944.
Yes, quite right about the different views of Bader and Stanford-Tuck. Bader's other aversion to cannon was that, in his view, it would encourage pilots to engage enemy aircraft at too great a distance. As was said, Bader passionately believed that the most effective way to shoot down the enemy was to get up very close and that 8 x .303 Brownings were more than enough firepower if used this way.
Interesting stuff. I had short-listed a section of this video on who slowed down the adoption of 20 mms, but it got left on the cutting room floor. Thanks for the clarification about de Wilde ammo.
@@kenstanway7625 The fact that virtually every British front line fighter switching to 20mm cannons in the latter half of the war showed who had won the argument.
One of the main reason the RAF used .303 in the beginning is it was 1938 before they fixed most of the problems. Then it was another year before they got 20 mm usable for service. Also complaints about P 52 being under gunned with only 6 .50's.
@@kenstanway7625 Also let's not forget about the "Dowding Spread", which had the 8 guns harmonised at 400 yards, to allow for the perhaps poor accuracy expected of the current RAF pilots. No 1 Squadron in France in 1940 soon decided to harmonise at 250 yds, and some at 200 yds, but had to keep it quiet as the Dowding Spread was still official policy. They were also one of the first squadrons to fit armour plate behind the pilot (borrowed from a crashed Fairey Battle). Air Ministry types had argued that the extra weight would affect performance, but the the Squadron Leader (Bull Halahan) tested it and found that it was fine.
The skilled fighters in the BoB tended to disregard the harmonisation distance for their wing guns as recommended by the RAF, which IIRC was several hundred yards and used a much smaller distance, even down to 100 yards (300 feet) or less! This gave the guns the close-in punch they lacked at distance and made for less wastage of very limited ammo and faster kills which was important in the melee of dogfighting. Also the rate of fire being faster than even the 50 cal of the time meant that snap-shooting, which often was the only kind possible, had more chance of a hit. Bob Tuck and Douglas Bader had many arguments about the guns in use which Tuck recounts in his book "Fly for Your Life". Bader wanted cannon whilst Tuck was determined to stick with the .303 for it's reliability and adequate performance - but Tuck was a superb shot and used to get in very close to his quarry, in itself a measure of his flying skill!
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About the jacket i would look a bit awkward at the company eh eh. You're rate of uploads is impressive. Interesting discussions about such different but highly performance tail wheeled aircraft.
They were a poor nation. Of only 50-million people.
With not the manufacturing resources of the Yanks for example,
They needed to standardize the production size of bullets over all their guns.
They did not have a plethora of bullet makers when the war started.
Did you know that all Brit infantryman carried only ten (!) rounds?
Simple as that.
Before WW2, the thinking also was that planes would be engaging at longer distances (due to better/higher engine powers), therefore in the cone/zone of a bullet travelling further, with a gap in between each bullet, a higher rate of fire would give far more chances of a hit against at that time, unarmoured planes. Only with actual battle experience, was it seen that dogfights would be at much closer ranges (& guns synchronised to this) so you were far more likely to hit your target, so cannons made much more sense.
A lot of nations still had planes with only 2-4 machine guns, so having 8 was seen as a big advantage. Small calibre MGs & lower weight gave the planes better mobility. During the BoB, the 0.303 was good enough against the opponents of the time. Boulton & Paul Defiants with only 4 x 0.303 mgs proved they could take down a bomber quite easily, it was the gun platform & accuracy that mattered.
Having a standardised mg & ammo makes things far easier for all services to resupply, & keeps the penny pinching accountants happy. Britain didn't have much money after WW1, and most of it still went to the Royal Navy. As you stated, there weren't enough 0.5" mg anyway, & Britain's industrial base couldn't cope with more demands. Powered turrets were still quite new, & lighter guns helped their early technology to function. Early RAF tests of 0.5" guns sadly killed an air gunner as the recoil wasn't designed in properly, & the guns went into his chest.
The Germans had trouble with their 20mm cannons in their Me110s jamming after hard manoeuvres. All new tech went through teething issues.
However, it was agreed that the 0.303s were being outclassed by later plane specifications, RAF pilot/ace Douglas Bader didn't want 20mm cannons originally (probably for the reasons you stated of jamming etc), but then became a complete convert to them.
Thank you for your video, well put together & presented, I enjoyed it! 🙏🙏
@@DennisMerwood-xk8wp My Grandfather's diary show he was issued 50 rounds of .303, plus extra for the Bren. That was Green Howards, 1939.
@@MzLunaCee Yeah but the Bren was a machine gun.
BTW, when we went thru our compulsory military training in NZ, in learning to fire the Bren, we were warned that it was only to be fired in short bursts! Otherwise, the barrel curled up at you! LOL
I have a 20mm cannon shell and bullet made by BMARCO at Grantham. The unexploded bullet was retrieved by my grandfather in Leicestershire from a peice of JU88 tailplane after a Spitfire chased a raider over the county. This is dated 1942 not long after they were introduced, and the shell casings were picked up off the road where they fell about a mile away. The JU88 finally succumbed and crashed near Market Deeping and the crew are buried in the churchyard there I heard. Years later, I showed the round to an ex RAF armourer who stated that it had definately been fired from a Hispano Cannon mounted in a Sptitfife as it has a neat line halfway up caused by the ejector mechanism in the cannon which were run on clockwork, which is why the aircraft had those wing-blisters to accomodate the mechanism. The explosive end apparently diddnt explode because it was incorrectly milled and was live until my father did his National Service in the Royal Engineers in the early 50's and recognised that fact and disarmed it! Until then it sat on the mantlepiece above the fire at my grandparents house!
Lol that would be an interesting moment to have if something happened "Honey your trinket from the War fell off the Firepla-" POW
@@Sparten148 🤣🤣🤣
My uncle also benefited from national service with the Royal Engineers, though we didn't have anything live on our mantle pieces.
Very cool story. Thsbkbyou for sharing.
In 1942 a lot of the rounds used were solid AP, so probably nothing to explode, thankfully, probably just incendiary and tracer (APIT).
The Mosquito fighter bomber was armed with 303's but also 4 20 mm canons. It could also be fitted with a canon which fired 6lb shell which would sink a modest boat or submarine. It flew 20mph faster than nearly all Spitfires and was made from mostly wood built by furniture makers and out of work musical instrument makers. It also could carry 2 x 500 lb bombs. The moral of this story is dont mess with a carpenter.
The F. II was a hair faster than the contemporary Spitfire, but built in limited numbers, and mostly as the NF.II which was slower. FB. VI Mosquitoes were no faster than contemporary Spitfires when introduced, and slower by war's end as engine upgrades went to the later NFs (no 303s). The NFs could keep up with Spitfires on the whole.
It was the bomber versions that were faster than Spitfires. No guns.
Those "Tstetse" variants were vicious!
Jesu... ooopps!
I guess this just comes with knowing a thing or two about a given subject; but it always annoys me when people make these generalising summaries lol. "The Mosquito" varied a lot over it's time in service, depending on level of development, and subtype. Also, as far as I can tell the 2x500lb bombs is one of those annoying stats that gets repeated more than it should as it seems to have only applied to early models. Some of the most heavily produced FB versions could carry 4x500lb bombs (two internal, and two wing mounted), or 2x500lb bombs and 8x60lb warhead RP-3's. The dedicated bomber versions were the fastest mosquitos and could carry up 4000lbs of bombs
TRUE TRUE! they will build a plane that will kill ya, and a coffin to bury ya in too.
Even in the optimal conditions an aircraft is an unsteady vibrating gun platform. Add in crosswinds, maneuvers, deflection, and so on - the chance of a hit is quite small. Put out a large number of .303 rounds from six to twelve guns, and well even a 10% hit rate out of 100 is ten chances to poke a hole in something important like a fuel tank, radiator, or pilot. Germany went the opposite direction with cannons - 10% of thirty is only three - but those three will make a huge impact. The M2 Browning made for a decent compromise between the two.
Where is the .303? The Murican Ma Deuce is still serving!
@@UkrainianPaulie But is the M1919 - Which is almost identical and was used by the US Forces? Kind of comparing different calibers and capability. 0.50cal BMG is basically a 12mm Cannon.
.303 Browning was basically an M1919 Medium Machine gun. 0.50cal Browning is a pseudo cannon masquerading as a Heavy Machine gun.
IIRC the primary german fighter cannons were MG131s, 14mm machine guns. From what ive read they were very effective guns, lighter and more compact than most other guns of this caliber at the start of the war, and used till the end.
Later, when you had planes with >1500 PS monster engines, it was likely much easier to justify taking some 20mm cannons. Even some Hurricanes got upgraded with quad Hispanos, though likely more for ground attack, since the planes werent great dogfighters.
Bullshot. 0.5 is the worst aircraft weapon possible. It shares disadvantages of 0.3" gun (no explosives) and 20 mm (weight of the gun). The only difference is that holes are little (60%) wider - it does mean nothing in practice. With armor and self sealing tanks tailored mostly against 0.3" it could keep its effectiveness little longer, but guncams show that cannons need much less aiming time than 0.5" batteries. Everyone knew this, the USAF planned and manufactured 50,000 20-mm Hispanos in advance, all of which were unfortunately defective.
0.5" Browning was the only option left. The rest is a wartime propaganda - soldiers need to believe that they have the best weapon possible. That propaganda became mythology.
@@termitreter6545 Relative efficiency is always the same. One Hispano was worth at least 3 0.5 Brownings, as long as you have ammo stored in the belt.4 cannons are more effective and lighter than 8 0.3" Brownings.
Hurricanes were excellent dogfighters, but they were little too slow.
I once read an account of a RAF pilots experiences during the BoB, he was posted to a non operational unit at the end of 1940 and then back to an operational unit later on after the Spitfire Mk V's introduction to service.
He was heavily involved in the Rhubarbs and Rodeos of that time period and found himself behind a 109 for the first time since the previous summer, he pressed the 'tit' and watched his De Wilde rounds dance over his target without apparent effect but then remembered he was in a Mk V and touched the cannon button whereupon the 109 dissolved in a great gout of flame and debris, he was mightily impressed and rued the lack of them during the BoB.
That says it all really. 😀
Ultimately the .303 did the job during the Battle of Britain 🇬🇧, and the introduction of the .50 or 20mm was a step forward in technology that could have been hastily introduced, and in doing so caused more problems than was acceptable, but once perfected the switch was an obvious no brainier.
Augsburg raid lancs daylight. 6 out of 12 lost. Me109 figured out lancs had 303 400 m. Effective. Stayed away 500m. And 20mm cannon slaughtered lancs. Very bad policy 303.
Brits had them in the Spitfire 1b, but the early cannons separated the ammo, so we're useless. The Hispano were reworked and became arguably the best 20mm cannon of the war.
@@allandavis8201 Neither the Spitfire nor the Hurricane were new aircraft in 1940 and if the British air ministry had put their minds to it there was no real reason why both types couldn't have been armed with cannon in time for July 1940.
The UK had at that time access to some of the best minds in the world and I'm sure they could have introduced a viable cannon armed Spitfire considerably earlier than October 1941 if only they'd paid attention to aerial combat that had already happened between modern fighters elsewhere.
Other countries like Russia, Germany, Japan and France had already successfully fielded fighter cannon and I sense a typical stubbornness on the part of RAF High Command that was prevalent throughout WW2.
They more or less completely disregarded any potentially valuable lessons learnt from either the Russo/Finnish, Russo/Japanese or the Spanish civil war.
Also, we can’t forget that Britain had to operate on a shoestring budget as Churchill told FDR even before the US was in it that GB was already almost bankrupt hence FDR’s creation of Lend-Lease! Britain literally didn’t have a pot to piss in! So using the 303 was the most economical. Great video.
They were in a bad financial place. You might get a laugh,bitI heard it toou them until 2006 to pay off their WW2 debts.
@@carlwessels2671 oh yes, I think I remember that! Russia actually paid off theirs also after Stalin tried to not pay, they finally paid it off.
That is almost completely incorrect. Firstly: The war started in 1939, and Britain was doing well at that time - the economy actually grew slightly during the war, partly because expenditure was dictated by the state to produce goods, rather than the free market, and because only necessary things were produced. The UK was certainly not "almost bankrupt". Lend lease, is not what you think it is. It was not a gift, and it had to be paid back after the war, as did the loans taken out - which *IS* what nearly bankrupted us after the war, as well as the completely exhausted infrastructure, and flattened towns, cities, factories and docks. Secondly: The decision to use the .303 calibre machine guns was built into the specification for the new monoplane fighters in 1936 and 1937 - well before the start of WWII. The contemporary, & brand new BF109A had just 2 ,792 machine guns, only being more heavily armed in response to the new RAF 8 gun design spec in later models. Therefore, 8x.303 Brownings was a perfectly sensible decision. Economy had little to do with it, and the designs were built around the guns (which initially called for just 4xMG - still 2 more than the BF109). On a side note, Russia only paid back a tiny fraction of it's lend lease - to the USA and the UK. As for the .50 - did you listen to the video at all? - it was rejected. The multiple .303 guns had a much higher firing rate, than the .50 MG. & could deliver more lead on target.
@@memkiii If Britain's economy was doing so well in 1939 how did they blow through all their gold and cash reserves by 1940? Why were they begging for a handout the entire time the US was in the war?
Oh, that's right the British and the French fought a " Phoney war" (look it up) for the first 8 months. This allowed the Germans to gather enough force to toss the Brits into the sea. A vast majority of the British expeditionary forces weapons were captured by the Germans. What did that do for the British economy?
BTW, Lend Lease was mostly written off (look it up). The contract stipulations required the lent materials to be destroyed or returned after the war. Neither of those conditions incurred expenses. Payment was only required for the materials they kept. Britain was loaned about 31 billion dollars they only repaid about 1 billion for materials that they kept after the war. That minor repayment was like pulling teeth. The same goes for the Russians they only paid for the material they kept which was a minor fraction of what they were loaned.
@@memkiii
Yes, the 'know nothings' under this stream can have their respective laugh at Britain's expense, but their disregard for facts and circumstances makes both them and their contributions appear sub intellectual. Britain's debts were paid off, the Soviet's were not. Britain had its factories bombed and factory worker's homes bombed for over two years before Germany declared war on the USA and brought a reluctant USA into the European war. That level of destruction has a profound effect on production levels and strategy. The US economy had to all intents and purposes recovered from the great depression on the back of French and British arms orders, and made the average worker pretty prosperous against British arms workers, at a time when British civilians were being bombed in their beds. At this time, the average American must have paid more attention to which new model of car he was going to buy in 1941, than why the economy was doing so well on the back of other people's grief. I don't want to be too hard on our allies, but the amount of Americans who earnestly think WW2 started in 1941, is too many.............
Don't forget that in the case of the spitfire fitting cannons was also impaired by the wing design. The very thin elliptical wing did not really have the room for the Hispano, hence most of the barrel was outside the wing and insulated and the wing had to be fitted with blisters to cover the loading mechanism. The big wing of the Typhon and Tempest could easily manage a pair of Hispano's and some 303's or 50's. Making it an extremely efficient ground attack platform.
Four Browning 0.50 cals could have been adapted, and weighed less than eight to twelve .303s.
It was far easier to fit cannons into the wings of a spitfire than it was to do the same to the Me BF-109 when the Germans attempted to do the same, so your point is only relative. It was not easy for the Spitfire but it WAS possible without having to resort to wing pods as the 109 had to. In fact it was possible to upgun the Spitfire to two 20mm per wing.
Ever noticed the letters in Spitfire designations? Mk VB for example? Mk IXC? Those letters denote the wing type on the aircraft, more specifically the armament. The A wing was the 4 .303 machinegun variant (per wing), the B wing was the 1 20mm, 2 303 variant (per wing), the C wing carried the two 20mm per wing armament.
Changing the wings on a Spitfire was actually remarkably easy, you simply unbolted them, lifted the aircraft fuselage off the wings, slid them out of the cradle, slid the new wings into the cradle, lowered the fuselage back down, then bolted the wings into place. It was something my Grandfather who was Spitfire Ground Crew during the war described in fairly extensive detail, obviously I have simplified it somewhat, but it was an operation they carried out regularly and could conduct within a couple of hours.
@@daveponder2754 They went one better though, the C wing carried two 20mm Hispano's per wing, and was the most common wing fitted to Spitfires late war. Even prior to that I would prefer the B wing with 2 20mm and 4 .303's over 4 .50's. The eight .303's were only mounted on the early Spitfire marks, mostly the I's and II's, the B wing being adopted soon after the Battle of Britain, despite suffering problems with the Hispano's at that time.
@@alganhar1 The "C" wing was an universal wing. It could take 8 .303s, 4 20mm or 2 20mm and 4 MG's.
The Typhoon and Tempest probably the best single engine G/A of the war
I live on an abandoned WW2 practice bombing range here in Arizona and find 30 and 50 cal rounds all the time. Inert practice bombs used to be common but they have pretty much disappeared because souvenir collectors got them.
That's impressive as there aren't many US World War II aircraft that used 30 caliber guns.
I'll bet that place is fun to metal detect lol
Get it in Australia too a lot of the national parks between SA & VIC we’re used as strafing & bombing ranges. Find .303 .50 & 20mm all over the place.
Sometimes you get lucky & find the big nasty fragments of a 500 pounder the forces at play to do that to a piece of half inch metal…
@@deejayimm The USA used a lot of 30 cal MGs during WW2
@@roscoefilms yes but not often on planes
Same here, I go out on the Barry Goldwater Range quite often, we find .50 cal casings with a single "4" headstamp date all the time. One cool find was a line of 20mm brass casings with 1953 dates. Shined up real nice with brasso.
Having read plenty personal stories from pilots, it would seem they did like the high rate of fire in dogfights but they complained about the punching power against bombers. The German side complains about their guns having a too low rate of fire in dogfights. So I figure both options had their advantages. As for a mix in armament, I’ve read accounts from pilots stating they would use the low call guns as range finders before using the cannons.
That's why the American solution was the best middle ground. Have .50s and to fill out the gap in rate of fire just have 8 of them.
@@Mike23443 America had the advantage of being able to develop all this whilst being safe. Brits just had to pump them out to keep on top of the germans.
One of the reasons why Germans rarely went iínto a dogfight. They usually practiced tactics to surprise the enemy and run away (hit-and-run) for which lardge caliber guns are very effective.
>use the low call guns as range finders before using the cannons
I use it like that in War Thunder Spitfires, had no idea it was also used that way in real life. I guess it's just that intuitive
@@Mike23443 Sorry the greatest of all marksmen Cats Eyes Cunningham Night Fighter pilot used only 40 rounds of his cannon to get a Me 410 your best Capt Don Gentle 160 rds for 1 xfw190and then there was RCAF Dick Audet 5 enemy in 7/10 minutes using all his cannon hardly any 50s No the RAF/friends were always the finer shots
Saw this in Flight Journal and thought it was interesting:
Squadron Leader Ralph Sorley is widely unappreciated for his contribution to the Spitfire’s armament. The original specification listed four .303-caliber guns, which, considering the nature of combat, would have been woefully inadequate. But Sorley, who had flown with the Royal Navy in WW I, was the right man in the right place at the right time. Working in the operational requirements office, he recommended upgrading the new fighter’s armament to eight machine guns. As it was, eight .30 calibers proved marginal against bombers.
In anachronistic terms, the “throw weight” of the British and German fighters’ armament favoured the latter. A three-second burst from eight .303s produced 13 pounds of projectiles downrange while the 109’s combined cannon/MG battery yielded 18 pounds. But undoubtedly far less than 10 percent of all rounds fired connected with a target, which is why so few pilots became aces. In one eye-opening episode, six Spitfires fired 7,000 rounds at a Do 17 without destroying it.
Sorley recommended sighting the eight machine guns into a ten-foot circle at 100 yards. That was a reasonable approach for an average pilot, but later Fighter Command adapted a 400-yard convergence that was beyond the abilities of most pilots and dispersed the pattern. In some squadrons, pilots could make their own arrangements, but if they had to fly another aircraft, their familiarity vanished. With 300 rounds per gun, the pilot had perhaps 20 seconds of trigger time.
Part way through the Battle, Spitfire IIB models arrived with two 20mms in place of four machine guns. Loading 60 rounds per cannon, the new mark was more lethal against bombers but the Hispano-Suiza design was unreliable, especially under G. Modifications only improved performance after the Battle when the mixed armament became standard for Spitfires. The “bump” on the wing of later models accommodated a motor to enhance feeding.
The RAF used a variety of ammunition, seeking an optimum combination to destroy enemy airframes. Ball, armor-piercing and tracer were commonly used in sequence, but incendiary rounds also were developed. In the Great War, Britain produced the Buckingham series, originally intended to ignite Zeppelins.
A more effective round came from the Belgium; the De Wilde was modified by the RAF with considerable success.
An unavoidable problem came with mixed armament. The .303 and 20mm left the muzzle at different velocities and possessed different ballistic properties. Consequently, they could only be harmonized for a specific range, and the cannon’s trajectory fell off fairly rapidly. As always in air combat, the closer a pilot could get to his target, the better.
Taken from FLIGHT JOURNAL website
Yeah I've read RAF doctrine prioritised flying and formation skills over accuracy. As a result the volume of fire of the .303 helped to compensate and reduce the skill required to hit. Not only that but the more ammunition available the longer you can stay in the fight meaning greater force projection for less aircraft which was especially important in the battle of Britain where they Brits were out numbered. The incendiary round had something like 25% or greater fire starting making it potentially more dangerous especially with how many rounds they could fire. I think they made the right decision for the time
Was going to say the same. It was fundamentally important that BOB interception aircraft could engage for the maximum time, they were massively outnumbered. Even if in an armoured aircraft being hailed by smaller caliber bullets is still going to disrupt whatever you are doing to some degree, especially if you don't know it's only low calibre ammunition and at you.
The most effective option is a mix. A good loading of low calibre shots and some heavier hitting canon ammo at hand, sighted in at the right range, you could potentially use the smaller caliber shots to lead in the big caliber hits all the while still having the chance of taking out enemies on the lighter ammo.
the Hurricane and Spitfires were designed in the mid thirty's and you are right that the thinking then was to throw as many bullets as possible, but by 1939 I think you will find that the RAF had realised that it needed bigger guns and they were planning to replace the Spitfire with the Whirlwind but unfortunatly that planes engines failed hence the rush to fit a cannon into the Sptfire.
P 47s used eight 50s. The more the merrier.
@@rogersmith7396 made great by Adding a Merlin..
@@fibessnaredrum2775 P 47 used radial engines it was the P 51
@@fred6319 completely correct... I'd been debating the Mustang on another video.... yep my mistake.. hands up!!
@@fibessnaredrum2775 See Greggs Airplanes analysis on the Merlin. It had altitude limitations. The P 38 Alison produced more power.
I often wonder why 303 was used and you explained it beautifully.
Yes, you're welcome as well!!
Gen Galland chewed out his crew chief during the Battle for France.
He had installed new armor in the
BF 109E and Galland banged his head against it.
His next mission found a Hurricane on his tail pouring .303 from eight guns. He crash landed and lived only because of the new armor.
He rewarded his crew chief with cash and leave. Later in life Galland said being on the receiving end of eight machine guns was like being caught in a rainstorm.
That’s not what Galland said in his book “ the first and the last” he said it was after the BoB and that it was a 20mm round that hit the new piece of armour. He said in the book that if the armour wasn’t there nothing would have been left of that indispensable part of his body. He also said he made it up with the crew chief by giving him money out of his own pocket and some leave.
Not the Battle for France, it was after BoB in July 1941. The fighter on his tail was a Spitfire. Hurricanes were too slow and had poor performance but were used as night intruders at that time.
Forcing your enemy to use a certain type of defence should be used in all modern war game/battle scenarios of today. Many things are learned by happenstance from history. I think the .303 strategy had enough dynamics of it's own for the thinkers of WWII to reliably predict what the enemy would do about .50 cal vs. .303. So I say no, I do not think defensive reaction was considered when deploying a caliber choice back then. But I would love to hear what the experts know about this.
Another thing most people don't realize is that for the first year after adopting the 20mm the RAF only had solid AP shot, which effectively made them big MGs. No HE filling, no incendiary. Just a big, heavy, slow-firing MG with longer range and better penetration if you happened to hit a armor plate or an engine or fuel tank.
I'd rather have hit a German Bomber with 20mm FMJ than with .303 incendiary. Punching through a fuel tank with a 20mm seems almost certain to start a fire from impact, splash, or massive leak.
Thats a good point. Its funny how far ahead german was with its 20mm cannons and compact 14mm guns at the start of war, but how much their bombers sucked. Tbf the 303-storm mightve actually had some effect against the vulnerable He-111s bombers.
@@termitreter6545 The Problem....the bigger the caliber the more "stuff" you could put in it...such as explosives or incendiary. 20mm shells exploded. If I were a Brit flying in the Battle of Britain, I would have screamed for .50s at least...and a pair of 20mm if possible. OR...if stuck with 8 .303s, I would have been like the Poles and got REAL CLOSE and then shredded them.
@@krismurphy7711 i wouldnt say german bombers were bad
20mm Ball was pretty effective vs aircraft structures. Analysis of crashed german aircraft showed that hits from the rear would pass through the entire aircraft, fuel tanks, armour, pilot, and finally lodge in the engine rear. A hit to the mainspar would remove the wing. A hit to the engine would critically damage it almost every time. Was properly functioning HE better? Yes. Was 20mm Ball more effective than a bunch of .303? Hell yes. There's a reason that Ball was still being used quite late in the war... it was cheap and it worked. To defend against it required unreasonable amounts of armour. The late war SAP used really was overkill.
In the Pacific, American pilots had a preference for only four .50s, though some aircraft were built with six. There was active resistance to adding more guns because it drastically reduced ammo capacity per weapon. They seemed to feel more ammunition per gun, hence more time on the trigger before running empty, was of greater value than more projectiles per burst.
Not exactly the same issue, but another example of how just going bigger isn't always better.
The US Navy wanted 20mm cannon but American industry couldn't produce a reliable copy of the Hispano. They made do with the 0.5 inch guns.
The 50 cal was perfect in the pacific theater because the Japanese had little armor on most of their aircraft so they were easy to destroy once hit with that particular gun
The RAF knew what it was doing and had tested a lot of weapons between the wars, concluding that changing to a .50 gave no significant advantage over .303" and that a 20mm was required. The Hispano was the weapon of choice but was not fully developed and needed a ridged mounting to work reliably. Also the gun initially used a drum feed which limited the number of rounds and complicated the installation, the Spitfire having the gun mounted on it's side which introduced addition issues. A prototype belt feed and drawings were got out of France from under the noses of the invading Germans and developed in Britain. When the problems were eventually resolved the Hispano proved reliable and the Hispano continued in service into the first generation of jet fighters post war, even the American eventually adopting it.
A guy I used to know (he died in 2014) was an RAF pilot in WW2. He started off flying Wellingtons (.303 guns) then flew Liberators (.50 cal) in Egypt. He once talked about the guns on the aircraft and said that against enemy fighter aircraft the .303 was good up to a range of about 350 yards, while the .50 cal guns of the Liberator were good for up too 500yards.
He much preffered the range of the .50 cal and so did his crew.
1 - .50 is significantly better than .303 (.303 ballistics wise is basically a low powered 30-06), effective range for AN/M2 .50 is 1500-2000 yards and would easily go through the engine blocks of enemy fighters
2 - we didn't adopt 20mm Hispano, we developed a new round, the m61 (20mm Vulcan) for use in Jet fighters. The Oerlikon 20 mm saw more use in the US than the Hispano (and is still widely used today in Europe
Non sense, the cal 50 is 10xmore powerfull and with twice the range from the 303…The real cause from the modification on the 20mm Hispano is not only the original drum feeding: this canon was made to fit between the cylinders from the Hispano Suisa Y12 engine use on the french fighter Morane Saulnier MS406 and Dewoitine D520, and firing trough the propeller shaft, but on the British fighters was the canon installed in the wings, so in very cold and icing conditions and the feed was modified to belt feed
Whatever!@@leneanderthalien
An interesting note is that the Lancaster Mk X made in Canada had the mid upper turret armed with two .50's as opposed to .303's.
My great uncle was a navigator in a Landcaster during WW2 (he was Canadian)
So did the late war Lanc Mark VII.
rose turret on the british lanc
Given the proximity to America it would've been considerably easier to acquire 50 cal MG's than .303 ones so i'm going to guess that's the reason why.
@@killman369547 Not to fire shots at GB but they were plenty ignorant in that war as far as anything built outside the country or not their idea. I mean 8 303's vs what 2 or 3 .50's would do to a plane? Pitty...
The real head scratcher for me is why within a couple months of each other did the RAF set up production of a .303 cal version of the browning and the Army set up another factory to make 8mm BESA tank machine guns. Both were rush war emergency jobs to get belt fed MGs into the fight as quickly as possible, yet the army decided it would be easier to no bother changing caliber and work around a gas operated gun.
Yet the air cooled browning started life specifically as a tank gun. There were British and French tanks in the 20’s with such an armament.
Best guess is they just didn’t talk with each other?
As to why the RAF went with .303, I think they were just a conservative lot and suspected (correctly) that in action many of the guns would fail. If you have 8 MGs and 2 fail that’s not bad. If you have 4 cannon and 2 fail that’s a big problem. And the cannon armed fighters were notorious for jamming in action until mid way through the war.
Unless supply lines might get confused separate and incompatible supply lines are not a problem. Producing different guns, with different requirements, might avoid bottlenecks in production. Having platoons or companies with mixed weapons can be a problem - but the RAF and Army had entirely separate supply lines that could easily accommodate different and incompatible supplies. In fact .303 ammo for snipers, ordinary rifles and machine guns was different - so even squaddies could deal with mixed ammunition that would fit into and fire in all guns (often very dangerously).
Maybe because they can't optimize the 404 like the American did.
AN/M2 is a fairly stable cannon who doesn't immediately jam after 2 second trigger squeeze.
@@nebunezz_r British Hispanos were pretty reliable. It was the USA ones that were not due to a dimensional error in the manufacture.
Pretty reliable once the initial kinks were worked out which were due to feed rather than light primer strikes. The US Hispano was still viable in the P-38 as it could be recocked. By war's end it was in use in the P-61 and several naval fighters but I'm not sure what changes were made for that if any.
Also , it is strange that the Army didn't rechambered BESA's to the .303 , the standard caliber for rifles and MG's. At least British tanks could use captured German ammunition.
As for keeping it in .303 because the army and navy used it, bear in mind that the British army also used 8mm Mauser.
The Czechoslovak designed BESA machine gun fitted to many British vehicles was 7.92x57mm.
Also known as 8mm Mauser.
Well, not the British Army, but the British tank force. The army stayed with .303 for their Enfields and Brens.
The Bren was also a Czech design and it’s modification to .303 ammo, resulted in its’ unique shaped magazine, which gave the British Bren its distinctive (and in my opinion) rather beautiful look.
It was desired to replace 303 with 7.92 and 7 mm both considered, much as in 1913. Both times war looked likely so reworking all those SMLEs didn't look viable.
@@wbertie2604 they should have gone with 7mm Mauser (rimless).
The commercial versions of the Lee Enfield (including the commercial SMLE) were already available in that calibre, as well as 8x50R Mannlicher (still sold as .315 Ishapore) and .375x2.5" Nitro Express.
@@kieranh2005 the issue was the stock of old rifles, though, and proximity to wars. If the UK had adopted the Pedersen in 7mm in 1932 or something, then that would have worked. But the Pedersen, Czech VZ, gas trap Garand were all found wanting, notably in terms of colonial (dusty) or tench (muddy) conditions. And then it was suddenly 1938 and too late. Or in the 1950s it was NATO and the USA insisting on an over powerful cartridge it then dropped for rifles shortly thereafter. So 7mm was always a nearly option. So 7.92mm looked like a better option as it would have been more compatible (with some but less work) existing guns. But that didn't happen either, except in the sense that 7.62mm NATO was pretty much equivalent.
10:44 - this is interesting. Given that the ‘B’ type Spitfire wing (to take 2 x 20mm Hispano with 60 rounds of drum ammo + 4 x .303 brownings with 350 rounds of ammo) was fully in production in early 1940. Jeffrey Quill - Supermarine’s chief test pilot - notes the disappointment that was he that the cannon wasn’t ready for the BoB in his autobiography. I suspect if the temperature management issues were worked out by April/May all hurricanes and spitfires would have been using the B wing with Hispanos by the height of BoB.
Once the shift to 2 x 20mm Hispanos was made as the main armament a rapid move to upgrade the .303s to .5 cals was not thought ‘necessary’. NECESSITY - not the pursuit of perfection - drove the Air Ministry’s requirements for the Spitfire after 1941: hence the reason why it persisted with the ‘interim’ Mk IX (and the closely aligned MkXVI - which really was the same as a late model Mk IX, but with a Packard Merlin 266 Engine) as the main production run right up until the end of the war - preferring large numbers of that plane to the superior Mk VIII and more powerful Griffon engined variants. It also explains why the Air Ministry were not keen on Supermarine diverting resources to develop the redesigned wing and enhanced tailplane to combat aileron reversal and longitudinal stability issues associated with the more powerful engines. It explained why the Air Ministry never commissioned long range spitfire development; why they delayed the introduction of both the Mk21 and Mk XVIII until near to of after the end of the European theatre of the war. As far as the Air Ministry was concerned the Mk IX worked perfectly for the roles that they needed it for and they wanted Supermarine - and all the subcontracting manufacturers - to produce as many of them as possible. This meant that NECESSITY never dictated the replacement of the .303 guns for the Merlin engined spits. In fact there were many uses for this light armament, including:
1. Supplementing the big 20mm in air to air combat: no real difference in overall firepower when compared to having 2 x .5 cal guns, plus better tracer rounds, plus less weight at the wing ends, hence greater rate of roll etc; and
2. Ground attack. Unless attacking armour (and the 20MM canon plus perhaps underwing rockets would be used for that), a light machine gun with a higher rate of fire was more effective against troops. The Mk IX was increasingly used in a ground attack role in the later part of the war.
The RAF had recon Spitfires that could fly all the way to Berlin and back. But plenty of Mustangs were arriving in Britain in 1943 so they used those instead.
@@ToddSauve 1. The spitfires that could fly to Berlin and back from the east coast of England were reconnaissance planes that did not have armament and used the leading edge of the wing for fuel (66 imperial gallons in each wing). They had 228 imperial gallons of fuel carried forward of the plane’s centre of gravity and hence did not need any modification for longitudinal stability or to carry fuel in either the rear of the fuselage or externally. Paul Studdart wrote a detailed article which you can find online for the Royal Society of Aeronautical Engineers that postulated that it was possible to have a series of interconnected fuel tanks on either side the gun barrels along the leading edge of the wings on an armed spitfire (ie. between the 4th and 10th spars and then again from the 12th to 21st spars and connected by steel piping) that would give at least 50 gallons of extra fuel capacity per wing. In a suitably modified Mk VIII that would mean about 200 gallons of combat usable fuel once any rear fuselage fuel (up to 75 gallons could be squeezed in at the back, but this make the plane unstable and hence not suitable for acrobatics and thus war fighting) and external fuel stores were expended. Add in that 75 gallons into the rear and say a further 60 gallons in a paperboard drop tank would get a fully armed spitfire to a target area over central germany. The 200 gallons left unused in the front of the plane and in the wings would be enough to fight for at least 20 minutes (50 gallons expended at max power), then fly home (no more than an expected 100 gallons even with headwinds) plus leave a very handy reserve for contingencies.
2. The truth is that in early to mid 1943 the Brits had already committed to night time strategic bombing and hence didnt need a fighter escort and the Americans were still in the grip of the ‘bomber mafia’ with their doctrine that ‘the bomber will always get through’, hence no attempts were made to use the kit already available to make the P47 go that little bit extra distance from eastern France to Schweinfurt in time for the big July and August 1943 raids: a disaster. using the Mustang thereafter was probably only an arse covering exercise to hide their strategic blunders in mid 1943. In any case, the mustang didn’t turn up in large numbers until right at the end of 1943 and by then the P47 had largely done the job of killing all the Luftwaffe’s experienced fighter pilots on the western front. Ultimately however, there is no dispute that the Mustang was the superior platform for a long range fighter than either the P47 or Spitfire, but in the planning phase for the 1943 strategic bombing raids, both of the later were available to be adapted for that purpose & the Packard-Merlin mustang (with extended range rear fuel tanks) was still spooling up on the production side.
@@andrewmetcalfe9898 One tends to find the best quality nerds on videos of this kind.
@@andrewmetcalfe9898 A very well put together comment and very informative. I don't recall my Spitfire books mentioning the wing leading edge tanks, nor talk on internal rear fuselage tank. That same tank in the Mustang made handling tricky on take off and until the fuel was used up.
Mark from Melbourne Australia
@@andrewmetcalfe9898 to have really long range, the P-51 also gained a rear tank with the same issues. The rear tank was used first.
Whilst the strategic bombing force was at night, the RAF still did quite a bit of daylight tactical and operational bombing, including with the heavies, and so did need fighter escort. However, this was generally shorter range si the VIII wasn't seen as that much of a requirement compared to the IX. It was useful to pair the VIII airframe with the big, thirsty Griffon and call it the XIV, though. However, the RAF did employ quite a lot of Mosquito NFs as escorts on night operations. One of the complaints with Village Inn ad that it resulted in Mosquitos (and other Lancasters) being fired on.
Mind you it's not as easy upgrading an aircrafts armament as one might think. Weapons fit, weight, ammunition loading, centre of gravity and blast effects all have to be evaluated....
True, but it was made easier on Spitfires by the wing design. it could be easily removed and replaced. My Grandfather who was Spitfire Ground crew during the war explained it in a fair degree of detail, but essentially it was a matter of disconnecting all the fuel lines, hydraulics and the like, then simply unbolting the wing, lifting the fuselage up, slide the old wing out, slide the new wing into place, then lower fuselage back down. Then you simply bolted the wings on, reconnected everything, checked it, and boom.... new wings.
Why is this important? Ever seen the letters after a Spitfires Mark designation? Spitfire Mk VB for example? That referred to the wing. The A wing had the 8 .303's, the B wing had the 2 20mm and 4 .303's, and the C wing had the 4 20mm. The wing designations was down to the armament NOT to whether the wing was clipped or not.
It made the logistics of upgunning Spitfires pretty simple, all you did was change the wings, then tinker with the weights and the like to ensure proper stability, and voila, upgunned.
@@alganhar1 yes, a,b and c type etc. Members of my family worked in factories producing components for that aircraft before the war. I'm guessing they carried on through after my father was called up for the RAF. However I was referring more to getting cannons to work reliably and not to the detriment of performance either. I'm no expert, but there must have been knock on effects.
I worked for a WWII Spitfire pilot who flew Spitfires and was an Ace. He said that he got rid of the machine guns and his rearview mirror to lighten the aircraft so he could fly higher and faster. Flying higher and faster meant "life"!
The mirror useless anyway because if you saw anyone in it that was not a friendly, it meant you were already dead.
The 2 cannons had about 10 seconds of firing time, and he said that if he couldn't hit it in 10 seconds, he was never going to hit it.
In his opinion, the 8 machine guns were just dead weight as they lacked "Stopping Power".
Another interesting thing was that late in the war, he was on patrol for the V-1 Buzz Bombs and you would not shoot at them because the explosion would/could damge the aircraft. So they would fly up next to one of the wings of the B-1 with the Spitfire's wing just under, and use the air pressure coming off the Spitfire's wing to increase lift of the B-1 and it would then roll and eventually spiral into the ground.
As an American I was somewhat skeptical when I clicked on this video but you did a killer job explaining the topic!
Cheers mate!
Skeptical? Why? You think Americans are better at explaining things than English people?
You need to look at an early mark of Spitfire wing to see why they went with the 303. They were lucky to gave fifteen seconds of ammo. The mustang was designed so much later when a lot more had been learned. It also gad a lot bigger wing. Remember, in the mud 30s they were still designing biplanes.
That was a major downside to many of the RAF's fighters during the Battle of Britain. In a one to one comparison early model Spitfire's and Hurricane's had poorer flight performance (marginal in the case of the Spitfire) than the Bf-109E's they encountered, while the 109 was also able to bring the same weight of fire from it's two 7.92mm machine guns and one 20mm cannon as the RAF's fighters but with around 50 seconds worth of ammunition as opposed to fifteen. Had Luftwaffe high command given them more freedom to hunt down RAF fighters the result of the battle may have been very different.
Typing is hard, isn't it?
That doesn't explain why the .303 was still the most common gun alongside the 20mm even in later marks of Spitfire, and was always the standard gun on the heavy bombers. We aren't just talking about Spitfires and Hurricanes in 1940.
@@justforever96 my only thought would be that they persisted purely because it was the standard calibre for Commonwealth military weapons and thus readily available. In Australia you can purchase boxes of ex-military stock .303 rounds for cheaper than modern manufactured rounds. You could apply the same rationale for the USAF’s decision to arm early F-86 Sabre’s with the standard 6x .50cal machine guns when that arrangement was less effective than the armaments of similar era aircraft like the MIG-15, Hawker Hunter or de Havilland Venom.
@@julienbarrett9922 Major factor was production and availability, they had to pump as many as possible out whilst actively being at war. America had the advantage of being pretty safe and joining later on. German engineering is just out of this world and was only limited by how mad the R&D teams working on whatever were.
The .303 was a comfortable antique, but production was there and they where de-bugged well enough for there use. The 50 caliber was newer, heavier, but absolutely brutal to the enemy aircraft and is still in use today.
By what aircraft? Also, the .50 wasn't as good as the 20mm.
Bismarck laughs at the 50 and says 20mm was the way to go. The German ones had a pretty high rate of fire and a usable ammo load.
By the end of WWII aircraft were so tough single 50 cal round hits could be ineffective,
@@rogersmith7396 Wasn't talking about the 20mm, but thanks anyway.
..and the drum feed of the Hispano was unreliable
One thing I learned very early on when I was in timed shooting matches, the Second Chance Pin shooting contests, it doesn't matter how many times you miss it still isn't going to "kill" the target.
edit: I don't believe the reasoning for the Japanese lack of armor had anything to do with armor not being worthwhile in protecting the pilots. The Bushido mind set was that you didn't need armor if you killed your enemy first. That worked really well at first giving the "Zero" extreme agility and ability to evade fire and turn and attack it's attacker. But when tactics used first by Pierre Chenault's group, flying slower, less agile planes with a slower rate of climb but a really good dive speed, the Japanese planes had very little defense. Then later it was to late to add armor to the Japanese designs when the bigger planes like the P-38 could not only out run them, they could out climb them and even out turn them and with the concentrated fire of the 4 50 cal machine guns all shooting a stream of destruction along with usually a 20 mm cannon the zeros had very little chance as even a short burst through the plane did enough damage that even if the pilot survived the attack the plane was a goner.
My father flew an F4U Corsair in the pacific he loved the .5 browning's, on the day peace was declared he took the top round out of each gun and kept them, he is gone now but I have 3 of the rounds on my mantel piece, empty now of course not sure where the other 3 went. In one is an M1 carbine round from his personal defense rifle and a 38 from his handgun in the other. But he would have done Basic training with 303 Lee Enfield as he was RNZAF.
Thank you, New Zealand. Love from Canada!
@@edwardgatey8301 Cheers Edward my father Trained in Calgary so would very much enjoy your greeting he and my mother were regular tourists to Canada.
Your father and his type are missed very much. We need good men around, right now especially
@@otosere2857 Certainly he is missed but I also doubt there are fewer men like him about, his sons and grandsons have all turned out to be solid citizens (as have his granddaughters and daughters) his greatgrandchildren also. As he said though he was destined to mediocrity until WW2 took over and shaped him otherwise. Most people are pushed by circumstance to do great things some of us are lucky to not have that push or experience what he did including flying out in the morning in a flight of fighter bombers and coming home for lunch with half the seats in the mess hall empty. He said once ""I'll be fine I've already been to hell and it rejected me
It was also much harder to damage/shoot down a ww2 area bomber than ww2 area fighter. The bombers was able to absorb more damage than a "delicate" fighter. That was much why the US kept using the 50 cal in the European theater. As they were mostly up against German fighters. In this case the 50 cal was more than adequate
An interesting point.
@@CalibanRising to
The F 86 Saber continued with the 50 cal many years later. Apparently the USAF thought it was an effective weapon. Many bombers had 20 mms.
@@rogersmith7396 its effectiveness is started to going down at the jet era, many reports of MiG still managed to fly back to base with over hundreds bullet hole
Because of this they initiate Project GunVal, resulting F-86 Sabre variant F-2 that armed with more advanced 20mm compared to the one used by Navy jet (WW2 era M3 20mm)
After that 20mm become primary weapon for many jet that came later, interestingly it was Navy that moved on from 50cal
@@blackmark7165 The Navy had moved on from 50s on ships in 1941, then moved on from 20 mm. At the time of Korea the Sidewinder was under developement. F 102, 106 and maybe 104 did'nt have guns. B 52 had tail 20s. as did B 58 and B 36. With the failures of early sidewinders in Viet Nam the rotary canon was put on planes.
It is often said hindsight is 20/20. The RAF made their decision based on the best available information at the time. Given you uploaded this from Great Britain rather than the German British Isles I would suggest they chose well enough.
Tbf, the economic concerns that were a big factor in the decision became pretty irrelevant when the battle over brittain got going.
I suppose the smartest thing wouldve been to develope and set up 12-15mm mg production lines so you got them when you need them. Doing a sharp switch during the war was likely way more expensive than planning further ahead in the past.
This actually makes me wonder how the germans got to their 14mm MG131, which apparently was a very effective fighter MG. German economy was way worse off than Brittain. But then again, Germany was limited in many other ways, especially when it came to bombers.
Well, the Americans had most to do with that. Even this Brit understands this.
@@Fater4511 The Russians even more so.
Now we live in the American British Isles.
@@Fater4511Partially but that’s more with the whole war effort. Germany could never have invaded Britain. They were hoping the Uk would sue for peace.
Back in 1968, I fired a .303 round from a Lee-Enfield rifle, at a 30cm x 30cm x 10mm mild-steel plate from 50 metres and it went flying. I then fired a 7.62 round, from a Belgian FN rifle, same conditions, and the steel plate did not move. The .303 round had made a fair dent, where the 7.62 had clipped right through. This was my first infantry, ballistics event. Great video. 😏
BSA Meteor...now that brings back a few memories ..Vulcan?
Good old SLR L1A1
@@copee2960 My BSA came into South Africa via the back door during the apartheid era. No model number & no serial number. Bought around 1969 and I have just given it away, looking like new, but requiring a new piston & seals. Take care. 😉
I've shot many 3/8' thick steel plates with both .303 Brit and 7.62 x 51. My experience is that both burned a hole right through the plate from the same distances.
@@jacktar5867 It was the C1 rifle in Canada and I loved that rifle.
Nice video. I think most people think that it is always best to have the most effective thing, when in reality, you want the most of the thing that is effective enough. It is hard to argue that the Spitfire with its .303 guns was ineffective.
You also have to consider a heck of a lot of pilots going into battle, once the war was in full swing had seen little airtime before being in service. Many were often still teenagers.. they needed more rounds. It's a trade off but yes as is demonstrably proved by the outcome it was a fair choice.
Things evolved as necessary. But to start with it did the job well.
I chatted to a pilot on a flying field one day and he said he had flown MK 5 Spits . He said some had been fitted with cannon but had been taken off due to reliability problems .
The .303 has very mild recoil. A cannon, not so much.
We (in England had the .303 in abundance, and they were already installed in the early Spits and Hurri's, and pretty much everything else that moved) I am sure economy while Britain was all alone against the Axis. Had a substantial effect on the decision.
Looking back to the early British endeavours or pre WWII, on almost all of their weapons, it looks like they went with what they had and could obtain in quantity. We all know of the "Ministries" that made horrible decisions but this ammo one makes sense. I wonder though how many more of the enemy planes would have been downed with more robust guns. I believe the P-47 had the best set up with eight .50 caliber guns. That was a lot of lead spread out that almost no plane could survive if it flew into it. Great video.
It is "my understanding" the 303 was originally put into some fighters for Aero Dynamic reasons, along with lots of others. If you note old pics of Brit planes you will see a difference in their wings leading edge before and after weapons firing. This was an advantage needed while other were under development.
Are you referring to the red covers for the barrels? IIRC those were installed to avoid the barrels freezing. And shot through on the first engagement.
I saw your Hazel Hill video and her calculations of how many .303 bullets would hit in a two-second burst.
The caliber wars were universal. Germany had cannon-armed fighters during the Battle of Britain but they had a head start. The American AN/M2 .50 caliber machine gun was developed with Navy funding during the Great Depression--the US Army Air Force originally didn't want the big .50 and was satisfied with the .30 AN/M2 (confused yet?) plus the USAAF limited its "pursuit aircraft" to 500 pounds of munitions, NO bomb racks and no external drop tanks in an effort to justify their self-defending heavy bomber program. The Navy wanted to protect its ships from heavy bombers, from torpedo boats, from submarines and from other light enemy warships and if they could have, would have gone 20mm. The .50 caliber offered much better performance and so that was perfected, with two nose-mounted caliber 50 machine guns in the Dauntless dive bomber (along with a single or twin .30 firing from the rear gunner position). For that matter, the USAAF developed the Sperry bomb sight and the USN developed the superior Norden--by 1940 the USAAF was putting a pair of .50 nose guns in P-36 and P-40 fighters along with four .30 wing guns, had armed its few B-17's with .50 caliber guns, and was buying as many Norden bomb sights as the USN allowed them to buy (the Navy used Nordens in PBY flying boats and TBD Devastator torpedo bombers for high-altitude level bombing).
The P-38 and P-39 fighters were supposed to have a 37mm automatic cannon M4 (a weapon Browning designed and tested--there's one in the Browning Arms Museum in Ogden, Utah) but the gun wasn't finished when John M. Browning died--and there wasn't enough time to make it work right. The P-38 picked up a 20mm cannon as did many P-39's but the M4 was part of the A-26 optional armament package on paper in 1944 and the M4 was appreciated on the American PT (Patrol Torpedo) boats where a crewman could whack a jammed gun with a hammer to make it function.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_autocannon
Britain got its 20mm aircraft guns working before the US did--the US had a working .50 caliber and mostly faced fighter aircraft, not the heavy bombers clad in heavy armor. The .303 worked and that was enough to save Britain during the Battle of Britain. I've several books on aircraft armament examining the caliber question. The USN really wanted to have 20mm cannon and the late-war Corsair fighters and SB2C Helldiver dive bombers had 20mm cannon armament--along with the too-late-for-WW2 F8F Bearcat fighter (the first Bearcats had four .50 caliber machine guns until the Navy's edition of the 20mm worked well enough).
The USN contribution to aircraft armament is underappreciated today. Imperial Japan's Army Air Force and Navy Air Force hated each other and pretended to live in different world, but the IJN's A6M "Zero" fighter was armed with a pair of 7.7mm cowl guns firing through the propeller arc and a 20mm cannon in each wing firing outside the propeller arc because fighting Chinese defensive aviation proved that a pair of rifle caliber machineguns were inadequate to knock down those pre-war Russian-built planes and the ones from Curtiss of America. It was a case of sailors being better airmen than soldiers were. The Luftwaffe went 20mm because of experience in the Spanish Civil War.
The Royal Air Force controlled all aviation in Britain until shortly before the war. Putting all aviation under one command seemed like a good idea at the time, but the RAF ignored the needs of the Royal Navy and the Royal Navy ignored aviation because it wasn't any of the RN's business. Yes, I've oversimplified. The RAF went to war in 1939 with two bombers for every fighter plane. Coastal Command had to be stood up from nothing, and the Fleet Air Arm got funding too late to develop good carrier aviation, thought the British flying boats were very good. It would be nice to see a video focused on the Liberator bombers used by Coastal Command and how the Liberator helped crush the U-Boat menace. There were reasons that the Martlet (Grumman F4F Wildcat) and the Corsair (F4U) wound up in the Fleet Air Arm.
By the Korean Conflict the new United States Air Force had an improved AN-M3 caliber 50 machine gun on its jet fighters--the F-80, f-84 and F-86. The Navy fighters carried four 20mm cannon on their carrier operated jet fighters and on the two main propeller-driven attack aircraft, the AU-1 (modified F4U Corsair--some were still designated F4U) and AD Skyraiders (now A-1 Skyraiders). In stratospheric combat the .50 caliber proved less effective on MiG-15 fighters, often damaging the MiGs but at that altitude the .50 incendiaries didn't ignite and the MiGs didn't burn. On the other hand, 20mm cannon fire ripped the MiGs apart. I bring up the Korean Conflict experience because Britain was right to skip a point-five-inch machine gun and go directly to a 20mm even though they had to gamble with the .303 being too feeble. This video pointed out that early cannon-armed Spitfires and Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain were swapped back for .303 machinegun armed fighters because the 20mm didn't work well enough--over the North African desert at lower altitudes, the 20mm did work well enough and the mixed armament of 20mm and .303 machine guns was a compromise between cannon power and machine gun reliability and fire volume.
As for .303 caliber defensive guns on British bombers, the primary purpose of defensive machine guns was preventing the bomber from being shot down. Shooting down enemy fighters was a bonus. The .303 reduced Luftwaffe attack effectiveness on British bombers by forcing the Luftwaffe fighters to engage from longer distances (longer than their 7.92mm machine guns could reach because if the fighter could shoot the bomber with 7.92mm fire, the bomber could hit the fighter with .303 machine gun fire and the bomber was bigger, had more armor, had two or four engines and could take more punishment than the fighter). So Germany had to use 20mm cannon, later 30mm cannon, 50mm cannon, and barrages of unguided rockets. They had to fire outside of .303 machine gun range, which made German attacks less accurate. If the Luftwaffe didn't achieve enough hits because they had to fire their 20mm cannon from outside of .303 machine gun range, that meant less accuracy and the slower-firing 20mm were provided with less ammo. That's a "games player" solution but it did have the effect of reducing bomber losses. American .50 caliber machine gun fire--with far more guns per plane coordinated to protect other bombers in a 'combat box' forced the Luftwaffe to stop with the side and tail attacks and attack head-on with cannon fire, but the hand-held .50 calibers without computer gunsights weren't enough to fend off Luftwaffe fighters until coupled with long-range fighter escorts--the P51 Mustang specifically (built for a British contract by North American Aviation). Shooting down enemy fighters was a bonus for bomber crews. The primary purpose of bomber defenses is "don't get shot down."
The Fleet Air Arm is part of the Royal Navy, not the RAF🤣
@@richardrichard5409 It is now. There was a period when all aircraft belonged to the Royal Air Force--but that proved to be a bad idea. I could be wrong--perhaps the RAF only controlled things and didn't own the Fleet Air Arm from 1924 to 1937. Either way, the Fleet Air Arm was as crippled as the air forces belonging to national armies.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_Air_Arm
Politics did a number on France's air force. The Red Air Force was actually Red Air Forces with Frontal Aviation, Navy Aviation, Long Range Aviation, and Defensive Aviation--and both Russian and German paratroopers were air force personnel. For that matter, German FLAK (anti-aircraft artillery) were Luftwaffe, just like coastal defense guns were usually naval. There were exceptions. The US Army Coastal Defense Artillery existed alongside some expeditionary Marine Corps Base Defense battalions. POLITICS!
Another point is that F-86 Sabre had M3 fifty calibre guns not M2s. The M3 had double the rate of fire of the M2 and was introduced towards the end of WW2. It was also fitted to the tail turret of early B52s (4 x 0.50 cal) and the final version of the P47, the 'N 'model had 6 x M3 guns instead of 8 x M2 guns. Even the M3 gun was barely adequate in Korea and the USAF was starting to arm its Sabres with 4 x 20mm cannon by the end of that conflict.
Just to throw in a bit of maths - a fighter aircraft is about 10 metres long. Only about half of that is useful target area for a kill. At. 400 metres the angle involved is less than one degree - 0.716 degrees. 200 metres is 1.48 degrees. Easy to see why up close, higher rate of fire increases the chance of a kill, even with inferior calibre.
I'm not surprised about the surplus of 303 ammo, I recall from my cadet days in the mid 1970s being issued loads of ammo during range days because "it needed using up".I guess storage costs were an issue, but I gotta fire off thousands of rounds😁😁😁😁
No allied soldier, sailor or airman need ever apologize for bearing into battle the genius designs of John Moses Browning, whatever the caliber. The full battery of 8 Brownings guaranteed when the pilot needed fire, he would have it. Unstoppable reliability on hand for the RAF in the Battle of Britain . It could move on later to larger bores; in summer 1940 the RAF didn’t have time to trifle with unproven or new designs. The Browning .303 batteries did their job when called on, and could fire virtually all day without fail. That characteristic is what the RAF was looking for in the 1930s when they tested all competitors.
Excellent vid. I never questioned why the Brits stayed with .303. (At least early on in the war.) Simple logistics. As to effectiveness of the .303, he who carries more ammo stays in the fight longer. Pepper a 109 with enough .303 it's going to come down. ;-)
Well that and in 1939 a fighter with _eight_ excellent MGs was considered a powerhouse. Most fighters were just starting to go to 4 MGs. that was what early Bf 109s had. People don't consider that all this change happened over a couple of years. They only needed 8 guns because planes were so fast that it was hard to get a long burst on target now. then you didn't NEED cannon until they started armoring planes to protect them from the heavier MG armament, you needed something that did more damage with a single hit and which could penetrate thin armor plate.
Great video! The .303 makes the self defense argument that "the caliber that you can most accurately shoot, is the best caliber to carry." Being able to put 20 .303 rounds in an enemy plane is better than missing or only putting one or two .50 cal rounds.
Example two 50 cal round does more damage than 20 303 rounds.
@@verdebusterAP if they contact the enemy
@@alpearson9158
Hence why training is important
The problem with the 303 use was bad information
The claim was thousands of rounds was needed when in reality, it was just accurate targeting
@@verdebusterAP get in close to be more certain, then go a bit closer. First to need to hit...
@@verdebusterAP not really.
Most critical components of a plane are fragile things like cables and hydraulic lines that you either hit or you don't. More chances to get a "critical hit" is better than 1-2 largely insignificant holes that miss everything but the skin of the plane.
Or put another way, 20x .303 rounds has a bigger cross section than 1-2x .50 rounds.
More armor penetration power doesn't help against largely unarmored targets. You're just passing more of the little metal you can afford to carry with you through the same hole the tip of the bullet already made.
The square-cube law is working against the 50cal in this case.
Once you move from machine guns to cannons and can actually get effective explosive rounds this changes, but below that, more rounds headed toward your target is better.
It was my understanding it was because the Hispano 20mm wasn't ready for service by 1939, and wasn't reliable enough to completely replace the .303 for a while after it was introduced.
20mm Hispano cannon were available for RAF service in 1939.
In the Spitfire the fitment was the 'B' wing version, but the fitment to aircraft, the Spitfire especially, was falling behind due to problems of ammunition feed during high-G manouevres, and with ducting hot air to prevent the guns from freezing.
The Spitfire Mk.1b had 20mm cannon, and went into service with them late in 1940, but were not a great success.
The later Spitfire Mk.Vb had 20mm cannon and was built in large numbers, and used in most theatres of WWII.
Nice discussion for which I've never had a satisfactory answer, until now. One thing you didn't mention was the increase in weight of the rounds as the size increased and so the resulting decrease in numbers on rounds that were much more destructive and at a longer range.
Thanks!
Thanks for watching. Perhaps I could have covered this in more detail, thanks for the suggestion.
He did cover that the size and weight increases meant less ammo. It was a short bit so you could have missed it.
Or maybe he revised the video.
@@carlwessels2671
I think he generally mentioned the differences in weight -- the .50 is much larger than the .30 and the 20mm. Is a quantum larger than the .50 -- and the same is true of the rounds themselves so there's a difference in size/quantity in addition to weight.
I believe the Spitfire had a seperate trigger for the 20mm
caccin for selective firing. Why did the Hurricane Mk. II, which was largely used as a nightfighter, swap its 8 X .30 for 4 X 20mm.?
@@randytaylor1258 It's been stated that 4 20MM are much better at destroying bombers than 8 .303
IIRC there is plenty of evidence that Bomber Harris was very angry about the lack of better guns on the bombers.
Typical of Harris’ remarks was his statement that:
“this turret was the only improvement made to the defensive armament of the RAF’s heavy bombers after 1942, and those responsible for turret design and production have displayed an extraordinary disregard for Bomber Command’s requirements”.
The above turret was the Rose .5 turret you mentioned. So lets take it that Harris really was not happy about under armed bombers and crews..
Thanks. I wasn't convinced that Harris totally supported .303s, so good to hear a clear stance on the matter.
Excellent video - probably the best I've seen on the topic. One other consideration that had to factor into the equation, was the cost of the .50 Browning. They ran about $1000 USD each in 1945. This was a time when the average annual US salary was in the $2500 range for comparison.
While it would make sense, I'm not sure that standardization of production played too much of a role in the decision, as if you look at British tanks they really liked using the BESA, which (oddly enough) fired 7.92 Mauser.
The game theory approach to .303 was interesting. I've often wondered if that sort of thing factored into the US in modern times keeping the .50 cal mounted on just about everything - so that any potential adversary needs to make their APCs bullet-resistant to .50 AP and not just 7.62 NATO, but I had never considered it in this context.
Thanks for watching, I really appreciate it. Those prices are insane!
If those prices are accurate, then four Brownings was almost half the cost of the just the plane itself!
I think the "de Wilde" round had something to do with it (keeping .303). First, it made .303 more effective against enemy a/c. Secondly, after putting all those resources into secretly developing a new round, you'd want to get the most use out of it.
I think you're right. I mentioned that it could have been a useful 'aiming' device as the dixon/de Wilde round flashed on impact.
@@CalibanRising true. It certainly helps track hits in my "expert" opinion as an IL2:CloD pilot.
Also in the late 30s 50 calibre was not readily available in large numbers and American policy of neutrality limited what was available and 303 was . Early 20mil. Cannon were prone to jamming in combat and so they were switched back to 303 till that was sorted out
The .303 has very mild recoil if you've ever popped the cap on one. .50 cal machine guns would shake your plane apart.
Was there not an "incendiary" / tracer .303 round in British service in WW1? Originally intended for "balloon-busting"?
The Browning aircraft guns were seriously lightened versions of the ground-mount types. The rate of fire of the .303 guns was almost double the M1919 so a LOT of mixed nastiness went down-range in a 2 second burst from eight guns.
There were "lightweight" .50 types as well. You do not need a beefy barrel like the M2 series for two reasons. One, the air up there is cool, to say the least and two, "sustained-fire" is NOT an option, primarily, because of the weight and bulk of all that linked ammo..
Even the post-war 20 and 30mm Vulcsn" electric Gatlings carried limited ammo in those big helical magazines. Once rounds were expended, it was just dead weight, so it was time to go home., unless the aircraft was also well-loaded with explosive "stores" under-wing. I've never seen a "live" A-10 run but, long ago observed, from a safe distance, an F-111 tearing up the scenery with a Vulcan. Very impressive.
Aircraft armaments tend to get somewhat more TLC than ground mounts. Furthermore, the ammunition is not usually "general service" grade, but aerial use only" grade.
The Brits used tried and true "Cordite" in their .303 ammo for aerial gunnery until the outrageous muzzle flash could no longer be ignored. This flash signature not only clearly located a source of gun fire, but the muzzle flash also dazzled the air gunners in bombers doing night operations. So, they changed to filling with granulated Nitrocellulose propellants, which produced very little flash. If you see a .303 cartridge head-stamped Mk Vll Z, it is fueled by NC powder, not Cordite.
Ammunition reliability is very important for wing and cowl mounted guns. It is a bit tricky to re-cock such guns in the event of a "stoppage". The 20mm Oerlikon cannons are a monster to cock, mainly because they are essentially a gigantic open-bolt, straight blowback system. Pretty much a two-man job. The Japanese used quite a few as aircraft guns.
They had to go with the best they had at the time, future developments were nice but not usable there and then. Besides I think reliability must have been high on the list, a soldier on the ground can tinker with a stuck gun but up in the air they had to work when needed.
It is always good to read an account by someone actually there when decisions are made. A good place to start is "Duel of Eagles" Peter Townsend's account of the BoB (he really liked his Hurricane). The RAF held all sorts of trials during the interwar years to optimise their armament. They even tried a prototype fighter with a 37mm cannon, obliquely mounted to kill Zeppelins should any show up, but that is another story. During the 1930s, they wanted a reliable and higher rate of fire for their mgs and trialled the Vickers GO or K gun, in competition with the Lewis gun for comparison, the modded Vickers Maxim, the RAF modded Browning (fired from open bolt so the more sensitive cordite filled 303 did not cook off) etc., etc. To cut a long story short the Vickers GO/K was by far the most reliable and had the best RoF (up to 1200 rpm with a chance of more). The wee snag was that it was pan fed, the Gladiator took one in a tray under each wing, that was doable, but try squeezing a battery of those into a Spitfire wing! The compromise solution was the somewhat modified belt fed Browning 303. The Spitfire wing was complicated to build anyway and it was really hard to get 8 x 303s in there, just look at the distribution and compare with the Hurricane's concentrated gun battery. Despite what is sometimes believed the RAF had 20mm in Spitfires in the BoB. The wee snag there was the flexing of the wing (a virtue under other circumstances) jammed the cannon feed. Pilots pleaded for their 303 Spitfires back, guns that work are better than no guns.
I won't go in to the Hispano saga in detail again, but once Martin Baker had debugged the Le Chatterellaut (yes it was French) belt feed all was sweetness and light. In fact the Hispano once fixed, was so reliable they deleted the pneumatic cocking system to save weight. What the US subsequently did to it is a sorry tale and to my mind might account for the longevity of the 50 cal. There is a halfway house, if the Hispano 20mm was fuselage mounted it could be drum fed, and the first were. In the case of the Beaufighter NF for example, it was the observer's loathed job to wrestle empty drums off and full ones on. In the pitch dark in combat. Juggling 60 round drums at 60 lbs apiece was an unhappy task, especially in a confined space out of reach of your chute.. Anyway once debugged and belt fed the RAF used 20mm cannon just about everywhere suitable, Beaufighter, Mosquito (also 57mm Tetse fly), Spitfires in all flavours, Hurricanes ( 4 x 20mm, a version with 2 x 37mm was also used), Typhoons, Tempests, Hornets, Fireflies, Meteors etc. Even the prototype Windsor bomber had a couple of remote twin 20mm cannon. A Wellington was trialled with a low profile 40mm turret, I reckon that must have been rather a slow RoF.
There were two clear exceptions to a preference for cannon,. When working up a seriously high altitude interceptor serious consideration was given to reverting to 303. They could be counted on to be made to work at the very low temperatures (icing problems) and pressures to be encountered, they would weigh a lot less as would the ammunition (a serious factor in gaining the altitude required), and all they had to do was poke a few holes in the other guy's pressure cabin. The various pressure cabins back then were not pressurised to one atmosphere, the pressure differential would be far too great. The seals and connexions were enough of a problem as it stood. What they did do was help the crew's pressure suit do its job, no pressure cabin, no crew - or at least a rather dead bluey purple one. The other 303 exception, which I always wonder about, is that Hawker used to offer prototypes with a dozen or more 303s in the wings. If you have space for that why not fit something else?
The other element in this general theme that makes me curious is that the North American Sabre was rolled out with 6 x 50cal in the nose. I believe that this was used in Korea but stand to be corrected on that. At the same time, the Red Airforce MiG 15 (complete with its rip-off RR Nene engine) mounted a selection of 27mm, 37mm and upwards, cannon. I reckon something hit by those stayed hit, why the difference in choices?
RiP off rr nene the labour party of GB gift re d the nene to the russians
@Walter Sansom Trusting souls who did great things to rebuild Britain post war. They had guarantees from the Soviets that the Nene would only be used for civilian transports. Yes I know, a bit too trusting, but we had been allies in rather dark times. However, that said, they also knew that RR and the Bristol boys and the rest had even better engines just around the corner. For example, Whittle even had an after burning centrifugal engine of humongous thrust ready for the Miles bid to break the sound barrier. Sadly the plug was pulled on that project (the cash wasn't there) and all the technology, including the innovative all flying tail, was gift wrapped and gifted to the US. Winkle Brown was really p****d off, he really fancied a shot in the Miles. This is one of the two men who might have in reality have already exceded Mach 1 when trying to discover what made the DH Swallow a definite pilot killer.
Unlike the Bell manned missile, the Miles' effort could take off under its own power and had an under carriage. I've seen the wind tunnel model in the Museum on the site of the old Miles airfield. Sic transit Gloria mundi and all that.
My understanding regarding the Sabre is that they stayed with the .50 because of the combination of rate of fire and muzzle velocity, and because the gun had been demonstrated throughout the second world war to work well. Despite the Sabre's godlike kill-loss ratio in that war, the .50 was found to be somewhat lacking and later Sabres - especially Export versions - went over to 4 x 20mm and even 2 x 30mm (e.g. Australia). By the time the Americans switched to cannons, only one of their gun-armed fighters ever saw combat in US colours - the F-8 Crusader - and even there, the writing was on the wall: I read somewhere that the F-8 pilots had an unofficial competition (unsuccessful as it turned out) to see who would be the last American pilot to become an ace without using missiles. (The F-105 with the internal Vulcan cannon has quite a few gun kills to its credit, but it was overwhelmingly being operated as an attack aircraft with a self-defence capability and not as an air-superiority dogfighter.)
Meanwhile, the British designed their jet fighters from the start with a 4 x 20mm armament (e.g. Meteor, Vampire), which may account for why the Australian Meteors (and one or two British Sea Furies) got as many MiG kills in Korea as they did - the opportunities were fleeting, but the armament took advantage of them - and also IIRC why the Skyraider of all things has a tiny handful of MiG kills to its credit in Vietnam (shots of opportunity against MiG pilots who missed and overshot in front of their intended victim).
@@Ensign_Cthulhu Thanks for that. It figures, something that goes bang when you press the button is much preferable to one that goes click.
Great comment my man
One issue not mentioned is that tracer & incendiary rounds have different trajectories that ball ammo, so if you're using them as aiming aids you're focusing on hitting with one sixth of all rounds fired.
Several US groups reported increased kill rates when they eliminated tracer ammo. They weren't sure, but allied pilots hypothesized that if opponents didn't see tracer rounds, they were less likely to take evasive action.
Thanks for bringing this up. I'll bear it in mind for future videos.
@@CalibanRising At least one US 8th Air Force fighter group (the 4th) used tracers near the end of the ammunition belt to give pilots a visual indication that they were nearly out of ammunition. This is according to the book "1000 Destroyed: The Life and Times of the 4th Fighter Group" by Grover C. Hall.
@@CharlesStearman me109s had a counter.
Yes, that way they may not notice they are being shot at, until you actually hit them. The US planes may have had counters also but pilots were often too "busy" at the moment to look.
Against the Japanese it was found that just four .50 guns with extra armor piercing incendiary ammo worked well.
@@frosty3693 Supposedly. The Mitsubishi Zeros didnt have any armour plating or self sealing fuel tanks to protect their pilots. One could probably say that the 50's alone were probably quite overkill for those targets.
Finally an answer to a question I have wondered about for 60 years or so. As for the last reason (armour verses armament), that was most likely a lucky coincidence.
Great video, thanks.
Thanks for watching David.
I jumped on the vid when I saw the topic. I’ve been looking for any information about this. The .303 in Second World War aircraft always stood out as questionable. The more I read the more questionable it’s use appears to be. You’ve raised some really interesting things that might add a little credibility to using the .303. That is the incendiary bullet splashing so that it was easier to mark hits. Given the trajectory of the .303 round the pilot would have to see the strikes to have any chance of getting hits at 400 meters. A .303 drops approx. 1 meter at 400m.at 5 hundred meters bullet drops 76” with 700 FPDS energy remaining, which is a pistol round energy and I can’t see how it could do any damage at 300+ meters.
Bomber Harris 300 meters comment makes sense with the ballistics of the .303. the bullet drop, and lack of energy past 300.
Interesting video, and a subject worth considering.
I never considered Harris' theory regarding the .303s being used on the bombers at night instead of the .50 cal guns. I think he may have been right about that. Significant monetary savings in cost and also in weight. That could have possibly been one factor in the Lancaster's slight speed advantage over the B-17. That, along with only one pilot instead of two. I'm sure there were other factors as well.
I enjoyed this video. Well done!
Harris was wrong. A .50 weighs 660 gr a .303 wimps in at 180 max. So a single .50 whacks its target with 3.66 times more WHACK. 10 yards or 300 yards WHACK IS WHACK
Thanks, Francis!
@@CalibanRising I am not sure about these comments attributed to Harris, He was on record as saying that he considered the .303 to be a 'popgun.' At one point he tried to set up his own company to manufacture fifty - cal rear turrets. However, in 'Enemy Coast Ahead' Guy Gibson made a remark about fifty cals not being needed at night because you couldn't see far enough.
@@brucewelty7684 My Great Uncle was a Rear Gunner on Lancaster, flew three full tours, ninety missions. Used his guns a whole SIX times.
Lancaster crews preferred NOT to use their guns if they could possibly help it because, you know, they were flying AT NIGHT. Seeing streams of tracer kind of tells every night fighter, search light operator and AA gun crew EXACTLY where you are.
The only times the British heavies used their guns is if they had no other choice, and even then it was not to shoot down the enemy (though occasionally that did happen), but to distract him while the pilot put the bomber into violent evasive manoeuvres. The true defence of the British bombers on night missions was not to be seen. The guns were literally the last option defensively....
So their calibre literally DID NOT MATTER......
@@alganhar1 very true...they were told not to fire first, as the gunflash only gave the fighter something to aim at, and there was a risk of friendly fire hitting another RAF plane (they didn't fly in a formation as such and hit little idea as to the exact position of their companions, whereas the daylight US bomber formations were set so multiple bombers could safely create cones of fire directed at a single fighter.
You have presented a very well researched subject in an entertaining video. I have often discussed the subject with other WWII Historians and present day Fighter Pilots. Remembrance Day is just over a week away when I meet many military people from all the services so than-you for some new ammunition for discussion. (pun intended) My father won the DFC in the RCAF as an Air Bomber in mostly a Halifax III and lamented the fact they fired the 303 while British Lancasters were getting 50 Cal's. It seems the Colonials always got the latest equipment after British units. He had kept his large clothing and equipment trunk he used in the War which I still have to this day. It is missing a number of objects like the Practise Bomb and a 50 Cal Bullet made into a Cigarette Lighter which always frightened me. When I looked at it's large size and I understood how a man could be killed by just one of these.
There is a line in the Speer No11 reloading manual that goes like this. ""The .303 has killed more game in Africa than any other round. Wounded more also. The.30 cal Browning has about a 260 ft per second advantage over the .303 Browning. 30 cal is not exactly the same as .303
I always figured it was the higher rate of fire as the reason for using .303 machine guns. Much more practical reasons were given. The British were masters at modifying equipment. The British Firefly version of a Sherman tank is just one brilliant adaptation. If Americans, Canadians, and British tankers had at least one Firefly Sherman in each tank squadron, many lives could possibly have been saved.
Sounds interesting, I'll have to read up on this more.
Very Interesting History Video With A Fresh Angle - Impressively done.
Glad you enjoyed it!
By 1944, when the P-51D appeared, the typical Spitfire of that time had an E wing with two 20mm Hispano cannon and two .50cal. machine guns. This arrangement delivers much more energy than the P-51's armament, as 20mm shells have a kinetic energy of 65,000J each (three times that of a .50 cal. bullet), and the explosives in the 20mm shell add about 40,000J of detonation energy to each.
Accordingly, two 20mm cannon deliver approximately two megajoules per minute to the target, plus another 300,000J from the two .50cal. machine guns. This is well over twice the firepower of the P-51's six .50cal. machine guns, and all for less weight (275kg for the Spitfire vs 389kg for the Mustang, for guns and ammunition).
A four 20mm arrangement is the most lethal of all, and so proved by the end of the war.
I read that pilots in the Pacific preferred .50s to cannon for the greater ammo capacity. Japanese planes lacked armor and self sealing tanks so .50s had no problem chewing them up.
@Glicksman1 I think you have to explain further your statement that two Hispano cannon deliver 2 mega joules per minute destructive power plus 300,000 MJ destructive power from two 0.5cal. Browning machine guns! Doesn’t “MJ” mean mega joules? If that’s the case then the Hispano cannon are pretty puny!?!
@@ivatt442 I see the mistake. It was a typo. I meant to write, " ...300,000J"...". Joules, not megajoules (MJ). .50cal. machine guns are powerful, but not THAT powerful. :D
Also, please note that for descriptive convenience I wrote "per minute" when describing the power of the guns. No 20mm or .50cal. gun is fired uninterruptedly for an entire minute. To attempt to do so would destroy the gun well-before a minute was reached. A burst of one second or less was more usual which, if accurate, was sufficient to destroy virtually any aircraft.
Sorry for any misunderstanding because of the typo.
@@CorePathway Absolutely. Japanese fighters, particularly the Zero-Sen were very lightly built and carried no armour or self-sealing fuel tanks. This made them much lighter than they would have been if they had such, therefore more maneuverable and with a very good rate of climb. This, however, did not serve then well as faster and more rugged American and Commonwealth fighters using hit and extend tactics tore them apart with a burst of less than a second. A P-38's 20mm was even more lethal.
.50 cal Brownings in American fighter aircraft such as the P-40 were notorious for stoppages until design problems with the ammunition feed were corrected later in the war. The combination of the highly reliable .303 Browning and the 20 mm Hispano Suiza cannon in a number of British aircraft such as the Spitfire, Beaufighter and Mosquito was a highly effective one and was probably the best possible compromise on the basis of firepower, reliability, ammunition availability and supply and optimized weight of guns and their ammunition.
Great video, and thanks for putting this research together. I'm a fan of the U.S. Cal .30 M2 (or ANM2 .30) that was modified into the open bolt variation in Britain, culminating in the Mk II .303 model. The basic design was a joint project from U.S. Army Ordnance and Colt's, developed around 1929/1930. This gun was far smaller and lighter than the .30 cal Browning 1918 and 1919 series guns made for aircraft use, but based on the full size receiver from WWI. The ANM2 designation was used also for the .50 cal aircraft guns used on U.S. war planes, so one must distinguish the caliber when discussing these. In U.S. service, the .30 cal M2s were used most prominently on Dive and Torpedo bombers, in the tailgunner's position. The famous Dauntless dive bomber is the best known example. Colt's produced these in .303 for the British, and later Buffalo Arms, before manufacturing was initiated in Britain itself. There are interesting distinctions between the Mk II and the American ANM2, much of which I suppose has to do with mounting and triggering requirements, but the open vs closed bolt operation is the major functional difference. Fortunately, here in the States, it is still possible to experience shooting these amazing, historical arms.
The fantastic Paul Richey autobiography of the period "Fighter Pilot" covered a lot of territory and is well worth a read.
Particularly Vis British fighter doctrine going into WW2 and how 1 Squadron abandoned the Dowding Spread and harmonised their .303 hurricanes at 250 yards massively increasing the effectiveness.
The Dowding Spread (from a distance) wasn't particularly effective and was "driving the enemy off in an eastward direction" instead of actually shooting anything down.
*battle of France specifically and I mean "Number 1 Squadron of the RAF", not 1 random squadron.
Just to clarify both points
Really enjoyed the video, filled in some of the gaps in my knowledge.
Thanks for watching Peter!
New sub in the house! I'm a retired navy Senior Chief but I have always enjoyed aviation history - as well as general military history. I've watched a whack of your videos and found them quite good! You keep posting and I'll keep watching, liking, commenting, etc. BZ, mate!
Cheers Christopher, thanks for watching!
The .303 round was nothing but a joke. It's like going hunting for Grizzly bears with a 22 . SURE you might kill,the bear ,but you injured it , then look out YOU are in Big trouble
@@ernestsutton2570 And you're telling me this why, exactly?
IIRC, late 30s and very early 40s US fighters still used .30 caliber or mixed .30 and .50 caliber guns. Wartime creates inertia in production - changeover has to happen when existing designs are at full-time production. The UK was at war over 2 years before the US, i.e. that production inertia became a factor in the UK 2+ years earlier. Making a changeover is a complex weight, rate of fire, ammunition capacity, and damage potential decision.
"IIRC, late 30s and very early 40s US fighters still used .30 caliber or mixed .30 and .50 caliber guns."
Yes, and most of them only had two guns!
The game theory is interesting, and yeah, I'd say the RAF were canny enough to think of it... remember the 'Carrot story'? Stories were leaked that RAF pilots were fed carrots due to them helping improve night vision. It was actually a cover story to cover the Chain-Holm radar (and later aircraft mounted radars) - generations of kids have subsequently been told to eat their carrots to help see in the night.
Ah yes, "cat's eyes" Cunningham, right?
@@CalibanRising Yep, but I believe it pre-dated Cunningham (but only marginally) - to mask Chain Holm (the Germans only really using Radar as a ship borne system - I presume for fire control)
My father was secretary of the RAF modification committee during ww2, he told me we had over production of carrots so used the "cat's eyes" Cunningham story to encourage the young to eat them and avoid waste.
They could have used carrots instead of .303s.. 😬
As one of that generation of kids in England who was always told to eat his carrots, I was only thankful that Brussel Sprouts had no effect on eyesight!🤣😂
The key source of information on RAF armament is the book "I hold my aim" (some copies can still be found) which was written by C.H. Keith (see Wikipedia) who was in charge of RAF weapons development in the 1930's.
I remember there was a video on TH-cam that was talking about the first encounters with Spitfires and the Luftwaffe. A German WW2 pilot spoke to his personal experience with being shot by a Spitfire armed with the.303.
He said he managed to get back to base and when they checked his aircraft he was surprised to find so many holes in his fuselage and that they were from a relatively small caliber.
I have hunted large game with a 303 and I have shot them from the gun shop who sold Lee Enfield rifles. The only thing that I noticed was that penetration was not always the best. While there have been several Wildcat Cartridges made but over the years I have noticed they have pretty much fallen out of favour.
The 0'303 Lee Enfield Mk IV used by the Brits and its allies in WW2 was one of the best rifles in the war. With 1,000's of kills.
In the Battle of Britain, the 20mm cannon on the BF109 wasn't that great either. Only 60 rounds of ammunition per gun, about 7 seconds of fire after which the pilot had to rely on the two relatively puny rifle calibre machine guns in the nose or fly home to France for a refill. The Japanese A6M Zero had a similar arrangement and exactly the same problem.
I think I read somewhere that some Zero pilots used their smaller armament to range the target before letting fly their cannons. Might have to look that up again.
The fifty - calibre was definitely more effective than the .303 but the latter round could still down planes. The greatest Allied ace. 'Pat' Pattle shot down at least fifty German and Italian aircraft. All his kills were achieved using the 0.303 gun and many in the Gladiator which only had four 0.303 guns.
The gloster gladiator? The biplane?
That's badass
@@FLMKane More likely just propaganda. Pattle's victory total is nonsense.
@@FLMKane When the number of Gladiators on the island of Malta was reduced to three, they were named Faith, Hope and Charity. At least one book was written on the subject.
In the end though, the .303 was a good fit for the Spitfire. The pilots quickly learnt the best way to use them in combat and its lightness and size was perfect for those Spitfire wings. They shot down enough 109s to show it functioned well enough.
Tell that to the hundreds of british fighter pilots who died because of their shitty guns. The brits were very, very lucky their loss of pilots didn't make them lose the air battle.
@@miskatonic6210 What are you talking about? There's zero evidence the .303 had anything to do with the number of British pilots shot down. 109 pilots often had a torrid time getting the Spitfire into its sights due to its superior manoeuvrability, as mentioned by many former German WW2 pilots.
All the books I've read, I've literally never come across a single historian that's mentioned the calibre of bullets as nearly costing them the Battle of Britain. I'd recommend doing some reading, there's a lot of historical literature out there.
Exactly not to mention the spitfire had 8 of these machineguns firing at you so that's still some lead flying around.
@@danglingdave1787 about 160 rounds a second
@@cardiffpicker1 insane.
Thank you for answering a question I never needed to know or would have thought to ask, I actually found your video very interesting. And no I'm not being sarcastic I am being sincere, I even enjoy watching videos from the British guy that talks about every naval war ship that there ever was. Thank you and thumbs up. Have a nice day. I hope I met your three criterias . Remember you did not mention anything about bad grammar , poor punctuation and misspellings.
Thanks for watching John!
In 1936 the British had a study the determined the best way to get the most Steel on the target was eight, 303 machine guns this enabled them to have them converging it slightly different distances, and still put Steel on the target. The Americans with their 30 caliber, equivalent to the 303. When they started using it in action started to determine that the 303 did not have the range for the way they had taught their pilots to fight. So they started to put more and more 50 caliber machine guns, starting with a single then a pair then four, six, and ultimately eight in the P-47 Mustang. Most American Aces seem to engage at ranges much farther than the effective range of the 303, and the heavier throw weight per round at longer ranges help them immensely
On top of every one of the latest Abrams A3 tanks coming off of the assembly line, sits the MA Deuce.50 cal machine gun, same as in WWII fighters. John Browning knew what he was doing 🤌👌👍
It's an M2HB, which is quite a bit different in all details to the ANM2, but the same underlying design. Many weapons designs are surprisingly old.
@@wbertie2604 If it ain't broke don't fix it.
It's important to remember that the M2 Browning .50 cal MG was scaled up from the Browning .30 cal MG. Most American fighters were slinging six .50 cal MGs during WWII. Compared to an auto cannon, the .50 cal has a flatter trajectory, which makes hip shooting a lot easier.
It's on record that a fighter pilot with poor aim had much more change of scoring a hit with 8x .303 than with 4x 20mm. But early war RAF 'aces' had their armourers aim their 8 brownings to converge at (I think) 400 yards. Most RAF fighters were set to spray the bullets line ahead. So a poor shot would hit, but not kill.
The Germans & Japanese kept their ace pilots at the front to kill as many as they could. The Allies took their aces out of combat to train new pilots. 1 ace killing machine is great if you are desperate: but an endless supply of good enough killing machines is what wins wars.
@@glynwelshkarelian3489 - That's all very interesting. But imagine what six .50 cal MGs firing about 500 rpm could have done compared to eight .303s firing just rpm as on the Spitfire Mark I. The .50 bullet is up to four times as heavy as a .303 round, and it has a higher muzzle velocity, thus flatter trajectory.
So just two .50s might outperform either .303s. An air-cooled .303 weighs about 30 lbs, and a M2 .50 weighs 84 lbs. So yes, six .50 MGs could probably have been fit into a Spitfire Mark I and spit out 2-3 times more destruction per second.
I think that single change could have shortened the daylight phase of the Battle of Britain, putting an end to more ME-109s and the careers of their pilots rather than allowing them to fly back to France. This isn't to criticize the Mark I Spitfire; however, she might have been even more deadly had she been equipped with .50s at the start.
@@pacificostudios The .303 Browning fired at 1,200rpm. With eight guns that's 9,600rpm. Six AN/M-2 Brownings would give you 4,800rpm, which of course is only half as many. And tests on actual aircraft showed that, after penetrating a metal airframe, the .50 round wasn't actually significantly more effective at penetrating armour or breaking things. Cannon armament was clearly the way ahead, everyone knew it, and the RAF didn't see the point in messing around with a much bigger, heavier machinegun when it was obviously a dead end.
I do sometimes think Arthur Harris was a bit of a berk. It was not the range that was the issue; it was the stopping power.
But if you cant hit it....
Aluminum wing ribs have lightening holes to reduce weight where shear strength is not needed. These holes are designed to pass machine gun belts of a specific caliber. In terms of size, the various calibers were heavier, longer, fatter, and most importantly the bigger rounds had much stiffer belts with a much larger folding radius. In 1963, US NAVY Skyraiders with 8 50 caliber machine guns had to be catapult launched from an aircraft carrier. In 1964, the Skyraiders guns were replaced with 4 20mm guns. It was now light enough to be deck launched. The difference was the ammo. 20mm belts were too stiff to be laid in a second row in the wing boxes and the rounds were too long to pass through the lightening holes in the wing ribs to use the adjacent wing boxes. The net result was 50 caliber guns could use double row loading and adjacent wing boxes. The 20 mm guns had single row folding in the gun box only. The 8 50 caliber guns had 4 minutes of firing time at a much higher rate per gun. The 20mm guns had 20 seconds of firing time, they were slower and half as many but had a longer effective range. * 50 caliber guns had been the NAVY's solution for jungle fighting in the South Pacific in WWII. The 20mm was geared as a makeshift for Soviet armor busting. But these Skyraiders were only used in the Vietnam hot war. A superior solution replaced for an imaginary requirement.
What version of the Skyraider was this with 50 caliber armament? I can find no information on Skyraiders being armed with any guns other than 20mm. I can remember a Skyraider pilot in Korea talking about the effectiveness of the 20mm destroying vehicles.
Considering how much R.J. Mitchell thought that a stabilizing platform was most important always seemed to be of some importance perhaps? Wing design was ingenious. Well done with much information.
Very interesting. A comparison of muzzle velocities would have been relevant and informative though.
Great point!
About 800 (303), 835 (M2HB), 880 (Hispano II) for most common ammunition types. All m/s.
M/s. 303 Browning 800, M2 890 Hispano II, 880. For ball ammunition
It would have cost too much and been too slow to licence production of the 50cal from America with how gouged the prices on Thompsons were so it was easier and cheaper to bulk buy .308 brownings and convert them in Britain, the spitfire did eventually mount 20mms but they were unreliable so the quad. 303s were put back creating the mixed configuration then up to quad layout when reliability had been fixed.
"it was easier and cheaper to bulk buy .308 brownings and convert them in Britain"
Yes, but that never happened. For one thing, there WERE no ".308 Brownings" at the time. For another the British .303 Brownings were licence-made in the UK, and were radically modified from the original design.
@@fergusmason5426 what do you think 7.62mm
@@Litterbugtaylor US-made Brownings were chambered for .30-06. The .308 round did not exist, and in any case the British Colt-Browning .303 was pretty much a completely different gun by the time it entered service.
Turned out, the .303 did perfectly well downing Luftwaffe planes during the Battle of Britain.
As a buff, and a kid in the 70's, I always wondered why the .303 was the armament of the Hurricanes and Spits. Good video, now I know.
I have been interested in this sort of stuff since I was child. Good TV to me us a good history documentary. That said, I can't tell you how much I learned in this video. Dude, bravo.
Another factor that I didn't hear mentioned was that, for much of the war, the RAF was mostly engaging German fighters. .303 armament that would have been very inadequate for intercepting late-war bombers would have been adequate against lighter fighters.
Very good video Sir
Thanks for watching mate!
I was reading a good thread on this recently, there were a multitude of reasons as to why it happened. Great to see a video on this
Thanks. It's a question that seems to come up a lot, right?
@@CalibanRising Yeah, it comes up so often and it's one I only recently got interested in. It's a fascinating topic, thanks for the great vid
Remember every American vehicle had a 50 cal mounted on it. As for the Navy 50 cals where widely dispersed all over the ships. Fun fact, on the lowly US Navy LCS today there's 6 50 cal mounts.
The 50 cals were replaced by 20mm's in the first months of the war.
@@rocketguardian2001 Most PT boats kept their 50 cals. Even today every Abrams tank has a 50 cal on top the turret.
@@LV_CRAZY Yea but the Abrams .50 is not used for anti aircraft duties, and the .50 on the PT's was supplemented by 20mm's whenever the skippers could find one. The .50 was a great air to air weapon, but it has its limits. For surface to air, the 20mm is much better.
@@rocketguardian2001 I guess everyone's experience will vary. The 20 mm's aboard our ship, the USS Ajax in the 70s where a real disappointment. On every firing exercise they continually jammed. And couldn't be recovered. Every time. Maybe our Gunners Mates weren't the best. But the 20 mm left a bad impression with me.
@@LV_CRAZY do you know if they were the original mounts or replacements? They would have been decades old by the 70's, so maybe that would explain the poor performance. Cool that you served aboard a WW2 Era ship!
loving you work , amazing reasearch
Thanks very much Keith.
Jeffrey Quill was flying a Mk 2a Spit fitted with 20mm Canons which as you said froze at altitude, my grandfather was involved with machining the 20mm cannon barrels to get the tolerances just right, he said in the end they just taped over the end of the barrel, but later warm air fed from the engine solved the problem. Douglas Bader preferred to have an aircraft fitted with 8 X 303 mg's he had his guns adjusted to provide a concentrated cone of fire at 200yds much closer than the 600yds recommended in the Manuals, in fact, he had his MkVa Spit modified to have 8 X 303's fitted instead of the cannons it was built with. He thought the 303s provided a much higher concentration of destructive firepower. But then he did get shot down a few times! I believe we did adopt 0.5-inch mg's for our fighter aircraft later on.
Think you are being a bit hard on the Brits and the 303, for the planes they started out facing the fast firing 303 could easily damage and could be fitted in significant numbers to the light and nimble British fighters. Yes indeed they might have been better fitting something larger a little later in the war but there are advantages to using the same equipment in an extended manner. Now the US came in with great hulking aeroplanes with huge low-tech radial engines, both fighters and bombers. The heavy 50 cal would blow right through the sort of Armour used on aircraft by the Germans and could rattle from one end to the other of a zero, but just like any gun you needed to carry enough of them. The heavy US fighters could. Both the Japanese and the Germans used mixed gun batteries, the idea being able to handle anything, but the 20mm had only a handful of rounds and then they didn't have enough 303 to make up for it. As the war went on they packed more and more cannons (up to 30mm) to deal with heavily protected bombers. It was what they had to do, and by the end of the war they were really dangerous opponents to the bombers. Course it took them so long that by the time they were able to handle the bombers there were hordes of smiling mustangs they had to deal with first. Like so many things choosing aircraft weapons is not a one-sided deal, you got to figure on your enemy. An enemy with light fast maneuverable aircraft give me lots of light fast firing machine guns. Heavy bombers your problem - cannon, generally a 303 would just piss off a 17. Got plenty of weight, horsepower and wing area? A 50 cal is a good intermediate gun, real good at strafing ground targets too.
Some good points here, thanks!
probably supply reasons, it's easier to manufacture a lot of ammunition if you only made 1 type especially if you are under siege like the British was in the early parts of WW2
We had .303 in ready production both guns and ammo. The weapon and ammo is smaller and lighter and recoil is less making it easier build a plane around it.
.303 and .50bmg have the same drawback, they make holes. Both rounds relied heavily on hitting something important whereas a 20mm shell relies on sending shrapnel out to cause harm. You're better off going for more bullets and more speed if outright explosive effect isn't available.
It was a period of rapid evolution. The specs for these aircraft were designated several years before war broke out. History cannot be judged with hindsight.
Still used the .303 (Bren Gun)in the Rhodesian Security Forces 1980. My BN (3 BN Infantry) was the last Unit in the Forces who were issued with Brens. The SADF (South Africa) used the Bren till the 90ys
Actually by 1941 most British fighters had at least 2x 20mms hispano cannons, usually 4
Certainly did. What's interesting to me is that some late mark Spits retained the .303s.
The Japanese used a Browning clone, at least the army did. They scaled up the Browning action up to 30mm
I wonder if anyone experimented with fitting four .50 cals in a Spitfire or Hurricane wing (two in each wing) and how effective it would have been
Less effective than eight .303s.
I really enjoyed that video!
Subscribed!
I think this is the first video of yours I've seen. I'm impressed by the detail and clarity of presentation; it exceeds my initially naive expectations!
Thanks Glenn, I enjoyed putting this together for you.
You have to fight with what you have. The 303 was available and reliable. By the time the 50 started to arrive the 20 mm was working. Also self sealing tanks and armor only became available in 1940ish. At the cost of weight and performance. By the way one of the things stopping the zero having armor was Japan did not have an engine powerful enough to keep the performance.
There was a version of the Zero that was fitted with an armor plate to protect the pilot and I think it also had self sealing tanks, but the extra 400 lbs completely destroyed it's performance and as a result only 400 were produced, I think I remember reading that the majority of them were removed from front line service and were used as trainer's.
Like the Brewster Buffalo once it was weighed down with extra weight for survivability it couldn't be fitted with a more powerful engine because the airframe couldn't handle it, so much would have been redesigned that they just put the efforts into designing entirely different aircraft.
The "Mighty Zero" was a false God, it's entire reputation is based on it's record against Chinese biplanes and it's first month or two against green US pilots who just had to learn how to fight against it and forget their peacetime training which was wrong for dealing with an aircraft like that, but with the right tactics they quickly turned the tables against it to where even the Wildcat was shooting it down at a ratio of 5 to 1.
Having no survivability engineered into it for the sake of things like maneuverability and climb rate turned out to be a mistake, one good squirt from the .50 cals of the US fighter's and they came apart usually resulting in them bursting into flames, one of Japan's leading aces who survived the war is in an interview here on TH-cam and he himself says it was Japan's worst fighter of the war citing it's lack of survivability as why.
@@dukecraig2402 That's possibly the worst revisionist claim I've seen in a while. The IJN preferred maneuverability over speed, etc, as a matter of doctrine, not design choices. Hurricanes that were successful in the Battle of Britain tried the same tactics against A6Ms and got chewed up. Basically any attempts to engage in maneuver with a Zero was suicide. Allied air forces became successful when they started employing competitive strategies against the Zero. You also ignore the Zero's insane range compared to its opponents. The P-38 was the only plane that came close.
@@dukecraig2402 True but also the zero only had a 900 hp engine. When it first flew in China it was against biplane type aircraft the best being the Russian I-16. In 1942 it could out range the P 51 of 1944. Also the Japanese AL used was stronger than US AL of the day and a number of US aircraft were armed with .30 not .50's. Good comments.
@@Caseytify
And they paid the price for it, and why are you citing the example of Hurricanes using bad tactics against the Zero when I quite clearly stated that after the early engagements against the Japanese using wrong tactics the US pilots adopted the right tactics against the Zero and started shooting them down at 5 to 1 with even just the Wildcat? Don't you get what I was saying there? What does Hurricanes using the same incorrect tactics against the Zero have to do with it?
Facts are facts, a 5 to 1 kill ratio of the Wildcat vs the Zero is proof that the Zero was a false God, that 5 to 1 ratio isn't for US fighter's as a whole against the Zero that's the kill ratio for just the Wildcat specifically, what is it with you guy's who believe that maneuverability is the ultimate measuring metric for a fighter and just want to dismiss survivability? This was real life not a video game.
And once again, it's one of Japan's surviving top aces who right here on TH-cam even admits it was their worst fighter of the war and cites it's lack of survivability as the reason, seeing as how he flew it and their other fighter's he compares it to I'd say he knows what he's talking about.
ah. good point about the Japanese engines!
Apparently, when the Hispano was being evaluated it was based on some use of this weapon. However because it had been, of necessity at the time, mounted sideways in the aircraft wing this put strain and friction on parts not designed to take them. This led to unreliability which biased the decision not to use them at the time. Douglas Badrr was dead set against the Hispano because of this and insisted on retaining the .303 Browning.
Yes, I remember that preference of Bader's. He was an excellent pilot and (I think) marksman, so he could get in really close on an enemy. Lesser pilots/marksmen probably wouldn't have had as much faith in all-303 armament.
Also, Bader fought only in the early war years (before getting shot down and captured), before German up-armoring rendered the 303s peashooters.
@@britishamerican4321 In a 25th. BoB anniversary, article by a leading magazine of it's day, I read that the Brownings were set in a general spread to ensure a better chance of some hits by less experienced pilots. However, once a pilot had proved his skill at judging distance and deflection, he would have the guns reset to converge at 250 yards causing maximum damage at that point. Apparently, the effect was equivalent to a five ton truck hitting a brick wall at 60mph. - !
@@simongee8928 That's exactly right (re: the convergences, first set to a long range, then to much shorter range, e.g. 250 yards). And yes, the effect was devastating, in the days before more powerful engines (and thus up-armoring) became available.
At a conference after the Battle of Britain, there was a discussion about .303 vs 20mm. Douglas Bader insisted that the .303 was better, you just had to get in close to the target. Robert Stanford Tuck argued that cannon were better, having greater range and hitting power. He said that had he had cannon, there were a few instances where he reckoned that he could have downed an enemy that was out of effective range of his .303's.
While it started to be effective with the Mk V Spitfire, it should be noted that Bader, at his insistence, was flying the only 8 x .303 armed Mk V Spitfire in his Wing on the day that he was shot down (possibly by one of his Canadian pilots).
As for the de Wilde ammunition, according to Squadron Leader Jim Shedden (486 Squadron), it was not made in Belgium (although initially invented there in 1938) but at the Royal Arsenal Woolwich, and an improved version of the original. Britain had bought the rights to the design. It was called de Wilde at the time to confuse the Germans about the source.
My father's squadron (268) had the Mustang 1a, and was unusually armed with 4 x 20mm cannon, but as it was used in the Tactical Reconnaisance role, and was fitted with the Allison engine, never reached an altitude where heating was required. This was in 1944.
Yes, quite right about the different views of Bader and Stanford-Tuck. Bader's other aversion to cannon was that, in his view, it would encourage pilots to engage enemy aircraft at too great a distance. As was said, Bader passionately believed that the most effective way to shoot down the enemy was to get up very close and that 8 x .303 Brownings were more than enough firepower if used this way.
Interesting stuff. I had short-listed a section of this video on who slowed down the adoption of 20 mms, but it got left on the cutting room floor. Thanks for the clarification about de Wilde ammo.
@@kenstanway7625 The fact that virtually every British front line fighter switching to 20mm cannons in the latter half of the war showed who had won the argument.
One of the main reason the RAF used .303 in the beginning is it was 1938 before they fixed most of the problems. Then it was another year before they got 20 mm usable for service. Also complaints about P 52 being under gunned with only 6 .50's.
@@kenstanway7625 Also let's not forget about the "Dowding Spread", which had the 8 guns harmonised at 400 yards, to allow for the perhaps poor accuracy expected of the current RAF pilots. No 1 Squadron in France in 1940 soon decided to harmonise at 250 yds, and some at 200 yds, but had to keep it quiet as the Dowding Spread was still official policy.
They were also one of the first squadrons to fit armour plate behind the pilot (borrowed from a crashed Fairey Battle). Air Ministry types had argued that the extra weight would affect performance, but the the Squadron Leader (Bull Halahan) tested it and found that it was fine.
The skilled fighters in the BoB tended to disregard the harmonisation distance for their wing guns as recommended by the RAF, which IIRC was several hundred yards and used a much smaller distance, even down to 100 yards (300 feet) or less! This gave the guns the close-in punch they lacked at distance and made for less wastage of very limited ammo and faster kills which was important in the melee of dogfighting. Also the rate of fire being faster than even the 50 cal of the time meant that snap-shooting, which often was the only kind possible, had more chance of a hit. Bob Tuck and Douglas Bader had many arguments about the guns in use which Tuck recounts in his book "Fly for Your Life". Bader wanted cannon whilst Tuck was determined to stick with the .303 for it's reliability and adequate performance - but Tuck was a superb shot and used to get in very close to his quarry, in itself a measure of his flying skill!