How One Gunner's 'Illegal' Modification Made .50 Cals Fire 1,200 Rounds Per Minute скачать в хорошем качестве

How One Gunner's 'Illegal' Modification Made .50 Cals Fire 1,200 Rounds Per Minute

How One Gunner's 'Illegal' Modification Made .50 Cals Fire 1,200 Rounds Per Minute The morning of March third, nineteen forty-three. Above the Bismarck Sea, between New Guinea and New Britain, Captain Edward Larner pushed the control yoke of his B-twenty-five Mitchell forward, dropping below two hundred feet. The waves blurred beneath him. Salt spray misted his windscreen. This was not how medium bombers were supposed to operate. Then he pressed the trigger. Eight Browning AN/M-two fifty-caliber machine guns erupted simultaneously from his aircraft's nose. The combined roar was unlike anything in aviation warfare. Six thousand four hundred rounds per minute of armor-piercing incendiary ammunition raked across the Japanese destroyer Asagumo at point-blank range. The ship's superstructure disintegrated. Tracers ignited fuel lines. Secondary explosions rippled down her length. Within ninety seconds, the destroyer was dead in the water. This was not standard Army Air Force doctrine. This was innovation born from desperation, implemented through violation of regulations, and vindicated through devastating effectiveness. The man responsible had never attended engineering school. He held no advanced degree in aeronautics. He was a forty-three-year-old former Navy enlisted man who had talked his way into an Army commission. His name was Paul Irvin Gunn. Everyone called him Pappy. And what he did to the B-twenty-five Mitchell bomber would change the course of the Pacific War. If you're enjoying this deep dive into the story, hit the subscribe button and let us know in the comments from where in the world you are watching from today! The problem was straightforward. By mid-nineteen forty-two, American forces in the Southwest Pacific faced a logistical nightmare. Japanese convoys moved troops and supplies with near impunity. American heavy bombers attacked from altitude and missed. American fighters lacked the range. American torpedo bombers approached slowly and died quickly. The B-twenty-five Mitchell, North American Aviation's twin-engine medium bomber, represented the most capable platform available. But its armament configuration revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of Pacific warfare requirements. The standard B-twenty-five C carried one thirty-caliber machine gun in the nose, fired by a bombardier lying prone in the glazed nose compartment. Two fifty-caliber guns sat in a dorsal turret. A ventral turret, operated by periscope, extended from the belly. Waist gunners manned additional thirty-caliber weapons.