----- Original Message -----
From: "Colin Stevens" <colin@pacdat.net>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2001 2:07 AM
Subject: Re: [MV] Mosquito vs. B-17G
> British 6 Pounder was equal to US 57 mm. (why the US went metric on some
of
> this stuff who knows!). In anti-tank guns shells were interchangeable
> between 6 Pr and 57 mm.and as I recall, the ammo boxes were marked for
both.
>
Having had a change to trawl the data it is indeed 57mm but note there is no
fixed rule between calibre and the pounds measurement or even that the
production guns even fire exactly their pound designation..
> 80 shots per minute? I have trouble believing that. Firing 80 6 Pr
> shells/minute might equal reverse gear for a poor old Mossie! 8 rounds per
> minute perhaps?
>
I was working from memory having seen the B&W film of the Mossie firing its
57mm on the range, 8rpm it certainly isn't, in any case you'd only get one
shot before over-flying the target, however, the documented info search has
brought up the data:
Source "FlyPast" March 2001 - Mosquito FB.XVIII "Tsetse" (Has a bigger bite
than a regular Mosquito !)
The Molins gun was first fitted to HJ732 after trials in a scrap airframe,
flew on June 8 1943 and fired a full complement of rounds, used by 618 sqdn
and 248 sqdn proved highly successful as submarine hunters in the Bay of
Biscay using AP shot. A total of 18 Mk VI Mosquitos were made into XVIII
6pdr Molins gun types and mostly operated by 248 sqdn.
Molins gun:
Weight of shell 7.1lb
Recoil action
Cyclic rate 60 rpm
Weight 1800 lb
MV 2,600ft/sec
Capacity 22/27 rounds
Recoil on airframe 8,000 lb
Made by the Molins Machine Co. of Peterborough
Even more bizarre, and leading from the success of the 6pdr Molins gun, the
RAF jumped to the idea of fitting the 3.7" (94mm) 32pdr AT gun to the
Mosquito !
Keeping the poor Mossie in one piece owing to the fearsome recoil was
realised and a French refugee M.Galliot designed a very effective, weird and
almost unproduceable muzzle brake which looks like a multi-start thread
being fed from two rows of gas vents, several manufacturers refused to even
contemplate manufacture of it. Meanwhile the war ended but one brake was
made and a 3.7" was fitted to a Mosquito with Molins auto-loader having a
weight of 4,000 lb and test flown/fired. Having proved the point the
project was scrapped.
As an aside and speaking of Molins, who was Lucy Maria Mollin, married Nov
1916 ?
Richard
Southampton - England
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 23:18:32 PDT