----- Original Message -----
From: "islander" <islander@midmaine.com>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2001 5:14 PM
Subject: Re: [MV] Mosquito vs. B-17G
> Hello Renaud,
>
> >On Wednesday 09 May 2001 17:49, I was honoured by a missive from Richard
> >Notton that said :
>
> >> 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
>
> Ahh.... a "cyclic rate" of 60rpm is a lot different than the "practical
> rate". For those of you who might not know, the "cyclic rate" is the
> theoretical max rate of fire if everything goes off without a hitch in a
> lab and assumes there is a feed system (or an "at the ready" supply for
> manually loaded weapons) that can supply one minute's worth of ammo
> during sustained firing. For example, the cyclic rate of a German MG42
> is 1200 rounds per minute
>
Quite true but the Molins was auto-loaded and controlled and indeed fired
one shell every second.
To answer Ron the Frog, it is a single barrel weapon, aircraft in flight
have plenty of barrel cooling, often so much that gun heating is needed.
I'll post a scan of the Molins photo I have in the yahoogroups file,
unfortunately it is on a page join and has a step in it therefore.
> Looking at the ammo load of this plane shows that even if the gun *could*
> realistically do 60 rpm outside of laboratory conditions (which I very
> much doubt), having only 27 rounds max means less than 30 seconds worth
> of ammo :-) Meaning, no pilot would ever pull and hold down the trigger
> in actual combat.
>
The Spitfire only had 14seconds of gun capacity for instance. Gun camera
film of FB.XVIII's attacking shipping in Norway (often seen on
Discovery/History Channels) show about 4/5 rounds per pass which at 400mph
represents 4,400 ft of aircraft movement, at a steepish 45 deg this
represents 2,200 ft of altitude of course. The common piece of film shows
several FB.XVIII from a stand-off camera and actual gun camera, in the
latter footage the Molins firing is very obvious.
>2 shots per target would probably be all that was
> needed/practical. So I'd peg the practical rate of fire at somewhere
> around 3-5 rounds per minute in ideal circumstances. Just a guess!
>
No, I'd disagree, it fires at a rate of 60rpm.
> Why am I bothering with all this? Just to underscore that "cyclic rates"
> are like many figures for MV/planes/ships -> they sound more impressive
> than they really were in action.
>
Broadly true indeed.
> >This is getting more and more interesting; was the Molins a multi-barrel
> >effort, or a single barrel piece ?
>
> The weight of the barrel, breech, feed mechanism, power supply (electric
> or mechanical), etc. would really dissuade experimentation with multi
> barrel setups. Plus, it really wasn't necessary.
>
Quite so, I had a reference to a web page with an actual Molins on display
next to a Mossie in a museum here, the apprentices at the Molins Co. have
re-built one to drawing (mid 80's) and it is now in the De Havilland
Heritage Museum - Salisbury Hall, Herts.
> BTW, the Germans had a knack of always fielding something bigger than the
> other guy ;-)
>
Possibly the germ of an idea that led the RAF to try the 3.7", shame there
are no photos of this incredible installation.
> Oh... and getting back to heavy bombers. The Germans did have an
> operational 4 engine heavy bomber, the HE 177, but the fuel supply wasn't
> there. They had 270 of these planes by summer of 1944. However if all
> of them went on one medium range mission, they would have consumed a
> day's worth of Germany's ENTIRE fuel production. So even though the
> Germans had a bomber fleet of about 1/30th the size of the Allies at the
> time, they couldn't afford the fuel to use even this paltry number.
> Again, a lack of fuel is why the "New York Bomber" never went on a
> mission.
>
Just to finish the bit on heavy bombers, the Lancaster was rated for 22,000
lb and records show that trial Mossies were inadvertently filled with 10,000
lb of ballast and still flew acceptably, there is no evidence though that
this exceptional load was ever carried operationally.
Noboby took a stab at who Lucy Maria Mollin became then ? :-|
Richard
Southampton - England
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 23:18:32 PDT