Fighter Combat - Tactics and Maneuvering

FIGHTER WEAPONS 6
lets. Another factor in this equation involves target vulnerability. The
greater rate of fire possible with smaller bullets results in an increased
probability of registering a hit, but greater projectile weight generally leads
to more target damage given that a hit occurs.
Some of the armament variations of the combatants during World War II
can be explained by this factor. For instance, bombers generally are relatively
large, poorly maneuvering aircraft that are fairly easy to hit but
hard to destroy because of the armoring of vital areas and greater redundancy
of important systems. Such a target best may be destroyed by fewer
numbers of more destructive projectiles. The opposite may be true of
smaller, highly maneuverable fighters, which are usually harder to hit.
The search for more destructive projectiles led to the development of
the aircraft cannon. A cannon is essentially a gun that fires explosive
bullets. In general, these explosive charges are armed by the firing acceleration
of the shell, and they explode on contact with a target. Although some
use was made of single-shot cannon in World War I, truly effective automatic
cannon were developed between the wars. These were generally 20to
40-mm weapons and had projectiles significantly larger than those of
the .30- and .50-cal-class machine guns in common use, with correspondingly
lower rates of fire. The cannon themselves were also larger and
heavier, leading to further tradeoffs in usable aircraft space and in performance.
The many variations and exceptions of aircraft armament used in World
War II cannot be discussed in detail here, but some general trends deserve
mention. The firepower of the earlier fighters was invariably increased in
later versions of the same aircraft, as well as in new fighters introduced
during the war; increased projectile/target specialization also was apparent
as the conflict progressed through its various stages. For instance,
U.S. fighter designers, primarily concerned with German and Japanese
fighter opposition, tended to stay with high rate-of-fire machine guns. The
standard armament of the more important U.S. fighters (P-51, P-47, F4U,
F6F) at war's end was six or eight .50-cal Browning machine guns. These
were usually mounted in the wings, where there was more room and no
requirement for synchronization, so that the full rate of fire could be
developed. German designers generally employed a combination of cowlmounted
(often synchronized) and wing guns, and they tended to use
cannon for more potency against the heavy bombers that were their prime
concern. Late in the war the Me 262 (jet) and Me 163 (rocket) fighters,
primarily used as bomber interceptors, employed four 30-mm cannon
and/or 50-mm unguided rockets. Even larger guns were used successfully
by both sides in an air-to-ground role, as were unguided rockets.
The advent of wing-mounted guns led to increased problems with bullet
dispersion. When all guns were cowl mounted, they were simply boresighted
to fire essentially straight ahead (the sight might be aligned to
allow for the normal gravity drop of the bullets at a selected range). But
when guns were spread out over much of the span of the wings, bullet
dispersion became excessive, leaving large holes in the bullet pattern at