When you say the Vickers “S” looked huge, it´s because it is HUGE. Have you seen a picture of it under the wing of a Hurricane? It certainly is no toy 🙂

And about the Vimpy being as sturdy as the B17 and able to take the punch of big weapons, I don´t know. All I know is that the Vimpy was unuseable as a glider tug because the fuselage had a habit “streching” when under strain like glider towing

The Vickers “S” was the same “small” 40mm weapon as installed in the Hawker Mk.2 D Hurricane tank buster, used to great effect in the Western Desert against Axis armour. A Mk.2 Wellington also had the same weapon installed en a midd-upper turret location as an experimental installation. Nothing came of it.

You say the B17 received structural damage to the nose after the operational deput with 220 sq. Somehow I find this hard to understand. Most surely they would have fired the gun during testing before that stage was reached??? Maybe they packed the nose of that ole B17 full of 40mm guns, and the fatique of the structure only showed up after the first operational sortie???

Since the Wellington could stand the recoil of this weapon, why should the B17 not, since it was a lot more sturdy than the Wimpy??

Fantastic news……And the pictures are SO great 🙂

If I only had some money, something like this would be my kind of thing 😉 but like they say in some old ABBA tune……Money Money Money, must be funny, in a rich mans world.

You are correct Tom_W! The Hs 129 had the PaK 40 75mm weapon. The North American B25G Mitchel had a 75mm M4 US. Army cannon. It was mainly used for anti-shipping operation. A total of 400 thus equipped aircraft were built by the factory, plus an unspecified number of mainly B25C’s converted in the field.

The Germans had one more interesting combination. The Junkers Ju 88 P-1 was a ground attack version of the famous bomber and packed a terrible punch in the form of a PaK 40, 75mm cannon.

Somewhere at the back of my head I seem to remember that the Junkers Ju 88 was also operational with an 88mm anti-aircraft gun, but try as I might, I can not find this in black and white at the moment. Any ideas????

Regards,
galdri

RE: Radial engine running in reverse ?

In response to YAK11 FANS comments about a radial engine in a YAK 11 runing in reverse for a short time, I’m afraid he is a little bit mistaken about that. I’ve seen the same thing happen on my YAK 55, and what is really happening is that the spark is too advanced during the start which leads the ignition in the cylinders to happen too soon, and it causes the engine to produce a kick powerful enough to turn the engine backwards. But it is deffinatly not running, it is just turning backwards, the engine is dead by this time, and actually, most probably never started propperly in the first place. And to make it absolutly clear, this can happen to any and all piston engines and is not isolated to radial engines. If somebody would like a better description of what is going on, in a step by step description, I will be happy to answear any queastions.

About the comment of some Shuttleworth aero engines actually running backwards for some time, the only thing I´ve got to say about it is that it is impossible!!

Regards,
Galdri