BEAUTIFUL, hi rez gun pod pic in action- 1,832 × 1,512 pixels, file size: 2.27 MB
For USAF F-4 pilots, we all got practice firing the M-61 in initial training and annual weapons qualification. For those of us who went through initial in the F-4C in Arizona, we used the gun pod. Later, after converting to the F-4E, we had the internal nose gun.
The external pod was inherently less accurate than the nose gun…you can imagine the recoil of something that powerful…the mounting system just wasn’t as rock steady as the nose gun (in the picture, you can see that it is attached to the centerline pylon just like a bomb). Added to that was the way the pod was sighted in when being mounted…and the mounting was only temporary, the pod only being loaded when the training requirements called for it…it wasn’t a permanent load.
The pod was sighted in this way (simplified). The pod was mounted but not tightened all the way down. A technician would put a small telescope into the breech of the gun to allow him to look through the barrel…that way he could see what the gun was pointed at. He would then align the scope on the sighting target and then tighten the pod down.
The problem was that the sighting target was a black cross painted on the back of the nose gear strut (since the nose gear was directly in front of the gun). The technician adjusted the mounting of the pod until the scope pointed right at the center of the cross.
This produced a relatively accurate aiming reference but not one as good as used with the nose gun. The gear cross was too close to the pod and any errors made in adjustment were magnified over the actual firing distance (2000′ minimum for ground attack).
At our base in Arizona, we trained both F-4 and F-104 pilots. I flew the F-4C there as a student and the F-104 as an instructor…generally speaking, whenever we had competitions among ourselves, the F-104 tended to win strafe because of the better mounting system of its internal gun. Later, when I flew the F-4E, I found my strafe scores improved over those that I had in the C model.
But nothing beat the A-10!! I was only an average bomber but was very competitive in strafe…typical F-4 scores (given in % of hits vs rounds fired) were less than 50%. Hog scores often were above 50%…I thought that if I didn’t shoot 75% or better, I was having a bad day.
You might wonder how we calculated “hits”. Two basic ways. The old fashioned way was to fire at a target and then have someone go out and count the holes! The better and more modern way was to use a device that detected the sound of the ‘bullets’ as they passed overhead. This ‘acoustiscoring device’ was installed below the target and protected by a dirt berm. Its detection distance was limited to the size of the scoring area on the target (we often used old aircraft drag chutes that were painted bright orange for better visibility). It could detect each rounds as it passed and transmitted that count to the range ground controller who would then radio the results to the pilot…that allowed us to correct our aiming for the next pass. We were given 100 rounds and allowed three passes to fire those rounds out.
I would make the first pass a “sighter” pass where I would aim as carefully as possible, correcting for wind. Then I would fire a very short burst. The result would tell me how well the gun was sighted in and how well I had corrected for the wind. The next pass I would fire a longer burst to verify my correction. If that was a good correction, then on my last pass, I would get to work! I’d do two things…get the best possible aim and then delay my firing until the last possible moment. Our minimum range was 2000′ and some of us got real good at knowing right where that was!!
The winning shooting technique was to open fire with the gunsight exactly on the wind corrected aiming point. While the gun was firing, we made every effort to keep aiming at that point…so that when we stopped firing we were still pointed at the aiming reference…pilots who didn’t do well in strafe often let their aim move while the gun was firing and got lower scores as a result.
Back when I was doing a lot of work with flight sims, I teamed up with a very talented guy who programmed add-ons to existing sims…together, we made an add-on to the sim Strike Fighters that allowed the player to fly a bombing mission on a USAF style bombing range. I helped with the technical advice and he did the actual art work and programming. Here are a few screenshots that show the range and a strafing run in a F-4.
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