The Tsar Cannons of Soviet Aviation
20-mm gun ShVAK was produced in versions: wing, turret and motor-gun. Weight guns 40 kg- 44,5 kg. 700-800 firing rate / min. Initial speed 815 m / s. Synchronous and wing 20-mm installation ShVAK installed on fighters and-153P, I-16, Yak-1, Yak-3, Yak-7B, LaGG-3, La-5, La-7, Pe-3, and 1943 The 158 guns were launched for use on Hurricane fighters instead of Browning's 7,92-mm machine guns. Two fixed guns were placed on the Tu-2 bomber and on the Pe-2 bomber part. Defensive turret installations with 20-mm ShVAK guns were installed on Pe-8 and Ep-2 bomber.
ShVAK was superior in all respects to the German MG-FF aviation cannon, which in 1941 was the most common in German aviation.
In the 1940 year, the designers A. A. Volkov and S. A. Yartsev created the 23-mm automatic gun VY-23 for the new 23-mm cartridge. With a weight of 66 kg, the gun made 550-650 revs / min.
In the air cannon VYa shells were used weighing 200 g, which is twice as large as that of ShVAK. An armor-piercing incendiary projectile at a distance of 400 m along the normal pierced through 25-mm armor.
The recoil of the VN gun was quite large, and it was not originally installed on fighters. By the beginning of the war, its only carrier was the Il-2 attack aircraft, in each wing of which one VY cannon with ammunition for 150 ammunition was mounted on the barrel. Later, she was armed with attack aircraft Il-10 and part of LaGG-3 fighters.
In the course of the fighting, it turned out that Soviet 20-23-mm caliber guns are able to effectively fight only light enemy armored vehicles, medium Tanks and self-propelled guns were "too tough" for them.
In the second half of 1942, the IL-2 variant armed with 37-mm ShFK-37 guns was released in a small series.
37-mm aircraft gun ShFK-37 was developed under the direction of B.G.Shpitalnogo.
The weight of the gun with the installation on the IL-2 was 302,5 kg. The rate of firing of SFC-37 according to field test data was on average equal to 169 per minute shots at an initial projectile speed of about 894 m / s. The gun ammunition included armor-piercing incendiary tracer (BZT-37) and fragmentation-incendiary-tracer (OZT-37 ) shells.
The BZT-37 projectile ensured the penetration of German tank armor 30 mm thick at an angle 45 degrees. normals from a distance of no more than 500 m. Armor 15-16 thick mm and less projectile punched at meeting angles of no more than 60 hail. at the same distances. Armor 50 mm thick (frontal part of the hull and turret of medium-sized German tanks) was pierced with a BZT-37 projectile from distances no more than 200 m at meeting angles not exceeding 5 degrees.
The large dimensions of the PFC-37 cannons and the store supply (the capacity of the 40 projectile shop) determined their placement in the fairing under the wing of the IL-2 aircraft. Because of the installation on the cannon of a large store, it had to be strongly lowered down relative to the building plane of the wing (aircraft axis), which not only complicated the design of attaching the cannon to the wing (the cannon was attached to the shock absorber and moved along with the magazine when firing), but also required it is bulky with a large cross-section fairings.
The tests showed that the flight data of the IL-2 with the large-caliber ShFK-37 air cannons, compared with the serial IL-2 with the ShVAK or VY cannons, markedly decreased. The plane became more inert and difficult in the technique of piloting, especially on turns and turns at low altitude. At high speeds, maneuverability deteriorated. Pilots complained of significant load on the rudders when performing maneuvers.
Accurate firing of ShFK-37 cannons on an Il-2 aircraft was greatly hampered due to the strong recoil of the cannons during firing and asynchronism in their work. Due to the large spacing of the guns relative to the center of mass of the aircraft, and also due to the insufficient rigidity of the gun mount, the attack aircraft experienced strong shocks, "pecks" and fired from the aiming line when firing, and this in turn, taking into account the insufficient the longitudinal stability of the "Elah", led to a significant dispersion of projectiles and a sharp decrease (by about 4 times) the accuracy of fire.
Shooting from the same gun was completely impossible. The attack aircraft immediately turned in the direction of the firing gun so that it was impossible to introduce an amendment to the aiming. In this case, hitting the target could only be the first projectile.
During the entire test period, the SFC-37 guns worked unreliably - the average percentage of the ammunition that fell on one failure was only 54%. That is, almost every second flight on the Il-2 combat mission with ShFC-37 cannons was accompanied by the refusal of at least one of the cannons. The maximum bombardment of the attack aircraft decreased and amounted to just 200 kg. All this significantly reduced the combat value of the new attack aircraft.
Despite the failure of ShFK-37, work in this direction was continued. In 1943, the launch of the NS-37 air cannon (designers Nudelman and Suranov) began. It used tape power, which allowed to increase the rate of fire to 240-260 rds / min. The initial velocity of the projectile 810 m / s, the weight of the gun 171 kg. Thanks to tape feed and less weight, it became possible to install a new system on the fighters.
Troop tests of guns were carried out on the LaGG-3 from April 21 to 7 on June 1943 on the Kalinin Front and on the Yak-9 on July 22 to August 21 on the Central Front. After the military tests, the gun was adopted under the symbol НС-1943. The Yak-37T (tank) aircraft was produced from March 9 to June 1943 g. Total produced 1945 aircraft.
According to the designers, an increase in firepower of fighters, was to increase the distance of aimed shooting and the probability of hitting the target. In order to shoot down a fighter, as a rule, one hit of an 37-mm projectile was enough; for a twin-engine bomber, two or three were required.
However, the new air cannon had its drawbacks. Increasing the caliber reduced the rate of fire and the number of shells in the ammunition on board the fighter. Effective firing at air targets was only single projectiles, since when firing from a Yak-9 aircraft the aircraft swayed strongly, and aimed fire was obtained only with the first shot, with subsequent shells thrown around. It is worth noting that most Soviet fighters built high-quality sights during the war, as a rule, it was the simplest Vizier Vasiliev consisting of rings painted on the windshield and a front sight on the bonnet, which of course affected the shooting at medium and long distances.
20 July 1943 of the year began military testing of the Il-16 with two 2-mm air guns НС-37, which lasted until December 37. In total, X-NUMX Il-96 attack planes with NS-2 were involved in troop testing.
Compared to serial Ila, armed with ShVAK or VY guns, the IL-2 with the NA-37 and the bomb load in the 200 kg became more inert, difficult on the turn and at a combat reversal.
The deterioration of the flight characteristics of the new attack aircraft, as well as the IL-2 with the ShFK-37 guns, was due to the large separation of the masses in wing span and the presence of the fairings of the guns, which impair the aerodynamics of the aircraft. In the whole range of IL-2 alignments with HC-37, it did not have longitudinal stability, which significantly reduced the accuracy of shooting in the air. The latter was aggravated by the strong recoil of guns when firing from them.
The tests showed that the shooting of the Il-2 aircraft from the NS-37 cannons was necessary only for short bursts of no more than two or three shots, since when firing two cannons at the same time due to the asynchrony of their work, the aircraft experienced significant pecks and misled the aiming line. The correction in aiming in this case was in principle impossible.
When firing from one cannon, hitting the target was possible only with the first shot, since the attack aircraft turned towards the firing cannon and an amendment to the aiming became impossible. The defeat of the same point targets - tanks, armored vehicles, cars, etc. during normal operation of the guns was quite achievable.
In this case, hits in the tanks were received only in 43% departures, and the number of hits to the used ammunition was 2,98%.
According to the general opinion, the aircrew flying on the Il-2 with the NS-37, attack aircraft with attacks of small-sized targets had no advantages over the Il-2 with smaller caliber guns (ShVAK or IJ) with a normal bomb load of 400 kg. At the same time, the use of IL-2 with HC-37 on large areal and volumetric targets, ammunition depots, clusters of tanks, artillery and anti-aircraft batteries, train echelons, light-tonnage vessels, etc., could be quite successful.
When operating on ground targets, the effectiveness of each type of gun is determined by the nature of the target. So, when shooting at openly located living targets, the action of 7,62-mm bullets differed little from that of an 20-mm projectile, since their fragmentation effect was very weak and a direct hit was required to defeat personnel. When firing on cars, railway stations and small boats 7,62-12,7-mm machine guns were ineffective, and the effect of aircraft guns increased sharply with increasing caliber and projectile weight. Here they needed guns of greater caliber.
The massive defeat of tanks from aircraft guns, widely advertised in films and memoirs, in most cases refers to hunting stories. It is simply impossible to pierce the vertical armor of a medium or heavy tank made of 20-mm - 37-mm aircraft cannon. We can talk only about the armor of the tank roof, which is several times thinner than the vertical and was 15-20 mm in medium and 30-40 mm in heavy tanks. In the aircraft cannon used both caliber and sub-caliber armor-piercing shells. In both cases, they did not contain explosives, and only occasionally a few grams of incendiary substances. In this case, the projectile was supposed to fall perpendicular to the armor. It is clear that in combat conditions shells hit the roof of tanks at much smaller angles, which drastically reduced their armor penetration or ricochet at all. To this we must add that not every projectile, piercing the armor of a tank, put it out of action.
Given the reduction in flight performance and a decrease in the bomb load on the Il-2 aircraft armed with the HC-37, this modification of the attack aircraft was not widely used. The PTB-1943-2,5 cumulative bombs that came into service in 1,5 were a much more effective anti-tank weapon.
On the basis of the HC-37 gun, while preserving its overall dimensions, an aviation, automatic 45-mm HC-45 gun was created. The weight of the gun was 150-153 kg. Firing rate of 260-280 boom / min. Power feed tape. In the 45-mm aircraft gun NS-45, for the first time in the USSR, a muzzle brake was used on the plane, absorbing up to 85% recoil energy. In 1944-45, a total of about 200 guns were produced. Especially for this gun, the Yak-9K fighter (large-caliber) with the HC-45 cannon in the engine collapse, with 29 ammunition ammunition, was designed and built. All was made 53 aircraft of this type.
The 44 of the Yak-9 aircraft passed military tests from August 13 to 18 on September 1944 on the Belarusian Front 3 and from January 15 on February to 15 on the Belarusian Front 1945. It was assumed that fighters with large-caliber guns would operate on groups of enemy bombers, being outside the zone of effective defensive fire from their firing points. An average of 10 2-mm shells were spent on an enemy aircraft downed.
However, the Yak-9K themselves needed to cover the fighters with 20-mm cannons, including the slave machines. Aim shooting from 45-mm guns was obtained only on the first shot, the rest of the shells flew past. After the queue of three shots made even at maximum speed, the latter fell sharply, the stability of the aircraft was lost, there was a leak of oil and water in the pipelines.
In addition, to meet a large group of enemy bombers at the end of 1944 was a rarity, and there was no particular need for such a fighter. According to the results of military tests in mass production, the Yak-9K did not start.
In the USSR, in the wartime, aircraft cannon and larger caliber were developed. The 57-mm H-57 automatic cannon was developed under the guidance of lead designer G. A. Fat at the end of the Great Patriotic War. For such a caliber, the gun had a relatively small mass - 135 kg. A small series of 36 guns was manufactured.
The gun successfully passed tests on the MiG-9 "F-3" jet fighter (third prototype). It was the first and only stories Aviation case of installing 57-mm guns on a jet fighter. But the production of the MiG-9 was launched with an H-37 cannon with a caliber of 37 mm, although some of the aircraft of the first batch were still equipped with an H-57 cannon. Subsequently, on all aircraft it was replaced by a gun H-37.
In 1943 — 1945 in CACB which was headed by VG Grabin were working on the creation of large-caliber aviation automatic guns.
Developed 65-mm, 76-mm, 100-mm automatic aircraft guns.
In 1948, two prototypes of the 65-mm gun were manufactured and passed factory tests. In 1949, one sample was sent for field testing at the Air Force Institute. Two shots were made for the 65-mm cannon: with an OFZT projectile and with a BRZT projectile. At a distance of 600 m BRZT, a projectile punched 60 mm of armor at a meeting angle of 30 °. Thus, this shell could pierce the top of the armor of any tank of the time.
In 1948, the Central Research Institute-58 began work on the 100-mm aviation automatic gun B-0902. It was supposed to be put on bomber planes like the Tu-2 and Tu-4, which they were going to remake into fighters. Naturally, neither rotor (Yak-3, JIa-5, La-7, La-9, etc.), nor reactive (Yak-15, MiG-9, etc.) fighters could not physically carry this gun because of her weight and recoil.
Automatics 100-mm gun - mechanical type with a long stroke of the barrel, with all the operations performed automatically. The gun was equipped with a powerful muzzle brake, absorbing 65% recoil energy. The gun was able to make a compact due to the rational placement of all its units. Food store tapeless. The store placed 15 unitary cartridges.
Fire control of the gun and pneumatic recharging was conducted from the cockpit. The weight of the gun without the power box was 1350 kg. The rate of fire - 30,5 shot per minute. Recoil force - 5 tons.
For the B-0902 cannon in the TsNII-58, three shots were specifically created: with an FZT projectile, with a BRZT projectile and with a distance grenade.
A cartridge with an FZT projectile (high explosive incendiary tracer) had a weight of 27 kg and a length of 990 mm. The weight of the propellant charge was 4,47 kg, so that the projectile had an initial speed of 810 m / s. The projectile weighing 13,9 kg contained 1,46 kg of explosive. The effective firing range of the rocket launcher was 1000 — 1200 m.
A cartridge with a BRZT projectile had a weight of 27,34 kg and a length of 956 mm. The weight of the propellant charge was 4,55 kg, and the projectile received the initial velocity 800 m / s. The 14,2 kg projectile itself contained some explosive (0,1 kg). During test firing, a BZRT projectile at a distance of 600 m punched 120-mm armor (at a meeting angle of 30 °).
For firing at air targets, an 100-mm distance grenade was created with incendiary elements. 15,6 grenade weight kg. The grenade contained 0,605 kg of explosive (expelling charge) and 93 a slaughter-incendiary element weighing from 52 to 61 g each. The projectile was equipped with a BM-30 remote tube. In 1948 — 1949 Experimental batches of grenades were tested with a unitary and ring arrangement of slaughter-incendiary elements. To test the effectiveness of the fragments and their "incendiary ability", ground firing at aircraft was conducted.
The 100 mm B-0902 cannon has become the most powerful automatic aircraft cannon not only in the USSR, but also, apparently, in the world. From a technical point of view, it was a masterpiece of engineering. The only trouble is that she was five years late. In 1944 — 1945 a high-speed piston-engine bomber could shoot out flying fortresses B-17 and B-29 from a distance of 1 km and more with almost impunity from it. But the appearance of jet fighters radically changed the tactics of air combat, and heavy aircraft guns lost all significance, at least for firing at aircraft.
Based on:
Shirokorad A. B. History of aviation weapons. - Minsk: Harvest, 1999.
http://www.airwar.ru/weapon/guns/vya23.html
http://www.plam.ru/tehnauka/genii_sovetskoi_artillerii_triumf_i_tragedija_v_grabina/p36.php
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