Of course air resistance is a factor, but the depleted uranium rounds that thing fires are mighty dense compared to their cross-sectional area, and the round would spend quite a while at high altitudes where the air is pretty thin (apogee with no air resistance would be a bit more than 107,000 feet). So it might fly an appreciable fraction of that 78 miles.
I think that 12000 foot "maximum firing range" figure is probably more like "maximum range for any practical shot at an actual target."
Shot the 30mm at targets at 12,000 feet. Accurately.
Punched through light armor with training rounds and not the armor piercing round.
Can shoot farther if needed on the ground or A/A.
A/A can engage with the gun much farther than the 20mm pop-gun.
More tomorrow.
“I wonder how far the misses can fly.”
A fascinating question!
A quick search, nothing solid.
On to my Guru... he used to have some Hatcher data tables somewhere... not much?
I have a PDF of the Hatcher Handbook, not searchable.???
Available in TXT, should be searchable but from 1940s, not likely they have data on this 30mm projectile.
https://archive.org/details/Hatchers_Notebook
This is my Guru for ballistics and fun reading.
https://www.frfrogspad.com/miscella.htm#maximum
“In a vacuum a firearm would achieve its absolute maximum range at an elevation of 45°. However, with typical small arms projectiles the effect of air resistance is so great that maximum range is usually obtained at a departure angle of between 29° and 35°. The table below gives the calculated approximate absolute maximum ranges for some common rounds using modern drag modeling techniques at standard sea level conditions, and a not so common projectile. It may differ from some previously published data based on older methods of computation. The data indicated by “#” is from government firing tables.”
And he does address the firing from elevation maxium range.