[sasportas]

Yesh, talk about mean looking. Hate to be on the receiving end of all those 50 cal in its nose! And what is that big whatever it is, sitting lower in it's nose? Looks like a large gun of some sort.

[F-117A]

Yesh, talk about mean looking. Hate to be on the receiving end of all those 50 cal in its nose! And what is that big whatever it is, sitting lower in it's nose? Looks like a large gun of some sort.

That's a 75mm cannon. In addition to the four 50's in the nose there are two more pointing forward on each side of the cockpit! And it looks like the top turret can bring two more to bear. If so, that's ten (10) .50-cals and a 75mm on target! Not to mention another two at the rear to clean up! The side gunners get a crack at anyone trying to get out of the way.

Click on the picture and look at the other pictures. You you look close you can see the extra 50s!

"The B-25H was an improved version of the B-25G. The fixed nose armament was increased to four nose-mounted .50-cal. machine guns and four more .50-cal. machine guns in fuselage mounted pods. The 75mm cannon was changed from the G model's M4 to the lighter T13E1 75mm cannon. The top turret was moved to the forward fuselage and the lower turret was removed and replaced by a single .50-cal. machine gun in each of the two waist positions. A tail turret housing a pair of .50-cal. machine guns was added bringing the firepower total to 14 .50-cal. machine guns and a 75mm cannon. The aircraft could also carry up to 3,200 pounds of bombs."

[alfa6]

The only problem with the 75mm gun in the B-25s was the low rate of fire. IIRC the navigator/gunner was at best able to only fire four rounds in a gunnery pass and accuaracy was not very good.

Now the British came up with a Mosquito FB XVIII that was outfitted with a 57mm Molins automatic cannon. The 57mm or 6pounder fired a shell that weighed 7.1 pounds and had a cyclic rate of 60 rounds a minute with a 22? round magazine. A brief history of this Mossie type is at...

(TseTseFly)

Sorry but I don't seem to have a pic of a Mossie with the Molins gun installed.

Regards

alfa6 ;>}