Tag Archives: 20mm cannon

Cue, ‘Fortunate Son’…

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I recently hit the road in southwest Alabama and visited the U.S. Army Aviation Museum, one of the largest military helicopter collections in the world.

Located at Fort Novosel (formerly Fort Rucker, aka “Mother Rucker”), the sprawling 60,000-acre complex has been home to all Army helicopter training since 1959 and all aviation training since 1973. 

The Museum has over 250 aircraft in its inventory – some incredibly rare.

The post earlier this year was named in honor of Army CWO Michael J. Novosel, a UH-1 medevac pilot who evacuated an amazing 5,589 wounded personnel while in Vietnam, earning a well-deserved Medal of Honor.

While I have a full 15-minute video and lots of images over in my column at GDC, these two struck me as appropriate for today.

In a sobering display, a downed Huey is shown in the center of the museum’s main gallery.

The Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association estimates over 3,300 UH-1 models were lost either due to combat or accidents during the war.

66 years ago today: ‘Spitting death at the Communists in North Korea’

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Seaman Leroy Kellam weighed down with belts of 20-millimeter cannon ammunition, hustles up the flight deck of USS Essex (CVA-9) to load a waiting Banshee fighter (examples seen behind him) as the WWII-era fleet carrier cruises somewhere off the Korean coast.

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command. Catalog #: NH 97271

From the Navy:

“These same shells were spitting death at the Communists in North Korea a short time after this picture was taken. Photograph and caption were released by Commander, Naval Forces, Far East under date of 12 October 1951.”

The McDonnell F2H-2 Banshee was a single-seat carrier-based fighter developed from the older FH Phantom I– the first jet fighter flown from flattops– and was introduced to the fleet in 1948. Though nearly 900 were made for the U.S. and Royal Canadian Navy (they had carriers back then!), these straight wing jets were 100 kts slower than MiG-15s, which made them a bad investment after 1950 and they were all subsequently retired by the early 1960s.

They did carry four sweet 20 mm Colt Mk 16 cannons, though, for which they carried a total of 940 shells of the kind Seaman Kellem is swathed in Frito Bandito-style.

As for the mighty Essex, she was decommissioned for the last time in 1969 after extensive service and sold for scrap in 1975.

20mm single shot DIY Vulcan. Yup, you read that right

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Josh, a 4Chan user, finally got his ATF Form 1 approved and commenced to building a single shot 20mm cannon project that just screams recoil pad.

Homebuild 20mm cannon project defines stout recoil 2

As the builder has a stockpile of 90 rounds of M55A2 TP, the same stuff used in the electrically fired Vulcan 20mm cannon, the NFA defined destructive device uses an electrical system constructed of two CR123V batteries and a boost converter that pumps juice into a 320uf flash photo capacitor to trigger the primers.

Homebuild 20mm cannon project defines stout recoil 3

I just wanted to share my abomination that I will attempt to test-fire tomorrow. This firearm is a rudimentary single-shot 20x102mm (20mm Vulcan) Destructive Device I built myself on an ATF Form 1. Every single part on here (minus the barrel (but including rear threading & muzzle brake), tripod, pintle, and traverse/elevation mechanism) I built myself, by hand. No CNC parts, nothing off-she-shelf except for a few bolts from the hardware store. The gun is not yet finished, but far enough along for it’s first prototype test-fire. I plan to do this tomorrow, at a family gathering out on the girlfriend’s property.

The final project is estimated to be about 45 pounds in weight and run just over 5 feet long. But hey, its a single shot Vulcan 20mm. Plus, keep in mind that the ammo is only required to be registered if it has 1/4oz or more explosive in the projectile – these rounds are inert solids, so no paperwork necessary other than on the cannon itself.

Homebuild 20mm cannon project defines stout recoil 5

Check out the remote test fire below against a poor defenseless Kyocera EcoSys FS-4020 laser printer.

Dat recoil.

 

The Oerlikon Cannon: The legendary 20mm Kamikaze killer

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You are a 19-year old US sailor in the Pacific in 1944 and you hear the characteristic drone of an approaching radial engine fighter aircraft cuts through the thick heat of the salt air. You look up and see the red ‘meatball’ markings on the wings and your heart sinks as you realize it’s one of ‘theirs’ and, more importantly, it’s a racing strait towards you at over 300-miles per hour. Luckily, you have a mother-freaking gorgeous 20mm Oerlikon pressed against your shoulders and the most advanced gun sight of its day to help make sure the kamikaze doesn’t run right down your throat

Back in 1918, German arms engineer Reinhold Becker came up with a 20x80mm round that fired using primer ignition blowback in a very large machine gun to fire at 300-rounds per minute. This gun was to be used to help sweep the sky of the Western Front of those pesky thousands of American, British, and French biplanes in the last year of World War 1. Too bad for Becker, (not to mention the Kaiser) the guns were never made in enough numbers to affect the war and his design was shelved.

In 1934 the Swiss based company of Oerlikon Contraves (Oerlikon being the name of the town the factory was located in and contra-aves being Latin for “against birds”) dusted off Becker’s design and super-sized it to be able to better shoot down the more modern fighters of the 1930s.

This gun, typically just referred to as the 20mm Oerlikon, became perhaps one of the most effective AAA (antiaircraft artillery) cannons of World War 2.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

Kamikaze attack on USS Yorktown