Sorry I haven't replied until now; real life is a bit busy :-( A long time ago, Ryan Gill wrote:
> >In gelatin. I am unaware of any firearms round designed for firing > >through water from air, though I understand some special forces have > >firearms (and rounds) designed for underwater use, I'm not aware of > >any that are designed for shooting through water after being fired > >above it. This is more a statement of my ignorance of such things > >than of their non-existence, but I try to be well-read. > >Through water, no, but what were the rounds used on Japanese and German >shipping by US B25s and Bristol Beaufighters? US B-25Gs and Hs used 75mm explosive shells. Those particular models were developed specifically for anti-shipping strikes, presumably because the nose-mounted 0.50" gunpacks in earlier B-25 variants were considered insufficient for the task. The Beaufighter's main armament consisted of four 20mm Hispanos in the nose. While some marks of Beaufighters also had four 0.50" HMGs in the wings, the 20mm cannon were far more destructive... I don't think you'll be able to single out any sinkings where the HMGs were decisive from all the ones where the cannon did the vast majority of the damage :-/ >That seemed to do RATHER well at riddling them with holes and otherwise >making life horrible for the Axis crews. Well, yes. HE shells are quite good at blowing large holes in things. That doesn't say very much about the non-explosive 0.50" HMG bullets, unfortunately. > The Mosquitos of RAF Bomber and Coastal Commands also did rather well > against German E Boats. The Mossies were armed with 20mm Hispanos and .303"-cal MGs, not 0.50" HMGs. In addition to this, there is a wee bit of difference in trajectory between a projectile fired more or less horisontally from one boat to another (which was the original premise of this thread) and a projectile fired at a downwards slant from an aircraft to a boat. The air-launched projectile doesn't need to go nearly as far through water to reach the underwater part of the target's hull (in fact, if it goes through the deck it can penetrate the hull from the inside, only entering the water *after* it has holed the hull). All in all, I don't think that these examples of aircraft armaments are very useful for discussing how far HMG bullets can travel through water and still be dangerous to a target boat :-/ Ah well. I'll stop discussing this now, before I write something I'm not allowed to :-( Regards, Oerjan [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it." -Hen3ry _______________________________________________ Gzg-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu:1337/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ground Zero Games" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/gzg-group?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
