World War II Database

1.  Bill says:
20 Dec 2015 04:58:59 PM

WEAPONS DETAIL: WHEN IN DOUBT CLEAN

Clean those fifties from the pilots who flew the F4U, to the ground crews everybody learned how to field strip and service those weapons even the feed systems needed maintenance ammo wiped down and cleaned.
Some pilots liked tracer ammo loaded along with ball ammo while others wanted ball ammo loaded
with a couple of tracers, this would tell the pilot he had 50 to 100 rounds left per gun.

SHORT BURSTS:

The firing time for those 6 x .50's was (30) seconds, pilots fired short bursts against a target.
the fifty caliber was reliable, and could carry a lot of ammo, the round had high muzzle velocity and flatter trajectory and was very effective in deflection shooting this means firing just a head so the target runs into a lot of lead.

Rate of fire was 10 to 12 rounds per second, so a one second burst from 6 x.50's could put out 60 to 72 rounds that's a lot of lead. The .50 caliber is used when you want to reach out and touch somebody....during WWII US Industry produced over 2,000,000 fifty caliber machine guns, this doesn't count spare parts, the weapon is still in production today.