Probably no machine gun can match the position of Swiss Erlikon 20 mm machine gun in World War II. The 20 mm cannon designed by this Swiss company and its many derivatives were adopted by France, Germany, Britain, the United States, Japan and other major participating countries in the middle and late 1930s, which constituted the main gun force of the air forces of various countries from the early to the middle of the war. In all, more than 30 countries adopted Ericon's products in wartime. From the hot desert of North Africa to the vast Pacific Ocean, Swiss masterpieces can be seen everywhere. The change of Eriksson gun is a very interesting process; War has greatly promoted the progress of air combat theory, and the development of weapons has followed. Due to the lack of information, the use of Erican machine guns by allies is only briefly described, and the second half will focus on the less mentioned career of Erican ·FFL in Japan.
Simag l gun
Basically, the origin of the Erricon 20mm gun can be traced back to the Baker gun adopted by the German Air Force at the end of World War I, which was used as an airborne gun and an anti-aircraft gun. After the war, Simag purchased this design, and further improved it, and made an "L" machine gun, firing 20x99RB shells, weighing about 43kg, with a firing rate of 350 rounds per second. Erricon subsequently annexed Simag, and developed a heavier S-type machine gun on this basis, firing 20x 1 10RB shells with a weight of 62kg and a firing rate of 280 rounds per minute. In the middle of 1920s, Erricon adjusted its development plan and developed three kinds of 20mm caliber machine guns with different ammunition. For the convenience of unification, the finalized name: FF type, firing 20x76RB shells with a weight of 25 kg and a firing rate of 520 rounds per minute; FFL type, using 20x 100RB shells, weighing 30kg, and firing rate of 500 rounds per minute; FFS type, using 20x 1 10RB shells, weighing 39 kg, and firing rate of 400-470 rounds per minute. Later variants were basically derived from these machine guns. As a commercial product, from design drawings to production licenses, it can be sold according to customers' requirements.
Several different kinds of ammunition
In the middle and late 1930s, European wars were gathering clouds, and all countries expanded their armaments in an all-round way. Well-made and outstanding in performance, Eriksson guns are naturally very popular. France Hispano Xuzha Company purchased the production license of FFS machine gun, and developed two machine guns, HS7 and HS9, based on 1936, weighing 48kg and firing at a rate of 400 rounds per minute. The main improvement is to design a machine gun with liquid-cooled engine blades. The Royal Navy purchased FFS as an anti-aircraft gun and used it throughout the war. On the basis of S-type, Erricon developed SS series machine guns weighing 62kg, and the firing rate was increased to 500-600 rounds per minute. The US Navy subsequently adopted the same machine gun. The German Air Force purchased the production license of FF model in 1939, and designed an improved MG-FF, which used 20x80RB shells with a weight of 25 kg and a firing rate of 540 rounds per minute. This weapon became the standard airborne weapon of the former German Air Force in MG15120, and was further improved to MG-FFM in 1940.
Interestingly, the FFL model with the best performance has been left out in the cold, and several major belligerents have given up buying it. The post-war comparison shows that compared with the Hispano-2 20 mm naval gun used by the Royal Air Force in the early days, the FFL 20 mm naval gun only has lower firing rate, but its ammunition power and ballistic performance are better, lighter and more compact, and the problems caused by recoil are less. If the Royal Air Force can buy this kind of gun before the war, then the air combat in Britain may achieve better results. However, HNA and Luhang in the United States did not use machine guns on a large scale, which is generally considered to be determined by their air combat concepts. In fact, there is another little-known aspect: the United States did not produce a 20 mm machine gun that fully satisfied it until the last war. This problem was not completely solved until a few years after the war. In the early 1950s, the French accepted 64 American F8F- 1B fighters. As a result, they were surprised to find that as many as 25 of them were equipped with 20 mm M3 machine guns, which had many problems and had to be replaced. Moreover, the problem of American-made 20mm M 1, An -M2 and M3 guns has nothing to do with the industrial capacity of the United States, and it is purely a face design problem, so-called "60 inches". I'll elaborate when I have time. Therefore, the 20mm machine guns (and a small amount of F4U- 1) are mainly used in the navy's P-38 fighters and SB-2C dive bombers. However, Americans' ideas have made rapid progress. The regulation 1945+65438 issued by the navy on February 26th clearly stipulates that "20mm naval guns must be widely used in all naval tactical aircraft of existing design". As for the later air force, I'm afraid there are many helpless elements on the way back to .50-inch M2. Far away, back to our FFL gun, when Erican was worried about not selling it, a new customer came to the door: the Japanese navy.
The pace of Japan's expansion always exceeds its own economic level and industrial technology level. Indeed, the low-cost but huge-profit colonial war is irresistible. On the other hand, the Japanese have to be dissatisfied with the world's demand for excellent weapons and equipment that cannot be perfectly designed but are urgently needed by their own industries, and machine guns are one of them. The Japanese navy took a keen interest in Erricon's products and purchased the production lines of FF and FFL guns. Both sides are very happy. Erricon's production line and technicians arrived in Japan soon, and the production plant was completed on time according to the contract.
However, the shrewd Japanese navy does not intend to pay the subsequent production license fee at all. On the occasion of the completion of the production line, the family of the director of Erricon factory in Japan received "special care" from the Japanese navy, and he himself was warned that he must continue to maintain the normal operation of the production line, otherwise his life and the life of his family would be worried. I don't know if Eriksson's headquarters later shouted "Never trust the Japanese" in grief. I guess it's similar. Japan has been in its heyday for 40 years, but it has not filled the bottomless pit of the battlefield in China with troops and materials, is not ready for the Pacific War, and has not taken out huge foreign exchange to fill the domestic food supply gap. Soldiers can be "* * * physically difficult", although a bit rogue, at least saving a lot of money for the navy. However, this is at the cost of losing Ericon's follow-up technical support. Facts have proved that with Japan's weak industrial technology foundation, it was not until the end of the war that the machine gun barely comparable to MG 15 1/20 was developed and not equipped in time. However, at that time, for the Japanese military, which firmly believed that the Pacific War would end in a year at most, this did not seem to be taken into account.
99- 1 formula
99-2 Type 4
The FF made in Japan is called 99- 1 model, weighs 23kg, uses 23X72RB shells, has a barrel length of 76cm and a firing rate of 520 rounds per minute. The FFL model is called Model 99-2 and weighs 30 kilograms. 20x 10 1RB shells were used, the barrel length was 120 cm, and the firing rate was 490 rounds per minute. Both types of machine guns have maintained the standard features of Elkan: all the original models use 60 cartridges. Type 99 is famous mainly because it is equipped with Mitsubishi A6M fighter, which is also known as Zero War. The standard zero-war equipment is two synchronous machine guns, 7.7 mm on the fairing and 20 mm under the two wings. On July 2 1940 and 15, A6M2 was sent to China to join Hankou 12 Naval Joint Aviation. On September 3rd, China Air Force 1940, 13 and 27 Policarpo I- 15, I- 16 broke out in Chongqing. Japanese records showed that all the fighters of China Air Force were wounded and shot down without any loss. During the zero war in China's early production, more than 90 China fighters were shot down and injured, and only two were destroyed by ground fire. 4 1, 12 On February 7th, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War broke out. On February 8, 65438+, 84 zero-war planes of Tainan United escorted 54 1 land attack planes and 96 bombers, and attacked Clark Airport of the US military in the Philippines, destroying the main force of the US military aviation in the Philippines in one fell swoop. The huge wildcat F4-F has been proved to be no match for Zero War before. Excellent horizontal maneuverability, long battery life and the Japanese HNA elite driving it constitute the main factors for the success of the early zero war. Eriksson machine gun is very popular with veterans and is a sharp weapon in the hands of ace players who are good at killing with one blow. By the way, I stumbled across the original "Zero War" of Air Force Wings. If you are interested, you can compare how they are translated.
Zero war A6M7 wing gun
At the same time, the Japanese themselves began to improve the 99-2 gun. As a result, the 99-2-3 gun was equipped with A6M3, and the capacity of each drum was increased to 100 rounds. Almost no 100 ammunition barrel has been designed before. This method has at least one advantage, that is, the weight of each gun is only increased by 4 kilograms, which is much lighter than the Spanish 20 mm gun with elastic chain supplied by the Allied Forces at the same time. However, the later developed 99- 1 and 99-2-4 machine guns were replaced by bullet chains. The last improvement is the 99-2 type 5 machine gun. The main firing mechanism is designed to be lighter, and a stronger spring is installed in the breech. The intention is to make the main firing structure move faster in the back seat and improve the firing rate (don't hit me if you don't understand). Experiments show that this can increase the firing rate to 675-750 rounds per minute. Although the performance of this type of machine gun is impressive, at this time the war is coming to an end and there is no time to equip the Japanese Air Force.
99-2 Type 5
According to the FF model, the Japanese subsequently developed a 30 mm machine gun with a larger caliber. 1942 designed type 2 30 mm machine gun, weighing 50 kg, using 30x92RB shells, barrel length 135 cm, and firing rate of 400 rounds per minute; This kind of gun is rare in the service record of Shanghai Airlines. Only the Japanese version J8M 1 63 "Comet" rocket fighter is mentioned. Sui Shu plans to install two 30mm machine guns with the same purpose as its original German products: to deal with heavy bombers flying high and fast by the Allied forces.
Type 2 30 mm machine gun
How effective is the Japanese navy's machine gun? There is a set of mathematical models to judge the effectiveness and lethality of machine guns. Basically, don't study if you don't want to be gray. I can't read it anyway. However, some simple comparisons can be made. The ideal muzzle velocity of 20 mm machine gun is 850 m/s after combining the weight limitation and ammunition limitation of machine gun, while the muzzle velocity of 99-2 with 20x1kloc-0/Rb shell is 720 m/s, and the weight of the shell is 128 g, which contains 8% of high-explosive ammunition, so the attack power is weak. Detailed textual research, for later slowly textual research.
The Japanese navy's 99-2 model 5 can be considered as the final model of FFL, because Erricon stopped improving it. Compared with other brothers, it has some reservations in development. According to the basic concept of MG-FFM, Germany designed 30 mm caliber MK 108, using 30x90RB shells, weighing 60 kg, with a barrel length of 44 cm and a firing rate of 600-650 rounds per minute. On the basis of S-type, Erricon developed a series of long barrel guns, from SS to 1SS and 2SS, all of which used 20x10Rb shells, and the barrel 140 cm, and the firing rate increased from 470 rounds/sec in SS to 650 rounds/sec in 2SS.
Two oblique angles MK 108 are installed on BF 165438-F4/U 1.
At present, Erlikon Company is a subsidiary of Laing Steel Defense Technology Company, specializing in the production of ground air defense weapon systems, medium caliber rapid-fire guns and their ammunition, and it is still in the leading position in the field of its traditional small caliber air defense guns.
Ai Li kang today