P-47 Thunderbolt Pt. 7 Firepower, A Lot of Firepower.

In this episode we cover the P-47 weapons, The 50 caliber machine guns, bombs, rockets, and more. There are comparisons with other air to air weapons, and we get into gun convergence and more.

Cannons vs. Machine guns, Fuselage vs. Wing Mounted, it's all covered in this video.

Notes: I made a comment about "average" soldiers, airmen, and sailors and said that they are the ones who win the war. I feel that needs further explanation. We all know that there were top fighter pilots, tank crews and so on who performed incredibly, and they certainly made a difference. However from the point of view of an equipment designer, whether is be a fighter plane, a rifle, or a tank, it has to perform well in the hands of an average soldier or it likely won't be a war winning weapon.

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[johndonovan]

Twenty seconds in, and all you need to show is that clip of spent shells falling like macaroni out of a box. That conveys what we're dealing with in a way statistics never can.

[amandastevenson]

Between the Wildcat and the p-38 you have destroyed my childhood obsession with the Corsair and the Mustang

[Bluegumtiger]

Adolf Galland said that a gun in the nose was worth two in the wings but given a choice, he would prefer to have both.

[neoconshooter]

Since my last post, I found a small bit of USAF weapons history that you might find interesting? In Korea, the Average range of effective fire, IE the target gets shot down, was 750 Yards with the six fifties that most of our planes carried. We shot down a lot of MiG-15s! The Brits used four 20s in their jets, but were much less effective if you divide kills by missions. After much study, the USAF found that RoF, MV and BC were much more important that weight of fire! We reduced the weight of our 20 MM shell buy 28%, increased MV to 1, 036 M/S, made it much more pointed and increased the rate of fire to ~6, 000 rounds per minute! Either four M-39 revolver guns at 1, 500 rounds per minute, per gun in the F-86H tested in Korea to good effect. Or the six barreled Vulcan gun. In every case, they found the more pointed shell at much higher M/V and at higher rates of fire was very much more effective than the much larger and more powerful Russian guns in the MiGs! This was born out to the Present day in encounters in the middle east between older MiGs and our newer jets! They miss more and while the individual damage might be worse, it was not enough to knock the plane down. But flying threw the Vulcan gun's bullet hose killed everything! For the F-22, they went so far as to test reducing the weight of the shell to 84 grams and lengthen the barrel to increase the MV to 1, 525 M/S! Only logistical reasons why they did not adopt this.

[johnivkovich]

I have so much respect for Greg that when he mistakenly said 'kits', I changed my understanding of the English language before he corrected to 'kills'.

[sadwingsraging]

The propeller on a plane is there to cool the pilot. Don't believe me? Watch the pilot start sweating if it quits blowing!
Glad to see you are going to do a video on the propeller Greg. This is a much needed part of flight that not much is out there to absorb in less than rocket science explaining terms.

[sangell]

I was a P-47 fan because William Wyler made that movie 'Thunderbolt'. The squadron commander of the featured unit was Lt. Colonel Gil Wymond of Louisville, Kentucky. He flew over almost 150 misssions in a P-47 during the war but was killed flying a Republic F-84 in 1949. This is why Gregg's videos are so important. Great men die in bad airplanes.

[Robert-ffwf]

I have never heard an American ww2 pilot complain about only having 50 caliber guns on their aircraft. As a matter of fact they seemed quite happy with them and from what I can tell by looking at gun camera footage seemed to be very effective weather against other aircraft or ground targets and they seemed very reliable.

[dennismason]

Encyclopedia Gregtannia. I crack me up. Incendiary ammo brings me right back to sober (literally since 1982).

[otohikoamv]

Few things to excite me more about starting a video than hearing Greg say right off the bat that he's going to drift off-topic - because honestly, I can't think of another channel where the diversions are as erudite, surprising, and insightful as this one!

[paultullis]

Thanks for another installment in your great P-47 series. One factor which I didn't hear you mention in your comparison of .50 vs 20mm is that you can carry a lot more .50 rounds than 20mm rounds in a given space. Thus an additional advantage of .50s is that you can stay in the fight longer.

[LA_Commander]

I saw a documentary on the P-38 Lightning and some of the pilots remarked how that single 20mm canon in the nose would just "tear up" any plane in front of it. Yes, it had 4 .50 calibers as well, but with roughly 1 of every 6 rounds coming out as a 20mm shell the pilots were very impressed with its performance. Especially when you consider how lightly most of the Japanese planes were built.

[RidinDirtyRollinBurnouts]

Love these videos to death. Greg goes way more in-depth than any documentary ever will, and is always packed with tons of research many documentarians dont even bother with.

[pshacker]

If you watch old gun cam films, you can actually see bullets occasionally colliding at the convergence spot, and spinning off in random directions.

[organicdudranch]

My friend wally groce flew one in ww2 . when it first came out he said everyone was afraid to fly it. he said it did not fly well at all at low speeds, but when you held it open it was his favorite plane. he shot down a ME 262 . did you know it had cameras ? he has a photo of the shot that took it down. he said his wingman strafed a long train with the 8-50's he said the power was so much it slowed the plane down, and knocked the train over. just the force of 8 -50's did that. wally died a few years ago, he was a fine man all the way. you can google him.

[RVaviator]

Fantastic research.! Thanks for the effort and info. Republic P-47 is my ALL time favourite aeroplane ...PERIOD...!!!!

[drawingboard]

Greg I've driven home from my secret mountain lair so I can be somewhere with a good signal to watch this!

[jroch]

I enjoyed watching my uncle’s gun camera footage from his P-47. He flew 75+ missions.

[rogerpattube]

27:25 Great photo of the ammo belts in the wing. Very interesting.

[lycossurfer]

@45:05 if anybody is interested in U.S. Navy procedure & safety on aerial gunnery, another YouTube channel called Nuclear Vault has a 1943 film called "Don't Kill Your Friends" that covers some of this. Another nice one you have here Greg.