Early WW1 gunship?

[Olham 164]

Again found at Rosebud's WW1 and early aviation website - a Caudron,

heavily armed (an aircraft for your likes, UncleAl !).

 

http://www.earlyaeroplanes.com/archive1.htm

 

 

[Bullethead 12]

Again found at Rosebud's WW1 and early aviation website - a Caudron,

 

One of my favorite WW1 planes. This is one of those specialized bomber "escort fighters" the French had. The R.11 came out in early 1918 but engine problems delayed the program so they only built about 370 by the end of the war. They were also used as long-range recon planes. Strangely enough, they couldn't carry bombs.

 

I disagree with armament shown on the photo. Most of them had 4x Lewis guns, 2 on each end. Some had a 5th gun in the nose compartment firing under the tail, operated by the nose gunner. I never heard of any of these having 37mm cannons--the French had quit doing that by this point in time.

[Olham 164]

Sometimes you're quite predictable, Unc - I KNEW you would come up with this pic again.

 

You're right, I would always prefer a Pup or a DIII in a fight against this monster.

[Morris 2]

Lets have that plane in P4 so that i can shoot it down.

 

m

[Olham 164]

Me first, me first!!!

[Bullethead 12]

That aircraft has no defensive weapons, surely that would remove the sport of it all. She must've flown with an escort, for just such eager beavers

 

Actually, that cannon-armed pusher IS the escort.

 

It's most likely a Voisin 4, or possibly a 6 although they made only a few of those. I can't tell them apart, myself. Anyway, the 4 was the escort version of the 3, and the 6 was the escort version of the 5. In the Groupes de Bombardement, they had several bomber squadrons equiped with 3s and 5s, and 1 squadron equipped with the cannon-armed 4s or 6s. The 4s and 6s were supposed to escort the bombers and defend them from attacking fighters. This didn't work well, so they switched the cannon-armed planes to bombing themselves. You can see the bomb racks in this photo.

 

The cannon was intended to keep attacking planes out beyond the range of their machineguns. It didn't work for a number of reasons: 1) very low rate of fire, 2) difficulty in aiming at long range, 3) limited traverse meant the "fighter" had to point at the target, which it wasn't maneuverable enough to do well, and 4) the "fighter" was no faster than the bombers, so any maneuvers it did to engage interceptors, especially turns to attack enemies coming from behind, naturally got it out of formation with little hope of catching back up.

 

However, the cannon did prove useful in ground attack, so the French kept building cannon-armed Voisins. The 3s - 6s were 1915/1916 planes, but they Voisin 8 was used in large numbers all through 1917, in both conventional and cannon versions.

[Wels 2]

Hello,

those planes using "pneumatic guns" were used in the Vardar valley, Macedonia, in 1916. Jentsch describes the planes and how they flew above the "Feldfliegerabteilungen". As he said it was certainly bad being hit by those cannons, but it would have been more of a nuisance, than a real threat. It seems in a vibrating plane, with a heavy gun on a swivel, it was not easy to hit anything, apart from larger buildings.

 

Nice photo,

thanks and greetings,

Catfish

[Bullethead 12]

those planes using "pneumatic guns" were used in the Vardar valley, Macedonia, in 1916.

 

Why were they called "pneumatic guns"? AFAIK, this was the standard 37mm Hotchkiss designed in the late 1800s as an anti-torpedoboat weapon for battleships and cruisers. It was just a conventional naval gun of the then-new "quick-firing" type, firing conventional ammunition. There was a large stockpile of them available in WW1 because they'd been built in huge numbers for navies all over the world, but had become too small for their original job years before the war.

 

This is the only true pneumatic gun I know of.

[Wels 2]

Hello,

 

"pneumatic", well - Jentsch describes them as such. I also wondered, but i thougth it would be some pneumatic damper, against the recoil (?), not the technique of firing the bullets.

 

Greetings,

Catfish

[Bullethead 12]

"pneumatic", well - Jentsch describes them as such. I also wondered, but i thougth it would be some pneumatic damper, against the recoil (?), not the technique of firing the bullets.

 

Yeah, these guns had a recoil system. That's what the smaller tubes are around and above the barrel. The usual system was an hydraulic cylinder 1 or more gas cylinders. The hydraulic cylinder slowed and stopped the recoil, during which the gas cylinders compressed. Then the gas cylinders returned the barrel forward to the firing position. But that's not really what I'd call "pneumatic".

 

Maybe instead the French were using those early recoilless guns? I could see that being called "pneumatic" in the early days before "recoilless" had become the standard term, in that backwards air pressure is what balanced the recoil.