Bofors and Oerlikon

they were designed to be the best they met enemies face to face endured tragedies and enjoyed victories they went down in history due to the bravery of their crews they are the ships that deserve to be called naval legends u.s. battleship Alabama British Cruiser Belfast and polish destroyer wisc Evita these ships are very different but they all have one thing in common [Music] the Bofors el61 of the best automatic anti-aircraft guns of World War two it is estimated that this model of 40 millimeter automatic cannon shot down more airplanes than all other anti-aircraft guns put together caliber 40 millimeter barrel weight 103 kilograms barrel length 56 calibers mm 250 millimeter loading principle clips for shots each rate of fire 120 rounds per minute shell type primarily fragmentation shall weight around 900 grams maximum vertical range 7000 160 meters guns were installed in single coaxial quadruple and six-barreled mounts [Music] she became a very efficient gun for anti-aircraft and surface targets as time progressed the the first of the all Bofors that came on line with the Royal Navy were hand driven in terms of elevation and training and they were had a very basic sight system and again like a lot of early systems they were reliant on training ability of the Amer's and the gun crew [Music] the specifics of world war ii artillery relies in the fact that the smaller the caliber is the more i depends on the gun crew of their cohesion in combat performance characteristics of light guns and the aircraft guns and Bofors in particular are a combination of the artillery mount itself and the training and coordination of its crew especially in battle when tensions are running very high there's no time to think you need to move very fast turn around loading the shells and start firing and all this happens automatically without thinking not to a battle sailors often couldn't even remember what they were doing that level of performance was achieved through constant training this weapon is operated by a crew of four three on the mounting the gun leia the gun trainer the loader the fourth member carries the ammunition from the magazine and loads them into the clips on the side of the gun the l60 was developed in neutral Sweden Bofors a metallurgy company started manufacturing canons around the 1870s then it was owned by the famous Alfred Nobel for a while and after World War 1 Bofors actively cooperated with the German troop consortium in March 1932 the official trials of the automatic anti-aircraft cannon l60 were completed and it was put on the market in 1933 British and American military engineer studied the gun and were quite impressed the Swedish system was more effective than the obsolete British Vickers pom-poms and had more fire piled on the Chicago pianos used by the US the maximum vertical range of Bofors was almost twice that of the British gun and though the Swedish system had a slightly lower rate of fire than its American counterpart the shells it used were twice as heavy Great Britain the USA and ten other countries purchased a license to produce the governor and by the beginning of World War two Bofors exported their l60 to 18 countries on different continents in particular Denmark Greece Egypt Siam Australia and Argentina it wasn't just the allies that used the Bofors l60 Japanese forces captured several British guns in Singapore and only their underdeveloped industry prevented them from mass producing them the German Navy used el 60s captured in Poland Norway and France from 1939 under the designation flat 28 they were installed on submarines and cruisers Admiral hipper and prinz eugen however the Swedish gun wasn't ideal and required modernization [Music] the mechanical drive system on ship-based anti-aircraft mounts would break down due to its exposure to salt water and needed to be replaced with a hydraulic one the air cooling of the barrel also had to be replaced with water cooling also some design modifications were required to mass-produce the gun one of the main problems of the Bofors l sixties application was a high reliance on the training and skills of the gun crew the job of the loader is to carry or load the gun by lifting the clip dropping into the weapon so once he has done that he then taps the gun layer on his head to let him know the gun is loaded loading a gun like this wasn't easy ammunition had to be taken out of a box and carried to the gun as the gun constantly rotated the carrier had to run around it with a clip of shells in his hands to pass it to the loader [Music] this position on the gun is known as the trainer's position and these handles are turned or reversed to allow the gun to move backwards and forwards on the target using the graphical sight in front of you following the tracer being fired from the gun we can adjust for aim off if we are too far in front or too far behind the target to allow the other side of the gun which is the layers side to then manufacture the elevation for the target [Music] as time went on their gun developed and so that we could come away from the the hand driven gun she was turned into a hydraulic driven gun so she had pressure tanks and mornings and suchlike which sped up the the training and the elevation of the gun so that they could lock onto targets quicker [Music] this is the gun lairs position he was also the captain of the gun and responsible for giving orders to the rest of the crew he would for instance initiate the loading sequence by telling the loader to bring the gun to half [ __ ] this means that the weapon can then be loaded with rounds into the auto feeder he was also responsible for aiming the weapon using the three hundred knots sight in front of him using the tracers from the rounds to adjust accordingly the sight arrangement was going away from the spiderweb type of sight to a mirror type of sight which was basically what we call a head-up display today on small displacement ships anti-aircraft guns were aimed manually but on cruisers battleships and aircraft carriers the firing data was produced by directors special systems that controlled anti-aircraft artillery by calculating targeting parameters and sending them centrally to the receiving devices on guns the information on target parameters were supplied by anti-aircraft range finders and later by gun radars the command to engage or fire comes directly from the command and without further ado the gun captain would press the firing push as long as he held his foot on the firing push the gun would continue to fire as long as it had enough ammunition in the hopper to keep feeding it the guns created a fire barrage which was almost impossible for a single aircraft or entire squadrons to penetrate you can see it in old newsreels there's literally a wall of fire in the air and some plane trying to get through it the Bofors l60 proved it's worth during World War two the anti-aircraft gun Bofors l/70 became its logical continuation the human factor is crucial in Morse a man can become frightened maybe poorly trained or something unexpected can happen to them as a result the struggle to minimize the influence of the human element and to increase the gun survivability and rate of fire led to the development of the modernized Bofors l 70 which required minimal human input it compared to the very first Bofors gun such as the L 60 however the L 60 remained in use on some ships in 1982 during the Falklands War which involved Great Britain and Argentina the British managed to shoot down a jet plane using this Bofors gun even in the 1970s when artillery was gradually replaced by missile systems Bofors cannons remained in service not only the upgraded L seventies but also the veteran L 60 it can still be found on some German minesweepers and the heavily armed us ac-130 gunships which provide fire support to ground units [Music] of all the weapons used by the warring parties in world war ii a special place is occupied by a gun from a swiss company all again this autocannon was operated by the militaries on both sides of the front line but only the Allies managed to reveal its full potential using the Swiss designed weapon the Allied navies provided their ships with highly effective air defense [Music] the Oerlikon is a Swiss design gun made in the UK under licence and it was introduced into the Royal Navy in 1940 specifications of the Oerlikon anti-aircraft gun caliber 20 millimetres barrel weight with breech block from 64 to 68 kilograms gun length 2210 millimetres ammunition feed drum magazine holding 45 60 75 or 100 rounds rate of fire from 250 to 300 and 20 rounds per minute the guns were fitted in single twin and quadruple mountings [Music] the gun is used for Ram fast air surface targets and for anti-aircraft as well so the the gun was fitted to many many naval ships from aircraft carriers right down to the smallest step minesweepers in 1941 england commissioned battleship Duke of York with six Oerlikon cannons on board it was the first British warship armed with Swiss anti-aircraft guns one of the key requirements that the British put forward for all Eakins was that they be operable and maintainable from qualified personnel like fishermen and sailors from the merchant fleet this condition proved to be quite farsighted before world war ii kicked off Great Britain ordered 1,500 guns from Switzerland and purchased a license for their production by 1943 single barrel Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns were no longer effective against fast and well protected enemy aircraft a good solution to this problem was the development of multi gun mounts this is a 20-millimeter Oerlikon mark 11 mounting fitted with two 20 millimeter cannons each capable of firing up to 350 rounds a minute per gun however the magazine only holds 60 rounds so the rate of fire is dependent upon the crews ability to resupply magazines to the gun throughout the action the twin mounts were fed with ammunition from the left and right hand sides to avoid mistakes during loading the magazine for the left gun was painted in a bright color this is the 60 round magazine which fits on the cannon this one is empty but he's still very heavy imagine it filled with 60 rounds fits on the cannon like this and would be changed perhaps three or four times during an engagement the loaders job is not just to load the magazine she has to put the bullets or the shells inside the magazine each shell is individually loaded into the magazine pre-greased to allow for lubrication through the firing system [Music] as you can see the aimer uses his bodyweight to move the mounting in the training motion the elevation is adjusted by the hand wheel you can see here when he's given the command by the gunnery controller and once he has got the gun onto the target he calls a mat argot and has given the command to engage at that point he takes the safety catch off and fires the weapon when a shot is fired gunpowder gasses applied pressure to the projectile which starts moving out of the barrel at the cartridge which pushes the breech makes it slide along the barrel the weight of the breech and the return force of the spring pressed by it are matched in such a way so that the moment the projectile leaves the barrel a spent cartridge is ejected from the breech block and the next round is fed to her place from the magazine at this moment the recoil spring pushes the breech back ramming the shell into the chamber there are two loaders for this gun one for the right gun and one for the left obviously they don't just lift full magazines onto the gun and take the empty ones away their duties are also to act as the emergency crew should anything happen to the aimer who sits on the left-hand side then the MEC gun can be fired manually by one person from the back of the gun here the gulls in the twin mount fire in turn as a result it's cyclic rate of fire is about 600 rounds per minute the Oerlikon was used on ships as a short-range anti-aircraft gun it's effective range of fire was up to 2 kilometers you can say was a last chance weapon especially for American ships as they had to face Japanese kamikaze attacks in the Pacific [Music] during the war Alec and autocannons were extensively installed on the ships of the Allies for example the American essex-class aircraft carriers were equipped with up to 50 Oregon guns therefore the number of people on board the ships became significantly larger due to the anti-aircraft gun crews remembering that all the crew are actually linked together by the gunnery control communication system they all can hear the commands from the gunnery director platform and the gun master gunner this box relates to the type 6 gyro sight and it's the controlled inputs which are given to him by the gunnery control gunnery director pro platform personnel prior to the start of the engagement and set such things as wind speed direction and air temperature which affect the ballistics of the ammunition if during the engagement which obviously is very noisy there is a need to stop firing the gunnery director officer in the gunnery director platform we'll press the check fire bell which operates this belt you see here and this rings continuously until the aimer replies through his communication system check check check which informs the gunnery officer that he has stopped firing [Music] during World War two the Allies produced over 300,000 Oerlikon cannons many of them were later modified and upgraded but in general they still remained a Swiss design the gun was too advanced for the time when it was developed in the early 1930s and only when world war ii broke out did this cannon occupy a niche where it was unmatched on both opposing sides according to US statistics from December 1941 through September 1944 as many as 32% of all Japanese aircraft were shot down by naval Oerlikon guns in the second half of 1942 about 48% of enemy aircraft losses resulted from the use of these small calibre cannons [Music] after the war the 20-millimeter Oerlikon a a gun remained in service with many navies around the globe until it was inevitably replaced by more advanced systems however even today you can still see the world war ii design all acun guns installed on some small patrol ships [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Navy Films TV

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Id: 6EmXbStCssY

Length: 22min 45sec (1365 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 14 2017