Why Did The RAF Use .303 Caliber Machine Guns in WW2? The Surprising Answer

one question that comes up a lot is why the British persist with arming the aircraft with 0.303 machine guns for much of the second world war sharks those lambies are just dumb yeah the englanders in Dome well a strong an argument as that is perhaps there's more to it the usual arguments boiled out to the following British officials were just incompetent it was cheaper to use a surplus of World War One ammunition the 303 was just the best gun available to the British at the time so which of these are actually true well here's what I found out and the answer is actually much more surprising than I originally thought so let's begin by setting the scene during the first World War British aircraft had been equipped largely with either the Vickers machine gun or the American design Lewis machine gun these were both armed with 0.303 caliber rounds and were adapted models of the same guns used by the Infantry by 1918 the standard Armament for British Fighters was two machine guns either twin Vickers or one paired with the Lewis gun as in the case of the SE5A against enemy aircraft of the day they were highly effective and as the 1920s came and went not a lot changed in British fighter Armament but Armament during the first world war usually consisted of a single or twin Lewis guns mounted on a rotating scarf ring for an observer as with the Bristol fighter all multiple Lewis guns in the case of the Hanley page type series two-seater aircraft also often had a fixed forward-firing machine gun with the Advent of faster aircraft in the early 1930s many of which were now constructed largely for metal a need for heavier Armament was reconsidered the question was could a .303 still damage an aircraft enough to shoot out of the sky as the veteran Vickers and Lewis machine guns were bulky and heavy the British were looking for a replacement aerial machine gun for their aircraft during trials and tests throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s the air Ministry evaluated their current 0.303 caliber Armament against other larger rounds the air Ministry tested a scaled up version of the Vicar's gun now a .50 caliber machine gun against the American Browning .50 caliber which was both heavier and more powerful at the time it was found that the 50 cal certainly created a larger hole than the 0.303 but when the machine guns were compared in terms of weight the future Browning 0.303 was the Victor it's actually a good thing perhaps that the 50 cal was rejected as ultimately the British would have adopted the Vickers version which would serve with the Army and Navy and proved to pack less of a punch than the American gun as a side note reportedly both Italy and Japan developed a version of the Vickers .50 caliber machine gun which with its lower Effectiveness may have ultimately saved Allied lives Tess were also made with the Swiss or looking 20 millimeter cannon developed from the German Beck machine gun used in the Great War when comparing the .303 caliber round to the 20 millimeter there was no contest the bigger and heavier explosive shell could inflict much more damage than the rifle caliber round however it was deemed that no suitable 20 millimeter gun was available that could match the 0.303 machine gun for reliability and rate of fire a pin was put in this 20 millimeter option until it became absolutely essential to use them in all aircraft but the time the most famous World War II British Fighters and bombers were coming off the drawing boards the air Ministry had selected the Armament that would be fitted to most British aircraft during the approaching conflict selected were the 0.303 American design Brown rounding machine gun and the 0.303 Vickers gas operated machine gun known as the vgo or Class K the former was heavily modified from the original American design to turn it from a close to an open bolt system as well as converting it to a 0.303 caliber round the gun was modified to allow for the heating issues caused by using cordite and to reduce it jamming and its damage to the gun ultimately what dictated the choice of armament for the British and All Nations was a combination of factors namely weight rate of fire relative destructiveness and availability to name but a few the Browning Point 303 boasted roughly a 1200 rounds a minute rate of fire and the vgo could fire up to 950 rounds a minute that's compared to the Browning 0.50 caliber an M2 which then fired around 800 rounds per minute and the Hispano hs-404 which could get up to 850 rounds per minute of course it needs to be noted here that the 50 cal trialled by the British in the 1930s was not the same model being used by in 1943 in American fighters if it had been perhaps this would be a different conversation nevertheless at the time it had a much lower rate of fire than the .303 this higher rate of fire was taken into consideration when in 1934 the air Ministry took advice from the operational requirements brand it said that the next generation of fighter aircraft should be fitted with a battery of six but ideally eight machine guns in order to hit faster moving enemy aircraft this is a story which involves a very unlikely contributor and if you want to find out more please watch my video about hazel Hill it's a great story if you're enjoying this video so far and you want to support my channel then please just like the video to help it spread to more people I really appreciate that in terms of weight which is a huge factor in the performance of an aircraft the 0.303 Browning was the leaness machine gun at around 10 kilograms the 0.50 Browning weighed 29 kilograms and the Hispano about 50 kilograms of course you need ammunition for a machine gun to be effective so weight also determines how much you could carry to the fight a 0.303 round weighed roughly 24 grams a 50 cal was around 112 grams and a 20 millimeter Hispanic Cannon used a 257 gram shell these rough numbers show you just how much bigger the other two rounds were compared to the 0.303 in addition to this you had to calculate for the links ammo boxes mounts and other Armament paraphernalia in short with a 0.303 Browning machine gun you could carry almost three for every 50 cal and up to five for every Hispano you could also carry more ammunition of course this would change later in the war with more powerful aircraft were available so perhaps logic said in the mid-1930s more was better than less this might also be because the air Ministry had little faith in their pilots Gunnery skills having more rounds gave you a better chance of actually hitting something this notion seems applicable with the level of training Battle of Britain era Pilots received and the pre-war tactics used this lack of Gunnery prowess simply wouldn't be the case by 1942 or 1943 it's often said that the British kept the .303 caliber machine gun because it was the same round used by its infantry while it's true that the ball round used in a Spitfire or Blenheim was essentially a normal rifle bullet the Tracer and incendiary rounds were specially made for the task while they may have had leftover ammunition from the Great War I feel that perhaps it was the cost of reconfiguring the Armament industry that may have been a bigger Factor uniformity is much more efficient and cost effective and in this the accountants for a financially ruined country free may have had more influence than the military as we've seen the British authorities weren't completely ignorant of the Hispano 20 millimeters capabilities they had even seen that it was better to make the jump directly from 0.303s to 20 millimeter Armament rather than Hopscotch from 0.303s to 50 cows and then to the big argument although some later marks spit fires and bombers would use 50 cows in 1939 there had been plans to standardize Armament efforts among the British and French and adopt the Belgium FN version of the 50 caliber per hunting machine gun however these plans were ruined when Belgium was invaded in 1940 and it seemed better to ramp up efforts to build 0.303 guns instead this decision was probably made with expectations that suitable 20 millimeter Armament was only months away rather than years Supply was perhaps another reason why the 0.303 was favored over the Browning .50 caliber although American industrial Mite was crucial in defeating the Axis powers in 1939 it was still a sleeping giant had the British wanted to equip their entire Air Force with the machine gun in 1939 the Americans could not have provided the weapons Vickers a British company also would probably have failed at this task rough figures suggest that from July 1940 production of all U.S built types of 50 cal machine guns was about 5155 Guns by 1941 they had produced 49 479 guns and by 1945 factories knocked out about 239 821 guns at the outbreak of War almost immediately the 0.303 was shown to be somewhat inadequate it's true that a 0.303 round was Lethal when fired through an unarmored aircraft panel and its incendiary round version had double the chance of setting fuel tanks alike compared to a similar axis round nevertheless against ever more armored enemy aircraft which also began to be equipped with self-sealing fuel tanks it was almost pitiful although a .303 reportedly could make it through up to 12 millimeters of armor plate its Effectiveness could be significantly reduced when it had to pass through other parts of an aircraft or if fired from extreme distance be that as it may ref and Commonwealth aircraft did manage to shoot down the enemy in droves especially after tactics and harmonization distances were improved would they have be more effective with similar Armament of the later War birds of course but it takes time to refit Air Forces with better weapons the British simply didn't have the industrial capability in 1940 to Simply equip all their Fighters and bomber aircraft with 50 caliber Armament let alone the 20 millimeter Hispana Cannon what's more than knowledge that a 20 millimeter shell was more destructive was overshadowed but the difficulty of getting the gun to work reliably when first trialled in RAF Fighters the Hispano hs-404 was all but useless in combat but this was largely because it wasn't used in the way it been designed first intended to be mounted around the engine on sturdy platforms the guns were turned on their sides and installed and flexible in cold Wings this led to guns freezing and jamming even though the British had first been introduced to the gun in 1936 it took over four years for them to negotiate the rights to buy it then to set up the subsidiary offices in Grantham England to produce it which then called for the gun to be redrawn in Imperial measurements and tinkered with to produce a working and reliable Armament this was not done successfully until after the Battle of Britain even though trials were made during the battle by 19th Squadron these were not overly successful and the Squadron even formally requested for the machine gun armed fighters to be returned the issues faced By the Mark 1 Cannon armed Spitfires weren't really ironed out until the Advent of the mark fives in 1941 the bomber aircraft the 0.303 remained the star standard Armament for various reasons most importantly due to the delay in redesigning gun turrets when a single machine gun was used invariably it was the vgo although many American bombers would use a single 50 cal successfully in this role the British didn't seem to want to re-equip the smaller bomb aircraft with them however by 1944 most aircraft in number one group of bomber command had been converted to carry the rose rice turret this hydraulically powered turret boasted twin 50 cal machine guns and an open Forward Design which improved visibility and survivability for the Gunner however the air Ministry compiled a report that found that 60 of these turrets experience stoppages compared to 23 of the older 0.303 armed turrets it could be said that the 0.303 machine gun dictated RF bomber commands tactics for most of World War II the experiences of light bombers such as the fairy battles and even heavier types such as the Wellington over enemy territory in 1940 one thing was painfully clear a handful of 0.303 machine guns could not ward off a gaggle of attacking German Fighters almost immediately the British opted for the relative safety of Darkness to give them protection from the 109s and 110s this also effectively relegated air Gunners to the role of Observer their job was less to engage the enemy and more to give advanced warning so that evasive action could be taken for the reduced distances that night fighting created at 0.303 was effective enough there was a perhaps apocryphal tale where air Chief Marshall Harris CNC of bomber command was asked by an air Gunner why they weren't given 50 cal machine guns instead of 0.303s Harris replied how far can you see at night on Ops about 300 yards was the reply exactly says Harris what's the point of having greater range if you can not see the target perhaps a better point to make here is that the added weight of a 50 caliber machine gun would have to be compensated for with a reduced bomb or fuel capacity especially in smaller bombers the Hispano 20 millimeter cannon really came into its own when the Mark V was developed and fitted to later production Hawker Tempest however this version of the Hispano 20 millimeter didn't see widespread use and Spitfires until after the war and the Spitfire is a very good example of the 0.303 being used throughout the entire War whereas aircraft such as the typhoon or Tempest were Canon armed and the hurricane went through various Armament configurations why did the British persist with Canon and .303 equipped Spitfires for much of the war what is certain is that mounting twin 20 millimeter cannons on Spitfires was not as easy as it was for tempests or typhoons preventing guns from freezing wasn't as easy presumably because a significant part of the barrel was sticking out of the wing especially when compared to the tempests another reason might be due to an added bonus 0.303 ammunition provided a pilot when shooting at an enemy the Dixon incendiary round based on the Belgian de Wilde design tended to light up the Impact Zone when a round landed these flashes were very helpful when trying to shoot down an enemy as no similar incendiary round was developed to quite the same success for a 50 cal machine gun perhaps this was a deciding factor in keeping 4.303 machine guns on most late War Spitfires it's also true to say that the higher rate of fire that .303 provided was still effective when performing full deflection shots and could easily kill Pilots or crew from this position another if somewhat far-fetched opinion I uncovered Verge is on some pretty in-depth Game Theory could the British have held on to the 0.303s simply because of the effect it had on axis aircraft design to explain this Theory let's look back a little further in history up into the late 17th century most European armies fielded heavily armored men when armies grew in size became more mobile and faced heavier Firearms armor was more of a hindrance so it was abandoned for the advantages it gave in the face of the protection it provided against swords and Small Arms fire so seeing that little could stop a 20 millimeter shell there would be little point in trying to protect a crew or fuel tank from it however when aircraft carry arguments such as the 0.303 caliber machine gun which is more easily protected against it would be foolish not to install the armor plate although this seems a little far-fetched it's essentially what the Japanese aircraft designers did during the run-up to War and what some finish units reportedly did during the war were the British really that canny I'd love to hear what your thoughts on this theory is in the comments if you've made it this far then please like the video to help it spread to more people and if 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Channel: Caliban Rising - Aviation History

Views: 553,351

Keywords: aviation history, military aviation

Id: stnhcxmGzrA

Length: 17min 11sec (1031 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 17 2022