Bulletproof Airplanes

[zapatos]

On 9/13/2024 at 9:45 AM, dimreepr said:

I have no idea what inspired me to post that in the first place, just a thought out of place here, sorry.

Not too far out of place. On the A-10 the main gun is mounted off center so that the barrel of the gun is lined up on the center line of the plane. While it will not cause catastrophic damage if the barrel is offset from center, it is enough of a difference that if the gun were placed differently it would lose significant accuracy.

[John Cuthber]

19 hours ago, StringJunky said:

I was thinking with modern computerized systems doing the calcs the error rate is probably cut down a fair bit now.

I don't think the calculation is the the tricky bit.
By the mid 40s, people had worked out how to avoid them.
If you fly "random" zig zags, then the computers launching missiles (In the technical sense- a thing that is thrown) aren't going to do very well.

Of course, if you have a controlled missile which can change direction while in flight, you can improve the hit rate enormously.

 

 

 

Edited 12 hours ago by John Cuthber

[StringJunky]

20 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

I don't think the calculation is the the tricky bit.
By the mid 40s, people had worked out how to avoid them.
If you fly "random" zig zags, then the computers launching missiles (In the technical sense- a thing that is thrown) aren't going to do very well.

Of course, if you have a controlled missile which can change direction while in flight, you can improve the hit rate enormously.

 

I don't think the calculation is the the tricky bit.
By the mid 40s, people had worked out how to avoid them.
If you fly "random" zig zags, then the computers launching missiles (In the technical sense- a thing that is thrown) aren't going to do very well.

Of course, if you have a controlled missile which can change direction while in flight, you can improve the hit rate enormously.

 

Thanks. That was interesting.

[dimreepr]

20 hours ago, zapatos said:

Not too far out of place. On the A-10 the main gun is mounted off center so that the barrel of the gun is lined up on the center line of the plane. While it will not cause catastrophic damage if the barrel is offset from center, it is enough of a difference that if the gun were placed differently it would lose significant accuracy.

Thanks for trying, but far enough to appear stupid in this context, a bullet is all about point loading and penetration.

However the Nazi's had a similar thought with there air cannon, I'll bet they felt stupid with there oversized whoopi cushion...