Don't get me wrong, I'd be all for having our own funky, down under version of the Papal Guard but... we have a LOT of shores. I don't think there are enough Swiss people for that.

In all honestly, my admittedly scant, research and knowledge of the F35 program tells me its more boondoggle than not. Yes, it has the potential of being a very good multirole Aircraft. But its going to be probably one of the most expensive fighters ever. And the maintance costs are projected to be equally massive.

Ignoring the steathy bits of the F35 program, I honestly believe the various Airforces that are buying into it would be much better served with the latest flavours of current strike fighters: F/A18 E/F, Block 50/60 F16s, Gripens, and 15E's. Be massivly cheaper to boot.

Our borders would be just like Swiss cheese. :D

Oh christ, I just had to laugh at that one...

It would seem to me that the Sukhoi PAK FA would be a better choice than the F-35 at the moment. If for no other reason its superior to the Super hornet (etc). While the F35 is potentially a better aircraft. Its a long, long way away. The Sukhoi is a year or two tops, away. NATO countries need to shake the stigma, that the Russians are the bad guys. We cant buy their stuff. Let face it, its a brave new world. Its kinda every country for itself. I mean we buy all kinds of stuff (Clothing, other assorted items) from China for our military here in the US. I think they portray a far greater threat in our future than the Russians. My ten cents anyway

Each of these nations will be as big a threat as their leadership feels they can afford to be.

The US should be buying all the latest Russian gear, if only to see what is going on with the competition. Pilots who thoroughly understand the enemy's strengths and weaknesses, as well as their own strengths and weaknesses, are the most likely to bring victory.

Concrete armored cars. I never would have thought of that. The threat of invasion really brings out the creativity in some folks.

Getting back the gun trucks, I want to put a question out to the community at large: when does a fire support vehicle become a light assault gun?

I would say when the vehicle in question is equipped with heavy frontal armor, and a gun of at least 50mm.

Couple pics I came across
http://photos.kitmaker.net/data/500/.../Mad_Max_1.jpg
http://photos.kitmaker.net/data/500/.../Mad_Max_2.jpg
http://photos.kitmaker.net/data/500/.../Mad_Max_3.jpg
http://www.militarymodelling.com/sit...un%20truck.jpg

And the Russians will sell the PAK FA a lot cheaper than we're selling the F-35 for, because they're strapped for cash. And the Russians aren't so worried about getting everything perfect or making every congressional district happy -- they just want to get on the market with something that, while it may not be what the F-35 may eventually come, is on the market now and is better than what is now available. A lot of countries will see the PAK FA as an opportunity to get stealth at a bargain, even if its systems are not as deluxe as those that the F-35 will eventually have or its stealth profile isn't as small as the F-35 will eventually have.

And electronics and other systems can be upgraded over time....

How about an aircraft carrier made of Pykrete? It won't be fast, but you can make it big enough to carry conventional aircraft rather than dedicated carrier-based models...
http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Icecrete/

http://operatorchan.org/v/arch/src/v...attleship1.jpg
http://www.panzerbaer.de/helper/pix/...pecops-001.jpg
http://www.proartmodels.be/gallery/gal_09/gal_0901.jpg
http://www.modellbau-universe.de/upl...l/af_35034.jpg
http://media.photobucket.com/image/F...te_i000041.jpg

Found what I was looking for in the WW2 aircraft with LCG in the nose.. Bell P-39 had a 37mm firing through the rotor hub. Don't ask me how.. just what it says... knew that I saw something on one somewhere... Not may built, and I know there were some in service in PAO.. met an old timer at church years back that flew them, then transfered to P-38 Lightning. He was on the Yamamoto raid flying top cover for them. Funny old guy too... said he was shot down three times... but got five of them.. "Oh your an ace." says I. "That's not how my wife pronounces it." says he.

FB



http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircr...ircraft_id=140

Yeah that was an interesting program on History Channel about that some time ago. Wood pulp and ice... guess they were for northern service only.. but the concept was actually sound from tests done, as to construction, floating, and durability, other than the fact it melted!!

Hey Grae,

when you were in Vietnam, did you come across any gun trucks?

just curious
bdd

The engine was behind the pilot, placing a shaft under the pilot's legs up to the prop. Worth adding that some PT boats began fitting the 37mm cannon from wrecked P-39's (including the built-in 30 round magazine) as a deck gun.

The Me 109, with a front engine, had a short 20mm cannon that fired through the propeller hub.

Either the P-38 prototype or first model had a 37mm rather than 20mm nose gun.

The earliest P-38 (maybe only the XP-38) had a 37mm nose gun, I'm pretty sure all production models moved to the 20mm gun. It was designed as a high-altitude bomber-interceptor, the main reason it had turbosupercharger and the P-39 and P-40 did not.

The P-39 was designed and built with the 37mm gun, for ground support, but not necessarily tank-busting, in mind. It and the P-40 had heavy armament for attack missions.
One variant had a 20mm instead, for shipment to the British. Several of these were sidetracked to the South Pacific instead (39th Fighter Squadron, Guadalcanal, IIRC), where they couldn't really fly at high altitude (still had British oxygen equipment, and no turbosupercharger). This was the P-400 ("it's a P-40 with a Zero on its tail!"). The Marines liked them for ground support.

There were other P-39 squadrons in New Guinea, Alaska and other Pacific islands, and a few groups in the Mediterranean. Once the USAAF started getting P-47s in bulk, most of the P-39 production went to the French and Soviets. The Soviets loved them-- they had radios! Lots of folks have read that the Soviets used them for CAS, but in Soviet terminology, "close air support" meant stooging over the battlefield, looking for German ground-attack planes to shoot down.

There was a really cool book by a P-39 pilot, http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...t_s_Love_Story. The vibrations of the gun firing through the drive shaft were one of his favorite sensations.

I'm still convinced there was a WW1 German cannon-armed plane, but I have not been able to track it down.

It's amusing that this thread has become as much a place to discuss large caliber weapons mounted on aircraft (especially WWII aircraft) as it is to discuss gun trucks. :)

I think a convoy escort unit (with gun trucks of course) would make for an interesting PC group. It would work great for the Escape from Kalisz module- it's on its way to resupply part of the 5th when the Soviet counterattack hits. You could do this for pretty much any unit you choose. A convoy following the wayward 8th ID would work well too.

It would provide a group of relatively low-powered (combat skill-wise, at least) PCs with a good amount of mobility and firepower.

Do they charge to the rescue with much-needed fuel and tank ammo?

Do they head for the hills in classic EFK fashion?

Do they try to set themselves up as a local power?

A force of gun trucks would also make for an interesting NPC encounter for a more conventional EFK group. "Sorry guys, we don't have any 5.56 or 7.62mm but we have a shit-ton of 120mm AP..."

A rogue gun truck unit could also make for a nasty group of marauders...

Large calibre aircraft guns and gun trucks are such a great combination.

The Germans did some work on 35cm and 54cm recoilless (countershot) weapons to be carried under aircraft.

beating a dead (cannon-armed, flying) horse
 

Some WWI British aircraft were equipped with a Davis Gun, which was a counter-shot weapon (explosive shell goes forward, frangible counterweight of equal mass goes harmlessly <?> out the back).

One of the SPAD models had a 37mm cannon firing through the hollow propeller shaft.

In WW2:
The Me109 (some versions, too lazy to track down which) had a 30mm cannon "nestled between the cylinder heads" of the aircraft's engine, firing through the propeller boss.

Back to gun trucks:
I think the penultimate gun trucks were the SAS jeeps used in the "Jeep Raids" on German airstrips in North Africa. Like the eventual evolution of the PT boats from torpedo to gunboats, these Jeeps had more armament per pound of vehicle weight than just about any other weapons system in their class.

The engine on a P-39 is mounted behind the pilot and the propeller shaft is offset below the hub of the prop (runs the prop through a gear housing) the barrel of the cannon runs right through the center of the housing. Needless to say, it is a maintenance nightmare!

The early models of the P-38 were designed with a 37mm cannon, that was replaced with a 20mm somewhere around the D/E model. There was also a
B-17 variant that mounted one in the nose for anti-fighter duty, never official, but there are a couple of pics and a old war story of it being used in Europe.

My high school shop teacher was a Confederate Air Force Colonel and we got extra credit for "assisting" the regular mechanics on the old warbirds.

What about rocket pods?

I was looking at some of those crazy Libyan vehicles with soviet rocket pods bolted to them. I was thinking about some of the SNEB pods we used to use on the Jaguar and Harrier aircraft. Put them on some kind of moveable mount and you'll give an ambush a really bad day as you suddely lay down a dozen 68mm HE rockets on their position.

They have actually looked at that as a factory built system - I recall a Humvee being fitted with 6 FFAR/19 pods. It would lead to a very effective short range bombardment system...

The Italians use a similar type vehicle, but I don't remember offhand what the base chassis is.

There was a version of the Hurricane with a 40mm cannon under each wing that they used for tank-busting in North Africa. Recoil was said to be brutal on the pilot, and that makes me think that maintenance on the wings and wing roots had to be constant and thorough.

I want one of those HEMTT gun trucks. Traffic in San Antonio sucks -- it would be nice to clear some of the idiots out of the way...:D

In our Year of the Zombie campaign we had a couple HEMTT 10-ton cargo trucks, and a fuel tanker as part of our convoy... one of them had been turned into a guntruck with .50cals, 7.62mm general purpose machineguns and two 40mm automatic grenade launchers. Oh.. and a light mortar. It had been designed not to destroy lot's of zombies, but to keep marauders and fleshmongers away from our convoy of civilian survivors... the convoy was divided into three sections with a Grayhound coach full of survivors as the centrepeice of each section and there was a heavily modified Grayhound coach that had been turned into a mobile medical clinic.

For what it's worth, since you were talking about weapons on vehicles stripped from aircraft, I remember seeing a pic of a WWII PT boat that had the 37mm autocannon from a P39 Airacobra rigged on a weapon mount on the deck, with traverse and elevation, fire controls, ammunition drum, the works. If they could do it on a boat, pretty sure they could have set up something similiar on a truck as well. Of course, I think you'd find 37mm ammunition to be fairly scarce these days.

Of course, not just guns. If you wanted to get fancier....they were for a while touting around the HUMRAAM, which was basically a Humvee modified to carry a turret rack that mounted (correct me if I'm wrong) 4 AMRAAM's and 2 Sidewinders modified for the SAM role.

Just goes to show I guess that with enough ingenuity, you can, within reason, pretty much mount ALMOST anything from an aircraft onto a vehicle, provided the vehicle is large enough and can handle the weight and recoil of the weapons. Of course, something like the 30mm Avenger autocannon mounted on the A-10 might be a bit problematic. :eek: