soc.history.war.world-war-ii

"YMC" wrote in message
news:47ce4aa6$0$26271$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...

> What was the biggest and most effective ballistic weapon for an aircraft
in
> WW2.
>
> I realize that some aircraft carried 75mm cannon - the B25 iirc and the
> Germans probably shoehorned an 88 into one of their fighter bombers

This hints at some misunderstandings about weapons.
1. All weapons and projectiles are "ballistic" so far
as they respond to gravity alone after release, i.e.
are not guided by controls that alter their trajectory.
Except for a couple of German and Japanese "glider bombs"
no guided weapons were used in WW2.
2. The largest artillery piece fitted to any aircraft appears
to have been the 75 mm. gun. Overall weight aside, the main
problem is how to load a gun in flight. You need to be able
to reload because it would not pay to carry all that inert
weight to the target in order to fire just one round of
weight 10 to 40 kg. (i.e. 10 to 40 lb. of explosive.)

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)