Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 268" video.

  1. wrt the question about substitutes in the absence of the 20mm and 40mm guns, in my reading about the navy's AA gun competition, while the Vickers performed fairly well, apparently it did not function well using USN smokeless powder, and no-one in the US made cordite. Given that issue, I'm thinking they would have gone with the 37mm. The 37 apparently had a tendency to jam, but a proper cooling jacket may have solved that. The army version had a water chest, and, the crew was supposed to stop firing every 60 or 90 rounds, and flush water through the gun to cool it. The manual for the gun says if it jams, it's because it's too hot. The 37 was developed into a model that could be fed from either right or left, with simple modification, and switched from rigid clips, to metal belt ammo. The 37 has a significantly higher ceiling than the Vickers, though not quite as high as the Bofors. Given that the gun and ammo were already in production in the US, I would think logistics would have won the day and the 37mm would have been adapted. The 20mm Hispano never seemed to work right for the US, which is why US fighters tended to have .50 cal machine guns instead. Here's an odd thought. The aircraft version of the 37mm was light enough to use on a free mount, as was done on PT boats. A while back I looked at the numbers, and, iirc, the aircraft 37mm had range performance competitive with the 20mm. While it's rate of fire was slower, the weight of the shells was greater, so each would do much more damage to the target. If I was running BuOrd, I could see the M1 in twin and quad mounts replacing the Bofors, and the M4 replacing the Oerlikon.
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