Ammo Belts Loadout/Exploit Poll

[Skoshi Tiger]

In various video clips I've seen the armourers making up the belts for the fighters, basically it's a couple of blokes sitting at a desk with a machine, they have a hopper of links and a chute they feed the bullets into. They pull the leaver and the round is added to the belt.

Now what woiuld be interesting would be knowing what the procedure was for varying the make up of the belts. Was it just a matter of getting someone with sufficient rank to go down and ask them to put together a belt with a certain sequence? Or did it require a request to the Air Ministry or some other board like that?

How much freedom did they have at squadron level with things like belting configurations and convergences? As proffessional pilots did they sit around over cocktails discussing thier belting and having a go the next day?

I assume if they had supply issues of any particular round they'd have to use an alternative sequence, who was responsible and what was the procedure for choosing it?

In the British loadout sections we have a range of unusual rounds like the MKI and MKVI ball ammo. These rounds run about 500fps slower than most of the other rounds on the list. Would you really want to have these rounds in a belt with the H/V rounds? They'ld have completely different ballistics and would throw your convergense right out the window.

Cheers!