The destructive power of Russian guns/cannons

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by K_Freddie

I remember there being some comparison info somewhere.. If I'm not mistaken..

- The Russian weapons had a higher muzzle velocity and greater penetration power (going through your pilots armour plate causing more PKs, etc..).

- The German weapons had lower velocity but had more explosive/hitting power, but less penetration power.

So essentially the Russian stuff shredded, and the German stuff blew things apart.

That'd be a pretty good summary for sure!

Doing a very simple comparison...

Cannon, Cartridge, Rate of Fire (rpm), Muzzle Velocity
MG 151/20, 20 x 82, 700-750, 725
ShVAK, 20 x 99R, 800, 750-770
Hispano II, 20 x 110, 600, 880

(from here: http://users.skynet.be/Emmanuel.Gust...n/fgun-pe.html)

The ShVAK basically fires a bigger shell than the MG151/20 and it does it at a higher rate of fire and with a higher muzzle velocity. So on the face of it the ShVAK is actually the better cannon. The MG151/20 makes up for it by having the better explosive shell with the Mine-shell (very thin high grade shell wall with much more explosive). It's a fairly even trade off.

My reading suggests that it's sort of a three way tie as to which cannon is the best. The Hispano fires the biggest round at the highest muzzle velocity but had a variety of teething reliability problems and had a lower fire rate (at least until the Mark V). The ShVAK fills the middle road with a capable cannon that had it's bugs worked out before WWII. The MG151/20 is the most technologically sophisticated and takes slightly lesser stats (very slightly) and makes up for it with a much higher explosive power.

The Japanese also had a pretty good cannon in the Ho-5. It was actually derived from the Browning .50cal design but it wasn't as good as "the big three".