Ammunition power

[R0NNC0]

Originally Posted by IceFire

And I believe several USAAF aces did too. I get the impression that point convergence is something the experienced pilots prefer while it makes it more difficult for the less experienced pilots.

Possibly, but some of it could be training too. USN had more thorough gunnery training than USAAF.

Here's Dave McCampbell, MOH winner and leading USN/USMC ace (34 victories) on convergence used in VF-15:

An interesting thing worth mentioning is the boresight pattern of the guns on the Hellcat. Back in training in the U.S., one of the people who had a little combat down in the Solomon Islands didn't like the gun performance, which had a pattern called the Bureau of Ordnance gun-sight pattern. So he went to work and developed a pattern for 1,000 ft. At 1,000 feet, the six guns would concentrate into a 3-foot diameter circle, and he could get 92 to 94 percent of the shells in that 3-foot diameter circle at 1,000 feet. What this amounted to was very concentrated fire at 1,000 feet, where the bullets would cross each other,so you still had basically the same pattern for strafing which you do at much further distance. We found that most effective for shooting down planes. We would start firing in earnest at about 1,000 feet; you may open fire a little further because in flying along, it's difficult to judge 1,000 from 1,200 feet or even 1,500 feet. But at that point, you had a very concentrated fire.

Source: Smithsonian Oral History Collection "Carrier Warfare in the Pacific", ISBN 1-56098-822-3