Heath, Tim German Aircraft Weaponry

Machine Guns, Cannon and Aerial Artillery in Luftwaffe Service, 1939-1945

Since the outbreak of war in 1939, German Air Force weapons designers and engineers had developed many revolutionary concepts for the onboard weapons of their military aircraft, especially as the threat from strategic bombing raids by the Allies, led by the United States and Great Britain, grew ever greater from 1943 onwards. In a desperate attempt to counter the threat to German industry and infrastructure posed by Allied bombers, ever larger calibres and ever more lethal anti-aircraft guns were introduced. This book examines the use of the modest rifle-calibre machine gun as an aircraft weapon, as well as efforts to develop suitable cannons with greater destructive power for use in aircraft, the progress made in the interwar years, and the various barrel weapons used or proposed by the German Luftwaffe during the Second World War. This work includes not only the technical and operational assessments of the various weapons used by German Luftwaffe crews, including some of Germany's leading surviving fighter aces from the Second World War, but also the armourers entrusted with their daily maintenance, the instructors and technicians on the ground, and those who were exposed to their firepower both in the air and on the ground. This work includes many new and previously unpublished eyewitness accounts, told for the first time in their own words by those who were there.