The US Army’s first useful self-propelled anti-aircraft gun mounting was the M19 Gun Motor Carriage based on the chassis of the M24 Chaffee. The turret of this manually operated system, armed with two 40-mm Bofors guns, was later modified and installed on the chassis of the M41 Walker Bulldog light tank to produce the M42 …
Category Archives: Anti-aircraft
The Soviet/Russian ZSU-23-4 Shilka self-propelled anti-aircraft mounting
By the mid-1950s, it was clear that the days of the ZSU-57-2 self-propelled anti-aircraft gun mounting were numbered in terms of the system’s operational capability. For all the destructive effect of its large projectiles, the S-68 cannon possessed too low a rate of fire; the poor rates of traverse and elevation made it all but …
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The US M16 self-propelled anti-aircraft mounting
The M45 quadruple machine gun mounting was a weapon mounting with four 0.5-in (12.7-mm) Colt-Browning M2HB (heavy barrel) L/90 heavy machine guns in the form of M2 Turret Type weapons mounted in vertical pairs on each side of the gunner’s electrically open cab. The M45 was developed by the W. L. Maxson Corporation in 1942 …
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The German ‘Wirbelwind’ self-propelled anti-aircraft gun
Despite developing Blitzkrieg tactics, the Germans were as slow as the other early WWII powers in developing self-propelled anti-aircraft artillery. This stemmed in part from the German leadership and armaments industry’s primary concern with the development and manufacture of offensive weapons. Yet it was also a result of their belief that their breakthrough forces could …
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The anti-aircraft cruiser – the US ‘Juneau’ class
The three ‘Juneau’ class light cruisers of the US Navy were built to a modified ‘Oakland’ class design: the ‘Oakland’ class was a four-ship subset of the ‘Atlanta’ class standard. The design of the ‘Juneau’ class reflected the operating service’s experience in the later part of World War II against Japanese attacks by massed aircraft …
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The anti-aircraft cruiser – the British ‘Dido’ class
The ‘Dido’ class of British light anti-aircraft cruisers comprised 11 ships (three built by Cammell Laird, two by Scotts, two by Hawthorn Leslie, and single ships by Fairfield, Stephen, Chatham Dockyard and Portsmouth Dockyard), and there were also five generally similar ships of the ‘Bellona’ class, sometimes considered a sub-class of the ‘Dido’ class. The …
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The anti-aircraft cruiser – the US ‘Atlanta’ class
While the ‘Worcester’ class ships with 6-in (152.4-mm) guns can be considered the heavyweights of the anti-aircraft cruiser, they were too late for service in World War II and built only in small numbers. The ‘Atlanta’ class ships with 5-in (127-mm) guns were the middleweights of the type, saw widespread service in World War II …
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The anti-aircraft cruiser – the US ‘Worcester’ class
The world’s first powered, sustained and controlled aeroplane flight had been made only in 1903 by the Wright brothers. Furthermore, technical developments were made only slowly up to the start of World War I (1914/18),where many pioneers foresaw the emergence of the aeroplane as a weapon. The potential of the aeroplane as a war machine was …
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A 20th century innovation – The Chain Gun
A history of the chain gun; the best known chain gun being the M230 which is used in the Boeing AH-64 Apache battlefield helicopter.
Destroyer classes of the 1930s – The ‘German Type 1934’ classes
A history of the German type 1934 destroyers, designed to match the capabilities of vessels from other navies, with specifications; most were sunk but 5 survived the war.