Aside from the issue of overheating, is there a way that large howitzers (i.e. 105mm or 155mm) or tank cannons could be engineered so that they are fed from a belt of artillery rounds and fire rapid-fire in auto mode just like the way machine guns do? (rather than having 10-30 seconds in between shots)
How large a round did Stalin organs fire?
Well, there is the Vulcan M61 cannon, used in American fighters. It’s been fairly successful at shooting down enemy aircraft. It shoots 100-110 shells per second, and is quite reliable.
But it only shoots a 20mm shell – about 1/5th of your specification.
I think that making larger versions of a Gatling-design gun would not be very productive.
The M61 already suffers from over-firing. A full minute of auto-fire would use nearly a half-ton of ammunition – too much weight for a warplane to devote to anti-aircraft fire. A larger cannon would have even larger & heavier shells. Not very feasible for planes.
On a land vehicle, the size of the cannon, and the size & weight of the ammunition would be less of a problem. But auto-firing is less important – you want to wait to see if the first shell destroyed the target before you send more shells at that same target. You want to save the rest of your shells for the next target, rather than over-killing only the first target. So generally, increased rate of fire hasn’t been as important for land-based cannons, compared to accuracy and ease of re-aiming.
Anywhere between 12 to 30cm rockets depending on the model/truck chassis. They weren’t howitzers.
Microscopic.
And in between is the German 88, smaller than a large howizter shell but capable of rates of fire significantly higher than once every 10-30 seconds: its firing mechanism is described by Wikipedia as “semi-automatic” because once the shell is in place the gun fires and ejects it automatically, allowing the crew to shoot as fast as they can manually load it.
Are you asking whether an autoloader can be devised for larger caliber rounds, or whether we could devise one to fire continuously?
The answers are yes, the Russians have used them for decades, and probably, but why? Tanks and artillery are more concerned with accuracy than volume of fire these days, mostly I’m guessing because counterbattery fire is usually quick and accurate. So being able to fire quickly and accurately is more important than just firing off 10 rounds as fast as possible.
It seems like the key is how fast can you recover after recoil? I suspect that one cannot simply scale up a machine gun due to the much larger recoil forces. The largest version of a workable automatic cannon I can think of is the 40mm Bofors guns in the navy in WWII. The Luftwaffe built about 300 50mm BK 5 cannons for mounting in anti-bomber fighters. It fired 45 rds/minute but jammed a lot. I don’t know how it cycled.
The Panzerhaubitze 2000 (PzH) can fire 10 rounds in 56 seconds. It doesn’t use a belt. Reloading it’s 60 rounds magazine with all the automated assistance takes 12 minutes.
The Swedish Archer has a magazine of ten 155 mm rounds. It can fire it’s full magazine of 20 rounds in 2.5 minutes and salvo 3 rounds in 15 seconds. The continuous fire rate is only 75 rounds per hour though thanks to it taking about 10 minutes to reload the magazine. That’s back down around more traditional artillery pieces that don’t include autoloaders.
It takes a lot of time to move significant numbers of big and heavy artillery rounds to the gun. There’s value in being able to fire quickly for a short period, though. Both the Archer and PzH 2000 fire quickly enough to be able to have multiple rounds land simultaneously by firing with different charges and trajectories. That means a lot of firepower delivered before the target has time to react and do things like dive for cover. Once the target gets to cover artillery becomes much less effective at producing casualties. How fast the initial rounds land matters more than the rate of fire at the gun for that.
The Archer and PzH 2000 fire fast enough to achieve simultaneous impact from a single gun in indirect mode. Simultaneous impact is constrained by the discrete options for the charges and the time even automated relaying of the gun takes. Firing faster without relaying would actually reduce firepower in that very short period where it’s most effective. Sometimes more is less.
This is the sort of thing the Germans must have had some kooky project for.
I doubt you’ll find anything close to a 155mm MFHMG; Even if it were attainable, it would require enough R&D that someone would figure that if you want as much metal downrange as fast as possible, you might as well use a multiple rocket launcher or bombs/missiles with cluster submunitions.
The 8 inch guns on the Newport News class of US heavy cruisers should probably be mentioned. Rates of fire, sustained, of 10 rounds per minute. Muzzle velocity much faster than a howitzer, in the 2500-2700 fps range. Maximum range of ~30,000 yards. 260-335 lbs shell weight, with a 21 pound bursting charge for the HE version.
Probably could do 50 percent or more again greater range with the use of rocket assisted projectiles or saboted projectiles.
Be interesting for someone like Poysyn to chime in, but I’m not sure a fire mission of greater than 10 rounds per gun would be feasible in a near-peer environment featuring counterbattery fire. Besides, as mentioned upthread, after the first couple of impacts, your targets are either dead or have found cover anyway.
My bold.
Cluster munitions is problematic for the majority of nations in the world. For them it’s a war crime. The Convention on Cluster Munitions prohibits their use, productions, stockpiling or transfer of cluster munitions. 120 nations have committed to it’s goals with 106 parties and 14 other signatories. There’s a map at that link of parties/signatories along with a link to a complete list.
If you want a big aircraft gun, you don’t want the Vulcan. You want the GAU-8 Avenger, mounted on the A10. It cranks out 70 rounds a second, each of them 30 mm.
You’re thinking of Stalin’s violin.
Additionally, artillery almost always is in a group. Why bother with one gun that fires fast but is complex and heavy when you can have a bunch of much simpler guns that can salvo fire? FWIW, Russia used to have a 57mm autocannon they used for AAA. ZSU-57/2.
"The guns have a recoil of between 325 and 370 mm. The individual weapons cannot be swapped from one side to the other as they are mirror images. Each air-cooled gun barrel is 4365 mm long (76.6 calibers) and is fitted with a muzzle brake. They can be elevated or depressed between −5° and +85° at a speed of between 0.3° and 20° per second, the turret can traverse 360° at a speed of between 0.2° and 36° per second. Drive is from a direct current electric motor and universal hydraulic speed gears (a manual mechanical drive is also provided in case of electrohydraulic failure; with the use of mechanical drive, elevation speed is 4.5° per second and the turret traverse speed is 4° per second).[3][16]
The guns firing together are capable of firing up to 210–240 fragmentation and armour-piercing tracer (AP-T) shells per minute, with a practical rate of fire of between 100 and 140 rounds per minute.[3] Muzzle velocity is 1,000 m/s. Each clip has 4 rounds, each of which weighs 6.6 kg; the charge in each round consists of 1.2 kg of 11/7 nitrocellulose powder, a projectile weighs 2.8 kg. Maximum horizontal range is 12 km (with an effective range against ground targets of up to 4 km / 2.5 miles. Maximum vertical range is 8.8 km with a maximum effective vertical range of 4.5 km / 14,750 ft). Fragmentation rounds have a safety-destructor which activates between 12 and 16 seconds after being fired to ensure the shells won’t fall back to ground, so the maximum slant range of anti-aircraft fire is 6.5–7 km.[16] BR-281 armour-piercing rounds are able to penetrate 110 mm armour at 500 m or 70 mm armour at 2,000 m (at 90° impact angle)"
Closest thing to this that I’ve seen was the Ontos, a light-armored track vehicle used by the Marines in Vietnam. It had six 106mm recoilless rifles mounted on it. While it was loaded manually, it was an ass-kicker.
You’re right, thank you.
Are there alternatives to cluster submunitions? How good are airburst and thermobaric weapons at covering a lot of area?
Do I remember correctly that some submunitions like guided ones aren’t as restricted? Is this still used? CBU-97 Sensor Fuzed Weapon - Wikipedia
I guess countries that signed the cluster munitions convention tend to take a more subtle approach than an autohowitzer.
How about mortars? It should be easier to make mortars fires fast than howitzers.
The best I can come up that kinda fits with OP is automatic grenade launchers which are a hybrid between machineguns and artillery.
Is there not a modern self-propelled gun (I think German) that can time the arrival of its projectiles to impact simultaneously by firing each on a different trajectory or using less propellant (in real time)? They are released in rapid sequence but arrive together, making quite an initial impact on the recipient.
I searched but could not find it.
Multiple Rounds Simultaneous Impact (MRSI).
CMC fnord!
Indeed!