When I went through Aircraft Weapons Mechanic school at Lowry AFB in 1967, we were told that the M-39 cannon used in the F-100’s ( and later in the F-5A Freedom Fighters ) was an almost exact copy of a German design from WW2. Does anyone know which German A/C’s that gun was used? I still have most of the training manuals from that school including an illustrated parts breakdown of the M-39.
Here’s a shot of the IPB:
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I can’t get this thing to work. I’ll keep trying and put it in a later post on this thread.
Sounds like if it was a 20 mm it was probably used on just about every German plane that had a 20mm cannon, but of course I am not a gun expert and this is just an educated guess. Hope you find what your looking for.
The M-39 was a very unique design. Instead of a receiver/breech, it used a cylinder shaped exactly like a handgun’s except it was about 6 inches in diameter and held 5 rounds of 20mm. The cylinder would index with each firing and used the 6 o’clock position as the firing position. The gun was gas operated and had a firing rate of about 650 rds per minute. I’ve tried Google searches and different sites dedicated to German aircraft, but have seen no cannons even remotely resembling it. I’ve been toying with the idea of building a model of just the cannon at about 1/8th or 1’16th scale–maybe with a figure " working " on it in a Weapons Release Shop setting.
Hey Dogsbody:
Thanks a bunch for that link!!! It’s given me a lot more info for my files. I found a link there for an F-106 website that looks REAL good for some other research I want to do. Also, by cruising around on that site I found out the the F-101A had GUNS of all things, and one variant of the F-106 carried a M-61 Vulcan in place of the AIR-2 Genie. ( Although, I can’t imagine HOW the Vulcan would have been mounted, unless there was a telecoping arm that would drop down ?? ) I was a Weapons Crewmember on F-106’s in Minnesota back in 1970, and NEVER heard of or saw anything like that. Anyway, THANK YOU.
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