Flying Guns: China Lake

[HAZORD]

Lately I've been rumaging around the internet researching a subset of U.S. air-dropped weapons, as I have always had a passion for bombs. Well, anything that goes bang actually, but bombs on this search. Internet search engines are amazing these days, and tend to find all sorts of amazing things.

China Lake Naval Weapons Center is located in Northern California, a huge desert area, were all types of bizarre and innovative weapons have been tested through the years, along with spacecraft, and other fun things. They built a museum a few years back, and have also deposited a large number of photos from their testing since 1946 into an archive on the Internet. Being a very visual person, the photos caught my eye, and yielded up the following which also caught my interest.

The photo names reveal the year that they were taken. Apparently, fom 1970 through 1974, research was done on the firing of recoilless weapons from propeller driven aircraft. An OV-10 Bronco was tested with both a Davis gun, centerline under the fuselage, and a 106mm Recoilless Rifle, and a P51 Mustang is shown with a 106RR on each wing tip. I'm theorizing that the Davis gun was a 6 Pdr or 9 Pdr caliber, by the size of the gun in the photos. Most of the photos show the OV-10 and a P51 mustang suspended from a crane, evidently to test pitch and yaw affects of the guns on the aircraft. The crown jewel of the batch, is the 106RR being fired from a flying P51. Unfortunately, the only information about the projects, are the notes on the photos, and the photos are small. 106mm Recoilless ammo has a muzzel velocity of approximately 1650 fps.

As an addendum, you might be asking yourselves how the Navy came up with Davis Gun ammo from the 1920s, to shoot in the 1970s. In ammo collector circles in the U.S., tales are told of WWI ammo still filling the countless bunkers scattered all over the U.S. Proof of this, is that our troops fighting in the Gulf right now, are being issued WWII loaded .50 cal ammo, that has been pulled from storage and relinked, the ammo in most cases is 3 times older than the troops that are firing it. Enjoy!

John

 

[SG500]

Interesting stuff John, thanks for posting it all. Makes you wonder if they ever tried out any of the German SG 500's.
Dave.

 

[Weasel]

Hi Hazord,
Nice find on the pictures, that what happens when you go searching for something you always get side tracked and end up finding something else interesting. Thanks for posting them.
As to the testing of other flying weapons like the SG500 i would imagine that most if not all of the equipment captured and taken back to the US post 45 was tested out and played around with, i have never seen a reference to it or seen a pics.
Best regards Weasel.

 

[US-Subs]

Much of it is still around, though difficult to find. Many pieces were tested in areas like Wright Patterson AFB (WP). In the years afterwards much of it was donated to the AIr Force Museum, they in turn let some of it go to other museums.

A lot can only be found in the museum storage areas, where it is lost from view. WP doesn't let anyone into theirs, but with special permission Aberdeen and the Smithsonian do. I've seen some very cool pieces in the Smithsonian storage area, much of which came from WP. I don't understand much of the history of the AC stuff, they have some very unique pieces. Even much of the ordnance can be a struggle.

Unfortunately some of it was not well documented at WP, then even more of the history was lost when it was moved to the Smith. Researching Japanese bombs I find many Italian and Russian pieces that are mis-marked, labelled as Japanese. This is on the original tags from the Air Force.

 

[HAZORD]

Unfortunately, that is what happens with most collections whenever a government agency takes over. It gets locked behind doors where no one can see it, stolen and sold off by nefarious individuals, and dislocated from its documentation.

 

[US-Subs]

Nearly all of the museums will work with you once you are able to identify that you are doing legitimate research. Based upon their manning and availability they will work with you, schedule time and open their doors to assist. With a little pre-research you can find where the stuff is and work out a schedule. Sometimes it takes a long time, but it can be worth it.

The US Air Force Museum (Wright-Patterson) is the only place I've found that flat out refuses to work with independent researchers. This "policy" seems to have been implemented when the current folks moved into their positions, about 12-13 years ago. Admittedly they have a lot of requests, aircraft get a lot of interest, but I think that in this case some government employees have forgotten who they work for.