I'm getting the hang of this slide scanning now...Here is a short Venom re-arming sequence which shows the tough job the armourers did on this aircraft.
The 20mm ammo is belted 2 and 2...That is 2 High Explosive then 2 Semi Armour Piercing Incendiary.
The HE rounds have the red and yellow heads and the SAPI rounds have the red with white tips.
Well I guess I brewed up a couple of things with those...One was a Spitfire and the other was a Meteor 7 which I shared with one of the other chaps!!!
Actually, I'm not joking...but they were on the ground and at the time they were worthless :crying:
Wow you had 20mm belt feed ammo, whilst on the RFA OLNA i had the wonderful job of reloading the 20mm guns. first lay down blanket, then open ammo box's. take out two of those one of those and three of those. lay on blanket, then get case and pot of grease.
then cover each and every round with grease and load with wooden finger into the ammo case. once four case's complete pack equipment away and off to the gun. five mins later come back and start again.
RFA Olwen first ship 36,000 ton tanker
RFA Fort Grange Ammo,supply ship
RFA Tidespring tanker, last trip for this one, she went for scrap after i paid off.
RFA Regent ammo supply ship
RFA Sir Galahad landing ship
RFA Gold Rover small fleet tanker
RFA Olna tanker
RFA Fort Victoria supply ship
RFA Sir Percivale Landing ship. my last ship
medical discharge, surgion made a pig's ear of an operation onboard. nearly cost me my left leg due to infection.
david balmer wrote:Wow you had 20mm belt feed ammo, whilst on the RFA OLNA i had the wonderful job of reloading the 20mm guns. first lay down blanket, then open ammo box's. take out two of those one of those and three of those. lay on blanket, then get case and pot of grease.
then cover each and every round with grease and load with wooden finger into the ammo case. once four case's complete pack equipment away and off to the gun. five mins later come back and start again.
David,
If you look at that first picture, you will see the refuelling hose passing in front of a BFM (Belt Feed Mechanism) lying on the ground...You can see a section of belt feeding into it and a round in the "Lips" ready for the breach block to ram it home into the chamber. The "Chute" sticking out from the top, feeds the links out. Each of the four cannons will have a BFM fitted to it and the belt from it will be linked to the rest of its belt, up in the "Ammo Tanks". The second shot shows the chaps feeding a belt into the starboard ammo tank...There is a tank for two belts on each side of the aircraft. You can also see under the starboard wing, in that second picture, the front end of two RP (Rocket Projectile) rails. We could carry eight 60 pounder rockets with HE heads or Hollow Charge heads for tank busting. The 20mm ammo capacity was 1200 rounds...That's 300 rounds per gun and at 10 rounds per second per gun that was enough for 30 seconds firing. This was in contrast to the Hunter with its gunpack of four 30 mm Aden revolver cannons, which fired at double that rate...so from that pack would emerge 80 HE 30mm rounds per second with huge destructive power. However, with only a 600 round max load, you only got 7 seconds firing time. :think:
I don't want to drag this off topic (in case Toby tick's me off again!!) but I've operated with all of those with the exception of the 'Sir's' and Fort Victoria. I know ALL of them with the exception of Fort Victoria :think:
Our lot used to quake at the thought of going into Haslar due to the fact that it was likely you'd come out worse than when you went in!! :-$
Every three months i would go infront of the donkeyman ( CPO Mech ) and have my appraisal. i would always ask for the basket weaving course at hasler
they never had any sence of fun, after that i was sent down to the falklands for four months. :yipeee:
peter i look forward to see more of your military photo's, i realy dig those empire builder shorts. reminds me of my whites and blues, just before we tied up in charleston SC. by the time we finished no one had whites left, black and muddy was the order.
Superb pics!