Corsairs lack of gun heaters on Carrier Franklin 45

[elephantshampoo]

Excerpt from Above & Beyond. Marine Combat in WW 2

Page 167; The day after our arrival, Trigger Long took a launch and visited out ship in order to apprise us of our problems with the 50 caliber guns installed in the Corsairs. In essence, he said that all oil had to be wiped from the machine guns because the gun heaters had been removed, ( Naval gun factory had come up with gun heaters, but they were declared inefficient, so the project was dropped). At high altitudes the oil would freeze and the guns would not fire.

Warrant officer Onasta experimented with a solution of wing and prop deicing fluid mixed with Sperm whale oil & applied this to the guns. The concoction was an improvement, but not a permanent fix.


Makes one wonder what they did 1940 on through 44.

Anyway, I figured with this being a Pacific topic, it might more of interest here. The author made several uncomplimentary remarks about the Wildcat, but positive comments re the P-400 & Corsair.

www.amazon.com/Above-Beyond-Charles-Patrick-Weiland/dp/0743479823

[Dave Homewood]

Interesting. I have never heard problems with the RNZAF Corsair guns freezing up. I wonder what the RNZAF did.

[baz62]

Possibly the issue was sorted by the time we got our Corsairs (March 1944). I wonder what altitudes we operated at since we were doing a lot of ground attack. As the Japanese air threat was a lot lower perhaps there was less operational use of our guns at altitude compared with US units earlier in the war.

[davidd]

Freezing up of various technical items at higher altitudes or in northern climes (or anywhere that ice forms) had long been a major problem in aviation, and gun freezing was just one of them. Some gun heaters were electrical, others used hot air obtained from various sources, and special low temperature greases and oils were developed, as well as sparing application of same to a minimum. So far as I know the RNZAF never reported any serious problems with gun lubricants freezing, probably because our aircraft rarely flew much above 10 - 15,000 feet. F4Us were of course capable of getting to 40,000 at a pinch, but this capability was rarely exploited, and quite frankly was operationally hardly ever required. Our P-40s and F4Us were the only aircraft used by RNZAF in WW2 which ever went above 20,000 feet on operations and this was mainly between April 1943 and March 1944, when the opposition fielded a capable interception force. Such capability was also useful to counter the few remaining Dinah reconnaissance aircraft (Army Type 100 Command recce a/c) which were based at Rabaul until the end of the war, but their sorties were few and far between. I would imagine that 97% of all ammunition fired by RNZAF aircraft in Pacific theatre was fired against ground targets. There were plenty of other technical issues which afflicted wartime aircraft to keep the groundstaff busy, with coral dust being a serious, but unavoidable one (reducing life of parts of engines, props, and parts of hydraulic systems), damaged Marston matting on runways, troublesome bomb releases, and endless modifications to be incorporated, plus ingress of rain water into structures which eventually caused trouble, as with the all-wood ailerons fitted to Corsairs. The early ammunition supplied to RNZAF by the Americans at Guadalcanal from April 1943 was of very inferior quality (much having been manufactured in WW1 to much lower standards) and was a cause of great dismay in early operations, when most guns failed to fire after a few rounds. This was cured by careful inspection of individual rounds for signs of weakness, and ceased altogether when more modern ammunition finally displaced the faulty stuff.
David D

[Dave Homewood]

The ammunition issued in 1942 to RNZAF Hudsons in New Caledonia and Santo was equally as old and unreliable, causing many jams.

[elephantshampoo]

He mentions it a couple more times at end of book off Okimawa,( also said he thought both the gun heaters & oil were necessary to have the guns function right, not happy at the heaters being deleted), but I would agree the closer to Japan one gets, the more noticeable the problem would be, naturally as it gets colder. He also mentioned interrupter gear problems with SBD Dauntless divebombers where the guns would shoot a hole in the prop, a clever chap from Montana worked out a way to fix it with lead, which saved the otherwise thrown away prop blade. Some staff pukes stateside visited Guadalcanal & said it was against official procedure, the pilots told em to take a hike.

Other interesting details about Guadalcanal were a Catalina flying boat being fitted out with 2 torpedoes, the pilot sunk a Japanese transport & did get shot up a bit on the way home, but landed in one piece.

He made a deal with a P-400 army pilot that if he could fly his plane, the other guy could fly his, he said the tricycle landing gear was weird the 1st time you took off, but visibility was fantastic, cockpit felt snug & maneuverability was good. The Army pilot barely made a safe landing & he didn't say what he said about the Wildcat.

It does make one re-think the wisdom of wing mounted guns vs cowl mounted as these would stay warm from the motor & likely have less freezing issues.

[elephantshampoo]

Oct 20, 2014 10:30:08 GMT 12 elephantshampoo said:

He mentions it a couple more times at end of book off Okimawa,( also said he thought both the gun heaters & oil were necessary to have the guns function right, not happy at the heaters being deleted), but I would agree the closer to Japan one gets, the more noticeable the problem would be, naturally as it gets colder. He also mentioned interrupter gear problems with SBD Dauntless divebombers where the guns would shoot a hole in the prop, a clever chap from Montana worked out a way to fix it with lead, which saved the otherwise thrown away prop blade. Some staff pukes stateside visited Guadalcanal & said it was against official procedure, the pilots told em to take a hike.

Other interesting details about Guadalcanal were a Catalina flying boat being fitted out with 2 torpedoes, the pilot sunk a Japanese transport & did get shot up a bit on the way home, but landed in one piece.

He made a deal with a P-400 army pilot that if he could fly his plane, the other guy could fly his, he said the tricycle landing gear was weird the 1st time you took off, but visibility was fantastic, cockpit felt snug & maneuverability was good. The Army pilot barely made a safe landing & he didn't say what he said about the Wildcat.

It does make one re-think the wisdom of wing mounted guns vs cowl mounted as these, ( centrally mounted), would stay warm from the motor & likely have less freezing issues.

[elephantshampoo]

Here's a bit more about the Franklin from another source...

Early the next day, which was the fateful date of March 19, 1945, our air scouts reported seeing the battleship Yamamoto, the largest warship in the world, and the carrier Amagi in Kobe Harbor. Some Corsairs were hurriedly outfitted with armor-busting Tiny Tim rockets to attack the Yamamoto and the Amagi. As the flights lifted off, there was time at last for chow. The breakfast queue of weary crew snaked from the galley up a ladder to the open door at the hangar deck, just under the flight deck. It wound around and among the battle-primed aircraft, waiting ordnance and refueling lines. Messmen slapped powdered eggs, toast, apples, tomato juice and coffee on the steel trays for the exhausted crew.

On the flight deck, just below on the hangar deck, waited scores of our fighters, bombers and torpedo planes armed with bombs, rockets and bullets, and fat with high-octane aviation fuel.

Suddenly, a single Japanese Judy dive bomber screamed out of a low winter cloud and sped for our ship. The Judy, as we called this Japanese aircraft, had shaken one of our Hellcats that tried to stop her-though our pilot had shot his machine guns empty trying to knock the Judy down. Too late, then our 40 millimeter anti-aircraft guns on the carriers bow began throwing flack at the intruder. The Judy reached its release point and dropped one 500 pound bomb on the flight deck of the Franklin, then returned a second time dropping another near the first. The flagship of Task Force 58 became the anteroom of Hell! The Judy intruder had been spotted by Franklin’s Combat Information Center orbiting on port beam about twelve miles out from the
ship, but lost the attacker in the clutter of launching our own planes.

The first bomb struck the flight deck on the centerline at 7:06 am, and ripped below, igniting gasoline and ordnance in a flash of flame and concussion. It incinerated some men where they stood in chow line and blasted others out the hangar doors into the sea. The thirty-two ton forward aircraft elevator blew into the air and fell back onto the holocaust. The blast drove the 21,000 ton ship out of the water and whipped her to the right. She began to settle into a thirteen degree starboard list. Steel floors and bulkheads buckled, crushing men between them. Steel pipes burst, spilling most of the ship’s 230,000 gallons of high-octane fuel and 7,000 more gallons of boiler fuel oil.
www.ussfranklin.org/?cat=4


The author mentioned the Judy's bombs were not what did the most damage to the Franklin, rather it was the Tiny Tim 10 foot rockets going off that did most of it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_Tim_(rocket)