Lancaster machine guns

[Walter Lindekens]

Hi all,

 

I've studied the .303 Browning in some detail and I've never come across any photo or documentation mentioning round cooling holes.    To my knowledge the round cooling holes are only found on the US .30 ANM2 (from which the British Browning was developed) whereas the elongated cooling slots typify the British gun.    Note that the bit with the cooling slots is officially known as the barrel casing and that this is swaged into the gun body and as per the manual should not be removed on unit level.   The barrel itself is removed for cleaning from the back of the gun.     Also, the .303 Browning barrel casing is tapered whereas the US version appears to be straight.

 

 

Cheers,

Walter

 

[Simon Cornes]

I had no idea the British .303 had a tapered casing, I thought it was parallel sided? You live and learn!!

[dogsbody]

This image is from member @Carl V ( author Carl Vincent ). You can see the difference in the cartridge shape.

 

 

 

 

 

Chris

[Simon Cornes]

9 hours ago, dogsbody said:

This image is from member @Carl V ( author Carl Vincent ). You can see the difference in the cartridge shape.

 

 

 

 

 

Chris

I think Walter was saying that the barrel casing tapers, not the round but I must admit that I though that the American and British round were essentially the same, clearly not though.

Simon 

[Giorgio N]

The British .303 Browning was based on the Colt MG40, a derivative of the M1917 optimized for aircraft use (mainly higher rate of fire and lower weight).

The MG40 was offered in a number of calibres, including of course the standard US .30-06 and a number of Mauser designed cartridges that were used in various parts of the world.

MG40s seem to have had both oval and round holes in the barrel jacket (that Colt does indeed call casing), with oval holes present at the very beginning, that may be the reason why British guns had this feature. Regarding the tapering barrel jacket, only British guns seem to have had this.

The US military AN/M2, itself a military variant of the MG40, of course feature round holes and a straight sided barrel jacket.

 

Cartridge cases: of course the British and US ammunition was very different, different calibre, different case shape... the British round was older and it shows in many respects (particularly the rimmed case). The British round was also more prone to cooking-off (that is a round shooting because of the heat) and this led to a different mechanism in the British MG40 derived guns, that fired from open bolt to improve cooling. Not that this would make any difference from a modeller point of view of course since modifications were internal...

[dogsbody]

Somewhat of a drift from the main topic, but @Carl V thought this may be of interest.

 

When the Curtiss H-81 Tomahawks first arrived in England, they were armed with US .30 wing guns that only had two types of ammunition, ball and tracer. 

The British replaced the inner gun with their .303 guns that had a larger variety of ammo.

 

" Many people are not aware of the fact that in late 1941 most or all of the RAF’s Tomahawks had their inboard wing .30's replaced by .303's. The attached photo shows the port wing guns of Tomahawk  AH903 RU.Z of 414 Squadron, RCAF being loaded, giving quite good views of both the barrels and the different ammunition. "

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chris, for Carl

[Giorgio N]

Nice picture ! Notice how the US gun also features oval holes in the barrel jacket, wonder if it's a commercial MG40 rather than a military AN/M2.

The different muzzles are also interesting, the British one being distinctively shaped

[Walter Lindekens]

Just came across these two very informative video's on the .303 Browning:

 

https://youtu.be/cCkvyjGQ2xg

 

https://youtu.be/jqq3Jf3Jpxo?t=1

 

Cheers,

 

Walter