Example of an A+A Dolphin !

[flash]

Having just got a Dolphin for m'birthday I had a poke around for some pics & came across this in an old (Oct 1971) Military modelling Magazine.
No 87 Sqn RAF - "This tail shot of Dolphin 'I' showing the interesting mounting arrangement for the Lewis guns on the lower wing":



You couldn't reload them in flight of course but they would give someone a nasty fright on first contact !!
Sadly no further info on this or how successful it was, I suspect it was the pilot (Lt Sales, if the article is accurate) trying something out.

[Zoe Brain]

Here's another shot, of N.



This appears to be common practice in 87 sqdrn.

[Attila57]

Another shot of Z

79 Squadron, in France (from this web site with an article on Capt. Gillet aka Gillet 'Razors' http://www.dieselpunks.org/profiles/...he-air-francis)

Attachment 33832

[gully_raker]

Yes I had heard of that but I am just going to add one Lewis to the Pylon on the RHS as seems to be the most widely utilised if indeed they did not remove both Lewis's from the Pylon. ( Hope colinwe can get the printing fixed otherwise more "kit bashing"!)

[Flying Officer Kyte]

Could be handy in reserve, for that moment when you had run out of ammo in your cockpit guns and had to make a run for the lines.
Rob.

[Chris Maes]

Hello,

I had recently read an article (wish I new where from...) on the internet, that explained the wing guns mounted by 79 Squadron. Apparently, they were loaded exclusively with incendiary ammunition because of some problem firing that type of ammo with the Vickers, and they would fire one set of guns or the other, but rarely (if ever) both sets at once (recoil?). Does this make sense to anyone why a synchronized Vickers MG would have problems with incendiary ammo, but an un-synchronized Lewis would not? Perhaps because the Vickers is belt-fed and the Lewis is drum-fed?

Chris Maes

[Zoe Brain]

Does this make sense to anyone why a synchronized Vickers MG would have problems with incendiary ammo, but an un-synchronized Lewis would not?

The Vickers mechanism ceases fire with a cartridge still in the breech. The Lewis ceases fire with an empty breech. Having explosive or incendiary ammunition in a very hot part of a gun "cooking" for several seconds is a Bad Idea(tm). Buckingham and Bock/Pommeroy ammunition was unsafe when fired from a .303 Vickers. The risk could be reduced, but not eliminated, by having several ball rounds between each incendiary or explosive round, thereby lowering the odds that a "special" would be left in the breech to cook-off. Another method was to have the "specials" in only the first 20-30 rounds in the belt, and require that the first burst be long enough to expend them all.

In the 13mm Vickers, the breech didn't get hot enough to set off the lower-velocity reduced-charge incendiary bullets, and this is the route the French took.

One of the reasons why the Vickers+Lewis combination persisted in the RNAS and later RAF was so that incendiary and explosive rounds could fill the 97-round Lewis guns.

[Rat of Vengence]

That explains it. I always wondered why have 1 of each. I just thought it was to have the Lewis on the more 'flexible' Foster mount, but they did this before those mounts were created too.

Dave

[flash]

Take it they used the incendiary for balloon busting ? Would they then load ball ammo in the Lewis if they were not balloon busting or just dismount the Lewis guns to save weight ? Yeah - I'm still looking for a reason to have an A+A firing Dolphin !!