A BIT OF HISTORY B-17 LITTLE UNKNOW FACTS ABOUT THE FIGHTS IN THE SKY ARMAMENT: Thirteen Browning M-2 .50 caliber machine guns. Fire rate approximately 13 rounds per second. No gun on a B-17 carried more than one minute’s supply of ammunition. North American P-51 Mustang Armed with six .50 caliber (12.7mm) M-2 browning machine guns AN/M3, GAU-21/A, and M3P During World War II, a faster-firing Browning was developed for aircraft use. The AN/M3 features a mechanical or electrically boosted feed mechanism to increase the rate of fire to around 1,200 rounds per minute. So you wonder how they did it? It just might be like this. So you jump into you Mustang airplanes to give the bomber group some support as they fly to Berlin. The bomber group had left ahead of you but you will join them before they get into to much trouble. The thing that worries you the most, is how do I use my ten seconds of firepower I have on the machine guns. The plane is armed with six 50-caliber M2 Browning machine guns. Yes I have a lot of firepower but I have to use it wisely as ten seconds is not much time. I only have a total of ten seconds of firepower and then I’m out of ammunition. I will try to hold my excitement and high in so that I will shoot in short burst and not use up all the ammunition to fast. They told me I would fire thirteen to twenty rounds for each second I hold the trigger down depending on which model of Browning I have. It does not sound like much but with six machines it will spit out 120 rounds at the enemy plane when I fire for one second. Yes all fighters had this same problem on the 600 hundred-mile flight to Berlin one way. You had to use you ammunition wisely or you were in big trouble and soon out of ammunitions. If you had any ammunition left on the return trip you might be able to strafe a enemy train or truck convoy. If you were out of ammunition you had to hightail it home and hope you didn't run into a enemy plane on the way. Or you could stick around diving at the enemy hoping to fake them out so they run. The same would go for the B-17 bombers with there 8 machine guns. Only the bombers could carry more ammunition. Each gunner had almost 60 seconds of fire power. With a enemy plane diving into your plane to wipe you out of the sky, you had to hold you adrenaline in so that you didn't us all of the ammunition, but then you didn't want to get shot down out of the sky. You also didn't want him to hit your plane engines, or the bombs you carried, or the fuel or any of your mates aboard the plane. Oh yes you can use up your ammunition real fast. Flying all that way and you could only shoot at the other planes for 10 or 60 seconds. Wow they sure hard it hard. It's a wonder how so many made it back home at all. gusski
So Mustang had only 10 seconds of ammunition to use? Where did you get the information from? It surely sound like the plane would be a sitting duck in just 10 seconds. B-17 had 60 seconds of ammunition? If that information is accurate, then there is not much they can do if they don't get the enemy fighter came at them on the 4th or 5th run. All the movies and even real videos shot during WWII battles sure looked like those planes had more ammunition than mere seconds. I remember in one real battle scenario, one B-17 was cornered by over 30 Zeros. At least that's what the History Channel said. It took multiple hits but was able to down 3~4 Zeros and forced the remaining to stay out of the range before they safely returned. If they had only 60 seconds of ammo in each of their machine guns, then I very much doubt they could do what was said.
Even in today's battlefield, pilots are taught to do very short bursts to save ammo. It's a complete waste to simply spray ammo all over the place. While the P-51 had 6 50 caliber guns, ammo would go quick. They really had to conserve it. Even with the boom back home in America and industrialization getting us out of the Great Depression, we had to make sure we conserved ammo. You can't pull over in the middle of a fight and reload.
