Bore-Sighting Your Mustang

How about an 8 gun mag dump!! Wish I could find the video that clip is from.

On the History channel, there was a documentary of the recovery of "Glacier Girl" the P-38 buried under the ice. I was pretty fascinated with the show. I think it was more of how the crew had to overcome so many problems. Once the ice melter achieved it's elevation, they had a water like cannon that hollowed out a cavern and this would freeze in the evenings. They removed the guns from the P-38 in which they raised to the surface. Those guns still fired off all these years later. Absolutely amazing. While not related, I was present a few years ago when they welded the restored anti-aircraft gun back onto the USS New Jersey. I was on the 19th floor across the river on Pearl Harbor Day. The guns were to fire at noon. I can't exactly tell how far away I was as it was a fair distance. In addition, the city is just noisy. I alerted many that the guns were to be fired. We gathered around the windows and everyone was asking if they fired. I saw the puffs of smoke and that seemed to be about it. Then I could hear it and feel it in the air all that distance. It was a thunderous repeated roar. Just too cool. If they would only shoot the 16" guns that would be the coolest. I think that would take out windows though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiEubQV4aRQ

Ken Cook wrote:The guns were to fire at noon. I can't exactly tell how far away I was as it was a fair distance. In addition, the city is just noisy. I alerted many that the guns were to be fired. We gathered around the windows and everyone was asking if they fired. I saw the puffs of smoke and that seemed to be about it. Then I could hear it and feel it in the air all that distance. It was a thunderous repeated roar. Just too cool. If they would only shoot the 16" guns that would be the coolest. I think that would take out windows though.

Enjoyed watching the video link you provided, Ken. The narrator states that it takes 3 hours of cleaning and preventative maintenance for these guns. During WW2, it was the sailor who maintained them. Then, people weren't afraid of hard work and just did it, which paid off when these were needed.

The wing mounted aircraft guns are interesting how they would zero them to converge at a particular distance, which I imagine was through a combination of experience and intuition on the distance where the pilot would best hit an enemy aircraft.

The jet age did away with machine guns, read a story about a test pilot who fired a burst from one of the early jets in a dive, exceeded the bullets' velocity and shot up his airplane when he pulled out from the dive. From then on it was cannons and rockets.