Talk:MK 108 cannon

hydrostatic fuse

This explanation doesn't sound right. Is the one who wrote it sure he understands this fuse? David R. Ingham (talk) 22:43, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Ballistic

I'm going to remove the paragraph:

"Low muzzle velocity was the MK 108's main shortcoming, giving it a limited effective range, with a rapidly downward-curving trajectory in which the projectile dropped 41 m (135 ft) in the first 1,000 m (3,300 ft) of travel. The long time of flight of its projectile and the curved trajectory strongly reduced the usefulness of the MK 108 against maneuvering targets like fighters. It was designed for use against bombers, which could not maneuver due to the need to stay in formation. Even against these, attacks had to be pressed home to close range (often, at just 200–300 meters), which was particularly difficult for fast pioneering jet fighters like the Me 262A — armed with a quartet of MK 108s in the forward nose — in which the rate of closure was so rapid it was hard to get close enough to get off an effective volley without colliding with the target." - as it contains unsourced and incorrect assertions.

The German "Handbook for Aircraft ammunition" p. 38, list a projectile drop of about 90 ft (28 m) at 3300 ft (1005 m) for the Mk 108 (ground mount). However, the speed of an aircraft and the lower air density at high altitude will considerably affect the ballistic trajectory of a projectile, thus increasing accuracy. This can be illustrated well with the 37 mm M4 aircraft cannon as mounted on the P-63 Kingcobra, (source) whose has a slightly higher muzzle velocity (2000 ft/sec) but almost similar bullet drop.

Altidude	Range	Speed	Drop
0 ft	3,600 ft (1097 m)	0 mph	75 ft (23 m)
0 ft	3,600 ft (1097 m)	150 mph (240 kph)	60 ft (18 m)
0 ft	3,600 ft (1097 m)	300 mph (482 kph)	50 ft (15 m)
0 ft	3,600 ft (1097 m)	450 mph (725 kph)	40 ft (12 m)
15,000 ft (4572 m)	3,600 ft (1097 m)	150 mph (240 kph)	50 ft (15 m)
15,000 ft (4572 m)	3,600 ft (1097 m)	300 mph (482 kph)	40 ft (12 m)
15,000 ft (4572 m)	3,600 ft (1097 m)	450 mph (725 kph)	35 ft (10 m)

At a speed of 300 mph the bullet drop is reduced by 35% and at 400 mph, by more than 50%. The probability to hit a target is therefore greater at higher speed, than it is at lower speed, thus making claims like "which was particularly difficult for fast pioneering jet fighters like the Me 262A" unsustainable. Beenjin (talk) 11:38, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

The Bf 109 G-6/U4 MK 108 weapons manual (Beiheft 1) from 6/1944 shows a bullet drop of 3,35m at 400m and of 5,55m at 500m. --Denniss (talk) 15:03, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

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External links modified (January 2018)

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Empty cases

I've removed this line from the text because I don't believe for a moment that it is accurate: "Once they emerge the weapon cycles like other automatic guns,with one significant exception: instead of simply ejecting the spent cartridge case, the 108 reinserts it into the empty link in the ammunition belt." Perhaps there are variants of the MK 108 this is true with (although I cannot imagine why they would want the extra complexity, and it would be difficult to design two different versions of the gun), but it's certainly not true of the "standard" MK 108. If the MK 108 re-inserts spent cases into the ammo belt, how does one explain the prominent spent-case ejection chutes visible under the nose of the Me 262 (for starters)? There is one under the center nose of the Ta 152, and probably all the other aircraft that used this cannon. If any MK 108 had this feature, it was some version cooked up for the Me 163 rocket fighter or something, to deal with the difficulty of ejecting spent cases at high speeds. But the Me 262 did just fine ejeting them, and that never used any gun but the MK 108 in and real numbers. Reinserting spent cases causes more trouble than it's worth; you need a far mroe complex mechanism to do it, and you need a second magazine drum almost as large as the first just to store the now-empty belt and cases. Some planes would collect the empty CASES, but they never bothered with designing a gun that would REINSERT the spent cases into the (presumably non-disintegrarting) belt, both belt and cases requiring storage space both before and after the gun. Disintegrating belts were adopted very rapidly because they were found to be far superior to fixed belts in aircraft and grond appilcations. Why would they regress back to fixed belts and design a gun twice as complex as it needs to be just so it could store the empty cases nice and tidy back in the belt? Not when it was so simple just to NOT do so. Only guns that I know of that even come close to this (besides the US's post-war Gatling types when they use linkless-feed tracks) are the large 37mm and 50mm US and German aircraft guns with "loop" style magazines. IIRC they stowed their emtpies back intp the loop, but that's a whole different story. Idumea47b (talk) 09:12, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

WP:OR. What do the sources say? Now it's likely that there were several variants of the Mk 108 (we know there were) and the feed mechanism may have differed between models and applications. Feeds that replace the empty case into the belt (or tray) were not unusual, especially for early LMGs, because in many ways it's an easier mechanism (the feed mechanism is moving back to the belt axis for its next round). It is very well sourced that the Mk 108 replaced the empties for at least some of its variants. Now if you can source that some of them didn't, then clarify that. But otherwise I'm restoring this section. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:24, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Empty cases are placed back into the belt during the firing operation - all MK 108 would do this (weapons manual). Ejection slots may indicate some kind of disintegrating belt. --Denniss (talk) 11:36, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Rate of Fire “MK108A” source?

Under ‘Quick Facts>Specifications>Rate of Fire’, there’s a detail that says a variant called “MK108A” is faster firing, and has a link to Canada after it (implying that it was used by Canada at some point). However, no reference tag for an accompanying source is provided. Anyone know what’s up with that? Ladolego (talk) 18:27, 28 December 2022 (UTC)