Sorry forgot to crop the photo - fixed
79,000 rpm/88 guns = 897.7 rpm/gun, but Wikipedia has the PPSh-41 rate of fire listed as 1250 rpm, which would make this 110,000 rpm.
But, that drum magazine only has 71 rounds, so you could get 110,000 rpm for about 3 seconds (71 rounds/1250 rpm = 0.057 min = 3.4 sec) … and then what? Fly back to base so you can swap out 88 individual drum magazines? And also do maintenace on any of the guns that jammed?
Some real redneck engineering energy.
It’s ww1 thinking. Aerial darts were fairly effective, not really damage wise but fear wise. They imagined the save idea but it doesn’t have the same effect since they aren’t that loud and visually don’t make a s much of an impact as seeing you homeboy suddenly turned into a gruesome pincushion.
Just for fun: Assuming they are firing perfectly staggered, 110,000 rpm at the top speed of 528km/h (1,833rps at 1,466m/s) gives us a dispersion of 1.25m/bullet. Not bad at all. If a person is standing in this line, there’s a 14.4% chance of being hit (18cm head diameter). If they were crouched or lying down it would be even higher, up to 100% if they were unfortunate enough to lie in the direction the plane is traveling.
Won’t this depend a lot on the altitude?
Also, if the plane is traveling at 1466 m/s it will cover 4984m in 3.4s. So that’s about 1.25 bullets for every linear meter of travel (6248 rounds), but we have to account for the width of the targeted area which would depend on the spread at the distance from the muzzle (dependent on the altitude). Let’s assume it’s a strip 5km long by 10m wide for simplicity… and we’re looking at like 1 bullet for every 8 square meters… that’s going to be mostly miss. If the infantry have any cover at all it’s going to be a very futile exercise.
You’d probably be better off dropping hand grenades out of the plane than dealing with that ridiculous contraption.
Also worth noting that flying low enough to be in effective range for the mounted firearms means that the plane will be in effective range for firearms… which is not really where you want to be in a bomber giant target. I wouldn’t want to fly this mission.
