Four Fun Facts about the Oerlikon 20mm Antiaircraft Cannon!

[Vincent]

Information

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[browningautorifle]

Love the way he goes on glibly about an idiot shooting through the muzzle cover...he's never had someone shooting at him to see how excited and hasty things get. During Pearl Harbor many deck guns were fired with muzzle covers, nothing more happened than having them disintegrate.

So Vincent...looking to add one to the collection?

[Peter Laidler]

Same as the 120mm tank and BAT bore/muzzle alignment gauge. You just don't see it again unless you want to walk downrange for about 200 yards and start picking up the bits

[Vincent]

Just looking, Jim. The online RIA catalog has some nice high detail pictures. Click on “Full Screen” and have a look. I am too old to be messing with an Oerlikon.

[browningautorifle]

I am too old to be messing with an Oerlikon.

I'm not sure that's possible...

[Peter Laidler]

Surely the 20mm Oerlikon would have had safety fuzed projectiles. Not necessarily for the case of the ice blocked muzzle cover scenario but dropping the rounds while loading the drums, rounds falling off tables into deck wells, into the turrets of vehicles while sat around loading. Or what about dropping a loaded drum face down? Nope....... Safe impact fuzes I say. What say the ammo collectors

[old tanker]

For what it's worth, here is some info for WW2 era ammunition:

20mm Oerlikon

"The fuse is not equipped with any bore-safe feature, and will act whenever the closing disc is displaced into the fuse with suffi*cient force."

http://pdf.textfiles.com/manuals/MIL...april_1994.pdf

TM 43-0001-27 ARMY AMMUNITION DATA SHEETS, chapter 14 covers 20mm ammo.
The M139 was a built under license Hispano Suiza 20mm cannon that had a long and unhappy life in the US Army on the M114A1. Glad I was not a Scout along the inter German border in those days, but fuzes were mostly bore safe by then.

[Woodsy]

The RNZN sold off their 20mm Oerlikons to local collectors a few years ago. Some were on the full naval mount and the rest just bare guns. A naval mount gun sold at auction last weekend for NZ$15,000. I have a bare gun with magazine and loading tools jammed in a corner of my room. It is a great heavy monstrosity of a thing that I will get rid of shortly!

[browningautorifle]

http://pdf.textfiles.com/manuals/MIL...april_1994.pdf

That PDF shows 20 mm ammo that isn't for the Oerlikon cannon. It's the newer ammo instead, nothing like Oerlikon.

[old tanker]

Yes, that is later US stuff. Mostly boresafe by then I included it as a comparison to the WW2 Navy info above it.