Loading a New Belt onto a Belt-Fed MG

[Flying10uk]

Was there never a need to change the barrels on the air versions of the Browning 50 cal MG as used on B17 and other aircraft? I've never heard of the barrels being changed on air versions. Was the airflow, in flight, over the barrel sufficient to cool it?

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[browningautorifle]

As for the .50 with the quick-change barrel

Ours were painful too, old guns with new parts. The FN guns worked great and everyone thought we could do the same. They had new made guns with FN made ammo specially produced for the job. We had neither. As soon as they took my headspace and timing gauges, we were hooped.

change the barrels on the air versions of the Browning 50 cal MG

Those guns only had a limited amount of ammo when they went up and would never exceed the guns capabilities while in flight. No ammo resupply, like us on the ground. We could just keep bringing ammo until the gun melts. Up there they only had a few hundred per gun or a thousand...not very much. The barrel was new on takeoff and gun would be completely overhauled upon landing. No barrel changes needed. The internals of the guns were a bit different too. Some of the externals differed as well.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

And it gets downright chilly at 20-plus thousand feet in an um-pressurized aircraft. Five hundred rounds of the big Fifty, fired in controlled bursts in such drafty conditions is not likely to cause issues of metallurgical failure in such circumstances.

At sea-level, assaulting Tarawa in the tropics? Who cares about barrel-life?

The LVT 4 carried a 20mm Polsten with a drum feed and a couple of . 30 cal BMGs. If they survived the crossing of the coral shelf and the drive up the beach, it was a miracle of sorts.

[browningautorifle]

fired in controlled bursts

They had to be controlled in the aircraft as there was no resupply coming.

[CINDERS]

when they went up

I think they had a different rate of fire for the air mounted 50 BMG weapons as the footage I've seen on them operating with ground troops the cyclic rate of the air ones seems allot higher.