Work on the creation of a multi-barreled machine gun began in the 40s of the twentieth century. This type of weapon, with high rates of fire and a high density of fire, was developed as a weapon for jet tactical fighters of the US Air Force.
The prototype for creating the first sample of the six-barreled M61 Vulcan was the German twelve barreled air gun Fokker-Leimberger, which is based on the design of the Gatling revolving-battery circuit. Using this scheme, a well-balanced design of a multi-barreled machine gun with a block of rotating barrels was created, and all the necessary operations were carried out in one turn of the block.
Volcano M61 was developed in 1949, and adopted by the Air Force of America in 1956. The first aircraft in the fuselage of which was mounted six-barrel machine gun M61 Vulcan, became the fighter-bomber F-105 "Thunderchief".
Features of the design of the gun M61 Volcano
M61 Vulcan is a six-barreled aircraft machine gun (gun) with air-cooled barrel and combat equipment with a cartridge of 20 x 102 mm with an electrocapsular type of ignition.
The ammunition supply system in a six-barreled Vulcan machine gun without linkage, from a cylindrical magazine the capacity of which is 1000 rounds. A machine gun with a magazine is connected by two conveyor feeds, in which the spent cartridges are returned back to the store using a return conveyor.
Conveyor belts are placed in elastic guide sleeves with a total length of 4.6 meters.
The entire array of cartridges in the store moves along its axis, but the central guiding rotor made in the form of a spiral rotates, with ammunition between the turns. When firing, two cartridges are synchronously extracted from the magazine, and on the opposite side, two spent cartridges are placed in it, which are then placed in the conveyor.
The firing mechanism has an external drive circuit with a power of 14.7 kW. This type of drive does not require the installation of a gas regulator and is not afraid of misfires.
The equipment of cartridges can be: caliber, fragmentation, armor-piercing incendiary, fragmentation incendiary, subcaliber.
Video: shooting a volcano machine gun
Aircraft suspension for gun M61
At the beginning of the 1960s, General Electric decided to create special suspension containers (suspended gun installations) to accommodate six-barrel 20-mm M61 Vulcan. It was supposed to use them for firing at ground targets with a range of not> 700 m, and equip them with subsonic and supersonic attack aircraft and fighters. In 1963-1964, the US Air Force received two variations of the PUF, the SUU-16 / A and the SUU-23 / A.
The design of the suspended gun installations of both models has the same overall dimensions of the hull (length - 5.05 m, diameter - 0.56 m) and unified 762-mm suspension units, allowing to install such a machine gun in the PUF on the most different models of combat aircraft. A characteristic difference in the installation of the SUU-23 / A is the presence of a visor above the receiver unit.
As a mechanical drive for PPU SUU-16 / A for unwinding and accelerating the barrel unit of the Vulcan machine gun, an aircraft turbine powered by an incoming air flow is used. Full ammunition consists of 1200 shells, the curb weight is 785 kg, the weight without equipment is 484 kg.
The drive of the SUU-23 / A installation for acceleration of the trunks is an electric starter, the ammunition consists of 1200 projectiles, the curb weight is 780 kg, the weight without equipment is 489 kg.
The machine gun in the outboard container is fixed and fixed motionless. An onboard fire correction system or a visual rifle scope is used as a sight when shooting. Extraction of spent cartridges when firing occurs outside, overboard installation.
Main tactical and technical characteristics of the Volcano M61
- The total length of the gun - 1875 mm.
- Barrel length - 1524 mm.
- The mass of the gun M61 Vulcan - 120 kg, with a set of supply system (without cartridges) - 190 kg.
- Rate of fire - 6000 shots / min. Were released copies of the rate of fire - 4000 shots / min.
- The initial speed of caliber / sub-caliber projectiles is 1030/1100 m / s.
- The muzzle capacity is 5.3 MW.
- Exit time to the maximum rate of fire - 0.2 - 0.3 seconds.
- Survivability - about 50 thousand shots.
The rapid-fire machine-gun Vulcan M61, currently installed on fighters - Eagle (F-15), Corsair (F-104, A-7D, F-105D), Tomket (F-14A, A- 7E), Phantom (F-4F).
