- First there was this gun .....
-
-
-
-
- It was developed by General Electric, the "We bring
good things to life" people. It's one of the modern-day Gatling guns.
It shoots very big bullets. It shoots them very quickly.
-
- Someone said, "Let's put it in an airplane."
-
- Someone else said, "Better still, let's build an
airplane around it."
-
-
-
-
- So they did.
- And "they" were the Fairchild-Republic airplane
people.
-
-
- They had done such a good job with an airplane they developed
-
- back in WWII ...
-
- ...called the P-47 Thunderbolt, they decided to call
it the A10 Thunderbolt.
-
- They made it so it was very good at flying low and slow
and shooting things with that fabulous gun.
-
- But since it did fly low and slow, they made it bulletproof,
or almost so. A lot of bad guys have found you can shoot an A10 with anything
from a pistol to a 23mm Soviet cannon and it just keeps on flying and shooting.
-
- When they got through, it looked like this ...
-
-
-
-
-
- It's not sleek and sexy like an F18 or the stealthy Raptors
and such, but I think it's such a great airplane because it does what it
does better than any other plane in the world.
-
- It kills tanks.
-
- Not only tanks, as Sadam Hussein's boys found out to
their horror, but armored personnel carriers, radar stations, locomotives,
bunkers, fuel depots... just about anything the bad guys thought was bulletproof
turned out to be easy pickings for this beast.
-
-
-
-
-
- See those engines. One of them alone will fly this puppy.
The pilot sits in a very thick titanium alloy "bathtub."
-
- That's typical of the design.
-
- They were smart enough to make every part the same whether
mounted on the left side or right side of the plane, like landing gear,
for instance.
-
- Because the engines are mounted so high (away from ground
debris) and the landing gear uses such low pressure tires, it can operate
from a damaged airport, interstate highway, plowed field, or dirt road.
-
- Everything is redundant. They have two of almost everything.
Sometimes they have three of something. Like flight controls. There's triple
redundancy of those, and even if there is a total failure of the double
hydraulic system, there is a set of manual flying controls.
-
-
-
-
-
- Capt. Kim Campbell sustained this damage over Bagdad
and flew for another hour before returning to base. But, back to that gun
.....
-
- It's so hard to grasp just how powerful it is.
-
-
-
-
-
- This is the closest I could find to showing you just
what this cartridge is all about. What the guy is holding is NOT the 30mm
round, but a "little" .50 Browing machinegun round and the 20mm
cannon round which has been around for a long time.
-
- The 30mm is MUCH bigger.
-
-
-
-
-
- Down at the bottom are the .50 BMG and 20x102 Vulcan
the fellow was holding. At the bottom right is the bad boy we're discussing.
-
- Let's get some perspective here: The .223 Rem (M16 rifle
round) is fast. It shoots a 55 or so grain bullet at about 3300 feet/sec,
give or take. It's the fastest of all those rounds shown (except one).
When you move up to the ..30 caliber rounds, the bullets jump up in weight
to 160-200 grains. Speeds run from about 2600 to 3000 fps or so.
-
- The .338 Lapua is the king of the sniper rifles these
days and shoots a 350 grain bullet at 2800 fps or so. They kill bad guys
at over a mile with that one.
-
- The ..50 BMG is really big. Mike Beasley has one on his
desk. Everyone who picks it up thinks it's some sort of fake, unless they
know big ammo. It's really huge with a bullet that weighs 750 grains and
goes as fast the Lapua.
-
- I don't have data on the Vulcan, but hang on to your
hat.
-
- The bullet for the 30x173 Avenger has an aluminum jacket
around a spent uranium core and weighs 6560 grains (yes, over 100 times
as heavy as the M16 bullet, and flies through the air at 3500 fps (which
is faster than the M16 as well).
-
- The gun shoots at a rate of 4200 rounds per minute. Yes,
four thousand. Pilots typically shoot either one- or two-second burst which
set loose 70 to 150 rounds. The system is optimized for shooting at 4,000
feet.
-
- OK, the best for last.
-
- You've got a pretty good idea of how big that cartridge
is, but I'll bet you're like me and you don't fully appreciate how big
the GA GAU-8 Avenger really is.
-
- Take a look ......
-
-
-
-
-
- Each of those seven barrels is 112" long. That's
almost ten feet. The entire gun is 19-1/2 feet long.
-
- Think how impressive it would look set up in your living
room.
-
- Oh, by the way, it doesn't eject the empty shells but
runs them back into the storage drum. There's just so dang many flying
out, they felt it might damage the aircraft.
-
-
- Oh yeah, I forgot, they can hang those bomb and rocket
things on em too, just in case. After all, it is an airplane!
-
- Like I said, this is a beautiful design.
-
-
-
- I'm glad it's ours.
|
