Davis Gun

[TonyE]

The British Pathe newsreel site has pulled together all their WWI film segments, including this one which shows both the 2 Pr. and 6 Pr. Davis guns being fired.

These recoilless rifles were used by the RNAS.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/wonderful-new-guns

Regards

TonyE

[Mike_H]

Tony

Interesting sequence, as the Davis, of whatever calibre, was designed to be mounted not hand held - I wonder if the sequence of the guy dancing around with a broken collar bone ended up on the cutting room floor.

M

[centurion]

But AFAIK although the RNAS spent a lot of time and effort on them the only one actually used in action was by the RFC being fastened to the side of an aircraft in Mesopotamia with an improvised mounting and used for ground attack firing downwards at 45 degrees and the counter weight going up and back over the tail.

[centurion]

Tony

Interesting sequence, as the Davis, of whatever calibre, was designed to be mounted not hand held - I wonder if the sequence of the guy dancing around with a broken collar bone ended up on the cutting room floor.

M

The WW2 equivalent http://www.war44.com/misc/images/6/recoilless_gun.jpg There is a classic photo of the prototype 3.45 inch Burney prototype and the Sergeant firing it from the shoulder has the same stance as the nan with the Davis in the clip. Problem with the Davis was that the breech was never very gas tight but it was genuinely recoillesss as was the 3.45 which led to the post war MOBAT WOMBAT recoilless series. They were simply too heavy and needed a light weight carriage simply to move them around.

[TonyE]

Yes, I have seen mention of the use of the Davis gun in Mesopotamia.

As you say, the RNAS did a lot of work with the Davis and there is a well known picture of one mounted in the bow of an RNAS flying boat (a Curtiss IIRC) Also, this picture of the RNAS Armament Depot at Battersea, South London shows at least half a dozen Davis guns in both 2Pr. and 6Pr. versions.

Off topic I know, but that is a good picture of the Burney 3.45 inch RCL. I have done quite a bit of research on all the Burney prototypes including the 20mm and the 7mm rifle.The second picture shows the Burney 20mm rifle.

Regards

TonyE

[jhill]

A piece of trivia in this regard is that a Davis Gun was one of the main armaments of the F5L, the American version of the Felixstowe F5 large patrol flying boat. Curiously, these were produced from July 1918 by Canadian Aeroplanes, Ltd (among others), for the United States Navy. Canadian Aeroplanes was owned by the Imperial Munitions Board, which was an agency of the British government. They made no F5s for the British service!

[RobL]

Doubt fired in anger but used on Handley Pages flying out of Redcar on anti-U boat duties in 1917

[centurion]

A piece of trivia in this regard is that a Davis Gun was one of the main armaments of the F5L, the American version of the Felixstowe F5 large patrol flying boat. Curiously, these were produced from July 1918 by Canadian Aeroplanes, Ltd (among others), for the United States Navy. Canadian Aeroplanes was owned by the Imperial Munitions Board, which was an agency of the British government. They made no F5s for the British service!

There is a photo in a number of books showing one so mounted in an American flying boat - I think it may be the one TonyE eludes to. However I think this was a post war experiment and not a standard armament,

Quite a number of aircraft were specially built to carry a Davis including the A D Scout, Blackburn Triplane and the Supermarine Nighthawk. The Soviets attempted development of the Davis as an aircraft gun up into the 30s and the last aircraft to carry the developed weapon was this

Which carried a gun with an autoloader device in each boom. On its trial the breech of one exploded severing one boom. As the mechanism to jettison the rear propeller had not been installed the pilot could not bale out without being turned into mincemeat but some how managed to coax the crippled aircraft into a landing. Stalin was not amused by the incident and had the gun developer 'disapeared'' and further work was halted.

[MikB]

IMO recoilless guns are a chimaera. They're dangerous to anyone behind them for a considerable distance, they advertise their presence by backblast, and they can't achieve a flat enough trajectory to make them anything but difficult to use in the fluid actions they're supposed to promote, because of the consequent need for precise rangefinding.

Regards,

MikB

[centurion]

IMO recoilless guns are a chimaera. They're dangerous to anyone behind them for a considerable distance, they advertise their presence by backblast, and they can't achieve a flat enough trajectory to make them anything but difficult to use in the fluid actions they're supposed to promote, because of the consequent need for precise rangefinding.

Regards,

MikB

And the increased weight of the ammunition more than overcomes any advantages of mobility on the battlefield. The gun is lighter but you have lug a much heavier load of ammo.

This is part of the reason why the British army's recoilless battalion AT guns were intended to be used from vehicles in a shoot and scoot mode - once you'd fired and revealed your position the idea was to scram to another position ASAP and you wouldn't get the chance to fire many rounds and these could be carried on the vehicle. However with the Soviet deployment of heavily armed attack helicopters even this tactic would have been near suicidal.

In the early days of aviation however the recoilless weapon was probably the only way an airborne large calibre weapon could be readily available. If someone had made a decision to concentrate development on just one tactical use (say ground attack) something might have been made of the Davis but as it was it became a solution seeking a problem to solve,