![]() Israeli mechanics struggled to synchronize those MGs with the propeller, which resulted in at least one Israeli Avia 199 shooting off its own propeller. They also installed rifle-caliber machineguns in the engine cowlings.Ĭzech pilots disliked their Avia 199s and sarcastically nicknamed them “mule” for their poor handling. Since the substitute engines would not accept motor-kanon, Czechs substituted under-wing cannons which degrades performance. ![]() ![]() swinging on take-off and ground-looping on landing). The new engine exacerabted handling problems that plagued Me.109s during Nazi service (e.g. When hey ran out of original engines, Czechs substituted Jumo 211F engines originally made for Heinkel 111 Bombers. Those Me.109s were built in Czechoslovakia on much of hte same tooling as that Czechs had used to build Me.109s – under license – during World War 2. Your mention of Me.109s to Israel demonstrates the difficulty of building replicas. Manufacture is never as easy as it looks, from the outside. An armorer he mentioned had to spend considerable time to get even a fraction of the rejects to work in any of the guns.Īll that went away with better production machinery and technique in the late 1930s. The reject rate he describes is on the order of 60-80%. ![]() I’ve seen first-person historical accounts from the post-WWI and early 1930s US Army, where the person writing them describes going through crate after crate of WWI-produced BAR magazines to make up a working set for his BAR during qualification. Johnson had something to do with the initial production of BAR magazines, from what I remember reading, and he had so much trouble with it all that he never designed a weapon with a replaceable box magazine as a result. That’s a large part of the reason the Johnson LMGs all have those weird single-feed magazines and built-in feed lips. Getting all that worked out just right isn’t easy serial manufacture of precision components like magazines is a lot more complex than it looks, especially with the machinery they used to have available.Īffordable magazines weren’t really reliable until the late 1930s. There are these issues called “tolerance stacking” wherein you have a whole bunch of parts that are “within specification”, yet won’t work together when assembled. ![]()
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