![B-25 Mitchell 50-calibre machine gun blister mounts](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/B-25_Mitchell_50-calibre_machine_gun_blister_mounts.jpg)
A gun pod is a detachable pod or pack containing
machine gun
A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) a ...
s,
autocannon
An autocannon, automatic cannon or machine cannon is a fully automatic gun that is capable of rapid-firing large-caliber ( or more) armour-piercing, explosive or incendiary shells, as opposed to the smaller-caliber kinetic projectiles (bull ...
s,
revolver cannon
A revolver cannon is a type of autocannon, commonly used as an aircraft gun. It uses a cylinder with multiple chambers, like those of a revolver handgun, to speed up the loading-firing-ejection cycle. Some examples are also power-driven, to fur ...
s, or
rotary cannon
A rotary cannon, rotary autocannon, rotary gun or Gatling cannon, is any large- caliber multiple-barreled automatic firearm that uses a Gatling-type rotating barrel assembly to deliver a sustained saturational direct fire at much greater ...
s and ancillaries, mounted externally on a
vehicle
A vehicle (from la, vehiculum) is a machine that transports people or cargo. Vehicles include wagons, bicycles, motor vehicles (motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses, mobility scooters for disabled people), railed vehicles (trains, trams), wa ...
such as a
military aircraft
A military aircraft is any fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft that is operated by a legal or insurrectionary armed service of any type. Military aircraft can be either combat or non-combat:
* Combat aircraft are designed to destroy enemy equipm ...
which may or may not also have its own guns.
Description
A gun pod typically contains one or more guns, a supply of ammunition, and, if necessary, a power source. Electrically powered cannon, such as the
M61 Vulcan
The M61 Vulcan is a hydraulically, electrically, or pneumatically driven, six- barrel, air-cooled, electrically fired Gatling-style rotary cannon which fires rounds at an extremely high rate (typically 6,000 rounds per minute). The M61 and i ...
, may be powered from the aircraft's electrical system or by a
ram-air turbine
A ram air turbine (RAT) is a small wind turbine that is connected to a hydraulic pump, or electrical generator, installed in an aircraft and used as a power source. The RAT generates power from the airstream by ram pressure due to the speed o ...
.
Gun pods increase a vehicle's firepower without occupying internal volume. When not required for a specific mission they can be omitted to save weight. On some vehicles they isolate delicate internal components such as
radar
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...
from the weapon's recoil and gases, and for
jet aircraft allow the weapons to be mounted away from the intakes of the engines, reducing problems of gun-gas ingestion, which may cause the engine to stall.
When designed to be suspension-mounted on a
hardpoint
A hardpoint is an attachment location on a structural frame designed to transfer force and carry an external or internal load. The term is usually used to refer to the mounting points (more formally known as a weapon station or station) on the ...
on a typical post-WW II aircraft, gun pods are inherently less accurate than integral guns, or the type of "conformal" gun pods that are faired smoothly into or onto the nearby surfaces of an aircraft, because the "hardpoint" mounting is necessarily less rigid, so that the weapon's recoil produces more deflection. This problem is particularly acute with powerful cannon like the
30mm GPU-5 gun pod. Both hardpoint-mounted and conformal-mount gun pods also cause substantial
drag on fast-moving vehicles such as
fighter aircraft
Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...
.
Gun pods are commonly carried on military
helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...
s, and are often fitted to light aircraft to equip them for
counter-insurgency
Counterinsurgency (COIN) is "the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces". The Oxford English Dictionary defines counterinsurgency as any "military or political action taken against the activities of guerrillas or revolutionar ...
operations. Some air arms use gun pods for
fighter bombers
A fighter-bomber is a fighter aircraft that has been modified, or used primarily, as a light bomber or attack aircraft. It differs from bomber and attack aircraft primarily in its origins, as a fighter that has been adapted into other roles, wh ...
for use in
strafing
Strafing is the military practice of attacking ground targets from low-flying aircraft using aircraft-mounted automatic weapons.
Less commonly, the term is used by extension to describe high-speed firing runs by any land or naval craft such ...
attacks. Since the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
,
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...
policy has been that the use of multimillion-dollar aircraft for strafing is not economically justified, but the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, and subsequently Russia, have remained proponents of strafing, and have continued to develop systems for this purpose. Soviet experience in
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
in the 1980s led to an unusual innovation in the form of the
SPPU series of gun pods, which have traversable barrels allowing them to continue to fire on a fixed target as the aircraft passes overhead. Lessons learned during the Vietnam War showed the effectiveness of guns. Then expensive fighter jets such as the F-4 didn't even carry an internal cannon. Missiles (thought to be superior) -- in particular radar-guided missiles—had notoriously poor combat track records in air-to-air combat. Engineers and air crews quickly created a solution by attaching rotary cannons in a cut-out fuel drop tank, creating an impromptu gun pod suitable for attacking ground targets.
World War II
![Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-662-6659-37, Flugzeug Messerschmitt Me 109](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-662-6659-37%2C_Flugzeug_Messerschmitt_Me_109.jpg)
In
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
the Third Reich's Luftwaffe made use of many different, and most often rigidly mounted, conformal and suspended-mount gun pod systems usually called ''Waffenbehälter'' (prefix of ''WB'', literally 'weapon container') or ''Waffenträger'' (prefix of ''WT'', literally 'weapon carrier'), and carrying anything from rifle caliber
MG 81 machine gun
The MG 81 was a German belt fed 7.92×57mm Mauser machine gun which was used in flexible installations in World War II Luftwaffe aircraft, in which capacity it replaced the older drum magazine-fed MG 15.
The MG 81 was developed by Mauser as a d ...
s, all the way up to the enormous ''Bordkanone'' anti-tank cannon based ordnance weapon series, ranging from 37 to 75mm in caliber, though the usual underwing conformal gun pods fitted to
Bf 109 and
Fw 190
The Focke-Wulf Fw 190, nicknamed ''Würger'' ("Shrike") is a German single-seat, single-engine fighter aircraft designed by Kurt Tank at Focke-Wulf in the late 1930s and widely used during World War II. Along with its well-known counterpart, t ...
single engined fighters used either the
MG 151/20 or
MK 108
The MK 108 (German: ''Maschinenkanone''—"machine cannon") was a 30 mm caliber autocannon manufactured in Germany during World War II by Rheinmetall‑Borsig for use in aircraft.
The cannon saw widespread use as an anti-bomber weapon during t ...
in gun pod mounts.
Other countries also used gun pods on their aircraft; the U.S.
SBD Dauntless
The Douglas SBD Dauntless is a World War II American naval scout plane and dive bomber that was manufactured by Douglas Aircraft from 1940 through 1944. The SBD ("Scout Bomber Douglas") was the United States Navy's main carrier-based scout/dive ...
could be equipped with two gun pods on each wing, each with two
M2 Browning machine guns.
The
Bristol Blenheim Mk.1F of the
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...
was a night fighter conversion of the twin engine light bomber equipped with airborne interception radar and armed with four
Browning machine gun Browning machine guns are a family of machine gun designs by John Browning, a prolific weapon designer.
These include:
*M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun, based on a design dating to 1889, was the first successful gas-operated machine gun to ent ...
in a special gun pack under the fuselage. The Mk.IVF was a long range fighter version armed with the same gun pack.
![Pilot 6 Sqn RAF with Hurricane IID at Shandur c1942](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Pilot_6_Sqn_RAF_with_Hurricane_IID_at_Shandur_c1942.jpg)
The RAF
Hawker Hurricane Mk.IID of 1942 was an early and extremely successful example of tank busting aircraft of the
North African campaign armed with two
Vickers S gun
The Vickers 40 mm Class S gun, also known simply as the "S gun", was a 40 mm (1.57 in) airborne autocannon designed by Vickers-Armstrongs for use as aircraft armament.
It was primarily used during World War II by British aircr ...
with 15 rounds mounted in gondola-style pods, one under each wing.
Common gun pods
United States
* GPU-2/A: Gun pod with
M197 cannon.
* GPU-5/A: Gun pod with
GAU-13/A cannon.
* M18/SUU-11/A: Gun pod with
M134/GAU-2/A machine gun.
* M12/SUU-16/A: Gun pod with
M61A1 cannon.
* M25/SUU-23/A: Gun pod with
GAU-4/A cannon.
USSR/Russia
* GUV-8700: Gun pod (9A624) 2
GShG 7.62mm / 9A622 and 1
Yak-B 12.7mm / 9A624
* GUV-8700: Gun pod (9A669), similar as above, 1
9A800 (version of AGS-17 30mm automatic grenade launcher) in the same pod.
* UPK-23-250: Gun pod
GSh-23L twin barreled 23mm
* SPPU-22: Depressible gun pod
GSh-23L twin barreled 23mm
* SPPU-6: Fully mobile gun pod
GSh-6-23 six barreled 23mm
* SPPU-687: Depressible gun pod (9A-4273)
GSh-30-1 high velocity 30mm (prototype)
France
* CC420: Gun pod with 30mm
DEFA 552, 552A, 553, or 554 cannon.
* CC422: Short gun pod with 30mm DEFA 553 cannon.
* CC630: Gun pod with two 30mm DEFA 554 cannons.
External links
{{commons category-inline, Aircraft gun pods
Aircraft guns