Warbird Information Exchange

I was just settling in for a good nights sleep and when one of those odd thoughts crossed my mind. I'd never thought about it before but where do the shell casings go when the nose guns/ cannons are fired on a single engine WWII fighter? I've seen the ejection ports on a P-38 but never noticed how it was handled on a single engined plane.

Nose guns on single engine fighters, hmmm. The P-39 comes to mind but that fired through the prop shaft and I would guess the casings ejected somewhere out of the fuselage.

Unless I'm mistaken, most if not all single engine had wing mounted guns and had ejection ports in the lower skins of the wings, below the guns, thus dropping the casings harmlessly out of the way.

I am not a true expert but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Regards,
Scott

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"There are old pilots and bold pilots but few old, bold pilots."

thats and interesting question.. I know the early P-40's had nose guns as did the P-36. Never thought about where the casings came out.

In a related thought, when I was little I remember seeing the shell casing eject from the wings of P-51 in the movies and always thought that someone would get hurt by those things falling out of the sky. Completely missing the fact that they were shooting at each other.

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Scott Rose
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I don’t know everything about the 39 and 63 shells ejection but here goes:

In the P-39 and P-63 the spent shells from in the two 50s and the one 37 millimeter cannon in nose of the aircraft were held there until landing. The fear was if they were to eject the shells they would enter the radiator openings and bring down the aircraft. If you want some pics go to our website www.dixiewing.org where were restoring a P-63.

Hoped this helped.

Philip

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Philip Beegle
Dixie Wing CAF

On the Douglas SBD, the two 50's in the nose have ejector chutes that travel down the forward face of the firewall and dump the links out at the bottom, just forward of the main landing gear tires while they are retracted. The casings have chutes that travel down aft of the firewall, and exit thru the wing center section where it passes thru the fuselage a bit further outboard of where the links are ejected.

I hadn't thought about ejected shells and links being a possible danger to the radiators on some planes. I wonder how it was handled on the A-36? It did occur to me that they could be a hazard to tail surfaces, especially fabric covered parts.

Your question did not specify jet aircraft but...

The ME-262 (not single engine either) had chutes as follows (courtesy of stormbirds.com)





wonder if this arrangement was a problem with the Jumos sucking casings?

regards,

t~

The SNJ cowl gun empties were collected and taken out on landing, but they only held about a 100 rounds. See small door on lower right side of fusalage.

F9F Panther collected shells in containers to keep the CG close. That's what I was told anyway.

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Blue Skies,
Doug

www.cavanaughflightmuseum.com