AT-11 project, looking for ANM2's and turret info

[BuzzBy]

Hello, brief history:
my wife and I have owned a Beech E18-S for several years and really enjoyed it. The only void was that it never had any real historical significance. We wanted something that would be honoring Veterans, preserving history, and educating the next generation. Fran and I sold our E-18 (and RV-4) and bought Mark and Celia Godsil's very nice AT-11. It is a 1941 built Kansan that spent the entire war training bombardiers and gunners in Victorville. It was surely flown by WASP too as they were based at VCV and flew AT-11's there. Unfortunately there are only 5 WASP left that flew out of VCV, we are trying to find out if any might remember 41-9486.
This was the 49th Kansan built so it had the early Beech turret (that looks like a large teardrop navigator dome). It has a nice looking fixed plexiglass turret, and still has the original tunnel gun position, but no guns. It would have had 1 ANM2 on the top turret and one ANM2 in the bottom.
Does anyone have any drawings or info on the early Beech turret?
Any good sources on 2 ANM2 .30 cal replica's? We would like to do one as a gas fired if possible.
I hear Steve Smith has a good kit for making sim-fire guns but I'm not sure an ANM2 can be done because of it's smaller size. Has anyone even seen a gas fired ANM2 and did it work very well? I'll load some pictures of the areas the guns would have mounted and hopefully someone can lead us in the right direction for the mount type, or good ideas?
Thank you
John Hess


This AT-11 is one of two that have been modified to a gross wt of 9465# with the addition of square tips, D-18 ldg gear metalized controls, and a couple of other mods. I would rather be more original but I like the (430 gal) long range tanks. (It was a survey aircraft after the war).


Fixed replica turret


Cover plate on the tunnel gun hole.


The original tunnel gun mounting area.

Last edited by BuzzBy on Fri Jun 29, 2012 9:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.

[TAdan]

You may want to contact Taigh Ramey. He seems to be very familiar with AT-11's and turrets.

Here is his business's website. http://www.twinbeech.com/

He also posts on the board pretty frequently.

[jmkendall]

An ANM2 would be a .50 cal, not .30.

M2 is the designation for a Machine Gun, 50 caliber.

AN is the designation for an Aircraft specific model. However; an .50 can be easily modified back and forth. We have a .50 in our Armory right now (Army National Guard) that is stamped AN.

[Randy Wilson]

I think there was an M2 designation for the Browning .30 cal. RCMG up until 1943 or so. It is mentioned on page 17 of Flying Guns of World War II by Williams & Gustin.

Randy

[AG pilot]

An ANM2 would be a .50 cal, not .30.

M2 is the designation for a Machine Gun, 50 caliber.

AN is the designation for an Aircraft specific model. However; an .50 can be easily modified back and forth. We have a .50 in our Armory right now (Army National Guard) that is stamped AN.

Not neccessarily so. An ANM2 is a 30 cal, and can be used to designate a 50 cal, as well as a 20mm. (I have seen the manuals.) Many times an ANM2 50 cal is simply referred to as a 50 cal M2 aircraft gun.

The receiver and internal parts of an ANM2 30 cal are much smaller and lighter than a 1919 30 cal. The ANM2 30 cal is a very delicate looking weapon compared to a 1919, and almost tiny compared to an M2 50 cal.

The only differences between a M2 50 cal heavy barrel ground gun and an M2 50 cal aircraft gun was the omission of the barrel support, trunnion bushing, heavy barrel, sights, and the addition of a barrel jacket, trunnion adapter, sight covers, and lighter shorter barrel. They use the same bolt and buffer although the buffer is filled with oil in the lightened setup. The receivers are identical. Charging systems varied by use/installation.

M3 50 cal are different than the M2 50 cals as well.

To the original posters question about locating items, you might try BMGparts.com, gunbroker.com, ebay, and other gun websites. If you want real gun parts, I have seen ANM2 30 cal parts kits, less the right sideplate of course, at various times. I can not direct you to a source for propane fired guns. Good luck.

[Taigh Ramey]

I'm pretty sure that the AN designation was for the aircraft version but both the .30 and the .50 aircraft guns were designated as the M2. I think the manuals refer to them as Gun, Machine, Caliber .30, M2 Aircraft Fixed/Flexible and Gun, Machine, Caliber .50, M2 Aircraft Fixed/Flexible. I can take a shot of the manual at work and post it if you like.

The early Beech manufactured AT-11 turret had the single flexible .30 cal M2 gun in an early cradle. There was a Lear V belt drive that would rotate the turret which consisted of not much more than a low profile dome with a canvas port for the single 30.

As far as I know there aren't any of these turrets around that are not bolted on to an AT-11 and many simply have a crude dome screwed in place as a dummy. The actual early Beech turret that rotates has not been done yet to my knowledge but sure would be cool. It is going to be quite the part to manufacture if an original cannot be found. The dome is the easy part. Its the mounting structure and rotating ring that will be pretty labor intensive due to its compount curves and lack of detailed information available.

I will be happy to help with your new AT-11 especially if you want to take her back to stock.

[BuzzBy]

Thank you all for the replies and info.
Taigh, are there any drawings or pictures of these early turrets?
I would even be glad to seek out one of these you say are bolted to an AT-11 and get some pictures. Do you know where I might see one?
BMG parts has a Mark 9 mount they say might be accurate. Does anyone know if this would be the correct mounts?,..and would it be used for both top and bottom?

Thanks again.
John

BTW, if it is not uncool, I'd like to give a shout out to Wix contributors "planeoldSteve" and Chuck Giese.
Steve and Chuck came by last weekend and were a huge help with the AT-11 annual!

[Stoney]

http://www.iracinc.com/

[BuzzBy]

Hi Stoney, I talked to Stephen at IRAC and he doesn't build ANM2 replicas any more. He said it was such a low demand gun. He was skeptical that a .30 cal ANM2 could be made into a sim fire, said there would have to be 10 pounds of s#!* in a 5 pound bag.

I'm presently looking at 2 sources for the ANM2

Guns of Liberty's replica:

http://www.gunsofliberty.com/gol_anm2.htm



And BMG:
http://www.bmgparts.com/anm2.html



These are both mostly aluminum replicas so they only weigh 17-20 pounds
Neither offers a Sim-Fire option, it would have to be done as a kit, (if even possible).

Here is BMG's Mark 9 mount:


I'll take any input on these or other options, and still looking for one gas fired.
The one gas .50 I have had the experience of seeing, (and hearing) was awesome.

Thanks
John

Last edited by BuzzBy on Sat Jun 30, 2012 10:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

[51fixer]

I've talked with these guys re a .30 cal for the SNJ-3-
http://www.bmgparts.com/anm2.html
Don't know if it can be made into a bang-bang propane gun or not.
A guy in NJ has an SNJ done up like a SBD and has some propane guns.
I've seen them installed for movie work, particularly for Flight of the Intruder in the ADs.

[Old SAR pilot]

Bit of ANM2 info here:

http://browningmgs.com/AirGunnery/02_30cal.htm

[BuzzBy]

Bit of ANM2 info here:

http://browningmgs.com/AirGunnery/02_30cal.htm

Thanks Old SAR Pilot, that site is a good source of info on guns and mounts.
John

[BuzzBy]

I've talked with these guys re a .30 cal for the SNJ-3-
http://www.bmgparts.com/anm2.html
Don't know if it can be made into a bang-bang propane gun or not.
A guy in NJ has an SNJ done up like a SBD and has some propane guns.
I've seen them installed for movie work, particularly for Flight of the Intruder in the ADs.

Rich,
I am talking to the folks at BMG now, just trying to find out about the gas kit on them.
Thanks, John

[Taigh Ramey]

The Mark 9 mount is a good one to use as it it about as close as you can get for the money. The original mount is super rare and 9999 out of 1000 air show patrons will not know the difference anyway. You will need two one for the turret and one for the tunnel gun as they were the same and mount similarly. They even use the same ammo box as what was used in the AT-11 and your Mk 9 mount comes with the ammo box mount.

The other impossible part to find is the casting to secure the gun mount to the airframe but you can fabricate a simple adapter that will work. I can do that for you if you like. It is basically a socket that the post on the yoke fits into.

I believe that the Beech turret had a micro switch set up so when you would move the gun mount in azimuth it would energize the Lear actuator to drive the turret dome. The problem is that there is little information or detail about this turret. It seems as though most of the AT-11's were used for bombardier training and only a few were used for gunnery training. In my opinion the Navy used the SNB-1 for more gunnery training than the Army did in the AT-11. I base this theory on the available photos of the turret's (both Beech and Crocker Wheeler). It is very rare to see a gun installed in a Beech turret and it is also rare to see a Crocker Wheeler turret installed and flying. More SNB-1 shots seem to have surfaced where they are in operation.

Beech made a post war version for the Chinese that had Crocker Wheeler's installed but the airframes were D model (from the D-18S) instead of the WWII C models but this is diverging from the topic.

[BuzzBy]

Thank you Taigh.
That gets me heading in the right direction.

BTW did you see your old SNB-1, N68635, is for sale?

http://www.barnstormers.com/classified_ ... NB-1+.html

If we hadn't bought our AT-11 already it would be a tough choice. That is a super cool Kansan!
I love a polished Beech and your old SNB-1 is very original and complete. It now has a tunnel gun installed too.
One of the only drawbacks, being I have a family of five.

Thanks again for all your help,
I regularly visit your website for all the great Kansan history you have provided.
(not to mention the Norden Bombsight info).
John Hess