Warbird Information Exchange

The Fagen Fighter museum's Facebook page just uploaded a video of the live fire of her .50s. It is not on Youtube so all you non facebookers might be outta luck...
Here is the link:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/phot ... =2&theater

Oh that is so cool

I'm not a FB user, and I was able to view the (VERY cool) video with no problems.

Look at how the airplane bucks when the guns are fired!

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Dean Hemphill, K5DH
Port Charlotte, Florida

Nice! Watching the spent casings drop from the plane got me to thinking, aren't there still millions of shell casings from aerial battles just waiting to be found all across Europe still today?

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Ain't no sunshine when she's gone!

impressive. Unless you've actually fired a .50 live I don't think you can understand the power. I'd love to know where they got the guns. Registered live 50s sell for something around $40K each.
Tom Bowers

Outstanding! Simply awesome!


Chappie

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Brrring. Dispersal? TWO SECTIONS SCRAMBLE!!

And to feed it, its a $5 bill each...

I don't intend to re-ignite the gun control debate, but I'm curious as to the legal issues involved with installing live machine guns on a civillian-owned aircraft. Same with the P-40N in New Zealand. Are the weapons on these aircraft configured in such a way that they can't fire actual bullets, only blanks?

Steve the Curious

It would be nice to zero the guns in, just in case it was needed to be called into action!

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Kind Regards,
Gary Lewis
J.A.F.O.

Pretty neat!

Though I would have thought that all those 50 cal rounds would have kicked up a lot more dust.

It's been a quite a while since I actually looked this all up,and the regs may have changed. This also assumes USA, as that's where I am, and where I looked it up.

The FAA's concerns are: a)Aircraft integrity. In this case the aircraft was designed with the mounts, so not an issue. b) Safety of things dropped (shot) from the aircraft. The FAR's only note that dropping things from an aircraft should be done in a safe manner, and makes you responsible for ensuring that.

The BATFE's only concern is that they are properly registered and taxed. Past that, you could mount it on you airplane, your car, or fire it from the hip - not their problem.

State Fish and Game departments may(or may not) object if you use them to hunt, depending on what you're hunting, when and where. Past that, it's not their problem either.

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Lest Hero-worship raise it's head and cloud our vision, remember that World War II was fought and won by the same sort of twenty-something punks we wouldn't let our daughters date.

The only other legal requirement not mentioned is that every time you transport a class 3 registered weapon across state lines, you must file a form 5320 with the BATFE with the intended destination. Firing from a civil aircraft is not unprecedented. A man named Dillon, famous for the Dillon reloading press company, has been strafing his property and selling the videos for a while. I love how far warbird restoration has come. From civilian paint schemes to semi accurate restorations, to finally full on restorations back to a combat aircraft with working weapons systems. Just amazing.
Tom Bowers

First of all, it was great to finally see the video, and to see that Fagen Fighters is on Facebook!

Regarding the live firing, in the Warbrid Digest article on the aircraft (Issue 42), it is said that a lot of "bureaucratic hoops" had to be jumped through, and a ATF license was attained so that the guns could be fired on the ground (real bullets, not blanks, as the video shows). When the aircraft has flown, the guns aren't configured to operate (I believe a few Mustangs and other warbird restorations have dummy guns, but the solenoids work - clicking away when you pull the trigger). One of the cool things I liked about the whole thing, is that before firing the guns, they actually bore-sighted them, and the fully functioning gun sight, following the original manual/guidelines.

Watch the Fagen P-51 video again. Those are live rounds being loaded and fired. Notice the holes in the paper target? The New Zealand P-40 was only firing blanks (but still awesome!). It's my understanding that because a .50 machine gun needs mods to fire blanks that it can't fire live rounds. I wish they'd been firing tracer rounds in the P-51 like they did in the war. That would have looked incredible.

At 0:13, they show a short belt of Tracer cartridges (red tips) loaded in one of the guns.

Maybe they only used those to sight in the guns, because the footage of all six firing doesn't show Tracers.