Aircraft designers stopped putting mashineguns on wings as soon as the problem of the propereller blades getting in the way has been solved, and mashineguns have RoF several orders of magnitude higher than SW weapons.

Actually that's just blatantly not true. Even after they solved that problem aircraft were still commonly designed with wing mounted weapons. The weapons were generally built to be pointed slightly inwards, giving the aircraft an optimum-range where all weapon's fire converged. This gave the pilot a kind of flexibility, as firing at another craft at that optimum-range dealt maximum damage, but firing slightly outside that optimum range gave a greater chance of scoring at least some hits as the fire was more diffuse.

Captain nitpick... AWAY!

Yup. One of my favourite facts about aircraft is that some of the very first mounted machineguns which were synced to the speed of the prop so that the bullets actually passed between the prop blades.

As early as 1913 in fact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronization_gear

I think the reason that it fell out of use for a while was the change to more complex engine types which couldn't be as easily geared in that manner, but I'm not sure.

This has been a derail about cool engineering. Back to your regularly scheduled bickering about heatsinks.

If I recall, before that they just put metal plates on the propellers, to deflect the bullets...and most of the time they wouldn't fly back and kill the pilot...mostly.

Edit: Oh, apparently the problem with deflector gear was more the loss of optimal propeller function, from having big deflector wedges on them.

They did that too, yeah.

In some cases they just sort of assumed that the gun would fire at about the right rate not to hit the prop most of the time and just shot it through the prop anyway. Which mostly worked.

Mostly.

Sometimes it chopped the end of the prop off though.

And sometimes they just dropped grenades on each other or beaned away with revolvers from the cockpit. Very early warplanes were... odd.

Warning - pure speculation ahead.

I suspect the wings of WWI planes were not robust enough to take the weight of the first machine guns (not to mention the likelihood of needing to clear jams), hence they went on the fuselage, and probably why the syncopation-mechanism was invented relatively early (out of necessity) - some designs simply had a gunner/bomber with a rear-facing pintel-mounted gun.

By WWII, with the improvements in airframes/weapons weight, they could move them out to the wings for the reasons described above (though many kept central mounted also - some ME's and Hienkels, the Lightening, etc)

Then, post-WWII, either the advent of computer assisted aiming reduced the need for the pilot to rely on dispersion when out of convergence range, or missiles reduced the reliance on cannons/guns.

---

All that said, still can't decide if there's rational justification to spread the weapons on fictional, futuristic fighter-craft, or it's just retro-fitting reason to a cool-looking design.

Warning - pure speculation ahead.

I suspect the wings of WWI planes were not robust enough to take the weight of the first machine guns (not to mention the likelihood of needing to clear jams), hence they went on the fuselage, and probably why the syncopation-mechanism was invented relatively early (out of necessity) - some designs simply had a gunner/bomber with a rear-facing pintel-mounted gun.

By WWII, with the improvements in airframes/weapons weight, they could move them out to the wings for the reasons described above (though many kept central mounted also - some ME's and Hienkels, the Lightening, etc)

Then, post-WWII, either the advent of computer assisted aiming reduced the need for the pilot to rely on dispersion when out of convergence range, or missiles reduced the reliance on cannons/guns.

It's not a load-bearing problem--or at least that's way down the list of engineering problems to be solved. From the pilot's perspective, the closer the gun is to the center of the fuselage, the easier it is to aim. As the distance from that center point increases. The principal engineering problems arise from the question of how to get a bulky gun assembly (and its ammunition) to sit as close to the pilot as possible.

If there were a substantial advantage to "dispersion", we would see aircraft designed like the X-wing, with guns at the extreme outside of the airframe.

All that said, still can't decide if there's rational justification to spread the weapons on fictional, futuristic fighter-craft, or it's retro-fitting reason to a cool-looking design.

It's the latter.

to the above comments

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_harmonisation

Look at the canon examples of wing-tip mounted guns, X-wings, B-wings and ARC-170s. The later two are assault fighters that tend to attack heavy, slow targets. Arguably the X-wing is also an assault fighter with heavy weapons and may have originally been intended as a strike fighter against heavily shielded targets. It's assumed in the EU that the X-wing was a space superiority fighter but that's frankly a hard sale. It has Torpedos instead of missiles and huge guns that are spread as far apart as possible. This thing is meant to hit a wide area with a lot of fire power. I'm sure the weapons can be set to converge their firepower at a certain distance and thus become space bound equivelents to WWII fighters, but calling the X-wing a space superiority fighter is a bit silly. It's designed to do too many roles to be that specific.

Oh, and on a similar subject( the B-wing does have guns mounted on the 'chin' of the cockpit, perfect for 'dogfighting'. THe A-wing has a somewhat odd placement for its guns, unless you consider the possibility of them pivoting and being able to fire to the rear. And the placement of the internal missile tubes requiring the guns to be away from a central location.

Yeah, spot on, with engines allowing for tousands of g of acceleration, weapons vaporizing starships and shields designed to absorb the insanely powerful bursts of energy, the motor opening S-foils once per battle is surely a significant source of heat that can't be overlooked :D

And obviously the same can be applied to the X-wing, and it has been in service for over 30 years.

1. So how does it dissipate heat before it opens the panels? Does everyone just hope it doesn't overheat before it can? Sorry, this offends my engineering sensibility. I can suspend my disbelief for a lot of things, but that explanation pulls me out of a it a bit too much (plus, why are the heat sinks painted?)

2. With regards to the X-Wing, I never once thought they were giant heat sinks, so it doesn't bother me the same way.

Because you don't want to trap your enemy, you want to kill him, as fast as possible. In order to do that you want your shots to go exactly where you aim, especially in a high speed combat when the target is in position to be shot at for a fraction of a second and especially with such a low rate of fire as most SW starfighter weapons have.

Aircraft designers stopped putting mashineguns on wings as soon as the problem of the propereller blades getting in the way has been solved, and mashineguns have RoF several orders of magnitude higher than SW weapons.

In other words, I can rationalize the X-Wing (and B-Wing) S-Foils far more easily than the ARC-170 S-Foils

On the wingtip weapons issue, corran horn specifcially states that he sets his X-wing's lasers ahead of time to a certain range that makes his lasers converge at close range.

So it seems that the pilots of Xwings (at least) can adjust it, now i'm do not recall if he had to do it with controls in the cockpit or if they were done by literally adjusting/tweaking the angle of the cannons themselves externally.

If it is something that can be done with cockpit controls, I can see that being quite useful, and maybe even able to be done in a long engagemen, if a pilot knows he may need close range shots for some targets and longer range for others.

As for the S-foils comment, someone else brought up that they are radiators for the heat disspipation of the cannons, several sources say that, I believe novels and a few rpg and non-rpg technical manuals.

I'm on record elsewhere on these forums as stating that I believe everyone can have their own personal canon to aid their enjoyment of the franchise. I enjoy some of the non-movie stuff, but for me, the movies will always remain the only true canon. Anything else is something I can choose to believe or not (such as fire-linking of X-Wing cannon!)

...

I managed to use both "cannon" and "canon" in one post. Now to hope I managed to spell them correctly in each instance!

Aircraft designers stopped putting mashineguns on wings as soon as the problem of the propereller blades getting in the way has been solved, and mashineguns have RoF several orders of magnitude higher than SW weapons.

Actually that's just blatantly not true. Even after they solved that problem aircraft were still commonly designed with wing mounted weapons.

Actually that's just blatantly not true. But OK, who says A must say B, if they were so "commonly" designed that way, could you provide a few examples of aircrafts without a propeller in front of the central fuselage which utilize wing mounted weapons?

The choice is to either have your weapons accurate at one specific range and have some "spread" few meters closer and further than the optimal distance vs having them accurate at all ranges... that's not really a choice, is it? But go on, I'd be glad to be proven wrong with those numerous examples of the "common" design.

If you want a good example... The P51 Mustang is a somewhat well known and common aircraft... or rather a very famous SMS common one from WW2. It had 6 machine guns mounted in its wings. The interrupter/synchronization gear was developed and universally adopted in WW1.

They put the guns in the wings with the spread because they couldn't fit more than 2 guns in the cramped space in the engine block along with the additional gear.

But all of your concerns are from a time before computers existed at all. In Star Wars their starfighters have targeting computers which means the spread of the laser fire is much more predictable for the pilots.

But even then I'd say that based on the targets the X Wings were facing a single laser hitting a TIE Fighter, or Interceptor, or to a lesser extent Bomber is sufficient to disrupt it. The spread increases the likelihood to getting a single hit on the unshielded craft. The shielded targets were much larger so you really don't have to worry about the spread and normally Proton Torpedoes would be better against the capital ships anyways.

Yeah, spot on, with engines allowing for tousands of g of acceleration, weapons vaporizing starships and shields designed to absorb the insanely powerful bursts of energy, the motor opening S-foils once per battle is surely a significant source of heat that can't be overlooked :D

And obviously the same can be applied to the X-wing, and it has been in service for over 30 years.

1. So how does it dissipate heat before it opens the panels? Does everyone just hope it doesn't overheat before it can? Sorry, this offends my engineering sensibility. I can suspend my disbelief for a lot of things, but that explanation pulls me out of a it a bit too much (plus, why are the heat sinks painted?)

2. With regards to the X-Wing, I never once thought they were giant heat sinks, so it doesn't bother me the same way.

1. The dissipation of the heat is strictly for the extra heat caused by firing the cannons, hence having to lock S-foils in attack position. Assuming they aren't firing weapons with them closed, there isn't any heat they need to dissipate.

2. There's literally no other logical explanation for them to open other then, "It looks cool" (which imo it doesn't anyways). I don't how else you justify the X-wing and B-wing wings but this seriously just sounds like an excuse to hate on a prequel design because prequels.

Yeah, spot on, with engines allowing for tousands of g of acceleration, weapons vaporizing starships and shields designed to absorb the insanely powerful bursts of energy, the motor opening S-foils once per battle is surely a significant source of heat that can't be overlooked :D

And obviously the same can be applied to the X-wing, and it has been in service for over 30 years.

1. So how does it dissipate heat before it opens the panels? Does everyone just hope it doesn't overheat before it can? Sorry, this offends my engineering sensibility. I can suspend my disbelief for a lot of things, but that explanation pulls me out of a it a bit too much (plus, why are the heat sinks painted?)

2. With regards to the X-Wing, I never once thought they were giant heat sinks, so it doesn't bother me the same way.

1. The dissipation of the heat is strictly for the extra heat caused by firing the cannons, hence having to lock S-foils in attack position. Assuming they aren't firing weapons with them closed, there isn't any heat they need to dissipate.

2. There's literally no other logical explanation for them to open other then, "It looks cool" (which imo it doesn't anyways). I don't how else you justify the X-wing and B-wing wings but this seriously just sounds like an excuse to hate on a prequel design because prequels.

I don't actually hate the design, though. For the most part, I actually _like_ the ARC-170! I just wish they'd put weapons at the ends of the S-Foils. Really it just bothers my itch for consistency... kind of like how I need all the handles of the mugs to face the same way in the cabinet...

Warning - pure speculation ahead.

I suspect the wings of WWI planes were not robust enough to take the weight of the first machine guns (not to mention the likelihood of needing to clear jams), hence they went on the fuselage, and probably why the syncopation-mechanism was invented relatively early (out of necessity) - some designs simply had a gunner/bomber with a rear-facing pintel-mounted gun.

The SE5A had a lewis mounted on top of the top wing - this allowed the pilot to reload and even fire upwards.

Yeah, spot on, with engines allowing for tousands of g of acceleration, weapons vaporizing starships and shields designed to absorb the insanely powerful bursts of energy, the motor opening S-foils once per battle is surely a significant source of heat that can't be overlooked :D

And obviously the same can be applied to the X-wing, and it has been in service for over 30 years.

1. So how does it dissipate heat before it opens the panels? Does everyone just hope it doesn't overheat before it can? Sorry, this offends my engineering sensibility. I can suspend my disbelief for a lot of things, but that explanation pulls me out of a it a bit too much (plus, why are the heat sinks painted?)

2. With regards to the X-Wing, I never once thought they were giant heat sinks, so it doesn't bother me the same way.

1. The dissipation of the heat is strictly for the extra heat caused by firing the cannons, hence having to lock S-foils in attack position. Assuming they aren't firing weapons with them closed, there isn't any heat they need to dissipate.

2. There's literally no other logical explanation for them to open other then, "It looks cool" (which imo it doesn't anyways). I don't how else you justify the X-wing and B-wing wings but this seriously just sounds like an excuse to hate on a prequel design because prequels.

Ad. 2 - maybe the radiator surface is fragile, susceptible to micrometeor impacts or some such? Might make sense to cover them when they're not necessary.

This would be something the Empire got right in the TIE panels.

Warning - pure speculation ahead.

I suspect the wings of WWI planes were not robust enough to take the weight of the first machine guns (not to mention the likelihood of needing to clear jams), hence they went on the fuselage, and probably why the syncopation-mechanism was invented relatively early (out of necessity) - some designs simply had a gunner/bomber with a rear-facing pintel-mounted gun.

The SE5A had a lewis mounted on top of the top wing - this allowed the pilot to reload and even fire upwards.

The top mounted gun on the SE5a was considered a weakness by most.

Warning - pure speculation ahead.

I suspect the wings of WWI planes were not robust enough to take the weight of the first machine guns (not to mention the likelihood of needing to clear jams), hence they went on the fuselage, and probably why the syncopation-mechanism was invented relatively early (out of necessity) - some designs simply had a gunner/bomber with a rear-facing pintel-mounted gun.

The SE5A had a lewis mounted on top of the top wing - this allowed the pilot to reload and even fire upwards.

The top mounted gun on the SE5a was considered a weakness by most.

I'm guess that would be 'most' WWI aviation experts... So, 2 people?

Since when did this thread turn into a Wings of Glory discussion?

My understanding (which basicallt comes from PBS specials and a little reading) of the body vs pintle mounted aerial gun was that in practice it was way easier to aim the body of the plane to hit something than aimthe turret. This was due, I think to both stability of the mount and the combination of control and aiming in the same person, he knew where his plane was going to go.

This is illustrated in WWII, where massive formations of bombers, bristling woth machine guns, we're still found to need fighter escorts to protect them from enemy fighter formations.

My understanding (which basicallt comes from PBS specials and a little reading) of the body vs pintle mounted aerial gun was that in practice it was way easier to aim the body of the plane to hit something than aimthe turret. This was due, I think to both stability of the mount and the combination of control and aiming in the same person, he knew where his plane was going to go.

This is illustrated in WWII, where massive formations of bombers, bristling woth machine guns, we're still found to need fighter escorts to protect them from enemy fighter formations.

Fighter escorts were needed for a completely different reason - a formation of bombers was a slow, big, predictable target with big blindspots, despite the guns. The fighters attacking them were small, fast and nimble, moving much faster than the bomber guns could track them.

So add speed and limited traverse to the reasons turreted guns had problems.

Yeah, spot on, with engines allowing for tousands of g of acceleration, weapons vaporizing starships and shields designed to absorb the insanely powerful bursts of energy, the motor opening S-foils once per battle is surely a significant source of heat that can't be overlooked :D

And obviously the same can be applied to the X-wing, and it has been in service for over 30 years.

1. So how does it dissipate heat before it opens the panels? Does everyone just hope it doesn't overheat before it can? Sorry, this offends my engineering sensibility. I can suspend my disbelief for a lot of things, but that explanation pulls me out of a it a bit too much (plus, why are the heat sinks painted?)

2. With regards to the X-Wing, I never once thought they were giant heat sinks, so it doesn't bother me the same way.

1. The dissipation of the heat is strictly for the extra heat caused by firing the cannons, hence having to lock S-foils in attack position. Assuming they aren't firing weapons with them closed, there isn't any heat they need to dissipate.

2. There's literally no other logical explanation for them to open other then, "It looks cool" (which imo it doesn't anyways). I don't how else you justify the X-wing and B-wing wings but this seriously just sounds like an excuse to hate on a prequel design because prequels.

Ad. 2 - maybe the radiator surface is fragile, susceptible to micrometeor impacts or some such? Might make sense to cover them when they're not necessary.

This would be something the Empire got right in the TIE panels.

Facinating and fun discussion. I'm no areospace engineer, but the foils opening in flight for cooling purposes when the ship is in attack posture in space seems untenable. As far as I recall, even in deepest outer space, scientists put an estimated background temperature of about minus 455°F. Now I could possibly understand the justification of cooling radiator exposure when fighting in atmosphere -when atmospheric density can retain solar heat and run in higher (+0) temperatures-but not in space. I therefore believe it has nothing to do with the heat of X-wings weapons, propulsion or systems. On the other hand, I have seen diagrams that lead the viewer to understand that the "foils retracted" or together was for "cruising speed" and open foils is for "attack speed". This clearly leads me to think the open foils adds to the ships ability to attain greater speed and/or agility. This would be nonsense if the ship in question were once again in atmosphere (more surface area and frictional resistance/turbulence to create heat, flight instability and drag which all are opposed to "speed and agility"), but in space there is only inertia to tend with, no resisting forces, save the minuscule effects of gravity. Therefore, my theory ends up exposing an unknown; that there is some component or system designed within the interior sections of the foils (obviously hidden or too elementary to engineers "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" to denote on schematics) that gives the ship greater, all-be-it less economical, agility and speed in the open position.

See, I said nothing with a bunch of words......I should run for office.

The vacuum of space is so bad at taking heat away (despite the fact that its so cold) that keeping a spacecraft cool is a major issue in real physics world. The main issue with S-foils as presented in the movie is that, if they are radiators, they are radiating most of their heat into each other.

Engineer here.

The best way to "lose" heat (you never really lose it) is to transfer it inwards, into a reservoir of water (or ice) built specifically for this purpose. That way, you don't have to expose your heat exchangers until after battle. Also, you can simply flush the water if there isn't enough time to cool it off.

It wouldn't make for a very interesting movie or game though. You'd just have two massive battleships trying to strain each-other's heat budget, instead of groups of pickets, fighters and line ships like we have in the movies.

The vacuum of space is so bad at taking heat away (despite the fact that its so cold) that keeping a spacecraft cool is a major issue in real physics world. The main issue with S-foils as presented in the movie is that, if they are radiators, they are radiating most of their heat into each other.

Exactly...I agree.....although extreamly cold, there are not enough particles to allow sufficient heat transfer as happens in air or water, therefore any 'radiator' type mechanism covered by the wings wouldn't do much of anything when exposed that it could do when touching an adjacent surface of the ship. The connection of the heat source to the structure of the ship in its entirety would be the best/better way current thermodynamics would prove that heat removal could be achieved. So it's got to be an unknown/undiscovered system that demanded the foils open for speed and agility....

Engineer here.

The best way to "lose" heat (you never really lose it) is to transfer it inwards, into a reservoir of water (or ice) built specifically for this purpose. That way, you don't have to expose your heat exchangers until after battle. Also, you can simply flush the water if there isn't enough time to cool it off.

It wouldn't make for a very interesting movie or game though. You'd just have two massive battleships trying to strain each-other's heat budget, instead of groups of pickets, fighters and line ships like we have in the movies.

Realism hurts movies, take your logical science stuff somewhere else. People don't want to think!

Besides how is that supposed to predict what's coming in wave 9?

The vacuum of space is so bad at taking heat away (despite the fact that its so cold) that keeping a spacecraft cool is a major issue in real physics world. The main issue with S-foils as presented in the movie is that, if they are radiators, they are radiating most of their heat into each other.

Exactly...I agree.....although extreamly cold, there are not enough particles to allow sufficient heat transfer as happens in air or water, therefore any 'radiator' type mechanism covered by the wings wouldn't do much of anything when exposed that it could do when touching an adjacent surface of the ship. The connection of the heat source to the structure of the ship in its entirety would be the best/better way current thermodynamics would prove that heat removal could be achieved. So it's got to be an unknown/undiscovered system that demanded the foils open for speed and agility....

Radiation of 'hyper-particles'. Sounds Star Warsy enuff.

Wait! Maybe the radiation of the heat or heated water is done so in jets that could minorly correct the angle in which the Xwing is flying, thus giving it better mobility?

Wait! Maybe the radiation of the heat or heated water is done so in jets that could minorly correct the angle in which the Xwing is flying, thus giving it better mobility?

And the wings are spread out to give each cooling jet more control. Nice.