OK - here is another story about would be Top Guns
NOT a Top Gun yet but improving.
The Mustang had 6 50 cal guns.
Prolonged bursts of machine gun firing overheated our gun barrels. We soon found that, with the next live round being in the breach ready to fire, a state was soon reached where these rounds would become over-heated and cook off at random. Early in the process of learning this, I was line astern to Bay Adams, climbing up after a long firing pass when all six guns cooked off in rapid succession. I felt sure that one or more of these would have hit Bay's aircraft and was most relieved to learn later that none had. I refrained from telling Bay about this until many years later.
The gun-sight fitted to our aircraft was an early model gyro-reflector sight which would automatically provide target lead in a turn by swinging a dot in a ranging circle ahead of the line of flight of the target. The pilot had to set a selector knob on a scale of wingspan for the target and then use a throttle twist grip to vary the size of the adjustable ranging circle to fit closely around the target. This process provided a rough range solution which was then used to precess the sight’s gyroscopic mirror to set the aiming lead on the target.
For rocketry, bombing and air to ground gunnery we used the sight in a fixed condition which presented a fixed cross to signify the harmonisation point for the guns. It was not until I returned to Australia that I learned that the Mustangs there were fitted with improved gun-sights which provided the aiming solution during rocketry. It remains a mystery to me that we continued to use the early model gun-sights in combat.
An unusual incident would occasionally occur during gun firing. We carried successive rounds in the belts of ammunition of ball, incendiary, tracer, armour piercing and explosive. Sometimes one of the incendiary or tracer rounds would explode some 100 feet in front of the aircraft to form an almost perfect smoke ring. Whenever this happened I instinctively ducked, as this smoke ring seemed about to smash into the cockpit.
Smoke rings of other kinds were also ingrained in memory as the following descriptions will attest. For some time the North Koreans' advance was being held around a southern perimeter which passed about ten miles north of Taegu. Many of our ground attacks were directed towards protection of this vital airfield which the North badly wanted to put out of action.
Just north of the bomb line near Taegu were a few short railway tunnels. At night the North Koreans would use these tunnels to hide trucks loaded with supplies. We were assigned to attempt to make the tunnel entrances collapse using our rockets with their big 60 pound heads. We found that the best attack could be made by flying just above the railway tracks approaching the tunnel entrance. A little pull-up to allow for gravity drop just before release of the rocket was required followed by a very hard pull to clear the hill above the tunnel entrance. This could be followed by a half roll to give one a view of the rocket explosion. Using this technique about 1 in 4 rockets could be made to enter the tunnel. The resulting effects of the explosion of the rocket inside the tunnel was initially unexpected. There would be a whoosh of smoke out of the far end of the tunnel and a giant smoke ring would then come flying out of the near end.
After a couple of these we soon began a competition to blow the biggest and best smoke ring. For anyone or anything inside the tunnels it must have been decidedly unhealthy. The North Koreans soon stopped using those tunnels.
Other smoke rings were more ominous. These were from flak. I was never briefed on the finer points of flak until after a mission which took us over the harbour of Wonsan. Suddenly there were black puffs appearing about 5,000 ft above us. Bay Adams called flak and to start weaving. He was already doing this quite vigorously and I started to do the same. However I was intrigued that the flak continued to burst well above us, so my weaving dropped off.
During the debriefing after the mission Bay tore strips off me about my attempts at weaving. I exclaimed that the flak was way off target and nowhere near me. With raised eyebrows he said softly and with great effect, "Is that the first time you have flown through self destroying 40 mm ?" It now dawned on me that the AA must have been passing close to me and that the proximity fuses may have come awfully close to finding me. Perhaps if I had been weaving more vigorously I may have flown closer to one of those nasty things.