Maxmet I am with you. Pilots and guns... I remember boring hours spent in the cold war on exercise. The guns we had been issued with, Browning 9mm if I remember, were like magnets. We couldn't help but be drawn to then and to play with them. The usual game was to strip it down whilst in the crew room on standby way beyond one's level of knowledge. Then later to try to put it back together from a hastily collected handful of bits.
Variations on a theme were that a group of pilots (and navigators) would do said demolition exercise to a number of weapons. The bits would be mixed up whilst on top of the coffee table or Uckers board, and the race would be to see who could put their gun together again quickest. It made the hours fly by.
Maybe it would be a good addition to the cockpit for those long trans-siberian legs after all?
As for the temptation and dangers of fiddling with the damn things, read Wino's reported account again. The pilot with the gun got lucky when the bad guy's gun misfired. Otherwise it wouldn't have worked out too well.
Love
Roger
PS. Talking of Aeroflot, forget axes etc, I understand they have developed a nice range of only mildy poisonous knock-out gasses which might be very effective in the cabin.
