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Gun pod
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== History == [[file:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-662-6659-37, Flugzeug Messerschmitt Me 109.jpg|thumb|A Bf 109G-6 of the WW II ''Luftwaffe's'' [[JG 27]] in [[Defense of the Reich|''Reichsverteidigung'']] service, armed with two [[MG 151 cannon|MG 151/20]] underwing gun pods]] In [[World War II]] the Third Reich's Luftwaffe made use of many different, and most often rigidly mounted, conformal and suspended-mount gun pod systems usually called ''Waffenbehälter'' (prefix of ''WB'', literally 'weapon container') or ''Waffenträger'' (prefix of ''WT'', literally 'weapon carrier'), and carrying anything from rifle caliber [[MG 81 machine gun]]s, all the way up to the enormous ''Bordkanone'' anti-tank cannon based ordnance weapon series, ranging from 37 to 75mm in caliber, though the usual underwing conformal gun pods fitted to [[Messerschmitt Bf 109|Bf 109]] and [[Focke-Wulf Fw 190|Fw 190]] single engined fighters used either the [[MG 151 cannon|MG 151/20]] or [[MK 108 cannon|MK 108]] in gun pod mounts. Other countries also used gun pods on their aircraft; the U.S. [[SBD Dauntless]] could be equipped with two gun pods on each wing, each with two [[M2 Browning machine gun]]s. The [[Bristol Blenheim|Bristol Blenheim Mk.1F]] of the [[Royal Air Force]] was a night fighter conversion of the twin engine light bomber equipped with airborne interception radar and armed with four [[0.303 British|{{cvt|.303|in|1}}]] [[M1919 Browning machine gun|Browning machine gun]] in a special gun pack under the fuselage. The Mk.IVF was a long range fighter version armed with the same gun pack. [[File:Pilot 6 Sqn RAF with Hurricane IID at Shandur c1942.jpg|thumb|A Mark IID Hurricane of 6 Squadron at Shandur, Egypt (1942)]] The RAF [[Hawker Hurricane|Hawker Hurricane Mk.IID]] of 1942 was an early and extremely successful example of tank busting aircraft of the [[North African campaign]] armed with two {{cvt|40|mm|2}} [[Vickers S gun]] with 15 rounds mounted in gondola-style pods, one under each wing. Lessons learned during the [[Vietnam War]] showed the effectiveness of guns. Then expensive fighter jets such as the F-4 didn't even carry an internal cannon. Missiles (thought to be superior) -- in particular radar-guided missiles—had notoriously poor combat track records in air-to-air combat. Engineers and air crews quickly created a solution by attaching rotary cannons in a cut-out fuel drop tank, creating an impromptu gun pod suitable for attacking ground targets.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}} Since the Vietnam War, [[United States Air Force]] policy has been that the use of multimillion-dollar aircraft for strafing is not economically justified, but the [[Soviet Union]], and subsequently Russia, have remained proponents of strafing, and have continued to develop systems for this purpose. Soviet experience in [[Afghanistan]] in the 1980s led to an unusual innovation in the form of the [[SPPU-20 Gun Pod|SPPU]] series of gun pods, which have traversable barrels allowing them to continue to fire on a fixed target as the aircraft passes overhead.
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