P-51D - What .50 rounds and which sequence?

[One-Oh-Four]

Hi guys,

 

What type of rounds were used in the .50 ammo belts of P-51D’s? I know every 5th or 7th round was tracer but what about the rest?

 

Were there differences in the ETO/MTO between escort / air superiority missions and dedicated air-to-ground missions?

 

Were there differences in types of ammo use between Europe and the Pacific?

 

Thanks!

Erik.

[martin_sam_2000]

As far as I know ammo belts could be made up on the fly in any pattern required. I have heard that for ground attack they would use all tracer to make it look more intimidating for the troops on the ground while they would use no tracer during the night at times to better hide their location. 
 

as for armour pericinf and what not, that would depend on what targets they were going to attacking

[Slartibartfast]

Some ETO pilots requested no tracers until the last fifty or so in the belt.  These pilots didn't need them for aiming and claimed tracers alerted the victim he was being shot at which allowed him to make evasive maneuvers before being hit.

Edited January 15, 2020 by Slartibartfast

[GW8345]

From what I've read over the years, the round's mix was different between the ETO and Pacific theater, the Pacific theater leaned more on incendiary rounds while the ETO theater leaned more towards the Armor Piercing (AP) rounds. The reason was for the Pacific theater, Japanese aircraft were not armored and would burn easily when incendiary rounds were used. For the ETO theater the German's did use armor and self sealing fuel tanks so our pilots would lean more to the AP rounds to help punch holes in the aircraft.

 

To my knowledge there wasn't any real theater wide standard belt mix, it generally was standardized down at the wing and squadron level. There were different belt mixes for air to air and air to ground missions. As mentioned above, some pilots had their own belt mix.

 

Here is a thread that discusses .50 Cal mix belts, lots of useful info in it.

https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/ammunition-composition-of-50-caliber-belts-on-late-war-fighters.43635/

[One-Oh-Four]

Thank you very much for your insights, guys! 

 

Cheers,

Erik.