Fighter Firepower Chart

Here are plots of the total weight of fire, total muzzle power, and total number of rounds fired per second for a number of fighter aircraft. See the WWII fighters page for a discussion of these parameters.

The four horizontal lines in each plot represent the firepower of eight Browning .303 guns, six Browning .50 guns, four 20mm Hispano Mk.II cannon, and finally two 30mm MK 108 cannon.

You can manipulate the chart:

• Click on a label in the plot to get the name and armament specification.
• You can drag with the right mouse button depressed to zoom in, and click the center button to zoom out again. If you don't have a right or middle mouse button, you can use the left button in combination with the META (Ctrl on Windows system) and ALT keys.

Known problems:

• Clicking on a symbol does not always produce the text label one expects. The applet selects the one which is closest to the coordinates of the button press. If in trouble, zoom in first.
• Not all browsers support all three mouse buttons correctly.

Weight of fire

This is a chart of the total fired weight per second vs. the year of production of fighters.

Muzzle power

Here is an other parameter, total muzzle power in kilowatt.

Rounds per second

And finally, the number of rounds fired per second.

Materials

Here is the source code for the applet, the data plotting class, a national symbols drawing class, an auxiliary math class, and the data file that is read by the applet.

Next: Ballistics