|
The Rikhter R-23 is an aircraft autocannon developed for the Soviet Air Force starting in the late 1950s. It was designed to be as short as possible to avoid problems found on high-speed aircraft when the guns were pointed into the airstream. The R-23 was a gas operated revolver cannon that used gas bled from holes in the barrel to provide the motive force. Firing up to 2,600 rpm, the R-23 was the fastest firing single-barrel cannon ever introduced into service. The R-23 took some time to develop, and was not used operationally until 1964. It was used only in the tail turret of the Tu-22, and experimentally on the Salyut 3 space station. Its role was taken over by the twin-barrel Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-23. ==Development== In the late 1940s and the early 1950s tests with defensive bomber turret cannons resulted in problems caused by the air flow affecting the weapons' barrel. Among these were the widely used Nudelman-Rikhter NR-23, found in many bomber installations, which barrels that extended far past their mounting points. A contest for a new design that was much shorter led to entries from Aron Abramovich Rikhter at A.E. Nudelman's OKB-16 in Moscow, and a competing design from Igor Dmitriev's TsKB-14 in Tula.〔("Research and design establishments" ), University of Warwick〕 Rikhter's design was radical; he selected a revolver cannon layout, but chose a front-loading design where the rounds were fed rearward into the revolver chambers. This allowed the feed mechanism to be placed in front of the rotating block, under the barrel. This created a gun with shorter overall length, and greatly improved the balance, with the center of gravity almost directly under the middle of the barrel. Despite some initial problems, the first 261-P prototype cannon was produced in 1957. On 7 August 1964 the cannon was adopted and received the official designation R-23. By this time the competing design from TsKB-14 has also been put into production as the Afanasev Makarov AM-23. The R-23 is installed in the DK-20 tail turret of the “A”, “B”, “K” and “R” versions of the Tu-22 bomber only. The hydraulically elevated and traversed DK-20 turret uses the “Krypton” radar sight and TP-1 or TP-1A television sights. Spent cartridge cases are ejected outside the aircraft. The DK-20 turret weighs 593 kg including the R-23 cannon and 500 rounds of ammunition. Next and much more unique application found the cannon in the Soviet space program. It was mounted on the military space station ALMAZ/Salyut 3/OPS-2 as self-defence weapon. At the end of the mission, when the station flew unmanned, it was tested and successfully fired. This "space cannon" had supply of 32 rounds. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rikhter R-23」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|