Photo of Gefr. Heim - Cantacuzino's last victim

Well, it's as close as I'll ever get to flying a Me 109...

the Mg-131 did use HE rounds, but to be honest, since i haven't shot one at anyone's throat -yet- , i doubt it coud "decapitate" someone. even if it could dough, i don't think it could pass trough the backseat armor plate.

This post has been edited by D13-th_Toppy on February 06, 2006 02:22 am

Don't underestimate the power of the 13mm electric primed round for MG 131. The bullet weight is between 34-38,5 grams and the energy around 9500 Joules.At such energy, a seat armor have only a"pshychological protection".Note that any obstacle initiate the ricochet effect, and the bullet start turning and hiting often not with the nose, but with the side, generating devastating wounds.And a pilot is not a target for direct hits , but for ricochets, because the bullet hit the plane body first.

There are a lot more factors to the problem than raw projectile power. The position of the armour plate (or laminated glass panels), the speed and attitude of the aircraft, the spot where the shell hits...
Of course that under the right circumstances a 13mm round (HE I doubt, since they explode on contact, and are not designed to pierce armour*) can penetrate the cockpit. Wherever that kind of round would still pack enough punch to decapitate someone shortly afterwards is still subject to question though. Personally, I think that to be rather unlikely, and wouch for the "20mm" theory. But short of actual experimentation with both projectiles and a piece of aircraft armour, I see this debate going on forever.

Anyway, here's some more information about 13 mm (MG 131) ammunition I managed to dig up from the ol' 'net:

AP - Panzergranatpatrone L'spur o. Zerl
HE - Brandsprenggranatpatronen L'spur o. Zerl

The 13mm Panzergranatpatrone was a solid AP round. The Brandsprenggranatpatrone was a conventional HE/I round, a bored-out projectile filled with an explosive mixture. German armourers were warned that the first round fired had to be an AP round: The cap over the muzzle had to be destroyed first, and there was the possibility that the HE/I round would go off when it hit this. Note that for both rounds, tracer was chosen (L'spur, or Leuchtspur) but that there was no selfdestruction (o. Zerl, or ohne Zerlegerung).

See the source of this information here

* Cockpit armour for the Me 109 G-2 was: Headrest - 9.4 mm, Side armoured plating -4.4 mm, Seat 8 mm. From the G-6s, the top of the headrest armour was replaced with a 60mm thick pane of buletproof laminated glass, the same as the cockpit roof. Often, damaged planes of older versions were retrofitted with this feature while in the factory for repairs.

Some of the info above comes from a wartime russian report on the Me 109, translated here

You're right! I've made my comment looking back for my experiments witha 30-06 hunting rifle.I had fired several shots in the field against a wreck of a mud tank of a abandoned oilfield equipment. The mud tank wall was 3mm steel plate. The 30-06 (8-10 grams weight and around 2800J energy) penetrate the first wall (round hole), start spining and penetrate the oposite wall creting a big irregular split arround 7 cm long, and go away. If such a small bullet can do such damage, what a 13mm can do?

The armour plate on an airplane is made of much stronger steel than an old rusty metal oil tank! It is supposed to guard against bullet penetration, and by the time it reaches it, the round has allready penetrated the outer skin of the aircraft, and possibly the radio that is located behind the pilot's seat. If it were so useless as you are trying to suggest, why would they keep it there in the first place? Even if the round wold reach the armour, it would be so deformed by this time, that penetration would be nearly impossible. A HE round would have long before that, exploded in contact with the outer skin.
And a 6cm thick peice of tempered, laminated glass (in fact both glass and acrilic panels laminated together , to make the compound even stronger) would stop even a 13mm dead in its tracks if fired at it directly. A HE round wouldn't even scratch it, because the explosion will happen at the surface, and the gases will take the path of least resistance- outwards... An AP will probably penetrate it, but then I doubt it would have enough force to do furter damage.

But I just realised how pointless this debate is in the first place: I'm sure Hpt. Lipfert was shooting all his guns at Darjan, not just the 20mm or the 13mm, so it was the combined effect of all tis types of ammunition hitting almost simultaneously that caused his death, not a single, magic, bullet. It could well be that he was killed by a 13mm after a 20mm pulverised the seat armour. We don't know that, and there is no way we will ever know.

In the end, he was still killed, and I'm sure his memory is worth more than an aimless dispute over what could and could not have caused his demise.

This post has been edited by Wings_of_wrath on February 09, 2006 10:21 am

I belive these were the same events that led to the death of Adj. Traian Darjan, Bazu's wingman. There were about 8 Fw's on an AT mission, but Bazu chose to attack them anyway. He shot down Gefr. Hermann Heim, but the Focke-Wulfs retaliated. Darjan was hit in the oil pump, and, as he tried to belly-land his plane, was hit in the cockpit by a 20mm shell. He died instantly.
Bazu was hit also by concentrated fire, but managed to crash-land his stricken 109 near the russian lines, and escaped with only bruises and mild concussions.

I learned this story a few years ago, when I first got intrested in aircraft, and started flying sailplanes at Dezmir Airfield, near Cluj- Napoca. The field was settled in the 1920's, and after '90 it was renamed "Traian Darjan Airclub", since the unlucky airman was a native of Cluj.

There was further information on this incident in the issue of Aeromagazin about Constantin Cantacuzino. Unfortunately, although I have the collection in its entirety, the issue in question seems to have gotten misplaced (that's what you get when your house resembles a warehouse of old aeronautic stuff)...
I will get back to you with the information once I find it.

Wings of wrath, could you find the issue of Aeromagazin about C. Cantacuzino in the meantime? Would you be so kind to advice an exact number/year of the Aeromagazin? Or instantly to send the whole article?

Anybody else could advice?

Thanks in advance

Fekiac

This post has been edited by fekiac on May 02, 2007 06:17 pm