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Bad Day At Work!!!

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Is that what they call a hot landing?
 
There's a GAU-8 clip in that pile. Whew!

I got to be present at the first "multiple firing" test of that thing. The clip shows a MUCH more substantial mounting fixture than I got to see.
 
I was an inspector at Fairchild Republic in A-10A Final Assembly. One of the things I did was inspect the installation and testing of the GAU-8A.

That is an impressive gun!

There are three parts to it. Front-to-back; the barrel assembly, drive unit(hydraulic motor), and the drum. The drum was about the size of two 55 gallon drums end-to-end and held the rounds in a spiral, pointing inward. It sat over the C.G. The drive was in between the other two parts and driveshafts ran to them. The driveshafts turned the barrels and drum. Conveyer belts moved the rounds from drum to breech. Also empties back to the drum for re-use.

We couldn't live fire the gun, but since it's powered by the hydraulic system, we tested it with 161 dummy rounds. On High Rate (4800 RPM), it went through those 161 rounds in no time! Even low rate was incredible.

After 25 gun tests the rounds were discarded and replaced. I have a dummy round somewhere. It's about as big as your forearm.
 
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