The Westland C.O.W. Gun Fighter was an attempt to produce a fighter aircraft armed with a heavy calibre gun. The
Coventry Ordnance Works
Coventry Ordnance Works was a British manufacturer of heavy guns particularly naval artillery jointly owned by Cammell Laird & Co of Sheffield and Birkenhead, Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company of Govan, Glasgow and John Brown & Compa ...
(COW)
37 mm automatic gun was used, which had been developed for this purpose some years earlier.
Design and development
The design was in response to
Air Ministry specification F.29/27. The design was an open cockpit single engined metal monoplane with fabric covering. The aircraft design had already been submitted for specification F.20/27 as the
Westland Interceptor but had lost out to the
Gloster Gauntlet
The Gloster Gauntlet was a single-seat biplane fighter designed and produced by the British aeroplane manufacturer Gloster Aircraft in the 1930s. It was the last fighter to be operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF) to have an open cockpit, and ...
. The gun was in the fuselage and fired up at an angle, in order to attack bombers from below. This concept was similar to the
Schräge Musik
''Schräge Musik'', which may also be spelled ''Schraege Musik'', was a common name for the fitting of an upward-firing autocannon or machine gun, to an interceptor aircraft, such as a night fighter. The term was introduced by the German ''L ...
system used by Germany during World War II. The plane first flew at the end of 1930 but the trials did not give satisfactory results to continue with the idea.
The COW gun had been developed by 1918 for use in aircraft and had been trialled on the
Airco DH.4
The Aircraft Manufacturing Company Limited (Airco) was an early British aircraft manufacturer. Established during 1912, it grew rapidly during the First World War, referring to itself as the largest aircraft company in the world by 1918.
Ai ...
.
Specifications (C.O.W. Gun Fighter)
See also
References
Bibliography
*
* James, Derek N. ''Westland Aircraft since 1915''. London: Putnam, 1991. .
* Mason, Francis K. ''The British Fighter since 1912''. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1992. .
External links
Westland COW Gun Fighter– British Aircraft Directory
Westland historyAccessed 1 Feb 2007
*http://users.skynet.be/Emmanuel.Gustin/history/NoAllowance.html Accessed 1 Feb 2007
{{Westland aircraft
1930s British fighter aircraft
COW
Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult ma ...