Thank you for a very interesting thread.
I enjoy the informed postings and pictures.
One thing I find hard to locate are terminal results of various
weapons on armor and other targets.
This thread has some outstanding pictures of these effects.
You re welcome, you re welcome, it wasnt easy to emsemble all the info but it worth the effort. 
Cleaning up the barrel of MG 151/20. The knurled section is for easier handling when extracting it, it was a quick change one obviously.
Nice views the rear MG 151/20 turret, He-177.
Very nice pics Panzerknacker.
Thanks, here is another.
Filling up 60 round magazines for the Ikaria Werke MG-FF 20mm gun. ( airfield in the France Campaign, 1940)
Are those 20mm rounds in paper sleeves? Btw, does anyone know if there are any videos of luftwaffe guns being fired online? I don’t mean guncamera shots, but like ground tests.
Cardboard slevees actually.
My dear Comrade: in my extensive collection and research in the german newsreel Deutsche Wochenschau as well in other non-public instructional Lehrfilm I ve found little of the materiel you want.
Most you can see inboard footage of machineguns or like MG 15, MG 81, MG FF being fired by a bomber gunner mostly against ground targets.
The most close to your request is some footage of the MG 151 firing from the wing of Junkers Ju-87D-5 in a woche of 1944, and the Ju-87G of Rudel being filmed using its guns from a chase plane.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRUj6RiCj4w
So far I ve found no film of any Luftwaffe weapon being tested in the ground.
Here is a pic of part of my ammo stash showing the sleeves in which they were packed This is 20x138B ammo, as used in German AA guns (and AT rifles)
Must be a hard work to emsemble all the magazines when you got to extract every single round from its package, but I guess with fused ammo there was no much options, you need to protect it from the shocks of the travel to the front.
The tubes were just to prevent scratching, denting, etc. the outer crates were the real protection, whether wood, or metal. Sometimes the ammo was placed inside a sealed tin, then inside a wooden crate. Fuzes were not much trouble, being fairly simple in that size.(at the time) Physical protection of the fuze was more the thought than preventing premature functioning.
It was (in the American services anyway,) common practice to assemble belts, and magazines from loose ammo sent in bulk containers. I’d guess it was a time consuming job, but one that was really important to weed out substandard rounds. also the loads were determined by the work to be done, all A.P., all explosive, trace or no trace, even accounting for the different types of these munitions.
Thanks for the info TankG.
A photo for bullet manics:
Reloading a Me-106G-6 in Russland 1943. Note the grey Pzg übung projectiles in the ammo belft for the MG 151/20, that confirms the “exercice” ammunition was indeed used in combat missions.
RZ 65:
1943 experimental air-to-air spin stabilized rocket, tested in special underwing pods on BF-109F.
Mauser MK 214 ( Amendment )
Some corrections on my earlier post about this maschinenkanone.
-The feed was by means of a non-desintegrating metallic belt.
-Correct rate of fire was 160 rpm
-Electro-pneumatic feeding used by the BK 5 was completely discarded in this massive gun. The cartrigdes were feed by sliding/rotating cams working with the gun recoil.
Some more photos:
Ammunition belt:
Panzerknacker your post
Mauser MK 214 ( Amendment )
Some corrections on my earlier post about this maschinenkanone.
-The feed was by means of a non-desintegrating metallic belt.
But the ammunition belt shown is a disintergrating link belt
Hmm, is possible. Did I mistranslate the german source ?
However the belt sems disasembled for the photo, that doesnt mean the mechanism inside the MK 214 would do the same. In any case the used belt was keep in the Me-262 nose and not ejected.
Two more photos.
Panzerknacker and Leccy, my friends, we may be talking of two different terminologies as regards the belt carrying the shells.
There are two terms often erroneously used interchangably, that should not be employed that way.
“Disposable link” and “Disintegrating link”.
Disposable link literally means the belt disintegrates and the ejected shellcase takes with it the link portion of the belt it fed-through on.
Disintegrating link literally means the belt disintegrates, the shellcase is ejected, but the link, now “loose” is retained in a container for later re-use in a replacement belt.
In the decades since Ww2 the two above terms have come to be employed interchangably, where in fact they should not be.
I’m thinking that this explains the element of confusion with regard to the belt /beltlinks in question.
Kind and Respectful Regards, my friends Panzerknacker and Leccy, Uyraell.
Maybe the gun had both characteristicas. Is my opinion taht the links remained toghether after passing trough teh chamber, but I could be wrong , there is no a lot of information about thsi weapon because only 2 or 3 were made.
I found some info but I could not understand the mechanism properly, apart from the rounds were stripped from the belt and ejected after use, I could not work out if the cases and links were retained or dumped.
A seemingly minor point now that has had me thinking, normally the links were disposed of along with the cartridge cases, maybe due to Germanys declining industrial and resource base they were intending to bring them back for re-use.
I’d be thinking long and hard to come up with a source to back me, but I seem to recall that by about September of 1943 the Germans had begun to adopt a policy of retaining the links themselves, but ejecting the empty cartridge cases.
I have a half-formed memory of a Speer Directive being issued, that emphasised reduction of machining time in manufacture of various items, and which became the basis for the adoption of the policy of retaining the beltlinks.
Pretty much by early 1944 the Germans were, again as result of a Speer Directive, gradually introducing thin-walled steel cartridges into service in a surprisingly large number of calibres, even if only in prototype form.
Modern times have tended to credit the Russians in particular with steel-walled shells, but it was, if memory serves correctly, the Germans who first made large-scale use of shells and cartidges manufactured from steel.
Which is where the disintegrating links and retaining the empty links after firing enters the picture.
For comparative purposes regarding Germany’s economic situation, it should be recalled, that by mid 1943, Me.109’s and FW 190’s were going into combat with wooden tails and tailfins, in order to minimise losses of various metals used in the aircraft industry. Similarly, certain vehicles were leaving production lines with wooden seating where they had originally been designed with steelframe seating. All this, to economise on the usage of metals, which Germany was all-too-rapidly running out of.
Again, germane to the beltlinks question.
Kind and Respectful Regards my friends, Uyraell.
I dont thinkw the links were discarded at all, not only for economy reaos but also because eject links of that size from a jet fighter is quite complicated. The link could be cought by the airflow and smashed against the fuselage or other aircraft section. Very dangerous.
There was also a variant MK 214B, of 55mm caliber, 55x450B actually, it was under construction at tha time of the “Untergang”. It used the same cartrigde of the “Gerät 58” naval AAA gun.
