in
Reichsverteidigung service, armed with two
MG 151/20 underwing gun pods In
World War II the Third Reich's Luftwaffe made use of many different, and most often rigidly mounted, conformal and suspended-mount gun pod systems usually called
Waffenbehälter (prefix of
WB, literally 'weapon container') or
Waffenträger (prefix of
WT, literally 'weapon carrier'), and carrying anything from rifle caliber
MG 81 machine guns, all the way up to the enormous
Bordkanone anti-tank cannon based ordnance weapon series, ranging from 37 to 75mm in caliber, though the usual underwing conformal gun pods fitted to
Bf 109 and
Fw 190 single engined fighters used either the
MG 151/20 or
MK 108 in gun pod mounts. Other countries also used gun pods on their aircraft; the U.S.
SBD Dauntless could be equipped with two gun pods on each wing, each with two
M2 Browning machine guns. The
Bristol Blenheim Mk.1F of the
Royal Air Force was a night fighter conversion of the twin engine light bomber equipped with airborne interception radar and armed with four 0.303 British|
Browning machine gun in a special gun pack under the fuselage. The Mk.IVF was a long range fighter version armed with the same gun pack. The RAF
Hawker Hurricane Mk.IID of 1942 was an early and extremely successful example of tank busting aircraft of the
North African campaign armed with two
Vickers S gun with 15 rounds mounted in gondola-style pods, one under each wing. Lessons learned during the
Vietnam War showed the effectiveness of guns. Then, some expensive fighter jets such as the
F-4 didn't even carry an internal cannon. Missiles (thought to be superior)—in particular radar-guided missiles—had notoriously poor combat track records in air-to-air combat. Engineers and air crews quickly created a solution by attaching rotary cannons in a cut-out fuel drop tank, creating an impromptu gun pod suitable for attacking ground targets. Since the Vietnam War,
United States Air Force policy has been that the use of multimillion-dollar aircraft for strafing is not economically justified, but the
Soviet Union, and subsequently Russia, have remained proponents of strafing, and have continued to develop systems for this purpose. Soviet experience in
Afghanistan in the 1980s led to an unusual innovation in the form of the
SPPU series of gun pods, which have traversable barrels allowing them to continue to fire on a fixed target as the aircraft passes overhead. == Design ==