Italian Gun-turrets on bombers

[varjag]

Many Italian bombers/floatplanes carried a dorsal gun-turret, usually reffered to as a Scotti- och a Caproni-Lanciani design. They are a peculiar design where the actual gun-barrel is reciprocated by a what I take to be a compensator in the form of balancer, pointing in the opposite direction to the gunbarrel, assumingly to eliminate the need for power-operation of the turret. Most seems to have been armed with a Breda-SAFAT MG in either 7,7 och 12,7mm caliber - but other sources claim that Scotti towers had a Scotti MG? I also seem to recall a third name, that eludes me, for this type of turret. My question - was Scotti a turret or a gun/turret combination? Can anyone point to a patent description for these turrets or at least a link to how they worked? Over to the learned fraternaty on the forum.......varjag

[Cantankerous]

Many Italian bombers/floatplanes carried a dorsal gun-turret, usually reffered to as a Scotti- och a Caproni-Lanciani design. They are a peculiar design where the actual gun-barrel is reciprocated by a what I take to be a compensator in the form of balancer, pointing in the opposite direction to the gunbarrel, assumingly to eliminate the need for power-operation of the turret. Most seems to have been armed with a Breda-SAFAT MG in either 7,7 och 12,7mm caliber - but other sources claim that Scotti towers had a Scotti MG? I also seem to recall a third name, that eludes me, for this type of turret. My question - was Scotti a turret or a gun/turret combination? Can anyone point to a patent description for these turrets or at least a link to how they worked? Over to the learned fraternaty on the forum.......varjag

This thread may be nearly two decades old, but I should say that the Scotti was a machine gun developed by Isotta-Fraschini, and that the gun turret armed with either the Scotti machine gun or Breda-SAFAT machine gun was the Caproni-Lanciani Delta E.

Link:
https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/t ... 397/page-3