Ammunition feed apparatus
AssigneeThe Secretary of State for Defense in Her Britannic Majesty's Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
InventorGeorge J. Stubbs
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A gravity operated shell feed apparatus for a turret-mounted gun comprises two stacks of downwardly sloping magazine racks, from the lower ends of which shell may be singly released to roll into an appropriately positioned collection tray which is then angularly deflected in a vertical plane so as to transfer the shell to a ramming tray for delivery to a ramming position at the gun, the whole sequence being manually controlled by means of a single operating lever. The apparatus is designed for a fixed loading position thereby avoiding the necessity of sweeping the feed apparatus at high speed through a large volume of turret space, and using instead the elevating gear of the gun to sweep the balanced elevating mass through a smaller turret volume at a proportionately lower speed, in a region less hazardous to the gun crew.
Claims9
An ammunition feed apparatus for a turret-mounted gun having a barrel with an axial breech and including a magazine having at least one stack of two or more inclined plane-parallel racks each spaced away from its neighbour by a distance of approximately one calibre to define a compartment adapted to contain a single row of ammunition rounds lying with their cylindrical axes parallel with a lower end of the compartment, a plurality of escapement mechanisms disposed within each compartment and adapted to separate and control rolling of contained rounds towards the lower end, and a release mechanism located adjacent the lower end of each compartment;
- wherein the invention comprises that the magazine is attached to the turret rearwardly of the breech with the lower end of each compartment disposed adjacent and parallel to a substantially vertical plane containing the axis of the barrel, and includes a transfer means for collecting a round released from the lower end of any selected one of the compartments and for presenting that round in a ramming position at the breech, which transfer means is pivotally attached to the magazine intermediate the compartments and the breech so as to be angularly deflectable in the said vertical plane, the rounds being housed in use within the compartments with their based directed towards the breech.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.