The M39 Revolver Cannon, Spoils of War

Don’t let anyone tell you that a revolver is too slow. Besides blisteringly fast Single-Action shooters like Bob Munden and the iconic Jerry Miculek, there’s the M39 cannon. We stumbled upon a great static training layout for the gun system of an F-101 Voodoo fighter at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Arizona while visiting the amazing facility. That gun? The M39 autocannon. The system. What could go wrong? (All photos unless noted: Chris Eger/Guns.com) It had a single barrel with a five-chamber cylinder that revolved at the six o’clock position parallel to the bore. Think S&W J-Frame on steroids with rounds that were more the size of a Red Bull can rather than .38 Specials. Note the revolving cylinder, about the size of a desk garbage can. Gas-operated with a piston that ejected the spent casing from one of the cylinder’s chambers while a spring-loaded rammer slid a new cartridge into an open chamber on each right-hand rotation, the gun was capable of firing 1,500 rounds per minute.…