A flight investigation of the effects of varied lateral damping on the effectiveness of a typical high-speed fighter airplane as a gun platform has been made. The test airplane was equipped with a device for varying the lateral damping and with a gunsight employing both a fixed reticle and a gyro computing reticle. In addition, a brief inves¬tigation was made with a fixed telescopic sight. Flights were made at three conditions of damping identified as normal, increased, and decreased damping. The data were separated arbitrarily into two turbulence levels, one called "smooth" for variations of normal acceleration less than ±0.5g and the other called "moderately rough" for variations more than ±0.5g.nResults of simulated strafing runs made in this investigation indi¬cate that the gun-line dispersion could be expected to be decreased about 7 percent by increased lateral damping and to be increased about 85 percent by decreased damping and about 40 percent by rough air of the type encountered. Use of the telescopic sight indicated a 20-percent decrease in gun-line dispersion.
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