Vulcan Gatling gun

The M61 Vulcan is a hydraulically or pneumatically driven, six-barreled, air-cooled, electrically fired Gatling-style rotary cannon which fires 20 mm rounds at an extremely high rate.
The M61 and its derivatives have been the principal cannon armament of United States military fixed-wing aircraft for fifty years.
The first aircraft to carry the M61A1 was the C model of the F-104, starting in 1959.
The Vulcan is a Gatling gun: each of the cannon's six barrels fires once in turn during each revolution of the barrel cluster. The multiple barrels provide both a very high rate of fire
- around 100 rounds per second - and contribute to prolonged weapon life by minimizing barrel erosion and heat generation. Mean time between jams or failures is in excess of 10,000 rounds,
making it an extremely reliable weapon. The success of the Vulcan Project and its subsequent progeny, the very-high-speed Gatling gun, has led to guns of the same configuration being
referred to as Vulcan Cannon, which can sometimes confuse nomenclature on the subject.

copyright © Lockheed via Peitzmeier archive