Why the WW2 Soviet fighters had soo little ammo?

by Hotplayrecargas

after playin WT for 3 years i had this question, i've seen a lot of anwsers, from ¨the pilots liked it¨ to ¨they saw the pilots as expensable soo they didnt need soo much ammo¨ and i wanted to ask here.

wotan_weevil

The Soviet fighters armed with 20mm cannons usually carried from 100 to 200 rounds per gun. The 20mm ShVAK cannon had a rate of fire of about 12 rounds per second, so this provided about 8 to 16 seconds of firing. This was typical for cannon-armed fighters of WWII.

For example,

Fighter Gun rounds/gun firing time
Lavochkin La-5 20mm ShVAK 170 14
Lavochkin La-7 20mm ShVAK 200 16
Lavochkin La-7 20mm Berezin B-20 100 8
Lavochkin La-9 23mm Nudelman-Suranov NS-23 75 8
Polikarpov I-16 20mm ShVAK 150 12
Yakovlev Yak-9 20mm ShVAK 120 10
Messerschmitt Bf 109E-3 20mm 60 7
Messerschmitt Me 262A 30mm 100 10
Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero 20mm 60 7
Mitsubishi A6M5b Zero 20mm 125 15
Supermarine Spitfire Mk.XIVE 20mm Hispano 120 12
Hawker Tempest Mk.V 20mm Hispano 200 16

Some of these aircraft also carried machine guns in addition to cannons, and some other aircraft were armed with machine guns only. 200-300 rounds per gun was common for machine guns, usually providing 15 to 30 seconds of fire. The Messerschmitt Bf 109E-3 was exceptional for a single-engine fighter in that it carried 1000 rounds per machine gun, for 55 seconds of fire. Some two-engined fighters also carried more rounds per gun.

To summarise, for cannons, ammunition per gun providing 7 to 16 seconds of fire was usual, and about 15-30 seconds for machine guns. Soviet fighters carried ammunition per gun comparable to the fighters of many other nations. Some of the Soviet fighters were fairly small, and carried fewer guns than larger fighters, but they usually carried a similar number of rounds per gun.