The 'Stolen' German Weapon The British Put On Every Escort — And ItWorked Better

1941. Mid-Atlantic. A Focke-Wulf Condor drops out of cloud 500 yards from a corvette. The crew fires .50 calibre Vickers machine guns. Bullets spark off the bomber's fuselage. They do nothing. The Condor releases its bombs and climbs away untouched. The Royal Navy had a close-range anti-aircraft crisis. The solution already existed. It had been offered to the Admiralty in 1934. They rejected it. Rejected it again in 1937. It was a Swiss cannon with German ancestry, and British officials saw no reason to adopt a foreign weapon. By 1943, that rejected cannon armed over 3,000 Royal Navy warships. It became the most fired weapon in the fleet. And the irony: Germany helped create the design, then abandoned it. Britain copied it, mass-produced it, and used it to shoot down Luftwaffe aircraft by the hundred. The 20mm Oerlikon. Born from a 1913 German design by Reinhold Becker. Exiled to Switzerland by Versailles. Rescued from bankruptcy by Japan — whose money funded the improvements that later killed Japanese pilots. Championed alone by Mountbatten from 1937. Smuggled into Britain in a suitcase as France fell. Specifications: 450 rounds/minute cyclic. 830 metres/second muzzle velocity. 60-round drum — three to five times any Axis magazine. No external power. No water cooling. A single sailor could fire it. It could be bolted to any patch of deck. Germany's equivalent: the Flak 30. More powerful cartridge — but a 20-round magazine producing half the practical rate of fire. Japan's 25mm: 15-round magazine, 110 rounds/minute. Triple mounts vibrated so badly they destroyed accuracy. During Convoy PQ 18, escorts carrying Oerlikons helped destroy 44 German aircraft. Off Okinawa, 32% of all Japanese aircraft kills by the USN were credited to 20mm Oerlikons. Total Allied production: over 180,000 guns. Still in Royal Navy service during the Falklands War in 1982. #WW2 #Oerlikon #RoyalNavy #BritishHistory #WWII #AntiAircraft #NavalHistory #WorldWarTwo #MilitaryHistory #20mm #SwissCannon #Mountbatten #NavalGunnery #ConvoyEscort #ArcticConvoy #PQ18 #BritishInnovation #GermanDesign #NavalWeapons #FleetDefence