It's ww1 thinking. Aerial darts were fairly effective, not really damage wise but fear wise. They imagined the save idea but it doesn't have the same effect since they aren't that loud and visually don't make a s much of an impact as seeing you homeboy suddenly turned into a gruesome pincushion.

I have to think those would be a very bumpy 3 seconds, and that it would probably be cheaper and easier to just use artillery and/or bombs.

It’s safer than putting 88 people in the line of fire with the same circumstances. Theres the whole it’s less accurate angle, but its safer, man power not put in line of fire could be used to reload and swap magazines.

Russians love their redneck engineering.

(The rate of fire might've been lower in this configuration, for whatever reason.)

Just for fun: Assuming they are firing perfectly staggered, 110,000 rpm at the top speed of 528km/h (1,833rps at 1,466m/s) gives us a dispersion of 1.25m/bullet. Not bad at all. If a person is standing in this line, there's a 14.4% chance of being hit (18cm head diameter). If they were crouched or lying down it would be even higher, up to 100% if they were unfortunate enough to lie in the direction the plane is traveling.

It's a soviet design, so...yes, maybe?

That's just one reason why this is completely impractical.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/21/

For an AK47 it'd be 57.2N, so probably a bit less times 88, totalling something below 5000N or so for the ejected bullets, plus 30% for gas n stuff.

I highly recommend the xkcd in any case.

Tu-2 can carry an extra two 500kg or four 250kg bombs inside of that bomb bay (in addition to the welded wing mounts)

Why would you ever want the guns over the bombs