SZA autocannon

[World B4]

Gabriel Szakatz had a few 19mm autocannon designs at the end of WW1, in the German Empire. The intended end result was to create a ground use and an aircraft use variant of his system, with apparently 2 versions each built. The SZB and SZC were air cooled aircraft weapons, but the SZA-1 and SZA-2 were water cooled. I cannot find any illustrations of the SZA despite the detailed illustrations of the SZB and SZC. The guns were destroyed by the Inter-Allied Commission. I'm curious as to how the SZA would have been mounted considering the Becker 20mm autocannon got a tripod but the TuF 13.2mm hmg got a carriage. I suspect the latter would have been used due to the weight of the water. The SZA is described as having a long barrel stroke, which I don't know the meaning of.

 

[Tony Williams]

From my book Autocannon. There appears to be very little information available. The gun pic shows the final SZC model, the 19 x 114R cartridge was common to all models.

One design, at an advanced state of development in 1918 but which proved to be a dead-end, was the Szakats (invented by a Polish arms designer called Gabriel Szakats); a gun which was intended to be produced in various versions for ground and air use. Four types of gun were developed (SZ-1, SZA-2, SZB and SZC). The SZ-1 and SZA-2 could both be water cooled, but the SZB was much lighter and was air cooled only. The SZC was the final model and its modified components were made out of bronze to reduce friction. These guns all fired a 19 x 114R cartridge, and used a form of retarded blowback mechanism with an additional piston and cylinder (liquid-filled in the later models) to check the violent recoil of the bolt. The guns were belt-fed with a revolving feed and a rate of fire of 450 rounds per minute.