Talk:QF 2-pounder Octuple Pom-pom Gun Mount/@comment-115.65.58.153-20161216065417/@comment-108.88.197.98-20170101024912

There's a lot more to an effective anti-aircraft gun than rate of fire... The Pom-Pom had a very low muzzle velocity that made it a poor tool for AA work against WW2 quality aircraft. It was originally a WW1 weapon intended for AA against ~150km/h biplanes, remember.

Check out navweaps.com if you want to learn more, but the key thing to know about the Pom-Pom is that the Brits considered it effective out to only ~1.5km, and that's using the High-Velocity* ammunition developed in the late 1930s to try and wring some extra performance out of the gun. A good rate of fire and a rather nice metal-linked belted ammo supply was about all these guns had going for them. Even their 40mm round was weak for its size.

The Bofors was an effective AA gun out to around 4.5km in US service, and that's only because US shells were built to self-destruct at around that range rather than keep traveling. The Pom-Pom was just a very mediocre weapon that the UK made do with out of cost-benefit considerations and a shortage of Bofors available for sale to from the US (due to immense demand for it from the US military overwhelming the available production lines, and that's despite the gun being produced on a massive scale).


 * The "High-Velocity Pom-Pom rounds had their muzzle velocity boosted ~20% above standard. In other words, just barely fast enough to equal the muzzle velocity of a US superheavy shell fired from a 16"/45 caliber gun.