Revolver cannon

William A. Alexander of Mobile, Alabama invented a Rapid Firing Cannon Gun made from a design by Captain Weingard, both of whom also helped build the H.L.

In 1864 Alexander was called back to Mobile, AL. from Charleston, SC, to build one of his Rapid Firing Guns.

The Confederate States of America used a single 2-inch, 5-shot revolver cannon with manually rotated chambers during the Siege of Petersburg.

[4] In 1932, the Soviet ShKAS machine gun, 7.62 mm calibre aircraft ordnance used a twelve-round capacity, revolver-style feed mechanism with a single barrel and single chamber, to achieve firing rates of well over 1800 rounds per minute, and as high as 3,000 rounds per minute in special test versions in 1939, all operating from internal gas-operated reloading.

[5] Around 1935, Silin, Berezin and Morozenko worked on a 6000 rpm 7.62 mm aircraft machine gun using revolver design, called SIBEMAS (СИБЕМАС), but this was abandoned.

[7] The archetypal revolver cannon is the Mauser MK 213 from World War II, from which almost all current weapons are derived.

[11] The virtually unknown Rikhter R-23 was fitted only to some Tu-22 models, but later abandoned in favor of the two-barrel, Gast gun Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-23 in the Tu-22M.

However, revolver cannons are generally able to be made much lighter than rotary autocannons, requiring less support and mounting hardware—rotary autocannons spin the whole multiple barrel and breech assembly, which, in equal caliber versions, can weigh hundreds of kilograms more in comparison (though the weight per rounds fired per minute is lower for the rotary).

The need to accelerate this cluster generally requiring a large, external power supply means that the maximum attainable rate of fire is not immediately available.

In addition, rotaries suffer from lower accuracy, due to dispersion caused by multiple barrels rotating at a varying speed.