YellowAirplane.com: WW2 Airplane, Bomber Gun Camera? Can you tell me more?

WW2 Airplane, Bomber Gun Camera? Can you tell me more?

Gun Camera or Camera Gun, what is it? Why is the gun cameras lens pointing out of the side of the gun?

Gun Camera or Camera Gun page 2, you tell me

What is the purpose of this gun camera. It's a camera mounted on the side of a gun and was made for the U.S. Navy by Fairchild Aviation in New York, N.Y. It's definitely something military, was it used in the old ww2 bombers like a B-17 or B-29 or what. Please let me know if you have any ideas on this gun camera or gun cameras like it.

Computers, Electronics, Discount Center

We are looking for more information or photo's about this gun. It's some sort of a gun camera but the camera is pointing out the side of the gun. Do you have any idea what it is used for.
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Type 89 "Motion Picture Gun" Type (or Model) 2

Produced by Roku-oh Sha which was the mfg'ing arm of Konish-sha, the latter of which became Konica and is now Konica-Minolta.

The Type 89 refers to the year of introduction of the "camera gun" which was 2589 in the Japanese calendar which corresponds to 1929. The Type 2 gun was produced from 1933 to 1944. Approximately 12,000 were made although it is not clear to me yet whether that was both models or just the Type 2.

All evidence (on Japanese) sites point to this being an IJN instrument. There is no evidence that it was produced for the IJA which seems to have had other models.

The gun was used for aerial combat training but I have found no sites in English or Japanese which give any indication of what types of planes it was used with, etc.

In my opinion, these are _not_ very rare. Turns out that there are actually several examples on the web in English which can be found by searching for Type 89 Camera Gun or other permutations. My suspicion is that 1) many of these were found in air bases immediately after the war, 2) this was b/c as the war neared an end, there was no time, etc for the Japanese to be doing training so most of these probably sat unused and contrary to airplanes themselves, did not end up being destroyed by the allies in combat.

The museum that contacted me about this does not have theirs on display yet and is out of state so I haven't seen the actual thing yet and can provide no photos. Again, however, they are not rare. Museums which have them include the Smithsonian's NASM, a museum in Dayton, OH (most likely @ Wright-Patterson), one in Nagoya, Japan, one in the Japanese National Camera museum, etc.

Again, there are lots of web sites that have photos of the guns. Not everything written on the English sites is accurate so take it with a grain of salt. I have the Japanese manual but have not had time to read it yet--but it does seem to match what is written on Japanese web sites (eg 10 frames per second, types of Hexar lenses (2) used, the use of a Seiko chronograph which was also photographed, etc)

From the pictures I have seen, there are no dates on the guns themselves, only serial numbers. This seems odd to me so I suspect that there is a mfg'ing date on the guns somewhere but maybe on the bottom or .....? Many of the existing guns have the original wooden crates and accessories and there may be date info on the name plates in the crate.
Research thanks to Thomas Little.

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