.50 Cal vs 20 mm Hispano - Ground Attack

[JtD]

1 hour ago, Lord_Flashheart said:

Additionally the other 20mm rounds available would have been far less effective

 

The belting typically was SAP(I) / HE(I). AP only made up for a small fraction of Hispano ammunition production. In 1944, 40 million SAP rounds were manufactured, as opposed to 6 million AP rounds. HE probably not less than SAP. I haven't seen any pentration figures for the SAP rounds - anyone around who can provide these?

 

1 hour ago, Lord_Flashheart said:

Yes you do. Which is why its better to have more ammo and a denser/wider beaten zone. However, given the patterns of these guns bursts, it is just as unlikely that you only get one hit as it is you hit with every single round. If you hit at all, you are likely to hit with multiple rounds. And you are more likely to hit "at all" with the 50s. And if you miss, you have more ammo to try again.

 

Sorry, this does not add up. Either you have a higher chance to hit at all, in which case you're talking about a couple of rounds if not just a single one will hit, in which case a 20mm hit will typically do more damage than the corresponding two hits from a .50. Or you're hitting multiple times, in which case the 20mm rounds do more damage than the .50. The scenario you're promoting that the .50 are more likely to hit a with multiple rounds than the Hispanos are to hit at all, is not remotely realistic. Same way 8x.50 is not twice as likely to hit as 4x.50, it just doesn't work that way. But they are more likely to put twice the number of hits into the target for twice the damage.

 

1 hour ago, Lord_Flashheart said:

Additionally you guys are wildly overestimating the destructive nature of a 20mm round with explosive filler in ww2. A single 20mm hit hitting a random part of the vehicle as very likely not to kill the vehicle, just like a single 50 would not. A single 20mm to the engine or the crew cabin is only slightly more likely to kill the vehicle outright. It is not a bloody mortar round.

 

I'm not overestimating anything - unless the WW2 weapons testing I base my opnion on is far off the mark. From that testing it's a matter of fact that a 20mm round has a far higher chance to disable an aircraft or a vehicle with a single hit. With each single hit, so that probability stacks.

 

1 hour ago, Lord_Flashheart said:

The most likely scenario for any burst from either gun system that finds its target at all, dozens of rounds to hit. Not one round. Not all of them.

 

I find 'dozens' very high. 'Several', I'd agree with.

---

Just looked into an older document, if there was anything on ground targets, but there wasn't. Still, I found that a Fw190 in it's average attack spent 93 MG151 rounds and 74 MG131 rounds for a 32% chance of starting a fire on an enemy fighter. Same documents states 5.2 seconds of firing time for a a P-47 with 8x.50 for a 43% probability to shoot a Fw190 down. That's roughly 500 rounds.

---

According to the USAF statistical digest, the highest monthly loss of aircraft lost to enemy aircraft in the ETO was April 1944, with 516 (314 heavies, 1 medium, 201 fighters).  Another 153 were lost to enemy aircraft in the MTO that month (105/10/38). The fighting certainly wasn't over by then.

In the first half of 1944,

The USAAF attributed 2668 of its losses to enemy aircraft in the ETO and MTO.

The Luftwaffe states 6259 combat related losses, 2855 out of these fighters (all fronts).

Terribly high figures on both sides.

---

3 minutes ago, cardboard_killer said:

Excusing Axis failures? I celebrate Axis failures. I just wish it hadn't taken so many good men and women so long to stop the fascists.

 

Amen to that.

Edited September 22, 2019 by JtD

[sevenless]

15 minutes ago, Ehret said:

Even if you will carry the "outnumbered" excuse whose fault it was?

 

Being outnumbered from 1944 onwards is no excuse it was a fact. Allowing to be outnumbered was a direct consequence of political and strategic decisions by big herman and some other psychopaths involved in the big picture..

Edited September 22, 2019 by sevenless

[Ehret]

20 minutes ago, cardboard_killer said:

And facts are so lopsided in the issue of 20mm over .50cal as to make your argument turn to personal attacks on me as a fascist apologist.

 

That are your words - not at moment such thing came to my mind. The truth is no one knows what could work better and history just happened. Every technical/weapon choice is a compromise. Battery of HMGs had some perks - history has proved it worked well enough and pros were useful. Just check historic gun cameras - pilots were using generous ammo reserves expending longer bursts and "walking" bullet streams to target. It allowed mediocre pilots to hit targets reliably. Perhaps that was the most optimal way. Unless you make the time traveling machine we won't know.

 

And why you are using the name "fascists"? The major threat were Nazis - aka National Socialists and that is the great world tragedy that for defeating them Allies made the deal with Stalin - an another awful tyrant and his ugly regime which costed us in the Eastern Europe so much.

Edited September 22, 2019 by Ehret

[LColony_Kong]

37 minutes ago, sevenless said:

 

Nope, the turning point in the ETO was in the middle of 1943 when the 8th AF started to cover their bombers with fighters as you can see from the graphs below. Big Week in 2/44 only accelerated that effect. From Q4/1943 on the germans lost the battle of attrition in the air. The results were more an more untrained and inexperienced pilots in the air serving as cannon-fodder for the well trained RAF and USAAF fighter pilots. Local tactical superiority in one place didn´t help when the GAF as a whole wasn´t able to replace the human losses with adequately trained pilots.

 

 

You have an extremely interesting way of interpreting data.

 

 

The fact that bomber losses reached their peak and started to drop in mid-43 does not show that it was the turning point. Its only the turning point in the graph. Turning point, strategically speaking, is not until bomber losses got below acceptable levels. Simply doing down  (which is what you would expect when going from practically un-escorted to escorted) does not show that it went down enough.

 

The Luftwaffe was still quite capable at the beginning of 1944. Which really has nothing to do with my point as I made it anyhow: which is that having larger numbers of fighters did not translate to having large numbers of fighters at any given point of a battle. The myth that 51s, 38s, and 47s (especially the first one), only succeeded because it was 10 American fighters vs every German one, is a counter factual.

 

-it is a fact that pointblank did not begin to really gain momentum until the beginning of 1944.

-it is fact that the Luftwaffe held back most of its fighters on intercepts until the thunderbolts had to turn around

-it is a fact that only 2 groups of 51s and 2 groups of 38s were the only planes capable of escorting into Germany in early 44.

 

And it is also a fact that this is now very much off topic.

16 minutes ago, JtD said:

Sorry, this does not add up. Either you have a higher chance to hit at all, in which case you're talking about a couple of rounds if not just a single one will hit, in which case a 20mm hit will typically do more damage than the corresponding two hits from a .50. Or you're hitting multiple times, in which case the 20mm rounds do more damage than the .50. The scenario you're promoting that the .50 are more likely to hit a with multiple rounds than the Hispanos are to hit at all, is not remotely realistic. Same way 8x.50 is not twice as likely to hit as 4x.50, it just doesn't work that way. But they are more likely to put twice the number of hits into the target for twice the damage.

your missing my point. I am not saying 20mm is not more powerful. The point is that both rounds are about as likely to kill the target with any number of hits. Neither 1 20mm or 1 50cal is likely to kill a truck in one hit, especially assuming a random hit anywhere on the vehicle. there are situations where the extra oompf of the 20mm would make the difference, but thats not the statistically significant bit.

 

 

[sevenless]

6 minutes ago, Lord_Flashheart said:

You have an extremely interesting way of interpreting data.

 

The Luftwaffe was still quite capable at the beginning of 1944. Which really has nothing to do with my point as I made it anyhow: which is that having larger numbers of fighters did not translate to having large numbers of fighters at any given point of a battle. The myth that 51s, 38s, and 47s (especially the first one), only succeeded because it was 10 American fighters vs every German one, is a counter factual.

 

This a quote from the official report. I leave it at that:

 

"Stated otherwise, the growth in the size of the bomber force was 80 much greater than the growth in the enemy fighter force that German fighter defenses were saturated with attacking bombers. There were far too many bombers exposed as targets to the enemy fighters for the GAF to maintain its proportionate attack. And when long-range escort fighters greatly diminished bomber exposure, GAF fighter efficiency dropped to a minimum. "

[JtD]

36 minutes ago, Lord_Flashheart said:

your missing my point. I am not saying 20mm is not more powerful. The point is that both rounds are about as likely to kill the target with any number of hits. Neither 1 20mm or 1 50cal is likely to kill a truck in one hit, especially assuming a random hit anywhere on the vehicle. there are situations where the extra oompf of the 20mm would make the difference, but thats not the statistically significant bit.

 

There are simple ways to check this - add up the areas of vulnerability and divide it by total target area. Now I don't know the average Opel Blitz, horse drawn carriage or scout car vulnerabilities from the top of my head. But I can assure you, that outside of engine, driver and fuel tank there's very little that makes a difference when hitting a truck with a .50 API round. While an 20mm SAPI basically has to aim for the same thing, it has a higher probability of hitting it. Particularly cables and hoses are easier to hit. That's owing to splinters and a larger I content. So just think engine-compartment instead of engine or driver cabin instead of driver. Or whatever you find plausible. In the end, there's a significant difference.

Edited September 22, 2019 by JtD

[unreasonable]

22 minutes ago, Lord_Flashheart said:

 

And it is also a fact that this is now very much off topic.

your missing my point. I am not saying 20mm is not more powerful. The point is that both rounds are about as likely to kill the target with any number of hits. Neither 1 20mm or 1 50cal is likely to kill a truck in one hit, especially assuming a random hit anywhere on the vehicle. there are situations where the extra oompf of the 20mm would make the difference, but thats not the statistically significant bit.

 

 

 

I completely agree that "who won" etc is off topic:  just far too many variables.

 

The other point is where the difficulty lies. The US tested these weapons, immediately post war, against surplus P-47s, and produced statistical analyses of hits to various parts of the aircraft.   https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a800394.pdf  It is an interesting read and about the most fully documented research on these weapons I have seen. 

 

They concluded that, in the test scenario,  the probability of a 20mm HEI, M97 shell rendering a P-47 incapable of RTB, was 0.120

For 0.50 API-T M20 it was 0.037    so 3.24 times the "kill" probability for the 20mm.

 

So what is the probability of surviving n hits? Roughly:

                         20mm                50 cal            50cal/20mm

n              

1                          0.880              0.963                      1.09

2                          0.774              0.927                      1.20

3                         0.681               0.893                      1.31

4                         0.545               0.860                      1.58

5                         0.436               0.828                      1.90

6                         0.383               0.797                      2.08

 

Because the individual shot kill probabilities are rather low, the probability of surviving one shot of either type may not "feel" very different:  although it is. But as you are hit by successive shots the probability of surviving n hits drops far more sharply with the 20mm - which is what JtD means by the probabilities stacking.

 

Now this is in relation to use against aircraft. Turning to ground targets, you have been critical of the alleged exaggeration of the splinter effect of cannon rounds, but I still have not seen any numbers.  It does not take a large splinter to disable a human. (My British artillery site that had data on the splinters required to do this is now being flagged as containing malware, unfortunately).  

[Lusekofte]

A Jug or a P40 with additional ammo will kill more ground targets than any single piston fighter armed with anything. Simply because you got a lot of ammo. 

And that is all we need to know about that in this game. 

Exceptions for aces witch hit every single shell with correct amount of ammo. 

No need to bring up ballistic charts. They simply do not apply in such degree that make my statement un true

[Ehret]

23 minutes ago, JtD said:

In the end, there's a significant difference.

 

The difference which was penny counting for fighter pilots in the P-47s or P-38s. With 400-500rpg you don't care - just pull trigger and intersect the bullet stream with targets. They had such backing and logistics that's wasn't an issue - it was advantage.

[ZachariasX]

11 minutes ago, LuseKofte said:

A Jug or a P40 with additional ammo

You can load any aircrat with "more ammo" if hosing time is all that matters to you. But nobody complained about 20 sec firing time with 4 Hispanos being little. On the contrary. Also keep in mind that both P-40 and P-47 on the deck stuffed with that extra ammo you're talking about are no good in heavily contested airspace and a determined enemy. Especially the P-40. So assuming the enemy just lets you shoot at him, then you have a point. This is exactly the situation where the weight and space penalty is not really significant. But if that is the assumption you go to war with in general, it might bite you.

[BlitzPig_EL]

It's interesting to note that the aircraft that the USAAF originally contracted for as bomber interceptors, the P-38 and P-39, both had mixed cannon and machine gun armament packages.

It's not as if the US military and manufacturers did not understand the usefulness of cannon in the anti bomber role.  Of course this all became academic after the Battle of Britain, as massed formations of enemy bombers were really not a thing anymore for the Allied air forces, as was the concept of the short range "point interceptor" on the Allied side.  Sure the RAF still kept the Spitfire, as it was the best thing they had, but heavier, more "all 'rounder" types (Typhoon, Tempest, Sea Fury) I.E. heavier single seaters, became the future of the "fighter plane" in all air forces.  This devolved pissing match we are now into is pointless.  Both the US and RAF/LW arming solutions proved effective at making each other dead.

 

In short, flight simmers will be flight simmers.  We like to argue.  Fakt.

[unreasonable]

Oh no we don't!

[HagarTheHorrible]

36 minutes ago, LuseKofte said:

A Jug or a P40 with additional ammo will kill more ground targets than any single piston fighter armed with anything. Simply because you got a lot of ammo. 

And that is all we need to know about that in this game. 

Exceptions for aces witch hit every single shell with correct amount of ammo. 

No need to bring up ballistic charts. They simply do not apply in such degree that make my statement un true

 

Which is an erroneous assumption to make.  It was found, during the Vietnam war, that despite the almost universal use of semi and fully auto weapons, hit probability went down.  

 

Both weapons are equally effective, in low threat environments,  both are ineffective when high probability of lethality to risk is taken into account. If a job needed done then you took rockets or bombs because being shot at, when attacking has a shitty habit of putting people of their aim. If either the 50’s or 20’’S had been up the job then nobody would have bothered encumbering attack aircraft with anything else, except when trying to beat up little old ladies in their wheelchairs (harassing, undefended, targets of opportunity)

Edited September 22, 2019 by HagarTheHorrible

[JtD]

10 minutes ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

If either the 50’s or 20’’S had been up the job then nobody would have bothered encumbering attack aircraft with anything else

 

True, but the question of the topic is the 20mm vs. .50 in ground attack. Certainly, a 500kg bomb delivers more bang in a shorter time than any gun does.

 

43 minutes ago, Ehret said:

The difference which was penny counting for fighter pilots in the P-47s or P-38s.

 

More than 3200 US fighters were lost to AAA over Europe and the MTO, most of them in strafing runs. There is no penny counting on the front, the count there is in lives.

Edited September 22, 2019 by JtD

[unreasonable]

20 minutes ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

 

Which is an erroneous assumption to make.  It was found, during the Vietnam war, that despite the almost universal use of semi and fully auto weapons, hit probability went down.  

 

 

 

If that is true - and I can well believe it - it probably just reflects the fact that if you give someone a large quantity of ammunition and tell him not to come back with any he will aim far less carefully.  However, @LuseKofte may have been referring strictly to the game rather than RL?  Given the way entire factories crumble when you give them a nasty look, he may well be right. Trucks with one hit box may well be almost indifferent to being hit by 50 cal or 20mm, given BoX's fragile damage models.

[Ehret]

12 minutes ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

If either the 50’s or 20’’S had been up the job then nobody would have bothered encumbering attack aircraft with anything else, except when trying to beat up little old ladies in their wheelchairs (harassing, undefended, targets of opportunity)

 

Welcome to the reality of wars - about 80% successful air attacks were done in such way.

 

3 minutes ago, JtD said:

More than 3200 US fighters were lost to AAA over Europe and the MTO, most of them in strafing runs. There is no penny counting on the front, the count there is in lives.

 

The P-47s had 0.7% survival ratio per mission. If you doing things at huge scale you will get big numbers no matter what.

But ok... what you would propose instead - to up-gun Thunderbolts? Well... could be done probably but it would cost time, could introduce faults, would reduce readiness thus cost lives in other places.

 

The number of loses includes P-51s? If true then no 0.50"s are at fault here.

[LColony_Kong]

1 hour ago, unreasonable said:

 

I completely agree that "who won" etc is off topic:  just far too many variables.

 

The other point is where the difficulty lies. The US tested these weapons, immediately post war, against surplus P-47s, and produced statistical analyses of hits to various parts of the aircraft.   https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a800394.pdf  It is an interesting read and about the most fully documented research on these weapons I have seen. 

 

They concluded that, in the test scenario,  the probability of a 20mm HEI, M97 shell rendering a P-47 incapable of RTB, was 0.120

For 0.50 API-T M20 it was 0.037    so 3.24 times the "kill" probability for the 20mm.

 

So what is the probability of surviving n hits? Roughly:

                         20mm                50 cal            50cal/20mm

n              

1                          0.880              0.963                      1.09

2                          0.774              0.927                      1.20

3                         0.681               0.893                      1.31

4                         0.545               0.860                      1.58

5                         0.436               0.828                      1.90

6                         0.383               0.797                      2.08

 

Because the individual shot kill probabilities are rather low, the probability of surviving one shot of either type may not "feel" very different:  although it is. But as you are hit by successive shots the probability of surviving n hits drops far more sharply with the 20mm - which is what JtD means by the probabilities stacking.

 

Now this is in relation to use against aircraft. Turning to ground targets, you have been critical of the alleged exaggeration of the splinter effect of cannon rounds, but I still have not seen any numbers.  It does not take a large splinter to disable a human. (My British artillery site that had data on the splinters required to do this is now being flagged as containing malware, unfortunately).  

This data hardly contradicts any of what im saying.

 

The debate over the exaggeration of the HE filler was largely over the effect of a single round. I stated quite clearly that a single round of 50 vs 20mm has little difference in chance of a kill. Which exactly what this data shows. Does 6 20mm have a higher chance of killing than 6 50s? Yes. But ive never debated this. The fact is though that you are going to get alot more hits with the 6-8 fifty configuration that with the 20mm configuration, and you will have alot more ammo to try again if you dont. In any situation where either of these gun systems gets multiple hits, both of them will kill the target.

 

Is 20mm more powerful? Are there situations where you might get a kill you otherwise would not have because of that? Yes. Does it warrant using them all the time? No. 9 times out of 10 the 6-8 fifty config is the more flexible solution. A one second burst of 4 hispanos would put out roughly 47 rounds. 6 fifties, roughtly 80, and 8 fiftys roughly 106.

[[CPT]Crunch]

What are you guys, virtual pilots or politicians?  It wasn't up to the pilots to choose, you flew what you had, and were given.

[Bremspropeller]

3 hours ago, Ehret said:

 

WOULD is the correct world, indeed. Most of the Heer were on foot and horse drawn. Most Heer soldiers were carrying WW1 era rifles when US troops had M1 Garands as the standard issue. What else? Average age of Heer soldiers gone higher and higher relative to Allies as war progressed. At the end who it was? Old men and fanatics from HJ.

 

Again... excuses because "they ran out of something". You can not say that LW's pilots were getting shot left and right? P-47s pilots had loss ratio only 0.7 per cent per mission and achieved an aerial kill ratio of 4.6:1 in ETO. It seems that "the superior" firepower didn't do much for the LW's plight.

 

That's true but you should mention that many one engine Axis fighters didn't carry that many 20mm guns. The ones with heavier armament were handicapped and much easier pickings for Allied fighters. And what is really funny is that LW's fighter were equip with "peashooters" as well and only a pair at that. Why is it when Allied fighter carry a battery of 6-8 HMGs that's so inefficient but when Axis fighters carry just HMG (if not rifle caliber MG) pair and one 20mm cannon then it's so perfect?

 

A horse-drawn flak-quad isn't less lethal than a motor-mobilized one. In fact, mobility isn't a flak-units number one priority.

The Garand was a crappy gun, too. Just a bit less crappy than the 98K, which wasn't semi-auto. The G43 was, though.

What does the average Heer soldier's age have to do with the better effectivity of the 20mm in A-G and A-A?

 

P-47 pilots also only flew 50-100 missions and then went back home. Compared to what? 1000 missions with minimum R-R in between for a Luftwaffe pilot or some green kid that didn't have time to know his operational airplane, because training quickly tapered off after BoB? It seems that "firepower" isn't the metric that determines whether attrition will kill a supply of people, or not. Burn, straw-man, burn.

 

A six-gun Fw 190A-8 was a standard fighter in mid 1944 and it was not handicapped at all (other than lacking engine-power at altitude, which is a ifferent story).

The late-late war Fwocke-Wulf designs (Fw 190D-11, 12, 13, 14, 15) were all cannons only. So were the Ta 152C and H. And so was the Do 335.

Because a single 20mm Mine is enough to blow another fighter out of the sky.

 

 

[Ehret]

11 minutes ago, Lord_Flashheart said:

In any situation where either of these gun systems gets multiple hits, both of them will kill the target.

 

And if the target is not killed at once then so what? It may get strafed another time or another plane, or its fuel runs out, or it breaks, or its crew bail, or nothing.

 

The war was long continuous effort. If we are talking about strafing runs then the major difference between the P-47 and the Tempest is not in guns. For such sorties I would take the Thunderbolt every time.

[unreasonable]

13 minutes ago, [CPT]Crunch said:

What are you guys, virtual pilots or politicians?  It wasn't up to the pilots to choose, you flew what you had, and were given.

 

Of course: we are arguing about what they should have been given.

 

Looking around at why the US fighters had 50 cals rather than 20mm, it seems that the reason is that the US Ordnance Board messed up the dimensions, despite being given the drawings by the UK after all the teething problems had been solved. As a result they jammed constantly. They then produced huge numbers of 20mm cannons that were unusable without an electrical recocking system, for which only planes with nose mounted guns had room. Which is why the P-38 had a cannon in it's nose instead of extra 50 cals and the P-47 had none in it's wings.

 

20 minutes ago, Lord_Flashheart said:

This data hardly contradicts any of what im saying.

 

The debate over the exaggeration of the HE filler was largely over the effect of a single round. I stated quite clearly that a single round of 50 vs 20mm has little difference in chance of a kill. Which exactly what this data shows. Does 6 20mm have a higher chance of killing than 6 50s? Yes. But ive never debated this. The fact is though that you are going to get alot more hits with the 6-8 fifty configuration that with the 20mm configuration, and you will have alot more ammo to try again if you dont. In any situation where either of these gun systems gets multiple hits, both of them will kill the target.

 

 

Depends on the target, but for a P-47 the data absolutely contradicts this.  

 

    20mm                          50 cal

n       survival p               n   survival p               50/20

  

2              0.774               4      0.860                    1.11

3              0.681               6      0.797                    1.17

 

and so on. To get a 50% chance of downing the target with 20mm you need ~4 1/2 hits    To get the same with 50 cal you need ~18  

 

These are not my numbers - these are the US Ballistics Laboratory's numbers.

 

[HagarTheHorrible]

7 minutes ago, Ehret said:

 

 

 

 For such sorties I would take the Thunderbolt every time.

 

You'll take what you're given, EVERY TIME, and if I choose to give you a Fairly Battle then tough, you can lump it. ?

[=621=Samikatz]

On 9/20/2019 at 3:14 AM, Jaegermeister said:

I'm not sure what the debate is about when you can have both ...

 

?

 

Both is good!

[JtD]

1 hour ago, Ehret said:

what you would propose instead

 

Nothing, the topic is about 4x20 vs. 6-8x.50 vs. a mix. Out of these choices, the 4x20 are just the best option for ground attack. Biggest punch for smallest weight.

 

35 minutes ago, Ehret said:

It may get strafed another time or another plane

 

About attacking targets defended by AAA, the USAAF gave some advices:

Point 1: Use proper tactics.

Subpoint a: Only do a single strafing run.

 

So all this 'just attack another time, come back around for the next pass etc.' it just increases the chances for losses. The first run typically is a surprise attack - you fly fast, hit hard, and get out. That's why you'd want your aircraft to be as hard hitting as possible, and not really one where you need, but have available, twice the firing time to deal the same amount of damage. It puts you into at least twice the danger.

Edited September 22, 2019 by JtD

[Bremspropeller]

3 hours ago, Ehret said:

BTW greatest firepower won't matter if you can not hit the target. Unless you were one of the great aces it was really, really hard. It's a different era with many enhancement but you can see a guy struggling to land a hit with twin (ADEN or relative) 30mm cannons on maneuvering fighter even if it's badly outmatched.

 

If you have that game and the P-51D and something with nose mounted cannons at cycling rate about 3000rpm you can do a simple experiment. Make mission with AI F-5E or Mig-15 flying straight at about 500km/h and try it shoot from dead six. Start with plane with nose mounted cannons then switch to the P-51D which has harmonization pattern for in-wing guns. The difference is startling... it's so much easier to score hits with the P-51D. They won't be anywhere as lethal but it's so easy to land them repeatably. With nose mounted 20-30mm it takes a small imprecision to make bullets fly over or under target's fuselage or wings. Not so in the P-51D - you have huge allowable margin for aiming and for firing time.

 

Why use a game when you can have a look at the actual DEFA guncams of the Six Day War?

 

 

[unreasonable]

Did the maker of that compilation really have to do it when his maid was hoovering?  

 

It is striking how short the firing opportunities are with jets.

[Ehret]

2 minutes ago, Bremspropeller said:

What does the average Heer soldier's age have to do with the better effectivity of the 20mm in A-G and A-A?

 

The Germany was losing men in part because of pervasive Allied A-G. Bulk of it was done by US fighter-bombers.

 

3 minutes ago, Bremspropeller said:

A six-gun Fw 190A-8 was a standard fighter in mid 1944 and it was not handicapped at all (other than lacking engine-power at altitude, which is a ifferent story).

The late-late war Fwocke-Wulf designs (Fw 190D-11, 12, 13, 14, 15) were all cannons only. So were the Ta 152C and H. And so was the Do 335.

Because a single 20mm Mine is enough to blow another fighter out of the sky.

 

At that point everything just to prolong lives of few certain individuals. In the consequence giving rise to the USSR. It surely did... blow for 45 long years.

[Bremspropeller]

2 minutes ago, Ehret said:

At that point everything just to prolong lives of few certain individuals. In the consequence giving rise to the USSR. It surely did... blow for 45 long years.

 

So changing the subject entirely means you're agreeing with me?

It's the only rational conclusion, after all...

 

1 minute ago, Ehret said:

The Germany was losing men in part because of pervasive Allied A-G. Bulk of it was done by US fighter-bombers.

 

Men mostly were lost on the Eastern Front.

 

 

[Gambit21]

11 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

What weapon would you prefer, one that requires you to hit two, three times or one that requires you to hit „hundred“ times?

 

I’d prefer a weapon that worked - like the Jug or Tempest.

I don’t recall anyone flying around straddling a single gun of any type.

[Ehret]

5 minutes ago, Bremspropeller said:

So changing the subject entirely means you're agreeing with me?

It's the only rational conclusion, after all...

 

Yes - I agree. The avoiding of the Cold War should have be the priority. Therefore, in the WW2 Germans weren't killed fast enough and ETO should have priority for B-29s and A-bombs as well. Considering what happened for half of continent it's the only rational conclusion.

[BlitzPig_EL]

3 hours ago, Bremspropeller said:

The Garand was a crappy gun, too.

 

 

Now you've gone and done it.  Ever fired one side by side with a K98?  It's not even close to being a bit less crappy, it stands head and shoulders above the K98, and every other standard issue rifle used in WW2, though the Enfield No.4 Mk. I was good as well.  Go through the documents, the Heer was crying out for more accurate rifles, especially in the sniper role.  Good thing they never got them.  The German Army's acceptance standards for rifle accuracy were pitiful.  But I digress.

 

Signed, a former service rifle competition shooter.

Edited September 22, 2019 by BlitzPig_EL

[Rjel]

3 hours ago, =621=Samikatz said:

 

Both is good!

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, it was found those 20mm cannon added little to the overall effectiveness of the P-47 in ground attack.

 

[Bremspropeller]

1 hour ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

Now you've gone and done it.  Ever fired one side by side with a K98?  It's not even close to being a bit less crappy, it stands head and shoulders above the K98, and every other standard issue rifle used in WW2, though the Enfield No.4 Mk. I was good as well.  Go through the documents, the Heer was crying out for more accurate rifles, especially in the sniper role.  Good thing they never got them.  The German Army's acceptance standards for rifle accuracy were pitiful.  But I digress.

 

Signed, a former service rifle competition shooter.

 

You're missing the point entirely: Standard issued rifles were crap, because they were too large, too heavy, too powerful, too inflexible and too impractical.

By 1944 the StG 44 was state of the art and about an order of magnitude better for standard infantry applications.

 

[BlitzPig_EL]

I give up.

 

The M1 was not crap.  It was a well made, reliable and accurate rifle.

 

With that I'm out of this silly thread.

[Gambit21]

12 minutes ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

...silly thread.

 

Beyond words inane and silly, despite the quality of the individuals present...very odd.

 

[BraveSirRobin]

30 minutes ago, Bremspropeller said:

 

By 1944 the StG 44 was state of the art and about an order of magnitude better for standard infantry applications.

 

 

At that point the standard infantry application for German soldiers was throwing it on the ground and desperately hoping for mercy.    Was it effective in that role?

[Gambit21]

When he's right, he's right...dammit.

That got a snort laugh out of me.

[Sublime]

That was clever

[BraveSirRobin]

You can argue that Germany produced the best weapons for just about every situation (except strategic bomber).

 

best fighter

best tactical bomber

best tank

best battleship

best submarine 

best machine gun

best anti tank gun

best infantry AT weapon

best cannon

best assault rifle

best food (as a weapon, folks, not the actual food)

 

But they still lost.  Most of these super weapons showed up too late or were not really the best weapons for the war that they had to fight.  The best weapons were probably the Liberty ship, Deuce and a Half, and an endless supply of Russian conscripts.

 

[Venturi]

8 hours ago, unreasonable said:

 

I completely agree that "who won" etc is off topic:  just far too many variables.

 

The other point is where the difficulty lies. The US tested these weapons, immediately post war, against surplus P-47s, and produced statistical analyses of hits to various parts of the aircraft.   https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a800394.pdf  It is an interesting read and about the most fully documented research on these weapons I have seen. 

 

They concluded that, in the test scenario,  the probability of a 20mm HEI, M97 shell rendering a P-47 incapable of RTB, was 0.120

For 0.50 API-T M20 it was 0.037    so 3.24 times the "kill" probability for the 20mm.

 

So what is the probability of surviving n hits? Roughly:

                         20mm                50 cal            50cal/20mm

n              

1                          0.880              0.963                      1.09

2                          0.774              0.927                      1.20

3                         0.681               0.893                      1.31

4                         0.545               0.860                      1.58

5                         0.436               0.828                      1.90

6                         0.383               0.797                      2.08

 

Because the individual shot kill probabilities are rather low, the probability of surviving one shot of either type may not "feel" very different:  although it is. But as you are hit by successive shots the probability of surviving n hits drops far more sharply with the 20mm - which is what JtD means by the probabilities stacking.

 

Now this is in relation to use against aircraft. Turning to ground targets, you have been critical of the alleged exaggeration of the splinter effect of cannon rounds, but I still have not seen any numbers.  It does not take a large splinter to disable a human. (My British artillery site that had data on the splinters required to do this is now being flagged as containing malware, unfortunately).  

 

Probability doesn’t work like that.

 

It is in fact the probability that nothing happens in “x” number of tries. And so you minus that from 1.

 

Ex:

Say a Jug and a Tempest each fire a burst at a “target Jug” for 0.5 seconds. Assuming average rate of fire, which is 725rpm x4 for the Tempest and 800rpm x8 for the Jug - (600-850rpm (725) for the Hispano, 750-850rpm for the AN/m2 (800)) - then the Tempest will place 24 rounds in the “target zone”, and the Jug will place 53 rounds in the target zone.

 

Let’s assume that of those rounds in the target area, only one in five actually hit the target. That means 5/24 20mm Hispano rounds hit, and 11/53 of the 50BMG rounds hit.

 

Thus, using the CORRECT probability formula,  1-[(1-p)^x] , and the probability statistics from your post, we get the following information:

 

50BMG, 11 hits

1-[(1-0.037)^11] = 0.34 or 34% fail to RTB

 

20mm Hispano, 5 hits

1-[(1-0.120)^5] = 0.47 or 47% fail to RTB

 

This is of course, assuming that the of the extra six hits that the 50BMG has, one of them wasn’t directly through the cockpit of the target or severing the elevator control cables or pulleys... remember, statistics only work reliably when dealing with a group of data that is larger than n=30, in general. In any one particular instance, having extra hits means extra rolls of the dice to instantly disable the aircraft, which has a quality all its own...

 

Now let’s compare the Spit with 2x 20mm Hispano and 4x 303, or the Bf109 with 2x 8mm and 1x MG151/20...

Edited September 22, 2019 by Venturi