Realistic flak

[Nic727]

Hi,

 

I never saw this flak in the game. Is it in future plan?

 

Thank you

[Legioneod]

38 minutes ago, Nic727 said:

Hi,

 

I never saw this flak in the game. Is it in future plan?

 

Thank you

This is mostly because there arent hundreds of flak guns firing at you in-game. Most of the time it's just a handful of guns shooting at you in-game.

[[CPT]Crunch]

It wouldn't be present without those B-17's in the very photo, and we don't have anything near them in any type of volume.  So what would be the point?  No one would ever waste that sort of resources and manpower on the stuff we're currently flying.

[Gretsch_Man]

On 1/23/2020 at 2:08 PM, Legioneod said:

This is mostly because there arent hundreds of flak guns firing at you in-game. Most of the time it's just a handful of guns shooting at you in-game.

True, but for example those 20mm quadruple guns used by the Germans should be putting up quite a wall of white puffs when firing, which you don't see in the game. Maybe the devs left them out on purpose to go easy on the fps.

[Charon]

5 hours ago, Gretsch_Man said:

True, but for example those 20mm quadruple guns used by the Germans should be putting up quite a wall of white puffs when firing, which you don't see in the game. Maybe the devs left them out on purpose to go easy on the fps.

 

Didn't light flak use contact fuses? I can't imagine being able to estimate altitude and range fast enough to be useful against low flying aircraft, and the shrapnel is so minimal that timed fuses wouldn't seem to help much in hitting the target.

[Yogiflight]

1 hour ago, Charon said:

 

Didn't light flak use contact fuses? I can't imagine being able to estimate altitude and range fast enough to be useful against low flying aircraft, and the shrapnel is so minimal that timed fuses wouldn't seem to help much in hitting the target.

Yes they used contact fuses, but after a certain time, they usually exploded on their own, so they wouldn't cause victims among the own troops or civilians, when hitting the ground. You can see this kind of explosions in CoD, but it is left out in GB.

[unreasonable]

To be specific, the Germans used both a contact fuze and a mechanism where the tracer burned through to ignite the charge after about 2,000m/ 5 seconds, so they did produce air bursts from 20mm shells, although these would not have been for destructive purposes but for safety, as @Yogiflight says.  I think the 3.7cm shells were the same.  Nice to have in game but not important: the way the guns work, the bursts will almost always be well past the target.. 

 

The British and US 20mm LAA did not have such a mechanism, which was one of the reasons why they phased out 20mm as soon as they could in situations such as airfield defence where the shells would land in friendly territory. That and the 40mm Bofors, which did have a self destruct fuze, being all round a much better investment. 

[ZachariasX]

On 1/23/2020 at 5:28 AM, Nic727 said:

Hi,

 

I never saw this flak in the game. Is it in future plan?

 

We will not see that in the foreseeable future. What you are depicting is heavy flak. Our in game AAA doesn‘t work like heavy flak was often used, especially if bombers were above a cloud layer. What they did is use several guns that would cover a predefined airspace with dense fire that the bomber formation is flying through. Ranging, either optical or by RADAR gave flight distances for the shells and they were pre set for detonation at that range. This is why the bombers saw explosions all around them, despite the Germans not using proximity fuzes.

 

Aiming at an individual aircraft is not trivial. It works better if that aircraft is illuminated by search lights. Hence a gunner might not always specifically aim for an aircraft.

 

In the game, each guns always aims for a specific aircraft and sets fuze timer to shoot that single aircraft, hence the smoke pattern looks different.

 

As light flak is concerned this is quiet right:

4 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

Yes they used contact fuses, but after a certain time, they usually exploded on their own,

But only in case of HE rounds, tracers do venture on until they come down.

 

Still, this makes light flak produce a smoke cap ~2 km above the defended regions after extensive firing.

 

[Gretsch_Man]

12 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

Yes they used contact fuses, but after a certain time, they usually exploded on their own, so they wouldn't cause victims among the own troops or civilians, when hitting the ground. You can see this kind of explosions in CoD, but it is left out in GB.

How German 20mm (and 37mm) flak bursts looked from the point of view of an allied pilot was vividly portrayed by the book "The Big Show" by Pierre Clostermann.