Hurricane 12 x .303s vs. a 109

[[-=BP=-]Slegawsky_VR]

In case you wonder about .303 against a 109 effectiveness:

 

 

Edited November 10, 2020 by Slegawsky_VR

[56RAF_Roblex]

There is an interesting interview here with a Hurri pilot from North Africa.  He states that although the 109 was better armed they almost never went head on with a hurri because just one 303 round would kill the engine.  That would have been with 8 guns.   Go to 10:10 for that quote.

 

https://youtu.be/AWyY78s8L3w

 

I don't think anyone would argue that the 303s did little when hitting wings or fuselage unless you got a lucky hit but I feel 1C has underestimated the damage even a rifle calibre bullet would do to an engine surrounded by vital parts.   In fact, a large percentage of the 109s brought down in the Battle Of Britain had ruined coolant systems because a hail of 303s would shred those underwing radiators.

[RedKestrel]

24 minutes ago, 56RAF_Roblex said:

There is an interesting interview here with a Hurri pilot from North Africa.  He states that although the 109 was better armed they almost never went head on with a hurri because just one 303 round would kill the engine.  That would have been with 8 guns.   Go to 10:10 for that quote.

 

https://youtu.be/AWyY78s8L3w

 

I don't think anyone would argue that the 303s did little when hitting wings or fuselage unless you got a lucky hit but I feel 1C has underestimated the damage even a rifle calibre bullet would do to an engine surrounded by vital parts.   In fact, a large percentage of the 109s brought down in the Battle Of Britain had ruined coolant systems because a hail of 303s would shred those underwing radiators.

I think generally speaking, engines are probably too resistant to coolant loss and damage overall. I remember back when they updated the DM that originally they were going to leave the engine DM alone, and then ended up doing a preliminary rework because with the new DM, the engines were extremely fragile relative to the airframe. So I believe that what we have now has gone perhaps a bit too far the other way, away from the glass engines we had before but now to a point where especially the liquid cooled engines are more resilient than they should be. The radial engines feel resilient again finally but I think that if the liquid cooled engines had a more reasonable vulnerability to machinegun damage a lot of the complaints about MG effectiveness would be answered. 

 

 

[unreasonable]

The engine DMs (especially radials) were too fragile to direct hits or splinters: but this is a different matter to the cooling systems.  Does anyone have any actual data on how long it would take an inline to overheat once it had taken a radiator hit?  I vaguely recall reading that for the high pressure Merlin's this could be measured in seconds rather than minutes, but cannot find a source just now. Likewise I think 109s were able to separate the two radiators so they might have a chance of surviving with only one, although I assume they could not fight at full power like that.

 

109s damaged in the BoB had to fly 100 miles or more back to base: most of the complaints here seem to be that targets hit by MGs are not being downed or severely disabled in seconds. If you lose your coolant in the game your engine will overheat and you will be downed eventually. It is just that this way of downing a target, while a large source of real losses, is not so effective in an MP environment where people do not care very much about their virtual lives and so will fight on rather than bailing out. 

 

Having said that, I do not know how long it would take to drain in RL - would be interesting to know.

 

 

[RedKestrel]

11 minutes ago, unreasonable said:

The engine DMs (especially radials) were too fragile to direct hits or splinters: but this is a different matter to the cooling systems.  Does anyone have any actual data on how long it would take an inline to overheat once it had taken a radiator hit?  I vaguely recall reading that for the high pressure Merlin's this could be measured in seconds rather than minutes, but cannot find a source just now. Likewise I think 109s were able to separate the two radiators so they might have a chance of surviving with only one, although I assume they could not fight at full power like that.

 

109s damaged in the BoB had to fly 100 miles or more back to base: most of the complaints here seem to be that targets hit by MGs are not being downed or severely disabled in seconds. If you lose your coolant in the game your engine will overheat and you will be downed eventually. It is just that this way of downing a target, while a large source of real losses, is not so effective in an MP environment where people do not care very much about their virtual lives and so will fight on rather than bailing out. 

 

Having said that, I do not know how long it would take to drain in RL - would be interesting to know.

 

 

Doing a quick google, I did find this video specifically on the Mustang. Relevant comment is about halfway through, where the engineer says that damage to the radiator could basically bring the aircraft down in "90 seconds". But this is based on memory, so it might very well be a huge generalization. He goes on to describe how the design in the Mustang was compartmentalized to avoid this scenario so that damage to one part would not vent all the coolant. Some of the nomenclature in the video makes it unclear what they're referring to.
 

So it probably depends hugely on the aircraft and the amount of damage to the radiator - if its compartmentalized, a single hit may only drain part of the radiator. I know I've read of problems (I believe in Ace of The Eighth, by Norman Forrier) where Mustang pilots had killed their engine when the radiator failed and closed automatically, and by the time they noted that the coolant was boiling they had very little time to correct the issue before damaging or destroying their engine. So once the coolant is gone the engine is probably a goner in a very short time.

90 seconds is a long time in air combat, especially in the sim. That can be long enough to reach friendly airspace or even an airfield on a lot of maps.

[Diggun]

We have a further complication in that the visuals of the coolant leak do not represent the actual rate of coolant loss in game - Only one leak size visualised, but many different levels of coolant line / cooling damage can occur...

[56RAF_Roblex]

8 hours ago, RedKestrel said:

109s damaged in the BoB had to fly 100 miles or more back to base:

 

The base *might* be 100 miles away but the channel is only 21 miles wide between Dover & Calais so for a 109 fighting over Kent and needing to reach France we are really talking under 50 miles a lot of the time.  SE London to Calais is about 100 miles but the escorts rarely went that far.   I remember one of the LW fighter pilot memoirs (Knoke? Steinhilper?) saying that when one of them had to bail from altitude the rest of the squadron could be landing in France before the downed pilots parachute landed in Kent ?

Edited November 18, 2020 by 56RAF_Roblex

[unreasonable]

A touch of survivor bias there, I think. No doubt that was true on occasion, especially during the initial fights over the channel, but the escorts had to go as far as they could and if the bombers were attacking Biggin Hill or any targets close to London - or the London Docks themselves -  their escorts would have a very long way to get home. 

 

It would be interesting to know what proportion of 109's with radiator damage during the BoB made it back to the French side of the channel over the whole fight: I would guess less than 10%, but I suppose we will never know.