gun power help

[PeaceO]

Is there a way to boost the guns unrealistically? Much stronger than default? Perhaps a file modification or similar?

[Irishratticus72]

You mean, like a Mozambique in the cockpit? 

[Avimimus]

I believe mods have been made for this (which work offline). I'd personally advocate practicing aiming more though  

 

That said, part of me wishes the rifle calibre weapons were a bit more powerful (and I'm sure I'll wish that more once the IAR is released)... perhaps they ricocheted more  than larger rounds? Thus were more likely to hit pipes etc? Bounced around inside the plane? Onecould hope.

[BlitzPig_EL]

The rifle caliber weapons in the sim are a real mystery to me.  In essence they are utterly useless, yet in the real Battle of Britain .303 armed Spitfires and Hurricanes shot down a fair number of German aircraft.  In the sim they have about the same effect as shooting a BB gun.

[LukeFF]

3 minutes ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

The rifle caliber weapons in the sim are a real mystery to me.  In essence they are utterly useless, yet in the real Battle of Britain .303 armed Spitfires and Hurricanes shot down a fair number of German aircraft.  In the sim they have about the same effect as shooting a BB gun.

 

It's all about shooting at the radiators and engines, otherwise you're just wasting time. Yes, the RAF downed quite a few planes during the BoB, but many a German plane also made it back to France peppered with holes but otherwise intact.

[Avimimus]

I understand the idea  Maybe there is a difference between understanding it in theory and actually being any good at it...

 

However... we do know that aircraft with four rifle calibre guns (or even two) were regularly downing bombers (e.g. PZL-11 usually had two guns, as did Ki-43, and Gloster Gladiators only had four).

[LukeFF]

2 hours ago, Avimimus said:

However... we do know that aircraft with four rifle calibre guns (or even two) were regularly downing bombers (e.g. PZL-11 usually had two guns, as did Ki-43, and Gloster Gladiators only had four).

 

Define "regularly downing." ?

[40plus]

3 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

 

Define "regularly downing." ?

....saw it in a movie once....

[grcurmudgeon]

Maybe I'll find the time to dig through "Fly for your Life" and find Tuck's discussion of how much he hated the .303s. I also have the vague recollection of a few instances of him getting pounded by bomber gunners while calmly lining up on their 6, but it's been a couple of decades...

[oc2209]

3 hours ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

The rifle caliber weapons in the sim are a real mystery to me.  In essence they are utterly useless, yet in the real Battle of Britain .303 armed Spitfires and Hurricanes shot down a fair number of German aircraft.  In the sim they have about the same effect as shooting a BB gun.

 

I'm conflicted on the issue.

 

While I have read accounts (thinking of Saburo Sakai's in particular, where he pours hundreds of rounds of 7.7mm into a Wildcat at close range, to little effect) of the .30's weakness, I think they're a little too weak in the sim--for probably the same reasons people complained about .50s.

 

The difference between .50s and .30s here is that if you line up a P-51 or P-47 on a relatively immobile target at close range, .50s will do significant damage. The problems with .50s here are in the smattering of shots that frequently occurs against an evasive target, and how a lack of concentrated strikes in a specific area can make cumulative, scattered hits often seem ineffectual.

 

However, .30s are so bad that even if you float a Hurricane right on your target's ass (I've set convergence to absolute minimum to test this), twelve .303s will often fail to have any measurable effect aside from causing fuel/radiator leaks.

 

While I do find it believable that 2 or 4 light machine guns can be entirely ineffectual against certain targets at certain angles, I'm skeptical that 12 of them could all fail equally in terms of setting fires or penetrating pilot armor at very close ranges.

 

Something else worth mentioning is that being on the receiving end of light machine gun rounds when attacking bombers (this is especially true before AI gunner accuracy was reduced recently), it seems like they start fires and kill pilots quite effectively even from considerable ranges. Provided the bullets are coming at you from the front and not from behind.

 

Which leads me to believe that something in the damage model, specifically how parts of the fuselage and airframe interact with bullets, is excessively diminishing the penetration values of light machine gun rounds.

 

For example: let's say you fire solid bursts from twelve .303s into a 109 from behind, dead six or nearly so. The airframe is presumably deflecting or sapping the energy from our bullets before they reach critical areas (pilot, fuel tank, engine), so that when they actually hit a critical area from behind, nothing happens.

 

Since the airframe can't be destroyed (as I've observed with multiple 30mm HE hits failing to break the fuselage behind the pilot in most cases), the airframe is more or less invincible and endlessly 'eats' or deflects light machine gun bullets. It does the same to .50s, but since their penetration values are higher, it's less noticeable.

[Rjel]

1 hour ago, grcurmudgeon said:

Maybe I'll find the time to dig through "Fly for your Life" and find Tuck's discussion of how much he hated the .303s. I also have the vague recollection of a few instances of him getting pounded by bomber gunners while calmly lining up on their 6, but it's been a couple of decades...

Fly For Your Life was one of the first WWII fighter pilot autobiographies I read long ago. Great book.

[Avimimus]

2 hours ago, LukeFF said:

Define "regularly downing." ?

 

...well according to German records the number of aircraft lost to air-combat over Poland was >90

 

...then there is the Gladiator's combat record in China, Norway, and the Mediterranean show them repeatedly taking down bombers (even if the claim from the Norway campaign of 'three down two probably' in one sortie is taken as inaccurate).

 

...then there are any victories by Ki-27, Ki-43 (before it was upgunned) etc. Not to mention any claims by Bf-109 pilots who had their main cannons jammed.

 

I could probably come up with several dozen examples of bombs being shot down with two light machine guns - even if we excluded Poland entirely (I'm not sure why we would).

 

 

[Yogiflight]

I downed several fighters with the four 7.92mm guns in my 110 E2's nose, when my 20mm were out of ammo. Just don't shoot at the wings, here they are pretty useless, from my experiences. I tried it with IL-2s, too, but with no success so far. And shoot at short distance, to get as much lead into them as possible. Somewhen they simply get too heavy to keep flying

[oc2209]

26 minutes ago, Yogiflight said:

I downed several fighters with the four 7.92mm guns in my 110 E2's nose, when my 20mm were out of ammo. Just don't shoot at the wings, here they are pretty useless, from my experiences. I tried it with IL-2s, too, but with no success so far. And shoot at short distance, to get as much lead into them as possible.

 

Sturmoviks can be given heavy oil leaks with a 109's 7.9mm, but that's about it. You might get a fire 1% of the time, if you hang-glide underneath a Sturm long enough while pouring ammo into its Death Star weak spot from below.

 

The real question is how durable should a fighter be from behind versus 8-12 .303s fired from under 150m. While hitting the engine from behind should be difficult/impossible with the low penetrative power of light machine gun ammo, there should be a reasonable chance of at least lighting up the fuel tank in the fuselage that most planes carry. The 109 in this case.

 

Example:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Here I try the same against a P-40:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Both planes are seemingly invincible from behind, while the P-40 only lights up because I get him in a turn.

[LukeFF]

1 hour ago, Avimimus said:

 

...well according to German records the number of aircraft lost to air-combat over Poland was >90

 

...then there is the Gladiator's combat record in China, Norway, and the Mediterranean show them repeatedly taking down bombers (even if the claim from the Norway campaign of 'three down two probably' in one sortie is taken as inaccurate).

 

...then there are any victories by Ki-27, Ki-43 (before it was upgunned) etc. Not to mention any claims by Bf-109 pilots who had their main cannons jammed.

 

I could probably come up with several dozen examples of bombs being shot down with two light machine guns - even if we excluded Poland entirely (I'm not sure why we would).

 

Sure, but how many of those planes were returned to service? It's easy enough to say a plane was "shot up" without knowing what its ultimate fate was, especially if the pilot didn't see the crew bail out or the plane crash. Heck, you have Soviet pilots saying in their memoirs that rifle-caliber MGs were nothing more than "paint-scratchers" that were only good for getting the proper ranging for their cannons. 

Edited November 29, 2021 by LukeFF

[Avimimus]

24 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

Sure, but how many of those planes were returned to service? It's easy enough to say a plane was "shot up" without knowing what its ultimate fate was, especially if the pilot didn't see the crew bail out or the plane crash. Heck, you have Soviet pilots saying in their memoirs that rifle-caliber MGs were nothing more than "paint-scratchers" that were only good for getting the proper ranging for their cannons. 

 

I agree that over claiming is an issue... and potentially a somewhat greater issue with smaller calibre weapons (as the aircraft is less likely to suffer catastrophic damage).

 

It is helped a bit by the fact that many of these were second-line aircraft by the start of the war, so combat tended to happen in theatres where the few combats that happened are relatively well documents. So it becomes possible to look at Jacobsen's record for instance - during his sortie where he was awarded 3-5 kills only one He-111 is confirmed to have been lost to a fighter and the two were probably claimed by Swedish anti-aircraft fire:

http://surfcity.kund.dalnet.se/commonwealth_jacobsen.htm

 

Let's consider Poland though - which was busy but which had a lack of better armed aircraft - German losses are 232-258 losses - that is quite substantial. The question is how many were lost to air-combat? That would take some work to figure out.

[Ace_Pilto]

In FC there's a massive discrepancy between MG08's and .303 guns. With the former you have to be alert to pieces of the enemy aircraft coming off and hiting you, with the latter I can only reliably score kills by aiming for the pilot. It's good training, gets your eye in but the .303's are pretty disappointing sometimes. 

[oc2209]

1 hour ago, Ace_Pilto said:

 It's good training, gets your eye in but the .303's are pretty disappointing sometimes. 

 

If you ever find you're having trouble penetrating enemy seat armor at less than 100m, I have a simple solution:

 

 

 

Just shoot the seat armor dozens of times until the whole assembly flies off!

 

Then, just like a Tootsie roll pop, you can finally get at the gooey center.

[Ace_Pilto]

There's always a workaround, if you want it badly enough.

[Knarley-Bob]

There is a big difference between where you hit it and how many times you hit it. Blowing holes in the fuse behind the cockpit won't do much, there isn't much there to hit. Knocking off the tail feathers is a different story. The cockpit and forward is the 'Sweet Spot'.....(The gooey center) I like that.? And of course the motor. I'd try a little more lead.

IMHO

KB

[Yogiflight]

9 hours ago, oc2209 said:

Sturmoviks can be given heavy oil leaks with a 109's 7.9mm, but that's about it.

Unfortunately those AI guys are not too cooperative. With their constantly turning away as soon as I get to shooting distance, it is quite difficult to shoot at the oil cooler.

[Alexmarine]

13 hours ago, Avimimus said:

 

...well according to German records the number of aircraft lost to air-combat over Poland was >90

 

...then there is the Gladiator's combat record in China, Norway, and the Mediterranean show them repeatedly taking down bombers (even if the claim from the Norway campaign of 'three down two probably' in one sortie is taken as inaccurate).

 

...then there are any victories by Ki-27, Ki-43 (before it was upgunned) etc. Not to mention any claims by Bf-109 pilots who had their main cannons jammed.

 

I could probably come up with several dozen examples of bombs being shot down with two light machine guns - even if we excluded Poland entirely (I'm not sure why we would).

 

 

 

The Ki-27 units accounted for close to 200 Soviet planes shot down during the Nomonah Incident by looking at the Soviets own figure (so discounting overclaims).

 

My take is that light MG are penalised by the lack of incendiary rounds as the allied 50cals and that in this sims compared to others the time for engine seizure after a coolant/oil leak seems higher, giving enough time to planes to make it back at base

[Avimimus]

I'm finding a near total inability to down bombers with just two ShKAS or two MG-17 (unless I get the cockpit in a head-on pass).

 

3 hours ago, Alexmarine said:

My take is that light MG are penalised by the lack of incendiary rounds as the allied 50cals and that in this sims compared to others the time for engine seizure after a coolant/oil leak seems higher, giving enough time to planes to make it back at base

 

That is an interesting idea. My own thought was that yaw on the bullet from penetrating the aircraft skin might make it more likely to bounce - so several bullets fired into the same part of the aircraft should spread out more (increasing the chances of damaging systems). In contrast, high calibre AP rounds would tend to penetrate cleanly and exist the other side of the aircraft (rather than ricochet out in a broader cone within the aircraft).

 

Honestly, I'm pretty convinced of the quality of the damage model and physics overall - so if they lack effectiveness, it has to be due to something like a lack of incendiary effects or a lack of internal ricochets being modelled - at least that is my impression.

[grcurmudgeon]

20 minutes ago, Avimimus said:

I'm finding a near total inability to down bombers with just two ShKAS or two MG-17 (unless I get the cockpit in a head-on pass).

Aiming for the engines has worked pretty well for me with the smaller MGs. I find bombers and Me-110s easier than fighters...

[Avimimus]

21 minutes ago, grcurmudgeon said:

Aiming for the engines has worked pretty well for me with the smaller MGs. I find bombers and Me-110s easier than fighters...

 

Are you talking about the 12.7mm Bredas, .50 cals on the P-39, or the UB? Because I find those work quite well on engines...

 

...it is just the 0.303, 7.62mm, and 7.92mm guns that I'm finding I can't get a kill with.

 

Maybe you (or someone) should do a video tutorial on this to put some of us to to shame (In the same way the Air Combat Tutorial Library anti-aircraft player guide videos showed us it wasn't the guns but our accuracy that made the anti-aircraft collector vehicles weak).

[PatrickAWlson]

I have managed to down planes when out of cannon ammo, just not very often.  Almost always a pilot hit or fire, and almost always against fighters.  Honestly seems about right to me.  Bringing down planes can definitely be done, but you're probably not going to get to world class ace relying on rifle caliber machine guns.  The British switched to 20mm shortly after BoB for a reason.

 

 

[grcurmudgeon]

49 minutes ago, Avimimus said:

 

Are you talking about the 12.7mm Bredas, .50 cals on the P-39, or the UB? Because I find those work quite well on engines...

 

...it is just the 0.303, 7.62mm, and 7.92mm guns that I'm finding I can't get a kill with.

 

Maybe you (or someone) should do a video tutorial on this to put some of us to to shame (In the same way the Air Combat Tutorial Library anti-aircraft player guide videos showed us it wasn't the guns but our accuracy that made the anti-aircraft collector vehicles weak).

Maybe, I have not had a lot of luck with recordings (in particular remembering to start them ?

 

It's the rifle caliber rounds I'm talking about. Once out of canon ammo, instead of turning for home, I found I could still get kills with the peashooters by going after engines in the bombers. Yeah, it requires hitting the right spot to get the fuel leak or fire you need, but they have a high rate of fire so it was reasonably common with a couple of bursts (the remaining couple of hundred rounds) to one engine to knock one down. If there are no bombers around, then I head home because I'm not going to do much to fighters unless I get lucky and put one through the cockpit (which you can sometimes do if you catch them correctly when they break), and I'm not usually that lucky.

 

Now yeah, the half-inch guns or canons are nice where a very short burst into an engine can light one on fire, or even better yet cause a fuel explosion that tears the target apart. Catching a bomber flight alone and bringing down 4 to 6 before the big guns run out of ammo is lots of fun.

 

The key piece that helped me with my gunnery against bombers, getting lined up on an engine and staying lined up, was a trim wheel. Once I got one added to my setup and figured out how to use it to get my elevator trim dialed in, I found it so much easier to get lined up and stay lined up on the engine to put enough rounds into it. Without one I'd be bobbing up and down and not landing a high percentage of hits. But if it's dialed in it's not hard to settle the reticule on the engine and keep it there so most of the rounds go into the engine instead of the air around it.

[LukeFF]

43 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

The British switched to 20mm shortly after BoB for a reason.

 

Exactly

[Alexmarine]

55 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 you're probably not going to get to world class ace relying on rifle caliber machine guns.  

We could equally argue that you ain't getting world class aces relying on heavy machine guns while everyone else is toting 20mm and up cannons with explosive shells but this is a slippery slope I would prefer to avoid...

 

In any case, the issue with incendiary rounds being incorrectly modelled or not being modelled at all (would be nice to hear from the team on this) is something that goes beyond the weapon effectiveness and is a matter of modelling correctly the weapons sported on our planes (imagine the uproar if the germans MG151/20 were modelled with no Minengeschoss shell...)

[Yogiflight]

46 minutes ago, Alexmarine said:

(imagine the uproar if the germans MG151/20 were modelled with no Minengeschoss shell...)

You mean like the uproar, that the M2 Browning effectiveness is absolutely undermodelled

But I am absolutely with you. If IL-2 sees itself as a Flight Combat Simulation, one could expect, that extensively used ammunition, like incendiary ammo, is modelled in game.

[Knarley-Bob]

How far out is your conversion point? It does make a difference.

KB

[Alexmarine]

40 minutes ago, Yogiflight said:

 M2 Browning effectiveness is absolutely undermodelled

 

 

Personally while the issue was true in a way I wouldn't have used the term undermodelled (though one can argue that if the incendiary rounds, which made up half of the ammo belts in most cases, aren't actually modelled it's some sort of undermodelling) for the M2 gun itself, along with the incendiary rounds issue the feeling that it was undermodelled came from the more than effective results of Russian/German/Italian heavy machine guns loaded with HE rounds. (with someone here posting that HE shell of Berezin/MG131 were found as 60 times more effective than their own AP shells, basically almost bringing those explosive shell in line with actual cannons rounds in the 20mm range). For Japanese and Italian planes of WW2 it is often remarked that their two heavy machine guns left much to be desired and that the use of HE shells didn't really made up the small caliber of those weapons compared to proper autocannons.

 

So it's not about simply making the M2 stronger, but it's about giving it the proper ammunition load (this will of course also help all light machine guns already present in the game, be them the .303 or the MG17) and about better tuning the effects of HE shells below the 20mm calibre.

 

As far as cannons are concerned I don't have any issue with their effectiveness.

[PatrickAWlson]

2 hours ago, Alexmarine said:

We could equally argue that you ain't getting world class aces relying on heavy machine guns while everyone else is toting 20mm and up cannons with explosive shells but this is a slippery slope I would prefer to avoid...

 

I disagree.  The .50 was fit for purpose for the USAAF, which was taking on fighters and relatively lightly armored bombers.  It would not have been fit for purpose against B17s or even IL2s, but it never had to be.  The US stopped using the .50s later than everybody else, but in the WWII time frame we could get away with it.

 

I don't think the rifle caliber MGs were ever really fit for WWII combat.  They were what was available early in the war but were abandoned ASAP.

[Avimimus]

3 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

I have managed to down planes when out of cannon ammo, just not very often.  Almost always a pilot hit or fire, and almost always against fighters.  Honestly seems about right to me.  Bringing down planes can definitely be done, but you're probably not going to get to world class ace relying on rifle caliber machine guns.  The British switched to 20mm shortly after BoB for a reason.

2 hours ago, LukeFF said:

Exactly

 

I get that. There is no comparison in destructive power between a rifle calibre gun and a 20mm cannon... the 20mm cannon wins out on all metrics. The question isn't whether a heavy machine gun is better than a rifle calibre gun, whether a 20mm cannon is better than a machine gun etc. We know the answer.

 

The question I asked was:

 

Can a fighter with just two (or four) rifle calibre guns shoot down a bomber?

 

That is a very different question from whether a 20mm Hispano round beats a 0.303 in terms of destructive potential.

[354thFG_Drewm3i-VR]

The problem is that there are very few systems modeled under the hood to damage, which is how AP rounds brought down planes...il-2 is great at modeling structural damage, but systems modeling is very lacking.

[Ace_Pilto]

16 hours ago, Knarley-Bob said:

There is a big difference between where you hit it and how many times you hit it. Blowing holes in the fuse behind the cockpit won't do much, there isn't much there to hit. Knocking off the tail feathers is a different story. The cockpit and forward is the 'Sweet Spot'.....(The gooey center) I like that.? And of course the motor. I'd try a little more lead.

IMHO

KB

 

There's more than you'd think. Oxygen bottles, electrical equipment, sometimes even ducting for mechanical systems that run off of the engine like cooling or supercharging and, most vulnerable back there are the control rods. The fuselage also exists to support the rear stabilisers so, any degradation of its' integrity could result in potentially losing of jamming the rudder/elevator or having the entire tail break away. The Bf-109 was notoriously weak in this particular area from what I've read, to the extent that an excessively hard landing would make it fold up behind the cockpit. Heavier MG rounds like the .50 or German MG131 type weapons would be able to potentially compromise even the heavier structural members made from aluminium. (or they might just out a hole in the skin depending on placement)

 

35 minutes ago, Alexmarine said:

As far as cannons are concerned I don't have any issue with their effectiveness.

 

I do, I keep getting hit by chunks of enemy plane coming back at me.

 

People are also mentioning the incendiary or API belting. When the P-51 first came out I got flamers on just about every time I hit with them. I guess that got toned down huh? My tip is to learn to estimate range via the gunsight and discipline yourself to keep off the trigger unless the effectiveness can be maximised. It won't fix the modelling (if it is wrong) but you will notice the benefits in every aricraft.

[PatrickAWlson]

5 minutes ago, Avimimus said:

 

I get that. There is no comparison in destructive power between a rifle calibre gun and a 20mm cannon... the 20mm cannon wins out on all metrics. The question isn't whether a heavy machine gun is better than a rifle calibre gun, whether a 20mm cannon is better than a machine gun etc. We know the answer.

 

The question I asked was:

 

Can a fighter with just two (or four) rifle calibre guns shoot down a bomber?

 

That is a very different question from whether a 20mm Hispano round beats a 0.303 in terms of destructive potential.

 

@grcurmudgeonsays he can do it reasonably often by aiming at engines and wing roots.  I would suspect that getting a pilot kill on a bomber is not too much more difficult than getting a fighter.  I have gotten PE2s on rare occasions by starting a fire with just the two MGs on a 109.  Doesn't happen very often but it can definitely be done.  What cannot be done is hammering away at a plane and achieving structural failure, but I'm sure you know that.

 

Honestly, it seems about right in the game based on my readings of pilot accounts.  It's just hard to do.  Even with 8x 303 on a Hurricane, if those guns are not converging on a critical spot then they are just punching holes in aluminum.  I almost think that scoring with the two nose mounted guns of a 109 is easier than scoring with the 8x in a Hurricane's wings, but that's just me admitting that I stink at accounting for convergence.

[Alexmarine]

6 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

Even with 8x 303 on a Hurricane, if those guns are not converging on a critical spot then they are just punching holes in aluminum.

 

You don't need all eight gun of yours to converge precisely into the head of an enemy pilot or through a fuel tank (that can be protected or not though), which brings to the two point that already came out: component damage and lack of incendiary effect due to the lack of incendiary ammo.

 

On my own I would also add that the main issue that plague planes with big arrays of MG/HMG in the wings is actually the fact that they are way too precise with a lack of the "shotgun" effect that persisted even with point-converged batteries and that was definitely appreciated by some pilots; bursts are also always perfectly synchronised, actually working against you as you can't rely on single bullets hitting/damaging multiple components outside the specific point you are aiming.

[CountZero]

just use hispanos, they seam like purpous build for videogames

[PatrickAWlson]

40 minutes ago, Alexmarine said:

 

You don't need all eight gun of yours to converge precisely into the head of an enemy pilot or through a fuel tank (that can be protected or not though), which brings to the two point that already came out: component damage and lack of incendiary effect due to the lack of incendiary ammo.

 

 

I didn't say that.  I said that convergence mattered.  Doesn't have to be perfect, but if I fire with reasonable convergence then more bullets are hitting something important.  That leads to better odds of downing a plane.

 

 

41 minutes ago, Alexmarine said:

 

On my own I would also add that the main issue that plague planes with big arrays of MG/HMG in the wings is actually the fact that they are way too precise with a lack of the "shotgun" effect that persisted even with point-converged batteries and that was definitely appreciated by some pilots; bursts are also always perfectly synchronised, actually working against you as you can't rely on single bullets hitting/damaging multiple components outside the specific point you are aiming.

 

Sounds like you think that shotgun is better than concentration.  If that is your argument then I disagree.  To consistently bring down planes you have to do a lot of harm in a short time.  Spattering a plane with MG rounds is IMHO not the best way to do it.