The HP's 57mm recoilless rifle

[[F.Circus]Gorn_Captain]

The davis gun was probably one of my most anticipated parts of this patch, just for how truly unusual a weapon it is. I've been doing a bunch of testing in game, and made some fun (and a few disappointing) discoveries. 

 

Right now it's firing solid AP shells with no explosive, this might be a bug as the modifications screen lists it as HE, though given its historical purpose HE would surprise me. Unfortunately this means shooting other planes with the davis is quite underwhelming, and generally does very little, though on one occasion it did cause a Gotha's fuel tank to explode with a lucky hit. But generally, if you do manage to hit another plane with it, don't expect anything to happen except for a large hole in their canvas. 

Backblast sadly doesn't seem to be a feature that's modelled, despite several attempts we couldn't cause any damage to aircraft directly in the path of the backblast (some mere metres from the end of the tube). In real life the davis gun would have fired a large cloud of lead balls out the back of the barrel to neutralise the recoil, effectively acting as a shotgun. Not very dangerous to another aircraft, but still not something you'd want to get in the way of. Sadly this isn't represented in game.

 

What the davis does do though is blow up trains, very spectacularly: 

(the music doesn't hurt either) 

 

It can also quite happily kill A7Vs with one hit, provided you hit them in the right place, the rear upper plate. In my testing hits anywhere else would generally cause no visible damage, but one shot through the back roof will reliably kill them. And you carry enough ammunition to wipe out a sizeable portion of Germany's entire wartime A7V stock in a single flight! https://gfycat.com/calculatingoffbeatfieldspaniel

 

That takes a fair amount of skill on your gunners part, and some pretty low flying from the pilot, so its not a reasonable use of anyone's time or resources. Especially compared to lobbing a HERL at them from a brisfit.  But the davis gun method is fun, so I'll be finding as many excuses to use it as possible. I'm curious how Flugpark's barge targets will hold up...

 

One other fun thing we discovered, during our testing we would often end up with inexplicable damage to the starboard engine, generally after firing the davis a few time. After confirming backblast wasn't the culprit. (even if it was modelled the gun won't depress enough to actually hit the plane) we realised the shell is ejected to the right hand side, directly into the prop arc of the starboard engine. A very nice bit of attetntion to detail. You can avoid the damage by flying slowly when firing most of the time, but it is a bit of a crapshoot. Someone needs to teach Nigel not to litter...

Edited March 16, 2022 by [F.Circus]Gorn_Captain

[=IRFC=kotori87]

A fine machine, really a fine machine. Soaring majestically over the train, splattering its parts all over the railway, then gracefully arcing away. Truly what a wonder has been released upon the world.

 

Have you had any luck with your pistol or flare gun in the Handley Page? It appears my HP pilot forgot to pack his sidearm

Edited March 16, 2022 by kotori87

[[F.Circus]Gorn_Captain]

8 hours ago, kotori87 said:

Have you had any luck with your pistol or flare gun in the Handley Page? It appears my HP pilot forgot to pack his sidearm

 

Seems my pilot forgot his as well, he must be too confident with all those extra guns, but I can't say I feel safe without that trusty webley.

[=621=Samikatz]

Glad others were also excited to have the Davis gun back, it's a really fun multi-crew experience that just feels really swashbuckling. That said I do feel like it is actually HE, but maybe the explosion effect is missing? At least when I hit airplanes with it they fly apart like they've been hit by an explosion, an AP shell would just go through canvas, right?

 

10 hours ago, [F.Circus]Gorn_Captain said:

One other fun thing we discovered, during our testing we would often end up with inexplicable damage to the starboard engine, generally after firing the davis a few time. After confirming backblast wasn't the culprit. (even if it was modelled the gun won't depress enough to actually hit the plane) we realised the shell is ejected to the right hand side, directly into the prop arc of the starboard engine. A very nice bit of attetntion to detail. You can avoid the damage by flying slowly when firing most of the time, but it is a bit of a crapshoot. Someone needs to teach Nigel not to litter...

 

I think this might be the single funniest thing the devs have ever modelled

[[F.Circus]Gorn_Captain]

1 hour ago, =621=Samikatz said:

Glad others were also excited to have the Davis gun back, it's a really fun multi-crew experience that just feels really swashbuckling. That said I do feel like it is actually HE, but maybe the explosion effect is missing? At least when I hit airplanes with it they fly apart like they've been hit by an explosion, an AP shell would just go through canvas, right?

 

Huh, that's really odd, all but one of our attempts to shoot other aircraft ended with it just going right through canvas. We got a fuel tank detonation once, but otherwise no appreciable damage. Shooting the ground in a parked plane produced the standard AP dust cloud, no explosion or splash damage. Sounds like we'll have to do some more testing against planes.

 

[=621=Samikatz]

1 minute ago, [F.Circus]Gorn_Captain said:

 

Huh, that's really odd, all but one of our attempts to shoot other aircraft ended with it just going right through canvas. We got a fuel tank detonation once, but otherwise no appreciable damage. Shooting the ground in a parked plane produced the standard AP dust cloud, no explosion or splash damage. Sounds like we'll have to do some more testing against planes.

 

 

Were you using it with or without the lewis attachment? I've been aiming with the machine gun, but in your gfycat you're using the proper sight. Maybe that's where the discrepency is?

 

https://streamable.com/1fvjz2

[[F.Circus]Gorn_Captain]

19 minutes ago, =621=Samikatz said:

 

Were you using it with or without the lewis attachment? I've been aiming with the machine gun, but in your gfycat you're using the proper sight. Maybe that's where the discrepency is?

 

https://streamable.com/1fvjz2

 

That's very strange indeed, I've just tried it both with and without the lewis gun and was unable to get any kind of appreciable damage to planes. Only the faint little puff of smoke and nothing else. Here:

 

 

At a longer range than yours (on my laptop at the moment, had to fly with the mouse) but I doubt that'd have an impact on whether the HE detonates or not. You can see I get multiple hits with both the aldis and the lewis, but no real damage. 

 

It looks like yours hit the engine, perhaps the shell is fused so it only detonates if it hits something hard, and over penetrates the canvas? Though if that were the case I'd have thought it'd detonate if you shot the ground while parked but it doesn't seem to. Perhaps a safety? 

[SYN_Vander]

How about barges???

[=621=Samikatz]

36 minutes ago, [F.Circus]Gorn_Captain said:

 

That's very strange indeed, I've just tried it both with and without the lewis gun and was unable to get any kind of appreciable damage to planes. Only the faint little puff of smoke and nothing else. Here:

 

At a longer range than yours (on my laptop at the moment, had to fly with the mouse) but I doubt that'd have an impact on whether the HE detonates or not. You can see I get multiple hits with both the aldis and the lewis, but no real damage. 

 

It looks like yours hit the engine, perhaps the shell is fused so it only detonates if it hits something hard, and over penetrates the canvas? Though if that were the case I'd have thought it'd detonate if you shot the ground while parked but it doesn't seem to. Perhaps a safety? 

 

Weird! I'll have to do more testing myself, only did it a couple times at very close range, so I'm going to assume your more thorough experience is the norm. Had to a quick search to see if it's the text or the shell that's at fault, and while I didn't find much concrete 1st hand information on this gun, I've seen a few sites list it as carrying explosive shells, and the green and red bands on the shells apparently mean TNT, so it probably should be exploding reliably

 

I'd drop your videos in the bug report section, maybe?

[LukeFF]

18 minutes ago, =621=Samikatz said:

Weird! I'll have to do more testing myself, only did it a couple times at very close range, so I'm going to assume your more thorough experience is the norm. Had to a quick search to see if it's the text or the shell that's at fault, and while I didn't find much concrete 1st hand information on this gun, I've seen a few sites list it as carrying explosive shells, and the green and red bands on the shells apparently mean TNT, so it probably should be exploding reliably

 

The Davis Gun Ordnance Pamphlet I have from November 1918 lists two ammunition types:

• A sharp-nose projectile for practice firing
• A nonrecocheting head fitted with a blunt nose with hardened cutting edges designed to puncture steel plates under water.

I've linked the whole file here - it's a fascinating, in-depth document: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3iggm7ion8tdld1/Ordnance Pamphlet No. 94 - Davis 6-Pdr. Nonrecoil Gun.zip?dl=0

[[F.Circus]Gorn_Captain]

1 hour ago, LukeFF said:

 

The Davis Gun Ordnance Pamphlet I have from November 1918 lists two ammunition types:

• A sharp-nose projectile for practice firing
• A nonrecocheting head fitted with a blunt nose with hardened cutting edges designed to puncture steel plates under water.

I've linked the whole file here - it's a fascinating, in-depth document: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3iggm7ion8tdld1/Ordnance Pamphlet No. 94 - Davis 6-Pdr. Nonrecoil Gun.zip?dl=0

That's a great document! Very interesting stuff. I wonder if what we have in the game is the mentioned special 9 pdr ammunition with delayed fuse? It would explain why my tests where it hit canvas did very little, but hitting the engine block like Samikatz did takes the entire wing off. I've not had a chance to test if hitting the engine reliably causes the explosion yet though. 

 

One other thing I noticed is it suggests the shell casing be removed by hand, our gunner is perhaps a little more blasé as you can see here: https://gfycat.com/tenderallhare

Probably best not to offend him if you like having two engines...

 

[Cynic_Al]

In RoF this gun has an initialisation bug that may have carried-over.  By default the gun is ready to fire, however if you press reload without having fired the gun for the first time, it runs an unnecessary reload sequence after which it will not fire the first time the trigger is operated.  Thereafter operation is as expected.  You may want to test that.

[S10JlAbraxis]

Just tried the Davis gun for the first time.  No matter what I do it only points almost straight down.  Am I missing something or is the gun limited to shooting down towards the ground?

[RNAS10_Oliver]

1 minute ago, S10JlAbraxis said:

Just tried the Davis gun for the first time.  No matter what I do it only points almost straight down.  Am I missing something or is the gun limited to shooting down towards the ground?

Nah that’s correct, it’s a recoilless rifle, so if you aimed it higher your gona be chucking some nasty stuff back at your own aircraft.

[AndyJWest]

1 hour ago, RNAS10_Oliver said:

Nah that’s correct, it’s a recoilless rifle, so if you aimed it higher your gona be chucking some nasty stuff back at your own aircraft.

 

Lead shot and grease, to be exact.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200224005612/http://www.big-ordnance.com/Davis/davis_ammunition.htm

 

 

[[F.Circus]MoerasGrizzly]

2 hours ago, S10JlAbraxis said:

Just tried the Davis gun for the first time.  No matter what I do it only points almost straight down.  Am I missing something or is the gun limited to shooting down towards the ground?

 

 

[BMA_Hellbender]

11 hours ago, S10JlAbraxis said:

Just tried the Davis gun for the first time.  No matter what I do it only points almost straight down.  Am I missing something or is the gun limited to shooting down towards the ground?

 
Try flying upside down.

[J2_Trupobaw]

On 3/18/2022 at 5:53 AM, Hellbender said:

 
Try flying upside down.

... so the gunner hangs for dear life from the gun  after he falls from the cockpit, pulling guns butt towards the Earth and barrel towards the sky?

Edited March 20, 2022 by J2_Trupobaw

[AndyJWest]

I doubt that the O-400 was designed with sustained negative-G operation in mind. ?

[doyle66]

Well Paddy, that's a common ailment when a male human gets older ...