In WT it’s completely misrepresented, nit picked to the absolute maximum performance it never had.
One US sources said it had a RoF of up to 950 RPM, which is what we have in the game, even though that could clearly only achieved while firing the heavy AP rounds.
The actual RoF was 700 with plans to increase the average RoF to 800, which never happened.
Another US source also said that the HE velocity was 740m/s, confirmed by test firing, yet they were recently buffed to 800m/s because of a single Japanese book from like 2013, even though all the information in that book is the same as a US source from 1945-49 that investigated Japanese weapon development after the war.
There was experimental propellant with nitro glycerin that would have increased velocity and thereby RoF but it wasn’t adopted.
Similar to the high velocity ammo from the T-60 tank that never entered service.
And since the gun suffered from reliability issues, due to low quality steel, increasing the stress on the system wasn’t feasible.
So in reality the Ho-5 was practically the weakest and least effective 20mm cannon of the war, entering service way after the ShVAK.
With the main advantage over the Type 99-2 that it could be synchronized.
The only saving graze might be the 20mm fuzeless shell. But you could basically achieve the same with just your regular Hispano HEFI without the problem of heat and strike sensitive ammunition.
You forgot to mention that somehow 80g HEFI from Ho-5 outperforms 117g IT and AP from MG151/20 in long range ballistics, despite 0 indication of any smart design choices that would have enabled such thing happening (7.92 CETME bullet is a nice example of super light for its caliber bullet with excellent ballistics, but it required special design with ridiculously long nose).
Now imagine if Gaijin turned Shvak API into wbat it really was: steel cored HVAP. Now that would have been hilarious, you fire at italian truck, hit the sheet metal roof - shell shattered, go … yourself!
BTW Soviet 23mm API also was steel cored HVAP.
IL-2 attacks Ostwind, fires 60 rounds, ails to pen the turret even once. I would throw my keyboard out the window probably if I did not suffer through 20mm HVAP failing to penetrate Hellcat point blank first.
@KillaKiwi Do I remember it right? If 15mm APCR requires several hits to destroy an engine or kill a crewman because apparently high velocity tungsten core produces no spall and hurts as much as a papercut, why does Shvak API deal full damage?
Still, for strafing actually MG151/20 is better because M-geschoss HE does great and sometimes ridiculous things vs open-tops, while Shvak vs M10 feels like throwing boiled eggs at the crew inside.
My favourite is, pilots can facetank 20mm IT like no issue, because sure as hell 8g of whatever it was of incendiary composition exploding inside your skull is entirely survivable.
Will have to see if 30mm incendiary is survivable too, but I would not be surprised even a tiny bit
in essence, such hit has basically 0 impact on plane flight characteristics in game.
IRL cockpit would look like you threw some heavy-duty fireworks into a huge bowl of tomato soup.
Japanese Type 5 APHE has freaking better ballistic performance than MK 103 APHEI-T.
Just completely made up, just like Ho-5 ballistics.
Makes no sense. Lighter shell, no tracer but better ballistics.
Not to mention that 30mm APHE deals more damage than the supposed SAPHEI shell.
And the fuzeless APHE also has a “fuze” delay of 1.2m while for the German shell it’s just 0.2m, so doesn’t benefit from the sphere of death as much.
That’s the fun part. I recently flew Do-335B2 with 3 MK103s with air belts and I didnnot really witness any improvement in number of shots to kill or time to kill compared to Pay2winnin’s Yak-3 with 1 Shvak and 1 Berezin.
Even better, I don’t even know if I’m hitting with MG151/20 or MK103s, because 20mm M-geschoss deals only slightly less damage per shot.
Of course much better 30mm ballistics are a welcome change, bur you know what I’m saying.
It’s also hilarious that a lot of planes in this game can just happily fly with 1 wing. My favourites are Yak-3U which basically doesn’t lose any speed over missing wing and J2M, same story, both can still dogfight while missing a wing too.
I wish Do-335 could get a HVAP/API belt due to the fact this game is bugged to hell, API in this scenario would probably go through more flat armor than HVAP. ;)
Tell that to Douglas Bader!
Jokes aside I think they are over due for a rework of the aircraft models, things like the structural ribbing need to be modeled in the fuselage, hydraulic lines and pumps, radios, batteries etc, all to give AP round things to hit and knock out or set on fire.
The current system where a round either dose absolutely nothing or just atomizes the plane is quiet irritating to deal with.
It would also shake up the meta with planes like the FW-190s gaining a significant buff due to their use of electrical systems instead of hydraulics for flight control, so they would only lose the control surface that actually got hit rather then the whole system de-pressurizing.
Edit: just realized how long this threads been up and that I replied to a year old post…
Well more systems would also benefit HE rounds, damaging them with fragments and dealing lethal DoT, instead of every round with a few grams of explosive ripping wings and tails off.
And of course incendiary content needs to finally be added to count for incendiary performance and/or blast damage.
Early ShVAK shells were filled with both explosive and incendiary filler, like Hispano HEFI, while only later shells used a uniform explosive-mixture.
The performance difference isn’t that big but Gaijin always just looks at explosive content or they just make things up even it’s not convenient.
If Gaijin is going by alternate physics for non-German shell, maybe Jacob de Marre once got back home from night of heavy drinking and showing off his ability to break random rocks using his skull, then slipped on wet tiles, fell, hit back of his head on the edge of reinforced toilet seat (because he left his safety helmet on his tricycle) and came up with another briliant equation, this time for ballistics instead of APCR? Everything would be better than Japenese shell having better performance despite lower weight and lower muzzle velocity, less aerodynamic shape AND NO TRACER on top of that.
It’s almost as funny with 30mm M-geschoss with tracer vs Japanese 30mm He:
330g at 860m/s, aerodynamic long ogive nose + boattail vs 350g potato at 770m/s and somehow at 1600m potato already overtakes ( I mean, I’m fairly sure speed wise it’s doing better past 1200m already). Come on gaijin, how does that make any sense?
So the Soviet planes needed more shots, and at weaker points than those of other countries? I understand that their cannons had the least damage, so I think they would have been planes with little operational time, since with only 120 20mm rounds they wouldn’t have enough to shoot down many enemies, unless they were lucky shots.
In reality you didnt shoot down 5 planes with 120 rounds, you were lucky you shot down even one.
Of course it all depends on pilot skill and the engagement.
WT gives you many advantages compared to real life but that also means the enemy has the same advantages.
So while it’s much easier to spot someone in third person to attack them, the enemy is also able to see and react to your attacks.
As long as your rounds land where it matters,
fuel tanks, pilot, engine, you will quickly destroy them with just a couple of shots fired.
Otherwise you might just deal damage that takes time to bring the aircraft down.
But hitting wings or tails during a deflection shot does almost nothing. Since there’s nothing there that can be damaged.
That doesn’t change whether it’s a Hispano or ShVAK but the ShVAK had some big disadvantage in reality.
Namely an AP round that couldn’t easily penetrate a pilots armor plate from behind and shells that lost speed quickly, so setting a bombers fuel tanks on fire from range was less likely.
The explosive rounds is lighter, slower is filled with less incendiary content.
While it was perfectly adequate for killing German single engined fighters and two engined heavy fighters and bombers, it would struggle against planes with armor protecting fuel tanks and large/fast bombers.
The NS-23 solved these issues by firing a larger projectile that could penetrate armor more effectively and keep more velocity at range, while also bringing more mass and filler into the target.
In WT it’s a pointless upgrade since AP mechanics don’t work like in reality and structure damage is so extreme that anything above 20mm is pointless.
