I think you’re underestimating the number of rounds involved in these “single shot” deaths. The MG151 has a RoF of 700 rounds per minute, and you can only see 1/6th of the rounds coming. If someone’s running gunpods, that’s 2100 rpm (or 35 round every second), of which you’re only seeing 350 rpm (or 5.8 rounds per second).
ShVAKs run slightly faster, at 720 rpm, so the same principle applies, though the number of guns varies from 1 to 4, and the belts have more tracers in them.
Bottom line is, the odds of hitting someone with exactly one shot are pretty slim, even in a deflection shot. It’s far more likely that you took a good burst of 10+ rounds, but only saw 1-2 of them.
That red circle seems to be how Gaijin models fragmentation (or where fragmentation could spawn, since it rarely does for .50s). You can see the exact same effect on .50 cal AP rounds with zero incendiary payload. At best, I would say I rounds do slightly more damage to the panels themselves (Since it doesn’t overpen), but at the expense of losing all ability to damage internal modules, which are far more important when it comes to actually downing an aircraft.
I literally 1 tapped an F6F’s wing with a Yak-1. He wasn’t damaged, he had perfect flight performance. I literally clicked once and his wing falls off.
Seeing some actually flat wrong claims/statements in this thread is similar to a witness a discussion of blind people about colors - interesting, but more from the comedian aspect. The fellow player @Aegis270 corrected some of them - thx for that.
Any comparison between the AN/M2 0.50 / AN/M3 0.50 and the Swedish Akan M/39a is useless as you compare a HMG with a cannon.
The AN/M2 0.50 / AN/M3 0.50 never had explosive filler of any kind in WW 2 - that’s why FN developed the Browning Aircraft Machine Gun - F.N. Caliber 13.2 mm (seen in wt as Akan M39a) with a larger round with a small HE filler - this classifies the bullet as a shell and makes the HMG technically seen a cannon.
The 0.50 cal needs no buff - even with my potato aim i am able to kill enemies whilst flying P-47s. Ofc with AP-IT.
Claiming that cannon armed fighters have an advantage as they produce more damage than 0.50 cals with less hits is quite amusing as that’s the reason why cannons were used by other nations.
The lack of 20mm cannons in US planes (T1, AN/M2 & M3, T 33, etc) was based on technical difficulties to adopt / implement these HS 404 derivates.
Any comparison of irl circumstances and wt are pointless. Alone the artificial accuracy increase of mouse aim combined with the option to set convergence >400 meters proves this. Convergence settings of batteries of 6 or 8 0.50 cals were optimized to allow average pilots to score hits at those way lower combat ranges that wt allows.
Whilst chasing enemies the AN/M2 0.50 / AN/M3 0.50 can reliable score hits and crits at very long ranges (~1.8km). Whilst using in turrets and getting chased this value increases to at least 2.4 km.
In totall opposition to that you can outrun most cannon shells at very high sppeds - usually a 20 mm cannon is no threat if the distance is around 1.2 to 1.4 km or higher. This is based on the fact that different bullets & shells vanish at different distances and dannon shells have usually way lower muzzle velocities. Iirc the US 0.50 cal bullets have a “appearance range” of ~ 3.500 meters, whilst most cannon shells disappear ~ 2 km.
The damage analysis is very often described as unreliable source to draw conclusions of actual damage in game.
If you search in the old forum you will find a lot of more or less official statements why a few cannon shells cut off tails of strategic bombers or planes in general.It boils down that gaijin admits that all damage is kind of overpowered as this is a game and no simulation. You saw this in the past when you hit bomber in a 90 degree dive with a central mounted cannon and cut the left wing off - more than often the right wing was cut off too, despite the wing was not hit.
Actually the 0.50 cals received a severe buff due to the ballistic nerf for cannon shells as the severe bullet drop makes it way harder to hit anything >6-800 meters whilst the much higher muzzle velocity of the 0.50 cals creates way better chances to hit, crit and kill way beyond 1 km.
So imho this discussion is nothing new and 0.50 cals need no buff.
I will admit that my understanding of how the Incendiary rounds worked was awful. The shell demo in the mod window is quite misleading. I’m going through and checking out the protection analysis to get a better understanding of them.
I love US .50 cals! I have questions for the thread. What is your favorite belt? I normally use as much AP-I or AP as possible. Stealth belts feel awful, and I suspect non-AP incendiary is bugged/useless. Tracer also feels like almost no damage. Thoughts?
Dream on! MG’s have more rounds, and more guns per plane, many planes drop smaller caliber for bigger at a rate of 2 to 1. If you want cannons in USA go fly for the navy, interceptors or even strike aircraft. If you are not a USA main find a plane that has cannons.
.50 BMG is by no means just regular old rifle ammunition. And before you give me some Bs about the Barrett or some other .50 anti material rifle, in the context of war thunder and most military in general rifle caliber is the spectrum of rounds that would be used by a standard service rifle. If .50 bmg was a rifle caliber round, then soldiers would walk around with m82’s. But they do not, as there is a reason why only very specialized rifles use .50 bmg. That is recoil, cost, weight, and flexibility which are qualities some specialized soldiers give up for the power and accuracy of .50 bmg
Figure of speech. I can not call it a gun because in the military that would mean artillery piece ie cannon. You cant deny that it is on tge limit of rifle caliber
Hey, I’m not wrong though. If gaijin is fully aware of how insane Cannons are. Then either make .50’s completely shred, or give back the flamethrower nature of .50’s simple as. ALso, .50’s aren’t head-on kings. 20mms are. 1 20mm kills you. I can hit all day with .50’s and nothing
Will do if they hit and a big if they hit the right spot, because they are bigger and have more explosive filler, but less velocity, less rate of fire, less pieces, less of them fitted, there are cannons like the Italian that are not effective past 300m.
Why dont you fly a plane that has cannons? If you cant hit a plane with 50 cal. Then you wont be any good with cannons.
I do fly planes with cannons, again. I don’t care for you ‘explanation’ of filler. Because as stated above, gaijin knows well how over performing most guns do for damage. What I’m saying is. If I can fly planes with 500lb bombs worth of filler in each shell that can do massive damage to me in 1 shot anywhere while my .50s do literally sprinkles worth in glancing blows, why don’t they buff the rounds to be on par to how they were back in 2016?