hmm, ye no. If you can aim around a played for a month level they hit just like 20mm just instead of getting only 200-400 ammo you get 1200-3000, I’ve used a lot recently on things like the G.91, the P-47D30, the F4Us, the P51s etc. and they gotta be the best in game gun I’ve ever used, then when I use cannons on things like the Mig 15. G.55, G.56, RE 2001’s, Bf109s and more and they hit just like 50. cals but have WAY less ammo still plenty for an ace but you absolutely gotta spare ammo which gets me killed way to much
Read things carefully before you post.
It says that the. 50cal Incendiary DOES NOT penetrate the target even at 100yards.
The. 50cal bullet that DOES is the A.P. one, not the Incendiary.
I had my wing shot off by a bomber from 600-800m, who can only fire 2-4 .50cals at most.
They can rip of wings way to often. One match in the F-80A-5 I parked myself behind La-200, a big bus of an aircraft, as he was climbing away. I shot at him from 600m, missed most of my bursts but then at one point I got the aim right and hit him with a good burst and took his wing off, using default ammo.
Based on that damage, it takes 2-3 .50cal hits to destroy a wing spar.
Testimony why high caliber AP in the game is a waste:
Of course when you compare it to what 20mm cannons can do, it’s probably in the same ballpark.
But at the bottom it says the M1 Incendiary penetrates the dural armor sandwich.
Only the British .50cal Incendiary fails to so.
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You have six guns firing at once with a high rate of fire. I don’t think it’s 2-3 rounds, but more like you had around 6-9 rounds hitting your target at the same time in the same localized area. The P-36G has a singular .50 and API and regular AP basically does the same damage (I might be wrong on this as I’m actually noticing more structural damage with AP in protection analysis), besides of course the RNG fire capability. Taking the Stealth belts—so things don’t get muddied up by tracer rounds and give the best results in terms of potential damage and then I tested with universal for more AP rounds.
I tested on the P-40s in the test map in attempts to snap the wing at the wing root. It’s not the most scientific test on the matter, but I’m finding that around 7-9 rounds is what does the killing and this is entirely rear aspect where I am striking the spars the entire time, no deflection shots where AP passes through near harmlessly
so having a good burst of nose mounted .50’s is obviously going to have a lot of damage. Also note. YOu have this much lead coming out of your plane
And you say a good burst, that’s easily around the 50 round mark if you do a 1 second burst with nose mounted .50s, especially that close. No duh that’s going to hurt a crap ton.
But jet damage models are weird to begin with as a singular hit from any gun can heavily affect aerodynamics instantaneously to the point your plane can enter a spin at over 800kmh.
F8U’s have this happen a lot. Clip their wing tip, they lose all lift in that wing tip and then they will pull so many G’s the wing snaps in a split second.
prop aircraft DMs are wet paper mixed with insanely overperforming 20mms that can split planes in a single shot is an issue.
I’d like to add after testing with the P-47D and using ground target ammunition, which was utter misery. Incendiary ammunition. Not particularly API-T, but pure incendiary is doing the heavy lifting for damage, which is why stealth belts crap damage.
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You’re striking your targets for the most part with AP in your 20mm belts which is the biggest culprit for why your 20mm doesn’t do damage, and mixed with your slow rate of fire you can also have enemies fly threw your rounds. This can happen with .50s, but 20mms can have this especially happen to them. Does your belt contain anything other than HE as well? because regular incendiary shells can also do minimum damage.
unironically, the ‘realistic’ ammo belts for planes aren’t meta. You’d want them with the most explosive ammunition as humanly possible. Strangely for .50s, incendiary damages wings more than AP while AP damages the fuselage more. I dun get it, but I hope the addition of custom ammo belts comes out because I do want to see what a full ‘Incendiary belt’ with no AP behaves like.
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the “ACcURaCY” argument is honestly one of the stupidest arguments Warthunder players have made for their favorite nation to stay OP. You can see from the footage that the B-17 took over a dozen HE hits and showed 0 signs of critical damage, unlike Warthunder where just one or two shells will rip off entire tails and wings.
It doesn’t matter that aiming in WT can be more accurate when the pilot in the footage hit more shots than most WT players and the B-17 was fine.
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I wouldn’t argue ‘fine’ as more than likely the crew was shredded, but the plane would’ve definitely been able to fly for more than at least 5 minutes from that amount of damage.
The engines were definetly gone, but it was still flying straight. In Warthunder, just one or two hits would’ve completely ripped the wing/tail off or at the bare minimum leave it black and ruin your flight performance.
Irl they would’ve eventually had to bail out, but in Warthunder they would be considered fine as you can glide back to airfield.
Oh definitely I agree. Gaijin puts all this care into how damage modeling works for tanks, but the second planes are involved “OOPS ITS ALL PAPER”
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Fr, especially in ruzzian vehicles
You can detonate fab500 on a su25/39 wing by hitting it with guns but it wont kill the plane or even rip the wing lmao
Meanwhile f15 will rip at the slightest movement downwards literally made out of paper
G overload seems abit sus rn. I can pull 8-9G “EXTREME OVERLOAD” in my F4D all day and suffer 0 consequences
Because gaijin isn’t going to even try and touch the physics of progressive structural overload from pulling Gs over and over again especially with how the game considers our planes easily replaceable, nor are they gonna make it where recovering from G-Loc can take several minutes to regain full functionality without being somewhat clouded.
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Its almost like when you alloy them those two aspects balance out… Anything that helps a round keep from deforming will increase its penetration. Its why AP shells are made of steel, not lead despite lead being significantly denser.
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So:
And not:
Because unless your 20mm hits a critical components, it’s not going to accomplish much.
In reality a 20mm Incendiary shell would greatly enhance a fighters ability to take down a B-17 with a MG 151/20 instead of firing mostly Mineshells, since the Incendiary shell have a much better to cause a fuel fire.
But in WT they are practically usless.
Same is true for other ammo types. They are simply not doing what they should be doing, so now we have this high-explosive meta.
For example: Soviets made 37mm API shells for their large 37mm cannons. And they are infact called API (BZ) like previous calibers, despite lacking any incendiary element. So they are just solid shot.
Now why would you even carry 37mm AP shells instead of 37mm HEI?
On thing that is for certain, is that a 37mm AP packs quite the kinetic energy.
It might not take down a bomber in one shot, but it can go throught the entire fuselage and destroy an engine.
It’s also interesting to think what would happen, if a fuel tank was hit.
In WT it would just pass through, but in RL would create a massive fuel leak.
And with the kinetic energy that gets dumped into the fuel tank, a huge amount of fuel is probably going to spill out of the tank.
While that won’t do much on it’s own, other 23mm API/HEI and 37mm HEI shells are on their way, which would easily set the fuel on fire, creating a massive fuel fire in the wing, that would most certainly be the end of the bomber.
Something that just doesn’t happen in WT. So instead it’s just blowing off wings with 37mm HEI in a single hit.
You do realize that a mere 5% antimony is enough to significantly boost lead’s tensile strength, and the USA had it over double that at 12.5%?
Why are you so intent on saying that adding a well-known hardening alloying metal to lead couldn’t possibly increase its ability to penetrate armor?
I would like to add in the conversation about this to M23
Basically a few tickles would render enemy aircraft on fire with one aircraft setting around 10 aircraft on fire due to how strong incendiary is, not only that, we now know the mixture.
It also has explosive filler as well as incendiary mixture, so the round should be slightly high explosive as well. going by the top-left.
Going by this forum posthere on the old forums
.50 should act like SAPI ammunition if we go by the game’s incorrect implementation
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.50cals are already overperforming on damage. Plus, they always have far more ammo capacity than 20mms.
Every single 109 has, AT MOST, 200rds of 20mm. On a SINGLE cannon.
La-5s and 7s get 340-390rds of 20mm across two cannons.
The completely overkill J6K has 1200rds of 20mm spread across 6 cannons.
A Ki-61-I otsu or Ki-44-II hei, both with 4x 12.7s, have 1000rds on board.
Now let’s look at the US and their .50s.
All P-47Ds get 3400rds across 8 guns, the N gets even more.
P-51s get 1880rds on 6 guns across most models, Corsairs get 2350rds for the same guns.
P-51C and Bearcat have 1250-1260rds, with the same burst mass and gun count as for the two 12.7mm-armed japanese planes above.
The P-47 gets a higher burst mass than everything I mentioned, except the J6K. It is better than most Fw190 models (only 2 or 3 are better, and those are even worse aircraft than the P-47), or a 109 G2 WITH gunpods. And you get that as low as 3.7.
The P-38 has a very good 20mm and you can fly it as low as 3.0. Due to how unreliable it was, not many other US aircraft got a 20mm cannon at all. The US also has what is probably the best armed plane at 3.7, the P-51A with its 4x 20mm cannons. Unlike comparable aircraft from other nations, it is low enough where its speed is relevant.
At 5.7, the F4U-4B has more 20mm ammo (and arguably better guns) than anything else I could find on a fighter near its BR and with comparable ammo load. N1K2s, J2Ms, Fw190s, Tempests… only the N1K2s get close with 900rds, but the cannons have much lower RoF and the plane itself is quite bad.
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Shooting from that angle into a B-17 in-game will yield you about the same results. The only time you’re gonna shoot someone down in very few hits is by coming from above or below and targeting the wing root or pilot.
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