.50's deserve a buff

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
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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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It’s just incendiary mixture:
40% Barium Nitrate
10% Potassium Perchlorate
50% Magnalium (50:50)

The only difference to the M1 Incendiary is the 10% Potassium Perchlorate, which is a stronger oxidizer than Barium Nitrate, increasing the heat of the flash.

You also forgot the fact that the rounds will actually prematurely detonate when firing at long burst or from a hot barrel.
One of the issues that led to the round stopped being produced.

In the 12.7mm M3, the high RoF would increase the chance of rounds getting too hot even more since the higher RoF would induce more heat in a shorter time.

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They overperform on strutucal damage, fire chance and range. (probably accuracy as well)

Of course all guns overperform to some extent but .50cals and 20mm are probably both the strongest contenders for being much more capable than in RL.

But when it comes to ammo types, all types of Incendiary ammo is severly underperforming, if it doesn’t have AP or HE in the name as well.

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The entire argument of burst mass makes no sense, especially when it’s one second burst mass (Look at the video of the P-80 above) In any match. You’re not going to get a full second of burst onto a singular enemy unless they are flying completely straight and unaware or AFK.
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The majority of the time, you’re going to get glancing blows that do nothing in deflection shots. They achieve no major loss in lift nor do they heavily affect the flight characteristics of the aircraft.

Compare this to a single 20mm being able to snap a P-51C in half. The P-51C snaps in this location. Making it where cannon rounds magically have the explosive filler of bombs. This why the ‘ammunition amount’ argument makes no sense. You can literally 1 tap aircraft, if you run out of ammunition. That’s your fault. I regularly go in the Fw-190 A-1 and I will point-and-click-adventure La-5s, P-40s, Ki-43s, Ki-45s, P-38s, and even P-51s and P-47s with one round from either cannon smacking one of their wings instantly splitting them into two or magically combusting their wing tip to pieces, and vice versa for most other country’s cannons
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second clip a B-17 is being peppered by a Bf-110 G-2 yet the wing isn’t mysteriously flying off nor is the tail splitting in half. I wonder what gun the Bf-110 G-2 has?
image
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According to war thunder. 1-2 hits is what kills the plane. Lol

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Good thing that you can scale burst mass to whatever time you want, until you have to consider gun overheating or running out of ammo.

Even if your firing window is just 1/4 sec, the P-47D still puts more lead in the air than almost anything else.

Plane in video is firing its 20mm cannons, not 30mm. We also don’t know what ammo is used, so retest with AP-I or IT and see how little it does.

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You’re just telling me what I’ve already read in the document. I don’t really care about the ammunition bursting because—honestly. Who cares? Gaijin isn’t going to add that defect. If they did, then they’re going to need to add sabotaged Me-262s and the La-5 can’t go above 3000 meters because the pilots would be gassing themselves with their own exhaust fumes if they close the canopy doors

The thing with the M23s is that it’s mentioned multiple times that the ammunition does penetrate and that there is over double the amount of filler compared to M1 incendiary, Yes, it does detonate on impact, but it still penetrates. Like I mentioned in the previous post. The incendiary for .50’s should behave like SAPI on hispano cannons but instead of penetrating and exploding like an HE or APHE shell (Which is incorrect as pointed out by another user on the older forum) it should rely on the impact of the cartridge hitting the aircraft as the means of “detonating” the ammunition.

Like the .303 incendiary test posted above.

Tearing quotes and stuff out of “Flying Guns of World War II; Development of Aircraft guns, ammunition, and installations 1933-1945” by Anthony G. Williams and Emmanuel Gustin.

"The Luftwaffe saw considerable variations in belt loading, as follows:

The 7.92mm MG-17 used in fighters were loaded with 50 percent AP, 40 percent API and 10 percent HEI (a Beobachtungsgeschoss, or observation round, which exploded on impact to show the pilot he was on target). For ground attack and for the MG-15 and MG-81 felxible guns, the sequence typically changed to equal proportions of AP, AP-T and API; v-munition loadings were only used in the MG-17. The 13mm MG-131 was loaded with one or two HEI for every AP/T. Official loadings for the 20mm belts and magazines varied at different times and places. Three types of projectiles were usually mixed in the belts: HEI (M-Geschoss), HE/T and AP/API or APHE. Ratios quoted include 1:1:1, 3:1:1, and 2:2:1 respectively.

Generally speaking, the more powerful weapons were able to provide sufficient destructive power with only one or two projectile types, so belts were less varied. As we have seen, an equal mix of HEI and SAPI became standard in the RAF’s 20mm Hispanos, whereas the 30mm MK-108 principally relied on the M-Geschoss HEI it was designed for. The .50 in Browning fighter belts in US service started the war loaded with 40 percent AP, 40 percent Incendiary and 20 percent tracer. The tracer fell out of favour when it was realised that it was providing more help to the enemy. By the end of the war, fighters were primarily loaded with the M8 API (which appeared in service in spring 1944), as this proved to be a good general-purpose projectile, although the M23 incendiary also saw some use."

So overall, the luftwaffe was using high explosives for their cannons. I have no clue why you want to go “Mmmm But do it with AP!” as if they ran full AP against bombers for some reason. Sounds like you’re moving the goal post.

First, you’re using the wrong caliber of ammo. Second, you’re extrapolating the damage from one hit, with the cartridge that can be as little as 1/3rd of the belt (as per your own information, and that’s without considering ammo shortages), AND from the worst angle possible.

No, despite all your crying about it, a B-17 will survive about that much fire in-game too.

The problem is not that the 151 is doing too much damage. The problem is that it is doing too much structural damage