They can one tap
The 0.50 has a gazillion rounds and lazerbeam ballistics
Seems fair to me
Except 20mm Shvak reaches nearly as far as .50 despite have a less aerodynamic round, and less powder than German 20mms but can almost hit 1.5 km for some reason. The good range is the same for Hispanos reaching over 1km out.
Only reason for most of this discussion we singled out Mineshells is the damage potential of them. But in general, 20mm cannons are overpowered cartoonishly in terms of strength.
Square cube law, rifle bullets have very good coefficients but are meaningless vs HMG.
Mineshells, esp 20mm have incredibly bad ballistic coefficients. You can look at the real tables, they really drop harder than LMG rounds.
Damage is cartoonish for everything, it just happens to benefit 20mm. German 30 just blows up planes half the time.
In real life, a 0.50 can barely pen 0.524 inch armor steel past 500 yards. But in game it’s an instant erasure.
It’s all fake.
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Was talked about before in the thread and agreed upon. Everything is cartoonishly strong. But cannons in general are leagues and bounds better than .50’s to the point they can kill with singular cannon rounds. Almost every cannon in game can one tap people while with .50’s you need to get a sustained long burst enough for structural damage. Fires are already much rarer in this game compared to before and less lethal now as well compared to the guaranteed death sentence they were back then.
It’s why I suggested buffing .50’s incendiary to near 2016 levels of flammability. So .50’s have the incendiary capability, and cannons keep the insane structural damage they can output. Another option being giving the U.S. a dedicated air-target belt where it’s basically just the stealth belt but with the API replaced with API-T. the M23 in game kinda acts like a miniature HEFI and with wings, it damages them a decent amount for a single round. Basically, no stat changes. Just a new ammo belt. That way even a glancing blow can actually affect performance, and not just make it the lightest yellow because API passed harmlessly through your wing.
API-T striking the wing
M23 incendiary striking the wing.
American planes are already leagues and bounds more difficult to play than a Yak-3 or a Bf-109 mixed with the shortened match timer, the patience required to climb, and then trusting your team to not instantly melt. it gets nightmarish when a vehicle focused on patience also has to sustain a long burst on an enemy that knows your presence while the enemy can essentially tap you out of the sky if he gets one shot in.
Check the USA pick rate in MM. I think it’s entirely bearable, if anything 6x HMG > 2x cannon.
Most players bring gun pods so like 3x cannons on the 109s, 4 (default) on 190, you’re not instagibbed.
it’s picked a lot simply because it’s America and America was a massive player in WW2.
This is what the U.S. saw it as, roughly 2-3 .50’s per cannon in terms of destructive potential when making comparisons… But that’s IRL, not how Warthunder makes it out to be.
Cannons readily melt planes even when armed with one of them and in singular shots. If armed with 4 .50’s you struggle to match the damage output of a single cannon.
Wasn’t .50 cal pretty damn bad when it comes to penetration after going through aircraft skin, while MG131 with its crude bullets did surprisingly well?
I think I’ve seen such claim in this forum, but it’s hard to verify.
That’s some pretty hard armor. Almost FHA level.
But they also shot it directly. When the round gets destabilized first, it probably has little chance to have any effect.
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Yes. According to German data. It’s because jacketed bullets, will get destabilized very easily after impacting any material at oblique impact.
The German 13mm round doesn’t have a copper jacket but is like a miniature cannon shell made from hardened steel with a driving band.
The center of gravity is also near the front, due to the large tracer cavity, which keeps the round facing forward instead of turning sideways.
The downside are the worse ballistic performance, since the .50cal is both more pointy and also boat tailed. But the tracer makes up for that to some degree. 13mm API was only used for a short period. I suspect because it must have had unusable ballistic performance, since it would have even worse ballistics than AP-T.
German 13mm AP-T
13mm AP-T compared to 12.7mm AP (from German document)
Numbers in brackets are the armor penetration values at 100m, for a high hardness steel plate (450 BHN), 2m behind a 2mm dural plate sloped at 70°.
A 7.92mm or 7.7mm AP round will penetrate 4mm in comparison.
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Wow, that really is shaped just like a tank shell.
0.50 cal AP is massively overperforming in general.
Real thing had limited impression on even T-26.
As for German 13mm… That is trash.
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Not really possible to gut it though, given how stuff like the M2A2 and SPAAs need at least some penetration.
True if it performed like real life, where Finn’s ambushed T-26 with 0.50cal at close range and made no impression, it would be unusable like it is in reality.
But maybe they should have thought of that before giving 12.7 autocannon performance.
As provided in thread MG131 AP is trash.
In game - yes. But apparently IRL the bullet design was pretty smart for destroying planes, although, just like with other German air to air weapons, some decisions are harder to understand :)
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Pretty sure Finn’s used Boys AT Rifles to some effect against T-26s and BTs.
Both are vulnerable to .50cal rounds after all.
And you can see from the document you posted that a US 50cal. AP will punch through 5/8" (15.875mm) even at 30° with roughly 2730fps (832m/s).
Which means a penetraten range of around 100-500m, depending on impact angle.
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All of Germanys guns use Full steel Driving band ammo, with exception to 7,92mm, tho that had the Pz.Geschoss developed, which is a 10g Full steel Copper driving band steel. Mainly as Air to air Ap, duo to above mentioned better performance after penetrating aircraft skin.
But also was used as a cheaper alternative in the 7,92x94mm case with the Pz.B.38 and 39 as well as EW 141 with some 1250m/s velocity.
I have another topic, which shows pretty much all German (own) used Armarments. (Or rather 3 topics, AA, General ground and Aircraft armarments) they are pinned in the dedicated place on the forum, so rather easy to find.
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It’s hilarious that I routinely find your comments on youtube, haha. But it shouldn’t surprise me, it seems we zre interested in rather obscure topics :D
Anyway, I love that thread, it’s so damn informative.
BTW ever since I’ve started using stealth belt I no longer have problems with MG151/20 ballistics. Yes, they are horrible, but additional 70-80m/s muzzle velocity makes all the difference inside 500m. Finally they are in line with my expectations.
But that’s off topic so Loofah over and out :P
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Oof hopefully noting wrong on my part. :x
Finland didn’t use 50 cal’s did they?
Some sources say they had a small number of 13.2mm - possible Brownings from Sweden but they were found to be ineffective - possibly lacking AP ammo?