Iirc even from 30° and flat on at 250m.
A bit off topic but here’s the 15mm API in comparison.
Spoiler
As we can see, they are nearly identical and thus would behave very similiar.
I checked the ballistic table and at 500m the 15mm API would penetrate as much as 13mm from 100m (15mm).
In comparison the 15mm AP-T also only penetrate 15mm at 100m when it first goes through the airframe, since its center of gravity is around the center while the API is going to be more nose heavy.
Thus the 15mm API has really excellent AP performance for combating fighters.
Combined with the new Incendiary round, I would say that easily doubled the effectiveness of the MG 151 and that it probably was on par with the 20mm MG 151.
The 20mm MG 151 will cause more damage but it’s also less likely to score hits due to the low velocity, high drag shells.
A P-47 is still very susceptable to the armor piercing and incendiary elements of the 15mm shell, while it will tank 20mm Mineshells much better than smaller fighters.
Against large, slow targets like bombers, bigger calibers are going to be more effective, since it’s going to be easier to hit the target, negating the advantage of more hits from smaller calibers in favor for more damage per hit.
So how much penetration should the 15mm have at 10m (as compared to in-game)?
Well, the thing is that penetration isn’t something that can be generalized but greatly changes with plate thickness and armor hardness.
So for every caliber there’s a specific hardness that would result in the lowest amount of steel necessary to stop it.
But if you use the best armor hardness to protect against 20mm shells, the armor will become even more vulnerable to larger caliber shells.
Since the best way to stop a shell is by breaking it up without the armor plate shattering or pluging, but shattering and plugging becomes more likely the more kinetic energy impacts the plate.
According to German data, the 15mm AP-T penetrates 25mm of HHA (~450 BHN or 150kg/mm² tensile strenght) compared to the 24mm of US .50cal.
Likewiese the Soviet 12.7mm API penetrates 25mm as well while the API-T penetrates 23mm.
However the maximum penetration is limited here by the ballistic limit of the rounds.
Which means, that the 15mm AP-T and 12.7mm AP and API penetrate comparetively little armor and the 12.7mm API-T a lot in comparison, because they simply can not defeat armor of such hardness without breaking appart.
If the armor was softer, then the increased kinetic energy wouldn’t go to waste and the rounds could penetrate more armor.
There’s some data for the 20mm API-T fired by German AA guns, to penetrate 42mm at 100m against 125kg/mm² tensile strenght armor.
The 15mm AP-T would be able to penetrate 34mm according to DeMarre, in comparison.
I get around 27mm for US .50cal AP at PB, when just using the steel penetrator data.
While this table puts it at 28mm.
Gaijins calculator gives 20mm API-T and 15mm AP-T too little penetration in comparison, with only 37mm and 30mm at 100m, respectively.
In fairness .50cal AP would also need to have their penetration reduced from 28mm to 24mm at 100m.
In-game they have higher penetration because Gaijin uses a calculator for tank shells but uses data for jacketed bullets. Since the .50cal bullets are not made from solid steel but use a steel core, the penetration data is off in comparison.
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this is common for hurricanes as they where built out of cloth
These are snaps show the effectiveness of M1 incendiary as an ‘low explosive’ round.
A few shots of M1 incendiary blew off the horizontal stabilizer of an A6M5.
The round contains 2.2 grams of barium nitrates mixed with aluminium/magnesium powder, releases a lot of gas upon impact the target.:
Other nations’ design such as Japanese Ma-103 and German incendiary round on MG151/20 use fuse and explosive charge to help on ignite and spread the incendiary charge. The American design on M1 and M23 were fuse-less and ignite the charge with kinetic energy.
The M1 incendiary in game use to be modelled as a ball round with 8.0 fire multiplier. But right now it became an HE round with no charge and no shatter effective, make it basically useless. I think gaijin should either made M1/M23 real HE/IAI rounds just as 8 years ago, or made them able to penetrate the airframe and touch the fuel tank.
I am recently modding the IL2-1946 for PTO theatre, and I just modelled M1 incendiary rounds as a small APHEI round. Which has both API effect and releases small explosion when hitting the target.
How do you know it wasn’t a P-38s 20mm?
You can clearly see a large explosion before the vertical stabilizer separates.
All three shooters were F6F, especially the one you pointed out, the clip has the second wingman POV confirmed the shooter was indeed an F6F.
Since these clips were obtained in mid-1944, this excludes the possibility of F6F carrying 20mm since that configuration was equipped in mid-late 1945.
I found your clip here and they are all random clips.
So how can you tell what aircraft it was, in that specific instance?
And how do you explain that large explosion?
That was clearly from a 20mm hit as 12.7mm only create some flashes on impact.
Also when it’s from 1944 the .50cal ammo would be 100% API.
Maybe mixed with a tracer on pilots request, but in general did M8 API replace AP, Inc, Ball and Tracer bullets after 1943.
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This clip with big explosion on A6M5’s tail was originally obtained from the wartime film The Fighting Lady in 1944, the clip was said to be happened during the Mariana’s Turkey shoot, but it may actually happened earlier, during the raids of Marhsall Islands. So that one was pretty sure been obtained from an F6F-3 with 6x0.50 MG, excluded any possibility that the shot came from a 20mm. You will find the original film on Youtube and that clip happens around 53-54 minutes of the film.
The M8 API was only fully equipped in AAF’s operation in the Western Front since 1943, and it was somewhat short in supply. Unlike the ETO, the M1 incendiary remained as the major round in Browning 50cal in PTO, with the belt sequencing be something like I-I-I-T or I-I-AP-AP-T. Even this the M1 was also saw short in supply sometime around 1943. Since the M1 incendiary was already very effective against unarmoured Japanese plane, until they equipped with self-sealing fuel tank covered by bulletproof rubber and CO2 system.
The big flash on 50cal Inc round was quite common, here’s P-51’s shooting on a FW-190:
About the A6M5’s tail blown off clip, here’s another POV with flash been recorded. The GIF image has limited FPS thus a lot of hit flash was omitted.
It could be that the blast effect from an fuse-less Inc round highly depend on the velocity, angle and material during the impact, since there is no fuse charge to ignite the round in a certain manner.
Ok, here’s my new theory:
The round struck the rudder hinge, loosening the connection and causing the rudder to be ripped off from the airflow.
So basically a lucky hit on a structural weak point.
This explanation makes the most sense, as we can see the entire rudder just fall off, with little structual damage to it:
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That damage must be done by KE damage of the 50cal round, coupled with the blasting effect generated by M1 Inc hitting the stab spar.
With the right angle, the 50cal would do structural damage.
P-51 shooting a 109:
F6F shooting a G4M:
In some memoirs, the Japanese pilots state that the case of A6M been blown a wing off by 50cal was more frequent than been set afire. Though I didn’t find proves through the gun cam footage.
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Damn, that’s brutal, I love the footage
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.50 Incendiary does release fragmentation in-game, but the fragmentation radius is so small that the fragments exist for only a quarter of a second within the red explosive bubble in protection analysis.
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Don’t really have an explanation for that one, again just a theory.
The full clip is very sus because you see the Bf 109 being in the sight for a long time but you don’t see any impacts except one, before the wing tip gets blown off from an explosion, and then another spark on the bottom of the fuselage after that.
The explosion that separates the wing tip is again pretty big, while the hits on the fuselage are typical 12.7 API sparks.
I was thinking about a Spitfire with Hispanos and .50cals but British gun cameras had incredibly bad quality, at least the ones I saw.
Of course there’s also the claim that it was a P-51 but then why do you only see three impacts when it has 6 .50cals?
My only other explanation is M23 Incendiary but I’m not sure if that even saw any service in WW2.
At least the round contains a multitude of incendiary filler, which would definitely cause that kind of damage. The filler weight is bigger than a 20mm ShVAK shell and the incendiary filler effectiveness was increased over M1 Incendiary so that 5.83g probably hits like 7-8g.
Definitely enough to overpressure the wing cell and cause that kind of damage.
Or the most logical explanation, 50.bmg packs a ton of energy,
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Well it doesn’t call RealShatter method, so there’s no “real” shatter. XD
The shooter to the 109 was a P-51D piloted by Capt.Raymond R Withers, happens in 27.Nov.1944. So that excludes the possibility of any M23 Inc round. The only explanation was M8 API directly ripped the 109’s wing spar.
Relative to what?
20mm already have at least twice the kinetic energy and 2.4 times the size.
Neither do they pack that much kinetic energy nor chemical.
There are clips of Bf 109s getting completely hammered by .50cals and no structural damage is apparent.
Yet, there are clips from Bf 109s shooting at Spitfires and 20mm explosive hits visible showing several pieces flying through the air.
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But why the big puff on the wing tip while bright sparks on the fuselage?
And .50cal API can’t really rip a wing spar.
The wing tip also stayed attached but bends 90°.
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