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.
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.
.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.
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.
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.
Not really, a take out od list in mT. (Meter tons) muzzle force.
Mg 131 1mt, US Cal. .50 1,6, USSR 1,7, Mg 151/15 2,6, Mg FF/M 2,0, Mg 151/20 3,0, Shvak 2,9, Hispano 404 5,0.
So the US Cal. .50 is ralatively weak, even weaker than the 20mm MG FF/M.
Source: Im Einsatz Befindliche Bordwaffen 1944.
Actually, the US found that 20mms have more damage than 0.50 cals even if the amount of (mass of) bullets is the same. That’s why they switched to 20mms after WWII.
I know. .50cals still have enough power to rip wings/control surfaces off when fired at the right angle and against especially soft targets (Japanese planes).
The ability to down a plane with a .50cal is insignificant compared to the power of the force (of a 20mm).
It’s pretty much known what a .50cal can accomplish, particularly in comparison to 20mm and larger cannons.
Especially since Soviets had a similar .50cal with API and HEI bullets, which was still less effective than one of the weakest 20mm cannons.
Theoretically, multiple .50cals tumbling after impact might be able to rip enough holes into a wing spar to weaken it enough for it to break in flight , but it’s still an unlikely scenario, as these hits needs to be very close together. Basically sawing through the spar.
20mm cannons as AA were probably very effective during the interwar years where planes were still mostly constructed from wood but against metal planes the effectiveness was greatly reduced.
It’s not very likely to hit a fighter-bomber more than once with a single 20mm, which isn’t all that likely to bring it down.
Hence why Germany mounted them in a quad mounts but favored 37mm cannon development in later years.
I’ve seen some picture of .50cals leaving some pretty long scratches in the wing of an aircraft.
So in theory they should be able to cause enough damage to the skin to have it bend and rip off.
But we’re talking about 2-3mm thick plates.
Not very likely for a round to impact that and leave more than a hole or a 10cm long scratch.
But in general the killing power effects pretty much everything but the structure of the aircraft.
Engine, pilot and fuel are going to be 99% of the causes for a .50cal kill.
Unless we‘re taking Biplanes vs. explosive bullets.
The big puff was just created from the airframe breaks, not directly from the M8 API hit. Simple.
Almost all cases of wing ripping off clips in gun cam I saw, were came from 50cal shots. Haven’t seen any footage of German or British 20mm tear off a wing from a S/E fighter. The number of samples and lower hitting rate of the 20 do matter in the case. One theory would be that 20mm HE round do most damage to the skin rather than the spar.
Yes you certainly saw cases where 109/190 been absolutely punched in 50cal long burst while leaving no structure damage. That do happen more often when the aircraft was steady and with little load. When the aircraft taken such punishment been thrown into a dive latter, the structure would likely to break apart, that would be outside the gun-cam range. When the aircraft was having air-load/ maneuverer, an AP round hitting the spar that accumulated a lot of stress, would be catastrophic. Specifically in Y29 air battle, P-51 pilots saw that FW-190 could took a lot of punishment when they flew steady, but its both wing could be shredded and flip like an carrier aircraft when exposed to 50cal fire in a sharp turn.
This 109 was trying a little neg-G roll, when 50cal hit the spar, the wing ripped off.
The 50cal HMG is definitely weaker when comparing with 20mm, but US planes often carry 6-8 of them, so that would still be very lethal. Again in lot of clips, it was not known whether the pilot shot all of them, sometimes the pilot would just shoot a pair of them. The amount vibration in the clip may tell.
In WT the structural breaks seems to be irrelevant to the airspeed and acceleration. This reminds of IL2-1946, where the JAVA code allows the spar been shot off more frequent when the speed and acceleration was high.
