With four .50s in the nose, you could also succeed greatly without using the cannon at all as well, so the point is kinda moot here I feel
Okay so heres the thing here, I think this whole topic is in the wrong direction. The thing you are debating isn’t whether .50s should be equal to 20mms, because the answer is obviously no. But I think the real debate here is whether the US M2 Browning .50 cal is under performing compared to OTHER nations .50 cal MGs.
I will say, your part of the debate is much better and makes more sense than SpecialistMain’s mental merry-go-round.
I did give the Ki-44 a fly, checking its HEF round, we do actually have 3.06g of TNT equivalent - about half what the HEF-T shell on the 20mm Type 99 Mod 1 cannon the A6M2 at the same BR gets. And I admit, if you look at the two clips in the video below, it does snap wings like it did to the P-51D, but also it does do things like it did against that P-63, that was a lot of hits for a whole lot of not much. He did lose control, get stuck in a flat spin, and would have given me the kill had my teammate not gotten some hits in right after, but in this scenario, I’m willing to bet that the same number of M2 brownings would have ripped him to bits and set him on fire as well. I think the Brownings are slightly more consistent in that regard. (and have better ballistics than the Ho-103 to be honest)
I think a lot of this has to do with the Ki-44 being an extremely strong aircraft in terms of flight performance at its BR, more than the guns themselves
Are you consistent with bomb hits and pilot snipes?
There was a lot of single elevator damage, not much in terms of engine, though.
The number of total kills: 10
The number of kills that weren’t bomb destructions, a pilot snipe, or the enemy dying for no reason (the Su-9): 6
The remaining four kills:
The I-16 - Fuel explosion - Likely helped by the incendiary rounds (but HE filler could’ve also increased the chance of this happening)
The La-7 - Fuel explosion - Likely helped by the incendiary rounds (but HE filler could’ve also increased the chance of this happening)
The Ki-61-I - Fire damage - The left flap came off, the left wing is set on fire, and it slowly hit the ground
The Do-335 A - Fire damage - The right flap was broken, eventually fire damage either snaps the tail off or makes it inoperable
The Fw-190F - Breaking a single control surface at an inopportune time (also likely fire damage) - The Fw was facing towards the ground at a steep angle when one of its elevators was hit by a .50 cal bullet, and despite having control over roll it wasn’t able to pitch up to not hit the ground. This likely means that either the Fw was at too steep an angle for just one elevator to save it, or a fire severed the control cable to the remaining elevator
The La-9 - Three direct hits to the wing spar - The left wing snapped off after getting hit three times directly at a near perpendicular angle
That is 1/3 fire damage, 1/2 likely assisted by fire damage, and 1/6 direct hits to the wing spar.
Except fire damage is inconsistent nor is it as powerful as HE filler.
Do you have more information on the explosive used in the .50 cals? I’d like to look it up some so I can see if we can get an HE modifier/code added to the .50 cal rounds (at least internally).
I’ve been today years old when I learnt that killing planes by getting them torched is not actually killing them.
This was one of the most awful revalations I’d have ever learnt…
Ki-61-I Hei needs a serious buff because I think at least 2 out of 3 kills I have with it were due to the enemy plane catching on fire and the pilot getting roasted rather than cutting a tail off or severing a wing.
I never realized I left so many of my targets alive!
you know what does need buffs MG-151 they have 3 times the explosive filler of Shvak cannons but do less damage they have 18Grams of HA-41 and shvaks are Filled with 6 grams of Tetryl which is weaker
FIGURE 12—DESTRUCTION OF AN ME 109 BY AN 8TH AIRFORCE FIGHTER USING CALIBER .50 INCENDIARY AMMUNITION
I dunno man. I trust the gubment book more than your intuition. Like I stated before. Airframes were exceptionally varied throughout the war, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is just a showcase to how thin bf-109 airframes were compared to most U.S. airframes. I also consider it highly unlikely that it was M23 as well as that was used REALLY late into the war
Right, and having a weapon bank on aircraft having an easily accessible fuel tank to hit is really fun. I love shooting at a Bf-109 only ticking his wings even though I shoved easily 50 rounds almost in it at that point.
Basically. I even said in the OP to have it be like swede ammo or a little bit less. If everyone else can have stupid damage. Let U.S. .50s get stupid damage too. U.S. .50s are at one of their weakest points now compared to when they literally had near 100% fire rates and fires were death sentences until Gaijin tried to course correct. Due to the fixed ‘real shatter’ cannons, and to be fair anything that had ‘high explosive’ in it’s name, are now at their strongest. If you wanna go for realism, then hilariously enough, the ‘bugged’ realshatter was more realistic as they were no longer 1 shot guns that instantly obliterated people, but you needed to burst with. But considering Gaijin is balancing damage purely off of gameplay. It makes no sense to me why every country usually have a multitude of aircraft with guns that kill with Minimal effort while U.S. (The planes with some of the hardest play styles in the game) have to be very specific with how they use their guns and get either fuel fires or pilot snipes.
12.7mm HEF can blacken a wing in two shots. Now from other angles, it can be a bit iffy but it’s mostly consistent that a good chunk of your shots will do a lot of damage, and I believe that some rounds not doing anything is not ‘as gaijin intended’ but a weird quirk as I believe most of the damage is coming from fragments that strike the same surface, doing more damage. This explains why you’ll sometimes take shots that do minimal damage while others you out right obliterate the guy.
As KillaKiwi showed, some rounds can do jack all and I believe that’s due to the fact that the filler amount is small enough that the game runs into trouble calculating fragmentation damage. You can see this happen a bit on the swedish 13mms though not to such an exaggerated extent. But the absolute minimal damage you can get should not be taken as the norm.
This seems consistent with the damage on my other surfaces from this replay. I was tickled with two shots and it instantly blackened a section of my wing.
I’m not saying that this should be normal damage or this is “What happened” all the time.
But obviously we’re seeing destruction here that can’t be achieved in-game with how .50s are. I have NEVER in my life of playing war thunder seen a full on fuel explosion from a .50.
Never seen them happen. All I have seen are fires. No explosions
You can literally blow a B-17 wing off with 2 20mm rounds. Japanese 12.7mm can blacken entire P-47 wings off with an average of 2 rounds, Russian 12.7mm Berezin IAI can do the exact same and even blacken some wings with a single shot.
It’s legitimately not fair for every other country in the game to have 12.7s that can detonate you easily while the U.S. has to be HIGHLY specific on the convergence they fire at and make sure they hit a fuel tank or the pilot or else they do no damage. At the same time, the ability to start fires in .50s have been nerfed greatly compared to previous years
