.50's deserve a buff

[PercussionCap]

@dovah4

Now get it where you’re having a dodging enemy with both of you going 400-500kmh and you can only get a few hits at a time.

The .50s will still land more hits thanks to having incredible ballistics, better than most 20mms and certainly better than the Ho-103 HEF shells. If I’m 1km away from almost any other plane I can basically just ignore them. If its something with US .50cals, I have to constantly dodge because their range and volume of fire actually presents a threat and if hit they almost always will set a fire.

@dovah4

For german 13mm machine guns. you can get belts that are literally just all IAI that have explosive filler.

Lol they suck. Not that you’d know since they’re not the primary armament of any fighter (maybe a stock high tier 109 since the MG151/20 default belt is literally useless) and you’ve never used a plane with the MG131s.

@dovah4

But with cannons you have to be pin point! Just ignore the fact that if they hit the these giant barn doors called a wing with their high explosive rounds they completely cripple them! "

Also you have NO IDEA how many times you’ll have people just… fly through your shells when using cannons. Especially common with Oerlikon-derived ones.

@dovah4

While they have belts FILLED with the round that does the workhorse damage

Alright then, for these two aircraft, would you mind indicating to me which of these belts does more damage respectively? And then we’ll see if your theory holds up.

@dovah4

Cherry picking the one aircraft line from the entire tree. The vast majority of Japanese aircraft usually carry 12.7mm or equivalent machine guns. Shouldn’t you know this? You’re a Japan main. Are you not?

All of the Navy aircraft have 20mm cannons as the main damage dealers. The 13.2mm Type 3 only shows up very late and it’s very overshadowed by said cannons. Getting a feel for how much damage they do is almost impossible unless you gimp yourself and turn off the Type 99s.

The Army aircraft only have solely 12.7mm armament at low tier, with the 20mm Ho-5 taking over as the main damage dealer - at this point the 12.7s aren’t really noticeable about 95% of the time and the Army fighters are quite low in firepower at higher BRs.
I have endless videos of me hitting people over and over again with Ho-103s and getting nothing done. Especially bombers which get immediately fucked over with US .50cals thanks to high penetration and fire chance.

[_Zekken]

@PercussionCap

The .50s will still land more hits thanks to having incredible ballistics, better than most 20mms and certainly better than the Ho-103 HEF shells. If I’m 1km away from almost any other plane I can basically just ignore them. If its something with US .50cals, I have to constantly dodge because their range and volume of fire actually presents a threat and if hit they almost always will set a fire.

You are better at explaining that than me, thanks.

Also you have to lead less so if you are fighting a dodging enemy, you dont need quite as much nose authority to get a good lead, which is a big drawback of most cannon armed energy fighters.

[_Zekken]

@PercussionCap

The 13.2mm Type 3 only shows up very late and it’s very overshadowed by said cannons.

I think the A7M2 is the only (tech tree) plane thats actually usable with the 13.2s? The only other plane I can think of off the top of my head that actually has them is the A6M5 Hei, but that thing is so weighed down and so slow and over BRd that its practically unusable in ARB.

[LordLimeyJuice-live]

A10 Late + matching tank usa Best British premium rank 7 and rank 8 premiums plus tank i played wot for 10 years and played world of planes or aircraft its beta on pc, now on xbox series x 12 terraflops of computional data capabilities, and connected turtle beach controller. Keyboard and mouse i have evolved into a post cancer posr warthunder addiction…

[PercussionCap]

The two A7Ms are the best candidates yes, and even then you only get two. The A6M5 Otsu has just one, fired alongside the 7.7mm Type 97. The J6K also has two, but only 200rpg (A7Ms get 300rpg) and it’s on a vastly worse airframe at a higher BR. This is pretty much where the list ends.

Maybe if we got one of the A6M field mods with more 13.2s and on variants that aren’t bricks, they’d be more noticeable.

[Ghostmaxi]

@dovah4

M23 has over 5 grams of filler. While Japanese and Italian ‘HEF’ rounds contain 0.6 to 1 gram of explosive.

You are going by pure filler and not TnTa, which is with the Pent filler of the HEF rounds a good tat higher.

[dovah4]

@_Zekken

An M2 browning 2 shots an engine, lights a fuel tank on fire in 1 or 2 shots, and kills a pilot in 1 shot except it MIGHT not with max vitality.

The protection analysis only shows what colour the module turns. It does not show whether the module is removed, set on fire, stopped from working etc. I have flown with black wings that are still attached plenty of times.

You are 100% and very, very, very correct that just because the wing blackens that doesn’t mean it’s removed or broken off. But protection analysis does give a good baseline on how damaging a shot would be.

In my P-47. A Blackened wing is a death sentence. If I pull up, my plane almost goes into a spin and it rolls like the wing was snapped off. But that’s my thing. It’s very easy to get your wings hit. In general, for everybody. Especially when it’s one of the biggest parts for the enemy to hit and many countries have belts that are more than happy to supply the proper ammunition to damage it no matter what gun it is at all.

I just don’t like the fact that everyone has belts mostly consistent of ammunition that do this to my wing in a stray shot.

While the ammo in my belt does this.

When I could be having rounds that hit like this.

I mean I’ve used tracer belts and yeah they can set things alight if you get things to align just right. But if you strike anywhere that’s not something important. I’ve had Spitfires, Fw-190s, I-185s, A6Ms where I’ll dump a good burst and they just eat it as if it was a three course meal and I have to go for another go around. I want my 3 or so rounds that hit bad too.

I want a belt that actually has substance.

@RunaDacino

Rolling left vs rolling right was night and day.

I waited for the enemy aircraft to cross behind my canopy as required for the reversal and it worked perfectly for the first part of the scissor to the right. Reversing the turn to get my nose on target took too long, I overshot and the next time I tried to reverse I got bursted to pieces.

Elevator damage did less than wing damage. I also have a recorded dogfight where a Bf109 shot off half my tail (stab+elevator - literally fell off) and that fight I could roll just fine and force an overshoot.

Oh definitely. I never said you wouldn’t have any flight problems. but the fact your horizontal stabilizer was damaged actually affects your turning performance greatly. You produce insanely more drag.

I would argue that that being to force an overshoot even after losing the stab and elevator is highly dependent on the aircraft. Some planes, when you lose an elevator just become a bus.

[KillaKiwi]

Depends.
The TNT equivalent in WT is based on the destructive power of the explosive.

Like you need 1g TNT to penetrate 2mm of armor but only 0.6g of PETN.

It would also influence fragmentation of shells, since the explosive blows up the shell.
More explosive means more fragments and higher velocity, with a more powerful explosive taking up the same volume but being better at it.

As I’ve explained in this bug report:
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/AyCoq2Bai3nc

Incendiary blast performance isn’t any worse than that of explosives. Infact it’s even better.

Just ignore that big brain mod that shut my report down with his copy & paste response, despite my report not even mentioning any TNT equivalent.

The burning flash powder doesn’t create a powerful shockwave like any explosives, that can destroy sturdy material like steel easily but it will result higher pressure generated that last for a longer time.

This pressure is what can rip weak structure, like airplane skin, apart from the inside.
And it’s whats used on Torpedos to create a large gas bubble under a ship. The ship breaks apart, from the rapid formation and collapse of the bubble below it, which puts immense stress on the hull.

You also know about the Mine effect of explosives.
Where shells fired with a delay, into the ground or buildings, destroy them from the inside, caused by the pressure built up.
Which is several times more destructive than the shell exploding on contact, where the blast has little effect and the shell mainly causes damage from fragments.

So flash powder would have an equal blast effect of probably 0.8 times the TNT, potentially more.

M23 uses even stronger flash powder, so the blast effect is probably 1:1 to TNT.

So we are talking equal blast performance as 5.83g TNT.

Nearly as much as a ShVAKs HEFI with 5.6g RDX/Alunimum and certainly as powerful as the HEFI-T with only 4.13g.

So M23 would be an incredible powerful round, both in incendiary performances and structural damage, for a 12.7mm bullet.

But it’s potential is greatly held back by its heat sensitive nature.
Preventing long bursts without having the bullet self ignite.

So in reality it’s basically a gimmick.

[dovah4]

@KillaKiwi

M23 uses even stronger flash powder, so the blast effect is probably 1:1 to TNT.

What makes you think it’s 1:1?

Is Potassium Perchlorate that powerful? Because today they moved on to Ammonium Perchlorate?

I decided to just google the difference. Surprising to see how easily it is to find people talking about the differences due to it’s use in rocketry.

But everyone is saying that Potassium Perchlorate has too much of an aggressive burn rate that it produces a shockwave when under pressure. I guess it’s a case of ‘it’s too powerful’

[Irregular23]

I found that DTIC report interesting, it shows that an M23 can penetrate fuel tank on the P-38 quite easily, and at the same impact velocity it makes the tank less likely to seal when comparing with an 60cal API round. Which may tell that M23 will punch a larger hole on the fuel tank.

Overall chance of fire, in current game M23 has a fire multiplier of 12.0, which is larger than M20/M8’s 10.0. It should be noted that in game fire chance is calculated as intrinsic fire chance( defined by fuel tank/engine, a piece wise function correlates with remaining HP) multiplies with the fire chance of the munition. So in game, even a 20mm HEI with the same 10.0 fire chance will more likely to set afire due to larger damage value given to the fuel tank.

Another thing can be verified is that the fuseless nature of US 50cal Inc makes dud quite often, if the impact wasn’t strong enough, the flash powder may not react as expected. So that 2017 gun damage, with M23 to have HE damage but with large randomness was quite accurate.

I don’t know if Gaijin willing to give 50cal Inc blast effect, since they make M1 Inc an HE round in naval M2 but not for the aerial one. If they model M23 as HE just like today’s ho103, then with its 1000ms muzzle velocity it will mean the end of air battle. So I think at least gaijin should rework to make the Inc round be able to penetrate the cover and fuel tank, making them function as usual.

[KillaKiwi]

I‘m talking about the British test that showed that flash powder had an equal or better blast effect than a RDX/TNT mix.

In that US report „ Airplane Vulnerability and Overall Armament Effectivness“ the M96 Incendiary with 10.8g of flash powder is shown having a greater chance to kill a P-47 due to structural damage than M97 HEI, which has 5.5g Tetryl + 2.2 flash powder.

That‘s because the M96 actually has bigger blast power.

Thin structure is going to be blown apart from the pressure of the blast, rather than the strengths of the shockwave, which at first has to break up a shell.

Flash powder is denser than explosives, by around 50%, so I’m not sure how exactly a blast equivalent would be to TNT.
If it was 25% more effective by volume (replacing TNT with flash powder), the mass equivalent should be 0.833.

M23 with Perchlorate should be more efficient on a weight basis since perchlorate is a stronger oxidizer.

[Irregular23]

Could it be that the flash powder and shattering projectile had caused a lateral effect, similar but somewhat different to an HE round? I heard that the M61 Vulcan used specifically designed projectile with lateral effect, though with less explosive filling, it was claimed to be as effective as a 30mm round.

I remember when I was visiting an air museum in Canada, an veteran(presumably the ground crew) told me that F86 sabre actually used dum-dum bullets for its 50cals. I assume he was telling the M23 Inc.

[Zannafrancy12]

what this is just plain wrong

[KillaKiwi]

@Irregular23

I remember when I was visiting an air museum in Canada, an veteran(presumably the ground crew) told me that F86 sabre actually used dum-dum bullets for its 50cals. I assume he was telling the M23 Inc.

People in the military usually have a poor idea of what they are working with.
Especially when it comes to weapons.

All types of .50cal bullets are known and in that report someone posted recently, the ammunition for .50cals in Korea was:

M8 API
M1 Incendiary
Regular Tracer
M20 API-T

I think it was something like 40:30:20:10.

M23 wasn’t used as they couldn’t solve the self-ignition from barrel heat problem.

[Irregular23]

Yes in the DTIC report, but that composition was only related with a partial of all fighting units (Only two instances of fight record perhaps), and does not represent the overall use of 50cal ammunition in the entire Korean War.

In that Canadian museum though it did mention the belt sequencing was 5xAPI + 1xT (perhaps M21).

As for M23, it did saw action in 1945 over the ETO, and the problem can be compensated by firing short burst. Since those DTIC report in 1950s focused a lot on M23 instead of the classical M1, I think M23 should have saw action in the Korean War, but not for sure.

The Japanese fuzeless 50cal HEI round Ma-102 also got self-detonation problem, that was more dangerous than the M23 round. The round was prohibited to be fired when barrel temp rises beyond 200C. It was not known whether IJA had used Ma-102 in action, in game Ho-103 air target belt utilized mainly the Ma-102, seems to be unlikely IRL.

[Zannafrancy12]

@_Zekken

They literally do not.

SpeclistMain1:

they literally do

[Ghostmaxi]

Would a 7,5 cm He round filled with such then also be way more effective, or is there a drop off?
Is that also the reason why for pretty much all grenades from germany (Pzgr.39, Sprgr.34 and such) there is also an Al variant, which has additional aluminium powder, for hotter, incendary blast?

[KillaKiwi]

Theoretically. But you want HE in a shell to cause fragmentation. The blast isn’t all that important unlike against aircraft.

The Al increased the blast performance as well as causing a larger fireball, adding some incendiary effect.

Most Soviet APHE all have A-IX-2 filler which is basically HA 41.

Post war a lot of HEI shells use RDX and Aluminum instead of adding layers of flash powder.

This results in a good mix of blast and brisance, so you get good fragmentation, blast as well as some incendiary effect.

[dovah4]

Made a suggestion regarding TNT equivalencies and it sat in pending before just magically disappearing. Lol

[_Zekken]

@dovah4

In my P-47. A Blackened wing is a death sentence. If I pull up, my plane almost goes into a spin and it rolls like the wing was snapped off. But that’s my thing. It’s very easy to get your wings hit. In general, for everybody. Especially when it’s one of the biggest parts for the enemy to hit and many countries have belts that are more than happy to supply the proper ammunition to damage it no matter what gun it is at all.

a black wing is super hard to fly with on any plane. Avoiding them hitting your wings is a tactic as well. Normally when I see someone coming for a good deflection shot on me, I roll sideways so they dont have my wings to shoot at. makes me a much smaller target and harder to hit, plus preventing wing damage.

@dovah4

I just don’t like the fact that everyone has belts mostly consistent of ammunition that do this to my wing in a stray shot.

you’re still focusing one one bullet vs one bullet though, its more like 1 bullet vs 2 bullets from an M2 browning. Plus you have different advantages that they do not. An M2 browning with an HEF round would become ny far and away the single most broken OP gun in the game

@dovah4

I’ve had Spitfires, Fw-190s, I-185s, A6Ms where I’ll dump a good burst and they just eat it as if it was a three course meal and I have to go for another go around.

I’ve had this happen to just as many planes while firing 20mms too, all the damn time. you put a burst into them and they shrug it off. This is just more of a gaijin moment than a problem with the belts IMO.

@Zannafrancy12

they literally do

I spent 300 replies and quite frankly several hours of gameplay explaining WITH video evidence exactly why he was wrong, and he refused to give me any evidence based response other than “You are wrong because I believe you are wrong!”

I’m not going to do the same with you.