.50's deserve a buff

[SpeclistMain1]

@PercussionCap

The P-40s have very good firepower.

Their ammo is mainly ball or AP, they do not have good firepower.

@PercussionCap

All the single 20mm 109s are 2.7 or higher. There are only two Yak-1s, one 2.3 and one 3.0. MiG-3-34 has two ShVAKs. LaGGs have at least one 2.7 model. All Zeros and N1K1 have two 20mm cannons.There is just one He 112 with a single 20mm, with all others either not counting (7.92s only) or having two 20mm.

The E-3 109 has 2x 20mms; I should’ve said “a Yak-1”; the A-0 and B-0 He 112s have 20mms; the LaGGs also have three non-2.7s; wait are you listing the planes that don’t have only one 20mm?

@PercussionCap

Such as?

The Hurricane Mk IV, it’s 2.0 rip.

@PercussionCap

A 20mm MIGHT have hit the pilot or engine, but volume of fire is so much lower that the shell in question might have never been fired in the first place.

That’s not what’s being discussed there, though. What’s being discussed is that a 20mm can also take out engines but it (and HE 12.7mms and other cannons) can do consistent structural damage. Besides, one .50 cal bullet is not comparable to one 20mm in terms of engine damage.

@RedEye_ツ

Meanwhile US .50cals have a superior spray potential and range compared to cannons, that’s also something only the US .50cals can do over the rest of the guns, but you seem not to count it as any sort of advantage.

Because having to spray to maybe do anything, taking more time and wasting more energy due to more passes, in airframes that are already worse than the competition in terms of short- and long-term dogfights isn’t good?

@RedEye_ツ

Right, just like many cannons kills would’ve happened if u were using .50cals as well but in a different way with a slight higher TTK depending of your aim. With the exception of snapshots.

There’s no waiting for fire to do something, you can literally spray people down until they become ashes, or their pilot gets deleted from existence or you disable their engine completely and rip their wings from time to time.

HE 12.7mms and cannons can waste ammo spraying people down, can get pilot snipes, and get engine kills, too. It’s just that they can do structural damage consistently.

@RedEye_ツ

Yea I mean of course the 20mm and 12.7mm filled with HE got the superior punch…?

@RedEye_ツ

It’s what KillaKiwi said above: What do you expect them to do? They are tiny bullets with merely 1g flash powder.

@RedEye_ツ

You are trying to compare a 12mm HEF-I that has 3.06g of TNT equiv to API-T or I that has no HE filler, why?

@Ghostmaxi

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

The following estimates are based on an RE factor of 0.25-0.36 for the powder used in the US incendiary rounds. The values were based on formulations of barium nitrate, potassium chlorate, and aluminum powder in a document somewhere above this, although the two compounds used in US used a magnesium-aluminum alloy/powder. Values of 0.30 and 0.36 were found for the low-potassium-perchlorate solutions, so if the magnesium-aluminum powder enhances the RE factor then it might be greater.

M8 API (0.97g powder): 0.2425g-0.3492g TNTeq
M1 I (2.2g powder): 0.55g-0.792g TNTeq
M23 I (5.8g powder): 1.45g-2.088g TNTeq

Japanese 12.7mm HE (0.6g PETN): 0.996g TNTeq

15mm MG-151 HEF-T: 3.23g TNTeq

ShVak HEF-I: 4.35g TNTeq
ShVak HEF: 5.8g TNTeq

Hispano Mk.II HEI: 9.28g TNTeq

The M1 incendiary rounds should be just short of the Japanese 12.7mm HE rounds and the M23 incendiary rounds should have more than twice the destructive potential of the Japanese 12.7mm HE rounds.

Two rounds of M23 should do comparable damage to a single ShVak HEF-I round (actually better when you consider there is more surface area of two .50 cal explosions than one 20mm explosion due to the inverse square law), and three M23 rounds should be doing comparable damage to a ShVak HEF round.

Although, the incendiary rounds are obviously not doing that currently.

@_Zekken

Am M2 browning API-T round is going to enter the back of the fuselage, fly through the entire thing, and damage everything in its path. Fuel tanks, pilot, engine. The engine is going to be the only thing that stops it.

A M2 Browning API-T round is going to enter one side of the fuselage, fly through the entire thing, and do nothing important unless it directly impacts with a module that matters.*

@_Zekken

A 12.7 HEF round is fused, its going to hit the surface, explode, and damage whatever is in the near vicinity. Sure it will do more damage to whatever is in that vacinity, but if it hits the wrong place it wont do much.

That’s literally what incendiary does, and M23 literally has over TWICE the TNTeq of the 12.7mm HEF rounds.

@KillaKiwi

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.

If that’s the case, then in combination with the TNTeq values I found it seems like 2.7-3.888g TNTeq of flash powder is better than 6.875g TNTeq of Tetryl (RE factor of 1.25) plus 0.55g-0.792g of flash powder. That would give flash powder a damage ratio (in terms of effective damage per gram of TNTeq) of 1.972:1 to 2.75:1 when compared to traditional HE.

In that scenario, M23 would have a TNTeq (to structures specifically) of 4.12g to 5.742g - nearly to just better than some 20mms.

[_Zekken]

@SpeclistMain1

A M2 Browning API-T round is going to enter one side of the fuselage, fly through the entire thing, and do nothing important unless it directly impacts with a module that matters.*

Thats a lot of damage from one bullet entering through the rear of the fuselage. (I did this about 20 different times in different areas, it almost always ended up in the engine after damaging multiple modules, or the pilot depending on exactly where you placed the round)

remember there are 74 more rounds coming every second where that one came from

[_Zekken]

@dovah4

I guess the P-36G should go up to 5.3 now because you can hit a non-maneuvering target at long range!

working on playing this at 5.3 btw, I’ve never flown the plane so it started from completely stock, still GRB (so I can force it in with a 5.3 tank lineup) but people wont. stop. running. away from me. Like they aren’t even trying to extend to energy fight me, they just keep refusing to engage at all :(

currently 5 kiills 1 death (the death was to SPAA). But heres a nice pair I got today:

P 36G double kill

that was what, a 2 second burst on the Ki-44? two .50s and four .30s btw

(Oh, and I ripped the wing off the Ki-61, the opposite wing to the one that was on fire. though it took a bit more shooting to get him down)

[Ghostmaxi]

@SpeclistMain1

The E-3 109 has 2x 20mms; […] the A-0 and B-0 He 112s have 20mms; […] wait are you listing the planes that don’t have only one 20mm?

Such wow, 2x 20mm with the ballistics of throwing a rock and 60 rounds each at 520 rpm, they are empty in no time with easily pretty much nothing hit.
And both E-3 and B-0 only use the MG FF without Minen.Geschoss.
And the FI-T (should be HEFI-T) is quite bad.

Not to mention the A-0 uses the 20mm MG C/30 L at 325 rpm with 100 rounds and no other armarment, and you will most likely choose the API-T belt, thats also not an ideal choice in general against air.

[SoundWave777]

I find as a general rule of thumb, find the belt with the highest AP value with some incendiary. You need that AP value to break engine blocks or even armor. If the ammo in the belt contains: Incendiary alone or Ball or Tracer alone those are usually useless rounds within the belt.

AP, AP-I, API-T, SAPHEI

[Tubby_Vermin]

The way .50 cals are modeled has always been a hot topic, especially when compared to the sheer destructive power of 20mm cannons.

Real gun camera footage shows that bringing down an aircraft usually took sustained fire whether through structural damage, setting it ablaze, hitting the pilot, or even triggering an ammunition explosion.

But in-game, 20mm rounds often feel absurdly overpowered, while .50 cals struggle to match their effectiveness from my testing.

Buffing the post-penetration damage of .50s to something closer to the Swedish 13.2mm rounds when they were first introduced seems like a fair adjustment, even if it’s not completely realistic.

If 20mm cannons are essentially functioning like tiny HE shells with exaggerated damage, then smaller calibers should at least be able to hold their own.

The nerf to incendiary tracer belts is another frustrating issue. Late-war U.S. belts were notorious for igniting enemy aircraft in real footage, yet their in-game performance has been weakened over time.

Germany and Russia get access to strong 20mm options early, making U.S. weapons feel comparatively underwhelming for a large part of the tech tree.

If War Thunder really wants to balance realism and gameplay, tweaking .50 cals to make high-altitude Boom & Zoom strategies more viable would be a welcome change.

[SpeclistMain1]

@_Zekken

Thats a lot of damage from one bullet entering through the rear of the fuselage.

A yellow elevator, yellow fuel tank, and yellow engine is a lot of damage? That’s also going under the assumption that it’s a near-direct shot from the rear - which I get is the premise of what you were talking about - but that isn’t what’s going to happen most of the time.

@Ghostmaxi

Such wow, 2x 20mm with the ballistics of throwing a rock and 60 rounds each at 520 rpm, they are empty in no time with easily pretty much nothing hit.

They’ll be doing more damage than 2x or 4x .50 cals, though. Especially at the low BRs where the .50 cals get the early belts (at most one incendiary shell per belt, and with the rest being either just AP, just T, or just Ball).

@Tubby_Vermin

The way .50 cals are modeled has always been a hot topic, especially when compared to the sheer destructive power of 20mm cannons.

We don’t need AI summaries of the thread…

[Ghostmaxi]

@SpeclistMain1

@Ghostmaxi

Such wow, 2x 20mm with the ballistics of throwing a rock and 60 rounds each at 520 rpm, they are empty in no time with easily pretty much nothing hit.

They’ll be doing more damage than 2x or 4x .50 cals, though. Especially at the low BRs where the .50 cals get the early belts (at most one incendiary shell per belt, and with the rest being either just AP, just T, or just Ball).

More than 2, ok, but not more than 4, not to mention that you simply dont have the advantages (that were so often mentioned above) that 2 Cal. .50 have. Ballistics, Velocity, Penetration, Ammo storage, fire rate. The Mg FF only has 1 thing for it, some damage, but getting the damage on target, in a comparisson to Cal. .50 is a whole different story, if you dont see that, thats either skill issue or you are just completly biased.

[RedEye_ツ]

I’d rather have x6 .50cals over the current MG151/20 and even easily x4 over the MG/FF’s.
These are performing so poorly due to their outdated nerfed code and bad ballistics. Makes no sense.

[SpeclistMain1]

@Ghostmaxi

Ballistics, Velocity, Penetration, Ammo storage, fire rate.

MG/Cannon	Penetration (mm)	Velocity (m/s)	Ammo Storage	Rate of Fire (round/s)	Time to Spray (s)
M2 .50 cal (Late belts)	28-30	874-911, 1036 (everything except M23, M23)	425	12.5	34
ShVak 20mm (Standard belts)	28	800	120	12	10
Mg 151 20mm	26	Unsure	200	11.67	17.14
Hispano Mk.II	26-37	822-853 (AP-T, HEI)	125	10	12.5

So .50 cals get slightly better velocities (outside of M23 which is not the majority of belts) and more time to spray (on platforms that generally do not do well in long dogfights) as a trade for massively worse damage? Meanwhile cannons get to do massive amounts of damage with a limited amount of time to spray, even though their aircraft excel at quick and long dogfights?

[Ghostmaxi]

YES, and you also have LOTS of Cal. .50, you can easily outrange shoot them, you can shoot whenever you want, with ease of aim, and the damage isnt bad as you want to say.

@SpeclistMain1

ven though their aircraft excel at quick and long dogfights?

Pilot skill, there are different planes with different strength.

You now wrote the numbers yourself and yet are still blind, you are just so biased. Its not worth to concidder the topic. (Well it wasnt from the beginning, but thats a different story.)

[AlanHR]

Your comparison is completely moot. It would be OK if planes didn’t have multiple .50 cals.

For example compare any P-47D with 8 .50 cals and Bf 109 G-2 with 1 MG 151 and 2xMG 17. Which one has more firepower?

Thats why there is one second burst mass designation in the game.

Also MG 151 has basically the lowest MV of all you mentioned - 705-805 m/s.

[PercussionCap]

@SpeclistMain1

Their ammo is mainly ball or AP, they do not have good firepower.

They have fantastic firepower. Everytime I get a good angle on someone they’re either dead or terminally crippled.

@PercussionCap

@SpeclistMain1

There’s a lot of single 20mms below ~3.0

For who? Unless we’re talking about france (and they don’t have that many aircraft to begin with) they’re almost all at 2.7 or above.

@SpeclistMain1

Some deal of 109s,

You were talking about single 20mm-armed fighters. The 109 E-3 has two, and they’re quite bad in every regard. Very far apart, only 60rpg, bad ammo, low velocity, and even firerate is poor at ~500rpm. There’s a very good reason why it’s the same BR as the 109 E-1 with 4x 7.92mm.

@SpeclistMain1

The Hurricane Mk IV, it’s 2.0 rip.

That has two 40mm cannons.

@SpeclistMain1

Besides, one .50 cal bullet is not comparable to one 20mm in terms of engine damage.

Which is entirely irrevelant because at any given BR, .50cal-armed planes will have more guns (2-3x as many), each with higher RoF on average, and far greater ammo reserves. Sure, a .50cal may not destroy an engine like a 20mm hit would, but it never has to because it’s putting out several times more bullets in the air.

@SpeclistMain1

Because having to spray to maybe do anything, taking more time and wasting more energy due to more passes

You can fire accurately from much further away.

@SpeclistMain1

HE 12.7mms and cannons can waste ammo spraying people down

With their much smaller ammo reserves and half as many guns most of the time?

@SpeclistMain1

Japanese 12.7mm HE (0.6g PETN): 0.996g TNTeq

By the way this is the early 12.7mm HEF, which had also 1g incendiary filler alongside the RDX explosive. Actually, most of those other shells should also have quite a bit of incendiary filler, so this is not a 1:1 comparison.

@_Zekken

Like they aren’t even trying to extend to energy fight me, they just keep refusing to engage at all :(

I’ve seen this happen a lot to me, my only recommendation is to just turn away and go for a reversal or maybe bait them into friendly SPAA. Of course the fight much more boring then.
Can also bring someone else along (in a squad) to chase them down.

@Tubby_Vermin

Germany and Russia get access to strong 20mm options early

Neither MG FF is what I’d call “strong”. Their poor performance leads to some very good flying fighters though, like the 109 E-4 - a far more important set of capabilities than “it shoots good”.
And even in that plane I’ll get as close as I can to guarantee good hits and not waste the very few 20mm shells it carries.

@SpeclistMain1

Velocity (m/s)

To complete this chart:

MG FF/M has 675m/s velocity on its Air Targets belt; Type 99-1s at 588m/s on all shells, and Type 99-2s (only found at 5.0 and up to 6.7) at an unimpressive 750m/s. Ho-5 20mm are even worse at 740m/s. Ho-103 12.7mm are also very low on this table at 780m/s and high drag.

[Ghostmaxi]

@PercussionCap

MG FF/M has 675m/s velocity on its Air Targets belt

Well it should historically even be 585m/s to my knowlege actually.

[RunaDacino]

20mm cannons kill in 1 tap regardless of context and circumstance.

Proof:

20mm Breakfast of Champions

Spoiler

This is a satire post.

[Tubby_Vermin]

@SpeclistMain1

We don’t need AI summaries of the thread…

You’re right, we don’t, but the fact remains that this debate has been dragging on since the old forum thread. Countless other issues still linger unresolved, yet nothing really changes.

The Ugly Truth: Cannons better than .50cal?

[dovah4]

I would like to add that bullet velocity only matters for the first round in the belt. The M23 could have 10000m/s velocity but if the first round in the belt is AP it’s going to follow the velocity of AP. Gaijin did this so you wouldn’t have random rounds that fired at way higher velocities than other rounds which I think is dumb.

@AlanHR

For example compare any P-47D with 8 .50 cals and Bf 109 G-2 with 1 MG 151 and 2xMG 17. Which one has more firepower?

You would think it’s the P-47. But unless you have a sustained burst on something important. you’re mostly going to be striking the wings with API-T which basically do nothing. Even in slow stall fights where you have enemies cross the nose. There are multiple times my guns rake across an opponent but do minimal damage. But I’ll fight any cannon armed or even machine gun armed aircraft and I get tapped and my entire plane turns to mush.

@_Zekken

currently 5 kiills 1 death (the death was to SPAA). But heres a nice pair I got today:

Using kills as a metric when you’re hitting essentially a bunch of blind people is not good form.

But lets use this video actually. Because this shows my point to a T.

For the first plane. dumped 50 rounds on the first plane. Now I’m 99% sure not all the rounds hit but lets say 10 smacked him, again. we’re not counting missed shots here. That’s not productive.

on the second pass, You took roughly ALL CENTERED 20 rounds to just set him alight. Not even a pilot snipe So over 30 rounds on target for a kill with a vast majority of them being ALL CENTERED and aimed DIRECTLY at the important bits with no worries for convergence or anything of that matter… For the second plane, it took 20 rounds all centered on directly his fuselage to actually set him alight. For both aircraft. These are sweetheart targets too. You aren’t booming and zooming people. You’re dumping EVERYTHING into this guy.
Here’s a funny too. Just as an aside.

On the outboard wings (Not the wing section of the wing root but the two others) 7.62 does the same damage as API-T on the skin. On the spars it’s iffy but it can opaque yellow it on a single hit.

It kinda shows that if you’re stuck striking the wings you’re doing piecemeal damage, even with a bunch of .50s. You’re doing dookie damage unless you hit something important (Like the point I’ve been making before.

Now what about the Ki-44?

Using ONLY the two wing mounted guns. I tore apart a P-47 in a few rounds.

P-47 Kill

F6F kill

My F6F kill. You’ll notice something… I am missing a lot of ammo. And it says gun jammed. If you’re thinking what I’m thinking. Yes. At the beginning of the match I purposely jammed one of my guns to ensure I was firing at the enemy with only ONE GUN

One japanese fifty cal beats eight American fifty cals.

[AlanHR]

Here is .50 cal on tank which has lower RoF and only one barrel but it still does the damage - TBF wing rip.

.50 cal vs TBF

[KillaKiwi]

@dovah4

Gaijin did this so you wouldn’t have random rounds that fired at way higher velocities than other rounds which I think is dumb.

It’s most likely just a bug.
While all shells start with the same velocity, each shell has their own ballistics and slow down at different rates.

So there’s no real reason for that to be intentional.

It also effects gun penetration because the velocity is higher or lower than it should.

This might be a bug that‘s as old as the game itself.

[PercussionCap]

I was surprised, only one of the shells is that slow. The FF/M HEI is even faster at 750m/s, I think gaijin fucked up somewhere.