They have fantastic firepower. Everytime I get a good angle on someone they’re either dead or terminally crippled.
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.
That has two 40mm cannons.
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.
You can fire accurately from much further away.
With their much smaller ammo reserves and half as many guns most of the time?
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.
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.
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.
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.
