The reality of air combat is that planes are very similar to humans in functionality.
The engine is the heart that supplies power.
The brain is the pilot.
Fuel and coolants are like blood.
Controls are like the spine.
Wings are like feet.
Shooting a 20mm at a plane is like firing a .22 at someone.
It won’t do much unless it hits something vital.
Even a 37-40mm HE round still doesn’t pack the explosion content to either blow a wing or tail off a fighter and the likelihood for to bring it down, sooner or later, is like 50%.
Either due to:
- Knocking out or disabling the pilot
- Killing the engine immediately
- Killing the engine due to oil/water leaks
- Causing a lethal fuel fire
- Fuel running out from damaged tanks
- Loss of controls from damaged control cables
While a 30mm Mineshell lacks almost any meaningful fragmentation and kills mainly due to structural damage, containing much more explosive in a thin casing.
Either blowing a tail off or causing so much damage to a wing that a plane that keeping it in the air isn’t possible anymore.
Now, a 20mm Mineshell is a lot less deadly than a 30mm Mineshell, because it can’t overpressure the tail structure unless the plane is made from wood,
while it requires around 4 hits to cause the same structural damage to a wing.
20mm Explosive rounds from ShVAK, Hispano or Type 99 cause even less structural damage and are much lighter than 37-40mm shells.
Unless you get a direct hit with either AP or HE into a vital component, you not bringing down a plane with just 20mm hits.
There’s a reason why most countries invested in 37-40mm AA guns, because 20mm or 25mm guns just didn’t cut it for reliably downing a plane.
20mm is like the minimum caliber you want for the job.
A 7.7mm MG has no realistic chance to bring down a plane unless hitting the pilot and causing a delayed kill from damaged cooling systems.
An engine will tank 7.7mm hits without too much trouble and even 12.7mm rounds won’t be able to kill an engine instantly like in WT.
Both ShVAKs and British Hispanos were always loaded with 50% kinetic rounds (Ball, API, SAPI) because rounds piercing through the airframe and hitting components inside was always desirable instead of just having shells explode on impact sending just small fragments into it.
20mm Mineshells should be like shotgun rounds compared to other 20mm shells, having limited range but causing much higher structural damage.
It also doesn’t help that fuel tank damage in WT is basically irrelevant and fire chance is just based on RNG with small calibers completely outperforming larger ones.
A ShVAK API should cause a lot of damages to fuel tanks, creating fuel leaks that 12.7mm API rounds and 20mm HEFI-T shells can ignite.
But you still need to hit a fuel tank before you are likely going to take a plane out.
But when any 20mm HE round can shoot a wing or tail off in 1-2 hits, larger calibers, Mineshells or rounds that aren’t HE have no point in being used.
