bombs dont have any armor or mantlets (except armor piercing bombs and that’s not very thick)
Makes like no sense. Most players use HE rounds which have no chance of ever reaching bombs inside a bomber or causing damage to the bomb itself.
Even 20 AP rounds are not very likely to cause severe damage to bombs and the explosive inside bombs is generally pretty stable.
So how bombs are exploding with WT dysfunctional damage system is a mystery to me.
There’s a report on German mine shells which describes them as being able to get shot without exploding, unlike the propellant charge of course.
lol no they aren’t stable source: USS forestal accidents, yes there were several involving ordnance
also high caliber He shells can cause the bombs to be overpressured and detonated that way source: the fact that some tanks fire explosive wire to detonate mines in minefields
This depends on the bomber type - a lot of bombers without access to the bomb bay for their bombardiers (like Lancaster) had to fly with wires connected to the fuselage - so if the bombs were dropped the wires removed safety pins which fully armed the bomb.
As this was not perfect especially allied bombers used to drop unused bombs at designated areas before landing for safety reasons. Those drops included dropping the wire construction with them to avoid detonation.
Imho you overestimate the thickness. Even as the fragmentation effect of the casing was part of their purpose:
A general-purpose bomb is an air-dropped bomb intended as a compromise between blast damage, penetration, and fragmentation in explosive effect.
General-purpose (GP) bombs use a thick-walled metal casing with explosive filler
…you have to consider that the thicker the wall the less fragmentation - as the explosive damage will be reduced if the wall is too thick.
The correct question would be: Is it possible to penetrate the casing?
If i see the data of an average bomb like the SC 1000 (details here) the casing was 0.4 inches thick. So depending on range and drop of penetration values it seems possible to penetrate the casing of a rather heavy bomb.
Whilst your point looks rather reasonable i am not sure if you have considered the effect of an AP round hitting a metal casing: Parts of the motion energy whilst penetrating will be transformed into heat - heat is able to ignite the explosive filler.
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well said
My Heli exploded today in Heli PVE in mid air. Kill feed reported a crash. I was nowhere near the ground or other objects. This does happen regularly.
Either the mechanic fails to credit the kill correctly or something else is wrong.
its possible on hueys at least to shoot your own rocket so that it blows you up
Well, we are talking here about secondary explosives not gasoline or propellant charge. They require a booster charge to explode.
The heat from the AP round going through the bomb is unlike to cause your general bomb filler to detonate.
I also remember that German note about the Mineshells now correctly. It said the Mineshell will not explode when hit unless the detonator is struck.
I would assume that phlegmatized PETN is more or around the same sensitive as TNT.
Still there might be a possibility that it would detonate a bomb. However it most likely would require like an ideal scenario.
While it WT it just happened way to often to make any sense how it is implemented.
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I don’t want to create an argument here, but you might heard what happens when you throw a hand grenade (without releasing the pin) into a bonfire…
Have in mind that one the secondary purposes of anti-material rifles is to detonate explosive devices like IEDs or VBIEDs from a safe distance if no IEDD unit is available - with your logic this won’t be possible…
what rifle are you talking about? (no seriously Ive never heard of any antimaterial rifle being used in that way) No one shoots an IED with any lower caliber gun to detonate it (unless it happens to be identical to a car) because its extremely dangerous
however in the case of the grenade in a bonfire your completely correct
They most certainly are not firing AP rounds but API, Incendiary or explosive-incendiary rounds at them.
Mines carry sensitive detonators just like explosive shells or bombs and IDEs can be made from all sorts of things that can easily explode.
However a bomb inside a bomber is surrounded by the bombers air frame. 90% of explosive or incendiary effects are going to take place on impact with the air frame.
Out of all weapons the Hispanos SAPI would have the highest chance to detonate a bomb, since it carries the incendiary charge behind the armor piercing nose, instead inside the nose or windshield, like a lot of other API rounds.
But in WT they explode just like HEFI shells on impact with the airframe.
it should also be noted that Japanese fuzeless rounds use unphlegmatized PETN to explode in impact from being crushed.
While phlegmatized or less sensitive explosives wouldn’t function like that (like the early Mineshell filled with phlegmatized PETN). Hence why HE rounds use a booster to detonate the main charge.
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0.50 cal stuff like Barret.
Saw this at least one time in a documentary about 2nd Iraq war (occupation phase, dealing with the threat and losses caused by IEDs or VBIEDs); we might have some vets here which might share their live experiences.
Imho it makes sense to use them that way - either u hammer suspicious plastic bags near the road in front of your convoy with your 0.50 cal in the lead vehicle - or u use a way more precise weapon. I mean even if outside populated areas the risk of a remote ignition is rather low and you have time to call the disposal guys - why take a risk?
I noticed it as well. When I fly P-47 or anything with cal50, I just need to fire a short burst and any bomber detonates midair. It makes especially cal50 even more op than used to be. Unlike shells with HE filler, cal50 rounds also don’t selfdestruct after 1km shot distance, but go all the way until the ballistic drop ends it. Means you can detonate bombers at distances far above 1km.
The change should be reversed. Make bomb ordnance not to explode if still mounted @plane. It was like this all the years since dawn of WT. Bombers are fragile enough. They barely tank any fire. Exploding bomb ordnance is overkill.
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fully agree - even if bombs may have exploded by gunfire this happens much too often. Its so frustrating to be shot down during a attack and the bomb dropped prev. is also destroyed mid-air.
This happens esp. often in naval battles where the ai aa is ridicoulos precise.
Especially if you just have one bomb and it gets shot off. You can just bail out at this point.
Wounder whose idea this was. It changed the game to the worse.
Probably the same developer that thinks a B-29 should lose its tail from a single 37mm HE round.
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Just lost another bomber in GRB. Cal.50 dude opened fire from a ground vehicle and my bombload exploded. They really should tone that doen. Bombers are doa right now.
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Came here to chime in that I am experiencing this as well. It is NOT when my bomb hits the plane. In fact, any contact I can make with the plane and my bomb and I’m fine. The bomb can be “juggled” so it’s not the plane hitting the bomb that’s causing the issue…
See here https://youtu.be/QorzJ6tMijk
I was in a game today and a fighter was attacking me but wasn’t really getting any good hits. In the replay the fighter’s shooting was WAY off and what I noticed as that my belly gunner might be the issue, since he shoots the bomb. Usually I’ve died without any fighter shooting me and only my gunner’s firing. I think this is the issue, and any bombers that have a gunner with an angle of fire in the same direction of the bomb, you run this risk. Stupid really.
My bombs have a 2-3 sec fuse too. So this has to be bomb taking fire from none other than my own gunner.
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Now that’s good evidence.