Its a game mechanic to give opponents an opportunity to counter an attack. You know, because its a game.
Yeah this.
There’s a difference between a bomb being rendered inert by a bullet impact and dudding (perfectly plausible), as opposed to high-ordering due to an impact inflight and then that explosion chaining back to the dropping aircraft’s bomb bay, which I’ve seen (and done) quite a lot lately. That’s a little silly. I get it’s there, like so many WT things, purely for “rule of cool,” but it’s still silly. At the moment as a big WW2 bomber dropping your bombs while you’re under fighter MG fire is basically suicide, plus you won’t get any score for dropping them, though.
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Yk lemme just apologise on behalf of all us kids who arent taught in school about how to blow people up. U got a point.
Tnt ignites around 80°c
Incendiary bullets burn around 200°c not including heat from the propellant
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TNT don’t ignite by 80°C …stop with nonsens
good to know you can reason. at least you kno its more or less independent of temp. now tell me what you think is the actual cause. perhaps a shockwave? perhaps a micro shockwave that… hmmm, idk might be produced by an exploding or pericing incendiary bullet that…hmmm maybe peirces through the steel shell causing sparks+heat+a micro shockwave?
admittedly, not ALL bullets would NOR should explode bombs ALL the time. you can make a bug report about that. but it being a feature overall is not unreal
With mg gun fire it’s pretty unrealistic, as most WW2 era bombs had quite a thick casing to for example prevent it from blowing up in case of a mishap while loading it into a plane.
Possibly if you could hit the detonator, or the tail of the bomb, you could blow it up, but not really anywhere else.
I do think a 88mm FlaK (or bigger) wouldve been capabke of settinf one off with a direct hit in the bomb bay, but smaller doesnt seem likely, and I guess would just alter the course of the bomb
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The TV show Mythbusters is here to save us. A grenade filled with TNT hit by shot didn’t explode, but one hit by a rifle bullet penetrated the casing and detonated the explosive. So AP hitting directly on the bomb filler - a smaller target than the bomb itself - should detonate a TNT bomb, but shrapnel from an HE shell should not, whether that’s a proxy fuse or an HE shell hitting the aircraft before it’s dropped. But hitting a falling bomb with AP is a much trickier task in real life than in WT. Consider that anti-aircraft fire was aimed by open spider sights with no magnificatiom, seeing a bomb falling out of the air would be basically impossible, let alone tracking a tiny target like that with manual handles is much less realistic than mouse-aiming on it. Anti-aircraft usually needed massive batteries of ground fire to have a chance of hitting aircraft in the first place with unguided open sights.
Later explosives were designed to be even less sensitive to shock detonation post-WW2.
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So you agree with me.
As i said, possible yes, likely no.
That’s the entire purpose of the CRAM and CIWS systems in general
And there has been numerous of bombs hit by workers , or lifted and they have exploded.
It all depends how unstable that explosive inside that mysterious metal casing has become or in that detonator.
But yes, maybe if that 20mm round is filled with somesort of explosive matter and it happens to explode inside that bomb, it wouldnt act as detonator?
I’ve got a treat for you guys… it’s not just when you hit the bomb, though that’s hilarious in its own right (and I like to save those clips). You can get some nice sympathetic dets! I figure the unreality of this and the unreality of the Yak-3’s flight model cancel each other out for perfect realism.
ETA: if the resolution isn’t good enough to see… I go from 62 cannon rounds to 58 cannon rounds and 158 to 148 .50 cal rounds. All that goodness for a total of 14 rounds expended. CIWS/C-RAM, eat your freaking heart out.
Oh, and secondarily to the fun post above, some of y’all clearly have NO idea how HE works and need to get back in your lane. It’s OK to not understand something… it’s a lot less OK to stubbornly ignore that you don’t understand something.
The short version is that if you want a high order det out of HE, you need both heat and pressure. You can get sympathetic det if you have an HE charge go high order in proximity of other HE. Blasting caps, det cord, and fuses are placed in direct contact with HE charges/filler for efficient and reliable detonation.
The challenge with using aircraft projos from WW2 against steel/iron cased munitions falling from the sky is two fold - penetration of the case/proximity AND getting a sympathetic det from a relatively small amount of explosive fill. Even a Minengeschoss is very, very light for the task at hand unless it penetrates through the case directly and is in contact with the filler/charge.
It’s not impossible… just highly improbable. Modern systems like CIWS/C-RAM expend a LOT of ammo to get “steel on steel” - now, let’s argue about how comparable modern 20mm is with the stuff we were slinging back in WW2 ;-).
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I do it on accident from time to time, but it did help me save my cap and my teammate from being bombed
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Since 500lb bomb will probably NOT have shell as thick as tank armor, 20mm WW2 shell hitting will destroy it all the same like modern 20mm shell fired by CRAM, even if the modern 20mm shell is several times better.
Now probability of hitting 500lb with 20mm WW2 shell, or rather WW2 AA? That is more luck than anything, but it cal still happen. Chance is just extremely small.
It varies between 6.35 to 38 mm (0.25 to 1.5 inches).
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I tend to agree that you shouldnt be able to just MG a Bomb into explosion. Thats just nonesense.
Even if u hit it with bigger caliber of smt like 40mm guns u usually dont get an explosion as the stuff inside the bomb needs (depends on the stuff in it ofc) a shit ton of energy to explode. Thats why they have a fuse/detonator!
Also, why the hell cant we MG missles away any longer? Bombs are designed to not get destroyed by shrapnell and MG fire and especially not explode by it. Missle are not designed for such thing. Thats even how some APS systems work…
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I like the idea. In general I think it looks cool when everything explodes. I have to be careful dropping bombs now. I used to drop a pile of them nearly point blank before. Now a wad of bombs will most certainly blow up in my face if I’m in gun range (the way I drop)
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Whilst i agree in general for modern tertiary explosives - the explosives in bombs just need additional energy to ignite them - so it is imho an “and/or” and not an “and”.
Therefore the question is more like:
Is the energy of a HMG or cannon round able to penetrate the casing of a bomb AND is able to provide so much energy in the form of heat and/or pressure to ignite it.
And ofc: Flying Yak-3? 😂👍
Edit: Flag attack. @Surbaissemaxxing - is false flagging not forbidden?
The casing of any GP bomb has the purpose to create shrapnel in addition to the blast effects. So the thickness is a matter of what kind of shrapnel you would like to have - and on which target with what damage radius. Handling issues play no role as long we talk about military usage - those explosives are so called secondary explosives which need a primary explosive to detonate.
Look up the casing of GP bombs - i found this site for you:
WW2 Equipment Data: German Explosive Ordnance - SC Bombs (Part 1)
Thickness of SC 1.000 casing= ~ 11 mm / 0,4 inches.
We do have WW 2 memoirs which describe even the total evaporation of bombers (eyewitness reports from gunners in other ships) after direct flak hits.
Same as hits by LW fighter pilots with 30mm MK 108s - but it is imho not 100% clear if the bombs were hit directly or if they detonated as a result of a very fast chain reaction of a fuel tank explosion.
To be fair: You find also reports of flak shells penetrating the fuselage of B-17s completely without any explosive damage when their detonator was set to a higher alt / longer time.