German 20mm HEI(minengeschoß) shells low damage compared to other 20mm guns

Machinery of War Discussion Aircraft
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I created this topic to ask what you guys think about the current performance of the german HEI shells, specifically, the damage.

After having some struggle to kill bombers in sim, i thought about testing the damage of different cannons on different bombers, and i did something like this: I selected pe-8, p-47, and the ju188 for protection analysis; i then set an area in which i would be shooting randomly (country mark in the middle of the tail section), distance of 300m for all, and then i selected different explosive types of shell: japan(type99 model 2, HEF-T), britain(hispano mk2, HEI), soviet(ShVAK, FI-T and HEF), US(AN/M2 cannon, HEF).

After some dozens of shooting with each cannon, i shockingly realized that the german shell was the only one that dealt the less damage of all these. In all the tests, it didnt leave the tail section black even once, hell, hardly red even, all while the hispano and M2 cannon would leave the tail red at minimum.
The only other thing that the minengeschoß did was do some small damage to nearby areas(set the tail wing of the p-47 red 2 times), which is kinda to be expected.

So, please, someone tell me what i’m missing, the german HEI even while having more than double the amount of tnt than the hispano and having +60% more than the american M2, deals far less damage( i’m not exaggerating), while also having similar detonation fuse. Why’s that?

Don’t mind if you call me stupid, it’s just really frustrating to suffer from poor ballistics, and on top of that dealing less damage compared other aircraft of the same BR. Add all this to the fact that bombers(gunners) are broken in sim, and you might get why I’m ranting like this…

Edit: Everything is making sense to me now, thank you guys for the input(and suggestion! I might try the SM 92)

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You might use the forum search function (i recommend posts by @KillaKiwi and @Ghostmaxi regarding this topic - imho real experts) and you find our that 3-5 times higher TNT filler of the shells gives you little to zero advantage vs the other 20 mm cannons as Real Shatter 1.0- 3.0 increased their damage output whilst the ballistic “update” crippled the MG 151/20 performance even more.

On top of that the SD fuze bug made long range engagements rather pointless (just see my bug report). Don’t get me wrong - i am still able to reliably kill enemies with it (SM 92) as i score mainly in turnfights with deflection shots (plane turns exceptionally well, you might try it) and avoid head-ons at all cost - but performing high speed dive attacks need way more gun time than before and you have to get way more closer to enemies.

It boils down that the ruling 20 mm cannon of previous years is now the weakest.

Regarding the 30 mm and 50 mm HEI shells in the 262s - even as gaijin reduced their nerf (artificial spread added years ago) of the 50 mm - i am still not happy with it - especially when you need more than 2 hits for a kill.
The 30 mm is for me a pain to aim and has imho a way to large inconsistency regarding damage output - so some times u get a kill with one hit and a game later you score 3 hits and your opponent is totally unimpressed…

Have a good one!

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Mineshells use the old damage model, with a sphere like explosion and fragmentation.

While other every other nations HE rounds uses realShatter with the damage slider set to max, causing absurd structural damage, from the shells fragments.

While 20mm Mineshells at the moment effect a larger area, they generally deal less damage to the structure they hit.

They are certainly not weak, but since they have by far the worst ballistics compared to other 20mm explosive rounds, they are currently outclassed.

Who knows if that every is going to change.

The main killing power of 20mm HEF and HEFI rounds would come from the fragmentation, then the incendiary performance and lastly the structural damage.

With HEI (Mineshell) it would be structure, incendiary performance and lastly fragmentation (which practically doesn’t exist).

Against large bombers the 20mm Mineshell wouldn’t really have any advantage as the fragmentation of HEF and HEFI should cause enough damage to fuel tanks that fires become more likely, making up for the lack of structural damage.

But Germany also used HEFI-T shells until they replaced them with Incendiary rounds, which also deliever a fragmentation effect.

In WT the HEFI-T (FI-T in the game) deals pathetic damage, as it also doesn’t use realShatter and no belt has both HEI and HEFI-T. Instead they use Incendiary-tracer rounds, which also don’t work and are practically useless.

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the difference is only 15m/s which wouldnt matter that much gaijins heavily nerfed them

gaijin also isnt addressing year old bug reports
and wont accept new ones

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My guess is they would be insanely OP with real shatter because currently planes are like made out of paper compared to real life and these would just end up one shotting anything they touch so they left them as they are.

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elJnefmHatw

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Saw this vid multiple times in this forum.

3 things:

  1. The cannon fire sound is artificially created as german gun cameras had no audio.
  2. You see just 20 mm shells
  3. WT and irl are 2 separate worlds

You don’t have to trust me regarding points 1 & 2 - you will find a hell of discussions on “real” aviation web sites regarding this footage.

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I’m just using it to show how weak planes are here, even if the bf100 was firing 20mm solid shot rounds that bombers would be on fire or in pieces halfway through that vid.

The point being if mineshells were given real shatter they would be insanely OP.

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they need it there airframes are sub par at best, last cabable 109 is like G-2
it would be like any other cannon, as all of them when hit by say a shvak it vaporizes the plane on impact same with the american colts and hispanos

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if mine shells cant have it no one should cause its just unfair as basically every german plane is stuck using them and they suck

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A short remark: Punctuation marks are outdated, ik. But they would make your posts way more readable…😉👍

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I have no clue what you mean by that.

Are you referring to Mineshells velocity of 785m/s being 15m/s slower than ShVAK shells with 800m/s?

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I’ve posted some images about structural damage in my topic about aircraft ammunition:

It also has one image showing 20mm Mineshells damage to a He 111 horizontal stabilizer, with and without delay charge.

Causing enough structural damage to a large bomber with 20mm shells simply isn’t feasible.
All you do is create 0.015-0.03m² holes into planes with 100-200m² total area.

There’s a reason why during WW2 almost every airforce put 1:2 to 1:1 AP rounds into their 20mm cannons.

Having kinetic rounds hit a bombers engine or cause fuel leaks that can be ignited would result in much greater chance to take out a bomber than just firing 20mm explosive ammunition.

In contrast, if we consider that a Mineshell, with 18.7g blast enhancing explosive, explodes inside a wing or stabilizer and destroys 0.25m² of that area, then we destroyed a total of 5m² with 20 rounds, which was the number to take our four-engined bomber, based on German estimation.

But they still developed 20mm incendiary shells and even shells that would explode when they hit the fuel tank, instead of just firing nothing but Mineshells.

Generally they had:
API vs. engines and pilot armor
Incendiary vs. fuel tanks
Mineshells vs. control surfaces and fuel tanks

In WT we have Mineshells or explosive shells vs. everything since all you need to do is rip a wing or tail.

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On a side note, german I-T round for the 20mm gun is designed to penetrate the wing, ignite the incendary material and push it out of the front over a certain range, while the main projectile body continues to travel forward to penetrate fueltanks and such.
There was a drawing and text, but i cant find it anymore. Similary, the bigger 3cm AP-I rounds, were the same, but backwards.

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yes is that the poor ballistics your talking about ?
or you talkin the lower fire rate

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Velocity doesn’t equal ballistics.

Mineshells are light and don’t have the best aerodynamic shape.

They lose velocity much faster than any other 20mm shell.

So they take much longer to reach long distance and the ballistics drop makes it more difficult to hit due to the great shell drop.
Doesn’t help that the tracer rounds have better ballistics, so if you hit with tracers at long range you’re not hitting with 20mm Mineshells and vice versa.

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The nose part will generate plenty of fragments and the guide ring area also has some potential, it’s a bit of an overstatement to say it has no fragmentation, though indeed good part of fragmentation is irrelevant, though even the thin parts of body will sometimes produce some bigger shards that may pierce a few things (depends on how it impacts od course!)

I mean, remember average person has no idea, and when they read “practically no fragmentation”, well they see a rather inaccurate picture :P

Other than that - you’re absolutely right.
M-geschoss is super painful vs jets as it turns some parts… light yellow. And that’s it.
Meanwhile Shvak will make the same part red or black.

Anyway, current state of the air to air ammunition is quite sad. Essentialy Gaijin went from one inaccurate model to another, even more inaccurate model, incendiary shells are in limbo, AP shells are useless.
At least MK103 APHEI shell finally kinda works :D

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Considering the very low HE mass of these shells, I wounder where the fragments take the energy from to wreck the whole airframe structure. The metal beams and metal fuselage. The damage is absurd.

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Well, they shouldn’t.
They should deal damage to cooling systems, maybe control rods and cables, crew and fuel tanks.

Oh and weapon systems.
Dealing damage to ammunition and jamming guns.
Which isn’t even possible in WT.

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… and hydraulics - you disable hydraulics or the actuator and aircraft like P-51s or Spitfires can’t use weapons, flaps or gear. Even prop pitch was steered by hydraulics…

Btw: This is also one of the reason why Fw 190s had electric motors for critical stuff - no hydraulic lines, no pumps etc needed which increased their survival rates…

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Right 🤔

So in WT fragments are inherently worse because of the lack of systems they can damage.

Kinda how helicopter are super tanky because they have hardly any systems that can be damaged.

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