Here’s a Youtube channel that has two great videos showing what the real world damage of German 20mm and 30mm Minengeschosse was:
https://www.youtube.com/@WWIIUSBombers/search?query=minengeschoss
In real life they were pretty darn devastating to bombers and fighters alike.
The Warthunder game used to represent that kind of damage done my the German cannons fairly accurately before things somehow change completely for whatever inexplicable reasons.
Now a single .303 browning armor piercing incendiary bullet will somehow magically burn your entire plane up within 2 seconds. It will also magically pass through any armored glass designed to stop exactly this type of round and instantly knock out your pilot.
50 cal US bullets really are little nukes compared to anything in the German fighter arsenal, even the mighty 50mm BK5.
I understand that Warthunder probably had to cater to inexperienced players of the British and US tech tree barely able of landing any shots on enemies. It really and rightfully was somewhat difficult to score kills with 6 browning guns the way early WW2 allied fighters were commonly armed, simply because these guns required some time on target and a bunch of lead, whereas German 20mm and 30mm cannons had a much lower rate of fire and comparably poor ballistics, but those really could take out a Spitfire with a single well placed hit.
The general issue arising from the changes in the game however is that heavy twin engine fighters have now become completely obsolete and utterly uncompetitive.
These are planes that in real life could dish out a lot of damage but in turn they could take a serious punch, so to say.
They weren’t nearly as nimble and agile as single engine fighters but they certainly required a lot more .303 hits to bring down, and they carried cannons which dealt a lot of damage, especially to bombers.
Before Gajin completely changed the gun damages, twin engine fighters like the Bf-110 or Me-410, as well as the Mosquito , Firefly or also the P-38, these planes would all have a very reasonable place in the game and rightfully so. They were good against bombers and they were inferior against single engine fighters, less maneuverable, often a bit slower, but however they were basically ‘flying tanks’ and required several hits to bring down, realistically and rightfully so.
Now with the absolutely insane damage outputs Browning MGs and .50 cal bullets produce, all planes pretty much become ‘easy single shot kills’. A single hit or two will now simply do the job.
This practically robs any robust airplane on the game of the advantages they had in real combat.
A Fw-190, a P-47, and a F-4U corsair are now just as easy to shoot down as a Bf-109 or a P-51 are, even twin engine P-38s or a BF-110s are now practically just as quick and easy to shoot down as a Japanese Zero is.
The significantly reduced and now very limited damage output of the German 20mm and 30mm mine-shells is one issue, the much bigger problem is the insane and utterly unrealistic damage output of small caliber guns.
I don’t want to complain too much, and a game is a game and reality is reality and those are two fundamentally different things with fundamentally different goals.
However, comparing a massive 50mm BK5 that can barely penetrate a lightly armored vehicle, with .303 browning MGs blowing the same vehicles up just as quick and easily while carrying far more ammo to do so, is plain absurd.
Aside from that, let me mention that the Me-410 A1/U5 and the B2/U4 variants carrying this 50mm BKW gun were designed and ever used for one single task only which is to snipe B-17, B-24 and Lancaster bombers out of the sky from a mile away.
That is why it had a telescopic gun sight for the BK5 similar to what the game models on the HS-129 with the 75mm gun.
Instead of catering to the true and historic intent of the Me 410 /U4 versions Gajin more and more tweaked it into a ground pounding attacker, which the plane is actually pretty terrible at in the game and in reality.
The 22 shots of slow firing 50mm ammo just don’t allow any reasonably skilled player to rack up a lot of kills on ground targets and any other Me 410 or BF 110 variant carrying bombs or rockets will (rightfully) be far more effective.
As it is now, the Me 410 A1/U4 and B2/U4 (which were quite successful and effective in WW2 despite their low production numbers) have become almost completely unusable in the game.
the 50mm AP and HEI rounds don’t do nearly as much damage as they should and did in reality. The (absurdly) removed tracers from the 50mm air target belt combined with the lack of a telescopic gun sight (which the real WW2 plane had) make it nearly impossible to hit anything other than at close range.
This is not supposed to be a rant, but this used to be by far my favorite plane to fly and with skill it allowed for some amazing long range bomber kills.
The Me 410 /U4 was always challenging to use, and was typically disadvantaged in many situations (rightfully and realistically so). It always required quite some serious skill, to use efficiently, but it was a lot of fun to fly despite and exactly because of all this.
Now in the current version of the game the Me 410 U4s really became nothing but an utterly useless death trap.
Any other type of Me 410 , Bf 110, Mosquito, Firefly and many other heavy fighters have become similarly useless and overly vulnerable to the insanely OP damage outputs of smaller caliber guns.
