Why does a shell with 11g of TNT completely rip a B-29 apart but similar shells deal no damage to fighters? How does a heavy bomber have a worse damage model than a tiny fighter aircraft?
Spoiler
Very fun way of losing a nuke :D
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The loads of any cantilevered wing are borne entirely by wing spars, which are usually only a few millimeters of aluminum alloy. Notice the “penetration” and “fusing” listed.
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Yes and it takes a lot more than 11g of explosive to rip a wing off.
These have to withstand a considerable amoung of load especially in a turn given the high wing loading bombers have. No wing snaps off after a single internal module gets slightly damaged by a 20mm HE. This isn’t a fighter.
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They are designed to withstand a considerable amoung of load as long as they don’t have anyone putting holes or literally blowing them apart.
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Ding ding ding ding, we have a winner!
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IIRC this image was taken either after a direct hit by large caliber AA or after a bomb dropped on its wing.
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Considering the tail control surfaces are burned away, probably not. It was just illustrative of how fragile aircraft really are and shows the remains of failed wing spars.
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The tail being damaged as well suggests it is a large-caliber flak gun
It just means that a fire occurred. Considering the B-17 wings contained a lot of fuel tanks doesn’t mean much. It was just the first dramatic image that illustrates “wing spar failure”. Don’t get twisted.
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They aren’t burnt they got shot of by a bursting flak round.
Bombers aren’t as fragile as you think.
The wing spars aren’t the problem here and you can see a part of them still attached to the fuselage. The whole wing got shot off it doesn’t matter if they’re aluminium or steel they’re going to break when shot at by a large AA round.
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Or one or a few small caliber explosive rounds.
Not at that altitude and you’d need a few dozen 20mm round to deal that kind of damage. It certainly doesn’t happen after a single impact.
Probably not. If a shell (singular) cuts the web of the main spar of a wing, the stress will concentrate and cause mechanical failure. This tends to be detrimental to continued flying.
Cause it isn’t 1 20mm round. The moment you see that muzzle flash is the moment several rounds come out of the barrel. However, bombers are certainly far more resilient something I noticed with the Ki-49. Or even the FW-200 at its BR. Cause I flew it with 3 or 4 planes engaging me, 2 poorly damaged, and the 3rd or 4th don’t recall had to ram into my wing to cause me to crash.
No it was literally 1 round. You can see the second the damage indicator shows a hit the wing rips.
They are a low BR and fight fewer planes that have cannons than the other heavy bombers. The Ju-87G at 1.3 is almost invincible to biplanes.
This is because low tier players don’t know how to aim.
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Additionally, at those lower BRs most of the fighters have at most a few 0.50 cals with the terrible early belts.
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A direct hit to the spars with 20mm HE will do that. If it hit anywhere else on the wing you might’ve gotten away.
Wings need to be both flexible and strong to withstand wing loading. Make it too strong and your wings will be prone to snapping, too flexible and you’ll get deformations. Wing spars are a lot more delicate than you think since they’re made from aluminum alloys.
Going off the following, B-29s (and B-17s by extension) were much tougher than that:
Sergeant Lyle Patterson’s testimony about being attacked by MiG-15s during the Korean War:
" The B-29 that was right behind us took a 37mm hit in the wing and began streaming fuel as it listed to the right and fell out of formation, heading down. Our lead bomber, Dragon Lady, took a hit in the left side of the cockpit, killing the pilot. They stayed on course and dropped their bombs on target, with the copilot handling the controls.
- A B-29 got hit with a 37mm cannon in the wing and it only caused a fuel leak (it was fatal damage, but the shell did not rip the wing off).
- A B-29 got hit with either the 23mm cannon or the 37mm cannon in the left side of the cockpit, but it did so little damage to the controls that the plane could still fly fine.
Images from WWII:
Direct hit to the engine from flak over Yokohama - (was able to fly all the way back to Iwo Jima)
Irish Lassie being rammed by two different Japanese planes and suffering damage from gunfire is able to fly from Tokyo to Saipan - (crash lands)
B-29 tail staying intact after taking shrapnel from a Japanese flak gun -
Not a B-29, but a B-17 after colliding mid-air with a Bf-109 -
B-29 destroyed along the wing spar through ramming, not bullets -
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This is called “confirmation bias”. There are not many testimonials or photos from aircraft that had wings shot off and the planes spun into the ground.
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indeed according to Wikipedia Germans and uk lost 20 000 and 10 000 bomber aircraft respectively so makes sense there are a few miracles