Its 1.0 higher, planea arent inherently noticably more armoured at 5.0 vs 4.0, except maybe some thicker bulletproof glass and pilot seat armour which only effects pilot snipes (and only on some aircraft)
Fifty cals IME are very, very sensitive to convergence. Hispanos slash AN/M2 don’t really care if they strike wings or fuselage, that plane is going down.
While fifty cals, if they land en masse in the body striking the fuel tank - there’s gonna be a big fire and that plane is not gonna be putting it out.
However, if you hit a wing and you’re not hitting the wing spars or traction of control surfaces or the control surfaces themselves… it’s not going to do much for most aircraft (some will become crippled by having a yellowed wing and become easy prey for follow-up shots as they lose the ability to roll effectively).
So, shooting within gun convergence and aiming for the fuselage (unless you know the target has wing mounted fuel tanks or has multiple engine pods in its wing) makes a massive difference for fifty cal power.
2.7-3.7 planes generally have no armor whatsoever, yet at 4.0-5.0 they start to have armor.
“One tapping” is not spraying until you sever their control cables, and then spraying again until he J-ed out or maybe, maybe severed his wing (but the resolution and frame rate is too low to tell). Landing hits on the rear of a wing near the fuselage would’ve severed the wing in one or two shots (usually one), but you barely did anything other than get lucky with the cables.
Except if they can’t do any meaningful damage to most of the airframe (since US 0.50 cals don’t get HE shells), that won’t mean much.
You struck his elevator. the smallest, tiniest, and least likely control surfaces to hit, as shown by the missing horizontal stabilizer and complete loss of pitch control. You basically got completely lucky to hit somewhere in that spot. This video is an exceptional. Not the norm as you are more likely to hit the wings or fuselage.
Even abysmal Italian 12.7s would’ve obliterated that elevator and horizontal stabilizer in 1-2 shots. If you struck literally anywhere else, your likelihood to cause extensive damage that would’ve set the fight in your favor considerably, or even snap the wing of the aircraft is completely MINIMAL
Just recently, I fought two Ki-44-IIs and it took 5-7 passes, 18 minutes and a blackened engine cowl to even put them on the backfoot. The only time I ‘defeated them’ was after they exhausted their 20mms because they only had their nose mounted guns and so they tried to run back to base.
And the funny part was? I didn’t blow any flight surfaces, tail planes, flaps or anything off even after I covered them in shots. The only way I was able to get a kill? Was through pilot snipes.
If you’re experienced, you don’t aim for the armored parts, unless you know how to line up your shots to hit straight into the fuselage directly.
Another thing, “Oh no, oh he has armor,” it barely makes much of a difference once you figure out where to kill and how. 1->3 bursts is usually the kill zone.
The most important parts to hit with severe damage are behind armor, though? Cannons (and I guess 12.7mms with HE) can get away with aiming for the wing spars due to their HE, but with 0.50 cals you usually have to either chainsaw a wing off or hit critical parts of the fuselage behind the armor.
Dedicated fighters don’t carry as much ground attack ordinance as the Jug does. Jug is more multirole than anything, which isn’t a bad thing, mind you. It just means it’s not specialized or dedicated to anything.
Mate 12.7’s and .50 cals are the same thing also if you are armed with over 8 of them in a P-47, why does it matter damn thing is gonna kill you no matter what.
I’m referring to 0.50 cals as the American name for the type of bullet, and the subject of which is (mainly) US 0.50 cals due to them not having any HE shells. Coincidentally, I got reminded of how bad US 0.50 cals are in this game when I got my P-47D-28’s entire rudder/vertical stablizer ripped off by a Ki-44-II’s 12.7mm HEF shell. Meanwhile, American 0.50 cals would likely take dozens of shots to do the same.
It’s .50 cal, and no one here says zero dot fifty. We say fifty cal. 0 is silent and invisible when you write it.
Same reason when we say 30.06. We don’t say Thirty Zero Six. We say Thirty-Ought-Six. I’m not trying to be one of those types of grammar folks; however, it’s proper pronunciation. Also, once again, just use Incendiary belts. There’s a reason why folks use either Tracer or universal belts.
No, you should. The bullet on its own isn’t magically gonna do damage. It is the specific type of bullet that harms. AP rounds are only useful against armored areas of an aircraft. Completely useless if the enemy has no armor. Which is where Incendiary, tracer, and High Explosive belts come into play, which are designed to blow up or cause a fire, aka cause significant damage.
Except one is completely random in the amount of damage it does and how long it will take to do that random damage, and also takes significantly more bullets (even when factoring rate of fire) to kill, and the other can one-shot aircraft consistently - with the worst outcomes being a handful of hits.
Which AP only belts? Don’t know what you’re not getting. Armor Piercing belts tend not to work. Unless you’re aiming directly at the fuselage. I’ve barely had any issue taking down any craft so long your aiming for the wings.
