I added 23mm shells for the VYa and NS-23/NR-23 cannons in comparison to some 20mm explosive shells.
Added damage comparison of blast effect against Bf 109 E wing.
Edit: Added a bit more information on other blast damage examples:
Added Italian 7.7mm API (Green tip) bullet
Added 15mm HEFI-T to 20mm comparison + 15mm HEFI-T fragmentation dispersion.
Also added shell wall thickness to compare fragmentation performance.
Added armor penetration values for AP-I shells.
Added 20mm M56 HEFI to 23mm comparison.
With this there’s now visualiation for the following post-war shells:
- 20mm M39 & M61 Vulcan (HEFI)
- 23mm NS-23 / NR-23 (HEFI, HEFI-T, API) (Same as WW2)
- 30mm ADEN/DEFA (HEI)
- 30mm GSh-30-1 (HEFI)
Added a summary of explosive damage. It’s notable that Mineshells outperform explosive shells when it comes to structural damage to wings.
Added a comparison of explosive shells and Mineshells for taking out large bombers.
Of course it’s a simplification, since many factors influence the results.
Added .50cal API
Crazy to think that that little I tip of the AP-I Cal. .50 has a greater firechance in game than some bigger Incendary rounds.
Indeed. Proportions of incendiary chance and damage are completely blown out of the water and Incendiary bullets or shells have no clear advantage over API in War Thunder.
There either needs to be a system that bases incendiary chance and damage on caliber and ammunition type or incendiary content needs to be modeled.
I would prefer the later, for more accurate depiction of ammunition.
Spoiler

.50cal API-T with 1.16g Incendiary filler only has a 0.6% chance to cause a kill within 5 minutes with damage to fuel tanks and structure.
20mm M96 with 10.8g Incendiary filler has a 5% chance in comparison. Thats more than 8 times the likeliness.
Changed MG 151/20 API penetration from 20mm to 24mm.
Compared to the softer APHE and the regular AP, the API was hardened to a greater degree.
Presumably to make the shell break appart more easily, to release the WP, which also increased the penetration performance.
Here is the IJA tests of HE rounds from Ho-103 and Ho-5 against 3.2mm steel that stands for a ship/boat hull, which is interesting.
The rounds were 12.7mm “Type 1 HE”(Ma-102?) of Ho-103, and 20mm “Type 2 HE” from Ho-5, fired at a distance of 50m:


Results:
20mm Ho-5 Entry:

20mm Ho-5 Exit:

12.7mm Ho-103 Entry:

12.7mm Ho-103 Exit:

20mm Ho-5 against a folding boat:

12.7mm Ho-103 against a folding boat:

The median value is roughly 181.5cm², while the mean without the outliers is around 201cm².
This translates to a hole with 15-16cm diamter in size.
Very similiar to the performance of the ShVAK against a duralumin sheet aircraft wing (18cm hole)
Construction steel has roughly the same hardness as aircraft duralumin, so it should be pretty comparable, other the fact that the steel plate is thicker and should offer more resistance.
Here the median is 18cm² or 21cm average without outliers. So a 4.5-5cm wide hole. (2.65g filler)
Compared to the Berezin MDZ-3 bullet which leaves a 2cm entrance hole and a 11cm exit hole in a dural wing (3.2g filler).
How come the 15mm rounds are all so bad compared to Cal. .50.
And whats up with the Pzbrgr. being so godly bad in ballistics. Its still a 59g shell at 960m/s
It’s because .50cal bullets are very aerodynamic compared to cannon shells 🙂
And 15mm shells are awfully light cannon shells, so they are not great at keeping their speed.
Very noticeable with 15mm API which is lighter and doesn’t have a tracer compared to 15mm AP-T.
13mm API would have complete potato ballistics and 13mm AP-T is already barely effective past 200m.
Yeah, but the Ap-T at 72g, boat tail, tracer, nearly same velocity, still so much worse than the lighter, no tracer .50.
It’s the shape. 15mm is pointy till around 1/3 and then has complete straight walls.
While a .50cal are basically pointy to 2/3 or more.
They are also bottom heavy, which keeps the tail more stable while 15mm shells are more nose heavy, which causes them to wiggle around, increasing drag.
Downside is that bullets will easily tumble once they impact a target, while front heavy shells keep their orientation.
Added firing time comparisons for taking down a 4-engined bomber.
@KillaKiwi @Ghostmaxi I would actually put my money on real world vs Gaijin calculated ballistics.
I mean, nose heavy projectiles are naturally stable, hence all smoothbore slugs and bullets are nose heavy (f.e. Minie bullets).
Now, at least in shotguns, any wiggling there is is eliminated by spin stabilisation. In other words, nose heavy, spin stabilised bullet in theory should be the least prone to wiggling and should be the most stable overal.
Now, maybe 15mm simply has somehow way worse mass to frontal area ratio, which would also mean way lower length to diameter ratio.
But that’s assuming Gaijin uses real world data for US bullets.
Do they?
The nose shape is of course not without impact, but the difference seems just too big…
As far as I know, both 15mm and US .50cal ballistics are accurate.
