If he’s holding the trigger long enough it would. Do understand that the guns are not firing 1 bullet. They fire a large quantity within seconds. This is why they tell you to fire in burst, this makes those couple seconds of munitions you have last far longer.
so whats the problem then?
I responded to the OP, who asked if this was possible in game. It is possible in game. They didn’t say anything about whether or not it was possible in real life. But I personally don’t see much of an issue with one of the most heavily armed fighters in the game easily ripping the very lightweight tail section of a Bf109 to shreds.
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On the other hand, I’ve dumped like 400 bullets into Lagg-3 from dead 6 little to no effect. Can’t wait to come home to watch the replay because I remember unloading continuous stream of 8mm Mauser :D
And yes, he eventually died with 3 guys shooting at him for a few seconds.
Probably his tail went black and decided to stop taking damage, while it kept absorbing my bullets. That would have been typical gaijin
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Very funny. Let me introduce you to the Tempest or Fw 190 A-8.
The problem is that that kind of damage is not realistic and the reason for it happening is that tail controls are super fragile at the moment, to the point where kinetic rounds will completely destroy them when penetrating through them.
If those were M23 Incendairy rounds, it that would have been an entirely different situation.
But it makes no sense to have API-T, or just AP in general, deal so much damage to structural components. Even though with API and API-T you could argue that the damage should be higher to structure due to the incendiary component.
But for some reason the incendiary rounds deal less damage to the tail controls then AP while they deal more damage to wings.
So it seems that the damage to tail controls was deliberately changed to be more susceptible to AP rounds.
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The thing is though, when have we EVER known the damage models and process of applying damage to EVER be completely consistent?
Having played war thunder since planes OBT, the only answer I can give is never.
You can have .50 cals doing what they did in the OP sure, but on the reverse Ive also had plenty of up to 37mm HEF rounds hit enemy fighters and just… Do nothing at all.
You always get these weird outliers. It happens in ground forces just as often as it does for aircraft.
Sure this event may be a bit “weird”, but so are those occasional 37mm shells Ive had provide as much damage to the enemy as a 7mm ball round.
I dont really see why there was a need to make a thread about this. If i made a new thread discussing why I died in a “weird” way, Id probably be posting one nearly every day I played.
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Well, if you want anything to change first people need to know and then the developers.
Or everything will just be the same.
Guns change all the time due to the players complaining about something going on.
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If I recall correctly (its been a while so double check this before taking it as gospel) effective rang of a B-17s .50cal tail gun was considered 400m. A Spitfires .303s where considered to be effective to a max of 250 FEET… that’s under 50m. Now a lot of that could be the ability to hit a moving target, not just the ability to damage it… but still…
This is P-51 gun camera, but same .50cals note the rage:
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Many higher caliber shells used to have 0.25+mm fuse which allowed them to pass clean through most of soviet fighters below 5.0 + Mosquito and some other planes with wrong skin thickness.
After several years of my whining, Gaijin fixed MG151/20 which was notorious for passing clean through Soviet planes (it probably worked like that since 2012, but only with protection analysis with option to select a shell it became possible to reliably test it - before you could only test highest penetrating shell in a belt).
Just note on that, the game has a much easier time aiming than real life due to 3rd person+mouse aim.
I know that when I play ground RB my effective firing ranges drop considerably compared to air RB just from losing that red marker over their plane.
In the small number of sim games Ive played, my engagement ranges were honestly pretty similar to that gun camera clip.
So Id say its more of a “game UI and control scheme” difference allowing players to be much more accurate at much longer ranges than was possible IRL
Probably yards. I heard before how during the Battle of Britain .303 MGs had their convergance lowered from 400m (yds) to 250. Most likely because at 400m you just couldn’t expect to make a lot of hits against fighters while also delivering enough lead to deal serious damage.
That’s certainly fair, As I said the “effective range” could be fire control/ accuracy issues… but I would point out that none of the planes being hit had their entire tail unit blown completely off… in-fact their was no visible damage at all other than smoke… sure a game or movie needs to have flame and smoke to make it exciting… but the fact I can kill someone from 700m 14 times what was considered effective range with .303s… is a little jarring, not to say it isn’t possible, but how much more fun would it be if you needed those ranges?
If we have a common understanding that irl and wt are at best just loosely connected (= skin & size of aircraft) i am not sure if this is just a misunderstanding or not.
So irl effective ranges of 0.50 cal gunners like shown in this vid (02:35):
are actually not relevant.
I asked a simple question:
…and your answer is not dealing with that.
Why?
I am actually not sure if we have the same amount of in-game experience with long range gunnery. That’s why i asked you as “ballistic expert” to post the current de-rendering ranges stored in game files only accessible via PC.
My longest recorded kill whilst flying a B-18B was 2.74 km with the Swedish 13.2 mm cannon - and even in Dengars last vid (B-17 G) you see him scoring hits and crits on a Me 264 flying 2.4 km behind him.
My claim of the 0.50 cal in-game range is based on hundreds of high alt and high speed chases with or against P-47 D-30s and B-18B. So when i fly a B-18B in these conditions the fight is rather unfair for the P-47 as i am safe if i am able to to keep a minimum distance of ~ 1.8 km - as his bullets just “tickle” my plane - whilst i am able to score hits, crits and kills far beyond 2km. But if i manage to close the distance whilst flying a P-47 to 1.7 or 1.6 km i start to have hits, fires and critical hits.
And that’s also why i asked for the de-rendering distances for cannon shells - as you can out run them at very high speeds as they simply disappear at around 2 km distance travelled - whilst losing their high muzzle velocity very fast - that’s why i am safe vs almost all cannon fire if the distance is not less than ~ 1.4 km. The only shell i ever “tanked” at this range came from a 37mm shell from an ITP pilot - somehow these shells seems to be faster or i was just too slow.
So i renew my question…
Check the vid above at 02:35…
For a target in tailchase this will translate into around 2km actually, of course depends on altitude.
It was a pilot snipe vs a SB2C - he tried to climb at very low speed and was far below me - i was slow as hell too as i climbed at the same time.
Imho we talk here about 2 topics:
- Absolute distance a bullet travels from being shot until the bullet disappears / de-renders (imho for US 0.50 cals more than 3km, same as Swedish 13.2 mm cannon)
and
- Loss of penetration power within this distance
That’s why - at least from my pov - forward firing 0.50 cals at high alt / speed are harmless outside 1.8 km as they can’t pen your skin anymore (and start a fire for example) whilst a backwards firing gun should have much higher AP values at the same or larger distances as the target flies into the bullet… The SB2C kill was imho a pilot snipe (instant kill) due to non-bullet proof windshield…
I guess American late 50cals are overperforming in the game.
I usually fly a lot of Korean War era jets and often see the Sabre’s .50 cals easily blow the wings off a MiG or set it on fire.
irl, their guns had a very hard time killing MiGs so,it makes leading to the development of revolver cannons and vulcans after the 1950s, so its firepowers in the game is very questionable.
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Yeah, I should have expected that you were using some super safe super frustrating tactic, because where’s the fun if everyone is not annoyed and bored to death by perfectly dogfight capable plane in space.
Anyway, interesting fact, Shvak has 4000m max range - makes sense because Gaijin gave it otherwordly ballistic coefficient to make it vastly superior to MG-151.
Of course in a tailchase and at higher alt HMG will be able to score a super long range kill, since this MG is peppering people with HE too, but I don’t think high vitality pilot would die even if you shot him in the face at that distance with AP - Sweden’s MG has otherwordly BC too, but I have my doubts if its otherwordly enough :P
I’ve once hit MB-5 from 1300m away with MK103 while he was running. His cowling went light yellow. The only shell that was able to reach him was incendiary, because HE despawns past 1600m, and it was quite obvious it had to cover around 1800m to get to him due to target speed and velocity loss. I absolutely love Gaijin and their decisions (MK108 HEIT gets worse ballistic coefficient while being literally the same shell, just with a slightly different fuse, but MK103 can’t get longer range to despawn, because now that would be too much work).
Imagine a perfectly dogfight capable aircraft with depleted ammo of his singe forward firing autocannon…Btw this was at the end of 2022, gaijin has nerfed the same gun at least twice, i am quite sure the pilot is just yellow these days…
One word is enough: Superior… :-)
So you have the values i asked @KillaKiwi to provide?
It would be great if you could share these data. Thanks in advance!
Imagine not trying to be as malicious and annoying to everyone else for once.
Poor Uncle J won’t land, he only uses AF AAA to save him from trouble, when he can just endlessly frustrate people by flying to space and spamming his infinite ammo gunners (most fair feature ever) - why bother landing. That may have led to a fair fight, we can’t have that.
I think you’re the sweatiest tryhard ever witnessed by this community. I’m not joking.
Anyway, I’d have to loook up data mined numbers again. I just remembered Shvak and MK103 because they are both huge jokes.
The pure fact that i do not share your opinion might be annoying for you, but either you simply accept that others have deviating opinions - or not. Idc.
I do actually not care about your thoughts. Why would i? A random stranger in a forum of a video game repeating certain topics (af aaa, inferior MG 151s, gaijin bias) in infinite loops? Seriously?
If i would have been interested in your opinion - i would have asked.
But in this case:
Just post the requested data regarding bullet / shell ranges.
The effective range is determined by accuracy you are correct.
I don’t get why people ignore the elefant in the room: “mouse aim” it is soooo much easier and more accurate to point a mouse than to point an aircraft or real gun. Of course that increases the effective ranges to a ridiculous degree.
A bunch of .50 cals have no issue pubching through a bf109 at 1km. The problem was hitting the damn thing. But that isn’t an issue with mouse aim.