Brief history:
ever since Gaijin introduced fuse sensitivity and different skin materials (which may be: since 2013, or maybe some time later) all cannons with HE with fuse sensitivity over 0.1mm failed to deal any significant damage to all aircraft with plywood skin, that is - most popular Soviet WW2 props + Mosquito.
The bug has been reported several times over the years, by me and others, but only after protection analysis allowed to select any shell from any belt, we were able to test plywood vs M-geschoss (which had 0.4mm fuse at that time - highest among all 20mm HE shells, and was the only one failing to fuse) we were able to confirm it with absolute certainty.
It took Gaijin years to come up with a fix
A fix, that did not “fix” the bug.
In december 2023 they had adjusted MG151/20 fuse sensitivity to 0.1mm, in line with other 20mm HE shells.
Problem was, everything with lower sensitivity, that required a thicker target, was still failing to fuse - mostly larger caliber weapons, like Soviet 37mm HE.
Fast forward to May 2025, Gaijin…
…reduces plywood skin “thickness” below 0.1mm and all 20mm HE shells stop working.
Basically unless you struck a module, wings and fuselages and tails of Soviet props (and Mosquito) happily ignored getting struck by HE, receiving 0 damage.
This persisted for several months.
In the Autumn Gaijin changed something and the bug turned less reliable, as seen in the video:
Recently Gaijin has performed another briliant action and started setting fuses to 0,001mm.
See the problem?
Yeah, they are fighting the symptoms, not the cause, and a lot of weapons still fail to fuse,because most weapons still have “old standard” 0,1mm, hence Yak-3 behaves like an absolute tank when facing Hispanos, Type 99 Mk2 or even… Shvaks:
All Gaijin has to do is to set plywood skin to 0.1mm or higher.
Instead they are keeping the plywood bug alive, allowing plywood planes to shrug off damage that should rip them to pieces. IT hurts both enemy aircraft and SPAA.
And it got me thinking - why has Gaijin never tried increasing the plywood thickness, which would bring Soviet aircraft in line with everything else?
And IMO it’s all about the community.
You guys just DO NOT CARE.
If you see your guns not work frequently, you may complain, and Gaijin reacts by “fixing” popular weapons (right now only MG151/20 is fixed, everyone else suffers).
But other than that?
Nobody gives a rats tail.
Plywood bug persists, and it’s not getting fixed.
And my guess is not now. Not ever.
Thank you very much.