The .50 cal machine gun was considered a viable AA option before the inception of MANPADS
.50 is probably one of the most amazing weapons ever made, but we are talking about a roof mounted .50 on top of a tank that is used in supporting fire against ground forces. If I had to choose a between an M2 and a Browning .30 I would take the M2 all day, everyone would. Just because you can shoot it at a plane or heli from a tank commander positiion doesnt mean thats what its designed to do nor effective at, which is the whole point. Yall act like I am saying its completely incapable of it, I’m not, but the effectiveness within warthunder is about 1000x more than real life.
Have any of you ever sat in a .50 turret either on a tank or Humvee? I have across 3 deployment and while I would shoot at something if my life depended on it, its not effective. Keep in mind that air defenses that the video is targeting is also not a single .50 on a tank.
Further, in combined arms maneuvers and tank warfare, the commander is not sitting outside on a .50 to shoot a plane…
All roof mounted .50 cals I am familiar with from WW2 into the early/mid Cold War were absolutely intended for AA work primarily, and for anti-infantry/material secondarily. This is not exactly unknown, you’ll see a ton of material referring to roof mounted HMGs as anti-aircraft guns. Here’s a video featuring two subject matter experts discussing the one on the T-62.
During WW2, it was explictly intended for aircraft, namely dive bombers and light strafers. A lot of German propaganda was focused on the terrifying ability of the Stuka, so a lot of thought was put in to how to counter them, and aircraft like them. A single gun on it’s own wouldn’t provide much defense, but no tank was ever supposed to be operating on it’s own. The idea was you’d have an entire column of tanks, each with their own .50 cal, all shooting at the same target, which would put up so much fire that even if they weren’t hit the pilot would abort the run.
Into the Cold War, planes became too fast for these sorts of AA mounts to be effective. And so some nations, mainly the Soviets, dropped them. However, a new threat appeared, attack helicopters. These were close and slow enough that a roof mounted heavy MG was a credible threat, epecially (Again) en masse. And so the heavy MG for AA work continued. It’s somewhat fallen out of favor now though, with attack helicopters now generally using long range standoff attacks against armor. However, the .50 is still retained for anti material work.
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I LOVE how the video you link also comments about how machine guns were basically useless against air and how the DShK is also hand cranked which would make that thing grossly inaccurate. You would be lucky to hit a helicopter and only if both were sitting still doing nothing. Thanks buddy. You all are still missing the point.
You said that the weapon wasn’t intended for shooting aircraft. I provided evidence that it was intended, and you claim checkmate?
Also, a weapon being handcranked does not nessesarily mean it’s not efficient for AA work, for example the 40mm Bofors, widely use in game and in real life as a very effective AA weapon, is handcranked for horizontal and vertical traverse. This DSHKM is only horizontally traversed (And quickly too), and the firing mechanism is right on the crank for easy shooting.
Was it effective in real life? Probably not as effective as in game, but at the same time it’s an important gameplay balance to heli rushes, and it’s hardly unreasonable that guns meant for AA work actually work for AA in game, with easier controls and more skilled operators.
What evidence? Neither of those jamokes are any more credible than I am. Did you really just cite a random YouTuber lol. So if I made YouTube videos, you would cite me?
AGAIN you are missing the point. Your argument is completely irrelevant to the discussion.
Have you fired a DshK? I have.
Have you fired a turret mounted weapon on anything? I have.
Nicholas Moran, ex-US tanker and notable tank historian, and Ian McCollum, notable firearms historian, both of whom have written books on the subject, do in fact have more credibility that some random person on the internet who claims to have served. Especially when it comes to what a weapons system was intended for, and the doctrine it was used under.
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Completely beside the point but.
Firstly the AA in WWII was largely dependent on volume of fire and luck. Be it 40mm Bofors or Flak 88s, it was all about air saturation and less about actual accuracy. Volume of fire remains a critical component of modern operations.
Planes in WWII were largely ineffective against actual tanks and precision strikes thus there was never a need for any roof mounted machine guns specifically for air defense, though they could serve dual purposes. People standing outside of a tank to fire at a plane would risk being strafed by the plane itself or likely a target of enemies in ground operations. Jets entered the fold before WWII even ended really and were to fast for any roof mounted machine guns, again, volume of fire which continued into the Cold War.
Vietnam saw the first large scale use of helicopters in combat and it was this specific niche use case based on the volume that soviet tanks were upgraded with the DshK and as I mentioned it was grossly inaccurate (Ironically your video at 19:00 shows how in accurate it is even at 800 yars, imagine trying to rotate and elevate at the same time). Warthunder does not have unarmed helicopters shuttling troops, landing in LZ, loitering helicopters in escort etc. With the introduction of ATGMs at this same time made these upgrades simultaneously obsolete and the rest is history…
Anyways, I see no value in arguing exceptions that have no real bearing on the main topic.
It’s a game … Gaijin decides how much realism serves the playability. Otherwise we can dig up old discussions about stickin gunbarrels into tanks and buildings, very basic heli-flight model and behaviour of the tracks from the tanks.
So until Gaijin decides to accept a suggestion to change the turnrates the OP has to adapt or not …
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This wasn’t known at the time though. Hence why you see continued developments of so called “Tank Buster” aircraft, like the Il-2. Inflated air kill score against armored vehicles on all sides of the conflict continued right until the end of the war, and it’s only post war (In some cases, very post war) sources that start to dissect these claims and really undermine them.
It occurs to me I had a much better video that goes over these in more detail, in reference to a Sherman. Which basically covers all the points I’m going to.
As previously mentioned, early war German propaganda films so focused on the supremacy of the Stuka for CAS work that the US army was transfixed with the idea that every single vehicle that could support one needed a .50 cal that could be pointed into the sky to defend against aircraft. You can see it in diagrams and doctrine of the day, the .50 cal is consistently labeled an AA gun.
Why do you think it was they decided on the .50 cal in the first place? A .30 cal would have been much more useful against infantry, and could have shared ammo with the coaxial gun for easier logistics. It’s why the Germans standaridized on a MG34 for their pintle mounted guns. But the .50 had the range and the firepower to damage aircraft, and that was the intended role of the roof mounted .50 during the war.
Now, that’s not to say that the war went according to doctrine. The actual effectiveness of the .50s on the roof mount of Shermans is hard to pin down, but it’s unlikely massively significant. But it’s intended role was as an AA weapon, and certainly in concept the effect of a company of tanks all firing at the sky (more barrels than the standard M45 quad mount used for close range AA at the time) would be something of a serious emotional event for the attacking pilot.
As for their post war use as AA guns, I have no doubt that it slackened off a bit, but there is a reason that even in the M 48/60 series, the enclosed .50 cal on the roof maintained the capability of pointing nearly straight up.
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What do you think the purpose of this forum is
What do you think people are doing in this thread
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discussion and suggestions are two different things …
Do you not see users discussing the performance of Rooftop machine guns in this thread
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HAHAHA
Your answere to this was also “no”
i provided historical facts. You said no.
You are lying. Thats it
No. It was classified as an Anti Air mount by the army.
Anti air was its use.
Anti ground use was the coaxial and hull machinegun.
Hence why the british dismounted the roof 50cals. Because they believed that hiding from planes was the better option.
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You replied to my quote which included the word suggestion … then you asked me what this forum is about. I told you game discussion and showed you the perfect place for YOUR suggestion.
And this is not a discussion … To all things that come up you just say NO … no no no no no … you don’t want a discussion.
EDIT … you know what … don’t even try to think about and answer. I will not bother you any more …
Strv 81, Strv 101.
Some french tanks like AMX-50 (TO90/930) have roof MGs so hilariously bad, I’d hesitate to count them.
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Then why are you commenting in this thread?