I have noticed over the past several months an appreciable change in the performance of air target HE loads in war thunder. I typically use average sized cannons (20mm), and with the higher volume of shells, it’s easier to overlook the damage output per shell, but I have recently noticed these effects in planes with high caliber guns.
I want to take the Me-262 A-2/U4 as an example. This aircraft has a 50mm main gun, and with HE loads, each shell contains an explosive mass of nearly half a kilogram of TNT. I can’t say I have used this aircraft a ton, but I did use it some in the past, and most shots that land (regardless of the aircraft type) were instant kills. This is to be expected, the shock of such a single shell of this explosive mass would be capable of tearing tail sections off of large bombers without issue.
Since this air cannon HE rework debacle I recently did some testing with it. I’ve found that it now typically takes an average of 4-6 hits to land a kill on a bomber, and more often than not, it won’t kill a fighter in once shot.
Here’s an example I selected from a hit I scored on a FW-190 F8
Here’s the moment of impact on the plane:
Damage Aftermath
Top Down:
Side Image Showing side of engine and fuselage
From Below
As you can see, it’s almost like the shell put a giant 3 foot diameter hole in the base of the wing right next to the fuselage and did absolutely no shrapnel or shock damage. Notice that there is almost no damage to critical components on the fuselage. In any real life scenario I am certain that the explosion associated with the impact of a 50mm HE shell at the location seen above would have been more than capable of critically damaging the fuselage and rear components of the engine, and even probabaly killed the pilot. This is quite literally a bomb going off feet from the pilot’s legs. The plane would have likely been a fireball instantly after this impact if the wing didn’t shear off, but in Gainjin’s current model, little to no damage was done to the FW 190.
Please test this out for yourself. Go into the mission editor and try shooting down bombers (B-17’s, Halifax, Lancaster, B-24, etc.) with either this Me 262 or a Yak 9K and see how inneficient and unrealistic these very high caliber shells have become. A hit from a 50mm HE should be ripping tails off of planes, not damaging a single elevator. It often times can take as many as 8 or 9 50mm HE shells to land before you can get a kill on a B-17E, with multiple shells slamming into and exploding in the tail section.
I admit that I am not the most technically versed in damage effects from explosive shells on aircraft, but I don’t feel as though I need to be to say that this is an unrealistic representation of what a 50mm HE shell would do, but this is simply poor modeling on Gaijins part and it seems these large shells are almost incapable of damaging more than one component at a time.
Does anyone have any further input? I’d like to see more examples of this, or if you disagree, and think this is a fair representation of a high caliber HE shell impact, I’d like to hear your explanation.
