YaK-9K: Remove it's APHE belt or move it up to 5.7 in GRB

It’s not fine, when a struggle-bus like Ta-152C3 with no APHE (the best shell is stealth 30mm which makes aiming more difficult, it has 58mm pen and horrible post pen), horrible turn rate, worst mid/late 20mms (the only cannons of the era outside of Hispanos where enemy fighter can tank 8 shots and still fly home just fine, but MG151/20 has horrible range and velocity bleed on top of that) is 6.3 for some reason.
UT is a bit slower on the deck. And that’s it. Everywhere else it’s just SO MUCH better.
It is more effective than 6.7 Me-262 with 50mm because 262’s gun is inaccurate, 262 is an absolute bus, fragile as hell, fairly big and has no other weapons outside of 50mm which is a hit and miss vs planes.

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I fire Berezin in short bursts. Just like Shvak as both are hammers of god. I fire Hispanos and MG151/20 in long bursts because I know I need to land at least 8 shells to be sure.
The fact 90g Shvak shell with 5g of TNT cripples planes with 1 hit while Yak-3U gets hit with MK108 330g shell with 90g of TNT in the wingtip and only loses aileron (wingtip stays attached) and another in the tail (loses half the elevator, pulls like nothing happened) and only dies because I landed 4-6 MG151/20 shells to the engine/fuselage and set him on fire is pretty damn telling. Without the fire, even id every other shell landed, he would have flown away, lol.

Are you confident you are hitting with the Mg151/20 shells and not the machine gun? I’ve gotten angry before at just how tanky some planes were, went into the replay and watched it and saw my 20mm rounds flying past the target harmlessly while my mgs were hitting.

The cannon is often on the bottom of the nose, not on the top. This can lead to scenarios, especially without vertical targetting, where you land hits with the machineguns but not the cannon.

Stepping the frames 1 by 1, around 3 shells hit the engine pod.

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The bottom tracer is the mg151/20. In this screenshot, it was fired with 300m convergence vertical targetting, so all 3 tracers impacted on the same point. Without VT or outside of convergence range, the mg151/20 will start falling behind the machinegun bullets.

Depending on what belt you use (stealth vs universal vs air targets), your 20mm cannon either fires 785 m/s rounds (stealth) or 720 m/s (air targets, universal). Meanwhile your 7mm fires 905 m/s on universal. The two also have significantly different ballistics so at longer ranges diverge greatly.

My experience with Bf109F4/Bf109G14 has been that if I shoot a plane where my guns converge + vertical targetting and I have proper lead AND ping is ~60-80 AND shoot enough so that I fire off 1 HEI shell in my belt and not just IT/AP-I - the plane I shoot turns into a fireball provided it has a fuselage fuel tank or I hit the engine.

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Ta-152H has no machineguns.
And I routinely watch replays to see what the hell happened. I was kinda surprised that after a really rich burst I gave that Yak-3U it just continued his maneuver, luckily the fire did the job.
MK108 to wingtip does not destroy the wingtip.
2 shvak shells mid-wing and entire wing is gone. That’s how the game works nowadays.
Berezin will also de-wing your aircraft if you land 2-3 HE bullets from 800m away.
I would gladly switch 4 Hispanos on Wyvern for 3 Berezins. And I would gladly switch 2xMG151/20 175 RPG + 1xMK108 with 90 RPG on Ta-152H for 1 Type 99 Mk2 with 170 shells or for 2 Shvaks with 270 ammo total.
Japanese and Soviet guns are just that good nowadays.

You yourself said it should be 6.0 or 6.3 and it is 6.0 as of now.

I’d say that with amount of uptiers 6.0 ground gets, it is in a fine spot. 6.0 is domain of stuff like Corsair, Bf 109K, Yak-3U or late mustangs and spitfires. Yak-9UT is by far an inferior fighter to all of those.

I mean, around 6.3 it’s still way better than Ta-152C3, Me-262 A1U4, AD-4 etc.
A1H is better but it’s typical pay2win case.
AU-1 may be just as deadly, but again - pay2win + it’s a boat with bombs.
UT based on its ability to kill ground targets can go to 6.7 Ground RB no problem. Which opens up a slot for 5.7 Yak-9K. :)

In Ground RB being an inferior fighter whole being the best attacker doesn’t sound like that much of a problem. Yak-3U can strafe some guys with 15mm top armor and some open tops. And that’s it.
K4 can drop a single bomb.
Ta-152H can’t do shit.
There’s a big price to being a better fighter around that BR. F4U4B is a better fighter while still retaining reasonable ground attack capability. Thing is, F4U4B with bombs is a vastly inferior fighter, while Yak-9UT can dogfight with its full anti-tank load no issue.
And UT is a better ground attacker than U4B.

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It will never be better than Me 262 A1 u4. Even if Me’s accuracy wasn’t greatly improved like a month or 2 ago, it was always much faster allowing it to be close to immune to enemy fighters and it always had double the penetration.

Sure RoF and maneuvrability is better on the Yak, but Me 262 surely deserves the higher BR, especially now with improved accuracy.

I wouldn’t say it’s much better than AD-4 either. Sure AD-4 has smaller kill potential, but has an advantage of bomb CAS being generally much easier to use and being less vulnerable to AA.

When it comes to TA idk, i have never played it, but from what i remember it’s not even a dedicated CAS plane so why would it matter? A much better plane to compare Yak to would be Do 335 B-2 which at 5.7 seems to be comparable to Yak in most regards.

Yak-9UT at 6.7 would be a joke of a plane, just like Yak-9K would be at 5.7. How do i know that? Because i used to uptier my Yak-9UT to 6.7 a lot when spading USSR rank IV. It just gets owned by all of the AA in that BR range, let alone fighters.

And yes, being an inferior fighter in GRB makes a difference, because surprisingly people can and do play dedicated fighters in GRB. A single good player in a decent fighter can deny enemy team from having any air support. Yak-9 is already inferior to other fighters at 6.0, at 6.7 it would be no different from a fat attacker.

If I’m a joke, you’re the entire circus.

Skill means better win rate, what a harebrained assertion.

Pretty sure the discussion is about Ground Battles and the Yak-9K or UT have easily more ground vehicle killing power than most fighter bombers or attackers while maintaining fighter like agility and speed.

The difference between the Yak-9T firing 37mm solid shot is light years apart from the 9K firing APHE.

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Dude. Taiwan, be careful. Habby stalked me and followed me into a GRB match and Teamkilled me by strafing my M44 with his pitiful Bf 109 F-4. All he can do is TK cuz he can’t get enemy kills and also can’t beat us in arguments. IMO he talks crap and acts like crap, just spam reporting my messages to hide them. Bet he’s got 10 alts spam reporting me.

Please provide link to server replay

Uhhh…I’ll find it maybe (idk how tho

You can just write me time and map of the battle

He can come after me all he wants, I’m not so obsessed with stats or win rate to really care about another death or a thrown match for a forum argument lol

Please please please let this be true and post a replay

it would be so funny

uhh…I don’t know…like my european (German) time was like 3-something and map uh…Kuban. I’ll get a screenshot sometiome soon.

CAn’t record but a screenshot i’ll find.

I like that spirit!

Here are some screenshots:


That’s Habby shooting me (the dead thing there)

Can clearly see that’s Habby
Screenshot 2025-04-23 165803
The Chat Log ( I screenshotted the screenshot).

Here’s how you share replays:

  1. Go to Gaijin Entertainment - Single Sign On

Use the following settings:

Open all battles with down arrow:

Ctrl+f " Internationalism"

Copy replay link:
https://warthunder.com/en/tournament/replay/332443022900224465

Nota bene: you can watch chat in real time.

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