Damage is another issue entirely.
Il2 planes require either a critical hit(engine or pilot) to get any kind of quick kill. It can certainly be done. But mearly parking on a guys 6 at 200 yards and hitting him with 6 20mm usually wont do it. In the new expansion I droped the whole ammo load of a he162 into a C47 from the 6 oclock..and it never went down. I was able to repeat this several times...Its like 151/20s are 7.92mm
One mk108 brings it down though...
That's where the
"quality of hit" factor comes in. FB/AEP is impressive, but even it has its limits in visual quality. Due to the limitations of graphical representation, the visually exploding 20mm rounds may not be what is really happening at all.
In real life, you'd see the difference between a HE blast blowing up inside after it is well embedded(a large explosion with smoke, small fire and shrapnel, debris flying all over the surface), and an HE shell prematurely detonating/barely grazing the surface(which you would see an explosion and some smoke, but only a small hole about the size of two fists would be formed.)
The difference is shown in some of the recent threads where people asked for damage pictures - an embedded, and then perfectly detonated blast will blow a large chunk out of the structure. A prematurely detonated, or poor quality of hit shells will make only a small hole.
Thus, the difference is noticeable in where you hit what in which circumstances - parking on somebody's direct six produces a high probability of poor quality shots due to the thin profile of the wing and its trailing edges. It's like shooting the edges of a table from the sides and expecting it to break up. Especially with something like the Fw190 with four cannons spread apart in the wings, unless the convergence is right, surprisingly large amounts of shots result in poor quality shots.
Now, the same sort of shots in AH are registered as perfectly good hits, and it will bring down a plane no matter what. In FB/AEP, they are registered as only as much as they are worth.
In a simple test, I sort of recreated the event of Saburo Sakai and the C-47. I took up a A6M2 and did some quick target practices and the result was nothing unsatisfatory.
If I open up from too far, it would take as many as 9~10 20mms on the wings to make the C-47 go down. If I drive closer and concentrate my shots on the tail section, the C-47 structure holds, but it's loses control of the plane and plummets down to earth gradually. If I aim for the engines with the MGs, I can set all of them on fire one by one - a fire erupts, the C-47 pilot engages fire-extinguishers. And then I hit some more, and finally the fuel ignites and starts to burn.
..
Another confusion comes from this; knowing the above fact, some people will prefer to aim for the rear fuselage rather than the wing. They see multiple sparks and explosions fly but see the target is still up, and immediately the reaction becomes negative.
Make a track and analyze the shots one has fired with the "arcade=1" option on, and one immediately notices that the multiple volley of 20mms in fact, did not land on any concentrated area. 1~2 shots hit the rudder, some 1~2 other shots land on the horizontal stabs. Only 1~2 shots really "land" on the rear fuselage, making its way through the protruding obstacles and not getting snagged by it.
The end result is, the target plane loses a lot of rudder authority, may lose partial or total elevator control, loses top speed due to the holes drilled at the rear fuselage, and loses overall stability of the plane. In fact, in many cases such a hit locks the target plane into a gradual decline which will eventually force the pilot to bail out - but the pilot with the AH mindset will refuse to understand that. He saw some 5~8 bursts on the plane. If it does not go down with it's rear end snapped off, and grants him a kill immediately .. he becomes disappointed.
...
The best results are achieved with slight deflection. A single burst into the engine block sets a lot of planes on fire. A single burst into the flat of the wingroot, also sets a lot of fire. There are as much countering accounts as each "strange incidences" are brought up, and it effectively boils down to the assumption that heck, we're not really as good as we'd like to think we are.
The crackshot short burst kills are possible. There was this very same sort of debate in FB/AEP, which tempted me to do series of tests of my own. In no occasion will a plane withstand more than 5~6 hits to a single concentrated area. Only when the shots are spread all over, the plane "miraculously" holds.
As said, even a fragile plane like the Bf109 which will lose some sort of control the moment a 50cal armed plane even sneezes at it, will withstand upto some 10~15, even 20 20mm hits depending how cooky the hits landed. It's those kind of "miracles" which P-47 pilots encountered, and it's that much rare in FB/AEP.
...
To me, this whole analogy of basing the assumption towards truth to only AH, and then working from there, drawing out a conclusion which emphasizes the "gameyness" of FB/AEP, is a totally reversed logic.
IMO we really should get used to thinking that landing the 10~12 kill sorties in AH MA is not because we're all that better than WW2 pilots. Our game is just easier to get kills in.
