Gunnery

[Vila]

Thanks for the comments all.

Sharky:  no blast at you (that's why I dint post ur name).  You did what ya had to do given the circumstances, and would I have.  But after I'd done a fairly decent of job of avoiding your attacks from an advantage, I was fairly proud of bleeding off your e and being able to make a run for it.  Was just kinda depressing to get a radiator hit at 850 yrds and KNOW it was just a (short) matter of time before you'd get a shot at waxing me in the ditch  

Toad:  I don't have a really good answer for you other than the pilots I've talked to and my experience firing an M2 at the range.  The lehtal ranges in AH seem rather farther than most pilot accounts.... and 1000 yards is a LONG way. <shrug>

All:  I'm not NECESSARILY arguing that the "modelling" is "wrong."  Heck, I don't know.  But I agree that if the ballistics are right, then there appear to be some factors that arent taken into consideration that make gunnery easier for us.  Some possibiities:

1) We have LOTS more practice than RL WWII pilots and therefore, we're just BETTER within the confines of the sims we fly.

2) No turbulence.

3) "perfect" weapons.  That is, every .50 shoots like every other .50, making the results less "random" than in real life.  Also, weapons accuracy doesn't degrade from prolonged "spray and pray" firing.

4) Range Icons.  Makes setting up for the proper bullet drop MUCH easier.

5)  No "pilot factor".  We don't pull G's, etc.

 Vila

[Toad]

Hey, it's all just a discussion! No arms and legs getting chopped off here!

Funked, you said:

>This is based purely on reading hundreds and hundreds of first-person accounts >

What would you, of all posters,
say to a guy that wanted to speed up the P-51 flight model or degrade the Bf-109's climb ability based on this type of information? What would you expect Pyro to do?    

I think we just have to trust HTC to get the ballistics model pretty close.

The damage model is pretty subjective, OTOH and I totally agree with what Mig said above.

An anecdote to illustrate:

My PT, at some un-noticed moment (not a part of the pre-flight inspection) had the little nylon-insert lock nut fall off the stud where the throttle rod attaches to the carb. The rod, of course, realized its duty was to shake loose in flight and so it did. The carb and engine went to idle.

Since the real PT has   accurately modeled drag, a very short while later the PT was sitting undamaged in a hay field. (Yep, I'd much rather be lucky than good!) A quick fix with about a yard of safety wire and it was off and back to the home drome for a proper fix.

The moral of the story is that you don't have to blow a wing off to bring an airplane down. There are lots and lots of tiny little "soft" parts that are necessary for flight.

 

[lasse]

Ballistics seems to be right, but I actually dont have a clue  

But does that include bullet speed ?

In AH, is the bullet modeled to actually getting slower and slower thus further away from the barrel it gets ?

Like when I hit maniac at D12, did my bullet(s) hit him at max speed at that distance, it shure looked like that, but at that distance, shouldnt they be relatively slow ?

But then again, what do I know ?    

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The Wild Vikings
Commanding Officer
lasse-

[This message has been edited by lasse (edited 02-01-2000).]

[hitech]

About long range gunnery.

The modling of the bullets is fairly accurate. All bullets arn't the same and are very random in there pattern. Infact this makes long range gunnery easyer (more of a chance of a few bullets hitting) than perfect bullets would.

All weapons have different muzzle velocoties and are as accurate as the data we could find. All weapons have different drag coef.

Thing is im still not convinced that the current long range gunnery is a problem. I can on rare occasion do damage out side of 800 yards on a fighter , but it is exception not the norm. The times I do get hits at that distance the target is flying perfectly straight for me. BTW Im also interested if this is how everyone else is seeing their hits. And please don't tell me about when you got shot at that distance , only when you landed hits at long range.

A while back when this topic was brought up I posted a challange to send me films of anyone getting a kill out side of 850 yards. Never did recieve a film.

Buff's need to be able to hit at longer range's than fighters simply do to net lag on 6 problem. If we didn't give them a slightly longer range a fighter could sit just out of buff range, 200 - 400 yard net lag differance, and shoot with imunity.

Im open to suggestion's and comments but we also need to discuss what we want out of gunnery in the end. In my view there are only 2 ways of looking at things.

1. From a real life view point, this involves only what could be done in real planes and not what was done by the average pilot. Because almost everyone playing has better gunnery abilitys the 99% of real life WWII pilots.

2. We adjust gunnery to what we want the outcome to be. If we wish to elimitate kills out side of a certan range, then we just remove bullets after they fly a certian distance. Or we adjust lethalities at longer ranges to be even lower than they are now.

HiTech

[Yeager]

I think the ultimate observation I could make
on this issue is not so much about how the bullits behave after leaving the gun barrel (in AH I am *satisfied* with the current modeling) but rather, how secure the actual guns were in their mounts.  Here is an example using a Remington 308, bolt action hunting rifle:  Bedding is a term used to describe how the reciever is secured in the stock.  A glass bead bedding is preferred due to the enchanced
accuracy it provides.  Now I have seen both the regular factory mountings and the glass bead mountings and I tell you there is nothing I can see that explains why such a minor tweak makes such a noticable difference but it does improve hit groupings at longer ranges.  The reason is simple when you investigate the principle.  The glass bead bedding creates a more stable mating between the receiver and the the stock.  Extrapolate this to a large aluminum airframes powered by large vibrating engines.  Coupled with the wear and tear that occur in installation and maintenance of the guns, the stresses on the airframe even in one G flight and one starts to get a feel for the actual vr the virtual.  There are so many factors playing on the RL ballistics that these planes rarey got hits on enemy aircraft out passed 600-700 yards in actual combat.

Hits in AH out past 700 yrds should to be rare but not impossible.

Am I making ANY sense?

Does this observation have ANY pertinence to this topic?

Yeager


[This message has been edited by Yeager (edited 02-01-2000).]

[Rude]

<Yeager>....

Of course you are man....you have always made sense to me

<Toad>.....

In regards to your last post....Well Said....I doubt that WWII Fighter Aircraft possessed spare parts on board

<To All Who Posted>.....

This whole thread made me tired Was interesting but is the topic really that relevant to us having fun? You guys be the judges, as for me, I dont plan on lettin any of you within 1500yds of my ride

Cyas Up!

Rude Out!


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[Pyro]

The last time this came up, it suddenly died off after HT asked for film.  So I will repeat this request.  Can one of you long range sharpshooters be so kind as to make film of this?  I don't want film of other people shooting you, I want film from the shooters perspective.  

Just take a ride a P-51 up and only shoot at people who are over 800 yards away and send me film.

I'm not saying this to be facetious, I can't do more than get a lucky ping once in awhile from those distances.  I need to see what you're talking about.



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Doug "Pyro" Balmos
HiTech Creations

"If it's stupid but works, it's not stupid."

[Westy]

Well I'm Joe Average at best when it comes to aerial gunnery. I've found in AH that I should not ever bother taking a shot if the con is 650 or over.
There are many occasions that I have had a decent deflection shot and I will hit the trigger if the con is at approx 650-600 in range. But I lead the hell out of em. And I do occasionally get good hits. Enough to make the bogy break thier flight path and lose more E where I can hopefully finish them off.
 I have never gotten a kill at better than 650.  I also cannot recall being shot down from any great distance. Or if I was maybe I did not take notice as I've been so used to the Internet fudge factor sometimes involved in these things.
 If anyones keeping track, fly mainly .50 armed aircraft. The exception being the C205 and occasionally the Spitfire.
 Just my "average joe" wooden nickels worth.

 -Westy

[funked]

Toad  - Yeah I dunno what it is.

I'm not going to pretend I know very much about modeling damage or ballistics.

It just seems weird compared to the anectdotes.

Who knows, maybe all the vets were misjudging the range.      

P.S.  I only go to the anectdotes when I don't have any other information.  I'll take scientific tests over anectdotes anyday.  But I don't think there's much data out there for our gunnery questions.

Some factors that might be at work here:

1.  I think small scale turbulence is under-rated.  I ridden in a lot of twin turboprops that I would think are less resistant to turbulence than a smaller plane like a WW2 fighter.  In these planes I've noticed that the nose wobbles around quite a bit in level flight (yes sometimes they even let me look out the front of the plane).  Anyways this motion is definitely enough to screw up a 750-yd gun solution.

2.  The laser rangefinder probably helps more than we realize.  I know my first bursts are usually pretty darn close, even out at 750 yds.

3.  We get perfect damage feedback.  If we score a hit, we always see the hit flash.  I'm not sure a real pilot would be able to see this at 1000 yrds.  Anyways the hit flashes are a great tool for adjusting fire.

4.  Net Lag.  Never trust a range report from the guy that got shot.  Hits are scored on the shooter's front end.  Whatever range he sees is the range that matters.  What the other guy sees is meaningless.

[This message has been edited by funked (edited 02-01-2000).]

[Phantom121]

I did 10 year in USMC (67-77) mostly in the air wing but I did fire the M2 (.50) and the M60 (7.63mm) a fair amount on the range and both in combat (a little on the M2 - about 2 belts, a lot of M60 - serveral thousand rounds).  On the range with the M2 getting out to 1000 or 1200 yrd was learnable and often acheived by better gunners (not me), the M60's was more like 800 to 1000.  However, in combat, accurate gunnery was often well less then half that.  Poor conditions and stress (fear, adrenalin,  fatigue) I am sure were contributing factors.  Long range shot were not attempted nearly as much ammo was a scarce resource and running out was not conducive to long term survival.  Yes, those guns are accurate to long ranges, yes they do a lot of damage at those ranges, but under real combat conditions that is dificult (but not impossible) to achieve.  Now as to HiTech's question, I do a lot of long range gunnery and I am pretty good at it (my convergence is almost always at max).  It is my belief that the further out and can "work" the opponent the better it is for me.  I have routinely gotten hits out to 1200 (none beyond, seems I would get an occasional hit out to 1500)  but damage beyond 900 is pittiful at best (seems none existent beyond 1000).  I have downed a few planes at 1000 (almost all not manuvering) and many many 600 to 800.  However, I use a lot more ammunition per kill than most (long range gunnery is hard).  If it were real life, I doubt that I would attempt most of those shots (the penalty here for running out is much less severe).  Well a long winded answer - to say, all and all, current damage is not out of line (although long range damage might be a little on the light side) and that the gunnery seems pretty well modelled.

[Phantom121]

Pyro - you post came in while I was writting that long winded reply.  I will record you some long range hits (kills beyond 800 are very hard).

[funked]

P.S.

I played the abomination known as WB 2.6.  This taught a lot of us to be ridiculously precise with the guns, and my opinions are colored as a result.

[CptTrips]

>The last time this came up, it suddenly
>died off after HT asked for film.

Well I'm no sharp shooter but I did get a kill on Stalker1 the other night where I was d1.5 on his end and d1.1 on mine.  Complete luck, not a common occurance.  I was going fast so had nice stable platform and he was flying straight as a arrow (must have been on autopilot). I was in Spit firing mg and cannon.  No film but he can confirm I imagine.  

As far as the Buff's range...shrug.  I think the real problem isn't their range or lethality.  The real problem is that there is no wind layers to effect bombing accuracy.  They should have to get lower to bomb accurately.  The less air the bomb drops through the less it get blown off target.  That would allow fighters to dive in slashing attacks instead of climbing desparately upto a bomber from the six as they bomb with impunity and laser guided accuracy from near earth orbit.

$0.02 no charge,
Wab

[TT]

 You guys can pick any range that you like. I dont fire long range shots anyway. What I would like to see. Is something really bad happen to a wing I light up at 60 yrds. I dont want to hear about convergance. When my whole screen is full of airplane. Convergance shoud'nt matter.

[Pyro]

Who knows, maybe all the vets were misjudging the range
---------------------------------
Funked, there's a lot to that.  Anytime I've read about combat reports being matched to gun-cams where actual range can be measured, its stated that most pilots would underestimate the range in their reports.

I was once flying as a crewman when we had a near mid-air collision.  I'm sitting in the back of the plane and just happen to look out my window as a H-3 just passes off our port wing on a reciprical heading.  We all saw it just at the same instant and it put everyone's heart in their throat.  Now if I had to write a report immediately afterward(I didn't), I would have guessed that we passed within 50 feet of each other.  In reality, it was probably more like 50 yards.  But I can certainly see how perceptions differ when you're in a scared or excited state.  It's not the same as looking down the fairway at the pin.

Phantom, those are good points too.  Military pilots are going to perform as they're trained.  If they're trained not to shoot at extreme distances, most of them won't do it.

As to the film, mind you I'm not just looking for a hit or two to prove that it's possible.  I know it's possible and that's intentional.  I just want if it's really as effective a tactic as it's often made out to be.

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Doug "Pyro" Balmos
HiTech Creations

"If it's stupid but works, it's not stupid."

[This message has been edited by Pyro (edited 02-01-2000).]