What gun load do you select for your given aircraft (if you have a choice).

[Karnak]

I mostly fly Spitfires and usally choose 2 20mm cannon and 4 .303 machineguns.

Sisu

[Rocket]

For the spit 9 the best choice IMHO is the .50s and 20mm.  303s have a great rate of fire but are like throwing bbs at the target. I fly the spit 5 a lot now and after running outta cannon I have used 700 or so left over 303s and watch the enema fly away.

S!

Rocket

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The Red Dragons
Fierce and Bold
With Honour and Courage
_______________________
www.reddragons.de

[Minotaur]

 

Originally posted by Karnak:
I mostly fly Spitfires and usally choose 2 20mm cannon and 4 .303 machineguns.

Sisu

Karnak;

I have posted some Lethality Numbers Here in about the middle to end of the thread.

The lethality of a 30cal is 1.7 and is 6.4 for a 50cal.  For total lethality you add all the lethality of all the guns.

For a Spit comparing 30cal vs 50cal.  The 4x30cal has 6.8 and the 2x50cal has 12.8 total lethality.

If you add in the two 20mm you end up with 2x20mm + 4x30cal for 22.7 and 2x20mm + 2x50cal for 28.7 total lethality of the aircraft.

You can decide.  Good luck to you!  


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Mino
The Wrecking Crew

[Westy]

 I've found that if you want a kill with the Spit V 303's (After the cannon have run out) you had better be close. REAL close, like,  100-200 and shoot straight  
 I have gotten 3 kill runs several times, in base defense, with a Spit V. Not bad.  Especially for me.

-Westy

[ra]

P51--4x.50s
190--2x20mm, 2x13mm
spit--2x20mm, 2x.50
109--20mm in nose, usually no gondolas
205--heavy armament, tho sometimes MGs only for fun

My outlook is that unless you know you are going after buffs, why bring more firepower than you need.  Killing in the Hog-1C and the Niki, for example, just isn't as much fun as killing in a plane which requires tracking the target for a kill,  IMHO.

ra

[Swager]

For the Spit I chose the .303s.  Reason is I never shoot anything down anyways so I use the .303 to "scare" someone off of a friendlies tail.  Hey! It works sometimes.  


Mainly I like the sound of the .303s  

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Swager
"Damn.....I can't believe I missed that shot!!!"

JG2 "Richthofen"

[Dingy]

<tongue in cheek>

In the Nik I usually carry the 4 20s  

-Ding

[Vermillion]

Mino, you are just using the numbers & formual from Shaw correct?

Because, Shaw's couple of pages is just the barest framework of whats needed to calculate relative lethality, especially if you are comparing both cannons and machine guns in the same situation.

Two critical point's that you have to consider are: 1.) Explosive Energy content of Cannon shells (Shaw's lacks this totally) and 2.) British .303's do not equal US .30's, or US 20mm's are not equal to German MG151 20mm's, which are not equal to ShVAK 20mm's, etc etc etc.

A couple of years back I did a big study into relative lethality, and its all up on my website if your interested. Vermillion's Planes of WWII. Please note however the cannon explosive component applied to the airframe is open to debate.

For instance a .303 is quite a bit different than the US .30 machine gun.  Using metric numbers the US .30 delivers 52 kiljoules (kJ) of energy in a one second burst, versus 47 kJ for the British .303.  The M2 .50 cal produces 220 kJ for a one second burst.

So if the x2 20mm cannons produce Y energy (to keep discussion simple).

x4 .303's + x2 20mm's = 188+Y kJ
x2 .50's + x2 20mm's = 440+Y kJ

In other words the two .50's produce 234% of the lethality of the four .303's.

If you use the US .30 cal numbers you only get 188%, which to most people seems small, but is quite statistically significant.

I highly suggest anyone interested in this subject read Emmanuel Gustins' WWII Fighter Gun Debate

Ok, I'm sure I just put about 80% of the people reading this thread to sleep with all my Engineering Babble     Sorry

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Vermillion
**MOL**, Men of Leisure
 
   

[This message has been edited by Vermillion (edited 03-15-2000).]

[Udie]

 190a8 w/ 2x 20mm for furballing,  I think people don't realize how well this baby turns under 10k when she's not loaded up w/ cannons.

 190a8 w/ 4x20mm or 2x30mm+2x20mm if I feel like climbing up to 25k and BnZ'ing some poor victom, or when I want to go vulching  

 All 109's w/ just the nose cannon.

p51 w/ 2x.50 at all times, unless in a senario.

default for all others, but I mainly fly the 190  

udie

[Minotaur]

Verm;

OUCH!  

Shaw is close enough for me, because I am only interested in relative approximate comparisons.

Just the same I will check out your website.  Thanks for the info.

------------------
Mino
The Wrecking Crew

[Duckwing6]

could sbdy post the relative comparison as a chart for all theplanes and loadouts pls ?

Thanks

[Minotaur]

Verm;

Looking at your web page under the topic of Lethality you descibe that you based your computional results upon the formula in Shaw's book.

I am confused at your computation results.  Shaw is explicit and describes the lethality of a P-51D as 38.  On your table you calculate it as being 1322.  What am I missing?

Thanks!  

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Mino
The Wrecking Crew

[funked]

For the Spitfire, I like the fifties.  I save the 20mm for the knife-fights and use the fifties to tickle bandits at long range.

[fats]

Bf 109G-2: 1 x MG 151/20, 2 x MG 17
Bf 109G-6: 1 x MK 108, 2 x MG 131
Fw 190A-8: 4 x MG 151/20, 2 x MG 131*


//fats
*) It ain't a Focke wulf if it ain't got serious ammounts of whop ass!

[Vermillion]

Mino, its real simple .....

Units  

Shaw uses imperial (English/American) units, while I used Metric units.

I found it simpler to use the metric, when I started adding the explosive content into the equation.

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Vermillion
**MOL**, Men of Leisure
 
 

[This message has been edited by Vermillion (edited 03-16-2000).]