I've been seeing a lot of people complaining that the acks are immune to the 50cals... Of course, they are not really immune, but need constant firing of some 200~300 rounds to kill.
..........
Now, I've theorized that this was neither a bug, nor something having to do with 50cals, but simply a matter of aiming and convergence - most of the 50cal armed planes are wing-mounted. As discussed in some gunnery threads, the difference between center line armament and wing-armament is much more profound in AH2.
Acks are very small targets. And in a few runs against them I've come to feel that no matter how much I strafe the ack, none of what I've fired is actually hitting the target area itself.
Hitting a target that small with planes with guns mounted in the wings, means that there's really only one range, one distance where the guns could bear and get an accurate hit on it.
......
Then that would mean that 50cals armed at centerline should be easier to kill acks with.
I've tested my theory with the SBD with 2x50cals at the nose. The result was as I assumed, and the ack was destroyed very easily.
As long as the 50cal hits the ack, it goes down.
The results people have been seeing - particularly most often seen when CV-based Corsairs attack an airfield - is a combined result of;
1) bad aim
2) natural disadvantage of the weapon itself
3) natural disadvantage of the weapons mounting.
......
But that got me thinking again.
Then shouldn't the same thing apply to planes with wing-armed cannons?
The Fw190 has cannons mounted at the wingroots.. but what about planes with cannons mounted at the outboard of the wing? Such as the Spitfire? Or the Bf109E-4?
So I've tested it out.
A cannon is much more powerful than a HMG round, but it's slower in RoF and worse in trajectory - which means also harder to aim and expect hits... especially when
But every single pass of the attack the acks were going down very easily.
While testing the 50cals on the SBD out, I noticed that I need exact hits on the ack-gun itself to kill it. But when testing planes with outboard cannons - which should suffer from same convergence issues - I realized that I was destroying acks which I think my fired shots did not land on.
So, again I tried another test. I flew a Bf109E-4 with convergence set to 250 yards, and headed for a gun emplacement. At the very last moment, almost as if I'd collide, I fired my cannons. I assumed that at that distance, the cannons cannot hit the target ack-gun due to convergence.
Just as I thought, my fired cannon rounds did not hit the ack. It landed very near, but did not directly strike the ack.... but I was able to kill it.
...
So, to make a long story short...
does the cannons in AH have HE blast effect when it strikes the ground???
