.50 in aircraft

[YUCCA]

Seems to me damage is based on velocity.. Thats why hispanos kick butt and the more explosive german20mm's suck.

[ra]

I think the Hispanos are better than the German 20mms because they are easier to aim.  If you hit something with the German cannons it goes down.

[rabbidrabbit]

Originally posted by hitech
Mak333, you are completely wrong.


HiTech

Good to know... how about clearing it up a shade so others know and can share the knowledge next time this comes up?

[peregrin]

Originally posted by BALSUR
Due to the short barrels in the wings the ammunition cannot obtain full powder burn. So, your .50's and other "rifle" cartridges are only getting from 500 to 800 foot pounds. Most pistol cartridges achieve up to 1100 so, you can see where distance, accuracy and power is greatly reduced.

Sorry, but you're way off here.  A .50cal (say 700 grain bullet give or take) would have to have a velocity of only 500 ft/sec to give 800 foot pounds of energy.  Or less than half the speed of my .357 snub nose.  At the frequently quoted muzzle velocity of 2900 ft/s for the 50cal its energy is over 26,000 foot pounds.  If we assume that the aircraft version was so bad that it's muzzle velocity was only 2000 ft/s it still has 12,500 foot pounds.  You're figure of 500-800 is just wrong.

If the .50 was as bad as you say, bullet energy would be the least of our concerns.  A 700 grain bullet with 800 ft-lbs of energy is only going 340mph!!!  Most of the planes in AH could outrun it!

--Peregrine.

[Karnak]

Originally posted by rabbidrabbit
Good to know... how about clearing it up a shade so others know and can share the knowledge next time this comes up?

It has been shared in the past.  My post above HiTech's was not a wild guess.

[rabbidrabbit]

Alrighty.. What I'm saying is a brief description would have been helpfull.

[thebest1]

IDK, but ive seen real live guncams and some vids of .50s being shot at heystackes with targets on them (for the convergances) and .50s i think were more acuratley "displayed" back when AH2 1st came out, but still too strong. I think they went a tad overboard with the toning down on the .50s. Ive seen a guncamera of the P51D and the P40E and they completely ripped planes apart, expecially the P40E on the Jap planes in the pacific. I saw a P51D zoom down on a 109G6 and rip its wing clear off, but i dont know how close they were.

-My 2 cents!!!!!!

[BALSUR]

ok Peregrin, you can go and read it for yourself. The ballistic information came from "WW2 Fighter Gun Debate" at the following sight....
http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/hanger/8217/fgun/fgun-in.html

I believe the Ballistic table came from the US Navy.

I also looked into gun cameras having a zoom on them and they did not. Then common sense told me they were activated when the pilot pulled the trigger how would he be able to zoom them in and out. He couldn't! Shouldn't of even spent my time looking this one up.

   As for the real live gun cams of airplanes flying in and "blowing the wings off" of other planes there are many factors involved in this. How many - or + G's the plane was pulling. How many hits on the wing and so on. Bottom line is I didn't say it couldn't be done.

[Kweassa]

Blowing the wing off with .50s usually happened when the hit rounds penetrated and ignited the ammo box. Otherwise, just plain cutting the wing off with .50s alone would require a significant amount of .50s striking the supporting structures and causing it to fail.

 Frankly, the only cases of .50 guncams blowing wings off planes I've seen was when the enemy plane was already on fire and losing control, and could be cosidered "shot down". .50s hit, fuel leak, fuel ignition, pilot bails, and boom! the flame ignites the ammo box and the wing rips off. I've never seen .50 rounds just plain "saw off" a wing.

 In that sense, I'm all for implementing a new situation in AH2, so when a plane is leaking fuel, more hits to the leaking area would have a high chance(at least 30%) of igniting the fuels and causing a flame.

 However, I've seen nothing problematic with the accuracy, or hitting power of the .50 itself.

[peregrin]

Originally posted by BALSUR
ok Peregrin, you can go and read it for yourself. The ballistic information came from "WW2 Fighter Gun Debate" at the following sight....
http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/hanger/8217/fgun/fgun-in.html

I believe the Ballistic table came from the US Navy.

Actually, I can't read it for myself, since the link is broken.  But I don't need to read it.  I've done the unit conversion necessary. Energy is 0.5 * mass * velocity**2 every time.  You're numbers for .50 cal energy are wrong, no matter who you're quoting.

Also, I believe the fellow who referred to a "zoom" lens meant a telephoto lens, ie, a lens with fixed but large magnification.  No pilot intervention required.

--Peregrine.

[StarOfAfrica2]

Just curious........

Are the .50s modelled as API or just plain ole .50 cal. bullets?

[63tb]

In most of the US gun camera footage I've seen, the target plane winds up on fire. Also a lot of the British BoB reports mention their targets burning or smoking heavily. In RL were fuel/oil lines armored? It seems that if you sprayed a target plane with .50 bullets you would have a pretty good chance of cutting a line somewhere. Is that type of thing modeled in AH or just if you hit the engine or fuel tank itself?

63tb

[RTSigma]

I think the word of the thread here people is:


Get closer. And when you think you're close,....GET CLOSER!

[YUCCA]

I dont recall whether or not they are API or not.  I think they should be though.

[MOSQ]

"What we're talking about here is muzzle velocity. Due to the short barrels in the wings the ammunition cannot obtain full powder burn. So, your .50's and other "rifle" cartridges are only getting from 500 to 800 foot pounds. Most pistol cartridges achieve up to 1100 so, you can see where distance, accuracy and power is greatly reduced. When you use these calibers with proper barrel length you'll acheive the 2000+ you'd expect from them. This is partly why cannons became a must. Not because their ballistics where any better(only slightly, 1300 to 1800)"

"The comparison is the foot pounds.
the .50 and other "rifle" caliber MG's were only hitting 500 to 800 and an average pistol cartridge can hit upto a 1100. No comparison just using an example of muzzle velocity. "

Balsur,
I guess those WWII armorers should have just stripped the machine guns out of the wings and put Model 1911 Colts in!

I don't where you get this stuff, but you are off by a mile! To say that a WWII Aircraft machine gun has less energy than a pistol is so far off the mark as to make anything else you say suspect.

Get your facts straight before you post such a ridiculous statement.

Example, my favorite pistol round is the .45acp. :
From http://www.federalcartridge.com

MV is Muzzle Velocity, ME is Muzzle Energy

230 Gr. JHP Hydrashock      850 MV fps / 369 ME Ft-lbs
185 Gr. JHP                         950  MV fps / 371 ME Ft-lbs
230 Gr. FMJ                         835  MV fps / 356 ME Ft-lbs
185 Gr. JHP+P Hydrashock 1140 MV fps / 534 ME Ft-lbs

The site you put the incorrect link to is probably: http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/8217/fgun/fgun-pe.html

The 50 cal M2:Browning .50 M2 Bullet Weight: 43.3Gr. That is in Grams, not Grains. 43.3 Grams is 1.6 ounces!

Pistol bullets are listed in Grains, Machine Guns in Grams.
In other words the .45 acp 185 gr. weighs only 11.99 Grams.
 
50 cal M2 Muzzle Velocity is 880  Meters/sec

NOTE: That is Meters per second, NOT feet per second!!!!

The WWII M2 .50 cal machine gun had a bullet weight 3.6 times higher and travelled 3.1 times faster than a pistol.

If you had ever fired a pistol or a machine gun you would have known intuitively how ridiculous your opening statement was.