Hits to the bomb bay.. ?

[Grendel]

Originally posted by Viking
German night-fighters would target the bomb-bays of RAF terrorfliegers, using their obliquely mounted cannons (usually at 60 degrees off horizontal). Standard practice was to fire a one second burst and then immediately bank away since the bombers would often explode above them.

NO they would NOT.
Because the bomber might explode above them. And you don't want an exploding bomber 20-40 meters above you.

German night fighters with schage music targeted wings of the bomber. Wings had fuel tanks. You shot at the wing, fuel started burning, engines were maybe hit... You hit left wing, you banked right and vice versa. And the bombers destroyed to failing wings, fire spreading into engines and fuselage etc.

But they did NOT aim bomb-bays, never ever in purpose.

[Tiger]

Originally posted by AquaShrimp
In Chuck Yeager's book, Chuck and his wingman dropped their droptanks and tried to ignite them with the 50 cals on their mustangs.  They made sure fuel was still in the droptanks.  But they couldn't get them to ignite.

Ironically, while Chuck and his buddy were playing around, one of the biggest dogfights of the war was occurring as german fighters were attacking a bomber stream.

I've read reports of P-38 pilots using the droptanks as poor man's napalm by firing at them after dropping.

[Viking]

Originally posted by Grendel
NO they would NOT.
Because the bomber might explode above them. And you don't want an exploding bomber 20-40 meters above you.

German night fighters with schage music targeted wings of the bomber. Wings had fuel tanks. You shot at the wing, fuel started burning, engines were maybe hit... You hit left wing, you banked right and vice versa. And the bombers destroyed to failing wings, fire spreading into engines and fuselage etc.

But they did NOT aim bomb-bays, never ever in purpose.

I'm sorry, but I saw a video interview of a German 110 NF ace who contradicts your statement. He said he would aim at the fuselage right between the wings and fire a short burst, then immediately break away to avoid the explosion.

[Viking]

Originally posted by Larry
Umm the 20 and 30mm cannons in this game are HE as in High Explosive  not AP.

The British/US 20mm were armour pierecing HE shells, and the Germans used mixed belts of AP, HE and incendiary rounds.

If a .50 cal API round will go through an engine block, surely it will penetrate a bomb casing.

[Sketch]

quote:Originally posted by Viking
 20mm or 30mm cannon will detonate bombs. Perhaps not every time, but often. Heavy machineguns too. In the army we used 12.7mm (.50 cal) sniper rifles (with MP ammo) to set of mines, IED's and dud ordnance (mostly artillery shells). It usually only took one shot.

And your using the same ammo flown by planes during the WWII era?  

Originally posted by ColSuave
i dont know if even that would do it. im all for saying you could damage bomb-bay doors with it. or perhaps dent up the bombs and screw their areodynamics or trajectory, maybee even render them completely usless, but i dont see them exploding without being armed.

A dent in the bomb casing itself won't throw off the trajectory, but it you bent up a fin enough it would cause the bomb to tumble instead of nose down.  Another way it might make the bomb useless is if the round hit the arming wire and a piece was still in the fuze.  The fuze has a safety clip, but when the bomb is dropped a 'arming wire' which is thread through the fuze vain might get stuck.  Hence the bomb wouldn't arm.

[Snubby]

Originally posted by Viking
The British/US 20mm were armour pierecing HE shells, and the Germans used mixed belts of AP, HE and incendiary rounds.

If a .50 cal API round will go through an engine block, surely it will penetrate a bomb casing.

i too have a problem with the idea that 50cal and cannon rounds would just bounce off a high explosive bomb.

far as i knew typical high explosive or GP bombs had a relatively thin kin, so as to maximize the amount of room for explosive,  frag and AP bombs had thicker casings though.

[Charge]

Remember that at typical firing angles the angle between the bullet and the bomb is not 90 degrees but it can be very very oblique and the bullet has passed through a few layers of aluminum before that so it has probably already tumbled. It is possible for the trajectory to penetrate the casing but I think it is very unlikely from typical angles.

The best possibility would indeed be straight from below as the angle of the surfaces is optimal and there is only a single layer of aluminum between the projectile and the bomb casing. But still the projectile needs to deal with the cylindrical form of the casing, although it is relatively soft so an AP round has better possibility of punching through it than that of pure steel.

If a single AP projectile enters the bomb I don't think it is going to cause it to go off unless it hits the primer or detonator which is easier to ignite.

-C+

[Murdr]

I have no problem seeing a .50 cal round going straight through a bomb casing and out the other side.  A US 500lbs GP bomb only had a 1/3 inch steel case.  Context matters though.  The scenerio is firing from a moving platform onto a moving target, with the target in question being convex from most profiles.  So with all that, if you hit the bomb within the center 2/3rd of the silhouette it's likley to penetrate the casing.

Then, after that, globalsecurity.org reports that pure TNT fails to detonate 96% of the time according to US Army tests.  That's without a primary charge.  In the game, you'd have a small primer core present, that is more likely to be shocked into detonation.  So what are the odds then?  How do you model that?  Is modeling it even useful to the game?  That same WWII era US GP 500lb bomb, could be filled with TNT, or Amatol, or compound B.  What are the odds of detonation on the other two compounds?

[nirvana]

The problem with that Viking, is that those mines were already fully armed and set to go off due to pressure in the case of IEDs and mines, most likely for dud ordnance as well, a bullet will most likely put enough pressure on it to blow it up.

[Gianlupo]

Originally posted by Sketch
Oh, and I build bombs in the AF...

<-------------------------------

Now I see why you had this improper weapon handy.....

[splitatom]

if tnt was detonated by a explosive charge a 20 or 30 would probably just do the same thing as the detonater

[Sketch]

Originally posted by nirvana
The problem with that Viking, is that those mines were already fully armed and set to go off due to pressure in the case of IEDs and mines, most likely for dud ordnance as well, a bullet will most likely put enough pressure on it to blow it up.

Nirvana is somewhat correct on this.  The next step in the explosive chain is for the bomb to actually go off.  There is a sequence of events that need to happen for a bomb to work, just shooting it with a .50cal round is not going to set it off.  
There are 3 basic classifications for fuzes: Position (nose or tail fuze), Action and the Method of Arming.  
Position: If a bomb has a fuze in the nose, it will usually have a arming vain which spins when the bomb is dropped.  It has to spin a certain number of times before it is fully armed.  Thus, the delay of the fuze to detonate the bomb will occur with the impact of the bomb.

Action: Here there are three different ways to have them go off.
1) Impact: When the bomb hits a resistant material it will either go off immediately of will be delayed for a low level bomber to egress out before the bomb explodes.
2) Time: Basically a timed delayed fuze set to go off after a certain amount of time a spring-loaded firing pin triggers, drives into the detonator and the bomb explodes.
3) Proximity: Always in the nose and it senses the height of the bomb from the ground, such as a certain altitude and with the hieght of function the bomb will go off.

Methods of Arming: Fuzes cannot function when they are unarmed!  A fuze is only considered armed when the next normal event initiates a functioning of the fuze.  Such as the impact or the delay for it.  Two ways for this is Mechanically or Electronically.
Mechanically would be the arming vain type fuze
Electronically: (modern bombs) In which a timed circut sets of the detonator.

If you don't have a fuze armed and the next step of it is to set the bomb off, i.e. the timing delay is up or the arming vain has been spun around enough to initiate it, and then you shot it.... it is still not going to go off.  It has to trigger the detonator and shooting it won't work, just like shooting tnt or c4 in the movies.  

I deal with explosives every day and have built plenty of JDAM's GBU-12's, GBU-38's and worked with enough Small Diameter Bombs (SDB's) to know this stuff.  I still build them to this day in the Air Force and have gone through countless classes learning this stuff...

[Sketch]

Originally posted by Gianlupo
<-------------------------------

Now I see why you had this improper weapon handy.....

Hey I needed someone around to keep me happy!!  

[OOZ662]

Just FYI, ammo in this game varies widely. If the gun carried mixed belts like the German cannons, the plane in Aces High carries a hybrid round that has a bit of each property to be found in the belt. If only one style of round was used, such as in the .303s, then that is the only characteristic you'll find in the round.

Someone said that our 20 and 30mms are HE. See the above. Also, the 23mm on the Il-2 is AP. (API?)

[Grendel]

Originally posted by Viking
I'm sorry, but I saw a video interview of a German 110 NF ace who contradicts your statement. He said he would aim at the fuselage right between the wings and fire a short burst, then immediately break away to avoid the explosion.

And I've seen interviews, read books, have books and have talked with German night fighter pilots.

And no - they would not fire into fuselage - but to wings, usually aiming between the inner engine and fuselage.

If they would aim into fuselage at bomb bay, they would be no need to break away to avoid explosion. They would be dead in the moment the bombload explodes.

Shoot at the wing, cause fire, bank away, leave bomber dying away, find new target, repeat.

It was different matter when using nose guns.