Bomber .50s optimal range?

[Peyton]

BOMBER
Where are the .50s in a lanc?  Rear or front?

Also, with everything being equal, altitude, heading and on a level flight path, at what distance will the .50s hit dead center on a target that is directly on your 6?  Is it 800yds out?
When do you aim high? At 1000yds out?
When do you aim low? At 500yds?

What about .303s?


FIGHTER
In a fighter what is the optimal range that the .50s should be set for to provide the most damage and penetration?


Thanks

[Lusche]

The .50 are in the rear turret.

All bomber guns converge at a fixed point 500 yards away.
Use the .target command in the TA or offline to see how your bullets fly & hit at different distances and angles.   syntax is   .target [range] [heading] [angle],  .target 0 removes it
This will show you much more in bomber defensive gunnery than I could explain here in words

Fighter
Most damage would be at point blank range, but you certainly don't want to set the convergence that close. Ultimately the 'best' convergence settign depends on personal preference & fighting style (you may examine your films to see your actual gunnery), but keeping the default convergence is in most cases not a bad idea - at least until you know why you want to have it changed...

[Krusty]

While the bomber drones are convergent at 500 yards, the guns themselves will hit at distances past 1k in many cases. This is because the bombers fly at super fast top speeds, which is totally unhistorical. This means, basically, that they can fire further away at targets behind them because they (the targets) are flying towards the bullets, closing the distance that much faster while the bullet is in flight.

In the 1 second it might take a bullet to travel, a plane flying at 350mph can cover half a mile.

Gunnery is also dependent on the atmospheric conditions. If your bomber is on the deck the air is much denser, and bullets slow down faster. That means return fire is probably around 800-1000 yards lethal. If your bomber is at 25k+, however, it's quite possible to get hits out at 1.2, dare I say 1.5k (perhaps not QUITE that far).

There are plenty of factors to take into consideration. In the case of the lancaster I would say there are 2 weak zones:

1) Directly top-down. The cockpit glass is unarmored. A good solid sustained burst can kill all 3 planes as they pop into lead, if you instantly kill the pilot 3x in a row. Usually 50cal planes are best for this.

2) directly BELOW. It has no lower guns. However the tail gun can shoot pretty low, so you cannot make a low approach and pull the nose up at a shallow angle. He can shoot back. You have to fly along underneath by quite a bit of distance and with a lot of speed, pull up hard, and fire at the wings/fuselage before breaking off. Because you need distance to pull up, aim, adjust, and fire, you must fly well below the bombers to pull this off. When you come out of your attack run you are vulnerable to return fire (you are now above the bombers), so break away sideways very quickly. Due to the fleeting nature of this kind of attack, heavy cannons are best.

[texasfighter]

In the 1 second it might take a bullet to travel, a plane flying at 350mph can cover half a mile.

Lets see, 60 mph is a mile a minute. 360 mph is 6 miles a minute. 60 seconds divided by 6 = 10 seconds. So in 10 seconds a plane traveling 360 mph will travel one mile. To travel a half mile, that plane would take 5 seconds. So in one second, it would be traveling a tenth of a mile.

Still, your point is well taken. Its a lot easier to hit a plane coming at your bullet at 360 mph rather than flying away from your bullet at 360 mph.

(My wife hates it when I do explanations like the math above. To her, the original explanation was close enough. But she will tell someone on her cell phone that we are 10 minutes away when we still have 20 miles to go. I always mutter something like "sure glad we have a Bell JetRanger, Not!")

[Rebel]

re: fighter 50's

I've found that .50's equipped fighters do best in the 250 to 400 range.  Anything outside of 400, and you're either very good, or you're just sprayin' and prayin'.  Besides that, the weight and dispersion of the projectile really works against it at the longer ranges (it loses firepower and spreads out downrange), so it's harder to hit with, and for less damage at longer ranges.

In most of my .50's planes, the guns all converge at 300, and I rarely need more than one pass if I land my shot.  It will do lethal damage about 80% of the time.  Even if it's a glancing shot (he jinks just as I fire, for example), it will still break something.

The biggest key with .50's is to hit right at your chosen convergence point.  Concentrated volume of fire is the name of the game here.