Comments on 3 things: Gunsights, drop tanks, and machine guns. In that order...
Gunsights:While not standard, the Type C was used as early as May 1942 on the Series V when a production batch of 50 were built at SAI-Ambrosini with that gunsight installed. It showed up in later Series marks as well, but wasn't "standard" so much as it was what one factory installed. The Type C only become "standard" on the last production runs of the C.202.
Drop Tanks:The C.202 was primarily a fighter but it could carry bombs and drop tanks from a very early date. They simply weren't used much. Once the tide of war had turned to the point they were all withdrawing to defend Italy itself from invaders, many of the 202s flew ground attack missions, bombing and strafing troops on the ground. Now, granted, these bombs were more anti-personnel than anything else. They were very low-power bombs. For AH's purposes they would be useless. At this time they still didn't use drop tanks, either. However, after the C.205 came into being (still with the exact same drop tank and bomb capacity) the armistace took place. I'm speeding the timeline up to get past the armistace. Italy was divided; about half the 205s and pilots went North to fly with Germany, and half stayed South to be hastily recognized by the Allies as co-belligerent forces.
Unfortunately, this meant that brother could be fighting brother (so to speak) and so the co-belligerent forces were tasked to attack the German army positions in the Balkans to keep them from having to fight their own kinsmen in the North.
To this end, a general order was made to use drop tanks due to the long range nature of flying to the Balkans and back. These C.205s didn't rack up many kills, though they flew an astounding amount of sorties and wreaked havoc on german positions and equipment, especially during the German withdrawal. They raised a lot of hell. I ran across this and some other interesting info the last time I dug into C.2 droptanks, from the last time it was discussed. I can't, however, find the references cited or the webpages that had this info NOW, now that I could use it.
You'll most likely find Co-Belligerent markings on photos of C.205s with DTs on them. Here's one:
But the hectic time of the invasion of Italy means there are only so many photos of these planes. Co-Belligerent photos are pretty rare overall. The DT was important enough to warrant a historical place on the airframe in that museum in Italy. They put one under one of the wings. They must have felt it was important. Because of these points above I'd love to see the 2x 100 Liter droptanks as an option for our new C.205s.
The Breda-SAFAT 12.7mm machine gunes:The Breda SAFAT 12.7mm machine gun was heavily adapted from the Browning .50cal machine gune. It also suffered from the same problem the Browning had: When synchronized through a propeller, the rate of fire dropped significantly compared to that of an unsynchronized gun. While the Breda might do 700+ rpm normally, when fired through the prop this dropped to about 500-550 rpm. Some references put it as low as 400 rpm, which is quite believable since this is the RPM the Ho103 had and it used the same Italian ammo as the Breda and was also built off the Browning design. In-game now our C2 12.7mm fires at ~630 rpm, which is too fast. It needs to come down a bit. The same goes for all synchronized .50cal guns, as well. They seem to fire too fast as well.
Overall there is an average where you can estimate a gun will lose X percent of its rate of fire by synchronizing it, but there are a handful that defy this general statement and lose a lot more. Ho-103s, Breda-SAFAT 12.7mm, and Browning .50cal (the first 2 basically building from the Browning .50cal) all lose more rounds per minute than the average gun. A LOT more.
So now that we're getting the new Macchis, can we get the proper nose guns for them? Now would be the time to do it!
