I suspect no one here has researched the MK108 round far enough to know it had a right hand spin drift issue due to the ballistic coefficient and 23 inch short barrel with 1:16 twist to unlock the fuze. Along with crappy dispersion past 100m. The same round fired from the MK103 didn't experience this issue with a 47inch barrel. Past 100m due to it the single MK108 round had stability issues. Throw in some turbulence from the bomber. That's why ganging the MK108 was the preferred platform method. Some 190 pilots would stay back from the bombers and lob the MK108 rounds hoping for the self destruct at 1100m would send shrapnel into the bombers rather than try to get closer to hit the bombers.
Heavy AAF bombers in the ETO were not blown from the air in droves like we do in the game with the MK108. The greatest danger to the bombers was crew being slaughtered by the shrapnel from flack, 20mm, and 30mm round casings. Bombers were very tough without much armor for the crew. A single 20mm going off in the nose, no bombardier. In the cockpit, no flight crew. Many of the Luft combat footage against single bombers from the rear have some common factors. You don't see the other bombers in the tight elements. Not a lot of return fire is happening. And you don't get the sense of high closing speed by the fighter the camera is filming from. You kill the crew from high speed passes sending 20mm into the fuselage and you end up with crippled stragglers to make nice footage of when you finish them off.
I think Hitech pulls his ww2 blast data from an ARMY historical site that has ww2 AAF ETO bomber post mortem data and pictures of the damage a single 20mm HE can do. A common death for crew was bleeding to death from single tiny round casing fragments cutting arteries, then bleeding out in minutes due to the low air pressure. One post mortem photo showed about 70 tiny 20mm fragments collected out of the radio compartment where the radioman died from exsanguination along with a gunner. It was a very common scenario. Killing crew in ww2 was more likely to happen in a single pass than hitting anything critical enough to drop a B17 or B24 out of the air like we do in the game.
The 88 AA round was never expected to hit the bombers. The detonation was expected to kill crew and damage the bombers with shrapnel. That's why the ack fields were so dense. All testing of the MK108 in Germany and subsequently in England was under ideal conditions for that specific round and it's deficiencies on the ground. For penetration, acknowledged by testing at Rechlin, it was a 100m or less round. It's greatest effect was setting off the equivalent of an antipersonnel stick grenade against the skin of a bomber sending shrapnel into the structures around it. This is not to say penetration wasn't possible. Testing dictated to expect using the round for it's shrapnel effect at distances past 100m.
Many of the photos of ammo beltings for the MK108 and attached shot tubes are misleading about the outcome. The shot tubes are from 163, 262, 110, belly pack, wing pack or Schräge Musik installations. Any armor piercing or incendiary rounds will be most likely for a situation in which the plane could survive being 100m and closer from the target like Schräge Musik in a night fighter.
