My Wish list for AH

[Butcher]

800 yard shots from a ww2 aircraft are very rare

Marion Eugene Carl once quoted over Guadalcanal "I dove to avoid a Zero, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a Zero attempting to turn around and get on the 6 of another Wildcat, I threw the Wildcat over and fired a burst at what I guessed was 800 to 1000 yards and the Zeke caught fire and trailed away".
David McCampbell is another to shoot down a Japanese plane on his "Ace in a Day" tirade at the Marianas Turkey Shoot with an 800+ yard shot on a Judy.
Wolfgang Treuding was a JG 51 pilot who did a head on attack with an IL-2 at 1200 yards+, dove away after his initial burst and watched the Il-2 crash; he assumed he killed the pilot for his 32nd victory?.

431st FS has a clear example of long range "gunnery" - they were due to escort B-24's departing from NadZab airstrip No 3 to attack Hollandia; the P-38s of the 431st were over head and were jumped by 15 Japanese fighters. 1st Lt. Frank Monk ordered the pilots to drop their drop tanks when he saw the enemy aircraft 1,000ft above them, diving from the right towards the Lightnings in front of him. The "Oscars" were heading for the tail section of "Green Flight" which was immediately in front of him, so Monk forced the Japanese pilots to turn away from their intended targets by breaking into them head on. One Ki-43 flew straight at him and from a range of 1200 yards 1st Lt. Monk open fired, the Ki-43 broke right with pieces of his canopy, engine and wing coming off. 2nd Lt. Horace "Bo" Reeves was a new pilot in the squadron flying on Monk's wing throughout the mission and saw the Ki-43 burst into Flames and disintegrated with the well aimed head on shot.

While true - not all attacks were done at such range, some times it was necessary. Major Jack Rittmayer was killed by a head on shot from a Ki-84 from around 800 yards; Rittmayer's P-38 was completely destroyed from the head on shot.
McCampbell used 1000 yard Shots to cause the Judy's to "Spread" apart, enabling him to pick them off one by one, most cases it was a head on shot; unlike Aces high where you just end up in a "tower" and can take off again, many cases men lost their lives.

So in the argument was it "uncommon" - there is no supporting evidence. Richard Bong once said he couldn't hit the side of a Barn from 20 feet away; often firing at targets well out of distance, same for Hans-Joachim Marseille. Marseille admitted his gunnery was horrible, shooting from targets beyond 800 yards; eventually he taught himself to be a marksmanship and it latter paid off. The guy who once fired at a Hurricane that was out of range in early 1940, eventually became ace in a day on 24th September 1941.

[alskahawk]

 The idea that a 50 cal bullet can fly anything close to strait and true at 800 yards is absurd. The bullet drop in AH is better than some other games, but it isn't close to reality. It certainly isn't the best representative of what happens when the bullet leaves the barrel of a moving aircraft at 10 feet to 30,000 + altitude.

   The trade off for cannons versus MG's is better hitting power but at a increased weight, less ammunition and a lower rate of fire. The additional weight has to be compensated for. A cannon shell weighs more it drops more with equal muzzle velocity. Add 3 or 4- 20 mm guns to the front of a aircraft there has to be a lot of adjustments, particularly on light aircraft with small frames and short fuselages. 
 
  How many kills do you think, Hartmann had long range? 1 out of 352? 5 out of 352? Guenther Rall? Bong? 1 of 40? 5 of 40? Manfred von Richthofen? And that is just comparing shots to kills. Not even shots to...Almost got that one. Still rare no matter how you rationalize it.

[Wiley]

The idea that a 50 cal bullet can fly anything close to strait and true at 800 yards is absurd. The bullet drop in AH is better than some other games, but it isn't close to reality. It certainly isn't the best representative of what happens when the bullet leaves the barrel of a moving aircraft at 10 feet to 30,000 + altitude.

How far off is it?  At what altitude?  I recall seeing some posts (probably Bustr's) showing bullet drop actually changing depending on alt.  Where is it not right and by how much?

Wiley.

[Karnak]

The idea that a 50 cal bullet can fly anything close to strait and true at 800 yards is absurd. The bullet drop in AH is better than some other games, but it isn't close to reality. It certainly isn't the best representative of what happens when the bullet leaves the barrel of a moving aircraft at 10 feet to 30,000 + altitude.

HiTech says that the drag is factored into the round and the drag varies correctly with speed and altitude, which is one reason the bullets fired from bomber tail guns seem to go further, less drag due to less speed due to the movement of the firing platform.  The bullets also exhibit correct drops based on gravity and travel time.  Use .target while offline to test it.  If you can demonstrate that the rounds retain too much energy or don't drop fast enough, it can be changed.

 

The trade off for cannons versus MG's is better hitting power but at a increased weight, less ammunition and a lower rate of fire. The additional weight has to be compensated for. A cannon shell weighs more it drops more with equal muzzle velocity. Add 3 or 4- 20 mm guns to the front of a aircraft there has to be a lot of adjustments, particularly on light aircraft with small frames and short fuselages. 

Why would more weight make it drop faster?  10 meters per second per second.  That is 1G and it affects a .303 just the same as a 57mm cannon round.

As to the weight of the guns, that is modeled into the aircraft.  Why mention it here?  It doesn't seem relevant.  To rate of fire, some 20mm cannons actually beat the Browning .50 on a per gun basis, and aren't all that much heavier.  The US Navy rated a single M2 20mm cannon (Hispano Mk II) installation as being equal in firepower to a triple Browning M2 .50 installation.  That would make the Spitfire Mk XVI's firepower about equal to a eight gun P-47D.
 
 

How many kills do you think, Hartmann had long range? 1 out of 352? 5 out of 352? Guenther Rall? Bong? 1 of 40? 5 of 40? Manfred von Richthofen? And that is just comparing shots to kills. Not even shots to...Almost got that one. Still rare no matter how you rationalize it.

WWI guns were very much less powerful and much shorter ranged.

Yes, kill distances in AH are unhistorically long ranged.  The only way to make them historically ranged seems to be to artificially make the aspects of gunnery that can be made harder, well, harder to compensate for the things that cannot be made harder and are simply easier than the real deal.

[kvuo75]

The idea that a 50 cal bullet can fly anything close to strait and true at 800 yards is absurd.

ask some long range target shooters... one of the first results on google is video of a frickin 223(!) hitting an 11x17" target at 860 yards.

why don't you do some research instead of just going by how you feel things should be.

[bustr]

The faster drop off past 400 by 20mm and larger rounds is due to drag. The 20mm and larger rounds have a greater surface area than the .50, so experience more slowing down from drag. An exception is the ShVAK 20mm round, a 23ft drop at 1000m versus the Hisso 20mm 43ft drop at 1000yds, versus the .50 25ft at 1000yds. The ShVAK 20mm is about half the weight and length of the Hisso with similar ballistics to the AN\M2.

1000m = 914yd 

MG's loose effectiveness past 400 except in the case of an aircraft flying at the gun. This is not to say .50 won't punch holes in aluminum at 1000yds. It will have problems against armored structures and thicker structures like self sealing fuel tanks or engine blocks\cylinders. But with a 38, you still have that chemical potential round from the 20mm.

Hitech's representation of the random dispersion cone at given ranges is within the best he can duplicate from static ballistics data. Granted, induced dispersion due to turbulence and bomber prop wash bouncing the fighter is not modeled. I'm not sure if any other air combat game models it either.

And yes I tested the AN\M2, Hisso 20mm, MG151\20 and MK108 from SL up to 30k once. Hitech has faithfully modeled speed, alt, temp, and air pressure effects upon the rounds. And it also got me an arse chewing by Hitech for arguing as far out in left field over the ballistics I was testing, as your keeping this POST going by arguing down to heads of pins and numbers of angels.

If you want to tell Hitech you don't like him for some reason, don't attack his work when we all know it is an approximation of reality. Other wise, this is a kiddy game, and one of the best on the market for what it delivers.

[JVboob]

I never realized HT had gone that far with the ballistics. Very informative post yall.

[alskahawk]

ask some long range target shooters... one of the first results on google is video of a frickin 223(!) hitting an 11x17" target at 860 yards.

why don't you do some research instead of just going by how you feel things should be.

Big difference shooting on the ground versus shooting in the air

[hitech]

Big difference shooting on the ground versus shooting in the air

Ahh.... bullets don't tend to travel very far when they are in dirt.

But taking what you meant and not what you said,

You are  correct, the wind tends to be much more constant and the airless dense when you are shooting up high in a plane. So things are different.

HiTech

[save]

Dispersion should be higher at disdistance my opinion.

Getting a smoking engine at 1.5k icon distance out doing a high 12 attack seems to be the norm. I could take that , even if it's not realistic,  if I could do any damage at the bloody thing shooting me with same  guns on my plane.

Some bomber types invites drone warping, where as others seem to lose drones easy.

Effective gunnery against fighter targets where 400 and bombers  600 meters. You could probably find claims of incredible ranges kills, but in real life 1000 or 800 yards is very hard to judge from a pilots pov.