Confession of a Luftwobble.

[Toad]

Just a note on .50's from a real life source I trust.

The 345th Air Apaches (those B-25's with 8 .50's in the nose) used to raid Japanese airfields using line abreast tactics and attacking in squadron "waves" about 30 seconds to 1 minute apart.

So, you'd have 9-12 B-25's flying wingtip to wingtip going across the airfield dropping parafrags in four successive waves.

Standard procedure was to hold the gun button down for the entire run across the field, letting the 8 .50's keep the gunners heads down. Runs across the field took about 20 seconds usually, depending on the layout.

My father, who actually DID this stuff, says yeah, guns would occasionally jam but usually they just worked as advertised.

However, by the end of the run the barrels were warping and tracer was curving out in front of the nose in a lot of different directions. They figured that was a good thing... they were just trying to tear the place up and keep the people in the holes.

The guns would continue to "cook off" randomly for quite a while after the run due to the heat in the chambers. He said you had to be REAL careful not to point your nose at anyone for a while after the run.

The gun barrels? Replaced after almost every mission... but they had tons of 'em. 8 barrels were cheap compared to losing a plane and crew.

[Creamo]

The guns would continue to "cook off"

Man that sounds familiar. I have read a bit on WWII, but not much at all. I have FOR SURE heard this.

DId you post this before?

[Toad]

Yeah, I'm sure I did but it's been a long time.

[Nomde]

Santa,
I hate using rockets to de-ack fields, you have to get too close and aim too high to use em effectively. I instead like to use my D30 ride and kill the acks with 8-50's. A short burst from 1.5-1k out directly on target will kill em. A little evasive and you can normally follow through to de-ack one side of the field, then return for the other side. It's not recomended to fly a straight line here btw  

[lazs2]

I believe the missfire or jam rate for Browning fifties was 1 in 3,400 rounds.   It was higher for the vaunted LW guns mainly due to the inferior electric firing of primers.  

Obviously nobody bought the -1 "being superior to the D9 in allmost every way" thing but I will also add that the roll rate for LW rides is "just past" the update code or whatever.  If you are an unscroupulous Luftwobble you can "warp roll" till whoever is following you runs out of ammo.

LW planes should overheat much faster than most planes and with fuel injection, they should catch fire (engine fire) much faster.  the 190a models should also catch fire from the poorly placed oil cooler and they should run dry on oil about twice as fast as U.S. radials...  The LW engines should be hurt easier by damage since they are more efficient (hp/ci) and run at higher RPM.

All these artificial advantages have allways bothered me but I can see that if they didn't give the LW planes some advantages they didn't have then nobody would fly em.
lazs

[Professor Fate]

So while you merrilyu flew along and laughed hard at my feeble attempts of recovering, I was in panic with throttle at zero, rudder oposite spin, stick forward.

I find that if you shut the engine off the nose drops like a rock pointing straight at the ground in no time fire it back up and hope the bad guy hasn't had time to get on six

[Urchin]

Originally posted by lazs2
I believe the missfire or jam rate for Browning fifties was 1 in 3,400 rounds.   It was higher for the vaunted LW guns mainly due to the inferior electric firing of primers.  

Obviously nobody bought the -1 "being superior to the D9 in allmost every way" thing but I will also add that the roll rate for LW rides is "just past" the update code or whatever.  If you are an unscroupulous Luftwobble you can "warp roll" till whoever is following you runs out of ammo.

LW planes should overheat much faster than most planes and with fuel injection, they should catch fire (engine fire) much faster.  the 190a models should also catch fire from the poorly placed oil cooler and they should run dry on oil about twice as fast as U.S. radials...  The LW engines should be hurt easier by damage since they are more efficient (hp/ci) and run at higher RPM.

All these artificial advantages have allways bothered me but I can see that if they didn't give the LW planes some advantages they didn't have then nobody would fly em.
lazs

You can take advantage of latency in any plane.  

LW planes DO overheat faster than just about every other plane I've flown.  Lose your radiator in a Dora and you have about 5 seconds of powered flight time left.  

Engine fires aren't modeled, as far as I can tell.  Only way I've ever seen anyone catch fire was by taking a hit to a fuel tank that caught on fire- so that 'advantage' doesn't mean jack toejam.  

The 190A5 also loses its oil about 4 times faster than any other plane I've flown if the oil takes a hit.  Lose your oil in the A5 and you have maybe 1 minute of powered flight time available- get your oil hit in the La7 or P47 and you can still complete your sortie, dogfight for 20 minutes, and land with your engine still running.  

Can't comment on the last thing, there is no 'engine damage'- your engine is either perfectly functional or it is stopped, there is no in between.

[Naudet]

Urchin said

I'll fight a P51 in any LW ride, and expect I'll win. I'll knifefight a P51 in any German ride and expect I'll win. In my opinion, the G10 and the D9 are FAR superior to the P51 for knife-fighting, although I couldn't tell you any specific tactics I use, since I pretty much just make it up as I go along.

You must be a much better pilot than me, the only way i ever could knifefight a P51 using a D9, was when i were below 50% fuel and he just took of with 75%+ fuel.
Whenever i meet a P51 that is light, there is no chance the D9 can follow those turns.

With the G10 i agree, it can fight the P51, as long as the P51 doesnt dive and runs away.

on the other side, when flying anything like and F4U, P51 or P38, i expect to win any fight against any FW190 as long as he makes the mistake to start a knifefight, once he tries to turn, he is dead.


And to Vermillion

Naudet, I agree. I love to fly the Corsair, due to its nimble handling for such a big bird. But to say it does almost everything better than the Dora is a very large stretch of the truth.

Its a personal view, i must admit, won through experience. For the "normal" AH engagement it feels like  the F4U-1D is superior to D9 in almost every aspect, from offensive moves to defensive once.
It may be just the way i fly, but when in D9 and attacked from behind, i can never turn the tables, beside by running away and forcing a draw. While in the F4U i can do it. With it i can do the "force an overshoot and get the snapshoot opportunity" defense very often. And the snapshoot than is very often crippeling the other guy.

Also i have much better success using the hog against LA7s than using the D9. Dunno why, but it works.

Also i rate the lethality of the Hogs 6x0.5cals way higher than the gun loadout of the D9. I have about 80% of all snapshots with D9 ending with my tgt flying away almost unharmed, while the snapshoots with the 0.5cals render about 7 outta 10 tgts unable to fly on.