The Hispano

[Urchin]

After losing my tail in one hit, yet again, I feel compelled to ask some questions.  

Actually, just one question.  I've heard the Germans were in possesion of the Hispano (the same one that the British used)... so why on EARTH would they use the clearly inferior Mg151/20 or Mk108.  And yes, the Mk108 is clearly inferior in every respect to the Hispano, with the exception of individual rounds hitting power, and that is whoopee close.  

It makes absolutely no sense to me why anyone would choose the Mg151/20, or the godawful MG/FF, when they had the opportunity to use the Hispano instead.  

So what am I missing here?  

Or perhaps I should ask why the Mg151 sucks so bad in comparison to the Hispano.  If the Germans chose it for their main weapon for most of their planes, it should (in theory, I suppose) have some redeeming value?

Honestly, the Hispano (in AH at least) is more along the lines of a 30mm that fires fast and straight.  You hit someone 1 time with a 30mm in the wing or the tail, you get a kill.  You hit someone 1 time with a Hispano in the wingtip or the tail and you get a kill.  You hit someone 1 time with a Mg151/20 in the wingtip or the tail, you get diddly all.  I've yet to get a kill with the Mg151 that took less than 6 rounds (at least that I've noticed).  Even with my brief experience with the Spitfire, I can't count the number of times I've killed someone in one hit.  I also can't count the number of times I've been killed in one hit by them.  Every time a Spit pings me, the EXPECTATION is I'm dead.  I don't think that with any other plane except the Tiffie.  If a F4U pings me once and I die, I know it was a C-Hog.  

So, is the Hispano overmodelled, the Mg151 undermodelled, or were the LW armorers just really diddlying stupid?

[Dowding (Work)]

Firstly, you need to take a chill pill, kid. It's only a game afterall.

You hit someone 1 time with a Hispano in the wingtip or the tail and you get a kill.

Not in my experience, and I regularly fly the tiffie and tempest. I don't think I've ever got a one ping kill with either. And I'm not a bad shot either. The Hispano is a great weapon, though - it's high speed ballistics give the projectiles a flat tradjectory.

What's the 20mm LW cannon on the 190-A8? It's a great weapon - I downed two P-51s in a recent TOD just with a few pings.

[Hooligan]

Urchin:

The German 13mm weighs about 17Kg
The US .50 weighs about 30Kg
The Mg151 weighs about 42Kg
The Hispano MkII weighs about 60Kg

A belted 13mm round weighs about 80g
A belted .50 round weighs about 140g
A belted Mg151 round weighs about 200g
A belted Hispano round weighs about 280g

Get the picture?

The western Allies used much bigger, heavier guns with higher velocities and bigger projectiles for the same caliber.

A FW-190A8 with 4xMg151 (780 rounds) 2xMg131 (950 rounds) is carrying about 434 Kg of guns and ammo.

If it was carrying Western guns it could carry aproximately 2 hispanos (500 rounds) and 2x.50 (800) rounds.  Also the Hispano's were never synchronized so they would have to be mounted outside the propellor arc.  And the .50s are too big to fit in the cowling so they would have to go into the wings also.

The British guns have a clear advantage in ballistics but the last time I ran tests a Hispano round was only about 10% more lethal than an Mg151 round.  Considering that it is 40% larger, maybe the British were crazy.

Hooligan

[Dead Man Flying]

Originally posted by Urchin
After losing my tail in one hit, yet again, I feel compelled to ask some questions.

I put a pretty strong blast into you at convergence, Urchin, all of it concentrated on your tail.  Given the shot, I'd wager that 10-20 20mm smacked into your fuselage in roughly the same spot.

Attached is an image of the shot in question.

-- Todd/Leviathn

[Innominate]

This is AFAIK, I could be wrong.

The answer to a lot of "one-ping" kills is that they aren't one ping.  A bunch of shots landing at the same time get sent as a single "hit" packet with a count of the damage inflicted, so you hear one ping even though it was many hitting at once.

Anyways, there is no way to be sure wether or not there is something wrong with any guns, simply because there is no objective data about the implementation in the game.  About all we can test is relative hitting power.

[MANDOBLE]

IMO, nor hispano neither 151/20 are well modelled here.
1 - vibrations: fire with 4 "lo energy" 151/20 in 190A8 and repeat with a typh, any difference?
2 - mines: should not lose power with the range.

[fats]

Some silly stuff but anyway.

Hstab/Vstab hit points: 100
MG 151/20 lethality: 99
Hispano MkII Lethality: 101

Now which will appear way more lethal though there isn't that big difference at all?


// fats

[Fishu]

Hooligan,


..still doesn't make Hispano to be any 30mm

Germans actually used more explosives in their cannon rounds than allies, which evens up some lack of velocity.


From the past, my experiences with Hispano was - 800 yards, a target and a hispano hit or two = dead enemy.
Pretty much something or more departed the plane with single 20mm hit somewhere... but with MG151/20 it was pretty much pounding on the planes.

...although I did get kills with average of 13-20 cannon shots per kill in 109 fairly often

[Vermillion]

Beyond the technical reasons that Hooligan stated, there is another more "human" answer.

Nationalistic Pride.

As Hooligan stated, tests in AH have shown that the difference between the Hispano and the MG151/20 is around 10%.  If it was strictly historical the difference would be larger.  So is it a Pro-Luftwaffe conspiracy that makes the MG151/20 unrealistically powerful?  If you don't believe those tests, do your own and present the results.

Impression are one thing, accurate testing is another.

[MANDOBLE]

Germans could use Mg151/20 and Mg131 synchronized or unsynchronized. In the case of 190D9, they decided to place all the armament concentrated around the nose of the plane, even implying to have all the guns synchronized, instead of placing them unsynchronized in the same position spit has the hispanos. What is the benefict of that? convergence? No, IMO, the advantage came in the form of much less dispersion. The vibrations and derived dispersion produced when firing the two "lo E" 151/20s placed at the wing roots surely were much less disturbing than the vibrations and derived dispersion produced when firing two "Hi E" long barrel hispanos placed well outside the wingroots of the plane, at a much more flexible points.

[HFMudd]

Hmm, it looks as if the Hispano weights on the Fighter Gun Table are off.  I don't remember the 42kg for Mk V.

My bad?

[Hooligan]

No hfmudd the weight difference is my mistake, sorry.  I had to look almost everything up but the weight of the cannons I wrote from memory (erroneously in one case).

Hooligan

[Pei]

As to why the Germans didn't use the hispano though they had access to it the answer is that there is a significant difference between the reliability of the Hispano MKII and MKV in British service and the original french Hispano: i.e. the British had to do a lot of work to get it reliable.  The original drum-fed Hispano MKI which was tested during the BoB would jam after only a few rounds. The belt-fed Hispano MkII in service with the RAF had an average rate of failure of 1 in 1500 rounds fired.
Since the germans already had a reliable small calibre cannon (15mm) they probably though it more sensible to proceed with developing that to 20mm calibre.

[Regurge]

Hispanos are capable of 1 ping kills. In my experience a single hit  to a vertical or horizontal stabilizer will blow it clean off, even on tough planes like f6fs and f4us.

I don't recall this ever happening with 151s and I've fired more 151 rounds than Hispano.

This might be due to an incomplete damage model more than anything else.

[thrila]

Wish i could get these 1 ping kills people talk about.   I fly with a/c that have hispanos 99% of the time and yet to perform a 1 ping kill (except on a jug, but it hit the canopy).