Bomber gun madness(Tony Williams please)

[Batz]

aint it Kweassa

[bfreek]

Sakai u really thing 30cals are gonna pound a plane down like tiny hammers?  LOL thats the second dumbest thing i've seen posted. Hit vital componets or the pilot and down a plane ..yes. obviously you think the aircraft aluminum is the same stuff a beer can is made of LOL.

[joeblogs]

The engineers can probably refine the following argument as the failure of metal depends on the kind of stress being placed on it and I don't know how to translate such things...

A metal wing spar is typically a truss, just like most bridges, but much lighter in weight.

The F4u is stressed to 7 gs and weighs about 12,000 lbs.  It's wing is 41 feet and let's assume the average width of the plate under compression (the top of the spar) is 4 inches.  That gives you a total plate area of just under 2,000 inches.  

That means the wing is stressed to handle 7*12,000/1968 = 43 lbs per square inch of metal on the compression plate.  

The question is whether 30-50 rounds of rifle caliber ammunition have enough energy to damage a few inches of wing spar such that it can't handle a design load of 43lbs per square inch.

What's the answer you engineers?

p.s F4u1DOA - were you pulling a lot of G's when the wing came off?  If not then the wing came apart under a much smaller load, which is even more suprising.

-Blogs

Originally posted by F4UDOA
Karnak, DavePT40,

I agree.

Hazed,

I agree, it's probably the F4U damage model. What I didn't mention is that I took up a FW190A5 to kill the bastage that got me. I got all three of them although I took many hits I was very careful. The FW190 seems a bit more robust. The P-38 by comparison takes as much lead as a Panzer.

rshubert,

I can quote you the name of the Japanese ace that made the statement about 30 cal ammo bouncing off. He was very specific about having to shoot at a certain angle to do damage.

Also the only fabric covered areas of an F4U are the control surfaces such as the ailerons, rudder and elavator. That's it. The main portion of the wing was stressed aluminum.

The main portion of the wing was rated for 7G's at 12,000LBS. If you are saying that it is even possible to hit the wing in the same spot on a moving target at 350MPH I think you are mistaken.

I do not have the composition of the wing spar right now but I will post it shortly.

BTW, a 30cal bullet at 300yards is good for sniping but not good for vehicles or hard targets. Certainly not damaging structures. I could build a weight bearing structure out of cardboard and you couldn't snap it in two pieces with .30cal.

BTW F4U's have been landed with 40 plus 20 mill holes.

[rshubert]

And SOMETHING happened such that the plane was no longer capable of controlled flight.

Was it a fuel explosion?  Sometimes.  Was it a fire that burned through the spar.  Sometimes.  Sometimes the prop was hit and threw a blade, causing the engine to come out of the plane.  Sometimes the engine blew up like a grenade.  All of these could cause structural damaget to the airframe, making controlled flight impossible.  When the aircraft departs from control, stresses are put on it that can't be borne.  It breaks up, or a wing comes off, or the tail comes off.

HT can't model every bullet's precise placement in the target aircraft, its path through the aircraft after striking, adn what components are damaged to what extent.  So they build a cumulative damage model of some sort that knocks a wing off after 30 hits from an 8mm MG.  I'm ok with that, and think that the damage model is robust enough as it is, and consistent.  Even though I get shot down a lot.  Even in a Jug, which was supposed to be the strongest thing in the air.

[Sakai]

Originally posted by bfreek
Sakai u really thing 30cals are gonna pound a plane down like tiny hammers?  LOL thats the second dumbest thing i've seen posted. Hit vital componets or the pilot and down a plane ..yes. obviously you think the aircraft aluminum is the same stuff a beer can is made of LOL.

No, I think the cumulative effect of holes, tears, cracks and creases caused by those 8mms is greater than the striking force of them.

Read the whole post bucky, and try to stay up.

Sakai

[F4UDOA]

JoeB,

I can duplicate this in 1G level flight consistantly.

With approx 30 rounds every time.

[GScholz]

The bomber gunnery is incredibly gamey. Took one ping from a B17 at d1.6 ... a mile out, there goes one of the vertstabs and rudder on my 110, to say nothing about the paper tail of the 110 of course.

[joeblogs]

So that means 30 rounds at the wing root reduces the strength of the spar to less than 7lbs a square inch.  Seems awfully low...

-Blogs

Originally posted by Sakai
No, I think the cumulative effect of holes, tears, cracks and creases caused by those 8mms is greater than the striking force of them.

Read the whole post bucky, and try to stay up.

Sakai

[Sakai]

Originally posted by joeblogs
So that means 30 rounds at the wing root reduces the strength of the spar to less than 7lbs a square inch.  Seems awfully low...

-Blogs

That is quite possibly low, I would not know, I do think killing consistently at over 800 yards is somewhat gamey and unbelievable whether that is a fighter or a bomber although I also don't think that ranges pervcived are actually measured everytime or account for lag (can we ever do that?).  I have been killed by groundfire from M-16s which are .50s that I thought was a bit precise and effective at that range but never by buff gunners at extreme ranges reported here (not saying it doe snot happen, I simply have never seen it).  You know, someone posted stories of how hard it was for gunners to hit incoming fighters, I think likely in "real life" it was more difficult to train a fighters weapons consistently on a bomber as well then it is in AH.  

Perhaps it is a tradeoff?  I've never seen in any sim a bomber setting that fighter pilots were happy with.  Smart pilots don't get killed by bombers consistently, it happens but rarely.  Poor fighter pilots, or lazy ones, die far more often approaching a six.  I think that's obvious.

Sakai

[Dr Zhivago]

Originally posted by GScholz
The bomber gunnery is incredibly gamey. Took one ping from a B17 at d1.6 ... a mile out, there goes one of the vertstabs and rudder on my 110, to say nothing about the paper tail of the 110 of course.

When I came back in early '44 to II/NJG5, from a stint as test pilot I volunteered to fly a few of these reconnaissance sorties.
I changed tactics and flew very low, thereby avoiding detection.
On one of these flights, I caught an American pathfinder, a B-24 Liberator.
Since I had to climb up, I had to attack from behind, and with not all that much speed advantage.
My 20mm cannons had only an effective range of about 800m against a 1500m range of the very accurate American 50caliber (12.7mm) machine guns. It took an eternity to fly through their fire, but I finally got into shooting position and brought this Liberator down in flames, the crew barely having time to parachute.
After landing, I counted over 50 machine gun hits in my plane.

Oblt. Rudolf E. Thun Staffelkapitan of 9./NJG 6 with 7 air victories

[GScholz]

Originally posted by Dr Zhivago
It took an eternity to fly through their fire, but I finally got into shooting position and brought this Liberator down in flames, the crew barely having time to parachute.
After landing, I counted over 50 machine gun hits in my plane.

Yeah, you couldn't count the ONE hit on my plane because it ripped a big part of my plane off with it. I wonder if I'd have any parts left after 50 hits.