Shooting Paratroopers.. too easy?

[Shepard121]

Last night, there were 3 or 4 attempts on base 21 (bishop).  I was following the C-47 twice when it happened.  Once the paratroopers were in the air, I opened fire.  I found it surprisingly easy to kill them... is this normal?  Are Paratroopers (both in the air and on the ground) easy to kill from a plane?

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Shepard
CO 121st VFAS Pit Vipers
http://www.121stVFAS.com

[-kier-]

Did you see Saving Private Ryan? You remember the scene where the American troops were jumping on a German vehicle, only to have a 20mm anti-aircraft cannon turned on them? It wasn't pretty, and yeah, it was quick.

Now imagine 6x50 caliber heavy mg's trained on you, at convergence.

Or 4x20mm HO cannon.

Or 2xMG15 + 2xMG20 + 2x.79mm mg's.

etc.  

[Nath-BDP]

But you can kill them with 1 short burst of .303s, and not even have to hit them directly.

[214CaveJ]

that's still a lot of lead being put in thier vicinity w/ the purpose of killing them

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Air power is a thunderbolt launched from an egg shell invisibly tethered to a base.         -  Hoffman Nickerson

[Fishu]

I prefer 4x.303s of spitfire, it has 4 guns with higher rate of fire in each gun than any other gun has  
Also disperses nicely, just a quick burst and 10 troopers are dead, bybye.
Like it in killing enemy pilots too  

[Wimp]

Well I was defending 21 and was able to kill almost all the grunts with 1 pass on the ground AND in the air so Yeah I think it is a little easy. But don't get me wrong as a base defender I was very happy about it.

I think it should be harder to kill them once they hit the ground because you don't have the chute to hit. In they air you should only have to hit the chute(big target) to kill them.

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Dewey

Baby Harp Seals

[Laika]

It got a lot to do with the way the para's are dropped, if the C-47 passes over the field @ 1000ft and drops them in a straight line they are easy meat for a fighter and most of the time you can kill them all in 1 or 2 passes before they hit the ground. A much safer way (maybe less historic) is to come in low with a bit of speed and head for the tower (or is it the map room ?), when you are almost on top of it zoom climb and get the para's out as fast as you can on the way up, Before you stall all the troops are out and you can rudder over and head back down. By now the first para is landing next to the tower with the rest will land in about the same spot one after the other, they dont have far to go and are much harder to kill than a nice long line of chutes.