Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: sullie363 on March 24, 2005, 02:05:41 AM
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This evening I had a hole put in my main tank. All the gas drained out and I was out of fuel. Yes the auxiliary was empty. Shortly there after, I got a little shot up and my main tank caught on fire. So, my point is if the tank was devoid of fuel then how could it catch on fire?
The reason this matters is during the times when you may be within gliding distance of your base. Having a magical fire would prevent you from landing in most cases since it doesn't take that long for the fire to destroy the plane.
Regardless of hypothetical situations, no fuel = no fire. It would be like a gun continuing to fire without bullets. I would appreciate it if this was dealt with.
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Im guessing even an empty tank has burnable vapors
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For a fire it would need fuel. Vapor would explode.
It would be bad, maybe worse, but it would not be a sustained fire.
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yeah i thought that at first too, but wouldnt that be more of a flash than a continued burning?
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Yeah, with just vapors the tank would explode. Can we have that modeled in HT?
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Recent Headlines: To add further insult to injury, HT made it so that planes that have run out of fuel will explode at first sight of enemy fighter.
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It's either a glitch in the damage model, or ol' HT hasn't figured out how to "turn off" the ability for an empty tank to light up. I'm willing to bet on the latter, since fluid leaks don't stop once the offending container runs outa liquid. But, that's another gripe.
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Flakbait [Delta6]
(http://www.wa-net.com/~delta6/sig/lie.gif)
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give me a second; this is related to this thread...
One time, I was reading a historical account that was written by an Allied fighter pilot, who was chasing down a damaged German fighter. The black smoke stopped pouring out from the German fighter's engine compartment. The Allied pilot noticed this and realized that the German pilot had chopped his throttle; forcing the Allied pilot to do the same in order to stay on the bandit's six.
In AH, the smoke never disappears...just like the fire you're all talking about. I'm with you...it'd be nice to see the smoke and fire disappear at the appropriate times.
(pretty sure that the book was Thunderbolt! by Johnson)
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I agree, there does need to be changes made to the damage model. This whole thing is good, but there is room for more realism. (HTC you guys still ROCK) Please add more realism :D
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Next time your over water and on fire, ditch or bounce off the water and see what happens to your fire. :aok
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I also think when that when your plane starts to leak fuel from one of your tanks, and it's completely depleted, the leak of fumes should stop as well.
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My old cessna 172 held 21 gallons in each wing tank. Usable was 18 gallons. That leaves 6 gallons for the fire when you crash out of fuel.
That's my theory, and I am sticking with it.
shubie
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But in this case there would be a hole in the tank.
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I was flying a formation of 17's a while back and took a hit to the number 2 engine. It proceeded to flame up, so I proceeded to shut down that engine and put my plane into a moderate dive to try and put the flames out. Roughly at the mid piont of the dive the flames began to go out then boom! I was expolded?!?!
Any thoughts on this? :confused:
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If you're plane catches fire, you had better be within 15 seconds of a base or you're dead. I don't think engines can catch on fire so it was probably a wing tank.
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I thought that historically if you did get a fire like that you could cut the engine and extinguish it in a dive. Maby I am wrong.
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I would guess that would be the case with some types of fires.
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IIRC, I read that cutting the engine and extinguishing the fire with a steep dive, is just a myth.
If a fire is caused by the fuel tanks being ignited, then it's the fuel that is burning, and cutting the engines would have no real effect in stopping the fire. (maybe it could help slow down the spreading of the fire?)
So the only way to stop the fire is to stop the fuel mixing up with the oxygen to keep the fire going, and conventional diving speeds of WW2 planes just weren't that high enough to cut off the oxygen flow to the fuels. The flames might temporarily simmer down due to high speeds, but as soon as the plane hits level and slows down, the fire will grow again.
However, in other cases, the flames would die out naturally.
Small, local fires caused by a hit to the hydraulics systems would ignite the oil. After all of the oil in the local hydraulics has been burned out, the flame would die out. I've seen a few guncams where a plane has been hit in the wings by a cannon shell, and a small local fire springs up, but dies out quickly - indicating probably the hydraulic oil of the landing gears placed in the wings, have been burned away.
Or HE shells hitting canvas surfaces and setting flames was also common. I've seen some guncams of German planes hitting Hurricanes with cannons, and its canvas was set on fire. Sometimes it's uncontrollable, other times the flame just eats away some of the canvas, and then just dies out - sort of like when if you burn paper, sometimes it would turn into a fireball, and other times it just dies out after a small flame.
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So how does one stop this devastaeing engine fire. there has to be a way. I could of swore that the dive in a 17 would kill the flames. I guess I was wrong, though I have not fully researched it yet. :)
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There is no way. People bail when their plane is on fire, not try to put it out.
As for four-engined buffs, IIRC they had internal flame extinguishers installed at the engines, so if the engines catch fire the flames could be controlled and put out. However, if a fuel tank catches fire... they have to bail.
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Many years ago, I read a true story about a Wellington bomber being attacked by a night fighter.
The first pass cause the left engine to burn the crew shut down the engine and extinguished the flames. After a few minutes they could see that the flames were begining to take hold. The fire extinguisher was depleted so the engineer decided he would crawl across the wing, insert the small extinguisher and try to put out the flames.
So he spilled his chute inside the aeroplane and with one crew member feeding out his line he crawled out onto the wing by punching holes through the fabric. This is all at 16k (or whatever Wellingtons cruised at ).
He got the bottle into the engine casing and he thought that he did the job. However the Night Fighter picked that moment to come back and the manuovering of the buff caused the engineer to fall off the wing. Where he was suspended by his parachute harness about 6 feet behind the rear turret which was firing at the night fighter who was firing back at the gunner!!
The crew inside the aircraft managed to get the rest of chute out the hatch. That was the last he saw of them.
Relevance: Nil
:D