Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: F4UDOA on May 28, 2003, 04:31:51 PM
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Had a really bizarre experiance in the MA today that got me a little upset.
I intercepted a flight of JU-88's at 10K in an F4U-1D. Made an approach at about 350MPH and the bombers were level at about 250MPH or what ever the top speed at that alt is for them.
I made a pass from my right to left closing in on the bomber V formation. By the time I got to 500yards I started receiving hits and by 300yards my right wing was gone.
One pass, about 30 to 50 hits of .30 cal and my wing fell off.
I would bet that even at extreme close range there is no way possible that a .30 machine could spit in two the main wing spar of an F4U that is rated for 7G's at 12,000LBS.
I went to the DA with Ecke and tested this and duplicated this by finding in the F4U-1 and F4U-1D it took approximately 30 rounds from the tailgunnerof a single JU-88 to knock the wing off of an F4U. Ecke was in the JU-88 and I was in the F4U so my film is from my side. I was closing very slowly and still of it came quick.
What gives??
BTW, annecdotadally Japanese pilots have said that their .30cal would bounce off of the stressed aluminum skin of the F4U.
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Wth? My Ju-88s tailguns are next to useless. 1000 rounds into the nose and #3 engine of a b-17 at close range didnt damage him. The single 30 cal in the front is almost useless takes around 5 seconds to do anythinng to enemy. You wanna talk pork everytime I come near a Ki-67 1 single 20mm will break something every single hit.
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http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=87742
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Originally posted by F4UDOA
I made a pass from my right to left closing in on the bomber V formation. By the time I got to 500yards I started receiving hits and by 300yards my right wing was gone.
One pass, about 30 to 50 hits of .30 cal and my wing fell off.
You were under fire from between 3-9 guns so you were hit by more than that. With a twist of his wrist a gunner can alter the formation and suddenly you are under fire from more gunes. You might have started a great angle of attack but had it spoiled by your enemies moves. Need to juke a bunch when attacking buffs from the rear.
Also, multiple hits increases the stress on the target, so what you see is a cumulative effect from numerous hits, not teh weight of one hit in isolation viewed against a plane's rated strength. If you come into a guy's 88 formation tail on the proper angle, he is putting 6-9 8mms on you and considering that you were moving at 350 your craft wasn't under "static stress" conditions.
I can tell you that at times when I gun 88s, if a guy does what you described and I lead him just right as he comes in, he is hit with a fire-hose like effect of lead and if he wasn't sawn into pieces it would be ridiculous.
I have killed 5-8 enemies in 88 formations because they wandered directly into the line of fire at speeds which allowed me to concentrate on them singly.
To attack formations: best at higher speeds, steeper angles, from blind spots (the side and directly below the 88s or in front is good as well). Bringing a buddy is far preferable to attacking alone, one of you will score hits on your pass.
Sakai
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Sakai,
I have two problems with your theory.
1. I was coming in at a sharp angle accross the back of the formation so I was only really exposed to fire from one bomber unless they were shooting through each other. By the time I got to the cnter of the box my wing was gone. My rate of closure was so fast there was no way possible for the gunner to change positions to re-aquire me as I crossed behind the formation anyway.
2. Even more importantly I was able to duplicate this in the DA with only one JU-88 using 30 rounds of ammo. Both times he took my wing off.
I went to Tony Williams Gun Tables and the JU-88's 7.7MIL gun doesn't even have a HEI or Incendiary round. And the armor penatration is almost Zero. There is no way I should have lost a main wing spar.
And this was done with a single 7.7 machine gun from 300yards repeatedly in the DA with approx 30 rounds.
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Originally posted by F4UDOA
2. Even more importantly I was able to duplicate this in the DA with only one JU-88 using 30 rounds of ammo. Both times he took my wing off.
I went to Tony Williams Gun Tables and the JU-88's 7.7MIL gun doesn't even have a HEI or Incendiary round. And the armor penatration is almost Zero. There is no way I should have lost a main wing spar.
And this was done with a single 7.7 machine gun from 300yards repeatedly in the DA with approx 30 rounds.
Well, your DA experience sounds more interesting than does your MA experience, in my gunning in 88 formations, as I noted, you move the plane at all and the guy is a viable target for all 9 rear guns. I watch guys come in all the time in perfect line of sight and they always say "how did you hit me!" as if tehy could not possibly have exposed themselves nor I juked the plane to expose them. Also, you don't kill everything that flys up yer butt, let me assure you, you have to lead them just right or they can make repeated passes on you. I tatter people in weaker planes repeatedly when I have a Stuka, Val, Kate, etc. and I almost never get a kill. You do undertsand that on the single Ju88 all three rear facing guns will fire, no? So you are not getting hit by a single gun so you might try seeing if 30 rounds from the Panzer pintle will destroy a wing. It won't.
Or, try it at 300 yards from say a Val or Kate. You won't tear a wing off an F4U with 30 rounds--it won't happen.
The idea that 8mms don't penetrate planes is also not accurate. The force of striking planes repeatedly will weaken and break it up. Many a pilot and plane was lost to .30 cal fire in that war. How many planes were shot down by rifles when strafing troops? More than one I wager.
Sakai
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Sakai,
Your right about loosing planes to 30 cal fire. But not loosing a main wing spar. That was one piece of dense re-enforced metal on most planes and especially on the F4U which was built to withstand the force of carrier landings.
I have read of oil coolers, radiators etc. but not Wing spars.
Also there is no errosive effect of shooting armor with a light machine gun. Using that theory you could shoot through a tank if you hit it enough times with 30 cal. I think that was an error in the AH damage model for tanks that would allow MG fire to kill tanks. Maybe some of that logic applies to the A/C damage model as well.
I would luv to go to the DA with you and try it. I would test the Ju-87 as well.
I'm betting that .30 cal from the Ju-87 takes the wing off too with about the same number of rounds. Whish I could test this myself.
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Originally posted by F4UDOA
Sakai,
I would luv to go to the DA with you and try it. I would test the Ju-87 as well.
I'm betting that .30 cal from the Ju-87 takes the wing off too with about the same number of rounds. Whish I could test this myself.
Let's do that because this sounds like a bad problem to me. Could it simply be the Ju88 guns?
Sakai
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This experience has been shared by many people that attack ground vehicles armed with the same 7.9mm fired from German vehicles. I have also inflicted cripling damage on aircraft with a pintle gun on single passes. Those weapons are quite effective against targets that are approaching head-on.
MiG
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Originally posted by CMC Airboss
This experience has been shared by many people that attack ground vehicles armed with the same 7.9mm fired from German vehicles. I have also inflicted cripling damage on aircraft with a pintle gun on single passes. Those weapons are quite effective against targets that are approaching head-on.
MiG
Yes, if a guy comes in on a steady trajectory and you lead him right you land a great many hits, but I GV a ton and I shoot down many, many AC with them and I rarely get them as outright kills--most often they crash trying to strafe me or I and others hit them. Sometimes, after a few passes, I will get them but I rarely knock a wing off.
Sakai
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F4UDOA why not try the same thing with other planes to see if it happens to them too.
I think AH uses a culmalative DM myself. It doesnt seem to matter what hits you, if it hits enough it will break anything.
It seems to me each section of the aircraft model, be it tail or wingtip or wing, has its own sort of 'hit points' which are taken away with each hit, at least it feels like that.
A single hit sprite doesnt necessarily mean a single bullet either so its hard to be sure whats really going on. maybe the bullets that hit you are totaled up rather than added as individual hits. If you put 30 rds of 7.9mm or 1 or 2 rounds of 20mm you get the same effect? perhaps AH's model of aircraft doesnt model the wingspars in so much as it just makes the 'area' around the spar a little more durable than the wingtip areas to simulate it being stronger.The model must be hard to get right, I mean to actually model accurately every part of every aircraft would be an impossible task so you take the most important or significant areas instead like fuel tanks or pilot cockpit or tail section or elevator etc etc.The more they do they better it gets but there has to be a limit to it somehwere.
I think this may just be a visual effect to basically show the player youve taken too many hits. you get hit 50 times and the hits are all over your aircraft.The computer sees that 30 rounds have hit in one section(by the wing spar) it adds up the damage which exceeds its strength. It then has a choice of displaying wingtip damage,whole wing damage, engine fire or flaps blown off etc.Each when you think about it are just graphical visual clues for us to show damage so maybe its silly to expect hundreds of different 'damaged grapics' to be shown.
Perhaps you should just imagine you just lost your controls through damaged cables etc from 30 bullets tearing through the wires and accept AH will just show your wing missing to represent it.
I find it a rare occasion that ju88s get kills and a lot of the time i fly them i hit targets with hundreds of rounds.The common thing is they ignore the fire and plow in regardless, they soon die when 9 guns hit them even in their fast dives.Personally i think if this guy skillfully lead his shots and hit me fairly with 30 to 50 rds concentrated on one spot on my wing id expect to lose something vital and if i was the gunner Id expect a kill for getting it.
If it was a bug then its more than likely the f4u with too weak an area than the ju88 having too powerful guns :) the ju88 guns are pea shooters.
check the f4u DM :)
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Remember, there is NO armor on the wing of a plane. It is built to take a steady, evenly distributed load of x g's, but any damage to the structure weakens it considerably. Poking holes in the wing spars (aluminum extrusions or machined parts) will make them weak enough to break. An F4U-1 wing SHOULD fail with "30 to 50" .30 cal holes in it. The folding outer part was fabric covered, and is actually tougher against hits that miss the structure. If the spar or formers got hit, the structure would be destroyed. This doesn't even count the damage from the airstream when the holes open up and increase the drag. For the effects of a 300 mph wind, see "tornado".
If japanese pilots reported that .30 rounds bounced off American planes, they were drinking too much sake. There's no way a thin aluminum skin will stop a rifle bullet.
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It could probably 'skip' off of it depending on the angle it hit at.
By the way, the Val and Kate have .50 caliber rear guns in AH, not .30 caliber. They'll kill anyone dumb enough to run up their butt no problem, if they can shoot straight.
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F4UDOA,
You are simply encountering the way AH models damage.
My roomate and I tested the Lancaster's wing by shooting just the 50 cals from a P-38L at it.
It takes 12 rounds of 50 cal to completely sever the wing of one of the toughest heavy bombers of WWII. Just twelve.
It isn't unique to the Ju88 and it isn't unique to the F4U, which you'd have seen if you weren't so pressed to find errors in the F4U and had tested other fighters as a control.
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Poor damage modeling.
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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.
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Yea, I've read about the .30s 'bouncing off' as well, can't remember where I read it. I've also read that the F4F's were tough enough that even the A6M2's cannons sometimes wouldn't penetrate the armor around the pilot. That seems to be modelled anyway, the F4F is second only to the P38 in toughness in this game.
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Urchin,
Funny thing about the P-38. In the same book where the bouncing bullets comment is made "Japanese Navy Aces of WW2" the comment is also made about the tail snapping off of the P-38 with just a couple of cannon hits.
That thing could get hit with a howitzer in here and still fly through it.
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Originally posted by F4UDOA
Urchin,
Funny thing about the P-38. In the same book where the bouncing bullets comment is made "Japanese Navy Aces of WW2" the comment is also made about the tail snapping off of the P-38 with just a couple of cannon hits.
That thing could get hit with a howitzer in here and still fly through it.
It had an icreadably weak tail for about a year then they changed it.
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A few comments.
I think it is entirely possibly that 30 hits from a rifle-calibre MG, all landing in the same place, will sever a wing spar. What I don't believe is that such accuracy was even remotely possible from a flexibly-mounted gun in aerial combat. The shoot-down record of such weapons was frankly terrible, and only a tiny percentage of shots fired hit the aircraft at all, let alone in the same place on the plane.
As to the ability of RCMG bullets to penetrate an aircraft's alloy skin, this is from 'Flying Guns WW2', comparing the .303 with the 7.92mm AP:
"The test then changed to shooting at the rear of the long-suffering Bristol Blenheim at the same distance, involving penetrating the rear fuselage before reaching the 4 mm armour plate protecting the rear gunner, which was angled at 60º to the line of fire. The results in this case were reversed; 33% of the .303" rounds reached the armour and 6% penetrated it. In contrast, only 23% of the 7.92 mm bullets reached the armour, and just 1% penetrated. The British speculated that the degree of stability of the bullets (determined by the bullet design and the gun's rifling) might have accounted for these differences. "
Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website (http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk) and Discussion forum (http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/)
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I'm not sure what that Japanese ace saw, or thought he saw, but there is no WWII aircraft skin on earth that will stop a .30 cal bullet. As Tony said, even the armor on aircraft frequently couldn't stop meager rifle caliber rounds. Let alone, heavy MG's and cannon.
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Originally posted by Urchin
By the way, the Val and Kate have .50 caliber rear guns in AH, not .30 caliber. They'll kill anyone dumb enough to run up their butt no problem, if they can shoot straight.
Is this accurate? The Jap planes have .50s in Aces High?
Sakai
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Tony, I just don't know about those quoted penetration effects, and I wonder if "reaching the armor" had more to do with bullet path deflection after striking the skin. I will set up a test with my .30-06 M-1 and 8mm mauser rifles this weekend, and get back to you about penetration of aluminum by a bullet that is a bit less energetic than a wartime .30-06 or .303 as well as some M2 ball and AP I have. It may be interesting to see how much a bullet will deflect after passing through the "skin". I don't have any T6 or armor plate to test, though.
I will state again that I think a lot of the damage actually comes from the aerodynamic effects of the torn aluminum torquing and stressing the wing structure. We will have to look into how much of the strength of the wing is skin stiffness, how much is spar.
All in all, as long as the damage model is consistent over time, I think we can play it as it is.
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Tony,
I agree that the accuracy from 300yards from a moving platform to a moving target is just silly.
Also I have in AH flown the Hurri with 8 .303 and landing hundreds of hits with little to show.
I think this is probably closer to reality than 30 rounds taking off a wing at the fuselauge.
Sakai,
When are you usually online so we can test?
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I remember that the outer wing panels were fabric covered, and did a little research to verify it. Here's a link.
http://www.f4ucorsair.com/tdata/history.htm
It states that the outer wing panels were fabric covered, aft of the spar. That matches my memory. Of course, the leading edge would be aluminum skinned.
Don't quote me on this, and I'll need to check, but I think that they went all-aluminum for the -4 and above.
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BTW F4U's have been landed with 40 plus 20 mill holes.
That proves nothing. Until you examine the damage from all F4Us, those that were lost and those that made it back, you cant make any determination on "toughness". For all we know there could be many who were lost at sea with a few 30 cal hits.
Unfortunately theres no way to examine those that were lost at sea or impacted the ground. Using an example of a few miracle planes making it home prove nothing. There was one guy on the board who say p38s can flew through 109s and telephone poles. He uses 1 example to "prove" his point.
Sakai (the real one) preferred the mg to the cannon. No plane skin can stop a 7.92 round. But the bullets can be deflected depending on the angle they impact. Look at the f4f and f4u from the rear. One can imagine the upper fuselage being at an angle at which rounds glance off.
I agree that the accuracy from 300yards from a moving platform to a moving target is just silly.
This has been brought up many times in referrence to all bomber guns and gvs mgs in ah. Its been said 1000 times that its a gameplay decision. Bombers are generally easy kills. But even the weakest of them can bite ya if you dont make a proper attack.
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30-50 hits from anything might be a lot if they were concentrated or got "lucky". Doesn't sound unreasonable that an airframe under stress that was hit by that number of rounds might fail in some way. Not saying that happened since there is nothing to back that up, but it sounds plausible.
A side note, I had noticed that the "ping" sounds were not always representative of real hits against formations of bombers. The rounds from bombers effectively left all guns that were firing at the same time, and arrived at the same time. Each ping might therefore represent a number of hits. Combine that with the concentration at a convergence point (like D500-D650 that maybe bomber guys set) and you might actually be receiving 2-3 times the damage you expected. I had a film of this at one point a couple of months back where a Ju-88 cut me to pieces. Turned out when I spoke with the pilot that I'd received the majority of my hits at the instant I passed his convergence setting from 4+ guns firing and that's where my plane broke up.
-Soda
Aces High Trainer Corps.
The Assassins.
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Rshubert,
I think the text your reading from is from the XF4U-1.
Regardless the inner wing (from the wing fold in) joining to the fuselage is the area Im talking about. That area is where the pilot walkway was and was certainly not fabric. Also this is the are were the wing locking mechanism and landing gear are located. This area is loaded with heavy metal construction.
Here are some notes on construction from Americas Hundred Thousand.
1. A main wing spar.
2. Front and aft torque boxes "These boxes had metal skins which were .091 inches." from AHT
3. "A spar web made of heavy metal sheet reinforced by vertical stiffiners" from AHT.
4. This section also housed the landing gear, wing folding mechanism with supports for the outer wing and telescopic flaps which were metal covered. Also from AHT.
It should be noted that the same F4U-1 airframe had the structural integrity for 7Gs at 12,000lbs, carrier landings and 4,000lbs of bombs increased to 6,000lbs of bombs after WW2.
If you were making this arguement for a P-39 or another "empty wing" A/C I might say yes. But no way here. In fact I have never heard or read of a total wing failure in an F4U or F6F.
In Korea Capt. Jesse Folmer took a 37Mill shell from a Mig-15 and was left with a hole in his wing. He determined it was to unstable for a carrier landing so he water ditched but the A/C was intact and flyable.
If you want concrete numbers I can provide those as well.
From the Naval Historic Center
In WW2
F6F
66,530 Action sorties
553 A/C lost to NME AA
6,503 tons of ordinace dropped
F4U
64,051 Action Sorties
349 A/C lost to NME AA
15,621 tons of ordinace dropped
Over twice the amount of ordinance dropped and almost half the losses of the Grumman iron works.
I don't think .30 cal fire was a great concern.
FYI I can email this document I quoted if you like.
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F4UDOA, as the Dauphin, ws overheard in the French camp at Agincourt:
SCENE VII. The French camp, near Agincourt:
Enter the Constable of France, the LORD RAMBURES, ORLEANS, DAUPHIN, with others
Constable
Tut! I have the best armour of the world. Would it were day!
ORLEANS
You have an excellent armour; but let my horse have his due.
Constable
It is the best horse of Europe.
ORLEANS
Will it never be morning?
DAUPHIN
My lord of Orleans, and my lord high constable, you
talk of horse and armour?
ORLEANS
You are as well provided of both as any prince in the world.
DAUPHIN
What a long night is this! I will not change my
horse with any that treads but on four pasterns.
Ca, ha! he bounds from the earth, as if his
entrails were hairs; le cheval volant, the Pegasus,
chez les narines de feu! When I bestride him, I
soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth
sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his
hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.
ORLEANS
He's of the colour of the nutmeg.
DAUPHIN
And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for
Perseus: he is pure air and fire; and the dull
elements of earth and water never appear in him, but
only in Patient stillness while his rider mounts
him: he is indeed a horse; and all other jades you
may call beasts.
Constable
Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse.
DAUPHIN
It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the
bidding of a monarch and his countenance enforces homage.
ORLEANS
No more, cousin.
DAUPHIN
Nay, the man hath no wit that cannot, from the
rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary
deserved praise on my palfrey: it is a theme as
fluent as the sea: turn the sands into eloquent
tongues, and my horse is argument for them all:
'tis a subject for a sovereign to reason on, and for
a sovereign's sovereign to ride on; and for the
world, familiar to us and unknown to lay apart
their particular functions and wonder at him. I
once writ a sonnet in his praise and began thus:
'Wonder of nature,'--
ORLEANS
I have heard a sonnet begin so to one's mistress.
DAUPHIN
Then did they imitate that which I composed to my
courser, for my horse is my mistress.
ORLEANS
Your mistress bears well.
DAUPHIN
Me well; which is the prescript praise and
perfection of a good and particular mistress.
Constable
Nay, for methought yesterday your mistress shrewdly
shook your back.
DAUPHIN
So perhaps did yours.
Constable
Mine was not bridled.
DAUPHIN
O then belike she was old and gentle; and you rode,
like a kern of Ireland, your French hose off, and in
your straight strossers.
Constable
You have good judgment in horsemanship.
DAUPHIN
Be warned by me, then: they that ride so and ride
not warily, fall into foul bogs. I had rather have
my horse to my mistress.
Constable
I had as lief have my mistress a jade.
DAUPHIN
I tell thee, constable, my mistress wears his own hair.
Constable
I could make as true a boast as that, if I had a sow
to my mistress.
DAUPHIN
'Le chien est retourne a son propre vomissement, et
la truie lavee au bourbier;' thou makest use of any thing.
Constable
Yet do I not use my horse for my mistress, or any
such proverb so little kin to the purpose.
RAMBURES
My lord constable, the armour that I saw in your tent
to-night, are those stars or suns upon it?
Constable
Stars, my lord.
DAUPHIN
Some of them will fall to-morrow, I hope.
Constable
And yet my sky shall not want.
DAUPHIN
That may be, for you bear a many superfluously, and
'twere more honour some were away.
Constable
Even as your horse bears your praises; who would
trot as well, were some of your brags dismounted.
DAUPHIN
Would I were able to load him with his desert! Will
it never be day? I will trot to-morrow a mile, and
my way shall be paved with English faces.
Constable
I will not say so, for fear I should be faced out of
my way: but I would it were morning; for I would
fain be about the ears of the English.
RAMBURES
Who will go to hazard with me for twenty prisoners?
Constable
You must first go yourself to hazard, ere you have them.
DAUPHIN
'Tis midnight; I'll go arm myself.
Exit
ORLEANS
The Dauphin longs for morning.
RAMBURES
He longs to eat the English.
Constable
I think he will eat all he kills.
ORLEANS
By the white hand of my lady, he's a gallant prince.
Constable
Swear by her foot, that she may tread out the oath.
ORLEANS
He is simply the most active gentleman of France.
Constable
Doing is activity; and he will still be doing.
ORLEANS
He never did harm, that I heard of.
Constable
Nor will do none to-morrow: he will keep that good name still.
ORLEANS
I know him to be valiant.
Constable
I was told that by one that knows him better than
you.
ORLEANS
What's he?
Constable
Marry, he told me so himself; and he said he cared
not who knew it
ORLEANS
He needs not; it is no hidden virtue in him.
Constable
By my faith, sir, but it is; never any body saw it
but his lackey: 'tis a hooded valour; and when it
appears, it will bate.
ORLEANS
Ill will never said well.
Constable
I will cap that proverb with 'There is flattery in friendship.'
ORLEANS
And I will take up that with 'Give the devil his due.'
Constable
Well placed: there stands your friend for the
devil: have at the very eye of that proverb with 'A
pox of the devil.'
ORLEANS
You are the better at proverbs, by how much 'A
fool's bolt is soon shot.'
Constable
You have shot over.
ORLEANS
'Tis not the first time you were overshot.
Enter a Messenger
Messenger
My lord high constable, the English lie within
fifteen hundred paces of your tents.
Constable
Who hath measured the ground?
Messenger
The Lord Grandpre.
Constable
A valiant and most expert gentleman. Would it were
day! Alas, poor Harry of England! he longs not for
the dawning as we do.
ORLEANS
What a wretched and peevish fellow is this king of
England, to mope with his fat-brained followers so
far out of his knowledge!
Constable
If the English had any apprehension, they would run away.
ORLEANS
That they lack; for if their heads had any
intellectual armour, they could never wear such heavy
head-pieces.
RAMBURES
That island of England breeds very valiant
creatures; their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.
ORLEANS
Foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a
Russian bear and have their heads crushed like
rotten apples! You may as well say, that's a
valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.
Constable
Just, just; and the men do sympathize with the
mastiffs in robustious and rough coming on, leaving
their wits with their wives: and then give them
great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will
eat like wolves and fight like devils.
ORLEANS
Ay, but these English are shrewdly out of beef.
Constable
Then shall we find to-morrow they have only stomachs
to eat and none to fight. Now is it time to arm:
come, shall we about it?
ORLEANS
It is now two o'clock: but, let me see, by ten
We shall have each a hundred Englishmen.
Exeunt
Sakai
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Originally posted by F4UDOA
Rshubert,
I think the text your reading from is from the XF4U-1.
Nope. I checked again, and the fabric covering stayed on until the F4U-5. Nevertheless, I appreciate the info about the skin thickness. It will help my tests this weekend. I can get hold of some sheet aluminum 1/8" thick that will do nicely for penetration tests.
Don't think that I am going after the F4U in any way--I love that bird, and think it was one of the top two or three planes of all time. It is tough, but I know it could be shot down.
I propose to test penetration and deflection at 90, 45, 30 and 15 degrees from the horizontal. My guess is that I will be able to penetrate at all angles with ball ammo, but I won't predict what deflection will be. I will set up a target 1 meter behind the test coupons to measure deflection angle. At 90 degrees, there should be minimal deflection, and I will set up a piece of 1/4" steel to test penetration. My experience in shooting tells me right now that the 1/4" steel is in serious danger. Again, though, I don't have any t6 or rolled armor plate that thin to test against. I have some 3/8" T6 steel silhouette targets, and have penetrated them with AP, but not with Ball. I never knew how good the .30-06 AP was until then.
Testing will be done at 100 yds, since I can't shoot worth a damn beyond that with open sights anymore. My eyes are getting as old as I am. I'll post results Sunday night or Monday.
If you could get a drawing of the spar profile, I think we could test that, too. I have a friend with a browning .30 1919A4, and we could actually build up a section then shoot the dickens out of it. .:D I work at a steel mill, and can get tensile testing of the sections done before and after, to measure loss of strength. It may not match the exact alloys used by Vought, but we could get a relative measure.
Sounds like a fun project. I still say that the aerodynamic loads are what kills the plane after the wings get opened up to the wind at 300 mph
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"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."
Ohh now you really dissapoint the old Corsair fan in me. :( The whole outer wing center top and bottom was fabric covered. It only became metal with the F4U-5.
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I think it may just be how AH decides to graphically represent the damage...catastrophic failure and the wing is removed. But saying that, from my own personal experience, the F4U's shed their wings more easily than any other aircraft I have experience with. Even the A6M2 can sustain more damage and those things should pop just from looking at them. Literally...there is tons of anectodal evidence as to that.
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Puke,
I am noticing a strange trend on the message board.
It seems as if any technical discrepincy is delt with by being dismissed as whining.
I can produce documents, online testing, annecdotes and common sense. I get back Shakespear and a guy who wants to go shoot sheet metal targets at 100 yards.
This is something I can duplicate at 300YRDS in the DA.
Somehow this thread has turned into me defending the wing surface of and F4U and a quote from a japanese ace.
Funny thing I don't think many of these people even play the game.
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Well, we are just flying representations of aircraft. The differences are good enough to where you can say the Corsair in here flies much more like a Corsair than the BF109, but still, its only pixelations and code and so there can be many, many errors as compared to the histories we've read. The statement I made about the hog is from both sides of the coin. I used to fly her a lot, and the wing seemed to want leave the fuselage a lot whenever hit. But I've also seen it when fighting against a hog, I've hit them with a good spray and I'll watch as a wing leaves the fuselage a good majority of times. In appearance, this seems wrong to me based on everything I've read, but I just chalk it up as to being catastrophic damage which AH represents as just dropping the wing from the fuselage whether that would've really happened or not. But I think the whining comes from the fact that we all have our favorites and most probably specialize in a particular genre of World War II...I know much more about the USA aircraft than any other country's aircraft. Also, some people on here want to argue just about anything, even if they can produce some anomoly in data or historical record against you or nitpick one little word you use in your statement. Anyway, I take that as the tug-of-war and ebb-and-tide that is necessary to come to the truth of something. Still, I'm with you and the Corsair just doesn't strike me as being as sturdy as I feel it should be based on my readings...but what bothers me more than that, the Zeke is too sturdy in here and should pop!
Sorry for my ranting novel.
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Puke,
I would luv to do some more test in the DA.
There is another thread about the pintle gun of the Ostie being to strong. So Im wondering if it is the 30 cal in AH or the F4U damage model.
The funny thing is I really dont expect to make any major changes in AH with all of the work going into AH2. But it surprises me all of the negative feedback you can get when pointing out something that is relatively obvious.
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I performed the tests mentioned in my earlier post yesterday afternoon. The results were as predicted. All rounds from the .30-06 and 8mm penetrated. About half were deflected, from 5 to 20 degrees. None of the 8m bullets (190 gr. boat tail spire point spitzers) showed evidence of "upset", which surprised me. About half the .30-06 rounds did, evenly distributed between the AP and Ball loads. Upset increased as the angle increased. Interestingly, there was a disk of aluminum spalled off from the test coupon in every case (except .45 ACP) that also penetrated the 1/4" plywood backer 1 meter behind the test coupon. In every case, the test coupon was deformed to a greater or lesser degree by the passage of the bullet.
Two real surprises: I tried some .30 carbine lead loads, and they penetrated! My expectation was that they would not. I also shot a .45 acp round at one coupon. It did not penetrate, but deformed the aluminum more than any of the more powerful rounds that did. In fact, the coupon was broken in two.
The 8mm rounds were shot from a Turkish mauser, 24 in barrel, pretty typical. The .30-06 rounds were shot from an M1 Garand. The carbine rounds were fired from an M1 Carbine, typical WW2 issue. The .45 ACP roundw were fired from a Colt 1911A1.
Conclusions:
1. Penetratioon would be no problem.
2. Deflection would be. The path of the bullet is unpredictable after penetrating the aluminum skin of the plane.
3. The spalled disk could create further damage to the plane.
4. Upset bullets could add greatly to the damage caused by the gunfire.
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Dude,
1. Do you think at three hundred yards the bullets would penetrate.
2. You said your shooting was off with open sights at long range. How yard would it be for you to hit the same spot on a wing spar at that range?
3. How hard would it be if the target were moving and your firing platform were moving?
4. What does any of this have to do with my post?
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Originally posted by F4UDOA
Dude,
1. Do you think at three hundred yards the bullets would penetrate.
2. You said your shooting was off with open sights at long range. How yard would it be for you to hit the same spot on a wing spar at that range?
3. How hard would it be if the target were moving and your firing platform were moving?
4. What does any of this have to do with my post?
Answers:
1. Yes. Definitely. Comparing muzzle energy in joules between the 8mm round and the .30 carbine round, the 8mm round has about 75000 joules, and the .30 carbine round about 11000. That is a 7:1 ratio. Yet the .30 carbine round penetrated at 100 yards. I'll check the ballistics tables when I get home, but it would seem to me that the 8mm bullet would be MUCH, MUCH more than energetic enough at, say, 1000 yards. The problem would be hitting anything at that range.
2. I shot the rifles at 100 yards. I could hit a wing spar at that range. The test coupons were 6 " x 1-1/2" or so. I missed four times out of 18 shots fired, twice with the M1 carbine (open sights), twice with the M1 Garand (open sights) and zero times with the 8mm Mauser (scoped).
The pistol was fired at about 10 yards, since there ain't a chance in hell that I could hit something that small at 100 yards with a government model, except by luck.
3. Harder, but that's why they give us guns on the planes that shoot 800 round per minute per gun, or whatever number for a particular gun is applicable. People do hit other planes in this game. The statistics for each player show the hit percent he gets when firing a-a weapons. Mine is about 6 % in fighters. If I am "typical", then a five-second burst from 3 MG15s at 800 rpm per gun (that's a guess) would give me 200 hits on your plane. Remember that all guns in the formation that will bear on you fire at you when going up against a bomber vee, with aim just as good as the lone gunner's. If you get hit by one of them, you get hit by all of them. The downside for the gunner is that he can only engage one fighter at a time. I try to keep out of the gunner's sights, since he has a real death ray there.
4. You are the one that brought up the question of how much damage is done by rifle-caliber mg bullets to airplane structures. If the experimental information is of help, good. If not, sorry.
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F4UDOA, I noticed that you seem to put a lot of emphasis on the "stressed aluminum" nature of the F4U's skin. You may have a misconception what that means.
"Stressed skin" construction simply means that the skin provides some of the structural integrity of the part. That's as opposed to fabric-covered skinning, where the covering provides no structural strength to the object.
If you take the skin off the wing of a fabric covered plane, the structure will bear the same load as with the skin in place. If you take the skin off a stressed-skin airplane, the structural integrity is compromised, and the part is very weak.
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On the contrary rshubert,
I place no value on the armor protective qualities of the aircraft skin.
My mistake was quoting a Japanese ace that made the comment about the .30 cal ammo bouncing off. I was simply making light of the useless nature of the weapon in combat. It never even crossed my mind that aluminum sheets could or would provide any armor protection what so ever or that I would somehow get stuck defending his statement.
However I think you are ignoring the important pieces of information here. I''l list them if you whish to address them.
1. The shooter in a tail gunned position is shooting from a moving platform.
2. The target is moving.
3. The target is at 300yards.
4. The target is at a head on position. You are firing at the front of the leading edge of the wing by the fuselage. This area is about 1" thick.
5. The inside of the wing while not only being re-enforced metal is surrounded by
A. Oil coolers
B. The landing gear
C. The flaps while retracted.
D. The wing locking and folding mechanism.
Plus annecdotally
A. The F4U had a better record for surviving AA than the F6F Hellcat. (From the NAS)
B. At least one Japanese pilot thinks his ammo did not penatrate the aluminum skin at all angles of the F4U.
Take these peices of information and combine them with
1. I can take the wing off a F4U in the DA with approx 30 rounds of ammo from one Ju-88 tail gun consistantly at 300yards.
2. There is at least one other thread currently active on the AH boards right now about the hitting power of the Osty hull gun which is also a .30cal.
3. The resilient nature of other A/C in AH such as the A6M5.
Add it up and I think there is a problem relative to either the DM of the F4U or the hitting power of the .30 cal.
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A comment on the accuracy of guns in WW2:
Most aircraft guns were not very accurate, especially recoil-operated ones. This was because the priorities were a high rate of fire and good reliability, both of which were aided by loose tolerances. Loose tolerances are not compatible with accuracy.
The .303 Brownings as used in RAF fighters achieved 75% of shots within 5 mils accuracy (that is, within an 18" circle at 100 yards). They needed a circle a yard wide to cover all of the bullets fired. This was fairly typical.
Ground tests of the .50 MGs in a B-24 showed accuracies varying between 10 and 20 mils at 600 yards for the turret guns, and no less than 35 mils for the waist guns - that is, ten feet at 100 yards!
This illustrates the fact that hand-aimed, flexibly-mounted guns were highly inaccurate, even when fired on the ground at a stationary target. Factor in aircraft movement, target movement and the battering of the slipstream against the gun barrel, and it's easy to see why such guns rarely shot down anything.
If the B-24's waist guns are typical (and I have no reason to suspect otherwise) than at the 300 yards range you're talking about a burst of fire which would have been spread across a circle of thirty feet diameter even under ideal conditions. I'll leave you to work out how many shots you'd have to fire to have a significant number hit the same spot on a wing which is edge-on to you.....
Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website (http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk) and Discussion forum (http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/)
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Are this the results from the tests you mentioned Tony?
B-17:
ball turret > dia. 15' - 8.3mils
upper turret > dia. 21' - 11.7mils
chin turret > dia. 23' - 12.6 mils
waist(closed) dia. 26' - 14.3mils
side nose > dia. 34' - 18.7mils
tail turret > dia 45' - 25mils
B-24:
ball turret > dia. 15' - 8.3mils
upper turret > dia. 20' - 11.2mils
nose turret > dia. 23' - 12.9mils (Emerson)
nose turret > dia. 35' - 19.3mils (Motor Prod.)
waist(closed) dia. 23' - 12.9mils
waist(open) dia. 63' - 35.6mils
tail turret > dia 35' - 19.3mils
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The rifle sized mg's in AH is grossly undermodeled compared to the .50 cal. class weapons. This I think is in part due to to the simplistic damage model. Do I think 30 rounds of .30 cal would rip a wing of? No ... not even on a zeke. I have seen some 190's loose a wing due to ammo explosion, and a lot of flaming zekes (their main weakness was lack of self-sealing fuel tanks), but I have rarely seen planes loose major components like a wing to mg or hmg fire. Somtimes with cannon fire.
AH models absolute damage to all structural components AFAIK, meaning the component (wing in this case) doesn't loose integrity gradually like in RL, but continues to be just as strong untill it is damaged beyond it set limit ... and then fails completely. Those few guncam films where I have seen wing failure like this were in either high G load turnfights or high speed tailshots, where the stress of G or aerodynamic force ripped the weakened wing off.
A .50 cal. round do not do much more damage to a structure like a wing than a .30 cal. round. This is because both rounds have sufficient kinetic energy to penetrate and completely pass through the structure, even a heavy aluminum wing spar. The .50 cal is of course much more powerful, but it has no way of transfering all that kinetic energy to structural damage. A human being has the consistency of jello. The reason why a rifle round does more damage than a pistol round is because the higher kinetic energy of the rifle round causes more hydro shock in the human body (like shooting a baloon filled with water). Against a sheet of aluminum both rounds would do much the same damage if they both penetrated, the rifle bullet will just fly farther off into the woods. As Rshubert found out the .45 cal. pistol round actually did more damage to the sheet/structure by not penetrating because it was thus capable of transfering all it's energy to the target rather than just punching a small hole.
The reason the .50 cal. round was better at shooting down planes has nothing to do with the structure of the planes. The .50 cal. was more effective at causing critical component damage. At good angles the a .50 AP(I) round will crack the engine block, penetrate cockpit armor, the higher kinetic energy has a greater chance of rupturing self-sealing fuel tanks due to increased hydro shock, the projectile is bigger and thus capable of carrying more incendiary chemical power which increases the chanse of setting fire to fuel, hot engine oil and some hydraulic fluids.
Aluminum is a very good material to use in lightweigth loadbearing structures, but it is soft and suceptible to damage. The MG3 is chamered for the 7.62x51mm NATO round, which is somewhat less powerfull than the 7.92x57mm Mauser or the .303 British (7.7×56mm). The M113 APC has more than 1.5 inch hardened aluminum side armor which is sufficient to stop rifle sized ball rounds at all but the shortest ranges. I have personally shot a 50 round belt of AP at the side of a M113 at 400 meters (437 yards), not one round glanced off or failed to penetrate, and they did some impressive damage bouncing around the interior. So a .30 will penetrate the wing spar of an F4U. Would 30 rounds rip a wing off? nope. Will 30 .50 cal. rounds rip a wing off? nope. Will 30 HE cannon rounds rip a wing of? yes, probably.
My .2 cal... err, $
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Side note: We also shot some .50 cal MP ammo at that 113. Didn't do much more damage (but some since the MP has a HE component), but went straight through the other side of the vehicle. :)
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Thanks Guys
!!
I was waiting for the common sense cavalry to arrive.
BTW, I have film of my test in the DA.
I just hope HTC takes a look at this in AHII.
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Look at my first post, and I'll make the same statement. If the rounds open up the structure to the 300 mph wind, the airflow will do the rest of the damage.
Tony, I respect your work and research, but ...
Think about it. How many bullets did it take to really knock down an airplane in WW2? Not 30 cannon rounds. Not hundreds of rifle-caliber mg rounds. Not that many. It's the aerodynamic forces that do the damage, to the weakened structure under unusual stresses.
Here in AH they don't model the slipstream effects, or the vibration of the gun. OK. Whatever. However, the argument that both bodies are moving makes hits nearly impossible is specious, since in real life planes did get shot down, and deflection shots worked. Remember that the average AH gunner has much more experience than any WW2 gunner.
I'll bet somebody, somewhere has done an engineering study on that. I'll see what I can find.
And btw, the flaps, oil cooler, etc. were all made of lightweight materials, and probably offered little resistance to the passage of the bullets.
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Tony, would you not say that the dispersion factor you quoted makes a hit more likely, not less likely? Think "shotgun". At 600 rounds/min from a .50 mg, a five second burst puts 30 rounds in that 45 ft. circle (quoted) per gun. Two guns per turret in a B17 (60 rounds). Three (minimum) turrets firing (180 rounds). If the gunner gets the lead right, I would think that there would be some hits to the plane. Pellets in the sky bring down ducks, and airplanes.
Anecdotally, when I fly real planes, one of the things they want you to inspect carefully is the wing leading edge. Strange things happen to the lift characteristics of even a light plane wing when it is deformed. Planes with dented leading edges are supposed to stay on the ground for that reason. Wing skin damage is nothing to sneer at.
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I found this interesting..
I went into the CT and took up a Corsair. My first three flights ended with me losing my left wing, then losing my right wing, then my left again and all with no other damage that I could tell as I spun in or crabbed into the ground. My fourth death was due to ack and an M60 which basically took off all my parts. After that, I stopped paying attention and was really fretting about how poorly I was doing. I got my butt spanked big time...was honestly startled at the amount of HOs going on (wasn't seeing them occur until too late for some reason) and ack running. My quick little experiment shows the F4U tends to shed a wing when hit. It has nothing to do with what kind of bullet hits the hog or from what direction (first two deaths direct HO's.)
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Originally posted by rshubert
Think about it. How many bullets did it take to really knock down an airplane in WW2? Not 30 cannon rounds. Not hundreds of rifle-caliber mg rounds. Not that many. It's the aerodynamic forces that do the damage, to the weakened structure under unusual stresses.
Only a very small percentage of planes went down due to structural failure. Like I said critical component damage is the real killer in AA combat. Engine and engine systems (radiators and such), pilot/crew, fuel tanks and control surfaces or linkage. Some planes (like the Zeke) did sometimes break up in mid-air, but usually as a result of fire which weaken aluminum a lot (aluminum will actually burn with a catalyst like aviation gas). Some planes exploded, again as a result of a catastrophic fuel fire, again critical component damage.
Only auto cannons had the effect of causing gaping wounds in the airframe ... like a broadsword would do to a human. .30's and .50's are more like rapiers, stabbing weapons. They penetrate and damage the components whithin the structure. The .50 rapier is of course somewhat longer and sharper. ;)
The kind of structural failure we see in AH is gamey IMHO, especially with regard to the bombers. IL2's damage model is better, but still simplistic compared to RL (duh!), but at least it seems more realistic.
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Originally posted by rshubert
At 600 rounds/min from a .50 mg, a five second burst puts 30 rounds in that 45 ft. circle (quoted) per gun.
5 seconds is a lifetime in combat. One ... ... ... two ... ... ... three ... ... ... four ... ... ... five ... ... ...
More realistic: One (109 5 O'clock!!!) ... two (training gun/turret) ... three (aiming) ... four (firing) ... five (Wooosh! Where did he go?!?) ...
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rshubert,
I'm not talking about 30 hits from the .30 cal.
I'm mean thirty rounds fired period.
Maybe 3/4 of them hits and then maybe half into my wing root.
So your really talking about maybe 10 hits.
Puke,
Your right, wings fall off like daisy leaves. I also feel like the -1D is more fragile than the -1 although my test showed them to be the same.
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Of the damage model. My point could be restated to say that the airplane itself does the destruction. If the wing or tail surfaces are distorted in some way by the damage, the airplane can become uncontrollable. The resulting departure from controlled flight overstresses the airframe. The airframe comes apart.
We've both seen a lot of gun camera footage of real airplanes coming apart at the seams when hit by ack, or missiles, or gunfire. Sometimes they explode, other times they don't I think a large percentage of in-flight breakups are due to loss of control caused by damage to flying surfaces. How much? I don't know for sure. But it did happen a lot.
I don't have any problem with the amount of damage required to bring me down, as long as it is consistent from player to player. It seems to be. Is the discussion of what exactly happens during the process important? Yes, but not in the game. The game models damage caused by gunfire consistently.
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Nice try, G, but the plane was passing left-to-right approaching from behind, at D400 or so, according to F4UDOA's original post. I would get five seconds at him from that approach vector if I saw him coming.
4.0k identify threat...1.6k aim...1.0 k open up...stop when he flys past.
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OK guys, try an experiment. Draw a circle to a convenient scale to represent 30 feet diameter.Superimpose onto this a head-on view of your favourite fighter to the same scale. Calculate the percentage of the area occupied by said fighter. I would expect this to be no more than 10%.
So, even under ideal conditions (both targets stationary, on the ground) the vast majority of your shots are going to miss. Those which do hit will be scattered all over the aircraft. To stand a reasonable chance of several hits impacting on the same spot you would have to be firing for minutes, not seconds.
Sure, sim gunners get better practice than WW2 gunnners did in RL. But, you don't have to cope with the vibration, the bucking around of the aircraft, the slipstream battering the gun barrels, and above all the gut-wrenching fear of combat. Yes, fighters were shot down by bombers (put enough lead in the air and you will eventually get lucky), but (in the case of the USAAF) at a rate of about one-tenth of the claimed figures. And even taking the claimed figures, USAAF bombers still fired 12,000 rounds for every claim, which means the actual figure was around 100,000 rounds per bird, which works out as TWO HOURS continuous firing.
I'd be interested to see evidence for the claim that most planes were shot down due to structural damage. The RAF estimated that 90% of their bombers were lost due to fire.
Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website (http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk) and Discussion forum (http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/)
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Damn.. lookit him go
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Originally posted by Tony Williams
I'd be interested to see evidence for the claim that most planes were shot down due to structural damage. The RAF estimated that 90% of their bombers were lost due to fire.
Exactly.
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Originally posted by rshubert
Nice try, G, but the plane was passing left-to-right approaching from behind, at D400 or so, according to F4UDOA's original post. I would get five seconds at him from that approach vector if I saw him coming.
4.0k identify threat...1.6k aim...1.0 k open up...stop when he flys past.
Nice try R :)
You'd be hard pressed to see a fighter head-on at d4k to say nothing about identifying it. You start aiming at d1.6k a mile out? ... and you start firing at d1k. By that time you have been attacked by the other fighers you didn't see while aiming and wasting your ammo at d1k.
Here's a little anectodal evidence for you:
The Schweinfurt
Raid
-----
By Sgt. WALTER PETERS
There were fighters everywhere, but mostly on our tail. "The whole Golly-gee Luftwaffey is out today," somebody said over the inter-phone. There were the single-engined Me.109s and twin-engined Me.110s; there were Ju.88s and FW190s; there also were Me.210s, even Dornier bombers, and God only knows what else the Germans had thrown into the fight. The only things they did not throw at the division were the plane factories themselves, or such factories as they have left to throw.
"This is nothing," Zorn reassured me. "We've seen worse in other raids. About 25 minutes more to the target."
The captain took a little evasive action. The plane banked to the left, then to the right. To the right we sighted a huge column of smoke, which looked at first like a big black cloud. It was the target. Libs and Forts had already passed the ball-bearing works and hit the plants solidly. We'd soon be there, but we wondered just how soon. The passage of time is a little different up there. The Navigator told me to look out of the left side. There were a couple of planes burning there, a Fort and an enemy fighter. Three white parachutes and one brown one floated in the sky. The whites belonged to our boys. Under the brown one was a German.
When in hell are we getting to that target? Time has passed so slowly these past 15 minutes. Ten minutes more and we'll surely be there. Heuser was still calling them off. The fighters were coming in from all sides now, but not too close. Maybe about 500 yards away, often as much as 1,000. I looked back toward the fuselage. There was Tex, his left foot planted on a box of caliber 50s, his right foot lazily dangling in space. From the inter-phone we knew Tex was a very, very busy top turret gunner. His gun was tracking fighters all around the clock. Occasionally he concentrated his gun to the tail, where his friend Sweeney was busy firing at the enemy as they queued up from the rear.
A Ju.88 and a 190 attacked Sweeney's position from 4 and 8 o'clock, and high. Tex's guns worked fast. Both planes peeled off. The 190 shied off but the 88 came back from about 500 yards to the rear, flying smack into the ex-tire salesman. Sweeney calmly pressed his triggers. Meanwhile, Tex directed his fire. "You're shooting at him just a little high. Get him lower. A little lower." Sweeney did; the 88 came closer, and lobbed out two of the rockets which the Germans are now using. They were deadly looking affairs as they shot out like flames.
Tex still guided his pal over the inter-phone. "A little lower, Bill," he said. A little lower Bill went. The 88 wavered, flipped over and as it did we could see that it was afire, trailing smoke. Then there was one less Ju.88; also one less Ju.88 crew of two. They didn't get out.
---
These guys had trouble hitting a Ju88 at 500 yards steady on their six, a bloody twin-engined bomber!
The selfdefending bomber formation concept was violenty proven faulty on Oct. 14, 1943.
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My father was a WAG (radio op/gunner) in the RCAF during WW2. During training, he had a 5% hit rate, firing from a turret, on the target drone and was complimented by the instructor on his score since it was double what the average was for a trainee gunner. This was under a controlled condition, not in a combat situation.
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...So, even under ideal conditions (both targets stationary, on the ground) the vast majority of your shots are going to miss. Those which do hit will be scattered all over the aircraft. To stand a reasonable chance of several hits impacting on the same spot you would have to be firing for minutes, not seconds...
This is good stuff!
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aint it Kweassa :)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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JoeB,
I can duplicate this in 1G level flight consistantly.
With approx 30 rounds every time.
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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.
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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
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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
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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 (http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/7404/thun.html) Staffelkapitan of 9./NJG 6 with 7 air victories
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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.