Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: hazed- on August 12, 2003, 10:39:35 AM
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After recently buying a book on the P47 which has many pictures of battle damaged P47s and many snippets telling how the pilot returned with sometimes amazing levels of damage I now even more than i did before feel OUR P47s arent tough enough!!
I know this is controversial and very much a subject prone to each of our individual 'feelings' about its durability but id like to put my case accross and see if anyone agrees.....
First id like to point out that when we all seemed to agree the P38's tail was like glass when hit we could all 'feel' it was wrong or at least go to read books about it and see that , although the tail WAS vulnerable it wasnt so weak as to be mentioned as a fault with the aircraft. It wasnt how we put it 'glassed tailed'.
Well Ive noticed when shooting down the P47s rather than flying them that the Tail(or more accurately the horizontal stabilisers) are very easy to remove with sometimes fairly small caliber weapons. It seems if you manage to hit a few times on those stabilisers they will come off. Ive also noticed if you manage to hit the wings in a sawing type of hit (a long strike accross the surface) the wings shear off quite easily too.
Then theres the engine too which , although i feel it does survive oil hits pretty well it still is certainly not so noticable as the books would make you believe.
Ok so, I always felt that the P47 should appear to be one of the most durable if not THE most durable fighter aircraft in AH and after reading this book on the P47 i was amazed at some of the battle damage they sustained and still managed to return home.
I cant scan them in or host the pics but i can give you the ISBN number so you might buy the book too and see. (ISBN 1-58007-018-3)
Ill describe some of the damage: One picture has a cannon hit on the horizontal stabiliser big enough for a fully upright man to STAND in and low and behold there is a picture with the mechanic standing in the hole make by the hit!! Then theres two pictures of bullet holes from a 6oclock shot that peirces the propellor blade! The hole is the size of a golf ball one side and a grapefruit the other!! this aircraft returned home with this hole! can you imagine the vibrations? another picture shows incredible damage to the right horizontal stabiliser where the whole thing has literally been ripped off leaving just the elevator conected to the twisted wreckage of the horizontal stabiliser, the vertical fin is pot marked with collateral damage. Again this fighter returned to base. Another picture shows a battle damaged P47 ditched and you can see the whole tail section from just behind the cockpit has been bent and crushed. The caption says 'On april 22 1944, P47D 42-8426 suffered major damage but retained enough structural integrity to protect its pilot as it came to rest in an english hedge'.
Many others show hits and the resulting damage. Some look like at least 20mm hits, some showing the cockpit hit and smashed with a gaping hole. Overall the short excerpts and stories seem to point again and again to a incredibly rugged fighter.
It does seem to suggest the fighter wasnt a great turner which is a little strange in that our P47s turn pretty good but overall the impression made by this and other books is that this was a Big, fast and very durable fighter.
I have to say in AH it just doesnt portray that sort of durability, ALTHOUGH it is pretty good.
Imo though the P47 needs to be a little tougher to break up than our present AH P47s. I know this is just my opinion and really it counts for nothing much but I was wondering who might also feel it isnt quite the legendry tank like aircraft it appeared to have been in the books.
This is why im lobbying for HTC to toughen it up a little. Make it capable of recieving a lot of damage. So much so that we all feel its the strongest of the lot. At the moment I dont feel its much harder or tougher to damage than say the P38 or F4F or even La7 and a few others. All of these aircraft i find harder to break a part off and yet in books about them you dont often see the ones that returned missing huge sections like you do in P47 books.
I might be out of line asking and maybe im not being scientific enough to warrent listening to, but remember there wasnt any charts or details given in order to fix the P38 tail or the 190a8 engine when they 'FELT' wrong.
So who would agree to it? who agrees they would like to see our P47s surviving massive damage that would likely down lesser durable planes? do you like me desire to 'feel' that the P47 is a damn hard aircraft to shoot and break up?
guess its very subjective and perhaps HTC would feel this is a dumb request but id hope they take a look in this book I have just got myself (isbn above)and maybe agree with me. you guys too....
Remember also Im rarely flying them myself, but i have shot many down and my view has been formed from the damage i see inflicted when i hit. When i have flown the P47 it DOES seem pretty rugged and tough but I would have to say it doesnt feel any tougher than many other types of aircraft in AH and i feel (if HTC agree to strengthen them) this is something that would make them 'feel' like the legendary tough bird they were.
ok fire away with those flame throwers!! :D
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Hi Hazed,
Related discussion:
http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27181&highlight=vulnerability
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
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I have always thought the P-47 damage model was way under estimated. I fly Luftwaffe now but I was in an American Squad before and the P-47 was one of our historical planes. It didn't seem to be anymore tough than any other plane which I thought was odd. I don't know how many times I would hear a couple of pings and the next thing I know I am standing in a tower. I have flown the Ki-61 and brought it back many times with battle damage but I can't recall ever being able to do that with the Jug. Maybe it will be changed with AH2. Here's to wishing.
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I think every plane in AH seems too fragile, especially the bombers, but I think it has more to do with gunnery issues than damage model. We land many more hits on planes in AH than the pilots in R/L did ... by far! I have also seen many photos of various planes that survived with grievous damage, however I noticed that the actual number of hits were very few compared to what we see in AH. In a 109F4 (my favourite 109) it takes me less than half a second to send 10 20mm rounds into lets say ... the wing of a Jug ... from ONE Mg151 cannon. AH gunnery is very accurate it seems compared to WWII pilots R/L experiences. Remember that the pilots who brought these shot up birds home in one piece were very lucky, and many didn't with much less damage.
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Damage models are always speculative. The glass tail on the p38 and the glass engine on the 190 and other planes were bad enough to cause people not to fly those planes. Toughness, especially against cannon rounds, has always been more of a myth than reality.
it takes me less than half a second to send 10 20mm rounds into lets say ...
How did you count? 10 rounds in 1/2 second exceeds the max RoF of the gun.
ra
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I guess what im really asking is would you object if HTC were to increase the toughness/durability of the P47s?
I know we have a strange damage system at present, bombers show it up well but its all we have for now. So in the light of this dmage model being how we have it i think in order for us to feel like the jug is as tough as they appear to have been we , imo, need to increase its strength in AH.
To be honest ive always felt the 190F8 is similarly lacking in any 'durability feel' but i have to steer clear of it because if its about that plane its immediately a whine. In all honesty its just a desire to see the legendarily tough planes to appear tough in AH and thats all it is.
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How did you count? 10 rounds in 1/2 second exceeds the max RoF of the gun.[/B]
Ok ok, 6 rounds, not 10. Still a 1/2 second kill.
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I remember a while back, i went to this website whose name i cant remember right now.
It showed a P-47 that had been blown up by the 500lb it was carrying while on the ground. Amazingly, the pilot managed to survive the accident.
NOW THATS A TOUGH PLANE!
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Originally posted by hazed-
I guess what im really asking is would you object if HTC were to increase the toughness/durability of the P47s?
Yes I would, because the Jug is tougher than other fighters in AH, but it only shows if you're using .303's or in snapshots where you only get a couple of rounds in.
In AH it is impossible to do many of the things WWII pilots did in R/L, like a Jug being in the crosshairs of a 190A8 and survive, or a 110 slowly climbing up a B17's six and survive with 50 holes in it. In AH the Jug would be blown away and the 110 would go down with 500 holes in it. Let's say the Jug is 100% more durable than say a P51. In AH that means you'd have to squeeze the trigger a fraction of a second longer to deliver fatal damage to the Jug, whereas in R/L it would be several seconds longer because they didn't score as many hits. The Jug isn't "under modelled" in my opinion, it's the gunnery that is the culprit. The Jug shouldn't get special treatment, every plane should be tougher or the gunnery model adjusted.
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what about midair collisions? i crashed into this yak the other day in a 109f4 and ended up as a lawndart. On my way down, i saw the yak only had a fuel leak. he may have had more damage but the plane was still flyable. The collision wasnt headon or at high speeds. We were scissoring back and forth at very low speeds when i ended up hitting his left flank.
Please make a better collison model.
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LOL, wtg Hazed, now you got yourself covered for the future!
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I vote for you to embrace brevity.
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Originally posted by Mathman
LOL, wtg Hazed, now you got yourself covered for the future!
? if you are refering to me asking for fw190f8 in future to be strengthened im not going to, I already asked a year or maybe 3 ago :) just thought id mention it as another aircraft which doesnt 'feel' like I would expect it to. After all the f8 is supposed to have more armour than the a8 i believe.Anyhow its besides the point of this post...this is P47
And as for the P47 Ive always said i thought it should be the most durable of all fighters and if you look at my previous posts i have asked for this increase in durability before. Its just that after seeing even more evidence of its durability in this new book I thought id just come right out and ask again. After all dont ask dont get and if you had this book i think it would make you request the same thing.
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heheh, never mind
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Anyone know how many P47s were lost in the ETO? I think the loss rate of ground attack squadrons was HIGH.
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I think that it is broadly true that AH's aircraft are too fragile (with some standouts like the redone P-38 and the A6M5b).
My guess as to the cause is a lack of "hit quality" simulating/faking, By "hit quality" I mean that a Hispano Mk II round fired from an aircraft going 200mph from exactly 300 yards behind another aircraft going 200mph always does axactly the same amount of damage in AH, whereas in reality there is a great variabilty in the damage caused by each strike (and not just based on where it hits). I feel that AH models only best case strikes.
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I agree regarding the P-47s. And at the extreme opposite end of this spectrum, the Zekes are way too tough.
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Originally posted by Mathman
LOL, wtg Hazed, now you got yourself covered for the future!
Nice, asking for that is "legal" but saw as a cover operation to ask for something illegal, that is, LW related ...
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Originally posted by MANDOBLE
Nice, asking for that is "legal" but saw as a cover operation to ask for something illegal, that is, LW related ...
yep seems thats what im supposed to be up to. well let em think what they like mandoble, I cant win if i deny or confirm it.
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Originally posted by hazed-
After recently buying a book on the P47 which has many pictures of battle damaged P47s and many snippets telling how the pilot returned with sometimes amazing levels of damage I now even more than i did before feel OUR P47s arent tough enough!!
There is one inherent problem with using the documented cases of planes making it back with huge amounts of damage as indicators of how resistant to damage an aircraft was. The sample is inherently self-selected -- you're seeing the planes that did make it back, without knowing what it took to shoot down the planes that were lost.
Take the case of the P-47 that made it back after having a FW-190 use up all its ammo on it. Yes, the pilot made it back with an incredibly shot-up plane -- but if the first burst of fire from the FW had shattered the linkage connecting the plane's stick to the aileron and elevator cables, it would have gone immediately out of control and crashed.
You can't know, for all the planes that were shot down and the pilot killed, how much damage it actually took to take down the aircraft unless you go through all the gun camera footage for the enemy planes and count and localize hits -- which isn't particularly practical.
And the problem gets worse when you try to evaluate an aircraft's vulnerability to weapons that they didn't actually encounter during the war, or try to isolate damage by weapon type from aircraft equipped with both machine guns and cannon.
Originally posted by GScholz-
AH gunnery is very accurate it seems compared to WWII pilots R/L experiences.
Which is a very telling point. Look at actual WWII pilot records. How many pilots in WWII survived getting shot down as many times as most of us get shot down in a week? Erich Hartmann got 352 kills -- but how many of his squadmates were killed over his career? We get shot down and 'killed', we just up another plane and keep going, learning from our mistakes -- of course we're going to learn what works and what doesn't in AH, from simple repetition if nothing else. Most of us brought ACM and shooting skills from other simulations, as well.
The one fundamental problem with AH, or any other combat simulation, for that matter, is that the player is inviolable. No matter what penalties you apply in the game for being shot down and killed, you can't keep the player from learning from the experience. If you make the player start their 'flying career' over after being 'killed', they're not starting over with the same skill they had the last time they started over. Think back to the first time you played an air-combat simulation. You sucked, right? We all did.
Think of what AH would be like if there was some way to make the player lose their accumulated flying skill when they got killed, and got locked out of an arena until the map got reset when they got captured. Staying alive would have a much higher reward than it does now -- the 'pork and auger' crowd would be resetting themselves to noobs fresh out of flight school every time they did it, for example. Pilots would be a lot more cautious about engaging; even the big furballs that lasz wants would die back. You'd get a game that would more closely resemble what actually occurred during the war -- but I don't think that it would be as much fun.
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There is one inherent problem with using the documented cases of planes making it back with huge amounts of damage as indicators of how resistant to damage an aircraft was.
Exactly. But you can make comparisons of all aircraft types that did make it back with damage and come to some conclusions as to ruggedness.
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The German high command during WW2 conducted a study of how many hits it takes to bring down certian allied airplanes. If you want to get closer to real world, then utilize real world statistics. Alot of planes during that era were very durable but the pilots were n't. Thats why germany put their pilots in a metal bath tub for survivability. How do you think so many lived to fight for 4 or 5 years. I personnally have an issue with the cannons. Especially in the later model planes. They didn't use armor piercing rounds they converted to air burst. Air burst were much more lethal to plane structure than armor piercing. Look at those damage photos you'll see the normal machine gun holes but sometimes you'll see what looks like a 1 to 2 foot hole. those holes came from air burst rounds.
just the ramblings of the mentally deranged, thank you for tolerating me. :D
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There's nothing wrong with plane hardiness or lethality in Aces High. Awhile back (over a year now), Nath and I ran some tests of bomber toughness against various plane types and compared the rounds required to bring down the bomber to actual averages from the war.
Basically, one of us would up in a bomber and the other in a fighter, then we'd level out, match speeds with the fighter about 300 yards off the bomber's six, and the fighter would shoot as close to a single round at a time until the bomber became unflyable. Not incredibly scientific, but the results interestingly matched historical expectations.
For instance, not once did a single 30mm bring down a Lancaster. Lancs required between three and five 30mm hits each time to become unflyable; I think once it took almost seven 30mm hits to bring down a Lancaster. Fewer shots were required when aiming at specific soft points such as wingtips, but the Lancaster especially proved very durable. We also discovered that the Hurricane IID makes for a crappy buff killer despite its enormous guns due to the incredibly low muzzle velocity of its cannons. German 30mms required relatively fewer hits to bring down buffs than the IID's 40mm.
Anyway, just my two cents.
-- Todd/Leviathn
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Originally posted by Puke
Exactly. But you can make comparisons of all aircraft types that did make it back with damage and come to some conclusions as to ruggedness.
While you can make some generalizations about relative toughness between aircraft, the amount of variation in cases makes isolating causes a nightmare -- number of friendly aircraft of a type, number of enemy aircraft, type of enemy aircraft, engagement durations, etc. The German research work, although limited in its scope, provides a much better picture of what damage effects and resistance were like than examining the damage on planes that made it back and trying to determine damage resistance on that basis.
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shiva you make some good points and we are all aware of the fact we see the ones that come back and not the many that dont but the point is the P47 DID come back even with such huge destructive hits and it would appear quite often it manages to survive them.
Other aircraft have the same sort of 'survival tales' but as far as i have read not as many as the P47 . Nor are they ever claimed by the pilots to be better than the p47.The main thing the pilots generally stress is the amazing ability it had for absorbing damage.
Now this might well be anectdotal evidence but it is none the less a general consensus of opinion of people that were there, also well documented by photographic evidence, (more so than any other aircraft ive seen personally).If you would choose to ignore all of this evidence and rather trust a computer calculation based on a programme based on a set of data charts/etc derived from human testers who also after all are just as human as the pilots and so just as prone to error etc then im dumbfounded.
The AH P47 as far as MY EXPERIENCE tells me through constant play is not particularly tough, it doesnt seem to soak up hits any better that say the P38, imo the LA7 has often taken more hits to down.
Im not trying to claim 'HTC has it all wrong blah blah', not at all, but i'd just like them to know the P47 in their game in my veiw isnt very similar to its 'historic legend' if i can call it that. I think if you really read its history and read some of the many combat reports you will see, yes they lost a huge amount of P47s, but also that they did the most dangerous of the jobs.Tree top hunting for ground targets, airfield attacks, high escort work the list is enourmous.They were shot up and came back time and again, it really is an impressive aircraft.
Surely asking to have AH reflect this isnt so terrible. Im thinking only a slight adjustment. like adding a few mm to a virtual iron armour if you will.Id like it if i find a short burst of 20mm takes out aircraft like 109s and spitfires and such BUT when i get that same burst on a P47 I still want to see it damaged!, I still want to see parts fly off and oil or glycol or smoke flow out but I'd like to see that airctaft survive enough to try to escape or fight on.
It would only be a SLIGHT adjustment if I got what im asking for.
I dont want to see the P47 become something unrealistic.I dont want it to defy the laws of physics. I would just like to fly it and feel 'amazed at how many hits it can take and still make it home'.
anyone feel the same just say you like the propsal, please dont turn this into a gunnery model discussion. At the moment the gunnery is going to stay the same. HTC might however be able to adjust a few small parimeters with the P47 model to make it APPEAR more durable to us. It may not look right on paper to some of you but we will all get to feel the P47 is the strong aircraft it was in the mean time. Thats all i'd like.
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Well put Hazed
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Perhaps in AH2, with the new visable damage model on the aircraft we will be able to better understand the amount of damage planes in AH can withstand.
It'll also give us a clue as to the gunnery and if it needs to be looked into.
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Originally posted by hazed-
I dont want to see the P47 become something unrealistic.I dont want it to defy the laws of physics. I would just like to fly it and feel 'amazed at how many hits it can take and still make it home'.
The ability to survive a couple of 20mm's in AH should amaze you just as much as Buzzbait's story did in this (http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27181) thread.
You're not are you? If a 190 snapshoots a few rounds in your Jug and you keep flying you're not amazed??? How unrealistic of you! ;)
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Originally posted by Shiva
While you can make some generalizations about relative toughness between aircraft, the amount of variation in cases makes isolating causes a nightmare -- number of friendly aircraft of a type, number of enemy aircraft, type of enemy aircraft, engagement durations, etc. The German research work, although limited in its scope, provides a much better picture of what damage effects and resistance were like than examining the damage on planes that made it back and trying to determine damage resistance on that basis.
Well the way they did it in WW2, was each plane that came back from a sortie, went under damage review. Pretty much it was a sheet of paper, with cross sections of the air frame from above, both sides, below, wings, tail, of a plane and they'd mark every where the plane received damage. After accumulating 100 planes they'd take all the drawings and over lap them. What they would do then is take cross sections and see where the "Dots of Damage" were light in concentration, What this would mean is that when a plane was usually hit in that area, it was fatal and not return home thus that damage area was not recorded. A durable plane would pretty much have no Light Concentration of Dots, and all damage would be spread evenly. Of course there are more vulnerable spots than others, but this was factored. Also this is still subjective as far as determining which plane was "more" durable. If the plane tended to bring home pilots more often, it would be considered more durable than another, but that doesn't factor in types of missions, pilot skills, time during the war. Hopefully this helps
-BM
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Originally posted by BlckMgk
Well the way they did it in WW2, was each plane that came back from a sortie, went under damage review. Pretty much it was a sheet of paper, with cross sections of the air frame from above, both sides, below, wings, tail, of a plane and they'd mark every where the plane received damage. After accumulating 100 planes they'd take all the drawings and over lap them. What they would do then is take cross sections and see where the "Dots of Damage" were light in concentration, What this would mean is that when a plane was usually hit in that area, it was fatal and not return home thus that damage area was not recorded. A durable plane would pretty much have no Light Concentration of Dots, and all damage would be spread evenly. Of course there are more vulnerable spots than others, but this was factored. Also this is still subjective as far as determining which plane was "more" durable. If the plane tended to bring home pilots more often, it would be considered more durable than another, but that doesn't factor in types of missions, pilot skills, time during the war. Hopefully this helps
I think that 100 planes is still short of being a statistical universe, given the number of different directions a plane can take fire from, and the factors you cite also contribute to variations. Done over a longer period of time, the variations would even out, so if we could collect the data over the whole war we'd get statistically reliable data.
It would also be interesting to look at the data separated into repairable and writeoff; looking at what types or degree of damage would turn the plane into a spare-parts supply would give additional information into what was important to keeping the plane flyable.
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Originally posted by Puke
I agree regarding the P-47s. And at the extreme opposite end of this spectrum, the Zekes are way too tough.
Can't agree about the Zeke, my experience is that just a few .50s and it'll catch fire and pop after 15 seconds at most. I've been flying the 5b for almost 3 TOD's and have found that it's just as fragile as advertised.....and slow too.