Tony Williams, about italian and german ammo

[HoHun]

Hi Gatt,

>As far as 12,7mm are concerned, I was not comparing the AH2's BREDA with RL combat AAR's. I was just asking myself how real pilots could shoot down anything with them. I have talked a lot to E. Annoni, CO of the 96a Squadriglia, 4° Stormo Caccia, in North Africa and Malta. A gentleman and an ace with 11 kills (9 with the RA). Most of them got with his C.202 (the one that H.J.Marseille crashed during a trial ). Well, he said that he usually never glued on the enemy' tail (too dangerous! he said, looking at me as if I was mad) but used "hit and climb" techniques against Hurricanes and Spitfires.

You could ask him how many "hit and climb" attacks resulted in a kill, and how frequently the enemy aircraft survived the attack. The higher the firepower, the fewer survivors there would be - but as hitting vulnerable components of the target was a statistical process, there will always be aircraft that get shot down even by a low-firepower weapon.

(Simplified: Maybe with MG151/20 armament, Annoni would have scored 22 kills instead of 11.)

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

[gatt]

Too late HoHun, he passed away last year

Anyway, I guess that in the real thing a 3-4 seconds burst of two 12,7mm in the cockpit, wings ... engine from high 5-7 o'clock was enuff to put a fighter on fire or damage it enuff to make him leave quickly the fight. In the RL it was enuff and many times it was considered a kill or a claim.

Back to your question, you are right. Usually it was his wingman who told him what happened to his prey. Only once he saw his prey bailing out, from his 20mm armed C.205