tank main gun shooting planes down.

[Slate]

Solution: the only weapon that would shoot from command view is the m4 rockets.

There would still be planes getting hit by the main gun, but only in the situations like one of the guys mentioned where the spinner fills the entire reticle view.

Its only happened to me a few times, but there's a solution. My guess I'd that it didn't happen often in the war because they were looking through the sight wherever they fired the main.

   I only will shoot at planes through the gun sight not commanders position, much more accurate. When I see one coming in for a run I switch to gun site and fire when he is maybe 200 out? Aim slightly above as shell drop is severe. Also using a hill as a ramp is useful or trees nearby as many will just auger trying for the kill.    Try it you'll like it. 

[bustr]

If this isn't going to change, at least introduce the Hs 129 B2\B3.

Hs 129 B3 - BK 7.5 at 1500m(1640yd) penetrates 110mm(4.3in) of plate.

You can imagine what happens closer in since Hs 129 B3 killed Joseph Stalin tanks and blew a 3ft dia hole in the side of T-34. You won't need to perk the B3 since tankers will have computer aided target acquisition and the main gun slaved to commander mode. This will keep the B2 with MK101\103 and 30mm ammo from getting inside of 100yd where that ammo killed real world KV-1 and KV-2 tanks at 50m-60m.

The current commander mode already keeps the Ju87 G2 from getting inside of 100yd where the BK 3.7 carbide core round single salvo kills both T-34.

Anyone can test this offline. Put out a T-34 as a drone at a medium field on the runway. Up the Ju87 to 1000ft. Start your run at the T-34's side from 1500yd. At 800yd dive at the T-34. Hold fire until inside of 100yd. Shoot into the 60 degree armor above the track skirt. If you hit below it, the rounds are going into the track wheels and plate at an oblique angle doing nothing. Same problem encountered by the Ju87 and Hs129 pilots. Once you get the aim and firing range down, Both T-34 go boom in one pass like they did in WW2.

Sadly the NS-37 round in the IL2 is not good enough to accomplish this inside of 100yd. Took up to 4 passes to finally kill either T-34 with this tactic. Shooting the engine hatch from a 45-70 degree angle works, starting firing at 600, 400 is better. First pass cracks the hatch and smokes the engine. Second kills the tank. If, the commander doesn't main gun wing shoot you in bound on the first pass from being at too shallow an angle. Or on your pull up. Even on the second pass the commander can get you. Because the IL2 was not designed as a dive bomber, you have a good chance of killing yourself anyway trying to pull out of your dive. In early testing, IL2 pilots were lost discovering how poor the IL2 was at dive bombing.

So Aces High tank busting has been turned into playing Russian roulette with who kills you first. The main gun from commander mode, a wirbel just spawned in, or your guns run dive angle to defeat either defenses. Wirbles were designed to kill planes. Tanks were not with the caveat that the germans respected the M2 on M4 so much, they made sure to release their bombs from the vertical and pull out above it's effective range. 

[Saxman]

Give the B-25H the 5 rounds of AP they carried for the pumpkin chucker.

[BaldEagl]

I've shot down so many aircraft with a tank main gun I can't count them and not once have I done so in commander view.  I've always been in the gun turret as my accuracy there is significantly higher.  After all these years of practice the likelyhood of a plane flying straight at me within my elevation range and escaping alive is somewhere in the 10-20% range.

From the main turret I've also gotten kills an several crossing shots.  The most memorable was while sitting on an enemy airfield hidden in a hanger.  I killed a fighter on the crossing runway just after wheels up, sort of like taking a hip shot at a bird with a rifle.  Lucky.

One other memorable experience was on Trinity.  I was at one of the V-bases at the end of a canyon on the south side of the map.  Lancasters had just made a run and were turning for home just over the mountain tops.  I kept firing and missing, adjusting my shots and trying again and just as they flew out of icon range, BOOM... a Lanc goes down.

The advent of the Storch has allowed me to further refine my ability at hitting on crossing shots as they are slow and typically low enough to be in elevation range, turning what, in the past, might have been a lucky shot into a more predictable outcome.

Again, I NEVER use commander view.  I simply practice practice practice and take advantage of those pilots who are idiots.  I highly doubt real life WWII tank crews as a whole had the opportunity to put as much time into this as, even I as a single individual, have been able to in game.

[bustr]

You were probably the rare person who shot down my IL2 years ago before commander mode. Before commander mode, pretty much every tank I attacked who didn't have an ack panzer to cover it, I could fly my IL2 into it without being main gunned. Top machine gun was a real threat like in the real war if I was not careful.

Commander mode links the commander and main gun to your joystick or mouse with your feet steering from your rudder pedals. So the least skilled GV driver today is pointing his main gun at you at all times. So then it's hit Key_2 or have your elevation set and fire. Since commander mode almost all GV I watch from full zoom are tracking my IL2 or Ju87 while I circle waiting to dive in. I watch other planes and tanks from full zoom and see this along with planes left and right being main gunned during their attack runs.

Attack runs against tanks require committing to at least 1000yds of straight flight at the tank. Part of this is to straighten the flight path so there is no yaw and a steady AoA for the cannon rounds or rockets. There is no fancy ACM jinking possible to address the BS being thrown around these days of, "just don't fly straight into their main gun". With the commander mode and main gun linked together, any direction you make your run from is flying into the main gun. That is the same as M1 Abrams computer aided target acquisition and optics for our tanks, while attack planes are limited to WW2 manual controlled tech and the current shortened GV icon ranges.

Then in WW2 the commander buttoned up the hatch when planes were around because like the pilot of a plane he was vulnerable to gun fire and proximity explosions or like the Russians evacuated the tank all together and fired at the tank busters from the bushes as they passed by on their run. And then there were the Americans in their M4 with M2 mounted on the top.

[Brooke]

I fly Il-2's a lot and get shot down by tank main guns occasionally.  I don't come diving down in steep angles on tanks to fire on them for several reasons.  First is that I need to be firing at close range to see the target, to hit it, and to penetrate, and pulling out under those conditions isn't usually too workable.  Second is that if I'm not down in among the trees, Wirbles can nail me easily as I'm scouting around for things.  Third is that it takes a while to climb back up, position, etc., compared to staying low.

Not all tankers hit me going in.  Some are very good (like BaldEagle and Tyfoo as a couple examples), but most people are not perfect shots.  Still, if the guy is a good shot, on my next life, I'm more careful and try feinting or jinking in, waiting for the shot, then trying to get in before they reload, or I try harder to come in with a larger angle, or I try to coordinate with another attacker.

I do suspect it was not as easy in real WWII tanks to shoot airplanes out of the sky, especially in tanks that are maneuvering as they shoot at you.  But I don't know for sure, and it doesn't bother me much.  It's still fun to go after tanks with Il-2's, flying around at treetop level.

[dirtdart]

Commanders position should be "woundable."  I have said this for years. If HTC bothers to model the pilot space as a "woundable" area, the same should go for the physical space occupied by the tc. Not more ridiculous then strafing a gv with an il2s cannon and getting pilot wounded by a 7mm Pinole gun. Iirc you have to hit the gun itself and get x damage to put it out of action. A bit much. I have always been of the opinion that the tc must go to position 2 to spare himself from being pw.

On tanks shooting down planes... I doubt any tanker has fired has many rounds as even some of the moderately experienced ah'rs. If you have fired tens of thousands tank rounds, you could probably do what we do in the game, but like flying a corsair inverted at 200feet with full flaps and gear out, there is no first hand record of this being a standard practice. Do not go down the gun target line of a tank. If you are a tanker... always load he for ac and for the heavy tanks so you can knock their track off and then pick them to pieces.....

Dirtdart

[Lusche]

Commanders position should be "woundable." 

I don't disagree, but then HTC would have first to provide "buttoned up" stations to all tanks, which is a lot of additional work.

[Megalodon]

If this is a Air or WWII combat simulator?.... what part of WWII air or war combat is tanks shooting planes with their main gun simulating?

You can't simulate something that didn't happen.

You have 2-3 real life tankers in the game saying that it is hog wash.

 

[scott66]

Cause it did happen

[BaldEagl]

If this is a Air or WWII combat simulator?.... what part of WWII air or war combat is tanks shooting planes with their main gun simulating?

You can't simulate something that didn't happen.

You have 2-3 real life tankers in the game saying that it is hog wash.

 

No, this is a air combat or WWII GAME.  If it was meant to simulate WWII we'd have Axis and Allies and real maps and when you logged on you'd have to wait to be assigned a role in a scenario.

Real life tankers had real life considerations, like not wasting thousands or even tens of thousands of rounds learning how to shoot down aircraft.  Here the ammo is unlimited.  You either get resupplied or get a new tank.

[Tinkles]

If this is a Air or WWII combat simulator?.... what part of WWII air or war combat is tanks shooting planes with their main gun simulating?

You can't simulate something that didn't happen.

You have 2-3 real life tankers in the game saying that it is hog wash.

 

I have been the 'victim' of been shot down by tanks while in a plane. However, it was my own stupidity that got me killed, not what the other player did or the tool he used.  Just because it didn't happen on a daily basis doesn't mean that it shouldn't be possible in the game.  It wouldn't happen "so often" if players would fly and attack tanks correctly and attack from high angles, rather than rush in and wonder why they died.  Don't blame the mechanics, blame the player! 

We as the players get multiple tries to attack the same target. If we fail one way we can try another way until we succeed.  It isn't HTC's fault that players decided to go around the same mountain and get bored or annoyed, it is the player's fault for not broadening their scope and trying out new methods and ways of gameplay.

[Saxman]

I have been the 'victim' of been shot down by tanks while in a plane. However, it was my own stupidity that got me killed, not what the other player did or the tool he used.  Just because it didn't happen on a daily basis doesn't mean that it shouldn't be possible in the game.  It wouldn't happen "so often" if players would fly and attack tanks correctly and attack from high angles, rather than rush in and wonder why they died.  Don't blame the mechanics, blame the player!  

It's not a matter of arguing whether it should be possible. It's a matter of whether the game is artificially making it easier than it should be. IE, the tank commander's position making it too easy to track incoming air attackers and aim the gun, optics that are much clearer than they should be making it easier to line up on an air target, or turrets that aren't operating under historical motion restrictions (someone I believe pointed out that some tanks couldn't adjust elevation and rotation simultaneously, or that for others the turret had to be locked for firing). And I find it hilarious you're talking about players for not attacking tanks "correctly," when they're using the same tactics dictated BY ACTUAL TANK BUSTERS DURING THE WAR (IE, low-level strafing passes firing into the side armor at close range).

It's not that different from the arguments about BUFF gunners having it easier than they ought to. It's more than just us as players having more practice time; bombers in the game are much more stable gunnery platforms in the game than they should be (no turbulence, static environment, the camera set perfectly on the iron sights of waist positions and never wavering).

[LCADolby]

The gamey bit is when the tanks shoot HE into the ground 2 feet away from them killing the strafing aircraft while they go undamaged.

[WWhiskey]

It is amazing to me that poor SA on the pilots part is blamed on the non flying tank trying not to get killed by an AIRPLANE, don't like getting shot at by tanks!!  Stay away from the ground!
Tanks can't fly, they can't bomb, they can't go very fast,, they have one defensive tool, their guns,, and you want to nerf that as well?  You have the whole sky to avoid them, and yet you come here and whine about them shooting you down because you were to close to the ground!
 if your complaining about getting shot up on the runway while taking off I'm guessing you forgot to look around and see why the base was flashing to start with,
The trains in this game will shoot you down quick enough but no one complains about that, we need more trains,more armed convoys, more town and factory defenses,, keep the planes at alt, fighting each other instead of vulching tanks and whining about it when it doesn't work out!

Well that's my rant for the day!