Aircraft cannot be destroyed when on ground

I'm not sure if this has been reported, but I've seen it happen quite often.

When an aircraft is on the ground (stationary, taxiing, landing ...) it cannot be destroyed, no matter how many times you hit it. See attached screenshots.

Edit: to clarify my original wording, the issue does not happen all the time, but it does occur with some frequency

I've not ever seen aircraft be invincible on the ground, and I've destroyed my fair share of aircraft on the ground. I'm not sure what your screenshots are trying to show there, all that they show is a landing gear bug. You need to provide a track or at the very least, detailed descriptions of how to replicate the behavior. And "try to kill aircraft on the ground" doesn't quite do it, because I've killed lots of aircraft on the ground, they are quite vulnerable, not invulnerable. And in those (50? 100?) kills on taxiing aircraft, not a single time have they been invincible- I would certainly remember if I had ever encountered that kind of bug.

In one mission alone that I flew a few weeks ago, I destroyed about 10 taxiing enemy aircraft over a 1 hour period. I blew them to little pieces, nothing but a fireball and debris left.

Can you please offer a track of this?

I'll make a track next time, shouldn't take too long before it happens again ;)

I've attached some screenshots of an Su-24 that I shot while it was landing.

After getting hit, the Su-24 went through the surface (see smoke effects), continuing into the sea.

The last screenshot shows another AI aircraft that went "underground".

Pay attention to the indicated altitude of the aircraft, it's negative ...

Only time I've seen underground aircraft is right before ping timeout on a multiplayer host. Units keep moving the direction they were moving before... ground units just start floating off the ground, aircraft sink underground sometimes... then you get timeout. Where did you experience underground aircraft? And was it single or multiplayer?

Screenshots unfortunately do not help very much. Track files allow direct attempts at duplicating everything involved in the issue, but screenshots make it extremely hard for us to find and duplicate the parameters involved.

Ah yes... now I do remember seeing an aircraft travelling underground at one point... like something out of Tremors :D I can't remember exactly when and where I saw it though. If it's not a product of multiplayer connectivity issues, it's a rare bug indeed.

All screenshots were taken in single player. (mostly in the Georgian Hammer campaign)

I've not been able to recreate the exact situation, yet.

For now you can enjoy a track of a related issue:

Aircraft gets hit with AIM-9 during takeoff and stops dead in its tracks.

No visible damage and afterburner keeps going ...

AIM9-1.trk

For me I see that too, but the AIM-9 airburst over the plane, which was already stationary. Track said a 'building' was destroyed.

"destroyed" aircraft (opposition forces - SU's) still show up the label in the G H campaign

lol, it's funny that this should show up. I saw this "bug" just yesterday- but I think I know what caused it in this case.

We had a tanker set to "immortal" in multiplayer, and after we were done refueling with it, we followed the SOP and shot it down. Which in itself, really should be a bug there- immortal units should not be able to be killed. It DID show remarkable immunity to my sidewinder attack, but I guess the GAU-8 can even kill immortal beings :D

Anyway, instead of exploding when it hit the ground, it just kept on going down, underneath it, leaving a slow-moving cloud of dust on the surface of the ground directly above where it was. I'm going to guess that this "bug" is a bug with the immortality setting for units- immortal units are still taking damage, and can be shot down, but their object is incapable of being fully killed- so they just keep on going down after they "hit" the ground, and are forced to live an undead, subterranean existence :D

Unfortunately, I can't post a track of it, it's a 16MB track and it gives me a "security token" error when I try uploading. But at least I think I did find the root of the problem. The above explanation makes sense, and explains why I've hardly ever seen it myself (I very rarely fly missions with immortal units, and manifestation of this bug requires one of them to die and me to notice it with external views). This should be easy enough to reproduce myself this evening when I get back home. Then I will post a track.

Interesting finding. I'll keep looking for this "bug" to confirm if it's related to the immortal setting.

Still present in 1.2.4. Unit not set to immortal.