Engine battle damage handling

[Bucic]

The manual only mentions the manual mode for the automatic governor failure. It's hardly a complete discussion of the subject, not to mention it's hard to say if the governor is fine after taking a spray of 50 cal on the whole aircraft. Any tips? I usually leave the MW50 on and decrease RPM, cowl fully open manually.

[kablamoman]

There’s not a whole lot extra to worry about in normal operation, nor even much you can do if there’s any kind of damage.

Either you get peppered in non-critical areas (wings, for example) and keep flying. Or you take a critical hit (most commonly the rad or something that results in some kind of coolant leak), and then it’s just a matter of time.

Running reduced RPM and lowering the desired coolant temp with the knob might give you a bit of extra time before the engine seizes, but it’s dynamic and also depends on where you’re leaking and how badly.

I’ve been peppered with some spit .303, had a small coolant leak, but it was minor and I was able to get back to a field safely without having to pull back power (was still running). But other times, with more severe leaks it’ll burn off and overheat a lot faster. The oil coolant heat exchanger is tied into the same system, so either way you’re kind of hooped. 
 

I’ve yet to have my MBG damaged, but I’d imagine that would manifest as some kind of erratic, non-responsive, or overboosting throttle. I wouldn’t worry about that except in that very specific circumstance. In real life the handle was used in cold starts as a kind of choke for smoother starting in cold temps. In the sim you’ll never really need to do anything with it.

[Bucic]

Thanks for chiming in! That was what I suspected but wanted to make sure I'm not missing something obvious.