F4U .50 cal machine gun damage and the Zero model

[Katj]

6 hours ago, Gunfreak said:

We aren't talking 1 ans 1 bullet, 80 bullets every second. First ten bullets go so far, the next go so far etc etc. If you fire a 2 second burst. Then yes by the 160th bullet it will have past any armor, the pilot and continued on. 

 

Can you post a track where a DCS Anton survives 160 hits from .50 cal?

[MAXsenna]

7 hours ago, Gunfreak said:

We aren't talking 1 ans 1 bullet, 80 bullets every second. First ten bullets go so far, the next go so far etc etc. If you fire a 2 second burst. Then yes by the 160th bullet it will have past any armor, the pilot and continued on. 

 

Assuming you hit with all of them.  

[PawlaczGMD]

12 hours ago, Gunfreak said:

We aren't talking 1 ans 1 bullet, 80 bullets every second. First ten bullets go so far, the next go so far etc etc. If you fire a 2 second burst. Then yes by the 160th bullet it will have past any armor, the pilot and continued on. 

 

You will not hit all of the 160 bullets, and they will not hit the same exact spot, so their armor penetration doesn't 'add up'.

[Bowie]

On 7/8/2025 at 12:27 PM, Saxman said:

People always complain about .50cal lethality, when it's really about not knowing how wing-mounted .50cal work.

Most important of all: Make sure you're shooting in convergence range. This is actually easy to do with the Corsair:

The Mark 8 sight reticle is calibrated so you can use the middle and outer rings to range a target if you know its wingspan. For a 30-foot wingspan (approximately the size of a single-engine fighter) the target will be at 400 yards when his wingtips are touching opposite sides of the 50mil (middle) ring. At 200 yards his wingtips will be touching the 100mil (outer) ring. Obviously if you're not dead six you're going to need to give it a bit of windage, but once you get used to it it's not too difficult.

I THINK during the Gunnery Training the Corsair's guns are centered at 300m (330+ yards).* The 190's wingspan is 34ft. So you'll be at convergence range when his wingtips reach half way between the middle and outer rings. To simplify things, shooting him anywhere between 200-400 yards is close enough for hand grenades. The A6M5 wingspan is about 36ft, so you can comfortably use the same estimate (any single-engine WW2 fighter will be "close enough" to 30ft span you can use the same range estimation).

CONVERGENCE MATTERS. The Browning.50cal is basically just throwing lumps of metal at the target. That's it. It's reliant almost entirely on kinetic impact to cause damage.** If you're firing outside your convergence range all you're going to do is scatter your fire across the target. Unless you have a golden BB that hits something important just right, you're just poking holes. To cause REAL damage you need to concentrate a whole bunch of BBs into a small point to amplify the energy of the impact. IE a single .50cal round won't break a wing spar. But putting a couple dozen into the same spot on it all at once is another matter. This applies both if you're too far away and too close. So if your sight picture looks like this:

You're TOO DAMN CLOSE, and none of your bullets are going to be hitting in the same spot (they're going to miss center of pass entirely and go up the wings. You can best see how it works here:

As you can see, there's a range at which you have your tightest concentration of fire. That's where the damage is done.

You can change your convergence range when setting your loadout.*

The second, is to be aware of your combat mix. The Corsair has two different mixes of ammunition for air-to-air: Combat Mix and Combat Mix Late. These mixes are grouped in five round patterns. I believe Combat Mix consists of 2 ball rounds, an armor-piercing round, an incendiary round, and a tracer. Each of these types of munitions have different properties. Late Mix is four Armor Piercing Incendiaries, followed by a tracer. Late Mix is going to cause considerably more damage.

Finally, remember that the Fw-190A is a considerably more ruggedly-built fighter than the Zero. It has good armor for the pilot and other critical systems, as well as self-sealing fuel tanks. This is, naturally, going to be much more resilient than the Zero which has none of this. However, a good one-second burst in convergence range, especially with the Late Mix, will really mess him up.

* - Currently you can set convergence at ranges between 300 - 500 meters. THIS IS INCORRECT, and I've already started a thread on the wishlist to get it changed. It is on average at considerably longer distances than the US centered their guns, which tended to be between 200-400 yards (yards, not meters!). However, we also have accounts of some Marine squadrons setting their guns as close as 100 yards! PLEASE, M3, can we get these ranges adjusted?

** It's a bit more complicated than that. You have ball, which is just an inert lump of metal. Armor-piercing are hardened inert lumps of metal designed to punch through armor. Tracers are nominally inert lumps of metal trailing an incendiary component that makes them visible and can, under the right circumstances, start a fire. Incendiaries have a small charge designed to light things on fire, though their explosive power isn't remotely comparable to a cannon shell. Finally, you have API, or armor-piercing incendiaries, which combine the properties of AP and Incendiary into one package. By the end of the War, the US was almost entirely using API for air-to-air combat loads.

Like the P-51D, which has the K-14 70-MIL gunsight ring - 35' wingspan/Half MIL Ring/1,000 ft (~300 yds) convergence.

Both armaments produce the same ~ 20 rds./0.25 sec.

So, a 1/2 sec./40 rd. burst, into a half of a 4x8 sheet of plywood (4'x4') size target (convergence), will absolutely shred an aircraft.

Have nicknamed the P-47D, w/ their 8x0.50M2's, the "Fireman," as they are flamethrowers at convergence.

 

The biggest problem is the DCS default "View Angle" settings.

It is nearly a 2x Reduction.

The arcade panoramic view for the cockpit causes the outside targets to appear small.

So when they are visually at the right distance, they are invariably well inside of convergence range and getting closer, fast.

Everything goes left/right of the gunsight pipper, resulting in a few stray hits at best.

 

On the other hand...

If one corrects this condition, by resetting the value to "40.0," a nearly 1:1 ratio w/ the outside view of 55°, the MIL rings jive w/ the outside view.

Then, when they look right - they ARE right.

Just have to learn to point one's nose where they want to look, which is also realistic.

 

These views are 30°'s apart, giving almost exactly 30° of edge-to edge view.

1:1 view.

 

EDIT:

On 7/13/2025 at 1:38 PM, PawlaczGMD said:

You will not hit all of the 160 bullets, and they will not hit the same exact spot, so their armor penetration doesn't 'add up'.

Damage Boxes - Are cumulative, so they do add up, w/in any box that is hit.

And any 4'x4' location on an A/C ahead of the main spar, will not withstand Forty(40) M2/0.50 Cal. hits, which is the pattern and volume, at convergence, of a 1/2 sec. burst.

 

Bowie

Edited 15 hours ago by Bowie