I think the argument is whether or not the bullets will still have enough energy to do any significant damage to all those parts.

According to Winny, they may not.

However, I know nothing about ballistics, and I will not insert my opinion in this matter.

However, I do wonder if maybe fuel tanks are "too easy" to light on fire, as shown in the leaked Beta footage and others. Even though some rounds are incendiary, it isn't necessarily guaranteed. The round has to pass through a point where fuel is vaporized, such as a leak. The probability of that is low unless hitting at convergence I imagine.

PS - I just noticed that He-111 has two crosses on each wing. Interesting.

Its discussed here:

http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=18246

I intend to set my convergence to about 50m. With a closing speed of 100Kph this will give me at least one second of deadly fire before I ram the target.

Even though I don't condone intentional ramming I am, well, fairly bad at gunnery and my reactions aren't as fast as they used to be so I expect there will be a few collisions along the way ;)

Cheers!

In the same tests the RAF fired British .303 incendaries and German 7.92mm incendiaries into the self sealing tanks of a Blenheim. Both caused a fire with about 1 in 10 of the rounds fired. The 'De Wides' were more effective, causing a fire with 1 in 5 shots.

And yet, 10 years after release, the only CFS with a more complex damage model is Rise of Flight, which has had some major bugs in that respect.

Well, then about 10 shots have to hit the exact same spot then right? :)

I also wonder what constitutes a fire in those tests. Certainly not a roaring inferno? Could a small round 1/10 times always create a pillar of fire?

Maybe I missed it, but will CoD treat fire differently than IL-2? Currently it's fuel leak; grey smoke; black smoke; inferno. By the time it gets to the latter, you've got a few minutes, at best, to bail.

Maybe it should be something along the lines of: small leak, larger leak, largest leak; light grey smoke, heavy grey smoke; light black smoke, heavy black smoke; small fire, medium fire, blazing fire-ball of death, etc.

They were looking at how many rounds it took to actually set the whole fuel tank on fire.

I don't know if German fuel tanks were any better protected than Blenheim ones, so that could be a factor. Plus the tests were done on the ground so you don't get the effect of the airflow either putting out, or intensifying the flames.

And no aluminium skin to deflect some energy from the rounds, before hitting the tank?

When they first started to armour plate the MK1 Spitfire they placed a 3mm Duralumin sheet over the fuel tank in front of the cockpit to deflect rounds coming in from the front at shallow angles.

I think the second thing they did was place the armoured glass slab on the wind screen because thats where the deflected round ended up! ;)

Cheers!

I have to agree on the first part. And just to be fair: The Tommys will also whine about the 303 not beeing powerfull enough ;)
We have seen it in the past. Many people are not satisfied with "only" disabling the ennemy. They want to see them explode or at least burn.

But of course, machine guns will be great for damaging the cooling system or other similar sensitive areas. You just have to hit the right places. And imo that's one advantage of the canon shell. Even if you just hit the wing for exemple, you might not damage internal sytems, but the structural damage will be much greater.
People with good shooting skills will probably prefere the canon. The others might favor the machine guns.