Yes, you may be right about cherry picking. IRL, there are still some cherries to pick, but do you even have any cherry to pick in-game at all? I admit that shredding wings do happen ingame somtimes, but I have never seen 50cal exploding target directly from 6. Maybe at an angle, diving or climbing shots, but not in lvl fly and directly at 6. Also you are correct about it is the G-stress that ripped off damaged wing, not the bullets themselves, but isn't G-stress also modelled ingame? Or are we simply flying in airless vaccum ingame?

Well, being at convergence distance is ideal for most killing power with 0.50cal MGs. Either at exact convergence or +/- 50m within the convergence distance.

When you got 200m convergence, and your shooting at enemy from 500m distance, taking 1 sec snapshots at 90deg deflection bandits, don't expect the enemy to explode!

On the other hand, 0.50cal tends to kill and wound enemy pilots eventually. High rate of fire tends to help in this also, in my opinion.

Even fw-190 burns up nicely, when you hit his main fuel tank, behind pilot seat, a couple of times :grin:

I think aiming along the centre fuselage is good with these 0.50cals (unless you're against Japanese planes, wingroot is excellent target for those)
If, you hit the engine, or pilot, enemy is going down soon. Center fuselage hit can probably light up main fuel tank, or kill cables. Rear fuselage would destroy elevator and rudder tabs, and cut cables.

vs. German/Italian opposition, explosion or even wingloss happens rather seldom (And when shooting from direct six, against 190s it should not happen at all -armor protects the fuel tank from that angle). But against Japanese planes you get the total destruction quite often.
Using Italian SAFAT guns, I've ripped wings of Hurricanes more than once, and often their wings were loaded when shot at. So there may be a combined effect of G load and damage modeled.

It takes less damage to break a structure that is under more load. In IL2 it is supposed to be that a damaged plane will take less G's before airframe failure and there's a progressive system of stress and damages behind it. IIRC that started after 2007.

I would say, those wings had to be heavily loaded to achieve a wing-rip with a pair of SAFATs. Otherwise SAFATs are near hopeless unless you aim at the engine, the tank, or the pilot, in my experience.

That's why I tend to fly a lot in Pacific theatre. LOL. Zeros are easy. However, some of the bomber planes are tough. B5Ns are pretty tough from direct 6. Sometimes felt even tougher than IL-2. But if shooting from diving, I have exploded them quite a few times. Betties is also an interesting story. When shooting from directly behind, it feels like your bullets all went into a void. That kinda makes sense cuz the bombers tend to have a lot of internal space in their fuselage. But their engines are weak. Several short bursts can set them on fire.

with those Japanese bombers try this exercise to see how tough they really are!
I remember I was shooting at Val dive bombers with my corsair, they seemed lke tough planes. But on closer inspection as I dove past and paused the game, I saw the whole plane was littered with bullet holes and crew was dead. From rear sector firing passes, about from about 7-5 o clock


load up game
select quick battles
on the bottom of the screen in the middle, there should be save and load button
load up the battle of midway battle from there.

You can select whatever plane you want really, but I like to pick corsair and try to maximize my hitrate, and maximize my kills, but also sometimes go for the one pass kills, regardless of ammo expenditure.

I hope these quick missions are in stock game, because I was playing my stock game and it worked just fine. I doubt I've ever downloaded or installed custom player made missions in this game (other than strictly player built campaigns)

B5Ns tend to go KABOOOM when hit dead centre at convergence. Can get funny results when they are in close formation -I've more than once killed planes I didn't shoot at that way. And their wing tanks are touchy, too. Structurally they are tough though.
Bettys suffer from their Achilles heel they had in real life, too -their unprotected wet wings. Don't try shooting from direct 6, if possible make high (and if you don't want to be hit by the tail gunner also off-angle) passes, even from directly above, the tanks present large enough hitting zones that way, and almost anything hitting them makes them burn (especially good are .30s!)

I may be that SAFATS have been a little upgraded in one of the last patches.
But they still are among they most difficult guns to get results with, you are right there - one needs to aim for specific parts of the plane, the pilot is the easiest to get a kill with these buggers IMHO.
Vs. Hurricanes, it is doable to shoot a 4-5secs burst into the tail section, and usually it will rip -may not be the most effective way, but works. And after a prolonged time trying to down something with SAFATs, you learn to shoot at the parts of the enemys plane that count, so using these guns actually improves your shooting skills.