Yea in reality the DeWildes were in very short supply.
In air terms the .303 was really a stop-gap as it was the 'stock' calibre of the majority of UK forces; the last thing the chiefs wanted was a diversity of calibres, so the .303 catered for everyone from the humble tommy's Enfield to fighters and bomber defence.

I guess with all the defence cut-backs in the inter-war years, the RAF developing cannons was never going to happen, if our fighters (spit) and bombers (Blenheim) development had to be funded privately.
Doubtless if the RAF had their way with funding, they would have developed the jet engine quicker especially when you consider that Whittle had a prototype running in 1937...

Needs muster as the saying goes, which is why after millions of German 9mm rounds were captured in N.Africa, the infamous sten gun was knocked up to utilise the round; not a good gun and very good at chopping fingers off the unwary but at least it hurt less to be firing it than to be infront of it... :D

That's interesting, I didn't know about this ammo capture in N.Africa, when did it occur?

By strange coincidence, that actually became the RAF standard for machine guns in 1942.

@ reflected;

You can indeed make any load out in the FMB and save it that way.
You can also fiddle with the mission parameters there. Lots of fun with just slight changes.

Good luck

They are.

Brits tested the .303 on old Blens , and a good percentage of the bullets just bounced off the Al skin.

Quite a few LW bombers barely made it back to France with over 200 hits on them.

IIRC the record holder was a bomber with 1000+ .303 holes in it, and there are stories of whole Squadrons expanding all their ammunition on a single Dornier or Heinkel.

It really matters where you hit them. From what I've seen, creating fires are the surest way (PK is another, but it more difficult to pull unless using a head-on). RCMGs have no real ability to damage the structure, especially if hits are all over the place.. and the gunner and crew positions on BoB era German bombers were fairly well armored, and they had self sealing tanks. Their defensive firepower were not so great, but if 2-3 Heinkels shooting at you at the same time, it can get messy quickly with a lucky hit. Slugging it out with one is also a bad idea IMHO - the Heinkels are like flying tanks, the Ju 88 otoh was very manouverable. The Do 17 is the easiest to be shot down IMHO, as it has neither the robustusness of the Heinkell nor the nimbleness of the 88, but the radial engines seem to be very resistant.

British bombers are on the other side of the scale - they are vulnerable but have relatively good firepower. Still, Blenheims are essentially flying targets. The tail gunner on the Wellington is a problem, but is rather easy to be silenced with the center mounted MGs on Germans fighters; thankfully those are generously provided with ammunition. And it catches fire very easily. I am not sure if it's flyable, think not, but it would be great to have a equivalent of the 111! :)

how so, you say yourself that one squadron did this, and i have read varied accounts where pilots who knew they could shoot had their guns harmonised closer and tighter. we can just play as one of those pilots.
this may be true, but then to extend the argument, in late war scenarios the luftwaffe would have to be horrifically outnumbered, out-skilled, under supplied with fuel, ammunition and spares, and reliability would have to be far reduced as well.

however, where is the fun in that?

I don't have much difficulties downing planes with my Brownings with the exception of the Heinkel which is really very strong. But I think it is ok. Don't forget that downing a bomber was a team effort and it is supposed to be hard to shoot one down. Just read about the kill statistics during the Battle of Britain and you realize that the number of planes shot down each day is rather small compared to the number of planes in the air. Particularly when you look at the number of downed planes during one engagement. Very little and very often there had been an engagement with damages issued but no kill achieved and both sides flew home.

We had been spoiled too much by IL2 where the fire power was excessive imho and over-done me thinks. Just forget about IL2 and what was possible with this engine. It is a new game and I think it is more realistic concerning fire power.

I'm saying that it's not historically accurate, but then again it's hard to re-create a historically accurate scenario.. the fighting skills of people involved in the sim are far superior to the real guys who went up there and didn't have much if no fighting experience at all.. most of us have been playing sims for 10+ years and learned a lot of tricks, whilst those poor guys sent up to fight sometimes didn't even survive their first mission :(

That may be true, but then again, I plan to load up my E-4 with only Minengeschoss rounds for the 2cm cannons.. and it's only fair when I can have around 5 pounds of ultra high explosives for my cannons to play with, he can have a bit more than the usual amount of fireworks, too! ;)