The correct setting would be 340m according to the official manual of the Bf 110G-2 with the BK 3,7mm Rüstsatz.

For the Ju 87G it is 375m, again according to the manual.

Excelent Zorin, Thanks for the accurate info :grin:
(was that from historical manuals, or from ingame manuals?)

I guess I didn't look that hard for the numbers :oops:, and went and found out through trial and error. I got fairly close eh?

Historical ones.

Yes, got pretty close with your guesstimation. :)

Revi Gunsights: How to Use
 

In every fighter to fighter scenario, one has to destroy the other plane to be successful. This much is given. With the 110 though, it seems that opportunities and options are far fewer than with other fighters in every situation. It has great firepower as main strength but gets far fewer opportunities to use this firepower. This means that the pilot must be an expert marksman because he is unlikely to get more than one chance. And be able to do it at non-optimal ranges (meaning often at longer ranges or at difficult deflection situations).

Head to head mergings, bouncing, some energy tactics, flaps and slowing down so much that the enemy hopefully swings past, giving a moment to use the firepower as they fly/climb/run away in a way that other aircraft cannot (except P-38) do.

The firepower package in the nose is always awesome. 4xmg17 with infinite ammo, 2xMG-FF, or MG-151's with 2xMk 108 30mm cannons. It has the range and ability to reach out and touch people far, far away. All the weapons are fairly equal at longer ranges because the heavier the cannon is, even if it has lower and lower muzzle velocity, does not slow down as much in flight, and catches up with and even overtakes the lighter shells/rounds after a few hundred meters (beyond most people's effective gun range). The MG17's lose most of their power beyond several hundred meters however and as such are not good looong range weapons. Their superior speed is better for hitting stuff very close, and no-convergence means no problem shooting at too close of a range.

If relying on the plane's firepower, and posessing very(!) good gunnery skills, having an external gunpod could even be a good idea. Because if gunnery skills are so good, then aim will be on target - but the RPM of say, two cannons, is low enough that the enemy plane, especially if a small fighter flying straight at or straight away, will be able to fly 'between' the shells. The gunpod can double the amount of shells in the air in the same spot bringing double the potential damage and higher likelyhood of a hit (I'm talking long range here, not up close).

110's should excel in the role of being the 'bag' when it comes to "drag and bag" tactics. Get enemy to chase a friendly plane, then 110 shoots the enemy being dragged by the friendly.

So I think.. that I need to focus on my gunnery much more than acrobatics (which I am decent at after practicing mostly that for too long). So how does one make use of the Revi gunsight fully? Those rings are there for a reason. It was made so the pilot can estimate range to target and lead. Very important, especially at longer ranges. And especially easy if they are flying straight (trying to run away) since the effective gun range is much longer than other aircraft, but the aircraft flies away quickly, the moment is fleeting. Revi gunsights were in most Luftwaffe aircraft back then. There must be manuals and guides for how to use them. I have the official USA gunnery manual from 1942 or so, and while it teaches about gunnery principles, the data is useless as it is all in one of those old arcane systems of measurement that were/are still in use by a few percent of the world. And the sights they used do not have the same properties as the Revi gunsights either. Need real Revi guides.

Well, generally speaking most gunsights are calibrated for a certain wingspan. Don't be surprised for example if the Revis are calibrated for Spitfires.

Now, the way this works is that if you know the approximate wingspan of your targets and the winspan of the target the Revi is calibrated for, you can make some quick calculations and deduce range.

For example, let's say we have a gunsight that's calibrated for a target with a nice, easy, wingspan of 10 meters. The other part of the calibration is at what range the sight is calibrated at. So, in order to make it easy once again, let's say it's calibrated for a target wingspan of 10m at a range of 100m.

What this means in simple temrs it that a plane with a 10m wingspan will fill the entire gunsight when it's 100m from you. I think that by "fill the gunsight" , most gunsights usually mean the circle and not the 4 lines/cross that extend past it. Now, if we see that the same target with a wingspan of 10m fills about half the circle, we know he's 200m away, if he fills a quarter of the circle he's 400m away and so on.

Conversely, when the target has a bigger wingspan it goes the other way around, ie we need to first assess what kind of "sight picture" we'll be getting at 100m for our new target or alternatively, at what range the new target will fill the entire gunsight, before we start approximating the rest of the ranges.

As an easy example, let's say the target is a twin engined bomber with a wingspan of 20m. It's double the span of our original fighter sized target, so it will show up double the size at the same range--->only half of the bomber's wingspan will fit in the gunsight at 100m, but at 200m it will fit nicely in the gunsight's circle. So, when it fills half the gunsight he's not 200m away as the fighter war, he's 400m away.
In short, for 10m span/100m calibration:

target wingspan-----------sight picture---------------range
fighter, 10m-------------------entire sight-----------------100m
---------------------------------1/2----------------------200m
---------------------------------1/4----------------------400m
bomber, 20m-------------------entire sight----------------200m
---------------------------------1/2----------------------400m
---------------------------------1/4----------------------800m

After looking around, it seems that the Revi (at least in IL2, don't know about the real one) is calibrated so that a Spitfire at 100m will fill the entire gunsight. Don't ask me which mark, clipped wing or not :lol:
Wikipedia gives a wing span of 11.23m for a Mk.Vb.
So, i'll just go on a rough but good enough approximation here and just go ahead and assume that 10m of wing span when viewed from a Revi at a distance of 100m, will give us a sight picture of the target's wingtips being slightly inside the gunsight's circle.

Better yet, we could look up the wingspans of the most likely targets. We already know that Spit(11.23m) at 100m will fill the gunsight.

A P-47D is a bit wider at 12.42m, so at 100m range his wingtips will be a bit outside the gunsight's ring.

A P-51D is very close to the Spitfire, with 11.28m of wingspan, so we'll just treat it the same (100m when gunsight is filled).

The A-20 is 18.69m. Let's make it easy on ourselves and say it's almost roughly 1.6 times the Spit's wing span, so when it fills the gunsight it will be at 160 meters.

A B-25 is 20.6m, so it's almost double the size of the Spit. That means it's almost 200m away when it fills the sight.

A B-24 is 33.5m, that's about 3 times the Spit's size, so it gives us 300 meters when the sight is full.

A B-17 is 31.52m, so it will be a bit less than 300 meters away from us when it fills the gunsight circle.

That's the first part of using the gunsight, so that you can determine range effectively. There are other more technical issues as well, but i'm not as familiar with them. For example, you can use the sight in accordance with your angle-off target to determine the lead you need to pull. However, this can get complicated depending on relative speeds between you and the target, as well as the projectile ballistics.

Most of all, in planes like the 110 that carry 2-3 different kinds of guns, the convergence might seem not to be an issue but because of different ballistics the guns have different arcs in the vertical axis. Shooting a bit outside of convergence you might sometimes see that while the gunfire "meets" on the horizontal axis, there's still vertical separation between the shells, ie you could be getting hits on the target's fuselage, wingroots and wingtips, but half your cannons are shooting too high or too low and you waste half of your projectiles.

This is not so much a problem when you have a lot of ammo that still deals a good punch however.

I'm not very experienced with estimating lead from angle-off with the gunsight so i usually do it by experience alone, but i think you can find a good tutorial on the movies section of this forum (it's called "bag the Hun" i think) that discusses a few more technical stuff:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=5012

Official shooting manual
 

S!

Here is a link to an official "Horrido - Des Jägers Schiessfibel" shooting manual approved by Galland. It's in german, and has humorous depiction of things :)

http://rafiger.de/Homepage/Literatur/Schiessfibel.pdf

And finnish translation here:
http://www.virtualpilots.fi/hist/WW2...mpumaopas.html


Pages 9 and 10 are most informative. Basically contains what Blackdog already said.

-LLv34_Untamo

That's a nice find, but i have never been able to read it. Is there any kind of English translation floating around?

Most of all i'd like to see if there's a more "scientific" way of determining lead by angle-off, so that i don't have to do it by experience alone.

Thanks for all the info and links everyone. I have not had the chance to go through ALL of it yet, but I will before flying again :)

Translation issue: go to translate.google.com and input the adress to the finnish version (that's what I did, works, though a bit cryptic at times. Very interesting and good advice for pilots on how to simplify things).

Angle-off: The only scientific way is to use geometry :p I mentally see the flight path of the aircraft ahead of it, with a target box indicating where to shoot at any given moment. But this box is often way off, and I fail to compute if speed is not slow and angle-off is beyond say, 60 degrees. I can think well in 3D so the flight path line starts from making a line between the tail and the center of the nose, then it keeps projecting.

This does not solve the angle-off-tail determination if going about it less intuitively. I took a moment to think about this issue before writing the post.. I recommend that you go into the model viewer in IL-2 and look at the aircraft you mostly face. Look at which angle the wing of the aircraft closest to you protrudes as far as the nose, then memorize what angle this was. Repeat with wing on the other side of the aircraft (away from you) - at some point the wing will be at the same point as the rear elevator, and if a bit more, it will be the same as the stabilizer (disappears and is unobservable past this angle).

The steps above can be repeated from the front aspect of the aircraft, then comparing the wing on your side to the stabilizer and the outer wing to the nose.

It's something at least. It works even if there is some vertical variation (from below/above) somewhat as well.

Haven't noticed the instability problem you mention here. The 110 just need constant fine tuning of the elevator + rudder trimming. Relatively small changes in speed (and throttle input) needs adjustment of both rudder + elevator trimming. I prefer to always trim the elevator negative ( means I have to slightly pull on the stick to keep it level ) this helps a lot in the dives where it is inevitable that you will gain more speed and screw up your trimming.

BTW going in a steep angled dive in an online server with a high ping (mine avg between 250ms(eu) - 350ms(usa)) is a sure way to die. ALWAYS go in with a shallow dive, fire from some distance to give you ample time to pull up.

As for tank busting , I have one golden rule, If I can't kill it from the side I don't waist my time with said target. Just skip the tanks ( unless you have SD/SC 500s, even so if they aren't tightly grouped don't bother ) , go for soft targets trucks, half tracks , and mobile artillery. Half tracks and trucks you kill with the 20mm's (one short burst do the trick), Mobile artillery you can also kill with 20mm , but I prefer to give them a short burst of the mk108's.

I have NEVER been able to kill a heavy tank on an online server with the mk108 or bk 3.7 ,and I have never seen it done either...

Always take 2xmk108+2x20mm's ( with optional bombs if your mission is JABO, SD500's if you can)
Bombs set to 2.5-3.5 secs delay.
If you find an enemy on your six and you still have your bombs you can use them as a last ditch defense too, hit the deck +- 20m , drop your bombs as the enemy gets in range ( you need some practice to find the right delay + distance + speed and more importantly to fly the plane low on the deck while you are looking at enemy from the you gunner position.. ).
That said this is a last resort. As Oktoberfest said, if at all possible turn to face your enemy.

~S Oktober , been a while since we shared the skies m8.

The Revi gunsights are no doubt not calibrated for spitfires. More likely it uses the mil system, marking the rings accordingly. Biggest ring is probably 100 meters across at 1000 meters, and 10 meters across at 100 meters. The ones inside I haven't checked but one can visually figure it out by checking their ratio compared to the main ring. I'm sure the gunnery manual we found in german and finnish tells it correctly. :)

I found all kinds of pilot manuals for the Bf 110 series (and Me-210's, Me-410's, 109's, Fw-190's, Ju 87's, Ju 88's, Ju-188's, He-111's, He-162's, Me-262's, Do-17's), from early to late models. Even several different ones for various G-2 models depending on loadout options. Including the Mk 108 version.. It even has illustrations/charts showing the ballistic path of the 108 shells compared to the 151/20 shells. It's all in German which I don't understand well. Going to select the most interesting parts and type them into google translate I guess so I can make sense of them. I do look forward to learning how the real pilots flew those things - making use of all the instrument panels for RPM, manifold pressure and so forth. :)

I found the manuals here: http://deutscheluftwaffe.de/archiv/D.../Dokumente.htm - Click on "F" and then scroll down to "Flugzeug Handbücher". Then on the manufacturer.

EDIT: Crappy, been looking through the 110 ones, and they are mainly just technical manuals, not really for piloting. Not the gold mine I thought it was.