I suppose your right about the 303 not being very effective against aircraft, it was designed to kill people, it was never very good at destroying aircraft. I don't really think that the 303 in game is all that far off, it always took a steady hand and nerves to take down a bomber with them. It's been pointed out before that the value of sending a bomber home shot to pieces with half the crew dead or wounded may well be greater than a strait up loss, it's certainly just as good if the plane is written off and the crew is rattled to the point of being ineffective.

My point at any rate was that it was the "weapon at hand", nothing more.

The .50 (I'm talking about the round here) on the other hand was designed to penetrate tanks (albeit thinly armored ones), and proved to be effective at "tearing $hit up" including airplanes. I can't tell how many times I've had my 109 shredded by a single burst from a P51. The round is still used today to penetrate heavy targets and "tear $hit up".

The fact is that the .50 (and the excellent Browning machine gun that fired it) was also the weapon at hand and it did it's job well, given the targets it was asked to engage.

The problem is that the .50 did not do it's job well. It was adequate, but nothing more. Bout the USAF and USN wanted 20mm, the Navy so desperately that they were willing to ignore the reliability problems of the US-made M3.

For the USAF the problem was not so much lack of destructive power, as much as weight. They compensated for the lack of power of the .50 by adding more guns, but the Browning was a heavy gun (29 kg). In a plane like the Thunderbolt, it did not matter much, but the Mustang was really pressed to the edge weight-wise. If the Mustang had a Hispano in each wing, it would have had just a little bit less firepower than it did with 6 Brownings, yet would weigh roughly 100 kilo less (depending on whether we are talking Hispano II or V). Imagine a 100 kg lighter Mustang!

I'm curious. What makes disabled bomber getting back home with ½ crew better than it being shot down with entire crew MIA / POW? Or did I misunderstand?

Think about morale.

I have my convergence set to between 220 and 270...I play against AI and they usually dont let you get much closer then .30 away and still have a clean shot. Usually if they let you get .14 away im dodging the plane instead of aiming at it, trying not to slam into it haha. I guess maybe my convergence could be part of my problem.....I just put in a number that sounds good at the time and go with it. Also, I know the 30s can down lightly armored targets..i downed a Zero with a split second burst head on from a Spit MkI...I hit F3 for the fly by camera view and saw the Zero in the background flaming in a downward angle...was thinking to myself.."No way did a 30cal just kill something that fast" haha. I know close range helps w/ penetration but its hard to get to like 15 and below for me and still be aiming. If I get close enough like .15 it usually ends up in me getting greedy followed by a spectacular fireball.

I'd count losing pilot(s) that take quite some time to train / get experienced + the entire aircraft & rest of the crew worse that the alternative. Also returning even though damaged would raise confidence on the aircraft's ability to 'take us home' despite heavy punishment it received.. like B17 for example.

But what do I know, I wasn't there.

Online, if there are no helps on, with some practice and patience, its pretty easy to get to surprise people and fire on an unsuspecting bandit at a very close range. I always use max 150m convergence for wing guns myself, often as short as 120m. The closer the better... You know, when a 190 is the size of a P-51's (or P40/47/38's) gunsight, hes only 105m away, much closer than one might estimate. ;)

Would rather have 4 Hispano V with Tempest style ammo load-outs. At 42Kg each, you would have an armament that weighs 168Kg total, compared to 174Kg for 6 Browning M2s, yet it would have firepower equal to 12 M2s (Going by USN tests that value the Hispano as being 3 times as destructive as the M2).

Heck, you could have 6 Hispano Vs in a Thunderbolt (252Kg) replacing the 8 M2s (232Kg) for firepower equal to 18 M2s, or you could go with just 4 guns and a whole load of ammo.

I never had problems with the Thunderbolt's armament - just set the convergence at like 175 m, zoom on the sucker and let him have it. You can easily down 4 B29s aiming at the engines with extra ammo.

On a side note does someone know how frequent was the 6 gun installation on the Jug? There was an interview posted on simhq forums a very long time ago with a Jug pilot and he was surprised to hear that the 47 had 8 guns - he said they always had 6)

Aside from morale ...

One of the huge issues the US had in Iraq was better body armor and combat medics meant the proportion of casualties KIA was down massively which is clearly a good thing but the number of wounded shipped home and looked after in hospital for sometimes years after went up substantially.

Its the same logic that resulted in anti-personal mines designed to maim rather than kill.

As far as the 0.303 cal in game goes, if you attack an early war bomber (blenheim, ju88, he111) in a historically fashion - from the side above below or headon - you can get acceptable results. Admittedly the he111 is a touch more immune to 0.303 cal than most of the others but its still not hard to knock out an engine or even set a wing on fire.