Just dont forget that if you hit the FW's wing even with just a few light MG shots, you render it barely flyable! I highly doubt its realistic. This needs to be fixed too.

Actually, I will really like to see any proof of severing a wing from a 190 on reality using .50s. Wings got severed not by enemy fire itself, but by a weakening of it's structure and spars that are subjected to high pressure. Also you could got the ammo rack exploded if it was simulated on il-2 at all, but it is not.
190's were really sturdy for their time. Much more so than a 109.
Even so, on the popular plane lists, it is the one that suffers more from single damage. It becomes almost impossible to land safely after any single shot on it's wings.

If a human is flying it yes, its time to RTB
AI seem to be less affected for some reason.

My findings as well for a long time now,
even worse is the length of runway needed for landing now compounding the DM problem when RTBing

My perspective on this has changed over time but I honestly think that everyone is making some good... no... excellent points! But this may be a case of missing the forest for the trees. The damage model has been adjusted a half dozen times over the years in an attempt to make things work. The FW190 has been one of the harder ones to get right - for whatever reason.

I suspect a variety of reasons but I think the big one staring us all right in the face is that the simulation is just not complex enough.

I think it's pretty good right now - having seen some of the worst adjustments over the years. It's not super or even great but its ok and maybe mucking around with it would only make things worse.

Or, possibly, a simplification could be the answer. Generally speaking, all WWII types were very susceptible to battle damage. Yes, I know: rifle calibre machine guns were largely ineffective, and some types were able to absorb a lot of damage and return home, but that’s exactly the point: they returned home, being unable to press on combat and reach their target.

Any fighter, not just the FW190, with a 20 mm. shot in a wing or in the engine became unfit for combat.

A possible improvement (I don’t dare to say “solution”) could be to use a single damage model, with simple tweaking. An armoured engine (Il2) should resist more than an unarmoured radial, a radial engine more than a liquid cooled one. A metal wing should resist a little more than a wooden one. An unprotected fuel tank should catch fire more easily than a self-sealing one. Pilot protection with armour plates and glass should be taken in account, but that’s all. Three, four variables at most for airframe, fuel tank, engine and crew.

It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would avoid seriously “porked planes”.
To complement this simplification, an effective “return to base” routine for damaged planes should be implemented. Here also I’m not talking of complicated calculations. Any plane with serious damage should immediately quit combat and RTB.

You're right, of course. It's rare that any sort of small caliber gunfire - even counting 30mm guns as "small" - directly causes structural failure.

Instead, as you point out, what happens is that the gunfire sufficiently weakens the airframe that the forces of gravity, g-forces, and air resistance take over and cause structural collapse.

If you look at combat films where an aircraft's wing fails, often you'll see a slight delay before the wing comes off. Sometimes, you'll even see the wing "fold" as it collapses. That means that the gunfire/fire just fatally weakened the wing and gravity and air pressure finished the job.

I don't know if IL2 can model progressive weakening of damaged parts. Obviously, the game models parts pulling off due to overspeed flight, but I'm not sure if the game progressively reduces the top speed and maximum G load a damaged part can sustain without failing.

For the experiments I did with the FW-190, they were mostly in level flight or making relatively low-G turns, and were never traveling at excessive speeds. So, I have no way of knowing if the FW-190's wing might have failed had it been exposed to greater stresses, assuming the game even models that sort of failure.

I'm pretty sure that all a hit to the 20mm cannon magazine does is trigger a "gun jammed" hit. IL2 doesn't seem to model the possibility of bullets/cannon shells exploding. To be fair, that possibility is rare, since it requires just the right circumstances for one bullet/cannon shell to make another bullet/shell explode.

Of course the men who flew the FW-190 thought that it was a tougher plane than the Bf-109! The FW-190 was heavier (3,200 kg for the FW-190A-8 vs. 2,247 kg for the Bf-109G-6) and the basic airframe was designed 5 years after the Bf-109's (1937 vs. 1933) giving it at least a "generation" of progressive improvements in airframe construction.

The real question is whether the FW-190 was any tougher than aircraft of equivalent quality of construction, designed in the same year, and with roughly equivalent mass. For example, should the FW-190's AIRFRAME be any tougher than that of the P-51 D (designed 1939/40, 3,465 kg empty mass) or the P-40E (designed 1938, 2,753 kg empty mass)?

Unless you have a novel structural design which was famed for its structural strength or weakness - like the geodesic wing and fuselage structure of the Wellington or the delamination problems that some of the LaGG-3 series suffered - then really all you can do is base a plane's ability to absorb punishment on its year of production and its empty mass.

Perhaps divide by the number of engines and/or omit the mass of the engines as well.

Pilot reports of relative combat durability of their aircraft have to be read skeptically, because they're based on the accounts of the men who survived and came back to tell the tale. If a plane was well-liked by its crew, they were likely to overlook its lesser faults and sing its praises. If they disliked the type, they were likely to overlook its merits.

Also, unless you're reading the reports of a test pilot or an engineering commission, where the writer(s) had a chance to examine multiple different aircraft, the writer - even if he's an experienced combat veteran - might not necessarily be in the best position to make comparisons.

I agree, this is another way that the FW-190 is messed up. Just a handful of .50 caliber bullets scattered across the wings will trigger the heavy damage texture. That seems excessive considering that each .50 caliber bullet is only going to make a thumb-sized to fist-sized hole. (huge by human standards, but less impressive scattered across several square meters of space).

In some ways it seems like it's far too easy to damage the FW-190, in other ways it seems to be invulnerable.

Too weak: Far too vulnerable to having minor wing or fuselage damage turn into serious damage. Probably a bit too vulnerable to having control surfaces shot off/seriously damaged. Perhaps a bit too vulnerable to fuel tank fires (but no more vulnerable than equivalently equipped planes in the game).

Too easy to snap the fuselage due to damage (but this is IL2's method of modeling fatal fuselage damage that renders the plane unflyable. Since IL2 can't make airframes bend or shake, it breaks them instead.)

Too strong: Seems quite difficult for heavy damage to the wing (at least from .50 caliber guns) to convert to fatal damage - either directly or by causing structural failure under G-loads. Probably far too difficult to start an engine fire. Possibly too difficult to seriously damage/destroy vertical stabilizer.

Just right: Armor modeling, cockpit/crew hits, hydraulic failure which causes landing gear to begin to extend. Engine durability (excluding fires).

Missing/Not modeled (AFAIK): Potential "critical hit" to loaded 20mm cannon magazine can cause secondary explosion sufficient to instantly separate the wing.

That is a problem. If DM creation is as tricky as I imagine it to be, all those progressive changes to DM might have introduced progressive errors as well!

Perhaps all that is needed is for all the remnants of past attempts to fix the DM model be removed.

But, assuming that getting the FW-190's DM is possible, and that the sim can handle the complexities of how a brilliantly designed, well-built, but smallish aircraft falls apart, here's what I think needs to happen for the FW-190.

These suggestions assume that DM operates on a "hit point" or "life bar" model - where damage progressively reduces a particular part's ability to take future damage in a linear fashion.

Engine: Reduce threshold between hit points required to get the "serious damage" texture/smoke, and that required for "engine fire". (Assuming those two damage results are linked.)

Wing: Slightly increase threshold required to get light damage result, increase threshold required for light damage to turn into heavy damage. Decrease threshold for heavy damage to turn into fatal damage/wing breaks.

Control surfaces: Slightly increase threshold required to get damage & destruction/part falls off result.

Vertical & horizontal stabilizer: Slightly reduce threshold required to turn heavy damage into fatal damage/part breaks off.

These changes both address the "one shot and it's unflyable" complaints of FW-190 fans, and the "you can't kill it" complaints of its opponents.

In any case, the FW-190 should be about as tough as contemporary planes of equivalent quality, design, and mass (e.g. P-51 & Spitfire). Certainly less durable than heavier aircraft like the Tempest, P-47 or F6F.

Generally, this is already the case. In a dogfight a single 20mm shot in the wing or engine will put you at enough of a disadvantage that it's time to find a way to disengage.

I'd love to see this, since it would simplify DM production and would settle a number of arguments about whether a particular plane is "nerfed" or "uber".
Maybe it's already in place, and we peasants don't know about it.

Base "hit points" for airframe parts on aircraft empty mass, minus mass of engines and fuel tanks, divided by surface area of that part. (Surface area is easily determined in a 3D modeling program.) Modify as necessary.

Similar formulas could be used to get basic HP for engines/coolant/turbocharger systems & fuel tanks/lines.

Damage modeling to humans would be a bit more complex, but unless you get hit by shrapnel or a 3.03/.30 caliber/7.62 mm bullet you're going to be seriously wounded at best, most likely dead. That simplifies things a lot! :twisted:

IL2 already does a great job of modeling armor/armor glass. And, I believe that it actually works on real ballistic calculations of bullet energy vs. armor thickness, which makes it more accurate than any simplified model based on "hit points."

In Arcade Mode, a "speech bubble" pops up over the damaged aircraft when it takes enough damage that it should RTB. It actually reads "RTB". For the life of me, I can't understand why that calculation hasn't yet made it into the AI programming!

So simple. Enough damage to trigger RTB message in arcade mode = actual freakin' AI RTB routine!

Very good question. It does model it with a heavier load, but I don't know if it applies to damaged air frames too.

Now, you could see a lot of guncams of zeros or Ki43 planes braking wings, but it is very difficult to find one of an anton doing it.

Also, they will rarely aim at a wing, they will fire to the bulk of the plane. Wing shots are always done while diving on an unexpected foe, not from dead six. And guncams of diving shots are extremely rare to find. Specially because they don't show the enemy plane. That kind of shot is always a deflection shot.

I don't know how rare it was, but ages back, in the beginnings of il-2, they invited a former German fighter pilot to test the sim, and when he find himself being fired at, the first thing he did, was emptying his magazine, even before trying to evade it's foe. Everybody was confused why he was doing that, and he clearly explained that it was for avoiding fatal hit on live ammo. He didn't know that it wasn't simmed.

Actually, if you can believe the tales on osprey book aces of the FW on the eastern front, the first test the pilots themselves made was putting the 190 on a steep dive, and, after landing, count the lost rivets on the airframe.
The tale states that to their surprise, the count was zero.

Tougher wings, I don't know, but smaller, for sure! Also, it's ailerons control system, was far better and sturdier than any other plane of it's time. It also helped to build stronger wings because of this particular detail.

Already assumed before posting

It doesn't need a handful. Sometimes even a singe shot will do the trick. Tested it with the arrows enabled.

Tough, yes, invulnerable, no way. Pick 8 B17s on quick mission. at 2000m. Not historically accurate, but funnier to do. Try to down more than four, and tell me how invulnerable it is to .50s fire. It is really nice to try it.

You will suffer a lot of damage, and of different sorts.
Try the same thing with different planes, and you will have an idea which planes have weak points when YOU are flying them.
Still, american .50s are really a bad weapon to down B17s!

Keep the arrows on.

Agreed, but if you get your deflection wrong while aiming at the fuselage, your bullets can go through the wings.

That's good evidence that the more experienced German pilots knew of the "bug," so it must be more common than I assumed.

The reason I called out bullets/shells exploding bullets/shells as being rare is that in order to get a secondary explosion, you need to have an explosive bullet that hits the propellant or explosive charge, or a direct hit on the primer within the bullet, to make it detonate. Otherwise, the bullet/shell hit just tears up the other bullet/shell, which just causes a stoppage.

Also, with a typical aircraft ammo belting, you're only going to have a fraction of bullets/shells which are APE (rarely HE). That means you've typically got a 20%-33% chance that any bullet that hits ammo will be APE, and a 25-33% chance that the bullet/shell it hits will be APE.

So, low odds, but higher than getting hit by lightning or winning the lottery.

But, packing all your bullets/shells into a magazine (like FW-190's cannon shell magazine) will increase the chance that an APE bullet will hit something that causes a secondary explosion, so the odds go up a bit.

To simplify things, lets say there's a 10% chance that any hit to a magazine by an explosive bullet will cause a secondary explosion, multiplied by the percentage of HE bullets in the magazine. With 25% explosive rounds for both attacker and target, that works out to a 0.625% chance that any given bullet hit to a magazine will cause a secondary explosion.

Basically, a lucky hit rather than a certainty, even if you're an amazing shot.

The factors that affect airframe durability are: design quality, construction quality, & quality of materials.

Early war German aircraft were beautifully constructed, which is why monthly aircraft production totals were low(ish). The same could be said for pre-war/early war aircraft constructed by other advanced economies, as well as many prototypes.

Massively mass-produced aircraft, especially those constructed from inferior materials, had inferior - or at least uneven - construction. Pilots of the era will tell you that no two aircraft flew exactly the same, even if they came off the same assembly line.

Giving the FW-190A the benefit of the doubt, I'd call it superior in terms of design, superior in construction quality, but average in terms of materials (at least for much of the war). Later war versions were probably only average in construction quality.

By contrast: P-51D = superior design, average construction quality (Rosie the Riveter was highly motivated, but she was new to the job), with average to superior materials. LaGG-3 = Superior design (precursor to the well-loved and rugged La-5), average to poor construction quality (and quite variable!), average to poor materials.

Control system =/ control surface area. The FW-190 should be a bit more resilient vs. aileron control damage. Control surfaces are a different story, since they're fabric covered.

The game doesn't distinguish between fabric-covered surfaces vs. surfaces with a skin of some solid material like wood or aluminum. Fabric-covered surfaces shouldn't trigger bullet/cannon shell explosions, should be much more vulnerable to fire, and to the effects of nearby internal explosions. Wood or steel frame with doped canvas construction should also have fewer overall "hit points" than for monococque construction.

Fabric covered control surfaces should be slightly less responsive at high speeds, and more prone to damage due to overspeed. (The fabric could deform or tear under stress.)


This a problem common to all aircraft in the game. IL2 damage textures are merely "artist's interpretations" of actual damage results. With Arcade Mode on, you can get some really strange results. For example, in a some cases, the damage textures will actually show more holes in the plane than the actual number of actual bullets that hit it!

I think you could make a good case that the damage threshold required to trigger any sort of damage to fuselage, wings, tail or control surfaces, for all planes, should be considerably higher for .30 caliber or .50 caliber bullets. Those weapons were fine for killing people, damaging engines and starting fires, but were never intended to blast vehicles apart.

But, there also needs to be some degree of progressive weakening of damaged parts so even .30 caliber bullets can make a plane fall apart if it subsequently pulls extreme Gs or goes overspeed.

You'll get no argument from me, but it's a matter of how you die. I've flown this sort of mission dozens of times over the years and generally end up with a dead/dying engine or pilot. Less commonly a flaming fuel tank or chewed up wing that keeps me from keeping up with the bomber formation. Its very unusual to get a wing failure, however.

That's the thing that US 0.50 caliber fanboys forget. .50 caliber/12.7 mm guns suck against any sturdily-built medium to heavy bomber.

The US military standardized on the M2 as their preferred aerial weapon because it was their most reliable weapon, because it simplified supply chain problems, and most importantly, because US pilots were almost always on the offensive, flying long range missions (where ammo quantity is as important as weight of fire) where the opposition was usually enemy fighters.

By contrast, nations whose air forces had to play defense against medium or heavy bombers (read: everybody except the US), or who wanted effective "tank buster" aircraft, quickly learned that the 20 mm or 30 mm cannon was the preferred tool for the job.

For bomber interceptors, the US got the message, too, which is why planes like the F6F-5N, P-61 & F7F were armed with cannons.