Rifle caliber hits are extremely ineffective against self sealing tanks. I have a Russian testing result against Bf 109 s-s tank, and they found that up to 20 (!!) hits were sealed when hit my RCMG fire. That's a lot, and the Heinkel fuel tanks are larger and more massive.. getting 20 hits on the same tank so that fuel would start to pour out to everywhere is also very unlikely to me.

I think I read that the 109 had a system that filled the emty space in the fueltank with inert gas or that air was sucked out of it.
If this works, it should be prevented from catching fire on the first pass. It will take a while for fuel to run out an soak the rest of the aircraft.

Most of my kills in COD, have been pilot kills or team kills.
Convergense is the key in aircraft with wingmounted guns, especially if you only have light machine guns.

OT: La-5/7 had that system. IIRC they drove exhaust gases to fuel tank.

Try adding incendiary rounds...

My ammo belts are 4 guns nothing but De Wilde. 4 guns AP and tracer.
Attacks from sides, above, underneath, tried even dead 6 for a change, normally not my style. I never shoot further away than about 170-180 and closing in to under 100. Convergence at 150.

As said a good precise attack needs less than 100 hits to down that He 111. Often I need 150-250, but that is due to rather less than perfect shooting and is the combined hits of 3 passes or so.
Rarely I need 400-500 hits. Rarely.


While I agree and am happy that there isn't fires all over the place it still strikes me a bit odd that in approx 40-50 test attacks on a Heinkel 111 drone I was never able to start a single little fire.
Kabooms, yes, pilot kills yes, thin white stream (coolant, fuel), think black stream (engine oil), loads of holes in the wing areas, ailerons kaputt, elevators shot away, etc, etc.
But never a single little fire.

Now if the tanks are hard to set on fire that's fine with me. But never?
Next would be the engine. Never. No engine fires either?
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OK, was able to flame quite a few Heinels and Stukas with the G50. Then used the 109 and flamed some Stuka using only the nose MG's.

Now differences with Hurricane:

If Hurricane hits the vulnerable spot (fuel tanks for example) it does not burn - it does kaboom immediately; because you hit it with 4 / 8 MG's at once (instead of two of 109 or G50).
It's more difficult to hit vulnerable spot with Hurricane; ideal distance seems 180/170m in terms of convergence, if you go any closer the guns do not converge at one single spot anymore.
However at 180m aiming and hitting vulnerable spot is difficult as you are still far away - and if you are inside 150m difficult to hit a particular spot as the guns will hit left and right of where you aim.

De Wilde and Incendary work fine, try it on a Wellington, the fabric starts to burn easily all over the plane.

Maybe another odd thing is that you can easily get thin white 'smoke' coming out of the wings - fuel leak I would say. But if you clobber than wing heavily with De Wilde and Incendary afterwards this seems not to result in fires.
Those wingtanks were not really small targets either:
http://www.germanmilitaryhistory.com...64564564_1.jpg
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I've been on fire In my G.50. Just throwing it out there.

25 20mm hits on a he111 wing is far too much! On average it only took 20 20mm to down a gigantic B17! Il2 1946 has this down very well.

It's a definite immersion killer and 1946 is still miles ahead in this regard until they get this damage model at least some what calibrated. Despite more advanced architecture, it's porked currently.

there is also another very important thing to remember here that further puts all of this into perspective and that is that we are far 'better' pilots than the pilots combating these things in 1940, having had hundreds and hundreds of hours blowing up every size and shape aircraft over the years, not to mention the absence of fear- yet countless combat reports and footage reveal the destruction still yielded under their circumstances.

Rly ?

Then try to do that in real world with G, wind gust, turbulence, vibration, not 100% perfect mechanism and a real 3D perspective (and not 3D projected).

Then we will see who are the real aces ;)

No offense man. Just a reminder of what we do not to face in our sim.

On top of what Tomcat says we don't die, we just re-fly....

Well, indeed we are 'better' pilots as it is much easier for us, but that explains as well why many real pilots had very few victories.

Back to the DM. Yes it needs some work, but then the one from IL-2 46 didn't get there overnight either.
It has a lot of potential however I think.

Dunno how DM works really here are is my guess in this case:

Very few hits do no damage to those self sealing tanks.
Several hits result in a thin white spray, fuel leak
Sustained hits (steady burst of 2 sec well places in the area) results in fire
Lot of hits result in explosion

The problem with a Hurricane is that at least for of your guns hit the tank. If aim is not steady on the tank you will get only white thin fuel leak. If aim is square and steady on the tank the 4 guns will score so many hits that it goes directly to kaboom scenario.

Another thing I'm not sure is on who repeated hits on same area in different passes are treated.
You make one pas hit one area - like the fuel tank. White fuel leak.
Now you hit the same area again.
It does not seem that the damaged area and leaking fuel makes this area now more vulnerable.
Same goes for structural damage. Hit one area and do damage. Hit it again and damage should not only be 'on top of' the damage already be done but make it worse as the area is already weakened.
How does this work in game, anybody knows?

And a He 111 with a total of 800 spray and pray hits is no worse off than one with 300 spray and pray hits. Slow death circle, going lower and lower.
Crew seems never to abandon plane in such cases - while when on fire they start to bail out pretty quick.
Maybe it should be modeled that if the AI pilot cannot hold the plane anymore that he will give order to abandon the plane and bail out?


Yes, 20 rounds of 20mm is an awful lot to get that Heinkel down, however I will have to test fly that a bit more as it was ony one single test.

One overall problem of the DM is to have a balance of all weapons and plane models. Whatever you change results in a chain reaction across the whole bandwith.

With the 109 (MG only), G50 and Stuka I need 50-150 hits to down that He 111 and if I aim and hit well it is no problem to get those tanks on fire. Seems perfectly ok to me.
But I can go in to 100m and hit accurately with those nose mounted sniper guns.

The Hurricane can only be set convergence to what 180m or so (anyone can confirm minimum distance?), not closer, means it is much more difficult to accurately hit that tank area from a longer distance.
Going closer hitting is more difficult as you hit left and right of where you aim...
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