The destructive power of Russian guns/cannons
 

3 weeks' intense online play since the release of the new patch has given me a feeling that Russian guns/cannons has become way more powerful than they used to be, where they were already overmodelled.

I've tested them in a quick mission against German fighters. Usually one or two hits of Shvak or B-20 are enough to either drill several holes on their wings or smoke their engine, or take out one of their control surfaces.

While on the other hand, the power of MG-151 seems to be greatly reduced. To take out the combat-ability of any Russian fighter would need more cannon hits than before. 20 MG-151 hits is quite common in that case.

I hope you will investigate this matter and fix this problem in the incoming patch, TD.

So far as I know absolutely nothing was changed to cannon damages. I could be wrong but nobody has said anything about it.

Before you say that Russian cannons were always over modeled I suggest some research on the subject. Russians had some very good aerial weaponry including the excellent Berezin UB and the B-20 which were both lightweight and effective weapons.

I remember there being some comparison info somewhere.. If I'm not mistaken..

- The Russian weapons had a higher muzzle velocity and greater penetration power (going through your pilots armour plate causing more PKs, etc..).

- The German weapons had lower velocity but had more explosive/hitting power, but less penetration power.

So essentially the Russian stuff shredded, and the German stuff blew things apart.
;)

That'd be a pretty good summary for sure!

Doing a very simple comparison...

Cannon, Cartridge, Rate of Fire (rpm), Muzzle Velocity
MG 151/20, 20 x 82, 700-750, 725
ShVAK, 20 x 99R, 800, 750-770
Hispano II, 20 x 110, 600, 880

(from here: http://users.skynet.be/Emmanuel.Gust...n/fgun-pe.html)

The ShVAK basically fires a bigger shell than the MG151/20 and it does it at a higher rate of fire and with a higher muzzle velocity. So on the face of it the ShVAK is actually the better cannon. The MG151/20 makes up for it by having the better explosive shell with the Mine-shell (very thin high grade shell wall with much more explosive). It's a fairly even trade off.

My reading suggests that it's sort of a three way tie as to which cannon is the best. The Hispano fires the biggest round at the highest muzzle velocity but had a variety of teething reliability problems and had a lower fire rate (at least until the Mark V). The ShVAK fills the middle road with a capable cannon that had it's bugs worked out before WWII. The MG151/20 is the most technologically sophisticated and takes slightly lesser stats (very slightly) and makes up for it with a much higher explosive power.

The Japanese also had a pretty good cannon in the Ho-5. It was actually derived from the Browning .50cal design but it wasn't as good as "the big three".

The ShVAK has a bigger cartridge than the MG 151/20, but a smaller projectile.

The only historical problem with the Russian armament in IL2, is from IL2-3M.

Those canons weren't synchronized. They were removed from the tank buster function to the anti shipping role. At least those were big enough to get some hits with asynchronous heavy guns.

In game, heavy tank killing is a child play with those canons.

If you were testing against AI, keep in mind that AI damage control is poorly modelled. AI can still fly perfectly with a big hole in the wing and half rudder gone. And there is a rumor that Ace AI has defense bonus, though I'm not sure if it's right.

Have an example for this? My experience has consistently been the opposite, that if you blow "a big hole" in the wing of an AI aircraft it's flight performance suffers accordingly, though now it's much more plausibly so with the new patch than in previous versions.

A rumor. And one that you're not even sure of. Why mention this at all?

In retrospect its kind of lucky the Luftwaffe did not push to make the Mauser MG 213C 30mm single barrel revolver cannon operational, else late war would have seen the Reich defense equipped with the equivalent of a 30mm Aden.

MG 151 /20 is capable for many ammunitios


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