[RPS69]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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)?

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.

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.

Already assumed before posting

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).

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

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

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.