[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Furio

I didn’t talk of 90° dive. I talked about the bullet hitting target at 90°, regardless of plane position. At any other hitting angle, penetration is reduced, up to glancing and no penetration at all.

Is this correct? Obviously, it's correct in real life, but does IL2 actually model angle of impact when calculating armor penetration? I'm not sure that it does.

Originally Posted by Furio

A damaged and temporarily disabled tank can be an advantage during a battle, but cannot be considered a kill, if it isn't captured.

You're right, but IL2 doesn't model damaged ground vehicles. A ground vehicle is either dead or in perfect health. Certainly, you don't get credit for damaged vehicles.

In that way, I think that IL2 is unintentionally realistic, in that it sort of models the kill claims made by ground attack pilots. (The unofficial rule being that if you put gunfire into a vehicle it's a kill, even if a few hours at the maintenance unit will set things right.)

Originally Posted by Furio

Otherwise, the same tank could be killed countless times.

This was, and is, is a very common reason for pilots (and tankers) to make exaggerated kill claims.

Unlike in IL2, where the game helpfully shows you (and tells you, if you've got Padlock and HUD messages on) whether you've killed a vehicle or not, in real life it's sometimes quite hard to tell if an AFV is damaged to the point of destruction.

That means that different pilots (and tankers) might shoot up the same "dead" vehicle multiple times thinking that it was still a valid target.

Originally Posted by Furio

A kill means:
A) A completely destroyed tank.
B) A damaged, immobilized and captured tank.

The ordinance units would probably count a "kill" as "damaged beyond effective repair", which can mean all manner of things.

But, setting an AFV on fire is usually a good way to wreck it, since the heat of the fire ruins the armor as well as any internal equipment.

In combat, it's more useful to think of "mobility kills" (vehicle can't move), "gun kills" (weapons systems no longer functional), and "combat effectiveness" kills (crew wounded, killed, or otherwise no longer willing or able to fight, vital equipment destroyed, low on fuel, etc. to the point that the vehicle won't be taking any further part in the action that day.)

If IL2 paid more attention to ground vehicle ops, then it might be useful to model mobility and gun kills. Right now what it does is crudely models combat effectiveness kills.

Originally Posted by Furio

I would not take too seriously Rudel's tales. His victory tally is more than suspicious.

His claims were subject to the usual very strict Luftwaffe kill-claiming procedures - at least for air-to-air kills. Rudel might have been an unrepentant Nazi, and possibly a braggart, but he was undoubtedly one of the finest attack pilots ever.

I think that there's a lot of truth to his stories. Certainly, his story about sinking the Marat is valid, as is his sortie record (over 2,500 combat missions!). How many ground vehicles he actually destroyed is questionable, but it's probably a considerable number.