weapons firepower

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by pandacat

That's why I tend to fly a lot in Pacific theatre. LOL. Zeros are easy. However, some of the bomber planes are tough. B5Ns are pretty tough from direct 6. Sometimes felt even tougher than IL-2. But if shooting from diving, I have exploded them quite a few times. Betties is also an interesting story. When shooting from directly behind, it feels like your bullets all went into a void. That kinda makes sense cuz the bombers tend to have a lot of internal space in their fuselage. But their engines are weak. Several short bursts can set them on fire.

B5Ns tend to go KABOOOM when hit dead centre at convergence. Can get funny results when they are in close formation -I've more than once killed planes I didn't shoot at that way. And their wing tanks are touchy, too. Structurally they are tough though.
Bettys suffer from their Achilles heel they had in real life, too -their unprotected wet wings. Don't try shooting from direct 6, if possible make high (and if you don't want to be hit by the tail gunner also off-angle) passes, even from directly above, the tanks present large enough hitting zones that way, and almost anything hitting them makes them burn (especially good are .30s!)

Originally Posted by sniperton

I would say, those wings had to be heavily loaded to achieve a wing-rip with a pair of SAFATs. Otherwise SAFATs are near hopeless unless you aim at the engine, the tank, or the pilot, in my experience.

I may be that SAFATS have been a little upgraded in one of the last patches.
But they still are among they most difficult guns to get results with, you are right there - one needs to aim for specific parts of the plane, the pilot is the easiest to get a kill with these buggers IMHO.
Vs. Hurricanes, it is doable to shoot a 4-5secs burst into the tail section, and usually it will rip -may not be the most effective way, but works. And after a prolonged time trying to down something with SAFATs, you learn to shoot at the parts of the enemys plane that count, so using these guns actually improves your shooting skills.