Durability of aircraft to MG (< 8mm) guns

[Former_Older]

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

As for aluminum skins deflecting and dissipating energy from MG rounds, yes and no.

Aluminum is a very soft metal and bullets have little to not trouble penetrating multiple layers of it. Sure you can have a bullet impact at a very extreme angle or at the end of its effective range, but for the most part rounds keep on trucking. A guy I know went out to the bush to test out a new (new to him, but old) .30-30 rifle. This is pretty much the weakest .30 cal rifle out there. He accidentally (negligently) put a round through the side of his mini-van and it went clear out the other side. It went through the outer panel, through one of the support beam leading to the roof, through the plastic casing, through the entire second row passenger seat (metal frame, 4 feet of foam, and then through the other side's plastic casing, support frame, and outer panel.

Bullets do a lot of strange things, but against soft or thin metals they usually go straight through and only vary their trajectory slightly. Hence He-111's coming back intact, but with mostly dead crewmembers.

In your typical WWII airframe the only things that are going to stop them are armour plates, metal cylinders, the engine, or other hard metal fixtures that are not part of the actual airframe and shell.

I think you make a good point

A lot of people seem to not understand how much damage a rifle-caliber bullet can really do. Movies and TV are the basis for a lot of opinions I think.

The 'small' .303 and it's US .30 cousins could go through trees. At the Springfield Armory museum in Massachusetts, USA is a fascinating series of thick hardwood blocks that were shot with .30 and .308 caliber rifle rounds, from M1 and M14 rifles. Well over a foot of penetrating from either round. I recall the .308 as having a 19" penetration through solid hardwood

And that's a single shot, not a barrage of sustained automatic fire pummeling the hardwood block, just one single round.

Yup, the only problem though with MG ammo vs. aluminum is that it makes pretty little holes and you don't get those spectacular exit craters that you see in the hardwood at that museum, which sucks for the Brits or Luft pilots who have spent all their cannon ammo.

[Royraiden]

Could a concentrated mg fire at convergence distance rip a whole wing off by the base?Would be nice to see attacked airplanes go down in a lot of different ways, rather than just setting it on fire and explode.The whole tail blown off by cannon rounds,exploding ammo ripping the whole wings and stuff like that.I havent read much about the new damage model.Would be nice to have some specific details or a video showing them.

[WTE_Galway]

Originally Posted by Royraiden

Could a concentrated mg fire at convergence distance rip a whole wing off by the base?Would be nice to see attacked airplanes go down in a lot of different ways, rather than just setting it on fire and explode.The whole tail blown off by cannon rounds,exploding ammo ripping the whole wings and stuff like that.I havent read much about the new damage model.Would be nice to have some specific details or a video showing them.

Mythbusters .303 minigun versus a tree ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC8jnSaCqxY

But in reality if you look at actual WWII gun cams and photos of downede aircraft de-winging was uncommon.

Perhaps we need a "cinematic" mode that allows unrealistic exploding and de-winging of aircraft to satisfy the inner need for people to blow things apart

[Royraiden]

Originally Posted by WTE_Galway

Mythbusters .303 minigun versus a tree ...

But in reality if you look at actual WWII gun cams and photos of downede aircraft de-winging was uncommon.

Perhaps we need a "cinematic" mode that allows unrealistic exploding and de-winging of aircraft to satisfy the inner need for people to blow things apart

Well at least Ive seen wings breaking off due to the ammo exploding after getting hit.Cannon rounds could definitely do what Im asking

[Avimimus]

There was a really great article posted a few years ago on the SimHQ forum.

Apparently, passing through a 2mm aluminum sheet introduces considerable yaw (in the ballistic - not aeroplane sense) to the bullet. This lowers terminal penetration by something like 30% because it no longer hits head-on.

[WTE_Galway]

Originally Posted by Former_Older

I think you make a good point

A lot of people seem to not understand how much damage a rifle-caliber bullet can really do. Movies and TV are the basis for a lot of opinions I think.

The 'small' .303 and it's US .30 cousins could go through trees. At the Springfield Armory museum in Massachusetts, USA is a fascinating series of thick hardwood blocks that were shot with .30 and .308 caliber rifle rounds, from M1 and M14 rifles. Well over a foot of penetrating from either round. I recall the .308 as having a 19" penetration through solid hardwood

And that's a single shot, not a barrage of sustained automatic fire pummeling the hardwood block, just one single round.

On the other hand I had a Vietnamese friend who said they found during the war that 3 feet or so of loose "brush" consisting of cut leafy branches one or two inches thick over a trench or pit would not only camouflaged them from helicopters but effectively stopped a lot of rifle calibre MGs.

[winny]

The main cause for the majority of the holes in German bombers was simple ball ammo. RAF fighters usually had 3 or 4 guns with ball ammo 1 or 2 with AP.

The problem, as someone already said, is that the bullets would deflect or start to tumble and not hit at the correct angle. Only a quarter of the armour piercing rounds fired into the Blenheim reached the armoured plate and hardly any penetrated it.

The same round fired straight at a 12mm armoured plate (8mm thicker than the Blenheims) from the same distance (180m) penetrated the armour 100% of the time. Airframe makes a huge difference.

The Germans knew that AP rounds were ineffective against bombers and they eventually removed them from the ammo belts, except for specialised missions.

[Chivas]

I doubt very much the developers will nerf the cannons and uber the smaller calibers. There is a huge difference in the damage model of IL-2 and COD. The days of shot up fighters staying and being effective in a fight are over. With the new damage model every system on the aircraft can be damaged or destroyed. Pilots will be bailing out or trying to find a way out of the fight as quickly as possible, because the aircraft will no longer be effective.

[Skoshi Tiger]

Originally Posted by WTE_Galway

Mythbusters .303 minigun versus a tree ...

I think you'll find its a 7.62mm Nato round. The rimmed .303 cases were a throw back to the late 1800's and have issues with auto weapons. Without proper loading it's even possible to lock the rims in a Lee Endfield magazine - very embarassing :!)

Cheers and thanks for the video! I wonder if they could mount one of those in my Spitfire?