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| IL-2 Sturmovik The famous combat flight simulator. |
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Thread Tools | Display Modes |
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#1
07-25-2013, 05:25 AM
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Mitsubishi Stuka and Thunderbolt
The 1943 versions of the P-47 and Stuka both fall apart really easily don't they?
When I shoot a P-47 while flying the FW190 the tail section seems to break off like it is made of paper mache quite often. All I have read for decades about the P-47 was it's legendary ability to take a beating, not to mention the bushels of photos of it flying back home full of holes and missing all sorts of parts. Rudel surely did not have a 4.12 Stuka to complete his over 2000 sorties either. On one mission he landed after several hits from 37mm P-39 rounds on top of many 20mm hits. He took many hits with Stukas and made it back home despite. The 4.12 Stuka flames like an early Zero when it is hit by anything and loses parts just as easily, big important parts. I am sure these two aircraft should not be in the same league as an IL2 Sturmovik, but by reading accounts of their historical ability to absorb damage in combat it looks to me like the 4.12 versions of them would not have been able to cut it or create any legends. If anything in WWII was put together to take abuse it would be any designated ground attack aircraft and the American aircraft that were built with limitless resources out of much better materials than were available to anyone else in the world. While flying the 4.12 FW190A I have not noticed it breaking apart so easily as the above aircraft. Not invulnerable but I have made many trips home and landings with it after taking multiple 20mm and fifty caliber hits from other fighters and AA installations. Has anyone else flew these 1943 versions and compared the 4.12 Thunderbolt and Stuka to historical accounts of survivable damage? I did not fly these aircraft in WWII so all I have to go on are actual combat accounts and 12 years of flying this sim. Thanks.... |
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#3
07-25-2013, 07:03 AM
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Cannot tell you if the Stuka DM is porked—oops, excuse me, I meant ‘off’. The ridiculous ai rear gunners have kept me from doing any serious damage to them for years. Still, given the sheer size of the beast, if it were even a bit fragile in real life, it couldn’t have been as effective in combat conditions for most of the war as it obviously was.
However, most Jug (and Corsair and Hellcat) fans would have to wonder where you’ve been all these years; the Il-2 Sturmovik ’46 version of the P-47D DM is obviously the creation of a truly dedicated bunch of debunkers. Debunkers are usually people who read or hear of something being described in superlatives, and without any further investigation or actual thought, say to themselves “Naaah, it couldn’t possibly have been that good” and proceed from there to undo the legend with all the resources at their disposal without the slightest twinge of conscience, because they just know better (and because they think that destroying a legend will make them superior). Debunkers have done their worst to undo Western Civilization in many ways, from insisting that great men in previous eras must have been vile and unworthy because they didn’t subscribe to today’s fashions in politically correct behavior, that the Allied Powers in WWII were only in it for the money and markets, that the Beatles weren’t really geniuses (they just stole all their material from some obscure band they saw in Frankfurt in the early sixties), and that rock and roll will eventually die. The debunkers have looked at the whole spectrum of WWII fighters, and decided that the certain aircraft couldn’t possibly have deviated so far from the norm. I think that this is certainly the case with the P-47; compared to the standard smaller and lighter European fighters, it (and the F4U and F6F) was big and heavy, with not only armor in the usual places, but the sheer number of layers of stuff in the fuselage made it hard to hit anything vital, and what you could hit was so over-engineered that you had to get a multitude of heavy hits to bring it down. But that would make it above average in this regard, and the debunkers can't have that. And that’s just hitting it from the rear. The R-2800 was the finest radial engine of the Second World War; only the Merlin has a comparable reputation or powered as many dominant fighters. It was legendary for its ability to take hits from light MGs to 20mm cannon and still run away from the opposition and get its pilot home, often hundreds of miles away. It was the Golden BB shots that were memorable rather than the regular hits, but in this sim, every hit to the engine compartment of an R-2800 is a Golden BB. The M-82 of the La-5/7 is easily the most rugged engine in the Il-2 inventory; it will take some hits and keep running fairly strongly, and the BMW in the FW 190As will keep going after a few strikes (even from a 12.7mm MG), but the R-2800 will stop on a dime almost every time it is hit with a spitball (and let’s be clear here; I maintain that 95% of the hits made to the engine compartment should not be possible for the rear gunners, AI or human, much less that 99.9% of those hits would have done anything like the damage they usually do). AI gunners are still making high deflection hits from 500m and more away, so the bullshit factor has always been very high in that regard (and oddly enough, the debunkers ignore the historical realities in this case). Both of these engines were closely cowled, and their interiors were packed tightly with all sorts of tubing and wiring; any hit to these areas that penetrated the skin of the aircraft would probably have done some serious damage, whereas the R-2800 was not so closely packed and the bulk of the cylinders’ diameters were made up of cooling fins. I would also suggest that it was so big and made so well made that it was not nearly as susceptible to a couple of rounds bouncing around inside the cowl as these other examples. There are multiple records of R-2800s getting their aircraft back to base with two or three cylinders shot away, with tree limbs 10-15cm in diameter stuck in the engine compartment, or with large portions of one or more propeller blades shot away (unbalanced props would be catastrophic for most engines). Every time this comes up, a debunker says something like “Well, you only hear about the aircraft that made it back; you never hear about the hundreds that didn’t come back, so there.” Hah. P-47s and F6F Hellcats were the two safest fighters to fly in combat in WWII, and they were both powered by the mighty R-2800. An awful lot of them did come back, in much greater proportions than any other aircraft performing the same sorts of missions. And these were very widely used in all theaters, in greater numbers than most of the other ‘safe’ fighter/bomber types that are touted as ‘rugged’. Look out debunkers. We've found you out. cheers horseback |
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#4
07-25-2013, 01:35 PM
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Stukas being vulnerable at last? Gotta check this out. I haven't done any missions against these for a loooong time, because few patches ago they could absorb ridiculous amounts of bullets (especially .30 caliber), which made emulating early BoB scenarios quite a bit difficult. If they're less "panzer" now, I'm all for it!
Re: La-5/7 and Fw-190 - they are amongst the oldest models, dating back to the very first version of the game and their simplified DMs were never really completely upgraded, hence the engines and fuselages made of reinforced concrete  . We just have to live with it and hope that TD will consider putting these on "to do" list (including aforementioned R-2800).
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#5
07-25-2013, 02:20 PM
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The Stuka has been in the sim for a very long time too.
The FW190 has been tweaked up and down over the years, I remember one patch saw it's wings flying off with one hit, then the next patch it was made stronger. I think with most of the aircraft they have found a good balance, you can hobble home with a few hits but when they start adding up your chances of staying in the air quickly go way down. It just seemed to me that the 4.12 P-47 and Stuka were not as tough as the fW190A, and I have even had better luck while flying the 109 in taking hits than the 4.12 Stuka. I had a mission set up where I was intercepting four Ace p-47 razorbacks and I was surprised at how easy it was to knock them out of the sky, often one pass, even an off angle one will take the plane or pilot out. I can see getting the occasional lucky hit, but it seemed every one of the P-47s I hit with the FW190 went down very easily. I don't remember reading about how their tail sections were weak or vulnerable like you can read about the IL2 or Bf109. The Stuka I was flying was the D-5, the late one that is supposed to be more heavily armored than the early ones, but it seems it would light up like a torch with one hit from a fighter, and it fell apart very easily from one AA hit, which is not what you read about in combat accounts. I have a lot of experience with engineering and mechanics, I know more about internal combustion engines than most people ever will, and I have a good feel for what machinery should do under abuse. Once I got a look at a sort of blueprint for a FW190 and I am pretty sure I saw that it had a large diameter piece of pipe going through one wing, through the fuselage and into the other wing, and I though about how hard it would be to shoot one of those wings off, it would take a good hit on that metal pipe, hitting the rest of the wing might make it useless, but it would hang onto the fuselage. So when you see wings flying off model aircraft frequently which were specifically designed to be in combat carrying heavy loads while dive bombing etc. it makes you wonder if something needs tweaked a bit. I don't know what the blueprint for the p47 or stuka looks like, but unless a hit is very lucky or well placed, I would think it would take more than one to break a wing off a dive bomber, or the tail off the massive P47 fuselage. And a late war dive bomber that is heavily armored should not light up in flames as often as a paper-bag early Japanese fighter with no armor and no sealing tanks. So I don't want to complain, but just offer observations and comparisons between history texts and the modeled aircraft and betwen the modeled aircraft themselves where inconsistencies seem to show up. Thanks. |
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#6
07-25-2013, 02:27 PM
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Quote:
Quote:
Hit critical areas - engine, pilot, wingroots with concentrated bursts, or when possible shoot the fuel tank from behind with 20mm or larger, and they will go down. I've had Fw190 going down with single bursts, and I have had them absorb lots of ammo - but then mostly due to my less than stellar targeting. Sitting in an Fw190 I have been killed by single .50cal bullets (pilot or engine) -happens rarely, but does. And I have taken countless hits and still more or less flew away -also rare. |
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#7
07-25-2013, 05:13 PM
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FW 190
x 4 MG 151. 20 X2 MG 131 If you have bad luck and get one burst of one seconds of fire from fw. You will get 12 bullets x 4 = 48 hits of HE 20mm And 15 x 2 = 30 hits of 13 mm - HE - AP ? Maybe you can lost your tail section in a P47 for the amount of HE. Many aircraft have fuel tanks in the wings but are ignored.., others have ammunition. What I wonder is because some fuel tanks catch fire and others no. TD is doing a good job... But always will be a endless Work. Now TD is fixing many things. I only can tell, THANKS! Edited: some numbers Last edited by Mustang; 07-25-2013 at 07:33 PM. |
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#10
07-25-2013, 07:47 PM
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Edited:
The reasons why an engine dies It is mainly due to loss of water and oil or Fuel Caused by .30 or 23mm its close to the same " virtually " Fire stops if the fuel pump cut ... maybe.. I just remember online Play I was behind 4 Ju 88 at 150 to 250 mts shooting at the six.. for one minute or more in a Hellcat. I get full hits of 4 Ju 88 For one minute ! I only lose aleiron controls and maybe some engine power.. Maybe in 4.10 or 4.11.. Last edited by Mustang; 07-25-2013 at 08:16 PM. |
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