Mitsubishi Stuka and Thunderbolt

[horseback]

Originally Posted by JtD

Actually, the only single shot kill to the R-2800 is hitting the ignition, on top of the hub in the P-47. No armour or backup system there in real life, a clear one shot kill.

How big is the 'ignition' on the R-2800? What percentage of area inside the cowl (viewed from head-on) does it represent? How often does the average two or three shot burst of 7mm into the cowl from a rear gunner kill the engine?

If the answer to the last question is is a greater number than the answers to the the first questions, something is very wrong. Hitting one of the ignition coils(?) on top of the crankcase from over 200m is a classic Golden BB, and should be vanishingly rare.

It is not vanishingly rare.

cheers

horseback

[The_WOZ]

As most planes in the game, both the P-47 and the Fw-190 have complete internal collision boxes modelled. This is, individual models for each internal system with a rough shape and size.

This means that if the ignition system is shot out, is because a bullet indeed hit that small part of the engine.

Now, there's another group of planes, which includes the Stuka and the P-39/P-63, that do not have any internal collision boxes at all.
In these planes the damage to internal systems is determined procedurally every time a bullet hits the airframe.
For the Stuka there's around a 60% chance for a incendiary bullet shot to the wing root to set the wing tanks on fire.

I have once hit a P-47 with 80 20mm rounds (from a J2M) and it flew away. Other times a few hits from a 109 on the wing root will bring it down.
Even on planes with complete damage models there's some randomness thrown in to make things more interesting and realistic.
For example, back to the ignition system in the P-47, a bullet may not have enough force to knock out a magneto, but it may still sever some wiring and have the same effect.

In the case of the F6F, as a Ju88 and Betty pilot I can attest to the engine toughness to both MG and cannon fire.

[ElAurens]

I've had more "one shot" instant stops in the P 47 than any other plane in the sim. Second place goes to the glass jawed P 40.

You could probably bring the IL2 P 47 down easily with a side arm, if they were available in the sim.

[horseback]

As most planes in the game, both the P-47 and the Fw-190 have complete internal collision boxes modelled. This is, individual models for each internal system with a rough shape and size.

This means that if the ignition system is shot out, is because a bullet indeed hit that small part of the engine.

Which tells me that the shot is impossibly accurate, or that the 'collision boxes' are on the especially generous side for the P-47's (and the Hellcat's and the Corsair's) engine compartment.

As for random numbers, only God can generate a truly random number; there is always a prejudice built into any system built by men, and it is pretty obvious here.

When I run down and across the rear of a Betty at a 45 degree angle after a high 7 o'clock diving gunnery pass, and the rear gunner takes out my engine 3 out of 5 times in a QMB (my speed was in excess of 370 kts every time), that is not random.

When I approach from a level 4 o'clock, and get my engine knocked out from 450 meters as often as once in five tries, that is not random.

It is wrong.

cheers

horseback

[The_WOZ]

Let me put it this way, without these pseudo random numbers every single hit would knock out the engine, break controls, set fires, tear wings, etc, every single time

And no, the game doesn't call a special "letsporkthep47.rnd()" function, it uses de very same random number generator for the whole game. So by your logic the entire game is wrong

Also look at the size of the R-2800 distributors in this picture, each is as big as an human head.



Now, I'm not claiming that the damage model is perfect as it is, and I don't fly the P-47 so I can only tell what I have seen when flying against it online.
I would expect the engine to be somewhat more fragile, given the complex instalation with the turbocharger on the belly and all the plumbing it needs. But still it shouldn't have more probability to seize than the F6F or F4U.

Personally I wouldn't guide by getting the engine killed on a single hit by AI, it always had that supernatural hability to do tremendous damage with few rounds.

I have the same problem with the Hs-129 and AAA, it would aim directly to the engines and knock them down on a single hit, rarely it hits other thing that the very precise spot that kills the engines.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by horseback

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.

There's nothing about the Stuka's service record which indicates that it was a particularly tough aircraft, other than the fact that it was stressed to handle dive bombing.

Remember, part of the Stuka's reputation rested on the fact that the Germans were able to achieve massive air superiority in 1939-41. Without fighter escort, the Stuka was quite vulnerable, as evidenced by its less than stellar performance during the Battle of Britain.

Dora model Stukas might have been tougher than Bertha models, but they were still based on a mid-1930s design with all its limitations.

Originally Posted by horseback

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.

To paraphrase a common saying, "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by poor modeling." (Other than that, I agree with you. Debunking is just a method of generating controversy, which drums up trade for documentary producers, writers and academics.)

Remember that both the Corsair and Hellcat are products of the deeply flawed Pacific Fighters expansion, and there might be legal reasons why 1c/TD can't fix them. The Pacific Theater and carrier ops were obviously areas that 1c had less experience with, fewer local resources to work with, and less personal incentive to recreate, and it shows.

As for the P-47, I think that 1c's original work was influenced heavily by contemporary Soviet assessments of the P-47C, which were influenced by the relative lack of need for a high-altitude, long-range escort and the Soviet preference for cannons rather than heavy machine guns as fighter aircraft armament. The Soviets didn't know what to make of it and wrote it off. I also have to wonder if Soviet assessments suffered from some of the same shock that British and U.S. 56 FG pilots suffered when transitioning from the Spitfire to the Jug. After all, Soviet fighter pilots were more familiar with small, nimble fighters like the I-16 and Yak series, so the P-47 must have seemed clumsy by comparison.

TD has gone to great lengths to fix things, so I don't want to fault them, but it's possible that there is more work to be done.

Originally Posted by horseback

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.

While I think that your points about the R-2800 (and, by extension many of the other late war U.S. radial engines modeled in the game) are valid, to play devil's advocate, part of the reputation of the late war U.S. fighters was made by the fact that after 1943, U.S. pilots usually had air superiority (at least locally) and were usually facing inferior opponents.

What I'd like is if just about every plane in the game were harder to break into pieces or set on fire, except those noted for their light construction and lack of self-sealing fuel tanks. I think that TD has got it about right for crew injury and kills, but it's a too easy to blow parts off or set planes on fire.

In particular, I think that it's unrealistic for any heavy or medium bomber to lose a wing, stabilizer or entire engine to MG fire, or anything other than sustained 20mm cannon fire, and extremely unrealistic for the fuselage to break up.

I particularly dislike the ease with which you can blow off entire wings of planes like the B-17 using just heavy machine guns or a few 20mm cannon hits. If you look at gun camera footage of actual heavy bomber kills, kills are mostly achieved by setting the plane on fire, while archival films of heavy bomber shoot-downs shows that major parts come off the plane only as a result of severe fires (which melt, burn and weaken aluminum), direct hits by heavy flak (i.e., a direct hit by a 75mm or greater explosive round) or G-stresses on the plane as it falls out of control (possibly due to pilot kills or destruction of control linkages).

Likewise, it's possibly unrealistic for the heavier single- and twin-engined planes in the game (e.g. IL-2, P-38, P-47, F4U, F6F) to lose wings, engines or entire control surfaces due to MG fire, or anything more than sustained 20mm cannon fire, much less break up. There's plenty of evidence showing that smaller planes like the Bf-109, FW-190 or various Japanese fighters can lose wings due to heavy MG or 20mm fire, however.

After all, it's the nature of explosive rounds to blow up on the aircraft's surface, blowing big holes in the plane's skin, while much of the blast is dissipated in the empty space within the fuselage or wing, while most AP rounds will punch a smallish hole in the skin and pass through the plane to the other side. Obviously, if there's something under the skin things are very different, but you see lots of pictures of planes with massive surface damage which are able to keep on flying - at least for a while.

And, even for critical parts, most parts of a military aircraft are designed to be redundant, so that one hit to a particular part doesn't kill the plane. Obviously, there are exceptions like cooling systems or crew, but just one hit to a wing root or engine mount isn't going to blow that part off.

I'd like to see slightly more complex damage modeling, where there is a minimum damage requirement to blow off certain parts of certain planes (as opposed to just setting them on fire or make them stop working). Not just "hit points" or a random chance of critical damage, but an actual threshold to do any significant damage at all.

As an ignorant rough estimate:

Heavy or medium bomber fuselage or wing - 75 mm explosive.
Heavy or medium bomber stabilizer or engine mount - 30 mm explosive.
Heavy or medium bomber control surface - 20 mm explosive.

Light twin-engined bomber or heavy attack, fighter or transport fuselage - 75 mm explosive.
Light twin-engined bomber or heavy attack, fighter or transport wing or engine mount - 30 mm explosive.
Light twin-engined bomber or heavy attack, fighter or transport stabilizer - 20 mm explosive.
Light twin-engined bomber or heavy attack, fighter or transport control surface - Heavy MG (e.g., .50 caliber or 12.7mm) HE, AP or ball.

Light attack, recce or fighter or transport fuselage or engine mount - 30 mm explosive.
Light attack, recce or fighter or transport wing or stabilizer - Heavy MG HE, AP or ball.
Light attack, recce or fighter or transport control surface - Light MG (e.g., 0.30 caliber or 7.62 mm) AP or ball.

Very light aircraft fuselage, wing or engine mount - 20 mm explosive or AP.
Very light aircraft stabilizer - Heavy MG HE, AP or ball.
Very light aircraft control surface - Light MG AP or ball.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by The_WOZ

Personally I wouldn't guide by getting the engine killed on a single hit by AI, it always had that supernatural hability to do tremendous damage with few rounds.

This has been changed in 4.12. If anything, AI gunnery isn't good enough, at least for Ace or Veteran fighters.

Originally Posted by The_WOZ

I have the same problem with the Hs-129 and AAA, it would aim directly to the engines and knock them down on a single hit, rarely it hits other thing that the very precise spot that kills the engines.

That might speak not so much to the accuracy of the AAA, so much as flaws with the DM for the Hs-129. TD gave us a lovely rework of this plane, but they might still be retaining old, bad DM.

[horseback]

Originally Posted by The_WOZ

Let me put it this way, without these pseudo random numbers every single hit would knock out the engine, break controls, set fires, tear wings, etc, every single time

And no, the game doesn't call a special "letsporkthep47.rnd()" function, it uses de very same random number generator for the whole game. So by your logic the entire game is wrong

Also look at the size of the R-2800 distributors in this picture, each is as big as an human head.



Now, I'm not claiming that the damage model is perfect as it is, and I don't fly the P-47 so I can only tell what I have seen when flying against it online.
I would expect the engine to be somewhat more fragile, given the complex instalation with the turbocharger on the belly and all the plumbing it needs. But still it shouldn't have more probability to seize than the F6F or F4U.

Personally I wouldn't guide by getting the engine killed on a single hit by AI, it always had that supernatural hability to do tremendous damage with few rounds.

I have the same problem with the Hs-129 and AAA, it would aim directly to the engines and knock them down on a single hit, rarely it hits other thing that the very precise spot that kills the engines.

That was why they had two distributors, for redundancy. My argument is that the Corsair and Hellcat are both at least as fragile as the P-47 (and the Hellcat is probably the worst of the trio). You might also take another look at your picture: there's a lot more space between the cylinder heads and the metal of the cowling than we would see in a comparable picture of a Focke-Wulf or Lavotchkin. The damage model for the R-2800 is plainly wrong, and the DMs for the rest of the aircraft that use it are also clearly exaggerated in light of their combat records.

As I pointed out, just making a hit inside the cowling of a fighter approaching from any angle at any distance was extremely difficult; it happens far too often, and for certain aircraft, I suspect that it happens extra often, just as certain ai aircraft always seem to be crewed by clones of Little Stevie Wonder at the gunner's position (regardless of assigned skill level) and others always have the virtual offspring of Annie Oakley and Davy Crockett at their guns.

Do a little research and see how the fuel tanks and turbosupercharger in the Thunderbolt was installed and try to remember that American fighters in general were notoriously over-engineered and built to greater stress standards than the European norm (and most definitely the Japanese norm), and that the P-47 was considered even more so. There was a heavy belly 'keel' added early in the P-47C series in order to support a large drop tank and plumbing for it; it added a lot of protection for fuel tanks that were already buried pretty deeply inside the fuselage and had oodles of the leak-proofing that was standard on less protected tanks in other aircraft of the era. See the attached picture:

That's just the turbosupercharger; it doesn't show the supporting frames or the basic structure that covered it. The majority of it was ducting and piping that was hard to hit, and wouldn't be easily or seriously punctured unless hit from the right angle (i.e., a low-probability high deflection shot). The critical components were comparatively small. It could take a licking and keep in ticking.

Carrier aircraft are designed to take the stresses of repeated carrier landings, which adds to the strength and density of the airframe, which makes them even tougher to destroy or damage.

All three of these aircraft were used extensively in close ground support and were universally acknowledged as the safest aircraft of the war for that task. Corsairs and Hellcats largely replaced the SB2C Helldiver in the divebombing role by the end of the war because the difference in accuracy was minimal and the aircraft were much more capable (and survivable) after they dropped their bombs at low level over some of the densest light flak in the world.

The FW-190's BMW and the La-5/-7 series are treated much better, as I have pointed out, and neither had a record remotely comparable, particularly when specifically assigned to ground support. The schlacht variants of the 190 were heavily rebuilt with extra armor and weapon installations; the P-47, F6F and F4U assigned to ground attack were no different from the models assigned to air combat. Hour for dedicated ground attack combat hour, all three of these American fighters were statistically safer to fly over heavily defended enemy positions.

But not in this game. The 'random numbers' that generate hits and determine damage are clearly wrong for these aircraft.

And of course, it is a given that the AI are accurate (and swivel their guns ridiculously fast) at any distance or skill setting, to the point of parody (seriously, not a lot of trained soldiers can hit a stationary target the size of a P-47's cowl opening from 400m away, much less pick off the distributors with a standard rifle, much less than that hit it with a machine gun with open sights from a moving platform). For the off-line player, that is by far the biggest hole in the sim, but there appears to be no effective way to limit their accuracy to realistic levels (that DT will admit to, but I'm still getting disabling strikes from Rookie Zeros at over 400m, and as for the Betties...).

In general, the aircraft crew ai are far too accurate at ridiculous ranges and angles, and are able to bring their guns to bear much too quickly. They consistently hit 'spots' more often than the aircraft in general. The AA on the ground also seems to be modeled as being equivalent to a battery than as an individual emplacement, and again, even the heavy guns readjust and aim at 'spots' with inhuman speed.

I've flown many Soviet and German campaigns in Il-2 Sturmovik and all its successors over the last eleven years; no German or Soviet aircraft is as susceptible to being hit or being seriously damaged by those hits as the US radial powered fighters, when you take into account their relative size and speeds. It is not a matter of tactics; you can use the QMB to assign yourself a FW 190 or La-5F/FN to attack the same formation of Betties or He-111s and take the same angles of approach and you will take fewer hits and less damage than you will with a P-47, F4U or F6F.

You will find that these aircraft are harder to keep trimmed, that their instrument displays are generally inaccurate, and even once you finally figure out how to fly them with comparable precision, you will still take more hits than with the German or Soviet radials and that those hits will do disproportionate levels of damage.

cheers

horseback

[Treetop64]

Originally Posted by JtD

Actually, the only single shot kill to the R-2800 is hitting the ignition, on top of the hub in the P-47. No armour or backup system there in real life, a clear one shot kill.

Virtually all aircraft piston engines have dual ignition systems. If one totally fails, the other will continue to run. You'd have to take out both mags or the entire ignition manifold (which also had extra thickness at the front of the ring) to destroy the ignition system in an R-2800. The mags were encased with some armor protection at the front, and also had some protection from the spinning propeller. Their small size also helped protect them. Many things will be hit and knocked out from the front before the ignition.

Though it's one of my top favorite aircraft of any era, I haven't touched Oleg's P-47 in years, due to it's unacceptably crappy cockpit, and it's "glass jaw" vulnerability. Now, I don't know if the latter issue was ever addressed in subsequent patches, but if the real-world P-47 was anywhere as near to being one-shot-killed from the front as it is in the game, then it would have earned an entirely different reputation than the one it enjoys now.

The game's F6F and F4U have the same engine but aren't nearly as brittle in the front quarter as the P-47.

[JtD]

Whatever the ignition component on top of the hub was, it's crucial for the engine and there's no backup system. I'm nowhere near my sources, so you'll have to look at the details yourself. One hit in the right spot, the component's dead, and the engine dies with it. You can also try in game and shoot the engine into other parts, you'll see it keeps working.