.303's
 

I was going to attempt some humour and title this thread ".303's are porked!" but decided against it.

First off the good news is that I'm getting better accuracy in COD (about 20%) than in IL2 (about 5%) and it looks like my rounds are doing some effect. In the after mission report many of my targets are getting 50%-99% damage. But I don't get to see many of them bite the dust.

Unfortunately the lack of sniper tail gunners have made direct 6 the norm and maybe a bit of deflection shooting may get my rounds on more sensitive parts of the aircraft towards the front of the planes?

All in all, I think the engineers at Supermarine need to put cannons on the spitfire!

Cheers!

Salute

I wouldn't say the .303's are porked, and I am primarily a RAF pilot.

There is a big difference between the Spit and Hurri, the Hurri is far more effective in my experience, more stable and the closely grouped 4 gun batteries hit much harder than the skittish Spit with its dispersed guns.

Also makes a huge difference as to whether you set up your guns right, each gun has to have its convergence set separately, that's 8 guns you need to set, the initial ranges are way too distant for the power of this weapon, you need to get up close and have your convergence set to that distance to do serious damage.

Ammo is also importance, forget the marker and tracers, load up with Armour piercing and De Wilde inciendaries and rock on.

They are more effective than what I am used to in IL2 46. Honestly any way the .303 is modelled someone will complain so I hope Luthier ignores these threads.

It is frustrating shooting 25% until the guns are winchester and still not scoring kills.

I have no idea whether or not that is historically accurate. If it is, it should be left the way it is.

Thanks for the advice, I haven't seriously looked at the different loadouts yet, so in my next session I'll have a go.


Not all thread are directed towards the development team or are asking for changes. This one wasn't, I just wanted to see what was working (or not working) for other pilots in the sim.

In the IL2 I seam to get good results with the early model Hurricanes especially against the light un-armoured Japanese types but I'm definately getting more rounds on target in COD.

It could be that the damage has been done but it's effects are more subtle, maybe I'm finnishing my missions before target plane crashes or is forced down due to the damage sustained.

I expect its as Buzzsaw says, set convergence up close, choose the right ammunition , and only fire when you know your going to do the damage.

Cheers!

Armour piercing and Dewilde are definitely the way to go. I go about 50-50 save for tracers every fourth round on my inboard guns, and residual tracers on the left outboard, so I know when I'm just about out.

On the Spittie I set my outboard guns at 250, the second set moving in at 225 and the remaining four at 200. My squad mate came up with this scheme, and it sounded good so I tried it and so far I like it.

And BTW, I'm quite satisfied with the damage that the 303's do. My aim is a different matter altogether.

There is a reason why they eventually added cannons to the Spitfires and Hurricanes.. There is very little armor in Luftwaffe AC in this period.. crew kills are relatively easy... Set up a single mission with you and an He111 and HO the cockpit area.. it will roll right over and go in.. dead 6 attacks go into the only armor they had (seat backs) so any deflection angle will help

I'm also quite pleased with the 0.303s.

There are a few tricks:

1. Aim for vulnerable components like engine & pilot because you won't chop aircraft up as you might have done in IL2.
2. Be prepared to wait; it often takes a while for system damage to bring down an aeroplane; oil and cooling systems can leak for 5-10 minutes before running dry, and engines can then run on for another 5-10, followed by perhaps another 5-10 minutes of gliding.
3. If you want to score lots of kills, be prepared to cripple a target and move on to the next one whilst you wait for it to die.

Remember that the objective of the exercise is to remove the enemy's ability to fight, not to generate a TV-friendly spectacle.

If you want a real challenge, try scoring kills in the G50...

I'm Loading quad AP with a sprinkling of Dewilde's and red tracer guns on the outer guns and inner guns with non tracer AP/incendiary in the rest.

so my spit Loadout looks a bit like this

gun1, AP AP AP AP, Dewilde Dewilde Red Tracer, incendiary Tracer
gun2 AP AP AP AP, Dewilde Dewilde, Ball Ball
gun3 AP AP AP AP, Dewilde Dewilde, Ball Ball
gun4 AP AP AP AP, Dewilde Red Tracer, incendiary Tracer
gun5, AP AP AP AP, Dewilde Red Tracer, incendiary Tracer
gun6 AP AP AP AP, Dewilde, Dewilde Ball Ball
gun7 AP AP AP AP, Dewilde, Dewilde, Ball Ball
gun8 AP AP AP AP, Dewilde Dewilde Red Tracer, incendiary Tracer

The tracers give a nice cone effect and you can easily see your convergence distance
convergence is the same across all guns set at 250 thinking of bringing it down to about 220 or staggering the convergence like badaim (great idea) though the closer you get the better the results.

And i love the 303's they feel right, you can spray all day and not hit anything vital from the rear but from an angle aiming at some vital component like a fuel tank or engine and you hit that part at convergence even a half second burst can be lethal and leave you with some spectacular moments you won't chop parts off unless you hit a fuel tank but you will leave your opponent crippled, on fire or smoking who's easy to finish or you can leave him to have an interesting flight back to base with the likely result he'll be ditching in the channel at some point.

Anyone else hoping for the 12 gun hurri to make a return :D

I know convergence and loadout is the key, but I can't select it in QMB! :(
The thing is broken, it's so stupid... :(

True, but to be honest editing the QMB missions in FMB is actually more fun, and you can change loadouts.

yeh it's hit and mostly miss :p
i set the belts up in the FMB then go to plane options to adjust convergence select the belt save you've created in the FMB then adjust convergence then resave over the existing belt or create a new one making sure you hit OK or save as you go back through the menu's as hitting back won't save any changes you make, it doesn't seem to work for the quick missions and only a few of the single missions but MP will load the last loadout you used so it's fine there, if you want to try the loadout out easiest way is just make a quick test mission in the FMB with 2 planes flying around, as you can load belting and weaponsets directly from group properties in the object list.

Fingers crossed it'll get sorted soon though as it's a bit of a roundabout way just to change the loadout :p

As it's one of the headlinr features, having it slightly broken is damn irritating. Be nise if the plane and pilot customising screens were added to mission selection screen as well tbh, so you can pick mission and fiddle with settings.

+1 to that

this could be another of those "let's change history a bit" points IMHO.

303s didn't deliver the expected punch simply because a)they're small calibre and b)they weren't harmonised at a close distance, but used the (in)famous Dowding Spread, which was meant to create a "cloud" of bullets at 400 yards to defeat aiming inaccuracy and bring bombers down, but in reality it was simply a stupid idea, which only caused German bombers to come back with hundreds of holes in their fuselages.

The changes made by the 1st Sqn made the difference in fighting, with harmonisation to one point taken down to 250 yards, delivering a concentrated punch in one specific point by 8 machine guns.

The idea is to aim for the pilots fellas, you'll save a lot of ammo and shoot down a lot more enemies.. sad, but hey, war is hell!

I've got all guns loaded with AP-DeWilde-AP-DeWilde-... from start to finish, all harmonised at 100m horizontal and vertical. :) Seems to work nicely, 109s brew up a treat and if you aim steadily at one component on the bombers you can make a right mess.

100m, you're braver than me man ;)

You'll shoot the whole RAF's stock of DeWildes in no time;)

S ohow can I select those damn loadouts in QMB?

0:create my loadout under options and save it
1: open the quick missions in FMB
2: modify them so as to my plane carries my saved loadouts (?)

Is that right?

pretty much slight change though adjust convergence in options save it to a new loadout then open the quick mission in FMB and change the loadout belting in there.

Yea in reality the DeWildes were in very short supply.
In air terms the .303 was really a stop-gap as it was the 'stock' calibre of the majority of UK forces; the last thing the chiefs wanted was a diversity of calibres, so the .303 catered for everyone from the humble tommy's Enfield to fighters and bomber defence.

I guess with all the defence cut-backs in the inter-war years, the RAF developing cannons was never going to happen, if our fighters (spit) and bombers (Blenheim) development had to be funded privately.
Doubtless if the RAF had their way with funding, they would have developed the jet engine quicker especially when you consider that Whittle had a prototype running in 1937...

Needs muster as the saying goes, which is why after millions of German 9mm rounds were captured in N.Africa, the infamous sten gun was knocked up to utilise the round; not a good gun and very good at chopping fingers off the unwary but at least it hurt less to be firing it than to be infront of it... :D

That's interesting, I didn't know about this ammo capture in N.Africa, when did it occur?

By strange coincidence, that actually became the RAF standard for machine guns in 1942.

@ reflected;

You can indeed make any load out in the FMB and save it that way.
You can also fiddle with the mission parameters there. Lots of fun with just slight changes.

Good luck

They are.

Brits tested the .303 on old Blens , and a good percentage of the bullets just bounced off the Al skin.

Quite a few LW bombers barely made it back to France with over 200 hits on them.

IIRC the record holder was a bomber with 1000+ .303 holes in it, and there are stories of whole Squadrons expanding all their ammunition on a single Dornier or Heinkel.

It really matters where you hit them. From what I've seen, creating fires are the surest way (PK is another, but it more difficult to pull unless using a head-on). RCMGs have no real ability to damage the structure, especially if hits are all over the place.. and the gunner and crew positions on BoB era German bombers were fairly well armored, and they had self sealing tanks. Their defensive firepower were not so great, but if 2-3 Heinkels shooting at you at the same time, it can get messy quickly with a lucky hit. Slugging it out with one is also a bad idea IMHO - the Heinkels are like flying tanks, the Ju 88 otoh was very manouverable. The Do 17 is the easiest to be shot down IMHO, as it has neither the robustusness of the Heinkell nor the nimbleness of the 88, but the radial engines seem to be very resistant.

British bombers are on the other side of the scale - they are vulnerable but have relatively good firepower. Still, Blenheims are essentially flying targets. The tail gunner on the Wellington is a problem, but is rather easy to be silenced with the center mounted MGs on Germans fighters; thankfully those are generously provided with ammunition. And it catches fire very easily. I am not sure if it's flyable, think not, but it would be great to have a equivalent of the 111! :)

how so, you say yourself that one squadron did this, and i have read varied accounts where pilots who knew they could shoot had their guns harmonised closer and tighter. we can just play as one of those pilots.
this may be true, but then to extend the argument, in late war scenarios the luftwaffe would have to be horrifically outnumbered, out-skilled, under supplied with fuel, ammunition and spares, and reliability would have to be far reduced as well.

however, where is the fun in that?

I don't have much difficulties downing planes with my Brownings with the exception of the Heinkel which is really very strong. But I think it is ok. Don't forget that downing a bomber was a team effort and it is supposed to be hard to shoot one down. Just read about the kill statistics during the Battle of Britain and you realize that the number of planes shot down each day is rather small compared to the number of planes in the air. Particularly when you look at the number of downed planes during one engagement. Very little and very often there had been an engagement with damages issued but no kill achieved and both sides flew home.

We had been spoiled too much by IL2 where the fire power was excessive imho and over-done me thinks. Just forget about IL2 and what was possible with this engine. It is a new game and I think it is more realistic concerning fire power.

I'm saying that it's not historically accurate, but then again it's hard to re-create a historically accurate scenario.. the fighting skills of people involved in the sim are far superior to the real guys who went up there and didn't have much if no fighting experience at all.. most of us have been playing sims for 10+ years and learned a lot of tricks, whilst those poor guys sent up to fight sometimes didn't even survive their first mission :(

That may be true, but then again, I plan to load up my E-4 with only Minengeschoss rounds for the 2cm cannons.. and it's only fair when I can have around 5 pounds of ultra high explosives for my cannons to play with, he can have a bit more than the usual amount of fireworks, too! ;)

OK, I managed to change and save my loadouts via FMB - wish it would work in QMB too - but I couldn't find where to set the convergeance. Can you help me please?

PS: boy, those AP and deWildes really make a difference! :grin:

you can't change convergence in the FMB have to do it through the plane options - open the loadout you saved in the FMB from the options page go to guns and the convergence is set in there for horizontal and vertical untick the default convergence box you can then set your convergence on the individual guns set your convergence then hit OK to save or save it on to the new loadout.

hmm when I load the loadout saved in FMB in the options/plane menu, I can selevt it but it doesn1t load the actual loadout but the default one under mine's name. :(

Apparently 1940-41 though there does seem to be some discrepancy over if the 9mm was German or Italian.
When I was a kid my Great Uncle related a story to me of chasing the Germans out of a city (he didn't specify) and then finding massive stores of ammunition left behind.
He also told me of being in a foxhole in the desert during a battle and having a large calibre round hit the back of his pit. He jumped out of the pit in case it exploded but it didn't. He says he almost pooped his pants when he looked down and saw that spinning between his feet. :D

As a footnote he was then sent to Singapore just in time to be captured by the Japanese from where he went to work on the railway in Burma which he survived by eating mashed cockroaches collected from the latrines.

He survived the war without any injury, but in an ironic twist of fate he died from gangerene; he was showing me the derelict site where he used to work in a chalk pit and stepped on a rusty nail.

Even though this became infected, he refused to get it treated until finally he had to have his leg amputated.
He died some months later just before he was due to have the other leg amputated as the gangerene had spread.

A stupid end to a stubborn old soldier but I guess after all he'd been through a simple nail seemed rediculous to worry about.

Not accurate.

The tests revealed MANY of the bullets did not penetrate the FRAME of the bomber, but it was dependent on the angle they struck. The bullets were generally effective in doing damage to engines, fuel tanks and personel who were not protected by armour.

Most of the problems with the .303's effectiveness was a function of the convergence which the RAF recommended initially, which was far to distant, and resulted in scattered results. Once pilots reduced their convergence down to 200 yards, the results were much better.

Versus the lighter frames of the 109's and Stukas, pilots found the .303's could actually saw off wings and fuselages.

In my view, the 303s are far better than in il2. But which sim is the most accurate?

If you are unfamiliar with .303, they are on par with a .308 win/7.62x51mm NATO in bullet weight, velocity and energy wise, or if you not old enough to have used the above in significant quantity they fire a bullet ~2.8 times the weigh with ~2 times the energy than a more modern lighter 5.56x45mm NATO

;)

Pure fantasy.
 

You're dead right Sven.

A Captain or later Major Dixon of the Royal Arsenal (responsible for small arms ammunition) was entrusted to sort out (remake) the De Wilde ammunition suitable for British manufacturing processes. Hence, Dixon (without instruction or permission from superiors) found his own solution after much personal trial and error. And, just in time too. His Mk 7 wasn't put into production until May 1940, and wasn't available at all till June 1940, and wasn't in general widespread use till August 1940.

1940 First production .303” Ball Mk 7 at Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF) Radway Green.
1940 First production of .303” Ball Mk 7 at ICI Agency factory, Standish (K2).
1941 Last .303” incendiary cartridge (B Mk 7) approved for service.

In firing tests, the Mk 7 had a 20% success rate in setting fuel tanks alight, twice that of the older Buckingham or the equivalent German 7.92 mm incendiary rounds, and also had the happy side-benefit that the flash of ignition on impact told the pilot that he was on target. This effect was very popular.

The RAF in 1940 preferred to load each .303 fighter gun with only one type of ammunition (easier than mix and matching ammunition in belts by hand when in a hurry during a desperate war).

The Dixon Mk 7 ammunition was first issued to squadrons in June 1940 and was at first in short supply. The initial fighter loading being one gun firing Dixon incendiary (when available), two guns with the old 1929 issue Buckingham incendiary/tracers (British gun camera film from the Battle of Britain often clearly shows the smoke trails of this round), and two guns with armour-piercing, and three with plain vanilla "ball" rounds with lead cores. This didn't change till 1942, then the standard loading for fixed guns was half with AP and half with incendiaries.

In the Battle of Britain, the performance of .303 ammunition was initially adequate but it was found that the German bombers often survived large numbers of hits. The reason became clear in further tests which involved firing .303 and German 7.92 mm armour-piercing ammunition against the fuselage of a Blenheim light bomber from behind – not the toughest of structures, and with only a 4 mm armour plate protecting the gunner. This AP ammunition could normally penetrate up to 10-12 mm of armour plate, but it was found that the aircraft structure it had to plough through before reaching the armour deflected, absorbed or disrupted the flight of the great majority of the bullets, and of those which reached the armour, very few had enough energy left to penetrate it. Some improvement was achieved by reducing the gun harmonisation range from 400 to 250 yards in order to concentrate the firepower of the RAF's fighters, but it was clear that a more powerful gun was needed. This eventually arrived in the form of the 20 mm Hispano.

The Dixon, Mk 7 / De Wilde bullet had no trace effect whatsoever.

There's a good read in a book called "One Perfect Summer", or something like that, about Captain Dixon.

http://cartridgecollectors.org/cmo/cmo07feb.htm

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/fo...owtopic=104583

A timeline of .303 development...
http://www.milsurpafterhours.com/bb/...c.php?f=3&t=79

http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/RAF%20guns.htm

I just fired up a one on one using the old IL-2 QMB. The Hurricane .303s feel massively overpowered in 1946 now - just aim in vaguely the right direction from any distance and the opponent just falls apart. Which is correct? Possibly somewhere in the middle... Don't misread this to be a plea for the return of the 1946 DM - it's not since I think it was overpowered but there sure is a huge difference.

There's 1 big difference though Jimbo, you can alter your ammunition loadout in CoD something which you couldn't do in 1946. Unfortunately, I cannot remember what the loadout was for the Hurri Mk.I in 1946 so I can't make a comparison.

That's a good point - maybe someone knows? Although even if you set full de Wilde & AP in CoD you can't come close.

I don't really know about effectiveness of the .303 in real life.

I though don't think it is undermodelled in terms of fire power. If any discrepancy that I'd say that it is overpowered but I am not sure.

Here why I think that it is not undermodelled:

I can make planes catch fire, explode or rip wings off with my 8 machine guns in standard loadout as delivered by CoD. I just made a 109 explode with my Browings online (so standard loadout, no tracers per default of course as I cannot alter the setting right now) and I didn't have to pump several seconds. I at best shot a burst of one second.

I also managed to rip the wing off a 111 with my Spit 1. I frequently set 109s on fire.

If I hit the enemy with the correct distance corresponding to my convergence I do a lot of damage. If I hit something vital it is a quick kill. A very quick kill.

It also depends on the target plane. Some are easier to bring down, some are very robust. I usually have no difficulties in downing a Ju88 but a He111 is more reluctant to fall.

And yes, with the Hurri I manage to be more effective than with the Spit but I do think that it is quite close to reality. The Hurri was reputed to be a very stable shooting platform that is the bullets are more likely to hit home when you aim right than with a Spit because the latter will more make its bullet "rain" around the point you want to shoot at as the Spit is quite nervous. Also I think the gun setup of the Hurri is much better than in the Spit. If I remember well 6 out of the 8 machine guns of the Hurri (perhaps it's all of them) are located very close to each other while in the Spit they are all quite apart from each other. Now if the target is slightly off the convergence point of the guns, the area at which the bullets will hit is more confined for the Hurri than for the Spit and therefore the Hurri will cause more damage in such situations. Therefore I think it is valid that the Hurri overall is the better shooting platform and can cause more damage when the target is not ideally in the convergence of one's guns and usually the target will always be a bit off. So the Hurri wins here.

If you use a setup of half AP and half "De Wilde", you're not actually using the setup used in 1940...this setup wasn't used until 1942. So it's perfectly understandable why someone would think it was overmodelled and wrong...when it fact it's just the wrong loadout for the era.
From what I've read from different sources, the loadouts for the Battle of Britain tended to be 3 or 4 guns with ball ammunition, 2 with AP and the rest with either "De Wilde" or B.Mk.IV's (I believe the closest to these are the B.Mk.Iz's in game).

Read the posts again - I was saying that 1946 seems overmodelled in comparison to CoD. Was wondering which loadouts were used in 1946 since they seem more powerful than CoD even with the AP/De Wilde mix.

Myth.

Statistically, The Ju-88 suffered significantly more losses in BoB then He-111 or Do-17z.
Do-17z's where also used in low level bombing raids, including the very famous one on, pardon if I name the wrong field, but Kently.
IIRC, of those that attacked, 1 crashed, 1 force landed in UK, the rest made it to France, only just, all where badly damaged.

The Do-17 was smaller then the other two, had a one piece space frame wing making it more durable then the joined wings of the 111 and 88.
As you mentioned, the radial engines where less prone to stoppage due to damage, as the B-17's and Grumman aircraft years later proved as they kept coming back home.

17's did have Self-sealing fuel tanks (while Blen and Wimpey did not, resulting in many losses). Armor was added later (non of the German bombers had armor at start, field additions).

The 17's could and did carry 20mm cannons, with the bomb sight (The 88 could carry 20mm, or bomb sight, BUT NOT BOTH).