Quote:
Originally Posted by ElAurens
Every inline engine I know of has an aluminum engine block, and I rather think that they are not 1 to 2 inches (25 to 50mm) thick.
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I believe that all WW2-era high performance aircraft engines had cast iron blocks and that cast aluminum blocks are mostly post-war. Remember, aluminum was a somewhat scarce resource for many nations during WW2, whereas mild steel was relatively common.
I admit to eyeballing the exact thickness of the engine block using cutaways of Merlin and Daimler-Benze engines. But, remember, inline aircraft engines are big (~3/4 metric tonne, nearly 1 English ton, vs. 200 kilos/300 lb. for auto engines) and are designed to deal with much greater forces than auto engines.
I'm not saying that aircraft engine blocks are bullet-proof by any means, since cast iron is relatively soft and brittle as steel goes. But they're going to be a bit tougher to penetrate than auto engines, which is mostly what you see being shot up by various guns on YouTube.
There are also four different damage states the game engine needs to model for damage effects to inline engines - no functional damage (i.e., pitting of the engine's exterior, but no penetration), penetration of the block around the gearbox (= oil leak and eventual failure or seizure of the engine due to gearbox overheating), penetration of the block around the cylinders (= coolant leak and eventual seizure of the engine due to overheating of cylinders) and the penetration of both the exterior block and one of the cylinders which results in loss of engine compression and a fuel leak in addition to the effects of a coolant leak).
As a variation on penetrating the cylinder, there's also the possibility of damaging one of the pistons, cylinder head or camshafts, or one of the spark plugs or part of the wiring harnes, which would reduce engine compression and possibly cause overheating or engine seizure without the fuel or coolant leak.
Since engines in IL2 are modeled as solid blocks of metal, it seems that the simplest way to model the different types of hits would would just be to assign random percentages of no functional damage, coolant leak, oil leak, fuel leak and compression loss/engine seizure based on bullet energy, with .50 caliber or better bullets having a chance of multiple different hits, but with .30 caliber bullets just getting one type of hit (and with fuel leak/loss of compression/engine seizure hits being very rare).
Given the fluid pressures and temperatures involved, I think that IL2 is realistic, if not a bit generous, in allowing damaged inline engine to survive as long as they do. But, since I'm ignorant about these things I'll defer to others with more experience.