Quote:
Originally Posted by Furio
On the contrary: realism would require less effective weapons. I can’t find better words than those written by Pursuivant.
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FWIW, veteran pilots learned that you needed to get really close and low in order to effectively engage ground targets, so it's not unrealistic for very brave/suicidal veteran pilots to pull out of their dives very low, or to conduct strafing runs at treetop height or below.
I don't have any good Soviet or German sources here, but as examples, Francis Gabreski (leading US Ace in the ETO) was captured after he damaged his plane's prop when it hit the edge of a railway embankment while making a strafing run, and that another US pilot making a low strafing run literally cut a German soldier's head off with his airplane's wing!
Of course, that makes it a pain to program the AI, since it means a whole bunch of collision avoidance programming that you can mostly ignore as long as AI aircraft don't fly below a couple hundred meters AGL.