weapons firepower

[Laurwin]

Well, being at convergence distance is ideal for most killing power with 0.50cal MGs. Either at exact convergence or +/- 50m within the convergence distance.

When you got 200m convergence, and your shooting at enemy from 500m distance, taking 1 sec snapshots at 90deg deflection bandits, don't expect the enemy to explode!

On the other hand, 0.50cal tends to kill and wound enemy pilots eventually. High rate of fire tends to help in this also, in my opinion.

Even fw-190 burns up nicely, when you hit his main fuel tank, behind pilot seat, a couple of times

I think aiming along the centre fuselage is good with these 0.50cals (unless you're against Japanese planes, wingroot is excellent target for those)
If, you hit the engine, or pilot, enemy is going down soon. Center fuselage hit can probably light up main fuel tank, or kill cables. Rear fuselage would destroy elevator and rudder tabs, and cut cables.

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by pandacat

Yes, you may be right about cherry picking. IRL, there are still some cherries to pick, but do you even have any cherry to pick in-game at all? I admit that shredding wings do happen ingame somtimes, but I have never seen 50cal exploding target directly from 6. Maybe at an angle, diving or climbing shots, but not in lvl fly and directly at 6. Also you are correct about it is the G-stress that ripped off damaged wing, not the bullets themselves, but isn't G-stress also modelled ingame? Or are we simply flying in airless vaccum ingame?

vs. German/Italian opposition, explosion or even wingloss happens rather seldom (And when shooting from direct six, against 190s it should not happen at all -armor protects the fuel tank from that angle). But against Japanese planes you get the total destruction quite often.
Using Italian SAFAT guns, I've ripped wings of Hurricanes more than once, and often their wings were loaded when shot at. So there may be a combined effect of G load and damage modeled.