.303 ammunition expierence exchange

[Hellbender]

The issue with the exploding but still flying planes have been eyewitnessed several times, mostly on the Repka server due to the high density of the dogfights.

I also find it much more promising to attack a target not from 6 o´clock level but high or low, especially bombers sicne you can hit in that way the pilot or the fuel tanks better. However the problem remains, that you can´t chose your firing angle often, especially when a 109 tries to escape in a dive. In a dogfight it is a good idea to attack someone while he/she is turning sicne your bullets will have a lots of surface to impact on .

Actually with a 109 you harly will get ever a shot from 6 astern. Either because your target is fixed on someone and is turning wildly or because he can hear you from 500m (needs to be fixed because it is not realistic that one hears sounds from outside).

It still remains that I have seen a thousand times Spits doing a turning fight and winning even though they have been badly damaged (on Repka one has external view). I guess the same is for 109s.

Basically I think it is currently a bit unrealistic that if a spit looses one half of its elevator that it still can outturn me and catch on me with ease. That is what I challenge.

The same basically goes for 109 loosing half of its wings. One has some small torque but that's all. You still can land safely.

The best way currently to score a kill is to kill the pilot. I agree that this was the ultimate goal (with all the nastyness of meaning of course) in an air combat back then but my difficulty is that I wonder how they scored kills at all bck then.

Even when I am badly damaged I usually can get home and actually land ...

[TomcatViP]

one thing tht I know is that the grd seems to be too soft making crash-ldng a piece of cake.

yesterday I came back to the airfield in my 110 with no rudder and half elev (I tested online the new VNE) touching down too fast nose first in a -5deg attitude.
Figure what ? I survived !

[Hellbender]

Tonight, when there were 70+ people flying on the ATAG server, I took the chance and flew with a 109 ( there were more REDs than BLUEs). I vulched two Spitfires and a Hurricane with the MG and enaged 3 Hurricanes over the Channel in a dogfight.

I must admit, that the recoil of the cannon can lead to the issue that there a soem shells are bouncing over your target, I foudn it very useful and successful to only fire very short burst of MG/FF rounds (4-6) which saves some ammo and, in case your aiming is good deal some significant damage. 1 or two hits at the hurricanes each time and the planes had to abort the dogfight or when they continued they had to fly with soem big wholes in the wing. One hurricane stalled and crashed.

On the other side, I got hit in the last dogfight with two hurricanes and with the player Gelbe Vierzehn helping me out in the midst of the channel, were I got hit by a 1 second burst of a hurricane. That burst slightly injured me and created 3 tiny wholes in total in my wings. Anything else seemed to be okay.

Point is, when I compae the firepower apart form the auto cannon of the 109, I find the MGs of it more powerful than the .303 rounds of the british planes.

The most promising ammo loadout i fly in the british planes at them moment is for me:

Gun 1: White Tracer/Incendiary
Gun 2 Ball
Gun 3 Armor
Gun 4 DeWilde
Gun 5 Armor
Gun 6 Ball, DeWilde, Ball
Gun 7 Ball
Gun 8 Tracer/Indendiary

So big question still remains, is the DeWilde any good and worth 300 rounds in Gun 6 or has it only a minoreffect on your targets ?

[JG53Frankyboy]

Originally Posted by Hellbender

Tonight, when there were 70+ people flying on the ATAG server, I took the chance and flew with a 109 ( there were more REDs than BLUEs). I vulched two Spitfires and a Hurricane with the MG and enaged 3 Hurricanes over the Channel in a dogfight.

I must admit, that the recoil of the cannon can lead to the issue that there a soem shells are bouncing over your target, I foudn it very useful and successful to only fire very short burst of MG/FF rounds (4-6) which saves some ammo and, in case your aiming is good deal some significant damage. 1 or two hits at the hurricanes each time and the planes had to abort the dogfight or when they continued they had to fly with soem big wholes in the wing. One hurricane stalled and crashed.

On the other side, I got hit in the last dogfight with two hurricanes and with the player Gelbe Vierzehn helping me out in the midst of the channel, were I got hit by a 1 second burst of a hurricane. That burst slightly injured me and created 3 tiny wholes in total in my wings. Anything else seemed to be okay.

Point is, when I compae the firepower apart form the auto cannon of the 109, I find the MGs of it more powerful than the .303 rounds of the british planes.

The most promising ammo loadout i fly in the british planes at them moment is for me:

Gun 1: White Tracer/Incendiary
Gun 2 Ball
Gun 3 Armor
Gun 4 DeWilde
Gun 5 Armor
Gun 6 Ball, DeWilde, Ball
Gun 7 Ball
Gun 8 Tracer/Indendiary

So big question still remains, is the DeWilde any good and worth 300 rounds in Gun 6 or has it only a minoreffect on your targets ?

till the ammoloadout GUI is not working 100% properly, i will do no ammo tests

from a pure guessing i have loaded all guns with
1 DeWilde
1 AP

No tracers, just 5 in the last 25 rounds in the inner guns. IIRC the real pilots of 1940 wanted a lot DeWilde, but it was on too short supply for this....nobody is asking in game for supply

[Hellbender]

I read as well that a lots of the kills by the RAF during the Battle of Britain was credited to the DeWilde against bombers ammuntion. Is the ammo historically modeled in its effect here in this game ?

[JG53Frankyboy]

here in game, with never ending supplies of all kind of ammo ( a reason i dont like these totaly free editable gun loadouts.......), i see no reason to use ball ?!

if i want make holes in the target or even kill the pilot, a AP should be superiour over a ball
and british test showed that the "DeWilde" Mk.VI incendiary was far superiour over the "normal" Mk.IV incendiary.

'The incendiary ammunition was also variable in performance. Comparative British tests of British .303" and German 7.92 mm incendiary ammunition against the self-sealing wing tanks in the Blenheim, also fired from 200 yards (180m) astern, revealed that the .303" B. Mk IV incendiary tracer (based on the First World War Buckingham design – it was ignited on firing and burned on its way to the target) and the 7.92 mm were about equal, each setting the tanks alight with about one in ten shots fired. The B. Mk VI 'De Wilde' incendiary (named after the original Belgian inventor but in fact completely redesigned by Major Dixon), which contained 0.5 grams of SR 365 (a composition including barium nitrate which ignited on impact with the target) was twice as effective as these, scoring one in five.



The 'De Wilde' bullets were first issued in June 1940 and tested operationally in the air battles over Dunkirk. Their improved effectiveness, coupled with the fact that the flash on impact indicated that the shooting was on target, was much appreciated by the fighter pilots. It was at first in short supply, and the initial RAF fighter loading was three guns loaded with ball, two with AP, two with Mk IV incendiary tracer and one with Mk VI incendiary.

Another source for the Battle of Britain armament gives four guns with ball, two with AP and two with incendiaries (presumably Mk VI) with four of the last 25 rounds being tracer (presumably Mk IV incendiary/tracer) to tell the pilot he was running out of ammunition. It is not clear why ball was used at all; presumably there was a shortage of the more effective loadings. (By 1942 the standard loading for fixed .303s was half loaded with AP and half with incendiary.) '


to repeat, when the GUI is working, such tests will be much more easier.

Let the game run, than we can test its features