Improve your aiming/marksman skills

[hegykc]

Originally Posted by klem

Metres.
I have a ballistics spreadsheet for all the guns in IL-2 '46 somewhere based on RL values but in the end it came down to KISS.

If you could share those that would be great.

The thing is,

with a "one point" convergence you have 3 possibilities : hit, miss, or hit armor. So you have like 33% chance of doing some damage.
With a harmonized 3-4 times larger pattern in all the 3 possibilities you'll hit something: you either hit and then some, miss but still hit something, or hit armor but also hit something else. So you have "100%" chance of doing some damage.
Even if you don't instantly blow them to pieces they still have a long way home. And even if they get back to base, they're still damaged and out of the war machine.

As you can see on the "death cone", with one point convergence you can waste a whole burst on the back plate armor. While with the harmonization you'll always hit something. And you only need one tank, one oil or gas line, one control cable etc...

How it will transfer into COD, we'll have to test and see.

[klem]

Hi hegykc,

I've found it. Its old but I think its still relevant.

I would call your "cone of death" the "cone of impact", there's no "death" in hitting an empty wingroot and it would be a very lucky hit on a control cable in a fuselage with scattered shots (assuming the DM is that sophisticated).

With point harmonisation you have 2 possibilities, not 3. Hit or Miss. Hitting armour may not be too helpful but it is a Hit. Also, most hits are not from the 6 o'clock position, they are at some angle of deflection varying both horizontally and vertically. I usually try for a deflection shot on the canopy especially as the CoD 109s seem to fly on whether burning or hammered hard. Best way is to kill the pilot and I'll probably rake through the engine as I try. True you only need one or two pilot hits so a scatter can do it but point harmonisation will make sure of it at harmonisation range and against bombers you need concentated fire on engines, wing tanks etc.

By the way, with pure 200yd point harmonisation you get a scatter of about 5 feet (about 1.5m) from 150yds through point harmonisation out to 5 feet at 250 yds so you have the benefits of 'harmonised' setup through that range as you close and get closer.

Its a matter of personal choice but I prefer point harmonisation.

Did you know that the best shots in the RAF (like Sailor Malan) preferred point harmonisation at anything from 150 to 250 yards? A 4 feet square pattern harmonisation at 400yards was the official setting at the beginning of the war until it was changed to point harmonisation at 250 yds during the BoB. The thinking at first was that 4 feet square at 400 yds would give the average pilot a chance of hitting 'something' but it was found to be ineffective at bringing enemy aircraft down. They found that concentrated fire was necessary or too many escaped with only minor damage.

EDIT: In CoD damaged a/c aren't out of the war machine. The pilot just gets a new one.

[hegykc]

Thanks for the file.

Cone of death is an expression I've read. It's not mine, nor describing this pattern as being more deadly.
And I don't won't to re-invent the wheel here. I would gladly calculate the convergences according to official harmonization charts, but I haven't found any for WWII RAF.
Also, US standard is 1000 feet convergence. But when you look at the charts, you see that it's not just one setting.

So I thought it might be a similar setup with the RAF. The .50 caliber being more destructive is a solid point and I agree, you can afford to spread them out.
Wish I had official harmonization charts for RAF.

If you can point me to a quote saying the best shots proffered single point harmonization I would be very interested. And, of course they would, I mean the best shots could do with a single bullet.

This is for the guys that are having trouble hitting their targets.

Also your numbers are a little off. Browning .303 has a 4.2 mill dispersion cone, so at 150 yards you get a 1.9 feet scatter, and at 250 yards a 3.2 feet scatter.

Anyway, it's out. If it fails, there's always tweaking, if that fails, back to default.

[GF_Mastiff]

Thank you just trying to unconfuse the new comers that are coming on line the last few weeks.

Just remember in the GUI ammo load outs the convergence is in meters,

I just rounded to the nearest denominator and made me a spreed shoot,

Heres mine

guns 1/8 is at 299meters which converted in the cockpit is 250yards,

then I just set wingspans for everything else.

1/8 299, 250 yards.. ammo is tracer incendiary(1), armor(2), incendiary(3), armor(2), ....up to five each staggered, tracer is once every 10 rounds. so it's like this 1,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3...

2/7 183, 200 yards, these guns are like this 1,222,333,222,333,222,333...

3/6 174, 190 yards, 1,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3

4/5 163, 180 yards.. 1,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3...

this is very effective against all target I find.

[pstyle]

Right, I have set up my guns to match your 300m convergence suggestion, that is:

Outboard (guns 1 and : 120m vert 300m hor
Guns 2 and 7: 268m and 300m
Guns 3 and 6: 265m and 370m
Inboard (Guns 4 and 5):275m and 342m

I have NOT yet corrected for yards, but I will test at m first, just to see if the difference is noticeable

[pstyle]

Originally Posted by pstyle

Right, I have set up my guns to match your 300m convergence suggestion, that is:

Outboard (guns 1 and : 120m vert 300m hor
Guns 2 and 7: 268m and 300m
Guns 3 and 6: 265m and 370m
Inboard (Guns 4 and 5):275m and 342m

I have NOT yet corrected for yards, but I will test at m first, just to see if the difference is noticeable

I can confirm that the above settings are a nonsense.

BUT, in game, aren't the horizontal and vertical convergences the wrong way around?

[pstyle]

you need to Reverse the horizontal and vertical convergences in game. The game has them around the wrong way.

This is already reversed, so enter it exactly as specified: It works quite well:
Outboard (guns 1 and : 300 vert and 120 hor
Guns 2 and 7: 300 and 268
Guns 3 and 6: 370 and 370
Inboard (Guns 4 and 5): 342 and 275

I just tested the above with tracers in all 8 guns. Gives a good cone of fire out to fairly long range.

[klem]

Originally Posted by hegykc

Thanks for the file.

Cone of death is an expression I've read. It's not mine, nor describing this pattern as being more deadly.
And I don't won't to re-invent the wheel here. I would gladly calculate the convergences according to official harmonization charts, but I haven't found any for WWII RAF.
Also, US standard is 1000 feet convergence. But when you look at the charts, you see that it's not just one setting.

So I thought it might be a similar setup with the RAF. The .50 caliber being more destructive is a solid point and I agree, you can afford to spread them out.
Wish I had official harmonization charts for RAF.

If you can point me to a quote saying the best shots proffered single point harmonization I would be very interested. And, of course they would, I mean the best shots could do with a single bullet.

This is for the guys that are having trouble hitting their targets.

Also your numbers are a little off. Browning .303 has a 4.2 mill dispersion cone, so at 150 yards you get a 1.9 feet scatter, and at 250 yards a 3.2 feet scatter.

Anyway, it's out. If it fails, there's always tweaking, if that fails, back to default.

Well we shouldn't fall out over this but here are a couple of quotes. I've abbreviated some of the following to save space but the message is faithful to the original.

Johnnie Johnson. Top scoring Allied Fighter pilot in western theatre (34 individual victories over enemy aircraft, as well as seven shared victories, three shared probables, 10 damaged, three shared damaged and one destroyed on the ground. All confirmed.)
"The story of air fighting" Chapter 12.
"The average standard of shooting in fighter command was not high, for too little attention had been devoted to gunnery instruction and the kills in many squadrons always fell to the same three or four pilots while the remainder....hosepiped their machine guns from skidding aroplanes..." and so "it was usual for the machine guns to be harmonised to give a fairly large 'shot gun' pattern at the best firing range and this 'area of lethal density'....gave the poor marksman the best chance of destroying his adversary. But although [this] catered for the rank and file it handicapped the better shots .... who sometimes closed to excellent killing range to find the area of lethal density was not particularly lethal because [it] did not give sufficiently heavy concentration of fire... Accordingly the expert shots harmonised their guns to give 'spot' concentration of fire...."

In his own biography WIng Leader" he says "....I veered away when at excellent killing range of 200yds...."

The fact is there was little chance of "destroying his adversary" with the original area of fire at 450 yards and bear in mind that at closer ranges the dispersion was even weaker which is the point JJ makes.

Al Deere (22 destroyed, 10 probables, 18 damaged).
"Nine Lives". Chapter 6.
He quotes Colin Gray (27 aerial kills, two shared destroyed, six probable kills, with a further four shared probables) who was flying in Al Deere's Squadron at the time and after a sortie over Dunkirk where they felt they had not done as much damage to the enemy as they could have done:-
"It all goes to prove my point. Its absolutely useless having our guns harmonised to produce a rectangular cone of fire at 450 yards as at present. All this guarantees is a few hits by the indifferent shot, the good shot on the other hand is penalised.... We must get point harmonisation at 250 yards or less..." And they did. During the lull between Dunkirk and the opening of the Battle of Britain:- "Sailor Malan... the best shot in fighter command... was adamant [on point harmonisation at 250 yds] and ...Command issued instructions that point harmonisation was to be the standard for all day fighter aircraft..." By the way this change co-incided with the introduction of the De Wilde ammunition.

There are other examples but I have too many books to trawl through

Again, its a matter of personal choice and I suspect you would harmonise at less than 450 yds although your area would appear to be larger than 4 x 4 feet (1.2m x 1.2m).

My spread at roughly +/- 50 yads was considering only the pure boresight angles. As you say, on top of that is the natural dispersion of the rounds caused by ammunition load/quality differences (very minor), mostly vibration of the Brownings and some wing flexing especially in the Spitfire.

It could all be a bit moot though. I don't think the aircraft and damage modelling is sophisticated enough to place each round at a specific component, I imagine there are hit boxes or bubbles, however small, for damage modelling.

[pstyle]

I've anecdotally (about 2 hours flying time, 7 or 8 missions, about 10 engagements) found that having the "cone" of fire set as my load-out convergence has drastically reduced my damage inflicted.

I've decided to revert back to 200/200 on all guns.

[hegykc]

Originally Posted by klem

Well we shouldn't fall out over this but here are a couple of quotes.

It could all be a bit moot though. I don't think the aircraft and damage modelling is sophisticated enough to place each round at a specific component, I imagine there are hit boxes or bubbles, however small, for damage modelling.

No fall out here
Thanks for the effort, that's what I was looking for. The 450 yards is just crazy

I'm trying to get a hit area the size of the canopy, or the engine, at a desired convergence and deflection angle. That's why I modeled everything in scale.

Cause shooting from a deflection angle, you don't need 8x bullets on the pilots body in one single spot, right? so if a pilot's profile is 2x2 feet why not set the scatter to be 2x2 feet at say 200 yards, or even more because the pilot is the weakest point. So you might actually double or triple your chances of a pilot kill even if your not spot on his head

I just hope the devs took the effort to code the "damage bubbles" to represent rel life .303 scatter.
I read that the game is too easy to be modified, maybe someone can take a look to see how big the damage area of the bullet is? Does it change with distance?

So for a good marksman the concentration area will be maybe 10-20-30% larger, just enough to fill the part of the aircraft (and the aircraft type) he's aiming to hit, depending on the distance and deflection he's comfortable shooting at.
He's still getting a huge concentration of fire.

And keep in mind that the vast majority of people flying are really poor marksmen, and that's no surprise. Shooting from a moving target into a moving target in 3 dimensions. That's exceptionally hard to do.
So as per your quotes, the shotgun pattern actually does increase hit chances for most of the pilots. It's only expert marksman that are penalized with that. Even though at 450 yards the scatter of just one gun is 5.6 feet which is just ridiculous, and I do agree, tighten the pattern as much as possible while still having a nice hit area.

So what I propose is to have a pattern for good marksmen which would fill an engine profile, a fuel tank profile or the pilot profile at his desired range. Or separate the convergences vertically so that when shooting from deflection 4 of the guns hit the engine while other 4 hit the pilot. Or 6 guns hitting the engine while other 2 hit the pilot.
Or if someone likes to cut a wing off, set the scatter so that it's more of a "line" than a "dot". Again, it might suck big time, but why not try and test it, it might just work, there is some logic behind it.

And for people that just want to fly, it's really disappointing to not be able to get at least some bullets on the target. So for them, have the shotgun pattern, more so, separate the convergences horizontally and vertically because they're probably not setting their sights correctly or watching they're range.
It might make the game more easy and awarding for the arcade crowd.

Anyway, off to do some modifications...