The German study I read said that it took on average twenty hits from 20mm and five from a 30mm to down a heavy bomber. Given an experten behind the gun sight, someone who could average 10 percent hits, even expending ALL the 20mm should result in 50 20mm hits. The real issue is firing time- in a high speed pass the fighter has just a second or two long window of opportunity. No German fighter (or any nation's) would have much luck surviving just sitting behind a bomber and blazing away. Still, one or two effective passes should bring down a bomber given that in WB the skilled players all shoot at near or above 10 percent hits- even given misses on ground targets counting against them. Are you suggesting we artificially reduce gun effectiveness for fighters to artificially create a lower and more realistic hit average? Hoo boy. There's a slippery slope. I think I"d suggest increasing dispersion for all guns to force shorter range (and historically accurate shooting) before messing with projectile effectiveness. To be fair, there is no perfect solution. I think what exists now isn't a bad compromise. Get rid of the rinse and repeat launching of bombers and fighters by making all players start from a base further back after a death rather than simply re-launching. The bomb and bail crowd would get half as many missions into an hour's play, but the defenders would not be able to reincarnate time after time either. finn PS Of course, all this is moot when there are 10 guys online and 9 of them are on the same side. That's the real problem- but that's also for another thread!
quote="Robert"]Regarding bomber toughness, here is an interesting study by German Luftwaffe officers and armament experts. The Germans concluded that a fighter would on average need to carry over 1000x 20-mm rounds to bring a large bomber down, taking into account the hit accuracy of a normal pilot. A Fw 190 usually carries 500x 20-mm rounds and a Spitfire IXe, as comparison, carries only 240x 20-mm rounds. As such, in real life you would need at minimum 2x Fw 190's, or 4x Spitfires to bring down a single B-17 or B-24. Also it is mentioned in the text that approaching bombers from behind resulted in great losses for the German fighters due to the defensive gunners of the bombers.
"On January 27, 1943, Eighth Air Force attacked Germany for the first time. Fifty-eight B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators hit the port of Wilhelmshaven.
During the next seven months, the bombers ventured progressively deeper over the enemy homeland and in progressively greater force. These raids took the bombers far beyond the reach of US and British fighters. The bombers had only the concentrated crossfire of their .50-caliber machine guns to ward off attacks from German fighters. The Luftwaffe slowly came to realize that these daylight attacks, if left unchecked, would undermine Germany’s capacity to prosecute the war. German fighter units were pulled back from the battle fronts. During the first half of 1943, the day fighter force in Germany and the western occupied territories rose from 635 aircraft to more than 800.
German fighters initially found themselves short on firepower when engaging the sturdy, well-armored heavy bombers. When Luftwaffe officers examined wrecked B-17s and B-24s, they discovered that it took at least twenty hits with 20-mm shells fired from the rear to bring them down. Armament experts, after analyzing combat camera footage, learned that pilots of average ability hit the bombers with only about two percent of the rounds they fired. To obtain twenty hits, the average pilot had to aim 1,000x 20-mm rounds at the bomber. The best German fighter, the FW-190, carried only 500x 20-mm rounds.
Of course, the straight-shooting Luftwaffe “experts” (fighter pilots with more than twenty-five kills; the Luftwaffe did not use the term “ace”) got a much higher percentage of their rounds on the target. But even they had problems when attacking formations of heavy bombers. Maj. Anton Hackl, who ended the war with 192 credited victories, explained: “If one came in from the rear, there was a long period, closing from 1,000 meters to our firing range of 400 meters, when the bombers were firing at us but we could not fire at them. This was a very dangerous time, and we lost a lot of aircraft trying to attack that way.”
In Warbirds a good pilot can sometimes kill several bombers with a single Fw 190A-8. A contributing factor to this is probably that the bullets are near basketball sized, and the average Warbirds player has many years of experience. As such we see a much higher hit accuracy in WB's than what the pilots had in real life.
<S> /Robert[/quote]
|