Effectiveness of Flexible Gun Fire?

dglewwe · 13 November 2009, 09:11 AM

"I fired at....some 200 meters away. After firing 100 rounds, the enemy aeroplane broke apart." Darn fine shooting or else...

...the SE chose that moment to attempt a stress-inducing maneuver that broke something, or perhaps someone else in the fray was firing at the SE and caused the fatal damage (and would not dispute the subsequent claim of the rittmeister), or...?

I'm not inserting this idea of challenging the pilot's report to start any sort of debate on the specific case, but merely wish to inject a moment's pause in basing analysis (or conclusions) on the recollections/reports of those on the scene (or worse: their self-appointed chroniclers). Their opinions are certainly valuable but must, IMO, be tempered with what is known regarding testing/performance of the aircraft/guns of the time (via replicas and/or surviving examples or contemporary trials). Such testing/results needs also be weighed by the large varience in quality/condition of the equipment (both man and machine) --the results of one replica-test or journal of one pilot can hardly be said to be typical performance of the wide variety of cases in history.

For myself (as a game designer), the scarcity of information (in both this subject and others of the era) is frustrating at times. The only way out I've seen is to make a best-guess based on what is known and (if desired) allow for the random occurance of that "one-in-a-million-shot" that made it into the history books.

hmmm....that may be an interesting point: many of the accounts/moments that survive to be told/retold are of the outlier-incidents, and are therefore not representative of the "most of the time" events that occured on a day-to-day basis?

ponder ponder...

Romani · 13 November 2009, 09:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dglewwe

"I fired at....some 200 meters away. After firing 100 rounds, the enemy aeroplane broke apart." Darn fine shooting or else...

...the SE chose that moment to attempt a stress-inducing maneuver that broke something, or perhaps someone else in the fray was firing at the SE and caused the fatal damage (and would not dispute the subsequent claim of the rittmeister), or...?

A biplane being basically a girder structure of wood beams and bracing wires is a very strong structure capable of withstanding enormous loads, but is also fragile. A chance bullet that splits a longeron or severs a bracing wire can weaken the structure and cause a catastrophic collapse under the stress of combat manevuers.

Those biplanes had speed limitations, I reckon many of the airplanes that were seen to broke up in the air collapsed as a consequence of entering a uncontrollable dive that exceeded the safe speed of the airframe, caused by pilot's death or injury, or often, a severed control cable. In addition to this, if the airplane also suffered structural damage in the form of shattered longerons, struts, or severed bracing wires, a dive or spin or violent maneuver that under normal circumstances would be within the safe parameters of the airframe, would result in collapse.

McCudden in "Flying Fury" thought that some type of German 2-seaters were frail death traps for their crews because they were often seen to break up to pieces. MaCudden had a point, those recon 2-seaters with double bays and long wingspans were probably less strong than a smaller single bay biplane, but his shooting also had something to do with it. The longer the longerons and the more numerous the bracing wires, the more chances of a bullet hitting one.

Epee · 13 November 2009, 10:20 AM

True enough; a hit on a flying wire and a pilot attempting to escape via a "break-turn" and something does indeed break.

That MvR expended 100rds indicates that this was more than a little squirt to clear a pal's tail; that's almost 8 seconds firing time.

"hmmm....that may be an interesting point: many of the accounts/moments that survive to be told/retold are of the outlier-incidents, and are therefore not representative of the "most of the time" events that occured on a day-to-day basis?"

Good point! Sort of like the stories of horrendously damaged B-17s making it back to England. Sure the 17 was a tough bird but it wasn't a flying tank; you rarely hear the stories (certainly not from the crew) of the ones at blew to smithereens with the first hit on the bombbay.

sightreader · 13 November 2009, 01:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bristol scout

Most pilots would have tried to get in close---and the ones who scored very close

Hey, by the way, did Fonck demonstrate long range gunnery much?

Romani · 13 November 2009, 02:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sightreader

Hey, by the way, did Fonck demonstrate long range gunnery much?

He was a very good shot, but his incredible feats of markmanship were actually a matter of getting on the tail of the victim, and very close, at pistol shot range, for a zero deflection shot.

Again, "Gunning for the Red Baron" by Leon Bennet is the recquired textbook

sightreader · 14 November 2009, 10:02 PM

So, I take it, after all this back and forth, there's no good way to put a hard number on the effectiveness of flexible defense? Perhaps the number of two seater claims by scouts compared to fighter claims by observers?

LewisS · 19 November 2009, 05:55 PM

I'm a model developer for Targetwares Richthofen's Skies, I also like RedBaron3D, which I've played for years with the WFP7.1 patch. In RB you have an additional adjustment for the 2 seater's gun's AI effectiveness, through Campaign Manager, which includes tracking speed, distance of target acquisition, and spray or jitter.

In RS we have a seperate text editable file called an .acm that does lot of the computing of targeting guns, both ground and airborne. This file does nearly the same thing in that it establishes the distance that the AI first "sees" the target, the distance it starts to track it and I think there's a percentage for this "tracking" distance that enables the guns to start firing. One of the complaints about the AI was that it was too darn accurate on the two seaters.

The other complaints were about the effectiveness of Flak aiming. The German flak was a bit wide of target, but the Allied flak was murderous. I've played a bit with these adjustments in the game on the flak to more closely even the historic effectiveness. Part of the deal was that early on in an attempt to improve the games immersion, of the flak effects of the truck and rail mounted flak guns, was to model two guns per unit. Unfortunately keeping in mind the historic ROF of the guns, this was a bit of a wash in this and they had to be readjusted.

At any rate I'm getting off topic, the AI for guns of two seaters can be dialed down in TW by adjusting the tracking rate, and targeting jitter. I'm assuming any decently designed combat flight sim would allow some adjustment of these factors.

One thing I always found odd but amusing was the big 300mm German Howitzers would target and shoot at Dover from Zeebrugge and while shooting directly at the target, the shells were shot point blank into the Channel.

Sims can do funny things. I'm still curious about the gun totin' ducks from the first issue of The Promised Land patch for RB3D.

Epee · 20 November 2009, 06:13 AM

Lewis,
It is also important what part of the damage model the AI gunners "aim" at. For instance in the "Warbirds" sim fighter pilots continually complained about the effectiveness of even a single heavy bomber's gunners, and with reason as players began using B-17s as gun-ships, dumping the bombs and flying back and forth through dogfights killing at 100s of meters. Dialing down the AI gunner effectiveness resulted in happy fighter pilots but the bombers became sitting ducks whcih put on a light show before they were shot down.

The answer lay in the targeting of the AI gunners; they aimed at the pilot. This meant that even with accuracy set at 1% every 5 second burst would result in a pilot kill, often before any other part of the aircraft was hit. I believe that the engine or fuselage was later chosen as the AI target.

LewisS · 21 November 2009, 01:03 PM

I used to think that it was the 3D modeling "center" that was targeted in RS, but I found out later it's the part(s) marked "critical" in the damage model, and it's usually the forward fuselage. What's also odd is when you're balloon busting with a front flex gun, it tends to shoot the basket and occupant more than the balloon envelope. It's hard to get a flamer with just one pass.