For my Spitfire. Good Lord, I'm I rotten shot! I empty my guns and get, at the most , 27% hits on an enemy plane. He goes on flying and I've got empty guns. Once I wound up with 2%. That's embarrassing.
I'm trying to be disciplined and not open up 'til I see the whites of their eyes. But, I always wind up blasting away, out of range.
Now the 109, on the other hand, is another story. Got myself two Beaufighters in one mission. But, I don't want to go over to the dark side! I can see Adolph Galland saying, "Pooch...I am your father!" Nooooooooo!
I've read that they have already decided that this is as far as this sim is being taken. No more planes, so I won't see my Spit 5. They will do some more versions of existing airplanes, however. Spitfire 2b , maybe? I'll take it, even with those jamming cannons.

Oh come on Pooch, the dark side isn't that bad. We have punch and pie!

Hey, 27% hits is pretty darned good - especially for the spread out guns on a Spit!

Certainly you have to shoot to your convergence. Lately I've been setting mine to 150 yards with good results, but it depends on your flying/fighting style for what best works for you. Changing the guns' loadouts can help significantly, too. After much discussion with my flying colleagues on the ATAG server, I'm currently using a mix of DeWilde, AP, and Mark VII ball; with a bit of red tracer on the outboard guns.

Das Attorney over at the 1C forum introduced a mod which included a IIb with cannon (along with a "100 octane petrol" option which was neat). This was a while ago and I don't think it would work with the current CoD version, plus it was strictly for offline use. The cannon were freakin' AWESOME -- especially on bombers!!!!! Maybe we'll see Spitfire IIb's introduced in a future patch, but I doubt it's a high priority with the devs.

The Spitfires are easy to fly and a joy.......but they're.........complicated......at times. LOL

If you crawl on the tail of the plane in front of you, like I consistently see online/videos, remember that even at a convergence of 100m, the bullets are not hitting what you are aiming at when you're 25m behind the E/A. When you get inside your convergence, plan for it, and adjust to the side so at least 1 of your wings is putting shots where you want them. The wings can take a lot of punishment, if you are firing and hitting on both sides of the fuel tanks. When I get close, too close for my convergence, I typically aim 1-2m off of what I want to hit, so one wing will put rounds where I need them.

Okay, I'm going to start playing with convergence and loadouts and see what works for me. Thanks.

3-4 rounds per sortie? If you got those cannons, you would be pissed off and asking for the reliability to be removed. I know I would. That said, I do prefer the more historically accurate weapons package they have now considering the time frame. Rest assured, Reds will get cannons one day, most likely in Moscow first. RAF already has a far superior fighter to anything else in game, in the IIa, which is running much faster, turns tighter, and out-climbs all opposition. Crappy guns package just goes with the unfortunate lack of foresight pre-war planning spit out.

I find myself doing incredible amounts of damage with close convergence on both Hurris and Spits (>150m). Granted I do use custom loadouts of mostly De Wilde and AP (which isn't necessarily historical, but then I tend to load mostly m-geschoss in my 109 much to others' dismay I'm sure) but I find myself downing more planes on the red side when I'm dead six than the blues, which is impressive considering I mostly and much prefer to fly blue.

I think the biggest problem from the red side is opening fire too early for inexperienced pilots, and expecting too drastic results from those who aren't too eager. For the record I try and fly whichever side is hurting for the most pilots, although recently that seems to be blue with the introduction of the IIa on ATAG After taking a good burst from either sides MG's I can rarely make it home intact, however (especially when I fly blue, what with the temptation of the 20 mils and all) I'm rarely content to see a plane head home streaming fluids and smoke. If it doesn't head for the deck in an uncontrollable dive I'll probably follow it with guns blazing. Is it the best tactic? Certainly not! And it is one of the things I've been trying to fix with my play the most (15 kills without a death/bail out over E/T on Blue side thus far , fingers crossed!) but I see others, and myself for that matter, do it an awful lot, even when I'm fully aware it's a terrible idea :P. What I try and do when I fly red is hit someone bad enough that I think they're done (i.e. streaming at least two forms of smoke and diving for speed to head home or something similar) so I can conserve ammo for bombers or another sortie. It's easy to forget just how much damage hundreds of tiny bullets can do in such a short period of time when you're on the generous end of things . If a blue manages to get on my tail then I'm relatively confident I can out-maneuver them by dragging their speed down or just diving and killing their alt advantage. I find complaints about imbalances in the FM to be largely unwarranted (although the IIa is still a UFO. )Call me biased, but I honestly do try and fly both sides at least somewhat equally, and I find them to be more or less equal, especially if you fly either side to its' advantages.

Pooch, do you set ur sight correctly and fire at the right distance? Essential w the British planes.

Initially its difficult to get more bullets on target with the Spit than the 109. The 109 nose guns as well as wing mounted guns take some convergence calculations out of the equation. Because the Spit has only wing mounted guns, ypu definitely have to understand convergence to put bullets on target.

You will see newer Spits in the future either by modders or the developer as they build aircraft for other theaters which can still be used in the COD theater.

When they build the Bf-109F's for the Battle of Moscow they can use them for the Channel Theatre of Operations 1941 onwards: Channel Dash, Rhubarb missions, early Focke-wulfs, Spit V's, etc, it will be great!