Yea, it was old Vidtory at Sea footage....mostly of the Pacific theater and the planes were F4-U Corsairs with 8 .50 cal MG's. American planes used almost exclusively .50 cal during WWII and I recall seeing many clips of such planes destroying merchants.

Yeah... flown plenty of US planes to know what they're firing :p

Sure it was not 20mm guns on those Corsairs?

Anyway, the question was WHAT triggered the explosion? But as I said, I'll look into it. However, the problem of making the guns too effective stands.

This is NOT how the flak should be used, regardless of what Luth did now and then.

Dan

20mm damages medium ships on my system but can't finish them off. That seems realistic to me and I wasn't disappointed

But 50cals can tear a ship to pieces and yes guncamera film shows ships exploding under 50cals getting into boilers (no ammo deck-stacks on merchants) - they were a fearsome weapon when firing into the deck from above

Remember that the rounds are already travelling at ~200-300mph before being fired from an aircraft. Kinetic energy. Rounds fired from static weapons would be less destructive and no aspect shots from our position on the surface, we just see the armored side of a ship mostly

Hi elanaiba and thanks for the truly marvellous sim!

Ming

20mm cannons were certainly capable of sinking ships, but it was likely not through causing critical structural damage, but rather by triggering explosions or fires that the ship would eventually succumb to. If the 20mm rounds are not even being recorded as penetrating the hulls of merchants, then that is certainly too limiting.