Someone was telling me the other day that the He111 in FB is too robust,
it just soaks up .303 rounds without dieing. Well I was doing some gunnery
practice with arcade=1 set in conf.ini, and this might give an insight:



I was either in a MiG-3 or an early P-40, so that's two .303s to every .50.
I've scored loads of hits, plenty in the fuselage, but still missed everything
important except perhaps a gunner or two and a few rounds into the
starboard engine!



With this (different) aircraft I did better and got plenty of rounds on the
cabin and engines.

The He111 is vulnerable in the cockpit and engines but the rest is a
deceptively large mass of aluminium-encased air!

[this is reposted from the EAF squad forums]

And the caption states - "Typical .303-inch machine gun damage to a Heinkel 111; more than fifty hits are visible in this photograph. There are several well-authenticated accounts of German bombers having returned with more than two hundred hits from such rounds. By mid-1940 the general installation of armour plating and self-sealing fuel tanks had rendered the rifle calibre machine gun obsolescent as a bomber-destroying weapon."

Those wingroots are huge, I can see why they stay on.

I remember the various multiplayer rounds that I've seen where people would hammer away at a Heinkel with a Hurricane Mark IIB. The problem was that these people were engaging the Heinkel at 300 or 400 meters. The .303 was already weak and you need to get in close (100m or less) and hammer away at an engine or the cockpit but these people were spraying at 300m. I've actually seen a large group of Hurricanes firing away at a He-111 with no effect to be seen from their perspective.

I don't think its too tough...people are too thick

Right, which is why you saddle up the IIC and put some good old Hispano pie on the oven.

Salute

Shoot at #1: the cockpit, #2 the engines, if you are using .303's. Shooting at the wings or fuselage is useless.

It is relatively easy to kill the pilot if you have an overhead or head to head shot. The engines will start to smoke with only a few rounds, a good burst will start them heavily smoking, with the possibility of fire very soon.

I have often wondered how many kills were made during the BoB on bombers that had previously taken a good beating from another group of fighters who had broken off for whatever reason? I really can't see anything less than an entire section of .303 laden fighters bringing one down unless they hit something vital!

Salute

The Hurri IIB is a very good Bomber killer, including vs. Heinkel 111H's.

My Squadron just finished flying a campaign which used Hurri IIB's and a lot of aircraft were shot down by them. I personally got 6 bombers with a IIB. As said, you can't aim at the wings, you need to direct your fire at the engines and cockpit. The RAF .303 fires an API round, ie. Armour Piercing Inciendary, and it does a very nice job of setting fire to a bomber's engine. You need to set your convergence to 200 or 150 meters and wait till you get close enough.

Seems I remember setting a few He-111s on fire with all types of MG ammo, including .303 British ammo. I have killed and smoked hudreds of them since IL-2 was around. The 111 was AI ( I think ) since almost the beginning. It's true that a lot of 111s have a tendency to die slowly, but if you wait and go back and land at your home base, they will many times eventually succumb to dead engines, crashland and you will get credit for them. But I don't find them hard to down in a few minutes either. The base of the wings will light on fire a lot of times.

UPDATE:
Ok, before I hit 'submit' on this post, I went into QMB and put myself in a Hurri. Mk. IIb, which has 12 .303 Mgs. I was easily able to kill two of the four 111 H2s with a load of ammo. I think this reasonably realistic. If I were a Hurricane pilot in the Battle of Britain, I'd think it a great accomplishment to get two bombers with one load of ammo. In real life I'd probably be decorated for it.

Actually it's the wing just outboard of the engines where they set on fire the best. One of the two bombers I just downed lit on fire just on the outside of it's left ( #1 ) engine.

A bit OT, but how do you do to get these arrows to show where you have hit?
Would be nice to be able to check how my accuracy really is....

Hi CoNa,

go to the game directory, find the file conf.ini, and I think it's in the [game] section: there's a line arcade=0. Change that to arcade=1. Remember to turn it off again when you want to do some 'serious' flying!

It doesn't work online by the way.

Or you can install "Il-2 Stab", this is a program which manages conf.ini, there's an option there to set arcade=1.

The thing about the Heinkel is it's a huge cloud of aluminium with a vulnerable cockpit and vulnerable engines. It's a huge target, but the vulnerable bits are small targets and difficult to hit from behind. I think the way to reliably bring these down is to practice overhead diving attacks when you can hit the engines and cockpit more easily.

Setting arcacde=1 lets you see exactly where you're missing too.

OK, Thanks. Have never tried the arcade setting before, so that's why I had not seen it before.

De Wilde (sp?) bullets were explosive however, not just regular MG ammunition. I think it's true to real life that you have to get in very close and go for the engines. These things were hard to bring down. In theory sections would attack the same a/c. Teamwork's the key, not individual scores. In game it's best to finish off an aircraft that's already been damaged. Or is this 'cheating'?


S! Comp.

yes they are easy to bring down even too easy ,its almost harder to bring down a k21 whit the same gun lol.

Too funny - the RAF migrated to the 20mm round for a reason

I'll quote from Paul Ritchey's "Fighter Pilot", the story of 1 Squadron in the battle of France

p.35
p.104
p.137 [this time the Heinkel got him]
p.136

The only loss due to an attacked Heinkel was Richey himself on one occasion. All with Hurricane Mk1s.

smoker1963=phoenix1963

Well unlike RAF pilots in 1940 we've got the ability to endlessly practice over and over again in the QMB, so we can get good at hitting the engines and flight deck!

Read somewhere once that 'it was like shooting cows in a field', can't remember where though. It might not have been so simple for those less gifted. Still, the engagement of enemy bombers in the virtual world does seem a bit less like hunting down an easy prey and more like putting your hand into a wasp's nest. No nice 'stuka party's' in this game. Not that I'm looking for easy kills, that's the last thing I want. Just a feeling of historical reenactment. Why is a Hurricane pilot so much more vulnerable than an HeIII rear gunner?

Billy the problem is that you cannot simulate reality at 39.99 USD per unit sold. Now at 3.99M USD you may possible come pretty darn close.