Does anyone know what the normal ammo capacity for the guns (both turrets and fixed) on the bombers in CFS3
(B-25, B-26 and Ju88) were? I've no idea myself but the default ammo loads do seem very low.
I know you shouldn't rely on anecdotal evidence like this and there isn't a Halifax in CFS3 anyway, but I recently
read an article (in the book "Epics of Aviation Archaeology) on the recovery of a Handley-Page Halifax from a Norwegian lake, which mentioned that over 150,000
rounds of .303 ammo from the gunner's positions were recovered and had to be disposed of. This seems to indicate that
whatever the actual gun ammo capacity, gunners usually took plenty of spare ammo with them.

I need this info for a small mod I'm working on containing various tweaks and fixes, including correcting the ammo loadout
for aircraft that need it (e.g Spitfire IXc, the Fw190s, and some of the addon planes). I've got info on most of the fighters,
but not bombers.
(I'm also working on a custom campaign which includes all the WW2-era addon aircraft available to this date)

Another question, the Ju88 damage model seems a bit odd; it invariably explodes into fragments when heavily damaged. I've never
seen one "go down in flames" in any intercept missions I've played.

(edit: also, what was the ammo capacity for the P-40F? It seems very low to me, but I only have data on the C and E models)

[This message has been edited by Drawde (edited 01-31-2003).]

A 150,000 rounds or 18,750 rounds per gun of .303 would weigh about 11,250lbs. (bullet, case, power, links)

Interesting thing is the plane it self only weighs about 35,000lbs and had to reduce its bombload from a max of about 18,000lbs to 10-11,000lbs to reach Berlin

This much ammo would take about 600 ammo cans of 250 rounds each to hold it so there is no way that the number reported is anywhere near correct.

For comparison the B-17 carried its turret ammo in cans


B-17 Ammo Can

and its waist gun ammo in feeder trays built down the side of the plane from the gunstaions to wooden ammo boxes.



Have the exact data around some place but the number of rounds carried in bombers is very much less the most people imagine especially when you move up to .50 which weigh about 5X what a .303 weighs. The B-17 carried about a ton and a half (3,000) of ammo and depending on the gun mix this was about 800-900 per gun or about one and a half minutes trigger down time.

B-25J, with glazed nose, normal bomb load of 4,000 lb (1,814 kg) .50 guns supplied with 5,000 rounds.

BEAR 1% Team

[This message has been edited by BEAR 257th (edited 01-31-2003).]

I belive it was quite common for B-17 crew to take extra ammo with them on tough raids.

It was common to take up to 3 - 4 times the official load.


for a good read. "Combat crew" by John Comer. isbn 0-7474-0424-0

He talks quite a lot about the extra ammo loads they took with them.

Bip

RAF_Bip,

Actually I did allow for extra boxes in the 1 and a half tons being a "typical" load. The "standard" armament is about half the amount I listed for some of the stations which is as follows:

Sperry No. 645473E power turret in the dorsal position with two 0.50 Browning M2 machine guns with 500 rounds per gun.

Sperry No. 654849-J power turret in ventral position with two 0.50-inch Browning machine guns with 500 rounds per gun.

0.50-inch Browning M2 machine gun in each of the two waist windows, 400 rounds per gun.

0.50-inch Browning M2 machine gun in each of the two cheek windows, 400 rounds per gun.

Take rough numbers for a B-17G the maximum short-range bombload was 8 tons with reduced altitude and fuel loads but to get to Berlin 2810 gallons of fuel was needed with only 2 tons of bombs at 25,000 feet.

Thing is if they were to take 6 tons of ammo they would have to leave something home like bombs or gas. There is also the question of where they could actually fit and extra 2-3 tons of boxed ammo.

If you look at the YB-40 gunship experment they added a power turret to the raidio compartment and made the wasit gus twins making it 14X.50 total. Still this plane only carried a normal ammunition load of 11,135 rounds, which could be increased to 17,265 rounds if the fuel load was reduced.

So in the gunship version that carried no bombs (used as ammo storage) you are still onlt talking of 800 to 1200 rounds per gun.

The game also poses a problem in the you can only subtract from 100% so you have to use something reasonable as the 100% loadout.

BEAR 1% Team

If what you say is correct, it seems like the writers got that figure wrong by a zero or two! However I'm sure that the loadouts for CFS3 are still a bit low; possibly the developers used the number of rounds per GUN rather than per turret? The turrets in the CFS3 B-25 have around 600-800 rounds each, I think; since there are 7 guns (4 in the two turrets, 3 flexible) in the glazed-nose B-25J (I think), 5000 rounds sounds right in terms of rounds per gun (about 714 r.p.g).
So doubling the ammo loadout for two-gun turrets, and leaving the flexible single MGs alone, would probably give a realistic loadout.

The Ju88's defensive guns are a bit different, they used removable/replaceable drums of ammo - whilst these didn't have much ammo capacity (as in CFS3) the aircraft usually carried a few extra drums for each gunner position. Not sure how many spare drums were standard though.

Drawde,

We have only looked at the flight models so far so have no real input on the guns.

One thing I noticed though is the game has a total load I think of 1200rds for the B25J solid nose. The nose guns alone in RL had 400rds each or 3200rds as a "Standard" load.

Beginning with B-25J-20 strafer version:

Eight 0.50-inch machine guns in the nose with 400 rpg.

Two 0.50-inch machine guns in individual blisters on each side of the forward fuselage with 400 rpg.

Two 0.50-inch machine guns in top turret, 400 rpg.

Two 0.50-inch machine guns in waist position, 200 rpg.

Two 0.50-inch machine guns in tail turret, 600 rpg.

Thing to remember as before these are 'standard' loadouts. Some of the guns would be hard to get to in-flight but the turret & waist guns would most likely have had an extra can per gun.

That being saisd we elected to go with 6000rds of .50 and 21 rounds of 75MM in our B-25H for CFS2 as we try to stay with the 'standard' published numbers when ever we can.



Saw a pictures of an 88 being setup for flight and it had a lot (8 at least at one station) of those little clip on magazines being loaded. That being said I don't think the mags held all that much ammo and most 88 hand helds were only .30 cal

BEAR 1% Team


[This message has been edited by BEAR 257th (edited 01-31-2003).]

Has anyone noticed if AI fighters have unlimited ammo?

No wonder the solid-nose B-25 strafer variants in CFS3 run out of ammo quickly.. they have 400 rounds TOTAL for the 8 nose guns, not 400rpg! Should be 3200. Same for the blister guns, the ammo load is 400, not 800.
They could still do with a gunsight so you can actually aim the MGs though! Hopefully the patch will add this; the announcement did list the B-25s among the planes that would get improved cockpits.

Anyone know what the ammo capacity of the drums carried by the Ju88 was?

No answer for you on the Ju88 yet, but it is also worth changing the tracers in all the medium bombers from 40 to 20, gives some extra atmosphere to a bomber intercept mission (esp with some of the lighting mods available)..

sure seems like it sometimes

On the Ju-88, I read somewhere that the hit points on the fuselage or too low, like by a zero or two.

I fixed that a while ago.. the fuselage had 500hp, compared to, for example, the B-25's 3000. I set it to between 2750 and 3250 depending on type. I believe that the C fighter-bomber version had some additional armour plating around the nose area, whilst the P version with the cannon was not quite as durable structurally due to the stresses caused by the weight of the cannon.
The Go229 also had very low fuselage HP. I fixed that as well, although the engines are still very vulnerable as with all the jets.
There are a lot of other errors like that in the .xdp files, for example some aircraft have only 10hp for their hydraulics reservoirs (part of the reason for the flak damage bug), and some ground vehicles have only 3 rounds of ammo for their anti-air MGs!.
All of these errors (at least the ones that I found) have been fixed. I've used all the info I can find on ammo loadouts, durability etc. for ground vehicles as well as aircraft.
I still don't know what ammo load the Ju88A usually carried though.

About the "tracer" value for weapons; I know this determines the tracer density, but how exactly does it work? Is it the percentage of rounds with tracers, or the number of ordinary rounds per tracer round (from your post, it seems like it's the latter)
Although the dispersion of bullets in CFS3 looks extremely accurate, based on footage I've seen, the muzzle velocity of most guns still seems very low. Rockets are even worse, they seem to behave like modern missiles in being "left behind" your aircraft, as if they were dropped and then ignited - but they are all rail/tube-launched rockets, so should travel faster than your aircraft as soon as they are fired.
However from looking at the weapon .xdp files, all of the default CFS3 muzzle velocities correspond exactly to the data I have on WW2 aircraft weapons (taken from the "WW2 Fighter Gun Debate"). Maybe the in-game frame of reference to speed doesn't quite correspond to real-life speed? Or maybe aircraft velocity isn't added to muzzle velocity properly, this would also explain the rockets.

I wonder if anyone does. William Green's Warplanes of the Third Reich (1970), which has ammo load date for every German plane ever made or concieved, does not list the MG ammo for the Ju-88. However, the He-111H carried about 1,000 rpg for its 7.92mm MGs, so you could use that figure. Of course, later model Ju-88s only had 300-500 rpg in their flexible defensive gun. Otherwise, I suggest seeing if you can get data from another game with a relatively high degree of historical fidelity (such as European Air War w/ECA, or BDG Battle of Britain) and using those figures. Not perfect, but better than nothing.

I've also been wondering if maybe the Go229A should be considered a bomber rather than a fighter?

Drawde, you still working on this, or have you gone over to the "dark" side (aka IL2:FB)?

No, I haven't gone over to the dark side, I do have FB but am still flying CFS3!
However I haven't had much time at all to work on my mod lately, partly as a result of having loads of other game-related projects I'm working on (a realism mod for BF1942, some Warbirds 3 missions (will post some info on these once I've done more work on them), an Everquest emulator database, and the games I'm writing myself in C++ including the WW2 sim/strategy game) and since I haven't had much time to work on any of these lately, I haven't yet got round to testing the beta version of my mod.
I'll try and do some more testing as soon as I can though. Basically what I need to do is fly a few campaign missions for each nation and check that everything works OK, and test each aircraft out briefly in quick combat.
FB is great, but nowhere near as polished as I thought it would be - not as
bad as CFS3, but not as good as the last patch version of IL-2.
There are many sound-related issues (sound works OK on my system, but channels tend to cut
out randomly and sound muffled at times), a lot of strangeness with the AI and damage modelling,
and the campaign generator seems to need some tweaking. Hopefully the patch should fix all or most of these (going by what I've read about it).