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Super slow .50 caliber rounds


unltd

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Every source I can find online, including the USAF museum itself, quotes the muzzle velocity at 875m/s and up to 890m/s. Really depends on the type of ammunition fired.

 

It's fairly well established. ED needs to actually correct it and the only reason not to? Stubbornness, I'd imagine, because it sure isn't for realism's sake. I may go look up something in the local library system. I'm betting I'll find the same results there. The point still stands. Why would this era of F-86 be using substandard ammunition? The first batches of M33 Ammo (which is clocked at 890m/s out of an AN/M3) were made in 1951. They weren't using the same ammunition stock for the .50s they did in WWII, which would've been the M2 ammo, I think.

 

"Balance?" That's not why we play DCS. Give us M33 ball.

 

Sure, your stats may indicate it's accurate. It'd be accurate for a Sabre flying in 1950, but this particular one isn't. This is an F Model with the 6-3. It would have been using the new ammunition standard of M33 Ball. It's incorrect, pure and simple. At least give us the option to change to M33 beltings.

 

Fortunately, I live in crazy ol' US of A. If you bring up surplus stores that sell that ammunition?

https://www.bulkammo.com/bulk-50-bmg-ammo-50bmg660grfmjxm33cfed-100

Made for Federal at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Lake City, Missouri, this cartridge is known as XM33. The M33 is a reference to the specific variation of .50 BMG this represents. The first.50 BMG ball ammunition was M2, which was slightly heavier at 707 grains. When M2 Tracer was replaced by M8 Tracer, the ballistics no longer matched, and therefore a new ball cartridge was born. The M33 is a lighter bullet than its M2 brother and has been manufactured since 1951 during the Korean War. As .50 BMG was used primarily in heavy machine gun platforms as an anti-aircraft round, ammunition belts included strategically placed tracer rounds to give the gunner a visual guide on their aim.

 

 

 

This is a from the Monthly Catalog of US Government Publications. This is an index of issues from January of 1951 until December 1960. Look under "Cartridges" on page 386

hEgsU59.png

 

That's a 1951 next to "ball, caliber .50, M33."

 

Note the date. F-86Fs had M33 rounds.

 

Here's another reference from the book Repeating and Multi-Fire Weapons: From the Zhuge Crossbow to the AK-47 on page 378

 

P9ZfL5Q.png

 

And this is from Air Force Manual Volume 335, Issue 25, page 103. This is official US DoD stuff, declassified of course:

 

WaXlHsX.png

 

On top of that, here's something straight from NG about the performance of the M33 round. 885m/s. No matter how you cut it, the F-86's .50 cal rounds should be faster than they are.

 

https://www.northropgrumman.com/Capabilities/50CalAmmunition/Documents/50CalAmmunitionFactSheet.pdf

 

Also, reference the video Schmidtfire posted. The heat and warp is clearly exaggerated in DCS. I'm not sure this is one that can be remedied with the sort of accuracy usually demanded, but it's clearly not as bad as it is. Reducing it some would be ideal. At the very least, give us the higher velocity rounds.


Edited by MiG21bisFishbedL

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By the way, I was curious if ED simulates the bullet speed just with the speed written on the manual (just as it was fired from a static vehicle), or is it the speed of the aircraft + muzzle velocity. It should be the aircraft speed + the muzzle velocity. After firing, the trajectory and air resistances should be calculated accordingly.

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This statement says it all:

 

 

Everything we have shows the current settings as accurate to the type of gun though.

 

So no matter how many documents you supply showing the inaccuracy of the information they are using they are NOT going to look at it or change it. So stop trying to confuse them with facts.

 

 

 

A stubborn mindset will never be swayed with facts sorry….

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Similar thing happens with F-5E. You can catch the bullets.

 

Well, catching your own rounds isn't out of the question. It's happened before. It's just about the only thing anyone remembers the F-11F Tiger for:

 

http://www.aerofiles.com/tiger-tail.html

 

:pilotfly: I should try doing this in the MiG-21 to see what results I get as well. Just for fun.

 

Still, the fact remains that the F-86F would have had been loaded with the M33 Ball rounds instead of the older M2 rounds. M33s came about in '51, the F-86F arrived a year later, ED.

Reformers hate him! This one weird trick found by a bush pilot will make gunfighter obsessed old farts angry at your multi-role carrier deck line up!

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I will say this, I have been flying the F-86 too much recently with the arrival of the hornet and the falcon as well as rotating through various aircraft to try out all my new grips. So, I flew the basic intercept mission over the Caucasus terrain and found that the gunsight was very accurate out to 3,000 ft. To the best of my recall, I was never able to get the bullets on target, even in level flight, without aiming a little high until the range got very short (< 1,200 ft). That was a huge improvement for me.

 

Next, I flew the dogfight mission over the Persian Gulf. It is a 1 vs 1 with a MiG-15bis. The point was to try to get into a steady state turn/loop and test a rear quarter steady state tracking gunshot, which is exactly what this sight should be good for even under decent g-loads. It was hard to control the range and keep a steady load because the AI is almost always trying to force an overshoot or pull away while turning fairly hard and alternating between diving and climbing depending on speed and altitude. But, I had no problem using the sight effectively at ranges under 1,200 ft. It helped to pull just a tad of lead, but I seemed to still score hits even when holding the piper on the target.

 

Maybe it is just me, but the F-86F gunsight seems to be working better than ever if not 100% correctly. But there are two sides to this equation: even if the bullets are too slow, as long as the sight computes the correct drop for the bullet speed being used, it should still work fine.

 

So there are really three things that may need to be tested and fixed:

1) bullet velocity adjusted to reflect reality rather than using WW2 bullet parameters.

2) barrel warping effects on dispersion over time

3) gunsight correctly computing lead for the bullets being used, whether they are slow WW2 rounds or faster Korean War rounds.

 

The extra parameter out of my reach is how closely DCS gunsight algorithms match the computations of the real gunsights. Gunsights were mechanical computers that had many limitations. I don't want a P-51D or F-86F with a modern gunsight that perfectly predicts the bullet impact point for the specified range. I want the piper to move the way it would on the real gunsight in response to my aircraft's motion and the range input. That includes stability issues (if any) and intrinsic errors. Some gunsights were better than others, particularly when it comes to dynamic dogfights with constantly changing loads.

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This statement says it all:

 

 

Everything we have shows the current settings as accurate to the type of gun though.

 

So no matter how many documents you supply showing the inaccuracy of the information they are using they are NOT going to look at it or change it. So stop trying to confuse them with facts.

 

 

 

A stubborn mindset will never be swayed with facts sorry….

 

They've changed it before. The ROF was abysmal in the past.

Reformers hate him! This one weird trick found by a bush pilot will make gunfighter obsessed old farts angry at your multi-role carrier deck line up!

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Great work guys. Thanks for those docs Fishbed. I saw the NG doc a while ago but missed the M33 ball version. The 875 APIT is OK in game but the standard M2 ball is most decidedly NOT. And it's so easy to fix. Other guns use a different algorithm of circular displacement. That works fine. I am so glad the UN had air superiority over Korea. If not, we might not be allowed to talk about this today ;) Hehe. :D

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It's perfectly ordinary banter Squiffy, "Bally Jerry, pranged his kite, right in the 'how's your father.'" - Monty Python, RAF Banter Sketch.

Squiffy, a. slang. 1. Intoxicated; drunk. 2. Askew, skew-whiff. - OED

 

"Put that sucker in a 4G turn and keep it there!!" - Maj. Gen. "Boots" Blesse

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Great work guys. Thanks for those docs Fishbed. I saw the NG doc a while ago but missed the M33 ball version. The 875 APIT is OK in game but the standard M2 ball is most decidedly NOT. And it's so easy to fix. Other guns use a different algorithm of circular displacement. That works fine. I am so glad the UN had air superiority over Korea. If not, we might not be allowed to talk about this today ;) Hehe. :D

 

It was honestly, at most, an hour of googling to find. No biggie. :thumbup: I just hope they actually take a look at this and make the change since the documentation clearly shows the muzzle velocity is currently inaccurate.

Reformers hate him! This one weird trick found by a bush pilot will make gunfighter obsessed old farts angry at your multi-role carrier deck line up!

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
I asked someone to check the code internally on the gun, and that all checks out apparently, and I did reference the code you guys posted about earlier as well.

 

Still looking into it though.

 

Some notes:

 

Hi Nineline,

 

Appreciate you getting someone to look into this for us. I've just checked back through the thread from my initial "bump" as I wasn't expecting anything out of it to be honest. I see that there are still some concerns this isn't being taken seriously or actually considered properly.

 

Would it possible for you to detail out what "all checks out apparently" actually relates to, based on source documents? There's clearly a disconnect between what you guys at ED and BST think this aircraft should be capable of gunnery wise and what the community thinks it should be.

 

It honestly is the single reason why I don't fly the Sabre and the Korea theatre because it's so damn frustrating to be unable to hit a barn from the inside.

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It would be nice to at least get a "To hell with you, we're going with our sekrit documents instead of the documents provided here that indicate that Sabres had the M33 ball ammo in Korea and its muzzle velocity was much higher"

Reformers hate him! This one weird trick found by a bush pilot will make gunfighter obsessed old farts angry at your multi-role carrier deck line up!

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And I will just restate for the record that the superior accuracy, range (Mv), and rate of fire of the Sabres 50 cals, along with the radar gun sight and g suit, was a defining, historical, set of facts about the conflict. Especially at higher g-loadings. It is one of the primary reasons the UN gained air superiority. Yes cannons hit harder, but as memorialized in the words of "Boots" Blesse, (in my sig) the 4+ G turn was a safe way to avoid getting tagged by the MiGs cannon. It is a cold fact of physics, brilliant tactics, and leadership by the UN forces. The MiGs could simply not pull enough lead to hit the Sabres at these speeds and g loadings. The Sabre could. Or at least could once they were "in the saddle."

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]

It's perfectly ordinary banter Squiffy, "Bally Jerry, pranged his kite, right in the 'how's your father.'" - Monty Python, RAF Banter Sketch.

Squiffy, a. slang. 1. Intoxicated; drunk. 2. Askew, skew-whiff. - OED

 

"Put that sucker in a 4G turn and keep it there!!" - Maj. Gen. "Boots" Blesse

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From what I can gather, the guns are coded based on what information they have, and that it's accurate to that.

 

That said, I am still looking into it, also about having ammunition options, etc.

 

It would certainly be accurate if they're using the same figures from the WWII era M2, utilizing the M2 round. But, F-86Fs didn't use the same .50 in the Mustang nor did they use the same round. By the time this Sabre was in service, it was M33 all the way in the AN/M3. Giving us the option to change to that ammo belting would be a god send.

 

It just occurs to me that this is quite the oversight by ED. With so much resources being invested into these old gunfighters, it's paramount that ammunition type be looked at. While you can kind of get away with it in regards to more contemporary fighters, the beltings were essential in the era of ring-and-bead gunnery over Europe and over the Yalu.


Edited by MiG21bisFishbedL

Reformers hate him! This one weird trick found by a bush pilot will make gunfighter obsessed old farts angry at your multi-role carrier deck line up!

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  • 3 weeks later...
From what I can gather, the guns are coded based on what information they have, and that it's accurate to that.

 

That said, I am still looking into it, also about having ammunition options, etc.

 

Any further news on this NineLine? Could you possibly detail what that information is and where it comes from because it seems like we're in some sort of impasse right now. We say its wrong as it is and providing why we think so (and I'm not seeing anyone saying it is perfectly fine) and ED are saying it's not OK but that's it.

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  • 1 month later...
Any further news on this NineLine? Could you possibly detail what that information is and where it comes from because it seems like we're in some sort of impasse right now. We say its wrong as it is and providing why we think so (and I'm not seeing anyone saying it is perfectly fine) and ED are saying it's not OK but that's it.

 

I'm guessing that the silence means you're working all hours God sends to fix this for us...?:megalol:

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'd hope so. A refusal to address is unacceptable and, frankly? I got what I want in DCS, pretty much. I will find myself limiting purchases, especially those of WWII era.

Reformers hate him! This one weird trick found by a bush pilot will make gunfighter obsessed old farts angry at your multi-role carrier deck line up!

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This is one issue that really upsets me. I have waited for YEARS for this to be corrected. I get that barrels warp. But having fired many a .50 cal Browning, and even the 7.62 M60. I know that they over heat and that there is a cool down period. In DCS it stays warped for eternity. It's useless once it goes into that warped stage. I know from experience that this is wrong. Plus...It takes a few seconds in DCS for the barrels to become hopelessly inaccurate. Again....Not true. I have fired many .50 cal Brownings and ED has this completely wrong. Yet for reasons I cannot understand they seem to be uninterested in correcting this issue.

Granted the .50 cals I have fired were turret mounted on Tanks and trucks but they were accurate for longer and would correct after a cooling period, Not so in DCS. I would think that an aircraft traveling at 300 MPH would cool those .50 cals pretty quick. But no such luck.

This is why I get so frustrated with this sim. It's just one of dozens of issues that DCS seems to not be interested in correcting.

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You guys missed the part where 9L said "the guns are coded based on what information they have, and that it's accurate to that". So why not provide some verifiable and quantifiable data they can base the changes on instead of complaining?

The DCS Mi-8MTV2. The best aviational BBW experience you could ever dream of.

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