Resquest: Ju-88 firing rate adjustment

At this time, Ju-88's fires s completely solid stream of bullets non-stop, making it more like a laser show than ww2 combat.

Suggest that they fire in burst- and with lower accuracy.

An 'average' skilled flight of Ju-88 decimented a flight of 4 spitfires in seconds...

I love the asset pack and I love DCS, I just... Did you not notice this in testing?

Even the B-17's, who aren't slouches with their 50 cals and snipe most of what moves in the sky are better than this.

And yeah I know "Beta" etcetc.

But how hard can it be to have a normal firing rate?

The Ju88 had defensive gun with a little caliber but a really high firing rate.

I don't mean it's the perfect one. But it's correct that it shoot that fast.

But gunner precision is not realist !

To give you an idea :

Bowning M2 rate of fire : 500 shoot / min

MG 81 rate of fire : 1600 shoot/min (get that from luftarchiv.de).

This mean that the JU 88 can shoot 3200 rounds per minute over and under the plane as it have 2 separated MG 81 on the back and a MG81Z (double MG 81) under.

Yeah, but machinegunner in the world just keeps his finger on the trigger for a minute straight, the accuracy (ironcally) would be horrible.

It would be much more likely to have them fire bursts in intervals.

Quite correct about remarkable rate of fire for the 7.92mm MG81, although the barrels had to be changed out every 3 ammo cans of continuous fire IIRC (?). Much less often in bursts and that would be standard practise for German gunners in aerial gunnery school anyway, it's really only American pilots that habitually walked fire onto a target and that's because aerial gunnery school there specified laying maximum projectile volume onto targets as opposed to continental schools which taught conservative use of ammunition stores per target, this was mainly because continental birds generally had centreline armament with explosive filler or high rate of fire except the Brits, whilst American and British birds generally had wing armament with multiple MG, so they were schooled for gunnery differently. Germans didn't waste ammo. Marsielle routinely downed e/a with 1-2 rounds of 2cm and 30-40 of 7.92mm, a remarkable fact documented by his armourers, he almost always returned with kills and almost full magazines. He published lectures for Luftwaffe pilots which were circulated for training, even a waist gunner got his schooling from the experience of Moelders and Marsielle, so they're all taught this way and it gets refined and added to over time.

(paraphrasing) Armourer's report, 5th June 1942, following a sortie in which Marsielle is credited with 6 confirmed kills, SAAF No.5 Sqn Kittyhawks, magazines upon landing, 10 2cm used, 180 7.92mm used. To give an idea of what all Luftwaffe aerial gunners aspired to.

Of course, these weapons must be air cooled, yet I cant help but think if you are going to be continually laying down 1600 rounds a minute, they are going to get the barrel melting. Its not like its that easy to change a barrel in flight I should have thought?

Its really the same kind of debate you always see on history forums 'The MG42 is the best gun in the world, because of the rate of fire'. Yes, right up to the barrel overheats.

Strikes me what we want is a realistic rate of fire AND realistic AI behavior. I dont just mean the ability to miss sometimes.

There is also the other question I would ask, does the game actually take note of how much ammunition the gunners have? Ive seen nothing written on this.

As far as I know resupply is generally an unlimited resource so long as one has access to a "warehouse" or in this case an ammunition store to restock individual gun magazines aboard a bomber as opposed to inaccessible fighter armament and therefore a finite, single magazine per gun. It would seem logical crewed gunnery stations have unlimited ammo given army trucks and warehouses offer unlimited restocking/resupply within the access radius.

Funny story, related about the western front late war, you know what the Luftwaffe used to supply bombs to the very few medium bomber squadron fields still braving a sky literally buzzing with enemy fighters? FW190G. They modified them with extra long tailwheel and stripped them out to shorten a heavy laden takeoff run, and mounted SC1000 and SC1500 bombs under them. They couldn't drop them as a munition, they had to be removed by armourers at the destination airfield. It was just the only way to get heavy bombs to the bombers in the face of overwhelming Allied numerical superiority in every area en route. It sort of punctuates the only survivable form of bombing the enemy for the Luftwaffe in the late war was by using fighter-bombers and hence Hitler's thinking behind making jets fighter-bombers instead of interceptors, the latter which they were better suited to. But also means most fighter sorties in the late war on the whole were fighter-bomber sorties, relatively few were pure fighter squadrons.

Yeah, but machinegunner in the world just keeps his finger on the trigger for a minute straight, the accuracy (ironcally) would be horrible.

 

It would be much more likely to have them fire bursts in intervals.

It is impossible ammo belts often comes with 100-150 package, so true ROF is much lower then theoretical. It maybe as high as in slow ROF browning mg.

I say that ammo storage maybe not sufficient for 1 min burst per gun :)

It is impossible ammo belts often comes with 100-150 package, so true ROF is much lower then theoretical. It maybe as high as in slow ROF browning mg.

I say that ammo storage maybe not sufficient for 1 min burst per gun :)

Agree.

But as lot of people begin to complain on several discord, that's not the ROF that's wrong. That's the AI itself. But there is the same problem for every gunner of every plane.

Hope to see big update on AI (pilot and gunner).

JU-88 imperial star bomber :megalol:

This complaint was common 18 years back on the original Il-2 forums.

The Ju-88's defensive guns had a high firing rate, but a small ammo supply contained in, I believe, round magazines. Short bursts were necessary to conserve ammo and keep from burning out the barrels.

Also, defensive gunners in WWII bombers on all sides were notoriously inaccurate; the gunner in this case is standing in a crowded cockpit, in an aircraft that is bouncing and wobbling its way through the air from air currents/enemy flak/aircraft fire, and shooting at a teeny-tiny target several hundred meters away (not to mention that most of them were scared out of their skins).

The farther off-angle your target is, the more complicated your firing solution, pretty much the opposite of the pilot in an attacking fighter.

However, the realism of defensive gunners is apparently not very high on the devs' list right now, and that's why we get what we get.

Bear in mind that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and be a pest until they get around to your wheel.

Roll on some kind of fix for this in the nearish future.