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Originally Posted by Untamo
Being mainly a 109 pilot I get oil splatters a lot, even a AAA gun crew looking angrily at it makes it to spill its oil supply 
There are 3 kinds of oil leaks, depending on amount of damage:
1) Mild leak, thin black smoke coming out. Does not smudge the windscreen, but you can notice the mild smoking in the cowling. Easily misinterpreted as fuel leak seen from other planes. The trail is the same but more black. Not dangerous and you can in most cases operate the engine with normal power output for about 10-30min, after which the engine starts to lose power slowly. Haven't seen cases that this would get worse with just engine mismanagement.
2) Medium leak, medium thickness black smoke. About the same thickness as when putting out that brownish smoke when having too rich mixture setting. More dangerous, engine starts to lose power after a couple of minutes and will usually die after 10min. Medium smoking can become heavy leak(!) in some cases, usually something to do with high RPM and overheat (or getting more damaged of course ). |
I honestly haven't ever seen a difference between these two. Whenever I get hit, it's either "thin" or "thick" black smoke. Thin smoke will cause the engine to go south pretty quickly unless you nurse it along, but it'll almost always sound like hell warmed over after about 5-10 minutes. If I can keep it in the air long enough it'll eventually quit on me. The smoke trail doesn't ever go away though, that I'm positive of now.
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3) Heavy leak, thick black smoke, the smoke now also makes little puffs instead of just a steady stream when coming out. Very dangerous in 109, usually leads to a fire and explosion within seconds. Recommend bailing immediately. In some other planes (bombers mostly) I've seen they can last in the heavy smoking state longer (few minutes) before catching on fire, but they always do eventually.
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Dunno about "seconds", I've seen a few AI planes get hit bad enough to have the thick black smoke, and limp along for upwards of 2-3 min before the fires start. Once the fire starts, the crew will always bail unless they're dead.
As an aside, I did a quick mission with me in a P-47D vs. an H8K1 over Okinawa. I shot it up pretty good, started a fire on the underside of it. Let it go to see how long it would last. It kept flying on fire for about 5 minutes before I realized I forgot to turn on autopilot and crashed. This was in DBW 1.71 on 4.10.1, but I still found it rather amusing.