Mitsubishi Stuka and Thunderbolt

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by horseback

Note also that the data is for ground testing, which means that there is no relative motion to joggle the gunner's elbow or guesstimations about where the target was going to be when the bullets got there. Chances are good that the guns were sighted in and then clamped down and fired by a fixed remote to get those figures in order to eliminate human error.

It might be possible to find the actual technical report in the National Archives. That would settle a lot of questions about methods

In any case, TD now have actual factual data for the ABSOLUTE BEST accuracy possible using certain guns, which could be extrapolated for other types.

What would really be useful is if the USN or USAAF did studies on accuracy of pintle or Scarff-ring mounted rear-facing guns.

Or, even better, did any Air Forces keep records on relative gunner accuracy during training missions against aerial targets? Were there acceptable "Go/No Go" standards for aerial gunnery against target drogues in order to graduate from aerial gunner school? At least for the USAAF, it might be a bit easier to find that sort of data since Clark Gable was an air gunner (and, unusually, a commissioned officer). Stuff that might have otherwise been tossed at the end of the war might have been kept for sentimental reasons if it involved a movie star.

[MiloMorai]

My Dad was a WAG in the RCAF and during training and his instructor wrote `excellent` in his log book for a 5% hit on the drogue, if that is any help Pursuivant.

Typical was 1-2%.

[horseback]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

It might be possible to find the actual technical report in the National Archives. That would settle a lot of questions about methods

In any case, TD now have actual factual data for the ABSOLUTE BEST accuracy possible using certain guns, which could be extrapolated for other types.

What would really be useful is if the USN or USAAF did studies on accuracy of pintle or Scarff-ring mounted rear-facing guns.

Or, even better, did any Air Forces keep records on relative gunner accuracy during training missions against aerial targets? Were there acceptable "Go/No Go" standards for aerial gunnery against target drogues in order to graduate from aerial gunner school? At least for the USAAF, it might be a bit easier to find that sort of data since Clark Gable was an air gunner (and, unusually, a commissioned officer). Stuff that might have otherwise been tossed at the end of the war might have been kept for sentimental reasons if it involved a movie star.

The Navy and Marines used more pintle/ring mounted guns on their dive & torpedo bombers than the Army used; the various float planes launched from the cruisers and battleships also had rear gun installations. I retain the impression that the pre-war trained Navy gunners had a pretty high standard for accuracy, much like the pre-war Naval Aviators (Dave McCampbell was a chain-smoking guy in his thirties when he rang up his score; you have to wonder what John Thach, one of the other acknowledged 'Top Guns' of the prewar era could have accomplished in a similar position).

As for my description of how the gun mounts were most likely tested, sighting the guns in and then clamping the gunner's end down gives you the dispersion inherent to the gun mount type; humans are terribly non standard as a rule (even from minute to minute), so you would want to limit their influence as much as possible.

MiloMorai's numbers sound about right for shooting drogues flying in formation with your aircraft; 5% for a steady state target unlikely to shoot back.

cheers

horseback

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

In any case, TD now have actual factual data for the ABSOLUTE BEST accuracy possible using certain guns, which could be extrapolated for other types.

Hmm, what about the dual gun mounts and convergence? This would need clarification to not over/under estimate their accuracy.

And I wouldn't know what I had decided in around 1938. Then fighters were becoming faster than bombers, yes, but their range was still limited (thats why the Zero was so incredibly successful first IMHO -noone thought any fighter could have that range), and their payload was not stellar either. So you could guess right about the fighters potential and leave the bombers be. But the risk that bombers could be still capable enough was too great to not have them. And once you had them, you needed to use them...

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by horseback

The in-game player's mouse gunner model is vastly simpler and less complicated than the operation and aiming of machine guns from a constantly bobbing and rolling gun platform like an actual moving aircraft of that era.

At least when AI is at the controls, I find it difficult to aim accurately because the pilot will perform maneuvers without telling me that he's going to do so. Online, it's likely to be easier because the pilot can actually talk to the crew.

But, like you said, there are lots of things that gunnery doesn't currently model in IL2, which makes it easier to be a gunner, relatively speaking, than it was in real life.

So, I don't see your concerns (which are legitimate) and mine as being incompatible. IL2 online gunnery IS too easy for all the reasons we've mentioned before - plane vibration, turbulence, gun vibration, sticky scarf rings or turret rings, G-forces, physical labor and inertia of slewing the guns around (at least by hand) and, of course, slipstream effects.

I think that these effects would all be pretty easy to model just by incorporating a bit more randomness into the bullet dispersal pattern for gunners under various conditions and by building a bit of variable turn speed and randomness into the mouse movement model.

Things that increase bullet dispersal - each shot after the first in a burst, turbulence (synched to weather/wind, although it is possible to build turbulence into the game), G-forces, slipstream/wind buffeting - at least 10 degrees angle off from (plane's vector - 180 degrees), hand-turned guns.

Things that reduce turning speed of turret/Scarff ring/pintle-mounted guns - G-forces, slipstream/wind-buffeting - at least 10 degrees angle off from (plane's vector - 180 degrees), inertia (modeled as a bit of initial slowness in getting the guns to track if they're not already in motion in the directions you want to track, greater inertia for larger or multiple guns due to mass).

Plus, you automatically build a tiny bit of randomness into mouse tracking movement to represent stickiness and "Murphy's Law."

If TD were kind enough to include all those problems into the human-controlled gunnery model, after the shrieks of outrage fade to whimpers of grudging acceptance, THEN you calibrate maximum human skill to get maximum AI skill for gunners.

Of course, as with any option of this sort, there should be a button to turn it all off, so people who can't cope with the aiming problems that real gunners faced can still have their simplified gunnery model.

If TD wanted to be extra nice to us, they could model the effects of injury to gunners' limbs. A hit to the arm means that you have lots of trouble turning and shooting hand-turned, hand-triggered guns. A hit to the leg means that you can't turn foot-operated turrets in a particular direction. And, of course, bleeding means that gunners will eventually bleed out, getting weaker and less accurate until they fall unconscious or die.

Originally Posted by horseback

The 8th Air Force awarded the title of 'ace' to over 300 bomber crew gunners; I would be amazed if any two of them actually destroyed a combined total of five enemy aircraft in flight, and the late war US bomber defenses were the heaviest and most sophisticated of the war.

This might be a bit too extreme. Some planes flying solo really did shoot down multiple enemy aircraft - or at least damage them seriously enough that they were "probables" and out of the action. So, aerial gunners weren't completely useless - especially the tail gunners who accounted for a majority of the 8th Air Force gunner aces. It's also worth mentioning that the USAAF kept tailgunners long after they ditched every other gunner position (last tailgunner kill was over Vietnam).

But, as you said, the USAAF (and every other Air Force) had problems with overclaiming kills. Often, when some hapless Bf-109 diving through a formation B-17 or B-24 coughed up smoke because pilot mishandled the fuel mixture, every gunner in the formation would claim it as a kill because they saw the 109 coughing up black smoke were sure that their gun was the one that "hit." With claims like that, even the most skeptical debriefing intelligence officer was likely to believe that the fighter was a "probable" even if the Luftwaffe plane wasn't scratched.