06-06-2014, 10:09 PM
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Approved Member
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Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 1,439
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Buster_Dee
The B-17 had warren truss rather than spar. It was notoriously hard to bring down if trying to "saw the wing off." The B-24, with large spar, was more accommodating.
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A good example of exactly how the B-24 wing spar would fail under stress is here:
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About 1 minute in.
The B-17 wing could fail if you got enough cannon shells in just the right place.
http://www.ww2incolor.com/d/432815-4...oyed_by_Me-262
Assuming that the caption is correct and the Me-262 was able to "buzz-saw" the B-17's wing at the wing root, rather than just weaken the wing sufficiently that wind resistance and gravity finished the job, that still indicates that it took four closely spaced 30mm cannon hits to take a wing off a B-17!
Perhaps I'm overstating the case that 20 mm or .50 caliber hits should never be able to take the wing off a 4-engined bomber, since in combat anything can happen, but I think it should be a very rare event - perhaps 1 in 100 or 1 in a 1000. Certainly, I shouldn't be able to consistently and quickly take the wings off a B-17 using a Bf-109G firing a few 20 mm shots from 300 m.
What I'd find to be much more realistic is those same bullets starting catastrophic fires that spread, then having the wing fail under stress after a few minutes as the fire softens up the aluminum. Or, have damage that makes the plane enter a spin or steep dive which causes wing failure.
For more lightly-built and smaller planes, the "buzz saw" effect is highly realistic and well implemented in IL2.
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