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[Marchochias]

Originally Posted by Skii

The Me109E relied heavily on its cannon armament, 2 x 20mm cannon in each wing, secondary armament was 2 x 7.92mm machine guns above the engine. The ammunition for the 109E's cannons was limited to only 60 rounds per gun - so the pilot needed to be accurate to make his rounds count, obviously a hit by a cannon shell was more devastating than the .303 browning bullet fired by the 8-gun spits and hurricanes, but the respective total armaments of the 109 and the Spit pretty much balanced each other at the time.

The armaments themselves weren't exactly balanced, as you say, the cannons had very little ammunition. It might give the Bf 109 an advantage against the first fighter that it shoots at, but as soon as they run out of those 120 rounds, they'd be at a pretty big disadvantage against further aircraft with only 2 small machine guns.

If their positions had been reversed, imagine how long it would have taken Bf 109s with no cannon ammo left to shoot down even small bombers like the He 111, with only the two small machine guns.

Then again, they had some other advantages, like the fuel injecting and what not. My point is that not all of these factors can be represented accurately in a game.