Bullet Range 2

Lethal Bullet Range II

by Fuzeman
March 2009

Hello again Gentlemen,

More fuzeman pictures to help you get a feel for when and were to shoot. Also when NOT to shoot as I learned making these I have been wasting ammo myself for a long time.

For all of these pictures I use fire primary, position only. For all of them except tail gun shots I was firing at the center of the target.

Looking at the chin pictures. First chin #1, notice the bullet drop at D500, the distance bomber guns convergence is set at. Pretty tight pattern and would definitely damage a target. Chin#2 taken at D1000, again notice the bullet drop, logically its about twice that at D500 shown in chin#1. Notice the bullet stream dispersal though, much more dispersal than at D500, chin#1. You may hit the target but I don't believe the shots would be concentrated enough to do lethal damage.

Here's where things get real interesting. On side shots from waist guns. You get similar bullet drop on side shots as you do on chin or tail guns. Notice that even when firing at the center of the target, the bullets loose their forward momentum and fall backwards. At D500 the bullet stream is still fairly concentrated but fades away from the planes direction of travel, the plane is traveling to the right in this picture. At distance of D1000 the dispersal has expanded similar to chin guns but notice the great rearward deflection of the bullets as they get farther from your plane and loose their forward momentum. They fall back almost to the point of being off the target. This means when using waist guns or firing at targets off to the side you must add a significant amount of lead, much more than you would expect to.

Now for the tail gun, which is similar to the chin gun because the bullets are traveling in the same plane as the bombers direction. As expected because you are firing backwards and the bullets dont have a headwind to counter the bullet drop is not as significant as the chin gun but it does fall slightly. Bullet stream dispersal is very similar to the chin gun and this dispersal increases with range. Here is where I realized something I had not in my previous years of gunning bombers. Note what happens from D1200 to D1300. Yes I was firing bullets at D1300 but as you see there are no impact marks from the bullets. This means firing at targets at ranges of +D1200 is a complete waste of ammo even if your aim is perfect!!! Now you can switch to the #2 or #3 drones to extend your effective firing range slightly but again bullet stream dispersal makes your shots less lethal than closer in.

Remember, you should knwo the commands to fire your position only [ Fire Primary ], fire all guns [ Fire Secondary ], and to change plane in formation. To change plane you first need to move to a gun position, then you can select the plane in formation with Ctrl #, where 2 is plane on left and 3 is plane on left. If a bomber is destroyed for example, if #2 has been shot down and #3 pulls to the left, it is still considered plane #3 and not #2.

A bomber can have at most 1 person join him to help man the guns. The pilot can also man guns but they can not share a gun position. They can however both shoot the same non-manned gun under certain circumstances. For example, a gunner joins and mans the tail gun, while the pilot mans the chin gun. If a target closes on either gun, as the plane moves past the bomber and the gunner follows it and fires, both the pilot and gunner would fire the waist gun as it passes by. In my opinion when you do have a gunner, its a good technique to mane guns on opposite sides of the bomber. For example if a gunner is in the tail, the pilot could man the chin. If a gunner mans the ball turret on the bottom, the pilot could man the top turret. This way they can cover opposite sides of their formation. ammo conservation is extremely important in these situations as some guns are fired by both gunners and use more ammo than usual if only 1 person was gunning.

I believe if a gunner is in the tail gun and the pilot then tries to man that same tail gun, the original tail gunner is shifted to drone #2 or 3 but I have to confiorm what happens in that situation. I also have to check what happens when the pilot moves to a gun position used by the gunner and there are no drones for him to shift to.

fuzeman