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Originally Posted by Kilhmar
You might want take those documents with a grain of salt and read my post on modern armour piercing rounds. The IX had 22 mm thick pressure hull, and the VIIc/41 had 28-33 mm thick pressure hull.
I have some very detailed listings and after action reports on sinking of subs by US aircraft. None of the strafing attacks seriously damaged the U-boats, but sometimes cleared the deck allowing other aircraft to attack with bombs or rockets.
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I have never read or heard of a U-boat being sunk or seriously damaged by strafing alone.
More documentation can be found at www.history.navy.mil
Unfortunately the power of the .50 cal has been greatly exaggerated in popular media. |
Although the .50 caliber is quite powerful, yes, it probably couldn't penetrate the pressure hulls. Thing is, the light hull, ballast tanks, and fuel tanks weren't so thick. They never saw the pressure differential that the pressure hull would and did, and so weren't thick-walled at all. .50 caliber would most certainly penetrate that and, once your tanks were perforated, well . . . that might not sink you (and probably didn't) but it sure would prevent you from submerging, as you wouldn't be able to effectively blow the tanks once you'd gone down to any depth. And once you were stuck running surfaced . . .
The problem is, as Kpt. Lehmann and the others have mentioned before, is that they're stuck both with the game engine (which is hardcoded) and that so many individual things are interconnected. Mess with one and that can have disturbing (and unrealistc) effects elsewhere. In a perfect world the .50 caliber would, at best, sweep your deck of personnel (ick!) and damage the light hull and prevent you from submerging. However, I don't think there is any way they can mod the damage effects to duplicate that without making some horrendous effects elsewhere.
If you want to see just how devestating a .50 caliber aircraft attack can look like, watch this:
I warn you now: it's really hideous.
In a perfect world, yes, the .50 caliber most likely wouldn't do the internal damage that it does now. Unfortunately, the SHIII game engine and hard codes seem to be less than perfect.
(By the way,
excellent job of research there!)