Why are planes so fragile?

[Kenlict]

Now I know most planes through out the ages aren't heavily armored and all cannons go straight through. But historically planes did have armored plating around vital areas and were extremely structurally sound, making it hard for holes to do any real damage unless it hit a vital spot. Not to mention most air craft through out history have be able to fly stable missing either a wing, or some of the tail rudders. So why in this game do planes literally fall apart like wet paper when a cannon round sniffs it? Dont get me wrong its satisfying as hell to just obliterate an enemy plane, but I think its a bit unrealistic for planes to just rip apart so easily and then the physics engine ♥♥♥♥♥ itself any time a part of the plane is gone and treats it like a rock XD

[Northy]

a lot of the reason why planes and even some tanks are weaker than irl is this game still has arcade physics to a degree. This is also to make the game more enjoyable overall and less of a painful experience.

[LordBUM]

mainly for balance because historically planes like the B-17 would be able to tank damage that would be fatal to other planes but still fly back to base like nothing happened. so you can imagine how many tryhards would get salty after unloading all their ammo into the first bomber they see only for said bomber to fly back to base and rearm. granted though i do agree that planes that were built to take damage and still fly should be able to do so but don't expect something like the japanese zero or american P-51 to tank any shots they weren't built for that.

[Jaes]

You're playing a video game that gives every single aircraft in the game fly-by-wire capabilities and you have no consequences if you "die."

It's way easier for me to get a lot of time on target to aim to land several shots instead of maybe an ill-placed burst than it was 80 years ago when things looking to grievously maim and kill you were being thrown at you.

You need to adjust your expectations of how survivable aircraft are.

[Kenlict]

Yeah fair enough. I enjoy Air RB a lot more than Air Arcade since no one works together, and for some reason in realistic battles the aerodynamics are so god awful(not by normal people's standards but I am a physicist lol). At least they gave german and russian tanks a speed boost. Cuz they would be unplayable if they were realistic omg.

[🎀Hara🎀]

play sim mode, sure the controls are tougher but you will see a huge differance, you can't just sit behind an enemy plane because they can use your blind spots even when right infront of you to turn out of your field of view then you need to search for them, sometimes you have less than a second to make a shot and you will miss a lot.

oh anfd flying anywhere near a bomber in sim mode without knowing exactly what you are doing is a bad idea

[Kenlict]

Originally posted by 🎀Hara🎀:

play sim mode, sure the controls are tougher but you will see a huge differance, you can't just sit behind an enemy plane because they can use your blind spots even when right infront of you to turn out of your field of view then you need to search for them, sometimes you have less than a second to make a shot and you will miss a lot.

oh anfd flying anywhere near a bomber in sim mode without knowing exactly what you are doing is a bad idea

Alright ill try that.

[Alquimiista]

physics?

[Chaoslink]

I mean, armor in planes isn't really meant for taking hits and shrugging them off like tanks do, they're intended to protect important bits like the oil or water from shrapnel from explosive rounds. That's about it. Most of the armor is only like 5mm thick, just enough for shrapnel and low caliber rounds without AP.

[Kenlict]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

I mean, armor in planes isn't really meant for taking hits and shrugging them off like tanks do, they're intended to protect important bits like the oil or water from shrapnel from explosive rounds. That's about it. Most of the armor is only like 5mm thick, just enough for shrapnel and low caliber rounds without AP.

Yeah thats why I said cannons still easily go through it. But the point I am saying is that a cannon round doesnt rip an entire wind or tail off. lol

[Santa Claus]

The truth is the ballistics of the rounds in question are extremely hard to near impossible to model. There are so many factors that go into a 20mm round hitting a plane and it depends where the hit is. What did it hit? Did the round detonate? Did the shrapnel strike critical components? What components? The pilot? The fuel? The oil? The engine? The hydraulics? Control cables? Did the shrapnel cut through a wing spar? Is the speed of the plane such that the spar will start bending and break against the air pressure? The list can go on for a long time.

Using anecdotal evidence of a B-17 that RTB'd IRL with 400 to 1000 holes in it is BS. There are plenty that took a single hit and went down because of all the factors I listed and more.

That said, planes did get a nerf at some point as they do seem to go down easier. Maybe a little more "life bar" is in order for planes. Especially bombers.

[ArrowViper]

Bombers. Bombers in this game are made out of wet toilet paper and Gaijin will never change that. Tu-4 used to be extremely scary with it's array of 23mm guns and very tough damage model it was always a sight to behold one fighting off 2 Sabres...now it's trash. It falls apart from few .50cals and almost everyone at 8.0 (who climbs anyway) has AA missiles. I haven't seen anyone (i'm serious) play a Tu-4 for like a year now...and i do alot of 8.0 - 8.7 flying.

[Wandering Flare]

Originally posted by Kenlict:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

I mean, armor in planes isn't really meant for taking hits and shrugging them off like tanks do, they're intended to protect important bits like the oil or water from shrapnel from explosive rounds. That's about it. Most of the armor is only like 5mm thick, just enough for shrapnel and low caliber rounds without AP.

Yeah thats why I said cannons still easily go through it. But the point I am saying is that a cannon round doesnt rip an entire wind or tail off. lol

Depends on the ammo. I'd wager that an explosive-filled 20mm round would cause pretty good structural damage to where the wing just snaps off due to the exertion caused by the plane's speed.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Kenlict:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

I mean, armor in planes isn't really meant for taking hits and shrugging them off like tanks do, they're intended to protect important bits like the oil or water from shrapnel from explosive rounds. That's about it. Most of the armor is only like 5mm thick, just enough for shrapnel and low caliber rounds without AP.

Yeah thats why I said cannons still easily go through it. But the point I am saying is that a cannon round doesnt rip an entire wind or tail off. lol

You don’t even need cannons to go through it. Basically anything will. Aircraft armor isn’t there to take direct hits by bullets of any kind. It’s there exclusively for shrapnel. Same with the flak jackets the crew would wear, though I’ve seen reports that many actually just sat on them instead of wearing them. Still, they weren’t bullet protection. Even .30 cals would penetrate the armor if they were AP rounds.

As for the structural integrity, it could be slightly better for fighters, but it really doesn’t take much to knock them out, they’re designed to be lightweight for the most part. Only a few fighters were known for taking punishment such as the P-47.

Bombers need a huge durability upgrade though. They’re far too easy to take out. Need rebalancing too. My favorite comparison is the Pe-8 vs the B-17. Flight performance, armament, bomb load… seriously in what universe should the Pe-8 be a lower BR than the B-17? The Pe-8 can basically be flown like a fighter whereas making a turn in the B-17 is likely to rip the wings off.

[Admiral Piett]

Aircraft, even the most "heavily protected," have paltry resistance to damage compared to armoured vehicles on the ground that people are more familiar with. Armoured plates, when aircraft had them at all (it heavily depends on the era being discussed), were universally small and thin by ground vehicle standards. They typically protected the pilot and, occasionally, components like the oil system. Among the thickest plates used in WWII were found in Japanese army aircraft and even still none of those exceeded 16.5mm in some bombers. Most armour plates among the world's air forces were in the 5-10mm range. That was enough to provide basic shrapnel protection or, if you were lucky, some impacts from bullets that were already out of much of their kinetic energy.

Fuel tank protection is a whole other can of worms that is very poorly understood and War Thunder does no favours here with its binary "self-sealing fuel tanks, yes/no" system. Not all fuel tank protection systems were "self-sealing" and not all self-sealing fuel tanks were created equal. There was a great deal of technological change through WWII. No self-sealing fuel tank in WWII could self-seal if it had been comprehensively destroyed by a significant enough hit.

Aircraft structural strength is another massive and complicated mess. It would probably shock people to learn that Japanese navy aircraft were designed to higher aerodynamic load tolerances than the US Navy, yet their aircraft don't have the same reputation for durability. In that case it was primarily due to a lack of armour or fuel tank protection in most Japanese navy models. Words like "robust" are thrown around a lot and while it might be true that a P-47 could absorb more punishment than a Bf-109 on average, it didn't make the P-47 a literal flying tank. All combat aircraft still needed to fly and, not only that, have good flight performance. That meant saving weight wherever possible. The size of an aircraft is also a factor - if your plane is large then it will usually take more punishment than a plane that is smaller. Aircraft armament, particularly 20mm and larger, could and did rip off wings or tails from aircraft. You can even find combat footage of 12.7mm doing so despite that not being the primary method through which such a calibre knocked an aircraft out of the sky.

The damage aircraft sustain in War Thunder air RB is quite reasonable. It's not a perfect damage system, certainly, but aircraft that sustained hundreds of hits and returned to base were rare outliers, not the rule. Even B-17 losses were astonishingly high, yet photos of those that returned with significant battle damage are the ones that stick in the popular mind. Aircraft armour in particular was meant as insurance against chance blows - a "saving throw" in the words of Christoph Bergs. That "saving throw" was often more about saving the pilot so they could bail out and (hopefully) fight another day than saving the aircraft itself. The best chance of survival in WWII fighters was to not get hit in the first place.

[biomike]

Originally posted by Kenlict:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

I mean, armor in planes isn't really meant for taking hits and shrugging them off like tanks do, they're intended to protect important bits like the oil or water from shrapnel from explosive rounds. That's about it. Most of the armor is only like 5mm thick, just enough for shrapnel and low caliber rounds without AP.

Yeah thats why I said cannons still easily go through it. But the point I am saying is that a cannon round doesnt rip an entire wind or tail off. lol

Actually a single 30mm Mk108 HE round can in fact do just that https://www.reddit.com/r/Warthunder/comments/qe5xya/british_test_of_a_single_german_30mm_mine_shell/
In flight that planes tail would of come right off