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krattalak t1_j5zg6ab wrote

This is true of most WWII fighters to one degree or another. The p-51 mustang had 21 seconds of ammo. 380 rounds for the inboard guns, 270 rounds for the outboard guns. The Browning AN/M2 fired @ 750-850 rounds/min.

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Landlubber77 t1_j5zkrmu wrote

Top Gun Maverick did a great job showing just how quickly an F-14 runs out of ammo for its Vulcan cannon. You're not gonna be up there all day blasting away, you're gonna get a few good squirts and hope it did the trick. Fucker shoots like 6,000 rounds per minute and an F-14 typically carries like 600.

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RandomBilly91 t1_j5zkyuw wrote

Depends on the versions. It could be a lot higher with lower caliber weapons, but they were overall quite ineffective.

A spifire mk XXIV ( last version), had around 800 shells, with a total fire rate of 2800 rounds/min

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NFTY_GIFTY t1_j5zlyle wrote

My wife had always called me the "Spitfire", still trying to figure out why.

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Middcore t1_j5zvo0m wrote

The picture with the article is a Hawker Hurricane, not a Spitfire. Pretty much the same situation, though. True of all fighter aircraft in this era.

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CareerMicDrop t1_j601dtw wrote

Every movie is wildly inaccurate. Especially when it comes to guns. Dudes with a 10 round clip still lighting up bad guys 20 shots later. A sniper a mile way puts his cross hairs on the target. I’m sorry. You just adjusted for wind. Rain. Temp. Humidity. Altitude. Distance. The speed of the target. The spin of the earth on its axis. And yet your bullet goes straight at the target a mile away dead.

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GoGaslightYerself t1_j602ssc wrote

> Every movie is wildly inaccurate.

Ya mean to tell me you can't get 23,573 rounds out of a seven-shot 1911 magazine without reloading? Who knew?!?

What I like best -- and this is in like every movie ever produced -- is how the bad guys never actually load their firearms until they get really mad and then it's SNICK-SNICK as they cycle the slides on their pistols or load their shotgun/rifle. The rest of the time, they're running around with unloaded guns! So realistic!

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bstowers t1_j60g8fh wrote

Wait, the entertainment industry's depiction of war was wildly inaccurate about something?

I'm finding this really hard to believe.

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kombatunit t1_j60ikic wrote

Which is why realistic flights sims suck for my non-aiming ass :)

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Minuted t1_j60o7o0 wrote

Honestly it seems like quite a lot if you sit and count out 20 seconds. Obviously up there in the heat of battle I'd imagine it didn't feel quite so generous, but I'd guess even a second or two of gunfire would do a lot of damage to anything in its way.

>A three-second burst from eight .303s produced 13 pounds of projectiles downrange while the 109’s combined cannon/MG battery yielded 18 pounds. But undoubtedly far less than 10 percent of all rounds fired connected with a target, which is why so few pilots became aces.

I guess you have to keep in mind the distances they would be firing from, and in a dog-fight the movement necessitating the huge amount of ammunition to increase the chances of a single hit.

I'm trying to find out how many rounds per second they'd put out, but still, 20 seconds of something that can put out nearly 5 pounds (2.2 kilos) of metal at supersonic speeds per second... I'm seeing about 20 rounds per second from each .303 gun, with eight guns on a Spitfire, so 160 rounds per second. Though there's a lot of variation across different types of aircraft and model.

I'd be morbidly curious about how much damage you could do if you could line up a Spitfire (or any WWII fighter) and unload all 20 seconds of ammunition onto a test target, if the guns could sustain 20 seconds. Even if not you could fire in burst rounds and see a similar effect.

My main point was that 20 seconds seems like a long time given just how much these guns put out but I ended up rambling. 20 seconds of watching a sunset is a lot different to 20 seconds of noise and fury.

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Minuted t1_j60owug wrote

It's more of an editing thing but my favourite is the "gun noise" they sometimes put in when someone holds up a gun. Not reloading or cocking a hammer or anything, just holding up a gun.

I love Doctor Who but this is pretty egregious. Movies do it too, though I can't think of any as bad as this example. It's a revolver and I'm guessing it's an automatic cycling noise? I don't know it makes no sense.

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Jahnknob t1_j60rg1p wrote

Like every single bullet shooting gun in any movie.

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RicksterA2 t1_j60ysx0 wrote

Funny how the story references Spitfires and the photo is of a Hawker Hurricane...

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Shirojam t1_j6115n2 wrote

Video games like Ace combat, war thunder also is inaccurate on ammo count. Though low ammo count would make the games not as fun

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Business-Emu-6923 t1_j612iq8 wrote

Ok, my one bit of fighter plane knowledge.

The Harrier VTOL can hover, but only for like 30 seconds. While hovering the outlet ducts have to be cooled with water, and the plane only carries enough in its tanks for 30s of hovering. Movies, however…

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RedSonGamble t1_j61bmyj wrote

Back then seems like a better option would just be a dude in the back with a machine gun.

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Landlubber77 t1_j61c8sh wrote

I don't know, maybe it has something to do with the tracer rounds which help show where they're firing. Like it has to be that rate of fire to accurately show where the rounds are going? Or maybe something to do with the mechanism and having to fire that fast to have enough force to withstand the fact that the thing firing the rounds is traveling 1500 miles per hour, as is the thing it's firing at? It's also important to keep in mind I have no fucking idea what I'm talking about.

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nuxi t1_j61h1m1 wrote

Slower rate of fire puts more space between each bullet which results in a gap that the enemy aircraft can safely pass through. The goal is to basically make a box of bullets in front of the enemy plane that is tight enough that the enemy plane has to hit one and large enough that the enemy plane can't avoid passing through it. Decisions like rate of fire are an attempt to balance these factors.

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nuxi t1_j61jc0w wrote

If it helps to imagine it, think back to this scene from Captain America: Civil War. The impacts keep ending up all around our hero but never actually hitting him. Each time he passes across the minigun's line of fire, there is no bullet because of how slow the rate of fire is. Far, far slower than a real minigun fires.

Compare that to The Matrix where the minigun is depicted as firing so rapidly that not even an Agent can dodge it. This is a much more realistic depiction of the firing speed. (Althugh the rate of fire depicted varies considerably within the clip)

Bonus: In the Captain America clip you can see the minigun spin up to a speed much faster than it is actually depicted as firing.

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nackavich t1_j61lian wrote

Still THE most realistic movie depicting dogfights and aerial combat.

A lot of other films still use it's footage to this day - there's been a few modern movies (Hurricane and another I can't remember) which also used it's footage.

Not to mention the phenomenal cast!

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nackavich t1_j61om55 wrote

Yeah Dunkirk was excellent, especially the way the Spitfire scenes felt so long and drawn out, yet when viewed from another perspective the action was over in an instant, which is something veteran pilots mentioned.

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Flying_Dustbin t1_j61qfek wrote

I went to see Midway in theaters and it was hilarious how they made the Dauntless perform in some flight scenes. I know dogfighting sometimes happened with them (EX: Stanley “Swede” Vejtasa) but c’mon.

I’d throw Pearl Harbor in there too.

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Jwestie15 t1_j6248wj wrote

Well I was on my ACT upgrade Standard 4vX The AWACS guy was out to lunch And I couldn’t get no decs

But I knew that they were hostile But I couldn't take the chance So I flipped the switch to outboard And said, "Boys, it's time to dance"

And they asked me, "Where ya goin'?" As I started to diverge Said "I had enough of this shit, man I'm goin' to the merge"

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Jwestie15 t1_j624g0n wrote

Well sorta, alot of the time you would have to visually verifying with mk1 eyeball that what your launching on is actually hostile and not a transceiver error or something. Lots of stuff to go wrong in BVR without an AWACs

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Gabagool1987 t1_j62cn5e wrote

Yes they fired in short bursts. Movies as a whole rarely gets gunfire right

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sixty6006 t1_j62oc6o wrote

I found a trail of 20mm shells and links in a forest once when I was metal detecting. Fired from a spitfire while shooting at training targets out in the sea. Those things are big!

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RedDemocracy t1_j63fe50 wrote

Some guns don’t have slide releases, or it’s a matter of preferences/comfort. I’ve hot small hands and weak fingers, and I don’t think I’ve ever successfully hit the slide release on my Star BM, but it’s smooth as a dream on my Jericho.

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ixamnis t1_j64d9l5 wrote

I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?"

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Shutterstormphoto t1_j64tqdz wrote

I’d imagine you shoot for less than a second at a time. It’s pretty hard to line someone up for a long time since they’re trying to dodge. Even a 1s arc would cover a lot of ground if you’re pulling the stick. Strafing runs in movies often are less than 10s too.

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Rexel450 t1_j69c67h wrote

> I'm trying to find out how many rounds per second they'd put out

P51P-51 Mustang armed with six Browning M2 .50 in machine guns, each firing at the exact equal rate, 13 rds a second, 800 rounds per minute: 1880 rds, (400 rds each inboard, 270 rds each outboard)

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