CorvusCorvax, on 17 May 2018 - 02:30 PM, said:
IIRC, a U.S. pilot in the Pacific got in behind a Zero, and when he depressed the trigger, his guns fired and then immediately jammed. The Zero caught fire and went down. It was later determined that his aircraft expended a total of four rounds of .50 cal ammunition.
You have to remember that zeroes had notoriously poor armor, a single well placed .50 cal round would be able to ignite the gas tank, which was very vulnerable. Compare that to most U.S. aircraft that served in the pacific, especially planes like the F4F and F6F, which had self-sealing fuel tanks. It helps a shell's killing power if the plane its fired at has practically no armor to speak of!
Whether or not the U.S. had the best planes in the war is certainly debatable, but we sure had quite a few types that could take an enormous amount of punishment.
I quote this from Wikipedia, regarding a particular P-47 Thunderbolt:
"In June 1943, [Egon] Mayer encountered Robert S. Johnson, a future ace from the 56th Fighter Group of the US Eighth Air Force. Johnson's P-47 Thunderbolt had been badly shot-up by some Focke Wulf Fw 190s during a routine mission. As Johnson limped home, with a canopy that would not open and hydraulic fluid and oil covering his windscreen, Mayer pulled alongside him in his Fw 190. Mayer looked the wounded P-47 over, and then circled to come in from Johnson's six-o'clock to give it the coup de grâce. The first gun pass failed to knock the heavy American fighter out of the sky. Mayer made two more runs on Johnson, without success. After running out of ammunition, Mayer pulled alongside Johnson, saluted him and headed for home. Johnson landed his plane, and counted more than 200 holes, without even moving around the airplane. He also saw that a 20 mm cannon shell had exploded just behind his headrest, which had made it impossible to open his canopy."
20mm shells, as HANNIBAL_LECTER's post visualized for us (+1 for that BTW), are no slouches, but this snippet right here goes to show that planes can be made to take an absolute hell of a pounding and still fly.
Now if Japan had made planes like this early on in the war things might have been different.
Edited by NovaTempest, 18 May 2018 - 04:46 PM.