Effectiveness of AA Guns in IL2 Korea

[Stahlwolle]

Hey Pilots,

one thing i noticed which is not very plausible to me is the accuracy of anti-aircraft guns in the sim. I had an attack on artillery cannons surrounded by 3 or 4 anti aircraft guns - i flew around 5-7 passes low level over the target area to attack and i never got hit by any of those aa-guns at all. I did not even care about them. I saw same in many youtube videos - is this intentionally? did aa guns were that ineffective against smaller airplanes and were supposed only to be effective against bombers? i would expect aa guns to me way more dangerous and it probably would be more interesting if you could not ignore them but have to kill them first before you can bomb a factory 5 times. 

build 0.004

difficulty level was "normal" (not touched), i flew in a F-86A - did not even tried to evade or avoid straight attack runs since the aa did not seem to be dangerous at all.

best regards!

 

Edited July 31 by Stahlwolle

[BlitzPig_EL]

This depends on the skill level assigned to them when the mission was constructed.  On a DF mission I made I have set the AA at airfields all on ACE.  It's a curtain of death.

[AndreiTomescu]

hotfix 004b, career, Mustang, 12th group. Left options for AAA, planes, targets, etc unchanged from how it was set ingame.

the AAA and ground fire , in airfield attacks or frontline attack, or CAS, is deadly. both to me and wingmen.

IMHO, they might be TOO accurate.

on airfield attack, if you came low and fast, you have one pass relatively safely, but afterwards the Mustangs are smoking and falling like flies.

[Uther]

1 hour ago, AndreiTomescu said:

hotfix 004b, career, Mustang, 12th group. Left options for AAA, planes, targets, etc unchanged from how it was set ingame.

the AAA and ground fire , in airfield attacks or frontline attack, or CAS, is deadly. both to me and wingmen.

IMHO, they might be TOO accurate.

on airfield attack, if you came low and fast, you have one pass relatively safely, but afterwards the Mustangs are smoking and falling like flies.

I imagine in real life they probably did make one run and then got the hell out of there. Once you've woken the AA up you risk having a very bad day.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

5 hours ago, Stahlwolle said:

did aa guns were that ineffective against smaller airplanes and were supposed only to be effective against bombers?

It's not really that they were supposed to be effective only against bombers - they weren't usually that effective at all.

34 minutes ago, Uther said:

I imagine in real life they probably did make one run and then got the hell out of there. Once you've woken the AA up you risk having a very bad day.

Not necessarily. I quote from the ORBs of No.77 Sq. RAAF, an armed reconnaissance by four Mustangs on 20 November 1950:

"[...] The section proceeded to Kanggye where they encountered medium anti ack fire. Estimated to be medium calibre and coming from eight pits. These positions covering an area one hundred by twenty five yards was rocketed and strafed. Only one gun continued to fire after the attack. [...]"

Another four-aircraft flight later the same day:

"[...] Flying over Kosanjin [...] flak was encountered. The positions were rocketed and strafed and all pits had ceased firing when the flight departed. The section then returned to Konan North."

No mention is made of any damage, and all aircraft returned safely. Obviously, medium Flak was inaccurate enough that the standard response on Armed Recon missions was to engage it, even if outnumbered 2 to 1.

[Juri_JS]

In the game the number of AA-guns in missions is usually much too low when compared to the situation during the Korean War. In reality the lack of accuracy was compensated by numbers. Here an example of an AA-battery:

 

[LuftManu]

27 minutes ago, Juri_JS said:

In the game the number of AA-guns in missions is usually much too low when compared to the situation during the Korean War. In reality the lack of accuracy was compensated by numbers. Here an example of an AA-battery:

 

Great pic. Seems like there are 10! pieces there?

[Dash,Polder]

More details would be needed to assess, such as type AA guns, type plane, game & mission settings, and terain layout.  If it's mustangs they're capable of engaging inside the minimum weapons engagement zone on lots of the flak gun types, and can effectively use terrain masking easier than a fast mover.  This was easy as pie to do against the Flak 88 gun class in Great Battles, since even the in game physics made it impossible to swing one fast enough and fuse it within a certain radius of each gun.  Why the good players always dealt with the effective short range guns first when doing repeated attacks.

 

[Gunfreak]

Generally AAA only hit by saturating the sky. Remember even with hundreds of radar guided AAA from 20mm to giant stuff Japanese aircraft still made it through. 

In Vietnam SAM systems were often flak traps. 1 or 2 batteries of SA2, would be defended by up to 300 guns from 23mm to 100mm. And everything in-between. A handful of AAA would only hit with that golden bb. 

In DCS ground fire is way too effective. You can count 1 light or medium AAA in game as representing 10 guns in real life.  If you put actual correct numbers of guns in DCS. There would be 100% chance of death.

In Korea i have actually been hit. I was attacking a column unaware that several mobile AAA guns were in it. So I flew rather leisurely. Taking my time aiming my bombs. When i had flown straight over a AAA that riddled my plane. Luckily it was just low caliber stuff and it was mostly potmarks and no real damage.

 

[AEthelraedUnraed]

1 hour ago, Juri_JS said:

In the game the number of AA-guns in missions is usually much too low when compared to the situation during the Korean War. In reality the lack of accuracy was compensated by numbers.

I wouldn't say "usually". It depends on the target. For heavily defended ones such as airfields, you're probably correct. But the vast majority of missions didn't go to these areas. The most they'd encounter, if anything, would be perhaps 8 to 12 Flak. As we can see from the ORB I quoted above, they felt confident engaging those numbers with a single, 4-aircraft flight.

I've gone through No.77's ORBs for the entire period they were stationed at Konan, and only once during this period did they encounter Flak of such intensity that they felt it necessary to retreat. By far most missions didn't encounter any AAA, and many didn't even encounter any enemies for that matter. So if we speak about "usually" in a strictly historical sense, I would say that the number of AA-guns in a "usual" mission is much too high rather than much too low. Yes, there were a few well-defended targets out there, but these were either avoided or precautions were taken, to completely overwhelm the enemy. If we look at some statistics to judge the effectiveness of Flak, the FEAF lost 816 aircraft to Flak for a total of 710886 sorties. That's a 0.115% chance for an aircraft to get shot down by AAA on a particular mission. I think we can safely conclude that Flak wasn't usually there, and when it was, it was ineffective.

Of course, that's not very interesting for us as gamers since we want to see some action. We want to encounter situations where in reality, pilots would likely retreat rather than face a powerful enemy. We want to have a real chance of being shot down, since that gives us the feeling of achievement if we aren't. But this gaming mindset has little to do with reality, and one should take care not to conflate the two.

If anything, I think AAA is probably more accurate than in real life, but since our life is not on the line, it doesn't feel that way.

[Juri_JS]

I think number and type of flak should depend on the area and target. Near the front the numbers should be lower and light flak should dominate, while important targets like the Yalu bridges or dams should be defended by several batteries of 37 mm and 85 mm guns.

Apparently heavy flak accuracy improved during the war when gun laying radar became widely available. I would simulate this by increasing the skill level of heavy flak from 1952 onwards.

[KillerBee]

Anything other than on-call CAS with FAC support would be a preplanned strike mission involving a reconnaissance mission to identify the target area, then an AAA mission to neutralize the AAA, followed by the strike mission.  If the mission you’re flying is just the target strike without the prep missions (as most are), then you’re just asking to be sheet metal fodder.  Maybe we (mission builders) need to start considering this when building a mission, ie 1 or 2 missions to include the 3 actual missions; ie., two miz files, (1) the recon to feed the mission brief for (2) the AAA prep and strike.  Just thinking out loud.  [Edit] Or just a single miz with an AI AAA mission ahead of the player strike mission.

Edited July 31 by KillerBee

[AEthelraedUnraed]

2 hours ago, KillerBee said:

Anything other than on-call CAS with FAC support would be a preplanned strike mission involving a reconnaissance mission to identify the target area, then an AAA mission to neutralize the AAA, followed by the strike mission.  If the mission you’re flying is just the target strike without the prep missions (as most are), then you’re just asking to be sheet metal fodder.  Maybe we (mission builders) need to start considering this when building a mission, ie 1 or 2 missions to include the 3 actual missions; ie., two miz files, (1) the recon to feed the mission brief for (2) the AAA prep and strike.  Just thinking out loud.  [Edit] Or just a single miz with an AI AAA mission ahead of the player strike mission.

Besides CAS, the same goes for traffic interdiction and armed recon. Together, the vast majority of ground-attack missions. But yes, if they finally did a major strike, it was well-planned. Recon though would mostly be left to dedicated squadrons (e.g. flying the RF-80), and sadly we cannot have enough aircraft in the air simultaneously to do effective Flak suppression.

Still, I like your idea of having a few missions centered around one event 🙂

In the end, missions are always a compromise between historicity, entertainment value and playability (e.g. CPU usage). Flak was inaccurate, but for large strike missions we cannot have realistic numbers to compensate for that. On the other hand, we also cannot have realistic numbers of flak suppression aircraft and the Flak is, IMO, vastly more accurate than it was in real life. Overall, I think it's an OK balance.

[KillerBee]

@AEthelraedUnraed Maybe, BIG maybe, there’s a way to use the scripting utility in the IL2 editor to do something like what bandit648 did with the Heavy FlaK script over in DCS.  I use that one a lot and it’s great for getting the heavy flak effect without the object penalty, it can also be linked so that it can be respawned if destroyed if needed.

Edited July 31 by KillerBee

[Stahlwolle]

oh i realy caused a serious discussion about aa guns here - i appreciate that! Thanks for all that comments and toughts - i will try other difficulty levels and maybe jets have been too fast for conventional aa guns... i am no expert in that topic. But i agree with the comment which said that they did compensate lack of accuracy by raising the amount of aa guns and that there should be the probability to get shot down because thats what it makes rewarding if you dont. Overall: Amazing game!