The m247 is fucking insane, it can engage jets from 6 kilometers and it can murder all jets, close, medium, and long range with 40 mil proxies (not to mention it has an amazing radar), and it can kill mbts from the side and light tanks easily. All at 9.0
6km wtf are you smoking at that range the slightest turn would make you miss your shots you lucky to get a 3km snipe. And York has some of the worst AP belts of any SPAA in game
But it packs a lot of explosive. Will one hit most light tanks. MBTs is much harder to kill tho, but there're some armor glitch will allow you to one hit certain MBTs too
The proxy shell works amazing too but you must be stupid to attempt to hit something 6km away lol, unless it's a clueless hovering heli
Yeah well most aircraft are clueless because they don’t expect to be attacked by stealth belts while the are flying in- though if you have half a brain cell you would know to at least maneuver a bit when flying to battle
I burst out laughing when I one shot a T-72M1 frontally with that thing. It’s even funnier because he (I guess rightfully) thought I couldn’t do anything and was toying with me.
Yep, there is a very small area in the turret ring right above the drivers hatch that glitches out. I think the 40mm also has overpressure, or at least the killcam said so.
1: most planes at that BR don’t have a warning radar, so a lot of them will fly in a straight line to the battlefield and won’t notice you shooting (because no tracers) 2: it might have bad AP belts, but it makes up for that in HE filler. If you aim below the extra side armor on leopards and t72s you can immediately kill because of he filler
It is pretty bad before you get the proxy and I’ve found that you can only really kill mbts by hitting the roadwheels. Light vehicles die by simply looking at them so there’s that.
While the imp chaparral isn’t particularly amazing, the higher damage over stingers is pretty cool and it gets pretty decent range and a decent proxy fuse.
The missiles feel more impactful than stingers and seeing an aim9 launch of an alien looking truck never gets old. Thermals also help but aren’t particularly important.
"oh boy, after getting killed by literally any enemy spaa even at 8.0, I can't wait to get my M132 and do it to others too!"
-me, mere seconds before discovering the M132 uses .25g biodegradable BBs
I wish the M42 would get true alternating firing (this is true on every twin barreled gun tbh), would be a much better AA if it had a stable firerate.
I do find the M42 pretty effective though, as i do with a lot of slow firing SPAA. I guess the only thing that could be said is try to get better, there is literally no other way to say it. The more you use it, the more you get used to it.
On a sidenote, you could also bring a fighter plane into your lineup. Most people are using heavier strike aircraft or bombers, so taking out other planes almost becomes a turkey shoot. In the US tech tre i've had great success with P-400 and later P-39 as counter air patrol planes.
Agree 100%. Ground battles should be for ground only, and the people who like “mixed battles” (essentially having the majority of both teams in helis or planes) go to another game mode.
P-51H at 6.3 is absolutely insane. The ground lineup is decent, but when there is a lot of enemy CAS I hop into the 51H. Most people don’t grind the air tree as much as they grind the ground tree so you get to club Bf109’s or Spitfires that think they can do anything to you. The occasional jet can be a problem but sometimes they get overconfident and try to turn with you, getting smacked.
The P-51H is easily my favorite fighter. It amazes me that it remains 6.3 but I'm not complaining. I hate going from the H to one of the D variants. It's so painful.
F4U-4B is my favorite. Decent turn, insane guns and ammo, decent ap on belts, nice flaps and gear works like an airbrake. Best plane to clean up germain 109k4 cattle.
I prefer AD4 for both ground attack and CAP at that BR, 4000lb of bombs and 60 rockets, and it turns very well with the 4 20mms. I once killed a mig15 with it, but that was cause I jumped it after it ran out of energy.
Yeah he dove on an SK-60 or something and had to pull a turn to kill him, he had dove down a bit further to gain some speed before climbing and I jumped him from about 1km, I think I killed his engine and then closed for the kill.
It’s my second proudest kill, the first is when I dog fought and killed a Me-262 in a F4U4
Yeah it’s definitely not as good as an actual fighter but I didnt tend to see those often, and most of the time I got shot down by SPAA before getting to make CAP runs anyway. I don’t really fly CAS anymore cause I don’t like playing air so I havent ground out a plane to go along with my rank 6 tanks and I’ve found the AD-4 doesn’t really survive very well past 7.3 in my experience
I disagree. Yes strike fighters, bombers, helicopters, and fighters with bombs are cowardly and annoying for GRB. But pure fighters who don’t go after ground targets and only counter enemy planes are great for the fact that everyone else can play ground without being bombard! What do you think to that?
>(this is true on every twin barreled gun tbh)
[ZSU-57-2 did not use alternating firing.](https://old-forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/397855-zsu-57-2-rate-of-fire-should-be-changed-no-firing-of-both-barrels-at-the-same-time-fire-them-one-after-another-to-have-a-higher-rate-of-fire/&do=findComment&comment=7428801)
The ZSU-57-2 is a special case though. Irl it has two firing modes, it can fire both guns at the same time like in the game, it can also fire each gun alternately.
I got 5 ground kills with the m42 in a 6.0-7.0 game. The ability to keep firing until all your ammo is gone is so nice. The AP is also pretty good at spalling.
Don’t fret, it’s not like every other nation gets a knock off Gepard to fill a SPAA gap. Meanwhile the US gets the M42 to use until the mediocre M163. I mean what’s the big deal with a gap of 4.3 and 7.7….
Besides the M42 was really a direct fire infantry support vehicle in Vietnam because it was shit at taking down planes.
On the other hand, no other nation has the amount of air strike power in the 5.3-7.7 as the US does. Between Mauler, Skyraiders, Corsairs, and Thunderbolts, the US has a lot of ordnance available. I don't think any other nation comes even close to the number of strike aircraft options nor payload sizes available.
It was shit at taking down *jets, which is what it faced in Vietnam. In WT it faces low-ish BR props so not really comparable and is actually decent when used at its own BR as SPAA. Though USA could definitely use something to fill the gap in between.
The radar is pretty much useless and all that ammo goes pretty quickly. You also get zero way to defend yourself against medium or heavy tanks. The Gepard is miles better for only a 0.6 br increase.
7.7 is 1.6 br away from 9.3. The gepard gets a search radar, far better track radar, self defence belts, better guns, better mobility and better survivability for only going from 7.7 to 8.3. I use the m103 and the m163 in my 8.3 lineup and they perform decently well so bringing a tank up that much isn’t good but also isn’t that bad.
Yes you can see 9.3 at 8.3 but comparing tanks against what they can fight in an uptier is always “this tank sucks”. It’s pointless to say “this tank is bad because it can fight a br 1 above it” since that applies to literally everything in game. I’d much rather fight 9.3 in a gepard than 8.7 in an m163 since the gepard has similar radar performance to the m247 which is 9.0.
Track radar only with a max range lower than a mk1 eyeball can see. Poor damage that's wildly inconsistent. No real spread making shots actually harder to hit. No AT capability against 90% of what you fight. At the same br as the ZSU-37-2 and now Veak 40 both of which have track and search radar, longer range better guns and can actually defend themselves from ground units.
The M163 is not THAT bad. Sure, the tracking radar is terrible and you have to be persistent to get a lock sometimes (sometimes you just have to shoot without a lock), but the gun all makes up for it.
What i found was that using anything other than the air belt was very difficult, and considering you only have 40mm pen anyways, you're not gonna go tank hunting in it. Take the air belt and you will have great success against air targets.
The track radar is only helpful when someone is either flying straight or right on top of you, and in that case the lead indicator is far enough away that to aim at it breaks your lock. It is absolutely insane at taking out planes strafing you, as long as you don’t have your gunner vaporised before you can shoot back.
The problem is that you will either be using the m19 or m42 or most commonly have just given up on using SPAA. This means that you have to completely relearn where to aim against planes and at the br the m163 is at a lot of planes can outspeed your ability to aim at them. However it is phenomenal when you hit something (the rounds either do nothing or completely destroy whatever you hit).
It's not all that bad. The M163 isn't great, sits at a somewhat awkward place in the US tree and it has weaknesses, but its definitely usable just because it has so damn much firepower. And the M247 is again at a somewhat awkward BR and hell to grind out, but once you get the VT-fuse-belts it's an absolute menace. I have been shot at by both in various aircraft and I respect both of them thoroughly
Trying to stock grind the m247 just boils down to going for caps or hunting light tanks and some of them can resist your shells. I only got 1 air kill before I got the VT and it was a stationary heli that took almost half my shells.
Honestly i love the duster, even as AA. I just had to play it some to get a feeling for the shell speed, but now i‘m pretty efficient at taking down planes with it.
The added anti tank capabilities are a bonus, sadly they are a bit diminished at 6.3 where i‘m currently taking it.
But i feel you, i feel the same way about the Ostwind 2, but i know that‘s a skill issue on my part, since everybody else seems to do fine and hits me no problem, but i just cant for the death of me figure out the lead in it.
The ostwind II has higher velocity than the Wirble, so aim it fairly close to how you would it.
Also APHE go Brr, can one-shot jumbos frontally and kill them due to it, its crazy as an AT vehicle since most vehicles can be penned with even 49mm of pen at 4.3-6.3
Had a round earlier in which i killed 4 planes, a t-34, capped a point and got 3-4 assists in a duster. It was a pretty good use of the 70 spawn points imo
Edit,: also killed a yag 10 but that hardly counts
The only redeeming quality is that one successful hit can rip off an entire wing and one shot planes. I've been doing pretty well with it at 5.0, but I bet it will suck balls once I go above 6.0 and planes start getting freaky fast.
40 mil or so mid WW2 SPAAs are the weak spot of SPAA.
That being said they arn't theoretically bad as a person what actually knows how to hit with them can do insanely well (I usually get at least 1 air kill with ostwind/ostwind2/coelian per game) since 1 hit with HE is a kill.
The problem is getting there needs a lot of practice and skill, and untill you hit the threshold you get nothing out of it.
This is why i want some 'near miss' award since firing in the general direction of CAS either deters or makes CASing harder. This was true IRL too: AA fire is more about making it harder to bomb or CAS by forcing defensive manuvers and making them more innacurate.
I'm sorry but this is a massive skill issue. All of the midtier larger cannon SPAA are kinda similar in this respect, they aren't too easy to use but they are very deadly once you internalise the one main piece of SPAA advice, always give more lead.
I like the M42. It is very annoying when a Fw-190 drops a 1000kg bomb on your head, but as long as you know how to aim it, you’re golden. I’ve killed countless bombers, some fighters, and attack aircraft as well. It is extremely annoying when you get in a head on and you don’t get any hits from shooting directly at the plane. I would say just spam on bombers and wait for fighters to be in a low energy state or coming towards you, or preferably a target near you.
You think that's bad? Try the Skink. Zero damage, can't hit anything that doesn't fly on a straight line, and even then the shells are so slow you might as well mail them to your target.
The Skink's only advantage is that it's at a BR where most AA consists of open-topped vehicles and pilots tend to see ground fire and orient on it for attack. But unlike most AA, the Skink doesn't get crippled in the first two seconds of a plane spraying rounds at it. Trying to shoot down planes NOT flying directly at it is largely beyond its ability, though.
Inability to shoot down planes is a skill issue not a tank issue, at least when I spaded it. It's a close range spaa so if you use it like one you'll do quite well.
All vehicles are expected to be within a BR range where their use makes sense within the learning curve for that kind of vehicle. The skink's shells are so slow that you have more chance to hit something with an SPH sometimes.
Biggest advice for the M42 I can give you is to get a good AA sight from wt live and learn how to aim with it from 1st person. Sniping planes with this thing once you learn it is very satisfying
It feels so good ripping a plane apart with its HE belts though, and it is exceedingly great for disabling enemy tanks that haven't prioritized you yet. I have so many one burst snipes from that damn thing on some small fighters, you need to build intuition with its aiming and you'll enjoy it so much more then. You have to play it like a large, vicious, bird-eating rat. (Still need to finish editing a vid where I rolled a team, air and ground, without dying in that damn thing)
Im sorry to be so blunt but if you have bad aim ofc the duster is bad, everyone can shoot a 1000 degrees per second turn, never overheating/reloading laserbeam 50 cal thats magically controlled by a ghost, hoping for a random pilotsnipe or fire that gets you a kill, or the occasional crash, but the duster rewards actual skill with a 1 shot in 90% of the time. The Us is absolute ass to play against with cas because your time is limited in airspace due to everyone 50 calling you, while other nations just suck a big one if they dont have a very skilled spaa player up.
Us Mains are the most entitled WT player of them all, and i hope we get the historical 50 cal in the future, that requires an actual gunner, instead of an abomination like the m24 50 cal placement for example. and while youre at it, fix and nerf the gyro stablizer, it was shit irl and worse than tanks that had a decent transmission. Post war us tanks had no gyro stabilizer because it was obsolete and useless, stopping and shooting was way more accurate. Meanwhile ingame you have a copium modern 2 plane stab that magically deactivates at exactly 24 kp/h
AA vehicles such as this were generally used en masse in WW2, but if it was just a couple vehicles as opposed to a whole group, then yes they kinda sucked
Its more about medium and large calibre AA not having any real use in WT (except to kill tanks).
It's all about the short range high rof stuff since we're mostly shooting at small planes at short range.
you've been using it wrong my friend
You see, you were trying to use a vehicle clearly marked as SPAA against planes like a fool, while instead you should have been using it to hunt tanks!
by design, "spaa" in war thunder are just tank destroyers with fast guns. if you want to fight against enemy air, spawn more planes in your ground forces battle
I just spaded the M19A1 and M42, honestly not that bad. I killed around 2 planes per round, and frankly it gives a whole lot of satisfaction to see a big round clap that juicy plane like that.
Skill issue but it entered service in the Vietnam war and never was actually used for an aircraft, but provided direct fire on infantry usa needs their 6x.50 aa and 4x20mm aa
Depends on which BR you are talking about.
At its BR it is pretty effective even against ground targets as it has relatively high pen. Although I prefer M19A1 here, due to better gun depression and reverse speed.
If you bring it out along with 6.0+ lineups it starts to lose out a bit due to insufficient tracking speed and relatively low rate of fire, as planes get faster, so your window for taking out plane flying by gets smaller.
First of all, make sure you are using full HE belt vs planes. Mixed belt is good only until you unlock HE and AP belts. With HE belt one hit is often enough to take the plane out of the game, with mixed belt you often hit the plane only with AP and do nothing to it.
Don’t get me wrong I am also not a fan of M42, but because its limitations when fighting ground.
M16 is the best spaa until the LAV tbh lmao
Thankfully every tank has a roof .50cal to fill the gap
Yeah... Until the jets come around and bomb you from 3 miles away
I have started a new account recently with america as main, i got the "anti-air" title without researching a single spaa and before i hit level 15
The m247 is fucking insane, it can engage jets from 6 kilometers and it can murder all jets, close, medium, and long range with 40 mil proxies (not to mention it has an amazing radar), and it can kill mbts from the side and light tanks easily. All at 9.0
6km wtf are you smoking at that range the slightest turn would make you miss your shots you lucky to get a 3km snipe. And York has some of the worst AP belts of any SPAA in game
But it packs a lot of explosive. Will one hit most light tanks. MBTs is much harder to kill tho, but there're some armor glitch will allow you to one hit certain MBTs too The proxy shell works amazing too but you must be stupid to attempt to hit something 6km away lol, unless it's a clueless hovering heli
Yeah well most aircraft are clueless because they don’t expect to be attacked by stealth belts while the are flying in- though if you have half a brain cell you would know to at least maneuver a bit when flying to battle
I burst out laughing when I one shot a T-72M1 frontally with that thing. It’s even funnier because he (I guess rightfully) thought I couldn’t do anything and was toying with me.
Probably armor glitch. I killed multiple T-72 with it, including the turmst
Yep, there is a very small area in the turret ring right above the drivers hatch that glitches out. I think the 40mm also has overpressure, or at least the killcam said so.
The explosives also overpressure a bit. Shooting the drivers hatch or turrets roof seems to be the sweet spots for me.
1: most planes at that BR don’t have a warning radar, so a lot of them will fly in a straight line to the battlefield and won’t notice you shooting (because no tracers) 2: it might have bad AP belts, but it makes up for that in HE filler. If you aim below the extra side armor on leopards and t72s you can immediately kill because of he filler
also m48s in downtiers by shooting the weird ball thing on the side of the turret also works for enemy m60s if you dont want to shoot the cupola
Cept gaijin murdered the Veak and I'm shunning the York in solidarity
I just got the veak 2 weeks before they fucking neutered it. I am fuming
Proxy fuze shells have 4km self destruction
Yeah, I just got the best round for it and killed 5 aircraft in 5 minutes pretty strong.
It is pretty bad before you get the proxy and I’ve found that you can only really kill mbts by hitting the roadwheels. Light vehicles die by simply looking at them so there’s that.
Funny how, IRL the Radar was the biggest fault of that vehicle
lmao 38mm pen and mf says it can kill tanks, even Leopard 1 has enough armor to shrug off your SAP
While the imp chaparral isn’t particularly amazing, the higher damage over stingers is pretty cool and it gets pretty decent range and a decent proxy fuse.
I quite like it too. Thermals, spotting and fire and forget. It’s a lot of fun to play. Ugly as shit and the dorks in the front don’t help
The missiles feel more impactful than stingers and seeing an aim9 launch of an alien looking truck never gets old. Thermals also help but aren’t particularly important.
"oh boy, after getting killed by literally any enemy spaa even at 8.0, I can't wait to get my M132 and do it to others too!" -me, mere seconds before discovering the M132 uses .25g biodegradable BBs
I wish the M42 would get true alternating firing (this is true on every twin barreled gun tbh), would be a much better AA if it had a stable firerate. I do find the M42 pretty effective though, as i do with a lot of slow firing SPAA. I guess the only thing that could be said is try to get better, there is literally no other way to say it. The more you use it, the more you get used to it. On a sidenote, you could also bring a fighter plane into your lineup. Most people are using heavier strike aircraft or bombers, so taking out other planes almost becomes a turkey shoot. In the US tech tre i've had great success with P-400 and later P-39 as counter air patrol planes.
fair point, Im not using a fighter however, bringing air into ground battles is for cowards
>bringing air into ground battles is for cowards AMEN BROTHER! Boss over here spitting the truth.
Agree 100%. Ground battles should be for ground only, and the people who like “mixed battles” (essentially having the majority of both teams in helis or planes) go to another game mode.
Then your duster will continue wasting space in your line up as I clean up the air and ground with my P-51s
P-51H at 6.3 is absolutely insane. The ground lineup is decent, but when there is a lot of enemy CAS I hop into the 51H. Most people don’t grind the air tree as much as they grind the ground tree so you get to club Bf109’s or Spitfires that think they can do anything to you. The occasional jet can be a problem but sometimes they get overconfident and try to turn with you, getting smacked.
The P-51H is easily my favorite fighter. It amazes me that it remains 6.3 but I'm not complaining. I hate going from the H to one of the D variants. It's so painful.
F4U-4B is my favorite. Decent turn, insane guns and ammo, decent ap on belts, nice flaps and gear works like an airbrake. Best plane to clean up germain 109k4 cattle.
I prefer AD4 for both ground attack and CAP at that BR, 4000lb of bombs and 60 rockets, and it turns very well with the 4 20mms. I once killed a mig15 with it, but that was cause I jumped it after it ran out of energy.
[удалено]
Yeah he dove on an SK-60 or something and had to pull a turn to kill him, he had dove down a bit further to gain some speed before climbing and I jumped him from about 1km, I think I killed his engine and then closed for the kill. It’s my second proudest kill, the first is when I dog fought and killed a Me-262 in a F4U4 Yeah it’s definitely not as good as an actual fighter but I didnt tend to see those often, and most of the time I got shot down by SPAA before getting to make CAP runs anyway. I don’t really fly CAS anymore cause I don’t like playing air so I havent ground out a plane to go along with my rank 6 tanks and I’ve found the AD-4 doesn’t really survive very well past 7.3 in my experience
[удалено]
the SNEBs right? honestly i may grind france, the issue is i dont want to go through the low tier grind in ground again.
maybe this is what the zoomers would call, "based"
It is not if you just target enemy planes and helicopters. I alwqys bring a fighter with me.
I disagree. Yes strike fighters, bombers, helicopters, and fighters with bombs are cowardly and annoying for GRB. But pure fighters who don’t go after ground targets and only counter enemy planes are great for the fact that everyone else can play ground without being bombard! What do you think to that?
I love shooting down tunnel visioned CAS players. It’s literally a turkey shoot sometimes.
You are so spot on!
Unfathomably based
>(this is true on every twin barreled gun tbh) [ZSU-57-2 did not use alternating firing.](https://old-forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/397855-zsu-57-2-rate-of-fire-should-be-changed-no-firing-of-both-barrels-at-the-same-time-fire-them-one-after-another-to-have-a-higher-rate-of-fire/&do=findComment&comment=7428801)
The ZSU-57-2 is a special case though. Irl it has two firing modes, it can fire both guns at the same time like in the game, it can also fire each gun alternately.
Are there any examples of it being used alternately? It sounds impractical to me
The m19/42 are tank destroyers with elevation. They are for god modes only
I got 5 ground kills with the m42 in a 6.0-7.0 game. The ability to keep firing until all your ammo is gone is so nice. The AP is also pretty good at spalling.
Play them at 9.0+ to kill anything from the side and most stuff from the front
It is reasonably quick too, can get to some funny places early in a game and shoot the back of turrets and engine compartments.
Don’t fret, it’s not like every other nation gets a knock off Gepard to fill a SPAA gap. Meanwhile the US gets the M42 to use until the mediocre M163. I mean what’s the big deal with a gap of 4.3 and 7.7…. Besides the M42 was really a direct fire infantry support vehicle in Vietnam because it was shit at taking down planes.
It's 4.0 now :)
On the other hand, no other nation has the amount of air strike power in the 5.3-7.7 as the US does. Between Mauler, Skyraiders, Corsairs, and Thunderbolts, the US has a lot of ordnance available. I don't think any other nation comes even close to the number of strike aircraft options nor payload sizes available.
none of that is AA
It was shit at taking down *jets, which is what it faced in Vietnam. In WT it faces low-ish BR props so not really comparable and is actually decent when used at its own BR as SPAA. Though USA could definitely use something to fill the gap in between.
The US gets a radar SPAA with a massive belt at 7.7, don’t complain.
The radar is pretty much useless and all that ammo goes pretty quickly. You also get zero way to defend yourself against medium or heavy tanks. The Gepard is miles better for only a 0.6 br increase.
“Only 6.0 BR” is the difference between the 1940s bracket and the 1970s bracket. You don’t play your 7.7 tanks at 9.3.
7.7 is 1.6 br away from 9.3. The gepard gets a search radar, far better track radar, self defence belts, better guns, better mobility and better survivability for only going from 7.7 to 8.3. I use the m103 and the m163 in my 8.3 lineup and they perform decently well so bringing a tank up that much isn’t good but also isn’t that bad.
Are you dumb? 8.3 sees 9.3. The max you can see at 7.7 is 8.7.
Yes you can see 9.3 at 8.3 but comparing tanks against what they can fight in an uptier is always “this tank sucks”. It’s pointless to say “this tank is bad because it can fight a br 1 above it” since that applies to literally everything in game. I’d much rather fight 9.3 in a gepard than 8.7 in an m163 since the gepard has similar radar performance to the m247 which is 9.0.
Track radar only with a max range lower than a mk1 eyeball can see. Poor damage that's wildly inconsistent. No real spread making shots actually harder to hit. No AT capability against 90% of what you fight. At the same br as the ZSU-37-2 and now Veak 40 both of which have track and search radar, longer range better guns and can actually defend themselves from ground units.
The good news is the m163 is a huge piece of shit too!!
The M163 is not THAT bad. Sure, the tracking radar is terrible and you have to be persistent to get a lock sometimes (sometimes you just have to shoot without a lock), but the gun all makes up for it. What i found was that using anything other than the air belt was very difficult, and considering you only have 40mm pen anyways, you're not gonna go tank hunting in it. Take the air belt and you will have great success against air targets.
The track radar is only helpful when someone is either flying straight or right on top of you, and in that case the lead indicator is far enough away that to aim at it breaks your lock. It is absolutely insane at taking out planes strafing you, as long as you don’t have your gunner vaporised before you can shoot back.
m163 only sucks if you are bad in spaas and rely to much on the radar
The problem is that you will either be using the m19 or m42 or most commonly have just given up on using SPAA. This means that you have to completely relearn where to aim against planes and at the br the m163 is at a lot of planes can outspeed your ability to aim at them. However it is phenomenal when you hit something (the rounds either do nothing or completely destroy whatever you hit).
i am losing it
It's not all that bad. The M163 isn't great, sits at a somewhat awkward place in the US tree and it has weaknesses, but its definitely usable just because it has so damn much firepower. And the M247 is again at a somewhat awkward BR and hell to grind out, but once you get the VT-fuse-belts it's an absolute menace. I have been shot at by both in various aircraft and I respect both of them thoroughly
Trying to stock grind the m247 just boils down to going for caps or hunting light tanks and some of them can resist your shells. I only got 1 air kill before I got the VT and it was a stationary heli that took almost half my shells.
But once you finally get to the lavAD you can have fun again!
Somehow manages to hit my me262 every fucking shot
Honestly i love the duster, even as AA. I just had to play it some to get a feeling for the shell speed, but now i‘m pretty efficient at taking down planes with it. The added anti tank capabilities are a bonus, sadly they are a bit diminished at 6.3 where i‘m currently taking it. But i feel you, i feel the same way about the Ostwind 2, but i know that‘s a skill issue on my part, since everybody else seems to do fine and hits me no problem, but i just cant for the death of me figure out the lead in it.
same, I love the duster, I love almost all 40mm AA
The ostwind II has higher velocity than the Wirble, so aim it fairly close to how you would it. Also APHE go Brr, can one-shot jumbos frontally and kill them due to it, its crazy as an AT vehicle since most vehicles can be penned with even 49mm of pen at 4.3-6.3
Had a round earlier in which i killed 4 planes, a t-34, capped a point and got 3-4 assists in a duster. It was a pretty good use of the 70 spawn points imo Edit,: also killed a yag 10 but that hardly counts
The only redeeming quality is that one successful hit can rip off an entire wing and one shot planes. I've been doing pretty well with it at 5.0, but I bet it will suck balls once I go above 6.0 and planes start getting freaky fast.
40 mil or so mid WW2 SPAAs are the weak spot of SPAA. That being said they arn't theoretically bad as a person what actually knows how to hit with them can do insanely well (I usually get at least 1 air kill with ostwind/ostwind2/coelian per game) since 1 hit with HE is a kill. The problem is getting there needs a lot of practice and skill, and untill you hit the threshold you get nothing out of it. This is why i want some 'near miss' award since firing in the general direction of CAS either deters or makes CASing harder. This was true IRL too: AA fire is more about making it harder to bomb or CAS by forcing defensive manuvers and making them more innacurate.
I'm sorry but this is a massive skill issue. All of the midtier larger cannon SPAA are kinda similar in this respect, they aren't too easy to use but they are very deadly once you internalise the one main piece of SPAA advice, always give more lead.
The gap is atrocious. Insane that the highest BR aa I can bring in my 7.0 lineup is the M42
I nailed a p-47 and F6F with 3 40mm frag shells from a M42and it bounced them like nothing
P-47: "fuck your 40mm's" \*angles plane\* \*refuses to elaborate\* \*leaves\*
All 40mm SPAA are good, you just need a bit of aim.
I like the M42. It is very annoying when a Fw-190 drops a 1000kg bomb on your head, but as long as you know how to aim it, you’re golden. I’ve killed countless bombers, some fighters, and attack aircraft as well. It is extremely annoying when you get in a head on and you don’t get any hits from shooting directly at the plane. I would say just spam on bombers and wait for fighters to be in a low energy state or coming towards you, or preferably a target near you.
You think that's bad? Try the Skink. Zero damage, can't hit anything that doesn't fly on a straight line, and even then the shells are so slow you might as well mail them to your target.
The skink is amazing tbh
The Skink's only advantage is that it's at a BR where most AA consists of open-topped vehicles and pilots tend to see ground fire and orient on it for attack. But unlike most AA, the Skink doesn't get crippled in the first two seconds of a plane spraying rounds at it. Trying to shoot down planes NOT flying directly at it is largely beyond its ability, though.
Inability to shoot down planes is a skill issue not a tank issue, at least when I spaded it. It's a close range spaa so if you use it like one you'll do quite well.
All vehicles are expected to be within a BR range where their use makes sense within the learning curve for that kind of vehicle. The skink's shells are so slow that you have more chance to hit something with an SPH sometimes.
Biggest advice for the M42 I can give you is to get a good AA sight from wt live and learn how to aim with it from 1st person. Sniping planes with this thing once you learn it is very satisfying
It feels so good ripping a plane apart with its HE belts though, and it is exceedingly great for disabling enemy tanks that haven't prioritized you yet. I have so many one burst snipes from that damn thing on some small fighters, you need to build intuition with its aiming and you'll enjoy it so much more then. You have to play it like a large, vicious, bird-eating rat. (Still need to finish editing a vid where I rolled a team, air and ground, without dying in that damn thing)
The only reason I will ever play the M42 is if they add the prototype with a track radar and lead indicator.
skill issue
😨
Im sorry to be so blunt but if you have bad aim ofc the duster is bad, everyone can shoot a 1000 degrees per second turn, never overheating/reloading laserbeam 50 cal thats magically controlled by a ghost, hoping for a random pilotsnipe or fire that gets you a kill, or the occasional crash, but the duster rewards actual skill with a 1 shot in 90% of the time. The Us is absolute ass to play against with cas because your time is limited in airspace due to everyone 50 calling you, while other nations just suck a big one if they dont have a very skilled spaa player up. Us Mains are the most entitled WT player of them all, and i hope we get the historical 50 cal in the future, that requires an actual gunner, instead of an abomination like the m24 50 cal placement for example. and while youre at it, fix and nerf the gyro stablizer, it was shit irl and worse than tanks that had a decent transmission. Post war us tanks had no gyro stabilizer because it was obsolete and useless, stopping and shooting was way more accurate. Meanwhile ingame you have a copium modern 2 plane stab that magically deactivates at exactly 24 kp/h
As a based CAS enjoyer all I have to say is that literally the M42 and the gepard are the only 2 SPAA that ever kill me
“based cas enjoyer” is an oxymoron
Does anyone know about its performance IRL? Did it suck historically as well?
AA vehicles such as this were generally used en masse in WW2, but if it was just a couple vehicles as opposed to a whole group, then yes they kinda sucked
Its more about medium and large calibre AA not having any real use in WT (except to kill tanks). It's all about the short range high rof stuff since we're mostly shooting at small planes at short range.
It’s a great tank hunter, and the guns (if you can hit the plane) are pretty punchy. It really isn’t the worst SPAA, just maybe not godly
Poor you. It works pretty well for me in Arcade.
you've been using it wrong my friend You see, you were trying to use a vehicle clearly marked as SPAA against planes like a fool, while instead you should have been using it to hunt tanks!
I like the M42. :(
The duster is luck based, not bad at side penning some enemy tanks lol
yea but sometimes, especially at higher tiers, the pen is kinda wonky
Preach it brother, preach it.
the cckw found in the French tree is worse off lol. I'd much rather play the M42
every day i thank god i play america and not france, i feel so sorry for you
Unpopular opinion: Give SPAA a lead indicator that updates every fifth second
by design, "spaa" in war thunder are just tank destroyers with fast guns. if you want to fight against enemy air, spawn more planes in your ground forces battle
I dont care how shit the duster is at shooting planes down, im not spawning in air. air is for cowards and wallet warriors
M42 success depends on how you use it
It used to be 6.7 lol
I love the American 40mm AAAs. They're unbelievably good. Just use the right belts for the right targets and you're set.
I just spaded the M19A1 and M42, honestly not that bad. I killed around 2 planes per round, and frankly it gives a whole lot of satisfaction to see a big round clap that juicy plane like that.
If gaijin gave us scattershot BOFORS shells, the M42 would be a solid wall to close aircraft.
idk it should be bad but for me it's one of the only spaas that I can actually lead somewhat so it kinda works for me
My experience in the Japanese TT has taught me that M42 is a tank destroyer and that the M16 is the best AA untill you get to the Type 87.
M42 has always been one of the worst vehicles in the entire game. There is no redeeming feature to it.
Skill issue but it entered service in the Vietnam war and never was actually used for an aircraft, but provided direct fire on infantry usa needs their 6x.50 aa and 4x20mm aa
Depends on which BR you are talking about. At its BR it is pretty effective even against ground targets as it has relatively high pen. Although I prefer M19A1 here, due to better gun depression and reverse speed. If you bring it out along with 6.0+ lineups it starts to lose out a bit due to insufficient tracking speed and relatively low rate of fire, as planes get faster, so your window for taking out plane flying by gets smaller. First of all, make sure you are using full HE belt vs planes. Mixed belt is good only until you unlock HE and AP belts. With HE belt one hit is often enough to take the plane out of the game, with mixed belt you often hit the plane only with AP and do nothing to it. Don’t get me wrong I am also not a fan of M42, but because its limitations when fighting ground.
First, it's definitely not worse than 50 cal as AA. Second, it's tank destroyer
It is the worst piece of dogshit i have ever seen