Four guns talking

July 11, 2026 · air & naval

Since the first prototype, every plane in Warbirds has fired the same armament: one gun on each wing, volleying together. This pass sorts the roster by bore instead. The .50-cal fighters — Sparrowhawk and Swordfin — now mount a quad battery, two barrels about a foot apart on each wing, and all four fire every volley: double the rounds in the air, a genuine hose. The 20 mm Thunderhead keeps the classic pair. And the heavies go the other way entirely: the Ironclad's 30 mm becomes a single chin cannon on the centerline and the Starfang's armament is one six-barrel gatling in the port cheek of its nose. One rule you can feel through the trigger: the smaller the bore, the more barrels.

A crimson Sparrowhawk head-on with muzzle flashes on both wings and four tracer streams reaching downrange, a Starfang jet above pouring a single cannon stream from its nose, and a twin-engine Ironclad crossing behind them thumping heavy tracers from its centerline chin cannon — The armament pass: four streams weaving off the Sparrowhawk's wings, one hose pouring off the Starfang's cheek, and the Ironclad's chin cannon thumping away behind them.

More guns, not more damage

Bolting extra barrels on a fighter shouldn't quietly turn it into the strongest plane in the sky, so the trade is honest: more barrels, lighter rounds. The quad fifties throw twice the lead of the old wing pair, but each round hits a little softer — the plane's punch over a burst is right where it always was, just delivered as a wall of tracer instead of a trickle. The singles go the other way: one barrel firing flat-out puts the same rounds downrange the old pair did, so the Ironclad's 30 mm thumps out heavy shells from its chin fairing under the bombardier's glass, and the Starfang's gatling pours a steady stream of 20 mm out of one muzzle — a buzz instead of a drumbeat. What changes is how the guns feel, not how hard they bite.

The doctrine, plane by plane

The roster now sorts by bore. Machine-gun fighters hose — four streams pouring off a Sparrowhawk's wings and converging on the point you've harmonized them to, each plink lighter but the sky visibly thick with lead. Cannon fighters volley — the Thunderhead's paired hispanos are untouched, still the boom-and-zoom scalpel that rewards a clean pass. And the heavies deal one big card at a time: the Ironclad settles on a single centerline cannon slung under the bombardier's glass, and the Starfang finally matches its own panel lines, the lone gatling port on its nose doing all the talking. Fly each one and the trigger tells you what you're holding before you ever see a tracer.