you do realise that thanks to the F-104’s amazing climb rate, players can make a completely vertical attack in which transsonic aircraft stand no chance if F-104 plays properly?
Playing the F-104 properly still leads to people dodging the vulcan cause F-104 can’t pull alpha.
Ju-288 is a faster Ju-177, but the 177 can bomb 2 bases.
Ju288 is the most meta bomber at end stage props. Period. The speed is why it is.
Find me players that can win a dogfight against a Sabredog, G91, etc using an F-104A/C.
All they can do is boom & zoom.
That is some weird mental gymnastics. “They can only beat you by fighting you in a completely valid manner which is not hard to pull off!”. Just because the F-104 can’t S key people doesn’t mean it doesn’t annihilate them. It’s super easy to never give those slow ass transonics a shot in a F-104 while maximizing your odds of getting one. You’re also just simply unkillable/untouchable.
2 Likes
Ju-288 is “meta” because it’s a premium.
It can bomb one base & leave.
He-177 is equivalent with slight speed trade off for more bases bombed.
The reason why people use single-base bombing is cause it’s faster and you don’t have to worry about people taking a base.
And it’s easy to line up an Aim-9B, especially at higher altitudes.
G91YS can easily take on an F-104C at higher altitudes.
Well with the 288 it really is the combination of generally quick actions with the very good modifiers. If you arecone of those SL/RP per hour junkies.
Not much comes close in Rank IV, especially fast bombers.
If there was a Lincoln or Shackleton premium I doubt they would be as effective/favoured due to the quick turnaround fast bombers are able to make use of.
Also when a 288 lands it gets an air airfield start, most other, much heavier, bombers land to be left with a runway takeoff.
That’s another plus to the 288. And of course having an aircraft up to intercept is not always going to happen, not every plane in its region has such capability nor present on such teams (especially 6 v 6s).
Most 5.7 fighters are faster than the 288, some by over 150kph.
288 is not “favored” it was nerfed majorly 2 times. Once with rip speed, and a second with engine cooling.
288 has to take off from the runway after rearm just like everyone else, this has always been the case.
I have a 100% success rate intercepting 288s with my AU-1, and still over 80% with F-7F & P-51H5NA.
That is a lot more than what most bombers can do currently, and it has a decent turret armament, so it actually as the teeth needed to defend itself, something again, many equivalent tier bombers, dont have.
*Some
Ju-288C is faster than most spitfires, and it is routinely pitted against spitfires.
On another note, Ju288C does have this uncanny ability to survive being on fire. I always say its made out of Asbestos. I think its gotten a little better recently, but my record was setting a Ju-288C on fire 3 times, and it still survivng, didnt get a chance to fire at it again, because it out ran my spitfire. Not saying its totally OP, but there is more to why its used so often than just because its a premium. It would be a potent and common bomber even in the TT.
This I dont think is right, its a bomber, it gets airspawn. if not, then its further proof its faster than most fighters.
Its back at base already (map dependant). Cant catch an already home bomber. I often see others fail to keep up.
Its modifiers are very good actually. Though I think you did not understand. If we had a Premium slow bomber at 6.0 the 288 will still be *favoured" for those using it as a SL printer. If it is so unfavourable then oddly A LOT of people use and cause havoc in the German ARB queues.
You might want to recheck thst becayse every one I’ve had land with me gets an airstart immediately after repair/reload. For the last few years. Might be map dependant but I spaded most bombers and wondered why the player I was with suffenly appear 1-200m above me as I struggle to take off.
I don’t play US. And I have vehicles to spade and not “play”. If I did I use the Do B2 so don’t meet the 288 just obliterate most careless bomber pilots.
Spitfires faster than a Ju-288: LF Mk9 [there are 6 of these in the game at 5.7], Seafire FR 47, the 5.7 Griffons.
Ju-288s are not better than any other 6.0 bomber in WT.
He-177 can bomb one more base.
Shackleton can bomb 3 bases while being slower.
And so forth.
Bombers are BR’d based on bomb potential complimented with speed & defenses.
2 Ju-288s can get a base each, with the other 2 likely dead at or before due to map spawns.
And all dead on 2nd run cause much like Wyvern, there are stuff just as fast & faster that exist.
@CoffeeBean100
Yeah, that 80% for P-51 & F-7 is first pass.
Ju-288s getting one base doesn’t really mean much when they have to takeoff for a 2nd.
Odd, it has the highest modifiers of any 6.0 bomber in game. Again, I think you misunderstand the context of favoured for those requiring easy earnings. Just most use the Wyvern.
I never got close to a Ju288 in my Spits (5.3 - 6.3 ones), they were already back to base as I was heading to them. Not that they were my prime targets ever (bombers).
For being good in a match, no. But on about how they are mostly seemingly used: earn SL quick. They don’t care as those particular players are just spamming it for relatively easy earnings.
And the ones I’ve see get an airstart of airfield mid-match.
It doesn’t, B-17E for Japan does.
Mk9s are not faster, they have the same top speed (in theory, but in reality, the 288 pulls slightly ahead) The Griffons are marginally faster. (maybe, depends on alt)
My usual aircraft at that BR is the Plagis Spitfire. In a straight line, The Ju-288C is at best, the same speed, if not marginally faster, but I can climb slightly and then dive, but its hard work. Especially when you combine it with the abysmal performance of Hispanos recently. Ju-288C can quite happily shrug off an attack and it doesnt take much to damage the engine in a spitfire, something the 288 can do with ease.
Doesnt matter if you can bomb 1 base or 15, if you are intercepted before you even get close, and in something like the Shackleton, Lincoln or quite a few bombers, you have huge blind spots, if you are attacked within one of those, there is nothing you can do. and you are almost always intercepted because you ARE slower than literally everything else in the game at that BR. Ju-288C has great turret coverage, with very few weakspots that are hard to exploit and turrets that do great damage.
It might be easy to counter in some aircraft, but not all. Its definetly one of the strongest medium bombers in the game right now. If it wasnt, no one would play it, Premium or otherwise. There is a reason its so common.
Yep, another spammed one. But I’ve rarely seen anyone struggle to stop one of those.
Mk9s are indeed slower than I remember. Fair enough.
Ju-288s wing rip at 670kph, and can only maintain <600kph on level flight if MEC is used.
No I won’t be detailing my settings, just know they work.
But yeah, Ju-288 is not some monster. It’s just an F-105 or Mig-23BN of props.
but it is still in far beter position than idk… G91
Which is odd because why is it so popular if it isn’t that useful for SL printing? The fact we now get 6 v 6s from it and the queue in RIV Germany is always in the 20s (US being the most popular throughout generally). That’s a lot of dumb people!
I glad I never bought it and chose the Do 355 for printing. More “fun” too.
G91s, especially YS, are in fine positions, it’s just they have to face A-10, Su-25, F-104J, Mig-21SMT, Mirage 3E, J35XS, Sea Harrier…
Just cause something is an SL printer [everything is now], doesn’t mean it’s OP.
I think the biggest issue though is not that the Ju-288C is good, I think it wouldnt be harmed by a 0.3 BR increase, but thats another thing all together. The issue is that when you say “bombers need a buff” And I think a lot of bombers need a buff, either BR drop or starting alt increase. Their response is, “Bomber don’t need a buff, the Ju-288C is OP”. and immediately all bombers get tarnished with the same brush.
To bring it all back to the original thread. I think many bombers would have recieved that buff by now if not for GRB or for edge-case bombers like the Ju-288C that do very well.
As a user of the Ju-288 I can confidently say that this is false. Its speed and defence make it very good.
He-177 on the other hand is just bad. Being able to bomb one more base is good, but if you are so slow and not well defended, you’ll diebefore you are able to bomb 2 bases.
Which is still faster than most planes flat out.
The only bad thing about the Ju-288 is that the guns seem very inaccurate, other than that, its quite strong.