They just increased the BR from 6.0 to 6.3 - with a 3 x 800 kg or 2 x 1.500 kg bomb load. You need all 3 800 kg bombs to kill a base…
I predicted an additional stealth nerf. I keep you updated.
One easy change could be (on modern bombers) ECM/Jammer pods.
bombers now explode much too often by beeing hit in their bombload - its a additional nerf to them…
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Bombers are absolutely way too fragile. They crumple if somebody farts in your general direction with anything over 7.92mm in caliber. Are they tougher than that historically? Yeah. Could they actually survive engagements with hostile aircraft for longer than 2 seconds IRL? Yeah. If they didn’t, then I don’t imagine that the USA or England would have bothered to make… oh, around 57100~ bombers if we just go off of some of the popular ones - the B-29, B-17, B-24, B-25, B-26, and Lancaster to name a few.
However, do I have news for you; Gaijin knows the truth of historical accuracy! Turns out, all those nations must have been incompetent morons, because making those 57k+ bombers and who knows what else was absolutely worthless! They did nothing, they hurt nobody, they could only hope to shoot down a fighter if it was hit by a meteor first. That’s the truth plain and simple; bombers absolutely suck, and Gaijin knows it all.
It’s never gonna change. Just buy another top tier jet and go screw off.
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Irl and wt have nothing in common - u play a video game optimized to be played by kids.
If you would have invested your time doing some research you would have found out that bombers were just good for 3 things:
- Bombing of population centers due to missing accuracy
- Sending out thousands of airmen into certain death
- Creating jobs in the US, UK & Canada & making the producing guys rich
The myth of B-17s or Lancasters being more than death traps for their crews is nothing else than a modern fairy tale. If you look up actual combat losses of the USAAF and the RAF BC in the ETO you find out that they were rather easy targets - the comparable low loss rates were achieved after they were sacrificed in a war of attrition, so spring/summer 1944 when the main threat were mainly aaa batteries.
WT is unable and unwilling to provide asymmetric lobbies or historical scenarios as nobody wants to fly with 37 Me 262s vs 1.200 bombers and 600 escorts like on March 18, 1945.
From my pov there is no way to play a bomber successfully as long as their pilots are not experienced and successful fighter pilots - whilst i fully agree that anything above BR 4.0/4.3 (in Air RB) requires not only exceptional pilot skills - u need a hell of luck too.
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Destroying the German fuel industry, holding back u-boat and other general production, bringing the war to a swift end with Japan, diverting a major proportion of German AA and fighter defences away from the front lines.
none of which are relevant to WT of course!!
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of course they are not relevant, thank you for pointing that out! I was worried I had forgotten, of course. :) However - there is no reasonable way that they would have continued making bombers whatosever if any one of them could be slaughtered and turned inside out by a simple fart in the wind by a 20mm autocannon. You do know that right? Do you need me to spoon feed it to you?
If somebody makes twenty large airplanes, but somebody can destroy one large airplane with the mild suggestion of a few tiny rounds that cost very little to manufacture, do you know what happens?
People make airplanes that can climb as high as the bombers, and just use those tiny rounds. If warthunder was even close to the reality, then Germany would have won and we wouldn’t have to suffer with warthunder being the ‘only’ mass-multiplayer, easy access mass-vehicle simulator. Among a few other ‘unsavory’ things. Does that make sense?
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Do I understand correctly that you are switching to tail gunner?
I tried this in AAB, on various bombers, including those with fairly powerful defensive weapons. But if I play as a gunner, I can’t maneuver at the same time. As a result, I just get shot down faster than when I play as a pilot and try to actively maneuver, albeit on a heavy bomber.
Whereas when actively maneuvering, for example on the Pe-2-31 (aces crew + all defensive skills 10/10), AI gunners periodically shoot down inexperienced players, sometimes even two per match. While I’m spinning like a squirrel, at the same time trying to get to the base or ground targets.
disable ‘autopilot for gunner and bomb sight mode’.
In ARB or ASB, AI gunner goes nearly blinded and barely can shoot 210m in 75lv+aced crew
So, use of gunner view is ESSENTIAL when you play ARB.
Especially when enemy fighters are going to shoot 20mm at you more than 2km away.
Situation in AAB seems a lot much better when AI gunner can shoot 800m with their eye when 75lv+aced crew.
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Short version:
You are spreading myths created to tell a certain narrative which is misleading at best.
I am not following this narrative which is simply trying to hide the brutal truth of war: Hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted in a war of attrition. So i see this from two sides: The airmen which were sent to (almost) certain death without having the necessary accuracy to hit their targets - and the civilians burned to ashes if they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Long version:
Hidden as iimho off-topic
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The US oil embargo forced JP to die either slowly due to a lack of oil or violent in a prolonged war they could not win. That’s why we saw Pearl Harbor (as a high risk gamble) which was solely aimed to neutralize the Pacific Fleet in order to get a negotiated peace.
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The Germans were stupid, but not that stupid - google the vid “WW 2 War for Oil” by TiK. The war was lost latest mid 1943, others say in 1942 as they were unable to conquer the oilfields in the Caucasus. The RN sea blockade prevented oil imports and Romanian oil plus their synthetic fuel was never enough to allow any offensive operations after mid '43. Even the Battle of the Bulge was a one-way trip as they thought they could capture US fuel depots in order to keep their tanks operational.
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U-boats: Look up the french civilian casualties in the fruitless attempts to bomb the U-boat bases in France.
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General production: Another myth - depending on which sources you want to cite the industrial capacity of Germany remained to 75-85% intact. Bomber raids killed mainly logistic infrastructure like railyards which had the additional benefit that they could flatten residential areas as the most logistic hubs were in city centers.
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So even in case that allied bomber fleets hit here and there a tank, u-boat or aircraft factory - the Germans never had a real shortage of equipment, they simply had no fuel to train soldiers / airmen / tankers and operate them. I mean there is a reason why the Italian Navy was parked in harbors, they had no fuel to operate them - and the LW had in March 1945 the highest number of available fighters in the entire war…
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I recommend looking up the total amount of bombs dropped on JP and Germany. You find out that the majority was dropped after the LW ran out of pilots and fuel or because JP had no effective home defense fighters vs B-29s at day and night.
Swift end:
The Casablanca Conference in January 1943 determined the goal of unconditional surrender (the allies were fully aware that they outproduce and outfuel the axis and had already won) which prevented a negotiated peace with the axis powers and was extremely helpful to keep the US war machine running and delivering supplies to the USSR in order to allow them to die whilst taking the majority of combat casualties.
I agree from a holistic perspective.
This is the only way to fight in bombers.
Imho this:
… is just 50% of the solution:
As long as you stay in mouse aim mode the plane tries to auto center itself which makes evasive action way less effective.
This:
is a common misconception.
A reply from an older thread:
And this is still valid today.
I watch frequently my replays if i got hit by gunners - and in >90% of my bomber kills i killed them whilst their player was in bombardier view and the ai gunners were still able to get a few shots off…
I mean just try to use common sense and remember the bomber bot invasion - you saw B-25 / B-18B / Ju 288 bots with thousands of matches and hundreds of kills. Even the biggest fighter noobs have enough gun time to kill a bomber before they close in to 210 meters, so it is logical that the effective range is way higher.
Btw: I met frequently a guy in a PBJ (for several weeks now) and a B-18 B with bot scripts. The PBJ is quite successful as long as enemies approach from behind. Ofc i watched the replays (no manual player input, checking pilot view - option 2) and reported them weeks ago…
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Damm these are good tips
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Still too fragile to play
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I think you need to spoon feed history to yourself - you forget that the people making the large aircraft thought the same thing and got proved wrong on several very costly operations.
So they also made smaller aircraft to escort them, or went to night bombing - where it was harder to find those large aircraft and shoot them down, but even at night they still managed to lose about 8000 such aircraft to combat.
Also your argument from absurdity is very illuminating - thank you for the insight.
What myths are those?
The comments I made are from various historical comments and analysis, including more recent analysis of all records and comments from both sides.
Eg ICRC Targeting the city: Debates and silences about the aerial bombing of World War II: https://www.icrc.org/sites/default/files/external/doc/en/assets/files/other/irrc_859_maier.pdf
The Historiography of the Allied Bombing Campaign of Germany. The Historiography of the Allied Bombing Campaign of Germany. Ryan Patrick Hopkins East Tennessee State University
https://dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3355&context=etd
The Strategic Bombing of Germany in World War II: Costs and Accomplishments, Kenneth P. Werrell,
The Journal of American History, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Dec., 1986),
There has never been a time where civilians were not killed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time - the scale of this one was large, but not unusually so - cf massacres of populations after sieges in ancient times, or during rebellions
It is not about sides or historical comments - it is about common sense. I described in detail in my previous post why you are spreading myths.
The difference is just that you refuse to accept that history is biased by definition and you have to take a look at the whole picture.
You might be able to google old ads, studies or papers recommending smoking as good for your health - that does not make them true.
As this thread deals with bombers and the “fragility” this debate is completely off-topic.
Off-topic
I see it from the perspective of an airman drafted to fly in the ETO and being part of the 16,000 bombers (USAAF & RAF BC) which were lost there - or from the poor souls getting bombed.
So the question is: Were those casualties necessary / justified or not?
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Your cited sources are either just repeating old narratives (source #2 is a joke) or try to justify evil actions just because the other side did that too - all singing the song of “it was a good war”.
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As soon as you acknowledge that history is biased it makes zero sense to look up papers citing other (and older) papers - you need common sense.
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So i can check the books in my basement and can provide you with an even longer list stating that strategic bombing in WW 2 was necessary, effective and justified - and they all use the same narrative.
If you want to take the red pill:
Read about economic developments in the US and Europe before, during and after WW 2 and the shift of the US from a economic world power to the sole military superpower in 4-5 years - despite the US citizens were not interested in being involved in any kind of trouble.
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Hi, I think what is so easily lost in these discussions - given the nearly autistic obsession that we passionate Snail addicts have for technical and historical accuracy - is that the central point of buffing bombers is to make the game fun again. Right now they have been so over nerfed, that they are just straight up unplayable. Hello ----> it’s a game, it’s about the fun.
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I just finished an Air RB match in my B-18 B - and i saw two main factors which are making playing bombers so miserable:
- Nerfs of gunner accuracy and damage output of gunners
- Low skill fighter pilots dedicating their entire match to kill a bomber
What happened?
Long version:
- In this match (replay link) a player spotted my contrail after 3 minutes and tried to kill me until he had to break of at 15:45 game time.
Summary
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His effort out of these 12 minutes was 25 points for a hit, just a scratch.
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My mission score was 350 points for 8 hits and one crit.
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I saw him after around 4 minutes, checked his player card and decided to break off and turn away with a distance of 5-6 km. By looking at his stats (28k player kills vs 20k deaths in Air RB) it was obvious that he would go for me - whatever it takes.
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I mean a high and very fast B-18 B is one of the most difficult targets to kill - especially if you get peppered from 2.5 km and the pilot has a level 75 crew and an aced plane - this means 10 seconds reload time.
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Trying to go for a B-18 B with a Yak-3 (4.3 Air RB) is just brain dead; the Yak-3 is too slow above 6 km (=not suffient excess speed for an attack) and you have to get within 1.4 km to score a hit with the 20 mm ShVak. Otherwise the shell will de-render before they can reach a very fast (>650 kmph TAS) enemy.
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Zoom climbing does not work if the B-18B dives slightly as most guys have no clue that things like wing rip speed are connected to TAS values (585 kmph IAS is more than 720 TAS above 6 km) - the Yak-3 scratched his rip speed in such an attempt.
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After the Yak-3 broke off i bombed my two bases in order to get the research bonus and finished the match at 2nd place…
Short version:
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Until late 2022 a single hit with the Swedish 13,2 mm auto cannon killed reliably any single engine fighter. The shells fired had an HE filler which caused pilot snipes and or engine / fuel fires and the gunner was accurate at ranges even > 3 km.
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Out of of nowhere i was unable to hit anything at longer ranges and planes like XP-50s or Yak-3 are able to tanke 8-9 hits within 2 km without getting slower…and it looks like the cannon just fires AP rounds; i made the pilot yellow…
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Pilots going exclusively for bombers are not really new - but from my perspective their numbers increased like hell.
With reference to the title “too fragile to play?”:
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Yes. With just a few exceptions.
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But - most bombers suffer also from artificial spread added to their turrets. That gaijin has done this on purpose is imho obvious.
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I still see a need for a reversal of this spread.
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If you fly fighters you might have noticed that gaijin has reduced the artificial spread for the 50 mm Me 262. Time for them to do this for bomber gunners too.
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In one of the recent AAB battles I shot down a P-47D in a dogfight in a Soviet Ar-2. It took 8 or 9 laps before the single 7.62 ShKAS gradually ate it. And this was a Marshal with more than 30 days of playing the fighter!
Moreover, from the very beginning of the battle I deliberately went towards a distant side base, in a shallow dive, trying to achieve the maximum possible speed. And I tried to hide near the ground, using the mountainous terrain. But this bastard tagged along with me halfway to the base, although he could have taken the ground units, which was on the way and got more points.
In another similar situation, I ran away for a long time in a Pe-2, bombing three bases along the way, and in the end my bomber rammed an F4U, which could not shoot me down. I asked him: why was he sticking to me and got the answer “I’m just learning to play, fighters shoot me down quickly”. Snail made bombers such a simple punching bag that even noobs can see it.
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