Its a boat that flies so… its only real utility is in naval where it gives you the option to attack or try to cap/decap an unguarded point.
There used to be a large Air map that had stationary ships in it where various torpedo carriers could be used to effect - sadly disappeared quite a while ago along with a few other very large maps.
You might not be aware of that the mine bug is not fixed.
Despite gaijin’s claim they would have fixed it (like the bug report quoted by me above), it is still bugged…
Just take a look at this report:
Gotta love Mariner players tagging bases to bomb, when literally everything will get there faster.
…and then they are cursing other players for bombing their base while they are still half way to the target and enemy fighters start swarming them.
This plane was not dead on arrival, it was dead on dev blog.
Creating BP task around it was sadistic.
Looking forward to the BR going down.
is it better in AB I wonder??
It’s a pretty aircraft tho :)
Norway? It had ships that moved around but could still be targeted fine. I loved that map.
I did add it to rhe BR change feedback in an attempt a move to it 3.3, unsurprisingly it did not happen.
I found it utterly useless in its natural naval habitat where 3.7 is full of 37/40mm that can hit such big, slow targets with ease. And if HE-VT is available they are minced. I will admit to being killed twice, although both were kamikaze attacks where i was fully engaged with surface targets, and my AI gunner still shot them down.
My coupon remains unclaimed in the chest of shame. Flying the freebie missions were enough to tell me 3.7 was too high.
spawn it in the last seconds of a naval match?
I have, miraclously, had a norway battle recently! It was at a 6.3-7.3 bracket match though so maybe it’s weighted against for non-super props/non-early jets?
Very cool aircraft, but honestly its just about impossible to use in game at its current BR. I understand this BR is likely based off of its bomb load, but even the most aggressive of side climbing will not let you make it to the enemy base at 3.7 since 3.3-5.0 vehicles are filled with props with great climb rates and devastating weaponry.
I think 3.0-3.3 would be a much more appropriate BR for this aircraft. Its simply too big, too slow and too unprotected to face the onslaught of fast climbing cannon props.
3.0 will not help this poor thing, it still will be the slowest bomber of this br. I suggest 2.3-2.7 instead, since it is not that much better than regular tech tree mariner. And US already have one 2.3 premium plane at rank 3.
I was thinking of an AB map - the ships were all stationary IIRC.
Even as Air AB was mentioned - in order to be complete:
Imho we had at least 3 maps with stationary ships even in Air RB which were replaced (#2), deleted (#3) or extremely rare (#1):
- Norway
- Stanicza of Krimskaya
- Operation Husky
Details:
- On Norway there was a stationary destroyer / cruiser parked near an U-boat bunker (which was also a base). So with a torp hit on the warship you killed the ship and the base at the same time. Very late game a hell of light landing craft landed on the island - u could kill up to 5 with a P-108 or a Do 217 K with a torpedo, but the af aaa on the Island was way too strong.
- On this “Krimskaya” map there were 2 parked cargo ships in an almost undefended harbor (map replaced).
- On Operation Husky the allied ships (mainly large landing craft) created mid/late game 2-3 stationary clusters.map had an auto ticket win for allies ~45-50 minutes…and got deleted.
Currently i see in Air RB Midway quite often (lots of stationary ships), Operation Kuban with 4 stationary ships) and even on the Britain map you find a few of stationary ships in the harbour. The challenge is to get there alive …
It seems decent enough in air sim at least, although it’s so slow that by the time you reach a base or ground targets to bomb, you’re almost full-cycled your Useful actions timer.
The cockpit was very disappointing though.
Edit:
I decided to fly it as a gunboat.
It’s quite effective at shooting down planes in sim and surprisingly survivable (I got torched by a yer-2 and the fires were put out.)
i don’t have the plane but in preview it has the R-2800-34w which is the same version of the f8f-1 bearcat and it only displays 1800hp where the R-2800-34w in the f8f has 2299 hp. is the preview wrong or do they just have different horse power figures out of the same engine?
The PBM-5 should use the - 34 whilst the F8F-1 had a -34W. It’s basically the same engine except the W has water injection boosting combat power. I also believe the base - 34 should be 2100hp so it’s quite a bit short on horses.
in the viewer they are both listed as 34w but the w is water methanal injection i was just seeing if the preview is wrong but yes u are right the water methanal injection should push the 34w to 2400 while when its not active its 2100
I checked and was surprised to find no one has done a bug report on the wrong engine and missing hp.
I never cashed in my coupon after seeing how slow and useless it was in naval during the test flights. I doubt more power would make a significant difference to its effectiveness as its armament pushed it up in BR anyway.
it may well be a placeholder because i cant think of any other planes that use the -34 (in game)