I’d love to see buffs to some big strike air craft like the Hs 129, Me 210 and Me 410, and all those other big boys!
Do you know where the list is of buffed planes?
3 Likes
Should be on the major update post
I built a custom test mission to see how bombs interact with aircraft in mid-air.
A B-17 was used as the target, with bombs dropped from very short range under controlled conditions. Both aircraft guns were disabled.
The bombs physically collide with aircraft, but they do not detonate on contact.
- 60 kg bombs usually bounce off, sometimes causing minor local damage.
- 800 kg bombs can break wings or even the fuselage by impact alone.
- Multiple hits from a B-29 bomb drop can physically damage several parts of the aircraft.
Some behavior looked possibly unintended. In some cases, an 800 kg bomb could pass partly through the wing, remain on the aircraft after impact, slide backward along the wing, and end up hanging from it without exploding.
Physical collision: yes.
Mid-air contact detonation: no.
In practice, the bombs behave more like heavy falling objects than explosive weapons on direct mid-air impact.
2 Likes
I tested the Ki-109, Ki-102 Otsu, Ki-45 Toryu, and J5N1 Tenrai (Japanese heavy interceptors) against the B-17.
Some of these matchups would not normally happen in regular battles because of BR differences, so this was done in a controlled custom mission to compare damage behavior.
My conclusion is:
The 75 mm cannon can still blow the B-17 apart with a lucky hit.
The 57 mm cannon is already much less reliable and requires very accurate placement.
With 37 mm and 30 mm cannons, simply scoring hits is usually not enough. In many cases, you need to keep concentrating fire on critical areas, or set multiple engines on fire, before the B-17 finally goes down.
And of course, in a real fight, you would need to maintain that level of accuracy while being exposed to the bomber’s defensive gunfire.
Conclusion: even with Japanese heavy interceptors, big guns alone are not enough. You still need very precise aim, and doing that while the bomber is shooting back is another problem entirely.
7 Likes
The more I play, the more torn I am.
I just shot a B-17 with 45mms (about 35 hits) with APHE and no fires.
Shot him with plenty of 23mms too.
But when returning an F8F turned on me, I shot the hell out of his plane with the TU-1’s 12.7mm defensive armament but he seemingly took 0 damage, and set me on fire in both engine with only a couple hits.
So I’m split on whether it’s op or not.
In my honest opinion, it’s like some shells aren’t doing what they’re supposed to I guess, and others are over preforming?
Of course the B-17G taking so many 45mms was a bit odd…
But earlier I blew a Halifax’s tail off with two shots.
So, I think shells aren’t doing what they’re supposed to tbh.
Then I played my f7f-3 earlier and couldn’t kill anything despite getting many many hits on a G8N.
Then was riddled and killed by one in my He-177…
Seems to depends a lot on the round. The HE round is doing something each hit, but it usually takes more than one hit to cause enough cumulative damage to break something. This seems to be due to bomber parts being coded take less explosive damage(?), and because bomber skin is treated as thicker armor that’s more likely to prevent HE from piercing(?). That’s the explanation I’ve heard at least from people digging in the datamines, but I’m not 100% confident if that’s actually how it works. Despite this, I use HE against aircraft because it guarantees consistent progress.
The 75 mm APHE rounds the are technically more capable of one-shots, but is highly luck based. Because the round deals a lot of kinetic damage, it can just outright destroy spars and other modules it one hit, and can pierce through to the bomb bay. The issue is that the fuze sensitivity is too high to reliably trigger against most of the aircraft, so most shots will do very little in actual combat.
AP works against bombers for lower caliber guns since they can use volume of fire to compensate for the individual rounds lack of AoE, but it doesn’t really work that well for slow firing guns with limited ammo.
3 Likes
hi,
That actually lines up pretty well with my testing. HE gives more consistent cumulative damage, while APHE seems much more dependent on hitting the right internal structure.
The problem is that with something like the Ki-109, you have a slow-firing gun, limited ammunition, and you still need very precise hit placement while being shot at by defensive guns.
So yes, 75 mm can kill a bomber. My point is more that the amount of precision and luck currently required seems excessive for a weapon of that size.
1 Like
It should not require a lucky hit for a cannon this big. Only an unlucky hit should result in it surviving
4 Likes
Exactly. That is basically the point of the test.
A 75 mm hit should normally be the bad news for the bomber, not the lottery ticket for the attacker.
4 Likes
What? Sure u can controll the Plane while being in the gunner.
or u mean u cant on console? i am sure even on on console u can.
I just had a sim match in my b17, with a squad of competent fighters on the enemy team, it was fun and challenging, I died 5 times, once to the 21cm rockets, once i got split in half by a 109Z, and a few other times it was me410s just absolutely obliterating my poor fortress, and even 3 way coordinated attacks
props to these guys for using their brains and being good sports lmao, it was fun fighting them
The main thing theyve mentioned in that match wasnt really to nerf bombers, but buff fighters, which honestly, valid, .50 cals clipping whole wings off is kinda… nah
4 Likes
Yes, I know you can still control the aircraft in gunner view. I meant that aiming the guns and maneuvering effectively at the same time is much harder.
Not sure if i get the contect correct here but i have the feeling that especially with bomber gunners theres a learning issue from the players… because they never needed to use them in the past years, they forgotten how to aim.
I dont have any trouple hitting and often quickly damaging/killing enemy fighters at over 1km while flying a turn so they dont shot my cockpit. Its just lack of expirience for many, and also bombers are usually played by low skill people… so thats also not helping…
As much as I’m enjoying the cope from the smug dishonest people, I do think this might be a bit overtuned. I’ve got bombers shrugging off bursts of R4Ms.
I made another custom mission to test how practical it is to score a pilot kill against a B-17 in a head-on attack.
To reduce the closing speed somewhat, the B-17 was set to fly at around 150 km/h, while I used an F8F-1 as the attacking aircraft.
The video only shows the successful attempts, so it should not be taken as an indication of the actual success rate.
The result is clear: if the shots hit the cockpit and kill the pilot, the B-17 can be brought down immediately.
However, even under these controlled conditions, the attack was quite difficult. The closing speed is still high, the firing window is very short, and in several attempts I either overshot the aiming point or ended up colliding with the aircraft, including the tail, after the pass.
This test confirms that pilot kills are highly effective, while also showing how demanding the required shot placement can be in an actual head-on engagement.
not sure how custom maps are created but i know that there used to be a option for wind, with that u where able to fly backwards… or stay still basically… maybe thats smt?
hi,
That might actually work. I was trying to reduce the closing speed without changing too many variables, so I just limited the B-17 to around 150 km/h.
Using strong wind could probably reduce the ground-relative closing speed even more, though it would also introduce another variable into the test.
hi,
That makes sense. I think we were looking at different parts of the testing. The rear-attack clips were mainly about how difficult it is to damage the aircraft structure, while the head-on test was specifically about pilot kills.