This has been the established gameplay for 99% of the time since the game was released in 2013.
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Wow, your historical knowledge is REALLY impresive. Shot down in droves you say?
The British Imperial War Museum put the number of American heavy bombers lost per mission lost in combat across the whole war at appx 1.7% - prior to the introduction of the P51 in 1943 the number was up to 3.3%, with the higher risk missions of the war. While crewmen had, during the hardest times, 30% chance of survival this didn’t mean the bomber had a 30% chance of survival. (In other words: Meat bags packed into an airframe with tin foil for armor are a heck of a lot squishier than the machine itself.)
Yes, on SOME missions losses were pretty heavy, Schweinfurt in August 1943, out of nearly 400 B-17s sent, 60 were shot down. Around 16%. If ten bombers spawn in a mission in War Thunder, which is rare, that’s about 2 downed. And War Thunder doesnt have 88s, random mechanical or crew failures from men and machines puhed too far.
Imperial War Museum
National Museum of the USAF
Axis History Forum
But those are B-17s which are the best of the best, what about the war as a whole:
The USAAF 8th Air Force had…averaged over the whole war, a 1.7% to 2.1% daylight strategic bombing aircraft loss.
US Army Air Force Statistical Digest
RAF Bomber Command lost an average of 2.2% to 2.4% during nighttime raids over Europe (Lanc., Halifax)
The National Archives
The Luftwaffe lost about 3.5% to 4.5%…
German Federal Archives
While the Imperial Japanese armed forces experienced the worst average at 5% to 7%
[US Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific)(https://www.history.navy.mil/)
And just some closing remarks:
- The 5% “Hard Ceiling”: Historically, a 5% loss rate was considered the absolute mathematical limit of sustainability for a bomber command. If an air force consistently lost 5% of its bombers per mission, a crew could not mathematically survive a 25 or 30-mission deployment tour. When the USAAF hit a 16% to 20% loss rate during the single-day Schweinfurt raids of 1943, they were forced to completely halt deep-penetration daylight bombing until fighter escorts arrived.
National Museum of the Air Force
Bomber Command Museum Archives
- The “Damaged vs. Destroyed” Ratio: A key argument for Gaijin’s 2026 update was to model the fact that historical bombers came home heavily damaged but still intact. The Eighth Air Force historical rule of thumb was that 5 to 10 bombers returned with heavy damage for every 1 bomber that was completely shot down. In War Thunder’s pre-buff meta, structural damage instantly sheared wings off, compressing that ratio into a near-instant kill.
Our trusted friend the European Canadian
- The Geography Problem: Real missions spanned hundreds of miles where a damaged bomber could limp along for an hour to find a friendly airfield. In War Thunder, bombers spawn roughly 15km away from a swarm of climbing interceptors, concentrating a 6-hour gauntlet of historical air defense into a 3-minute death trap.
And finally The Snail in his own words. All Hail the Snail.
So…droves?
As a university educated military historian and passionate student of the subject of warfare from ~1750 to Present, I know the value of doing my research before speaking. (Yes, I can present you a picture of my degree…)
Your chance my friend…please present yours.
I understand the desire to get points and bump your grind. I really am sympathetic: I got my Fakours nerfed because the bottom half of the player base bitched and moaned about their premium airplanes getting destroyed because they couldn’t fly defensively.
Let’s make a deal: I’ll support what ever you want to do with bombers IF you support putting MY beloved pet back down to 13.0 ARB… because, and agains looking at statistics, there are PLENTY deadlier missiles in WT, including the PL-12, AIM-120C-5, and the R-77-1.
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You sir are a treasure. Thats what we need to see, SOURCES
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You’d have to have absolutely no knowledge of the game to say that.
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I tested the buffed B-17G with the following anti-aircraft weapons:
- 12.7 mm M2HB AA gun, API / M13 MGMC
- 20 mm FlaK 38 cannon, HEI / Wirbelwind
- 37 mm FlaK 43 cannon, HEI / Ostwind
I aimed at the wings and tail rather than the cockpit, since crew kills would interfere with the damage test. This is what happened.
The problem is the round you used is not the one that do the damage, is the Minengeschoss, look at the difference and this HEIT doesn’t do much damage to the bombers modules
Look at the difference
EDIT:
This is the same round and look at the difference with a bomber, it’s doesn’t have armored glass
and the engine? red at best (hitting it)
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Comment about the engine, A 1946 report by the US did find that the B17 and B25 engines could take 2-3 20mm iirc
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Another replay becuase I’M USING THE 30MM MK 108 WITH THE MINEGESCHOSS FOR THOSE TEST
Despite i am not involved in this - and idc - a short replay to your essay:
As long as you work with flaws statistical data - your results are flawed.
The reliance on average percentage loss rates is a convenient way to smooth out the real cost of the Combined Bomber Offensive. Those averages mix the high-loss deep penetrations of 1943 with the far larger volume of sorties flown later under long-range escort, plus milk runs, weather aborts and lightly defended targets. The resulting low single-digit figures are mathematically correct and still give a distorted impression of what crews actually faced.
Absolute numbers are harder to dismiss.
US heavy bomber combat losses in the European theater (primarily Eighth Air Force) already exceeded 5,500. Add the Fifteenth Air Force operating from Italy and the total climbs well past 7,000–8,000 heavy bombers lost against Germany and its allies. Medium bombers add further hundreds. Bomber Command’s own operational losses sit between roughly 8,300 and over 10,000 aircraft depending on the exact definition used. Those are not marginal figures.
Your claim that airframes were tougher than the men inside them also misses the practical point - and show that a degree can’t replace common sense:
Contemporary operational research showed that a large share of total losses began with engine or fuel-system damage that forced aircraft out of formation (USAAF) or immediate and total loss (RAF BC) due to way lower combat ranges and instant fuel fires. Protecting the systems that kept the aircraft flying could have saved more crews than added crew armour. Focusing only on the percentage of aircraft that returned therefore understates the real human cost of the planes that did not return.
“Dying in droves” is rhetorical. Using carefully averaged percentages that dilute the worst periods with the easiest ones is simply the other side of the same selective reading.
Absolute losses and the way those losses were counted matter more than the smoothed wartime average.
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In the last 48hrs I’ve come closer than ever to uninstalling this game and walking away. I’m largely retired and have enough disposable income that I’ve spend between $8-$10k on a computer, FCS, monitor, and dumping GE into the game when I got sick of grinding something stupid, or didn’t enjoy playing where I was anymore. A long time ago PC gamers in my vein held console players (as a species) in dim view. The advent of ‘free to play’ (gotcha) and cross-platform gaming has only gone to prove this.
I’ve spent 20 years as a TTRPG and wargame dev and you have no idea how badly I miss having up close and personal face-time with players. Sure we had debates, sure we had arguments and sometimes had to go for a walk…but we were friends and we respected one another. I was AFK for a long time with the Army - and then as contractor, and I’d hoped things had changed but…as with the world today it’s all gone to the lowest common denominator. Large portions of what we see on many forums across many sites aren’t even written by human hands - they’re bots meant to solicit a specific response that, when they get a certain ‘tug’ on the line, an influencer comes on to spin things for…who TF knows what reason.
What’s sad is they’re often the more intelligent, more cognizant ones.
I’d pay good money to have all these kiddos come together and meet in person. Maybe one in a hundred would ACTUALLY be toxic. I’ve met murderers, child molesters, rapists, thieves, terrorists, and heroes (sometimes in the same person)…they’re all humans and they all were forged by their experiences and their choices: Not a single one of them was irredeemable or started life ‘evil’ or were intrinsically stupid. I don’t think people are generally speaking, this stupid or this malicious (again, not talking about the thread, just in general)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: This game has the potential to be something amazing. It’s not the dev’s fault - they bust their balls to try and accommodate everyone. Their bosses are in some part at fault because their business model is terrible, it literally is the “I’ll take the penny now, fk your dollar later” mindset. But by and large…like politics…the electorate, the consumers are the problem.
I wish I’d never come home from Iraq. I wish it daily and sometimes I wish it hourly. It wasn’t worth it. Seeing this wasn’t worth it.
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So bringing up past convos.
I’m still in belief your image you posted previous of where it should “be” is pretty well placed.
But, as said previously…
Console aiming in RB/SB is atrocious.
But they’re working on the damage models at least.
I do think the Tu-1 is a lot better balanced than people are saying, given 1 engine fire is usually a death sentence. (Especially because it kills the controls over time)
But I would like to see the Bf110 and others get some love.
To add on: I think they really need to revise the severe damage mechanic for the buffed bombers.
Like x amount of gunners / engines killed = a severe.
Lastly… they need to fixed the shell inconsistencies and the ghost shells going on.
(I shot a spit fire 3 dozen times with no pt loss or ping above 25 and I watched multiple tracers fly through him. Granted it’s been bad in grb as well as nrb)
My b-17G can clearly survive:
(This is no longer about you and feel free not to respond.)
Absolute numbers are staggering, but you are confusing the raw scale of a global industrial war with the operational math that governed it—and that governs game design.
No one is dismissing the immense tragedy or the scale of the losses. Over 8,000 US heavy bombers lost in Europe is a horrifying, massive number. But using absolute numbers to analyze mission-by-mission survivability is a textbook statistical error. A global campaign that lasted over 1,000 days and dispatched hundreds of thousands of individual sorties will inherently yield massive absolute numbers.
If we applied your ‘absolute numbers over percentages’ logic to game design, a single War Thunder match would require a pool of 200,000 players to justify losing 2 bombers.
To address your points on Operational Research:
- The ‘Out of Formation’ Reality: You are completely correct that engine or fuel damage forced bombers out of formation, making them prey. But you missed why that matters here. If a bomber took engine damage, dropped out of formation, and was picked off, that is counted as a combat loss in the 1.7% statistic. The statistic doesn’t magically ignore them; it proves that despite the fragility of engines, 98.3% of the aircraft dispatched on an average day still made it back to base.
- The Systemic Breakdown: Your point actually reinforces my argument about War Thunder’s geography problem. In real life, a bomber with a damaged engine dropped out of formation and entered a desperate, multi-hour defensive struggle or limped toward Switzerland/friendly territory. In War Thunder, taking engine damage doesn’t cause you to fall behind a 50-plane formation; it drops you directly into a 30-second nose-dive into the battlefield floor because you spawned 15 kilometers away from the enemy airfield.
Using percentages isn’t ‘selective reading’ or propaganda—it is literally how the USAAF Operational Research Section (ORS) and RAF Bomber Command calculated the systemic viability of their campaigns. They knew a 5% loss rate meant the end of the force.
Bringing it back to the game: War Thunder is a simulation of individual engagements, not a 4-year war of attrition. When a single WT match yields a 50% to 100% bomber casualty rate, it isn’t replicating the Combined Bomber Offensive. It’s replicating a 3-minute execution.
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RAF Bomber Command:
59% of airmen became casualties
Out of every 100 airmen, 45 to 51 were killed, 6 to 8 were seriously wounded, 8 to 13 became POWs, and only about 38 to 41 survived physically untouched.
USAAF (Eighth Air Force): 66% became casualties (KIA, WIA, POW).
(Before the introduction of long-range escort fighters in mid-1944, a staggering 77% of airmen who flew against the Reich became casualties)
That sounds a bit more serious than your 1% loss rates per sortie.
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B-17G vs Anti-Aircraft Guns - Rev.2
･MK103 30mm HEI is added.
･Adjusted and re-recorded, taking the firing position and number of shots into account.
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We need to increase the rewards for shooting down bombers to several times their current level.
If interceptors started actively attacking bombers, it might help stop the situation that is beginning to turn into “Bomber Thunder.” In Sim, shooting down 10 or more bombers grants a special bonus called “Bomber Nightmare,” but even that is too low.
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I think so too still. And i believe that the upcoming refinement to the damage model will bring it close/closer to that.
I’ve given my opinion on this already, and it hasn’t changed.
Have not flown it since the changes, so I don’t have an opinion of it. The TIS MA on the other hand, based on my experiences, is in the same category as other bombers currently → needs refinement and fire damage to be more damaging overall.
I think all similarly sized and performing twin engine fighters need damage model reworks.
For balancing purposes planes such as the P-38 could be excluded, as it doesn’t struggle due to it’s flight model being competent as it is.
But planes such as the Bf 110, Me 410, Pe-3 and other similar ones, struggle to find a use case where they would have an advantage other than “More Guns.” Thus they would benefit from a damage model rework to make them more viable to use.
Agreed.
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I deliberately used Incendiary to show how abysmally shit it is.and that it can be facetanked by the pilot and how all-over-the-place damage is in WT.
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Losing an aircraft and losing a airman are two completely different scenarios.
A B-17 isn’t written off because the waist gunner got burned with hot oil or the ball gunner became minced meat because of flak.
According to the National Museum of the USAF, of the 35000 heavy bombers built, 5548 were lost in WWII, either by enemy fire, crashes or being destroyed on the airfield.
The B-26 Marauder was one of the most survivable planes in WWII with a 0,5% loss rate (5266 planes built, more than 110,000 sorties, 911 planes lost in combat)
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