Want an interceptor to track down bombers? Fighter with great climb rate.
Want to blow up ground targets without getting blown to smitherines before you even reach your target? Climb in a fighter with bombs.
I honestly can’t think of hardly anything that a strike aircraft or bomber would be advantageous for in war thunder lol. The only reason I research them is for tasks/ challenges.
if you need to score kills on bots in aircraft battles there is nothing better than an attack aircraft like the Il-8 or the Helldriver, I don’t understand what you’re talking about
Honestly, yeah. In generally it is better to take out strike aircraft or fighters over bombers. I was playing the beaufighter mk 10 and I had the option to bring 2 1000lb bombs. This was enough to destroy a base by itself
With none of the trade offs, you in the beaufighter, you get 4 20mm chin mounted cannons, and 8 7.62mm Mg’s, you even get a rear gunner; and good climb rate. It’s just better thank bringing the Wellington or something.
There’s a few things that favour interceptors that you don’t really appreciate in Arcade or realistic warthunder battles, and maybe not even in sim.
Interceptors often had heavy, nose mounted guns (P38 vs other US fighters), allowing for longer range engagement to avoid tailgunner fire.
This is less of an issue in AB/RB because people set convergence to 600-800 meters and click from very far away thanks to markers and mouse aim making long-distance sniping a breeze even with wing-mounted guns. In SB, due to visibility (no markers, cockpit view) engaging enemy fighters usually occurs at 100-500 meters so most people I know use realistic convergence at 300 or so meters.
Using wing-mounted guns with 300 meter convergence to hunt a bomber can become very annoying as your shot spreads out diluting damage. This is extra annoying with .50 cals because you want to shoot engines to get them burning.
Early interceptors tend to have more consistent high altitude performance. This is not just in presence of super/turbocharger gearing and power to weight, but also design propeller efficiency (two or more engines can transmit more power into thrust than one engine without needing more modern propeller blade design. Propeller blades are capable of “stalling” at low indicated airspeeds and flying very high usually means very low IAS)
Beyond this, look at the aspect of the wings. Interceptors usually have relatively massive wings, almost reminiscent of gliders
This is irrelevant in Warthunder because you’re fighting at 1-4 km altitudes, occasionally 6km but only ver rarely pushing it into the 8 km altitude range where bombers found themselves flying at IRL to avoid flak and interceptors.
This is true in all 3 game modes due to the small maps and objective design
Late war fighters often have comparable high alt performance
Finding targets.
The main advantage of a lot of late war interceptors (rudimentary in-flgiht radar that was too big to stuff into a single-engine fighter) is irrelevant outside of sim and even in sim we’re usually flying daytime in clear weather so visual spotting isn’t too difficult.
And before radar, you’d have radio. Big plane (beaufighters for instance) can carry much stronger and better radios to coordinate air intercept.
And with pre-radar aircraft, most people leave games in sim with terrible weather because it makes gameplay far less enjoyable if you want cool dogfights.
Endurance & survivability
Dying in warthunder comes with no consequence.
Dying in real life, well - duh.
Intercepting bombers - especially without third person view, markers and realistic controls - is an artform where even if you do everything right you might still get hit by a few stray bullets as you extend away.
If your plane has a single engine and those bullets hit a radiator line or caused an oil leak?
Maybe you can glide back home, maybe your engine won’t seize before you reach friendly territory.
However why risk it?
Just use two engines so that even if one goes down, you still have a back-up to limp back home.
Suddenly it makes sense to use a big fat plane that’s worse at dogfighting.
Also it’s prudent to note that real life usage of aircraft and what labels Warthunder gives them do not always line up. A lot of planes that were used as interceptors are marked as fighters or strike aircraft. Presumably, this is because of balance by how high/where they’re allowed to spawn. I recommend Greg’s airplanes and cars & IHYLS for decent quality documentaries on aircraft.
Thanks for enlightening me. I should have checked that, usually I will see some comment relevant to arcade to figure that out. I think the thread is still relaxant to realistic battles too though.
Attackers, strike aircraft, and bombers are better at destroying ground targets. They hold way more ordinance and have avionics that are made for targeting ground units. You’ll notice it more at higher tiers. For example, the JH-7 vs the J-8, the Mig-21 Bis vs the Su-25, or the F-5 vs the AV-8. Yeah fighters are faster and have limited air-to-ground capabilities, but they don’t perform the job as well as dedicated aircraft.
