I wonder why the B-29 is at 7.3, then, since besides bombload it is massively slower than everything at its BR and does not have equal or favorable armament compared to the fighters around its BR.
The Ki-61s -
Ki-61-I Otsu: 3.7 BR, no frontal armor
Ki-61-I tei: 4.3 BR, no frontal armor
Ki-61-II Otsu Kai: 4.7 BR, no frontal armor
What the B-29 faces -
Me-262: 7.0-8.0 BR, frontal armor that makes all of the aircraft except for the engines and the (extremely small) cockpit sides immune to the B-29’s bullets at 500m
Su-9: 7.0 Br, frontal armor that makes all of the aircraft except for the engines, nose guns, and (extremely small) cockpit sides immune to the B-29’s bullets at 500m
MiG-15: 8.0-8.3 BR, frontal armor that makes all of the aircraft except for the sides of the engine immune to the B-29’s bullets at 500m
While these are not all of the opponents the B-29 faces, and not all of the planes that it faces have armor, but all of the opponents the B-29 faces can pen the B-29 from farther away than the B-29 can pen them.
Also don’t forget that the B-29 is facing against planes that go 1.3-1.6x as fast as the Ki-61s.
As is the case with the vast, VAST majority of fighters. Even the ones considered to be “durable” don’t have frontal protection, that only being granted to the pilot due to the engine being in the way.
The fuel tank is unprotected, and any hit to the 262’s wings will make it almost unflyable due to a bad FM. It was designed to exclusively shoot at bombers, and its no surprise its good at doing it.
Again, the fuel tank is unprotected and like the 262, it can easily be hit from the front. No early jet engine is resistant to damage.
Unlike the other two, hits to the fuselage will also result in engine damage. Also, this is now a full uptier for the B-29, and a situation where even with escort fighters and formations in real life, they suffered great losses.
The main issue is that a single 37mm HEFI will take off a B-29s wing or tail.
Germany considered 55mm cannons and ultimately used the 55mm R4M Rocket to down B-17 and B-24s in a single hit.
The R4M carries an insane 520g of explosive over a 37mm 40-50g and even the 55mm cannon shells carried 420g. Of course the 37mm can absolutely destroy a B-29 in a single hit, except the chances are very low, as the round would either need to disable the tail controls or explode inside the fuel tank to completely rupture it. Which non-realistic can only happen from an attack from below or above.
But since every aircraft in WT has the structural integritiy of a wooden toy aircraft, they just fall out of the sky after a few explosive rounds.
Now that would be a hole with an area of whooping 0.56m² which is just a fraction B-17s tail controls and even making a square meter hole wouldn’t be detrimental.
But in WT you can say goodbye to your wing or tail.
Now of course the 37mm entire point was to be an effective anti-bomber weapon but it’s still just one gun, and a 37mm isn’t a 50mm firing Mineshells with 350g of explosive.
That being said, the 37mm is a pretty weak performer. Type 5’s 30mm tracerless HEF has 47g of filler; the MK108 has 90-102g of it depending on exact type and the MK103 has just a little less at 86g. 37mm HEF-T out of the BK 3.7 has double that of the russian gun at 108g.
Total projectile mass also isn’t kind to it, 880m/s w/ .74kg projectile, vs the BK’s 914m/s and .55kg. The NS-37 isn’t a peashooter but it is way behind the “bomber destroyer” guns.
90% of bomber gameplay problems could be solved by better map design and implementation, but gaijin stopped caring a long time ago. All these debates about bomber damage models and armament can only be implemented well if bombers get a meta shift. That said, I think the b 29 should get the 20mm in the tail turret and m23 needs to be fixed
I’m confident that a number of players have quit over the atrocious mission design of Air RB as it is right now who used to play when we had bigger maps for props.
I’m also confident they’d come back for air RB EC.
Yes, it is accurate because the hole isnt everything. Think of the energy that round delivers.
Ripping off the tail requires far more energy then a 37 delivers. And the 37mm HEFI shell is fundamentally not designed to do that. It’s in the name. It’s designed to send a ton of incendiary fragments throughout the internals. It’s going to do a lot of physical damage, but nowhere near enough to rip the tail clean off
It’s also a Mineshell, while the Russian or US 37mm is a regular HE round.
Which doesn’t make it necessarely any better. As the target grows in size, explosive power becomes less important, since it just takes a lot more to deal enough structural damage to bring the target down.
Just because the Mineshell makes larger holes, doesn’t mean the bomber is going down. While the fragmentation from the HE round can damage systems outside the range of the Mineshell.
There’s like a sweetspot where a Mineshell is more effective against a specific size of target, after which it’s not going to be any better.
For a 4 engined bomber, a 50mm Mineshell had pretty good chance to bring it down in one shot, while 50mm HE round might have slightly lower chance, since the Mineshell had a high chance to cause an instant structural failure, while 55mm made any hit practically lethal.
It’s rather comperatively unlikely to bring down a B-17 with a 30mm Mineshell due to structural damage but with a 0.5-1m fuze delay and firing 30mm Incendiary rounds as well, the chance to cause a lethal fuel fire with a good hit was much higher and the same applies to 37mm HEI rounds.
The armament of the B-29 is not better placed, and in practice, it doesn’t truly have 6 (or 13, if you want) effective machine guns. The tail turret can only cover up to -30 degrees below the horizontal; below that angle, only 4x12.7mm guns cover. However, this is still misleading, as the divergence in their trajectories means there is almost no overlap. At 500 m, the distance between a bullet fired from the rear turret and one from the forward turret is 20 m when you aiming at -90º, or 15 m at -45º.
At 700 meters, the situation worsens, with a separation of up to 35 meters at -45º.
To give you a visual idea, this is how far apart the paths of your bullets are. You have practically one less turret.
It’s clear that the firepower of the B-29 is actually inferior to that of the G8N1, so there is no way its armament can justify its permanence in such a high BR.
I have done some reasearch ( played some bombers for a few days) and basaed on my experience (+ the fact that i would say that i can use defensive armament a but better than the average player due to exessive training) the only reason why I survived in bombers is 1.1.becasue the Enemy doesnt attack me (statistically useless) or 1.2. the enemies who did attack me failed to hit me and i killed them before they could ( either missing or not shooting at me before coming into my effective gun range but that happened only one). Every other engagement I was either 2.1. able to kill the enemy but i die due to fire or crashing or 2.2. I die but the enemy crashes later or 2.3. the enemy killed me and he survived.
Putting them into perspective how often these things happened in percentages:
1.1: 30%
1.2: 3%
2.1: 4%
2.2: 3%
2.3: 60%
(statistics have been rounded up or down for your viewiong convenience)
To top my research off i would like to add that the encounters are mostly based on the skill (or lack there of) of the fighter engaging the bomber anf the bomber is mostly at the mercy of the fighter. Also Tailsitting outside the bombers effective range is a suprisingly save spot unless you get to close, but the happened 1 time (in my entire time playing this game i might add)
To conclude my findings: the people who complain about bombers being OP just have massive skill issue and it shows.
Any props uptiered into the B-29 will have no frontal protection. Many jets have no protection either (La-200 is another one, and i’m not gonna look through the whole early jet list to find out how many others don’t), and even the ones that do, like the MiG-9, you can still hit the pilot AND the engines easily.
Which here in War Thunder just means the fire will keep burning for longer. Fuel tank fires only go out if they have no fuel or if you’re a Ju 288.
At 500m it still has so much pen it easily goes through the wing spar. And it’s not like the B-29 is only firing one or two of these, you can easily get 3 turrets firing at anyone.
At 800m it now gets stopped by the wing spar, but still turns it orange. The wings are NOT “impenetrable”.
And the 8.0 jets are also lacking in protection. The Meteors’ 12.7mm of armor in front of the pilot will be easily penetrated at 500m (and since both aircraft will be moving, the distance at which you can penetrate it will be greater). None of the Vampire, Venom, Sea Hawk, Attacker FB, or Swift F1 jets have pilot armor. The R2Y2s don’t have armor. The Sabres don’t have armor. The Me163 is extremely fragile and its armor does not protect the fuel tanks.
I can keep going.
