The props/early jets that have no frontal armor (that the B-29 would face if it was put at a proper BR for it) would just make the B-29 actually usable, since its armament would be able to do more than hit tiny weakspots.
Not true, and plus there are fire suppression modifications.
Yes, I will correct myself: no critical components are damaged at 500m+, and even less are damaged at 700m+. As for how many bullets you can get onto the tiny area of the wing, it will likely not be multiple due to the already mentioned terrible dispersion.
Of which the lack of armor might be the sole benefit to these planes, even though they are all much, much faster with much, much better armaments.
Fire supression modifications which will destroy the engine when used, and none exist for fuel tanks. For a single engine fighter, they pretty much guarantee you’ll die anyway.
it’s the only advantage - and it’s not that big (especially in VR) of an advantage. I do think that you need to lose your stability when you’re spinning, it’s embarrassing that spinning bombers can just get kills because their aim point maintains the same point (you), coordinating all the gunners, who should be either G-LOC’d, stuck to the floor or bailing out out (and not shooting at you with perfect coordination).
I just came out of a match in which a rookie (regarding play time in Air RB) in a B-26 killed 4 (!!!) even bigger rookies in fighters which thought tailsitting behind a B-26 is a smart move. We talk about fights at medium alt (3.5 to 5 km) - so at optimal alt for fighters.
His last victim (P-51) shot out an engine and the left undercarriage (landing gear) whilst already on fire. The B-26 made it back to base…
I killed him late game attacking from his defensive blind spot (12 o’clock low) without any effort.
There is simply no urgent need to buff ai gunners or the damage model if a rather new player is able to defend himself with manual gunners. If you watch replays you see that most of the bombers get killed whilst being in bombardier view (at least from my pov). So it’s mostly about the timing of the bomb run…for everything else i refer to this post.
Bombers defend themselves by keeping distance from fighters. Usually as a long range bomber I turn away to keep the bandit(s) to more than 1km(or well out of max gun convergence) and shoot as they lose speed trying to climb up to me. If you’re a frontline bomber or a strike aircraft you have to just practice gunning more since you have no altitude or airspeed advantage.
2 friendly bombers (a He 111 and a Ju 88) killed the enemy airfield with dropping 6 (He 111) and 4 (Ju 88) C 250 Flamm on the first run. 10 C 250 were exactly the required payload to kill the airfield.
How this could happen?
Very small (and rather rare) old map (Frontline Korsun) which limits the chances of getting intercepted before a bomb drop.
Extremely bad weather (dusk/dawn, storm, very thick clouds) rendered markers almost useless and the enemy interceptors lost track of the 2 bombers.
Both bombers were smart enough to choose the best bomb loadout (8 and 4 C 250 Flamm bombs) which produce way higher base damage than standard GP bombs like the SC 250. The He 111 killed a base with 2 out of 8 C 250s, a third Ju 88 killed the other 2 bases before.
I saw a similar outcome yesterday (also whilst using C 250 Flamm) when a single Ju 88 finished alone the enemy airfield on the Frontline Mozdok map. Only difference - he needed 2 runs and got killed after his second drop by af aaa. All i had to do was to keep the last 2 enemy fighters busy and distracted so that he could land, rearm and drop a second time.
Matches like these show that determined bomber players can decide matches (if circumstances are perfect) - but gaijin has killed this opportunity with these plain stupid respawning bases on newer 4 bases maps at higher BRs.
Heck, when I tried to suggest that gunners call out incoming fighters (as they did in pretty much EVERY air force, so far as I can tell) that suggestion wasn’t approved for review.
Lower tier is nowadays more fun because you still have some old maps. Really Gaijin is soo lazy, many people did like the airfield objective. Gaijin just did not want to deal with it in any way and just remove them on all newer maps going forward :(
When it still works it are usually either the incendinary bombs or the naval mines that do the trick.
Fighters exist because bombers exist. But Gaijin things the game is more realistic by letting fighters have a furball without any objective. Call of Duty in the air, just team deathmatch.