I’ve just encountered a lend-lease/captured b-25j in air sim.
That thing is a flying death ball with its turrets. It killed like 3 players on my team before finally going down. Might be skill issue on my team’s side though but it’s still a notable killfeed to witness.
american bombers have really good turrets and really good turret placements, they are the overall meta for bombers to me
Thank god I can hit the plane from 3.5k feet and mop them with 2 hits before the gunners even think about firing.
IL-28 isn’t OP, but it is good.
Idk about sim; but I have the Soviet B-25J-30, and it’s turrets are monsters.
yeah nobody said bombers were good overall
In the meteor mk.8 I have to be super cautious of them but you are right about the sea vixen they do hard counter them big time
Yep, I did encounter one in the Javelin in Sim and did have to evade canon fire for a moment, but even firestreaks can deal with them reasonably well. But yeah. It does depend on the aircraft in question and how they are attacking, but I would be far more cautious in something like a meteor
Wow no duh? You were talking about “Really good turrets and good turret placement” like turrets really matter. Any person with 3 functioning brain cells can easily take out bombers, especially huge bombers.
B-34, B-18A, B-10B and Ki-49’s.
Comparatively speaking, A US heavy bomber like a B-17 has extremely good turret coverage and can typically at least fire back at a fighter coming in from nearly any angle (often allowing for more than 1 turret to fire onto the target). In contrast, something like a Lancaster has extremely limited firing angles and can rarely fire back.
You also have comparison of calibre of defensive turrets as well which quite greatly effects survivability. Most British heavies have 7.7mm guns which are only really good for damaging engines and pilot sniping. Unlikely to get a kill. But at or below the same BR, you have things like the B-17 which 12.7mm HMGs which do good damage or even 20mm canons starting with aircraft a full BR lower than the Lancaster like the Pe-8 on the soviet tree.
B-17G-60-VE
BR: 5.3
Turrets: 4x Twin 12.7mm and 5x Single 12.7mm
Coverage: Excellent
Speed: 257kt (mostly stock)
Lancaster B MkIII
BR: 5.3
Turrets: 1x Twin 12.7mm (Mk1 has a quad 7.7mm at the same BR) and 2x Twin 7.7mm
Coverage: Extremely poor
Speed: 249kt (spaded)
Pe-8
BR: 4.3
Turrets: 2x 20mm Cannon, 2x 12.7mm and 1x Twin 7.62mm
Coverage: Poor
Speed: 208kt (stock)
Me 264
BR: 5.0
Turrets: 3x 20mm Cannon and 3x 13mm HMG
Coverage: Fairly Decent
Speed: 257kt (stock)
TLDR: Yes, most heavy bombers are easy kills for most fighters, but not all heavy bombers are built equal and some are essentially free-kills regardless of how many brain cells you have and others do actually take a few brain cells to kill. BRs seem to be more about how many bombs you can carry and less about how good the turrets are (which made sense before the split BRs)
Alright, so-
Given this is AB and you dont have much risk of ripping your wings when turning, here are my tips:
If an aircraft comes at you, flip around and do your best with rear gunners. With this you will be able to at least have some chance of surviving.
Open fire on the enemy when they are ~1.75km-1.25km out, most fighters wont expect it and will be caught off-guard, expecting an easy kill.
Maintain altitude no matter what.
If you can slip past the initial climb + furball + bomber shootdown you are generally fairly safe as the enemy will have been brought down to loerr altitude to dogfight.
What you really want to watch out for are the climbers- the 109s and the Ki-61s. These things have bonkers climb rate and can easily catch up to you. You have a few options here, assuming this is post-furball/merge.
Same strategy as before, flip and then open fire. Tends to work fairly well.
(More risky, though can be very good.) Attempt to increase altitude until the enemy runs out of WEP and speed, then hit them when they stall. Only works well on lightweight bombers.
I recommend taking some time to hone your dogfighting skills though, as you will inevitably be shot down. There are some good guides on YT- overall best fighters imo are the Ki-61s and the 109s.
I find the PB4Y2 also very potent in AB. Good armament so that approaching from the rear is fairly hard, and iirc it has a good bombload.
The main thing bomber pilots unfortunately forget is that they can never be brought down to low altitude- they will die.
I played the Swedish Junkers 88 at 4BR in arcade simply to get the mods for GRB as CAS and it spawned at around twelve thousand feet which allowed me to climb to around sixteen thousand where you can normally survive long enough to bomb targets.
When I tried to play the Lancaster at 5-6 BR I spawned at eight thousand feet and was wiped off the map before I could even get to ten thousand.Five games and nothing so it’s pointless,I guess I must use GRB to very slowly grind the mods.
Also what use is the capture the airfield for a heavy bomber?
I dont play Air games much s they are truly pathetic scenarios ,made for children.
I played Air RB to grind the 12k bomb for my Lanc and it does spawn lower than it should. To get success I found that taking a far flanking action was most reliable, though far from ideal. It was certainly effective enough to get the grind done a lot faster than just playing GRB. I was usually able to get at least one base, sometimes as many as three. Sometimes I would run into a particularly determined fighter or interceptor who would fly way out on the flank to meet me. More often than not those occasions ended the run, but there were times when I won the fight and was still flying after. I was using the second Lanc so I did at least have some .50 cals.
Another strategy I see employed often by other bombers is to rush a base as fast as possible and get bombs out before inevitably being shot down. I cannot speak to its effectiveness as I’ve not tried it myself but it does seem popular enough.
Aside from their fragility and lackluster defenses, bombers also face the problem of Attackers and Fighters that can carry bombs and employ the aforementioned rush strategy with greater chance of success. These blights on society steal valuable base damage XP from bombers. What they should be doing is going after other ground targets like vehicles and artillery. Those are easy pickings for ground pounders, but a waste of time and bombs for bombers, especially the vehicles which are on the move and thus cannot be reliably bombed from altitude.
It would be extremely helpful to disincentivize ground pounders from going after bases, and encourage them to pick more suited targets. For example if they got more XP from those targets than they did a base, and bombers more for bases, I reckon it would sort things out. While they’re at it they should incentivize fighters to escort bombers through similar means. Give XP for flying near friendly bombers, and an XP bonus for getting defensive kills.
Yeah that is all I want ,the big bomb for GRB like a Brit Pe 8. CAS is very limited for Sweden at Low BR and it was desperation to try the Junkers 88 and with Arcade and boosters I was pleasantly surprised how quickly I spaded the Junkers to full capacity.
No such luck with the Lanc due to spawning so low.No idea why that should be but boosters are just being wasted.I am facing 6-7 BR in an unmodded Lanc that I cant mod
: )
I’m never going to rush the bases in a heavy bomber faster than a P47 as its my old trick for modding single engine CAS : ) A Great way to mod the single engine CAS especially on Xbox with few flying skills though.
I totally agree with that you say and it’s nice to see a fellow player with the same issues.
I take on board what you say about the later Lancaster with 50 cal,Maybe I’ll go to that instead.
Spawn height is vital for a bomber though.
I’m just trying to get a big bomb for UK GRB as firing potatoes at Panthers in a lightly armoured bucket gets boring real quick : ) I find the CAS a real help for UK in GRB at 5-6
I find the maps for Test flight to be so much more fun that the maps for the game.I would love an air game attacking Pearl Harbour or the Stalingrad factory complex. Hitting aircraft carriers or destroying trains and bridges.
Give us some real targets not just round dots and flashing lights
While zombers are despised, a genuine bomber who fights for his life, uses chat commands and tries to return home are very welcome in sim. Rewards kinda suck for pvp due to useful actions (2 kills are you are capped for 15 minutes), but as a bomber it should be just fine with the time to rtb to rearm and fly out to the next target.
I remember you saying you had joystick issues. The warthundersim sub recently had someone post a guide to getting controllers right and bombers are p easy to fly due to twin engine removing most of the propeller plane challenges and third person gunnery.
Come join us. Just keep map sizes in mind when joining (wiki has a list).
Also scenarios. I think youll enjoy the ec scenarios a fair bit more. Dover strait ec axis vs allies feels super cool (altho bombers seemed to have a much harder time there due to concentrated targets making interception easy)
Sounds good ,I’ll look into that.Thanks
Actually… not really, to be honest. Bombers get a higher spawn, and strike fighters get a longer bomb reload (3m as opposed to 60s)
Its moreso that the bombers rarely get through at all, so the bases remain un-bombed and its decided by the ground targets.
I am talking about Air Realistic.