It’s complete nonsense that bombers start from 5000 ft. The fighters you encounter can easily reach an altitude of 5000ft, and even if you go to altitudes like 7000ft, you cannot escape from the fighters.
Welcome to the forum. At this moment you are right. I managed even to go at 20.000 ft and in the end they still catch ya. It seems that Gaijin has no interest in fixing this issue. The problem persists a long time and no change in sight.
Bombers IRL flew in formations to make engaging them much more risky.
Bombers in War Thunder are incentivized to target different bases to maximize rewards. Additionally, fighters on your own team are not encouraged to defend you and instead to go after enemy bombers which are equally easy targets.
“Why are bombers weak?” They’re not, War Thunder’s Air Game Modes are not designed to include them.
Players can Squad up with other like minded players, and there are some in game advantages to that too
But yes, thats why they had developed a number of box formations for the likes of the B-17s / B-24s during the war, it did maximize bombers covering each other
Without the ability to maneuver defensively, they become quite useless. You’ll be hit by enemy bullets five times more often than you can hit them. Have you ever tried playing in bomber and in particular to hit with its peculiar ballistics?
Bombers, specifically the German ones, are weak in this game because many of them are missing armament or are incorrectly armed with just machine guns when they should have some sort of cannon:
The available Air based game modes just aren’t designed to favor Heavy bomber gameplay. Your only option in a heavy is to fly a long high route and pray that you don’t get spotted. If you do get spotted, you gotta hope a teammate is around to assist you, or you get a lucky gunner kill.
Gaijin has tried a few things to balance heavies over the years. The results are either OP indestructible deathstars, or what we have now. There’s really no middle ground, and I’d rather deal with what we have now (even as a bomber player), than the nightmare that was once indestructible gunships.
Fast bombers are still very effective, and are much less of a pain to use than the heavy bombers.