please disable bomb drops on the ground

[Seeker]

I can see (and, to an extent), understand the frustration engendered by a tactic many of you think is unrealistic. Many of you (us!) seem to think that a ground attack air craft, going between 200-400 MPG on a straffing/jabo run should be immune from ground zero explosions.


What follows is a cut and paste from one of my favorite websites  http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/sparkes/prome.htm,  
from a link I believe Funked originaly posted. It's the memoirs of a Hurri pilot in the Burma campaign. This is late war, so the Hurricane in question is the four cannon armed ground attack version, the "Hurribomber". You'll notice in the opening passage the writer commentating about his wing man running foul of a trip wire.

A trip wire, I stress, for an aeroplane.

We all wish for the simulation of realism, for immersion. How should AH, or WB or WWII online portray the following?  :

"We arrived over the target area without event and found that the station seemed to have been abandoned so flew down the runway at zero feet to find something to attack. There was nothing but as we broke away Jammy reported that he may have hit a tripwire as his engine was running very "rough". This was not good. To crashland in central Burmah was a pretty poor prospect (we had plenty of information on how the Nip treated pilot prisoners and we still had to get back over the Yoma). I told him to throttle to minimum, go into coarse pitch and tag along.

   *******  

Just when all hope had gone a single aircraft appeared at about 1,000ft, groaned in and shuddered to a stop. He had hit the trip wire exactly on the prop-boss, broken it and had two or three rounds of the wire to make life difficult for him. It was perfectly ordinary thick, mild steel wire.

He (the Nip) had a full repertoire of tricks. A reconnaissance showed what seemed to be a 'sentry box' on the Sandoway bridge so someone was sent to have a look at it. As soon as the aircraft approached it it blew up. Fortunately the finger on the button delayed long enough or delay in the detonator setting off the charge was just long enough to allow the aircraft to be out of range.

We once went to complete the destruction of a riverboat that had been damaged by 20mm cannon fire and beached the previous evening. Since the riverbanks were high there was only one line of attack: they had half buried some metal drums in the sand, put explosive in the bottom, rocks on top. The whole detonated by remote wire. They usually exploded behind the aircraft but were certainly a deterrent. They looked pretty spectacular when they went up. They also tried to use mortars against overflyers. We had expected them to be sparing on munitions because their lines of communications were so extended but they were lobbing them up as though the supplies were endless."

Please excuse the log post, but I thought this was germaine :-)

[Kweassa]

 Give some need and purpose for attacking ammo dumps then this problem should subside naturally. I don't know much about 'what it was like' in WW2. Did they contain ammo and rounds for fighters and high explosive bombs seperately? Or together?

 At anyhow, downing an ammo dump effects only buffs.. so far, in common sense, that does not sound much critical in base capture(since under condition when base capture is under progress, one would expect defending fighters to scramble, not buffs). So nobody gave much thought about rolling buffs as car-bombs until someone found out it could be a valid(but, admitably, sort of 'abusive') method for defense.

 Drop the ammo bunkers, and make the fighters suffer too.. then base capture would need some more complication, and people would go after them, and thus, no more punitive debates on 'car-bombing' - kamikaze style.

 ps) some might actually prefer dropping the ammo and fuel bunkers if this ever happens.

 

[kfsone]

RipSnort; it simulates the sort of desperate booby-trapping that was quite common during parts of the war to try and slow-down the onslaught of an overpowering enemy. The Germans learned a lot from the Russians on that grounds.

I realise it is somewhat inaccurate in its simulation, but the fact is it IS preventable. Field capture isn't intended to be 'kill 7 acks and sneak in some troops'.