Buffs

[Flyboy]

IF it was so easy shooting down attacking planes with the gunners on the attacked bomber. i belive that the luftwaffe would have last about 6 months, With or without the mustangs covering the bomber boxes.

aces high moddels the buffs defensive guns in a way that is just plain easy to shoot down incoming fighters.

attacking a B17 formation by yourself is plain suicide in the MA, unless the buff driver really doesnt know what to do.


my request is to remoddel this aspect of the game in AH2 so it will be more reallistic.

[jonnyb]

cracks open a beer, throws some flesh on the grill and waits for the show to start...

[Innominate]

I'll bite.

If you come up behind a bomber, in AH, or in the real world, you're going to take a whole lot of hits from the bomber.  This is not the way to attack bombers in either realm.

High speed slashing attacks from the high sides are ideal.  You keep your speed high, your plane moving across the gunners view(i.e. so they have to keep moving the turret to track you, not just make small adjustments) shoot close in,  and break off to set up for another pass.

When you stay with them, and fall onto thier six, you give the gunner a nice easy shot.

Or in short, if you fly like a tard the bomber will kill you every time.  If you take your time and do it right, buffs are just easy kills.

[straffo]

You can't be serious FlyBoy  before formation it was easy to kill bomber ... now it's still easy but you can have 3 kills in one pass !

That's an improvement for me

[Kweassa]

The method of attack is really irrelevant in this issue.

 Yes, a good attack does reduce your chances of dying, but really, against a good buff gunner, usually no matter how good you are the chances are you'll be damaged in someway. If it be the misfortune that the damaged part is a wing or a tail, then its adios Tonto.

 The problem is the accuracy of the guns slaved to the gunner position. Another problem is, the interrupt gear does not apply to drones - people shoot through their drones. So basically, the "peel the onion"approach, where you start working on the buffs that are on the most outside of the formation, really doesn't mean squat.

 It's an accuracy issue, not a skill issue.. I understand that some accomodations must be made for the buff pilot, since he doesn't got all the buff crew watching out in every direction... but the way how all the slaved guns fire upto a very very accurate point... *blechh*!

 ..


 But anyhow, I don't see a change coming. Been discussed before, and HT was pretty firm about this one.

 The only way to pursuade HT is through a maiden sacrifice(preferably beautiful and young...)... any volunteers?

[mars01]

LOL, see the other threads that all start this way.  I love killing bombers.  They are easy kills, unless you come up against the great shots like 999, BGB, et-al.

Sorry if I left some one off that list, but you know, and the rest of us know, who you are so I can't see anyone getting that bent.

[Batz]

Testing done by the USAAF found that the bullet pattern from a B-17 during ground testing had the following results for 12 rounds to 600yds:

ball turret > dia. 15' - 8.3mils
upper turret > dia. 21' - 11.7mils
chin turret > dia. 23' - 12.6 mils
waist(closed) dia. 26' - 14.3mils
side nose > dia. 34' - 18.7mils
tail turret > dia 45' - 25mils

For the B-24 it was:

ball turret > dia. 15' - 8.3mils
upper turret > dia. 20' - 11.2mils
nose turret > dia. 23' - 12.9mils (Emerson)
nose turret > dia. 35' - 19.3mils (Motor Prod.)
waist(closed) dia. 23' - 12.9mils
waist(open) dia. 63' - 35.6mils
tail turret > dia 35' - 19.3mils

A lot of nonsense being posted in this thread. Bomber gunners had a hard time hitting anything in RL. I can post many a LW account of 190s flying right up dead 6 of formation and destroying it.

In fact heres 1,

Major Walter Dahl lead his Gruppe in behind a Group of Liberators without any interference from escorts . The Gruppe were close to point-blank range before opening fire.Dahl  had swung his force in behind the Liberators of the 492nd Bomb Group which, as luck would have it, were temporarily without fighter cover. The Sturmgruppe closed on the American Group's Low Squadron, as Hauptmann Wilhelm Moritz split his force into its three component Sturmstaffeln and directed them against different parts of the enemy formation. Leutnant Walther Hagenah was one of the German pilots who took part in the attack;

     " My Staffel was in position about 1,000yd behind 'its' squadron of bombers.The Staffel leader ordered his aircraft into line abreast and, still in close formation, we advanced on the bombers. We were to advance like Frederick the Great's infantrymen, holding our fire until we could see 'the whites of the enemy's eyes'.''

 The tactics of the Sturmgruppe were governed by the performance of the wing-mounted 3cm cannon. Although the hexogen high-explosive ammunition fired by this weapon was devastatingly effective, the gun's relatively low muzzle velocity meant that its accuracy fell off rapidly with range . With only 55 rounds per gun, sufficient for about five seconds' firing, the Sturmböcke could not afford to waste ammunition in wild shooting from long range. The sky was alive with a withering hail of defensive fire from the bombers. As the unwieldy fighters slowly advanced on the bombers, the Sturmbock pilots could only grit their teeth until they were right up close against the bombers. The huge bulk of the radial engine and the heavy armour plate around the cockpit allowed the Sturm force to press on with a certain impunity, as Hagenath remembers

" like the armoured knights in the Middle Ages, we were well protected . A Staffel might lose one or two aircraft during the advance, but the rest continued relentlessly on ."

 Positioned now about 100yds behind the bombers  the Staffel leader barked out the order to open fire

' Pauke ! Pauke ! ..'

From such a range the Staffel could hardly miss, and the 3cm explosive rounds struck home . Just 2 rounds could take the tail off a B-17 , and a B-24's fuselage structure was not as sturdy.  The enemy bombers literally fell apart in front of the sturmgruppe.

Bomber gunners in AH have a nice stable platform to fire from. They can easily take their time and line up a shot and score hits at longer ranges.

However if bombers become unsurvivable (because thats what would happen in the main should HT make it harder for bomber gunners) then no one would fly them.

Kweassa has it right....

[hitech]

It's an accuracy issue, not a skill issue.. I understand that some accomodations must be made for the buff pilot, since he doesn't got all the buff crew watching out in every direction... but the way how all the slaved guns fire upto a very very accurate point... *blechh*!

No they do not. They just all fire at the same angle from there plane.

And bats have you check the dispersion in ah?


HiTEch

[Zanth]

Originally posted by hitech
No they do not. They just all fire at the same angle from there plane.

And bats have you check the dispersion in ah?


HiTEch

So then convergence is not adjustable afterall?

Bill

[Batz]

Yes but AFAIK there’s no way to recreate those tests above on my end. I can't fire bomber guns from the ground and in flight with the .target @ 600 yards it flies along with the bomber so the round isn’t traveling a true 600 yards. The target is moving toward the rounds at the same speed the bomber is traveling.

Do all the 50s have the same dispersion? I guess I could test it using a ground vehicle.

But there is no gun shake. AFAIK there is no effect on the round from the slipstream etc.

Also what’s is the size of the center circle and subsequent rings on the .target? I guess I could get a friend to fly an aircraft at d600 and snap a screenshot and then paste the plane onto the center of the .target and figure that out my self.

According to the B17 ground test above the tail turret = a 45' - 25mils firing only 12 rounds. It doesnt say how many rounds were well within the 45 feet but even so I wouldn't expect the hits to very concentrated.  

But like I said theres plenty of anecdotal evidence I can post that shows the lw "flew right up the arse of a b17 formation" and shot the crap out of them. Thats not to say none of the lw were shot down by the gunners. However, the risk doing the same thing in AH appears to greater then in rl accounts. The largest risk to the lw were the escorts, not the bomber guns.

Add some vibration to the bomber guns and I bet things change, but if bombers become to easy to kill then no one will fly them.

BTW I am not complaing about the guns, bomber types for the most part are easy meat for a well flown attacker. Events bare this out. Check Big Week or Ruhr. But the statement "even in rl if a fighter flew dead 6 into bomber, he would be killed" isnt true. The Sturmgruppen prove that.

[Batz]

Zanth,

You test what HT said using the .target command

Fire all guns and see if they converge. I used to think that to until Urchin did some testing a long time ago.

[moot]

Just fire the tail gun while watching from above in the outside view.  The other drones converge on your aim at a certain distance, don't remember what it is (just put a player at that point and see distance from gunner pov).

[Innominate]

The dispersion in AH is probably what makes the guns so brutal.

In the real world, you have each gunner tracking thier own target, and several fighters attacking.

In AH, you usually have ONE pilot attacking the bombers(Ever seen six come up fast behind a bomber?  Even a good gunner is going down with that many of them.)  And there is only one gunner so EVERY mg which can point there is shooting at him.

So coming up from behind a bomber formation, you can have 18 .50's shooting at you.  It only takes four .50 rounds on any one point of a fighter to bring it down.  So the dispersion of 18 .50's covers a nice wide area, while slinging enough lead that it's not hard to get those four hits for a kill.

[Zanth]

I miss true full bomber crews like in Air Warrior.    Made for some fun squad nights - I  remember hearing that there is some tecnical reason why AH cant do it.

[Octavius]

Originally posted by Zanth
I miss true full bomber crews like in Air Warrior.    Made for some fun squad nights - I  remember hearing that there is some tecnical reason why AH cant do it.

I think I remember HT saying that the lag would be horrendous.  Not sure... would be really fun for a full crew though