I used to like jaboing, but in AH?

[Fokker]

In WB i did a lot of jaboing with bombs and rockets. Low alt intruding on fields to knock out ack, radar etc.

In AH the ack makes this not realy feasable. The ack is far to accurate and deadly. A few pings and you explode.

Even with several jabos attacking together you have a slim chance to get out unharmed. Trying to jabo as a single attacker is just out of the question.

I hope they will do something about this. It realy takes away a bit of what can be quite fun and challenging.

These "radar" guided acks sure are not WW2 style and realistic.

[skernsk]

In AH the ack makes this not realy feasable. The ack is far to accurate and deadly. A few pings and you explode.

There is 40mm ack that can wreck your whole day.  The trick is to not fly at the ack for too long...give it a burst and manouver..if ya miss don't try to go for it till next pass.
It takes practice and alot of dieing  

[Fokker]

The trick is not so much being hit attacking, its getting away thats hard. Even when you manouver to try to avoid the ack.

[Fokker]

In real life it was often used to fly fast and very low alt to make it difficult for ack to get to you. In AH ack is just as accurate at very low alt as at any other alt within range.

In the millitary i was an AA-guy myself. I know how hard it is to hit. Even a drone at slow speed and straight flight is hard to hit.

[LLv34_Camouflage]

I just finished reading Pierre Clostermann's "Le Grand Cirque" last night. I believe he was the top-scoring Tempest ace in WW2.

During the last years of the war in Europe, the Germans had vicious AAA all over their facilities.

In the beginning of 1945 Clostermann's squadron was ordered to attack the LW base of Schwerin with 8 Tempests. They commenced the attack, starting their dive from the sun, at 14 000ft, towards the field:

Loose translation by yours truly:  
 

Ack!  Oh my god what ack! Muzzle flashes from the 20- and 37mm guns light up the field. There must be atleast 40 of them! A carpet of white explosion clouds spreads above us. The black puffs of the 37mm burst around us in "pearl threads" of 8. What an inferno of AAA!

Physical fear is the worst pain man can suffer. My heart feels like it is jammed all the way up to my mouth, I'm soaking wet from sweating - the shameful, sticky sweat of a rebelling body. My toes clutch inside my boots.  

We dive desperately deeper into the smoke of the explosions - tracers on the right - left - crossing - explode beside our wings and blind our eyes.

We are 1500 meters from the ring of the field, where people are running - altitude 50 meters. Lower for God's sake, lower! Lower lower!! For God's sake - my voice is probably hysterical.

A large grassy airfield, that is being cut by grey runways, races towards us. Our speed is 900 km/h."

<clip>

The attack is over - almost.

-Attention Filmstar planes - resume formation above the field at 10 000ft.
-Attention Pierre, this is red three. I don't think there is going to be any formation, all others have been shot down.

Impossible! I let my eyes wander all 360 degrees of the horizon, I look everywhere, also the terrible pyramid of AA-fire, that reaches above Schwerin.  I don't see anyone.

13.04. The attack started at 13.03. From the end of our dive to this moment, this nightmare took 35 seconds. In that time we lost 6 planes out of 8!

I don't think the AAA in AH is too much overmodelled.  

Camo

------------------
Camouflage
XO, Lentolaivue 34
 www.muodos.fi/LLv34

Brewster into AH!

"The really good pilots use their superior judgement to keep them out of situations
where they might be required to demonstrate their superior skill."

[Dowding]

The ack is rough at first, but practise those high speed runs and full-rudder barrel rolls out and you should be ok. It's gets easier the more planes you have attacking.

[Tac]

welcome to AH, home of the gameplay concessions.

[Jigster]

Fokker may be one of the unlucky few, like me, who through so bizaar twist of fate, setup, and whatnot makes the ack seem totally unreal, much to the contrary of what most others are seeing.

One or two seconds after entering the  8k diameter ack bubble and I am assured death. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, slipping or tucking doesn't work on ack anymore for me. One of the large caliber AAA guns always wacks me before entering gun range for my own weapons, save the Yak-T.

Strafing attacks against Ostwinds are safer for me right now...I rarely get close enough to do accurate bomb releases in normal dive bombing from 10k or so on air bases anymore.

Oh well  

[flakbait]

Just as a reference, a single 40mm triple-A round is 1.5 inches across and weighs about 3 pounds. That'll put a dent in anything flying. You don't want to know about the 88....

-----------------------
Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"For yay did the sky darken, and split open and spew forth fire, and
through the smoke rode the Four Wurgers of the Apocalypse.
And on their canopies was tattooed the number of the Beast, and the
number was 190." Jedi, Verse Five, Capter Two, The Book of Dweeb
 

[funked]

Fokker, a lot of guys are going to give you some helpful advice here, and it will work, but you are correct that it is entirely too accurate.  My father was also an AAA gunner and he had a good laugh watching the AH acks.  The US military would pay billions for air defense guns that were this accurate.  I guess it's a gameplay concession.

[Fokker]

I dont think the relation to Pierre Closterman is fully relevant. Notice that he mention more than 40 AA units firing. In the AH field defence is much less.

I was an AA man and know this in AH is unreal. Even when we had radar tracking of guns we could not achieve a hit rate like in AH. On manual control of guns its very hard to hit anything unless its coming straight towards you, or going straight away.

The AA tactic was alot about making a wall of fire for the planes to go through, and hoping for hits by scrapnell, and disturbing the pilots aiming.

When training AA on drones we may get a classified hit every couple of tousand rounds. And drones where slow and going in a straight path.

On fast planes, like jets, we couldnt even move guns fast enough to track them, unless they came at a very low angle towards, or away from us.

[Fokker]

Another element is accuracy at range. Our 40mm Bofors AA could fire at a range more than 7 to 8K. However, we never counted our effective range more than 4K. More than that we could never hit anything, even on radar tracking.

Range of smaller caliber would be even less.

In AH the ack hit you quite well, even at max range.

[funked]

Fokker, thanks for the info.  These are exactly the same problems that my father described.  And he was using a Vulcan, 6000 rounds per minute with radar.  He said they would shoot at targets which were towed by drones.  They could hit the target occasionally, but it was more fun to shoot at the drone, because it gave a much more pleasing result when you hit it.    

Back on topic, I think AH needs to simulate the limits on rates of traverse and elevation, and the difficulty of estimating lead and range on a target which is pulling gees.

If this means they need more acks at each facility, then so be it.  But to say that 10 UFO-Tech Year 3000 UberAcks® are equivalent 40 WWII acks is silly.

[This message has been edited by funked (edited 04-15-2001).]

[Fokker]

Another issue on ack is that they keep firing continuous, with no limitation on ammo. In the real world the 40mms couldnt shoot more than 8-12 shells at the time (2-3 clips), then the loaders needed to put in new clips. That should be simulated in AH with breaks between 40mm salvoes.

In smaller calibres you had the same situation. Ammo boxes neeeded to be replaced quite often. Firing continuous as in AH was out of the question.

It should not be difficult to simulate these ammo changes in AH ack.

[Fokker]

Another issue on ack is that they keep firing continuous, with no limitation on ammo. In the real world the 40mms couldnt shoot more than 8-12 shells at the time (2-3 clips), then the loaders needed to put in new clips. That should be simulated in AH with breaks between 40mm salvoes.

In smaller calibres you had the same situation. Ammo boxes neeeded to be replaced quite often. Firing continuous as in AH was out of the question.

It should not be difficult to simulate these ammo changes in AH ack.